Game News 2.0

RedXIV

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120504967#Comment_120504967

To be fair, coding is now in some schools. My daughter had the option of picking a technology module that I'd have KILLED for in secondary school where they learn to code on arduino boards and do some python & java coding.

Really echoing how badly we dropped the ball in Ireland for the tax cuts, I came out of one of the first dedicated game development B.Sc's in 2009 and there was a hunger then to get more game dev going in Ireland. We did have a lot of folks from the universities and gaming companies push for the tax breaks but I think the Great Recession took precedence and within a year of graduating, and no gaming jobs around, I ended up in enterprise software.

Without focusing on specific games though there are areas we're well known for contributing to, like Havok for physics engines, demonware for networking code, the xbox engineering team in microsoft in Dublin is not insignificant and I know a guy who did some good work on the accessibility projects for xbox in there too, and one that stuck out when I was in college was one of the best examples of a niche was a crowd who basically had an asset pack for trees they licenced to game studios. No idea if they are still going or not but apparently they were making a good bundle at the time.

Grumpypants

I'm hoping Romero's new FPS is a big hit. That's being made in Galway. It would be great to see them cement their place here and become a beacon for talent to come, or indeed stay, here.

Varik

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120505323#Comment_120505323

Going the other way there's a one man game made using unreal called "out of action" looks like a Ghost in the shell FPS that I really like the look of, made by a guy called Doku was an character and lighting artist and worked on a bunch of games as well as modding and if a game had a player created side of it's ingame store he'd probably having something in that.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1670780/Out_of_Action/

Only actual coding he'd to do was to get the slow mo to work, rest just used Unreals block system, which is probably no small coincidence that

Retr0gamer

Remember the PS1 and PS2? Remember when those consoles had libraries of weird quirky and brilliant games, when big game releases were interesting and not sad dad simulators?

Well humanity looks to be a nice slice of early playstation magnificence.

https://twitter.com/HumanityGame/status/1649054601109475328?t=DsOW1zXJ137xzUx9OJ6IWw&s=19

No news of a Xbox release unfortunately but damn this looks so good.

johnny_ultimate

The demo was great. Nice mix of old school puzzle vibes but with the new tech used for some delightfully weird visual and gameplay ideas. But it’s Enhance, one of the best devs around, so no surprise there :)

marcbrophy

For a second, I thought it was Humankind getting it's console release!

But yeah, I'll give this a blast on PS+ looks like some quirky fun :)

Zero-Cool

Holy ****, Flashback 2, out November this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDSpS0xXbYI

Retr0gamer

We already had Flashback 2 though.

I think I might be the only Fade to Black apologist still alive...

I just hope this is better than the utter shite that was that 3D Flashback reimagining from a few years back.

Zero-Cool

Fade To Black was..... different. I remember enjoying it but also it wasn't a patch on the original. I'm not sure of the 3d sections in this but definitely keeping my eye on it.

johnny_ultimate

UK CMA formally blocks Microsoft’s Activision acquisition 👀 UK was always going to be the biggest hurdle, but still surprised they actually ended up blocking it. Pretty major deal - prepare for legal battles?

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/microsoft-activision-deal-prevented-to-protect-innovation-and-choice-in-cloud-gaming

CatInABox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120522622#Comment_120522622

Have to admit, I didn't expect that to happen, particularly since they dropped their concerns about console level consolidation. Hilarious that it got blocked over cloud gaming, when absolutely no one is going to be streaming COD anytime soon, even if ABK chose to make it available.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120522644#Comment_120522644

It's also already available to stream on Boosteroid.

Jordan 199

Maybe Microsoft and the CMA can reach some agreement by talking to Joe on Liveline.

😉

There's nothing to stop Activision ans MS having a closer, very cosy relationship. They can't block 2 businesses doing business.

CastorTroy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120522498#Comment_120522498

Not that I got far in Flashback or played Fade to Black, but I thought Fade to Black was more a follow up than a sequel, the same way Flashback was a follow up to Another World while others think it's a sequel.

CatInABox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120522711#Comment_120522711

There's actually plenty, if you're in charge of a business, then you have to do what's in the interest of the shareholders. In this case, favouring MS over Sony would mean less sales, which would result in a lower stock price, the opposite of what shareholders would want. The shareholders might be missing out on a big pay today, but they definitely don't want their stock to perform worse.

EoinMcLovin

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1651181545409982466?t=b_GUwCn82p3mFVwYiiUf2g&s=19



UK say its blocking Microsoft deal

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120522498#Comment_120522498

Fade to Black is not a good game to go back to. I wouldn't be able to play it today. But on release it was a full 3D adventure game on PC before the likes of Tomb Raider. It really doesn't hold up though with poor controls, lack of any elevation in terrain and sky high difficulty. I think it's unfairly maligned as people only judge it against the PS1 port which was severely out of date when it arrived. On PC it reviewed really well and was seen as a big step forward in 3D.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120522742#Comment_120522742

Fade to Black is definitely a sequel to Flashback and takes place after it. Flashback also isn't a follow up to Another World. Both were different developers but people say that because it was the same publisher.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120522752#Comment_120522752

Sure but that's inclusive of doing business. I mean is bring COD to game pass bad for stock holders? They're happy to have it on boosteroid already. Slightly different in that you need to own the game to stream it. But is game pass really bad for business to the degree shareholders would be unhappy?

CatInABox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120522909#Comment_120522909

Ah, they'd be more than happy enough to pay to buy ABK, but they wouldn't pay ABK to put it on Gamepass, they're two very different types of expenditure, and there's no way that MS could make the numbers work.

quokula

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120522909#Comment_120522909

Yes, giving the game away for free to people who subscribe to gamepass instead of charging €70 or whatever per head for it is bad for business. Unless you're a small dev with low sales prospects, or you've got an old game that's already done most of its lifetime sales, or you're the owner of the platform and you're trying to lock more people into your ecosystem. This is why no AAA third party games ever appear on day one on gamepass, whether from Activision or anyone else.

For it to be worth Activision's while, Microsoft would have to pay as much money as all the combined purchasers would have spent to buy the game and they simply would have no chance of making that much back in new gamepass subscribers so it just makes no financial sense. Buying out ABK is a completely different scenario because it's capital expenditure and it's something that they calculate will make a return on investment over many years and across far more IPs than just COD and far more platforms than just console.

TitianGerm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120523482#Comment_120523482

That's not true though because Microsoft, Sony, Apple etc all take 30% of the sales price.

If COD for example went onto gamepass then then you'd imagine that Xbox are paying a decent fee upfront for that but that would be below the 70% of COD sales value.

Where you could see a benefit to COD would be that Game Pass players may be far more likely to buy micro transactions because they've gotten the game for "free".

Microsoft also announced they made $1B in revenue from Game Pass subscriptions last quarter. That's only going to grow as well.

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120523482#Comment_120523482

That's not really how business works. In simple terms more sales should equal more money. But having COD on gamepass will boost share price and the worth of the company grow which is the ultimate goal. It's how new tech businesses can lose money hand over foot each year and still be worth a lot of money. COD on gamepass is a big boost for XBOX and MS shareprices and company worth. In a way it's far more valuable than game sales because with game sales a huge amount of money is wasted on distribution and warehousing.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120523482#Comment_120523482

They specifically called out cloud streaming as the reason, not game pass. It could be a good time for MS to introduce streaming of purchased games. Same as GFN and Boosteroid. Boosteroid already have COD, but you have to own the game to stream it.

CatInABox

Microsofts Brad Smith was on BBC radio this morning talking about the CMA (spoiler alert, they're extremely pissed), one of the little bits of info that came out was that Microsoft currently has capacity for 5000 streaming sessions in the UK. I don't think I've ever even heard of a complaint that people can't get on, so I'd say that they're never hitting capacity.

Imagine having a $69 billion dollar deal blown up over a sector that's so small you couldn't even see it with a microscope, and which may never grow into anything. You'd be absolutely raging.

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120526709#Comment_120526709

Jason schreier said it was due to the collapse of Stadia and them deeming there's little competition left. So basically Phil Harrison caused the deal to fall through.

johnny_ultimate

Regulatory bodies exist precisely so companies like Microsoft can't just do whatever they want with the nearly unlimited resources at their disposal. I'm sure he's annoyed, but I personally find it very hard to conjure up much sympathy for the guy earning $20 million+ a year for running a tech giant :)

CatInABox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120526777#Comment_120526777

Ah, that was more of an off hand comment, just setting up the punchline of Phil Harrison. Even if Stadia was still going, MS would still have enough of the market that the CMA would have blocked, even if the market is essentially non-existant.

Its just so bizzare that it was the streaming aspect that they used to block it. It really does show signs of finding any reaso they can to block it.

The future for the xCloud/streaming part of Game Pass is far from certain. It's hard to imagine a situation where it is ever better to stream instead of playing natively on a console service. That will never change as long as they are using consoles for streaming.

OK, on the move. But honestly the mobile networks just aren't good enough. And in my experience and with family in the U.S their broadband and mobile networks are worse than what we have here and they still have data caps.

GFN and Stadia are/were different. GFN offers a streaming service that is better quality than many peoples PC's. That is worth paying for. Someone who can only dream of owning a 4090 PC can rent one for a month and play their favourite game on a high spec PC., But then their problem is the library is poor.

Now if game pass was to start using PC servers and offer better than native game quality, esentially turning a series S into a PC streaming client then I think there'd be an argument to say it is something for a competition authority to worry about. But they haven't gone that route. It's a console streaming service and it's never going to beat playing games on a PS5 which is essentially what they are worried about.

Penn

No doubt too that Sony will probably pull back on trying to develop or enhance their own streaming service platforms because it would then increase competition and open the door to the merger again.

EVERYONE'S A LOSER!