Cvantez

@RoomWithaMoose Just to add to this, your “freedom” to do things like walk down the street is now, under this administration, not something you can assume if your skin is anything but white. As the poster said above, he only cares about the freedoms that impact him. Fine, but that doesn’t make it the reality for huge swaths of people in this country (US).

@N1ghtW1ng

“Just a heads up, Saudi Arabia =/= Islam.
In my opinion, Saudia Arabia is probably the worse culture/country/nation that is linked to Islam.
They follow an extremely harsh and strict interpretation of Islam, which many people outside of Saudi Arabia do not agree with.
This is an extremely important point. Thanks for highlighting it.”

Thanks for highlighting this extremely important point.

@PuppetMaster - What do you think the “topic” is? Cmon man, companies get purchased by other companies all the time. To say this purchase is like those is head-in-sand stuff based on Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, especially when gaming is such a diverse community. Plenty of folks look at the bigger social picture beyond how it impacts their time with a controller in hand.

@Michael2008ish Say what? I was responding to the suggestion they were focused on remakes.

@nessisonett Given their consistent output this gen with LaD, Infinite Wealth, and Pirate Yakuza, I don’t think they can be accused of wallowing in the past. That’s in addition to Ishin. Man Who Erased His name was a bit of Kiryu fan service perhaps, but that can be forgiven because Kiryu is awesome and an epilogue was a nice idea after 6. Also, the two Judgment games are a very cool spin off. Kiwami remakes are certainly not dominating their output IMO.

I do agree that the sex offender stuff is super problematic.

@The_Elder This is certainly a take. Also a 100% unsubstantiated hot take reflecting your politics.

It’s all a risk/reward equation involving spreadsheets and projections to ensure maximization of shareholder value. This is life in the publicly traded gaming entities (and all corporations everywhere). Art and new experiences only enter the conversation if they can be confirmed to maximize the profit potential. The development cycles are just too long and costs too high to bear risk for the sake of art. This is the industry at the AAA level, full stop.

Building on existing IP is simply safer. Doesn’t mean they need to be strict sequels, as others here have said.

@DennisReynolds - I suspect they read it was a thing to be angry about in whatever corner of Reddit they frequent.

Great deal and good on them for going back to retrofit these terrific games. And if you don’t own digital and care, these RGG games are routinely dirt cheap on digital sales.

It’s no world beater, but something like Far Cry 6 ought to be on this list. Certainly ahead of Watch Dogs Legion.

@chuffie There is a path here for both parties that facilitates the velocity the developer wants and fair compensation for actors whose voice is used and extrapolated on post-recording. The VA unions and labor contracts need to catch up in this regard. If you get a residual payment each time your voice is leveraged for anything AI, with zero effort on your part, you may ultimately benefit if it turns into passive income while you do other work. It will take some strong negotiating work but that’s part and parcel with a changing paradigm.

@Leinad7 Or, if PS6 is $950 and the next Xbox is $1000, the Switch 2 will have dominant market share and devs target that platform. Perhaps AI-driven upsampling for the high-end niche consoles, maybe, but maybe not. The economics may have more of an impact on the landscape than we anticipate.

@Dogbreath Best post on here. Thanks.

@clvr If that’s what your post got deleted for, I’m right there with you.

@Exerion76 Exactly. This isn’t about “game preservation”. There is a very peculiar obsession here.

Not buying the game because of this is a choice I guess, if that’s the line you want to draw. Rationalizing piracy and used game purchases (which hurt devs) because of it is Grade A nonsense. Gamers are the best.

@jeff19023 This will have zero impact on game sales. If the reviews are poor, that’s another matter. But really, this disk issue is such a non factor except for a small small percentage of gamers.

@BAMozzy Yup, Gen X and maybe elder Millennials who grew up playing a certain way are the whales for new game purchases. Younger generations are whales for micro transactions. My 20-something sons game a good amount, but it’s always FIFA, Fortnite, Valorant, Rivals, or Rocket League, because it’s a part of their social fabric. It is laughing and connecting with friends as much as the game itself. They don’t dig sitting alone playing a single player game - they’d sooner watch a money or some peak TV. Maybe go back to Wii era Mario games for nostalgia. My 20-something nephews are more apt to play stuff like FTL and other cheap stuff on laptops. Decidedly not spending big.

The culture around gaming has shifted considerably. Can’t say it’s for better or worse. As a Gen Xer I still favor single player games but with backlog and great freebies (Alan Wake 2!) I don’t actually need to buy a game again unless something truly special lands. I’m not sure how the industry grows going forward aside from engagement games, annual franchises, and MMOs. Seems bleak to me.

@RicebinBernacky Buying games is a dopamine hit, like any form of therapy shopping. When you consider that the game you are eyeing will always be there in the future, for cheaper, it gets a lot easier to just not put it in your cart. Just simply owning a game that you’ll never have time to play doesn’t get you points in the game of life. That’s made it a lot easier for me to cut off the impulse sale purchases. Like you it takes me about two months to get through a big game, and I’ve just been playing stuff from Extra, or the monthly games, or stuff from the backlog.

Also, statistics isn’t fake math. That’s nonsense. However, conclusions drawn from bad statistical work (small sample sizes, poor or misleading questions, demographic issues in respondents) is a real problem. I don’t think the overall conclusion from this article is wrong, however, despite there being nuances within the numbers.

@naruball That’s impressive, but why? 360 games per year?

@JustMyOpinion The outrage over Saudi is not selective without reason. This regime is beyond the pale. If you are informed you can draw your own red line regarding what you will and won’t support. It isn’t all or nothing, and not all offensive regimes/corporations are equivalent, despite not being clean.

Having Kushner involved is just the kicker.

@pyrrhic_victory Yeah, was going to emphasize that since the article just says “advisor”. Kushner has that pasty quiet no-conscious evil thing going on. Odds are high Trump himself has a stake in Affinity.

@LifeGirl There are degrees of horribleness. Everyone can and should have their red lines. It’s tempting to say everything is bad so whatever, but how the consumer spends their money is one of the key pieces of power the population still has in a capitalist world.

@ILikeStake “Own the media own the population.” Great comment. Sadly most just consume it uncritically, which makes it so insidious.

@Markatron84 Yup, it sure feels like “stories” like these are mean to create a fanboy echo chamber in the comments. Fun times. Waiting for the story about how the Football Manager devs have found Game Pass to be beneficial with no game sales cannibalization. Actually no, not holding my breath for that story here.

And to think Xbox has traditionally carried the stereotype of being bro-shooterland.

One takeaway is that the homogeneous tastes of the average gamer, simply updating their 2-3 core games every year or two, plus live service games like Fortnite et al, which we know are dominant despite not showing up here (since they aren’t purchased) is a core reason smaller game studios are struggling to find their niche. The market just wants the same thing over and over again, updated. Which I’m not mad at - it’s recreation and these COD and sports games are extremely social - but it sort of speaks to what gaming is for many. And yeah, I think this is a much bigger factor for small devs than Game Pass (ducking).

@RoomWithaMoose It’s all arm-chair analysis here. No data, just vibes and select anecdotes to support those vibes, over and over. Again, this is entirely common in the echo chambers of 2025, but it’s worth calling it out and you did it quite nicely. I’m actually encouraged that there are as many people recognizing it as there are.

@Kierant202 - 100% this. News bits are cherry picked for confirmation bias reasons. Happens everywhere, and this site is no different. I will say it’s always amusing to see, despite winning this generation handily, how much XBox and GP live rent-free in people’s heads here. We didn’t just beat you XBox, you are now the root of all evil, and we have the carefully selected quotes to prove it. It’s silly.

And I say this as someone who really dislikes many aspects of Microsoft.

@graymamba You, who are the enlightened one. We shall just listen to you. Nice.

@AhmadSumadi Cherry-picking a comment from social media to support what’s become a prevailing (but unsupported) opinion here is very much from the Fox News playbook.

@TicklefistCP Agree. This article about a social media comment is red meat to this echo chamber. Appreciate that there are some holistic opinions in the comments. This industry is on fire but GP ain’t the cause of it. Competition for time and eyeballs, AI, the worldwide economy, geopolitical uncertainty….hell, live service games are a bigger threat to devs houses than pretty much anything else. GP may play a part but as someone above said, shutting down GP would barely change the dynamic.