Godot25

@CrashBandicoat From wording it seems like that Microsoft kept paying Tango staff until they got this deal through

@naruball Devs said to Game File that Final Shape could never bring as much money as was needed to avoid layoffs. Which probably tells you everything you need to know.

Also, expansion is already 33% off just two months after release on Steam. Which is unusually soon for Destiny expansion.

@naruball Yeah. I mean...it's not that hard to understand
Bungie was loosing money, because they employed 1,3k employees, while only having D2 as moneymaker. They were loosing money month after month. Also, employees told Bloomberg that sales of expansions were dropping every year. So it's not like The Final Shape somehow rescued Bungie.

But if you shed 30% of your studio wages, it will obviously get you out of the "loosing spree" hole.

But it's not like this will get Bungie out of troubles. Playerbase already dropped significantly since release of The Final Shape. Marathon is reportedly in rough shape and Bungie will no longer make big expansions for Destiny 2, because they finally realised that without good onboarding experience for new players, Destiny 2 is doomed long term.

@Type_Trubbish Microsoft kept GhostWire and The Evil Within IP's. They only gave Hi-Fi Rush to Krafton

@naruball Ehh. Pete Parsons said that Bungie was loosing money. That's main reason for deep cuts. So yeah. It's pretty obvious.

@Leechmonger_DeS Yeah. Because success of Bethesda merger was surely on Tango Gameworks. /s

Look. I loved The Evil Within 2 and Hi-Fi Rush. But can we stop pretending that Tango was main moneymaker in Zenimax? Hi-Fi Rush came onto PS5 this year and didn't even fit in TOP 20 in month of release. The Evil Within 2 was a commercial flop. GhosWire wasn't that great and wasn't selling that well.

Microsoft bought Zenimax for huge IPs like Doom (new Doom game is coming out next year if you didn't notice), The Elder Scrolls (which is in production), Fallout (Fallout 76 still makes huge amount of money), TESO (which still makes huge amount of money) and next MMO game from ZOS. Not to mention Arkane which is working on Blade. And Indy is coming out this year. Also, Starfield is so unsuccessful, that BGS is not only releasing new expansion this year, but also planning new expansion for 2025

It's like pretending that Microsoft bought ABK for Toys for Bob and Crash Bandicoot. No, they did not. They bought ABK for Call of Duty, Diablo, Overwatch and Candy Crush. Toys for Bob and Crash Bandicoot just happened to be in same package. And TfB isn't even in ABK anymore.

Trying to even compare it to Bungie is honestly hilarious, especially after recent report that Marathon is not looking that great and fact that Bungie was loosing money.

And somehow many people still think that PS5 will match or even surpass PS4 in terms of sales...

Well. It was Sony's due diligence to find out if they are overpromising...

@twitchtvpat I'm talking about his decisions when he was CEO, not years before that

Jimbo's decisions are looking worse and worse
His main prize - Bungie, who was supposed to spearhead live service charge is gutted. And probably is not independent anymore
Half of live service project delayed or outright canceled
Years of dev time spent on live service games that will never see light of day (TLOU Factions for example)
Concord seems like DoA

Basically, only success from this whole Jimbo's charade is Helldivers 2. Which is pretty bad if you ask me.

@Batesy125s That's why I said "you can count number of them on one hand for last two years"

BG3
Elden Ring
TOTK

And even TOTK was more "highly iterative" then genre defining. Same for God of War Ragnarok.

I love how almost every company claims to be making "genre defining" game. Meanwhile number of "genre defining games" in last two years can be counted on one hand.

I wouldn't call Concord's characters "fresh"
They are so derivative, that they are just outright boring and uninteresting.

Which is pretty huge problem when one of your selling point is weekly story cutscenes.

@WhiteRabbit by that logic Party Animals also isn't Xbox exclusive, since it was released day one on PC

It's nice to not being treated like second class citizen with this beta...

Gotta love the attitude that everybody who is pointing out flaws of this game is "hater"

It's just plain uninteresting.

Movement of players is sluggish for my taste. I don't know where comparisons with Destiny are coming from since Destiny 2 in it's current state (not during launch of Vanilla game) is pretty fast paced.

I can't imagine having long term interest in this game. I'm not playing MP game for weekly cutscenes. And in terms of content this game is just blandest of the bland. And visual style is not interesting in the slightest and some characters are downright ugly looking.

I think that Concord is DoA unless Sony is willing to put it into PS Plus day one. This game is competing with Overwatch 2, which is free-to-play.

40$ payment worked for Helldivers 2, because Helldivers 2 was very unique. I don't think that's the case for Concord.

Fact that they are opening beta without need of preorder speaks volume about state of preorders for that game.

On Steam, game has 1400 followers and is 1700th most wishlisted game on platform. Despite it being only one month before release.

???
Ultimate with new price is 1€ per month more expensive then PS Plus Premium. While having first-party games there day one, which Premium don't have and EA Play included, which Premium don't have.

So I don't understand point of this article tbh.

What Microsoft is doing is not admitting that "it was wrong move" but basically creating "terrible" Game Pass Standard (which is equivalent of PS Plus Extra btw), so they can upsell you on Ultimate, since it's only 3€ per month more expensive than Standard. Because when you hit peak subscriber count (which they have on consoles), only way to increase your revenue is to upsell your customer to higher tier or to jack up the price.

Admission of "wrong strategy" would be removing day one first-party games from PC Game Pass and Game Pass Ultimate too...

Considering Microsoft still owns publishing rights for first game, they can't make a PS version even if they wanted. Not unless Microsoft permits that.

Also, I doubt that it's high on their priority list. They are Marvel IP game factory after all.

@get2sammyb moneyhatting without Sony being publisher is also nothing uncommon for Sony. See Silent Hill 2, Kena: Bridge of Spirits, FF games and many many more.

But i don't think Black Myth was moneyhatted tbh. But it would be nice if devs were just straight with their customers for once. Larian clearly stated "no, we haven't recieved money from Sony, problem is splitscreen on Series S"

It's almost like it never happened (ehm. Stellar Blade), right?

I'm not implying that this is what happened. I'm just pointing out that it would be no surprise to me if that was the case. Because it would not be the first time...

@gaston Yeah. I can see how many people are interested in playing GT7, RE4 and RE Village on VR

I'm baffled that Sony didn't saw it way before release.
You are trying to sell 600$ piece of VR that needs 500$ console to work with. And has no PC support (at release)
Meanwhile your competition is selling 600$ VR headset that can work on it's own. And can be plugged to PC.

Even PSVR1 didn't sold gangbusters. I don't know what lead Sony to produce another generation. But I'm 99% sure there won't be any PSVR3.

@UltimateOtaku91 PlayStation gamers don't have problem with, PC gamers do. It's not that hard concept to understand.

Also, primary problem with Helldivers 2 was that Sony wanted to force PSN requirement 3 months after release. Because as you can saw there wasn't so much fuss about PSN requirement for Ghost of Tsushima Legends, Ragnarok and Concord outside of fact that PSN is not supported in 100s of countries.

It's hilarious honestly.
PlayStation guys were always talking about how Xbox have no games. And if they had games they were actually bad and nobody wants to play them
Xbox guys are always talking about how every PlayStation game is "sad dad simulator" and about "PlayStation template"

Meanwhile actual truth is that people are talking in that way because they can't play those games and it's easier to talk themselves into hating those games.

@WhiteRabbit No, because there is no debate that Helldivers 2 is a good game. I was just baffled that someone would brag about "Midblade 2" and then actually praise Stellar Blade and Rise of the Ronin in same sentence.

But I get it. Hellblade 2 is "Midblade 2" until it will come on PS5. Same as Sea of Thieves was bad, until it hit PS5

Also, Indiana Jones will be bad, but when it will get PS5 port it will be second coming of Jesus.

As usual.

Also, it's hilarious to claim "people thought that Hellblade 2 is worse then critics says" when 87% of Steam reviews for the game are positive. So players are actually praising the game even more than critics.

@WhiteRabbit
If Hellblade 2 is "as mid as it gets" then I don't know what is even the point of mentioning Stellar Blade and Rise of the Ronin. Since Stellar Blade has similar scores as Hellblade 2 (82 vs. 81 on OpenCritic) and Rise of the Ronin is even worse.

@PurvisP Well. It clearly works. So many comments, so many clicks...

Shawn is hilarious.
Especially when he was talking about dangers of industry consolidation while being on payroll of Tencent.

Keep it going...

@AdolBannings-Laylee Are you sure about that? Because only repeated games from last year's showcase were South of Midnight, Avowed, Fable and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. Not counting GaaS updates of course.

Call of Duty, Doom, State of Decay 3, Age of Mythology, Perfect Dark, Gears and Indiana Jones were not at last year's showcase(and that's just first-party stuff). Not to mention third-party stuff where the only repeated game that I can remember was Flintlock.

But I guess that when you change up 90% of games in your showcase it is almost same showcase than last year /s

@OM1993 Rofl. People are really claiming that?

Don't worry PlayStation fans. If Sony won't give you good games then "Good Guy Phil" will do it with Doom The Dark Ages.

I think, that people still refuse to accept a reality. That AAA games are taking forever to make. When you have only six studios (SSM, Insomniac, Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch, Bend and Guerrilla Games) who are capable of producing those types of games you are talking about 1-2 exclusives max per year. Since AAA games are taking 5-6 years to make nowadays.

People are just growing impatient. It's the reason why last year's showcase was percieved so badly. Because people wanted to see new stuff from Naughty Dog. They largely don't care about Concord or Fairgames.

One thing that was saving grace this year was that Sony labelled it as State of Play and not PlayStation Showcase. But that doesn't help much when we are mid poin this gen and we don't even know what Sucker Punch/Naughty Dog/Bend are working on. And god knows when they will actually release those games.

Hats off to Microsoft. After disastrous 2022 and mid 2023 they seems to finally picking up speed with their releases. But Microsoft, in their infinite stupidity (or greed) decided that the best time to go multiplatform is exactly the year when they have clear upper hand in terms of releases.

Jesus. Writing in this game sounds horrendous.

Like MCU fanfic.

This game looks exactly how I imagined phrase "Silent Hill 2 remake from Bloober Team"

Pretty bad animations and combat, but pretty decent environmental art.

Tbh, 5% YoY growth isn't anything to brag about.

But it was expected. Huge growth in first year and then stagnation onwards.

@3Above Mate. You truly don't know much, do you? So, few notes for you

• majority of COD playerbase is on PlayStation. There is no Game Pass on PlayStation, hence there will be still ***** of copies sold
• majority of COD revenue is generated post-launch (BP and microtransactions) and those would be untouched by GP inclusion
• You are basically relying on assumption that COD players on Xbox = existing Game Pass users. Which probably isn't true. I truly doubt that many players who play COD religiously are currently Game Pass subscribers
• If old-gen guy who is on PlayStation 4 decides to upgrade to Xbox because of COD GP inclusion, that's a win for Microsoft
• Microsoft said during FTC trial that they need 2,5 million GP subscribers in one month for COD in GP to "make sense." That's perfectly feasible
• You are also ignoring fact that huge portion of playerbase are not buying but still playing COD (Warzone)

Since Starbreeze shat a bed with Payday 3 I can see opening in market for this type of game.

But I don't have big hopes tbh.

@The_Wailing_Doom Lol. Do you really think Microsoft cares about little outrage on the internet?
People are going where the games are. They don't care about "outrage" of small core audience on internet forum thinks.

For Microsoft it's about money (what isn't). After ABK purchase they need to get their margins on a certain level, and this is a result. It's a stupid and short-sighted, but what are you going to do?

Please no. I really don't want Mad Max game with 5 hours of cutscenes

bu bu but Microsoft is preparing to shutter Ninja Theory...

@PuppetMaster Only people who are surprised are people who can't read.
Microsoft from the beginning said that XGS, Bethesda and Activision are separate branches with separate marketing, publishing and budgeting.

Meaning, that there is no connection between closure of Bethesda studio and creation of this studio.

Not to mention fact that if you check people who work in this studio, it's pretty clear that studio is 1,5-2 years old. It just got an official name.

@Shwing PR wins won't bring you revenue. By the time Tango would have a game ready, nobody will care about cheap PR points. Not to mention fact that The Evil Within, GhostWire and Hi-Fi Rush ip's remains with Microsoft.

Microsoft closed Tango (and Arkane) because they chose to streamline ZeniMax. So yes, Tango was a fat that needed trimming. For Microsoft. Not for me, since Hi-Fi Rush was my second favourite game last year. Which is why I think that closing of Tango is just tragedy.

So I don't understand why you think that Sony investing in Tango is good idea. You have devs, without valuable IP's attached to studio. And studio that didn't produce any commercially successful game in very long time.

@Shwing For what? The Evil Within 2 flopped commercially. Same for GhostWire Tokyo. Hi-Fi Rush also didn't set world on fire and didn't even placed in TOP 20 on PlayStation store in the month game was released.

Sony is also trimming fat in their studios and you want them to invest in a studio that haven't produce true commercial hit since their first game?

Sure...

@MrBook No. I'm not making excuses. It's ridiculous that 3 trillion dollar company can't spare few millions for two studios to continue to exist.

I'm just challenging the opinion that nothing like that would have happened without Microsoft buying Bethesda. Because I truly think that Bethesda would be ***** as a whole without external investments.

It's hilarious that we are seeing studios closures left and right, independent and studios under publishers and first thought that people will say is "consolidation is bad." Just lol.

@MrBook Lol.
Do you really think that Bethesda, which already had a problems with cashflow would be able to sustain studios like Arkane Austin or Tango by themselves?

Let's not kid ourselves please. Bethesda wanted to sell because they were in deep financial *****. They pivoted hard into live services like Redfall, Fallout 76 and Wolfenstein Youngblood, because of their problems.

And that's not to excuse Microsoft. Because their financial situation is more than fine and their actions are just sad. But I would argue that Bethesda without buyout would be even worse.

It's not like Deathloop and GhostWire set world on fire from commercial perspective.

Bu bu bu but consolidation.