Kierant202

Thoroughly enjoyed the comments. Came here knowing they had 2 versions. 1 with and 1 without the game (makes sense as there is no physical release for pc or Xbox).

Watching the many spiritual journeys from screw SE -> this article is misleading was worth the engagement

I've bought final fantasy tactics every time it released. It's been one of my comfort games my entire life and I cannot stress enough how happy this makes me

@BAMozzy nice to see someone else who understands what this game is. Everyone is too focused on the mainstream gaming experience.

Both the first and this one are experiences entirely separate from standard gaming that require an entirely different mindset and atmosphere to enjoy properly

@Onelastgo video game market analysts have had plenty to say about physical gaming.

Most notably that it is no longer to be expected. Physical gamers are now 'enthusiasts' in the same way music enthusiasts buy vinyls or frankly just...CDs, CDs have declined 95% since their peak for music and similarly physical games are over 85% down from their peak. Except they rarely complain when every new release isn't on vinyl.

As for the pricing that's just tiresome to hear. I earn well over 50% more compared to when I started my job for doing nothing particularly different or more. Everything has gone up in prices in turn. Compare the cost of luxuries like sweets and chocolates. Production costs remain similar but they are now very noticeably more expensive. Then we sit and complain that video games that have exponentially been growing in production values need to put up prices to remain sustainable? And complain we are paying more for less? While every year wages go up for no more work? Every analyst has been saying video game prices have been so far past due a rise that we have frankly been LUCKY it lasted this long

@ConsoleAgnostic I know perfectly well what the bystander effect is. But this really doesn't apply. It's such a low impact topic for such a vast majority of gamers that it just doesn't matter.

News outlets and media using rage in clickbait for everything just makes people angry and they push that anger everywhere except for actually productive places

All the console makers and the larger publishing arms don't particularly care too much for physical sales.

We are consumers, not customers. That's the shareholders. This is why 2019 Sony stopped allowing 3rd parties to sell download codes (even the developers themselves!) to force you to buy through their store for digital (Sony tax = shareholder win)

Same reason the pro is discless as standard let's be honest.

Nintendo already announced several switch 2 games are going this route.

By the same vein epic just won the apple lawsuit and are still encouraging all Fortnite players to buy v-bucks directly through epic not apple store. All about the shareholder profits

Do I think physical media should exist for preservation purposes? Yes.
Do I think this was only ever going to be a one way slope? Yes.
Is preservation ONLY possible through physical media? Not in the slightest.
Do the majority care? Nope.
Do the shareholders care? Nope.

So ultimately we can do nothing. Saying words matters not as it's too small a minority. Accept the reality of it and move on. No sense in getting worked up over some things outside our control

Where was this conversation when Like a dragon infinite wealth also sold over 1 million copies in its first week with a turn based combat system that featured QTE? Turn based is turn based. They've had games with also qte in them for over a decade. Legend of the dragon, paper mario, lost odyssey (the most like expedition 33... Let this team remaster THAT monster).

FF has had its own identity crisis for years. I enjoyed most entries but have found them lacking creative writing sparks most often that other RPGs I've enjoyed more from like a dragon, atlus games, expedition 33 seem to have as their real core.

@Northern_munkey I'm laying a portion of the blame of publisher's and audience expectations. I'm taking none away from Epic. They released press statements 2 months ago admitting UE5 had stutter issues largely because of shaders (which is almost always worse on pc than consoles), and digital foundry even posted a video on that subject where they said insiders in development studios were telling them that some aspects of UE5 weren't even working as they were told they should forcing developers to have to call in specialists to fix things and we still end up with these stuttery messes.

Now epic promise it will 'eventually be better'. Epic know that UE5 isn't really ready for the flawless AAA development they are promising these companies but they are downplaying it as much as possible on their end so people on the internet can blame rushed, underpaid developers instead.

When such a substantial amount of UE5 AAA games suffer this badly among a wide variety of developers then the common denominator isn't the devs. Go look at shader comp issues in UE5. Even Fortnite is a stutter fest with it at times.

UE5 as it is right now is a joke. It is not up to the standard epic claimed it was and developers and gamers are paying the price while they use us as testers.

@Northern_munkey it's not on the developers though. They aren't the top of the food chain. They aren't the ones making the engine decision. That's on the publishers that want faster, cheaper turnover, that's on the shareholders pushing for the cheapest employee turnover rates incentivising shared skillets being taught to new developers, that's on the audiences wanting games faster and prettier with no increase to the price of games. The developers are ultimately the LAST people to be blamed.

@Northern_munkey UE5 is pushed so hard on all new developers that it is literally taught on university courses. The problem is that UE5's many user friendly interfaces also scale together poorly when over relied on instead of more intimate coding by individual developers. This in itself then breeds more sloppily optimised games as it saves time and money pleasing shareholders and encouraging developers to continue cutting themselves kinds of corners.

Granted this mostly applies to the open world games as default UE5 settings tend to steer towards visual flair first and then require more developer knowledge for the performance side. I.e. games like hell blade 2 which isn't large open world, expedition 33 which is a small team of developers not pushed to release fast and actually taking their time to learn the engine in depth

Look at recent games in UE5 silent hill 2 remake, nightingale, immortals of aveum, lords of the fallen, avowed, even oblivion remaster

Then look at developer teams leaning on teaching their Devs actually how to use engines because they aren't just encouraged to learn the basics of the cheapest to teach engine out there

Alan wake, kingdom come deliverance 2 spring toind immediately.

The industry is pivoting en masse to UE5 so speed up production times, lower production cost, and make it easier to cycle Devs in ***** conditions because ALL Devs are graduating with basic UE5 knowledge. Just another symptom of gamings issues and an underlying cause for so much terrible optimisation and performance. All boosted by the fact UE5 has the good graphics base looks needed to get pre-orders in from trailers looking pretty on top

@Northern_munkey I don't disagree that the shadow drop hid performance issues but even if it had stable 60fps this graphic level would've been slaughtered in the internet.

I blame Bethesda less due the performance than epic quite frankly. UE5 is a joke considering the level of push to make it almost a universal engine that the smaller studios like virtuos would obviously default to

Bethesda had to shadow drop oblivion. If it had been a normal release schedule it would've been ridiculed and mocked online for poor graphics and jank. Overpowering the nostalgia rampage sweeping people with this shadow drop. The shadow drop and excitement of old fans created tonnes of fomo.

This is no ordinary (sometimes lazy) modern remaster of a game barely 5 years old to coincide with some series, sequel or movie to generate hype.

And it's incredibly indicative of the nature of people on the internet trying to hate on it just for the sake of hate.

Is expedition 33 better? Yes. Is that proving true with sales? Yes. Do I think Oblivion is rudely reducing sales of this fantastic new IP? No.

A lot of the vocal minority online of gamers are a lot more flexible with their purchases than they like to pretend online. And a lot of the 'I'll wait for a sale' group either do not manage to wait for a sale or simply never purchase. As has been proved several times with past games and further show how people won't purchase even with sale outside of initial Zeitgeist with things like the late port of ff7 to pc and it's corresponding sales numbers on pc

@AverageGamer was about to say the same thing. Ps5 pro or high end pcs can probably brute force the ue5 issues away but for base ps5 and the Xbox pair I expect some frame rate issues in the open world segments and maybe the capitol

@Dragoon1994 most of that discourse was referring to the fact that upscaled switch 2 versions of switch 1 games will only have the switch 1 version on the cartridge and the upgrade is via a download.

The rest is because some extra large 3rd party companies either can't because of size or just won't release physical copies of games all in the cartridge (as many of these companies also do with disc)

One point I don't see being mentioned is that one of the reasons Nintendo don't reduce the cost of their games is they are generally complete on release and don't rely on mtx to make up profits. All their love service bs is reserved for mobile devices and funds single player games. You may not like the genres they aim for or the fact they iterate on the same IPS but a LOT of people do. I don't want the next mario kart to sell out and offer 6 thousand different pieces of outfit for individual prices just to save £10 on the purchase. But neither do I begrudge that some companies do have to do things that way to make the games they want to make. We can't have our cakes and eat them. The extra development costs have to come from somewhere

Nintendo are making exclusives that vary greatly in genre, rarely ask for mtx and are almost always released in a complete state.

Most other AAA developers make up their costs with mtx and cut corners.

I'll take gameplay over graphics anyday. Nintendo have been nominated for 7 of the last 10 goty awards.

People screaming that the games aren't worth it if they aren't graphical monstrosities are entitled and have lost the core of gaming as a medium

@RagnarLothbrok Something commonly said in online circles but not as widespread proven considering the number of different outlets agree from various places.

Regardless the user scores for all four of those games are all at 7.6 or higher. And taking pentiment as the lowest of the lot the low reviews are laughably boiled down to 'not next gen graphics, don't wanna read'.

God forbid we have non mainstream games out here

@RagnarLothbrok that's a little disingenuous and rude. They may be out of the zeitgeist and talking ppints but every single game in that list boasts over an 80 on metacritic. All are good, respectable games

@themightyant agreed. People always vastly underestimate the effect of no longer being in the zeitgeist.

I think they should try and time single player ps5 releases with DLC/Expansion drops if they ever want large sales numbers while still having an exclusivity period elsewhere

@themightyant I'm just sad he also dragged in halo infinite, avowed and hi fi rush into the fight.

As someone who enjoys a a wide spectrum of games across pc and all 3 consoles why pick out some of the 3 actually good Xbox games (infinite I mean campaign, multiplayer I gave up with after the abysmal release schedule).

AC shadows is doing ok. It's got plenty of the more unsavoury modern gaming stuff, i.e. lots of paid options in a sp game, but it's definitely at the same standard as past ubisoft mainstream titles and other AC games partnered with a popular period and location. Angry internet people gotta be angry I guess

@heavyartillery56 https://gamerant.com/pc-gamers-play-old-games/

8% of steam users game time is on games less than 2 years old as pointed out in one portion of the article above. Pc gamers pirate new games more and wait for sales in a much larger proportion to console gamers. Steam sales really don't mean a whole lot for more console centric new titles.

Can we release the nemesis system to other developers now....

@Ralizah having played almost every monster hunter game I can't disagree more. It's a very very different experience playing from base versus starting from the dlc. It's a wildly different difficulty curve for one and most importantly the entire endgame loop of the base game is usually redundant for the dlc with the way the power scaling works. Especially so ever since world.

Playing monster hunter only from the dlc release may be smoother but it's really not the same experience intended by the developers in terms of content intake

Only the late to post game content loop should be 'hard' imo. Otherwise you won't even have enough of a playerbase for post game free updates

Anyone who knows how A.I tech has been progressing could tell you this being designed was an inevitability.

No point holding it against the creators. Instead watch and lambast those who use this technology for the wrong reasons in the wrong way.

Microsoft know this and are likely just trying to dissuade the knee jerk reactions with silly words

I need to see reviews on civ 7 on console. Wasn't impressed by the turn speeds and controls of 6 previously compared to on my pc

All I'm personally expecting over the next few years is a fresh new legal battle. Epic have set the trend on mobile and I don't doubt it will come to console.

Epic and likely Microsoft, possibly (though unlikely) even companies like steam, Amazon, netflix will be looking for the potential to have their own storefronts for sales and streaming.

I'm still fairly confident this is the end goal for Microsoft. Tie it in with game pass and their soon to be very large rollouts of mainstream western games and they will be hoping to become a platform for game purchases across all places to play games.

They will still sell consoles just for the optics and the die hard fans. Probably while saying that they are the 'best' place to play their games.

One thing that the industry has shown in the last couple generations. Players follow their friends. And many people follow their old library.
There used to be nothing stopping a swap in company gen to gen but once back compatibility and achievements took off along side the rise of console multiplayer it was the perfect time for Sony to win and Xbox to fumble and things to snowball from there. Microsoft probably see this as their last real chance to turn that tide utilising the next generations interest in mobile gaming and a look at a future of streaming to do it.

@Northern_munkey as mentioned in the article the intent is that the game knows what button you are pressing a few fractions of a second faster and prepares the input slightly quicker reducing input lag. This may be especially useful for streaming games

@middyone I quite literally said it was at a time that Ubisoft formula was popular at that time. Far cry 5 came out a year later and was the best selling in the franchise.

I also specifically added that it was the Sony stamp of approval during Sony's peak brand time that contributed to sales.

Horizon forbidden west went so far as to add 'destructible walls' to the minimap with nothing more behind them than a pile of gold. Zero dawn had little to no waste in the general nooks and crannies of the map being actually related to quests and collectibles. That is what I refer to as bloat. Forcing me to traverse the map back to places for these things on my map that serve 0 purpose.

The way Aloy was written in forbidden west felt incredibly forced at least so far as the early game. It got significantly better later but it is on the developers to make early game better.(starfield anyone?) The tonal dissonance between Aloy's urgency in the intro contrasted poorly to the flippant side quests. In zero dawn the framing of gaining allies framed things more organically for the side quests that culminated well at the end.

As for completion rate they are pretty identical. Despite the fact that zero dawn was free for everyone and that can be extrapolated to a massive amount of people who opened the game with no intention of completion.

The higher % platinum rate also leads credence to the sentiment that collectibles in forbidden west were on the higher end of the open world spectrum compared to zd.

Young audience + moba does not sound great long term to me. Even

Pokémon unite is only doing ok because of a more adult hardcore scene, especially in china.

I can't see enough of a playerbase for a long lasting live service game without a large IP or some stellar gameplay with that target audience in the moba scene of all things. I at least believe the latter might happen though it's very outside bungies comfort zone.

For me horizon zero dawn was a fun week but it left no impact on my even if I got the platinum. It just came out when the 'ubisoft formula' was at it's most popular and Sony was at their peak PS4 crest of popularity. Forbidden west in comparison was far to bloated and poorly written.

I appreciate hzd for what it was but it doesn't really have me hooked on the IP. I'll probably still give the movie a wat h as I found zd premise and execution on the history lore in it to be good

A LOT more negative talk went around about ms buying Activision (rightly so) I don't see this purchase overwhelmingly affecting the gaming world.

As for the anime world well 80% of crunchy roll anime are mid and of the remaining 20% lately the 'better' anime have been releasing elsewhere as well. Some of the biggest rated anime lately even being exclusive elsewhere. I.e. Oshi no KO.

The only reasons I could see msft being legitimately interested in kadokawa are the following:

1. Kadokawa want to remain pretty much intact and as such would be a profitable, working company in Japan for msft. (Tango was closed largely due to the director leaving and there being tenuous management available to msft for tango in Japan)

2. EVERYTHING kadokawa have could be available on msfts future plans of 'everything is an Xbox if you subscribe'. Music, anime, games. All of it

I don't want that so I'd rather Sony have it. Sony the gaming developer wouldn't buy a company this big. Sony the entertainment company most certainly can and would benefit massively.

As a 'real gamer' (TM) I'm contractually obligated per the social media rules to say Fortnite sucks blah blah blah. /S

(If this is the multiplayer game my friends want to play these next few months I'll play it and enjoy spending time with my friends. I have plenty of 'real' sp games to keep me busy otherwise)

The playerbase for this game on pc and Xbox is probably pretty saturated by now and it's not a system seller so I'd say a ps release is a net positive. Switch 2 would be icing on the cake

People seem to really enjoy saying how bad GPU is for cod and for gamers in general. Quoting the price of GPU for a year instead of buying cod. Which if you will ONLY play cod.... Fair enough.

I've had GPU on and off as things that interest me appear but I mostly game on a ps5 for mainstream titles.

For me gamepass allowed me to play and fall in love with franchise's that I hadn't even considered buying on sale. Starting with Yakuza 0 I was able to play through 700+ hours across Yakuza games a d now buy new Yakuza games day 1.

Another 100+ hours was slay the spire that I never thought I'd play. Another 200+ hours on Disney dream light valley for some time with my partner on its release. (She's since bought it for herself on the switch and my god the poor performance hurts me).

On top of this I 'shared' my gamepass with my at the time financially struggling younger brother and he appreciated being able to play on his own Xbox with his friends on games he otherwise couldn't.

Finally my best friend has 2 hyperactive children with the attention span of peanuts who each have an Xbox, shared game pass and devour every remotely new game that pops up until they quickly tire and move on. While he enjoys games like age of empires on his pc to his hearts content.

These were the people gamepass was made for originally. (So they said) A low price point of entry to see and try a multitude of games you otherwise might not. The constant price increases and the recent change to exclusives day one on GPU only have hurt that image greatly for me.

But I am still confident that the original idea was actually just to start this gateway to the world of cloud gaming platform for the next generation of gamers. Not for me or for most of us who use these news sites and only see our own opinions reflected back at us.

@NEStalgia can't agree more. The moment gaming as a medium switched to an online social platform with backlogs of games and digital sales the wave started. Sony won THE critical generations for the console gaming space.

Everyone must know on some level that a very large part of Sony's power is simply..... Sunken cost fallacy... We've all poured money, time and emotion into the brand and our accounts. Made friends and memories on the playstation.

Without a firing on all cylinders rival no amount of bad, but not industry ending, disasters was going to topple sonys place at no.1

Sony know this so they are striking while the iron is hot to make money off of us. Pure business. I hate it but get it.

Microsoft know it. They can't win in the raw console space by throwing money against the wave. Even good games wouldn't budge the needle enough. So they are laying groundwork for cloud gaming hoping the NEXT era of gaming will be theirs. A gamble I'm interested but not particularly looking forward to seeing.

The biggest issue with adapting Yakuza is that the main story is always exactly as serious and melodramatic as the show is being. The silly, goofy side almost exclusively comes from side content that's almost impossible to adapt as it is completely off tone from the rest. In game form it works, but I don't think it ever will for TV the same way

@DennisReynolds in terms of optics surrounding this release they had to in my opinion.

It was a very good game with a solid writing that well respected player time for an open world game unlike it's contemporaries or it's sequel.

However with minimal alternative story options and a satisfying but not addictive gameplay it does not interest me in a replay for purely graphical upgrades as someone who played everything the original had to offer.

By doing the upgrade paths there are many who will purchase but not play or simply dip a toe in to their original save and do a tour. Those who purchase it full price are unaffected and of course cannot bypass it by buying the original, digitally anyway, so their profit line is likely higher with a £10 upgrade available.

This doesn't happen like this for other Sony exclusives, that's usually just review bombing. This seems more personal so I'm willing to bet it's more on the female cosmetic changes than Microsoft fans.

Regardless of any console biases anyone who mislabels or marks down a game simply for it's platform is no real gamer. Respect the developers who made the game and keep personal bias be it platform or political out of reviews

@waynesworld ok they added monetisation but what was fall guys long term profit strategy to support the servers and new content beforehand?

Epic treated their playerbase with a lot more respect than most live service games these days. No pay to win ever (outside of that 1 skin I think). Constant story for those who want to look for it. And an entire creative mode that is its own giant.

@Jayslow yeah I haven't bought a ubisoft game in years. Just fully aware I can play a near identical game for half the price by going through their back catalogue. Nothing new they make is new.

People trying to use the woke label are stupid though. Ubisoft have had plenty of servicable stories. Their stories just don't matter. They are junk food, easy, copy and paste games that'll never crawl up a person's backlog

Ghost of yotei made this an ok showcase. Everything else was things I'd either seen before or had little interest in. Still against the horizon remaster by the change in tone towards it doesn't surprise me. Everyone already has it an £10 is no different than buying a mtx in a live service game. It doesn't even register to many gamers. Just free trophies and probably a couple hours dip into a game they've already played to say 'this is nice' then never touch it again

Thursday 30th may this says for me? Is it a glitch? (In the paragraph above the local time, which itself has the correct date)

@LogicStrikesAgain people forget about mid tier games from mid tier companies. Sony had a stellar reputation. Hence when something with such a high budget, dev time and market push, from a studio they acquired after approving of this games development, all the good will and expectations turn sour. It happens all the time with any company sitting on the top

Ff15 is one of the best selling in the franchise at over 10m. But Xbox only accounted for roughly 10% of that so Xbox can be left for later without much economic impact (unless they really needed that extra 1m or so sales)

I think that by the time these games released on the pc there was no longer any FOMO, the time had passed and other releases were in the limelight like baldurs gate 3 and elden ring. And by this point everyone knew what the final fantasy games were and were making informed decisions against another long long arpg that was a year or 2 old at the time.

@IamJT What I've come to believe watching Microsoft for the last 10 years (as a 3 console gamer, laptop too for games like civ, age of empires) is this.

About halfway through last generation they decided their future was not in the console space. It was as a comprehensive platform. Ironic seeing as their pc store is an absolute disgrace.

I believe their goal is to become a cloud gaming juggernaut. Via the TV, tablet, mobile, console, pc and if they have their way even on other consoles (epic games store Vs apple and android set a precedent).

In doing so the console is only a small piece of the pie. If you buy a 3rd party game via msft you can play it anywhere. It's simply very early for them to be aiming for such a thing. But msft always have jumped the gun. remember consoles as entertainment systems lol

Looks like a spiritual successor to lost odyssey combat and I'm all for that