@SoulsBourne128 A game almost has to try to be worse than S&B. The mere fact that Ubisoft hasn't buried that game and pretended it never existed tells you all you need to know about how bad their management is now.
One of the major differences between Mindseye and Cyberpunk is, reportedly, Cyberpunk at least broke even and possibly even made a profit off the preorders alone. There's no way Mindseye made anywhere near that when it launched. Now that they've split from IOI, I have no idea where they'd even get the funding to even try to fix Mindseye.
Build a Rocket Boy should focus on a new game as its "redemption" as a studio. Putting more work, and more money, into Mindseye could take down the entire studio and result in unemployment for everybody. We've seen far too many studio closures and layoffs already, nobody wants to see more people in gaming out of work.
I love this series. I'm really happy the next installment is on the way. It'll be one of the 2-3 games I preorder this year because the quality's always very good and AC Zero was great.
@Ichiban I disagree, this remake is absolutely necessary. I want another pirate game. I've wanted one ever since BF. Sadly, they managed to horribly mangle Skull & Bones, which originally was supposed to capitalize on the popularity of BF.
Plus the remake is rumored to have ditched the Animus stuff for more pirate action, including new characters like Anne Bonny and Mary Reed.
Ubisoft managed to screw up the pirate game everybody wanted after playing Black Flag. All they had to do was finish and release the SP non-AC pirate game they showed off in the first trailer. That game IMO would have printed money. Basically, people just wanted BF but without the Animus, Templars and Assassins. What did they actually release several years later? Skull & Bones. A game nobody wanted.
All this is to say I don't put it past Ubisoft management to have done, or do, something stupid and decide to not release the BF remake, especially if they can't figure out how to jam "live service" into it.
@Ainu20 This has been a pattern for Ubisoft for multiple years now. Not "crashing a remake" per se, but getting a game pretty far along only to completely change direction or cancel it.
Perhaps the most financially costly example of this is what they did with Skull & Bones. Back when it was announced, everybody wanted a non-AC pirate story driven game. That's what S&B was planned to be when they showed off the first trailer. Sadly, at some point, Ubisoft management decided that S&B "neeeded" to be live service. Fast forward a year or two, and they still hadn't figured out how to do both what fans oringinally wanted and management's insistance on live service. So, we got a game where they wanted gamers to "create their own story" and buy lots of live service content.
Given that in their reorganization announcement Ubisoft mentioned that going forward they would concentrate on open world and live service titles. I would not be surprised if Ubisoft management decided that this version of Prince of Persia "needed" to be killed because the game wasn't going to meet at least one of those goals, and I bet it's the live service goal. Devs/publishers IMO haven't figured out how to do live service with primarily story based, single player games because really the only way to do it is to go back to old school story dlc. They don't want to do that, because it would require them to keep enough people on staff to continually crank out new content plus hire people to develop & support other projects. The employee churn we've seen in the gaming industry the last 4-5 years saves the companies money.
I don't know if French tax law allows Ubisoft to write off the development costs of cancelled games or not. If they can write off the costs, all this is a "win" for Ubisoft. Management bean counters don't care about anybody who gets hurt by the decision to kill a game.
Just finally had time to hook up my Ghost of Yotei PS5. Unfortunately, for some odd reason my WiFi connection is taking forever to download game updates (didn't have a problem updating the console and the controller.) So hopefully I'll be able to play GoY tomorrow. I enjoyed Tsushima so much, including the Legends mode which I didn't think I'd like, I know I'm going to love Yotei.
Is the Legends mode the only DLC we're likely to get or might there be at least one expansion for the main game like the Iki Island dlc for GoT?
As somebody who was skeptical of Microsoft's ability to compete, but eventually went from PS to XBox after the 360 was released and has owned the XB1 and a Series S too, I'm really sad to see what's happened to the XBox console business. I vividly recall having so much fun listening to Major Nelson, E, Stepto and Laura Lollipop Massey. Also vividly recall watching Major Nelson's video when Splosion Man was released. That and other things XBox did, like memes/jokes about the banhammer, back then was great fun. Now Major Nelson's working for Unity Technologies, LL's working for Apple I think, and Stepto sadly passed away in 2017. Not sure if E's still at XBox or not.
XBox got on the wrong path when Dan Mattrick tried to sell the XB1 as a living room entertainment machine that also played games. When the Series S/X was released, I thought Microsoft had learned from those mistakes. In hindsight, I guess they probably did, they just insisted on making new ones. I don't know if their decision to segment their own customer base by releasing the Series S is ultimately what did them in or not, but it probably didn't help. Many people want to blame the Activision/Blizzard purchase and Microsoft's reported 30% profit target as the downfall of the console, but IMO we'd "still be here" even if they hadn't gone through with the purchase.
It's about the (lack of) games compared to PS and Nintendo. The last mainline Gears game, Gears 5, was released on the XB1 in 2019. Halo Infinite did well with 20 million players by January 2022, but ever since then...? There are multiple great exclusives on both PS and Switch that have released since late 2021, and most gamers don't want or can't afford two consoles. I guess you could blame the Activision/Blizzard purchase for costing Microsoft money that otherwise could have been used to do exclusivity deals, but I don't think we should assume Microsoft could have gotten those deals done. By their own admission they lost the "console war" to Sony because of the XB1. After that, Sony would have had to make serious mistakes to cause gamers to abandon their PS digital libraries and move to the S/X. Given the disparity in sales/brand loyalty to begin with, IMO only paying for COD to be XBox exclusives might have turned things around. However, if Activision was still an independent company, given Nadella's indifference to gaming and going all-in on AI/CoPilot, I don't think XBox could have ever even afforded to pay Activision for exclusivity.
My Ghost of Yotei PS5 bundle just arrived, so I'll be playing a lot of that game. If it's as good as Ghost of Tsushima was, I may not play anything else all weekend. If I do play something else, it'll be the Task Force Admiral Vol. 1 demo on my laptop.
I just bought a PS5 (pressed "buy" for the Ghost of Yotei bundle even before I was halfway through Ghost of Tsushima on my PC) so I really can't comment on how this year was for the console.
For gaming overall, IMO we're going to look back on this year as an extremely important year. Sony continued to move toward manufacturing even more gaming hardware with the announcement of a 27" gaming monitor with controller charging capability. Microsoft got into the handheld market, and seemingly decided on a confused halfway in/halfway out mess of a "strategy" for the XBox console, and Valve announced it's getting into the console space with the Steam Machine.
Regardless of whether you play on console, PC or handheld, gaming got more expensive this year too. With the RAM apocalypse growing instead of getting better, we might look back on the price hikes we saw this year as "quaint." It's already reportedly caused Sony to think more about the announcement/release date for the PS6. Whatever console Microsoft insists it's going to release will probably also get delayed. Both consoles will also probably release at higher prices because of the tarrifs and the RAM apocalypse that began this year.
If the price hikes dramatically reduce the purchase of new gaming laptops & desktops in 2026, I wonder if developers will rethink their graphic design strategies to make sure they don't outpace gamers ability to upgrade to play new games on the highest settings.
Lastly, 2025 might just have been the first dent in COD's "armor." The Black Ops 7 release quickly caused Activision/Microsoft to go into damage control mode and announce BO and MW won't ever have b2b releases again. Maybe it's just me, but I think the problem's bigger than that. With BO7's endgame mode, it seems to me like they're moving away from the traditional single player experience to more live service multiplayer like Warzone, and a large number of gamers don't want that. If 2026's game releases to a similar response, Activison's got a major problem.
The only things that seemed to remain consistent this year are Fortnite and Nintendo. Fortnite continued to dominate in a way nohody's been able to replicate, and Nintendo kept doing what they do with the Switch 2.
@old_gamer74 Black Flag is great!! It's still the best pirate themed game ever by far, and my favorite game in the AC franchise. Heck, it might be my most favorite Ubisoft game. The remake that should be out in 2026 (rumor is perhaps as soon as March) I think will be even better because it supposedly removes the present day content in favor of more pirate action.
Finally got around to playing Ghost of Tsushima on my laptop. I've completed the main story and now I'm doing the dlc. It's such an amazing game I bought the Ghost of Yotei PS5 bundle so I don't have to wait to play the sequel.
Whats everybody's opinion on the PS5 version of Rise of the Ronin? I know the launch of the PC port was pretty rough. I hope the original version is better.
I haven't gotten around to playing Robocop yet, so I didn't even know this was a standalone expansion. I just assumed this was DLC.
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Either way, I agree, companies responding to consumers by either releasing DLC they originally hadn't planned on releasing, or by developing a shorter standalone game using assets that didn't quite make it into the original game is awesome to see.
IMO, it seems like over the past 5-10 years developers/publishers, and especially their shareholders, have been chasing the money train that is COD/GTA/Fortnite. COD and GTA as an example of the AAA big budget game, and Fortnite as a live service game. In doing that, it seems like the "AA game" was forgotten. Hopefully smaller games like this one and Mafia will be well received and remind publishers there's money to be made everywhere, as long as the game's good.
According to a 1983 article in Infoworld, the VCS/Atari 2600 sold 10 million consoles in just the US by 1982. Because of Pac Man, they sold an additional 12 million consoles and 120 million cartridges by the end of 1982 alone. Internationally, the system sold 450,000 units in West Germany by 1984, and another 600,000 in France by the end of the decade. The system wasn't popular in Japan, however. Because of Japan's smaller population, the Famicom "only" sold 2.5 million units from 1983-1984.
Redesigned and named the NES, the console wasn't test marketed outside of Japan until October 1985 and wasn't released for sale worldwide until September 1986. There was an existing video game market in the US and and a few other countries well before that point. Heck, the market was sufficiently mature enough to crash in 1983. (Also, remember that because of the Iron Curtain and communist regimes in China and elsewhere in Asia, video game systems were legally available for sale in far fewer countries back then.)
Stop being nationalistic. Neither Japan nor the US can claim the popularity of video games would be what it is now without developers and consumers in both countries. Nobody did this on their own, with the possible exception of Ralph Baer, who invented the Magnivox Odyssey in 1972. That system inspired the guys who created Atari and developed Pong.
IMO, the reaction to this is "about" much more than just the closure of this studio. During the last round of layoffs, Microsoft said great things about the performance of one of the games...and Microsoft management still closed the studio. I feel badly for the Microsoft PR people, they're in a no-win situation.
Nadella wants out of the gaming business, and has since day one. Microsoft made a fateful decision when they made the XB1's focus "a living room machine that plays games" instead of keeping the focus on their core audience that made the 360 such a success. They screwed up so badly with the XB1 that Spencer eventually said the console "war" is over, and Sony won because gamers had already built up such large digital libraries by the end of that generation very few people were going to switch and lose access to all that content. Unless Sony made self inflicted mistakes and screwed up really badly, from a hardware perspective XBox was "dead" from the very beginning of this generation. Especially because consoles are intially sold at a loss, which I'm sure Nadella and the shareholders hate.
Basically, everything since the end of the XB1 generation has been about Spencer trying to keep XBox alive despite what Nadella and the shareholders want. I wouldn't be surprised if Nadella even wants out of Gamepass, becuase it's clear the numbers just don't work, and were crazy from the beginning.
They were probably too far down the road for Nadella to have killed off the Series X/S before it launched, but I am absolutely stunned that XBox keeps claiming they're going to release another console. If they do, IMO it not only is going to function more like a PC than a traditional console, it may look like one too.
@itsfoz EA tried reviving MoH, but it's EA so that didn't go well.
SOCOM's been gone so long, and I'm so old, I mostly can just recall fond memories of the PS2. I do remember the last title tried to copy COD though.
Sadly, I don't know if we'll get a "COD killer" like COD helped shove MoH into the grave EA had already dug for it. The cost of AAA development is so high, and investors/corporate suits so risk averse, IMO it's going to be difficult for someone else to even have the opportunity to dethrone them. More likely, COD just keeps going like one of their zombies (or the Madden franchise) and gamers keep buying it because there's not much else for single player shooter gamers on consoles. This is especially true if Battlefield shoots itself in both feet like they did with that last game.
I'd really love for SOCOM to come back. But I think if it did investors would want the game to be like COD, because it's all about chasing the same "golden goose" somebody else has already created, and the game would die a quick death (again.)
I haven't taken the time to try and get a translation of the original source written in Polish, but the $36 million Techland claims they're "losing" almost certainly includes the money they've already spent on development of a game that in their opinion just isn't financially viable. Meaning, to create a game out of whatever's already been done they'd have to spend even more money, all for something that still isn't necessarily going to sell. That kind of a management decision can end up tanking the entire company. In most cases, it's much better to simply abandon what isn't working rather than spend more money trying to salvage a mess. The sunk cost fallacy is real.
In today's gaming world, cancellations almost always mean layoffs as studios "get lean" while they're trying to decide what to do next. It sucks for employees, but from the developer's perspective they don't need as many people if they're just in the initial/early conceptual and design phase of development. They'll potentially get bigger if/when they're further along in development. AI's going to continue to disrupt the size of this cycle, of course.
Gaming isn't the only industry that behaves like this. For example, a slowdown in sales of cars often leads to a slowdown in factory production. Dealerships don't need more inventory they can't sell, and an automaker doesn't need 10,000 cars sitting on a lot waiting to be shipped to dealerships so they cut production. That=factory layoffs.
Remember, every large corporation in the world, Microsoft, Sony, Amazon, Toyota, Nissan, whatever...exists to maximize "shareholder value." Cutting projects that result in layoffs = savings. Humans are the biggest "cost" for a corporation and make no mistake, they all see employees as simply a cost to be minimized. The major difference in these layoffs seems to be that because Microsoft is headquartered in the US there's often no warning because the US doesn't have any federal laws that mandate employees be given any warning at all. If the corporation is located in a so-called "right to work" state, there are even fewer employee protections than in other states.
Benzies (and Gerhard) both need to shut up. The publisher, IO Interactive, flatly denied Gerhard's allegations and they'll probably deny these too if they're asked.
Ultimately, the major reason this game hasn't a chance at a "redemption arc" comes down to $$. Cyberpunk was profitable the day it released because the wild hype and lengthy development time led to an incredible amount of preorders. Not to mention the fact CDPR had built up goodwill among gamers.
This game, the studio's new, very few people preordered it, and even fewer are purchasing it now because the game's trash. On Steam, Mindseye hit a 24-hour peak of 46 players. As of 10 am this morning, only 26 people were playing. I doubt the console numbers are much, if any, better.
So the CEOs are going to have to convince investors to foot the cost of fixing this broken mess. All while Gebhard is apparently working on another game titled Ascendant, which was originally scheduled to be released this year. I'll be stunned if that game's ever released.
This is why delays and sometimes cancellations are ultimately less costly than releasing a rushed or poorly done game. A bad/broken attempt at a AAA game usually will take a new studio down with it.
@get2sammyb According to Jeff Grubb back in 2024, he'd been "hearing for years" that Perfect Dark was in "rough shape" overall. That's why Microsoft had to get Crystal Dynamics involved in 2021. They weren't originally supposed to work on this game.
IMO Perfect Dark was doomed from the start because, according to Grubb, development began with Microsoft unable/unwiling to set a clear direction for it. Management allegedly initially couldn't decide if the Perfect Dark reboot should be a FPS or not!
Management paralysis/dysfunction is the beginning of a perfect storm that'll usually lead to cancellation/vaporware.
Cyberpunk has to be the greatest reclimation project in video game history. Heck, it might be the greatest reclimation project in software history. What the devs at CD Projekt Red were able to do, once management backed off and gave them the time they needed to do it, is nothing short of phenominal.
When the game launched, I was really down on them. The fixes, expansions, dlc, etc. that have gotten pushed out by the devs since that disasterous launch day remind me of the good things we all hoped online connectivity could bring to video games when Internet capable consoles first launched. In the old days, this game would have just stayed broken and hardly anybody would have gotten to see how the devs wanted this game to look and how they wanted it to play.
As an XBox owner, IMO nobody should be buying a console expecting a ton of permanantly console exclusive games anymore. Both Microsoft and Sony game division executives have upper management and investors to answer to. For XBox games that's obviously going to happen sooner than for PS games, but eventually most, if not all, PS games are going to appear on PC. It makes too much $ sense for them not to. The only exception to this financial "rule" is Nintendo. They've always been different, and absent a major financial disaster nobody can reasonably predict happening, always will be.
So the questions become "Can I afford a gaming PC and how long do I want to wait for a PS/XBox game to appear on a device I don't have? And, how much do I really want to play a game on the original system it was designed for?" I gotta admit, even though I have a gaming laptop, if Sony released a Ghost of Tsushima bundle instead of this Black Ops 6 bundle I'd press a website "Buy" button in less than a second. It's irrational, but I'd do it.
I definitely agree that the price of the PS5 consoles are unlikely to get better until after the PS6 releases. But a multiplatform game like BO6 and the games that aren't already on PC just don't move the needle for me, even though the irrational FOMO part of my brain is definitely screaming "Buy it!!" anyway.
Given that it appears likely Sony's got some kind of a deal with Rockstar in place for GTA 6, if there's a bundle that'll fly off the shelves, and my FOMO will be screaming "Buy it!!" too even though I already own an XBox. IMO, a Ghost of Yotei bundle would quickly sell out too, and that I would definitely preorder in a second.
I thought about purchasing a PS5 for Ghost of Yoti and to play Rise of the Ronin, but it's just not worth it now because eventually Ronin's reported issues will (hopefully) be fixed and Yoti will be on PC in a year or two.
If nothing else, Microsoft's "issues" already caused me to decide to switch back to PS next generation. Now I'm not sure I'll buy another console at all. MS's strategy is 100% about putting XBox everywhere, so there won't be any console specific games at all. PS games eventually appear on PC, they just take longer to get there.
One thing I'm slightly concerned about is the fact the new price point for even digital versions of console games is likely to be $70-80 now. At what point do Steam, Epic and other digital PC storefronts and/or PC game publishers raise prices, if for no other reason than just because they can? I wouldn't bet on this not happening.
Secondly, how does this all impact GTA 6? As we all know, that game will sell to current console owners even if it's released at $100 (or more, in some countries.) But will it sell many new consoles? I don't know about that anymore. If it doesn't meet the new console sales expectations set by Wall Street analysts, how soon does Rockstar release it on PC? Rockstar's management has to be at least a little frustrated by this mess. The game's much too far down the road to release a PC version at launch, and they don't want to release a rushed port that just has to be massively fixed later because that leads to bad press and fewer initial sales.
Forgot about another thing, sports games. Does this cause EA, and even smaller studios like San Diego Studios the developer of MLB the Show, to start releasing their games on PC at launch next year?
@Dampsponge I agree with you. I know this is definitely not the first collectors edition to do this. I forget which game it was, but the first time I heard about a collector's edition being released without a physical game on disc I was like, "How? Then it's really not a collector's edition of the game. It's just a bunch of stuff related to the game put in a big box." 😂
Was there always going to be a DLC "roadmap?" I thought I'd read elsewhere (maybe GR?) that, prior to Shadow's launch Ubi only planned to release one DLC mission. If they've pivoted from that and decided to release more content because the response to the game is so positive I think that's great.
Yeah, I'm an old guy with "adult responsibilities" now and don't have the time to play nearly as much as I did 25 years ago. But I still absolutely love "big" games where I can spend 50- 60 or more hours on single player content (if the content's good of course.) I never understood the "it's too big/too long" criticism Valhalla got. Now that AC and a few other franchises are being spun off into their own company, if management wants to let the developers create new content for months until they absolutely "have" to move on to support development of the next game in the franchise, I'd be very happy with that.
@Bingoboyop This is hopefully shaping up to be the anti-2024. Even if GTA gets pushed to 2026, if everything else in your list releases on time or close to it, this year will IMO be a lot more packed (and fun) than last year. I kind of felt like last year was pretty sparse other than the "usual suspects" like COD.
This game looks beautiful. Unlike when Ghost of Tsushima was released, I should be able to afford a PS5 before this game releases this fall so I won't have to wait for it to be released on PC. I've also wanted to play Rise of the Ronin, and have read the PC port has had "issues" so it's (hopefully) best played on a PS5 too.
I was a PS console owner until the 360, so whats old is new again, I guess?
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Re: Pirate RPG Sea of Remnants Has Some Seriously Ambitious Post-Launch Plans
@SoulsBourne128 A game almost has to try to be worse than S&B. The mere fact that Ubisoft hasn't buried that game and pretended it never existed tells you all you need to know about how bad their management is now.
Re: Rumour: MindsEye Dev Splits From Hitman Publisher, Seeks to Fix 2025's Biggest Flop
One of the major differences between Mindseye and Cyberpunk is, reportedly, Cyberpunk at least broke even and possibly even made a profit off the preorders alone. There's no way Mindseye made anywhere near that when it launched. Now that they've split from IOI, I have no idea where they'd even get the funding to even try to fix Mindseye.
Build a Rocket Boy should focus on a new game as its "redemption" as a studio. Putting more work, and more money, into Mindseye could take down the entire studio and result in unemployment for everybody. We've seen far too many studio closures and layoffs already, nobody wants to see more people in gaming out of work.
Re: Rumour: Ace Combat 8 Online Beta Test Inbound, Pre-Order May Include a Whole Other Game
I love this series. I'm really happy the next installment is on the way. It'll be one of the 2-3 games I preorder this year because the quality's always very good and AC Zero was great.
Re: Even Ubisoft Is Poking Fun at the Endless Assassin's Creed 4 Remake Rumours
@Ichiban I disagree, this remake is absolutely necessary. I want another pirate game. I've wanted one ever since BF. Sadly, they managed to horribly mangle Skull & Bones, which originally was supposed to capitalize on the popularity of BF.
Plus the remake is rumored to have ditched the Animus stuff for more pirate action, including new characters like Anne Bonny and Mary Reed.
Re: Even Ubisoft Is Poking Fun at the Endless Assassin's Creed 4 Remake Rumours
Ubisoft managed to screw up the pirate game everybody wanted after playing Black Flag. All they had to do was finish and release the SP non-AC pirate game they showed off in the first trailer. That game IMO would have printed money. Basically, people just wanted BF but without the Animus, Templars and Assassins. What did they actually release several years later? Skull & Bones. A game nobody wanted.
All this is to say I don't put it past Ubisoft management to have done, or do, something stupid and decide to not release the BF remake, especially if they can't figure out how to jam "live service" into it.
Re: 'Everything Had Been Going Smoothly': Prince of Persia PS5 Remake Actress Found Out About Cancellation from Family
@Ainu20 This has been a pattern for Ubisoft for multiple years now. Not "crashing a remake" per se, but getting a game pretty far along only to completely change direction or cancel it.
Perhaps the most financially costly example of this is what they did with Skull & Bones. Back when it was announced, everybody wanted a non-AC pirate story driven game. That's what S&B was planned to be when they showed off the first trailer. Sadly, at some point, Ubisoft management decided that S&B "neeeded" to be live service. Fast forward a year or two, and they still hadn't figured out how to do both what fans oringinally wanted and management's insistance on live service. So, we got a game where they wanted gamers to "create their own story" and buy lots of live service content.
Given that in their reorganization announcement Ubisoft mentioned that going forward they would concentrate on open world and live service titles. I would not be surprised if Ubisoft management decided that this version of Prince of Persia "needed" to be killed because the game wasn't going to meet at least one of those goals, and I bet it's the live service goal. Devs/publishers IMO haven't figured out how to do live service with primarily story based, single player games because really the only way to do it is to go back to old school story dlc. They don't want to do that, because it would require them to keep enough people on staff to continually crank out new content plus hire people to develop & support other projects. The employee churn we've seen in the gaming industry the last 4-5 years saves the companies money.
I don't know if French tax law allows Ubisoft to write off the development costs of cancelled games or not. If they can write off the costs, all this is a "win" for Ubisoft. Management bean counters don't care about anybody who gets hurt by the decision to kill a game.
Re: In a Sea of Live Service, Ghost of Yotei Was the Third Best-Selling PS5 Game of 2025 in the US
Just finally had time to hook up my Ghost of Yotei PS5. Unfortunately, for some odd reason my WiFi connection is taking forever to download game updates (didn't have a problem updating the console and the controller.) So hopefully I'll be able to play GoY tomorrow. I enjoyed Tsushima so much, including the Legends mode which I didn't think I'd like, I know I'm going to love Yotei.
Is the Legends mode the only DLC we're likely to get or might there be at least one expansion for the main game like the Iki Island dlc for GoT?
Re: Xbox Sales Hit New Low in UK, Barely Competes with PS5 at This Point
As somebody who was skeptical of Microsoft's ability to compete, but eventually went from PS to XBox after the 360 was released and has owned the XB1 and a Series S too, I'm really sad to see what's happened to the XBox console business. I vividly recall having so much fun listening to Major Nelson, E, Stepto and Laura Lollipop Massey. Also vividly recall watching Major Nelson's video when Splosion Man was released. That and other things XBox did, like memes/jokes about the banhammer, back then was great fun. Now Major Nelson's working for Unity Technologies, LL's working for Apple I think, and Stepto sadly passed away in 2017. Not sure if E's still at XBox or not.
XBox got on the wrong path when Dan Mattrick tried to sell the XB1 as a living room entertainment machine that also played games. When the Series S/X was released, I thought Microsoft had learned from those mistakes. In hindsight, I guess they probably did, they just insisted on making new ones. I don't know if their decision to segment their own customer base by releasing the Series S is ultimately what did them in or not, but it probably didn't help. Many people want to blame the Activision/Blizzard purchase and Microsoft's reported 30% profit target as the downfall of the console, but IMO we'd "still be here" even if they hadn't gone through with the purchase.
It's about the (lack of) games compared to PS and Nintendo. The last mainline Gears game, Gears 5, was released on the XB1 in 2019. Halo Infinite did well with 20 million players by January 2022, but ever since then...? There are multiple great exclusives on both PS and Switch that have released since late 2021, and most gamers don't want or can't afford two consoles. I guess you could blame the Activision/Blizzard purchase for costing Microsoft money that otherwise could have been used to do exclusivity deals, but I don't think we should assume Microsoft could have gotten those deals done. By their own admission they lost the "console war" to Sony because of the XB1. After that, Sony would have had to make serious mistakes to cause gamers to abandon their PS digital libraries and move to the S/X. Given the disparity in sales/brand loyalty to begin with, IMO only paying for COD to be XBox exclusives might have turned things around. However, if Activision was still an independent company, given Nadella's indifference to gaming and going all-in on AI/CoPilot, I don't think XBox could have ever even afforded to pay Activision for exclusivity.
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? - Issue 614
My Ghost of Yotei PS5 bundle just arrived, so I'll be playing a lot of that game. If it's as good as Ghost of Tsushima was, I may not play anything else all weekend. If I do play something else, it'll be the Task Force Admiral Vol. 1 demo on my laptop.
Re: A Very Happy New Year to You
Sadly no, we're not driving hover cars yet. Science has even failed to give us the hoverboards I've wanted since 1985.
Happy New Year anyway everyone!
Re: Our PS5 Predictions for 2025 - Results Revealed
I just bought a PS5 (pressed "buy" for the Ghost of Yotei bundle even before I was halfway through Ghost of Tsushima on my PC) so I really can't comment on how this year was for the console.
For gaming overall, IMO we're going to look back on this year as an extremely important year. Sony continued to move toward manufacturing even more gaming hardware with the announcement of a 27" gaming monitor with controller charging capability. Microsoft got into the handheld market, and seemingly decided on a confused halfway in/halfway out mess of a "strategy" for the XBox console, and Valve announced it's getting into the console space with the Steam Machine.
Regardless of whether you play on console, PC or handheld, gaming got more expensive this year too. With the RAM apocalypse growing instead of getting better, we might look back on the price hikes we saw this year as "quaint." It's already reportedly caused Sony to think more about the announcement/release date for the PS6. Whatever console Microsoft insists it's going to release will probably also get delayed. Both consoles will also probably release at higher prices because of the tarrifs and the RAM apocalypse that began this year.
If the price hikes dramatically reduce the purchase of new gaming laptops & desktops in 2026, I wonder if developers will rethink their graphic design strategies to make sure they don't outpace gamers ability to upgrade to play new games on the highest settings.
Lastly, 2025 might just have been the first dent in COD's "armor." The Black Ops 7 release quickly caused Activision/Microsoft to go into damage control mode and announce BO and MW won't ever have b2b releases again. Maybe it's just me, but I think the problem's bigger than that. With BO7's endgame mode, it seems to me like they're moving away from the traditional single player experience to more live service multiplayer like Warzone, and a large number of gamers don't want that. If 2026's game releases to a similar response, Activison's got a major problem.
The only things that seemed to remain consistent this year are Fortnite and Nintendo. Fortnite continued to dominate in a way nohody's been able to replicate, and Nintendo kept doing what they do with the Switch 2.
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? - Issue 613
@old_gamer74 Black Flag is great!! It's still the best pirate themed game ever by far, and my favorite game in the AC franchise. Heck, it might be my most favorite Ubisoft game. The remake that should be out in 2026 (rumor is perhaps as soon as March) I think will be even better because it supposedly removes the present day content in favor of more pirate action.
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? - Issue 613
Finally got around to playing Ghost of Tsushima on my laptop. I've completed the main story and now I'm doing the dlc. It's such an amazing game I bought the Ghost of Yotei PS5 bundle so I don't have to wait to play the sequel.
Whats everybody's opinion on the PS5 version of Rise of the Ronin? I know the launch of the PC port was pretty rough. I hope the original version is better.
Re: There's Unfinished Business in Robocop: Rogue City's Standalone Expansion on PS5
I haven't gotten around to playing Robocop yet, so I didn't even know this was a standalone expansion. I just assumed this was DLC.
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Either way, I agree, companies responding to consumers by either releasing DLC they originally hadn't planned on releasing, or by developing a shorter standalone game using assets that didn't quite make it into the original game is awesome to see.
IMO, it seems like over the past 5-10 years developers/publishers, and especially their shareholders, have been chasing the money train that is COD/GTA/Fortnite. COD and GTA as an example of the AAA big budget game, and Fortnite as a live service game. In doing that, it seems like the "AA game" was forgotten. Hopefully smaller games like this one and Mafia will be well received and remind publishers there's money to be made everywhere, as long as the game's good.
Re: Romero Games Allegedly Met with Microsoft a Day Before Funding Was Pulled
@reek
The the VCS/Atari 2600 says "Hi!"
According to a 1983 article in Infoworld, the VCS/Atari 2600 sold 10 million consoles in just the US by 1982. Because of Pac Man, they sold an additional 12 million consoles and 120 million cartridges by the end of 1982 alone. Internationally, the system sold 450,000 units in West Germany by 1984, and another 600,000 in France by the end of the decade. The system wasn't popular in Japan, however. Because of Japan's smaller population, the Famicom "only" sold 2.5 million units from 1983-1984.
Redesigned and named the NES, the console wasn't test marketed outside of Japan until October 1985 and wasn't released for sale worldwide until September 1986. There was an existing video game market in the US and and a few other countries well before that point. Heck, the market was sufficiently mature enough to crash in 1983. (Also, remember that because of the Iron Curtain and communist regimes in China and elsewhere in Asia, video game systems were legally available for sale in far fewer countries back then.)
Stop being nationalistic. Neither Japan nor the US can claim the popularity of video games would be what it is now without developers and consumers in both countries. Nobody did this on their own, with the possible exception of Ralph Baer, who invented the Magnivox Odyssey in 1972. That system inspired the guys who created Atari and developed Pong.
Re: Romero Games Allegedly Met with Microsoft a Day Before Funding Was Pulled
@mazzel
IMO, the reaction to this is "about" much more than just the closure of this studio. During the last round of layoffs, Microsoft said great things about the performance of one of the games...and Microsoft management still closed the studio. I feel badly for the Microsoft PR people, they're in a no-win situation.
Nadella wants out of the gaming business, and has since day one. Microsoft made a fateful decision when they made the XB1's focus "a living room machine that plays games" instead of keeping the focus on their core audience that made the 360 such a success. They screwed up so badly with the XB1 that Spencer eventually said the console "war" is over, and Sony won because gamers had already built up such large digital libraries by the end of that generation very few people were going to switch and lose access to all that content. Unless Sony made self inflicted mistakes and screwed up really badly, from a hardware perspective XBox was "dead" from the very beginning of this generation. Especially because consoles are intially sold at a loss, which I'm sure Nadella and the shareholders hate.
Basically, everything since the end of the XB1 generation has been about Spencer trying to keep XBox alive despite what Nadella and the shareholders want. I wouldn't be surprised if Nadella even wants out of Gamepass, becuase it's clear the numbers just don't work, and were crazy from the beginning.
They were probably too far down the road for Nadella to have killed off the Series X/S before it launched, but I am absolutely stunned that XBox keeps claiming they're going to release another console. If they do, IMO it not only is going to function more like a PC than a traditional console, it may look like one too.
Re: What the Hell Has Happened to Call of Duty?
@itsfoz EA tried reviving MoH, but it's EA so that didn't go well.
SOCOM's been gone so long, and I'm so old, I mostly can just recall fond memories of the PS2. I do remember the last title tried to copy COD though.
Sadly, I don't know if we'll get a "COD killer" like COD helped shove MoH into the grave EA had already dug for it. The cost of AAA development is so high, and investors/corporate suits so risk averse, IMO it's going to be difficult for someone else to even have the opportunity to dethrone them. More likely, COD just keeps going like one of their zombies (or the Madden franchise) and gamers keep buying it because there's not much else for single player shooter gamers on consoles. This is especially true if Battlefield shoots itself in both feet like they did with that last game.
I'd really love for SOCOM to come back. But I think if it did investors would want the game to be like COD, because it's all about chasing the same "golden goose" somebody else has already created, and the game would die a quick death (again.)
Re: Dying Light Team Reportedly Cancels Two Games
@Balie3000
I haven't taken the time to try and get a translation of the original source written in Polish, but the $36 million Techland claims they're "losing" almost certainly includes the money they've already spent on development of a game that in their opinion just isn't financially viable. Meaning, to create a game out of whatever's already been done they'd have to spend even more money, all for something that still isn't necessarily going to sell. That kind of a management decision can end up tanking the entire company. In most cases, it's much better to simply abandon what isn't working rather than spend more money trying to salvage a mess. The sunk cost fallacy is real.
In today's gaming world, cancellations almost always mean layoffs as studios "get lean" while they're trying to decide what to do next. It sucks for employees, but from the developer's perspective they don't need as many people if they're just in the initial/early conceptual and design phase of development. They'll potentially get bigger if/when they're further along in development. AI's going to continue to disrupt the size of this cycle, of course.
Gaming isn't the only industry that behaves like this. For example, a slowdown in sales of cars often leads to a slowdown in factory production. Dealerships don't need more inventory they can't sell, and an automaker doesn't need 10,000 cars sitting on a lot waiting to be shipped to dealerships so they cut production. That=factory layoffs.
Re: Romero Games Appears to Have Closed as Xbox Layoffs Cast Dark Shadow Over Industry
@B0udoir There's often a tax writeoff.
Remember, every large corporation in the world, Microsoft, Sony, Amazon, Toyota, Nissan, whatever...exists to maximize "shareholder value." Cutting projects that result in layoffs = savings. Humans are the biggest "cost" for a corporation and make no mistake, they all see employees as simply a cost to be minimized. The major difference in these layoffs seems to be that because Microsoft is headquartered in the US there's often no warning because the US doesn't have any federal laws that mandate employees be given any warning at all. If the corporation is located in a so-called "right to work" state, there are even fewer employee protections than in other states.
Re: Rumour: PS5 Disaster MindsEye Wants 'Redemption Arc' Despite Hundreds of Jobs Being 'At Risk'
Benzies (and Gerhard) both need to shut up. The publisher, IO Interactive, flatly denied Gerhard's allegations and they'll probably deny these too if they're asked.
Ultimately, the major reason this game hasn't a chance at a "redemption arc" comes down to $$. Cyberpunk was profitable the day it released because the wild hype and lengthy development time led to an incredible amount of preorders. Not to mention the fact CDPR had built up goodwill among gamers.
This game, the studio's new, very few people preordered it, and even fewer are purchasing it now because the game's trash. On Steam, Mindseye hit a 24-hour peak of 46 players. As of 10 am this morning, only 26 people were playing. I doubt the console numbers are much, if any, better.
So the CEOs are going to have to convince investors to foot the cost of fixing this broken mess. All while Gebhard is apparently working on another game titled Ascendant, which was originally scheduled to be released this year. I'll be stunned if that game's ever released.
This is why delays and sometimes cancellations are ultimately less costly than releasing a rushed or poorly done game. A bad/broken attempt at a AAA game usually will take a new studio down with it.
Re: Xbox's Phil Spencer 'Not Retiring' After Dark Day of Cancellations and Job Cuts
@get2sammyb According to Jeff Grubb back in 2024, he'd been "hearing for years" that Perfect Dark was in "rough shape" overall. That's why Microsoft had to get Crystal Dynamics involved in 2021. They weren't originally supposed to work on this game.
IMO Perfect Dark was doomed from the start because, according to Grubb, development began with Microsoft unable/unwiling to set a clear direction for it. Management allegedly initially couldn't decide if the Perfect Dark reboot should be a FPS or not!
Management paralysis/dysfunction is the beginning of a perfect storm that'll usually lead to cancellation/vaporware.
Re: Rumour: New Cyberpunk 2077 DLC Is Incoming, Developer Leak Suggests
Cyberpunk has to be the greatest reclimation project in video game history. Heck, it might be the greatest reclimation project in software history. What the devs at CD Projekt Red were able to do, once management backed off and gave them the time they needed to do it, is nothing short of phenominal.
When the game launched, I was really down on them. The fixes, expansions, dlc, etc. that have gotten pushed out by the devs since that disasterous launch day remind me of the good things we all hoped online connectivity could bring to video games when Internet capable consoles first launched. In the old days, this game would have just stayed broken and hardly anybody would have gotten to see how the devs wanted this game to look and how they wanted it to play.
Re: Reaction: There's Never Been a Better Time to Buy a PS5
As an XBox owner, IMO nobody should be buying a console expecting a ton of permanantly console exclusive games anymore. Both Microsoft and Sony game division executives have upper management and investors to answer to. For XBox games that's obviously going to happen sooner than for PS games, but eventually most, if not all, PS games are going to appear on PC. It makes too much $ sense for them not to. The only exception to this financial "rule" is Nintendo. They've always been different, and absent a major financial disaster nobody can reasonably predict happening, always will be.
So the questions become "Can I afford a gaming PC and how long do I want to wait for a PS/XBox game to appear on a device I don't have? And, how much do I really want to play a game on the original system it was designed for?" I gotta admit, even though I have a gaming laptop, if Sony released a Ghost of Tsushima bundle instead of this Black Ops 6 bundle I'd press a website "Buy" button in less than a second. It's irrational, but I'd do it.
I definitely agree that the price of the PS5 consoles are unlikely to get better until after the PS6 releases. But a multiplatform game like BO6 and the games that aren't already on PC just don't move the needle for me, even though the irrational FOMO part of my brain is definitely screaming "Buy it!!" anyway.
Given that it appears likely Sony's got some kind of a deal with Rockstar in place for GTA 6, if there's a bundle that'll fly off the shelves, and my FOMO will be screaming "Buy it!!" too even though I already own an XBox. IMO, a Ghost of Yotei bundle would quickly sell out too, and that I would definitely preorder in a second.
Re: Opinion: If You're on the Fence, Consider Buying a PS5 Now Before the Prices Inevitably Rise
I thought about purchasing a PS5 for Ghost of Yoti and to play Rise of the Ronin, but it's just not worth it now because eventually Ronin's reported issues will (hopefully) be fixed and Yoti will be on PC in a year or two.
If nothing else, Microsoft's "issues" already caused me to decide to switch back to PS next generation. Now I'm not sure I'll buy another console at all. MS's strategy is 100% about putting XBox everywhere, so there won't be any console specific games at all. PS games eventually appear on PC, they just take longer to get there.
One thing I'm slightly concerned about is the fact the new price point for even digital versions of console games is likely to be $70-80 now. At what point do Steam, Epic and other digital PC storefronts and/or PC game publishers raise prices, if for no other reason than just because they can? I wouldn't bet on this not happening.
Secondly, how does this all impact GTA 6? As we all know, that game will sell to current console owners even if it's released at $100 (or more, in some countries.) But will it sell many new consoles? I don't know about that anymore. If it doesn't meet the new console sales expectations set by Wall Street analysts, how soon does Rockstar release it on PC? Rockstar's management has to be at least a little frustrated by this mess. The game's much too far down the road to release a PC version at launch, and they don't want to release a rushed port that just has to be massively fixed later because that leads to bad press and fewer initial sales.
Forgot about another thing, sports games. Does this cause EA, and even smaller studios like San Diego Studios the developer of MLB the Show, to start releasing their games on PC at launch next year?
Re: Ghost of Yotei Gets PS5 Release Date, Trailer, Pre-Order Details
@CieloAzure Absolutely. The CE's $249.99. Putting a disc in the box is what they choose to "skimp" on? 😂
Re: Ghost of Yotei Gets PS5 Release Date, Trailer, Pre-Order Details
@Dampsponge I agree with you. I know this is definitely not the first collectors edition to do this. I forget which game it was, but the first time I heard about a collector's edition being released without a physical game on disc I was like, "How? Then it's really not a collector's edition of the game. It's just a bunch of stuff related to the game put in a big box." 😂
Re: Assassin's Creed Shadows Update and DLC Roadmap Will Be Revealed Next Week
Was there always going to be a DLC "roadmap?" I thought I'd read elsewhere (maybe GR?) that, prior to Shadow's launch Ubi only planned to release one DLC mission. If they've pivoted from that and decided to release more content because the response to the game is so positive I think that's great.
Yeah, I'm an old guy with "adult responsibilities" now and don't have the time to play nearly as much as I did 25 years ago. But I still absolutely love "big" games where I can spend 50- 60 or more hours on single player content (if the content's good of course.) I never understood the "it's too big/too long" criticism Valhalla got. Now that AC and a few other franchises are being spun off into their own company, if management wants to let the developers create new content for months until they absolutely "have" to move on to support development of the next game in the franchise, I'd be very happy with that.
Re: Ghost of Yotei Gets PS5 Release Date, Trailer, Pre-Order Details
@Bingoboyop This is hopefully shaping up to be the anti-2024. Even if GTA gets pushed to 2026, if everything else in your list releases on time or close to it, this year will IMO be a lot more packed (and fun) than last year. I kind of felt like last year was pretty sparse other than the "usual suspects" like COD.
Re: Ghost of Yotei Gets PS5 Release Date, Trailer, Pre-Order Details
This game looks beautiful. Unlike when Ghost of Tsushima was released, I should be able to afford a PS5 before this game releases this fall so I won't have to wait for it to be released on PC. I've also wanted to play Rise of the Ronin, and have read the PC port has had "issues" so it's (hopefully) best played on a PS5 too.
I was a PS console owner until the 360, so whats old is new again, I guess?