I don't quite get the relevance of all this. It's not Sony acquiring Activision. Sounds like Microsoft just wants to make a show of it.
The FTC case against the merger is basically 99% based on arguments made by Sony in opposition of the merger. As such, for their defense in the case, MS has requested everything they feel is relevant to prove or disprove Sonys legal claims.
The judge has agreed with Microsoft that most of the requests are indeed relevant, while denying the relevance of a couple of requests.
Funny how Misrosoft acquiring a company has the FTC up in arms, yet the FTC let's Disney run amok and acquire almost every television and movie IP in existence.
Different administrations. The current FTC leadership has an anti-big-corporation mindset. Not making any personal judgements on thad being good or bad, but it’s why Disney went through its equally big Fox acquisition. Had Disney attempted that this year, they likely would had faced similar reaction from the FTC. Similarly, had the ABK Activision been done in 2020, or hell even 2015, it would had likely gone through uneventfully (in the US).
@Snake_V5 so they can likely bring arguments like Sony using its market leader position in anti-competitive ways, using that weight to secure more favorable contracts that harm competitors, and stuff like that. Also to reinforce a history of blocking features and content or access to GamePass presence even being negotiated.
Given Sony claims so much feature parity in, and access to, tentpole titles is so vital, it would help Microsoft’s case if they find proof of Sony making contracts that deny Microsoft said content.
@Snake_V5 details on the FF7 remake deal might not included. This will likely be based on when the deal was signed, not the date of the game release, and these deals are usually signed years in advance. It’s possible any deal done for the Intergrade release is there, unless it was signed before FF7 even released, something that is not out of the realm of possibilities.
Think this is why Microsoft wanted to go all the way to 2019, so they could get details on any game releases in the last 5 years.
I'm interested in the game, FF is no longer what I used to love (thankfully that role has been filled by Persona and Like a Dragon 7) but I still enjoy the tropes that are still carried over. I do love that Yoshi P is bringing a lot of things back, like moogles (still annoyed that FF7 Remake only "reference" to moogles was a kid on a suit...)
I wont be buying it day one, will most likely wait for a sale. Got plenty on my backlog to keep me busy the entire year already, so I likely can wait for a Black Friday sale. Then again... I remember feeling the same way about Final Fantasy 12 and succumbing on my drive home from work, stopping on a store and buying a copy day one... that I didn't play for perhaps 7 years...
@Titntin the story, as far as I heard, is that Square Enix (as usual) was not happy with the sales of the first Tomb Rider reboot entry and were not going to develop a sequel without outside investment. MS paying 100 million was not to make it exclusive, they basically co-financed the development without demanding full exclusivity, but they did demand timed exclusivity.
Chances are not insignificant that the game would had not been made at all without MS paying that 100 million.
We have seen at least Capcom information upon their leak, and Nintendo paid "only" 6 million to make the latest entry of Monster Hunter timed exclusive to the Switch, and Monster Hunter is one of the biggest selling IPs out there. Paying 100 million for a sequel to a game with disappointing sales sounds like a very poor investment, unless said game was never going to be made to begin with.
Tangent 1: Is Square ever, ever, not disappointed with their sales numbers?
Tangent 2: In that old article SE stated a goal to "profit" from game development window, before the game even is made. I guess the answer the article was looking for ended up being: finding platform holders that are willing to pay for the development costs.
Edit:
Personally, I don't mind exclusivity when we get to know the game would had not happened at all without that financing, but we rarely if ever get to find that out. When we find out, it tends to be years later due to leaks and behind the scenes talks.
Perhaps FF7 Remake would had not been a thing at all without Sony paying a lot of money to make it happen. Or perhaps they just money-hatted it, we wont ever know... or will we? (There is that FTC document request thing, and those documents might leak...)
FF16 was a game that was definitively going to be made, with or without outside investment.
As for paying for extra content, I am skeptical. I doubt they would hire additional developers just to make that content, so at the end of the day, the extra content took some time from development time from the core game content. If you are going to go that route, better give me some platform-fan service (like having the Master Sword on the Switch version of Skyrim.)
Switch is the worst though. Only shows the last 20 played games and rounds up to the nearest 5 hours (ie 20 hours played, 25 hours played etc).
Might I recommend Exophase.com? They hook up to Nintendo's public API and show you exactly how much time you spent on the games, without rounding. Do note that their API didn't come into effect until, I believe, 2019, so it wont show you older play times unless you at least launch those games to force a sync.
@themightyant Funny enough, I started doing this tracking because I felt I was not spending enough time playing games, instead spending too much time on volunteer development projects, and wanted this year to have some more me-time, so I started time tracking. At some point I might either find some free-ware time manual time tracker, or code my own, but for now tracking everything since 1/1/23 (only gaming time, not tracking work time on that thing.)
The save system helps with cloud but it predates it by a long run, it's been there since the 360 days. It was basically the result of them incorporating OneDrive technology into the console. I am very unlikely to ever play a game on PC if its on a console, any console, so I have never tested if XBox cloud saves actually work on the PC version. Did get a Steamdeck recently, no much use yet but might start changing my stance on PC games a bit.
@Titntin I wanted to have two TVs side by side in the living room to be able to play “couch coop” with without split-screens my partner on any game that supported online play, but they were having none of that. At the end it did give me room to get a way way way bigger TV for my personal gaming room.
@themightyant @get2sammyb @LiamCroft i don’t trust any time tracker 100%, Xbox also can have issues tracking. I don’t think the tracker works on cloud streaming sessions, for instance.
This year I took the extremely obsessive practice of keeping an actually manual gaming diary. It’s a simple spreadsheet where I write the title name, platform, play session start time and end time. Plan to code something at some point to generate nice tables and summaries, but for now, through the entirety of this year, I can find exactly what games I was playing at exactly what times and date.
As for the topic of the article, I play my third party games on Xbox mostly because of quick resume and the auto-syncing of save files. I have multiple rooms I can play games at, and it’s almost miraculous to see files sync as I launch a game without me having to remember to download them, as I must on the PlayStations.
this is sad news , playstation was never a third-party machine
PlayStation is where it is today mainly due to third party exclusives and marketing deals. Almost every highlight from the PS1 and PS2 era were third party exclusives.
It was not until mid-PS3 generation that first party exclusives started to do some heavy lifting.
Odd that he thinks “turn based” is a negative connotation…
I can’t think of a time when I associated JRPG with teens or anime. That’s what Weeb games is for. JRPG, in my opinion, always stood for very epic story driven RPGs with heavy emphasis on character development and… yes, turn based.
It was necessary to distinguish them from the terribly boring and yanky western RPGs, that were terrible (sorry Ultima fans, those games sucked.)
He should be glad his regional RPG flavor is not called “Eurojank”
@Titntin anyone that is early in production right now that still decides to make their game an exclusively live service game, deserves the failure that is coming to their way.
It’s cool if service is a side element that can be ignored (who buys Resident evil games for the mercenaries content?) but exclusively service?
@cragis0001 they didn’t use to have that policy during the 360 era, hell they didn’t even own Gears of war until after the xbox one launched.
Most publishing deals signed earlier in the Xbox one Gen, or before launch, we’re not owned, but later, tiles like Ori became xbox property even if the studio itself was not acquired.
My PS3 is still hooked up, so I’ll boot it up to make sure I get the update applied.
I still got a big of a backlog of PS3 exclusives that I been itching to play like Heavenly Sword and {3D Dot Heross, but want to at least beat Persona 4 first.
Maybe they changed their policy, but I understand at some point mid last Gen Xbox changed its policy so that they would own any game IO they finance and publish. If so, it’s very unlikely this will come to PlayStation.
It would be a bit odd, though, that if this was the case, Xbox would just green light IOI doing a blog reveal. So… I’d say this is 75% likely Xbox exclusive (assuming the Microsoft publishing rumor is true.)
I never cared enough to install this plugging before but installed the Dislikes in Youtube extension on Edge, and went through a few of the uploads for this video. Here are some of the up/down votes:
IGN: 9.5k👍| 26k👎
GamePot: 4.3k👍| 12k👎
PlayStation: 1.6k👍| 7.2k👎
Warner Bros. Games: 0.475k👍| 1.5k👎
So... the reactions are not good at all, and they know it.
@get2sammyb need to hunt this down but I seen some use some plugin that re-exposed downvotes in YouTube videos (it seems what YouTube did was hide the element, not eliminate the code behind it.)
Google's "kind of" objecting but without any specific claims
They had one claim, that supposedly Xbox is slowing down the performance of xcloud on Chrome browsers. For me that does not make much sense given how the two main platforms XBox is targeting for Game Cloud Streaming are iOS and Android.
It does make sense that Google would be against it, given they fear the ability of King establishing a third party app store in their mobile ecosystem, but that's not exactly the concern that will win them sympathy with any regulatory agency.
@get2sammyb I mean, Sony did start their gaming life by buying one of the largest European publishers at the time. Obviously they dimmed it necessary to buy an established publisher to break into the global game publishing market, and catch up with Nintendo and Sega's long-standing publishing arms.
A rather stupid quote from someone I heard recently is they dont take aspirin for headaches because they dont have a headache due to aspirin deficiency. Sure, they dont, but aspirine can fix the headache. Similarly, XBox's international performance is not poor because of lacking ABK, but owning ABK can likely help their issue.
On the topic of the market share point, bringing it up is one of the first things anyone does while discussing regulation and anti-competitive practices. If their market share is small enough, it's very hard for a single acquisition, even one this big, to put them in a position where they push anyone out of the market.
@TommyNL if it comes to that, it can become extremely complex and businesy. There are many odd things they can end up donig, like actually buying the entirety of ABK, but spinning off CoD into its own entity, something that would allow the full 70 billion deal to go through.
In such a move, they would still own a large stake on said company, very likely, but it's likely they would be limited by conditions on how large of a stake they would be allowed to retain.
Also, I dont think MS has ever said they dont care about CoD, they have stated CoD is not the main reason they are pursing the deal for.
@TommyNL I have a feeling that should they be absolutely forced to divest from CoD, and nothing else, they would still want to go through as they get a lot out of the other Activision IPs, Blizzard and King. The question should be instead if Activision Blizzard's investors would accept the restructured deal, it would certainly not be for the full $70 billion dollars, and they would be stuck with at minimum 3 studios and the CoD IP.
What If the commission feels Microsoft has done enough without Sony signing up, will that mean no more COD on PlayStation???
Doubtful, Xbox would not win much if PS is the only platform out there without CoD. The worst I see happening is Xbox saying "well... you turned down the contract that had parity... so now Zombies mode is exclusive to those platforms that agreed to the deal."
I don't think they will. What's the purpose of this 10-year deal if Microsoft means what they say about not taking games away?
The purpose is so that regulatory agencies can see they are not just making promises, but legally forcing themselves to keep those promises. Valve agrees with you, as they refused the deal on philosophical reasons (they don't want to hold anyone hostage) and the fact that they trust Xbox to keep their word without contracts.
I agree with posters saying all these games should be available for sale and not locked down behind the service. A lot of people complain that Game Pass will lead to a future where we can’t big games, but they sell everything in their service. It’s Nintendo and Sony selectively forcing rental-only for some games.
@NEStalgia even if we ignore the platform loyalist arguments, there is also the opinions like "the business model is terrible for the industry" as if somehow the success of Game Pass would mean that no one can buy games anymore.
All games in Game Pass can also be purchased. All music in Spotify is also available for purchase (most likely all in iTunes and Amazon, or some other storefront.) Hell, you can still buy vinyl (interesting vinyl outsold cd sales last year in the UK.)
Back to games... both things can be true: Game pass exist, ownership exist. I feel like some of these people would stand in front of a Blockbuster store and protest that those renting movies and games don't "own" anything...
My suspicion has always been that each download or 'engagement' with a game will count as a 'sale'[...]its just how i have always assumed it must work to make it profitible enough for devs
Long time ago I listened to an interview with Phil Spencer where he went on about the deals they make. He stated there was no one model, they work with every publisher and every deal slightly differently. At the start they tried to just offer an engagement fee/share (similar to how Spotify pays musicians based on song plays) but many publishers were skeptical of this model and didnt start jumping on board until they started also offering a flat up-front fee.
At the time, he noted they might still do either or a hybrid, or some other things (not specified.)
Sadly I don't remember what podcast I listened to that interview on so its hard for me to track it down again without simply looking up every interview available out there and listen to every single one again (that's how I originally bumped into it, as I was jumping to the Xbox ecosystem and philosophy and wanted to hear more about Xbox's vision before actually jumping on board.)
But at the end of the day: there is no one single model, and they negotiate with every single publisher, for every single addition.
I think you're coming at it from a strong "I hate Microsoft" and "I don't trust new business models" bias.
I think it's mostly the former than the later. Lets face it, if (when?) Sony added all their games day one to their service (likely the Extra tier) all these same individuals will praise it as the greatest thing in the planet and "the true best deal in gaming."
Any time XBox gets something that can be seen as a strong selling point, they feel the need to do all they can to stomp on it and argue why its bad, as highlighted with all the Skyrim/Fallout fans that, post Zenimax acquisition, went on a campaign about how terrible all Bethesda games are at launch, and recently have insisted that HiFi Rush is a bad looking game, and what not.
At the end of the day, though, the more people buys all these headlines (game pass is bad, we lose money, we have no games) the narrative will just help the Activision deal go through, so I welcome this take.
They only sell 4k in stores and have been for years. If you play games you have a 4k TV.
I just checked Walmart, Target and Best Buy. They all sell both, 1080p and 720p TVs. They are extremely cheap options for a family with a limited budget, something very common these days.
Largest 1080p TV I saw at Best Buy was 43" for $150, definitively what I would buy for a child's bedroom even if I was to go crazy and buy them a PS5.
Getting a PS5, especially this next year, is about games that are just not sold for PS4, not to mention the fast loading times.
This isn't about sony trying to block the deal it's about the CMA and FTC coming to their own conclusions with their own findings and research.
Not exactly, these findings are based on their inquiries and feedback to and from other interested parties. Without Sony’s claims, it’s likely they would had not reached this conclusion.
Either way, this is a procedural report that does not take into account any remedies suggested by Microsoft. Now they actually enter the negotiation phase, where Microsoft will not only officially put forward their commitment to keep the game on other platforms as they done with Minecraft, but also listen to CMAs own suggestions on potential remedies, that is always a part of these procedures.
There won’t actually be a block unless they can’t reach an agreement, something that is possible. CMA might be happy with Microsoft’s proposed remedies, or they might demand more extreme ones, like spinning off the entirety of Call of Duty into an independent entity. MS might not agree with more extreme solutions CMA might demand.
@get2sammyb PSN+ is very different than GamePass. The main reason most people get into PSN+ (and Xbox live gold) is to play games online, and that’s just a subset of the established console user base.
I don’t think that numbers is a good pointer of how far the game pass model can go, especially when game pass is not bound to a single console (also works with pc games and mobile via streaming) and it’s mostly about a big number of single player games. Regardless of potential it will take years for the model to give us a hint at the real brick wall.
It will take Xbox actually realizing some first party games to continue feeding the “day one” incentives, though.
@danlk1ng also, the character creator is very ambiguous. There is no “male” or “female” voice, there is “voice one” and “voice two” and you get to change the pitch of either selection. You never pick gender. The closest thing to a binary choice is deciding what dormitory you will be sleeping in, so there is just actual flag the player can pick to base pronouns off.
It would had actually been a nice thing, for everyone, to further allow customization by selecting your own pronouns, but that then that goes into the stuff you mention about re-recording several lines multiple times. As it is, the usage of they/them is good enough.
@themightyant yeap, never underestimate the power of cheap. It was also clear that, during the PS4 days, the Slim units sold more than the Pro units, and the same being true for One S vs One X is likely the reason Microsoft opted for the dual strategy out of the gate this gen.
Man, I remember being on NL when "NX" was announced amidst WiiU drama, all the naysayers were ranting about how it would fail horribly, it doesn't come close enough to PS4's power, PS 4 would destroy it, NintenDOOMED!!
Nintendo has an interesting history of industry over-reaction. Do you by any chance remember when the Wii U was announced, and both, PlayStation and XBox scrambled to try to come up with a software-based solution to offer second-screen gaming? You can still download the PS4 Second Screen app off the iPhone App Store. Dont remember what Microsoft called their offering, I dind't care much about XBox at that time.
Both companies just barely managed to offer their response to motion controls, and here came Nintendo with this second screen "innovation" that was about to destroy their hopes... and it crashed and burned like a building made out of coal bricks.
To this day I think some games still have features (that no longer work) locked behind these Second Screen smartphone app solutions.
Comments 1,002
Re: Sony Must Share Details of Exclusivity Deals with Microsoft in FTC's Court Hearing
@Nem
The FTC case against the merger is basically 99% based on arguments made by Sony in opposition of the merger. As such, for their defense in the case, MS has requested everything they feel is relevant to prove or disprove Sonys legal claims.
The judge has agreed with Microsoft that most of the requests are indeed relevant, while denying the relevance of a couple of requests.
Re: Sony Must Share Details of Exclusivity Deals with Microsoft in FTC's Court Hearing
@Kriandis
Different administrations. The current FTC leadership has an anti-big-corporation mindset. Not making any personal judgements on thad being good or bad, but it’s why Disney went through its equally big Fox acquisition. Had Disney attempted that this year, they likely would had faced similar reaction from the FTC. Similarly, had the ABK Activision been done in 2020, or hell even 2015, it would had likely gone through uneventfully (in the US).
Re: Sony Must Share Details of Exclusivity Deals with Microsoft in FTC's Court Hearing
@Snake_V5 so they can likely bring arguments like Sony using its market leader position in anti-competitive ways, using that weight to secure more favorable contracts that harm competitors, and stuff like that. Also to reinforce a history of blocking features and content or access to GamePass presence even being negotiated.
Given Sony claims so much feature parity in, and access to, tentpole titles is so vital, it would help Microsoft’s case if they find proof of Sony making contracts that deny Microsoft said content.
Re: Sony Must Share Details of Exclusivity Deals with Microsoft in FTC's Court Hearing
@Snake_V5 details on the FF7 remake deal might not included. This will likely be based on when the deal was signed, not the date of the game release, and these deals are usually signed years in advance. It’s possible any deal done for the Intergrade release is there, unless it was signed before FF7 even released, something that is not out of the realm of possibilities.
Think this is why Microsoft wanted to go all the way to 2019, so they could get details on any game releases in the last 5 years.
Re: Sony Wants to Make PlayStation the Best Place to Play Third-Party Games
@Shredderlovespizza Not trying to argue... but there are no laws against hooking up a console to a monitor, in a desk. 🙃
I do can see it being an issue in a household where the console is shared among multiple users.
Re: Poll: How Do You Feel About Final Fantasy 16?
I'm interested in the game, FF is no longer what I used to love (thankfully that role has been filled by Persona and Like a Dragon 7) but I still enjoy the tropes that are still carried over. I do love that Yoshi P is bringing a lot of things back, like moogles (still annoyed that FF7 Remake only "reference" to moogles was a kid on a suit...)
I wont be buying it day one, will most likely wait for a sale. Got plenty on my backlog to keep me busy the entire year already, so I likely can wait for a Black Friday sale. Then again... I remember feeling the same way about Final Fantasy 12 and succumbing on my drive home from work, stopping on a store and buying a copy day one... that I didn't play for perhaps 7 years...
Re: Sony Wants to Make PlayStation the Best Place to Play Third-Party Games
@Titntin the story, as far as I heard, is that Square Enix (as usual) was not happy with the sales of the first Tomb Rider reboot entry and were not going to develop a sequel without outside investment. MS paying 100 million was not to make it exclusive, they basically co-financed the development without demanding full exclusivity, but they did demand timed exclusivity.
Chances are not insignificant that the game would had not been made at all without MS paying that 100 million.
We have seen at least Capcom information upon their leak, and Nintendo paid "only" 6 million to make the latest entry of Monster Hunter timed exclusive to the Switch, and Monster Hunter is one of the biggest selling IPs out there. Paying 100 million for a sequel to a game with disappointing sales sounds like a very poor investment, unless said game was never going to be made to begin with.
Tangent 1: Is Square ever, ever, not disappointed with their sales numbers?
Tangent 2: In that old article SE stated a goal to "profit" from game development window, before the game even is made. I guess the answer the article was looking for ended up being: finding platform holders that are willing to pay for the development costs.
Edit:
Personally, I don't mind exclusivity when we get to know the game would had not happened at all without that financing, but we rarely if ever get to find that out. When we find out, it tends to be years later due to leaks and behind the scenes talks.
Perhaps FF7 Remake would had not been a thing at all without Sony paying a lot of money to make it happen. Or perhaps they just money-hatted it, we wont ever know... or will we? (There is that FTC document request thing, and those documents might leak...)
FF16 was a game that was definitively going to be made, with or without outside investment.
As for paying for extra content, I am skeptical. I doubt they would hire additional developers just to make that content, so at the end of the day, the extra content took some time from development time from the core game content. If you are going to go that route, better give me some platform-fan service (like having the Master Sword on the Switch version of Skyrim.)
Re: Sony Wants to Make PlayStation the Best Place to Play Third-Party Games
@Titntin Now I wonder how native time tracking behaves when jumping from XBox to PC....
Re: Sony Wants to Make PlayStation the Best Place to Play Third-Party Games
@jrt87
Might I recommend Exophase.com? They hook up to Nintendo's public API and show you exactly how much time you spent on the games, without rounding. Do note that their API didn't come into effect until, I believe, 2019, so it wont show you older play times unless you at least launch those games to force a sync.
Re: Sony Wants to Make PlayStation the Best Place to Play Third-Party Games
@themightyant Funny enough, I started doing this tracking because I felt I was not spending enough time playing games, instead spending too much time on volunteer development projects, and wanted this year to have some more me-time, so I started time tracking. At some point I might either find some free-ware time manual time tracker, or code my own, but for now tracking everything since 1/1/23 (only gaming time, not tracking work time on that thing.)
The save system helps with cloud but it predates it by a long run, it's been there since the 360 days. It was basically the result of them incorporating OneDrive technology into the console. I am very unlikely to ever play a game on PC if its on a console, any console, so I have never tested if XBox cloud saves actually work on the PC version. Did get a Steamdeck recently, no much use yet but might start changing my stance on PC games a bit.
Re: Sony Wants to Make PlayStation the Best Place to Play Third-Party Games
@Titntin I wanted to have two TVs side by side in the living room to be able to play “couch coop” with without split-screens my partner on any game that supported online play, but they were having none of that. At the end it did give me room to get a way way way bigger TV for my personal gaming room.
Re: Sony Wants to Make PlayStation the Best Place to Play Third-Party Games
@themightyant @get2sammyb @LiamCroft i don’t trust any time tracker 100%, Xbox also can have issues tracking. I don’t think the tracker works on cloud streaming sessions, for instance.
This year I took the extremely obsessive practice of keeping an actually manual gaming diary. It’s a simple spreadsheet where I write the title name, platform, play session start time and end time. Plan to code something at some point to generate nice tables and summaries, but for now, through the entirety of this year, I can find exactly what games I was playing at exactly what times and date.
As for the topic of the article, I play my third party games on Xbox mostly because of quick resume and the auto-syncing of save files. I have multiple rooms I can play games at, and it’s almost miraculous to see files sync as I launch a game without me having to remember to download them, as I must on the PlayStations.
Re: Sony Wants to Make PlayStation the Best Place to Play Third-Party Games
@nomither6
PlayStation is where it is today mainly due to third party exclusives and marketing deals. Almost every highlight from the PS1 and PS2 era were third party exclusives.
It was not until mid-PS3 generation that first party exclusives started to do some heavy lifting.
Re: Naoki Yoshida Is Not a Fan of the Term 'JRPG'
Odd that he thinks “turn based” is a negative connotation…
I can’t think of a time when I associated JRPG with teens or anime. That’s what Weeb games is for. JRPG, in my opinion, always stood for very epic story driven RPGs with heavy emphasis on character development and… yes, turn based.
It was necessary to distinguish them from the terribly boring and yanky western RPGs, that were terrible (sorry Ultima fans, those games sucked.)
He should be glad his regional RPG flavor is not called “Eurojank”
Re: Rumour: Shin Megami Tensei 5 to Be Announced for PS5, PS4 in May, But There's No Real Evidence
Hopefully this game gets ported to all modern platforms (Xbox Series X|S and PS5) plus PC and not just PS4|XBOne.
Re: What Year Is It? There's a New PS3 Firmware Update Out Now
@Olskeezy I hoarded tons of controllers, but I got good news for you! There are two good alternatives out there right now if you willing to spend $45.
First, there is Retrofighters releasing this beauty:
https://retrofighters.com/our-collection/defender-wireless-playstation-1-playstation-2-playstation-3-playstation-classic-nintendo-switch-pc-video-game-controller/
If you prefer a more first-party controller, though, then this might be for you:
https://www.brookaccessory.com/products/wingmanxe2/index.html
It will allow you to use a PS4, PS5, or even a Switch Pro Controller, hell even an Xbox Controller on your PS3.
Re: Hitman Dev Confirms Online Fantasy RPG, But No Mention of PS5
@Titntin anyone that is early in production right now that still decides to make their game an exclusively live service game, deserves the failure that is coming to their way.
It’s cool if service is a side element that can be ignored (who buys Resident evil games for the mercenaries content?) but exclusively service?
Re: Hitman Dev Confirms Online Fantasy RPG, But No Mention of PS5
@cragis0001 they didn’t use to have that policy during the 360 era, hell they didn’t even own Gears of war until after the xbox one launched.
Most publishing deals signed earlier in the Xbox one Gen, or before launch, we’re not owned, but later, tiles like Ori became xbox property even if the studio itself was not acquired.
Re: What Year Is It? There's a New PS3 Firmware Update Out Now
My PS3 is still hooked up, so I’ll boot it up to make sure I get the update applied.
I still got a big of a backlog of PS3 exclusives that I been itching to play like Heavenly Sword and {3D Dot Heross, but want to at least beat Persona 4 first.
Re: Hitman Dev Confirms Online Fantasy RPG, But No Mention of PS5
Maybe they changed their policy, but I understand at some point mid last Gen Xbox changed its policy so that they would own any game IO they finance and publish. If so, it’s very unlikely this will come to PlayStation.
It would be a bit odd, though, that if this was the case, Xbox would just green light IOI doing a blog reveal. So… I’d say this is 75% likely Xbox exclusive (assuming the Microsoft publishing rumor is true.)
Re: The Response to Rocksteady's Suicide Squad Has Been Abysmal
I never cared enough to install this plugging before but installed the Dislikes in Youtube extension on Edge, and went through a few of the uploads for this video. Here are some of the up/down votes:
So... the reactions are not good at all, and they know it.
Re: The Response to Rocksteady's Suicide Squad Has Been Abysmal
@get2sammyb need to hunt this down but I seen some use some plugin that re-exposed downvotes in YouTube videos (it seems what YouTube did was hide the element, not eliminate the code behind it.)
Re: Sony Somehow Screwed Up The Legend of Dragoon on PS5, PS4
So glad Sony charges extra money to be able to support these amazing emulators!
Re: Maximalist JRPG The Caligula Effect: Overdose Is Getting a Native PS5 Release
@Arnna the PS4 version was the remake, this is a PS5 enhanced version (that they will likely still charge everyone for).
Re: Suicide Squad Requires an Internet Connection Even in Single Player
It’s official, as far as I care this game does not exist.
Re: Xbox Series X|S Is Getting Trounced by PS5, Microsoft Weirdly Reveals
Nintendo not existing is just Xbox playing by Sonys semantics.
Re: Xbox on Charm Offensive to Push $69 Billion Activision Acquisition Through
@NEStalgia
They had one claim, that supposedly Xbox is slowing down the performance of xcloud on Chrome browsers. For me that does not make much sense given how the two main platforms XBox is targeting for Game Cloud Streaming are iOS and Android.
It does make sense that Google would be against it, given they fear the ability of King establishing a third party app store in their mobile ecosystem, but that's not exactly the concern that will win them sympathy with any regulatory agency.
Re: Xbox on Charm Offensive to Push $69 Billion Activision Acquisition Through
@Loftimus
EU stated that Microsoft never promised such a thing, and they never demanded it either. FTC's statement that such a promise was made was a lie, or giving benefit of the doubt, misinformed.
The FTC has been making a ton of bogus decisions as of late.
Re: Xbox on Charm Offensive to Push $69 Billion Activision Acquisition Through
@Loftimus
The EU openly stated that MS never lied, and it was the FTC that lied.
Re: Xbox on Charm Offensive to Push $69 Billion Activision Acquisition Through
@get2sammyb I mean, Sony did start their gaming life by buying one of the largest European publishers at the time. Obviously they dimmed it necessary to buy an established publisher to break into the global game publishing market, and catch up with Nintendo and Sega's long-standing publishing arms.
A rather stupid quote from someone I heard recently is they dont take aspirin for headaches because they dont have a headache due to aspirin deficiency. Sure, they dont, but aspirine can fix the headache. Similarly, XBox's international performance is not poor because of lacking ABK, but owning ABK can likely help their issue.
On the topic of the market share point, bringing it up is one of the first things anyone does while discussing regulation and anti-competitive practices. If their market share is small enough, it's very hard for a single acquisition, even one this big, to put them in a position where they push anyone out of the market.
Re: Xbox on Charm Offensive to Push $69 Billion Activision Acquisition Through
@TommyNL if it comes to that, it can become extremely complex and businesy. There are many odd things they can end up donig, like actually buying the entirety of ABK, but spinning off CoD into its own entity, something that would allow the full 70 billion deal to go through.
In such a move, they would still own a large stake on said company, very likely, but it's likely they would be limited by conditions on how large of a stake they would be allowed to retain.
Also, I dont think MS has ever said they dont care about CoD, they have stated CoD is not the main reason they are pursing the deal for.
Re: Xbox on Charm Offensive to Push $69 Billion Activision Acquisition Through
@get2sammyb
Cant they do both?
And ABK was the one looking for a buyer, MS was the only one with deep enough pockets and interest to go for it.
Should ABK instead be forced to break up and sell every IP and studio individually?
Re: Xbox on Charm Offensive to Push $69 Billion Activision Acquisition Through
@TommyNL I have a feeling that should they be absolutely forced to divest from CoD, and nothing else, they would still want to go through as they get a lot out of the other Activision IPs, Blizzard and King. The question should be instead if Activision Blizzard's investors would accept the restructured deal, it would certainly not be for the full $70 billion dollars, and they would be stuck with at minimum 3 studios and the CoD IP.
Re: Xbox on Charm Offensive to Push $69 Billion Activision Acquisition Through
@Splatmaster
Doubtful, Xbox would not win much if PS is the only platform out there without CoD. The worst I see happening is Xbox saying "well... you turned down the contract that had parity... so now Zombies mode is exclusive to those platforms that agreed to the deal."
Re: Xbox on Charm Offensive to Push $69 Billion Activision Acquisition Through
@TheCollector316
The purpose is so that regulatory agencies can see they are not just making promises, but legally forcing themselves to keep those promises. Valve agrees with you, as they refused the deal on philosophical reasons (they don't want to hold anyone hostage) and the fact that they trust Xbox to keep their word without contracts.
Re: New PS1 Classics Can Be Bought Off the PS Store
I agree with posters saying all these games should be available for sale and not locked down behind the service. A lot of people complain that Game Pass will lead to a future where we can’t big games, but they sell everything in their service. It’s Nintendo and Sony selectively forcing rental-only for some games.
Re: Microsoft Can't Deny Xbox Game Pass Cannibalises Software Sales
@NEStalgia even if we ignore the platform loyalist arguments, there is also the opinions like "the business model is terrible for the industry" as if somehow the success of Game Pass would mean that no one can buy games anymore.
All games in Game Pass can also be purchased. All music in Spotify is also available for purchase (most likely all in iTunes and Amazon, or some other storefront.) Hell, you can still buy vinyl (interesting vinyl outsold cd sales last year in the UK.)
Back to games... both things can be true: Game pass exist, ownership exist. I feel like some of these people would stand in front of a Blockbuster store and protest that those renting movies and games don't "own" anything...
Re: Microsoft Can't Deny Xbox Game Pass Cannibalises Software Sales
@Rob_230
Long time ago I listened to an interview with Phil Spencer where he went on about the deals they make. He stated there was no one model, they work with every publisher and every deal slightly differently. At the start they tried to just offer an engagement fee/share (similar to how Spotify pays musicians based on song plays) but many publishers were skeptical of this model and didnt start jumping on board until they started also offering a flat up-front fee.
At the time, he noted they might still do either or a hybrid, or some other things (not specified.)
Sadly I don't remember what podcast I listened to that interview on so its hard for me to track it down again without simply looking up every interview available out there and listen to every single one again (that's how I originally bumped into it, as I was jumping to the Xbox ecosystem and philosophy and wanted to hear more about Xbox's vision before actually jumping on board.)
But at the end of the day: there is no one single model, and they negotiate with every single publisher, for every single addition.
Re: Microsoft Can't Deny Xbox Game Pass Cannibalises Software Sales
@ORO_ERICIUS
If there is one thing no one can claim with a straight face, is that XBox is rushing games. They keep delaying games left and right.
Re: Microsoft Admits Xbox Game Pass Is Harming Software Sales After All
@NEStalgia
I think it's mostly the former than the later. Lets face it, if (when?) Sony added all their games day one to their service (likely the Extra tier) all these same individuals will praise it as the greatest thing in the planet and "the true best deal in gaming."
Any time XBox gets something that can be seen as a strong selling point, they feel the need to do all they can to stomp on it and argue why its bad, as highlighted with all the Skyrim/Fallout fans that, post Zenimax acquisition, went on a campaign about how terrible all Bethesda games are at launch, and recently have insisted that HiFi Rush is a bad looking game, and what not.
At the end of the day, though, the more people buys all these headlines (game pass is bad, we lose money, we have no games) the narrative will just help the Activision deal go through, so I welcome this take.
Re: Japanese PS5 Hardware May Be Being Sent Overseas, Explaining Soft Software Sales
If true, what region is China more likely to be importing their region free games from then?
Re: Rumour: Sony Suspects Skyrocketing PS5 Sales as New Model Hits in September 2023
@KaijuKaiser
I just checked Walmart, Target and Best Buy. They all sell both, 1080p and 720p TVs. They are extremely cheap options for a family with a limited budget, something very common these days.
Largest 1080p TV I saw at Best Buy was 43" for $150, definitively what I would buy for a child's bedroom even if I was to go crazy and buy them a PS5.
Getting a PS5, especially this next year, is about games that are just not sold for PS4, not to mention the fast loading times.
Re: Rumour: Sony Suspects Skyrocketing PS5 Sales as New Model Hits in September 2023
Thats one ambitious goal. Hope a bigger ratio of those consoles are not bundles.
Re: UK Determines Xbox's $69 Billion Activision Buyout Could Harm Gamers
@UltimateOtaku91
Not exactly, these findings are based on their inquiries and feedback to and from other interested parties. Without Sony’s claims, it’s likely they would had not reached this conclusion.
Either way, this is a procedural report that does not take into account any remedies suggested by Microsoft. Now they actually enter the negotiation phase, where Microsoft will not only officially put forward their commitment to keep the game on other platforms as they done with Minecraft, but also listen to CMAs own suggestions on potential remedies, that is always a part of these procedures.
There won’t actually be a block unless they can’t reach an agreement, something that is possible. CMA might be happy with Microsoft’s proposed remedies, or they might demand more extreme ones, like spinning off the entirety of Call of Duty into an independent entity. MS might not agree with more extreme solutions CMA might demand.
Re: PS Plus, Xbox Game Pass Aren't Big Enough to Impact Business, Says Take-Two Boss
@get2sammyb PSN+ is very different than GamePass. The main reason most people get into PSN+ (and Xbox live gold) is to play games online, and that’s just a subset of the established console user base.
I don’t think that numbers is a good pointer of how far the game pass model can go, especially when game pass is not bound to a single console (also works with pc games and mobile via streaming) and it’s mostly about a big number of single player games. Regardless of potential it will take years for the model to give us a hint at the real brick wall.
It will take Xbox actually realizing some first party games to continue feeding the “day one” incentives, though.
Re: PS2's Best-Selling Console Crown in Jeopardy As Nintendo Switch Passes PS4
@NEStalgia I think UBisoft did end up doing some of the best third party use of the Wii U pad, with Rayman and Zombi U.
I could have seen Zombi U becoming a big UBisoft IP had the Wii U and second screen concept been a big success.
Re: Hogwarts Legacy (PS5) - A Harry Potter Dream Come True
@danlk1ng also, the character creator is very ambiguous. There is no “male” or “female” voice, there is “voice one” and “voice two” and you get to change the pitch of either selection. You never pick gender. The closest thing to a binary choice is deciding what dormitory you will be sleeping in, so there is just actual flag the player can pick to base pronouns off.
It would had actually been a nice thing, for everyone, to further allow customization by selecting your own pronouns, but that then that goes into the stuff you mention about re-recording several lines multiple times. As it is, the usage of they/them is good enough.
Re: PS2's Best-Selling Console Crown in Jeopardy As Nintendo Switch Passes PS4
@themightyant yeap, never underestimate the power of cheap. It was also clear that, during the PS4 days, the Slim units sold more than the Pro units, and the same being true for One S vs One X is likely the reason Microsoft opted for the dual strategy out of the gate this gen.
Re: PS2's Best-Selling Console Crown in Jeopardy As Nintendo Switch Passes PS4
@NEStalgia
Nintendo has an interesting history of industry over-reaction. Do you by any chance remember when the Wii U was announced, and both, PlayStation and XBox scrambled to try to come up with a software-based solution to offer second-screen gaming? You can still download the PS4 Second Screen app off the iPhone App Store. Dont remember what Microsoft called their offering, I dind't care much about XBox at that time.
Both companies just barely managed to offer their response to motion controls, and here came Nintendo with this second screen "innovation" that was about to destroy their hopes... and it crashed and burned like a building made out of coal bricks.
To this day I think some games still have features (that no longer work) locked behind these Second Screen smartphone app solutions.
Re: Hogwarts Legacy (PS5) - A Harry Potter Dream Come True
@Jaz007 you are wrong, @tedinthepaint (and of course Merriam Webster) is right.