SeaDaVie

@PegasusActual93 According to Google, as of 2025, there are 36 states with no mandatory wait period.

It’s always amazing to me how much people will overlook for a company that is currently a darling of the industry. Embark have always used A.I. To replace voice actor work. If a company like Ubisoft or EA did that then it would be a massive deal.

On top of that Arc Raiders charges $20 for Skins, in a premium game, and yet there is not much mention of that on big gaming sites, despite the $10 pets in Fortnite getting an article today. Hell, I remember HD2 charged around $20 for a big crossover pack that was like multiple guns, a full armour set and other stuff, and that game got review bombed and pilloried all over the internet for it(because it was published by Sony, the devs were innocent victims obviously)

@nessisonett Not to mention the main driver of this kind of street level crime is socio-economic status, and most immigrants and people of colour have a much lower socio-economic status than the average white person. So any focus on ethnicity or race is just a spurious correlation caused by underlying socio-economic conditions.

The whole London = Knife crime centre is a fake right-wing narrative pushed because Donal Trump hates Sadiq Khan. As preposterous as that sounds, that’s how the right now operates apparently.

Here’s an article comparing homicide rates in New York vs. London:

https://www.searchlondon.co.uk/2025/03/10/londons-homicide-statistics-compared-to-new-york-citys/

Not only is the total homicide rate is NY 3.8x higher but homicides with stabbing/cuts are even 1.2x higher in NY. Despite everyone having ridiculous access to guns.

And this, ultimately, is why GTA can never be set anywhere except America(at least in the western world) because nowhere else in the world has such shocking levels of violence where guns can be bought so freely and drug dealers just openly stand around street corners.

Still, it's hard to envision a future where Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 doesn't sweep Game of the Year awards across all of games media

Why is that, considering Hades II got significantly higher review scores? Yeah, the fact it’s a sequel will hold it back but it seems a bit strange to dismiss such an astounding game.

@Max_the_German I'm waiting for you to write new, exciting takes, but it ain't happening anytime soon, is it?

@Dalamar

It's law's job to punish him, not RGG studio, not Sega, and definitely not yours.

I’m pretty sure if you go into work tomorrow and grab a woman by the hair, you will be instantly fired, and probably lose most of your friends. Your boss won’t just be like “it’s the laws job to punish him not me”. As crazy as this is going to sound to you, here’s the thing, the bar for getting fired from your job is most definitely lower than a criminal conviction.Theres quite a lot of things one can do that will get them fired without ever getting arrested.

It’s pretty crazy they’d fire a dude for doing cocaine but sexual harassment is absolutely A-OK.

@Oram77 Have you played the game or just doing the sheep routine?

Would I be happy to pay for online play? No, and I’m not happy to pay it now. I can’t imagine anyone is actually happy. It is what it is though.

Who knows, maybe I’ll play all online games on the PCboX. I’ll probably just stay in my comfort zone and do everything the same way I already do. This is the nature of people, just as much as the nature of a scorpion is to sting dudes.

@Striker21

The revenue from the Xbox storefront and online premium is minimal, making it irrelevant to Xbox's financials

They are literally the 2 highest margin items in the video game business. Getting 30% of the games other people make(plus 30% of all DLC, MTX etc.) and getting people to pay money for online play.

@Northern_munkey I played the last test on April and the open one in October. I think it's OK. I kinda wanted to get it but I am playing outer worlds 2 instead. If I played I'd probably just play through to end game one time and be done. Maybe revisit in a year. I like Helldivers 2 a lot but I don't really play it regularly for example and I think it's a similar experience game to that.

@Northern_munkey Yes, it will be around for a long time, but the majority of people will not be playing it in 6 months.

That’s normal for most live service games. Arc Raiders skews more towards social elements and pve than a full pvp experience, which also tends to have lower player retention. The game also will not have any forced wipes, which are normally common in extraction shooters so people will generally max a character and that will be it for the normal player. A lot of the people playing are more casual, primarily single player gamers and not pvp sweats that drive long term player numbers in other popular shooter games.

In 6 months the daily peak concurrent player count on a random day will be about 10% of what it is now.

@Bionic-Spencer 90% of the people playing this game will be finished with it forever by the the time Marathon releases. The success of another extraction shooter will only help it.

@LifeGirl

The only reason Sony cares is because it affects them.

What better reason to care could there possibly be?

It should also be noted that 2027 will also likely to be crowded, if it fell then. 2027 will mark 5 years since Forbidden West and Ragnarok and both studios would be expected to release games in that period(FW was 5 years and 1 month after ZD, Ragnarok was 4 years 10 months and also Saros and GoY are basically within a month or two of 5 years exactly also)

@BearsEatBeets

Didn’t TLoU 2 and GoT release about a month apart?

Yes, and the same year they also released Miles Morales, Demon Souls remake, Sackboy [and Astro's Playroom]

However, Sony has already confirmed two games for 2026 — the aforementioned Saros, launching in March, and Marvel's Wolverine, arriving in the Fall.

You forgot Marathon(and Marvel Tokon) 😭

People always act like Bend got thrown under the bus by Sony, but the reality is that the Days Gone 2 pitch was for a "fully co-op shared world game". I mean, that sounds pretty live service to me, or live service adjacent.

Here's the reality, Bend have released one game in the last 13 years and it's reception was most certainly "mixed" (it was a 71 on metacritic, which I do think is very harsh but it was also a technical mess at launch).

Also, it should be noted that DD2 sales dropped off the cliff just as sharply as Wilds. I remember on Steam the game launched at the same time as Ghost of Tsushima and had around 3x the peak concurrent user count of GoT, and now both have roughly the same sales at around 2.5m and GoT continues to sell way better week by week, despite DD2 being discounted heavier and more often(a good example of why we should be cautious with peak concurrent user numbers from Steam)

Capcom also have a reputation for quickly discounting items(I remember buying Village digitally on black Friday for £20 when it had released that year). So I'm guessing you either buy day one at full price or you wait for the big sale, and there's very little in between.

This is exacerbated by the feeling that Wilds is not a complete game and won't be until the expansion.

The current digital sales price for rise and Village is £8.74 & £8.24.

@Bez87 Halo 4 and onwards are made by 343 Industries(/Halo Studios) and not Bungie.

@JustX There's 4 maps at launch. 10% would be 0.4 of a map.

@Boxmonkey Where does the 10% come from? It had 25% of the day one maps.

@RoomWithaMoose It will lose players quickly and then maintain a small devoted following for the rest of its life, with peaks during the first few days of a new season. No wipes/resets or anything means it doesn’t really have a lot of continuous engagement potential. Most players will reach their endpoint and rarely come back.

@AhmadSumadi

Imagine if AI was able to allow NPCs to address your created character by the name you give them instead of the generic, preprogrammed name?

A.I. can actually allow NPCs to have real-time conversations with you and respond to your queries via speech etc. Would require use of the cloud and be always online etc. But it's really not that difficult if someone wants to spend the resources to build it out in a game.

That's a weird thing to say by the CEO of one of the first companies in the video game world to openly embrace the use of A.I. Exclusively to replace humans in a creative role: voice acting.

The game is solid as a tarkov-lite, but a million miles short of the hype. The biggest problem for this long term is that it has no mandatory wipes so if you pick this game up in a years time you’ll be playing with mostly people that have a years worth of progress.

In the long term I think it will have a small dedicated following, but it’s no Helldivers 2 or anything. More of a Dune: Awakening.

Has anyone employed by Microsoft ever answered a question directly in their entire life? I'm struggling to think of an example.

30% is basically impossible for Xbox if they’re making hardware. Most hardware is low margin, or even sold at a loss, dragging down the margin. Also having a storefront also artificially drags downs the margin because of how the stores work, with them selling the items to you and then giving 70% to the publisher.

@Questionable_Duck

Using your logic, I could make the same argument about Push Square and say that they're biased towards PlayStation games, considering that they've only given reviews of 6/10 or less to four first-party PS titles this gen

I mean, I'm inclined to believe they are. There's slight bias, and and then there's making Starfield game of the year over BG3 though.

@OldGamer999

Apart from the amazing Astrobot in the last three years, they are not as good as the PS4 or first two years of the PS5 days.

Spider-man 2 was 2 years ago and was a 90. Death Stranding 2 was this year and was an 89. This game is currently an 81 on Opencritic(which is all formats together). Not the best game to make a point.

Omg Xbox tax! I'm going to go to purexbox to find what score they gave it so I can complain about how mean you guys are. BRB.

I think the same way. All the things I'm not good at? They are antiquated and useless and people are stupid for being good at them.

@Questionable_Duck On Steam Magic P*ssy Chapter 3 is a 91.2%.

Back over with the adults, South of Midnight is a 77, which puts it in the 71st percentile. Meaning 29% of all video games reviewed are higher rated than it.

On its own a high score like that wouldn’t mean anything, and could be put down to personal opinion. However, PureXbox has a consistent history of giving high scores to anything published by Xbox(notably excepting Indiana Jones, which is probably their best game of the gen ironically). Who knows though, maybe they just have a strange opinion on what a good game is.

@CielloArc When was the last time Activision announced CoD sales? What about EA with FIFA?

@RoomWithaMoose

Not sure if this is sincere or satire

The dude is a right-wing troll, 99% certain.

@DadJKP If you follow the link you will find the exact quote from Matt

With one week in market, the US sales performance of Ghost of Yotei was basically flat to that of Ghost of Tsushima.

It did great.

They have access to the full sales numbers, they get the digital numbers directly from publishers, so this can be taken as a fact.

If the attach rate holds for worldwide then that's around 4m sales. Interesting fact, since the portal release date the combined sales of series x and series S is around 8m, so the portal may have literally outsold the series X over the period it's been available.

I will never ever get what PvE games are for

You won't get much of a catch with such obvious bait

@KillerBoy I'm curious what the inference here is

I recall Capcom, Champions of the People, charging for third person mode...

@awp69 PushSquare also gave Rise of the Ronin(published by Sony, developed by Team Ninja) 6/10. They tend to be tough but consistent.

PureXbox had Starfield game of the year ahead of BG3 and gave South of Midnight a 9/10. Their opinion is not one you should take particularly seriously.

@RoomWithaMoose The commercial success is the primary motivator for a major studio to fund it though. Making a good game that's peaking at 50% the player count of Magic P*ssy chapter 3 ain't going to cut it when it comes down to it. Certainly not in this economy.

@RoomWithaMoose I agree, it looks like the game got sent out to die, really. How much better does it do with actual advertising though?

Microsoft just released a smaller game, Keeper, which looks great and is an 83 on Opencritic. It's peak concurrent user count on Steam is 191. So, maybe, that's like 1,000 copies? Maybe with xbox it's like 10k copies, and that's a studio of 100+ people that released no game since 4 years ago.

I remember Dontnod said literally all their AA games failed to break even. Capcom made Kunitsu-gami that was received really well and sold basically nothing.

This looks like a legal requirement. I wonder if it's just Europe, or the USA too? With the USA being a straight-up GTFOH/10 when it comes to consumer protection laws and all.

Edit: Google says this is called the EU Price Indication Directive. God bless consumer protection laws. Next level should be to show the cheapest price a product has ever been on a storefront and some kind of mandated refund process.

@PloverNutter GoT didn’t sell 13m, it just never had its sales numbers updated since then. It was just in the top 10 global sellers on Steam last week and has sold close to 1.5m copies on Steam alone since the last sales numbers(VG Insights current steam estimate is 2.55m).

Horizon: FW didn’t sell 8m copies, it just never had any updated sales numbers since then. It sold 8.4m copies as of April 2023. Horizon: ZD sold 10m in just over a year. So about 20% behind, at most, in a comparable timeframe.

Again, GoY sold a similar number in Europe in launch week to GoT. That’s Sonys biggest market, and there is no reason to assume that other territories would be significantly different. Going from selling basically even to selling about -70%(that’s what 5m would be) seems completely ridiculous. The big first party games sell for years. Zero Dawn sold 14m+ after its first year.

@DadJKP

That headline ain't saying much since Spider-Man 2 lost 40% of the sales of the first Spider-Man game. But hey, when a game launches soft I guess you gotta make chicken salad out of chicken **** somehow.

How exactly did SM2 lose 40% of the sales of SM1? The sequel sold 11m units by April 2024. Are you comparing the lifetime(5 years+) of SM to the 6 month sales of SM2? 🤣🤣🤣