Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
bethesda.net
bethesda.net
Like, that's a lot of money, even for Apple, and then I'm not sure Nintendo would want to sell?
Nintendo definitely wouldn't want to sell but it's publicly traded so a hostile takeover is always in the cards
They had only $4.3 billion cash on hand as of 2018 (surely more by now thanks to the success and maturation of the Switch.) But Microsoft just dropped a little less than double that on ZeniMax.
I wish Nintendo were in such a rock-solid place where I'd feel confident about them existing forever like Disney but I don't think that's ever been the case.
Edit- The people downvoting me have apparently already forgotten about the Wii U. Imagine if they had two such systems in a row, without the DS/3DS line as a profitable fallback. Such are the possibilities of the future.
When Nintendo's doing well, they're doing great, and everyone seems to forget the bad times. The GameCube era wasn't much better, but at least the GameCube and GBA were profitable/break even from their launches, as opposed to the Wii U and especially 3DS post-Ambassador price cut.
Would be interested in a discussion or any kind of rebuttal from others who are actually familiar with Nintendo's financial history.
To be clear: Nintendo as a company operated a loss from 2012-2015. An incompetent CEO could easily exacerbate that into a death spiral. Don't take Nintendo for granted, is all I'm saying.
And there you have a key difference between Microsoft and Nintendo.
It's a possibility but pivoting to software isn't easy by any stretch, and it wasn't something Sega should have even been able to do (financially.) The only reason it happened is because Sega's biggest debtor, Isao Okawa, forgave that debt on his deathbed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/17/business/isao-okawa-74-ch...
In a slightly altered timeline where Okawa didn't do this, Sega would have went under and its IP's would have been sold piecemeal to the highest bidders.
As a Nintendo baby, it'd be a dark day if some conglomerate bought them.
I was just thinking though, if they needed money they could easily raise crazy amounts of cash from their fanbase via crowdfunding.
It's frustrating because there's a lot of untapped potential.
"It eventually became one of the most prominent figures in today's video game industry, being the world's largest video game company by revenue"
i.e. on the verge of bankruptcy according to ^
I feel Apple Arcade sucks. I recently subscribed, cause I thought maybe my daughter would enjoy it. But most of the games are still too hard for her. So then I tried to play some games on Arcade for myself, but can't say I enjoyed it. Played a few games for 15 - 30 minutes then got bored. There just seems to be very few -if any- really quality games on Apple Arcade, at least from my point of view.
A few days ago I ordered the Retroid Pocket 2 [0], I hope this device will help me get my gaming fix.
If the Retroid Pocket 2 provides me and my daughter with a fun experience, then later I'll order a 2nd one for my daughter. I believe old NES/SNES games are probably easier to play for a 3.5 year old child compared to most of Apple Arcade's offerings. My daughter can already handle a simple gamepad, so as long as the game doesn't use too many buttons (4 directions + A/B/X/Y), a game should be playable for her.
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[0]: https://www.goretroid.com/products/retroid-pocket-2-handheld...
NES games might be hard. I never really had a NES while I was young. But I do know for sure some SNES games that will be easy to play. E.g. Mario Kart & Unirally. There's some videos on YouTube that shows other games that are playable by young children [0]. Super Double Dragon isn't too complicated either I think and the Retroid Pocket 2 can be connected to a tv using HDMI cable and can use BLE to connect controllers. So that way I can play together with my daughter at the same time, to make it even easier for her.
Here's a video that suggests some NES games for children [1].
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It's fine for extremely casual or touch based games but doesn't work for anything serious.
And Dota 2 is by far their biggest game.
I'm old enough that I remember people saying this in 2014. Actual data on active users - https://steamcharts.com/app/570#All. This indicates that it's far from it's peak of 1.2M active players but 700k active is still respectable.
> Dota 2 is by far their biggest game.
Not by players. That would be CS:GO (https://steamcharts.com/app/730) with 900k active players.
It's interesting to see there seems to be some evolutionary pressures at play as a couple of new routines are being used, not just 'rotate on the spot', one or two shoot now (yes, I got shot by an XP farming zombie) and one does epicycles which makes them surprisingly hard to shoot.
Both of us created new account to so that noobie wouldn't be thrown into deep water right away. Note that me and my friend were 'baby sitting' - playing neutrally not trying to win vs lower rated opponents.
Out of 10 games 7 had hardcore smurfs in them. People in stack dominating their lanes. I don't see how anyone new and without any friends could possibly survived through such acid pool.
Imagine you are starting to play chess and 7/10 opponents are rated master and will crush you. And its kind of crush that you can't really learn from either.
I really don't see how dota can grow when there are so many alternatives.
Then in the harder ranks you can dial back those mechanics and make the game more skill based.
Just a little tip for Valve there. I'm sure they're reading.
Only after that should they be allowed multiplayer.
On a side note, the bots are not working since the latest patch.
Can't think of a Valve game that doesn't fit this description.
It's a heck of a "demo". It's about the size of Half Life 2.
But that is not its sole purpose.
The only debate is whether is a game first, or a demo of how full games work in the framework/hardware first and a full game because that was deemed the best way to showcase the what is possible.
From the outside, all we see is very few games being produced. From the inside, its far more complex; something like a Dark Decade for Valve where even they weren't sure what they should be working on. Hundreds of failed prototypes and ideas. Major technical issues with Source 2 that took years to fix. L4D3 was under development, but ran into huge scope creep (full open world with variable length days depending on time of year and hemisphere, variable tides based on moon cycle, crazy stuff like that). They were working on a tech showcase codenamed ARTI/Artifact using a brand new voxel-based game engine separate from Source (and after the game was canceled, the name was taken and used for the now-released Dota 2 Card Game).
Sure they could have pushed out a VR game every year for the last 5 years to maybe get to the same level of interaction fluidity but they would all feel subpar, not quite there, like the vast majority of other VR games.
Valves strength is that they a have a structure that allows experimentation without a hard deadline, they can afford to throw millions at the wall and see what sticks. This allows themw to take a decade between large, ground breaking projects. They're not beholden to YoY or QoQ growth.
They've had what? Two duds in 20+ years? Not bad when you consider the rest of their output are beloved classics.
Granted they have a good few money printing machines to help them work like this but I would argue that they have these money printing machines because they have the ability to experiment, because of their structure.
It's weird, they've got some seriously good franchises that they haven't done anything with; Half-Life could use a sequel every few years; Portal could become a massive franchise; Team Fortress 2, CS:GO and DOTA 2 are huge money makers but I think they're reluctant to make sequels to those because of balancing and pissing off the existing, invested player bases. (I think that may have happened when they went from CS:S to CS:Go, where the latter had very lucrative monetization options, lucrative but morally dubious because of off-site trading and gambling)
the only thing I see that they could really change in a new title would be the graphics, but I don't think that's much of a selling point to the audience. cs players care more about getting >100fps on their potato computer than pretty graphics.
And, you know, all the other independent developers. Of which there are a legion.
Tangentially, open-source game engine Godot keeps getting better and better, and it's just a matter of time before a significant game is made using its tools: https://godotengine.org/
It is also the tier1 engine sponsored by Google and Microsoft for their 3D offerings, Godot needs to grow a bit more to reach that level of relevance for game studios, AR/VR companies and Hollywood now looking at Unity.
Most developers don't work with them, and their customers represent a tiny less "gaming educated" population. It's like using cellphone games as a gauge on the greater market.
By the numbers, mobile gaming is the greater market. It's traditional gaming that's becoming the niche.
That's a bit insulting. Mario and Zelda are a few of the consistently best game franchises. Smash Bros gamers aren't "uneducated"
> It's like using cellphone games as a gauge on the greater market.
The mobile game market is bigger than the console and PC market.
The whole 'Nintendo is a thing unto itself' narrative is fading quickly.
I fully agree with you, but that narrative has started changing only in recent times. Not that long ago, I would have mostly agreed with the premise that "Nintendo is a thing unto itself."
If my memory serves right, Nintendo was dipping feet into it since at least GameCube/Wii era, but only with Switch they started seriously being, in my eyes, a not "unto itself" kind of an entity.
I mean, a part of the reason why indie titles work there is that Nintendo is refusing to offer a AAA gamepass, is using underpowered hardware and is charging a price premium for it. They very much are resisting trends and are their own thing, and it's kind of hard to really use them as a long term market barometer because it can and will backfire as often as it works.
They also kind of are in uncharted waters too. This is now the first time I think they don't have a dedicated handheld and home console, and just have one platform. A lot of why they were able to survive mistakes was having the handheld market as an evergreen to fall back on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games#Un...
The underlying C++ source code is available for both commercial engines, but Unity charges high fees for source access, and only on a direct per-studio basis, whereas Unreal 4's source is available on GitHub if you pay $20/mo. The vast majority of Unity developers work within its IDE and C# API. There are definitely strong network effects from the sheer number of developers using Unity, such as the amount of documentation, tutorials, and C# code available online.
But again, Godot is fully open source and getting consistently better as it evolves. It's C++ based, closing in on competitive rendering, ported to every relevant architecture, and has a full IDE and scripting system. It reminds me a lot of the Blender project. At some point, some significant video game IP will be built using it and shake things up. It's just a matter of time.
Unreal 4's source has been free to access for a while now. The $20/month thing was just when it first came out.
IMO Bethesda decided to sell to MS because their recent games cannot generate enough popularity. They can only hoped for skyrim and are struggling with their old engine.
Mind you, Minecraft's income comes from a lot of merchandise and spinoffs, whereas GTA is mainly from the game itself.
I was curious; RDR 2, also a Rockstar game, is the #14 best selling game of all time apparently; I didn't know it did that good. The other GTA games are also in the top 50.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_gam...
[1]: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-06-26-minecrafts-con...
Virtually every release Rockstar does sells millions. And from my point of view their games are fun too.
The performance is good enough for any of my purposes. I don't doubt it could be better.
The security thing sounds like a real problem. I didn't know about any of that.
Truly mystifying why they'd want to create an MMO. It's as if they hadn't been following the news. The success of WoW is incredibly hard to repeat, and most studios who try fail, no matter how much money they throw at it.
The MMO space has been, WoW aside, a money bonfire for one and a half decade at this point.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjagneaux/2020/03/30/elder-...
I'd guess that the article has it wrong and they're mainly on the free tier and that's not the subscriber count though.
In May 2016, 5 years after Skyrim was released, it was valued at $2.5 billion, now it's being bought 4 years later for $7.5 billion.
I appreciate some Bethesda fans have a weird agenda, but you are wrong. Also, Starfield has been written in an overhauled engine, so again, wrong[1]. Although to be honest, it's probably the same engine with updates and they're just saying that to try and stop the small minority of rabid fans that keep on harping about their imagined deficiencies of the creation engine with every new Bethesda game. That's then always a massive hit.
[1]https://bethesda.net/en/article/4IwKWIj174Cb2QNTTtBAEb/todd-... - paragraph 9 "[The new console cycle has] led to our largest engine overhaul since Oblivion, with all new technologies powering our first new IP in 25 years, Starfield"
Adding the back catalogue to gamepass (and probably taking it all off steam), is part of the price too.
Hell, if the price was $7.5 billion even after the FO76 flop, what would it have been if they'd pulled it off? Making a whole new type of MMO.
So yeah, a failed multiplayer/mmo game is a bigger failure imo, because it is hard/impossible to recover from
Seeing as there are still some ancient problems with CreationKit (physics over 60fps, widescreen support, etc), I'll be interested to see how much they will overhaul it and how many old bugs will have to be fixed by the community (see nexusmods "Universal Patch" for any CK Bethesda game).
It's easy to have no fixes, when it can't be fixed.
Similarly with widescreen support, there isn't really an issue with it, you can use any resolution by modifying configuration files but they just... do not bother to polish it up.
(note that any bug that can be fixed with normal mods isn't really an engine bug but a content bug - though some mods do work by hooking the engine executable)
> small minority of rabid fans that keep on harping about their imagined deficiencies of the creation engine
You post comes across a bit aggressive and insulting.
I wouldn't be so sure. Sure, they are not GTA or CoD, but Prey, Dishonored or Doom have all sold rather good.
I worked there for 6-7 years and the CEO fought off vivendis acquisition. Which was not the first.
He has even gone so far as to decentralise the Canadian studios so that if the company was somehow acquired the aquirer could not close down studios without heavy fines from the Canadian government.
example tech subsidy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Research_and_Experi...
The way it was described to me was that there's two major types of fine that the canadian government will levy against large companies that dump lots of workers at once.
1) More than 50 people within a 4week period.
Usually this means that the company must continue paying employment benefits on behalf of the company for a period of a year (iirc).
2) More than x% of your company being closed down.
You can get around #2 by claiming redundancies or claiming that you've moved the job to another canadian state (or, centralised a position), but once you give the studio its own legal entity and place an MD in charge (who is legally responsible for the studio) you can't do that any longer because the parent company continues to have a legal presence in the country, but operations are considered separate/independent.
Thus, if you close down the studio you've effectively terminated 100% of employment there which will garner super heavy fines.
Also also: Ubisoft doesn't want to piss of the canadian government either because nearly their entire profit exists in the tax break that montreal gives game companies.
.. but, like I said, this was told to me only a few times by a few high level directors and it was when we were talking about Vivendi trying to buy us, and they were also not laywers, so it could be a lot of chinese whispers.
But I've spoken to Yves, and while he's a really genuinely nice person... he will salt the earth before he sells the company.
But you knew what I meant and are being pedantic.
What I am repeating is a "fact" I've heard multiple times from multiple executives and I live half a world away, I've never been truly interested in what the various political systems are in Canada (or the US, or Mexico, or wherever) but I am acutely aware of different laws in those countries too.
For instance in some states in the US it is legal to turn right on red.
If I use the wrong terminology when referencing county or region then it has little bearing on the things I've actually heard.
I never claimed to be an expert on Canadian law, just that I had heard this anecdote and I'm trying to say as often as I can that I'm not an expert in law or Canada itself.
I understand your point, but it _is_ rather pedantic as it doesn't actually change anything about what I said to get it wrong.
I'm sure you know very little about how Switzerland is segmented but you are aware of the direct democracy antics of the country.
Ignorance of one thing does not preclude knowledge of another.
> Valve will quietly exit software development altogether, and pivot to building custom vanity knives using their hardware manufacturing experience.
My top 4 games by playtime in the last few years were Rimworld, Oxygen Not Included, Dwarf Fortress and WoW Classic. Honorable mentions go to Spelunky and Stellaris. It's to everyone's great regret that a single one of these titles was purchased by one of the shitty publishers you mentioned, fortunately it's the one that's on its last legs.
Small team makes innovative and interesting game. Gets bought, makes a good sequel, then milks IP forever.
It's up to you to move on.
It'd be better for the industry if we all recognized that the job of a guy like Bobby Kotick is to eat a steak every so often, and then vomit it up for the next 25 years. Someone has to drive a garbage truck and there's nothing wrong with paying him for it.
Check it out if you can - it' "Dark Quiet Death" from Season one
I know from experience. The “I’ll write my own engine” bug bit me in 2005. I wrote Reactor3D on XNA in 2007. Worked with Bill Reiss while he masterminded XNASilverlight which eventually would become the basis for MonoGame, which we all love and adore.
What’s interesting is the non-mention of itch.io
I think if enough people want new and interesting games, it will get done. Dev’s are surprisingly open to ideas, it’s the publishers (money people) who have a problem with change.
If you want to build new IP and there isn’t established funding you can go start a Kickstarter campaign to raise money from gamers to go build the game.
When the same IP gets passed to a dozen different studios who each create vastly different experiences, that's milking and I generally don't like it. The whole point of an IP is that you know what to expect, and having different studios working on the same IP is contrary to that goal.
Nintendo does not milk IPs, IMHO. They actually put a lot of though into their games and ensuring the the experience is top-notch. Compare Nintendo Zelda games to the few non-Nintendo variants: they've all been trash. Which is exactly why Nintendo rarely outsources games.
I think a distinction is if the Publisher treats the individual development studies as functionally equivalent black boxes. With Activision's brutal management of Call of Duty as maybe the key example. Where CoD assigned studios often go bankrupt after a couple games, and several have spun off after great hardship and will presumably never work with Activision again given the choice.
One fun exception from the more "indy" side of things that comes to mind is the playfulness that resulted when Croteam and publisher Devolver let a bunch of indy developers play with the Serious Sam franchise and created some fun games in a variety of styles outside of the FPS the series is known for.
That's an overstatement: Nintendo co-develops a lot of titles with other studios, outsource a lot of their smaller IPs (mostly to Japanese studios), _and_ is being rather friendly to letting people do smaller spinoffs of their big properties.
Examples of third-party colaboration, in no particular order:
- Koei Tecmo co-developed Fire Emblem: Three Houses, did both Fire Emblem Warriors and Hyrule Warriors, which are franchise spin-offs using their Dynasty Warriors engine and gameplay, and Nintendo trust them so much that their next canon Zelda game will be a Breath of the Wild prequel developed by them, using the Hyrule Warriors label.
- Bandai Namco is more or less the main developer of Super Smash Bros since the Wii U/3DS iterations, with Sora Ltd being essentially just a consulting company run by Masahiro Sakurai. Bandai Namco is also co-developing the new Pokemon Snap, and developed Metroid: Other M.
- Capcom developed both Oracle of Ages/Oracle of Seasons and Minish Cap, two portable and very well regarded entries in the Zelda Franchise.
- On the Mario side, pretty much all of their Mario sport titles are handled by Camelot, with the exception of the Mario & Sonic Olympic series, which are published by Sega direcly, and their highly praised portable RPG series Mario & Luigi was developed by (sadly defunct) Alpha Dream.
- Then there was that time when they gave the Mario franchise to Ubisoft and they made a Rabbids-crossover, XCom-like game, which is just too goddamn funny to not put in here separately (especially since it was also fairly well received by critics).
- Good-Feel, another Japanese developer, made entries to both Kirby (Epic Yarn), WarioLand and more recently, Yoshi franchises (Wooly World/Crafted World).
- There is a metric shitton of Pokemon spinoffs (that's probably where you will find the worst offenders of bad outsourced games, to be quite honest, but even then there are series like Pokemon Mistery Dungeon, by Spike-Chunsoft, which are very well regarded).
- And as a another Zelda example, Cadence of Hyrule, made by the Crypt of the Necrodancer developers.
There are more examples, but overall a large part of their output nowadays is made by third-parties, with of course a lot of their projects - big and small - being handled by their in-house studios. That's not even counting the fact that some studios readily associated with Nintendo, like Intelligent Systems and HAL Laboratory, are actually independent (they just like working with Nintendo).
Sorry for the large response, I was bored.
Is that actually the point of an IP? I would argue that an IP is more like Star Wars where the games that can come from it can vary in format and mechanics. And less like Battlefront where the expectation is a specific set of mechanics and game modes. I would argue that if someone where to make a non RPG Mass Effect that would still be within the IP and wouldn’t go against the core concept of IP.
oddly enough, call of duty seems like a pretty good example of how to do a AAA franchise. they hit a winning formula with cod4, and they haven't really changed anything since. I'm not a huge fan of the series, but if you loved cod4, you'll love pretty much every game after that.
or an even better example: counterstrike. hardcore cs players will complain about subtle differences in the engine/hitboxes/netcode over time, but the core mechanics are exactly the same as in 1999. if it ain't broke...
Obviously everyone has their opinions, but I thought Andromeda the strongest sequel to ME1 story content wise. Andromeda's failings weren't in the story or the content (ME "B-Team" or not, thanks to Anthem's black hole, they wrote most of the strongest story content in all four games), they were technical. EA absolutely should not have pushed BioWare to Frostbite without properly productionizing Frostbite as if it were Unreal/Unity with a dedicated team and possibly an honest attempt to sell it as a product outside of EA's walls, instead of leaving it as DICE's in house with BioWare struggling to keep up with forked changes. Almost all of the technical problems in DAI, MEA, and especially Anthem seem clearly the fault of this broken engine relationship between DICE and BioWare. If EA wants Frostbite to be the next Unreal (or even just an okay competitor to Unreal) it needs to learn (five years ago) the lessons from Unreal that you treat even first and second party games as if they were third party customers to get the best results.
Look at Destiny, there was originally planned for Destiny 3, but now the plan is just to make Destiny 2 the only game for the next 10 years with constant content updates. Even now, Destiny 2 of today is a significantly different than Destiny 2 at release.
Microsoft/343 have indicated that "Halo: Infinite" is planned to be this way as well, a living game.
Even indie games like Astroneer and Don't Starve are going down this route of updating a single game over a long period of time.
I'm not sure if that should be considering "milking", but it's definitely a change from how things used to be done.
This allows the studio to make money on the game based on the continued DLC which needs less development investment.
It isn't so much "milking" but rather "acknowledging a change in the way games are monetized because the price of the initial game isn't changing."
This probably works better for indies than DLC because I do think people have developed an aversion to DLC due to the big publishers abusing it for cosmetic updates. Personally, I'm very likely to pick up something like Factorio at full price, knowing that the devs are going to be adding "free" content to the base game over the years. But I'll skip over games with "season passes" and just wait for the complete edition to be released.
That was Activision's plan. Bungie never wanted pop new destiny titles likes CoD. D2 also designed with content being constantly added in mind - main story is super short. It's easier to sell cosmetics to fund "big" dlcs with small seasons in between. At least, compared to convincing people to buy an entire $60(70?) new game and wait for all of your friends buy it as well.
Destiny seems to have gone through a lot of different plans. The plan before Activision was seemingly to stop after 1 and make that the live service game, though the 1/2 break helped them hurdle a console generation gap so Activision might not have been wrong to push for 2 at least (but yeah was definitely trying to milk it with 3).
This is a significant step down from the old phsical media distribution model where any changes from the initial master were optional.
For these big conglomerates, the trendy thing is to have your own games store. Complete with exclusivity deals, privacy concerns, and plenty more.
That's not to say that every game on a store has these issues. However, I think the lesson from mobile app stores is: don't discount the impact that a storefront can have on what's allowed to succeed. Stores can exert their control with more than just removals.
Indies can't escape this. Even if they wanted to sell their game independently, not being on one of the big stores hurts visibility. Not all of them get the luxury to be able to expect their users to follow them to their own site/store/etc.
Right now, Steam is still the leader and obvious home for a lot of these otherwise-independent developers. Again, if the big conglomerates get what they want, this won't always be the case.
I wonder how they compare to Apple.
What yearly developer fees do you need to pay to keep a macOS game on Steam? Is it to Valve?
How else are they going to get people to use these stores?
People complain about the loss of functionality like screenshots or the in-game browser when using Epic. And there are exclusivity deals. Complaints against those things are valid, and the actual implementation of the storefront needs a lot of improvement, but I'm wondering if a Steam monopoly would have been any better for consumers and developers.
To me it sounds like a lot of consumers were happy with the monopoly and saw the exclusivity deals as disruptive as they had to migrate their friends list and set up a lot of things just to play that one hyped title. But when it comes down to the hard issue of staying afloat I can see how the money Epic offers to game studios is enticing.
The customer has no benefit from the lower cut epic charges.
Epic doesn't treat everyone equally. Big games like Cyberpunk 2077 are allowed to also sell on other platforms, while smaller games either go exclusive or go with everyone else.
Competition is good, but I'd rather have GOG be that competition to Steam than Epic purely based on their anti-DRM stance.
There isn't a conspiracy here. Epic pays developers to make certain games (like Control) temporarily exclusive to EGS. Other developers, like CD Project RED, have not made such a deal, and thus Cyberpunk 2077 is available on many different PC game clients.
There are plenty of games on EGS--large and small--which are not and have never been exclusive. Examples include The Unfinished Swan, SuperHot, and Axiom Verge just to pick three off the top of my head.
[1] https://www.dsogaming.com/news/epic-games-wanted-darq-as-an-...
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_that_treat_gog_custo...
[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/news/metro-exodus-pulled-from-s...
Furthermore, I know some gamedevs personally who release an early access level title with exclusivity deal on epic's playform just so that they gain access to further funding to finish the game and release on Steam for the actual shot at success. They take advantage of the money to fund their work, but have said that the numbers do not compare to that of Steam.
Personally I think at the very least the developers deserve equal blame for accepting the bag of money from Epic.
Money is a strong motivator but the Phoenix Point devs chose to break promises from crowdfunding to accept it. I think that reflects worse on them than it does Epic personally.
I know technically they're doing it to make money, but I can't help like feel it's also something of a labor of love as well. It would have been much easier to leave people in my (our?) position behind, so I appreciate the heck out of Valve for putting in the effort. I imagine they're going to have my goodwill for a long time as a result.
It speaks more to me that they released Proton rather than shelving it after losing the original motive.
When it proved hard to bootstrap that and seeing that the Steam Machine itself they started looking for options. Wine was already pretty good but DX11 support was bad. I do not know if it was serendipity that DXVK started showing promises around they same time they started looking into wine or whether it was the reason for them focusing into wine in the first place.
The rest is history, although the side effect is that it pretty much killed native ports for AAA games on Linux [2].
[1] for some values of native. Many, most, ports are based on internal close source equivalent of wine.
[2] I do not really care about native vs proton, but it would be nice if game companies did officially support proton.
Reminder: Valve was forced to double-down on SteamOS/Linux by Microsoft's then-intention to shutdown 3rd-party storefronts on Windows. I have a complicated relationship with both Steam (as a Proton user) and Epic (for pulling Linux support on a multiplayer game I already own!), but I still appreciate more competition in the arena: GOG alone won't cut it.
Well steam runs on and is actively supported on linux, Epic takes games that used to support linux then removes linux support and makes the games exclusive to their store.
So for me personally, a steam monopoly would be better. The epic game store's existence has actually caused games to be removed from the platform I use. It's taken away choice from me. If it stopped existing, I'd be happy.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/23/21078989/rocket-league-ma...
A significantly large part of why Ubisoft started cozying up to Epic was not because of the 5% stake tencent has in it.
It was because Steam pulls all kinds of nasty shenanigans but ubisoft will not state any of it publicly because it would hurt their relationship.
Steam has outright pulled all ubisoft games before, and ubisoft took the blame. People assumed it was because ubi wanted to push uplay; but it was all about someone at valve deciding that we'd violated some rule about content distribution.
We gave UK players of AC:Syndicate a country specific hat which wouldn't have made sense to the global market.
They didn't warn, we woke up to see that kotaku[0] had run an article about it before we even knew ourselves.
This is not an isolated incident, just a dramatic one that I remember as my own personal shifting point w.r.t. steam, because I'd only just started working at Ubisoft and was hating on uplay and was quite fond of steam.
[0]: https://kotaku.com/ubisoft-pulls-big-games-from-steam-165567...
> We gave UK players of AC:Syndicate a country specific hat which wouldn't have made sense to the global market.
So Valve makes sure that players from different countries get the same content? As a UK expat that's something I'm glad of.
Minus the slavery, have we really expended that much human effort and equivalent wealth and time on something in the modern era? The only thing I can think of is Free software products, shit like Linux.
[citation needed]
The 10th-tallest pyramid was built in Memphis, TN 30 years ago [0] and it's now used as a Bass Pro shop. Say what you will about working conditions in the US in the 90s, but I don't think it'd be fair to call it "a super-feudal economy and society".
That said, pyramids seem to have been built with hired labor so the point is pretty muddy regardless.
You know what's today's 4000yr long monument to vanity? Elon Musk's orbiting Tesla
HN: TEAR DOWN THE APPLE STORE MONOPOLY! Also HN: Steam is cool and pulls 30% from developers.
Steam being the de facto choice is another issue entirely, and yet another discussion for their fee structure.
I bet, if nvidia wanted to, they could publish geforce now there, for example.
But granted, the indie game market (and mid-sized publishers like Paradox) are super important right now to fight against the AAA / massive budget game devs and publishers.
Mind you, ID has been a bit of an underdog for a long while; their games are / were good, but did not become crazy big like their EA / Activision counterparts; the 2009 Wolfenstein sold poorly ("only" 100K units in the first month); The New Order, its sequel, did a lot better (400K sold in about a month and a half), and Doom 2016 was a hit.
MachineGames also has (uncredited?) work on Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal.
New Order - not at all, maybe as engine developers. Right for that IP were transferred to MachineGames in 2010 right after ZeniMax got hold of them.
As for Doom 2016 - they enlisted a lot of outside help after Doom 4 was scraped. Bethesda's game directors helped them a lot because they already figured how to make "old ip" to sell well with modern gamers (see Fallout 3).
side note:
I don't think id managed to get deliver a lot of good games since John Romero left. (just like John Romero didn't deliver many good games since the separation)
John Romero and John Carmack were like a dream team, but without each other it was meh.
I've loved a lot of Devolver's stuff. The Red String Club, Hotline Miami I/II, Katana ZERO .. all super incredible games with gameplay and story that's just as fun as the any of the big AAA shops.
Brilliantly put.
It's a garbage money grab.
The idea that there is a huge nostalgia fueled demand for the original experience doesn't absolve a multi-billion dollar developer from a complete lack of support or quality of life improvements to the game.
There is just too much overlap with the fact that they can literally re-release a game with practically zero development costs.
1) Costs were not zero for the re-release. The only version of the game data (stats, items, enemy spawns etc.) was in the form of an original database backup (from an old employee's personal stash!). Classic runs on the modern WOW engine, so work was required to shoehorn the old data in and reimplement systems and interfaces which don't exist in the current WOW engine.
2) Before Classic's release, by far the most vocal crowd making demands of Blizzard were shouting their slogan "NO CHANGES". I really don't find it surprising that Blizzard has not made major changes since the majority of the player base requested as such...
In terms of audience demographics, I've experienced nostalgia, but frankly I think the president had a point when he made his infamous comment. But I haven't seen any data to support any claims, beyond the existence of private servers.
The company invested significant development into Classic. The project started as a fork of Legion, in order to benefit from a decade of anti-bot measures, compatibility fixes, and Battle.net integration (auth and chat). They then ported the original game forward and added "layering" to avoid crashes that plagued the original game in 2004 and 2005.
I'm not sure what you're getting at, in my experience a massive chunk of the players don't play 'retail'. So the cost is just that, $15 a month.
Beyond that, do you have a source? It's not clear that any of these things they've been developing had significant costs in replicating for Classic.
Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 came out of CDProject Red. My favorite FPS of the last few years (Hunt: Showdown) came out of Crytek.
If you're looking for a good indie shooter, look at Diabotical[0]. It's more Quake than Quake Champions was, or even Rocket Arena for that matter. There's plenty of pro-level gameplay on Zoot's stream[1] as well.
And they're making a new World of Darkness RPG for the first time in forever.
I can't think of a good reason though that there aren't a few very successful indie shooters though.
All fantastic games better than most major studio titles.
Instead, I prefer realistic-looking graphics, with moving trees and clouds. I've more often than not spent too much money on new AAA just to look at the graphics and barely play. Unfortunately, games with AAA-graphics with a good story and great original gameplay (no sequels!) seem to get rarer, and the disappearance of independent top-notch game studios could be a reason for that.
There seems to be an overall issue now where the quality of the good produced and the benefit to the consumer is divorced from the value extracted by the producer.
For instance, you can make a mobile game company that aggressively monetizes re-hashed bubble-poppers or match three games. With that, you focus not on innovation of pleasing the customer but on making the most money per customer so that you can feed it back into your marketing. The most exploitative game wins.
This is a more profitable strategy than simply trying to make a fun game that people want to play.
With most consumer markets, we find similar stories of customer exploitation being a better play than simply making a great product. This is not as much the case in B2B.
How do we reign back in the markets? It doesn't seem like consumer choice is working out very well.
Maybe marketing is at the core of all of this malignment.
How do we reign back in the markets? It doesn't seem like consumer choice is working out very well.
Even without the mobile market, The story isn't much different. You either throw yourself out there in a sea of indie games, or you find a publisher to pitch and give your IP rights to in exchange for stability. The latter is just harder to do nowadays
Gambling ruined games like porn ruined movies -- it didn't. It's just a different partially similar thing.
Same deal with games, many previously good IPs are now stuffed with gambling mechanics as the producers controlling it push for it.
I too dislike gambling elements in computer games. I simply choose not to buy such games. If there was a shortage of good games without gambling mechanics, I could see your point. But clearly there's not.
When publishers were publishers and developers were developers (80s and 90s), it seemed like there was healthier competition. Even if there were a lot of abusive deals struck.
Now that we have giant, integrated publisher + development conglomerates, there's zero incentive to step out of that structure to publish a popular indie game.
It feels like news sites prohibiting links to external sites, and the world's the poorer.
Hollywood went from a vertically integrated system that handled production, distribution, and exhibition by a single entity to a system where production, distribution, and exhibition were done by separate entities.
It feels like game development went the reverse way.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....
[2]: https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-slow-death-of-hollywo...
It showed what kind of profits you could make off yearly refreshes of software, while minimizing development costs.
Why would an MBA take a chance on new IP when they have the above as an option?
But again: Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Nintendo have always been vertically integrated. This is not new.
I wish it was true, at least for my favorite genre. Technically speaking, a small team of developers can create excellent games when it comes to creativity, design, playability etc. but for some titles there is need for a good story, then turning it into acceptable animations, large worlds, complex graphics etc. that's where probably only a major game house can deliver because of the number of writers, developers, designers, actors needed. My favorite games of all time were the Mass Effect trilogy; they were technically great, but the writing, character development, voicing and direction was their point of excellence. I would take ME1-3 story arc over most recent titles. Unfortunately many game studios think only in terms of FPS and technical trivialities that cannot turn a dull story plastered with FPS scenes into something that one still remembers after 10 years. Not been a gamer for a while, so I may have missed a lot lately and would love to be proven wrong (details welcome!).
I hate fighting games. I especially despise melee action games. I don't love 3rd person perspective. I haven't really played JRPGs.
Nier:Automata jumped at the top of my list and kept getting better. Even my (non-gaming) wife watched me playing because she was curious and the art and story were fantastic.
A unique experience that is difficult to put into a review. FWIW, my other favourites are Mass Effect, Deus Ex, lots of Sierra & Lucasarts point & click games, etc.
Story telling and surprises (and style) in NieR:Automata were just top notch.
That success and the fortune they now had to protect seemed to hemorrhage their creativity or vision or concern. After that, we got Oblivion and Skyrim. Nice but very safe and uninspired games. And the best Fallout was the one from Obsidian Entertainment, not Bethesda Game Studios.
Success kills? Money kills?
With limitless resources, all ideas are valid.
....yayy?
Some Indie games are great, but there are still lot of really great big budget story based games being made that an Indie studio just couldn't produce.
>This is a more profitable strategy than simply trying to make a fun game that people want to play.
Still loads of high quality, very profitable, games being made e.g. RDR2, TLoU2, HZD, Ghost of Tsushima, Uncharted, Spiderman, Doom, Gears, Halo, Ratchet & Clank, Cyberpunk2077 (CDPR can't be considered indie anymore), Forza, Gran Turismo etc.
Sony in particular is really delivering with their single player story based, big budget games.
That's a highly subjective statement, and a blanket one at that.
You could also say that the worst games are made by independent developers and that would also be true at the same time, because "independent developers" is far from being a consistent group.
There was great optimism 20+ years ago that the Internet would change this with music, artists would have direct access to their fans, the middle man would be eliminated, and the major labels would crumble. That's not what we got, we just ended up with a new group of megacorps like Apple and Google and Spotify duking it out with the old majors for control of distribution.
To have watched these dreams die in the music industry and see a very similar dynamic unfolding in the digital native industry of games makes me think that maybe this isn't a technology issue, maybe it's something that runs deeper in society and the way people are wired. Then again if we go way back we can argue that the problem was created by technology in the first place (monopolies on music distribution were impossible back when everything was live, they only emerged once we devised technology for recording and copying audio!).
Just a thought: You got these big "movie budget" games. They need to make that budget back, so they use (a large part of the budget for) marketing, in order to sell way more games. This then consumes a very large part of the market. Problem now is that a large chunk of the money made in the majority of the market is spent on marketing. And this chunk of money is locked in with the industry giants, the indies and smaller devs can never get to it. Marketing ate part of the gaming industry.
Plenty of games out there, no reason to keep buying the same 3d-action RPG formula from the AAA-studios unless that's a thing you like.
I had a similar experience with Cosmoteer. And the darn thing is not even released yet! :)
We may get to a point where there are practically no "medium-large" developers and only "massive" ones like Microsoft, but I'm confident we'll still get great games from outside the massive groups.
The hardware-is-sold-at-a-loss argument that people like to use to defend closed console stores isn't as convincing when the console makers also own the biggest money making game studios as well.
Go Epic, go!
I would love the game industry to fully embrace Linux. If cloud gaming gains more traction, the industry might just do that. Why develop games to run on custom-built blades in a data center when generic blades exist?
That's been a dream for a long time:
Take a look at what all linux games are lacking and what nearly all AAA game that aren't on linux have.
...
DRM and Anti-Cheat.
Let's forget that DRM is trash. Publishers want to have it, and they don't care about our opinion of it. You can't really "port" DRM, you have to develop a whole new one for Linux and figure how to prevent easy-peasy eBPF programs to make cracking it easy.
Anti-Cheat is another story. Valve and Easy Anti-Cheat are currently working on bringing it to Linux. You need that and you want that for any online game. Probably not as hard as DRM, but still requires a lot of linux specific work.
Kind of ironic how bad an argument that is when discussing anti-trust. It's a form of dumping to distort the market. It prevents new competitors becoming viable purely by selling hardware.
https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/us-submi...
Among Us is just really cheap (free to play on its original mobile platforms, I believe, but that's not really the source of its current moment of popularity).
Plus is a strange case because you need it for online play and some other PS features like cloud saves, so many people have it regardless of what games are on offer. Let's just say that a large number of PS4 players got it at no marginal cost.
Miss Ukraine 1996 married Bobby Kotick's dad, Charles Kotick (for 2 years, before he passed away).
At least indoe games still have a chance. (among us for example)
> Great! I think Microsoft has been a good parent company for gaming IPs, and they don’t have a grudge against me, so maybe I will be able to re engage with some of my old titles.
https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1308069857913720832...
Wow, that's now a decade ago.
ID tech implemented megatextures earlier also, Quake Wars heavily relied on that feature.
What I am hoping for, and been hoping for a while, is for game engines to start integrating AI into workflows. There are some tools out there that do leverage machine learning to some extent, but what I would love to see are tools for instance that can take a video shot of an actor and then infer the bone structure a decent degree and transfer that animation into the model. Or a tool that allows style transfer of an image onto a 3D model so we can have realistically dynamic brush tools for environments, also integrating Face generation GANs onto models to reduce sculpting effort. Not to mention tools that can dynamically and infinitely scale 3D models based on material information.
I know some tools exist that can do some of these things at an okay degree, but it can be taken even further.
Truly the power of AI in video game tooling has yet to be unlocked, but I believe video games as a medium is in the position of being able to push for practical applications of new and exciting research, second only to CGI films. It's exciting what's in store for the future and I'm sure Carmack can appreciate the kind of breakthroughs that Microsoft would be able to foster
It'd be very interesting to see if his return to Id might spark some changes :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZeniMax_v._Oculus
https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/09/oculus-cto-john-carmack-is...
[0] https://store.nin.com/products/quake-vinyl
[1] https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1306279981459308546
No kidding. You want to keep a guy like Carmack in the family in whatever capacity you can, because he carries such deep respect in the industry. It was a stupid thing for ZeniMax to burn that bridge.
I can bet that many people would willingly taken pay cuts (or more-likely skipped on pay bumps) to work for a team led by Carmack.
Almost all of the other pop-culture figures in game development such as Todd Howard, Kojima and the like are designers, producers or story writers.
Carmack is the only one that is a proper coding guy.
______
Maybe Carmack comes back to lead Windows mixed reality ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and PCVR ? True wishful thinking right here.
I didn't buy DOOM because I didn't support Zenimax's cynical lawsuit/cash grab. Maybe now I'll get DOOM after the Microsoft acquisition closes.
Carmack also sued them separately for failing to pay him for part of their id software acquisition. They settled out of court again, with Carmack saying the settlement "fully satisfied their obligations" to him.
[1] https://www.engadget.com/2009-06-24-bethesda-parent-company-...
Well I was just thinking the other day that Microsoft really doesn't have any first party studio that are really as good as Sony's first party. IMO they didn't release a game 'this' gen that makes picking up a xbox one worth it. This could change that with fallout and doom. Also this allows them to bring the ID tech engine under their stewardship....
I just hope that they don't trash the franchises in an attempt to bolster game pass.
Also, my understanding is that on Windows, OpenGL generally runs into more issues with driver bugs than D3D does.
"Your game is bugged! It doesn't work! I want a refund!"
"But the vulkan renderer is only tested on Stadia, it's not officially supported and the game is free."
"I. Want. A. Refund."
I'm not sure if that's the case anymore, but it definitely has a bad rep on Windows. Initially (throughout XP and maybe some of Vista) OpenGL support on Windows was done by a OpenGL -> DirectX translation layer, so performance was always worse in OpenGL mode unless a game's Direct3D implementation was especially awful. This stopped being the case when NVIDIA started shipping a full OpenGL driver. (I'm not sure when AMD/ATI started shipping theirs)
Initially (Windows 95), OpenGL support was provided directly by the OS. Starting with Windows 98, Microsoft stopped updating the OGL version of their reference driver, so users were stuck with OGL 1.1 unless the graphics card driver shipped with a custom OpenGL implementation.
So whenever an application uses an OGL version higher than v1.1, it is provided by the graphics card driver and that has nothing to do with DirectX. There is no translation layer in that case (unless of course, that's what the driver does internally, but that's up to the manufacturer).
TL;DR Custom OGL drivers shipped with every graphics card that supported OGL in Windows since 1998.
Original link seems to be dead but Slashdot references Vista layering OpenGL on top of Direct3D:
https://slashdot.org/story/05/08/06/177251/windows-vista-may...
The Aero glass scheme was hardware accelerated and only worked with Direct3D, thus any OGL context created for a window using this renderer would have to run via Direct3D.
This is a very special case and as noted earlier, easily circumvented by simply not using this feature in your app.
What we could see now is these games coming to Game Pass early, or even getting Xbox exclusive content. Theres a low chance they dont drop on other platforms (Skyrim on your Windows phone?) but still a big chip for MSFT to have on hand.
"WHEN THE HELL WILL YOU TELL ME ABOUT STARFIELD?" and the rest of that paragraph actually fills me with a pretty high degree of confidence that this will go well. That, and Nadella-era Microsoft's surprisingly good track record in recent acquisitions.
They've been pretty hands-off with their most recent acquisition, but one studio does not a trend make.
IMO, (and if you told me I'd say this 10 years ago I'd say you're crazy) of the big tech companies right now I think MS might be the best steward.
I'm still waiting on the other shoe with github.
The client has been turned into a real fan-spinner and it seems like they sacrificed a great standalone service for something that pushes consumer and business users towards tight integration with Microsoft's platform.
2020 could have been a banner year for Skype; instead Zoom is now shorthand for any video meeting whatsoever.
I think MS'es ways have changed since then though, looking at acquisitions since 2013 to 2015-ish they seem to have been handled better IMO.
I've played Forza Horizon 4 for a while and you can buy cars in that game, but you earn enough points that they all become pretty cheap after only a few hours in the game.
In what way?
And how is your opinion better metric than my opinion? You have data to back it up?
Fallout 4 suffered from quest repetition/duplication, an emphasis on combat over other rpg driven approaches to play and a relatively low ability to effect the world as the player.
It's not a bad game per say but it's a mediocre rpg. It was arguably more disappointing given how incredible an rpg New Vegas was despite not having been finished properly.
https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/fallout-3
https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/fallout-4
One might slice and dice this by platform, but I think there was a general consensus that 4 was not as good as 3 both in meta score and user score.
The argument has nothing to do with anybody enjoying the game, a metric that I did not mention at all in my comment, it has to do with a growing trend where Bethesda has been doing the absolute bare minimum to cash in on their fans' good will.
For some reason you believe that your opinion about the game is universally true, while the opinion on the other is personal preference.
You are just trying to prove that vanilla flavor is universally better than chocolate.
Edit: Retracting "Borderline bigotry."
Also, what if vanilla could be proven to be universally better? That’d be cool, how could one go about doing that? Probably either: eliminate the supply of chocolate world wide, or spend billions marketing vanilla... Probably lots of ways to get a universal sentiment with the right levers!
One ding in chocolate: there’s no chocolate coca-cola... or is there? I should google that :) There do seeeeeem to be more vanilla flavored mass market colas than chocolate, but that’s very much cherry picking.
A ding for vanilla, I’m not sure if it’s ever eaten alone in any meaningful way, but I dunno, I’d have to think about it more.
That's exactly my point. I haven't once conflated the two, all of your comments have.
First rule: make every assumption about the other commenter’s intent. Second rule: never actually directly respond to the other commenter.
It’s like code golf, but to get toxic online interactions out of our systems in a controlled environment. What do you think? :)
How? The disagreement is if Fallout 4 was a moneygrab or not. Is that correct?
According to you it was because it "Skyrim was a significant technical advancement of Gamebryo, not just in terms of visual quality or so forth, but also in terms of what was possible with the engine. Fallout 4 was a minor upgrade and could have easily been a total conversion mod for Skyrim - there was no innovation and it did nothing new."
Correct me if I am wrong but isn't this "conflatng" the effort gone into a game, and specifically the engine, with the quality of the game?
Some very dedicated folks took the pittance of time/money afforded to them and made a fantastic effort. Imagine what the same people could have done with an engine that wasn't merely a minor graphical improvement. Imagine what FO4 could have been with richer story telling technology (dialog mechanics, interaction mechanics, etc.), instead the content team was stuck with the same scripting power available in Skyrim.
BOTH the effort of people who clearly care about the franchise AND the publisher's shameless money grubbing show in the final product.
Once on PC, once on Xbox, another time to get the remastered special edition, and finally on Nintendo Switch and I had zero regrets tbh. I even played switch and xbox in parallel when I traveled more.
If you just want another single player Fallout game, this game is a steal and has no monetization problem. What I can't do is build up a camp using a lot of different trinkets from the store, but luckily I don't care about that.
(source: there's one in my house <_<)
It doesn't have to be id tech, but can they make Todd Howard use some other engine than whatever Gamebryo monstrosity Bethesda Softworks been using for 20 years?
(Also, it is interesting to note that with the Bethesda purchase, Microsoft will now own "all" of Fallout and the "Fallout diaspora" caused by Interplay's death, as Microsoft already owned development studios Oblivion [made FO:Vegas, had developers involved with FO1 and FO2] and inXile [had developers on FO1, FO2, and FO-predecessor Wasteland 1/2/3, and was in a blood feud of sorts with Oblivion].)
Obsidian, the company is called Obsidian Entertainment.
That said, the folks at Obsidian (especially the creators of the original Fallout and New Vegas) have said they have no interest in doing a Fallout game. Tim Cain specifically mentioned during the Outer Worlds Q&A that the Fallout ship had sailed.
I think that Obsidian is better off doing non-Fallout things (and personally Outer Worlds is so much "Fallout Alternate Space Timeline" already that I'd much rather see them continue with Outer Worlds as the closest thing they ever again do to Fallout). It's just interesting to point out how many of the "Fallout birds" will come home to roost at Microsoft.
Can you play Halo on the PlayStation? No, for the same reason you can’t play Uncharted on the Xbox.
Microsoft will happily support Windows gaming, for obvious reasons. But the PlayStation for a franchise like Fallout or Elder Scrolls?
I will believe it when I see it. It makes little strategic sense to offer those titles on Sony hardware when Microsoft have their own console.
I'm surprised that isnt more commented on here. Everyone is focused on creative IP. Owning id Tech 6 is or should be a play against Epic, Unity, Crytek etc. 1-4 were open source, and ZeniMax clamped down 5-6. I can see Microsoft marketing id Tech's long open source history, and transforming it into an Amazon Lumberyard competitor.
Does Microsoft even want to compete against their customers/partners in this space? After all, MS may not want to alienate them to the point they won't release their games for the Xbox.
But yes, Microsoft seems to have a good working relationship with Unity at this point and probably wants to try to keep a good relationship with Epic, so I don't envy whatever product strategist would have to figure out if that minefield would be worth disturbing.
What Microsoft doesn't want is Epic or Google getting all the power, becoming the standard, and then being able to strongarm them. Competition, especially open competition, keeps the players more honest.
It's just another entry on this page, albeit a strong one. https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/gaming
I want to think that Microsoft can do it, regardless of Epic (and even Unity), but I still think it is a minefield.
Xbox 360 -> Xbox One S -> Xbox One X
But, looking at the different showcases. Definitely getting a PS5 this time. I don't do many multi-player games and actually enjoy story based single player games. Looking forward to play God of War, Unchartered, Spider Man, etc.
Maybe this will give Microsoft the boost they need to make some fun next gen games.
I mean Minecraft started off like that. Terraria is following behind it. Among Us, a $4 game on Steam released in 2018, suddenly became a meme and huge out of nowhere. Fall Guys, made by a small studio that mainly did web, Flash, Facebook and mobile games for most of their existence, came out of left field and created the top game of last month, which (if played right) is an instant brand because of their simple yet infinitely customizable cute characters.
There is still real competition because the big publishers cannot stop the small developers.
That said, I don't know if this is necessarily a good thing either. Strictly as a video game publisher, Microsoft has been doing pretty well for themselves over the last five years. They've definitely stood out as one of the more consumer-friendly publishers, but the market is full of notoriously bad publishers (Bethesda included) so being one of the better ones isn't very praiseworthy.
Microsoft also has their own jaded publishing history which includes some pretty bad moves at the end of the 360 generation and beginning of the Xbox One generation. The Kinect was a very high-profile failure. The original Xbox One was met with a strong backlash for lacking support for physical media. They played a significant role in the integration of "microtransactions" into full priced video games. Although they have done many great things over the last few years, I'm still weary of them as a publisher.
I think the jury is still out on whether this is a net positive for the video game market, but it will definitely make the upcoming console generation very interesting.
Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon have unprecedented insight into user behavior and that is power, and that continues to consolidate.
They are accumulating data through many other devices and applications from a wider user group, I doubt gaming makes all that much of difference.
Barring MS none of the others actually have any presence in gaming
FB and Google efforts in engaging the gaming community has not scaled. Stadia or Oculus is not mainstream yet. Amazon has even smaller presence with just some products on AWS. Apple is just interested in taking their 30% cut and done nothing really in this space.
>Like our original partnership, this one is about more than one system or one screen. We share a deep belief in the fundamental power of games, in their ability to connect, empower, and bring joy. And a belief we should bring that to everyone - regardless of who you are, where you live, or what you play on. Regardless of the screen size, the controller, or your ability to even use one.
https://bethesda.net/en/article/4IwKWIj174Cb2QNTTtBAEb/todd-...
Would a platform agnostic game only available on the Xbox online store count as "exclusive to xbox?" What if it required an Xbox Live/GamePass subscription for significant features - but not everything? Or they introduced super-skewed pricing ($100 for ES6 w/ no sales vs. included with GamePass)?
My concern isn't that this won't be true (at the very least, they release everything for Xbox on PC anyway), it's that the platform will evolve so much that console lock-in won't matter, so the promise will elide the real concern.
https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-guarantee-promise-facebook-l...
I don't doubt there will be timed exclusives, but at the current moment it seems like they aren't opposed to publishing on non-MS platforms.
It's not clear which one is a better deal for MS.
Plus, the PC, Switch, and iPad markets are largely orthogonal to the XB/PS ones. Content for the former probably doesn't compete with the latter, so it makes sense to sell in those markets. And lastly, could you imagine how Sony execs would feel if their best selling PS titles all came from MS studios? That would certainly put them in an awkward position to suddenly be financially dependent to some degree on MS.
As a Playstation gamer, anything Todd Howard related can stay on Xbox for all I care. What I will potentially miss are games like Wolfenstein and Doom.
https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1308062702905044993...
In other news, the only 3D API that matters now for gaming is DirectX. Which was kinda always the case, except now OpenGL and VK fanboys can't go "but... idTech!"
Specifically:
> Regardless of the screen size, the controller, or your ability to even use one.
"your ability to even use one" is clearly a reference to Xbox Adaptive Controller
Microsoft has decided that all their exclusives will also come to PC anyway. So Windows, Xbox consoles and Xcloud (streaming service) are a given.
This doesn't promise in any way that games will come to PlayStation.
> Quality differentiated content is the engine behind the growth and value of Xbox Game Pass—from Minecraft to Flight Simulator.
"Differentiated content" sounds to me like exclusives.
The biggest problem that Microsoft has with the Xbox is lack of AAA exclusives. If the next Elder Scrolls game is going to be released for Xbox and PS5 - what's the point of this exercise?
eh, I read this as games will still come out on PC and probably the odd token Nintendo switch release here and there.
I doubt there will be PS5 releases of Bethedsa games.
released a bunch of very successful games as xbox exclusives.
7 years later Bungie left microsoft as its own company again. (not sure how that happened.
My guess is Microsoft got to keep what it really wanted, the Halo brand.
So I don't know if you can pin the blame for what happened to the Halo franchise on MSFT.
Gigaconglomerates Tencent, Activision Blizzard Ubisoft (ABU), Microsoft and Apple gatekeep the entire gaming industry.
Rebel guerilla groups of small publishers and indie developers rise up to take control of their encampments.
Once we have cheap, ubiquitous VR, all we're missing is Kouriers, skateboards with those cool wheels and a cult based on a dead language.
I'm astonished Disney hasn't yet acquired Nintendo.
Sony Entertainment would be the better fit, however after buying Fox properties it may be difficult to sell the merger of another major studio into Disney.
And let's not forget 2K, 505 Games, Chucklefish, Bandai Namco, Capcom, Deep Silver, Devolver Digital, EA, Epic Games, Focus Home, Gearbox, Koei Tecmo, Paradox, Sega, Stardock, Square Enix, Take-Two, Team17, THQ Nordic, Valve, Warner Bros, and hundreds of other publishers that I can't even begin to list here.
2040 is definitely too soon for the dystopian future you're talking about. Maybe 2042.
Dear diary, I was today years old when I learned that Stardew Valley is not an indie game.
> What does it mean to be an indie game developer?
There's no hard-and-fast rule, but generally speaking it means the devs are not subordinate to the publisher.
There are games for which the publisher contracts a studio, therefore the publisher decides and has the last word, these are not indies.
There are others where the publisher provides funding and / or assistance (e.g. managing distribution channels), but doesn't take much or any active part in the development process. These are generally considered indie games.
There are also games which are entirely self-published. These are also, obviously, indie games.
Super Meat Boy, Shovel Knight, or The Witness are self-published indie games. Fez[0], Stardew, or Bastion are not (published respectively by Trapdoor, Chucklefish, and Warner).
Hell, World of Goo ultimately self-published because they didn't manage to convince a publisher, would that have made them "not indie"?
[0] literally one of the subjects of Indie Game: The Movie
The snark was unnecessary... Thanks for the rest though.
Excellent game that is actually on GamePass right now. Microsoft has actually been really great to smaller/indie games with GamePass.
In terms of game area progression it's more like Borderlands than Skyrim/Fallout. You can't just wander around the map to a random town and possibly spend a whole game mucking around in that area.
But the quests are more like Fallout NV.
I thoroughly enjoyed it none-the-less.
The maps and environments looked good but were pretty generic in terms of layout and variety.
I don't regret buying it (on sale), but I haven't picked up the DLC, and probably won't.. I had my fill with the base game.
But of course I'd say that. ;-)
Pros: 1. Solid Writing: I found the story to be interesting and engaging. There's great ambient world building via notes you find and the main story is fairly interesting with lots of branching paths. 2. Flexible playstyles: they really committed themselves to allowing you to play how you want to. There are the standard melee and ranged playstyles, but stealth and speed are also completely viable for the entire game as well. 3. Combat: Combat is actually pretty good. They replaced VATS with a time dilation mechanic that is basically bullet time/slowmo. I played a ranged character so it felt cool to slow down time and get headshots, etc. Maybe it feels less good with melee characters, I don't know.
Cons: 1. Limited loot: This was a big dissapointment. There were only 2-3 weapons per category, plus a few special weapons thrown in. I felt like I basically had 2 guns for the entire game, which was a bit of a let down. It was disappointing to get the same generic gun again and again from enemies, especially compared to the huge variety of guns in NV. 2. Less exciting progression: They changed the perk system to be much simpler and there are many fewer perks to choose from. Around the mid game I basically had selected all the good perks and felt like there was no point in selecting new ones. You also get perks from leveling up skills but I found that those weren't well balanced and frequently the first tier of perk unlocks were way better than the later tiers, which didn't incentivize much specialization. 3. Setting: This one definitely comes down to personal preference but I was not a big fan of the aesthetic. They swapped 1950s nuclear age with 1920s art deco. Some of the environments and costumes look cool, but generally I found it to be less compelling and exciting than Fallout. This is arguably an unfair comparison because they had a big body of existing Fallout lore to build on for NV but IMO it's a much weaker universe - I can't see it being as interesting even after they make a few games in this setting.
(1) Microsoft is trying to expand their gaming division, but struggle with first-party games. This acquisition is an acknowledgement that MSFT needs Bethesda creatives.
(2) Microsoft's big strategy right now is to build their Xbox ecosystem - they're pushing GamePass, Xcloud, etc. heavily, and trying to become Netflix for games.
I'd guess they're basically buying Bethesda's key franchises to drive GamePass subs. They'll build them quick, lock you in with a $10/month sub, and let Bethesda slowly merge with the mothership.
Short term, I'm excited because I want these new games! Long term, I fully expect Bethesda to get hollowed out.
Plus, GamePass locks you in like consoles once did. That stickiness in recurring revenue is hugely valuable in itself, and because it has a network effect (this was basically the reason for the ongoing console wars).
Combine that with cloud gaming, and the lock-in and UX just gets better.
Their main barrier is good content. Thus the splashy buy.
The thing that is missing are the huge AAA games, but I honestly can't see most of those coming to Game Pass. They may come but like 1-2 years after initial release.
Minus like the Forza and Halo series, most of the MS owned studios developing games are fairly shorter in length. Don't take that the wrong way though, even though they are shorter some are real gems. Just don't expect to play every game on there for 20+ hours or anything.
2 - Netflix is around the same price - a big enough market smooths it out.
3 - The press release defines their market as 3B people. I wouldn't be surprised at all if their internal business cases target 1B+ people.
Say that the system has a current-gen lifespan of 5 years and users run their subscription throughout the duration of the service, that's $600 per user assuming no price increases. I don't game nearly as much as I used to, so that would cost me way more than I've spent the last several years on games.
The shitty thing about a model like this is that I can't just power the system on after 6 months and just play without turning the subscription back on.
It's probably the gym membership model. Developers get money for actual time played. The market of users that just play from time to time and don't really care about the 10$s is probably substantial.
I fall into this category. I only really get an urge to play every few months. And unless there is some specific game I'm interested in, I just pick something from the Gamepass catalogue, which is already pretty substantial. (it has/had great games like RDR2, GTAV, Witcher 3, Subnautica, No Mans Sky, ...)
While cancelling the subscription and then re-subscribing when needed is actually pretty smooth (re-subscribing takes just 2 button presses), I don't care enough to do it.
And all the "idle" revenue probably allows Microsoft to play decent rates to publishers, so they actually incentivized enough to put their games on the service.
It always does. What about cancelling?
Nothing egregious. I did have to use Google to figure out where to go in the app, though...
Well done Microsoft and Bethesda.
You should look at the rumoured purchase price that Microsoft was willing to pay for TikTok.
TikTok is a fad, like Instagram and other social networks.
Indeed, which is why in the end they didn't go for it and oracle did: one of the two cared about improving the relationship more than the other.
> Now all restaurants are Taco Bell. Taco Bell was the only restaurant to survive the franchise wars.
Out of all the dystopian sci-fi movies, who would have thought Demolition Man would have it right?
Or was it Pizza Hut?[1]
The modding will no longer be able to truly edit the engine itself through some reverse engineering and be forced to utilize the APl/scripting framework. Third-party tools will be locked out. Obviously this has happened already on the console platform. There's still the PC platform but that could be locked down further as well.
Think about the time and fostered talent that it took to make some of the communities amazing tools. For example script extenders for elder scrolls series. As mods are now centralized in official 'the store' the community grow around which will never allow mods like the script extender for developers to make advanced innovative mods. Even if other modding communities like the Nexus allow for that It's going to continue to fragment the community and the talent which is foster within the community. Then you throw paid mods into the picture... Thus begins the death of the open source pillar in modding.
Vladimir Lenin, 1915.
I've historically preferred PS exclusives (Uncharted, Spiderman, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn), and the cross platform stuff, was a little worse than Xbox in the PS3 days, and a little better in the PS4 days (at least prior to XoX). Speaking as a biased PS4 owner, I'm happy with current layout of PS exclusives and cross platform stuff. Each new announcement like this sucks. I like DOOM and Dishonored. I liked being able to get them on PS4 and expected to get them on PS5. I don't think this will make me get an Xbox, but it sucks I'll likely be missing out on these games. I suppose what Microsoft hopes is that people like me get a PS5 and a cheaper Xbox Series S with Gamepass.
I love that the Nintendo Switch exists. It's completely different, and doesn't really compete with Playstation/Xbox. As a gamer, it makes sense to purchase a Nintendo Switch and one of either the Playstation/Xbox. I wish Xbox/Playstation differentiated somehow. I suppose Microsoft tried to do that with Kinect, but failed/gave up.
That always drove me nuts. Controller design hasn't changed that much since the mid 2000's.. there's zero reason for breaking backwards compatibility other than to sell you more hardware.
With that context laid out that I am a big-time PS user, looking at the XBOX game pass subscription model where you get the console for free is REALLY tempting.
In every market I've looked at, there is a deal that works out to about $30 a month for two years. They give you the console, instant access to hundreds of really good games, day one access to all microsoft first-party games included in the price, many new release games from other publishers (for example EA ACCESS titles). Free monthly titles on PC.
AND all of that is actually CHEAPER than buying the console with the two years of subscription.
Plus the XBOX is going to have a number of new features related to second-screen-game-streaming that are also really exciting.
I'm really torn here right now. I might move away from playstation for this next generation - the XBOX is looking like it is going to be a big deal this time round.
OTOH - I really want to play the Miles Morales spider-man ... so there are arguments on both sides. To say nothing of the third option involving an Nvidia RTX3080...
I honestly don't know what I'm going to do yet.
i know i'm more likely to subscribe to gamepass (and keep it running for years) vs. the 1/2 games i buy a year.
Also, Windows Store / GamePass doesn't stop modding, as Crusader King 3 proves.
I've read reports of Windows Store overwriting mod files, either this is a game by game problem or maybe it's solved. I do know a year or two ago the Window Store refused to open on a Windows PC of mine so it's a real problem and there's no way to easily reinstall the windows store if it occurs.
Whether Microsoft has solved these issues by now I don't know. I think I eventually got the windows store back with a Windows update.
With gamepass being on pc, xbox and cloud they could potentially capture a substantial part of that market and even expand it due to the low barrier of entry of xcloud or their rent to own scheme. They have 15 million subscribers now which is about 2 billion in revenue depending on the composition of their subscribers. They grew 50% in just 6 months. The potential for gamepass is therefore vast compared to traditional boxed products. If they capture 50% of the current market, thats 20 billion. That would be similar to netflix in size.
Aren't consumers just going to buy what they want anyway? Plus the Sony world just has so many more games worth playing
That's the model Microsoft are going for with Game Pass, just pay us a fixed monthly fee and play any of the hundreds of games we have available on Android/PC/XBox.
As a gamer I probably only spend ~£150 a year on a few really good big games and the odd cheap sale game. And I prefer not to spend so much because it feels wasteful, moreso than Netflix for reasons I can't figure.
Paying £15-20 a month is more money for something I feel I should be spending less on.
I feel like actual AAA gaming has never been more accessible than it is now.
I've only ever owned iPhone smartphones, but unless Apple changes their approach to game streaming services like xCloud or Stadia, I won't continue to be a customer.
Microsoft's endgame is to increase the subscribers to its GamePass subscription so akin to Netflix's insatiable appetite for video content, Microsoft's will be for video games. But since IP development for games is expensive, time-consuming and hard to break into, it's arguably easier to acquire game studios entirely.
The impact is so wide-ranging: what becomes of Google Stadia and Nvidia GeForce Now? Same goes for Sony and Nintendo. The most interesting one could be Apple, who clearly does not want game streaming to be the norm.
Local processing power is also not standing still in time, the capability a given price purchases is increasing year upon year. Do you imagine a future where people have limitless bandwidth, with low latency, and only use incapable thin clients?
The main point is that Microsoft is pivoting its gaming approach to the "gaming-as-a-service" and selling subscriptions, rather than the previous one of selling hardware and individual games. The digital-only editions of both the upcoming new Xbox and Playstation underscore this - plus you can even buy a subscription bundled with a console. Buying up studios help them achieve this vision.
So while the inevitable trajectory of AAA gaming is consolidation, we are still seeing more and more indie developers break out and succeed at a larger scale, and there's no reason why that phenomenon shouldn't continue (or even grow).
Does anyone have better data?
> Kinect Sports Rivals
Great game
> Sea of Thieves
Another great title
Also those games while not considered 'bad' weren't exactly considered system sellers.
Perfect Dark Zero in 2005 was probably the last title in either of those veins, which was a launch title for the 360 (soon to be 2 consoles ago!)
Sea of Thieves is certainly a feather in their cap, it's just a bit disappointing that we haven't been able to see Rare take a modern crack at the things they were so known for, if that's even possible now.
Pre-MS Rare was my personal golden age of gaming. I don't really play anymore, but man do I think fondly on those days.
Also, if MS just wants development studios and IPs, I imagine a lot of the publishing arm of the company will be redundant. I wonder what MS intends to do about the publishing staff.
ESO is by ZeniMax Online Studios and FO76 is by a separate studio inside Bethesda Game Studios. Nothing to do with the team that works on mainline TES and FO games.
Later on he changed his mind regarding OpenGL vs DirectX, but there are legions of wannabe game developers that worshiped his opinions regarding OpenGL.
See my sibling post regarding his change of opinion.
If MS kills (migrates) Bethesda off of Vulkan, I'd like the DOJ to censure them.
Good example of non-windows platforms.
Which I would also add Mac OS, because the only reason it supports OpenGL is Copland's failure, as it was going to use Quickdraw 3D.
And they are on the path to migrate off to Metal anyway.
OpenGL portability on anger is like POSIX or Web development, write once, debug everywhere, rince and repeat.
It is hardly any different than just defining an abstraction layer and loading the best API for the job on each platform.
A 3D API is a tiny portion of a game engine.
By the way, only DirectX works in all Windows modes and Microsoft is keen to contribute to Mesa/Angle instead of allowing ICD drivers on such contexts.
> Speaking to bit-tech for a forthcoming Custom PC feature about the future of OpenGL in PC gaming, Carmack said 'I actually think that Direct3D is a rather better API today.' He also added that 'Microsoft had the courage to continue making significant incompatible changes to improve the API, while OpenGL has been held back by compatibility concerns. Direct3D handles multi-threading better, and newer versions manage state better.'
A few paragraphs below
> 'It is really just inertia that keeps us on OpenGL at this point,' Carmack told us. He also explained that the developer has no plans to move over to Direct3D, despite its advantages.
https://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/pc/carmack-directx-bett...
And for a more up to date remarks
> "Lets fix OpenGL" http://cs.cornell.edu/~asampson/media/papers/opengl-snapl201... some interesting thoughts, but the shading language is the least broken part of OpenGL.
> For everyone saying "Vulkan!", the conclusion is that there is an opportunity for an API between Vulkan and the game engines. I agree.
https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/851397231320150017?...
So I can definitely feel the irony.
I think Microsoft’s gaming vision aligns well with Bethesda’s and they probably have a better vision compared to Zenimax board of directors.
We're going to have the US as one large corporation now? No competition?
Day one post acquisition? For sure!
A month later? Of course.
6 months later? Yes, ok.
1 year later? Maybe?
3 years later? Never!
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKn9yiLVlMM [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethesda_Softworks
- https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/370520/Microsoft_buys_Ze...
-https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1308028640488292352
1: https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1308029942018510848
This YouTube video predicting that’s what they were doing springs to mind: https://youtu.be/qJt_i2_vsSw
This, not so much. Fallout 3 was the last great Bethesda title. Well and New Vegas but that was Obsidian.
Completely lost interest in them with Fallout 76.
Edit: Oh wait, there's also Dishonored since Arkane is owned by ZeniMax. But that was never available on non-windows OSes so it's not much of a loss.
Don't forget inXile. Still waiting on that Linux version of Wasteland 3.
2020, I'm done.
Bethesda/Zenimax has arguably the longest lineup of critically acclaimed franchises in the video game world. Additionally, almost every franchise still feels fresh and has pulling power, unlike ones like Halo and Assassins creed which have slowly lost their thunder.
Additionally, Bethesda had no idea what they were doing with their 2 biggest properties - Fallout and Elder scrolls. Hopefully with the MSFT acquisition, both will get some direction.
For those that work at Obsidian and MSFT owned game studios, is the Work-life-balance still terrible like most video-game studios or is it more in line with the 'family frendly' pace at proper MSFT ? Am I too naive to think that this might be a good thing for the employees and their sanity.
Let me introduce you to a little company called Nintendo.
I knew I should have added 'cross-platform'. You're correct Nitendo certainly counts. Naughty dog would probably want to contend my claim too.
I don't know that this is a characteristic of all Microsoft studios. Departments in Microsoft can almost be like little companies all of their own. It _did_ leave a positive impression on me though and I can see myself working at Microsoft again in the future.
I left on good terms to see what it was like to work at startups.
So it's a lock-in move and again something that should have been stopped by anti-trust, but of course, it's non existent these days.
the new Doom was ok, but the new Fallout was TERRIBLE, as with many other recent Bethesda ventures...
EA has taught the industry that mega corps are where IP goes to die a long, slow, cash-cow squeezing death. I'm actually more disappointed in ZeniMax/Bethesda. In my mind, there is absolutely no possibility that Bethesda will ever produce another game on the level of FO3/NV now because corps do what corps do which is A/B test and second guess every decision until the product is a flavorless lump.
Arkane's 2016 Prey was just amazing... shame so few immersive sims get made anymore.
And as a fan of the acquired franchises, I'm confident about their future. MS has a good track record of handling game franchises.
Any other Hacker Newers live close to there too?
What this acquisition means is that the gap between potential Xbox exclusives/Day 1 releases and what Sony has is much smaller. Realistically there is a very low chance that any of the IP from this purchase becomes Xbox-exclusive, but even an early launch on Xbox shifts momentum massively.
[1] https://pausebutton.substack.com/p/level-69-the-next-generat...
Still buying a PS5, not an Xbox Series X. I can (hopefully?) play all Microsoft exclusives on PC.
With Fallout and The Elder Scrolls’ history as PC only titles in their early iterations I would suspect this bridge building will continue
They even promote so called "Xbox Play Anywhere", and tried to make it normal for the new XBOX so that you can buy a single game and play it on PC and XBOX. However the gaming studios haven't yet to my knowledge approved it fully so they want to sell you the game twice.
After all the PC gaming benefits Microsoft too.
Morrowind was a masterpiece of a game. Oblivion was amazing. Skyrim was quite special and carried the genre forward but left behind important bits from morrowind. The job of making the spiritual successor to oblivion and morrowind is now officially open to anyone because Bethesda will never do it.
Microsoft is buying Bethesda
Bethesda is owned by a company called ZeniMax Media
It's actually Bethesda Softworks
Bethesda is a place in Maryland
I find it troubling that good news for the former group seems to trump bad news for the latter.
Last week Microsoft was thanking Trump from giving them a chance to acquire TikTok. It did not go well.
(I know, I know...)
Next week: "Now you can play Skyrim on your Android phones via xCloud!"
Microsoft is serious about great content for its Xbox/Windows 10 platform.
The press note still caused some fear in me. Years ago (FASA?) such a move meant closure, since MS was not really in the gaming industry business content wise.
Outer Worlds, Fallout, and so on just differ by visuals and story, the general jist is all samey samey. No innovation. No just single series but across the estate. Nothings been as good as Fallout 3 & Skyrim, just repetitions and echoes of greatness.
Is this a good purchase for MS? Maybe, if it's for tech, IP, and bringing talent on board. Hopefully they'll add some originality in game play elements, not just reskinning.
Now of course with this announcement Obsidian and Bethesda are sister studios.
The irony is beyond my mortal understanding, but NV certainly flagships the IP today, behind maybe 2.
Both different developers.
Big hammer.