crispy4000

Haters gonna gate.  The game looks gorgeous. I’m all for blending modern tech with retro stylings.  Probably the most impressive blend of it since Noita.

1 hour ago, DarkStar189 said:

Game Pass is a strange concept when you think about it. Games are really expensive to make and the master plan was to put them all up for "free" and rely on subscribers paying monthly. For me personally, I almost never get heavily invested into a game I've gotten for free. I'm more likely to impulse buy something I might want to try. Then they have gotten my money for the game, and i stick with it more because I paid for it.  You put it up for free on Game Pass and I'll try it for 30 minutes and just move on. In that case they got no extra money out of me.

I already have a subscription where I can try 8+ new games a month.  Its called the Epic Games Store, and costs $0 a month.

In case that doesn't do it for me, there's the occasional good Prime drop within a subscription I already pay for.  If that doesn't have anything appealing, there's Humble Choice every month.  Then and only then might I consider paying for a month of rentals with Games Pass.  Or just stick to my backlog, boosted by all the aforementioned and more.

Why Games Pass hasn't succeeded on PC yet is plainly obvious.  There's too many other things its trying to vie attention from, even beyond Steam.  The rental model doesn't have much appeal in the current landscape there.

I have to wonder how much this stuff affects the consoles too.  Why buy an Xbox if you can't play all your free PC games on it?  All the noise about bringing EGS, itch.io, etc to Xbox consoles reflects that reality, IMO.  It's probably a preemptive move against Valve trying to enter the space again in a more meaningful way.

Speaking of PoP, Two Thrones is still on sale on Ubi's store for $20 after checkout code.  Ubisoft launcher.

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: ****

I had no real expectations here.  I played a bit of Retro City Rampage on 3DS, but remember not finding its 8-bit aesthetic appealing.  The way they overhauled this to a 16-bit + 90's computer art style is perfect.  It's one of the best looking games in this thread so far, from a pure pixel art angle.

Better yet, the game is hilariously tongue and cheek.  You're a modern day buisnessman whose 90's-era ventures are failing.  How will you save your retail spaces?  Taking a bat to Amazon delivery trucks of course.  Creditor threatening you?  Drive their car into the lake.  You can walk into any old convenience store and demand part of their profits.  Even the way cops just immediately turn to ram into you looks oddly comical.  The game controls well, has options to zoom the view way out for larger displays (thank goodness!), and just is a chill time all around. 

But play it for the snark.  Humor in games is hard, but here it's effortless.

Circus Electrique is free this week.  Mystery game next week, presumably some kind of sale with it.

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: **½

Playing this just makes me mad Killer Queen Black is delisted.  The general premise is that your side wins by killing their captain multiple times, taking enough gold, or blowing up their ship with a moving rowboat of TNT or canon shots.  The gold and cannonballs are found around the center of the map.  You can also buy a sword with gold to protect yourself, but can't use it when you're carrying anything.  Presentation is extremely good outside of the music, which is grating.  There's a story mode and bots, which gives it some longevity thankfully.

Compared to KQB, your character moves much too slow, and a super basic melee attack is no where near as fun as flying around as a killer wasp.  I don't think this would convince anyone they're missing out on anything, which is extremely unfortunate.  If you ever come across a Killer Queen Black machine, don't hesitate, play it.

There's little doubt she was pressured.

Halfway through NSMB U.  Is Luigi U worth playing or should I just skip straight to Wonder?

Do we know what Activision properties are underperforming?

Please don’t go third party.  The industry is much worse off if Sony goes unchecked in the AAA console space.

What is the point of Xbox?

WWW.EUROGAMER.NET

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Xbox has repeated the same terrible mistakes for over a decade. The reason is simple: its priorities are back-to-front.

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… The thing that binds all these moments together couldn't be more clear. The philosophy of a great video game platform holder is that it makes money in order to make more consoles and more games. The philosophy of Microsoft - and by dint of that, Xbox - is evidently that it only makes consoles and games in order to make money. Like so many businesses owned by gigantic, publicly-traded mega-companies, Xbox is now stuck in a cycle of thinking back-to-front. It, and I suspect much of the video game world, no longer knows why it exists.

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: ***

Competent Zelda-like highly inspired by Link's Awakening.  There's a bit of an Earthbound atmospheric vibe to the music that I appreciate as well.  Combat feels quite simplistic and easy, even compared to Link's Awakening, but is well executed.  It's not as successful of a homage as Blossom Tales, but has its own vibe.

16 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

 

I think that GamePass probably makes most sense as a repository of games 12+ months past release. Making it a place for day one releases reminds me of how the major studios thought they could do day and date cinema and streaming releases to catch both in home and out of home audiences at the same time. They failed to understand that these audiences are not wholly distinct, so they are taking money out of their own pockets by disincentivizing people from going to the cinema first, then also consuming to product at home.

12+ month past release would work better if game prices didn't fall like rocks (outside of Nintendo first party).  Games that old are already so cheap by the time they hit the subscriptions.

48 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

But like the all-you-can-stream video content model, all-you-can-play gaming quite clearly devalues the content in the eyes of gamers. I've noticed I am less likely to buy things like DLC now that I don't "own" a game even though I am getting a better deal by effectively renting the title. There is some strange consumer psychology at play that I haven't completely wrapped my head around.

I don't think that's a weird take at all.  You might never get to the DLC you paid for in the time it takes for a game to get delisted, or for you to decide to drop the subscription.

I much prefer the Humble Choice model where you own the games straight up.  It's not a use it or lose it sort of thing.  Even if the games are generally a bit lesser/older, I value them more than better stuff with temporary access.

This Resetera post, omg

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People are really misunderstanding this quote. What he's saying is that Microsoft is looking at all these smaller games that can give them prestige and awards as a reminder of all the killing they still have left to do

5 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Morale at the Microsoft-owned studios must have plummeted through the floor.

 

It's one thing to realize that your organization has transitioned to what amounts to a "cost rationalization" mode, but it's an entirely different matter when the entirety of the executive team doesn't appear to have a single bloody clue as to what the hell they're doing.

They surely felt the burn too.

Fuck off Booty.  Read the room. 

If CoD doesn’t go to Games Pass, its a clear admission the model is broken.

If CoD does go to Games Pass, maybe subscription prices go up another $6 a month.

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In a town hall this morning, Xbox president Matt Booty and ZeniMax head of studios Jill Braff said the division had been spread too thin and suggested that Arkane and Tango were shuttered in part because they were pitching new games that were years away

What industry do they think they’re in?

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Both Tango and Arkane released games last year and were looking to hire additional staff as they pitched new projects, which Booty and Braff suggested was the main factor behind their closures.

You want to hire?  How about YOU ALL FIRED!

36 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

That's precisely the reason why I believe that such a project would be ideal for Gamepass!

 

Theoretically, these types of "smaller" Gamepass-oriented projects would be relatively low-cost/low-risk and there'd be an adequate studio structure in place that could support the development and deployment of these projects at a pretty decent clip.

The problem for Ninja Theory is that Hellblade II probably doesn't fit that "relatively low-cost/low-risk" criteria at all.

They're selling the game for $50.  A Games Pass monthly 'rental' for it is $10-11.

The risk Microsoft runs, as with other shorter projects, is people not sticking around after finishing it.  That's even a problem with longer games too, but at least people will be subscribed for longer.

It's likely cheaper to pay off indies for shorter projects than make their own Pentiments and the like.

Time Spent: 10 minutes

Rating: *

There's a really slick opening cinematic in the vein of Smash Bros 64, so good start.  No bots for a multiplayer game, okay I'll forgive it.  Let's jump in ... wait, why is it so floaty?  You get one attack move with a super small hitbox, that's it?  You can only attack again after you fall to the ground???

Jump, attack, whiff, fall helplessly for 3 seconds, repeat.  This is my platform fighter nightmare.  It'd be a bad for a Mario Party mini-game.

4 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

It's not so much a vanity project.  In fact, it's probably the exactly the type of project for which Gamepass is the perfect vehicle for exposure/distribution.

The problem is that the same could be said for Hi-Fi Rush.

 

You say that, but people will easily blow through all 8 hours of it within a month.

Sea of Thieves strikes me more as the type of game best suited for Games Pass.

44 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

The problem is that they might not have any idea what the hell those targets even are at this point.

I think they said it themselves, high impact games that drive growth.

59 minutes ago, Dexterryu said:

 

I wasn't considering reviews... purely sales. Devs & Publishers need to generate sales enough to keep the lights on. If they take a big swing on an expensive to produce game, and miss even a little, then they either don't sell or fizzle quickly... even on game pass. It's all and purely about $$.

You can't use strict sales when a game is put on a popular subscription service Day One.  What if said game doesn't fizzle at all, but doesn't push subs higher in a meaningful way?  Your existing audience has moved from one property onto another within the service.  So if those sun numbers aren’t enough already, you better hope MTX gets them to open their wallets more than they already are.

The remaining sales, cannibalized on some level by the subscription, are likely to underwhelm.  It amplifies the perils of development that games without this pressure are already dealing with. 

If the budget of a game like Spider-Man 2 isn't sustainable, imagine just how much more pressure Machine Games feels with Indiana Jones not launching day and date on all platforms.  Realistically speaking, where is the money coming in from?  Would Steam be expected to do all the leg work?  A later PS5/Switch 2 port?

I think Phil is speaking in earnest about needing to expand their addressable Xbox audience.  Because they're in a pickle with this business model + limited sub growth + slowing console sales.