JPDunks4

There are quite a few free BR's now to test, but they are a touch genre to get into too at times, cause when you die, your done. Granted games like Fortnite have new modes that allow respawns and work more like a big Team Death Match. Apex Fortnite Realm Royale Cuisine Royale just launched on Xbox (No clue if its any good)

Does this take into account revenue on MTX? Fortnite obviously isn't on that list with all the money they bring in. So we have no idea how Apex would rate in money generated right?

I agree with this. As someone that plays a lot of these games, trying to keep up with the "Season Passes" and stuff is a lot. It's why Fortnite has tweaked itself season to season to perfect its formula. You can essentially play one day a week and still unlock essentially all the Seasons worth of content. Apex Season 1 was 100% time based. You had to play hundreds of games doing well to level up, it was bad. Apex has already stated they will be using Fortnites approach. Regardless though, I do understand the idea that, you can only commit yourself to so many of these types of games at a time. I didn't read the entire article, I read the initial quotes in the OP. I just disagree with the premise that because numbers may dip, a game isn't considered successful. So because Apex's numbers fell off from their crazy high numbers they are not as successful as a decent selling single player game? If you want to bring up Fallout and Anthem, okay, I can kind of get maybe they cost a ton to make and didn't sell nearly as well or maintain player numbers for long term revenue like they'd hope, but Apex? Apex is not a good game to bring up for this topic. On another note though, its why I find those that go overboard complaining about content in some of those games to be excessive. Anthem obviously completely floundered at this point, but when I ran out of new compelling content, I moved onto Division 2 while i waited . When I ran out of content for that, I moved onto another game until they deliver something new I want to play. I still jump in and play Fallout 76 when updates hit. Where as Breathe of the Wild, one of my favorite games the past 5 years, I beat it and never touched it again. So why is that better? If I love a game, I love to have reasons to keep revisiting it. I don't have to play those games non stop with each update, just a few days depending on the quality of the updates.

Yeah, I get that appeal completely. RDR2 I thought might be a game I wanted to dive into right away, but that left me more disappointed than any game I've bought in a long time. Anthem I at least got a good 50 hours of fun out of... RDR2 was a slog from Day 1. Last single player game I bought right away cause I really felt I was missing out otherwise was Breathe of the Wild. The hype around that and the Switch got me to buy a Switch, something I had no intention of buying at all initially. I loved it. I love a good single player game I can get lost in and no life for a few weeks. I just generally wait until a few years later to do so, cause theres no real rush.

For me personally, I have 0 motivation to rush out to buy a Single Player game. As it's been pointed out, if I play it today, or I play it 5 years from now, I'm not missing out on anything. I can wait for a sale, wait for it to be free somewhere, there's no rush. I'll have essentially the same experience as someone that bought it day 1. For a Multiplayer game or GaaS, if its something I'm interested in, I'm much more eager to buy it Day 1, to be there with the online community and experience the game and its growth from Day 1. I don't want to be left behind in terms of leveling/gear/experience. You also have the Seasonal type content now that once a Season is over, you no longer can experience certain aspects of the game. As for the article, again bringing up Apex Legends. Apex Legends Season 1 just ended, and Respawn admitted Season 1 was poorly done. They bring up Twitch viewership being down 80%.... being down 80% from #1 on Twitch and the crazy numbers they were doing is still vastly better than a huge majority of games released. They bring up Single player games that sold well and "made tons of money".... Did Apex not make tons of money? When Season 2 releases in 2 weeks is it not going to have another influx of sales and engagement. Polygon just does such a poor job of trying to explain or prove a point. Apex was F2P so obviously it never had the initial $60 sale, but to try to claim that a single player game that sold fairly well is a success while Apex because of it's drop off from an unheard of launch is now seen as a failure, just makes no sense to me.

GTAV's popularity probably has little to do with it's Single Player at this point, it is a GaaS.

While I agree with the sentiment, Anthem as an example, literally had none of this. Its a straight forward store. Items for a price, which can be bought with in game currency or real money. I am happy to see the "Loot Box" methodology going away. It really was such a bullshit scam.

I honestly don't know a ton about Ray Tracing so it maybe why I'm just looking at it wrong. I just think both will be aiming at roughly the same benchmarks and performance and price range, and both are probably working pretty closely with developers too on deciding on what specs to aim for. If Microsoft goes to a dev and says, is this suitable for what you need, and they are like, wellll its good but something else might be better. I think MS would re-evaluate what they are doing, and vice versa. Either way, we won't know shit til at least next E3 probably.

People will still claim superiority of course, but the difference of 1080p vs 720p are a lot more apparent and obvious than a 4k vs 4k checkeroarded or whatever the differences might be going forward in future hardware. The higher and higher resolutions we get, you keep getting diminishing returns. With all the different rendering techniques they use too, its difficult to figure out exactly what is what anyway. 360 vs PS3 was mostly an architecture disparity. Cell sucked to work with, 360 was easy for developrs. Sony learned their lesson. XB1 vs PS4 was a staight up power issue along with architecture. PS4 was a dream to work with, XB1X was an underpowered convuluted multimedia device. Microsoft learned their lesson. Now unless one of them are dumb enough to repeat old mistakes, I expect both to have a very developer friendly box, both 100% focused on game performance. I think one of the main differentiators maybe PSVR, and what MS is goign to do about VR.

He didn't say that. On the Giant Bomb interview he said it wont be the last console, and depending on where technology and expectations go, they'll do what is needed.

My money is they are gonna be damn near identical. Each will have some special sauce marketing hype, but end of the day, they will be so damn close, especially these days where the differences are harder and harder to really visually see. If one tries to "win" it'd probably be on price.

https://twitter.com/noobde/status/1142052141365960705?s=21

C'mon, this is what video game message boards were made for.

But if Gears 5 is going to be on Gamepass forever, I don't need to buy it. If its a 3rd party game that is on there that I missed and may only be on there for a month or two, then yes, that can help spur sales of those games.

As far as Game Pass helping sales. I honestly don't see how it wouldn't hurt game sales. Maybe early on it didn't make a difference, but with $1.00 sales and everything else, you'd be foolish not to just get Game Pass and use it. Especially if Microsoft is committed to releasing all their 1st party stuff on there, and keeping it there permanently. Now if they decided to launch Day 1 on Game Pass, but pull it after a few months, that might change things up a bit for some games. Like I generally bought every big name game that was releasing, and never played most of them. I finally just decided I'll get Game Pass and stop wasting money on new releases I wont get around to. Outer Worlds, Gears 5, both losing a sale from me this year that otherwise would've bought the highest priced edition of the game probably. Now because I'm an idiot and still like to support developers, if I play Outer Worlds and love it, I'll definitely still buy it, but I know I'm probably in a pretty big minority. Game Pass will work best for Sea of Thieves type games that continue to evolve with updates or can leverage Micro Transactions.

That's not quite what the article says...

These numbers don't necessarily mean much at face value. When you are selling very low quantities, percentages don't mean a whole lot. 19% increase over very small numbers is still, a very small number. With my business, I generally hate when we are sold on "Market Tests" using these methods. Oh yeah, sales are up 50% after this marketing campaign. Well yeah, last year we did nothing and were only selling $100 a week of that, so now are are selling $150 a week, big deal. If you see year after year of decreases in a segment, you are eventually going to get to a point where you hit damn near bottom and may see a rebound.

I didn’t know they added the ability to download titles. Are all Sony’s first party games on there now. I may need to check it out.

What other services are comparable to Gamepass other than EA Access right now? Genuinely curious as I don't really recall any others.

The power lines debate was BF4 as I think it was the very first video that dropped comparing PS4 to XB1, so it was the starting ground for the console war. Edit* Birds were in that opening scene in the first stage. They compared the jaggies of the power-lines in the driving sequence at the end of that level and number of birds in the sky when you first take control of your character. I remember watching it and just thinking, well damn these look identical to me. Then got to the boards and just seeing how the gen would play out scouring every frame drop and polygon from every DF Analysis video. Regardless of power this gen, I can’t see many people that had a PS4 or XB1 as a primary console changing next gen if they’ve invested heavily in the ecosystem. Too much backlog and old games there to leave behind.

One of Xbox Ones biggest flaws wasn’t so much it wasn’t as powerful, granted it was obviously a pretty big issue. The bigger issue was it was the weaker box with the bigger price tag. So the entire premise of paying an extra $100 for Kinect and TV features really rubbed so many the wrong way. That entire regime running MS is gone for a reason, and I’d be hard pressed to say I think Phil would make any dumb mistakes with Scarlett. The 360 was “weaker”, but it was cheaper (and a year head start). I think MS could manage releasing a weaker console as long as it’s priced accordingly. The only dumb decision hardware wise since Phil took over was the discless XBO which I think is selling terribly. So hopefully that’ll teach them some more lessons.

Hasn’t Sony come out and said BC with PS4, but nothing more than that? Are there expectations that the PS5 will be BC with PS3 or further back?

I’d expect these things to be damn near identical this time around. Microsoft ain’t gonna be messing around with Kinect and TV stuff. I’d really be shocked if one was substantially more powerful than the other. I did also see rumors Xbox scrapped the cheaper weaker box and are just building one console.

The first time this was announced was that Sony E3 right? When Sony also announced a kickstarter for Shenmue 3 and everyone went apeshit? Was that really 5 years ago?