General Game Chat

[Karo]

I feel like it would be a good move business wise for Sony I do question though what they will decide to be more profitable? Its not really like Stadia going to come along and suddenly be competition for any of their market share and Nintendo continues to be off in the corner doing Nintendo things.

Like if they don't raise it they could potentially get more people to buy PS5 this time, but even if they did would raising the price of their online give them a boost over any potential extra money that could get by keeping it the same?

[Moonface]

Gotta make more of that $ $ $! I am honestly not really surprised the price of gaming must continue to rise who else will give the CEOs more money if they don't do it themselves? :O

Silliness aside I don't really get their justifications for most of the price hikes going for the generation like honestly....are the graphical jump between the next generation of console really that demanding that the DLCs, Gacha mechanics, and cash shop not enough for them to build these "revolutionary new games"?

Games are expensive to make. For example, Shovel Knight is an incredibly good selling game and yet the developers have come out and said that it did not make them as much profit as you might think. If a game takes three or more years with a few hundred people, all that has to be paid for. Go back a few generations and big games on PS1 were coming out almost every year from the same developers. Longer times mean more work and costs, but when the prices don't go up other means have to be found to get the money. But if a game can't have DLC and such, then what do you do? God of War on PS4 has no DLC, so the only money it makes is from sales. That's a big game so the sales are guaranteed, but smaller sellers will struggle to turn profits. If an indie game is having a hard time to get good profits then I don't want to imagine how it is for the big studios to do it who have way higher costs to deal with.

[Karo]

For most triple A video games companies I honestly believe most of the time they will always be making a profit somehow and they'll do it in a way to make sure they cover every avenue to maximize said profit as they are businesses first thing first make a profit above anything else. For Indie developers I can fully understand most of the time its a passion project and its someone that want to make the game because they want too and a lot of passions projects don't turn out in the end, but they honestly usually sell themselves short because if your game is too expensive customers might not be willing to take a risk on it.

So things like signing an exclusivity deal with epic games, having DLCs, or whatever to make a profit I can understand the indie developers. Its just a lot of triple A games seem like they go for too much. God of War is a solid game and it didn't really need anything to drive home a profit and I think that amazing and I'd rather that still be the industry standard then filling a game to the brim with all this for profit stuff when you will make a profit and be able to invest in even more projects.

If your a free to play game having these things is fine you gotta make your profit somewhere just when you stack everything on top it honestly rubs me in the wrong way.

[Moonface]

Well making more money from subscriptions won't be happening, because Microsoft have back tracked on their decision to raise the price of Xbox Live and will keep it at the original price now. How they thought it wouldn't get backlash surprises me, considering that they had learned the hard way back in 2013 not to push things that consumers will dislike and that none of the competition are likely to adopt.

[Karo]

I feel like they most likely will try again at some point. Even if the customer complains they'll just wait for some time and try it again. Kinda like how in last generation Xbox tried to remove the disc drive, but they got backlash for it and this generation they are offering two models where I feel like they are trying to get people to warm up to the idea of no disc drive.

[Mr EliteL]

Oh wow, there's already been a such a reaction to make Xbox revert back to the original price, that's good. I was appalled reading the early post about the news, what on Earth were they thinking?! I did think prices for online might go up at some point, but they thought to get away with increasing $60 by two?! Far too outlandish.

[Moonface]

Broken down $10 a month isn't awful, but doubling the price without seemingly any additional benefits would be hard to swallow even if you went from $1 to $2 I'd imagine.

[ShiraNoMai]

I actually can't quite parse the decision to essentially double the subscription cost? I can understand a few dollars or hell, max $5 increase, but to go as far as doing that much of an increase really seemed like it was almost a price error (and it really wasn't, after all). I can't see Phil Spencer personally backing a decision like that, especially with the way he talks about making things on their platforms more accessible to all gamers.

Just very strange all around

[Karo]

Even if someone might do some good things in the video game industry I always have my suspicions its a business first and whenever they think they can get away with they probably will.  

Like I don't think Microsoft itself has gone full in on filling their games with every penny grabbing practice they can think of, but it doesn't mean they aren't against raising prices on things randomly for no reason.

[Moonface]

So after what feels like forever, Nintendo have finally announced a new Nintendo Direct that will be airing tomorrow!

What does everyone hope to see from the event? BotW2 has to be here because it's one of the few announced projects from Nintendo that hasn't had an update since its announcement and hasn't had a development issue like Bayonetta 3 and Metroid 4 have. On the note of those two, if either have the chance to appear I expect only Metroid 4 will, but I'm not going to expect it.

Don't really have any expectations for what Smash will get, but I won't be surprised at this point if Crash is the one.

A lot of the stuff might be new though, since there's barely anything left from E3 2019 that Nintendo showed that wasn't released yet.

[Moonface]

Well, that was a mostly underwhelming Direct. I was making a thread for it, but didn't bother in the end because almost everything noteworthy in it already has its own thread and the one or two games that don't can just be talked about here or get their own threads if anyone wants to make them. All this Direct did for me was show that Covid is still very much screwing everything up for game development and that news is going to be really slow for big titles. It doesn't really give me much hope for the summer to be filled with a lot of good stuff from any company, unless they all decide to just toss out announcements for games that are going to be years away from release.

[Mr EliteL]

I was going super hype over the supposed Octopath sequel which I thought at first, my hype died down but I'm not completely annoyed by it. Triangle Strategy (so needs a proper title) may be in Octopath's art style and I already like tactical RPGs, so I'm down for it. A long wait though, but I'll do so gladly. Also plays like Luminous Arc 2 with if you're behind, on a higher plane you do more damage. Team attacks is new to me in this style though. Looking forward to see more.

Monster Hunter Rise news and seeing the new Mario Golf plus Hades getting a physical release all seemed cool, that was it for me.

[Moonface]

I'm glad there's a demo for Triangle Strategy so I can try it out. I too thought it was another Octopath style game, which it looks to only be in art style. Just need to see if the gameplay is for me or not.

Mario Golf looked cool. Miitopia looks like they took the 3DS Street Pass game and bulked it out to a $60 title, which I'm not sure will be worth that much money or not. If nothing else it did make me miss Street Pass and I wish Nintendo would implement that feature into Switch.

[Dragon Lord]

90% of the Direct: I sleep.

Legend of Mana Remaster: Poggers

Project Triangle Strategy: Be still my beating heart! This game screams Tactics Ogre so much, and I would absolutely love it if it turns out to be a return of the series! Please Square Enix, you might fuck up everything else you've touched, but don't fuck this up!

[Moonface]

Legend of Mana Remaster: Poggers

I just realised that I mistook the game for Secret of Mana, and wondered why it was being promoted in the Direct when it was announced/released ages ago. XD