This week Dandr0id and Jack McBastard talk about the Gamestop "Circle of Life" controversy, and how the used game market screws developers (and the customers).
Intercept Games, the developer of space sim Kerbal Space Program 2, appears to have been shut down by parent company Take-Two.
Poor Xbox sales have affected AMD’S bottom line
Oh wow. How surprising! Nvidia overpriced their RTX cards by +100% and AMD instead of offering real competition, decided to join Nvidia in their greedy approach, while not having the same mindshare as Nvidia (sadly) does. The 7900 launch was a marketing disaster. All the reviews were made while the card was not worth the money at all, they lowered the price a bit later on, but not only not enough but also too late and out of "free marketing" window coming along with the new card generation release. Then the geniuses at AMD axed the high-end SKUs with increased cache etc, cause "nobody will buy expensive cards to play games" while Nvidia laughed at them selling their 2000€ 4090s.
Intel had all the mindshare among PC enthusiasts with their CPUs. All it took was a competetive product and good price (Ryzen 7000 series and especially 7800x3d) and guess what? AMD regained the market share in DYI PCs in no time! The same could've have happened with Radeon 5000, Radeon 6000 and Radeon 7000.
But meh. Why bother. Let's cancell high-end RDNA 4 and use the TSMC wafers for AI and then let the clueless "analysts" make their articles about "gaming demand dwingling".
I'm sure low-end, very overpriced and barely faster if not slower RDNA4 will turn things around. It will have AI and RT! Two things nobody asked for, especially not gamers who'd like to use the PC for what's most exciting about PC gaming (VR, high framerate gaming, hi-res gaming).
8000 series will be slow, overpriced and marketed based on its much improved RT/AI... and it will flop badly.
And there will be no sane conclusions made at AMD about that. There will be just one, insane: Gaming is not worth catering to. Let's go into AI/RT instead, what could go wrong..."
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Well that's gonna happen when you don't really try. I want to support AMD so badly and give Nvidia some actual competition but they don't very much seem interested in challenging, by their own accord. I been waiting for them to attack the GPU segment the same way they took over CPU, but they just seem so content with handing Nvidia the market year after year, and it's happening again this year with their cancelled high end card.
AMD prcied their cards thinking that they will sell out just like in the mining craze. I suspect reality has hit home when they realized most gamers cannot afford to spend over $500 for a gpu.
As part of previously-announced layoffs, Take-Two Interactive is closing Intercept Games and Roll7.
I loved Rollerdrome and was looking forward to a Rollerdrome 2. 😐
Don't want to be melodramatic but as far you can be upset over video-game news ... bit heartbroken.
I feel like there's a trend of well made games like this going largely ignored by the gaming audience. It's quite frustrating. I hope the devs form a new studio but I suppose they'd have to start again from scratch.
"I feel like there's a trend of well made games like this going largely ignored by the gaming audience."
Yep. I'd love to know how many of us actually bought this game, rather than just getting it on Gamepass or PS Plus. Probably a shockingly low number. Steam concurrents topped out at 419.
I know it's anecdotal, but when I think of my favorite indie games, I still largely think of titles that came out in the 2009-2015 range. Maybe with less competition it was easier to stand out then, but I just felt like at that time there was more recognition of the really great indie games that were worth your time.
Olliolli 2, olliolli world and rollerdrome are some of my favorite indies of all time. This industry is disgusting lately.
it's not industry's fault, it's the consumers fault. Audience just wants to play shooter/Battle Royale etc...
No. It's the publisher's fixation on profit margins. They only want the most profitable of products. It's greed.
I wouldn't blame consumers entirely either. If shooters and Battle Royal is all we're given then it's all we've got to buy. If the AAA industry wouldn't follow trends so obsessively it'd be better varied.
There is fault to go around. Some of it is on consumers for sure. We whine constantly about live service games, but then we play them anyway and ignore better smaller titles.
But publishers and platform holders bear some responsibility too. You hear stories come out from indie devs who had big hits in the late PS3/360 to early PS4/XONE window who can barely move units now, and some of that is definitely failure to advertise and poor discoverability. During that era I felt like I reliably heard about the worthwhile indies, and now I don't.
Then there is the game pass effect (and PS Plus to a lesser extent). So many consumers have now been trained to expect to get indies with their subscriptions, they don't want to pay $20-$40 for them anymore.
When voting with one's wallet goes wrong. I prsonally have no problem with AA or indie games. Often times those are some of the best experiences to be had in gaming. Unfortunately a lot of gamers thumb their noses at indies however. There are success stories but there are just as many casualties or at least it feels that way sometimes.
If the games made money the studios wouldn’t be closing. Blame consumers for not supporting “indies”
I've got to disagree with the comments blaming consumers. Yes that is a part of it but by and large the money men are closing studios and sacking staff to increase profitability. Let's not forget the obscene salaries they're on compared to the people who actually make the games. Take 2 are not short of cash, this didn't have to happen.
The thing is, some of the Indie devs closing are really independent. In other words, we can blame Take 2 here, but who can we blame other than the consumers when a fully independent dev shuts down because their games aren't selling? There is an answer to that question, it just isn't greedy publishers, even if they are the most fun to blame.
We created the industry by our purchasing decisions/actions. The industry is slowly imploding. At some point we may be left only with safe mainstays (COD, Fortnite) and franchise/movie tie-ins (Indiana Jones, Spiderman, Batman, Star Wars), along with a contingent of very low budget indie stuff if it can turn a profit.
Sad.
I loved Olli Olli.
I wanted to like Rollerdrome a lot more than I actually did. Shame about the studio though
