Chirag Pattni talks about downloadable content (DLC) becoming free. Why this may not be a good thing for quality, and where it can work alongside paid DLC.
Samus Aran from the Metroid series almost made an appearance in Fortnite, but Nintendo and Epic couldn’t agree on how she’d be implemented.
GB: "With this feature, we talk about 15 games on the PS3 that should be remade for the PlayStation 5."
The head of Nightdive Studios has posted that The Darkness is on their list of games they want to do, so hopefully something comes from that
Little Big Planet 1 and 2 deserve a mention, IMO.
Good call on Motorstorm, a game released 2 gens ago but still looks and feels so good. Motorstorm 2 and Motorstorm RC were gems as well. They followed up the Motorstorm games with the brilliant Driveclub, which still manages to put modern racing games to shame. Imagine closing down a studio as talented as that ... (!) Incredible.
A little 'arcade-gem' back then was The Last Guy, a top down 'follow the leader' snake-like game where you had to find and lead survivors to safety during an alien invasion, on terrible looking 'Google-earth' maps. Graphics were poor, even back then, but would love that same gameplay with modern maps and graphics.
Street Fighter 4, once it finally had a full roster, was quite good, but it was always an ugly game, sadly. Imagine bringing that back while using the current SF6 engine.
Good suggestions, I'd be in for
LittleBigPlanet
LittleBigPlanet 2
Motorstorm: Pacific Rift
Motorstorm: RC
God damn I love motorstorm so much
At the time I had a low-mid range sony 40” tv, The latency to the controller was waaaay too high, would to play a modern version
In saying that later I got a 3d lg tv and playing the 3d motorstorm in my bedroom with the environment crumbling around the track, was something special, specially compared to what others were playing at the time, will always remember that
Some good choices here and Resistance: Fall of Man is my most wanted PS3 remaster/remake. Not sure about their claim it was Sony's answer to Gears of War though.
I’d rather have sequels than remakes. Look at Dead Space 1 Remake. Would’ve been cooler if we got a new entry and it failed with sales sealing the fate of a sequel rather than just replay the same game and it fail in sales and we never get a new entry.
Remakes are great for things like PS2 and earlier games to really get a crazy new graphical coat, but I think we should ease up on all these remakes and actually do sequels.
Yeah for sure, sequels would be ideal. But in the current market environment where many big publishers are risk-averse, I'd rather get a remaster or remake that a developer can do on a budget that will be approved, rather than nothing for an IP.
I rather they remaster and port over to PC and current gen all the games permanently stuck on PS360. Those games don't need remakes, they need to be given a chance to live again outside of their confined consoles and then give a few proper sequels. Like Sleeping Dogs, Motor Storm, LA Noir, should get another entry.
Yeah I'd be fine with remasters of PS3 games too, they don't have to be remakes.
VGChartz's Mark Nielsen: "Warner Bros. gaming boss J.B Perrette recently described traditional AAA games as “volatile”, but while that development approach has its issues as well, in reality it’s the GaaS format that best fits this description, as each title is quite literally as likely to explode in popularity as it is to implode."
Live services aren't the way forward, they're an expensive dead end that appeal to execs far more than the gaming community.
For every game that gets it right, at least five fail miserably and make no money at all. What WB and other companies consider to be easy money is actually a much worse bet than a SP title or traditional MP game could ever be.
You're talking about videogames. To these people, they don't want videogames, they want services.
The thing I've been trying to wrap my head around lately is not thinking of services as games. Games are made, games are owned and games are played.
I actually got the opportunity to speak to someone in marketing for a AAA games company and when I spoke about my annoyance regarding ownership they got flustered and actually became weirdly pedantic.
"No, you don't own the games, that's not how it works. You're wrong. They're not meant to be owned and people don't want to own them." Like they were helping people?
It was weird. It changed my outlook on the games. A Fortnite player is technically not a proper gamer. They play Fortnite but they've no idea what Assassin's Creed even is.
I think this just goes back to companies trying to force the subscription model into everything, I don't want to pay a subscription to use Office or Adobe, I don't want to pay a subscription for heated seats in my car, I don't want to pay a subscription for multiple games. I want to buy and own the product to use and enjoy as I please, I also don't want a constant internet connection for everything either.
Helldivers 2 proved live service works, I think there will always be room for good ones that respects the player base but ultimately, how many GaaS games can people juggle realistically before gaming becomes more of a chore than a hobby? FOMO is also a huge problem with these games.
'how many GaaS games can people juggle realistically before gaming becomes more of a chore than a hobby?'
This to me is one of the main cruxes of the problem. If you try shove 10 GAAS titles down everyones throats, that demand you spend a few hours every day for the 'dailies' and 'weeklies', there's just not enough time for them and they saturate each other.
So says the company responsible for one of the biggest flops of the year. This is a pathetic attempt to push an agenda to justify GAAS and mobile monetisation in triple A games. Do you think we're stupid? No one asked you to balloon your development costs by over hiring and expanding and over estimating sales and budgets, failing to meet targets, developing trash games like Suicide Squad that have to be delayed and take 6 years to release because of poor reception, creating mediocrity like Gotham Knights, or over extending on advertising
As the article points out, Gaas is equally likely to be a monkey sink especially post release if it fails like Redfall.
Baldur's Gate 3 and God of War Ragnarok shamed you all. The former for delivering a top quality product without the vices of triple A games, and the latter for releasing an entire game mode and story DLC for free because their product was quality enough to sell beyond expectations.
It’s already working. I’ve made comments about this and people are happy with Hell Divers 2 and even defending the micros and Battle Passes. We’ve opened the door and traditional games are going to be less and less the norm. Hope you’re happy with the bright future of gaming.
Not when the vast majority of these are failing and losing these studios money. Helldivers didn't succeed because it was live service, but in spite of it- because the devs wanted to deliver a fun game first and a storefront second. It is absolutely not comparable with trash like SS or Skull and Bones.
Live Service is Live Service, my dude. It doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad, it’s the thing the industry is pushing for and for a very SPECIFIC reason. You still have your battle passes and micros with Helldivers 2 and everyone has defended it. Why couldn’t it just be a traditional made game with no season passes and micros? Why choose to make the game GaaS?
So, now guess what? You’re going to have many who will just throw everything at the wall to replicate that success. I mean you have Sony looking into pulling an Xbox and publishing on different platforms because sales in traditional game don’t bring a ROI. WB is just hellbent on GaaS because traditional AAA games are “volatile.”
This gen actually has been terrible for Sony with lines like this coming out:
“Sony now expects to sell 4 million fewer PS5 consoles in its 2023 fiscal year ending March 31st compared to previous projections, Bloomberg reports. The revision came as part of today’s third-quarter earnings release which saw Sony lower the PS5 sales forecast from the 25 million consoles it expected to sell down to 21 million.”
““Looking ahead, PS5 will enter the latter stage of its life cycle,” said Sony senior vice president Naomi Matsuoka in comments reported by Bloomberg. “As such, we will put more emphasis on the balance between profitability and sales. For this reason, we expect the annual sales pace of PS5 hardware will start falling from the next fiscal year.” Sony added it has no plans to release “any new major existing franchise titles” in its next fiscal year.”
https://www.theverge.com/20...
Have you read the leaks of possibly Sony selling Spider-Man 3 piecemeal? I have no idea why dev cost is so expensive now when the tools to make games haven’t changed. Why are they hiring more people when games don’t radically look different than last-gen games or even worse as is the case with Suicide Squad vs Arkham Knight? I think I even read an article on this very site claiming more people enjoy playing older games than games released currently.
We’re going to see shift in games. I think a lot more AA traditional games (which is what the industry needs to do, the onus is on them to manage budget and do cutbacks rather than expect everyone to pay more for games and buy an insane anount to make up for ROI) and a lot more GaaS.
@crimson Helldivers 2 is everything right with service games. The micros and battle passes are not remotely predatory and there are plenty of ways to earn the currency to unlock that content at no cost to the player. Everything is not as black and white as everyone here pretends it is. There are levels to it and some live service games are clearly out to exploit and extract as much money as they can as opposed to games like Helldivers that were obviously made with player experience in mind.
I'm a helldivers 2 player love the game refuse to buy a battle pass they got my money once I'm happy to grind out the free pass
Best 39.99 game purchase I've made in a long time. Like you, I'm not really swayed to heavily to buy any of the extra warbond tiers. Probably get one after I've unlocked all the standard stuff, but even then that just more of a me thing. Need to be able to spend those bonds on something new eventually, but at least their are multiple choices in tiers, and aren't locked into something like COD where you have to grind 100tiers to get everything it has to offer. Not to mention the game is fairly liberal with the amount of bonds, and SC's you can gather in game.
Just because a very few games are successful as a live service, that doesn't mean it's the way forward. Very few dev's/publishers have found the winning formula.
There will always be those exceptions
HD2 being what it is, is the reason I didn't buy it, and won't buy it. Any game - no matter how good it's supposed to be - that is live service is an instant deal breaker for me.
The micros in helldiver's don't really do anything at all. The super credits are to unlock battle passes ..which you can do by playing and to buy cosmetics.....which you also get by playing. Not to mention you can grind super credits in the game.
You can't buy samples or medals with super credits.
Not to mention they don't function like typical battle passes. No expiration
This is my point. Everyone, pay attention to how we’re justifying the battle pass and micros now.
There was a time, not long ago, when the backlash was real to anything like this. We’re ok with monthly battle passes now because they don’t expire. I personally, do not like the thought of continuously dumping money into a game over the course of its life-time and the “roadmap” of the game.
I’m saying why even do them in the first place? Why even design with GaaS in mind over just a good ol’ fashioned traditional game design? Imagine if all games started doing this? But hey, it’s not like the battle passes would expire.
2.8bn in 2023 revenue. I bet that game also has a very high profit margin, so it must be a bit of a cash flow cow for them.
why wouldnt it be? free is free
The problem happens when they say a game is free, but once your in they start charging you for every little bit or thing that will make the game any good.
See you used to get a lot of quality DLC for free, once everyone showed they were happy to buy the DLC obviously the free stuff dropped in quality (for the most part).
Yes. Lack of quality has more to do with devs realizing they can charge for what they used to give away for free, and reserving their best work for paid content. But I'll take free content regardless, if it's available.
Well, I think developers/publishers have caught on that if they want their game to keep people coming back to it, the best way to do so is to keep supporting it with fresh new content.
Paid DLC will often split up the user-base between haves and have nots, which often meant a relatively quick death to many MP games where people who didn't buy the new maps, just left the game completely, leaving the other half of the player-base with less people to play with/against.
So now we've seen games like Battlefield 5 and Battlefront 2 offering post-launch DLC support, for free, and it means people keep the game installed and keep coming back to it to check the new content.
I know I always check back in with GT Sport to quickly check out the free new cars or the new track.
We've seen a game like No Man's Sky redeeming itself after a less than positive launch.
These past few years have shown some great examples of games, and gamers, benefitting immensely because of some great free DLC support from developers.
We'll still have greedy DLC, and we'll still have lazy DLC. As a gamer, you just have to be wary, do your research, and support those devs that support their product and their player-base.