The European Union has approved Microsoft's blockbuster $68.7 billion buyout of Activision Blizzard, and one of the key people involved in the decision, Margrethe Vestager, has now shed more light on the decision.
Saad from eXputer: "After suffering from massive financial hits, Square Enix & Bandai Namco appear to be turning over a new leaf but I'm still unconvinced."
I was talking about games with some Japanese guys here in Japan, and it seems like around here Bandai Namco has a fame of making low-quality games, with the occasional gem.
About Square Enix, I believe they lack the capacity to improve. They should learn with Capcom (although even Capcom still makes some bad mistakes), but I don't think they ever will. They keep chasing whatever is new at the time (blockchain, AI...) to say "we innovate", without considering the public perception and if these things actually improve the games or not. Them releasing too many small games with no advertising also shows a lack of trust in its own products. Even with their biggest games, like turning FF into an action game with XVI and the very divisive plot changes regarding whispers and timelines in VII Remake, shows them trying to attract a new generation of gamers without understanding what made the series so big in the first place.
I want a true ff7 remake. With thatcsaid I'm way happier with 7 remake then I was with ff16. I'd still prefer turn based but square keep chasing these Lil kids
Man, it is perfectly fine to prefer turn based. Turn based is amazing. But there's zero reason to call anyone who likes action games "lil kids". Liking one gameplay system over another does not make you more mature in any way.
People love the new FF's overall...the problem is the abundance of 7's they release that lose money or make very little like diofield, star ocean divine force, Valkyrie asylum, harvestella, foam stars, etc. Advertising wouldn't have saved those games. Apparently Forespoken had a big Advertising budget but we saw how that went.
Star ocean divine force actually sold well from what I've read not ff type numbers but well enough. Was a dope game to.
Bandai Namco is going to Bandai Namco, I do believe that Square Enix can't change without changing the entire management, they've had these issues for more than a decade and haven't learnt, I have very little faith they can course correct. I'll still buy their better remasters/remakes like Star Ocean 2 though (not FF7R).
Namco is just milking the same Sword Art Online with lack of budget as well as anime IPs that don't go to decent developers like Jujutsu Kaisen and My Hero Academia. Namco deserves their losses and no future Dot Hack or Xenosaga remaster :(.
Square allocated lot of their budget on Forspoken was a mistake. Square always had management issues. Star Ocean 2 was a great remake and I found their recent entries of FF(16 and Rebirth) better than 13 and 15.
I think they were better than 360/PS3 generation where Square went really downhill.
I don’t know why NOW they decide on this, but I guess later is better than never.
Steam is changing its refund policy, but you probably won’t be affected
Should have happened a long time ago. People wanting refunds after 50 hours in game.
I'm not sure why you're getting disgrees. Whilst not all PC gamers are petty, an awful lot of them are lol
Entirely untrue. Not any more petty than console gamers. The only large difference is console gamers don't have much of a choice.
Not sure why you're getting agrees. an awful lot of console gamers are overemotional twinks ready to go to war over a plastic box, I'll take being a pc gamer then.
Speaking about overgeneralizing much.
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Only scumbags? As if people don't play their games on console put in the most amount of hours and return it to GameStop and trade it in for another game. But also how many people are actually do this? And what games have been allowed to be refunded?
You can refund any game you've purchased as long as it hasn't been longer than two weeks, and you've played less than 2 hours. I wish they would change it to 3 hours because some RPG's have so much exposition that you may only get an hour total of complete gameplay. That's my only knock on it. I've refunded plenty of stuff I was just curious to try. I typically stay away from Early Access titles which are the only ones affected by this policy change.
Apparently early access doesn't count, only complete games with a play early preorder bonus.
I never liked refunding anything. Even if a film is bad, i dont want my money back. Sometimes things just aren't for me, and it's not the creator's fault necessarily.
I feel you and i have never walked out on a bad movie cause I payed my money. I also don't refund games cause I'm a gamer and I know what to buy lol. I think having a digital refund is great.
Outriders developer People Can Fly's next game has been canceled after its publishing agreement with Take-Two Interactive fell through.
"the capital group of PCF Group S.A."
If you're getting funding from a group that needs two different ways of Acronyming itself, things will not go the way you want them to.
Outriders was crap. They slapped that game together and threw in a loot system to get players' attention. This game was absolutely jank and the always online nonsense made it stutter like crazy. People Can't Optimize.
I liked Outriders but I could see where the artistic vision was compromised. The way the industry is now, it wouldn't surprise me that upper management would scrap something that didn't pull in money via gaas, mts, or other means.
If that's a reason to approve she doesn't get it. This isn't a move to dominate console sales it's a move to monopolize the streaming era a decade from now.
Sleaze will be sleaze.
"She went on to say that the EU had concerns that Microsoft might make Activision Blizzard games exclusive to its own cloud gaming service. However, Vestager said Microsoft's 10-year deals with other cloud streaming providers outside of Microsoft's helped the EU get on board and approve the deal."
I think I know what got the EU on board:
Reuters
"The tech lobbying focuses on two key pieces of legislation. The Digital Markets' Act lists do's and don'ts for tech giants, and the Digital Services Act requires companies to do more to police content on their platforms.
The study warned about the industry's access to the European Commission, with lobbyists involved in three-quarters of the 270 meetings Commission officials had on the two draft laws.
It also cited the role played by trade and business associations, think tanks and even political parties in promoting the tech industry's narrative."
MS lobbied to neuter the The Digital Markets Act.
shes right that sony has a bigger foot in the gaming console world, HOWEVER, MS has had every chance to turn it around, and didnt.
this alone would not suffice to buy out one of the biggest publishers in the world, since MS already is a 2 TRILLION dollar company
MS fault for ditching consoles for PC day 1 and not making games good enough to get console sales