Senua's Saga:Hellblade II - the next entry in the Hellblade franchise from developer Ninja Theory. Footage for this trailer was captured entirely in engine.
Discover the impact of Microsoft's decision to include Call Of Duty in Game Pass. Explore the pros and cons and speculate about future changes.
Most folks that have a Gamepass subscription will not spend the $70, they will use Gamepass instead to play COD. MS will most likely make their money from some solely PC players & some solely PS5 owners. Even some PC players may opt to use Gamepass instead of spending $70. I would think MS would want to make every dime they could from retail sales. As long as they put new releases of COD day one on Gamepass, MS will lose out on some sales of COD.
COD makes truck loads of money on microtransactions. That's likely the play. Get more people in the door through Game Pass and sell more microtransactions. Have a steady stream of events to keep people interested so they keep their sub, and then just the sub alone would double the revenue from that player each year.
Buying the game at $70 a pop including the deluxe versions is much better than people subs for a dollar to $15 a month. Die hard fans that usually buy the game also buy into the transactions. Again putting any new COD day one on Gamepass is definitely a sure loss of making some retail money for every copy of COD. With the last iteration of COD being bad most likely people are going to sub to Gamepass to play COD basically saving themselves $70, that is a loss of retail sales.
Most that don't have Gamepass will just buy the game and he done with it. People that do will just result in a retail sale being lost. Some will buy the subscription for the month then be done. This is lose lose. Casuals aren't going to pay almost 300 dollars a year for COD.
The reality is that Microsoft already knows the answer as stated by them in their documents. PlayStation gamers have built up an ecosystem of games and they aren't migrating over and dropping what they have to buy an Xbox to play one game in a service you have to pay monthly for. Cheaper to just buy the game. And, I'd bet many casual COD players don't know or care about the acquisition.
Which is why Jim Ryan pushed to make sure that that one game continues to be sold as usual on Sony's platform to keep the status quo. Every other IP owned by Activision are worthless. And Activision has shown they don't care about other IP like Tony Hawk by cancelling them.
Sales WILL be lost on Xbox. That's for certain. Microsoft can only hope that Xbox gamers continue to buy up those micro transactions to make up for those lost sales. Only positive for Microsoft is that they get to dip into PlayStation game sales that we all know from history and NPD, that Sony's console sells more games. But increase subs from Sony fans for game pass? Not happening in any way that matters.
Sony, on the other hand, can have their cake and eat it too. They get COD and they can continue dropping more content for their fastest selling GaaS game which is Hell Divers 2. As the game passes 12 million sales and doesn't beat you over the head with micro transactions, Sony has a win win situation and can support the game getting more content to keep players engaged.
As a side note, COD is probably going to turn into some version of Sea of Fortnite Duty. Games as a service sitting in game pass being milked dry with micro transactions and constant updates making you feel you're playing an unfinished game that keeps going and going with no soul.
I'm not sure why everyone is acting like COD is a surprise. That was always the plan. They said in court during the FTC case they were doing this. They have said repeatedly and recently all first party games are going to Gamepass.
Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 will be released in a few days and Microsoft has shared some new screenshots for it.
Not sure why the disagrees because clearly it's visually a fantastic looking game. I'd be interested to know what better looking games from 2024 the people who disagreed think look better.
I'm interested too, what game looks better this year ?, but we all know who are these people , cleary the ones who don't have the game day one on their favorite platform.
@Cacabunga
Lol CGi ?
you need to wait for the full analysis from digital foundry.
@PrinceOfAnger
You asked a question some agreed some didn't then you ridiculed those that disagreed
why go full fanboy?
That is kinda flaky, I'd suggest maybe seeing some gameplay before jumping the gun, we are all waiting to see what digital foundry say
Nobody believes Xbox hype because they burned so many people with Halo, Starfield, and Redfall.
Hard to tell from a monster PC screenshot, but yeah, it will likely be the best looking console game when it launches.
I mean best looking game of all time so far imho...that said, that is all that we know. It's a set goal that is easy to achieve if you are not getting bogged down in physics, ai, and other power hungry operations. Most dev's have more they are going for then just the best graphics. Also this is one of the first true Unreal Engine 5 games that is pushing the said graphics aspect. UE always looks damn good for each iteration.
I want to see what the face idle animations look like.
Quite possibly I can't think of anything else that came out this year with a high level of Fidelio like this
Honestly, I agree, just wished MS would have marketed this more. Ill try to pick it up on PC if I have the extra cash.
I definitely think you'll be hard pressed to find a bigger visual marvel than hellblade 2 for a while, regardless of how it ends up being game-wise.
After watchdogs, I’ve been overly cautious of hyping myself up for how a game looks until I get it in my hands.
I should be able to get 4K 60fps in medium to high settings on my RTX 4080. I noticed they mentioned the rtx 4090 in the article
@Rynxie
What about the FPS? Trying to get it in 60fps. Hopefully it doesn't turn out like Dragon's Dogma 2
I'd rather go ultra and 1440 tbh. 4K is massively overrated unless you play on a huge TV
Looks good, but don’t know if it’s actual in game graphics. We’ll find out soon enough.
Safe to say the majority of those shots are cut scenes not actual game play and that last shot of the face is absolutely a cut scene, I wish we had in game graphics like that when you're actually playing but we are no where near that level yet. Still it's very impressive looking.
It's all real time, no cut aways. This is UE5 game so it's all seemless.
The consoles are more than capable of doing it like Alan Wake 2 or even Last Of Us 2 on last gen PS4.
@Lighning77
LOL, nah. There's a difference between in engine and in game while you are actually physically playing and controlling the character. I'm not saying the game doesn't look good in fact I've said the very opposite but people need to be realistic, there's going to be a lot of cut scenes in the game just like God of War or Uncharted where the game will look way better in those cinematic non playable cut scenes than actual game play. There's no way that last face shot image is game play, that is a cinematic in engine cut scene, you can disagree if you like but that's what it is..
It's all the same even during story elements. That's pretty much what they've been touting this whole time. DF will break it down so we'll have to wait and see.
If you played the first game you will know this is all real-time in game.
the lockdown was not kind to senua, just like Alloy from horizon, she's put on about 15lbs
On 16 May, the long-awaited release of the PC version of Ghost of Tsushima took place. And the game proved to be a great success on the first day.
It has surpassed spider man now
it's 71k+
game did this with way shorter time than spider man.
@prince
I'm confused. Does that number mean total players at one time playing like a snapshot
or total sales? If it's the former that's not very accurate because I know I'm not the only person that buys games and plays them later and that number is not included.
Is this going to be the new thing thing? Articles about Steam reviews? Which of course was in response to the false article about the review bombings in the first place.
Hey, just a heads up that the new owners did open news to Steam updates, but we try our best to not allow them to go on daily updates unless relevant to some other news. I understand this isn't everyone's cup and tea and sympathize, but the door has been open. If you feel it's 'too much' please do PM me or submit a ticket to the mod team. Thank you.
I came here to post this link in that specific article. 84 perce t is pretty good. How many bad reviews were there like 5
I always get confused by this, but is 72k good sales numbers for a game? I keep seeing games fail at selling 2.5 million and that they need to be on multiple platforms but is an additional 72k adding much?
Im not sure how its confusing :\
72k actively playing. Not 72k sold.
A good example is Helldivers 2, 6m sold, 450k (at its peak) active players.
But how many swords swung is what we're all really waiting for.
for one they already had a huge launch on the playstation, they don't need to sell 5m to make the porting to pc profitable and as pointed out below that number you see is just the people playing it at this moment.
Also from the insomniac leak we know these PC ports are a quick turnaround and budgeted around $2-4 million. At 100k sales they break even including Steams cut. They may not sell millions but they are a great ROI
72k concurrent. That is a global number. People who bought the game are not playing at the same time because of timezones, working schedules, holidays, events... There is no good rule of thumb but you can extrapolate based on other games that also released sales data. Then it is clear that the PC release alone accounts for at least 500K copies sold on steam, maybe closer to 700-800K. Probably will sell over a million this extended weekend.
According to steamspy and other data gathering sites games like Days Gone, Spider Man, God Of War, Horizon Zero Dawn have sold 2 to 5 million copies on Steam. So I expect Ghost to reach similar numbers. Probably even surpass it.
Holy sh$t!!!!
Edit: Come on fellow gamers you have to give credit when it’s due.
That was a awesome surprise by MS.
That was a pretty sick reveal. I didn't know what I was seeing at first til I saw her. I loved the first game and this one looks to be even bigger. I got a feeling Microsoft is gonna be reeling up this next gen. Revealing the Xbox Series X was also a huge surprise. This next gen should be interesting.
Bro, that's in engine on the next xbox?
https://gph.is/1aiYSzA
I hope it is good. I feel the first game was perfect as a stand alone, and doesnt need a sequel, but with that Microsoft money behind them..... maybe ninja theory can do something even more special.
First game was good, lets see what a bigger budget can do for the sequel.