Well, it’s been a weird couple of years for the entertainment industry, hasn’t it? After the video game industry collapsed in 2018 due to the astronomical development costs and Atari’s failed ET reboot, the few companies that weren’t driven immediately bankrupt decided to turn their attentions to film. Were they a success? Well, lets look back at some of my reviews of these films.
The Fallout and Elder Scrolls developer is a union shop now.
That's good to see. For the last 5-10 years every spring the gaming industry has seen mass layoffs after reporting record profits. It's disgusting. This industry needs more unionization to offer some protection to the people who make these games possible.
that's the price you pay to conduct your business in the land of the free. Stuff like that doesn't happen over here
Unions are rarely if ever good for the consumer. Often good for the worker but not for us consumers.
Yes, consumers no longer benefit from overworked and underpaid labor, aka decrease in overhead that allows them to sell goods made at a lower price. Kind of the reason things are made in China rather than the U.S. Well thought out.
But, now hear me out, what if the 'good to see' comment wasn't about being a consumer but a caring, apathetic fellow human being who wants to see people get paid what they're worth and not just get laid off all willy-nilly when the suits need to make their books look good for the FY reporting and make more money for shareholders who don't do any of the work either?
It's too late for Tango and Arkane Austin but fingers crossed that this will help. MS could have a friend in the White House soon though, and his thoughts on Union's should be worrying all in the US.
GOOD. Stop taking it in the ass from shareholders "we want a space game" but our fans want elderscrolls "YES BUT SPACE IS HUGE LOOK AT STAR CITIZEN!"
AI is going to be heavy going forward. they will keep less union workers and juice up the labor with AI.
People keep overestimating what AI is capable, they won't be able to get rid of as many workers as they think.
You guys realize unions slow production and increase costs right?
We're gonna get less games at higher costs, more delays. More cut content pushed to dlc.
Unions in every aspect of work are a complete joke.
Look, I typically don't like unions and understand the downsides of unions. I still realize that at this point the gaming industry needs them. There's no way around it.
Many persons don't seem to realize that it is a delicate balance between the employer, the employees and the customers. If the unions allow the employees to get more power, then it will be at the expense of the employer and the customers.
What do employees want? Better working conditions and better pay. Unless they have some draconian working conditions like you hear about the Japanese black companies, I don't see how having a union is going to make it better for us the gamers.
Unions don't typically prevent layoffs. The most they can do is negotiate better conditions for the workers once they are laid off.
All that tells me is that the publishers and board members really need a reality check when it comes down to everything. Record profits, yet still record layoffs.
I don't see the price of gaming going down for the average consumer, despite having parasitic cash grab, after cash grab, everywhere we look.
It's both sad and pathetic. The people who make these games possible continually get shafted, as well as the direct consumer who, nowadays, aren't paying to keep a company they like afloat; it's to keep that much bigger of a bonus in the pockets of those at the tip-top.
It's no wonder all of these industry veterans are creating smaller studios and going independent.
Good for the developers. We’ll have to see how this plays out for the actual development of games though.
As per some Reddit users, Blizzard has sent Game Pass trials to new users, sparking speculations about new titles coming to the Pass.
Despite losing its lawsuit seeking an injunction to freeze Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard in July 2023, the FTC appealed the decision with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. While it awaits a final decision from those justices, the FTC’s been filing additional evidence to support its claims that the merger would hurt competition in gaming and hurt customers, including a letter from earlier this year after Microsoft laid off nearly 2,000 employees across the newly acquired teams.
FTC never heard of inflation. Did they expect Gampass to remain the same price forever?
Would be funny if Gampass remained at 10€ fifty years from now...
"Microsoft insists Game Pass prices ‘will not increase as a result of Activision merger"
https://www.videogameschron...
"It says a price rise “would be counter-productive as it would increase subscriber churn rates”
"Game Pass prices will not increase as a result of the Merger"
Gamepass wouldn't increase in result of the merger... but it doesn't mean it wouldn't increase due to other reasons, like inflation, extra expenses, etc. Do you expect Gamepass to remain the same price forever?
All other online services have been increasing prices.
I cancelled my Ultimate sub after the announcement, so they were right. And yet, they still did it. That is so MS.
Inflation is down since they made that statement.
They also call into question the 2000+ people Microsoft has fired from the developers they bought.
And again, this is contradictory to what Microsoft said they would do.
They lied in court.
Lol...they never said gamepass wouldn't increase and they never said it would because of the merger. And even they did it's their right to do so. So what's your point?
Sony and other streaming services (Netflix, HBO, ...) have been increasing prices and altering their services. Do you expect Gamepass to remain the same price forever?
Others can increase prices and alter their services, but Microsoft can't?
Hypocrite much!
Exactly let's not forget this deal was done under the same economic climate this was predictable yet they maintained they would not be increasing prices yet now the merger is done they increased prices and split tiers to avoid further scrutiny.
This is and always has been how Microsoft do business deflect blame and increase profits
You are correct. It's actually lower. It was around 7% in 2021 and now it's around 3%, which is ideal.
inflation aint the same thing as to lock stuff behind a paywall that was previously not. lol
Yeah you're right. It's just a coincidence that this happened after spending billions of dollars buying up the industry. And closing studios. And firing thousands of people. All while barely being able to give away Xboxes. It's all because of inflation. LOL
Fanboyism bro this is pure fanboyism, it's bs we all know it so stop defending Microsoft.
Except $/mb of broadband, $/mb of storage, and $/compute power only gets cheaper over time. As Microsoft’s overhead has gone down, it’s prices have gone up.
@lelo: “FTC never heard of inflation. Did they expect Gampass to remain the same price forever?
Would be funny if Gampass remained at 10€ fifty years from now...”
I see you got the industrial size chapstick truck from Microsoft and put it into use already.
Add one more backpedaling to Microsoft and Phil rhetorics
Gamepass price was going up regardless of inflation or not and you know it. Hey atleast you guys have an excuse to ride for a little bit
Need I remind you of how much MS is worth? There was no need to let anyone go or any studio. MS are just cancer and should leave the industry.
Apparently it's ok that they raised PSN prices, but Xbox can't compete?!
The "Standard" is just a rebranded Xbox Live. Not expected but not crazy since they didn't really have a proper entry level subscription to match PSNs entry level.
Xbox raised their prices last year too though, their entry level was core or gamepass console.
The whole "Bu bu but Sony" thing with the PSN doesn't take into consideration Microsofts whole argument to the FTC during the entire Activision merger court case is that they wouldn't raise prices due to the merger, nothing would change.
Sony never said shit about raising prices and the like so while we can think it's scummy the FTC won't have an issue with it because the argument wasn't towards them, they never swore against anything.
If the Activision merger never happened and Microsoft raised their prices as a standard thing, like Sony with the PSN or even how Netflix has done it with their subscription it would have been business as usual.
I'm so tired of the Sony defense team. Pay off me thinks a lot of these comments come from Sony shills
All the judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit just got a free windows 11 upgrade!
The price hike just brings it closer in line to PSN, yet it still has greater value. The standard sub matches the lowest PSN sub.
FTC trying to seem relevant. Claiming their multi million dollar case was to stop a $3 dollar price hike is a stupid argument and embarrassing for them.
PS+
$80 per year cheaper
More total games
Retro Games - Added monthly
VR games - Added Monthly
Ubisoft + Classics
4 k Streaming of nearly all games including ones you own digital not on the service. (xbox 1080p series s)
Sony Pictures Catalog
Anime from Crunchyroll
Full Game Trials with Trophy Support
PSN absolutely does not have more total games. I have PSN Ultimate or whatever it's called.
They don't get day one exclusives.
They don't even have Last of Us 2 Remake on there yet! Or Last of Us Part 1!!
You get Ubisoft classics, so does Xbox. But w Xbox also get EA games!
VR games don't matter to me, but Xbox also gets PC games that don't matter to me.
Both have classic games.
Streaming means nothing to me, it's still a failed concept, Digital Foundry tests it often, and it's not there yet for "serious gamers". The lag is intense!
Sony pictures and anime are neat, I'll give ya that.
Full game trials are cool, but Xbox gets the full game day one, so.... 🤷
I haven't had a good game in PSN since HellDivers, this year has been dead.
Honestly, once Xbox starts dumping all these exclusives on to GamePass, it's gonna be a flood of great titles
It's $80 cheaper, you're paying $240 a year in hopes of getting Microsoft games, and things aren't looking great on the development side of things beyond all the stuff they started 5 years ago. There is no guarantee that some of these studios will even exist going forward.
No, game pass does not offer Ubisoft Classics, and you only need Extra unlike EA Play which requires Ultimate.
And it doesn't matter what you don't want, xbox isn't offering it for people who do. Those things add value for a lot of people.
What digital foundry found was that PS+ Streaming was vastly superior to xcloud.
Full Game Trials include 3'rd party games.
PlayStation get's "good games" all the time that aren't on xbox,GranBlue Fantasy Relink, Final Fantasy, Helldivers, Rise of the Ronin, Stellar Blade, Zenless Zone Zero, Pacific Drive ect. every week something new comes out or is announced for PlayStation that's not on xbox.
And you're bragging about day one but that keep proving to be unsustainable. That's why studios got closed, 5000+ people got fired, games got ported to PlayStation, the reward system got gutted, prices were increased multiple times and those new games got removed from game pass and paywalled to a more expensive tier.
@GamerRN
I guess you don't subscribe to both services.
PS+ Premium has close to 1000 games.
GPU has less than 500.
GPU doesn't come with Ubisoft Classic.
However, the do have EA Play instead.
I pay 120$ a year by using cdkeys.com for GamePass Ultimate
And I definitely have both... My main gripe is PSN extreme or whatever it's called is u don't have all the 1st party stuff I want. That being said I just started up Death Standing Directors cut (terrible game, cool story)... I really want Last of Us Part 1 and Part 2.... Other than that, I don't think I have access to Ubisoft games? Where do I access those? Are there any good ones? The menu system is very confusing trying to go to classic games, PSN collection, etc etc etc
The FTC should give up. Microsoft owns the US Government and then someday the world and all its useless masses.
They're not wrong.
But with MS main competitor Sony raising PS Plus prices roughly 30% across all tiers last September and in general sub services hiking prices or experimenting with different tiers like ones with ads (probably coming to GP soon) I think they won't have trouble arguing they're not doing anything others aren't who haven't just shelled out massively for mergers.
But when it's done on the unprecedented size and scale MS are doing it it's a concern.
But Sony was not the one lying in court saying they will not increase the price of their subs if they are allowed to buy AVK for $70B
I think the FTC have a good argument. But with Sony increasing prices and other sub services in general before MS it's not hard for them to spin the price hikes and new tiers as just part of an industry trend and not due to the merger.
If nobody else was raising prices or experimenting with tiers then they wouldn't have a leg to stand on, but they are.
Like Governments burying bad news on big news days, MS can use the current industry wide troubles and economic climate to legitimise their actions.
Sony increased their yearly prices by 30% last year. Which Microsoft doesn't have.
Going by yearly Extra is 11.25 a month compared to 15 a month for Gamepass standard.
Going by yearly Premium is 13.33 a month compared to 20 a month for Ultimate. And let's not forget yearly PS+ is on sale (25 to 30%) several times a year like it just was for days of play recently.
Also both Sony and Microsoft had a price increase last year. This is another price increase from Microsoft.
So since Sony raised the prices last year Microsoft can raise to whatever they want how many times they want?
Microsoft has been operating as a branch of the US Government for quite some time. This is why they have been able to get away with so much anti consumer stuff on Windows 11. Yet Google, Amazon etc have all been getting scalded by the Government.
They aren't incompetent.
But you can only do so much when so many are in corporate pockets, including politicians and judges.
Companies pay bribes... I mean lobby to make sure consumer protection rules don't apply to them, the FTC has been made powerless. MS is well versed in avoiding rules that apply to others.
I understand what you mean, I am not asking FTC to have won, I just expect them to provide one worthwhile argument and defend it well, gamers where providing more detailed arguments than FTC even tried to make
@H9
FTC provided worthwhile arguments, they basically prophesied the Game Pass price increases from Xbox post-merger. Somehow that isn't enough for you.
It a real shame that politicians have been so successful in turning the public against civil servants who keep the country running. Rather than blame political for the shit state of things, they blame everyone else!
I see what they mean and thanks, but it does seem like an inevitable price hike.
The value is starting to be especially debatable now though and the odd tier system makes it feel like a mess.
Ok, and were you trying to prevent this when PS+ doubled their price? How much of a price hike is the Gamepass price from what it was previously? Is it comparable to PS+'s price hike? Nintendo also added an additional tier to their service that you have to pay more for. Is the FTC trying to prevent those or only going against Xbox? What is the "consumer harm" exactly that only Xbox is doing, but the others aren't?
Hell, while we're at it, what about Netflix and Amazon Prime raising prices? You preventing those? Like, what's the difference with Xbox that you were trying to prevent? Y'all seemed extremely clueless about the game industry in court.
Meh, fine with the $3 increase. My Playstation Premium renews in 2025, I may reduce that as I rarely play the old games and only need the minimum to play online. Everything in life has gone up, blame whom you wish, this is where we are at, as I wish they could have stopped my car insurance, house insurance, taxes, everything you buy at the store, every app, gas from going up, too while they were trying to stop MS. Did people think the gaming industry was immune? Reality..
Let me get this straight
Thousands of jobs lost
Price increase for new subscribers
Still no 9/10 or 10/10 games
And people are happy with this
How?
There's one small problem with that... Peacock is part of a totally different industry, one that doesn't make video games.
I hope MS will get fucked over in the long run. They are worth 3 trillion so I don't see any fine hurting them. They should be forced to bring back all the employees they let go and the studios as well on top of back pay lost plus extra benefits.
If the FTC can pressure Microsoft into back pedaling then I will happily watch from the sidelines.
Who didn't see this coming you don't buy the number one IP in terms of raw sales and profit per year for the last 20 years to simply give it away for 10 bucks a month.
So many people looked at Microsoft as their best mate during the process like they were going to make cod a free game for them.
Sorry no Microsoft is a cutthroat business they've done this same thing in other areas come in take over buy out competition and increase the prices as the consumers are locked in and would not be able to move away look at Azure every other month there's a new licensing SKU to do something or a price increase to the point of organisations moving away from cloud and spending millions to move back to on prem or multi cloud approaches