— Playstation Enthusiast:
Online play became a thing in the console world all the way back in the 6th generation. Both the original Xbox and PlayStation 2 had online capabilities, and it quickly became a very popular and appreciated feature. In fact, the real pioneer of online-capable consoles is actually SEGA's Dreamcast, which featured a built-in Ethernet port. So yes, we've been playing online on consoles for a very long time now. Before, it was great, but now, it's kind of a bother—if you want it, you're going to have to pay for it. You can thank Microsoft for that. But, why? Why is it a paid service?
Cultured Vultures: You love the SNES, we love the SNES, so let’s look at the best SNES games ever together.
UN Squadron, Stunt Race FX, Top Gear 2, Nigel Mansell F1, Rock 'n' Roll Racing, Adam's Family, Super Probotector. Top 3 for me, Mario Kart, Legend of the Mystical Ninja and Mario World. It kills me that the Mega Drive and Super Nintendo generation has gone. Going from a Commodore 64 to a Mega Drive and Super Nintendo, the much higher costs of games, I couldn't play them all.
Former Santa Monica Studio writer Alanah Pearce has shared some insight on the game industry, and it's not great.
AAA has gone downhill as they focus on huge profits. Indie and other smaller games however have been amazing not chasing trends and the next big thing.
In all honesty, a significant majority of indies and smaller games fail. At best a you might hear about 10-20 indies that get attention or do well, but 100s more fail. AAA games can still be the bread and butter of the industry, but greedy executives would kill a good game if it doesn't make them a lot of money
I don’t game much anymore as i used to. Last big game i played was Stellar Blade. Almost didn’t touch the console since.
I don’t have much backlog for the first time in a long time. Maybe others enjoy what’s coming, but I’m losing feeling a little
Nail on the head. AAA has lost the magic and focused on profits and "player engagement". Gaming is an art form, and like always the CEO fat cats roll in to capitalize at the cost of innovation, passion, wild experimentation. We need a major realignment in the industry and it starts with gamers voting with their wallets.
I think that's already happening, we're seeing commercial successes in studios like Larion and whoever made Kingdom Come for example. Double Fine is another good example. Studios who are filled with and run by people who give a fuck that aren't hamstrung by money men. That's the answer and consumers are favouring it more than the soulless AAAs that have been put out. I don't doubt there is talent at Ubisoft for example but when they're told exactly what the end product needs to be by people who don't know what consumers actually want, it's always going to result in the same rehashed but slightly shinier slop.
Exactly. I do believe we are starting to see a shift in consumer habits. The market is saturated with GaaS and battlepasses, seasons, etc. We can't all play the same four games until the end of time. Fatigue is setting in and the industry needs to get back to making new experiences rather than chasing the latest "money maker".
I was wondering whether this is perception or actually happening but it feels to me, as a semi old gamer, there is more choice than ever and as such people are now much choosier about how they spend their time and money gaming. Certainly noticing this when it comes to GaaS as you mentioned, the question always has to be why would I play this instead of what I'm already playing. Anthem is going to have a real hard time prying away people, especially with a premium price tag that screams money men as a decision.
Nah. Devs need to pay the bills. Uninspired games fail, but artsy games usually fail even harder.
Gamers are voting with their wallets, Kingdom Come Deliverance, Expedition 33, games made by passionate developers who are not being controlled by money men are seeing their work get universal praise and selling extremely well. Meanwhile Outlaws and Veilguard are underperforming. I wonder how many people Ubi and EA had working on those games, in comparison Sandbox have just a core development team of 30 and managed to put something out EA and Ubi can only dream of.
The underlying problem though lays with how EA and Ubi execs react to these sort of things. Seems like they'd rather just lay off good developers and focus their efforts on their cash cows as opposed to change their development philosophies.
She didn't even call out Stanfield's PNG file planets when she flew through one. She just 'yelled' something stupid like 'flat earth'. She wasn't even taken aback in the slightest. I am not sure she isn't a part of the problem.
She's always been a narcissist bimbo, I'm even more surprised she's not in only fans yet.
I wasn't sure of the actual number of years just seemed like it wasn't that long ago when I heard that she got a job as a writer there, guess time flies. 4 years being "pretty good" or not is subjective depending on ones perspective. The question might be, was four years long enough to make a discernible writing contribution to a video game based on how long development cycles are these days?
She left SMS because she needed to go back to Australia to support a parent with cancer.
She quit SM studio to focus on her own stuff, There was a video where she explained all of it.
Okay, explain like the other 50 jobs she's had and hasn't held......
I think she likes to bend the truth a ton on how involved she is and when her lies catch up with her she moves on to start a new batch.
Greed , lack of innovation and agendas
Why do we rave about a good indie game but we avoid a AAA game.
NVIDIA’s RTX 50 “Blackwell” architecture has been a bit of a bore for us gamers. Apart from Multi Frame Generation, which has limited use-case scenarios, there isn’t much to be excited about. It is achieved using GPU-side Flip Metering. The optical field data is generated using AI models in the Tensor cores.
Preach it.
I'll never pay for PS+ or Xbox Live again. And if my brother gets me another year of each for Christmas I'll sell them on eBay. I put 1000 hours into Monster Hunter online, and haven't paid one red cent for it, as it should be. I'll keep my online gaming on consoles that don't charge me for it.
As for PS4 and X1, it's offline single player games only. And if the game forces an online connection for single player I won't buy it. Just out of principle.
Because they're closed systems with companies who want as much money as they can get owning them. It would be impossible to put paid online on PC as pc is not owned by any one company. If one eere to try it theres too much free competetion. One company tried to do it (MS) and look how that turned out.
It's because Microsoft introduced the idea with the 360. When Microsoft succeeded without much backlash Sony followed suit. I don't pay for online access so I just play rpg's and single player games. Although if Nintendo doesn't charge for online with the NX i may just buy their console.
Edit: I didn't have a original xbox so i didn't know that is when it started. Thanks for the correction. I'll leave my mistake so the people below me don't look like they're talking about nothing. I currently game on my ps4 but again that's to play single player games and jrpgs.
A lot of console owners would rather redirect blame to the competition to why they "have" to pay for an online service, when both companies are at fault, why not stand together on both fronts and sign a online petition to why online play shouldn't be mandatory for content that's including as part of your purchase, instead of pointing finger and casting blame back and forth, that will never solve anything, except create more flame wars between console owners, to why they're system of choice is better then the one they don't own.
A vicious circle that favors capitalism extremely well when it comes to selling consoles.
Oh look another "I want all the perks that cost money to make and maintain and I want it all for free" article. It always amazes me how many entitled brats each new generation of gaming brings out.