While on stage with Dina Bass at The Bloomberg Technology Summit the President of Xbox, Sarah Bond, was asked about the Xbox studio closures of Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog, and Roundhouse Studios
Xbox's Matt Booty discusses reactions to the Xbox showcase, shipping Sea of Thieves on PlayStation, closing studios like Tango Gameworks, and more.
Matt Booty:
How It Started:
"Go spend Sony out of business."
How It Is Going:
"We just have great working relationships with the teams at Sony." (Sony is a great partner)
Microsoft thought players views and habits didn't matter but there are more people engaged with the gaming industry politics than there ever has been. Microsoft is like a toxic party and people know it and won't support the no matter how much money they throw at it. That is important.
Watch for the sleight of hand.
Hint: Exclusives and launch exclusives are not the same thing.
"When asked about what this means for future Xbox exclusives, Booty reiterates that the teams are evaluating games hitting other consoles on a 'case-by-case basis,' adding that Xbox players can absolutely continue to expect many games to launch as exclusives, and that the 'Xbox promise' that all Xbox first-party games come to Xbox Game Pass will continue to be true."
Khayl Adam: "Former president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, Shawn Layden, began foretelling the current, apocalyptic state of the video game industry in 2020. A piece of conventional wisdom industry onlookers will often cite, Layden himself says it was no remarkable feat, gleaned by observing trend lines over decades. He even offered some suggestions for how developers can cut costs in the future and get their games out quicker."
A very fair assessment. I think it's fair to say Nintendo runs away from photorealism at a million miles an hour, and that's really the best approach there. Maybe once in a while if you have a great idea, but you should really have a massive financial buffer to offset potential losses from an unsuccessful project.
Procedural generation is a great idea, but I fail to see how it differs very much from AI—sure, AI requires there to be some precedent to pull from, but I think both have the "green cow" restriction, where something novel is constructed from something that exists (in this case, recognizing a cow and the color green).
To that end, with the talk of more time and less money vs less time and more money, it sounds like Layden believes fewer games being made but with procedural generation will occupy gamers longer...? The challenge there is those games don't really have an end. But he does have data on his side that most people don't actually finish their games. I do, and this lack of closure on an undertaking would drive me a bit mad. But that's just me.
His approach is certainly more sustainable and he's got a great point. Remember how hard games were back on SNES and Sega Genesis? How many of us saw the end of all of those games without cheats or emulation? Many of those games may as well have been procedurally generated because you're hoping to beat it, but in reality it's just about how far you got that day (most games didn't save, in case you're reading this and a bit younger).
I personally prefer to see an end, but I can't really dispute his point either.
you actually got it twisted, with AI you shouldn't have to have a set of presets or precedent to pull from, it should be able to come up with that itself, with procedural generation you need to have a "ruleset" in which you need to design a level/map. Think of something like how tilesets from hades/diablo work, there is some freedom but if you play a decent amount of time, you will see the same layouts over and over, with AI that shouldn't be the case. If you wanna see some pretty advanced AI in gaming, check out open AI, they did some really impressive stuff with Dota 2 and with at least 1 other game which I can't remember.
Michiel1989,
I'm a bit skeptical of the idea that AI would be able to construct something entirely novel. Let's use the example of Google AI creating its own language between two AIs:
An AI would define language in a way that we define language: that is, it is possible to crack the code of this "novel language" because it must follow pre-existing rules for language. Grammar, syntax, etc. AI is essentially restricted to the information it is fed or pulls from, is it not? We often hear how AI models must be trained on something, so like people, it draws inspiration from existing ideas to create something new. If this is not the case, how could two AIs understand the language that is created? There has to be a set of existing rules to allow communication.
I don't mean to say you're wrong, I just don't think there is much distinction between it and procedural generation in game design.
You mention Dota 2 is doing something in this regard. I'll have to take a look at that and see what you mean.
in the case of ai vs procedural you can basically compare it to:
Procedural being tilesets that can be placed vs AI giving them a full blown level editor.
AI doesn't need to communicate with itself because you can kind of merge them together from what I understand. With openai they gave them only 2 objectives, killing the enemy base is good and dying is bad. From there on they kept the ai playing games against eachother at 10times normal speed or even faster, don't remember exactly how fast and then they managed to merge it somehow. The AI beat the best teams in the world, although after a while it got cheesed because the AI had very little playtime against people compared to playing vs ai, but just the fact that they managed to do that with AI, I'm sure it can handle a level editor and placing some objectives in them.
I'm not sure what you exactly mean with communicating, that a game will have several AI's in one game? because that's not how they do it now, it's one AI running everything, it only needs to communicate with itself. They idea behind is that the game devs will create/train the ai, not put in a blank slate ai and that hopefully after tons of hours for each individual player it will finally be half decent.
I don't mean that the ai will create everything, lore, assets and gameplay, if that's what you're thinking.
Can definitely recommend checking out the dota 2 openai stuff, although it might be hard to understand how good the AI actually is if you didn't play the game. (it also did plenty of terrible stuff, or at least things that people would never do)
@Darx do you want more Nintendo type games? I don't. Use to be a big fan of Nintendo but they do not change they've been making largely the same games for over 30 years, like they're stuck on repeat. They're fun especially for kids but Nintendo will never make a game like gt7vr.
When i was younger, games were short and to the point because they were meant to keep taking your $ at the arcades. Then came home games, and people wanted more for their $$ so the games got longer. Now that im older, i prefer shorter games. i have a shit ton of games i have started but never finished due to limited time and patience. This includes a laundry list of big AAA titles and RPG's.
i just can't do it anymore, which is why i play more arcade style games. I always buy the new big game in the hopes i can get into it... but always return to the shorter and easier to pick up and play ones.
I'm the opposite. I used to prefer arcade fighters and etc, but as I get older I enjoy 80hr to 100hr experiences over the course of a few years. My focus has actually gotten stronger as my time has gotten more limited and there aren't that many actual good games to be in a hurry. We have been experiences quantity over quality.
Totally there. With the exception of a few games, I generally feel that games today are full of filler and the experience, even if it is a good one, gets stale after the 10 hour mark and I subconsciously reduce the effort to return to it and finish.
The original God of War is a title that I have never completed. I have gotten about 80% of the way through 3 separate times (original PS2, PS3 Remaster, and Ps Vita version), but I run out of steam at about the same mark and will just fail to return to it. And this kind of thing exemplifies my feeling with a lot of modern games. I just don’t have the desire to continue for hour upon hours once the concept wears thin.
The one modern example I will make an exception to are the FromSoft Souls titles. Those have that wonderful risk/reward old-school play style that keeps my interest for a good deal of time, and I have finished all of the mainline titles.
This guy wants people to lower their expectations...I bet the prices will still keep going up though...A company like Sony should have almost impossible expectations, they're good for it, around $97b good with gaming being almost $6b good.
oh im fully expecting them to go up next gen. either right at the beginning or in the middle.
Rational discussion is critical in this stage of game development. We are reaching a point now where you need hundreds of artists to make super detailed graphics in a game that most people don’t notice. I can appreciate photorealism, but the “wow” factor is gone for me and it’s not worth the extra time and money to chase diminishing returns.
Shawn is just talking sense. I’m a lifelong gamer and I only finish a fraction of the games that I start because they are too long for me. And I find myself more interested in retro gaming since the game concepts tend to be more pure and grounded. After PS3/XBox360, I have rarely been “wowed” by game graphics as they have achieved a general level of being good enough.
I'm good. They can lower the prices and lower the pay and concentrate on making easier games to manage.
i also think games are so expensive cause of the seasoned directors in most cases. and you know, if you have 100 ppl working on a case, it stacks up fairly quickly.
The series producer says the priority is making sure the originals remain playable…
That's a bs excuse wasteland 1 was put on console. He probably doesn't wanna be shown up by games they didnt make. Fallout 1 and 2 are a much better product then what bethesada has put out, and I like the new ones to.
The older ones would be amazing on console. Damn shame
Don't worry Toddy, modders are remaking Fallout 2 in Fallout 4 its called Fallout 4 Project Arroyo.
Wouldn't want to give Bethesda money for something they didn't create anyway, can play these on Vita (homebrew ports of FO 1/2 Community Edition) and now on 3DS too
I actually got a vita for this specifically. Would just prefer a console experience. I guess more of a TV experience is what I'd like.
Fair enough, i have a Vita TV too which is how i actually have been playing these again opposed to handheld - you might know about this, but just in case, you can output video via USB [UDCD UVC] to a computer or smart tv. Not ideal but for a turn based game like this should be fine
Honestly, that's fine. It'd be cool to have 3D remakes, but I'd be good with console ports someday if possible.
Of course she did. She's part of the problem and will just tow the company line.
Yikes you don't help Sarah 😬 making a problem worse
Like a deer caught in the headlights.....
I always wondered why xbox had multiple leaders with similar titles like Phil Spencer, Matt Booty, and Sarah Bond, like, how many heads do you actually need?
Seems to me it would be more cost efficient to cut 2 of them instead of all those studios.