For information on the "20 Days of..." contest, please see https://n4g.com/user/blogpo...
***
Congratulations to IamTylerDurden1, our fifteenth day winner and proving that you can win multiple times if you offer up the necessary sacrifice to RNGesus.
***
On the sixteenth day, the question we have for you is "What developer has been the worst at delivering on their promises this generation?"
Now, the trick to this question is that it's not the publisher, it's what developer. There's a massive difference in those. EA, for example, is a horrible publisher that affects many of their games and have led to failures of many types recently. But, that's from a publisher standpoint, not from the actions of the developers directly. Additionally, this question is made harder because many bad development studios are not gone (I mean, BossKey Productions is now gone thanks to poor management and chasing fads rather than passion).
My answer right now, and thinking of mainly major studios, is going to have to be Gearbox Software.
Sure, Borderlands is great, but it's also been six years. There's less time between the release of GTAV and RDR2 than Borderlands 2 and whatever is supposed to come next.
But, let's look at their other offerings. From the ever-so-stellar Aliens: Colonial Marines job to the poorly thought out and online-required but solo-able Battleborn. Both failed for different reasons, but were poorly received in general. And that's what they have to show for since 2012. That's it.
For a company of their caliber, they have disappointed by only saying they're working on a new Duke Nukem game since 2015, haven't really said anything about their most popular franchise, and there's supposedly a Brother's In Arms game coming that no one knows about?
Other than that, the company has shifted mostly into a role of publishing other studio titles or posting golden key codes on Twitter each week for Borderlands 2.
So, they went from making good games to doing nothing of note unless you're into playing 6-year-old games in VR. There's no reason they would be taking this long to develop something that they couldn't show by now.
Shaz from Pixel Swish: "The ROG Xbox Ally is another step towards Team Xbox’s 'Play Anywhere' strategy, and perfectly embodies the company’s future and how we’re all going to be playing an 'Xbox' in the future."
The funny thing about Xbox going more PC-like is that I’ve been saying this for over a decade and finally seeing it come to fruition. People use to hate the idea, but now are embracing it, and all I want is to be put on the payroll lol.
On a serious note, I think this is the best route going forward for MS. They don’t have to get out of the hardware game altogether. They can make their home console $300 entry & $600 premium home consoles and from there partner with other hardware makers for anything beyond that. Focus on being a publisher and creating a strong OS / Cloud option for other devices like desktop, handheld PCs, streaming devices, etc…
I honestly think they should also look into NVIDIA as well, with NVIDIA starting to make their own CPUs. Their CPU is already on par with AMDs best laptop CPUs of the previous/current generation which is more than enough, and a RTX 5000 / 6000 laptop GPU hybrid (DLSS 4 / DLSS5) could do wonders for them, and bring some much needed diversity back to console hardware.
https://n4g.com/user/blogpo...
I don't know why you'd expect them to still develop new consoles at this point. Ditching all exclusives and putting the Xbox logo on a ROG Windows device is a pretty clear message.
This isn't a good thing for Xbox. It's a long winded goodbye.
For the same reason they still have a laptop hardware lineup even though they have Windows.
Having some kind of retail presence for visibility and marketing won’t really affect them in any way.
I still expect them to have 1 or 2 SKUs that they won’t sell at a loss but will continue the trend of selling way less than the competition (though its still selling millions), just like they have their Surface laptops even though they could happily coast knowing practically every third party out there (or the end consumer) will pay them for the Windows license
You realise thos indicates that their next xbox will be an xbox branded pc right? And will cost pc prices as a result. So look forwards to a 600 dollar and 1000 dollar version with vast performance differences, with the upper range having similar performance to the ps6 that will be like half its price. The 800 dollar rog ally x makes this abundantly clear.
I saw this years ago. I don't see how it took this long for people actually close to the industry.
I said this years ago, mind you I know nothing about computers, but I always thought Xbox would go more PC-like.
As I said, and always said, I know squat about PCs, so I thought Xbox would become modular. I don’t know if that’s the right word, but I thought they would build a basic frame/shell and gamers would be able to configure their Xbox how they wish, similar to PC and buy motherboards, sound cards and graphic cards. I don’t know if that’s practical or even possible though.
This was when they first entered the gaming space.
I think consoles are so cheap and punch above their weight is because everything is so tightly designed around each component. Opening up to multiple permutations with modules would probably make it more expensive to build, develop for, and manage. It's not impossible, but probably gets in that gray area where it's not much different than a garden variety PC.
Well to clear up my thought process on the matter, I figured they would every so often within a gen like a pro model system, give gamers the proprietary parts.
Let’s say the original Xbox they built it modular in mind, so certain parts they would manufacture newer slightly more powerful components. That way you can either stay with the original configuration, or swap out the parts you choose, building your own pro. Then when the next gen comes around a new even more powerful components that would put the system in the Xbox360 range. Then another half step to tweak your system to a pro of that gen.
I guess similar to how I see people here talking about new 4080 cards, I’m just making up an example, and every so often people mention nother with a number larger than the last indicating it’s more powerful.
I understand what you’re saying about how it’s much easier to just have a closed system, and much cheaper. It was just something I thought might happen when Microsoft introduced the first Xbox.
"First-person roguelikes like Gunfire Reborn and Roboquest can be quite fun when done well. Another such game is MythForce, which comes from Beamdog, the developer that brought Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 to modern platforms (while mostly ditching the co-op). MythForce features cartoon-like visuals and a fantasy theme, making it quite different from most of its peers. It will soon reach its "final form" via the upcoming Version 1.2 update," says Co-Optimus.
Today, SCS Software officially announced Project Coaches, the next evolution for Euro Truck Simulator 2, adding buses to the game.
I'd say Gearbox too. No borderlands this gen and giving us the dumpster fire Battleborn instead
Keiji Inafune of Comcept!!!
Gearbox.
Todd Howard/ Bethesda. The man straight up lies on video and people keep buying his crap. They are the buggiest games out there and they always move on without fixing all the problems. Case in point: Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 have the same bugs.
Bethesda Studios. Fallout 4 and F76 are games we'd expect to see back in the ps3/360 era not current gen. Not only graphics-wise but the games quality as well, from bugs to frame rate to sub par storylines to none at all, all the way to the amount of content on release day. No other developer has been more underachieving this gen in my opinion.