Best careful what you wish for.
Overwatch 2 is another bad live service game.
Once a developer and publisher have burnt most of the goodwill of their playerbase an entire franchise can be destroyed.
Such a waste of talent but as EA have shown repeatedly with BF and Blizzard have recently shown with Overwatch 2 when the publisher in only interested in profits players don't have much choice other then boycotting the games said publisher makes.
If EA just let Dice focus on making their games without unrealistic deadlines and trying to appeal to a mass market to appeal to CODs audience the BF games would be a lot better.
The earlier more PC centric BF games were a lot better then the modern BF titles which focus on accessibility alienating PC players while not offering much different to console players. After the debacle that was BF 2042 it would likely only take one more high profile failure and EA would completel...
I haven't played a Gran Turismo game since GT2 but Polyphony Digital risk spreading themselves thin as they have struggled in the past with tech and ambitions for their games.
The porting and updating of the PC version would likely be outsourced to Nixxes Software but having more people involved isn't necessarily a good thing as there's a greater chance of human error.
While some hardcore gamers are happy to invest in PCs there'll always b...
Given the hierarchy of Japanese businesses it's a miracle Square existed in the first place. Japanese businesses are not know for taking risks.
Sakaguchi was able to get a lot of concessions from upper management because of the success of Final Fantasy up until Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.
Even if Sakaguchi hadn't resigned I don't think Square could have continued their legendary run, they just lost too many creative and passionate peopl...
The companies had very different management and cultures.
Enix outsourced wherever possible while Square had many closeknit groups of developers who enjoyed working together and experimenting and would later collaborate at other developers.
SE very much played it safe which isn't surprising since Hironobu Sakaguchi advocated for many of the more unique games Square put out which other executives had doubts about. After the failure of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within the remaining executives became even more conservative because they likely didn't want the disgrace that comes with supporting projects that are seen as failures having seen what happened to Sakaguchi.
A lot of Square's talent left because of lack of creative control and upper management.
Some games like Koudelka that were made by ex-Square employees were flawed gems but I'm glad they exist.
A lot of brain drain occurred well before the merger and continued post merger so SE was always going to underperforming relative to Square at its peak.
Sad that Final Fantasy The Spirits Within was such a costly failure. Lost Odyssey was great and felt like a homage to Square of old.
The stick tension was perfect on the Xbox360 controller, I don't like the Xbox Series controllers lower tension sticks.
Truth is the first casualty of war and in this acquisition war that's definitely the case.
What a depressing thought.
If that future eventuates I'll just become a retro only gamer.
Almost certainly AMD APUs will be used once again so there's a strong likelihood of backwards compatibility.
I doubt MS or Sony will get into bed with Nvidia again considering their experiences with Nvidia and the original Xbox and PS3 respectively. Doubt there'd be notable advantage going to an ARM/Ndivia SOC given the prices Nvidia likes to charge unless ARM gets significantly faster then x86.
Lastgen and currentgen consoles being x86 APU's with similar architectures has helped make scalability a lot easier.
Pretty remarkable what developers were able to get out of the even at launch outdated Jaguar cores in the PS4 and XO.
Even if lastgen consoles didn't exist developers would still have to make their games scale to low-end PCs.
I hope a PS5 Slim is not too far off.
With current inflation I can't imagine a scenario where a much more powerful revision is launched and doesn't cost significantly more.
On the tech front Google did about as well as could be expected but Stadia got mugged by reality and that was always going to be the case.
Even locales with good internet have internet issues occasionally like congested backhaul so I never had faith is Stadia or any of these online streaming gaming services becoming mainstream, not with today's internet anyway.
I've tried streaming games on the XBX on a 25/10mbps connection with 54ms latency but t...
Microsoft either can't or wont get their act together with the Halo series or a big new shooter IP and Sony while historically made some good online shooters they don't seem that interested in the genre as of late which is a shame.
If MS succeed in acquiring Activision Blizzard it could end up being a pyrrhic victory if MS becomes complacent and Activision Blizzard business practices continue.
It's the same with junk food. People know it isn't good but the mindshare, advertising and engineering of the product makes it addictive for a lot of people.
Sad you bring that up because Toys for Bob who made the excellent Spyro Reignited Trilogy and Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time saw their co-founders leave and the studio repurposed as another COD developer. :(
343i can't develop their own games in their own right and outsource when possible. I doubt Guerrilla Games would make the same mistakes but I don't see Killzone being a live service game adding much to anything other then Sony's bottom line.