You make that sound insane, but inflation was 15% this year (they changed the measure so it looks like 7%, but under the old measure it’s 15%). In a good year it’s usually around 3% anyway. 3% growth is basically shrinking sales.

I have no idea how Hello Games is making money, though. As far as I can tell, saying “this is how you do a live service game” is really just saying “continually give me major new expansions for free, and don’t monetize the game via MTX, so basically just perpetually lose all the money you made from initial sales until…

True, I don’t mean that they’re not successful, but that they’ve been a bit more low key in how hard they push the marketing. Generally speaking they seem to have been shown and talked about a lot less.

It’s not bad if you know there is an update. But the Xbox approach is automatic for everyone, even those more casual gamers who don’t pay attention to the fact that this updated version is available for them. No matter how easy it is, automatic still beats manual.

I vaguely recall that but you could probably say that to me about nearly any game and I’d vaguely recall it, because that controversy comes up so often that it all blends together and games that didn’t even have the issue spark that memory for me now.

I think that the biggest thing holding this game back is other games that have come out since the first one released. The first one came out right on the upswing of this type of game. If this was released in 2018, in otherwise identical form, we’d be having a very different conversation about it. Sure, it’d be more of…

I think it’s a valid critique. It’s one thing for new IP to feel similar to other games that have been done in the past - there’s a newness to the whole package, be it the setting or the story or some unique gameplay twist (Horizon Zero Dawn, for it’s part, was just that - a highly polished but ultimately familiar…

The Anthem devs invested more time than CDPR has so far. Doesn’t mean they won’t eventually stick to it for longer, but it’s not as if Anthem was dead at this point into its life.

Yea, they polished the hell out of that and invested a ton into it as an example of what the game could be - but they never did the same to the rest of the game...

I think the gameplay suffers because it is an RPG. There is actually a pretty great FPS game in there - but the plain old gun-based “soldier class” style approach is definitely really boring - there’s not enough variety to the weapons or the enemies to make that good. Where it shines is in embracing the wackier…

Oh great point, I completely missed that it was there earlier

I get where you’re coming from, but Mass Effect and Madden are big additions for those who like those games but not enough to buy them. I’m particularly looking forward to Madden, being of the type that likes the game but doesn’t need to have the latest version of it throughout the season (I actually wish I had been…

I don’t really know why, but something about The Witcher 3 just made me not feel as compelled to complete the map or as distracted by all the stuff on it, as I am in other open world games. Maybe because the quests were so good that I didn’t find myself getting sucked away, or maybe because so many of the icons were…

Yes and no. Yes, The Witcher 3 had a bumpy launch, bugs-wise. And if you play it today, you obviously miss out on the bugs - but you also experience a version of the game that has had major systems and menus tweaked or even entirely replaced - i.e. the menus are completely redesigned, stamina works differently (at…

All of these aspects were great but I just think it’s a stretch to call it a revelation. I haven’t felt its fingerprints on anything that came after it like the revolutionary game it is a reaction to - The Witcher 3. Ironically I’d probably argue that The Witcher 3 did less “new” stuff - doing new stuff isn’t really…

I’m not suggesting any of the things you seem to think I’m suggesting. It’s commendable that they transitioned to a new genre so well. But to call a game “a revelation” doesn’t really seem like a scale that should differ based on the studio’s prior knowledge of the genre.

Check Eurogamer for that - Digital foundry always has very detailed breakdowns of performance across the various supported platforms whenever a big-name title releases.

Horizon Zero Dawn was a revelation. Horizon Forbidden West is a refinement.

Yea, I can understand that, and I agree. I think it boils down to: how much do I have to spend on MTX to get the same experience I would expect if this was a $60 game? If the answer is > $60 then it’s a real problem. I suppose that’s the question I should be asking - what has to be spent to make the endgame progress…

I suppose I can see that perspective - to me, P2W implicitly means “pay to win vs. a human” - if someone wants to pay to speed up their progress in a PVE/singleplayer game, that’s a different story IMO. Of course, variants of it are still terrible (i.e. AC Odyssey where you pay $60 for a game and then your progress is…