How far up the console war shincter are you that you can’t remember Psychonauts 2, Ori and the Wisps, Battle Toads, Gears Tactics, Sea of Thieves and Flight Simulator? Or how about more recently HiFi Rush, Grounded, Minecraft Legends, and Pentiment.

Grounded, Minecraft Legends, Pentiment for the more recent. With Flight Simulator, Sea of Thieves, Gears Tactics, Battle Toads, Ori and the Wisps, Psychonauts 2, being a little older. Possibly Everwild coming up. I would even throw HiFi Rush in there, but I could understand argument against it.  While I don’t think…

It’s Sony’s own graph. I assume each 100% is the “PS5 Investment by Model”, which starts off low in 2019 while they are still crossgen with PS4 investment, and then grows in 2025 based on their wanting to sell off a business unit to increase funds for potential acquisitions (which was a separate news story earlier in…

This isn’t a Sony-specific problem, as pretty much every big brand in entertainment has become increasingly more terrified of perceived failures

It can feel weird sometimes. Like even the “no games” narrative that kept coming around. From a journalistic point of view it was objectively false. But the reason it got so popular was because journalists would just parrot it from social media like the rest of everyone else.

If anything this whole showcase got me super hyped for the Xbox showcase. Sony anounced this after Phil’s now quite famous KindaFunny interview, and it really felt like it was a response to Phil looking lowkey excited about the upcoming Xbox showcase. Like you could tell Phil knew he couldn’t hype it too much because…

I’m not sure that timed exclusives are the reason EGS is still alive.

Increased development costs

that’s sort of a mixed message.

I said active players, not live players at anyone time?

I really don’t understand why Epic continues to pursue timed exclusives. The giveaways + coupons are more than enough for user acquisition and, unlike exclusivity deals, they don’t piss people off.

The thing that always puzzles me with these games is that they know there are largely three types of players. Complete free-to-players, occasional spenders, and whales. The whales make up a fraction of the community, so why would you actively want the majority of your fanbase to feel unrewarded for playing and treated…

Yes it is. Because they had a better model before. It rewarded play time more generously, which kept you in there longer. I wouldn’t even be upset if they had a two tier system, like let those of us who want to pay $60 and remain on the old system do so. Let all the free players grind it out as they are accustomed to…

As someone who did play them both keatto’s comment tracks with my experience too (except I checked out before that event so I can’t comment on it). What are you calling into question?

Oh. I did not know about that second part with the runes. With Xbox giving us all the heroes as freebies I thought I might jump into League and give it a try. But no way am I grinding to make game play better.

And the market growth in response to the fixed price point resulted in record profits year after year, completely counteracting the inflated development costs. Also the development cost increase is a little fallacious. While it certainly has gone up for some studios, it has also dropped for many others as new tools…

You really need to stop taking these pro capitalist talking points at face value. The price increase is a slap in the face of the gaming community who responded to the $60 starting price point by evangelising and purchasing at record numbers boosting the game industry profits year on year into ever increasing profits.…

This ignores so many things. For starters Zelnick already admits they have seen a change in consumer behaviour with them buying less full price games. Like he literally says nothing has changed, and then explains how things have in fact changed. Also any Nintendo first party game entered into a conversation around…

Super nice when you buy in dollars. Elsewhere in the world it actually translates to a $20 increase (roughly the cost of a month of electricity, roughly 8 fast food meals). And it also absolultey messes up buying things on a sale. Now a 20% discount only removed $4 from the old full price. So those of us who used to…

Then explain why after the videogame industry raised its prices did it see its first overall decline in sales in decades.