Xbox Game Studios Stupidity Hate Thread Game Pass Edition

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Even though that statement has "game" in it, it has absolutely nothing to do with "video games"

I can't wait to give a hearty belly laugh when they get axed.
 
wholetthegodsout said:
But how did this game take 4 years at bare minimum? They spent a year making each hour?
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preproduction, location scouting for iceland (the location they're using is based on a real part of it iirc), making all the models and shit, a game like this would take a studio like theirs a long time and its a benefit they had a larger team with this one otherwise it'd take much longer to release
also the game will take longer to complete if you try to 100% it (maybe 8 to 12 hours depending on how fast/well youre playing), but it can be easily cleared within a weekend. that in of itself isnt a bad thing. either get a well made short experience or a low grade slog to play through and the first one is more appealing
 
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Ninja Theory used to make pretty cool games (Heavenly sword, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West) then DMC (FUCK YOU) Devil May Cry happened and the studio never recovered since.

its just sad watching them waste away like this.
 
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Yes yes, Ninja Theory made Enslaved and Heavenly Sword, but are we not going to mention their other masterpiece Kung Fu Chaos, the one game that was rescued by Argonaut Studios when they were running out of fundings during the beginning of that game's development stage?
 
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Correct me if I am wrong as I never had the Game Pass but from what I can gather (using the latest studio closures as evidence), the whole service is a steal for the customers, a constant flow of money for Microsoft and cancer for the developers.

Like, it is amazing to have all those benefits as a gamer and all the money as Microsoft but the games sales take a hit so it is not worth it releasing on Xbox if you do not want to risk the Game Pass canibalising the sales. Am I correct in that assumption?
 
Incecticyder said:
Like, it is amazing to have all those benefits as a gamer and all the money as Microsoft but the games sales take a hit so it is not worth it releasing on Xbox if you do not want to risk the Game Pass canibalising the sales. Am I correct in that assumption?
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It cannot be making any money for Microsoft. The economics of the service make zero sense. On top of that the extreme cannibalization of sales leads to AAA single player games being impossible to make because the 'service' economic model is contrary to their existence. Something like New Vegas is not going to work on Game Pass unless they piece out every single quest into a micro-transaction. If movie and television streaming services are all massive losers than gaming services are even worse .

Imagine playing New Vegas and every single location on the map is paywalled behind a $5.99 door. Every gun is only accessible with a $1.99 purchase with actual money and things like 'caps' or 'NCR dollars' are removed from the game. And certain endings are seasonal or timed content only. Want the Legion ending? That is only available from March 2025 to July 2025 and for $79.99 and then it expires permanently or goes to a price of $149.99 and never goes down. Want to play Dead Money? That was only available to pre-order purchasers.

Games like Diablo now have to be online only to accommodate the new financial strategy of the 'service game'. Meaning you have the constant upkeep of servers, piecemeal releasing of content, barren game modes at launch, no ability to mod the game, lag and server issues, hackers and bots that cannot be avoided, potential to be randomly banned without explanation, potential for content to be pulled without warning.
 
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TheHarbinger said:
It cannot be making any money for Microsoft. The economics of the service make zero sense. On top of that the extreme cannibalization of sales leads to AAA single player games being impossible to make because the 'service' economic model is contrary to their existence. Something like New Vegas is not going to work on Game Pass unless they piece out every single quest into a micro-transaction. If movie and television streaming services are all massive losers than gaming services are even worse .

Imagine playing New Vegas and every single location on the map is paywalled behind a $5.99 door. Every gun is only accessible with a $1.99 purchase with actual money and things like 'caps' or 'NCR dollars' are removed from the game. And certain endings are seasonal or timed content only. Want the Legion ending? That is only available from March 2025 to July 2025 and for $79.99 and then it expires permanently or goes to a price of $149.99 and never goes down. Want to play Dead Money? That was only available to pre-order purchasers.

Games like Diablo now have to be online only to accommodate the new financial strategy of the 'service game'. Meaning you have the constant upkeep of servers, piecemeal releasing of content, barren game modes at launch, no ability to mod the game, lag and server issues, hackers and bots that cannot be avoided, potential to be randomly banned without explanation, potential for content to be pulled without warning.
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This does not make any sense!

In both short term gain and long term profits, this just does not work. Single player games are almost completely incompatible with this service. And if every multiplayer is as predatory as it has to be to make money, then it will suck and its players will not have money to buy any other game! Maybe that is why they are buying all those studios. Make it so that there will always be someone to make games even if the Game Pass sucks for the developers. It is like they are in a hostage situation. But for 3rd parties, do not even bother making single player games for Xbox.

Seriously though, did no one at Microsoft think to say something about these problems when they were designing the Game Pass?
 
Incecticyder said:
Correct me if I am wrong as I never had the Game Pass but from what I can gather (using the latest studio closures as evidence), the whole service is a steal for the customers, a constant flow of money for Microsoft and cancer for the developers.

Like, it is amazing to have all those benefits as a gamer and all the money as Microsoft but the games sales take a hit so it is not worth it releasing on Xbox if you do not want to risk the Game Pass canibalising the sales. Am I correct in that assumption?
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We can tell the health of Game Pass by looking at recent new additions. Here's what's on the "recently added" page:
  • Galacticare: new (day one release) indie game by an obscure studio I've never heard of. Their first release in six years.
  • Hauntii: studio's first game. Day 1 release on Game Pass.
  • Hellblade 2: owned by Microsoft.
  • Immortals of Aveum: year old game that flopped and caused half the studio to be laid off.
  • Chants of Sennaar: six month old indie game, studio's second game.
  • Brothers: a Tale of Two Sons: literally 11 years old.
  • Little Kitty Big City: another debut title from a new studio.
  • Kona II: Brume: Six month old indie game by a small studio. Their other title, Kona, is also on Game Pass.
  • Tomb Raider Definitive Edition: literally 11 years old.
  • Have a Nice Death: year old indie game developed by a small studio and published by fucking Gearbox.
  • The Rewinder: three year old indie title.
  • Another Crab's Treasure: "soulslike" indie game, recent release.
That's the first two rows. Skipping over the rest, of note there's Jedi Survivor and NHL 24 (Game Pass has a deal with EA), Shadow of the Tomb Raider (also ancient), Harold Halibut (an indie title that apparently took 14 years to make), and Diablo IV which is owned by Microsoft. The rest is indie trash.

Take a good look at this list. There's indie jank that was released day one; those studios had to beg Microsoft for $$ to finish their game, and are hoping buzz translates to sales. There are indie titles that are six months old, so all the initial sales have dried up and this is just an alternate revenue source. Square Enix is putting old Tomb Raider games on the service, and I'm not sure who is more desperate, SE for the revenue or Microsoft for having at least something gamers heard of. Then there are the games Microsoft either owns or has a contract to put on the service. I can't imagine the EA deal was cheap even if both those games came out six months ago and the NHL season is over so nobody cares about hockey anymore. The EA contract is a few years old at this point.

Game Pass is in trouble. The only games they're adding are from studios they've bought for billions of dollars, from an old contract with EA that probably will not be renewed, or scraps that Microsoft is getting on the cheap.

If Game Pass is supposed to be the game equivalent of Netflix, imagine the offerings. You're not getting the latest good movies because Microsoft doesn't make good games. Instead you're getting 2013 releases, meaning you can finally watch "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" and "Man of Steel", maybe. You're getting plenty of indie documentaries about what it's like to be a troon in the Zambia though because they desperately needed $10K to finish editing.

Phil Spencer has over 20K people working for him. There's no way this ends well.
 
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Microsof never recovered from the "TV! TV! TV! Water cooler, TV!" launch of the Xbox One in my opinion. I always thought of Game Pass as a desperate attempt to recover the lost mindset of lost market share that didn't worked in the end.

The dumb naming convention of their consoles didn't help either, I still see people referring to the Series S/X as Xbox One, just like how it happened to the Wii/WiiU debacle.
 
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Peaches the Wonder Cat said:
If Game Pass is supposed to be the game equivalent of Netflix, imagine the offerings. You're not getting the latest good movies because Microsoft doesn't make good games. Instead you're getting 2013 releases, meaning you can finally watch "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" and "Man of Steel", maybe. You're getting plenty of indie documentaries about what it's like to be a troon in the Zambia though because they desperately needed $10K to finish editing.
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JESUS CHRIST! So it is either a recent game that sucks, an old game that sucks, a recent game that is owned by/has made a deal with Microsoft or an old game who might have been good but its sales dryed up because nobody cares about it anymore! How are they saying this is a success service? This model burns through both developsd AND customer goodwill!

Pepe Cortisona said:
Microsof never recovered from the "TV! TV! TV! Water cooler, TV!" launch of the Xbox One in my opinion. I always thought of Game Pass as a desperate attempt to recover the lost mindset of lost market share that didn't worked in the end.

The dumb naming convention of their consoles didn't help either, I still see people referring to the Series S/X as Xbox One, just like how it happened to the Wii/WiiU debacle.
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They always fail in one way or another. First Xbox had few games and a massive controller. 360 had the RROD associating the brand with badly made hardware. XBone was an expensive, kinect-based spy machine. And Series X/S has few games, most of them shit and the two series canibalise each other with the Series S holding game development for Xbox back. Microsoft never understood the industry.
 
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Chaotic Pizzaparty said:
For example got my new PC and still had game pass I could download Crusader Kings 3 or buy it for $12,
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My experience with gamepass is pretty negative so far. Similar story, I have a brand new gaming PC all put together, decided to get gamepass for Starfield. Game is so poorly optimized it was locking up my entire computer. Only game this has happened to so far despite all the intensive testing I've done.

So
 
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Peaches the Wonder Cat said:
Square Enix is putting old Tomb Raider games on the service, and I'm not sure who is more desperate, SE for the revenue or Microsoft for having at least something gamers heard of.
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Are they really? Because they already sold their IPs to Embracer two years back, and even then Tomb Raider has been in the glue factory 2010s onward
 
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TVB said:
Are they really? Because they already sold their IPs to Embracer two years back, and even then Tomb Raider has been in the glue factory 2010s onward
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In that case, it makes even more sense, because Embracer is desperate for cash and who is buying Tomb Raider games full of QTEs and cover shooting mechanics that have aged like milk. Microsoft was still only cheap enough for pay for TR which has been given away by Epic.
 
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If everyone hates Game Pass, who pays for it?

Embracer deserves its fate. One bad decision after the other, it is like a microcosm of the game industry. Buy developers, alienate customers, do not make good games and close doors because you are in too much debt from all the devs you bought. The more of their money that they spent buying, the faster the profit should have come to make it even as they sent their savings and the employees needed salaries. The moment one game failed, the castle of cards came down as the money had run out.
 
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