Is Nintendo the only console maker that still likes money?

[whatever I feel like]

Funny you bring that up because I do distinctly remember, wanna say it was well into two years after the drop of this gens consoles how people were still bitching about how they didn't get a previous gen version of say that lotr game or a watered down version of Black Ops 3. Two motherloving years for systems built to attempt the capabilities of high end gaming pcs from 2004 now that's a testament, also it's a testament to the consumer bases for making themselves out to be a bunch of old people yelling at clouds.

And whats worse is that the reason they were complaining is because so many other new releases WERE cross-gen. The original Destiny had a 360 version, thats nuts. The servers are probably still online, attempting to make Bungie money, thats even more nuts.

edit: Imagine how much better a world we would have if the people who attend video game music events didn't exist. All the smells we wouldn't have to smell, the sights we would not have to see. And all of the speech impediments we wouldn't have to hear.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

Consoles havent been sold at a loss for quite a while. Next gen may change that tho

2 minute google search gave me these

The ps4/xbone/wii u sold at a loss according to this: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/080515/economics-gaming-consoles.asp
If you want something else, ps4 sold at a loss according to this as well: https://www.cnet.com/news/playstation-4-to-sell-at-a-loss-but-sony-expects-profit/

Even then why wouldn't they? The consoles compete for relevance using their user base to get 3rd party support (especially the two not named Nintendo), and as my second article points out Sony has other means to recoup costs so if Sony/any console maker wants to appeal to demand it should keep its price as low as it can even if it means taking a loss. Lower price leads to generally higher demand. I don't know any marketing data about how price sensitive the average console gamer is, but I'd imagine most people buy 1 console at the start of the generation and maybe a second one by the end of the generation. So starting a generation with what would likely be considered a higher than average price could pose problems, especially if it is 500 usd. Though I do remember hearing that ps5 is backwards compatible with ps4 games, which is interesting and honestly almost convinces me to get one as I don't own a ps4 yet as I was waiting for the ps5 to come out.

Also in regards to the ps5 price talk, even if it is only 400 USD that is still a 33% price difference vs the Switch or a 299.99 USD Xbox one bundle, if it is 500 dollars that would be 67% (rounding) price difference. That is a fairly notable change though obviously the hardcore sony fanbase will still buy it and Sony survived "599.99 USD" ps3 so while I don't think it'll be a massive problem I don't think saying "400 usd is in the same range as 300 usd" is correct.

 

[Gustav Schuchardt]

What I can't figure out is why MS are releasing Halo : MCC on Windows, and on the Steam store of all places, not just the dead but won't lie down Windows Store

https://www.windowscentral.com/when-halo-master-chief-collection-pc-release-date

First unveiled during Microsoft's Inside Xbox live show, Halo: The Master Chief Collection is making its highly-anticipated PC debut. Following over a decade of exclusivity to the Xbox console family, the extensive compilation will bring the best of the iconic shooter to Steam and Windows 10.

Upon its PC arrival, Halo: The Master Chief Collection will feature six core entries, spanning both mainline titles and flagship spin-offs. Kicking off the rollout is 2010's Halo: Reach, exploring a fireteam of soldiers before the events of the first Halo game. Later titles are set to follow under a staggered rollout, dropping each title in chronological order.

Are they just trying to ring some more cash out of the older instalments Halo franchise with PC users, or is this part of a pivot from XBox to PC?

As far as Atari goes I'd love it if it rose, phoenix like from the ashes. But then I realise that Atari was hollowed out by Infogrames who now walk around wearing its skin.

 

[Ali della Fenice]

What I can't figure out is why MS are releasing Halo : MCC on Windows, and on the Steam store of all places, not just the dead but won't lie down Windows Store

https://www.windowscentral.com/when-halo-master-chief-collection-pc-release-date


Are they just trying to ring some more cash out of the older instalments Halo franchise with PC users, or is this part of a pivot from XBox to PC?

As far as Atari goes I'd love it if it rose, phoenix like from the ashes. But then I realise that Atari was hollowed out by Infogrames who now walk around wearing its skin.

ms has all but given up on consoles. that's why they are doing what they are doing.
Nobody buys their shit outside the US.

As for the rest, I dont think censorship is going to damage sony that much, but this depends on what stuff they are going to censor.

 

[Adolf Von Merkel]

Tales of as a series (out of the 6 games I've played) has never felt particularly interesting on anything except combat mechanics or the character interactions, because the plots, worlds, etc always felt sort of forgettable except maybe Tales of Symphonia just because it was my first Tales game so I have nostalgia over it or Vesperia because Yuri Lowell is a fun MC. Not that they're bad worlds and lack color in any capacity, but I think if I forget what your game looks like almost immediately after I'm done with it then was your world really that good? If you want to know I've played ToS 1/2, ToA, ToG (the ps3 version), ToV (the 360 version), and ToX1 in case I got unlucky 6 times in a row and got all the forgettable worlds, imo, each time.

If we count Xenoblade as a series for Nintendo as that series is basically owned by Nintendo, I remember most of those worlds fairly well to this day even Xenoblade X which is the most open world sandbox of these 3 games, X's environments aren't all winners but at least I remember something about them especially Noctilium with that huge elite mech just chilling in the sea for no reason that ganked me within my first 3 hours. I binged on Xenoblade 2's main story over the course of a week and I remember those titans fairly well even though I played most the game in portable mode. Xenoblade 1 looked like an old ps2 game at best and I still remember that world, especially the context behind them ya know being on top of a giant mech.

Weird , I always find symphonia mediocre and one of worst in terms of world and story(as you say,maybe is the nostalgia). It feels like they try to hard to be " the FFX of the GameCube" that they fail.

Most of their character asides the 2 protagonist are mediocre , the worldbuilding is mediocre compared with Abyss, and the world is a letdown compared to how bright it looked Eternia's world.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

Weird , I always find symphonia mediocre and one of worst in terms of world and story(as you say,maybe is the nostalgia). It feels like they try to hard to be " the FFX of the GameCube" that they fail.

Most of their character asides the 2 protagonist are mediocre , the worldbuilding is mediocre compared with Abyss, and the world is a letdown compared to how bright it looked Eternia's world.

I like Symphonia one of the least nowadays beyond my nostalgia, great when it came out 15 or so years ago, but it has aged like crap and I find its cast one of the least memorable, except Zelos he was pretty cool. I just remember its world and setting more often purely because it was my first Tales game 10 or so years ago, otherwise tales of worlds and settings are just forgotten by me once I've finished them. Which to me doesn't make Tales of worlds vibrant or interesting when I forget all about them within a few weeks.

 

[whatever I feel like]

What I can't figure out is why MS are releasing Halo : MCC on Windows, and on the Steam store of all places, not just the dead but won't lie down Windows Store

https://www.windowscentral.com/when-halo-master-chief-collection-pc-release-date


Are they just trying to ring some more cash out of the older instalments Halo franchise with PC users, or is this part of a pivot from XBox to PC?

As far as Atari goes I'd love it if it rose, phoenix like from the ashes. But then I realise that Atari was hollowed out by Infogrames who now walk around wearing its skin.

Microsoft isn't so much abandoning Xbox as it is shooting for a future of cloud gaming. Their massive servers are, after all, the only business advantage they have in the market. If people buy Xbox Live Gold or whatever its called now for use on the PC thats fine with Microsoft, they get your ten dollars a month either way. Or, alternatively, they get your money for buying single games, specifically. Its also a good way to keep brand awareness up. They want people to switch over to their system, but Halo and Xbox have both spent ten years in the wilderness at this point, if you don't make the games accessible, who is going to get hyped for them?


There was a Pacter Factor about this a month or two ago and, while I don't put much stock in his views on individual games (he is the epitome of pleb) he does know a bit about how the trends in the business are going. It is his opinion, and I believe that his reasoning is sensible, that most of these game streaming services will fail. It is impossible for the companies selling the services to charge enough to make a profit AND fairly pay for a large amount of AAA games. Netflix lucked out on buying the rights to content that rights holders thought was near worthless a decade ago. Nobody thinks that of their libraries anymore, these services will have a very hard time convincing games companies to turn their catalogs over for what might amount to five dollars or less per person playing their 60 dollar game. And if there's multiple competing services? Well your average gamer isn't going to subscribe to all or even most of them. Its not a sustainable market unless you have a large stable of your own stuff, complete with regular new releases.

 

[Gustav Schuchardt]

ms has all but given up on consoles. that's why they are doing what they are doing.
Nobody buys their shit outside the US.

Funny thing is they could fix all their problems if they transitioned Windows from being a trojan horse to try to save their failed mobile efforts to a trojan horse to take over from their failing console business.

Basically get rid of all the Metro/Modern App shit and instead make it look like a good OS for desktop Windows applications and games. Like Windows 7 used to be.

Actually one of the interesting things about Halo : MCC PC release is that not only is it releasing on Steam, it's going to run on Windows 7 too, presumably because if you look at the Steam hardware survey Windows 7 still has 23% market share.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=pc

Actually it still seems like an odd decision on MS's part to me when you can get unactivated Windows 10 for free and a CD key for $10 or so. Mind you I can see why some people are still running Windows 7 despite MS loudly announcing that it's going to be killed off Real Soon Now. Anything post Windows 7 sucks, it's just a question of how much.

It's actually funny how MS have screwed the pooch. They had a mobile OS which was failing so they added lots of mobile crap to Windows 8 which literally 100% of the world's population ended up despising. They then made a big show of skipping a Windows 9 release in favour of 10, which turned out to be a fairly minor fix of 8. Their mobile attempts failed. They tried to tie Halo to XBox. Xbox is now failing. All the post Bungie Halo games look terrible to me.

So now they're trying to sail the sinking ship that is Halo back to the sinking ship that is Windows away from the even more quickly sinking ship that is XBox.

Windows was the only thing that they've got which is popular, and even there everyone is either running an unactivated copy, paying $10 to a dubious reseller or buying a laptop with it on, which probably doesn't make MS all that much cash.

Office has been ruined with ribbon bars and Office 365 to the point that LibreOffice is actually less irritating. No one uses their cloud services or search engine. They've given up trying to make browsers.

 

[Marissa Moira]

I just want Microsoft to sell off the Rare IPs, I don't care to who, be it Sony or Nintendo.

It would probably wind up being THQ Nordic or some bullshit company tho and not a real deal developer or publisher.

We live in a world where Bubsy already has his third new game announced.

Also Microsoft has been acting retarded because they're now all being run by marketers.

Steve Jobs is 100% correct on Marketing People, they're a blight.

 

[Marco Fucko]

The Atari re-introduction is essentially a short term money play from a company that bought the name and is using what is probably a stolen open source emulator slapped into a plastic shell, I have no idea why OP put that in there with the big 3.

But yes, Nintendo is strong because they are Nintendo. While Sony and Microsoft ebb and flow against each other, Nintendo has been playing a different game since the Wii did gangbusters. Would some love for them to have comparable hardware and better relationships with foreign third parties? Definitely. But so many others want the new first party titles, contract third party ones (pokemon, fire emblem, etc) and whatever weird experience shows up on only a Nintendo console these days.

Xbox 360 was the obvious choice for American consumers due to PS3's high price and lower average resolution/performance, then MS shat the bed with the One, making people flock to PS4. Now that Sony is shitting the bed with censorchip and MS has dedicated this generation to a grand apology tour, things will probably end up more evenly split come PS5 v Scarlet.

As for Google? I see this potentially going the way of other big tech entry devices, like Microsoft's Kin, or Apple's console. The lag is considerable on optimized systems, let alone the unoptimized conditions of an actual home. I think nVidia is actually working on a similar concept as the Stadia, so it really isn't even a unique product.

EDIT: I looked over my post and realized I mistook a shitty Microsoft phone for one by Google.

 

[whatever I feel like]

There are like five companies or more trying to do the same thing as Stadia.

 

[GentlemanFaggot]

Weird , I always find symphonia mediocre and one of worst in terms of world and story(as you say,maybe is the nostalgia). It feels like they try to hard to be " the FFX of the GameCube" that they fail.

Most of their character asides the 2 protagonist are mediocre , the worldbuilding is mediocre compared with Abyss, and the world is a letdown compared to how bright it looked Eternia's world.

I liked Abyss the most back then, but it's probably aged just as bad.

Symphonia, I enjoyed the gameplay when it came out but always thought the characters were shallow. I think it went beyond marketing it as the FFX of the Gamecube and it was almost an outright plagiarism with how similar the basic plots are: Playing as a member of a voyage to escort a chosen one somewhere and

Spoiler

PLOT TWIST! She's gonna die if you follow the plan.

I think it avoided plagiarism a tad by having the second part of the game go in a different direction. But it always unsettled me a little.

 

[Marissa Moira]

The Atari re-introduction is essentially a short term money play from a company that bought the name and is using what is probably a stolen open source emulator slapped into a plastic shell, I have no idea why OP put that in there with the big 3.

But yes, Nintendo is strong because they are Nintendo. While Sony and Microsoft ebb and flow against each other, Nintendo has been playing a different game since the Wii did gangbusters. Would some love for them to have comparable hardware and better relationships with foreign third parties? Definitely. But so many others want the new first party titles, contract third party ones (pokemon, fire emblem, etc) and whatever weird experience shows up on only a Nintendo console these days.

Xbox 360 was the obvious choice for American consumers due to PS3's high price and lower average resolution/performance, then MS shat the bed with the One, making people flock to PS4. Now that Sony is shitting the bed with censorchip and MS has dedicated this generation to a grand apology tour, things will probably end up more evenly split come PS5 v Scarlet.

As for Google? I see this potentially going the way of other google devices, like their pre-Android phone, or Apple's console. The lag is considerable on optimized systems, let alone the unoptimized conditions of an actual home. I think nVidia is actually working on a similar concept as the Stadia, so it really isn't even a unique product.

Sony really isn't shitting the bed with censorship at all though. The affected games are stuff that actual weebs won't even touch, they're not even stuff that japanese citizens want. The only people who are really making noise are Outrage Clickbait sites and ironic weebs who have no intrest in actual games and just want porn or a fake nerds and just scream about censorship because that's what the group is doing.

Kingdom hearts 3 broke series sales records, if sony was shitting the bed it would have not sold well at all. Fuck Kingdom hearts 3 was just one in a series of games series that all broke records in the last six months due to playstation alone.

Honestly my whole theory on the censorship is that they created the position for someone's retarded child who got their position through nepotism. No skills but the retard child posts on social media all day and she's woke like her lesbian mommy who does big girl marketing for sony.

They scream and bitch and management gives her crotch spawn a job to make herself feel important. Meanwhile the big brain people try to tie this in with their business deals with china so the chinese feel secure that nobody is going to flash a picture of winnie the pooh during any of the games and sony has their TOP MEN doubly checking over a a game.

This is so they don't have to open their doors for tencent. So the people with sense just let this Chromosome Hog put her stamp of disapproval over stuff that the fucking Japanese don't even want, while hiding the good games from her.

I mean notice every time censorship has been enacted for games it's been far more efficient and they go after major series and make a big deal about it? Every title that's been touched over the last 8 months is crap in every way. Like this is the worst form of censorship because it's not even working. It's a policy paradox, like "if a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it" type of paradox. If you censor a game that nobody was going to buy in the first place is anyone going to care?

The VN devs who made a big stink about submitting shit in english were full of it because 4 months later they put out a fucking sequel to their magic cat visual novel on the playstation 4 with no difference between that version and the switch one and yeah both had tits in full view.

 

[whatever I feel like]

The censorship is because Sony of America got world-wide control over the standards. In the old days those games would have been allowed in Japan but got some censorship in the US. It is partially a reaction to MeToo. And, ironically, its stemming from the same source as Vic getting Kicked. Oh well...

edit: And its not like none of the games were popular, Senran Kagura did really well in Japan for some retarded reason. Now its basically not going to get made anymore.

 

[Foxxo]

Nintendo found in the Gamecube days that it needed a unique niche to thrive in, something it would be a leader in, even if it was the only thing in that market that had any quality whatsoever. As long as they're polarized against the other major companies and there are still people who can afford more than one game system, they'll do alright. They have enough money to completely fail another generation too, though.

Also, after the VirtualBoy & the 3DS' AR, I doubt Nintendo will ever do another VR project. They're late to the boat anyway; the most they could do to keep up is fix the VB and remake the O.G. Mario Tennis.

 

[Marissa Moira]

The censorship is because Sony of America got world-wide control over the standards. In the old days those games would have been allowed in Japan but got some censorship in the US. It is partially a reaction to MeToo. And, ironically, its stemming from the same source as Vic getting Kicked. Oh well...

edit: And its not like none of the games were popular, Senran Kagura did really well in Japan for some exceptional reason. Now its basically not going to get made anymore.

Eh the last few installments of Sk really didn't do well and the anime was a disaster on every front. The Uncensored version of Burst Renewal bombed and that really sealed the fate that the series needed change. XSeed/Marvelous agreed for Seven to be co-funded with Sony after Xseed lost the rights to both Cold Steel, Ys and all the remaining Trails series. NIS/NISA are supposedly going to do all previous and future games of Trails including a rumored reworked translation of Trails in the Sky Trilogy as well as stuff like AO. So Xseed/Marvelous is fucked since it lost most of their catalogue.

Senran kagura 7 is supposed dropping the Dynasty Warriors combat system and will have entirely new character rigs and models as well as a new engine. The production values are going to go noticeably up and it seems they can afford to get actual talent this time.

I should also mention that Xseed was well in financial trouble for years, what hurt them bad was when they dubbed Akiba's Beat. They spent far too much money on the dub and it was so expensive and they touted it as a good thing by saying BIGGEST DUB EVAAARRR!!!!! However the game bombed because it was awful and they have been in the red because of that. It effected everything including the shit that they were supposed to put out by other publishers, that's why Falcom went with NISA. NISA then made ys8 sell the most copies of any falcom title ever and then falcom severed all ties with Xseed. The Falcom titles Xseed still has the rights for are supposed to run out within a year or so if i understand right. So stuff like YsSeven, Memories of Celceta, Oath, all will go back to Falcom and they'll hand them over to NISA.

Xseed is doing one last thing by printing physical copies of Trails of Cold Steel 1 and 2 for the PS4 with the improved dub and all the DLC included. Those are the last Falcom titles that are going to be under Xseed.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

Also, after the VirtualBoy & the 3DS' AR, I doubt Nintendo will ever do another VR project. They're late to the boat anyway; the most they could do to keep up is fix the VB and remake the O.G. Mario Tennis.

Nintendo has started trying VR out again with the Labo VR kit if that counts, so I wouldn't be shocked if they're at least considering it because Nintendo loves trying to innovate just for the sake of saying they tried.

 

[TokiBun]

I only purchase Nintendo stuff because they have multiple properties I'm willing to buy games from. Any games I'd want that are on the XBOX One or PS4 I'd just buy on a steam and play using my laptop instead. With Nintendo I know when another console comes out I'll go back to their older consoles and still play games I bought for them.

 

[vertexwindi]

Also Microsoft has been acting exceptional because they're now all being run by marketers.

Pic very much related.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Pic very much related.

Link seems to be broken