Microsoft buys Bethesda for 7.5 billion.

including a lot of cool Japanese games.
but those few games like Halo and Lost Odissey would have been on playstation or nintendo consoles, Halo was already on pc. The gaming world really didn't need a third console in the console wars, much less an american one, it was all for the worst. MS could have just focused on expanding PC gaming and rts games for that already existing niche. Shooters were always better on PC anyways.

However once the scales tipped in favor of the western market during the 7th gen things got worse and today it would be better if videogames had remained a primarily Japanese thing.
Amen

I wish things could have stayed in that healthy equilibrium between east and west it had during the 6th gen, where you had your dudebro shooters like Halo but also your weird Japanese games like Katamari Damacy.
6th was the last truly fantastic gen. Probably the best one really, 5th and 6th seem like it could only get better and better for videogames.
 
but those few games like Halo and Lost Odissey would have been on playstation or nintendo consoles, Halo was already on pc. The gaming world really didn't need a third console in the console wars, much less an american one, it was all for the worst. MS could have just focused on expanding PC gaming and rts games for that already existing niche. Shooters were always better on PC anyways.


Amen


6th was the last truly fantastic gen. Probably the best one really, 5th and 6th seem like it could only get better and better for videogames.

Like I said, in the early days the Xbox was cool and I have a lot of fond memories of it, but in the long run yeah I wish games hadn’t gotten so westernized.

The 6th gen was without a doubt the best gen because it struck the best balance between everything.
 
Video games never were a strictly japanese thing. You always had a fuckton of western developers for the PC, it's just their presence was greater due to PC and Consoles now getting ports of the same games since both could keep up with each other.

What happened was consoles and PCs wound up merging somewhat which what changed the dynamic.

Also there's weird shit happening with Konami. Sony is apparently funding or either buying their IPs


Konami did a very good job with the TG-16 mini, but if a full on revival or buyout happens that's going to be interesting.
 
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Not gonna happen for multiple reasons.

Sega is part of SEGA Sammy, a publically traded coorporation. This means that the announcement of a potential SEGA acquisition would require Sammy and it would be announced in a business press conference or board room, not on Twitter. It would be known months in advance, like when Ubisoft was almost victim of a hostile takeover years ago. It wouldn't be as intense, but it would be public knowledge.

Sega Sammy has pachinko and anime subsidiaries. I don't believe Microsoft wants to get into those businesses just for Sega.

At most, you might get a collaberation and not an outright acquisition.
Isn't there also a Japanese law where a company there cannot be bought out by a foreign entity?
 
Seventh gen could've been much more if games didn't just focus on graphics at the expense of content.

And graphics that were inconsistent and in some cases not really much better than the prior gen's to boot.

Basically the way it often worked was 7th gen games had fancier effects, but often blurrier textures than some 6th gen games.

One good example of that is to look at Free Radical's Haze, which looked like total shit compared to Timesplitter's 2 and Future Perfect (part of this is due to art direction though)

That's one thing that's been nice about current video games though is that we have the best of both worlds, all the fancy effects but with the return of sharp textures.
 
If Sony buys SEGA, Total War is dead.
Total War has been dead for years now. It got diseased when Sega got its grubby paws on the property, and the disease became terminal with the development of Rome II. It's not a good sign that the most successful games they've released since then seem to owe their popularity to courting specific large audiences, like the Warhammer fanbase and Chyna, rather than to gameplay. Because that's been dumbed down and casualized to the point that nu-TW games resemble Battle for Middle-Earth with a campaign map.
All the people that made New Vegas what it was aren't at Obsidian and even if they were some of those people (Cuck Avellone especially) have changed for the worse.
Exactly. I think Sawyer is the only productive member of the period left atm, and its not like he's been sitting in stasis for the past few years. New Vegas worked (bugs and all) because it was developed in a sweet spot. It was made before woke "writing" and corporate grift really started to make its presence in gaming known, and it was made by a combination of pedigreed old-timers who weren't stuck up their own asses, and new talent that was given enough freedom to do its own thing. Even then, you could already start to see some rot set in with the expansions. Assuming that replicating the game is a given after nearly a decade of changes in every possible aspect of the industry is fucking delusional.
Obsidian no longer has Chris Avellone, so don't expect any of their games to be particularly good.
It's not up to one man, honestly. New Vegas was an ensemble effort, a lot of no-name scene editors contributed heavily to the atmosphere. There's a great channel of a guy interviewing these more obscure developers on their contributions. Also, Avellone's writing was at its best when he was kept on a leash. He was allowed to indulge himself creatively in OWB and LR, and those are generally regarded as the most controversial expansions because of that.
 
It's not up to one man, honestly. New Vegas was an ensemble effort, a lot of no-name scene editors contributed heavily to the atmosphere. There's a great channel of a guy interviewing these more obscure developers on their contributions. Also, Avellone's writing was at its best when he was kept on a leash. He was allowed to indulge himself creatively in OWB and LR, and those are generally regarded as the most controversial expansions because of that.
Leash or not, Avellone was the golden goose, and he's been #MeToo'd (and worst of all, he just rolled over and took it like a bitch), so the era of games with Planescape Torment-level writing is basically over.
 
Isn't there also a Japanese law where a company there cannot be bought out by a foreign entity?
Nope. Sharp was recently bought by a Taiwanese Company. Tango Gameworks is also a Japanese company that has now been bought by a western company fucking twice. It's hysterically ironic that Shinji Mikami works for them now too. RE4 was almost an Original Xbox exclusive but when the meeting between Mikami and Xbox Japan happened Mikami asked what their vision was for the Xbox, the guys who worked at Xbox JP fucked up the translation or something which led to Mikami leaving thinking they had no vision. After he made the deal with Nintendo he learned what they were supposed to say and said he would have signed immediately. A shitton of things about this is ironic though
-The whole Mikami situation
-Brian Fargo getting fucked over with Van Buren but now being in the same org as Todd
-Obsidian and the whole New Vegas situation now being a sister studio to Bethesda
-Compulsion is led by a guy who used to work at Arkane
-Obsidian basically making a Fallout clone and an Elder Scrolls clone but now being in the same org as the games they're cloning
-Fable without Peter Molyneux but now they have another guy known for lying about RPGs with Todd
-Xbox owns two IPs that are timed exclusive to Playstation
-They let 343 build a new engine to replace the broken as fuck BLAM! engine only to get a vastly superior engine with IDtech shortly after
-Finally got a Japanese studio and it only costed them 7.5 billion dollars
 
Remember when Microsoft bought Rare and then prevented them from doing anything outside re-releases/remakes and kinect bullshit especially since games like BK:Nuts'n'Bolts didn't do too well?

Anyone that thinks Microsoft is going to give Bethesda any better treatment than they did with Rare is :optimistic: as fuck. This is the same company that keeps breaking their Windows OS with each new update. This is the same company that hyped up SSD's for their newest console like it's the newest hot shit when SSD's have been around years before. This is the same company that didn't give a shit about the warnings their programmers/engineers were giving them about the 360 and shipped them out anyway resulting in the RRoD fiasco because "OH DUUUUUUR compacting everything in a tiny space makes things overheat".
Correct me if i am wrong but wasn't rare given full creative freedom for banjo nuts&bolts btw would recommend matt mcmuscles vid on it also forget to mention microsoft introduceing the onilne membership crap we have today
 
Correct me if i am wrong but wasn't rare given full creative freedom for banjo nuts&bolts btw would recommend matt mcmuscles vid on it also forget to mention microsoft introduceing the onilne membership crap we have today
I'm not saying Rare is excluded from criticism on their own. This is the same company that thought Battletoads NES was good enough to ship out even though the difficulty in that game was so retarded, the Japanese had to fix their mistakes
 
Total War has been dead for years now. It got diseased when Sega got its grubby paws on the property, and the disease became terminal with the development of Rome II. It's not a good sign that the most successful games they've released since then seem to owe their popularity to courting specific large audiences, like the Warhammer fanbase and Chyna, rather than to gameplay. Because that's been dumbed down and casualized to the point that nu-TW games resemble Battle for Middle-Earth with a campaign map.

Which is a good thing, because if you want to make a tactics and probabilities spreadsheet before entering combat, you should be playing crusader kings anyway. Total war has never been better than it is today, and the ones who yearn for the "glory" days need to go back to fucking empire and live with that shitshow for a few weeks.

AFAIK, total war has never been more popular or sold more copies than the last few releases, but more popular equals worse to brokebrains.
 
Which is a good thing, because if you want to make a tactics and probabilities spreadsheet before entering combat, you should be playing crusader kings anyway. Total war has never been better than it is today, and the ones who yearn for the "glory" days need to go back to fucking empire and live with that shitshow for a few weeks.

AFAIK, total war has never been more popular or sold more copies than the last few releases, but more popular equals worse to brokebrains.

Yeah, I was a bit confused by the previous post. Rome 2 is FAR more complicated than Rome 1. I don't know how in any way it could be considered "dumb downed" or for casuals.

I remember Empire as well. That game had tons of great ideas. But, the column warfare and naval engagements were janky as fuck...
 
Which is a good thing, because if you want to make a tactics and probabilities spreadsheet before entering combat, you should be playing crusader kings anyway. Total war has never been better than it is today, and the ones who yearn for the "glory" days need to go back to fucking empire and live with that shitshow for a few weeks.

AFAIK, total war has never been more popular or sold more copies than the last few releases, but more popular equals worse to brokebrains.
lol dude Empire was the shitshow that it was precisely because Creative Assembly was so consistent up until that point. Even so, Napoleon was much better and Shogun 2 was excellent. I didn't know that never being better than it is today meant broken as fuck games like Attila and Thrones of Britannia or gimmick shit like Troy.
 
-Brian Fargo getting fucked over with Van Buren but now being in the same org as Todd
-Obsidian and the whole New Vegas situation now being a sister studio to Bethesda
-Obsidian basically making a Fallout clone and an Elder Scrolls clone but now being in the same org as the games they're cloning

That is all hilariously ironic, but does this mean that Fallout 5, or at least some type of Fallout spinoff, could now be made with the involvement of Brian Fargo, Leonard Boyarsky, Tim Cain and Jason D. Anderson? That's a very exciting idea as a matter of fact.
 
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