Video Game Industry BS (AKA, GamerGate Thread 2.0)

The perennial speculation that Microsoft is exiting the console market is flaring up again. This time, it’s being driven not just by Xbox’s market share, but by moves on Microsoft’s part that some people find suspicious. Bringing its first party content over to Playstation and, to an extent, Nintendo platforms and its moves to unite Windows Gaming with Xbox have people concerned that Xbox is just going to be a PC launcher from the next hardware gen on. This didn’t do anything to quell those concerns.

Microsoft says that it isn’t happening, but of course they would. They still want to sell units in this hardware cycle.

I know ya’ll heard about the Kingdom Come: Deliverance II drama at the moment. I’m here to tell you:

Don’t be too worried boys, I sincerely doubt it’s “gone woke”.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance was famous for being an unapologetically faithful depicition of life in Medieval Bolivia
They were straight up like:

“Well of COURSE there are no black people in this game! Black people weren’t living in Bolivia back then!”

By contrast: homosexuality has been around - for better or worse - since before recorded history. So until you hear rumours of random African NPCs, I wouldn’t be too concerned. Knowing the devs, this is probably part of some subplot or quest to have them executed for sodomy.

Keep in mind that Warhorse Studios is full of devs who left CD Projekt Red because of the woke garbage now pervasive in that company…I sincerely doubt they did that only to support what they ran away from in the first place.

There are forces within the AAA space that are drooling for GTA6 to normalize up to $100 as the base price for Western games. There are still going to be the premium, deluxe, and higher packages after that, of course. If other companies that don’t have ‘Grand Theft Auto 6’ on the cover try to get in on that, Asian devs will swiftly bury them.

Not two weeks after getting a new Japanese CEO, Sony fires an unknown number of Californians. Hopefully this is a sign that the company is going back to being entertainment focused.

Ubisoft stock is down over 7% one day after AC: Shadows released. Shadows hasn’t hit 50,000 concurrent players on Steam, despite being a day one Steam release. Veilguard at least hit 89,000 players, and that was regarded as a catastrophe.

Ubisoft has been bought into further by Tencent. They are forming a new subsidiary of Ubisoft 1/4 controlled by Tencent that only does AC, Farcry, and Rainbow Six. Ubi’s absurd workforce of nearly 19,000 is likely to face deep cuts soon. What happens to Ubisoft’s other IPs hasn’t been made clear yet.

The U.S. patent office rejected 22 of the 23 patents Nintendo was suing PocketPair over. The case is now just about Nintendo’s patent on thrown items that capture monsters, which can then deploy them directionally.

Polygon has just been sold off and most of its employees seem to have been let go. It was bought by Valnet, owner of TheGamer and GameRant, so I don’t expect a change in editorial direction. Clearing out the Polygon writers probably has more to do with overhead.

Giant Bomb has also effectively ceased operating as of today. It’s ostensibly still going, but it’s been hollowed out and is on pause. It may be brought back in some form, or Fandom may just shutter it in a while. Either way, Giant Bomb’s done in its current form.

Microsoft laid off about 7,000 people a few days ago. Around 1,900 of those layoffs hit Xbox, Bethesda, and Activision Blizzard.

Mario Kart World has just released, priced at $80 USD, and seems to be selling well. The Outer Worlds 2 has also been announced, priced at $80 USD.

Many people across the internet have spent the past two weeks complaining about it, but it appears as though $80 has been normalized the standard price for AAA games going forward.

@Twiface
All the more reason for people to stop buying the new trash.

They can only normalise it if idiots still actually buy the things. There are so many older games that are of far superior quality that they can play instead.

Never buy full price. Wait for a sale. You waited years for the release, you can wait another month or few.

@Anonymous #A6A0
The problem there is that some companies rather stubbornly hold out on high prices - looking at Nintendo specifically with that one.

People just need to discipline themselves into being willing to not pay for it at all until companies start being more reasonable, even if that means waiting a few more years, ten more years even. XP

They can be forced to capitulate eventually, but not unless people are willing to wait as long as it takes for the asking price to drop, to be willing to potentially deprive themselves of “the big new game” indefinitely if needs must.

I am finding myself getting away from AAA games more and more. They all feel so similar now. I play almost exclusively Switch (I’m not getting a Switch 2 for a year or two). But I’m also stuck with my studies and I’ve been procrastinating a lot last week and I have to make up for it this one.

Almost 3,000 Switch 2’s were stolen from a truck in Texas.

@ANoobis
Where in Texas?

EA is being purchased for $55B. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is one of the parties acquiring it. Once the sale is finalized, EA will no longer be a publicly traded company.

@ANoobis
I wonder who the other 1 or 2 primary buyers are…

@Anonymous #C28B
Silver Lake Technology Management, L.L.C., a private equity firm based in California, and Affinity Partners, Jared Kushner’s investment firm.

Ubisoft and Tencent’s first joint venture, Vantage Studios, just went into operation. Vantage is now handling Far Cry, Assassin’s Creed, and Rainbow Six.

@ANoobis
And here I thought it couldn’t be any worse then letting ze French handle things…I forgot that China is always waiting in the wings to pounce on unsuspecting companies…

To everyone: Please don’t purchase any more Far Cry, Ass Cred or Rainbow Six games…every penny will go towards Winnie the Pooh’s planned Invasion of Taiwan. >.<

To me, the last good game in the Far Cry series was FC 3 or maybe 4. Rainbow Six stopped being good somewhere around the Xbox 360/Wii/PS3 era, and Assassin’s Creed hasn’t been good since Black flag or so. Yeah, even worse than EA and Zenimax.

The rumors that Xbox is getting out of the console market are back. This time, people seem to be taking them much more seriously, since they originated with a leak from someone who is supposed to be a Microsoft insider. Even if Microsoft doesn’t want to follow Sega’s example, it might just be time to anyway. Xbox sales are so weak that retailers are phasing out their Xbox stock, and their first-party titles are multi-plat now.

The game journos are already lining up to declare the Hogwarts Legacy sequel boycott. I don’t even know why. The first one had a trans character, allowed you to play a trans character, and ran the population of 1800s Scotland through a 2020s California-compliance filter. I doubt the second one will do anything different.