RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS - CON SEASON

[Chilloutman]

I think even if Diablo 4 would be like D2 again, at highest I would play through it only once... just like D3. I've grown out of that gameplay and it isn't as much fun to me anymore as 15 or what years ago.

 

Quite opposite for me, I really liked D1 and D2 but I was really not impressed with D3 at all, from visuals, to always online, to fiasco with real cash market...

[Malcador]

its not surprising tho in relation to latest comments from Blizz that they are going to focus on mobile games

Well, is a huge revenue area that they're not fully exploiting, no?

[Chilloutman]

 

its not surprising tho in relation to latest comments from Blizz that they are going to focus on mobile games

Well, is a huge revenue area that they're not fully exploiting, no?

 

 

Sure, again I don't care, I use my phone for calls, sms, and sometimes news on iternet. But to each his own I say

[Chilloutman]

I can stand term 'monetisation' in gaming world. Why someone even need to debate that? You make game - we buy it, end of monetisation

[Malcador]

I can stand term 'monetisation' in gaming world. Why someone even need to debate that? You make game - we buy it, end of monetisation

Because people give them money for the microtransaction stuff. If people want to pay you, take their money

[SonicMage117]

Ubisoft lucritively defends loot boxes, blames gamers for all industry's mistakes. Sound familiar?

 

 

Edit:

 

Actually the more that I think about it, the more I relize that Ubisoft is very smart with what they said, they're not wrong.

Edited November 23, 2018 by SonicMage117

[injurai]

 

Some credible info about Diablo 3 and Diablo 4 development at Blizzard, courtesy of the poster Fusion at Battlenet, and of course Kotaku:

https://kotaku.com/the-past-present-and-future-of-diablo-1830593195

 

 

• DIII originally planned to have two expansions but since it was perceived a "failure" after launch Blizzard decided to scrap the second one before seeing how Reaper of Souls performed to jump straight into D4 development.
• D4 started in 2014 as Project hades. over the should point of view, dark souls inspired title. Was scraped around 2016.
• D4's second iteration code named Fenris started around 2016. Want to make it dark, scary atmosphere like DII, remove cartoony graphics. Not sure if they want to do over the shoulder or isometric camera. (how can this even be an argument)
• much more. see below.

  Even as speculation this already relieves me so much.

  Pretty sad that this journalist has provided us more information than Blizzard has though.

 

 

Wow, project Hades is an obvious mistake. Even the Souls genre is niche and waning. Let's hope project Fenris isn't canned.

[Chilloutman]

all those blizz 'leaks' sounds more like a damage control to me

[Malcador]

Curious damage control to slate your management, though.

[Orogun01]

Ubisoft lucritively defends loot boxes, blames gamers for all industry's mistakes. Sound familiar?

 

 

Edit:

 

Actually the more that I think about it, the more I relize that Ubisoft is very smart with what they said, they're not wrong.

Ubisoft made most of its revenue last year from "Player Recurring Investment", why should they stop if people are buying them?

Plus if the games are so compromised by the inclusion of microtransactions you can easily not buy them.

I don't get the rage over this stuff and getting the government involved is just going end up backfiring.

 

https://gamerant.com/ubisoft-microtransaction-sales/

[Keyrock]

Hot taek: Titan Quest > Diablo 2. Grim Dawn > *

[Zoraptor]

Curious damage control to slate your management, though.

 

It's not like Robert Kotick esquire has any rep to lose with gamers, indeed he seems to enjoy being disliked by them. No one is going to remove management just because gamers hate them or there wouldn't be any management. In which case everyone would be Valve and we'd get tremendous non monetised deep SP games with all the features people want like Artifact instead.

 

The people whose opinion of Bobby K does count care about the share price and dividends, they couldn't care less about any backlash so long as sales hold up, and they read wsj/ ft etc instead of Kotaku or Polygon.

Edited November 23, 2018 by Zoraptor

[Malcador]

True, but I'd just assume there's no game being played with the article. Will have to see what the Diablo community is saying, always worth a laugh - read Brevik referred to as a 'titan of the industry' a week ago, for example. Dev hell and reboots in dev seem to be a theme with Blizzard - worked out okay for Titan and WC3 though (again, sort of curious marketing as it sounds as lower tier management has issues).

Edited November 23, 2018 by Malcador

[Lexx]

So I just found out that playing multiplayer on PS4 costs money. You have to spend like 8€ / month for a PS-Plus membership. Damn, console peasants are getting milked like crazy. Everything costs muchos monetos.

[SonicMage117]

Another reason I never really play alotta online games (with the exception of a few on pc). I'd never pay for subscriptions for something like WoW either, no matter how good the game is considered.

[213374U]

Ubisoft made most of its revenue last year from "Player Recurring Investment", why should they stop if people are buying them?

Plus if the games are so compromised by the inclusion of microtransactions you can easily not buy them.

I don't get the rage over this stuff and getting the government involved is just going end up backfiring.

 

https://gamerant.com/ubisoft-microtransaction-sales/

EA is the same. I guess any major publisher with a GaaS/MTX scheme is going to report more or less the same result. They can't stop because if they do, their market position may be compromised and then they risk being bought out by someone bigger... who in all likelihood engages in those practices anyway.

 

And if they don't stop, they'll be the ones buying studios up, milking them for all they are worth, and running them into the ground. Win/win scenario, right?

 

In any case, the idea is to cater to rich people by giving them the means to also display status symbols online and "stand out from the crowd"—that's literally the raison d'être of luxury items. You can only have this e-lambo if you open the $10k worth of lootboxes that we estimate it'll cost you to get it, based on drop odds.

[Orogun01]

 

Ubisoft made most of its revenue last year from "Player Recurring Investment", why should they stop if people are buying them?

Plus if the games are so compromised by the inclusion of microtransactions you can easily not buy them.

I don't get the rage over this stuff and getting the government involved is just going end up backfiring.

 

https://gamerant.com/ubisoft-microtransaction-sales/

EA is the same. I guess any major publisher with a GaaS/MTX scheme is going to report more or less the same result. They can't stop because if they do, their market position may be compromised and then they risk being bought out by someone bigger... who in all likelihood engages in those practices anyway.

 

And if they don't stop, they'll be the ones buying studios up, milking them for all they are worth, and running them into the ground. Win/win scenario, right?

 

In any case, the idea is to cater to rich people by giving them the means to also display status symbols online and "stand out from the crowd"—that's literally the raison d'être of luxury items. You can only have this e-lambo if you open the $10k worth of lootboxes that we estimate it'll cost you to get it, based on drop odds.

 

Except that a lot of those companies did get bought out by someone bigger. Tencent comes to mind since they had one of the biggest revenues last year in the industry and they own various stock on game developer studios. Microtransactions work well because of the relative low cost of production vs the high sell value, I don't see studios abandoning them anytime soon, although I don't know where that leaves pure single player experiences. Luckily there are a lot of mid level studios covering that market.

 

Additionally with Microsoft beginning to acquire studios I wonder if other big companies that want to start developing their own content will follow suit. Amazon also bought out some studios but no one of consequence. I guess we will likely see a period of expansion for smaller companies followed by consolidation as they're absorbed by the bigger studios. Kinda of a repeat of the era of 2005 to 2011.

[marelooke]

SkillUp's Fallout 76 review dropped. And hoooo boy...

[Keyrock]

So I just found out that playing multiplayer on PS4 costs money. You have to spend like 8€ / month for a PS-Plus membership. Damn, console peasants are getting milked like crazy. Everything costs muchos monetos.

Buying a whole year of PS Plus at a time is by far the cheapest option and you do get free games every month, good ones too. Still does suck to have to pay for multiplayer though.

 

If you just signed up snag Yakuza Kiwami, Bulletstorm, and Roundabout before the month is up. Just add them to your account and they're yours forever. You can download them whenever.

Edited November 24, 2018 by Keyrock

[Vitalis]

 

So I just found out that playing multiplayer on PS4 costs money. You have to spend like 8€ / month for a PS-Plus membership. Damn, console peasants are getting milked like crazy. Everything costs muchos monetos.

Buying a whole year of PS Plus at a time is by far the cheapest option and you do get free games every month, good ones too. Still does suck to have to pay for multiplayer though.

 

If you just signed up snag Yakuza Kiwami, Bulletstorm, and Roundabout before the month is up. Just add them to your account and they're yours forever. You can download them whenever.

I was under the impression that the games disappeared if your subscription ran out.

[SonicMage117]

I was under the impression that the games disappeared if your subscription ran out.

That is what happened with me on PS3, couldn't play the 30 games I got "free", had my PS4 since launch but haven't ever had PS+ on it so I'm not too certain if it operates the same or non.

[Katphood]

The games are yours to keep but you can only play them so long as you have an active PS Plus subscription. It's 60 bucks a year.

Edited November 24, 2018 by Katphood

[Chilloutman]

hah sounds helluva like ransom

[Lexx]

Sadly I don't play enough (console) games for that. Hell, I rarely play games anyway. Usually I'm just working on my projects and then won't have time to do anything else.

[Mamoulian War]

hah sounds helluva like ransom

Well that’s typical subscription model, which makes all of the actiUbiEaT2 execs wet all night long...