Xbox Mega FTC leak catastrophe mega thread

[Red flaming panda]

Yeah I'm late
But fuck you Phil for even suggesting buying out Nintendo and Valve
Nobody want's you or Microsoft owning most of the video game market you greedy fucks

 

[ShitLurker]

Nothing in this leaks is that surprising to me except for the undercurrent of panic and dread that permeates all of it. How they are aware they have a ton of studios doing fucking nothing, how they knew that having 18 months of nothing was a problem, how their only product to show was Redfall. And well, of course, good ol fashioned hubris, the BD3 thing is a fantastic self goal.

Console gaming has really died this generation. Only appealing console is the Switch and I can emulate enough of it's catalog well enough with a steam deck to just go there. There is zero appeal to me to buy a streaming licensing box which is what they want to sell you now. I'm fine with my desktop and my small PC where I can at least jam whatever the fuck I want in there and even if Steam suddenly revokes my license (please Gabe, live a long prosperous life) I should still be able to crack all of my games with little effort, and not depend on my magic box working.

 

[11 Herbs and Spices]

I don't get the outright obsession with making game streaming a thing. The infrastructure for it wasn't there when it came out. It wasn't there when the Stadia died. It's not there now. Outside of podpeople in a megacity at the moment, there's no one that can even utilize it at anything close to decent use cases. Is it just marketing huffing their own copium about the infinite growth of subscribers that has been proven to be lie after lie by every subscription service in the last year? Or is it just the latest infinite growth .com bubble scheme to employ creative accounting?

 

[anustart76]

I don't get the outright obsession with making game streaming a thing. The infrastructure for it wasn't there when it came out. It wasn't there when the Stadia died. It's not there now. Outside of podpeople in a megacity at the moment, there's no one that can even utilize it at anything close to decent use cases. Is it just marketing huffing their own copium about the infinite growth of subscribers that has been proven to be lie after lie by every subscription service in the last year? Or is it just the latest infinite growth .com bubble scheme to employ creative accounting?

It's the "you will own nothing and be happy" ideology, like with everything else going streaming. If you don't own your media it can be changed or removed at any time.

 

[Death of an Ego]

While I get the whole console gaming thing, pop game in, press button, play game, I still think long term if you want to play games, a PC is the far better option if you have the money. You aren't going to be buying a gaming PC for what you're going to pay for a console, especially something like the switch, but you have access to a vast library of games, new and old, and you can use it for any other standard PC task. You can upgrade them and design what you want the system to be too, instead of the static design of whatever the people at X company thought was a good idea during development. The last console I bought was a PS2, and I've had several PC's since.

Regarding what M$ is doing, it's their typical attempts to monopolize everything. Someone said that they haven't been the same since the antitrust suit back in the 90's, but M$ has literally always been predatory. I remember they had a suit against them for stealing code back in the days of dos when they made MS-DOS, but times were way different back then. Linux is decent enough as a desktop that that's what I use in a dual boot with a small windows partition that links to another large SSD exclusive to games.

When it comes to the state of the games industry, the problems are twofold, in my opinion. Clueless management is a massive factor because they are focused on profit margins and keeping shareholders happy, not with actually making a product any one wants to play, that's why M$ hoovered up so many companies, they see a good product and talent and think that they will do the same kind of work, but don't understand that it's very difficult to be creative and innovate under a huge crushing corporate monolithic structure filled with NPC HR drones programmed one way. There's other aspects for sure, but that's the big one in my view.

I've kind of gotten used to the whole digital only thing, as long as you have a stable connection and don't stupidly buy games that require a connection (looking at you Diablo 3 and 4), you can play many games offline with no issues, especially if you go through a service like GOG for some stuff. Steam I've always had a love/hate relationship with, and the idea that M$ would do anything but get laughed out of any proposed deal to buy Valve is comical. Same with Ninty.

The Xbox X is actually a decent console if you look only at the potential of it's components, and ignore the shoddy way it's software and firmware run. It's theoretically the most powerful console on the market, but if it doesn't have many games, and it doesn't run the ones it has particularly well, I'm not sure why anyone would think it would be a solid investment.

 

[Left Ass Cheek]

I like Japanese media, but gaming over there has been very bad the last 2 generations, with the gacha annihilating a ton of shit

I know Gamefreak employees have admitted that they’re dumbing down the newest pokemon games because they need to compete against mobile gacha games for the average Japanese person’s free time, but that’s the only meaningful example that comes to mind where the success of gacha has thoroughly degraded the quality of a non-mobile game.

 

[Breadbassket]

I know Gamefreak employees have admitted that they’re dumbing down the newest pokemon games because they need to compete against mobile gacha games for the average Japanese person’s free time, but that’s the only meaningful example that comes to mind where the success of gacha has thoroughly degraded the quality of a non-mobile game.

Mobile gaming is a tumor upon the rest of the industry at times.

 

[ShitLurker]

I know Gamefreak employees have admitted that they’re dumbing down the newest pokemon games because they need to compete against mobile gacha games for the average Japanese person’s free time, but that’s the only meaningful example that comes to mind where the success of gacha has thoroughly degraded the quality of a non-mobile game.

Gamefreak has been shit for years and their a Pokemon game a year is one of the bigger reasons for that. I do admire that they have tried to branch out, but sounds like all of their attempts were mid at best and at this point seems like they have accepted they have nothing outside of Pokemon, so I expect it to fully devolve into Japanese FIFA.

 

[BananaSplit²]

It seems to me like they bought all these game studios/companies and just assumed that would get the cash rolling, without realizing that those studious still have to continue to make games and other products in order for any money to be made. That’s like buying a flock of chickens so you can make profit on their eggs, without realizing you have to feed them in order for them to actually lay eggs.

The additional problem is that these western studios are prone to be overstaffed and with diversity hires as well, as meritocracy has long become a foreign concept in the West. It's why western games, especially the AAA kind, suck so bad and often have terrible launches too.
It's just bleeding money at this point but I don't doubt suits can find ways to turn around between money laudering, EGS score, etc. even if it's only effective on the short-term.

By comparison Nintendo prefers to acquire individual talents from other game studios and assign them to one of their internal teams. To name a couple of examples:
Tetsuya Kobayashi (Production Manager Sonic Unleashed - Mario Kart 8: Deluxe Course Design)
Ryoichi Yamagishi (Field artist Sonic Generations - Course Design Mario Kart 8: Deluxe)
Makoto Yonezu (Lead field artist on Sonic Unleashed - Planet designer on Galaxy 2 - lead landscape artist on Zelda BOTW)
Keihan Fujii (Field artist Sonic Unleashed - Landscape Modeling Zelda BOTW)
Daisuke Amakawa (Field artist on Sonic Unleashed - Character modeling for Zelda BOTW)
Hideaki Hakozaki (Field artist on Sonic Unleashed - Producer Xenoblade Chronicles X)
Masahiro Ukai (Programmer Sonic Generations - Programmer Xenoblade Chronicles 2)
Takayuki Satou (Team Silent artist, main CGI animator who worked on Luigi's Mansion 3)
Masashi Tsubuyama (Team Silent designer, now works at Kirby games)
Daisuke Mizuma & Hideki Kinoshita (Gravity Rush programmers, now both work at Monolith and participated in Xenoblade 3)
Yoichi Akizuki (Bloodborne's lead environment, now works at Monolith too)

There is a meme in Japan that whenever a japanese studio implodes or dies, people just end up working at Nintendo. This was especially true when Sony Interactive Entairnement (SIE) shut down Japan Studio and around 40 talents were later hired by Monolith/Nintendo. Add the good pay & bonuses, prestige and, most importantly, people want to work here on games that are appreciated by their peers. There was a recent japanese article mentioning Nintendo has a retention rate of 98.8%.

That's why other Japanese publishers had to do big salary increases across the board last year, in order keep their employees in but also to attract the new blood straight out of school. The death of Playstation in Japan also resulted in young developers spending the last decade playing on Nintendo systems + PC/Steam. Xbox still remains the underdog there though in spite I've seen some attempts of marketing.

 

[ChefKiss]

. This was especially true when Sony Interactive Entairnement (SIE) shut down Japan Studio and around 40 talents were later hired by Monolith/Nintendo

It's actually insane that everyone from Playstation CAMP, their incubation company for new talent that led to games like Tokyo Jungle, Rain etc all had to leave playstation and go work on pokemon and xenoblade. Sony could have thrown them a budget and gotten a few great first party exclusive JRPGs but instead spent far more for temp exclusivity on Forspoken and to ruin Final Fantasy

 

[ScatmansWorld]

I hope the FTC and NSA get into a civil war regarding tech monopolies and all kill each other.

 

[Slav Power]

The additional problem is that these western studios are prone to be overstaffed and with diversity hires as well, as meritocracy has long become a foreign concept in the West.

Speaking of, Valve also has the idea that they'll only hire you if you have the skills to back up your position. So they won't hire any schmuck that just wants to start working in the industry, they'll always try to poach veterans that know what they're doing.

Hence Half Life: Alyx and Counter Strike 2 are so well polished, and Source 2 is so effective in looking good whilst using the least resources, because they actually hire talented people and not just diversity hires. John Carmack in Oculus has/had a similar idea:

 

[Waifu Denier]

Speaking of, Valve also has the idea that they'll only hire you if you have the skills to back up your position. So they won't hire any schmuck that just wants to start working in the industry, they'll always try to poach veterans that know what they're doing.

Valve also has the means to not just be extremely selective, but actually get top talent drawn in and want to apply beyond just their name and legacy. They pay their devs six figures along with stock options in Valve itself, plus no crunch time and working at your own pace, choosing your own projects. Compared to the average AAA company paying peanuts for their devs, forcing 80+ hour crunch times, and making them work on soul sucking tripe, it's no surprise.

 

[Fate Fan]

GTA 6 which has already been in development for at least as long is still nowhere to be seen.

Didnt rockstar go thorugh an internal purge and get rid of most of the "bro programmers" its safe to assume the diversity hires are having trouble making the game and are probably going back and changing anything "problematic"

 

[Tanner Glass]

The additional problem is that these western studios are prone to be overstaffed and with diversity hires as well, as meritocracy has long become a foreign concept in the West. It's why western games, especially the AAA kind, suck so bad and often have terrible launches too.
It's just bleeding money at this point but I don't doubt suits can find ways to turn around between money laudering, EGS score, etc. even if it's only effective on the short-term.

It's not even just overstaffing - it's a lack of direction and vision across the whole company from the top down. Bioware making Anthem, Arkane making Redfall, the Destiny debacle, the Halo debacle, and all of the fucking remakes/remasters/rereleases. Just thinking that studios just make games by request and not by and kind of passion or initiative. The larger companies need to be giving these studios more tools and freedom - instead of way less.

It's a complete lack of vision and creativity all the way down. I always use "Outer Worlds" as an example - Microsoft acquiring Obsidian should have been a momentous occasion - finally a company large enough to fund Obsidian so they don't feel compelled to rush out an unfinished game and they still shit out a mediocre, rushed, and unfinished game. How?

Microsoft really needs to get a vision and a direction for their studios because right now they're just doing all kinds of nonsense - which is what they don't quite understand about Nintendo or Valve. The visions of Nintendo (innovation and fun) and Valve (genre redefining) are what attracts talent, fans, prestige, and money.

 

[Peaches the Wonder Cat]

Didnt rockstar go thorugh an internal purge and get rid of most of the "bro programmers" its safe to assume the diversity hires are having trouble making the game and are probably going back and changing anything "problematic"

The same thing is happening at Bioware.

 

[Slav Power]

Microsoft really needs to get a vision and a direction for their studios

The issue is that they don't and they never will. Public corporations have no fucking idea what they're doing and what they should do, they only care about the numbers in Excel going up, and they appoint people who have zero fucking idea about video games, operating systems and everything that Microsoft does to run those divisions.

And the end result is that they fail miserably because instead of hiring competent people who know what they should do to make that division profitable by delivering a good product, they put some out of touch C-class executive in charge, do retarded choices and in the end fail without knowing what went wrong.

 

[Kopasea]

The Peter Principle is alive and well in game dev. The teams are so bifurcated nowadays that 90% of devs don't give a shit what happens in another department as long as their stuff looks fine. It ends up with a technically sound but disjointed playing experience. Discussions between departments are done by incompetent managers who have no idea what it takes to actually build the systems they're discussing. Majority of the work is done by a relatively small number of devs do most of the work while everyone else pixel fucks to fill out their time on jira pretending that they're comparable to the devs of lore like Carmack.

I was born in the wrong fucking era

In regards to Microsoft, if people can abstain from gamepass for a few more years (I think the docs said 2027), Microsoft will leave the games business and we will be free!

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

Didnt rockstar go thorugh an internal purge and get rid of most of the "bro programmers" its safe to assume the diversity hires are having trouble making the game and are probably going back and changing anything "problematic"

GTA 6 will be the biggest, and best, shit show gaming has ever seen. Maybe even in all media entertainment.

Just imagine, a game known for it's offensive comedy, cutting-edge tech and mindless violence now purged of all offensiveness, cutting-edge tech and violence.

I can't wait for black female stereotype protagonist to flame the police with reddit-tier quips and ACAB slogans, while gurrll-bossing it around town about how fag love is real love.

The disaster will be better than the game.

 

[Fools Idol]

On the next Xbox (whatever retarded fucking name they give it) and Xbox S/X refresh I have a few thoughts and non of them good.

I understand the rational for going full digital only but I think it's a mistake. Most people given the choice are going to pick the system with the disk drive even if they don't use it. The only way to justify it would be a significant price difference like with the Series S vs X but here's the problem, Xbox doesn't exist in a vacuum. Right now Xbox is looking to sell a system that is only capable of digital purchases while PS and Nintendo offer a choice. There's effectively no difference in performance between the PS5 and Xbox X but the PS5 is often cheaper and that doesn't look like that's changing. It's not like deleting the disk drive is going to change that.

The idea that the next Xbox is going NVIDIA or ARM is insane to me. Sure I can understand why the NVIDIA partnership might make sense thanks to their industry leading tech but ARM? Going full ARM means that the neXt boX seriesX™ isn't going to have native backwards compatibility, that's also the concern with a NVIDIA partnership. MS could do some sort of software based backwards compatibility but that still puts you at their mercy. What happens when say the licensed music in GTA 5 runs out, do I still get to play my Xbox One disk through backwards compatibility?

A hybrid cloud based system is the most retarded idea I've ever heard, you get all the problems with game streaming and non of the benefits. The main selling point of game streaming to be able to play on anything with a screen and Internet connection but this approach needs you to have a base console. They still have to deal with the fact that Internet speeds suck dick for millions and the latency problem still hasn't been fixed. I'm not streaming any competitive game like say Tekken 8 for a reason.

Also doesn't a hybrid cloud based system just turn every game into a live service? I mean you need a constant connection just to play. What happens if they shut the severs down, do I not get to play my games anymore?

I've become more and more convinced that MS never scraped the original Xbox One's Orwellian control, they just repackaged it. Even shit like Games Pass is an attempt to control the whole games industry.