tds418

@sombre said:

There's your answer.

I'm probably 5-10 years younger than the OP, but my problem with Twitch I think is more basic: I don't like watching something that is constantly asking me to spend money, or in Twitch's case, constantly reminding me I can and should "donate" to support the streamers I like. At some point, those constant asks take away from the underlying content. That's one of the great things about GB Premium: you pay upfront, and then get a lot of great content that isn't constantly concerned with getting you to spend more.

This is simply not how monopolies work. If Sony is the only company selling a high-end console, they will sell it for more than they would otherwise. If they could easily sell it for a "bigger loss," why not do that now and crush the Xbox's market share?

@thepanzini said:

Yes, because if Sony had sold the PS4 for $700 or $800 it would not have outsold the Xbox One 2 to 1. So the Xbox was exerting competitive pressure on Sony.

I'm guessing the PS5 would be close to $700 if there were no Series X.

An angle I really haven't seen discussed here is that while it's good for consumers to have games on as many platforms as possible, it's also probably good for consumers to have more than one company making high-end consoles. As someone that much prefers Xbox controllers to PS controllers and has a bought a bunch of games in the Xbox ecosystem, it would be a bummer to me if MS left the console hardware business. And if PC/Xbox exclusives, like Elder Scrolls VI, allow MS to stay in the console market...that means more console competition, right? Especially considering a lot of Sony's competitive edge at the moment comes from exactly that -- console exclusives.

I've never liked DualSense controllers. It's a matter of personal preference, but I vastly prefer the alternating thumbsticks of the Xbox controller, rather than both sticks being next to each other. Maybe this preference is a result of the GameCube being the first console I owned. Either way, DualSense controllers are not an insignificant factor in me choosing to use xbox as my primary console.

The guy in the dark suit I took out through some classic hitman madness involving an overflowing sink and a series of dudes getting knocked out in the same small room.

And then I somehow pulled off this sniper shot from across the street to get the guy in the white suit:

https://gamerdvr.com/gamer/harpua418/video/126927780

Fun stuff! Hitman 3 is great.

edit: I've played a good amount of Hitman 3 at this point and I haven't seen people flying off into heaven. That's hilarious. A little minor jank here and there, but nothing that's broken a run for me.

@bigsocrates Okay, I guess we don't disagree much then. I also don't want BioWare shut down (or at least, I want them to have another opportunity to try and make a great single-player RPG first).

But, I think this is just as accurate as what you said:

EA studiosVideo games have all trended in a specific direction over the last 5-10 years, and that's not a coincidence.

So...you are just assuming. Mass Effect 3 successfully implemented microtransactions, so BioWare had proven they didn't need to go the full GaaS-route to get microtransactions into a new IP. The quotes from the Schrier piece (which, you know, is based on conversations with people who actually work at BioWare) strongly suggests that BioWare leadership was looking to expand into a different type of game....which is a pretty natural and expected thing for a studio looking to expand beyond a particular niche (hell, Destiny is partly the result of Bungie going independent and wanting to expand what it was known for with Halo).

It seems more likely to me that BioWare was genuinely interested in a service-type game and EA was obviously willing to support that. So, far less arm-twisting than you're suggesting.

@bigsocrates But why are you assuming it was EA's decision to go the live service route?

The below is from Schrier's great article, describing the discussions that took place at Bioware early in the game's development. It sure seems like BioWare wanted to make a service-type game:

The early ideas for Dylan (which we’ll call Anthem from now on for clarity) were ambitious and changing constantly, according to people who were on the project. As is typical during this sort of “ideation” phase, nobody knew what the game would look like yet—they just wanted to see what might be cool. It would be an action game, certainly, and you’d be able to play it with your friends. The goal was to get away from traditional sci-fi and fantasy, so the game would feel distinct from Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

...

“The idea was going to be that there were all these levers that could be pulled internally so there’d be different events happening at all times,” said a developer. “You’d be out somewhere, and an electrical storm would happen at random, and you had to survive it. We had an early demonstration of this where the environment was dynamic and by pulling levers we could change it from summer to winter to fall. You’d see the snow hitting the ground, hitting the trees… There were states of the build where that was being demonstrated, and that we could see this was something you could actually accomplish.”

...

Anthem was always envisioned as an online multiplayer game, according to developers who worked on it, but it wasn’t always a loot shooter, the kind of game where you’d endlessly grind missions for new weapons. In these early versions, the idea was that you’d embark from a city and go out on expeditions with your friends, staying out in the world for as long as you could.