"It's obvious that the current trend is creation of the one single worldwide company owning all the businesses and all the countries." Vladimir Lenin, 1915.
Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
691–700 of 798 posts
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#692Soon we'll just have Microsoft, Epic, and a conglomeration of EA, Activision, and Ubisoft after Bobby Kotick forces them all to merge. Facebook will bungle up any chance they have of capturing the gaming market after writing a cryptic paragraph about their legal right to request blood samples from all Oculous users in the TOS. Valve will quietly exit software development altogether, and pivot to building custom vanit…
As long as no one buys From Software everything will be ok. Praise the Sun.
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#693Earlier quoted context omitted.
> quality of game engine is completely orthogonal to how good a game is, right? That's exactly my point. I haven't once conflated the two, all of your comments have.
> That's exactly my point. I haven't once conflated the two, all of your comments have. How? The disagreement is if Fallout 4 was a moneygrab or not. Is that correct? According to you it was because it "Skyrim was a significant technical advancement of Gamebryo, not just in terms of visual quality or so forth, but also in terms of what was possible with the engine. Fallout 4 was a minor upgrade and could have easily…
Some very dedicated folks took the pittance of time/money afforded to them and made a fantastic effort. Imagine what the same people could have done with an engine that wasn't merely a minor graphical improvement. Imagine what FO4 could have been with richer story telling technology (dialog mechanics, interaction mechanics, etc.), instead the content team was stuck with the same scripting power available in Skyrim.
BOTH the effort of people who clearly care about the franchise AND the publisher's shameless money grubbing show in the final product.
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#694Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bingo! CoD, Quake, Doom, Civ, Madden, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, All of Nintendo... you can’t fault them for milking an IP though when fans vote with their wallets. I would love new stories, new hero archetypes, new consequences, in games and I think indie have done a decent job at showing it can be done. But even indie suffers from the “Hey! This worked! Let’s just keep doing this!” IP milkage. Game dev, like so…
Look at when Blizzard tried starting new a new IP with Overwatch, I'm sure they did okay but Overwatch doesn't have the same legendary luster that Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo have (or had).
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#695Earlier quoted context omitted.
I actually feel compelled to express an opinion regarding WoW classic: It's a garbage money grab. The idea that there is a huge nostalgia fueled demand for the original experience doesn't absolve a multi-billion dollar developer from a complete lack of support or quality of life improvements to the game. There is just too much overlap with the fact that they can literally re-release a game with practically zero devel…
If you think wow classic had "practically zero development cost", you don't know what you're talking about.
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#696Soon we'll just have Microsoft, Epic, and a conglomeration of EA, Activision, and Ubisoft after Bobby Kotick forces them all to merge. Facebook will bungle up any chance they have of capturing the gaming market after writing a cryptic paragraph about their legal right to request blood samples from all Oculous users in the TOS. Valve will quietly exit software development altogether, and pivot to building custom vanit…
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#697Earlier quoted context omitted.
I actually feel compelled to express an opinion regarding WoW classic: It's a garbage money grab. The idea that there is a huge nostalgia fueled demand for the original experience doesn't absolve a multi-billion dollar developer from a complete lack of support or quality of life improvements to the game. There is just too much overlap with the fact that they can literally re-release a game with practically zero devel…
Blizzard did not charge for WoW Classic. It merely requires an active subscription to the regular game. There's no additional purchase or subscription. The company invested significant development into Classic. The project started as a fork of Legion, in order to benefit from a decade of anti-bot measures, compatibility fixes, and Battle.net integration (auth and chat). They then ported the original game forward and…
I'm not sure what you're getting at, in my experience a massive chunk of the players don't play 'retail'. So the cost is just that, $15 a month.
Beyond that, do you have a source? It's not clear that any of these things they've been developing had significant costs in replicating for Classic.
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#698The year is 2040. Gigaconglomerates Tencent, Activision Blizzard Ubisoft (ABU), Microsoft and Apple gatekeep the entire gaming industry. Rebel guerilla groups of small publishers and indie developers rise up to take control of their encampments.
I mean this is the future described in Cyberpunk novels. United States of Coca Cola, Republic of Microsoft. Mega Corporations will replace states in an era of neocorporatism (AKA something else...), that's inevitable.
Once we have cheap, ubiquitous VR, all we're missing is Kouriers, skateboards with those cool wheels and a cult based on a dead language.
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#699Soon we'll just have Microsoft, Epic, and a conglomeration of EA, Activision, and Ubisoft after Bobby Kotick forces them all to merge. Facebook will bungle up any chance they have of capturing the gaming market after writing a cryptic paragraph about their legal right to request blood samples from all Oculous users in the TOS. Valve will quietly exit software development altogether, and pivot to building custom vanit…
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#700Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is The Outer Worlds? I heard it is basically space Fallout, which if that is half as good as it sounds I am all over it.
It’s ok. It scratched that “Bethesda fallout” itch better than Bethesda did, but ultimately I found it got a bit monotonous and dull after a little while. It’s not a bad game, but it’s no masterpiece.