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Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B

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Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B

#731

Post by Bombthecat »

larssorenson wrote: post #640
rodgerd wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right now, Steam is still the leader and obvious home for a lot of these otherwise-independent developers. HN: TEAR DOWN THE APPLE STORE MONOPOLY! Also HN: Steam is cool and pulls 30% from developers.

It's worth drawing the distinction that Steam, as opposed to Apple and their app store, does not hold an exclusive monopoly and cannot dictate where users can install software from. If a Dev doesn't like Steam, there are other publishers and store fronts that they can peddle their wares through. Similarly users can go elsewhere to buy and install, even direct from the manufacturer. Steam being the de facto choice is…

Also, steam is not as controlled as the apple store.

I bet, if nvidia wanted to, they could publish geforce now there, for example.

Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B

#732

Post by manquer »

mywittyname wrote: post #475
redisman wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure Disney will be there too. After they acquired Star Wars it's been a looming presence ready to swallow and regurgitate forever any entertainment properties.

NinDisney will be a thing. I'm astonished Disney hasn't yet acquired Nintendo.

I am not sure Nintendo would be up for sale to Disney. They have pretty unique culture in the industry.

Sony Entertainment would be the better fit, however after buying Fox properties it may be difficult to sell the merger of another major studio into Disney.

Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B

#733

Post by apatters »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #460
apatters wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if you ate McDonald's every day you'd probably think that there are no good restaurants anymore. My top 4 games by playtime in the last few years were Rimworld, Oxygen Not Included, Dwarf Fortress and WoW Classic. Honorable mentions go to Spelunky and Stellaris. It's to everyone's great regret that a single one of these titles was purchased by one of the shitty publishers you mentioned, fortunately it's the one…

This is absolutely right. The best games now are from independent developers who are themselves barely making it. The games you listed were some of the breakout successes of indie games but there are a ton of fun, interesting indie games out there that are dying from lack of revenue. There seems to be an overall issue now where the quality of the good produced and the benefit to the consumer is divorced from the valu…

You're spot on and I wish we knew what to do about it. I think there's a very good parallel between music and games, in both industries it's possible to create great works with innovation, creativity and not much capital. Unfortunately the greatest works don't necessarily bubble up to the top, because the money isn't in producing them, it's in controlling the channels of distribution.

There was great optimism 20+ years ago that the Internet would change this with music, artists would have direct access to their fans, the middle man would be eliminated, and the major labels would crumble. That's not what we got, we just ended up with a new group of megacorps like Apple and Google and Spotify duking it out with the old majors for control of distribution.

To have watched these dreams die in the music industry and see a very similar dynamic unfolding in the digital native industry of games makes me think that maybe this isn't a technology issue, maybe it's something that runs deeper in society and the way people are wired. Then again if we go way back we can argue that the problem was created by technology in the first place (monopolies on music distribution were impossible back when everything was live, they only emerged once we devised technology for recording and copying audio!).

Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B

#734

Post by apatters »

ux-app wrote: post #664
throwaway13337 wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely right. The best games now are from independent developers who are themselves barely making it. The games you listed were some of the breakout successes of indie games but there are a ton of fun, interesting indie games out there that are dying from lack of revenue. There seems to be an overall issue now where the quality of the good produced and the benefit to the consumer is divorced from the valu…

> The best games now are from independent developers Some Indie games are great, but there are still lot of really great big budget story based games being made that an Indie studio just couldn't produce. >This is a more profitable strategy than simply trying to make a fun game that people want to play. Still loads of high quality, very profitable, games being made e.g. RDR2, TLoU2, HZD, Ghost of Tsushima, Uncharted,…

To use cyberpunk as an example because it's one of my favorite genres, I wonder how many of the people who buy Cyberpunk2077 will have ever even heard of Shadowrun Dragonfall by Harebrained Schemes, or Technobabylon by Wadjet Eye Games. I'm pretty sure that while CP2077 has a vastly larger budget for art, code and Keanu Reeves, it won't even come close to these games in terms of narrative, atmosphere etc.

Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B

#735

Post by GoblinSlayer »

whynaut wrote: post #569
squarefoot wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The best games now are from independent developers who are themselves barely making it. I wish it was true, at least for my favorite genre. Technically speaking, a small team of developers can create excellent games when it comes to creativity, design, playability etc. but for some titles there is need for a good story, then turning it into acceptable animations, large worlds, complex graphics etc. that's where pro…

take a look at Nier: Automata or Dragon Age (1-2, and/or Inquisition). Both easily enjoyable if you like ME.

This, weeb games for the win.

Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B

#736

Post by jhasse »

monsieurbanana wrote: post #405
KitDuncan wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do release it to the public! Just for Proton and to experiment/bechmark.

As much as I'd like that, I can hear from here the outcries from the gaming community. "Your game is bugged! It doesn't work! I want a refund!" "But the vulkan renderer is only tested on Stadia, it's not officially supported and the game is free." "I. Want. A. Refund."

Make it a command line flag ;)

Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B

#737

Post by GoblinSlayer »

ekianjo wrote: post #702
whynaut wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

take a look at Nier: Automata or Dragon Age (1-2, and/or Inquisition). Both easily enjoyable if you like ME.

Platinum Games is not an indie studio.

Artistism gap between indie and AAA isn't as big in Japan as in USA, AAA gets more polygons but that's about the only difference.

Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B

#738

Post by imtringued »

LMYahooTFY wrote: post #379
apatters wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if you ate McDonald's every day you'd probably think that there are no good restaurants anymore. My top 4 games by playtime in the last few years were Rimworld, Oxygen Not Included, Dwarf Fortress and WoW Classic. Honorable mentions go to Spelunky and Stellaris. It's to everyone's great regret that a single one of these titles was purchased by one of the shitty publishers you mentioned, fortunately it's the one…

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 shut a "wow classic" style private server down because they are the owners of WoW but then they left lots of people who wanted the classic experience stranded and decided to give them an official way. It's not a money grab.

Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B

#739

Post by dijit »

aceofspades19 wrote: post #725
dijit wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have offices in Quebec, Ontario and Mantinoba.

None of which are states.

A federated state and a province are interchangeable terms. They have more specific names in some places, e.g. oblasts, emirates, etc. In much of the world the term state is usually used to refer to sovereign states unless directly talking about the US.

But you knew what I meant and are being pedantic.

Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B

#740

Post by formerly_proven »

recursive wrote: post #459
formerly_proven wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrary to popular opinion, Rockstar is actually not a competent game developer.

I'm curious how you measure competence. Virtually every release Rockstar does sells millions. And from my point of view their games are fun too.

Rockstar makes multiplayer titles, but doesn't have an engine that's capable of dealing with that (leading to an absurd number of bugs and performance problems), and they have no security at all, so their games are only playable on not-yet-cracked consoles. Rockstar even went so far as to include a "finger of god" feature in GTA, which allowed their admins to kick players from and mess with the single player mode, except Rockstar has no security, so mod menu developers figured out how anyone with a menu could use those features to mess with literally anyone's single player. They eventually removed that feature, which as I recall is one of maybe two or three times they fixed a security problem. Previously mod menu users could reset character stats and outright ban other players. It's incredibly broken, even though financially successful, based on ethically questionable marketing of ingame purchases to minors. RDR2 may be beautiful, but performance is bad. RDO runs on the exact same system as GTA, so zero security and unplayable on PC.
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