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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

#781

Post by formerly_proven »

recursive wrote: post #777
formerly_proven wrote: post #740

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, ex…

I've played most Rockstar titles, but never multiplayer. I don't understand how a lack of security means they're only playable on uncracked consoles. That sounds backwards. I've only ever played them on uncracked consoles. (and it's not just "yet", I just don't crack any consoles I own) The performance is good enough for any of my purposes. I don't doubt it could be better. The security thing sounds like a real probl…

The problem is not what you do with your console or PC, the problem is that multiplayer is P2P and a complete lack of security, anticheat and hardening means that anyone with a mod menu can do practically everything with your game (kick from the game, ban you from in-game features, make the game stuck, crash it, give you bad FPS, flashing or shaking screen, follow you into every session you join and even damage your installation). The only thing that prevents all of this is the platform not being cracked.

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

#782

Post by chaostheory »

nickflood wrote: post #744
chaostheory wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think Valve will exit software development, then you don't understand the market. Valve did do that and had this luxury when they were the only big game platform on PC. Unfortunately for them, there's GOG, EPIC, and MS Game Pass now. They need exclusives and the best way to do that without going the EPIC route is by developing their own games.

I'd argue that Valve doesn't need exclusives just yet. By virtue of being the default PC store they get plenty of games that are not on any other store. But this will change.

Alyx wouldn't exist if you were right. GOG and EPIC are credible threats.

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

#783

Post by gabereiser »

hueho wrote: post #515
mywittyname wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a difference between continuing an IP and milking one. When the same IP gets passed to a dozen different studios who each create vastly different experiences, that's milking and I generally don't like it. The whole point of an IP is that you know what to expect, and having different studios working on the same IP is contrary to that goal. Nintendo does not milk IPs, IMHO. They actually put a lot of th…

> why Nintendo rarely outsources games That's an overstatement: Nintendo co-develops a lot of titles with other studios, outsource a lot of their smaller IPs (mostly to Japanese studios), _and_ is being rather friendly to letting people do smaller spinoffs of their big properties. Examples of third-party colaboration, in no particular order: - Koei Tecmo co-developed Fire Emblem: Three Houses, did both Fire Emblem Wa…

This is great! No apologies. Example of how Nintendo milks their IP’s too. To be aware of it. Nothing wrong with Mario or Zelda, but the innovation and creativity is lacking for the sake of business and monetization.

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

#784

Post by int_19h »

Bayart wrote: post #506
int_19h wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mount & Blade series is an interesting counterexample to that, although I'm at a loss as to how define the genre ("feudalism sandbox"?). The first games were very clearly indy, but they capitalized on that success, and Bannerlord is a much more ambitious and polished game.

TaleWorlds were pretty lucky to stumble upon a community that could keep their game running for over a decade.

Did they stumble upon a community, or did they create one?

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

#785

Post by scollet »

antonyh wrote: post #769
scollet wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothings been as good as Fallout 3 The irony is beyond my mortal understanding, but NV certainly flagships the IP today, behind maybe 2. Both different developers.

I hated NV. It added complexity in crafting without joy for me.

Fair point. I kept it simple.

Big hammer.

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

#786

Post by ekianjo »

formerly_proven wrote: post #271
ekianjo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Rockstar ever gets acquired, this will be one of the most expensive deals ever. They routinely sell games in the dozens of millions of units.

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

My point was that they know how to make games that sell by truckloads. Quality of development is another matter altogether

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

#788

Post by danielrpa »

WorldMaker wrote: post #518
DubiousPusher wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's fair to include Microsoft in that list. They buy game studios so they can close them and shelve their IP after several attempts to turn beloved franchises into GAAS products. They're less of a game studio conglomerator and more of a recycling bin.

Depends on which era of Microsoft Game Studios / Xbox Game Studios you are talking about. Also, Microsoft has never really shelved IP ever, even Flight Simulator is back out of retirement! They've sold IP back to (nearly) the original developers, which is somewhat unheard of outside of Microsoft (Fasa's BattleTech/Mech Warrior and Shadowrun IP brands are back in the "indy space" because Microsoft sold it back; you ra…

This - only if Activision returned Infocom to an indie or sent it to the public domain!

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

#789

Post by tripzilch »

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…

> Maybe marketing is at the core of all of this malignment.

Just a thought: You got these big "movie budget" games. They need to make that budget back, so they use (a large part of the budget for) marketing, in order to sell way more games. This then consumes a very large part of the market. Problem now is that a large chunk of the money made in the majority of the market is spent on marketing. And this chunk of money is locked in with the industry giants, the indies and smaller devs can never get to it. Marketing ate part of the gaming industry.

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

#790

Post by smileybarry »

qayxc wrote: post #387
smileybarry wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, my understanding is that on Windows, OpenGL generally runs into more issues with driver bugs than D3D does. I'm not sure if that's the case anymore, but it definitely has a bad rep on Windows. Initially (throughout XP and maybe some of Vista) OpenGL support on Windows was done by a OpenGL -> DirectX translation layer, so performance was always worse in OpenGL mode unless a game's Direct3D implementation was e…

> Initially (throughout XP and maybe some of Vista) OpenGL support on Windows was done by a OpenGL Initially (Windows 95), OpenGL support was provided directly by the OS. Starting with Windows 98, Microsoft stopped updating the OGL version of their reference driver, so users were stuck with OGL 1.1 unless the graphics card driver shipped with a custom OpenGL implementation. So whenever an application uses an OGL vers…

That hasn't been the case, then, because I clearly remember OpenGL being translates to DirectX in XP/Vista days. Whether it was because anything >1.1 called that up or because the driver vendors chose translation over native, I don't know.

Original link seems to be dead but Slashdot references Vista layering OpenGL on top of Direct3D:

https://slashdot.org/story/05/08/06/177251/windows-vista-may...

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