I still need to check out Microsoft and EA’s conference.
What do you all think so far?
Me, I think that GRAW looked incredibly pre-rendered and question how Ubi keeps getting away with the bait and switch.
How are people looking forward to Watchdogs 2 after what Ubi pulled with the first one?!
Yep, that’s EXACTLY what everyone expected from Bethesda. Like carbon copied.
“Yay!” for Last Guardian getting a release date.
That new zombie game looks like it could be good or bad.
And I’m starting to think that Sony is repeating the same mistakes SEGA made with the Genesis. Only instead of releasing the 32X and the SEGA CD back to back to compete with one another, it’s VR and NEO.
Because the average consumer is not willing to do a thing if it would mean a slight inconvenience to them. Such as completely boycotting one Ubisoft game where the bait and switch turned out the worst. But that would mean not playing a game they want to play, so they won’t do it…
Ubisoft will do that as long as they can get away with it. Financial pressure is the only thing that could stop it imho.
Nah. MS is doing the same. It’s basically consoles are going the way of mobiles. Fresh hardware every so often. There is still a point to it over upgrading your desktop GPU every few years as there is almost no cheating on console and people do like to just not think about having to deal with it all.
Some mildly interesting developments so far. Microsoft leaned into its hardware announcements, and was quite keen on promoting its exclusive-to-Microsoft titles. Sony came strong with a fairly focused slate of crowd-pleasing big-budget titles. (all with a very cinematic vibe)
No one has noticeably dropped the ball this year. The software has been front-and-center, with the hardware developments pushed to the sides. About what I expected. Still disappointed that I didn’t hear anything about the Vita platform, but that’s just me.
At this point, I don’t imagine Sony has any expectations for the Vita in NA. If they say anything, it’ll probably be at TGS. They might get into hardware then too.
I wasn’t expecting, just hoping. The fact that they didn’t even mention the Vita was pretty much par for the course. As a fan of the platform, it is just a little frustrating for me that the potential of the Vita gets a bit squandered. All I really want is a decent revision/update to the firmware. A bit of polishing for the interface would go a long way to making the system more appealing.
Whoooof. The new Zelda looks really pretty. But the extended Pokémon interview/preview is really boring. Just kills the pacing. Nintendo’s Treehouse is not blowing my skirt up.
I was slightly disappointed that it was Skyrim instead of Oblivion. Oblivion needs a new engine badly. It crashes more than any other game I have ever played. Newer graphical effects would be nice but I’d settle on a new engine. At least Skyrim will benefit from a new engine too. Modding on a 32-bit editor is too limited.
To be fair the Windows Store (specifically “Games for Windows”) was not the greatest thing ever.
I think Microsoft is attempting to combat this with their cross platform thing and buying one copy of a game and being able to hop between Console and PC as you wish.
Some of my friends don’t have Overwatch for PC (nor the PC to run it), but they do have an Xbone. It’d be awesome if I could just hope on my Xbox and play a few games with them without having to buy another copy.
Technically, it’s not. Since both the Windows Store and Steam exist, they are technically in competition with each other. A true monopoly would be if Microsoft and Steam cozied up to each other and came to an agreement on how to split the profits from digital distribution.
Our current scenario is just a matter of one company competing far more effectively than the other, and raking in most of the market share as a result. People don’t gravitate toward Steam because its the only option. They gravitate toward it because it continues to be one of the best options.
And the Windows store continues to be one of the worst. Let’s not kid ourselves, Microsoft would hack off one of their own limbs in order to be in Valve’s position. And we have no guarantee that they would do a better job of it if they were.
That’s not what I meant. Today, steam holds so much digital sales market share that it might as well be considered a monopoly. If people refuse to buy from other stores for philosophical reasons (not talking about technical reasons), steam will always remain in that position and will not ever improve (and there’s much room for improvement). Let’s take origin for example: I honestly think that it’s better than steam. The UI is nicer, much more responsive and it actually has functional support. Competition is healthy. Zealotry is not.