Nuts and Gum posted:

lol sorta true, web TV (cant read poo poo on CRTs!), windows CE (limped on way too long because their only competition was Palm Pilot for a while), Win95 Active Desktop (computers too slow/no broadband yet).

Gamepass is the only recent thing I can think of where things just lined up perfectly for them and they weren't too late or early for once.

I said come in! posted:

If the deal between Microsoft and Activision falls through, I wonder what the possibility is of Activision working out a deal to have their games on Game Pass anyways. Although I don't really understand what the U.S. government, or governments in the U.K. and Europe can actually do to stop the merger. Other than voicing concerns, it seems like there isn't actually any legal recourse they have? I haven't been able to find anyone who can break down the whole thing and explain it or why any of this matters.

icantfindaname posted:

The FTC is the agency that can block mergers under antitrust law. They’ve almost never done this in recent decades but the current head of the FTC is Lina Khan, a progressive antitrust enthusiast, and this case looks like a good battle for her to pick. Not guaranteed it will be blocked but much more likely than historically would have been

Feels Villeneuve posted:

I just want Sekiro. You mother fuckers.

priznat posted:

acksplode posted:

Xbox Live was Seganet 2 and it was a hit in part because it was built around broadband. The entire experience was way better than what Dreamcast could do with a service that was built to accommodate dialup. The timing was just right to grow XBL alongside broadband adoption, which was starting to take off in the US.

icantfindaname posted:

The FTC is the agency that can block mergers under antitrust law. They’ve almost never done this in recent decades but the current head of the FTC is Lina Khan, a progressive antitrust enthusiast, and this case looks like a good battle for her to pick. Not guaranteed it will be blocked but much more likely than historically would have been

webmeister posted:

Make sure you post if it sucks or not, the trailers look interesting like a better version of monster hunter crossed with Fortnite style building and Death Stranding style objects across sessions kinda thing

BonoMan posted:

Anybody okay Exo One on Game Pass? Nice little flight of the navigator experience... Very little gamification and it's literally made by, like, 3 people

Martman posted:

it's the kind of game that you could have playing while hanging out with non-gamer friends, getting drunk and or high, and would be perfect to hand someone a controller and have them go "dude wtf is even happening"

was a fun playthrough but by the last hour my interest waned pretty hard

Feels Villeneuve posted:

I just want Sekiro. You mother fuckers.

Professor Beetus posted:

If the money games get from Microsoft/downloads from game pass is good enough, it really shouldn't matter that sales are down. Obviously it will to bigger companies who will shriek about lost sales but I'm pretty sure game pass has been a big payday for smaller studios/devs in terms of both money and exposure.

Tsietisin posted:

I'm sure there's been several developers that have stated that the money they initially got from Microsoft far exceeded what they expected to get through regular sales alone.

With the added bonus that they can still sell games on other platforms, they are more than happy to do it.

The Illusive Man posted:

Kinda wonder if this will remain true once GamePass is no longer in venture-capital “just get exposure at any cost” mode. Either prices paid to devs will go down or monthly subscription costs will go up (or most likely both).

Djarum posted:

I have been saying this basically since Gamepass launched. It is pretty obvious that the service is Microsoft’s vision of consumers not actually owning games for their hardware and instead paying them a fee to play games forever.

Your average customer buys 3 full price games a year, which is the price of Gamepass currently. You make it so the only way to play an Elder Scrolls 6 is on Gamepass in a couple of years, people will complain but enough will ultimately do it. Then they raise the price after announcing all first party games and selected third party will only be on Gamepass. If you want to play a lot of titles you will be forced to pay the Gamepass tax. Over time all Xbox titles will be Gamepass only.

It will be real interesting to see how everyone else combats this plan because Microsoft has enough money to throw at it to make it succeed.

Djarum posted:

I have been saying this basically since Gamepass launched. It is pretty obvious that the service is Microsoft’s vision of consumers not actually owning games for their hardware and instead paying them a fee to play games forever.

Your average customer buys 3 full price games a year, which is the price of Gamepass currently. You make it so the only way to play an Elder Scrolls 6 is on Gamepass in a couple of years, people will complain but enough will ultimately do it. Then they raise the price after announcing all first party games and selected third party will only be on Gamepass. If you want to play a lot of titles you will be forced to pay the Gamepass tax. Over time all Xbox titles will be Gamepass only.

It will be real interesting to see how everyone else combats this plan because Microsoft has enough money to throw at it to make it succeed.

hanyolo posted:

Doesn't explain Microsoft releasing all their games to steam, they'd be locked to the Windows store if they were going down that path

Wiltsghost posted:

They'll raise the price of game pass at some point, but they'll keep releasing everything on steam I would think.

webmeister posted:

Honestly they could put up the price by like 50% at this point and I wouldn’t really complain - as long as they keep the games flowing. I think the only full priced game I bought last year was Elden Ring; everything else was GamePass.

American McGay posted:

Hmm. Wrong.

John F Bennett posted:

Should the deal not go through, then MS suddenly has 70 billion dollars that they may want to spend quickly. Better watch out!

Neddy Seagoon posted:

Lol, streamed gaming isn't gonna threaten to replace purchased games. Covid lockdowns showed the bandwidth just isn't there ANYWHERE to sustain video streaming (cached downloads), let along game streaming (actual constant data transfer) at anywhere close to what would be needed for primetime usage.

Alchenar posted:

There's also streaming services on the horizon that potentially wipe out the need to have an xbox at all.

veni veni veni posted:

buy taco bell and give out free burritos w a gamepass sub

Alchenar posted:

Give it 10 years, or two console cycles, which is a pretty reasonable business planning horizon. I wouldn't say it will replace purchased games because physics means latency will always be a thing, but there is a huge chunk of the market that doesn't care about that and will default to the option that means you just need a controller and you can play whatever you want on your TV in seconds.

Quantum of Phallus posted:

streaming gaming sucks and always will

Quantum of Phallus posted:

streaming gaming sucks and always will

webmeister posted:

I dunno it works pretty well most of the time for me, outside of specific games like HiFi Rush mentioned above. I've played a bunch of Gamepass stuff via cloud when I've been too lazy to download something (or don't want to wait a couple of hours to discover something's poo poo), or games that are just way too big like Flight Simulator.

But yeah I have a brand new gigabit fibre connection in my apartment and an excellent ISP, which I realise is out of reach for a lot of people