Regardless of what Helix is officially announced as and what the lineup for next Gen, that’s just going to intrinsically be more important for competition & the health of the platform than anything else could be. That is the product that will be competing. The Xbox platform depends on a whole host of different marketing strategies, but the linchpin of it all will be what Xbox they’re selling. This generation has basically hit the end of its lifetime of sales. Even if series consoles stick around (which they likely will) there won’t be a huge influx of new sales after this year. If any PS gamers think of switching it’ll be when they’re looking to upgrade to next Gen and even if brand new gamers are coming in that’ll be what they’re most interested in. Even if they made COD exclusive, if every Helix console is multiple hundreds of dollars priced above PS6 consoles then it’s just a non-start.
I’m not super sure what this conversation is anymore. We’re talking about the potential effectiveness of making games without official release windows exclusive. We’d be better off discussing if Starcraft will be exclusive. And this started when I said that I don’t understand how Sharma keeps having specific singular great tests when her impact on Xbox will be a whole host of decisions across several years that we will constantly see shifting responses to from gamers, developers, and the industry.
I will say that at that singling out PS for exclusion for IP as big & multiplatform as Fallout & TES just seems really petty. I’m genuinely not sure I feel comfortable with that every gamer that fell in love with Fallout or TES who just happens to prefer PS getting punished like that. I’d certainly rage about it vice versa. I know we do. A full exclusive only on Xbox & PC would at least feel more purposeful and less like a direct attack.
Yeah, you’ve said all that. I’m not really sure how many times I can say that these decisions aren’t decided in real time on or the other, we don’t know the specifics behind any decision, and that our individual personal preference doesn’t come up .
Imagine if the roles were reverse: Xbox canceling O.D. and Sony announcing they would continue the project, everyone would be talking about how fantastic Sony is and how Xbox had lost out yet again.
People dislike Microsoft and find excuses to badmouth everything the company does, even when it’s something good.
Boo hoo if you ask me. I was a fan of Phil’s vision of meeting gamers where they are. The industry and PS fanboys were very vocal in their opposition to that, so fuck em’.
That was the sad part. Phil as trying to make the most consumer-friendly platform, but idiot console warriors and media kept screaming about exclusives. “If you sow the wind, you will reap the whirlwind”
I think we can guess this isn’t going to be cheap & buy all accounts Project Blackbird sounded like something really epic & yet that was dropped for budget reasons, but XBOX can find money for Kojima?
That just leaves a bad taste in my mouth, that’s all. The good thing is that it shows XBOX is investing in games it hopes to push the brand & doing great moves while SONY PR is in the dirt at the mo
Projects were dropped because they laid off developers to downsize the organization. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t going to be further investment into other projects… how is this hard to get? It’s such a ridiculous narrative invented by you-know-who. I’m sad about ID software being gutted therefore I can’t be positive about them picking up Kojima’s projects?
It’s indeed baffling to hear the gaming press ask how can they afford this after the recent layoffs. Continuing investing in Double Fine, Compulsion, NT, and UL (though I think they’ll come to regret this one) is what doesn’t make sense if you want each studio to make games that move the needle.
Physint may not become a 10 million+ seller, but it does bring a level of excitement and awareness to the platform in ways that the aforementioned cannot. It really is a no-brainer move for Xbox in that regard, and I think it’s a scenario Sony may come to regret.
Not to mention this was most likely saving Kojima’s project and studio in the process, at least in the current scope. No one else other than Sony or Microsoft as platform holders was genuinely gonna find a multiple hundred millions into a single player project in this economy, let alone from someone who is known for being unconventional and experimental
Project Blackbird looked so good & like a Cyberpunk dream. I really don’t get your narrative, because I would imagine if Kojima-san had said he’s only working on PlayStation, I doubt you’d be so positive.
I’m not or wasn’t against the closing down of some studios & given the amount of FPS staff inside XBOX, even the layoff’s at id software made a little sense
I just feel that this game must be costing hundreds of millions & missing milestones & that’s why even SONY pulled out, but we’ll see if this is money well spent & I’ll be the 1st to hold my hands up if I’m wrong
The average AAA game in this day and age costs hundred of millions and misses milestones, few are smooth sailing. But that’s not the point, the point is it’s not either or, it’s not all or nothing. You can be mad about layoffs and cancelled projects without projecting that to anything else that they invest in. Also I don’t personally give that much of a shit about Kojima games, I’m fine with playing them or not. It’s still a big deal regardless of my taste.
To point out how “normal” it is in game development for projects to miss milestones or be overbudget, from the same source which is now pushing it as “being bad (for game developer)” because it’s Sony’s Defense of cancelling the Kojima project. Seems to align with an agenda of it’s only bad when MS does it, but not when Sony does it.
FWIW I think it’s a little strange that “Arkane’s Blade is late and over budget” is becoming a lingering news story when the total number of big video games that were *not* late and over budget could be counted on one hand
If I ever hear troubled development from media again, I will throw up. If you ever worked in game dev you know there is no such thing as untroubled development. All games are on the knifes edge of disasters.
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