Dont see how either is a bad thing or where the comparison even starts.
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mainly the mix of 1st and 3rd person (specifically in the cover mechanics)
âXbox has way too many exclusives and hereâs why this is hurting the industryâ.
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âAre too many games for Xbox a bad thing? Why the Sony exclusives feel like Oscar movies compared to the MCU-Xbox approachâ
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Sounds interesting I just hope they give the player multiple options to complete a mission like the original. I do figure there will be some "streamlining " itâs a modern take after all.
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This! One of the best things about Perfect Dark (and also Goldeneye) was that higher difficulty also demanded to complete more tasks in a level e.g. stealing extra data from a guarded servwr room or whatever. This was such a novel and smart approach to difficulty and I am shocked no one tried to copy that 20 years later.
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Noone copied that because it takes much more resources, from designing it, through implementing it and to QAing it. Itâs much easier to just pump up the numbers and call it a day. Thatâs what most of the games do.
Interesting news hit Era. Supposedly God of War 2018 hit about 500 million in revenue (not profit) in its first year. Horizon earned about 400 million in 2 years in revenue. Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us a billion each. These numbers are stupidly impressive, no one can deny it but, letâs look at Game Pass.
Assuming that 20 million people subscribe, and all are at base (GPU counteracts $1 upgrades), we are looking at 200 million a month, and 2.4 billion a year in revenue. HOWEVER, not everyone subs to Game Pass, so you have to factor in steam and Xbox sales. The end result is, if Xbox releases one AAA game per quarter like planned, they are making about $600 million in revenue per AAA title, and Game Pass is growing. While some of the costs may be high (particularly in boosting the portfolio), image what happens if they hit 30, 40, 50+ million subs. Now it all starts to make sense. 
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The only concern that could be raised is that the studio is spreading itself too thin, pumping out low budget games instead of the new AAA mega games that MS still lacks. Clearly Avowed isnât one if they have only a fraction of their staff on it. Even if Obsidian had ALL their staff on one game Iâd still think theyâd need extra staff to get them to the top tier, production value wise.
That said, having such flexibility to work on smaller projects must make Obsidian such a cool place to work.
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Xbox is doing a partnership with WarnerMedia for the new Space Jam movie⌠
Ummm⌠
I have never heard about that unknown project, do we know anything about it?
Yep itâs hard for the average person to fathom how the business model of Game Pass works but the bottom line is itâs far more lucrative. Nadellaâs mentor is a co-founder of Netflix so he understands the business model well. Itâs about reaching that tipping point. Bottom line is they had 6 studios under the old model and 23 only a few years into the new one. Youâre weighing massive investment vs massive returns. The residual nature of it is key. As much as those Sony games made, you then had a Fall where Death Stranding didnât do well. Not every year you have games that turn 400 to 500 mil in revenue. Traditional model makes it more difficult to justify game to game risksâŚhence why Jim Ryan says theyâre not going to do as much new IP right now.
Where itâs exciting from a Xbox Game Studio perspective is that they can afford to combine big investment with risks. With new IPs. New content delivery cadences. If things like Gears DLC becomes part of the equation to get people to stay on the higher tier of Game Pass, it suddenly opens up all types of opportunities for studios to deliver content.
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Even if EA buys Warner Bros Gaming, Xbox should atleast grab NetherRealm with Mortal Kombat IP.
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Thatâs another thing we arenât taking into account, WarnerMedia could very well sell parts of Warner Bros. Games to different companies. Or they could sell one or two studios to a company and others to another one, etc. Lots of things they could do if they are interested in selling the division in the future.
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I still think the crossgen concerns are slightly overblown, but with a year long delay, what matters is whatâs best for the game.
Iâm confident and behind 343i for either decisions they could make. They know best what is good for Infinite.
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That has nothing to do with not being a AAA mega games.
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That could be true. Didnât BGS start out really small too? I think even for Oblivion it wasnât a super hoge team. Todd Howard also said that, there were pros to being a small team.
But how small I donât know, do we know that about Obsidian for Avowed? Also, Sponger on RE seemed real certain about the plans for Avowed, and it certainly isnât something small.
On the other hand, personally I would keep the most people on Avowed, a few on Grounded and the rest on ToW. Thatâs more than enough projects.