The Windows Store now isn't as bad as it was before. Besides, Origin before wasn't that good either. If you ask me, Microsoft is in a better position now to make their games exclusive to their marketplace garden on PC.
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The Windows Store now isn't as bad as it was before. Besides, Origin before wasn't that good either. If you ask me, Microsoft is in a better position now to make their games exclusive to their marketplace garden on PC.
The thing about Redfall is you'd think MS coming to that game with fresh eyes they would have picked up on the glaring issues that game had immediately, kind of like how Shuhei took one look at God of War and gave it the stink eye. That doesn't reflect well on the process they have for mock reviews.
I really want this game to be an evolution and more than a graphical upgrade to the first, but they haven't shown anything to get me excited that it will. I do have faith though, they've crafted a solid combat system in the past. They just need to actually show it.
The impression I had from Phil Spencer's interview was that he never looked at Redfall before release and solely went from what mock reviewers and Zenimax leadership told him. I mean we can be honest and say that they didn't really expect anything of redfall especially since the mock reviewers still had it in the low 70's. They were completely focused on Starfield and giving that all the resources and attention they wanted.
343 leadership getting as many chances as it did before any big shakeups happened is still kinda ridiculous to me. Infinite MP is finally shaping up to be what it should have been at launch and slowly growing its player base as a result, but it'l never be the sort of massive MP success it was supposed to be.
Hope that they can finally get their shit together and launch the next Halo in a better state, whenever that may be.
Halo is the poster child for this.
Forza is a strange one, because Turn 10 has a pretty good track record.
But Microsoft clearly has some organizational issues that make efficient development cycles elude them.
Most of the dev of Starfield and Redfall predates MS. That those games released in their state despite being delayed by MS and focusing on fewer platforms suggests MS wasn't the problem.
Poor comparison. Those games were never on Steam in the first place. And funnily enough, Blizzard games are making their way to Steam now, which kind of proves my point. Less and less games can afford to be without Steam.
That was 12 years ago, when Steam was in a less dominant position.
Activision tried this same move a few years ago with COD and it didn't work. It's literally the same exact scenario. And unlike EA, they moved to a client that has been around and respected for decades (battle.net)!
i wouldn't call it slowly growing. it got a bump with the last major update but it's been slowly crawling back to the baseline 6-7k players peak die hard halo fans on steam that it had forever.
it always gets a bump with updates this one was just slightly larger.
Steam was still dominant back then. Difference is you can still buy COD at the time in Steam. You just needed to get Battle.net to launch the game. Same with Ubisoft games requiring Uplay. EA was different because you couldn't buy the game from Steam.
One month after launch, season 5 peak players was is 70% higher on Steam than it was after a month with winter Season 2022. It hovers around 10k peak per day.
All of the retention statistics are likely even better on Xbox.
It's not just a seasonal bump, it's a higher baseline.
Phil says a lot of things. Surely you can't believe that for even a fraction of a second lol.
Phil Spencer is a full time gamer with thousands of hours in Destiny 2, he plays Vampire Survivors, Pillars of Eternity, Fallout 76 even. He lurks the Xbox OT and the Acquisition thread here on Era. He is 100% in to gaming. He is the sort of person that would (and probably does) pour over any titbit of information about anything vaguely hyped when a leak gets posted on reddit. It is totally unbelievable that he would spend 7.5 billion US dollars on Zenimax, and then not even play their hyped up "Destiny killer" co-op hero fireteam vampire killer GaaS with damage numbers on the purple-for-legendary loot drop weapons. Come on now. He played it a ton, and thought it was good. He used it as the "one more thing" at their E3 2021! He never even looked at it, hahaha.
I mean, here is a candid pic of him having an obviously enjoyable gaming session of Perfect Dark Remake (at the time unannounced) visiting The Initiative back in 2020:
This is not a person that "didn't even look" at Redfall for two years! 😂
Phil's problem is he has a poor eye for what makes a game good. He even thought Halo Infinite's debut footage featuring Craig looked good, or perhaps you think he hadn't even viewed that before introducing it at that E3 show?
Its up on Xbox charts, I believe? Or at least not falling off as quick as it did previously after new seasons.
This is not correct
You can see above that each prior season by the 5th week has pretty much locked in where it'll sit for the next two weeks. Infinite at worst should only drop to the low 9,000's by Day 50.
Season 5 is a significant improvement over the last few seasons and is objective growth and sustainability.
It's also still #15 in the Xbox Most Played charts which is where it landed when the season started. Season 4 was in the top 25-30 the last couple of weeks before Season 5.
I was just going by what he said himself. Also just knowing how much they have in the works and the amount of work he probably has. I doubt he has time to play everything that is being made especially if it's already been internally written off to a certain extent. Maybe he is lying and just likes bad games who the hell knows at this point. Also sometimes a rough game near the end of development could still come together at release like Demon's Souls. Yoshida said himself the version he played was bad as far as the performance went and also because he didn't get the play style at the time. Sometimes making games or anything creative is rolling the dice.
Worth mentioning that Yoshida just didn't even like the finished game at all.
took a long time for it to eventually grow on him.
Looks like a doubling of peak players from the past two seasons, which probably has similar trends of overall daily, MAU, etc... whatever metric they track. 343 folks have to be happy with this direction right now, so yeah, saying things are the same as previous seasons is an incorrect take.This is not correct
You can see above that each prior season by the 5th week has pretty much locked in where it'll sit for the next two weeks. Infinite at worst should only drop to the low 9,000's by Day 50.
Season 5 is a significant improvement over the last few seasons and is objective growth and sustainability.
It's also still #15 in the Xbox Most Played charts which is where it landed when the season started. Season 4 was in the top 25-30 the last couple of weeks before Season 5.
I can't tell what to believe or not 😂😂Phil says a lot of things. Surely you can't believe that for even a fraction of a second lol.
Phil Spencer is a full time gamer with thousands of hours in Destiny 2, he plays Vampire Survivors, Pillars of Eternity, Fallout 76 even. He lurks the Xbox OT and the Acquisition thread here on Era. He is 100% in to gaming. He is the sort of person that would (and probably does) pour over any titbit of information about anything vaguely hyped when a leak gets posted on reddit. It is totally unbelievable that he would spend 7.5 billion US dollars on Zenimax, and then not even play their hyped up "Destiny killer" co-op hero fireteam vampire killer GaaS with damage numbers on the purple-for-legendary loot drop weapons. Come on now. He played it a ton, and thought it was good. He used it as the "one more thing" at their E3 2021! He never even looked at it, hahaha.
I mean, here is a candid pic of him having an obviously enjoyable gaming session of Perfect Dark Remake (at the time unannounced) visiting The Initiative back in 2020:
This is not a person that "didn't even look" at Redfall for two years! 😂
Phil's problem is he has a poor eye for what makes a game good. He even thought Halo Infinite's debut footage featuring Craig looked good, or perhaps you think he hadn't even viewed that before introducing it at that E3 show?
No you couldn't buy COD on Steam for several years. MWII was the first one to launch there in 5 years.
Yep.
Right, it's sort of wild to me that even after their acquisition journey started six or so years ago I'd still only really be excited by Hi Fi Rush lol. That said I'd love it if Microsoft hit the next CoD game out of the park with some real commitment to sustainable play and player feedback improvements. And announcing THPS 3+4 remastered will have made all this drama worthwhile.
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If the trend continues for Xbox expect these kind of talks to get more intense till a mod steps in,similar to marvel tanking in the Box Office turning all discussions in the BO thread about Marvel
That's exactly being selective.
When you look at the picture in totality, there are sure to be strong internal arguments for and against MS releasing Bethesda SP titles as console exclusives.
When Bethesda was being purchased, all of the financial analysis prior to being approved by the Board of Directors was based on the idea that at least some future titles would remain on PlayStation, including Starfield.
Phil Spencer made the decision to withhold Zenimax titles from PS without first getting buy-in from MS Finance. Why? Because he felt that Xbox hardware needed a push, from Starfield and other games, even if it meant losing financially. This was a post-acquisition change in strategy - not a strategy intrinsic to the acquisition.
Data shows that Starfield didn't meaningfully impact the hardware sales dynamic, let alone Hi-Fi Rush and Red Fall. If this change in strategy cannot yield the desired strategic results AND is a loser financially, then the idea of MS changing strategy again isn't outlandish. That's pretty much been their MO -
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