For anybody involved in the Rock Band community, John Drake will be instantly recognizable. As a key member in the Harmonix team, he was a regular target of people who disappointed once again by the distinct lack of classic rock (or punk, or metal, or hair metal, or...). This weekend he announced he'd be leaving the music game developer, but not without promising that Harmonix have some great things to come.
Harmonix, best known for their work on the Rock Band franchise, has announced that they're becoming a part of the Epic Games family.
I don't get how people complained that Valve never released any games for years as an argument when defending Epic, and here's Epic just constantly revolving around one game, producing nothing else and trying desperately to keep retention on it by having over the top crossovers to stay in the news and social media. At least Valve knows how to make games instead of lucky shots.
It will never die sadly
If I have to be super blunt...there's too many idiots who buy into it.
I shit you not, I have someone on Twitter, a "friend" if you will, constantly complaining about needing money for gas, electric and to basically live, then when something Fortnite related comes out he then asks for money to buy the next Fortnite skins/pack. I mean who the f*** does that? "I need money to survive but if someone Fortnite related comes out I'll buy that instead rather than saving the left over money". The developers of this game must be laughing themselves all away to the bank.
I just think it's amazing how most of us as kids jumped from game to game, a variety of genres and experiences while today it's literally just COD, Fortnite, Fifa etc.
@Rachel: How have Epic had lucky shots? You don't create a great game by being lucky you create them by being talented. I don't care for Fortnite, not my kind of game, but talent is talent. They made great games before Fortnite too you know.
@Rachel
As someone who is far from a fan of Epic anymore ... was Gears, Unreal, and Unreal Tournament nothing more than lucky shots as well?
@Ted
@Xblade
They had almost 8 years of failures after Gears 3. They had failed to gauge any interest in IPs like Paragon and that Unreal Alpha they barely touched. Finally released Fortnite, but then they spent 3 months making a copy of a popular game at the time which was PUBG that everyone wanted to play. The problem was Pubg required expensive PC hardware and it was $30. But here comes fortnite with a free 2 play version, and all on console. It was the perfect chance to eat up what PUBG failed to do. They just got a lucky chance and seized it, that's it. It's no wonder they immediately canceled all their current projects including pushing STW off the focus over time to push their BR mode the game wasn't originally designed around. There entire company is built up all around Fortnite, but rather then make new games that bring in that same revenue, they would rather just buy up other companies and market share because I believe Tim doesn't trust his companies ability to produce another hit like Fortnite. If they are so talented then why do they not trust themselves to make new games with that great talent? At least Valve tries developing new games even with Steam protecting their revenue.
Harmonix, the developer behind Rock Band and Dance Central, reveal some new gameplay footage for the upcoming DJ song-mixing game.
More Stadia exclusives are on the way.
Google should just stick to tablets software and phones all this news still will not get people to buy the friggin thing. I'd rather buy a PS5 or a Series X then waste cash on Stadia.
you write "rather" as if the PS5 and the Series X aren't as shitty as Stadia lol.
Well they arent.
Stadia relies on a solid stable connection and somewhat fast connection.
For many people it isnt feasable and even for people with fiber it falters for some.
There is lag, it wont ever be as responsive as local hardware, it can be playable, but it is anywhere between perceptible to annoyingly slow or unplayable...
And on top of compression artifacts and quality losses... its not even always offering superior technical prowess over the Ps4 or X1 despite supposedly having way superior CPU and way more graphical power.
Akward when One X has the superior version over stadia isnt it?
its a paid subscription service, and you buy access to games for full retail price on top of that. even if the game is many years old.
And you dont have any control and you dont own squat and they can delete games or entire accounts or libraries at a whim that you paid for.
Sure this happens on consoles too sometimes with accounts being removed which is rare but does happen, and games being delisted and wiped entirely from the servers... But you usually dont pay full price on old games and most AA-AAA games are also on disc. Point is while control and ownership is sort of fizzling away on console... its still there and as long as the entire game is on a disc or a harddrive you can play it for as long as the disc lasts and the hardrives spins and you do not choose to delete it, heck you can loan, trade and buy new and used games whenever. if you can buy a complete game on a disc you have it and you can play it for as long as you have the disc in working order. Playstation and Xbox arent going to break into your home and take your disc games, but they can remove games from their end... and Stadia... well it is all on their end. any and all Stadia exclusives can just be wiped from existance at any time, your access can be revoked at any time. you get nothing, they get your money.
When/if they fail, or simply dont want to pay liscences or maintainance and electric bills on the servers... poof gone forever.
If you dont have a disc with the content or cant back up the digital copy you are just screwed and you have nothing.
Sony and MS arent perfect far from it, but stadia is on a whole another level, final form villainous scheme BS.
Take away the Internet and I can still play games on my console. Nor is the quality of my game dependent on my Internet connection. Nor do I lose the ability to trade/give/sell a game I've purchased on disc to someone else.
Lol what's the point? when will google realise the vast majority don't want to game on their crappy platform?
It's kind of sad. Splash Damage is a great developer, and have made some fantastic games that simply never saw the audience they deserved. Partnering with Stadia isn't going to change that track record, by any means.
As for Super Massive, Until Dawn was fantastic, but their latest release didn't do well, and I think they're looking for any sort of partnership money at this point.
i enjoyed part 1 of Man of Medan, more then i thought i would.
Looking forward to the next part.
more on topic, Google Stadia sucks and so does google.
John who? And why? Oh a marketing guy left Harmonix? It is the tuesday after e3 I guess it should be a slow news day.
Good luck to John Drake then!
Can we just get a separate 'Jobs vacant' section on N4G?? Now that we seem to be getting reports of every single person who comes and goes from developers we may as well start posting vacancies
John Drake was the face for Harmonix... kinda like Major Nelson is for Microsoft... he was at every event and always in the spotlight. So, yeah, I guess it is news.