Xbox division president Phil Spencer made some eyebrow-raising remarks recently. He gave his insights about the current status of the video game industry and he might not be that far off. Here are four takeaways from his comments
Strauss Zelnick says price of GTA 6 is being carefully considered and that Rockstar is focused on "making the most spectacular piece of entertainment on Earth."
If GTA 6 abandons everything that made GTA 5 great, it will crash and burn right out of the gate. GTA 5 was funny and not at all PC. My worry is that they will cave to the PC crowd and ruin the vibes.
They got freaking BBLs twerking on the top of trucks for the gram, the freaking Flordia joker, and dude running down the stree in their undies and you are worried about it being 'too PC'? The internet has runied gamers. It doesn't matter how non-PC they make the game, you will all listen to the grifters telling you not to believe your lying eyes lol.
"Rockstar Games’ co-founder and former VP of Development Jamie King said he envisions GTA 6 as a game that’s “maybe not quite as edgy or quite as funny” as its satirical predecessors."
oh yeah, totally internet grifters spreading rumors...
That's part of the plan, they destroyed you but they need to destroy the shareholders? Only 1 shre holder is the true elite that don't care
Meh.., if it’s above £55 I ain’t buying it.
Rockstar are genuinely not half the company they used to be. I was a die hard GTA fan I’ve purchased every game and expansion and spin off day 1.
My opinion of GTA6 is that I can take it or leave it. Not bothered. They burnt too many bridges.
So they're actually leaving the door open for an L.A. Noire sequel? Nice!
He should just come out and say it already it's getting stupid it's going to be a 100 bucks $200 for the special edition🤡🤡; 29315;🤣♿
I won't be getting this game until I can get it for $70. SHoot, I could wait for it to be even lower. I don't need the game that badly as my backlog is still huge and I am enjoying playing other things.
Skewed and Reviewed have posted an interview with Author Mike Diver about his pending book on Aliens video games.
Xbox boss Asha Sharma has discussed how component shortages will impact the company's plans for Project Helix.
When does this end? Its killing everyone. Consoles and PC. And for what? AI? The benefits of AI are completely outweighed by the negatives. And the government should have never allowed one company to buy up all the RAM.
This kind of proves this is an after thought product, most products like this are in r&d 5 years before they start mass producing. So they typically have the cost of components and things worked out long before assembly starts.
This is an assumption still, but I wouldn’t be surprised if project helix is similar to Scalebound,perfect dark and sod3. They had an idea but no actual execution other than concept stage. Being impacted by the ram shortage likely would also put this device 3-4 years out.
I’m not even sure MS has that endurance with Xbox yet
I mean.... what?
We're at a point that Samsung wont even provide their own phone department ram because they can sell it at higher prices to 3rd parties (AI). Its more profitable to sell the ram than make their own devices with it.
You think because R&D starts 5 years ago the 3rd party component manufacturers will honour that price? They'll sell it to whomever is paying the most today, not some gentlemens agreement they made years ago. AI farms will buy more volume at higher prices than any console manufacturer will. It'll be the same for Playstation.
Contractual agreements are not the same as “gentlemen” agreements. If you think that they work with their distributors a month before production then their entire business model is trash. They work with companies like nvidia constantly for building the graphics cards they need. They work with companies that build motherboards years in advance. This is what proper business planning does.
They are not buying components on a whim like a consumer. So again, considering the ram isn’t a singular module and is integrated into the motherboard I highly doubt they wouldn’t have a final schematic that they are supposed to be building around.
If they are delaying production another 3 years then it’s obvious again this is an after though project and is just trying to be responsive to their bad execution they had the last 14 years.
It also isn’t far fetched to use their failure to produce first party titles the last 7 years including the highly anticipated games I mentioned all being cancelled. That they would continue to you know… lie
Helix is going to be stupidly expensive
Instead of leaning into smarter upscaling techniques they're brute forcing hardware that will cost them dearly and it remains to be seen if it's genuinely going to provide a meaningful differential
I know in the oc.doace people like to brag about not using frame gen or dlss to get to high on a game but for the majority of players they happily use those technologies without a second thought
That's going to be ps6 vs Helix
While this does seem to be the case, I am encouraged by the statement from Microsoft about wanting to provide affordable options. If this means a Series S style Helix, at least there will be something affordable being offered.
It's called systematic inflationary. Yes we get it Microsoft, keep raising in the name ofall kinds of stuffs
Honestly if there was thing I learned from this generation is that new consoles arnt day one anymore.
I can wait 1-3 years.
Another important lesson from this generation: while Nintendo showed us that prices don't necessarily need to ever drop, we've now learned that waiting 1-3 years does carry some risk that prices increase. This generation is just bizarre in all the wrong ways.
The factors are largely external. Covid and Russia-Ukraine war causing inflation led to the first price increase in 2022.
Then we get Trump's tariffs increasing hardware prices, AI boom causing a RAM crisis, war on Iran causing a worldwide fuel crisis which impacts the cost of everything.
Gaming doesn't exist in a vacuum. The last few years have been a shitshow and lot of it was definitely avoidable.
LucasRuinedChildhood,
For sure. No disagreement on the external factors doing a lot of this. Where I have to gently push back however is on two fronts:
1. The pandemic definitely caused some issues: asynchronous development was a big issue and really complicated timelines and affected game quality. At the same time, when it comes to price hikes, it's really difficult to know what was genuine necessity and what was taking consumers for a ride. The pandemic brought about "stag-flation" which was increasing prices and stagnant wages, which was a problem caused by supply chain constraints. There was also "Greed-flation", where companies that were slightly affected or had no issues took advantage of the situation and squeezed everyone citing supply chain issues when there were none.
2. It's definitely true that the tariffs, AI boom, and RAM crisis were all things enabled by tech broligarchs throwing money at this caricature of a world leader, one of them being Satya Nadella. I don't think Sony and Nintendo have contributed much to this problem if at all, but Microsoft's Nadella I feel was instrumental in causing every one of those issues. Microsoft as a company contributed to both candidates (though they gave Harris 4x as much if I recall), but Nadella was all in on letting AI run wild. He paid for unregulated AI, and got a war that's not a war (even though Trump called it that at least five times on television) that screwed up helium access. So for me, I feel that one of the players in the gaming industry is a key architect of these issues, and for that reason I struggle a bit to think of it as "external".
"Spencer indicated that there are Microsoft IPs in the pipeline without mentioning specifics. The Xbox boss also said on Twitter that there will be single-player Xbox console exclusive games to look forward to in the near future."
I guess people only read what they want to read.
The biggest takeaway that he won't let first party SP games to be developed but instead let third parties do it.
Let's go ahead and fix this so that gamers can understand this fully. To help, just add this at the end "for Microsoft."
*Single-player games are not as lucrative as they once were(for Microsoft)
Halo and Gears aren't pushing consoles out the door for the company. So embarrassed, Microsoft can no longer post console sales. Even Nintendo, a proud company, posted Wii U numbers. Microsoft, not so proud, show cowardice. And single player games have failed for Microsoft like Tomb Raider exclusivity, Recore,Quantum Break, etc.
*Games as a service is the current market trend(for Microsoft)
Microsoft continues to look for revenue streams. Which is fine for a business to do. But it's because they lack a plethora of in house games that cater to players worldwide. Like Japanese games because Microsoft doesn't believe they will create huge returns in profit for them. And a fan base that believes games that aren't AAA or English based are niche.
*Multiplayer games rule the roost(for Microsoft)
More games that are online for Xbox live, the more Microsoft makes in revenue. It's why Crackdown 3,Sea of Thieves, State of Decay 2, Forza, even the remaster (?? Lol!) Phantom Rush is online. Even with micro transactions. Why Halo had better multiplayer and weak single player with couch co-op stripped out. Why Gears has weak single player story but good multiplayer. Makes Microsoft money to get you online. Paying for it anyway.... Oh.. And even canceled games like Scalebound and Fable Legends were multiplayer focused.
*Xbox One will have upcoming single-player focused games(for Microsoft)
Doesn't say in house. Only IPs that are coming in the pipeline (for Microsoft). And that could be Indies. That could be third parties which are multiplatform. Since single player games haven't helped Microsoft and Xbox one. And with their focus on multiplayer, what trust can you give them in that single player games like Zelda or Horizon are coming from them? They don't take risks like that.
Remember... For Microsoft...
Feel that if the SP game was AAA he would be shouting about it, using no definition surely hints that the offerings in the 'near future' will be Phantom dust and Ori.
For the good of gaming and MS I hope they have some bombs to drop at E3, I'm shopping around for 4K TVs so the Scorpio would be on the cards if they prove it will be worth it. I'm a PC gamer at heart but sometimes you just wanna sit on your ass in the couch.