Gamereactor spoke at length with Head of Xbox Phil Spencer about first-party software, monetisation, and what The Initiative is actually doing.
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".
"First of all, I would like to say that we haven't acquired ZeniMax. We have announced our intention to acquire ZeniMax. It is going through regulatory approval and we don't see any issues there. We expect early in 2021 the deal will close. But I say that because I want people to know, I'm not sitting down with Todd Howard and Robert Altman and planning their future. Because I'm currently not allowed to do that, that would be illegal. Your question is completely inbound, but I get a lot of questions right now: "is this game exclusive? Is this game exclusive?" And right now, that is not my job in regards to ZeniMax. My job is not to sit down and go through their portfolio and dictate what happens.
In terms of what I want long term. I want those amazing studious to create the best games they ever created. That's when Todd and I sat down and had a discussion. Todd and I have known each other for years and years, and we talked about this partnership. We looked each other in the eyes and we said, 'okay, what are we really gonna do here?' And he said, 'I wanna build the best games that I've ever built and I want the support of Microsoft to be able to do that.' And I say the same thing about the studios at Arkane and id Software and Machine Games. I want them to do the most amazing work and support them in doing that."
It seems like he's bother by this constant question, but he had to know that this was coming. In any case, if I'm reading this correctly, it's up to Zenimax to decide where there titles go and they're just being funded by MS?
I wish he could give a straight forward answer, because he has a history of saying one thing and doing another.
I expect new games to be on GamePass: Xbox, PC, mobile and the rumored streaming stick. That's a potential audience of 300+ million.
GamePass only works if there is content to keep the end user subscribed. Exclusives as the Sony fans say. Netflix struggled in the beginning of the streaming era because they lacked high quality exclusive content. When they finally got that content and began producing their own original content their stock valuation swelled.
"You know if I rewind five years ago, I would say over and over, that we are committed to PC and then get a bunch of eye rolls, and rightfully so for we weren't doing much. But I think now when you look at what our standing is on Steam and Game Pass on PC, we have shown that our commitment over time has paid off. PC customers may or may not love what we do, but they know that when we are shipping things, we're gonna do our best effort on PC as well as on Xbox."
Definitely have to give MS props for *finally* backing PC gaming the past few years. Took too long, but seeing all these Xbox games on Steam is nice to see. As is the Game Pass for PC service.
Business and politics are the same. It's all talk to get you to buy the product and screw you over later once they own the market or just lie to you altogether.
"I'm a voter! Aren't you supposed to lie to me and kiss my butt?" - Peter Vankmann (Bill Murray) Ghostbusters 2