Honestly, I'm only a modest SH fan and there are definitely some things that concern me trying to bring a game like this to the modern era - though none so esoteric as those posed by your strawman lol.

Oddly, the first thing I'm curious to see how they handle is the script and voice acting. It is one of those scenarios where the original was written in a time where you wouldn't necessarily have high-quality writers on staff. But, more so than that, during a time where options for quality translations were harder to come by. Not only having to survive the quality of the translator, but the skill of their own authorship & balancing the script for the game & its new audience.

And they didn't really have the same voice direction & such they do these days, so you could get some really odd voice performances. This game somehow worked with all the pieces it had, and I think something might feel off if they try to punch up the script. I can't imagine they try to recapture the same tone of voice acting, that would be a tall order. And one I'm not sure they should even try lol.

Creating an environment is one thing, and in this case is a very big piece of the puzzle. But it isn't the only piece. I'm still hopeful it'll turn out great, but it has some unique challenges it needs to overcome IMO.

I guess this removes all doubt.

Yah. But that was a leak.

And Fatal Frame!

and didn't they announce a new Alone in the Dark?

"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...

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

Yeah with FSR 5 they should be able to offer a much cheaper version of Helix.

Series S is what has killed Xbox Series so... Will they dare?

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".