'If the big companies dictate what games can be created, I don't think that will advance the industry.' -Shihei Yoshida
Former CEO describes lawsuit filed by Swedish pension fund as a "collateral attack" on Activision Blizzard.
Kotick Made $155 million from MS in the buyout, the little b*tch needs to stop whining. Thanks to this Microslop deal and massive industry consolidation thousands upon thousands of devs and other workers lost their livelihoods. This greedy piggie pervert needs shut up and f-off.
Larry writes: "As many of you have been with me during my career in gaming, I'd like to share personal news. Like many in the gaming space recently, I've been laid off from @Unity"
That’s some major layoffs best of luck to him and the rest that got laid off. It always hurt specially more before or during holidays.
Met Larry a couple times. Sucks to hear he got laid off. Real standup guy who just loves gaming and the industry.
Dude finally got laid at 58 years old. Bit of a weird flex but im still happy for the guy!🥂
"We see DRM as something which can make the life of a legal customer more difficult," says Michał Kiciński, "so there is no reason to keep it alive."
🙄 same guy who said 80$ is a steal lol and according to him M$ shouldnt put good on a services🤣 wtf
I can agree with that on some level
Subscription services have f***ed the movie industry and it's work force, caused massive studio buyups by companies like Disney consolidating huge parts of the industry under one roof and have creatively sterilised the IP's they've gobbled up. The same thing is happening to gaming, MS being the main greedy piggy.
I get what he's saying, but I don’t think we need subscription services to see a lot of the problems he's pointing out. All we really have to do is look at the gaming industry over the last two console generations. Even without subscriptions, the big AAA publishers have already been moving in a direction where almost every game feels like it's built from the same template. It’s all about streamlined, safe design choices that are meant to appeal to the widest possible audience. At this point, you could probably ask an AI to make a AAA game from a certain publisher and it would spit out something pretty close to what they’re actually making.
Now, about the whole “walled garden” thing... that’s not some future problem, it’s already here. Consoles have always worked like that. Their entire business model is based on controlling what gets released on their platforms. Sure, maybe they’re not as locked down as the extreme examples people bring up, but the end result is similar. If you’re not making the kind of game the platform holder wants, you’re probably not getting through the door. We’ve seen it with Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, even Valve does this in its own way with Steam. So yeah, the issue isn’t new or exclusive to subscription services.
Would a subscription-only future make that problem worse? Sure, it definitely could. But I don’t think we’re heading in that direction anytime soon. Unless physical hardware truly becomes a thing of the past and everyone switches to streaming games, I just don’t see subscriptions becoming the dominant model. They’ll stick around as an option, but I doubt they’ll take over completely.
Now, what will take over completely is digital media, and that’s a whole different issue that’s going to hit us a lot sooner. PC and mobile are already basically 100% digital, and that makes up around 70% of the gaming market. The remaining 30% is consoles, and even there we’re seeing the shift. Sony’s removing the disc drive from boxed consoles, Nintendo is releasing just one super expensive 64GB cartridge for their new system, which means almost all third-party publishers will end up going digital and Microsoft is mostly digital already. You either get a digital-only or a physical box with disc that only acts as a activation key. So yeah, that future’s already knocking on the door and the damage will be enormous.
Right, because then you can’t sell individual games at $80, which is an incredible value for the consumer!