Well....
It's still a Gaas game made Square. Nobody is going to get a full game.
But I get your argument.
L7Chapel
That's 100 million Live users, not Gold. It's been a long time since they announced Gold subs, but even with the success of the 360, you never saw more than 50% of the player base with it.
@nibblo
Agree, but I'm not ready to fully believe they won't screw it up a bit.
No?
But they removed XBL annual subs, and GP subs aren't offering any kind of discount on long term packages.
Can you even buy GP for more than 6 months?
All besides the point. At most, live could be bought for $60 a year. That's $5 a month. Cheaper than any GP sub. Sure, some probably pay month to month, but for the vast majority, turning XBL into GP will be an increase in price they may not want to pay.
With these events now being digital only, I wouldn't be surprised if both already have the price and date videos ready to release. Just playing the waiting game.
Probably 3 of the most memorable E3 moments of all time involved Sony price reveals. The $399 PS4 cheers, the $599 U.S. dollars facepalm, and the infamous $299 mic drop. More than anyone else, they know how important that price reveal will be.
The 4chan one?
Got to stop with some of these rumors and "leaks." Anytime they come out and are woefully wrong, we see the "insiders" just turn around and say "plans changed" or some nonsense.
99% of them are lonely dudes just looking for attention who just put out unverified wishlists to stir up the hive.
If they use their fat wallets to compete by offering better value, I can't be upset.
In the early 360 days, they used those deep pockets to buy up 3rd party time exclusive games and DLC. That was bullshit. It certainly paid off for them at the time, but hopefully all gamers can agree that if given a choice, we'd rather see these guys use their financial strength to offer better value and not just try to moneyhat.
Something is brewing. I'm on the fence on how aggressive MS will be here, though.
I see 3 scenarios. 1st - Kill XBL as it is, and force it into Gamepass. That's nice for people already into GP, but it's going to seriously piss off those who just want their yearly Live sub and don't want to go month-to-month and increase their costs. I bet MS has all of the numbers and might see this as a small risk, but the blowback will be huge imo.
2n...
Pure next generation multiplats? Meaning compatible on PC where you can use DS4s, Xbox, or any other controller?
Or meaning multiplat across consoles where you can also use non-dual sense pads?
I only use PS4 as my SP exclusive machine anymore, so this doesn't affect me as much as that family w/kids, or the people who use their PS systems for couch MP. But I was hopeful that the old "got to rebuy all new everything" was finally ending.
I can 100% understand 1st party. But all of the multplats could easily work without the new features (and likely will). Many of them already work with the DS4 because they have a ps4 version.
No spoilers!
It's helped. Expansion to PC, Covid, and continued popularity of MP titles like Warzone and Fortnite helped too. GP has seen aggressive investment to some degree, but it seems to me that they're being rather measured about it.
@Christopher
It's not entirely untrue. While their margins are probably nonexistent on GP, I don't see the level of aggressive investment we would expect if it truly was a Netflix or "money pit" situatio...
Wait, you didn't count Ori because it was "independently" developed, but you count other second party stuff like State of Decay (buggy but definitely not GaaS and was 2nd party at the time) and Crackdown (mediocre but not Gaas, developed by 2nd party).
Look at this month. Wasteland 3 (crpg not a Gaas) and Battletoads (not GaaS).
Grounded is looking like a hit. It's in game preview because it's unfinished. Kind of the point. Bleedi...
It's coming to PC too, MS would love if all XB owners had GP but it's not true, and F2P can only exist if you monetize them somehow.
Halo battle royale would be amazing. For all the jokes and negative treatment, you got what, 50 million people to jump onto Warzone? It's not going away.
F2P will mean that people without GP, on presumably either XB or PC will have free Halo.
This sounds like the rebirth of the Halo Online idea from a few years ago over in Russia.
And what if it's F2P on PC?
No paywall.
Although I suspect all of the Gold rumors have some truth to them. Let's see how ballsy they can be.
"What other aspects are there?"
Gameplay, story, setting, scope...There's plenty of other aspects being discussed, quite positively. Graphics seem to be the only focus from a lot of "concerned" people, though.
"That seems accurate, it looks like a 360 game."
Going back to the old aesthetic is a huge positive. I know people want hyper-realistic graphics in many games, and Halo 4 and 5 started trending ...
You keep saying effort and want to compare to others. I get it. They don't compare on the AAA output.
But what studios did they have to match Sony and Nintendo?
That's the part you're missing. They couldn't match them because they literally didn't have the humans available.
They're putting the effort in a lot more than the few years prior, but they're realistically 2 years from being close to matching Nint...
I'm sure they look at the best selling game of all time, Minecraft, and say "we should do less of that."
They have popular tentpole titles like Halo, Forza, and Gears. People enjoy them for their SP and MP. Some people think they are milked, but dedicated fans want more.
So what is the best approach? Take Halo. We see it's going to have a campaign, and the newest MP rumors are very interesting. Is it bad to release a SP and MP Halo and...
Yes, most games in this genre have released to game preview prior to full release. Maybe that's "normalized," I suppose.
You already identified the issue with the MS 1st party releases. Who exactly was going to release these games you're (not really) looking for on GP?
Coalition isn't going to have anything to release right after Gears, but they managed to assist w/ therelease that "budget" tactics game.
...
As to MS paying Square for their own DLC, Sony could easily have put language into the contract to make them the only platform to receive content. It's typical to do so.