COD mainly generates money from MTs and season passes.
The game industry confuses, closing down proven studios only open a new studio?
It might be cheaper to simply pay the fine. Fighting said fine could cost millions due to court and lawyer fees. Fortnite generates well over a 100 million in each month, so Epic has plenty of cash.
The big game companies [aside from maybe Nintendo] are moving towards focusing on high revenue studios. No Microsoft, Sony, Take Two, etc. all axed some of their smaller lower revenue studios. The game industry is too volatile. Small independent studios can crash and burn based on one title. Conversely, being part of big company doesn’t guarantee you safety.
From what I have seen of Stellar Blade, the female characters over sexualization is being greatly exaggerated. The character design is no more sexualized than what is seen in older games like Bayonetta.
The Locust trilogy concluded with Gears of War 3. I don’t get how Gears 4 and 5 are “woke” .
Bethesda [or Microsoft] would have to reallocate internal and external studios towards fallout and elder scrolls titles. Bethesda has the issue of developing 2 big IPs that are large RPGs on rotation. If you want more Fallout and Elder Scrolls, development will have to be outsourced.
I wonder if the Perfect Dark reboot will have multiplayer and co-op like the previous entires in the franchise? Crystal Dynamic is mostly a single player studio, that’s a good developer of action adventure single player titles. However, I don’t recall the studio doing much stuff that focused on multiplayer, ignoring their forced live service marvel title.
I also think higher up leads may simply demand more based on the IP they are working on. This could explain why COD costs so much to develop.
Obsidian has been working on two RPGs (Avowed and the Outer Worlds 2) for the past few years. TV shows and films can be produced much faster than video games.
These types of in game purchases occur because whales, who are financially illiterate [or less likely rich] buy them.
Game budgets and sales generally aren’t publicly disclosed like those of movies. We don’t know what break even point of the Dead Space remake was.
My problem with Sekiro was the combat, I didn’t find it as engaging as Bloodborne, DarkSouls due to the lack of RPG elements. I even found action games like Ninja Gaiden 1-2 and Ghost of Tsushima more engaging as well.
I can’t wait to play. I’m also very eager to watch Digital Foundry’s technical analysis of Hellblade 2.
This one title that never clicked with me. I enjoyed Dark Souls, Demon Souls and Bloodborne, but I never warmed up to Sekiro’s parry-focused combat. I honestly gave up on the game at about the half way point.
Starfield was a steam platinum tier seller in 2023( https://store.steampowered.... so the game did well. N4G seems to have an ever shifting goal post for what makes a game successful, especially if said title isn’t on your preferred platform.
You make a good point. I think 40 FPS options will become more common once 120hz TVs become more standardized.
I’m certain the Crash N-Sane trilogy sold better than the Reignited Trilogy. Crash 4: it’s about time also did pretty well. So I would assume a new Crash title in the next few years is more probable than a new Spyro.
The Horizon Games have very stylized realistic graphics. They are not photorealistic, nor was photorealism a visual target for the series.
The goal post for what photorealistic graphics are has always been moving. I remember some 360/PS3 sports games being called photorealistic way back in the mid 2000s.