Jim Sterling (The Jimquisition)

And it's getting worse. It will always get worse till there's a peak disjoint, and then either shit will improve, or the industry will find a way to die off for a while. That's how it always happens in situations like this. That's how it happened in the Video Game Crash of 1983.

Epic's announced their own digital game store and courting Devs by only taking 12% of the sale (Currently Steam takes 30%, 25% for large developpers as of a recent change)

To quote Jim

Not gonna lie, I do hope Valve gets serious competition, though I wonder how serious it'll be.

Edited by Ghilz on Dec 4th 2018 at 10:20:56 AM

The difference between streaming services and digital game stores is you don't need a monthly subscription to access the latter. If Epic's storefront takes off and other companies try to follow the leader, then downloading the different launchers is just a mild inconvenience and waste of storage at worst.

Assuming Epic curates their storefront and keeps things relatively high-quality, I can only wish for the best on this venture. Here's hoping more visibility and profits will head the way of indie developers.

Mighty Kombat: It's human myopia, not corporate myopia.

The bulk of game developers are based in America and Japan, and the ones in America all seem to be in New York or California, not anywhere that has dodgy Internet. They see good Internet as normal and so design for that; even if they know that big chunks of your country are still stuck with dialup, they don't bother accomodating them because the majority of their customers also live in places with good Internet, and people with bad Internet won't buy their products anyway because the Internet is so bad.

One sees something similar with apps. A bunch of libertarians who can afford to live in San Francisco come up with services that would make their own lives moderately easier, and tend to fail because it turns out most people can do things like laundry and cooking for themselves. But libertarians never even consider that, because it's not something they feel like dealing with; this can reach such ludicrous heights as Uber and Lyft independently coming up with a great new innovative idea which turns out to be a bus.

Regarding Epic's store, yeah it's good for Steam to have a competitor. That's why I use GOG instead. And sometimes itch.io. And remember Desura? Still, Epic does have the resources to hopefully make this happen.

Yet.

Anyhow, it would be nice to see some competition to encourage a better quality in the market, but I wonder if anyone can fill shoes big enough to front Steam. Even GOG, who's arguably in the best position to do it, doesn't reach far enough yet.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Dec 4th 2018 at 5:41:22 PM

Remember the "why would I want to live there?" Response when people pointed out just that in response to xbox1 originally being always online? Perfect example.

Epic's advantage over the other non-Steam stores is that via Fortnite they have the brand awareness to get people on-board, especially if they do something like offer in-game benefits for linking your account to their store or something.

They have the reputation for people to trust them with, and they have the perfect platform to promote the store with.

How would that even work? I know in America there's already stores that require memberships to shop there (like Sam's Club) but in the world of video games I don't see it going over well, even if I could see some company out there trying the concept.

It'll start with special memberships, that allow temporary free access to new games, give small bonuses, and so on. Ubisoft's Uplay, if I'm not wrong, had a special program for a while where they gave you a free old game or special prices that were better than Steam's or something. They'll then start hiking prices up, and introduce a new kind of special membership, that'll have the same benefits the old one had but for a smaller price, and so on, until getting the service but not paying is the same as not having one.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Dec 4th 2018 at 6:08:24 PM

EA's Origin had that. Dunno if Uplay ever did.

Game streaming is already here; you can play a streamed version of Resident Evil 7 on the Switch, and apparently it works passably.

This is where it starts. Offer one game for streaming, and the gaming press reports it as a great way to get high-end games on a system that would struggle to run them, because the code is all on another person's computer (better known by the buzzword 'the cloud'). This will expand. First, it will be an option alongside buying a game outright, and will be presented as a return to renting games. Then some big-budget games that would have gotten physical releases will be released for streaming some time before they are released physically or for download. Just a week, or even a few days at first, but over time the release gap will widen as people become used to it. As renting access to a game becomes more accepted, companies will push it more and more, until a AAA game in a popular series is made streaming-only. I'm guessing it will be an Assassin's Creed game, because this is just the kind of ~live~ ~service~ Ubisoft is eager to make happen.

Sure enough, the whole concept of having local copies of games will fall by the wayside. It's already well underway with movies and TV shows; lots of people don't even have anything capable of playing DVDs because they stream everything, and anecdotally I've heard of the iGeneration being genuinely surprised when they meet Millennials and Generation X who actually own physical media.

And at that point, Richard Stallman will have been proven right yet again.

I am not saying won't happen, but I do like to point out that there are giant hurdles to Cloud gaming, especially for it to become profitable. It's VERY computationally demanding. Like, think running an MMO, but worse. Especially for high fidelity games. Imagine the server farm you need to run the several million copies a COD or Battlefield game sees on launch.

It also requires you to have giant bandwidth, which is very limiting in some areas.

Again, not saying it won't happen (Several companies already do it), but for a game publisher, it's a giant expense, more than printing disks would be - added with a market reduction.

I think the Cloud gaming future will at first involve third parties (Nvidia's working on theirs) who will bare the brunt of the server loads, before publishers take a dip in that pool.

Edited by Ghilz on Dec 4th 2018 at 6:05:49 AM

Oh, it's not going to happen immediately; I was thinking super-long term.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnUdE8mK9gA - Play Station Classic - Underwhelming Plastic Tat (Jimpressions)

I've heard some real crazy shit out the PS Classic and how...hamstrung and held back it was, over the past few days.

Lookie lookie

Well that's just pouring salt in the open wound. Silent Hill? Vagrant Story? Medi Evil? Klonoa? Ehrgeiz? Parappa the Rapper? Suikoden? Mega Man Legends? Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver?

Yeesh, if that was the lineup I'd buy one of these things in a heartbeat.

Edited by M84 on Dec 6th 2018 at 2:38:58 AM

Best ending is they're added in some fashion later on or at least as a volume 2 unit, otherwise I fear Sony won't even acknowledge it in any way.

Damn it sony

Oh my fuck and it gets better you can access an emulator debug menu on the thing by plugging in a USB keyboard and hitting ESC.

Edited by MightyKombat on Dec 5th 2018 at 6:47:37 PM

LITERALLY the bare minimum.

Are people able to add games through the debug menu?

Edited by Rytex on Dec 5th 2018 at 12:54:47 PM

If they can't already, I bet they will in very short order.

Didn't take long for the NES and SNES Classics to get hacked after all. Then again this PS Classic hardly counts as hacking does it

Well if its easy to get some of the actually good games going on it I might look at it as an easy way to play classic games in another room from my PS 2/3 and PC.

Legend Of Dragoon, DQVIII and Parasite Eve 1 are some games I have been having a hankering to play but arnt even on the classic.

Oh trust me, I got all sorts of games, good and good that I'd love to mod on there. Shit like Gundam Battle Assault 2, Castlevania Chronicles, Tales of Eternia, Tekken 2, Soul Blade, Toshinden 3 and even Mortal Kombat Trilogy and Mythologies for the hell of it.

I’ve always wanted to play the Metal Gear Solid games.

Considering it's just a copy of PCSX Re AR Med, and the emulator is accessible with just a keyboard, modding in more games is probably not even that hard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQXdDsP3q7M - Silly Bethesda Leaks Personal Details Of Fallout 76 Customers To Other Customers

Lawsuit in 3,2,1..

Wow. Wow. It's like Bethesda noticed everyone saying that it's not actually possible for Fallout 76 to suck any harder than it already does and went, "Hold my beer."

You didn't need to punish people for playing Fallout 76, Bethesda. They're already being punished by playing Fallout 76.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Dec 6th 2018 at 8:11:15 AM