Jim Sterling (The Jimquisition)

Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 were both over a decade ago. They're from the Eisner era, not the Iger era.

While it's certainly true that Disney has a long history of not getting video games at all, it's also worth keeping in mind that Disney is a publicly traded company and wants to keep investor confidence up. I'm not sure I'd read too much into what Iger is saying

I mean, The Old Republic is still going strong and I liked what I played of it (even if I am on a sabbatical currently due to financial issues), but yeah, I am seriously worried about Bioware. If they go under because Anthem underperforms, then its all but guaranteed that EA will pull the plug on TOR, pocket all the subscription money and run. They did it for Darkspore and Mercenaries 2, after all.

Let's be real here, its not "if" its "when."

The signs are all there and in half a year or so we'll be saying "rest in piss forever miss" to Bioware and everyone will be letting EA get away with yet more borderline corporate sabotage.

Lots of Jimquisition videos to catch up on...

Cyka blyat... If a game has multiple "Special Editions" without any one of them being THE "Complete/Definitive Edition", then missing out on them is no big deal—to the point that any "Triple-AYYY" publisher that indulges in such a practice is enough of a warning sign that it should be avoided.

Now if I REALLY wanted to check that game out despite the multiple confusing editions, then I'll wait for the "digital Jack Sparrows" to do their thing first. (Besides, they'll probably unlock all that s**t from the get-go, to boot!)

I may not have played the first two Titanfall games, but I do feel sorry for the fans expecting Titanfall 3. For what it's worth, I just hope that Apex Legends earns more than enough money to warrant investing into Titanfall 3 without Executive Meddling from Unicronic Arts—unlikely as that may be.

Then again, if Apex Legends becomes a darkhorse cash cow for Unicronic Arts, I just know that the free-to-play game will be Ruined FOREVER somewhere down the line just to push players into buying MTX... (To say nothing of Anthem—a full-priced game.)

And speaking of Respawn Entertainment...

Well, I guess I won't be seeing any good, narrative-driven Star Wars games for the foreseeable future... I wouldn't be surprised if Respawn's Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order (which I only know of from that "interview" at Unicronic Arts' infamous E3 2018 conference) gets canned sooner or later for being a "linear, story-driven game."

"Learn as if you will live forever, live as if you will die tomorrow."

Disney's gonna say they're happy with EA's Star Wars stuff regardless of whether or not it's true, because they're still stuck in a contract with them.

And because it's the Mouse. They never admit when they are wrong.

Qui odoratus est qui fecit.

Electronic Arts 'Disappointed' By 7.3 Million Battlefield V Sales

In other news:

Water... still wet.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Feb 7th 2019 at 3:41:46 PM

Remember folks, single player games don't bring money and only multiplayer games are worth it.

And microtransactions are good.

Uni cat

> And microtransactions are good.

but james off credits said they were good so they must be!

New theme music also a box

I miss local multiplayer.

Secret Signature

...Okay, now I'm actually wondering what will happen to TOR if Bioware does end up going under over all this. I mean, from what I've seen, its been EA's "premiere" MMO for years and is marginally successful, especially after all the retooling its gotten.

Would they simply have a skeleton crew maintaining the servers? I know its EA, but considering TOR is essentially EA's Warcraft, I don't think even they're stupid/greedy enough to pull the plug on that sweet, sweet monthly subscription income.

It'll change hands to one of the other studios under EA's belt.

Jim has published a full audio of him reading the plot points of the Kingdom Hearts series on his Patreon, free for everyone to see.

It's a 55-minute long audio of Jim explaining plot points from the entire franchise.

It is glorious.

Fucking share prices...

Something very similar happened to Nintendo recently. In March last year, they forecast they would sell 20 million Switches in the fiscal year. Most people were skeptical, but then they had a really good Christmas period and actually seemed on track to meeting that goal.

Then at their last shareholder meeting they said they'd been a bit overly optimistic in their last forecast, and would likely sell 17 million rather than 20 million by end of fiscal year. 17 million is still bloody impressive for one year, especially since Nintendo actually makes a profit on hardware... but their share prices still dropped.

And this emphasis on shares is a goddamn special idea. Here's what a drop in share price actually means: if EA, or Nintendo, or whatever company decides to bring in some cash by issuing new shares, a lower share price means they need to sell more shares than if the share price was higher. That's it. That's all the difference share prices make.

Remember, 99.9% of share transactions don't change a company's fortunes by a single Zimbabwean cent, because the company isn't buying or selling anything - all those shares are being sold by stock traders to other stock traders.

Once upon a time, a change in share price could have been a useful metric by which to assess a company's health. In ye olden dayes, people invested for the long term, hoping to get dividends, and maybe make a profit on the actual shares by selling them somewhere down the line. Nowadays, however, few investors give a funt about dividends - the way to make money on the stock market is to buy some shares and sell them the instant they increase in price. This kind of thing only makes a few cents at most on each individual transaction, but because stock traders use powerful computers to do the actual trading, they can do this millions of times a day and make nice profits by providing no goods or services. (I will refrain from making a rant about the hypocrisy of libertarians and Objectivists because that is off-topic). Share prices are thus completely meaningless for assessing whether a company is in good or bad shape, because all the price of the shares reflects is the opinion of shareholders on what is going to happen to the price of the shares.

But EA has to capitulate to the stock market because of an axiom within modern capitalism that companies should prioritise making a profit for their shareholders. This notion is based on a platonic ideal of markets which was never really true, which is that companies provide goods and services ^{not always true}  Stock traders and investors mostly don't, and that the way to make a profit is to sell a higher-quality product ^false  For one example, look at how successful McDonald's and Burger King are compared to good fast food joints; therefore, in seeking to maximise profit, companies will make ever-better products at ever-lower prices, and everybody wins ^false  EA, for example, is notorious for increasing profits by laying off workers. Also, microtransactions make games objectively worse but are very very profitable. While EA appears to be incorporated in California, a whole lot of companies incorporate in Delaware because the state's laws enshrine this axiom in law; this means that, if a company is caught acting like a penis, they can claim that they'd love to dispose of their toxic waste safely, but that would mean they have less money to give their shareholders, which would be illegal!

This attitude seems to be weaker in Japan due to cultural reasons, which is why Nintendo doesn't seem to be as concerned, but it's still a meme that should go away, by force if necessary.

Edited by VampireBuddha on Feb 8th 2019 at 11:55:17 AM

Ukrainian Red Cross

I spent a solid minute trying to figure out how to highlight the trope you'd linked to in red before remembering that we can just make text be colored.

That's all I have to add. I don't know jack about trade or shareholders or the stock market.

Why am I not surpised that boringly competent Evil Overlord CEO Bob Iger , the king of safe remakes, only cares about whether or not Disney loses any money. I’m a bit surpised there isn’t a KOTOR remake already, seeing how popular the games are.

Apparently EA has been actively barring Bioware from making a new KOTOR because they don't want to have to give a cut of the potential profits to Disney.

Edited by SomeNewGuy on Feb 7th 2019 at 8:08:30 AM

Wow they are greedy.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

x6 So that's what Jim couldn't fit into that Kingdom Hearts video of his... 55 minutes to explain the plot points of Kingdom Hearts? Man, that series sounds convoluted AF.

Anyway...

Ah, the good old "below expectations" excuse... Eff off, Unicronic Arts. How about allowing your developers to take the time to actually make your games content-rich and bug-free before releasing them and asking for more money from customers? Ever thought of that?

And DICE...you were too damn Anvilicious inserting SJW agenda into Battlefield V, to the point that subtlety and historical accuracy gets thrown out of the window. To paraphrase Pixy's rebuttal to PJ in "Mayhem":

Edited by IncognitoNinja on Feb 8th 2019 at 1:09:14 AM

"Learn as if you will live forever, live as if you will die tomorrow."

Jim called Battlefield V a fine game ("So okay, its average" sort of way). So, i dont think its THAT horrible. And, from what i heard, there was a squad of black soldiers, deeds of who were ignored in history. And anyway, i dont know if i can get all SJW complaining from gamers seriosly, when most of them scream that "99,99 % of soldiers, who fought against Nazis in World War II, were white straight men".

Edited by VeryVileVillian on Feb 7th 2019 at 9:31:15 PM

Generally when people whine about "SJ Ws ruining everything" it's safe to ignore them.

Edited by M84 on Feb 8th 2019 at 2:53:27 AM

Disgusted, but not surprised

Nah, the SJW are to blame for battlefield v having women and shoehorning diversity.

It totally has nothing to do with the publisher forcing out a meh product and expecting cash to flow.

Uni cat

Totally nothing to do with the fact that it's part of a genre that while a singleplayer campaign is expected the focus is generally multiplayer, while being from a publisher that has been particularly fucking up with multiplayer and ~live service~ experiences. Nah, it's totally "get woke go broke"