Microsoft ruined gaming

[TedNugent]

Okay, let's see if they make one dollar net on that transaction

Reminds me of when Zynga hit the shit tank. More money than sense, looks like.

I remember when Activision threw out the Tony Hawk devs after railroading them into making biannual sequels, and when they killed the Guitar Hero franchise after farming it to death. They have one mentality. Is this working? Okay, let's drive it into the sun.

 

[Archibald]

Not saying that it's going to be profitable or that its going to work, but making candy crush clone would make even less sense. Besides, they didn't buy only the candy crush, they bought bunch of people who know how to make billions out of stupid match-3 games.

 

[Nikaido]

Thou price is absurd either way.

At the moment, Candy Crush's maker, King, has a revenue of almost 2 billions per year. And you're saying the buying price is absurd? They bought an established developer that can pull revenues most devs are only dreaming of. That has a massive install base that can be (ab)used to do things like in game advertising (through updates) for their other games.
They didn't just buy "candy crush". They bought an established studio that already has a diverse mobile game portfolio, of which Candy Crush is the best known, but not the only F2P cash cow. That studio's ability to pull off massive profits is far to have come to an end. They are deep within the casual market. And now they're getting advertisement from every installation of windows 10 because they became one of the new preinstalled games on windows. You tell me how many developers can get access to that kind of advertising? Being preinstalled on the N°1 (not a judgement on quality, but on install base) desktop/laptop OS of the market?

 

[Irenaeus II]

Another example of Microsoft ruining gaming.

 

[Severian Silk]

PC gaming was ruined because I called Bill Gates on the phone and told him to make the xbox.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

Gaming is ruined? Wa da fuck is that toddler tantrum.

 

[Keldryn]

Christopher Walken is so fucking awesome. He "upgrades" everything he's in.
Also, every time kids get excited about AA actors appearing in videogames, I just show them Wing Commander - at one point, you had Luke Skywalker, Alex de Large and Gimli in a videogame. How fucking cool is that!?

Don't forget about Biff. Now make like a tree... And get out of here.

 

[Irenaeus II]

Webcomics back in early 2000s told me all I wanted to know about how bad (and HUGE) the Xbox was.

 

[Soph]

Microsoft is probably still gauging their eyes out looking at the succes story of Steam

 

[prodigydancer]

Imagine that future. Just imagine Sony Dream World come to pass, where PCs are even simpler than consoles, are as simple as TVs. What a world that would be.

Yeah. Gotta love how M$ is evil ITT yet $ony is all friendship and rainbows.

Nice try, sonyboys, nice try.

Imagine if Microsoft was broken up by the government in the late 90s and Apple came to dominate PCs.

"Dominate" is a very appropriate word when one talks about Apple.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.develop-online.net/news/cecil-playstation-killed-the-first-indies/0213655

Cecil: 'PlayStation killed the first indies'

Revolution co-founder reflects on the past golden age of independent development

British games industry legend Charles Cecil says that the first PlayStation led to the death of the UK indie sector during the 1990s.

The founder of Broken Sword studio Revolution was providing advice from his 35 years working in games development at this month's Interface event in London, which is taking place today (November 12th).

“The time of Broken Sword 2 was a golden era for British developers,” Cecil reminisced. “We had Grand Theft Auto, Tomb Raider and Worms. The UK led the world in non-console games at the time.

“What brought everything to an end was the PlayStation in 1996. It inadvertently destroyed the indie scene the first time around. Because it was so successful, all of the retailers wanted to stock non-PC games. Not only did the cost of games escalate, but it was all about visceral 3D games.”

Cecil said that Apple’s App Store ushered in a second golden age for smaller British game makers, and recalled the beneficial effect of partnering with Apple on a sales promotion for the remastered release of Broken Sword on iOS.

“Everything changed in 2007 with the iPhone,” he recounted.

“The App Store effectively had an infinite storefront, which meant the barrier to entry no longer existed for younger developers. Everything changed.

“We had a second golden era for indie developers. For a time, Flick Soccer was beating FIFA. It was insane.”

He continued: “We were invited by Apple to be part of 12 Games of Christmas.”

“Deep down, I really felt worried about it, but when Apple asks you to do something like this, you don’t say no.

“We got 2.5 million downloads on one day, and Broken Sword went into the Top Ten most Tweeted keywords in the world.

“We had launched Broken Sword 2 a few days before. Even when the deal had ended, sales of Broken Sword rocketed the next day – not only did it go up, but Broken Sword 2 went up, as well. Our sales went up by about six because we’d given it away.

“It was contradictory to everything I’d learnt about retail to that point.”

 

[Irenaeus II]

Are these Broken Swords games any good? The screenshots remind me of a cross between Indiana Jones and Curse of Monkey Island.

 

[pippin]

Are these Broken Swords games any good? The screenshots remind me of a cross between Indiana Jones and Curse of Monkey Island.

1 is good and a must for adventure fans. 2 is good as well. The rest are.... different. 5 was kickstarted iirc but it's "old school", so it's not really bad.

 

[pippin]

Also: Steam sells the butchered version of 1 made by DotEmu, if you want to buy it, do it on Gog, since it includes the original game as an extra.

 

[Archibald]

Apple is the hero we need?

 

[taxalot]

Not entirely sure as a whole, but I'm sure the Xbox version of Morrowind can be blamed in a huge part.
It was a definite, shifiting moment.

"This kind of game is working on consoles."
"It would work better with a better framerate and worse graphics."
"It would work even better with less text and simplified mechanics.".

Morrowind is the one moment where game developpers seemed to have realize that PC genres not only worked well in consoles, but instead of straight ports they should adapt to a market which sold better. That's when consoles stopped receiving PC ports and PCs started receiving Console Ports. It all happened between Morrowind and Oblivion. Until that part, consoles and PCs still had a very distinct gamebase besides some multiplatform stuff. (I'm thinking of the Prince of Persia trilogy for some reason).

It's not Halo. It's not call of duty. It's Morrowind.

Jugulate that with the increasing costs of game development, and you have exactly what ruined not gaming, but AAA gaming.