The Wednesday letters page is unsurprised publishers aren’t learning from Suicide Squad, as one reader looks forward to MAR10 Day.
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Long term worries
We truly are in a strange spot at the moment with gaming and like many others I just don’t know what to think about where things are going. All I know at the moment is that I’m really enjoying Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Dark Forces Remaster and there also seems to be a lot of other good games out this year so far, which is good considering it’s only just March.
The problem starts when you look at the rest of the year and there’s almost nothing confirmed. That’s not that unusual when we’re still so far away from Christmas but I do feel that there should be some effort from companies to calm people’s nerves and assure them that there is good stuff still coming out.
I’m hoping that this week’s Xbox Direct will help with that, even though it is only third party games. But that’s fine, first party games have always been rare, we just need a steady flow of games of any kind and assurances that things aren’t going to dry up.
I’ll be honest, I am worried about the future of gaming. I imagine things will settle down in a year or two when the investment companies come back but in that time how many companies will shut down and how many developers will just quit the industry? The mistakes that are being made now could have an influence for a decade or more.
Janson
They hype was right
I wrote in about a month ago about the hype taking me, after playing the demo for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.
Well, the game more than lives up to it. The gameplay is excellent, it looks gorgeous, the soundtrack is amazing and, more importantly, it is absolutely fun to play. I can’t remember the last time a game had me smiling this much and I’ve only just finished Junon (after 27 hours I’m taking my time and just absorbing everything!).
It is truly phenomenal and everyone who worked on it deserves every accolade. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, but Erika Harlacher warrants a shout out for her part in the soundtrack. All of the voice actors went all in for this game.
Sill82
Awaiting the inevitable
The stupidity surrounding the Warner Bros. decision to make more lives service games is so perfect I love it. They have the best example possible of why live service games are too much of a risk, and why single-player games are such a good idea and… nah, that doesn’t count. Live service game is the buzzword of the hour so lets go ahead and make more of them.
Unless they’re implying they’re just going to make really cheap, quickly made live service games from now on, but that’s hardly any better. It’s clearly going to take a few more high profile flops for all this to be over so just bring it on and let’s get it over with.
Gaston
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Crash recovery experts
I can’t believe that not only did the new TimeSplitters exist but it narrowly avoided being a battle royale, only for the whole company to then be shut down. We were this close! Obviously, all those poor developers being laid off was the real tragedy, but I think it’s obvious from the guy that leaked the footage that they were proud of the game and very angry about everything that happened.
There’s obviously nothing ordinary gamers can do about this. Although I would kind of like to see a mass boycott of companies that have acted this way, as it would basically only leave Japanese companies, and I’m not sure that would be a bad thing. It seems to me that most of the bad habits in the industry come from American companies and it was, after all, Japan which saved the industry at the end of the last crash.
Onibee
Between states
Update: After Microsoft kindly wiped my Xbox wishlist for the second time (what the hell!) I decided I would download PowerSlave: Exhumed to see what happens when trying to play the game after my glitched purchase/refund.
It now says I do not own this game upon trying to launch it and have probably had a refund which is what has actually happened. However, it still states in the Xbox store that I still own it, so it is now technically impossible to purchase and impossible to play due to an error code and a little triangle icon on the corner of the game.
I don’t know what to do to get round this problem, and as I don’t have a Twitter account and the phone numbers I have just return me back to xbox.com where I cannot successfully obtain any help.
This is driving me crazy. Can anyone advise please.
Chaosphere616
Just one more failure
The problem with live service games is how many failures are needed before publishers give up? Skull And Bones has obviously been a flop but is that going to be the final straw for Ubisoft? They’ve tried for so long to get a hit and they just can’t do it. I can’t begin to imagine how much time and money they’ve wasted on trying to have a hit, when they could’ve just been out there making proper games.
Warner Bros. has flopped with Suicide Squad but I guess that doesn’t count, or something, in their minds? So Hogwarts Legacy is just a fluke and the safe option is to stick with a style of game that neither them or most of the other publishers have ever had a hit with?
It’s hard to tell if Sony has realised the dangers and backed out early or not but what makes me laugh is that the only big player that’s had two solid hits (or more – I’m guessing other American sports sims also work like EA Sports FC, but I don’t know for sure) is EA and you don’t see them rushing to make more.
They’ve got what was FIFA and Apex Legends and they haven’t really tried to push their luck beyond that, other than a few low budget experiments. That might change with Battlefield in the future but if I was another publisher I’d look to the one company that’s had a lot of success in this area, and how their strategy is to not to make any more.
Grayson
Day of the Mario
Every year when I hear about Nintendo’s Sales Event Mar10 Day my mind goes back to the old Digitiser days.
The day and date format on Teletext was Month/Date so once a year it would obviously say MAR10 at the top of the page.
I often remember people writing in just to celebrate this hallowed day.
Is it true GameCentral? Is it true that your grandfather Digitiser is the origin for MAR10 Day?
Please put me out of my misery as I question this every year.
Paul
GC: Alas, no. We’re not sure when it became mainstream, but a lot of franchises seemed to claim a day for themselves about a decade or so ago, often based around the date itself, with May 4th for Star Wars and April 26 for Alien.
Alternative controls
I’ve seen a few letters now, mentioning that the writer believes the end is nigh for consoles and that people will defect to PC. I’m a PC gamer, gaming on computers has pretty much always been my go-to. It may be an age thing, my earliest gaming machines being the Spectrum and Amiga, I didn’t really get on board with consoles until the PS1 era and haven’t owned a console since the PlayStation 2 era. Anyway, I’m still not convinced most people will switch, but I just wanted to share one of my favourite things about PC gaming.
Now I don’t have the best hand-to-eye coordination and this can prove to be problematic when playing games, especially when you need a degree of fine motor movement on a controller. Playing on PC though there is a great solution: you can switch controller types on the fly. Here’s an example.
I’m currently playing Red Dead Redemption 2. I’m loving it by the way, highlight so far was stumbling across the KKK ritual where the new inductee accidentally set himself on fire. I then killed the leader, stole his amusing meeting notes and got some good reputation.
Anyway, that’s besides the point. I’ve always struggled aiming with a controller, even with auto aim it’s not something I’m good at. Getting in gunfights or hunting animals, that’s obviously a bit of a problem (especially once deadeye is depleted). So, although I like playing most of the game on controller, as soon as I get to anything that needs fine aim I jump straight over to the mouse. Far easier to get that headshot for a 3* pelt.
Anyway, I’ve always done this. In some instances (Control being a good example) the mouse and keyboard controls just worked so much better I just stuck with them.
As for first person shooters, how anyone ever managed this on a controller I have absolutely no idea! Impossible for me! It’s like a three-year-old playing a game…
Have fun gaming y’all!
The Dude Abides
Inbox also-rans
Not only do I think most Apex Legends players have no idea what Titanfall is, I think most Titanfall fans have no interest in Apex Legends. I really have no interest in anything that isn’t just Titanfall 3.
Leant
I’m not to defend evil corporations but I’m really not sure how much sympathy I have for someone that knowingly does something legally dubious, that they know Nintendo hates, and then gets a shuriken to the face from the lawyers. What did they think would happen?
Paulie
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