Yeah it's a nonsense. Argentina and Turkey have atrocious economies, with inflation at crazy levels. Turkey's is at 60% and Argentinas is at 143% currently, on a background of years of terrible economic decisions. Their local currencies are effectively trash so it makes absolute sense for Steam to move to dollars if they're going to continue bothering trading in those countries.
It's how hyped it was and expectations set by Skyrim. Starfield was seen as the next step on from Skyrim in terms of game scale, and Bethesda hyped it up as their biggest and best game ever. It's neither of those things.
Also frankly in terms of RPGs, it feels dated. Witcher 3 set a new bar for what an RPG should be, but Starfield doesn't seem to have learnt those lessons. Baldurs Gate 3 has also set a high bar for RPGs this year, and Cyberpunk 2077 (for all its own flaws) also set a high bar for RPGs.
Starfield is an ok game but when it's hyped as it going to be the greatest game ever from Bethesda and going to be biggest game of the year, I'm not surprised it's being shat on when it turns out it's not.
But hopefully Starfield will be an important bump on the road for Bethesda. Bigger is not necessarily better and hopefully that lesson will carry in to Elder Scrolls VI.
Yeah reptuational is part of the issue but there is also a big financial issue too. Delaying a game is financially difficult as it affects financial projects for each year with shareholders (who only care about share price growth). If you release a game in a poor state you get to hit some of the financial targets which benefits the publisher particularly, but for the developer it means longer terms sales are much lower as reviews and feedback come in that the game is crap. You then have to patch and repair the game.
Patching has allowed publishers and developers to get away with this releasing of games in bad states, but it doesn't change that fundamental issue which disproportionately affects the developer. Dev studios often only have 1 game being worked on at a time. An unready early release which is poorly recieved can be an existential crisis. For publishers, a poorly recieved game is a disappointment but generally have other many other games also on release so they can move on and not care as much.
No Man's Sky and Cyberpunk are high profile exceptions. The gaming world is littered with abandoned flops, often due to not being ready for release.
Ironic for a company that published indie hits like Terraria and fresh mainstream games like A Tale of 2 Sons.
This does not reflect the whole gaming market but rather the failure of publishers to innovate well and make new things people like. Big publishers are risk averse and it's a common path them as they get bigger, and care more about shareholder value or venture capital. They won't take risks, and can't accept failures so they retrench. It's not a recipe for success as that end of the games market is already dominated by big publishers churning out annual versions of their mass market games.
A publisher like 505 r ally only has two possible futures on this road - go bankrupt as they can't compete or get bought out by a big fish who want their IP.
It doesn't say much abou the games market as it's actually very large, vibrant and varied. A publisher like 505 is not on the vanguard of the games market and like most people I had to look them up to even see which games they had published. This is just yet another company being mismanaged into oblivion and well beyond its hey day.
I suspect the real problem is that Unity's revenues and profitability don't match whatever targets have been set by it's investors. Unity Technologies lost $921m last year on revenues of $1.39bn. That's not a great position to be in for a 19 year old company, and with supposedly 2bn people a month supposedly using a Unity powered game every month.
They're either earning too little, spending too much or both. They've tried to increase income, controversially, and now they're trying to cut costs. Question really is, can this company actually be profitable or is their business model just fundamentally flawed.
Also a bizarre comparison. Cities 2 is a simulation game - they are very CPU intense games. The graphics are nice but it's likely it's problems with balancing the CPU demand and the graphics that is the problem, rather than the graphics themselves. Simulation bottlenecks will drop the FPS drastically, regardless of the graphics engine.
From what I'e seen of the game on Twitch, I think the performance issues aren't game breaking. It seems the game runs fine if you reduce settings; while it's far from ideal it looks playable.
But it will be damaging for the game. Mods won't launch until after the game is launched, and that may be delayed further by time taken fixing the game post launch. For a game that suceeded in a very large part due to user content that may really harm the game's success.
The articles take is still out of kilter with a lot of opinions. He's focused on the empty procedurally generated content but then talks about how "phenomenal" the main quest is?
The main quest is ok. I wouldn't say it's "phenomenal". I'm not seeing the depth of gameplay and writing that I saw in Baldurs Gate 3 or Cyberpunk 2077 or The Witcher 3. Starfield is not a bad game, but it's also not phenomenal. It's ok. I'm more excited by the next CD Projekt Red or Larian game than I am about the next Bethesda game at this point.
I think they want to be vendor neutral to reap the benefits regardless of where people bought the game (i.e. not be limited to steam workshop)
I'm more bothered by the Mods being for Console and PC. I worry that PC modding is going to be held back by the inherent limitations of modding on and for consoles.
I think this is the real problem with the gaming industry. Development studios are treated as if they're sources of IP when in fact it's more about the people working for them.
A good dev team is the people who made the games. A team gets bought out by a big publishing giant and it seems they inevitably lose the people who made them great.
That's not to say big publsiher owned studios can't make great games but I'd argue the best games are coming from the indy studies whether that by one man bands like ConcernedApe or big independent studios like CD Projekt Red.
Also CD Projekt Red was highly motivated to fix Cyberpunk as it's a smaller studio, and pretty much their entire future business needed it to be fixed and work. They need and want to make more Cyberpunk games. Microsoft has zero motivation to fix Redfall - it was a commercial failure in a big coroportation; they will just dump it and move on but also be more averse to trying to make new IP.
So been moving around a lot with browsers, waterfox, librewolf and very recently degoogle chromium, figured id look at Firefox and holy theres less than half the option in setting then there were afew years back but I gotta say the biggest sin is that adding custom search engine is obfuscated, and the chooses of engines are...
This has already been confirmed a non story. He said this around the launch time and Larian have since confirmed that the section has been found and played.
This article shows the poor state of gaming "journalism". Stories taken from each other and no actual work done by the "journalist". So false rumours spread.
To be fair I think Polygon have misunderstood the email.
Calling it "second run Stadia PC RPG" implies Microsoft thought it was going to launch as a Stadia exclusive for it's first run. This was back in 2020 when Stadia was still a thing, and trying to sign up exclusives.
That doesn't mean Microsoft underestimated it, but that it thought it'd already have had a run on Stadia which would make it less likely to be an important title for Microsoft.
'Today is the end of Steam': Argentina and Turkey floored by new Steam price hikes as high as 2900% (www.pcgamer.com)
Reviews for Starfield on Steam drop to "Mixed" (www.aroged.com)
Gabe Newell on why game delays are okay: 'Late is just for a little while. Suck is forever.' (www.pcgamer.com)
SimTower: The Simulated Skyscraper Game Strategies and Cheats (www.retrotechdreams.com)
505 Games' parent company lays off 30% of its workforce, says gamers really only want sequels so that's what it's going to make (www.pcgamer.com)
Digital Bros joins the chorus of game companies putting people out of work in the name of "operational efficiency."
Unity announces layoffs despite increased revenue and reduced losses (www.gamesindustry.biz)
Cities Skylines 2 reportedly runs with 7-12fps on an Intel Core i9 13900KS with AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX at 4K/High Settings (www.dsogaming.com)
Starfield Desperately Needs More Unique Locations (www.thegamer.com)
Cities: Skylines II - Updates on Modding (store.steampowered.com)
MORE MODS FOR EVERYONE...
Redfall can be the next Cyberpunk 2077, if Microsoft wants it to be. (www.pcgamesn.com)
I’m really hoping MS can get this game back on track. It has so much potential.
After Axing Headlines, Elon Musk To Hide Retweet, Like Buttons On Twitter (www.pcmag.com)
Since when did Firefox make it so difficult to set custom search engine?
So been moving around a lot with browsers, waterfox, librewolf and very recently degoogle chromium, figured id look at Firefox and holy theres less than half the option in setting then there were afew years back but I gotta say the biggest sin is that adding custom search engine is obfuscated, and the chooses of engines are...
Baldur's Gate 3 Voice Actor Claims There's A Two-Hour Section Of The Game No One Has Found Yet (www.gamespot.com)
Astarion actor Neil Newbon refused to offer even the slightest hint toward how to find it.
Microsoft completely misjudged Baldur’s Gate 3 (www.polygon.com)