Failure is always ugly and there’s a lot of blame to go around. The games business is hard and and I’m certain MS is dealing with a lot of difficult choices.
BUT
What’s happening now is a lot of pretty high profile announcements being marketed fairly heavily as games under development and then canned. Although Phantom Dust died early, together without Fable Legends and Scalebound this makes a pretty ugly pattern. At the very least they need to start asking themselves why this is happening repeatedly. Maybe they aren’t starting the projects with enough clarity in how it is supposed to develop. Maybe they aren’t willing to commit to the long term development needed to make the kind of properties they want. But whatever it is, clearly theybarent getting what they want out of whatever process they are using.
Without Scalebound, what exactly does MS have in the queue for 2017? Although I wasn’t over hyped about this game I’m hard pressed at the moment to think of something they have going that I’m even aware of let alone interested in.
Looks like they’re banking everything on Halo Wars 2, Crackdown 3, and Sea of Thieves. All of these seem risky to me. Halo Wars 2 is a sequel to a game I’m not sure anyone asked for, Crackdown 3 has massive competition with other open world games + general open world ennui (and they are trying to sell it on some cloud computing schtick which seems much more likely to fall flat on its face than produce anything revolutionary), and I’m not convinced Rare can produce an interesting video game anymore now that they have siphoned off so much talent. What I’ve seen of the game (which isn’t much) doesn’t impress me.
I dunno. Meanwhile, I take a look at the PS4 library and it’s a lot richer. I think there’s no doubt that Sony is murdering MS on the games library front unless the particular brand of Gears of War/Halo shooter action is your main thing.
I actually don’t really care about scalebound.
As long as i have KI and every year a new Forza game, i am happy.
If project Scorpio can offer me KI with 4k 60fps graphics, i buy one.
For the rest of the exclusives sea of thieves and state of decay 2 looks interisting.
Multiplats on Scorpio i hope for a better framerate. Don’t need 4k but 1080 or 1440 with better fps would be awesome and a reason to buy a Scorpio.
I bought an xbox one for KI and the forza games.
ps, I am more hyped for the new Nintendo that i was for Scalebound. Its still a bummer for a lot of gamers who were excited for scalebound.
[quote=“Infilament, post:42, topic:17678”]
I dunno. Meanwhile, I take a look at the PS4 library and it’s a lot richer. I think there’s no doubt that Sony is murdering MS on the games library front unless the particular brand of Gears of War/Halo shooter action is your main thing.
[/quote] While Sony may have more games, it’s true, it’s also true that I care not for most of them, whereas XBOx has games I do enjoy playing, like KI, Halo, Forza, etc.
Yeah it’s frustrating to see so many niches other than shooters and sports get neglected or run into the ground like this when it comes to Microsoft exclusives. This has always been an issue for them since the original Xbox, and I wonder why they’ve never really done anything about it.
I’m leaning more towards @Infilament on this one. There are some things that MS does well - Forza has no serious competitors for sim racing at this point (Gran Turismo comes out once a console cycle practically) and Sony doesn’t have a good Gears competitor or Halo competitor for that matter. But new and interesting? After about a three year stretch where I thought MS was clearly just killing them I see Sony being ahead for the foreseeable future in this. Horizon: Zero Dawn, The Last of Us 2, Insomniac’s Spider Man. These are the games generating buzz right now. Halo Wars 2 is not going to be a mega hit, and I’m kind of expecting Sea of Thieves to go the route of Recore and show up as kind of a disappointing budget title for a limited audience, despite being hyped as a major game in the release lineup. I could be wrong but so far I’m failing to see what is interesting about the game.
One way or another these are strange gaming times, with the craziness if multiple hardware releases. MS seems to be doing well with Xbox One S and Sony doesn’t look great with PS4 pro, but if Scorpio is going to capitalize on that they are going to need some games. And I’m not seeing much from MS. If I want a 4K $500 + box to play CoD on why would I not just build a more versatile PC?
Of these games, I’ve never heard of the 1st, haven’t yet played the original to the 2nd, and don’t give 2 licks about the 3rd, since every game with that hero has been, IMO, not good - so we’ll have to agree to disagree.
I have both consoles, so who has what exclusive doesn’t really matter to me. I was REALLY looking forward to Scalebound, but alas, it’s certainly a let down.
I’ve seen this line of thinking from others before and it’s simply not true… How would you feel if I said the same thing about Sony and FGs?[quote=“EbullientSeaCow, post:53, topic:17678”]
Ms has so many ips it’s not using it also needs a few new ones too.
[/quote]However, I won’t argue this point - virtually any Rare-based title (Perfect Dark, Conker, Banjo-Kazooie, Battletoads…), Viva Piñata, Voodoo Vince, etc. would all do well if given new life, I think.
I doubt we’ll ever get the full story on this. MS could maybe say “quality standards” on their side, but I can’t imagine it’d be a great idea to burn a bridge or throw a 3rd party under the bus like that. Platinum could say “unachievable milestones” but again, we don’t know the full story. Either way, it’s disappointing.
Honestly, they’re just crazier Devil May Cry games, at least as far as I’ve seen. They’re well made though.
I’m hoping that this is a few aberrations in a short amount of time, but I agree that it’s rather disconcerting. As someone that owns this system, I’m finding it a little harder to get myself hyped for potential announcements when it feels like the chances something turns out to be vaporware are rising.
I’ve read rumors that Crackdown 3’s production isn’t going very well, and for as long as I’ve been seeing Sea of Thieves, I still don’t see much of a “game” there, at least not one that really impresses me. Gather your friends and take a ship to places and find treasure and drink beer and invade other ships? Eh. Seeing it in action really makes me wonder why anyone would be hyped for it.
Almost definitely 2017:
Forza Motorsport 7 (I like Horizon, not a fan of Motorsport)
Halo Wars 2 (not an RTS fan)
State of Decay 2 (didn’t play the first one, not really interested in this either)
Sea of Thieves (doesn’t really appeal to me)
Ashen (indy darling, looks okay)
Tacoma (indy darling, doesn’t look very appealing)
Possibly 2017:
Crackdown 3 (can’t say I’m really interested)
Voodoo Vince Remaster (haven’t heard much beyond the announcement)
Cuphead (looks good, don’t think it has mass market appeal)
Below (if this makes 2017, I’ll be shocked. Also, not interested)
After looking at a few lists, that’s really all I could come up with. I’m sure there will be more Minecraft stuff too, but yeah, for me personally, that’s a REALLY grim lineup for 2017. Like possibly the worst lineup of exclusives (again, for me) that I’ve seen for any console in years. A few of those games, I might be able to force myself to be mildly interested in, but I can’t say I have any real hype for any of them.
To be fair, MS did have some decent variety on the original Xbox. Ninja Gaiden, Jade Empire, KOTOR, Dead or Alive 3, Fable, Crimson Skies, MechAssault, Blood Wake, Brute Force, Blinx, Voodoo Vince, Sudeki, Phantom Dust, etc.
Not to mention a host of Sega games that came exclusively to the original Xbox such as Panzer Dragoon Orta, Jet Set Radio Future, Outrun 2, Crazy Taxi 3, Shenmue 2, Otogi, Gun Valkyrie,
Honestly, as far as exclusives go, I think the OG Xbox was honestly the best system they’ve had. They seem to go away from exclusives a bit more with each passing generation, at least from what I’ve seen.
I’d really like to see them partner up again with Sega. I’ve mentioned that a million times, but MS simply doesn’t have enough studios right now to bring enough good games, spanning enough genres to market each year and we’re really starting to see that this year as the well is seemingly running dry. Personally, I don’t think their 2016 lineup was all that great either.
This would probably involve some indy studios, but honestly, at this point, whatever it takes. They need to put some money in to some projects that will get people interested, because right now, from my own, clearly limited vantage point, it seems to me that people are starting to get franchise fatigue when it comes to Halo, Gears and Forza. They’re great games, great IPs, but MS needs more, perhaps a lot more, and they’re not getting it from their other studios.
Depends on the title. For Destiny, I got it on Xbox first, because at the time most of my friends were on Xbox. I now have it on PS4 now as well. In respect to FFXV I picked it up on PS4, mostly due to only playing FF games on Sony systems. Skyrim… Xbox.
This is actually only true if we accept the unstated assumption that what “matters” in the gaming industry is what @galacticgeek thinks. I’m not arguing about what you should or shouldn’t care about or trying to convince @GalacticGeek to buy a PS4. But if your perspective on the industry is limited to the things that you, personally are aware of then you’re not really a part of the conversation. The games I listed are hugely discussed in the gaming media and have been the subject of intense marketing by Sony. If you don’t know what Horizon: Zero Dawn is that just says you are unaware of what’s happening in the industry.
Im not going to argue with you about what you haven’t heard of. We’re talking about the lineup of releases for 2017 and beyond and if you don’t know or care what they are then it’s really okay to not participate in the conversation.
