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regift_of_the_gods writes:
"The results from the 2013 holiday season through January are leaking in, and they look grim: not great for Sony, bad for Microsoft, terrible for Nintendo. The PS4 seems to be outselling the Xbox One but both are far behind their respective sales totals of 2006/2007, when they faced off with the previous generation of consoles. An anonymous developer quoted in the TechCrunch piece notes: 'There are 2+ year old GPUs that outperform these boxes, and even budget GPUs releasing now in the $150 range outclass these machines... This means whilst the casuals are moving to mobile/web, the high end enthusiasts are moving to PC where games are better looking. The traditional consoles are caught in a pincer movement.'
Sony has just completed a round of layoffs at its Santa Monica game studio. Meanwhile, the future of Xbox within Microsoft remains cloudy, with the departure of CEO Steve Ballmer and the ascension of Stephen Elop as head of the Devices and Services group, which includes the Nokia/Lumia handsets and the Surface tablet as well as Xbox. There are rumors that Microsoft is negotiating to sell the Xbox division to Amazon, which seems to be trying to enter the game platform industry. Elop wrote the (in)famous 'burning platform' memo when he was CEO at Nokia, as a prelude to abandoning the Symbian and MeeGo operating systems in favor of Windows Phone; he also stated last year that he would consider divesting Xbox and Bing if he was named CEO."
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Aiwendil on Monday March 10 2014, @12:26PM
I do actually not mourn the consoles, in fact they have been dead for more than a decade in my eyes. Anyhow, here is a short list of what killed games for me:
* Login-requirement - when the servers go down your purchase is not functioning (if the servers only are up a few years I consider it a rental)
* DRM - only bought SimCity4 after there where reports of a noCD-patch
* Non-skippable cutscreens - no, they are not impressive even the first time and add nothing while increasing irritation
* Non-configurable controls - I want down to indicate up and vice versa dammit, also I do often switch between lefthanded and right-handed setups (think arrows vs wasd)
* Too short - what happened with the games that took weeks or even months to properly figure out?
* Too easy - where are all the new games with instakills, one life, removes your savefile on death, and with a steep learningcurve
* Too simple - where are all the games that requires you to maintain a proper mental model of the entire game/level just to be able to pick a working tactic? (and where are games that requires proper strategy?)
* Too boring - special effects and reactiontime-games does nothing for me, engage my mind dammit (Dammit Jim, I'm a thinker - not a robot)
* Too linear - too few choices that changes the gameplay significantly (ie: where are all the mazes? (tech-trees, maps, etc))
* Too social - seriously, include a singleplayer against AIs if your game are multiplayer by nature, I often play at odd hours and often need to leave a game paused and suddenly for hours
* Centralized servers - seriously, release a server with your game as well for when at a lan-party, or when just wanting to play with friends, or when you have decided to shut down your main servers.
* DLC - Do not release an unfinished game, significant changes are fine however (smallest being roughly the difference between syndicate and syndicate - american revolt), however, allow all the updates to be uninstallable as well as saved to disk for use in later installation when your servers has been taken offline.
And yes, I still play games some 10-20hours per week, last bought game was a port of world empire delux for android.
And yes, I am bitter over the fact that it is almost impossible to find new and interesting games today.
(Score: 1) by kfazz on Monday March 10 2014, @01:04PM
sounds like you're looking for a roguelike. have you played dungeon crawl stone soup?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday March 10 2014, @02:25PM
TOME? Avadon? FTL? Avadon's not really roguelike but close, and has a great storyline and good balance.
Or any genre other than multiplayer WWII FPS, not just roguelikes? How bout minecraft?
(Score: 2) by hatta on Monday March 10 2014, @02:59PM
If you haven't beaten Nethack yet, do that first.
(Score: 1) by Aiwendil on Monday March 10 2014, @02:52PM
ADOM [adom.de] makes up about a quarter of the time I spend on games (about 10-20hours per week), and yes, rougelikes are pretty much the only non-[simulators|4X]-games I play these days
(Score: 2, Insightful) by threedigits on Monday March 10 2014, @01:59PM
You just left out:
* Too stupid - where are all the games with which you actually learned something playing?
(Score: 1) by Aiwendil on Monday March 10 2014, @02:54PM
So true, oh so true, how could I have missed that one..
Those I miss, but it was soo long since I last saw a good one (circa 1994 or something like that) I had forgotten those existed, I guess the closest thing we have today are khanacademy (it is heavily game-ified)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Pslytely Psycho on Tuesday March 11 2014, @04:33AM
https://www.kerbalspaceprogram.com/ [kerbalspaceprogram.com]
Because of this game, I had to watch Gravity with a BIG grain of salt. Before I knew nothing of orbital mechanics or transfer windows or orbital rendezvous. The physics are close enough that you can do the math if so inclined, but presented in a way you can still do it without knowing any of the math.
Fun and educational. Even has an .Edu version for schools. Some physics programs are using it to introduce the concepts to new students because it does it allows a detailed visualization. So they're not all gone. Just very hard to find.
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Tuesday March 11 2014, @04:49AM
The violence in KSP is limited to spectacular failures ('sposions!) that can kill the little green turnips (unless you plan escape towers and such) so it is educational, fun and very low in the violence category. As they are all named and persistent (with permadeath except for the main 3 characters) you actually try not to kill them. It requires a good bit of planning, design and finally execution to do it successfully. This makes an accomplishment like first orbit feel like a real accomplishment.
Preview, preview, when will I learn to preview....not today apparently...
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.