What's with the awful blood effects in every single game? Never has blood looked so tasty and sweet, but never has it looked so un-blood-like.

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travo said:

The Direct is only thirty minutes?  Crap.

GAF were saying it was a generic time stamp on the NICO video listing and that it didn't mean it would only be 30 minutes.

How shit must it feel if you were one of the people that made it?

_Jaded at E3; AAA looks like a wasteland

So we're in the middle of gamer Christmas, and I'm cautiously looking forward to a number of the games that are being shown, but at the same time there's this nagging sense that we might be at a precipice. Frankly, next gen and the AAA model looks like a wasteland. Everything is the same as before, only a lot less of it. It's going to be one and half years into the console generation before the next-gen big hitters come out, and they're just iterations. AC Unity, Far Cry 4, they're the same as always. Don't even get me started on the EA conference, cause holy crap.


The whole thing has been completely sucked dry of creativity, everything is safe and dumb. At least dumb and loud Hollywood has the decency to frame their movies in a new setting every time. More importantly, blockbuster Hollywood is still growing. In the game industry though, the big publishers seem to be reverting back to releasing only two big games a year tops, which don't try to do anything new. There's some hope that they're just iterating to safely make the transition into next-gen, after which their new IPs get released; see Bioware working on a new IP while the small team is creating Mass Effect 4, and talks of Uncharted 4 being the last one for ND. In that case though, it will be well three/four years into next-gen when it starts getting interesting again.


But will we ever get there? It's no secret that big money is being made in the mobile scene now, while AAA may be a bit safer but also has humongous budgets, creating other kinds of risks. I told my (casual gamer) brother in law to wait a bit before buying a PS4, he said he couldn't wait after my incessant talking about it and bought it anyway. Little did I know then that I should have advised him to wait a full four years before getting a new console. His is collecting dust, mine is starting to do it too. If you told me Nintendo would singlehandedly safe the next gaming year, I'd have called you mental just a few months ago. Luckily there are also indies, and No Man Sky looks spectacular, but that's not really why you buy a new console.


Am I too doom and gloom? Can you make me hype again GAF, or are we indeed seeing the early death throes of a business model.

GAF user. What say you?

gamingeek said:

GAF user. What say you?

Let it burn motherfucker.

Foolz said:

Let it burn motherfucker.

GAF user said:

I thought Destiny looked good. Strong sense of deja vu though, Halo, Crackdown, Uncharted, LBP, Souls game. Of the new "AAA" IP shown Kamiya's game looked really dated and cliche and The Order had barely any gameplay in a gameplay demo. Disappointing. I love indies but really wanted to see some exciting forward thinking new AAA IP or unique twists on existing franchises.

Another said:

If I was a fan of running around MedievalEurope/FuturisticCities (delete as applicable) destroying GiantMonsters/InvadingArmies (delete as applicable), I'd be well chuffed right now.

Someone else said:

Welcome to the current industry.


For diversity you need to seek out indies, but I can understand that some of you feel that those games can't scratch every itch. AAA is more expensive than ever and pushing new IP is extremely costly. It's going to be a weird Generation.

Another dude said:

They are really playing it safe. Although understandable, it's a shame. Very few of these games interested me at all.


Edit: And what really bothers me that people are wowed by graphics. Is that everything there's to next-gen? I couldn't give a shit about graphics. What about gameplay?

THIS^

Guy said:

I thought about making the same thread, honestly. It's pretty evident console gaming is in dire straits right now.


It's not a new development (we saw this in the deaths of B-tier and the COD-ification of the industry), but it's progressed to a new stage with these new consoles.


This should be a time of excitement and possibility, yet all I have is pessimism.

Nintendo is usually  all sequels too, but their games really stick out amongst the sea of grey. Mario Kart is the same as ever but it's like one coloured gem in a bag of coal. As a whole their games are more cartoony and not in a bad way for me at least.

NPD said:

Retail sales of game systems are up 51 percent in 2014 compared with a year ago, according to data from The NPD Group. Excitement over Sony's (Tokyo Stock Exchange: 6758.T-JP) PlayStation 4 and Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT - News) Xbox One and the potential of the next generation has revived interest in console games, which is welcome news for traditional gaming companies.

On the other hand, sales of game software at brick-and-mortar retail stores is down 27 percent year over year-a $372 million gap.

Overall, though, the early days of this eighth generation of consoles show people buying fewer games than they did in the early days of the Xbox 360 and PS3. The combined life-to-date tie ratio (the amount of games sold per system) for the PS4 and Xbox One was 2.7 games versus 3.8 across the prior consoles.

27% fall in game sales, users buying less new games for their new consoles.

The game that Ubisoft is sitting on must be complete and utter shit. When was the last time a really good game was made that got no announcements, no previews, or any kind of hype? If that was finished 6 months ago, its development probably started a year before that? Before the Wii U's soft sales were considered a problem, right? Yeah, keep the game. I don't think anyone is clamoring for Family Dance Party Night.

Eurogamer said:

Because looking back over Monday's events, one thing that stands out is that there is a lot of cool stuff coming down the pipes, but very little of it is going to keep us busy this year, something also borne out by the amount of CG filling all those conference minutes that we hoped would be devoted to live demos. Uncharted 4! Bloodborne! Crackdown! Scalebound! Put them to the back of your mind. You won't be playing them any time soon and, if this year's epidemic of delays is anything to go by, I wouldn't put money on 2015 for any of them either.

Sony and Microsoft didn't have a monopoly on this sort of thing, of course. It arguably reached its nadir in Electronic Arts' conference, in fact, where we were treated to the new phenomenon of "conceptual prototype" footage - live coverage of the beer mat as BioWare scribbles on the back of it, if you like.

So while you can make the argument that Sony had a stronger showing than Microsoft overall, the battle lines for this year don't quite support that narrative. Forget Halo 5 versus Uncharted 4, because the big fights of 2014 are between the likes of Sunset Overdrive and LittleBigPlanet 3. Elsewhere there's the battle of the stopgaps: Halo's Master Chief Collection versus The Last of Us Remastered. Or there's Forza Horizon 2 versus DriveClub - and by the way, the latter didn't even make the PlayStation conference, which hopefully isn't a reflection of Sony's confidence level.