MudMan

OK, but that's not how reality works, you're making up offenses that nobody has committed because you've decided a particular brand is "bad" while ignoring actual offenses from brands you like and so have decided are "good".

So no, I'm gonna have to say your hypotheticals don't make their offerings any worse (or better) than Microsoft's or Valve's. Now, the pricing and lack of content? Yeah, we can talk about those. But those don't have anything to do with preservation concerns, lack of ownership or content churn, which are all legit issues with all digital distribution and subscriptions.

There are valid criticisms, for sure. I was not in the original thread, though, so I don't know how willing to address those he is, but it's a valid point that it's not an all or nothing proposition. You can point out that subs aren't overtaking the market in gaming without implying that they should.

I'd be more interesting in debating whether subs are additive or not. I do know of anecdotal mentions of stunted sales on sub-forward releases, but I'd love to see more data about it (and what that means about revenue eventually, too).

But none of that influences the concerns on preservation one way or the other.

Honestly, I don't think you're right about the reasons growth has flatlined. I think the sub model just doesn't fit gaming best. The content just doesn't work well with the rotating carrousel of new and new-ish games most subscriptions have. I think Nintendo could be onto something, in the way Netflix was early on, in that you may be more willing to pay a fee to just have access to every single game before a certain point and from the beginning of time, but nobody is gonna figure that one out anytime soon.

Sure, it has its uses. So do the subscriptions from Ubisoft or EA, though.

All I'm saying is that the digital distribution outlets that people like and have a good reputation (Game Pass, Steam) still have all the downsides that people love to get mad about in the alternatives they dislike. That doesn't mean you should refuse to use the ones you like, but you should probably keep an eye on the effects it has on the art form and the industry.

I mean... yeah. Turns out that having models and looking at the actual data and analyzing the market tends to land on lukewarm takes. The hot takes are for the press and the trolls.

FWIW, I don't have visibility on subscription growth at all, so I'll have to take his word for it, but none of that sounds unreasonable.... except maybe for the fact that the hype may make people make bad moves and double down in ways that are harmful. A degree of fearmongering can be useful, if only as a deterrent.

I get it, I do. I've been a migrant in a place with a language barrier on top of sharing that general feeling, so... yeah, sure. In principle.

But the times I've used it it's twice the anxiety, in that I keep fearing I'll mess up and need help, which is orders of magnitude worse than having to go through the register. Just the potential of issues is enough to deter me, but the times I've had the scales mess up or the payment method not go through were excruciating.

Admittedly, that's helped by them doing terribly at selling hardware.

But also, screw gamepass and the subscription model overall. If we're gonna crap on Ubisoft for their recent foot-in-mouth episode let's be consistent and call all of it out. I'm cool with this as long as I can keep buying these in boxes.

Yeah, at this point they're only making these because they don't make any major changes and it probably has a bunch of synergies with their camera business anyway.

Between my post and yours I actually got the belated Android 14 update for my 2021 device, which is supposed to be probably the last major update it'll get. Aaaand it's missing the one feature I was looking forward to using.

So not great, and if anybody makes a similar set of specs on a flagship elsewhere I'll move on to that, I have no brand loyalty at play here. But there's literally no other option to match in the flagship space at all. Even gaming phones have started dropping some of these common sense features.

Is the idea to go back to having a SD card slot, dual sim and a headphone jack? No? Because that's why my last Samsung was a S10.

Oh, well, back to my Xperia. Hang in there Sony, all seven of us left still need you even if your software all comes from one intern you keep tied to a broken PS5 in the basement.

You absolutely did not, but keep guessing.

Yes.

My point stands.

Both of those things can be true at once. I don't know how much the marketing is "stupidity", ideally marketing makes you money. Execs being overpaid is absoutely a thing.

But even if you took those out games would be very expensive to make. When you have hundreds of people working on something for years numbers start to get very high. Scale is a bitch.

If it was all contract work it'd be better, probably. Devs would have representation, like actors or film directors, and they'd sign up for a project at a premium in the understanding that they're getting paid for the downtime after the project ends.

The kinda shitty part is that everybody is a full time employee but you still get frequent layoffs after projects end. That's the worst of both worlds, especially in the US where there are basically zero mandatory protections. In places with actual labor regulations it's... kinda expensive and self-defeating.

It is true that the layoffs get reported but the hires do not, so a lot of devs get rehired fairly quickly or start new projects and studios, so it always seems like there are devs getting kicked to the curb when there's a baseline of churn and cycling. That said, 2023 has been a very, very, very shitty year for the games industry for a number of reasons. Which sucks, because it's been a great year for games themselves.