Game Mess Mornings 09/25/23

You'll be luck don't meet beer. It's the Internet. You're busy. Let's
do this for September twenty five, twenty twenty three. For the next hour
or so, let me help you sort through the world of gaming on Games
Mornings Live with me Jeff Grubb. Today, Unity finally backtracked and pay Day
three is having a rough launch. But first please join me and welcoming today's
co host to Games Mornings. It's Lex Luody. Everybody, Lexie, how
are you doing? I got a thing of water here, but I can't
open it because it's too cold, and now it's all like slippery on the
outside. Good news, though, I have a second thing of water that's
less cold. Yeah, there you go. Yeah you feel about how you
feel about warm water? I'm like terrible, No, No, I'm gonna
play on like whatever. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I next slander. We're
doing a podcast where they were talking about you up and they were like,
yeah, some people in Eupe like warm water or like room temperature water.
I'm like, don't fucking group me in with those assholes. Do they like
it? Or is they don't know any better? Because that's the sense I
got when I was in Europe that's like, you know, can I get
water? And like here is a room temperature craft that we're gonna put on
your table because because you're an American and this is what you get. I'm
like, okay. A funny thing that happened was at Games Come you could
tell which which business areas were set up by people from the UK because whenever
you went up to them and like they have like water or coffee there.
If I think it was the Sega one, I was like, oh,
can I have some like a kind of a bottle of water and they were
like still do you want? Still knowing that if if you are European you're
gonna get gas water as the Colish. And then on top of that,
they also had three pronged plugs which are the UK and Irish plugs in the
booth and I just felt really bad for whatever poor German fucker showed up to
the Saga booth and was like, why are the British plugs in like my
German booth at Games Colm, What the fuck is going on? And they're
invading that's what's happening. Yeah yeah again, yes again, yes again,
Yeah. I got around the warm water. I'm fine with it now these
days, it's I used to be like, I can't do it at all,
Like whatever. I think. The ice machine broke on on our fridge
that we had at our last place, and it's like, that was great,
that's how ice whenever you wanted it. And then it broke because it
was a Samsung and it's a piece of trash and they can eat butt.
And then I'm so like, I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna go
get water out of this thing. And then usually it was warm, and
I'm like I'm used to it now. Apparently it's good for your digestive digestive
system. But I heard that on the internet, so who knows if it's
true. Yeah, yeah, speaking of hearing things on the internet. Let's
do this show. Let's explain what we do here most week days. I,
Jeff Greb will help piece your gaming life back together. That includes breaking
news and maybe even some of our own original reporting. For all these topics,
I'll get the input of a bona fide expert who will make me look
smart. If you were watching live on twitch welcome, You can always listen
to the show later on podcast feeds by searching for game mess mornings or find
the RSS on giant bomb dot com. You can also catch the show later
with chapters and timestamps on YouTube. Hello YouTube, all right, we have
a lot to get into quickly. Please always clothing and shash as you were
starshing your your like intro said hello YouTube, like you always say hello YouTube,
And for a second my brain boken was like, oh, chats just
in fun to go up right. There's a little bit of a lag,
Like I'm just lagging behind. The stream is just delayed. You get so
used to like dealing with different like delays and straight and lags and stuff when
you do this work that I don't blame you for like trying to piece together
what's happening there, Like the brain's gotta put two and two together some way.
Uh, let's start the morning. Thus with Unity apologizes makes controversial new
game development fees optional. This is from Steven Totello at Axios Gaming. After
a backlash, Unity will no longer require game creators to pay retroactive fees tied
to game installations. The Unity drama had rocked the video game industry, setting
smaller creators into a panic about whether their games becoming popular would result in ruinous
fees. Unity, the company behind one of the most most used game development
technologies of the world, issue revised terms of its runtime fee plan in a
blog post Friday and an effort to quell two weeks of anger from its customers.
The post started with senior executive Mark Witten stating, I am sorry.
Unity's revised plan may still charge some teams with fees calculated off of installations of
their games, but the company's making that fee structure optional and more easily avoidable
for smaller developers. In the new plan, smaller developers using unities Fee personal
plan won't be subject to the fee. Unity is allowing games that make up
to two hundred thousand revenue to stay in this group, up from a limit
of one hundred thousand dollars. Larger developers using paid versions of Unity can avoid
avoid the fee by not s to a newer version of Unity. If they
do, developers can choose between paying runtime fees tied to new user installations or
a two point five percent revenue share. Figures that unities say will be self
reported by the developers, and they also say you could pay the lesser of
the two, whichever one is a lower number. You could pay that one.
Earlier this month, the Unity said it would start charging developers a fee
every time a user installed their games beginning in twenty twenty four if their games
cleared a certain revenue in popularity thresholds. Obviously, that's where the backlash started.
A lot of developers spoke out about this Unity over last weekend. Leading
into last week was like, hey, we're sorry, we're listening. We're
gonna do something about this and have an answer. They waited until Friday.
This was it. They went. They went until like five o'clock on Friday,
right when literally as late as they could, and developers were getting and
see you even publicly on Twitter, people are getting like frustrated. But you
could see the strategy though, right like wait till the weekend so that developers
can't necessarily like point out why they why this might still be a problem,
and I think why problem the online during the weekend to like actually read developers
saying hey, this still sucks, yes exactly, so, uh, this
does answer a lot of the problems that that developers had up to the point
where it's like the install run time fee being in place at all is potentially
a problem because they could change the terms at any time and down the line
they could they could just or they could just do it slowly, like kind
of get it back to where it was when they first announced this by making
one small tweak at a time to their terms of service. But now the
fact that it's it's there and it's in place, they can more effectively do
that. So being announcing this, answering most of the criticisms, and then
not doing it at a time of the week where most developers are going to
have the you know, the wherewithal to respond and sort of get other developers
rallying against this. That's the strategy. Now. Whether or not that works
is up to developers right that they're I haven't seen so much of the response.
What have you seen? You can totally tell that somewhere within Unity there's
a level of management that is like, no, no, we are going
to do this someday eventually, And everyone else on the ground is like,
we keep on telling you this is a terrible idea and we should get rid
of this entirely. And someone's just being like, okay, what if we
roll it back to the most milk toast thing we can for now? And
people will stop being so mad, because we've now outlined so many rules that
it's become convolution, and most mainstream people like who are casually interested in the
story will stop caring when they see a big, long list of bullet points
explaining when this fear is applicable, when it isn't applicable, how much it's
applicable, like different options that you can buy into it is. It totally
just feels like a diversionary tactic to get as much attention away from this.
The whole thing feels orchestrated to be as much about not having attention on the
actual news story here, which is like, hey, Unity are just changing
their terms of service agreement mid service, which is still an exceptionally shitty thing
to do. I know that there is a lot of I think it was
the Spire team have said they are currently working on moving their next game off
of Unity, and I don't think they're going to be the only ones that
isn't a small undertaking. That was a big fucking task, and like when
you look at it, people forget how big surgeon games that use Unity are.
I loaded up Soul Hackers too on the PS five yesterday and I had
like made in Unity on the splash screen and I was like, oh,
that's like an Atlas game made in Unity, And it was kind of funny
that Atlas didn't pay to not have that splash screen there, which you can
pay. That's a separate topic, but like it, Unity is used for
a lot more than people realize. And Unity as a company have also been
a middleware provider and a services provider for a long time. They've done co
development, They've helped things come to View that aren't even on the Unity engine.
They've worked on Skylam View and from what I heard, and they've worked
on several other games that they don't really get credited on, but they just
lend talent and people to But who wants to work with a company that is
willing to change their terms after you've signed on the dotted line like that,
Nobody is feeling good about working with Unity at all right now. And stuff
like that does affect you in a business like this, Yeah, small business
like this. Yeah, These changes are all symptomatic of a of a company
that is kind of acting a little bit desperate and is willing to throw developers
under the bus to serve their to serve their investors. That's that's the read
on the situation. I think. I think it's the appropriate read on the
situation. And I think for developers, they feel that they noticed that and
they've internalized that now, and so the idea of rusting Unity going for is
is kind of going to be a laughable situation for quite some time. Unity
will have to spend years repairing that damage. For now, though, they
do have a little bit of a captive audience where yeah, some developers are
going to cancel their Unity games. Some developers are going to move their game
off of Unity. Some bigger studios, we'll take the time to move existing
games that have already launched off of Unity. There's been talks of that.
I think for the most part though, that's not going to be an option
for a lot of studios, and so Unity is kind of counting on that.
I think that that's not a great move because like those studios will will
remember this as well, and then their next game probably won't be on Unity.
Yeah, it's a telltale. You know, Massive Monster will remember this.
Full to the Lamb two will not be on Unity yet. Confidence in
saying that, you know a lot of Devolver developers who were using Unity,
were just like, we're just going to talk shit about you now because like
we have no problem with just not using you next time. So yeah,
it's gonna fuck over a lot of developers in the short run. It's gonna
fuck over Unity in the long run. And it's very hard to see a
way unless everyone goes to Unitshy for mobile it's and Unity just becomes a mobile
engine, which they're kind of struggling with at the moment. Like they have
competitors in the mobile space. It's hard to see Unitshy being as big a
company in the next five ten years, which fucking sucks because they employ a
lot of people. Yes, they Unity needs answers now as well. There's
been there's been layoffs at units for the last like twelve eighteen months. There's
been huge layoffs there already. So yeah, I don't know what they're What
do you do because now you have less people trying to repair relationships with a
product that is objectively less good than it was a month ago, And I
don't know what the fuck you do? Yeah, Stephens right here that the
Unity has been in the red for a while and has been trying to figure
out ways to make more money off of its popular tech. Unity reported five
hundred and thirty three million dollars in revenue in the spring quarter, with a
loss of one hundred and ninety three million dollars in terms of profit or loss.
In May, it said it would cut six hundred jobs, or eight
percent of its workforce. Unity is in perpetual competition with Epics Unreal Engine to
offer the tech used to make and operate games on mobile and console. Some
developers have said that the last week that Unity has broken its trust. As
we talked about, this is a company that's going to continue to need answers
for where's where money is going to come from? Now it needs money now
that likely they kind of scamper back and try to try to make good with
developers, but they probably do continue looking for those like military deals. I
know that they had to backtrack on that, but I wouldn't be surprised.
They're like, way, we found a way to make that work, and
now it's ethical. We've done an ethical military deal. It's like, wait,
what, something like that's probably going to happen because they are desperate and
are going to continue to act desperate. It seems like in the meantime like
developers. You know, we talk about, oh developers moving off a unity,
where do they go? Unreal is also pretty expensive to use for a
smaller team, is my understanding. I'm no game developer. I've heard that
said, and now now I'm repeating it. GOODO obviously or go dot.
I don't know how to say. I'm I'm gonna keep saying GOODO until someone
from that place over there it corrects me. Goodot. It seems like the
like an ideal alternative if if people feel like they can trust the open source
engine idea, and it's like I think they probably can. That's proven to
work for like OBS. Like OBS is open source and it's literally called open
source broadcasting software. And the way that that works or something like Blender is
they have like these corporate sponsors who pay a lot of money to ensure that
these things exist so that that streaming is like easier or whatever, or three
D modeling is easier. And I think it's probably time that companies like Microsoft
and Nintendo and Sony and all these other publishers kind of look over at something
like an open source engine and throw some money behind it, similar to what
happens with OPS that seems like it would be a good thing to happen so
that developers can feel confident about having another tool that's going to be supported long
term. All right, let's see here. Here's what the critics think of
pay Day three. This is from Ben Carry at pure Xbox. Pay Day
three blasted its way onto Xbox Game Pass this week, and the reviews are
now starting to roll in from various outlets across the web. Let's see here
is pure Xbox says, Ultimately your paiday three moledge will vary depending on how
you're expecting to play it. If co op shooters are your jam and you're
ready to get the squad back together, then sure give this. Want to
go on game Pass to see what you think. If you're more of a
solo player even when it comes to online stuff, then there's probably better options
out there that to fit this mold. PC games End gave it an eight
out of ten, says robbing a bank has never felt so good as pay
Day three is a clear step above its predecessors, which stood the test of
time and recently enjoyed it's two hundred and fortieth update. When it comes to
pay Day two, the future, how overlooks even brighter, as pay Day
Three's news, strong story, and improved gunplay should see the series recruiting new
criminals well into the next decade video game or giving out of ten. Igene
gave it a seven out of ten. Let's see here. Dext Surdo gave
it a six out of ten said pay Day Three's high octane action and extravagant
heist make it in another iconic entry into the Heights shooter franchise, but it
is ultimately held back by a lackluster user interface, match making issues, and
online trm lex. You've been playing this, what do you think? Yeah?
I've been playing as much as I can. I got a code on
Thursday or Friday and couldn't play at all on Friday because the servers were down,
couldn't play much on Saturday because the service was still down, and then
played a fair bit on Sunday. I'm like Level twelve or something, and
I'm super mixed. I loved that second game. I played so much of
it when it came out on consoles, and I also reviewed Crime Boss Rocket
City, which you can lead my thoughts on that brilliant play game. It's
a frustrating game. It's a very frustrating game to interact with at the moment,
because the gameplay and the moment to moment heisting is fun and it feels
good, and shooting feels really good, and it sounds incredible. The sound
design is fantastic, and the is some good customization in there. But also
there's just a lot of fucking problems and the servers are still down. If
you're playing on PS five, cutscenes don't have audio. You also haven't gotten
your preorder edition bonuses, yes, like several days after release, because apparently
they sent an old version to Sony and there's a bunch of other problems with
it. Two where like it is very you sign out and it's like,
oh, this is going to be like a nice drip feed of content.
I'm gonna get, you know, a new gun, a new thing to
try out in each new level, and even once I've played through all the
heights, I'll have new ways to approach them. And that isn't really happening
because once you get past level ten and once you get the first you know,
bunch of bonuses out of the way because they give you sort of like
bonuses for completing accomplishments or objectives side objectives. Once you get the first out
of those out of the way and you hit about level ten, the leveling
just hits a fucking wall. And then it's just like, okay, you're
gonna be filling like a third of your level of bar every time you do
a mission, or a quarter or fifth, And when the next automatic rifle
isn't until level seventeen, you're like, oh great, I'm just going to
be using the same gun for the next like five or seven hours until I
finally unlock something better. And it means that currently basically everyone has the same
load out. Also, already it has gotten to the point where and this
is where the game like loses out to some of its inbuilt community. The
community for the second game but very focused on self missions and you know,
doing the perfect heist, which of course you would, that's the point of
the game. But already I have had countless heist where I've loaded in someone's
blown cover and then instantly two or three people drop out, and you're just
like, oh great, now I'm with fucking AI going in loud. And
the reason they do that is because they tie a huge amount of your XP
to selfing. You can still get plenty of money which you can use to
buy guns and cosmetics, but you don't get the actual resource that you need,
which is the leveling resource, the XP, unless you go fully self
And it's infuriating because it just feels like you are doing the same missions with
the same guns, and even when the things are quite when what you're doing
is cool and fun, you're like, I have to fucking do this,
bide more times to get anywhere. And also there's just a lot of like
small glitches. It's a very buggy launch. There's textures floashing, There's things
like mission objectives not updating, so you get stuck in endless waves of cops
until they kill you. Right now, it is very hard not to just
say go play paid A two until Payday three is in a better place.
Yeah, and yeah, that's kind of how I'm feeling about it, Like
I want to like that game. I really enjoyed my time with it when
I played at Games Come when they had everything unlocked, surprise, surprise,
but also like I'm kind of at the point where I'm like, listen,
if there's no variation in what anyone is bringing in their load out if everyone
is specting to the same skills, like, this game isn't going to be
interesting until like two or three weeks afterwards, when people start leveling up and
the starts being diversity in your classes, and it just doesn't feel great to
interact where everyone is doing the exact same thing. Yeah, I'll say that.
So the Metacritic for this game is I believe it's seventy. Yeah,
seventy, and that's kind of what I was expecting. And then of course
the user reviews it is and slammed. Obviously, a big part of that
is the lack of the servers not working. We'll get to that in the
next story here in a second, but yeah, I think a lot of
people echoed what you said, where it's like, hey, this is a
downgrade from pay Day two in a lot of ways. And that's kind of
always going to happen when you put out a new game after a game that
you just put out, or you put out years ago that got two hundred
and forty updates, right, That's what happens to the SIMS. The SIMS
is like, Hey, we're gonna put on a million update packs for this
and it's gonna have every feature, They're gonna have a million updates to add
all these things, and the next game we're kind of kind of have to
start over a little bit, and people don't handle that. Well, yeah,
it's why people are gonna hate whatever GJ Online two is. And there's
just no way to have as much content as the thing that has been built
on for like seven years now. And it is unfair to compare apples to
oranges in that case. But even when you compare apples to apples of pay
Day two at launch and this at launch, Payday two was also broken at
launch, so like people shouldn't be too surprised. Let the servers are down,
but there were twelve high and that at launch, so it doesn't here,
yes, there's eighth and so it does feel like the clash of what
Sarboys was thinking was Okay, what if we have a ready to go drip
feed release schedule going. But then that also means that for the first couple
of weeks, when you're making a first impression, when the game's on game
Pass, people are like, oh, this is like less than the first
game, Like what's going on here? And I know I want to like
that game, but I'm not sure. If I don't have the pre time
and I don't have the patience that I had when I was twelve, I
don't Yeah, that's not going to happen. I'm not sure how much further,
I'm not sure if I'm going to come back to it in ten updates
time unless it seems really fucking cool, unless I have a crew of people
to do it with, and I don't know if I will. This game
will get the support though, Right, it's not in so much trouble that
like they're gonna cancel Pai Day three and go back to pay Day two.
Right, it's not that extreme. Oh no, no, no, it
is a great foundation. Like I think that's something you've seen in out of
the reviews, is like this is a great foundation. It will be great
when it like leaves early access and when it is a more finished product.
And the only hesitancy that I have about that is it is a play on
published game, and who are part of the Embraser group. And I highly
doubt Embraser even dumb enough to get cold fish when this game is getting with
you bombed at launch, Like they understand that pay Day two did well in
the long term, not in the short term, right, and so I'm
sure that they will have a reasonable sense about it, but like there is
still a worry of you know what if embraces like, oh shit, this
flopped or people aren't happy with this. What do we do now? Yeah,
I'm trying to find information on Metacritic and they change the site and I
can't use it anymore. Change is bad everybody. That's my opinion. All
right, let's see pay Day three devs CEO apologizes for server issues at launch.
This comes from Taylor Lyles at IGN. Pay Day three had a less
than spect acular launch yesterday, as Starberry's studios first person shooter was played with
server issues, with the developer under scrutiny. The studio CEOs apologize for the
issues, and a post on the social media platform Twitter, Starburry CEO Tobias
Jorgan acknowledge the release day issues. We are so sorry that the infrastructure didn't
hold up as expected, and although it's impossible to prepare for every scenario we
should have, we should be able to do better. We work tirelessly until
we have restored all services and our players can get back to heisteen again without
issues. Less than twenty four hours after acknowledging these issues with the server,
Starbury's posted on the official Payday account to on Twitter that the studio said that
the server issues should be fixed now. Despite this, however, several users
don't ready are still reporting some problems. Yeah, it seems better, but
it still seems like people are having are encountering issues. That's what your experience
has been, right. I think this is a problem that like you're going
to see more and more often as cosplay becomes a bigger thing, because a
lot of the time the solution for cross play is and it's the solution in
this game, they have their own internal network system where you create a user
name on that network and you're uploading pretty heavy server demands onto something that the
developers have to go and creation and sustain themselves instead of Xbox Live servers or
PlayStation servers or Steam servers or whatever. So you do have a situation where
there's a lot more stress on their internal network that they have. It's set
up for this, and then maybe they're equipped to deal with and like,
that's the risk you run when you go a game pass. Yes you get
a bunch of new players and there, yes you get a bunch of people
seeing the game and playing the game. But is that too many people playing
the game and that your internal systems can't handle it or the systems you have
set up can't handle it. Yep. Well, I mean, hey day,
we'll look continue to get updated. We probably are going to play a
little bit of a little bit of it this week. We'll see what happens.
But but yeah, I think that the heavenly somewhat strong foundation it's going
to be enough for them. And in two years. People remember when it
launched it was bad? Yeah what was that? Yeah, I'm more than
confident that it will get there. I just think I'm like a little bit
burnt at launch because I'm like, nah, this this isn't hitting the way
it used to, and that's that's disappointing. Yeah. Absolutely, all right,
me just this real quick, Okay, next story. Star Wars Eclipse
is still in development, but it's still years away. This is from Eric
heilback Furu at Game Reactor. Both Ubisoft Aquatic Dream announced they were working on
Star Wars games back twenty twenty one. The Divisions the division creators Star Wars
Outlaws. It's set to launch at twenty twenty four, while we well,
we've basically just heard disappointing rumors about the ladder since the unveiling. This has
led many to believe it has or will be canceled, so it's nice to
get an official update. Lisa Pens, vice president of marketing for Quatic Dream,
tells IgM that Star Wars Eclipse is still in development, but her wording
definitely seems to confirm the rumors of it still being years away. Can I
say it still exists because it's because it exists, it's just not ready.
It's simmering. This is a game that I was never expecting to come out
before twenty twenty seven. Early on I heard that. It was like you're
expecting who was going to come out? Yes, And now it's like,
yeah, do you expect it's ever gonna come out? Yeah, that's kind
of where I'm at. I mean, early on it was that that was
always the thing where it's like, hey, the Quantic Dream got this because
they said they would take the Star Wars license and then they would be able
to fund the game themselves. And it's like, well, Lucasfilm liked the
sound of that and said, well, yeah, because it's it's probably not
gonna work out. Like, they're probably not gonna actually be able to make
that happen. They're gonna need a lot of extra money, and that's going
to be more difficult to come by. This this is their action adventure game,
Lexie, this is gonna be there. Uh, it's breaking out of
the Quantic Dream mold. Although they also say stuff like it won't have game
over screens, so if someone dies, the game just continues and accounts for
all that. Uh, okay, good luck with that. I don't know
do you actually think this will ever come out? I might think about it
the more. David Cage is just the toxic Peter malon you of video games.
Somehow we wound up in that universe. I don't maybe this game.
No that No, I don't see a world where this game gets made.
I don't see a world where they have enough. Like they've set up a
publishing division and I'm sure that will get some money coming in. But like,
I don't know who is looking at Quantic Dream and going, let's invest
a shitload of money into them making a different type of game. Because Quantic
Dream make a very particular thing, a thing which usually doesn't sell, like
especially well, like it sells pretty well, Like Detroit Become Human was like
five million units, but for the length of time that was in development and
the amount of funding Sony put into it, I doubt that was a gray
return. Like I don't know where they keep getting their money from, and
I don't know how long the money will keep coming their way. And I'm
sure being able to say, hey, we have the sours license, we'll
get some investors interested. But again, how long can that last? When
like this game has been announced for what three almost four years and it's still
currently simmering, which sounds like no one's like actively doing a whole lot with
it, but we're working on it. We haven't killed the project, Like,
no, what the fuck are you doing? Yeah, I will be
very surprised if we see this game, and then I will be very shocked
if we see it any time before twenty twenty seven. At this point,
I'm sure it's much more likely to be like it's hive of public, and
like, who the fuck cares about the hyper public? The Republic books are
pretty good. No one cares about it, but they are. Honestly,
they're way better than the recent shows have been. But I don't know if
Lucas film has done anything so success of getting people to care about it.
Yeah, explain the hyper public to your dad and like see how that goes?
Yeah, like fucking no, no one. I mean I struggled enough
to explain when and war took place, right, confusing my dad? Right?
Yeah, So I like I try to like the I'm trying to think
what the pitch could be. I mean it is like, hey, the
Jedi are in charge, and it's a good time for them and the Republican
Republic itself, and it's like okay, and then the enemy is born.
Yeah, exactly, the enemies like the night Hill, which are these which
is short for Nihilism in case you haven't noticed, and they basically it's like
a yeah exactly, It's it's like a biker gang. And I don't know,
the first book was very very good so far, the other ones haven't
been quite as good as that. Yeah. Something that Austin Walker said years
ago is like they will always be sows, will always be good sws,
and will always be bad Star Wars. You just enjoy the good Star Wars
and ignore the bad Star Wars. Yes, And that's like the rule you
have to live by and that even goes within the single shows that they're making
the bad parts of those shows, and they are good parts of those shows.
So just cling onto the bit that you enjoy. I'm like, that's
fine. You can have your own head cannon. You can fucking ignore the
last jet or not the last Jet that's the good one, and visa Skywalker
if you want to, like, nobody's stopping you do. So. Yeah,
I just enjoy what you want to out of that franchise and occasionally good
things come of it. Yep, exactly. It's the Golden Narrow Star Wars
games. Was that like the early two thousands where there was twenty five games
a year or something like that and two of them were good. It's like
that works for me. I'm totally okay with that. All right, let's
see Xbox game Pass price increases are inevitable, says Phil Spencers from Alex Hopley
at Game Reactor. Phil Spencer has said that we will see price hikes or
game pass in the future. Already outside of the US, Japan, Chile,
Brazil, in Columbia, we've seen an increase in our subscription costs.
But this isn't the end. Although the main premise is to provide more value
the price, I think it is inevitable that it will rise in the future,
Spencer said in an interview with game Watch. We recently raised our prices
once, but the decision was made after careful consideration. We believe it is
important to provide services that are recognized as being of sufficient value even if prices
are increased. We're not sure if this beings a price increase in the territories
that is coming for the territories to dodge it last time, or if we'll
see even further hikes. PlayStation Plus has increased its price recently too, so
perhaps the age of affordable video game subscriptions of subscriptions is coming to an end.
This a bit of a noda to me story, but he I mean,
who could have seen this coming? Yeah, but I'm like, I'm
glad he's not trying to hide the fact that, like, hey, costs
go up, then the custom at games goes up, the value of currency
goes down like that, All of those are a recipe for raising prices.
Everything goes up in prices except for the hot dogs at Costco apparently, So
how long? How long until they do a Hulu and introduce and make it
so that the base fee has odds just put the black Obama please vote adds.
Yeah, but I back into the game. They probably will try to
pull that off, but I bet they've thought about it for a long time
and have no obvious way of making it work. Because on TV, the
putting ads and stuff, it makes a lot of sense, Like it's very
easy to make that work. You put a couple ads before the movie,
and people watch their movie and then for the ad break shows, well there
you go. Video games don't have that natural place to put ads. And
if you try to put ads into like loading screens, and it's like what
you make if like it goes like a second longer than the loading was supposed
to take, Like that's now you're just cheating us out of our time.
So I think they will try to figure something out, but I think it'll
be much more difficult for them than it was for like Hulu and Disney and
Netflix all these companies that are in Amazon Prime now that are adding ads supported
tiers. But yeah, prices will continue to go up. Prices of games
have gone up to from sixty to seventy. I think people might be a
little more concerned because it seems easier to raise the price of a subscription service
than it does the price of all games. Right, Yeah, it's it's
an easier thing to get away with because Microsoft can just be like, hey,
we're the game Pass people. Microsoft can't be like, hey, we're
every single game from every publisher people, right, And that's why there was
a bit of pushback to the you know, game price of physical games going
up, because you know, I think it was like a couple of what
was it and Capcom didn't raise their prices and other places didn't raise their prices
for a long time until they had a game where they were like, oh
no, this is a tent bowl title that we know people will buy anyway.
And then suddenly Resident Evil four is seventy dollars or a guo in my
case, which is great when like video games are brushing up against a hundred
fucking euro, that's incredible. I love that. So yeah, like I
think people are like to be worried because money's fucking expensive at the moment,
Like it's it's not cheap to buy things, and it sucks that video games
continue to be a extremely prohibitive experience to be a part of the culture of
Like, if you want to be in tune with the gaming industry, it
is a very expensive hobby in a way that even movies aren't because like movies,
they go to digital pretty quick. They're much cheaper there unless you're willing
to pirate things and pirating like a movie is much easier than pioting a video
game, And like it's hard to be h Yeah, and it's hard.
It's hard to stay up with games without spending our money and it's hard to
it's hard to get into this industry unless you have a cash flow coming in
already, and I think you find it with all our journalists, Like our
journalists are like, Hey, if I wasn't able to live at home with
my parents for a couple of years while I was breaking into this industry,
I just wouldn't of because I would have had to been making money. The
only reason I'm still doing this is because I've been doing college at the same
time. So like, yeah, I've had the option of living at home
or living in college accommodation and making it work through those different means. But
like, if this had to be my full time job, I wouldn't be
able to buy the fucking games to a view in the first place, and
not to be able not to mind be able to like survive. I've awful
of however much I'm getting from freelancing, and so, yeah, fucking games
being expensive sucks, and it sucks that they're going to keep on getting more
expensive, and they probably are. Yeah, they probably will. I think,
you know, a price increase every year first subscription services seems a bit
aggressive, but every couple of years, every two years going up a dollar
or so seems likely, and then maybe a slightly bigger increase every once in
a while. So, I mean, if you look at the rate of
inflation from when game Pass got introduced to what it costs now, it is
it's it's about the same amount of money in terms of like what the value
of your your purchasing power is. It's a little bit less actually, So
it's like, I think what game Pass ultimate is seventeen dollars per month now
eighteen dollars per month, and like if you price adjust for inflation the introduction
introductory price, it's a little bit more than that. So yeah, they're
just going to kind of try to keep up with inflation, I think for
the most part, and then they'll make their strikes where they can. I
think a lot of people assume, like, hey, they're getting activision,
they're gonna get called duty all that stuff. They spent sixty nine billion dollars,
that's where they had the price increase is gonna have to come uh that,
you know, it's not really how it works money, and they have
about money in the piggy bank gets fine, right, yeah, and like
that money was just sitting there and now that's gonna like and like yah,
they can go put it and invested or something and get interest on that.
But they're gonna get a lot more from Call of Duty, the money making
machine, and it's called duty and Candy Cross saga, and so that's kind
of pain for itself, basically, I'm not sure if you know this.
And actually, fun fact, the one dollar a month introductory price that they
had back in twenty seventeen, adjusted for inflation, eighteen dollars a month,
that's right, Yes, it's been it's been a rough couple of years.
That's right. Yeah, that's the map that checks out. All right,
let's see here Xbox players can expect Japanese Triple A exclusives in the future.
Phil Spencer says this comes from Chris Scollian at VGC. Xbox Boss Phil Spencer
has said players can expect to see Triple A exclusive from Japanese developers in the
future. In an interview with game Watch, Spencer was asked if Xbox would
eventually get uniquely Japanese Triple A titles such as Lost Odyssey or Blue Dragon instead
of just getting Xbox versions of Japanese games also on PlayStation or switch. When
asked if it was difficult for Xbox to meet these expectations, Spencer replied,
not at all. I think you can expect that. In fact, he
continued, we released high Fi Russian in January twenty twenty three. It may
not have been a major title like Blue Dragon, but it was certainly high
quality. There are also Japanese game creators too, are party Yeah? Please?
Is he saying that Blue Dragon was a bigger game than High five USh
because I take on Blach with that. You're right. How many copies did
Blue Dragons sell? Yeah, it's a good question. I have no idea
a Blue Dragon. I definitely remember at the time, like before it came
out, being like this will be a big deal, and then it came
out and it wasn't. It was not a big deal. Lost Odyssey,
right, that's the other one. That one is one was more fondly remembered.
But I don't know if it's I don't know if it did any better.
But yeah, hey, I'm with you. I think I think you
nailed it. But he goes on to say there are Japanese there are also
Japanese game creators who are not who are who are part of Microsoft Game Studios.
And while there are titles we can't announce yet, we are currently developing
new games in collaboration with Japanese companies, with further growth including first party and
third party. I believe you can look forward to the arrival of even more
Japanese titles in the future. This Their efforts to try to keep working with
Japanese studios, I think are admirable and mostly working. Obviously, they're not
getting all the Japanese games released that are coming to Switch and PlayStation. A
lot of them end up skipping Xbox. But the cure there is to keep
trying, right, I think they've come to the conclusion of like okay,
pickle Battles and yeah, like Allcom have no interest in getting all of the
Legends of Heroes games on Xbox, so why would we go after it.
Let's we have a working partnership with Sega because of course they're going to bring
Sonic over, So like, why why wouldn't we go after Atlas games and
make those deals because we know that those guys are open to talk to us.
Yes, and I'm very happy with us, like apparently, yeah,
and so and same with Capcom, Like they they have games that definitely sell
better in the West, Capcom, so they go, Okay, if we
have that relationship already, let's talk to them about you know the non you
know, big games in the West, you know whatever Capcom games that wouldn't
normally sell in the West, but would look nice on our portfolio that people
like having as there as a value add And so yeah, I think it's
it's a sensible way to pursue ish And I think we're coming up to like
some new stories of you know, there maybe some more Japanese game development free
at the moment, and some big names so suddenly not with the companies that
they were ash but I would be very interested to see what they're like future
plans are because we've seen over the last couple of years there's a lot of
of Japanese developers who were big parts of Capcom or Konami or say Yeah,
and they went away and they've made their own company. You you know,
you have negoti Studios, you have Grasshopper, you have places like Dash and
suddenly those are independent companies that need funding, whether it be from Niches and
ten Cent or from Microsoft. And I'm sure they're going to make those deals,
and I'm sure they're happy to make those deals. Yeah, and they're
yeah, whenever the opportunity presents themselves, they'll go for it. Do you
think that, Uh, someone in the twitch chet says Hi Fi Rush doesn't
really strike them as a quote unquote Japanese game because what people mean by that
is they want the web games or their JRPGs. And I'm like, I
get what you're saying, But for me, I'm like, I think at
Japanese games, and I think about ape Escape and all these other like this
wide variety of games that might have come out of so many studios Japan or
any number of things. So I'm Mike, I kind of just want the
Microsoft to keep trying and whoever they end up getting to work with, you
know, that would be ideal because it just it seems like Sony is like,
hey, we have a very strict idea of what works for us,
and it is these global successes, these global hits, and then that means
a couple of Japanese games, mostly from Square, and then a bunch of
other stuff from our studios elsewhere. So I think if Microsoft could just step
in and provide a platform for some of these companies to express themselves in new
ways, I'm hopeful. Like there's a bunch of very young Japanese developers and
studios, very very new studios that's unseen, which is a Kumi Nakamora's studio,
and I am like so interested to see what they are making because they're
working with a very international team and they're not country to like what you would
usually suspect a Japanese studio to be. They're very casual and the way they
conduct themselves, and they're very open to working with people outside of Japan,
and so I'm I do think like, if you're going to fund these studios,
allow them to do different and weird things, don't just like, that's
why people like Japanese games to begin with, is because they're different to Western
games. And so if you say no, just keep on making you know,
another or PGE, keep on making another tech in clone or something like,
why would you do that when they're saying like, hey, we actually
have new ideas and we want to do new things, and so yeah,
exactly, speaking of Japanese game development, DECKI Camia is leaving Platinum Games.
So it comes from Sophie McAvoy at Games Industry Dot. Is Headecki Camia,
creator and director of Bayonetta and The Wonderful One to One, is leaving Platinum.
As reported by VGC, Kama was promoted to vice president last year.
He will step down from that position on October twelfth. This came after a
lot of consideration based on my own beliefs. It was by no means an
easy decision to make. Could be a wrote on Twitter. However, I
feel this outcome is for the best. I will continue to create in my
Headki Camia way away. I hope you'll keep your eyes peeled. Kama co
founded Platinum in two thousand and six with president and CEO at Sushi Naba,
former CEO, Tatsuma Minami and Shinji Mikami. After leaving Capcom's Clover studio.
In response of to commit his departure, Platinum Games shared on Twitter, we
are truly quit grateful for his creative ideas, leadership, a contribution to the
growth of the studio from our startup to this very day. Yeah. Listen,
people don't stay any one place forever, but Commie I definitely associated with
with with with Platinum Games, with Bayonetta, So it's the end of an
era a little bit. Yeah. I think he's he's one of those creators
who is very tied up in his games, and or at least the association
is that he's very tied up in his games. And I do wonder if
anyone has told him that blocking people on Twitter doesn't count as creation in a
head eque Yeah, I kind of. I wonder if, like now that
he has quit, if it's like a head vampire dying and everyone gets just
unblocked magically or something like that. But probably not. No, No,
that's not until like the Twitter service completely fucking bo on. All your blocks
are just suddenly unblocks. That's not bad. That's a feature, that's an
email must feature right there. Yeah, that sounds great. Thanks Elon and
Decal tweets were good match. But yeah, I totally the safe money is
that he is going to go sound his own thing and that he will get
a big investment from Nehi's ten cent or next on one of those because they
love investing in Japanese talent at the moment, because they see that's where a
lot of the growth is and I think they can give them real pay days
to where it's like, you know, the Japanese payment structure, as far
as I know, it's very you know, predictable and solid and reliable.
But the cost of living in Japan's very low, so a lot of these
Japanese developers had haven't had to make big demands for the kind of reimbursements that
they get. But it's like, you know, these Chinese companies show.
I'm like, we'll give you a ton of them. We're gonna turn you
into a rock star, like they take curious what would you be interested in
seeing him go do? What type of game would you like to see from
them? I mean, ideally I would like him to continue just making action
games and trying that with the different settings and different genres, slightly different genres,
but you know, more more stuff like what's those the sci fi running
gun shooter game that he made, uh, something something along those lines would
be very cool. But really, I think what's going to end up the
realistic thing here is he's gonna end up making stuff for free to play and
mobile and PC and it's like, man, you know that has its place
too, but I don't know. I want to make games that I could
play on my Nintendo Switch, and that's maybe a little less likely, all
right. Cal Custis actor confirms work is ongoing for Star Wars Jedi three.
This is from Alex Hopley, a game reactor. The actor behind cal Custis,
Cameron Monahan, has confirmed that there is a third game coming in the
Star Wars Jedi series and that work is on going for it right now.
According to VGC, Monahan spilled the beans during a recent panel where he said
the following, we're working on the third, on a third, and we're
in the process of doing that right now. That's a big undertaking and there
have been some conversations so far, but hopefully when all things are said and
done, we'll be able to go in and make something really cool. Former
director at Response stick as Musum did want did want the series to be a
trilogy, and so the shouldn't come as a surprise, but he left the
company. He left Respond, so Stick asked Musim won't be working on Star
Wars Jedi three. That's what I've said this before, Lexi, but that's
what I've heard that, Uh, it's Star Wars Jedi Survivor did well enough,
they would immediately start working on the third one, finish out their trilogy.
And here we are. The game definitely did well enough. It's sold,
It's sold fine, it's sold better than fine. So yeah, they're
gonna make a third one. I think it probably will take about the same
amount of time between one and two. I just hope that they this time
around third times the charm, they can launch it without all the bugs and
performance issues. I don't know what you felt. This is my shocked face.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm struggling for words here like it.
But no, those games are really good, and I think that they are
some of the few Star Wars games in recent years. Is that, and
hopefully we get more of them. But like out of the EA batch,
they're the only ones that really understood white people like stars and they're the only
ones that had gameplay that felt really compelling from a Sows point of view,
Like Battlefield or battle Front is cool, but it is just kind of a
shooter with a Star Wars skin, and Star Wars Jedi always did feel like
a series that is very like it wouldn't work if it wasn't a so Wars
game. And I think like Cameron Manahan is actually a really good part of
though that those games, and like he is kind of bland dude McGhee,
but also made it work. Is Yeah, he is quite a good actor
and like he especially in that second game, there was some really good stuff
in there towards the end, and I'm very interested to see where they go
with it. I do wish that at some point, like they would just
pull the trigger and put him in one of the TV shows or something,
because like why not if you have them, why he could he could show
up in like what in and or at some point I guess that'd be weird.
We don't know what happens to him, right, So he could survive,
because I mean he's already survived Order sixty six, right, so he
could survive and show up in something like Asoca at some point. I don't
know. I'mn't surprised they haven't done that. It's weird that they cast so
much Hollywood talent in those games, like the entire corecast, who have facial
captured on our Hollywood talent in varying degrees, and it's strange that they haven't,
Like they clearly did that because there was a mandation of, hey,
we might need to move these people into live action at some point, or
there might be a goal to move them into live action at some point,
but they just haven't done that, and so I know that probably speaks to
a wider directionlessness at Disney for Star Wars itself. But yeah, those games
are fantastic. I really like those games. You should finish that second one.
Gup, Yeah, I'm going to I'm looking forward to it, all
right. Last couple of stories here UK Charts has Mortal Kombat one is number
one this week, Pickman one and two hd Or actually at number four.
Hugwart's Legacy still at number two. The other new entry here actually too,
a couple other new entries. Liza p was number three, and then then
that was Pickman one. And two at number four, and then Mario Kart
eight Deluxe Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven back up on the top ten after being twenty
one last week. It's number six this week. Pay Day three was number
seven. That's the other new entry in here, and then the top tens
rounded out with Grand Theft out of five the Legends. All the tears are
the Kingdom and Minecraft for switch because that's legally binding, you just have to
buy mind. I was just gonna say, like GJA five dropping from five
last month to eight this month, what the fuck are they going to do?
Then they're screwe jambles, absolutely it strouss Zelnik out of there, doesn't
know what he's doing. This is a Mortal karbat one. Obviously. I
didn't realize that lies A P even had a physical release, So good for
lies A P. Yeah, yeah, that's a game that's on game Pass
right, So I'm doing pretty well to get into the top five. Uh
yeah, that's that's a good showing for Lisa Pee. That's the one I'm
noticing as well, like, hey, yeah, I guess that could be
even higher, but honestly, considering that it's probably got a lot of digital
purchases. Uh, it's doing really well. Okay, can I tell you
something. Yeah, I'm actually really excited to watch the story mode of More
Combat one, and I'm saving myself. I'm really looking forward to it.
I haven't touched the game at all since I'm like, let's get through it.
That's how I'm gonna play it. So looking forward to it. Speaking
Lies P real quick, Jim, Jim beat it. Apparently, Jan you
beat Liza P. So our our little boy over there has become a real
boy. Now lies a real gamer, a real game. Yes we will.
Bailey finally accept that John is an actual game on fake No. No,
she's she's his honest John. The name of that the fox from which
she beats one game in a U and son Miiki's a gamer. H Mike
started Lisa P last night, says it's very good. I'm gonna I'm gonna
start it up soon. All right, we'll ask story here. Capcom says
it would gracefully decline a Microsoft buyout. This is for my Nintendo News since
a number of confidential documents were accidentally leaked as part of the ongoing Microsoft in
Activision Blizzard merger, which is expected to be approved by the CMA next month.
A number of companies have presumably been asked in interviews what they would do
when if they are approached by Microsoft for an excuse me, an acquisition to
be a part of Xbox Game Studios. Speaking to Bloomberg in a wide ranging
interview, Capcom CEO Haruru hero to Sushi Suji. Heam, we try that
again, Haru Heiro Sujimoto, there we go, told the US based I
got it. Yeah, first try the US based news site that if they
were approached by the Redman based company, they would gracefully decline, and that
he personally believes that Capcom would be better if we are equal partners. I
think, yeah, that's that. Yeah, that sounds right. Likely.
Microsoft isn't going to really do any hostile takeovers of any of these companies.
That would be that would look really bad and they would be would flip the
story up from being like, Oh, these good guys over at Microsoft to
immediately be in the villains. So they're not going to do that. So
they have to have the two to tango situation. And that's what happened with
activisions. Activisions like yeah, we messed up real bad by being really shitty
to human beings. And also we've we've done everything we could do with Call
of Duty. We have no other option here, so please buy us and
then look at Microsoft's. Yeah sure, but all these other companies that people
talk about, like Nintendo and and like, they would have to be in
a situation where they would want to sell from Microsoft to even consider it,
and Capcom clearly has I don't think they've ever been healthier than they are now,
right, Yeah, when you when you think about, like, the
only Japanese game studio that Microsoft's owns is Tango Games Works, and that was
kind of a fluke that somehow Bethesda owned that studio and set up that studio
with Hinji mcconmi. Like, how that ever happened is a separate, interesting
story I'd love to hear about. But I don't see any Japanese studio purely
from like a cultural point of view, being like, hey, this console
has like one percent of the install in our country. We want to make
games for latch, and like, I just I don't see a world where
anyone, even a CEO who is purely driven by money, would feel good
about that, because they know it would demoralize workers, like even if they're
like, yes, we love being a business partner with great friends. We're
not gonna fuck you. Keep hoping, though, thank keep hoping. All
right, let's go ahead and get to the poll from Once upon a Time
last week sometime. Bring it up right now, Which Tim Clancy series do
you want a new game from? The most? Your options are splinter Cell
and sorry, Tam, we have to have at least one other option,
Tam. Tam said, we can only have splinter Cells an option, and
surprisingly splinter Cell one six. It actually didn't way lower. Yeah, that's
way lower than YouTube. Yeah. This poll originally had the other options of
like the other time, Clan Ghost recond of all this other stuff, and
before we took it down because Tam only wanted splinter cellup there, splinter Cell
was winning ninety percent to the other three games, like a single digit obviously,
So yeah, but hey, I also want to do splinter Cell.
They're they're making that remake. I don't know when we ever see it.
I guess canceled left Vir game. They love announcing splinter Cell things and then
not doing them. Yeah, but I mean I would love a splinter Cell
one remake with Ray tracing so that when you shoot a light out the light
actually goes away in a realistic way. That would be very cool to me.
I would like that very much. All right, I'm gonna put up
a new poll question or ask Janna do it politely in the meantime, Alexey,
why don't you tell people where they could find you and all that good
stuff? You can find me Saltman New dot co dot UK. We're a
website for young people trying to wake into the old people trying to wake into
the games industry. Get started, find the pocing, find opportunities, get
edited by an editor, have their work on a professional website. And you
can reach us at the start menu on puisher or Hello stotmanu dot co dot
UK if you want to email us. And we're a lovely bunch. My
own stuff should be coming up in a future episode future play magazine issues.
I have something going up to Polygon at some point as something in a lost
and could book at some point. Other than that, I'm just doing bits
and bombs around the place, not that much. But you can find me
on Twitter at basically Lexie both words with eyes at the end and yeah,
that's about it. Uh. We will have more stuff happening on a Giant
Bomb where we will talk about this pull on Wednesday. What comes out first
Star Wars Eclipse from Chuantic, Dream Star Wars, Nights of the Old Republic
remake from Saber or neither. It's gonna mean neither're gonna come out Real Coffin
Baby Hydrogen Bomb question, Real Coffin Baby Hydrogen Bomb question. Absolutely, we'll
discuss that on Giant Bomb on Wednesday. The Bomb cast is tomorrow later today.
I would like to do more to Kombat. I gotta take emmy to
speech though, so let's get take some chuck on on my day. And
I know there was something else we were gonna do today, so I'm gonna
go in a meeting right now and figure it all out. Mortal Kombat will
happen this week, but whether or not it's today today is unlikely basically right
now, but we'll see. Blake Club is back this week. We were
going to do Payday on Wednesday, but I believe we decided last minute,
let's do what's start up Blake Club with Mike playing his game, so we
finished Sonico six. Actually, oh, that's what Blake clubs today that's the
thing that's today. Yes, Blake Club, but we're gonna finish the Sonic
thing because there's like one little segment that Dan needs to finish, so I'll
be around for that. We'll make that work. I'll probably do that when
I get back from Emmy's thing, so a bunch of stuff will be happening,
doesn't Yeah, what Mike doesn't know yet is Blake Club's actually Climb Boss
Rocky City and let's play through the whole story solo, and he's allowed to
use anything that. The problem is he loves that game, so that's he's
a big Rocky City guy, Big Michael Madsen. Dude. All right,
Well, like I said, we'll have all that up. We'll post to
the schedule of what we're doing this week up on social media and on YouTube
dot com Slash Giant Bombs Slash community. Check the community tab there tell you
what's going on. LEXI, thank you so much for spending today talking with
me about video games. I really appreciate it. YEP, saluting Major Mitch.
Major Mitch, thank you all for watching your the best audience and gaming.
Until next time, have a good one, take care of yourself and goodbye,