Forum - View topicThis Week in Games - Switchin' It Up
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Top Gun
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Has MS even had the sorts of franchises that promote merch, other than what they've purchased recently? Historically they've had Master Chief and...Master Chief. I've never had any interest in owning Xbox hardware because they have almost no exclusive titles that make them worth it. |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
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They also had Gears of War, and the COGs were fairly iconic back when the 360 was the king of piss-filtered fratboy shooters. Gears even did well enough to ga a bunch of comics and novels, but you're absolutely right: outside of Halo or Gears, Microsoft didn't develop any other properties to draw people in. They had chances--Sunset Overdrive could have become a huge deal if Microsoft didn't just toss it out the window. But they resorted to elbowing their way into the industry by trying to buy up talent instead of nurturing talent. You almost think Microsoft was banking on being able to buy out Shigeru Miyamoto to work for them. |
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Avec ou Nous
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I have about negative interest in Halo and Gears of War but all the toy reviewer YouTubers I follow have posted content on them for decades so at the very least I know there's tons of Gears of War and Halo action figures. And looking up a quick search on some toy websites I see replica Halo weapons and all kinds of junk that show me they're not exactly slacking on putting out merchandise for these games. Then again I also heard Halo and Gears kind of suck now with their latest entries so I wouldn't be surprised if the recent games didn't have that much merch and it's all the OG series that people loved that got it. Kind of like how companies like Super7 put out tons of merchandise for the 80s versions of Ninja Turtles, He-Man, She-Ra, and Thundercats and all the newer iterations have flopped and don't really get anything. Or, like, anything past the original Mighty Morphin era of Power Rangers gets ignored.
Just to clarify the timeline here, Microsoft bought ZeniMax Media and acquired its subsidiaries like Bethesda in March 2021. Fallout 76 came out in 2018, All the scorn about glass bottles and canvas bags happened before they became a Microsoft associated studio so you can't really try to lay that at Microsoft's feet. Having said that, I have no idea if Microsoft was behind the push since then but they been pumping out a lot of nice merchandise for Fallout in the recent years. We now have expensive collector statues, figures, model kits, and replica props from the game like bottle cap stashes, weapons, and, yes, proper glass bottles of all the Nuka Cola drinks, Nuka Dark included. I currently have Nuka Cherry, Nuke Dark, and Nuka Orange on my shelf. You can currently pre-order the die-cast Pipboy replica and they've put out great model kits for Pipboys in the past like Fallout 76. That's not to say Fallout never had nice merchandise in the past. I remember those nice replica weapons ThinkGeek sold like the power first and plasma rifle, and a ton of statues and minifigures. Sure, all the outrage merchants focused on the canvas bag and glass bottle because it was trendy to hate on 76 back in the day but for people to act like Fallout never had any nice merchandise makes me think they've never actually looked very hard and probably are just repeating stuff they've heard offhand. Even someone like me has has 0 interest in mini-fig and tabletop games notice all the nice pen and paper Fallout stuff they've been pumping out. I've been half tempted to get some of those hardcover rule books just for the nice artwork alone. And there's all those T shirts, hats, and Funko Pops if you're some kind of normie I guess. But to be honest I wouldn't expect things like dakimakura or anything remotely sexy out of American studios. As neat as it would be to have an official daki of Curie or an Assaultron I doubt they'd ever do that due to the optics and backlash they would no doubt get. Look at the way people treat Nintendo franchises like Fire Emblem or Xenoblade for putting out their sexy figurines and other otaku focused merchandise. And it's not like even NIntendo is rushing out to do the same for Samus or Peach. The only thing we ever got of Samus was the Zero Suit Figma back in 2016. And if we're being honest even Fire Emblem and Xenoblade have kind of toned things down in recent years. I think in general video games have gotten more reserved in the fanservice department due to modern optics and being afraid of backlash. I'm sure we're due for some Stellar Blade merch at least though. |
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AiddonValentine
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Which really goes to show how little they really understood of fandom and why it's so important to build cultural capital. You're not just selling games, you're selling characters and worlds. Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon could have been their Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, but they failed to invest in them after they didn't do millions to begin with. Fable was very successful but MS claimed single player RPGs were dead and that the future was multiplayer. Funny how when they killed Fable Legends (and Lionhead with it) that The Witcher III had been out for about a year and was a MASSIVE success, to date having sold around 58 million units. You can't buy institutional knowledge, you have to build it and fight to keep it. |
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BadNewsBlues
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Can’t go having that it wouldn’t be fair to get a years old game for significantly less than it’s launch price.
Most of the hate for Gears 5 stems from people who don’t like that you play as a female main character which is funny because I don’t think many of these same people were fond of JD in the fourth game. Who some of these so called critics have also complained about for looking like a trans woman. The other complaint is over the multiplayer which despite what these people think was never particularly any fun due to the [expletive] Gnasher among other problems that take the fun out of the mode. Literally the worst Gears game in the franchise is Judgment a superfluous prequel/interquel with a meaningless story with a still unresolved plot twist. And a multiplayer mode that for no reason restricted executions to its own mode, despite executions being a normal mechanic in every other Gears game prior.
Sunset Overdrive wasn’t a particularly strong game to be fair. Last edited by BadNewsBlues on Sun May 12, 2024 1:44 am; edited 2 times in total |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 517 |
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My brother in Christ, Nintendo paid Playboy for a naked cosplay photoshoot to promote Bayonetta 2. |
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Top Gun
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Heh, I'd honestly forgotten all about Gears of War. The original games were huge on the 360, but it hasn't really been part of the zeitgeist since then. Hell, I didn't even know it was up to 5 mainline entries now. Master Chief became a gaming icon, but "big beefy dudes with giant guns that double as chainsaws" didn't have nearly the staying power. As for Sunset Overdrive, I didn't even know what that was without looking it up, which probably says a lot. |
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TsarPlatinum
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I assume statements like these are tongue-in-cheek and you don't actually believe one minor character from a niche game is more popular than a mainstream AAA title, but sometimes I wonder with the way people act if they're being serious or not with these posts. Out of curiosity I looked on Gelbooru and Hi Fi Rush has like 120 pictures. Not really amazing. As far as Japanese games Microsoft could use to market itself in Japan I think Palworld has a much higher chance if they cared. Although from what I remember this column kind of tried to dismiss Palworld's success as just being fueled by jaded ex Pokemon fans who were mad Pokemon didn't grow up with them and called it a fad. Nevertheless Palworld still sees 30,000-100,000 daily peak players while Hi Fi Rush can barely reach 1000 despite the current brigading and campaign by people to spam the game with positive reviews on Steam. Some people are acting like this game was the equivalent of Sony throwing away all their Japanese games and studios when it's more like another silly game that didn't do well like High On Life or Sunset Overdrive. The humor seemed cringy to me like those games so I never played it personally. The only difference is this was made by a Japanese studio so apparently it should be respected more than the Ricky and Morty talking gun game is the vibe I'm getting from some people. But is it a big deal if Microsoft is huge in Japan? They tried that back in the 360 era with all those cool JRPGs and that didn't work either despite Sony dropping the ball with the PS3 initially. And hell, even Sony is kind of done in Japan these days and rarely ever makes the weekly sales charts that they've moved their HQ to California and focus on the international market now. Japan only cares about Nintendo and mobile games. |
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vorkedlarfleeze
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For all the success The Witcher III had Cyberpunk had a disastrous launch and was a huge step down quality and writing wise. CD Projekt Red did not keep their institutional knowledge for very long evidently. But that's the way it goes. Companies are always changing employees and franchises are always changing developers.. Nothing lasts forever. It's way too idealistic to think an IP is going to stay good forever, let alone be a massive franchise initially. Blue Dragon did not exactly light the world on fire and it even had an anime adaption to help promote it. It just didn't take off and that's not automatically anyone's fault. It's very easy to act like Cliff Bleszinski and say something could be a billion dollar IP but that's not how it works. If we're going to blame Microsoft for Enchanted ARMs not being the next Final Fantasy then we may as well blame Sony for Heavenly Sword not being the next God of War. Or Nintendo for Zack and Wiki not being the next Mario. Doesn't seem logical. |
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Wack Sage
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That was 10 years ago. They couldn't do that today. Nintendo ain't doing that now despite the same Playboy model expressing interest when Bayo 3 came out. Times change. Some might argue for the better. I argue for the worst. 10 years ago Fire Emblem also had touching mechanics and lewder outfits. A lot of Switch ports of those Wii U era games are censored from their original release like Tokyo Mirage Session and Fatal Frame. If Xenoblade X ever comes to the Switch I assume it'll be as well. |
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DKL
 Posts: 1956 Location: California, USA |
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Oh yeah, since we’re talking about it, preorders for the Xenoblade 3 Mio figure have finally gone up:
https://www.amiami.com/eng/detail?scode=FIGURE-170041&rank= This one took forever to get finalized for some reason and I thankfully kind of remembered it was a thing thanks to this thread vaguely referencing the game. I believe I own all the scale figures for this game series at this point, but I’m not sure since Melia may or may not be in one of these amiami boxes I have lying around, but have yet to open. Also, I don’t know if the discourse has actually caused anyone to pick up Hi-Fi Rush to actually play, but I’m mostly curious how people deal with some of these fights in this game on its Very Hard difficulty setting. Maybe it’s because I don’t have all the upgrades yet and don’t know the game too well yet, but things get quite a bit sweatier than, say, Dante Must Die in DMC5, possibly because I’m forced into interactions with a lot of the canon fodder instead of being able to hold in the air indefinitely like I do in that game… (Rank is also tied to time, so I can’t really turtle while killing things) But then, I put like 300 hours into that game and I only have like 10 or something in Hi-Fi Rush, but I feel like some of these encounters should have some kind of infamy with people that play action games given how ridiculous they can get. Shit kinda reminding me of what I played of Ninja Gaiden Sigma’s Master Mode in terms of sweatiness, though the parry option select I talked about is pretty good at dealing with these crowds since you can be relatively safe while throwing out hitboxes (the button combination is Parry + Assist Change + Assist Button and you do it to the beat of the music to get auto parry and attacks that will put armored enemies into stun at the same time). Game is pretty good and I recommend it if people have cheap access to the thing even though it’s too late to save the studio at this point. |
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BadNewsBlues
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Of those 3 games only 1 of them was published by the named publishers. Ubisoft published Enchanted Arms while Capcom published Zack & Wiki so I don’t know why Microsoft & Nintendo would take the heat for those titles not doing well on their platform.
You allude to Sony closing absorbing Team Japan & putting their Japanese produced games on Ice as being a huge negative but were any of those games besides Ape Escape & apparently Loco Roco huge sellers or overwhelmingly popular? Like people play up Ico, Gravity Rush, or Parappa The Rappa as these amazing games that were unfairly overlooked but they were pretty niche games that seemingly in the first two cases didn’t make much a dent on sales charts. |
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AiddonValentine
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Zack and Wiki was CAPCOM, but funny you should mention Nintendo considering they have repeatedly bucked "the way it goes" by having a 90% retention rate (because they rarely do layoffs and fight to keep talent), a plethora of franchises that are decades old and still getting new entries, as well as making new ones such as Splatoon which also was not a big financial hit initially, but has now become a pillar of the studio because they knew it had a fervent fanbase and invested in it. There is no reason that a company the size of MS can't do that as well. Layoffs are not an unpreventable act of god, they are almost always a choice, mostly stemming from executives who were too incompetent to know what they were doing or were greedy and have bought into that "infinite growth" stock price snake oil. In this case it's both with Spencer having spent too much money acquiring ActiBlizz and Nadella wanting to keep the pandemic sugar high going at all costs. All this accomplishes is people not wanting to work with Microsoft and damaging the industry at large. |
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DKL
Posts: 1956 Location: California, USA |
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So, I haven’t seen it explicitly mentioned in this thread (or maybe it has been, but I missed it), but, now that I’ve finished the game, it turns out that Hi-Fi Rush’s story is about fighting corporate greed with the power of friendship (no, really, there’s an entire sentimental sequence of it where Chai remembers how all his friends helped him).
It’s probably not the overall most sophisticated take on the subject, but I can’t help but feel like it’s more relevant (or ironic?) than most because of what ended up happening in real life, unless you agree with the interpretation of reality where Microsoft was in the right for cutting the studio off the way it did, though I do feel like even if people didn’t care for or enjoy the studio’s games, they should at least feel some sense of camaraderie with people that lost their jobs at big organizations that very likely don’t really see you as a human being. If it’s that hard to relate, think of your favorite vtuber and how it sucked when their organization did them dirty. I don’t know how much people care about spoilers or if they ever intend on watching the full story on their preferred video streaming service, but here’s popular Sonic the Hedgehog Voice Actor Roger Craig Smith ranting about how difficult it is for corporate execs to come up with ways to sell things and make money: https://youtu.be/igqOdlOWat8?si=K7gyWSGVZhuAT5gp I’m still trying to decide whether or not I would agree to the interpretation that he’s actually talking about Gamepass. I’m open to different ideas. Anyway, I’m about to head back into Final Fantasy now, but my short time with the game was very sweet and I’ll likely be talking about this one years later as a highlight in the realm of cool action games that people had the vision to go out and make. (Assuming I don’t get thirsty after I’m done with FF7 and come back to do proper rank runs… I can S rank individual fights on Very Hard and what appears to be the post game difficulty that doesn’t feel that much harder, but I’m unsure I’m good enough to do an entire string of them like that since the game is fairly sweaty and I don’t know if this game has that Bayonetta exploit where I pull a lowtiergod and quit out to preserve the ranking) I’d like to think that my gameplay got better as I progressed through story mode and I’m a bit proud of this sequence of gameplay I was able to eventually achieve by just sitting there, learning and grinding out the game’s very deep mechanics: https://youtu.be/y-BT5IndOmY?si=IG2H28x6Af1GIM4L While it’s no consolation for a lost job, I hope I was able to play and enjoy the game in a way that the devs vaguely envisioned for their players. I think I’ve done all I can trying to talk them up and describing why their closure is maybe perhaps a noteworthy loss to the industry at large. |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 517 |
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So the Playboy photoshoot they did ten years ago "couldn't happen today", but the vagina bone removal people still bellyache about from just as long is still "recent". Cool. 
Ignoring that Nintendo has the right to determine how to make or release their own first-party software (removing the dumb face-touching minigame is just as much artistic intent as Tharja's bodysuit), there are literal softcore games on the Switch eShop. Hell, I think Xenoblade X is gonna be fine--there is a naked co-ed shower scene in Xenoblade 3. Please stop taking talking points from Youtube Shoutmen, you'll lead a happier life when you don't treat everything as a windmill to tilt at. And if you really need Tsukasa in a lewd outfit, there are imageboards for that. Now let's stop trying to soapbox about "censorship" in the comments to an article that had nothing to do with it. |
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