Stanley

Yeah could be used to market Game Pass although I’m not sure they are crossover audiences

Candy Crush isn’t really Game Pass material is it, like taking a shit on a delicious cake.

Pitchfork have published their top 50 list. https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/ The top ten https://falseto.com/2022/12/06/pitchfork-announces-50-best-albums-of-2022-list-beyonce-on-top/

All that matters here is that MS get COD on Game Pass, job done. If that doesn’t increase subscribers nothing will. Also a canny way of getting Game Pass and Xcloud on Switch through the back door. I wonder how it will all work, if you subscribe to Game Pass will you be able to play the Switch and PlayStation versions as part of your subscription or will they be separate purchases?

It’s hard trying to narrow it down I find, especially when they’re probably compiling lists from multiple contributors. I’ve done my list but there are loads of others I could have chosen instead, and I keep thinking, ooh I really should have included that (hello Alpha Zulu) but you know, it’s done, and it’s only a bit of fun at the end of the year. I’m not just saying this, I listen to everything everyone posts in their top ten lists if I haven’t already heard it. It’s a fantastic way to get great new music and you won’t find it anywhere else. It’s the forums hidden gems.

Yeah it’s reached a limit which hit well below their initial projections. The other problem I see with it is whether they produce at least one AAA game per month to service that model, recent evidence suggests they can’t even do one a year, and even in a good year it’s like 3 or 4. I guess we’ll see what next year brings but I doubt it’s sustainable in the long term now they are being more realistic about the uptake.

Yeah the problem with this strategy is that Game Pass is performing well below expectations and they have no AAA games, so I’m not sure why you think that makes Sony look like fools here, at least they actually have the games.

Avowed, there’s a blast from the past.

£70 is high but then the RRP for most games these days is rarely the actual price for a game when you consider season passes, micro transactions & DLC etc. Sony aren’t exactly against that either as evidenced by the latest Gran Turismo, though to be fair most of their tentpole releases are pretty feature complete and of a high standard, production wise at least. Of course this announcement comes conveniently at a time during which they are negotiating their Activision deal. There was no chance they would ever charge less than as much as possible for COD.

They had nothing to lose because it’s a service they’d rather disband anyway and have everyone on the ‘one subscription to rule them all’. Just look at the absolute state of their monthly Gold offerings these days. One way or another their aim is to drive people to Game Pass, their entire structure is now built around it. Raising the price of their games, and ultimately (no pun intended) Game Pass, is something they will not dial back on.

I have never played them any other way, they are a lot of fun.

They had no choice! They realised £59.99 was more than fair, but really, what could they do in the face of such stiff competition other than raise their prices?

What you appear to be saying is that Microsoft, one of the worlds largest corporations, dwarfing Sony, decided that two years after Sony had raised their prices they would do likewise, and it’s all Sony’s fault, or the fault of their fans. Not only that, they haven’t actually released a game in twelve months, not one which would attract that kind of premium pricing anyway, and their next one is still months away. Really? This is yet another attempt to raise prices and push customers towards Game Pass. The last time they tried it was when they doubled the price of Xbox Live Gold but due to a severe backlash decided against that in the end. Game Pass, despite increasing in number of subscribers, is underperforming, massively. If customers won’t subscribe then MS will increase their revenue any way they can, not to mention that all of a sudden Game Pass is now even more value for money when the games separately cost £70 each. Microsoft believed that Game Pass would have been a bigger success than it has been, just look at their previous projections if further proof were needed. Now we’re approaching the year in which they apparently actually have some games coming out, lo and behold they are raising their prices. Game Pass will go up in price too, and likely the cost of hardware as well. Microsoft like every corporation care about one thing, shareholder value. btw are Sony fans responsible for my heating bill going up, and my petrol? Bastards.

This is dumb, have you been living under a rock for the last couple of years?

Onimusha and particularly Devil May Cry are clearly influential, the latter giving birth really to the modern action game, and was itself also at one point intended as an RE game. But all those games I can trace a through line to earlier games such as the aforementioned Ninja Gaiden and Castlevania, Shinobi etc. Certainly don’t see Tomb Raider DNA in it myself.