A detailed analysis of how the next OS from Microsft could kill the PC market and have disastrous side effects on other platforms, resulting in an increase of development costs and decrease of performance.
It's a quite long analysis, a bit technical, but very interesting and, well, a bit scary...
"Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to
provide content protection for so-called "premium content", typically HD data
from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs
considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical
support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not
only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the
protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever
come into contact with Vista, even if it's not used directly with Vista (for
example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server). This document
analyses the cost involved in Vista's content protection, and the collateral
damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry."
Follow the link to see the details...
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 launched last week to solid reviews from both fans and players. But its playercount? That's another story.
That's awful. This combined with the really low Steam numbers paint a disastrous picture imo. Really bad timing too because Tango was closed down for a similar thing. Great reviewed game, and low sales and/or player count. Hi-Fi Rush reviewed a hell of a lot better and it was widely loved by everyone, Hellblade 2 nowhere near that.
I know the rumor is that the studio has their next game already green-lit, but if I worked at Tango, I would be furious. "Why do they survive while we get binned?" I'd be telling myself.
But the suit woman will have you believe "Oh we have different metrics for the success of one studio compared to another studio. We judge each studio and game on their own set criteria" or something like that, I'm paraphrasing here but you get the idea. But no one who works there knows what the hell that even means. I mean the DLC for Redfall was getting worked on days before they even got the news their studio was getting dumped in the trash. So what are these mysterious metrics to let studios survive and others perish? I bet this is all hogwash, I bet MS don't even really know. They just had to make cuts and certain studios just found their way on the chopping block. Someone had to bite the dust, why not you?
Well I bet all this does nothing for the confidence of other employees in other studios. The truth is you have no idea where your career will be in a year from now working at one of their studios that aren't the mega big ones. MS just have too many studios to manage efficiently. "We'll just throw money at them and buy them and worry about the details later on. I mean we can do it, we're Microsoft."
...have you seen what the top 10 consists of? Its things like fortnite, roblox, CoD, apex... etc. This being a new game that has a niche appeal is actually surprising to see at 23. Its also the 33rd top paid game on the PC through the MS store.
Those are dreadful numbers any way you slice it dude. They hyped this game to hell for the last 4 plus yrs. It was supposed to be xboxs big game this yr. Ninja Theory is probably sweating right now.
And it's already slipped out of the Top 100 on Steam. Meanwhile a port of the 4-year old Ghost of Tsushima is sitting comfortably at #8.
One of the biggest games of the year, a multi million sequel and heavily advertised game, at 23 most played? There's no way to justify those numbers.
^^heavily advertised game...?
I mean, I knew the game was coming but outside of a boot screen ad for it, there has been little to no marketing. And yet it still managed 23rd. Make of that what you will.
Here in the East Coast on NY/NJ on cable tv Hellblade 2 has been advertised pretty well. I see the commercials every day at least 3 times a day for the past 3 weeks. It's even advertised as YT commercials.
What an idiotic comment. Let me guess the next comment would be GTA V outsold everything so....
Absolutely terrible numbers all round for this game. Ghost of Tsushima at number 8. Good games going to sell regardless of excuses
What a disaster, 2 failures in a row for Ninja Theory, first Bleeding edge, now Hellblade 2, any way you slice it these are not the numbers the most awaited game of the year for Xbox should show (before Activision purchase), also player numbers is extremely low and even more surprising considering is day 1 on gamepass.
If this game cost more and took longer to develop than Hi-Fi Rush, then I would worry if I were Ninja Theory. Projects may have been greenlit, but the increased scrutiny over at MS may very well put them on the chopping block. The incredible irony here is that it was PlayStation players that pushed the original game passed its 1 million copies sold milestone. With that purchasing power cut out, and the Game Pass effect having trained Xbox players to not purchase games, it seems that the sequel may have been set-up for failure.
And that's exactly what pisses me off about Hellblade 2 not being on PlayStation, Sony promoted the original game and I bought it basically on D1 back in the day because I liked what I saw and ended up really enjoying it!
I really hope Hellblade 2 is next on the porting list because I would buy it in a heartbeat, asshole microsoft robbed me of this game!
"Limassol-based (Cyprus) indie games publisher ESDigital Games and Moscow-based (Russia) indie games developer Sobaka Studio, are today very proud and glad to announce that they have just released the "Full Act 2" update for their fast-paced twin-stick shooter “REMEDIUM” (the said update is available right now for PC via Steam and EGS)." - Jonas Ek, TGG.
"The Barcelona-based (Spain) indie games publisher Abylight Studios and indie games developer Abylight Barcelona (the award-winning studio behind “One Military Camp”), today announced with great happiness and excitement that they have just released a playable demo for their upcoming mythical city building/strategy game “CITADELUM” (the said demo is available right now for PC via Steam EA)." - Jonas Ek, TGG.
good post man
A similar article comes out everytime a new windows OS it's released. Why? Because some people would like Microsoft to go bankrup so Open source OS systems like linux can have a better chance and those few people that fix/repair/support these OS can charge you $300 and hour to do so. Here is the fact: If a company make a better or more apealing product people will buy it. i.e. Microsoft has more money than Apple and that didn't stop them from taking the entire mp3 player industry. Instead of trying to convince people not to buy a product with all these paranoia bull (Since this kind of protection for premium content is what the people generating this content are asking for in order to pretect their intellectual property). Why don't linux developer lead in this and everything else? How come they don't have a solution for content protection that the market needs?
Microsoft is doing something about this, people are complaining and trying to find flaws on it. how about @#$@#$ microsoft! Show us your solution, how about instead of complains on how wrong microsoft is doing this; you all your linux geniuses show us what you got? The guy who wrote this article it's obviously smart enough to point all the flaws, so how about showing us Plan B, how can the same be done the most effective way. I'm sure everyone will jump in.
in a post concerning HDCP and the HD-DVD player a month ago. This mass revocation of device drivers is really going to kill Microsoft because it punishes people who have done nothing wrong and can lead to life threatening situations. How would like your local police department computers or the 911 emergency system shut down because someone half way around the world tried to burn a CD using PC with onboard audio similar to the one used by your local police?? How would you like to be a cancer patient having imaging done and the computer in the hospital suffers image degradation because someone, somewhere, is trying to copy a movie using the same video card that the hospital uses?? How about our military forces in the field?? What happens if they are in combat and their tanks suddenly stop running because of a generic component onboard that got it's driver revoked?? On the less critical side, how would you like to spend $1500 on a pair of SLi video cards and then some moron goes and gets the drivers revoked and now you and everyone else with that model card is staring at a black screen??
Yeah, it's pretty usual that each new windows gets his critics, but if actually read the article, you'd see that MS is pushing a bit too far with Vista...