John Herrman of Gizmodo writes:
"Desktop PCs have been in decline for a decade, and countless people have said their piece about it. But new evidence suggests the desktop tower's death spiral is underway-and we're not too broken up about it.
I say this as a guy who was baptized into the tech world with a desktop; who still obsessively follows the latest PC components from Intel, Nvidia, ATI and the like; who has built, fixed or upgraded more towers than I care to remember; and who, until a few years ago, was an avid PC gamer. As someone who would be, by most measures, a desktop-PC kinda guy, I just can't go on pretending there's a future for them."
The original article, written by John Herrman of Gizmodo, goes on to point out several trends that have been occurring in the PC industry as of late, citing various statistics that point to the rise in popularity of laptops and the rapid decline of desktop sales.
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.
"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.
