Matt, Brendan, Chris and James gather to discuss the biggest industry headlines of the past week on The GamesIndustry.biz Podcast,l.
Chief among them is the arrival of Crackdown 3 and the difficulty it presents in judging its success. Media reviews are mixed, its retail performance (in the UK, at least) has been poor, yet engagement on Xbox One seems to be high, thanks to Game Pass. Is this the first in a new type of release, where the metrics the industry has relied on in the past are ultimately meaningless?
Also discussed are the ongoing troubles of Starbreeze, with the poor performance of Overkill's The Walking Dead continuing to highlight the struggles the Swedish publisher faces. With the company now in a reconstruction period to avoid insolvency, what does the future look like for Starbreeze?
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick doesn't think AI will reduce employment or lower development costs, and calls it "stupidest thing" he's ever heard.
They already have AI trained to do coding.......
How he thinks it's stupid is beyond me, Especially since we see it happening in real time.
Company A has 300 employees and lays of 200 to replace them with AI to release the same quality game.
Company B has 300 employees and keeps all 300 but instead uses AI to release a game with dramatically larger scale, scope, complexity, short dev cycle etc.
Company B would release a dramatically better product by using humans + AI and consumers would buy the better game.
I actually agree with this concept.
This is key facet. Its how the AI is used. It's actually is impressive as is and really would make an amazing addition to alot of people in their jobs, not just tech. It also has the potential for businesses to use to lay off large amounts of people, as much as they could to save money on labor. I hope too many companies don't go with the latter. But since usually companies are worried about bottom line over people...we will see some try and hopefully fail. But yeah, if its to help workers like in your company B scenario I'm totally down...Just scared Company A may be too enticing to some ceos and businesses.
Value of AI and value of humans will both be increased with human-AI complex. Each, by themselves, will not be independently better than the other. Whether AI will ever be independent from humans is the fear question of humans, ironically because of our doing. At this stage, most of the doing is because of humans, not because of AI. AI is doing exactly that by our design, until we have failed ourselves with an AI development that went awry. The biggest take is that humans have only ourselves to blame when things become wrong, and we have to decide what is the ultimate goal with AI we want to accomplish. It would take a person with high morals and high ethics to make right of AI. I would not want businessman to decide what AI should do or what capabilities it can have. AI should be in the hands of people with high moral fiber, or those operating on love, kindness, and compassion.
AI is SUPPOSED to be used as a tool, not a replacement. It's designed to do two important things artists can take advantage of immediately.
- Make the ideation/reference imaging process much quicker and easier (basically using it as a google search)
- Make mundane and time consuming tasks faster and easier so more time is spent on creation.
Unfortunately, what many have done is used it as a way to replace rather than supplement.
You can already make your own SFX with text prompts now as well, of course it will lower development cost and time
WARNING WARNING ‼️ SARCASM AHEAD
Sure Strauss and robots didn’t take jobs from car factories.
Edit:Sad thing is he believes it and unfortunately he won’t be replaced for a long time by AI
I think maybe sometimes we give people in these positions too much credit when it comes to intelligence.
As long as it doesn't effect his inflated executive salary or his ridiculous bonuses I'm sure he's fine with it.
PlayStation Plus has improved the split of PS4 and PS5 players on its priciest tiers, but Sony continues to hide total subscriber numbers.
Uh...They're definitely not equivalent.
"Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass service now has 34 million subscribers."
"the total number of PS Plus subscribers across all tiers was 47.4 million"
That PSN number seems like it should be much higher... especially when you consider that PS4 alone has a sell through of over 117m. To not even be at least half that is rather interesting.
To the XB side, having 34m to an install base of roughly 50m (XBO sell through) or even 85m (360 sell through) is a greater percentage of unit to member ratio than PSN.
darthv72
"That PSN number seems like it should be much higher... especially when you consider that PS4 alone has a sell through of over 117m. To not even be at least half that is rather interesting.
To the XB side, having 34m to an install base of roughly 50m (XBO sell through) or even 85m (360 sell through) is a greater percentage of unit to member ratio than PSN."
Have you ever heard of a PC before? I hear they are pretty popular.
What. Definitely more os plus subscribers but that makes sense due to actual console sales
Darth the difference between the bases are huge your right but you gotta think. Ps players buy more games, where as the Xbox base relies on gamepass for their gaming. So it makes perfect sense
What makes perfect sense though? You say PS players buy more games... so then logically there should be more PS+ subscribers given the increased number of online multiplayer games in the PS4 generation alone. The PS4 was the first time that + was required for online play much like Gold was for 360 users.
Keep in mind we are talking subscribers, not simply XB/PS users. I assume you meant to say offline single player games, which is most likely true as well. That gen also saw a significant increase in games with an online component comparted to the previous gen.
I for one will be going back to essential at the next renewal. When I feel a game is good & right up my alley, I’ll check trusted reviews & just buy it.
I have the top tier until 2028 as they gave me a massive discount for all the years I had left but I’ll most likely go to essential as well. I buy my games but my kids do use the service occasionally. They do prefer to own their games as well since any game can leave the rental service at some point and they don’t like that idea. They mostly use it to demo games then ask me to buy games if they really like it.
For me, I will cancel it all together but unfortunately I still have it till 2030 lol
I would like to see Sony add a fourth tier of PS Plus for people who just want to be able to play games online without any of the perks like monthly games, store discounts, or anything like that, and it should cost $20 annually, $30 maximum. There’s no way I’m paying $80 just to play games online. Even the original $60 fee was too much, and I would often wait for sales to re-up my subscription.
Essential is too expensive, I agree. We’ve got one Essential and one Premium sub. Dropping the Premium when it expires.
Just let my subscription lapse for the first time since 2010. Will sub again every now and then for a month or so to access my old ps+ games but for me it's the end of an era.
Let those numbers continue to drop because it is now too expensive. $80 per year just to play online. I noticed they didn't offer any discounts on the subscription or controllers during this year's days of play for the first time in many years and they will feel it when people choose not to renew.
My subscription will lapse next month and it will stay that way until further notice.
There were savings on subs and controllers here in the UK? I bought a controller yesterday in the sale..
It would be weird if those deals were not in other territories too?
Konami has announced that a Silent Hill Transmission will take place on Thursday, May 30, at 4pm PT/7pm ET that will reveal game updates, a "deeper look at the film," and new merch. Join us at IGN to find out what's next for this beloved franchise.
This looks terrible. Capcom should have done the remake 😂 The animations and gameplay looks stiff.
Okay. I was saying before in another article how SH2 looked better than the last trailer, which is true but damn this looks rough as hell.
I wanted RE4 / Dead Space remake quality
You would hope it would be sales. Product performs well, you make another product. Possibly a sequel.
I don't know how "likes," "looks," and "twitter and mixer watchers" somehow make you money and a return on investment in it unless you are going to fill it with micro transactions, dlc, season passes and advertising. Translation: Gaas. And $2 for 2 months is like giving it away hoping for a long term investment on services that isn't guaranteed to be a success.
But that only works if you have a good product worth playing and coming back to. But media reviews aren't mixed. The majority have put it in the 60% range. That's not "mixed." The cake batter is bland and not representative of the large, sweet tasting wedding cake that was promised.
I feel like with Xbox this gen we always have all these revolutionary measures and parameters to know if they were successful or not...
The game it's a success no matter what because it is on game pass, which is " a new way of deliver"...
Modern Graphics, Sound, level design, actual gameplay, just simple modern controls, are no longer important all that matters it's fun (which is no longer subjective... no! it has become a new objective parameter
It doesn't matter that every single big release on the Xbox has review poorly... Critics! Right?
In any case all these games with bad reviews belong to the old cycle of Xbox Studios development; since E3 last year we know that MS acquire a lot of new studios that are making great games, that will also have great reviews... Hey you have to wait, but here's a trailer of Halo: you can see the Rhinos wrinkles.
The Xbox is successful because it sold millions (new standard practice is not to reveal your actual numbers... We are not hiding the numbers because they are bad, no! Is just that... We think that the... numbers of consoles you sell... no longer reflect if the console is successful or not )
No matter that Xbox lost their number one market to Sony (a market that was previously owned by far)... no matter that the Xbox almost doesn't exist in the rest of the world (because: Who cares about the World! Right?) no matter that the Switch comes like 3 years later and with a failure console on their backpack and still sells like hot cake and is catching up with what... We think... We think... are the Xb1 numbers.
Exclusive now also means "on PC"... The traditional concept of "exclusive to the console" that's just ridiculous!
Of course exclusivity always meant on PC too! Sometimes exclusivity also means... exclusive for like a little while... exclusive at launch, maybe 6 months, but then the rest could have the game if they want: But we had our 6 months! We'll always have Paris...
We want more players to enjoy our games... I mean I don't know who or why someone created this outrageous concept... is not that competition helped the industry in any way... Is not like it's forcing you to try to offer something better for your consumer. No! that's archaic. Competition is bad!
We prefer crossplay that's What all gamers really want. Shame on you Sony for not letting us reach out to your people!
Also in modern gaming exclusives are no longer important, Who cares about exclusives?! Who cares that you have some dormant franchises! Who wants to play Fable, Lost Odyssey, Alan Wake? When you have Crackdown and you can have fun!
Between it being offered on GamePass and MS not reporting actual and separate sale numbers, how is anyone outside of MS suppose to judge it or anything on Xbox?
I know what Crackdown 3 means for success: nothing.
I'm afraid we don't know the answer to this until MS defines what success is for the game. Usually they would have done that by now, but 9 days in, and nary a word. Hopefully in the next couple days, we'll get the official word from MS about why this game is successful, because the Xbox fan boys don't seem to be sure how to proceed in their spin on why this game is successful.
All I know, it's not a good sign when MS isn't saying anything.