This week, AnalogHype is back with another episode of the Underground Hype, the only podcast that is scientifically proven to make you wanna slap yo' mama... or something. Aside from all that, though, Adrian, Marcus, Stephen, Keem, and Khalid come together for a nice round of heated gaming discussion that'll make any fanboy wet his pants. What did they talk about, you ask? Well aside from pressing the Play button, you can read these bullet points.
Check out the fresh Final Fantasy IX artwork released for its 25th anniversary, alongside new Japanese bios and merchandise!
'If the big companies dictate what games can be created, I don't think that will advance the industry.' -Shihei Yoshida
🙄 same guy who said 80$ is a steal lol and according to him M$ shouldnt put good on a services🤣 wtf
Subscription services have f***ed the movie industry and it's work force, caused massive studio buyups by companies like Disney consolidating huge parts of the industry under one roof and have creatively sterilised the IP's they've gobbled up. The same thing is happening to gaming, MS being the main greedy piggy.
I get what he's saying, but I don’t think we need subscription services to see a lot of the problems he's pointing out. All we really have to do is look at the gaming industry over the last two console generations. Even without subscriptions, the big AAA publishers have already been moving in a direction where almost every game feels like it's built from the same template. It’s all about streamlined, safe design choices that are meant to appeal to the widest possible audience. At this point, you could probably ask an AI to make a AAA game from a certain publisher and it would spit out something pretty close to what they’re actually making.
Now, about the whole “walled garden” thing... that’s not some future problem, it’s already here. Consoles have always worked like that. Their entire business model is based on controlling what gets released on their platforms. Sure, maybe they’re not as locked down as the extreme examples people bring up, but the end result is similar. If you’re not making the kind of game the platform holder wants, you’re probably not getting through the door. We’ve seen it with Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, even Valve does this in its own way with Steam. So yeah, the issue isn’t new or exclusive to subscription services.
Would a subscription-only future make that problem worse? Sure, it definitely could. But I don’t think we’re heading in that direction anytime soon. Unless physical hardware truly becomes a thing of the past and everyone switches to streaming games, I just don’t see subscriptions becoming the dominant model. They’ll stick around as an option, but I doubt they’ll take over completely.
Now, what will take over completely is digital media, and that’s a whole different issue that’s going to hit us a lot sooner. PC and mobile are already basically 100% digital, and that makes up around 70% of the gaming market. The remaining 30% is consoles, and even there we’re seeing the shift. Sony’s removing the disc drive from boxed consoles, Nintendo is releasing just one super expensive 64GB cartridge for their new system, which means almost all third-party publishers will end up going digital and Microsoft is mostly digital already. You either get a digital-only or a physical box with disc that only acts as a activation key. So yeah, that future’s already knocking on the door and the damage will be enormous.
Right, because then you can’t sell individual games at $80, which is an incredible value for the consumer!
Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher developer CD Projekt revealed its earnings and announced that Cyberpunk 2 is now in pre-production.
CDPR please! Make a free Switch 2 upgrade of Witcher 3 or even with a small fee of $2.49 (like Fantasy Life did).
nope.
I got my popcorn ready for this one.
But I will say one thing. I will be getting a copy of Killzone 2 and that all that matter to me.
Halo 3 did over 9 million in sales. Only time will tell.
I don't think Killzone 2 will outdo Halo 3 in sales, but I do definantly think it's going to sell just as much as MGS4 or a little more because KZ2 is the the most anticipated game to hit the PS3 since MGS4.
The only PS3 game that I can see outselling Halo 3 is Gran Turismo 5, because every Gran Turismo game has sold more than 8 million copies, with Gran Turismo 3 topping out at over 14 million copies.