The issue is that even a short single-player game like Hellbalde is taking 5+ years of development, that's quite unfortunate for Xbox which is in despair need of big exclusive content to sell consoles and GamePass subs.
Xbox Developer_Direct January 18 (12pm PT / 3pm ET / 8pm UK): Indiana Jones, Avowed, Ara: History Untold, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II (No ABK updates)
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Sony solution to having giant games in terms of play time that also look like they look is to throw piles of money at the thing by using an insane amount of outsourcing.
If it weren't for that most of their prestige games would have to cheap out on either scope or the quality of presentation.
Per Mobygames, GoW:R has 2.7k people in the credits...
Xbox can't really afford to do that, with its lower installbase and general apathy towards its portfolio by the general gaming audience.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Spider-Man 2 only about 10 hours?
Really, the reason why Sony can somewhat get away with it is because JP developers tend to avoid Xbox. Like how Square gave Sony exclusivity, even timed, to FF16 and the FF7 remake games.
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Spider-Man 2
GoW:R
TLoU Part II
It's true that Spider-Man 2 is on the smaller end of the scale if you don't do the open world stuff, but it's not that short.
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Dont expect them to take any less time to make unless you want those games to look bad. Thats the reality of the industry.
Though if anything, Xboxs output has been pretty good this generation with the exception of 2021. They had a lot of games in 2023 vs just Spider-Man 2 for example. Rushing to push out more games would not solve the problem. The console brand itself seems like the thing that needs fixing. The output of games seems good. Though its looking like MS is kinda giving up on this front.
This feels like misreading the situation. Hellblade 2 is a smaller game on purpose, Xbox as a whole has plenty of huge games, even bigger than whats typical for Sony. Starfield, Forza Horizon, Halo, etc. These games all command lots of playtime.
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The Xbox release schedule is filling up nicely, Forza and CoD should provide a bigger push in Q4.
Overall that's what killed Xbox momentum post-2021. They need a notable game per quarter, either commercially or critically.
Overall that's what killed Xbox momentum post-2021. They need a notable game per quarter, either commercially or critically.
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If your 2023 output contains things like Redfall and Forza Motorsport, it might actually be more beneficial to not release those products, especially the former.
I'm not misreading the situation, I never thought Hellblade 2 was anything else but a true sequel with a higher budget. But it's true that a lot of people are ending up disappointed from that showing because they expected more. To be fair, they're not entirely in the wrong, Xbox has talked about the game so much, that at some point it builds up hype/expectations to something that doesn't reflect the equal product. A corporation is responsible for setting the expectations for their products correctly to its potential customer base as to maximize profits.
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Even without those games it was still Starfield, Hi-Fi Rush, Minecraft Legends and plenty of significant updates for their back catalogue. Thats still pretty good.
How is that not a misread of the situation when you said Xbox cant afford to do outsourcing? They can and do. Do you think they put out games like Starfield without any outsourcing? Outsourcing is a common practice, everyone does it nowadays. It sounded like you were blaming Hellblade being short on Xbox being cheap.
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This is indeed the most promising aspect of the presentation.
MS needs a pipeline of good and great games at a constant pace for a significant amount of years to start to interest gamers and publishers to their ecosystem.
to steer a big ship line Bethesda and an even bigger one like Activision, given the time to produce games, MS will need 5 to 6 years In the best case scenario.
The variety of MS games looks excellent, they are only missing, games for the younger ones and families, but that does seem the reign of Nintendo.I could see some acquisition in this area if possible. Minecraft is mysteriously absent from their marketing.
Meanwhile for this and next year I also expect them to slowly include, in 3 to 4 turns, Activision games into games pass augmenting the value proposition of the service significantly.
In the long term MS gaming strategy seems the most intentional of all the three Console producers but in the short and medium term there is a lot to do.
The only 1p game of the set with a release date is Hellblade in May, so it's reasonable to assume that there's nothing for the first 4 months. It also means the back half of the year is going to be quite stacked.
The real question is whether or not this year's CoD will be entering Gamepass on day one. It could be quite a Q4 if we wind up with CoD, Jones and Avowed over the span of 3 months. Towerborne was previously dated for 2024, but who knows. Flight Sim 2024 is... well one would hope it gets either a 2024 release or a title change. Unsure if that's coming to console at launch.
Stalker 2 is now dated for September, Silksong could be basically any month of the year, and there's about a dozen other small and medium sized games that are announced for GP (some exclusive, some not) with no current dates (maybe half of them were given "2024" or whatever but nothing firm).
The real question is whether or not this year's CoD will be entering Gamepass on day one. It could be quite a Q4 if we wind up with CoD, Jones and Avowed over the span of 3 months. Towerborne was previously dated for 2024, but who knows. Flight Sim 2024 is... well one would hope it gets either a 2024 release or a title change. Unsure if that's coming to console at launch.
Stalker 2 is now dated for September, Silksong could be basically any month of the year, and there's about a dozen other small and medium sized games that are announced for GP (some exclusive, some not) with no current dates (maybe half of them were given "2024" or whatever but nothing firm).
Not seeing anything that I think will massively move the needle personally. But all games am personally interested in.
The discourse around Third Persona don First Person is bizzare to me though.
The discourse around Third Persona don First Person is bizzare to me though.
I's say you could remove the "personally" here. Depending on one's taste, these surely will be fine games. But none of them evoke the feeling of bringing change to Xbox, of pushing back against PS5, which surely is MS's goal. The wait for Xbox' sw-output to fully materialize continues, 2024 probably won't be it.
Based on FTC vs. Microsoft trial CoD can only be on gamepass in 2025.
Hmm I think it was a CMA paragraph, but I am hoping it was a misunderstanding or otherwise in error (let me cope).
I don’t really think it is, people had the same discussions around Avatar Fronters of Pandora. Its just that no one really pushed back against criticisms of it being first person.
This. A tight narrative experience game doesn't need to be super long. One of my favorite Playstation games is of similar length (Until Dawn).
Hellblade 2 seems like production malpractice to me. The entire idea behind Hellblade was to produce AA games with a smaller budget and scope. Yet with Hellblade 2, it seems they pushed for triple-A production values and it pushed the game too far out. They spent 10 years on 2 Hellblade games. There is no way Hellblade 2 is gonna be worth that.
While it makes sense that Indiana Jones is first-person because of Machine Games experience with first-person, I think it's a mistake. That FPS whip combat is almost certainly gonna be less inferior to third-person combat. I don't see how that's gonna work.
Awoved looked further out than I would have liked. I suspect it might get pushed to 2025. They only dared to show off true gameplay (not just edited clips) in a very specific location, and the dialogue was very wooden and felt half-cooked to me. And when they show off stuff like that, it hints at a production that still has a lot more to be done.
Ara looks alright, but it's so Civilization-inspired that it's not certain people will choose it over Civ. The thing with Civ is, it's ever-playable. My guts tell me that I rather get one new CIV DLC and play that than Ara. CIV is like Mario Kart, it just owns the genre.
While it makes sense that Indiana Jones is first-person because of Machine Games experience with first-person, I think it's a mistake. That FPS whip combat is almost certainly gonna be less inferior to third-person combat. I don't see how that's gonna work.
Awoved looked further out than I would have liked. I suspect it might get pushed to 2025. They only dared to show off true gameplay (not just edited clips) in a very specific location, and the dialogue was very wooden and felt half-cooked to me. And when they show off stuff like that, it hints at a production that still has a lot more to be done.
Ara looks alright, but it's so Civilization-inspired that it's not certain people will choose it over Civ. The thing with Civ is, it's ever-playable. My guts tell me that I rather get one new CIV DLC and play that than Ara. CIV is like Mario Kart, it just owns the genre.
Ara is a civ clone. For those of us that have exhausted Civ 6, it’s something new to play until Civ 7 comes. That’s why I’m excited to play it.
I agree with this. I don’t see these games really changing the fortunes of Xbox this gen. TBH this far into the gen I think it’s hard for any games no matter how big or good they are to massively change the fortunes of a console.
Having said that they still need to keep getting their 1st party output in order so they can build momentum into next gen.
Thought the games shown today looked really good. Nothing ground breaking, but they will fill out the GP schedule.
HB2 - kinda surprised at the length considering how long it's been in development, but it's a relatively small team and seems to be by design.
Avowed - this looked extremely fun. Not sure how big the game is but there's a lot of potential.
Indiana Jones - I couldn't be less interested in this IP so this game doesn't really do much for me from what was shown. Machine Games is a great dev though so I'm sure it'll turn out well. It's good they're playing to their strengths and kept it first person. Kinda makes me wish for a new Uncharted though.
HB2 - kinda surprised at the length considering how long it's been in development, but it's a relatively small team and seems to be by design.
Avowed - this looked extremely fun. Not sure how big the game is but there's a lot of potential.
Indiana Jones - I couldn't be less interested in this IP so this game doesn't really do much for me from what was shown. Machine Games is a great dev though so I'm sure it'll turn out well. It's good they're playing to their strengths and kept it first person. Kinda makes me wish for a new Uncharted though.
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It being 'short' is okay. It taking all these years to be developed is bad. Something needs to change.
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I agree with this. Hellblade 1 prided itself on looking AAA on an indie budget, seems like a mistake to go full AAA on the second one. Unless the budget is lower than we think, but I doubt that.
Slighty less than 1M views (and 37k likes) for the conference After almost one day on Xbox channel.
Last year's conference is at 1,9M currently (with 44k likes).
Indiana Jones trailer is at 400k views (and 23k likes) on Xbox channel and slighty less than 700k (with 25k likes) on Bethesda channel.
Seams like a better reception than last year among the players base.
Last year's conference is at 1,9M currently (with 44k likes).
Indiana Jones trailer is at 400k views (and 23k likes) on Xbox channel and slighty less than 700k (with 25k likes) on Bethesda channel.
Seams like a better reception than last year among the players base.
Nothing suggest Hellblade 2 is AAA title. Ninja theory is small studio and number of years taken have more to do with number of people working on it.
Its not like MS gave them $200m budget and 300 people working on it for 5 years.
MS wouldn’t allow a AAA game to be an 8 hour $50 digital only game. The game took a long time because quality takes time and it’s a small team.
Remember that long game mostly just means it’s more padded. Look at Spider-Man 2, it’s a better game than 1 and it’s half as long, it had more playable characters, more boss fights, better boss fights, more abilities and more combinations to experiment with, better production values, they recorded the open world dialogue 3x in case you were swinging, walking, or fighting. It’s a better game in basically every way but it’s shorter because they replaced the filler content with better mechanics that actually makes the game fun.
They could easily have made Hellblade twice as long if they wanted to, increase enemy health bars and make encounters more frequent, make her walk slower, make side quests that have you running around and back tracking, but all of that makes the game worse. I applaud MS for letter Ninja Theory make the game they wanted.
A 3rd party AAA publisher wouldn’t have greenlit the game, and if they did they would have forced it to be an open world RPG with co op.
As far as Indiana Jones being first person, I agree it will hurt its sales, but you choose a first person studio to make it, forcing them to make a third person game is a mistake.
Remember that long game mostly just means it’s more padded. Look at Spider-Man 2, it’s a better game than 1 and it’s half as long, it had more playable characters, more boss fights, better boss fights, more abilities and more combinations to experiment with, better production values, they recorded the open world dialogue 3x in case you were swinging, walking, or fighting. It’s a better game in basically every way but it’s shorter because they replaced the filler content with better mechanics that actually makes the game fun.
They could easily have made Hellblade twice as long if they wanted to, increase enemy health bars and make encounters more frequent, make her walk slower, make side quests that have you running around and back tracking, but all of that makes the game worse. I applaud MS for letter Ninja Theory make the game they wanted.
A 3rd party AAA publisher wouldn’t have greenlit the game, and if they did they would have forced it to be an open world RPG with co op.
As far as Indiana Jones being first person, I agree it will hurt its sales, but you choose a first person studio to make it, forcing them to make a third person game is a mistake.
They just a bit smaller than Bend and Sucker Punch.
And way bigger than Bend was during the start of the last generation.
Not sure where is this "NT is small" coming from.
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The problem with Indy is just why the game is being made at all instead of anything else, lol.
(like just Indy with the serial numbers filed off)
Giving Disney tens of millions of dollars so Troy Baker can try to sound like Harrison Ford is really weird.
(like just Indy with the serial numbers filed off)
Giving Disney tens of millions of dollars so Troy Baker can try to sound like Harrison Ford is really weird.
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Todd Howard will not be denied!
I actually agree. I mean at the end of the day, MS agreed to the licensing agreement so they feel that it's worth it, but how big is the Indy IP? Will it really generate that much more money being a IJ game versus a new adventure IP with a similar story/game play?
I would imagine Indiana Jones brand power is orders of magnitude stronger than whatever new IP Machine Games would have come up with.
That doesn’t mean it’s automatically going to be a huge success, you have to make the right kind of game, but there’s no question they have a better shot than with a new IP
That doesn’t mean it’s automatically going to be a huge success, you have to make the right kind of game, but there’s no question they have a better shot than with a new IP
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IDK, the entire brand I think is just Harrison Ford and he's... not in the game.
Forking over 20% of your revenue for this IP instead of doing Quake 6 or Wolfenstein 3 seems really weird.
Obviously it looks a billion times worse now that Indy 5 lost like $150m.
As for Hellblade 2: Even if it's not actually AAA, MS is certainly positioning it like one, a major, if not THE major release of 2024.
As for Indiana Jones: I agree that the game's very existence is weird. My biggest worry is that Xbox NEEDED its very own Uncharted-equivalent, but using an external franchise means Disney can deny them any sequels if they choose to not let them use the franchise again. Should have created their own adventure-ip.
As for Indiana Jones: I agree that the game's very existence is weird. My biggest worry is that Xbox NEEDED its very own Uncharted-equivalent, but using an external franchise means Disney can deny them any sequels if they choose to not let them use the franchise again. Should have created their own adventure-ip.
But they also work on more then one project at a time. Hellblade 1 budget was $10m with 20 people working on it. Maybe for Hellblade 2 50 people worked and $40m budget. Far from AAA by modern standard but still much bigger then first one.
The thing with using budget as a measure of what is AAA is that some games have a smaller budget but do feel AAA when you play them. Hellblade 1 was like that.
If you look at something like Returnal, which probably had a rather small budget, it also felt like a AAA experience.
Some actual AAA games with huge budgets feel more limited. Gotham Knights probably had 3 or 4 times the budget of Hellblade or Returnal and yet those two games feel like much more refined products.
If you look at something like Returnal, which probably had a rather small budget, it also felt like a AAA experience.
Some actual AAA games with huge budgets feel more limited. Gotham Knights probably had 3 or 4 times the budget of Hellblade or Returnal and yet those two games feel like much more refined products.
They said that the team on Hellblade 2 is double of the team that worked on the first game, so around 40-50 people. Nothing like other AAA.
Todd Howard gave you the reason. Just like with Blade, you need to keep in mind that these games are made by human beings.
That's their choise, but they aren't small studio was my point.
And I kinda doubt about 40-50 people tbh.
Wasn't Project Mara even smaller project?
Is there a third project underway in that case?
Checked H1 credits - team was around 50 people, counting contract employees.
How? The combat is straight out of Skyrim and the quest dialogue was entirely unremarkable. It had by far the worst showing. If it wasn't for Obsidian's reputation, I would dismiss it out of hand.
Otherwise, Visions of Mana was super random in this and Indy looked ok but I need to see extended gameplay to see how the puzzle focused gameplay works. Puzzles in AAA games are usually banal and obvious.
Ultimately, with gamepass needing persistent content, these games just need to be "good".
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Yes. It's odd they advertised the hell out of a shorter game with no physical release from a small studio. Both Patrick Klepek and Tamor Hussein noted the same thing on the reaction videos I've seen.
theres a possibility that none of the upcoming Xbox games will have physicals
I think the AAA/AA discussion is moot because AAA budgets last gen are now becoming AA.
The only thing we can say is that Microsoft doesn't consider Hellblade 2 a huge release, as shown by its price point.
The only thing we can say is that Microsoft doesn't consider Hellblade 2 a huge release, as shown by its price point.
by actually looking better
having good global illumination (ray traced in this case) would do Starfield so much good. like, goddamn, it's really missing that. and it sucks because there were hints in linkedin posts for some RTX stuff. Starfield with path tracing? bruh
but Avowed leveraging lumen immediately puts it ahead of Starfield, visually
I never liked how Starfield looked (the muted, dull colors with the lifeless faces, I hated it) and it’s combat is still more creative looking than Starfield which always looked standard FPS to me.
I don't know if it pushes it up higher on my list, but it's definitely not a detriment in my eyes. Shorter, well-focused games can be wonderful experiences.
Anyway, for me personally, Indy and Hellblade 2 both look like good times to me.
Avowed lets you dive under water and Starfield doesn't. Debate over.
