Gaming Microsoft buys Zenimax | 9th March: Bethesda games officially joins Microsoft. Unlucky Afro.

Siorac

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I totally disagree with just about everything you've said there but.. each to their own.

Again, I am not arguing that there are more quality non exclusives than exclusives. I am arguing that there is a disproportionate amount of quality exclusives to non exclusives.
And I've yet to see any evidence for this. Unless of course we count all the garbage costing €2 on Steam among the "non-exclusive" but that would be disingenuous. If we only count games that are released on consoles then I don't see how you can justify that statement. Unless you're simply saying that the best games are Nintendo games. They are disproportionately represented in all these lists, that's for sure (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games).
 

Bosws87

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Exclusives make less sense now as the consoles are basically just glorified PC's and one game can jump to the other with relative ease.

It made a lot more sense up to the playstation 3 as they were dramatic different system architectures etc.

I still feel that focusing on one platform has it's benefits but they are very quickly becoming diminishing returns.
 

Massive Spanner

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And I've yet to see any evidence for this. Unless of course we count all the garbage costing €2 on Steam among the "non-exclusive" but that would be disingenuous. If we only count games that are released on consoles then I don't see how you can justify that statement. Unless you're simply saying that the best games are Nintendo games. They are disproportionately represented in all these lists, that's for sure (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games).
Best selling hardly equals best games. It also makes no sense in this context seeing as exclusives have a smaller market than multi-platforms.

You keep saying Nintendo shouldn't be excluded but that's ridiculous. I've said all along that between Sony and Nintendo a lot of the best games of the last generation were exclusives. You can't leave out one for your own benefit. It doesn't make any sense.
 

TrustInJanuzaj

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I do think it’s abit different buying an established IP and turning that into an exclusive compared to making brand new in house IPs which Xbox players won’t have ever played before. I think it’s fair game to argue one practice is worse than the other.
 

Cloud7

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The Obsidian team that made New Vegas, in particular the leader of that project, have left Obsidian if I remember correctly, so no guarantee that if they do get working on something together that it'll be as good as New Vegas. That being said, a new Fallout is more than a decade away if Bethesda keep up their usual pace. We could all be dead by then :lol:

On this topic, has there been any word on TES 6? There was that little teaser a couple year back that just confirmed it existed, but has there been anything since?

Crazy to think that it's now been ten years since Skyrim released.
 

amolbhatia50k

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PS fans two days ago:
Xbox has no exclusives. Who wants an Xbox

PS fans today:
FECK xbox, They should allow all their owned IPs on PS
This is good news for people who will be buying an XBOX. But as someone who definitely prefers PlayStation, I'm not really bothered about it. Fallout 3 was good but wouldn't say it's a game I need to play. And fallout 4 was an absolute joke. Elders Scroll used to be good so let's see if they can recreate that again. But again, I feel these aren't games I'm absolutely dying to play tbh.
 

Siorac

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Best selling hardly equals best games. It also makes no sense in this context seeing as exclusives have a smaller market than multi-platforms.

You keep saying Nintendo shouldn't be excluded but that's ridiculous. I've said all along that between Sony and Nintendo a lot of the best games of the last generation were exclusives. You can't leave out one for your own benefit. It doesn't make any sense.
In itself, that's a pointless and trivial statement. The context was that Alock claimed exclusivity results in better games, that they tend to be of higher quality. That is demonstrably untrue, as a lot of the greatest games have been multiplatform. I will repeat: exclusivity has no impact on a game's quality. Dark Souls isn't an inferior game to Demon's Souls. The Witcher 3 isn't worse than Horizon or God of War. Nier: Automata didn't suffer from being available on PC and later Xbox.

And I don't understand why you'd ever WANT exclusives. It's the weirdest possible attitude for anyone not working for Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo to have. It's pretty much insane - surely you realise your best interest is that every game is available on every platform? The quality of the game should be the only relevant factor when deciding whether to buy it or not. The shitty console wars and exclusivity deals mean that I'll never play Breath of the Wild, for example (well, OK, I actually did play some of it on a Wii U emulator but that is something Nintendo very much does not want) because it would cost me about €380 and that's not worth it. I get it that some people don't mind this, but at least let's not start being fecking grateful to companies for limiting our choices.
 

Massive Spanner

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In itself, that's a pointless and trivial statement. The context was that Alock claimed exclusivity results in better games, that they tend to be of higher quality. That is demonstrably untrue, as a lot of the greatest games have been multiplatform. I will repeat: exclusivity has no impact on a game's quality. Dark Souls isn't an inferior game to Demon's Souls. The Witcher 3 isn't worse than Horizon or God of War. Nier: Automata didn't suffer from being available on PC and later Xbox.

And I don't understand why you'd ever WANT exclusives. It's the weirdest possible attitude for anyone not working for Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo to have. It's pretty much insane - surely you realise your best interest is that every game is available on every platform? The quality of the game should be the only relevant factor when deciding whether to buy it or not. The shitty console wars and exclusivity deals mean that I'll never play Breath of the Wild, for example (well, OK, I actually did play some of it on a Wii U emulator but that is something Nintendo very much does not want) because it would cost me about €380 and that's not worth it. I get it that some people don't mind this, but at least let's not start being fecking grateful to companies for limiting our choices.
Is this aimed at me? I don't in any way want exclusives. It's bad for the consumer, as I said before.

Anyway it seems we are arguing different things. I don't know how many times I have to point out to you that I am talking about quality vs quantity, not that all exclusive games are better than non exclusives, because that would be stupid.
 

Ainu

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In itself, that's a pointless and trivial statement. The context was that Alock claimed exclusivity results in better games, that they tend to be of higher quality. That is demonstrably untrue, as a lot of the greatest games have been multiplatform. I will repeat: exclusivity has no impact on a game's quality. Dark Souls isn't an inferior game to Demon's Souls. The Witcher 3 isn't worse than Horizon or God of War. Nier: Automata didn't suffer from being available on PC and later Xbox.

And I don't understand why you'd ever WANT exclusives. It's the weirdest possible attitude for anyone not working for Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo to have. It's pretty much insane - surely you realise your best interest is that every game is available on every platform? The quality of the game should be the only relevant factor when deciding whether to buy it or not. The shitty console wars and exclusivity deals mean that I'll never play Breath of the Wild, for example (well, OK, I actually did play some of it on a Wii U emulator but that is something Nintendo very much does not want) because it would cost me about €380 and that's not worth it. I get it that some people don't mind this, but at least let's not start being fecking grateful to companies for limiting our choices.
It doesn't necessarily result in better games, but from a technological point of view, there's often a significant impact. God of War is a good example, as the game's data streaming is so extremely optimized for the PS4 that there's virtually no loading time once you're in the game world. For a game of that visual quality, detail and scale that's an incredibly impressive achievement. They would simply not get that running to the same standard without that laser focus on a single platform. Ghost of Tsushima's insanely fast loading times are another example, especially when compared to the excruciating loading times of a multiplatform title like AC: Odyssey.

From a creative point of view, you're right of course. These guys might've made these games anyway if they hadn't been first party and they might not have had to compromise on their artistic vision. But there would be a clear disadvantage on the technical side of things. How important that is, is for every individual to decide, but I would argue these games have clearly benefited from being exclusive to one platform.

If everything is platform agnostic, you lose that extreme optimization. The trade-off of course being that anyone could run anything on whatever system they want. As someone who'd rather get multiple platforms, I prefer having those games that run flawlessly on a single platform, but that's just my personal and very selfish preference.
 

Siorac

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Is this aimed at me? I don't in any way want exclusives. It's bad for the consumer, as I said before.

Anyway it seems we are arguing different things. I don't know how many times I have to point out to you that I am talking about quality vs quantity, not that all exclusive games are better than non exclusives, because that would be stupid.
Let's put it this way then: if we look at games with similar budgets, I doubt there's significant differences in quality depending on exclusivity. Rather, exclusives might be overrepresented in the high-budget, AAA category games - because the companies try to push them as console sellers. It's an anti-consumer practice but you can't really do anything about it.
 

Bojan11

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@Alock1 what have you done to my thread? It was supposed to be a moment of celebration and you ruined it.
 

hubbuh

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This is good news for people who will be buying an XBOX. But as someone who definitely prefers PlayStation, I'm not really bothered about it. Fallout 3 was good but wouldn't say it's a game I need to play. And fallout 4 was an absolute joke. Elders Scroll used to be good so let's see if they can recreate that again. But again, I feel these aren't games I'm absolutely dying to play tbh.
To the gaming world they're definitely 'flagship' games. DOOM is also pretty big.
 

Siorac

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It doesn't necessarily result in better games, but from a technological point of view, there's often a significant impact. God of War is a good example, as the game's data streaming is so extremely optimized for the PS4 that there's virtually no loading time once you're in the game world. For a game of that visual quality, detail and scale that's an incredibly impressive achievement. They would simply not get that running to the same standard without that laser focus on a single platform. Ghost of Tsushima's insanely fast loading times are another example, especially when compared to the excruciating loading times of a multiplatform title like AC: Odyssey.

From a creative point of view, you're right of course. These guys might've made these games anyway if they hadn't been first party and they might not have had to compromise on their artistic vision. But there would be a clear disadvantage on the technical side of things. How important that is, is for every individual to decide, but I would argue these games have clearly benefited from being exclusive to one platform.

If everything is platform agnostic, you lose that extreme optimization. The trade-off of course being that anyone could run anything on whatever system they want. As someone who'd rather get multiple platforms, I prefer having those games that run flawlessly on a single platform, but that's just my personal and very selfish preference.
As someone above said, this made a certain amount sense in the PS3 era, a little bit less sense in the PS4/Xbox One era, and no sense now. Both consoles are basically custom-designed PCs now, they'll both run on AMD CPUs and GPUs. They won't require radically different approaches from game developers.

And of course being exclusive is no guarantee of a game running flawlessly on its given platform anyway; I love Bloodborne but when it came out, its loading times were in the "taking the piss" category.
 

DavelinaJolie

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So now, in the cold light of day where we've revised history and The Elder Scrolls, Doom, Dishonoured and Fallout aren't actually that good, what do we all think?

Terrible move.
 

Siorac

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So now, in the cold light of day where we've revised history and The Elder Scrolls, Doom, Dishonoured and Fallout aren't actually that good, what do we all think?

Terrible move.
I don't think anyone said Dishonoured aren't that good. I loved the shit out of both. Not sure there's life in the story for another installment but I'd love a similar game from Arkane in a different setting.

Bethesda open world gamed never really grabbed me personally and the last two Fallouts were hot garbage though. That's not rewriting history.
 

Ainu

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As someone above said, this made a certain amount sense in the PS3 era, a little bit less sense in the PS4/Xbox One era, and no sense now. Both consoles are basically custom-designed PCs now, they'll both run on AMD CPUs and GPUs. They won't require radically different approaches from game developers.

And of course being exclusive is no guarantee of a game running flawlessly on its given platform anyway; I love Bloodborne but when it came out, its loading times were in the "taking the piss" category.
True, they're getting closer and closer. I guess their IO pipeline will be the biggest difference this time around, but it remains to be seen how big a factor that is in practice. And you're right about Bloodborne, I love From Software but in all honesty their technology is fecking awful. Loading times and frame pacing are all over the place.
 

amolbhatia50k

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To the gaming world they're definitely 'flagship' games. DOOM is also pretty big.
Oh definitely. It's a big win for MS. But form my personal pov, those aren't games I'm very interested in. And I guess that's Xbox in general. Even when my and my brother had both consoles, I never had that much interest in Xbox exclusives such as Halo which he loved.
 

amolbhatia50k

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So now, in the cold light of day where we've revised history and The Elder Scrolls, Doom, Dishonoured and Fallout aren't actually that good, what do we all think?

Terrible move.
Personally, I'd say,

Doom - Never gone back to it since I was a kid
Dishonored - Nice enough game. But it's in the category of Prey where it's good fun but nothing umissable for me.
Fallout - 3 was very enjoyable. 4 was utter nonsense and it felt like the Franchise had run its course.
Elders Scrolls - The old ones used to be brilliant. Skyrim was good but overrated.

All in all, I'd say there's potential for some very good games but none which I'd say I yearn for as a gamer.
 

Traub

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Could they afford to buy Rockstar? I think 99% of gamers would buy gamepass for GTA6.
 

Bojan11

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Could they afford to buy Rockstar? I think 99% of gamers would buy gamepass for GTA6.
Will cost 3 times as much.

This takeover was perfect for them as it was a private company. ZeniMax have been struggling as a lot of their single player games did not sell as well as expected. Some of their games need a bigger budget and MS will give them that.
 

esmufc07

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“I find it completely counter to what gaming is about to say that part of that is to lock people away from being able to experience those games. Or to force someone to buy my specific device on the day that I want them to go buy it, in order to partake in what gaming is about. Gaming is bigger than any one device…”
Weird how exclusives didn't matter, but now they do :wenger:
 

afrocentricity

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So PS owners will have to buy a new device to play games. Not what its about according to Spencer.
Apologists do not have logic or empathy.... Don't waste your time. Imagine it turns out that some Bethesda games will be coming to PlayStation. You think they'll be happy? No chance...
 

Cloud7

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So now, in the cold light of day where we've revised history and The Elder Scrolls, Doom, Dishonoured and Fallout aren't actually that good, what do we all think?

Terrible move.
TES and Fallout still have massive followings, even if on here people think the games aren't that good (The caf hardly ever likes anything so I'm not surprised), but as to whether people will buy an xbox to play them, that's difficult to say. Are those games console sellers? That's something you have to ask on a person by person basis. For example, for me the only console sellers are Pokemon games, in that I got a Gamecube, DS, 3DS and Switch to continue playing them. Skyrim is my favorite game ever, but would I convert to an Xbox to play the next TES iteration? For me, the answer is probably no.
 

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Weird how exclusives didn't matter, but now they do :wenger:
That was about having new games on Xbox One. It was about not making Xbox players buy the new console to play the new games for the next couple of years. He went on later in the interview to say that games play on different spec computers so why should playing on an old console hold a game back.
He was not on about making games from first party studios available on PlayStation. The only game from a studio that Microsoft own that is multiplat is Minecraft but that game is huge.
 

esmufc07

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That was about having new games on Xbox One. It was about not making Xbox players buy the new console to play the new games for the next couple of years. He went on later in the interview to say that games play on different spec computers so why should playing on an old console hold a game back.
He was not on about making games from first party studios available on PlayStation. The only game from a studio that Microsoft own that is multiplat is Minecraft but that game is huge.
I was just pulling Bojan's tail.

I've always said my issue with Xbox is they have no games I want to play. When TES6 is released I'll buy an Xbox to play it, it's not an issue for me. I just find it amusing how exclusives never mattered to the Xbox crowd and now suddenly they do. It's almost as if games actually matter.
 

Bojan11

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I was just pulling Bojan's tail.

I've always said my issue with Xbox is they have no games I want to play. When TES6 is released I'll buy an Xbox to play it, it's not an issue for me. I just find it amusing how exclusives never mattered to the Xbox crowd and now suddenly they do. It's almost as if games actually matter.
Which one is it?

No need to be bitter. You moaned for years about no games on Xbox and now they bought a big publisher for you.
 

Fully Fledged

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I was just pulling Bojan's tail.

I've always said my issue with Xbox is they have no games I want to play. When TES6 is released I'll buy an Xbox to play it, it's not an issue for me. I just find it amusing how exclusives never mattered to the Xbox crowd and now suddenly they do. It's almost as if games actually matter.
Okay no problem. Continue pulling.
 

esmufc07

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Which one is it?

No need to be bitter. You moaned for years about no games on Xbox and now they bought a big publisher for you.
Where have I been bitter? I’ve literally said in this thread that it’s good for MS and I will definitely buy an Xbox console when TES6 is released, if not before.
 

VeevaVee

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TES and Fallout still have massive followings, even if on here people think the games aren't that good (The caf hardly ever likes anything so I'm not surprised), but as to whether people will buy an xbox to play them, that's difficult to say. Are those games console sellers? That's something you have to ask on a person by person basis. For example, for me the only console sellers are Pokemon games, in that I got a Gamecube, DS, 3DS and Switch to continue playing them. Skyrim is my favorite game ever, but would I convert to an Xbox to play the next TES iteration? For me, the answer is probably no.
That’s a weird stance if it’s your favourite game ever. But everyone is different. A mate of mine adores Fallout, was massively against switching to Xbox, but is now thinking about it. They’re probably more of a console seller than the likes of Last of Us and Uncharted are, because they have big cult followings.
 

afrocentricity

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Tbf XBox still has no games. Let's wait for them to actually release some compelling games before we get carried away here.... I know y'all don't wanna hear that though.
 

Bojan11

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Where have I been bitter? I’ve literally said in this thread that it’s good for MS and I will definitely buy an Xbox console when TES6 is released, if not before.
No need to be defensive. I am sure you will ‘’buy’’ a Xbox. No need to justify your purchases to me.