Ok, so this happened:
My question here though is this… I’ve noticed a bunch of games like this recently. I noticed PSN was giving one away for free this month.
Why are these games a thing?
I mean, we had games like this… back in the 1990’s, right? Why are they coming back now?
Storage space and ease to record high quality video? I. The 90s even the best FMV games (GK3?) where fighting against the technical restrictions. You don’t have those restrictions anymore and you can do certain stuff cheaper that it can be done (if it can even be done still) with 3D graphics.
I mean, most of these will still be crap, but we are getting stuff like Her Story or the Black Mirror interactive episode.
Gamer Girl was briefly mentioned in the Twitch thread. It’s by Wales Interactive that made the rather good Late Shift, telling the story of a heist gone wrong. They make branching story line games where your choices influence three outcome. Not my favourite, but Late Soft was a fun time.
So the genre is not as dead as you think, at least as far as they are concerned.
It just struck me as really weird, because it made me think of those old CD-i games, and the notion just seemed super dated.
But whatevs!
He, he. True. But you asked. :)
On the other hand, ‘super dated’ is the new hotness, haven’t you heard? There are dozens of side-scrollers with 8-bit-style pixel art released *every day *, it seems, and have been for a while. Seems to me that by that timeline, cd-i interactive movies will hit oversaturation in the market sometime late next year.
I did exactly that when my original 360 died (thanks to the Arcade SKU that let me move my hard drive over), but held on to the original. Then they extended the warranty so I got the original one replaced, let the kids play on it. And then the replacement died. And then the Arcade died. I think I ended up with 3 repaired systems and 4 360s at the end of it all. What a shit-show.
And even then, if it hadn’t been for the mandatory Kinect and teevee-teevee-teevee focus of the 2013 announcement show (seriously, watch it again, no first-party game mentioned until 35 minutes in), I probably would have bought an XB1 at release, and definitely would have if the BC had been in place. And that ugly POS looked like my 1980s Sony VCR. They dared me to buy a PS4 and I accepted the challenge, but Sony could not get my loyalty.
At a certain point though, it goes beyond loyalty and you’re basically invested in a platform, I would think. If I look at my digital library on Xbox, I’ve accumulated over 500 games in my digital library. That’s a big reason to stay with the Xbox ecosystem next gen, for me. No reason I couldn’t also go PS5 certainly, although the idea of accumulating yet another massive digital library is daunting and one reason I’ve tried to stick to one platform. My PC library is a whole other story of course.
The magic of Kinect!
Sony is saying don’t expect multi-generational titles because the PS5 to so much more powerful than the PS4. Not a surprise but quite a contrast with Microsoft and the Xbox.
Ya, but those old 8 bit games that the retro games are emulating…were actually good.
The FMV CD-i games were not good.
There will be plenty of titles still released for current gen consoles. Almost all the 3rd party publishers will do so since they arnt going to cut off that many potential sales yet.
Sure, much like you can play current games on your old computer. Next-gen consoles are fully compatible, they’re just faster PCs. Same architecture, more gas in the tank.
All the substantial effort MS and Sony have expended to convince people otherwise is bullshit. They aren’t revolutionary, they won’t change gaming as we know it, they aren’t transformative, they’re just much faster versions of the consoles you can already buy.
They have to say that stuff because both Sony and MS are using comparable hardware made by the same company and neither is making a huge mistake on performance like MS did with the xbone, so these devices are to a large degree identical. That’s why they’re grasping at any possible way to differentiate their product.
Assuming neither kills it on pricing, ultimately it will come down to A) MS Game Pass & cross play vs. Sony exclusives and B) whatever all your friends are buying.
That’s actually selling them short. There is a lot of stuff that you can’t do very well at all on the other consoles because of all the differences in architecture: comparative anemic CPU, limited memory, allow streaming of assets.
And, obviously, the graphical rendering power. But that’s the visual cherry on the cake.
So, yes, it’s about being bigger and faster. But that means that the new consoles will be transformative when it comes to providing larger open worlds with better simulation and the ability to traverse them quickly. Also in the more consistent gameplay experience at 60fps.
All those things are what Sony and MS are selling. Not the idea that you need to come up with a brand new architecture that makes console gaming completely different every generation. That’s Nintendo’s wheelhouse. And they are pretty good at it.
So I don’t see what the bullshit part is. They are settling us faster consoles and MS is making it clear with the cross-gen support. They aren’t selling us a console that requires Kinect v3 or PSVR V2 because it will change how we use consoles. It doesn’t mean that the games will not be a substantially better experience to play on the new console. What else do you expect from a new console?
I mean, faster CPUs are faster. I did not restrict my statement to GPUs only. New consoles have faster GPUs and dramatically faster CPUs and storage.
I don’t expect anything else from a new console, their marketing is trying to get consumers to believe they’re offering new technology that will transform gaming. They do that every generation, and every time people swallow it whole, and every time it’s bullshit.
I still maintain a guaranteed fast SSD will lead to design changes
You need do define what a transformation of gaming would look like before there’s much point to saying it won’t happen.
Earlier transformations:
Text -> 2D Graphics -> Colour 2D -> 3D -> VR
Silence -> Beeps -> Current sound techs
CRT -> Colour ->Flat screen-> Maybe High/Variable Refresh/HDR…
I think it’s more reasonable to say CPU power isn’t transformative in general. Display has evolved both incrementally and in visible steps. CPUs, not so much… not at all?
It already has based on what we’ve seen of Ratchet and Clank. No way that game is possible on any other hardware atm.
The last transformative change I can remember from gaming hardware was in the original Assassin’s Creed. It was the first game to have crowds of people, with dozens on screen at the same time, and it offered gameplay in navigating though them.
It is a true next-gen game in that the XboneX/PS4 Pro couldn’t run it, but Ratchet & Clank could easily run on any modern gaming PC. It won’t, because it’s a Sony exclusive, but you’ll see plenty of console ports switching up environments similarly on PC next year.
BS it could. A stripped down version of it that looks like Superhot? Probably. There’s no way modern PC hardware can pull it off.