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The Initiative xbox game: "I don't think the internet is going to react very well to it."

Hawking Radiation

Hawking Radiation

Member
Clintizzle said:
Internet reacts negatively to Xbox news?

Business as usual.

probably fair enough
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No please. Leave ma Xbox alone

giphy.webp
 
The_Mike

The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
Topfuel said:
How do people find all these strange podcasts and fan news sites? Xbox living rent free.
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You make it sound like living rent free is mostly an Xbox thing lol.

Sony literally wasted money on advertising instead of letting Gaf and everyone else do it for free 🤣

I know your post was probably a joke though. Unless you meant it's damn hard to find news about anything xbox related.

Again, move outside of Gaf :p
 
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IDKFA

IDKFA

I am Become Bilbo Baggins
Episodic format would be one way to keep people signed up for Gamepass. I would absolutely expect more MS exclusive games to be episodic and/or live service games to keep people paying for Gamepass.

Smart move if true.
 
YeulEmeralda

YeulEmeralda

Member
thicc_girls_are_teh_best said:
If anything it just goes to show how dumb these labels for games are. Maybe the only way they make sense is in relation to budgets, and on that note yes I'd definitely agree Hellblade is more AA while something like Miles Morales is AAA. But I don't know how number of NPCs/enemy types/combat moves etc. really acts as a true differentiation point.

There are indie games with more enemy variety and combat techniques than some big-budget titles. Indivisible comes to mind for example. By that notion they could be considered more "AAA" than an Assassin's Creed Valhalla. But the other issue with those labels is they can imply quality when they really shouldn't, for the less informed. I personally prefer sticking to labels like "small budget", "mid-budget", "big budget" or "blockbuster budget" as distinguishing labels, that way it's clear I'm strictly talking about the budgets involved.
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Nobody is going to pay €60 (or is it €70 these days?) for a sub 10 hour long single player game. Which is where GamePass comes in.
 
Silent Viper

Silent Viper

Banned
So if they release Mandalorian calibur games in season then its bad a thing through game pass? Regardless of what kind of game they make 90% of the audience will play it through subscription over 60$
 
Thirty7ven

Thirty7ven

Banned
It’s cute that because comparisons to ND and SSM are out, they grab on to the closest thing they can imagine, Remedy.

If you think a newly founded “AA” size studio is going to have the chops to compare itself to Remedy, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

It also shows just how I’ll informed these insider fanboys are. Remedy has 250 employees...
 
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A

abacab driver

Banned
Thirty7ven said:
It’s cute that because comparisons to ND and SSM are out, they grab on to the closest thing they can imagine, Remedy.

If you think a newly founded “AA” size studio is going to have the chops to compare itself to Remedy, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

It also shows just how I’ll informed these insider fanboys are. Remedy has 250 employees...
Click to expand...

Remedy has 5 times the staff of Ninja Theory (as well was a much bigger budget) but their last 2 major releases (Control and Quantum Break) have lower Metacritic scores than Ninja Theory's last 2 major releases (DMC and Hellblade)...and I'm willing to bet that Hellblade 2 will outscore Crossfire X.

Moon Studios last 2 releases; which happen to be their FIRST two releases (Ori and Ori 2) outscored Sucker Punch's last two releases (Infamous Second Son and Ghost of Tsushima) on Metacritic as well.
Again, huge difference in staff, budget and experience..but who ultimately nailed their vision better? (Were not talking sales..as it doesnt pay anyones bills here).

Pound for pound, the QUALITY of The Initiative's staff is already terrific in its relative infancy.
Whatever they make will be of quality. They have too much experience (collectively) for it to turn out otherwise.
 
Thirty7ven

Thirty7ven

Banned
abacab driver said:
Remedy has 5 times the staff of Ninja Theory (as well was a much bigger budget) but their last 2 major releases (Control and Quantum Break) have lower Metacritic scores than Ninja Theory's last 2 major releases (DMC and Hellblade)...and I'm willing to bet that Hellblade 2 will outscore Crossfire X.

Moon Studios last 2 releases; which happen to be their FIRST two releases (Ori and Ori 2) outscored Sucker Punch's last two releases (Infamous Second Son and Ghost of Tsushima) on Metacritic as well.
Again, huge difference in staff, budget and experience..but who ultimately nailed their vision better? (Were not talking sales..as it doesnt pay anyones bills here).

Pound for pound, the QUALITY of The Initiative's staff is already terrific in its relative infancy.
Whatever they make will be of quality. They have too much experience (collectively) for it to turn out otherwise.
Click to expand...

I’m not talking quality, I’m talking type. This thread is really about the scale of the game being developed by The Initiative.

Also very convenient of you to name drop DMC, a game made with a larger staff from when Ninja Theory was still hired for AAA, a game that was panned by the community by the way, and decided to forget Bleeding Edge, their most recent game. (I loved Hellblade btw, even though it’s a simple game with no replayability whatsoever. By far their best game, which isn’t saying much but

And your comparison between Moon Studios and Sucker Punch is as wild as it gets.

Also your evaluation that pound for pound The Initiative is already a sure thing for a hit is based on what? You read a few forum posts about some people you don’t know going from Star studio A to B and decide that means it’s in the bag? This ain’t the movies.
 
thicc_girls_are_teh_best

thicc_girls_are_teh_best

Member
Ass of Can Whooping said:
Maybe look at from the perspective of 3D "cinematic game" instead of comparing it to 2D side scroller since the labour requirement in these genres are fundementally different
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Not necessarily, because 3D cinematic games can run the gamut in terms of both budget and work required. I'd argue it's harder these days (much harder) and more time-consuming to do real 2D sprite art (even at the level of upper-tier 16-bit games let alone 32-bit ones) than it is to make a 3D model with reasonable animations.

oldergamer said:
Wait, you think remedy is a AA studio? They are a triple AAA studio and have better writing, stories, and character then most AAA studios. They make a certain type of game ( mostly augmented gunplay / powers) but they are not AA.
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I don't know how big Remedy's budgets are, but it's probably safe to say they aren't at the level of, say, Uncharted or TLOU when it comes to budget sizes. And for myself personally, I look at these labels in terms of the budget brackets. It can also be said, though, that Remedy's games don't have the type of mass mainstream appeal or selling power as an Uncharted, SpiderMan or BOTW. I think hard data bears that out.

At the same time, regardless of a game's budget, that isn't necessarily an indication of quality and that's something a lot of gamers seem to have trouble comprehending. Otherwise games like Anthem and The Order would've been, well, good. But they were clearly lacking in quality and substance, while smaller games routinely outdid them in both areas, on much smaller budgets.
 
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Ass of Can Whooping

Ass of Can Whooping

Member
thicc_girls_are_teh_best said:
Not necessarily, because 3D cinematic games can run the gamut in terms of both budget and work required. I'd argue it's harder these days (much harder) and more time-consuming to do real 2D sprite art (even at the level of upper-tier 16-bit games let alone 32-bit ones) than it is to make a 3D model with reasonable animations.
Click to expand...

The only thing that's easier with 2D art is iteration. The 3D modeling pipeline is much more complex and requires more labour.

For 3D modeling you have the concept art, modeling, rigging, animation, the meshing, texturing and materials, and that doesn't factor in the additional work required on the programming side, which is again more complex in 3D games
 
TheThreadsThatBindUs

TheThreadsThatBindUs

Member
abacab driver said:
Remedy has 5 times the staff of Ninja Theory (as well was a much bigger budget) but their last 2 major releases (Control and Quantum Break) have lower Metacritic scores than Ninja Theory's last 2 major releases (DMC and Hellblade)...and I'm willing to bet that Hellblade 2 will outscore Crossfire X.

Moon Studios last 2 releases; which happen to be their FIRST two releases (Ori and Ori 2) outscored Sucker Punch's last two releases (Infamous Second Son and Ghost of Tsushima) on Metacritic as well.
Again, huge difference in staff, budget and experience..but who ultimately nailed their vision better? (Were not talking sales..as it doesnt pay anyones bills here).

Pound for pound, the QUALITY of The Initiative's staff is already terrific in its relative infancy.
Whatever they make will be of quality. They have too much experience (collectively) for it to turn out otherwise.
Click to expand...

Everybody said this about 343i and look how that turned out... :pie_eyeroll:

Brand newly formed game development teams making stellar top-tier games requires much MUCH more than simply assembling an all-star cast of individual devs. This kind of naïve thinking is what has plagued Microsoft Game Studios investments in studio formation and acquisition over the last decade.

Studio management, cohesion, team dynamics, structure, workflow, toolchain and morale all matter just as much, if not more so. And these are all things that don't just appear overnight. They're developed over the course of many years and many multiple projects of teams working together and ironing out the kinks. Unfortunately, MS's track record as a publisher has shown increasingly that they have neither the patience nor appetite to invest over multiple game titles to wait for this process of dev team maturation to run it's course. So I don't think anyone should be holding their breath at this point.
 
thicc_girls_are_teh_best

thicc_girls_are_teh_best

Member
Ass of Can Whooping said:
The only thing that's easier with 2D art is iteration. The 3D modeling pipeline is much more complex and requires more labour.

For 3D modeling you have the concept art, modeling, rigging, animation, the meshing, texturing and materials, and that doesn't factor in the additional work required on the programming side, which is again more complex in 3D games
Click to expand...

Personally I think it's relative. Yes those things are the case with 3D but modern 3D modeling programs have a lot of tools to assist in that for the animator, automating parts of the process. It's nowhere near as complicated as it used to be, but with budgets increasing all the time and amount of pure details that have to be modeled there's an argument that time of labor is at most similar if not increasing.

With 2D animation (I'm talking in terms of sprite animation), there's a lot less automated assistance. You can't rotate the camera to make sure the character is on-model from a different vantage point, it's up to the animator to make sure they know their anatomy and can infer that anatomy from that vantage point, position etc. At most they could have a wooden modeling figure to act as a reference, or in some cases a 3D model, a very simple one, you can pose in the 3D software to check for references.

Not trying to downplay the amount of work that goes into 3D modeling, I dabbled in it for a bit years ago and only got to a point to make crude 3D human models with basic skeleton frames, basic rigging etc (in fact I'm looking forward to re-learning all of that and going further), but doing 2D art, particularly 2D art for older systems, that's no cakewalk either.
 
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DavJay

DavJay

Member
I don’t care about the awards but that girl is lit. Let her host the rest of the show. Bye Jeff. Pipe. Geoff....
 
kuncol02

kuncol02

Banned
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