Pixels 61 – Booxels E3 2017
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/frenchspin.com/sites/pixels/audio/pixels_61.mp3
On this episode we discuss:
The big conferences from E3 2017!
EA, Bethesda, Microsoft, PC Gaming, Ubisoft, Sony, Nintendo!
Games, hardware, announcements, fun!
More info on the show:
The hosts are Scott Johnson (@scottjohnson) and Patrick Beja (@NotPatrick)
The theme is by Daniel Beja (@misterdanielb), his amazing royalty free music is at MusicinCloud.com
Discaddict says:
Great episode as usual with Scott.
I just wanted to share my pov on the xbox come back. You said that nothing showed at the conference would lead to a switch on the console leadership and on that point i agree with you. But i think that considering only the xbox on the Microsoft side is a bit limitating. What i mean is that Microsoft now don't care on which platform you spend tour money (Windows 10 pc or xbox) they are going to earn money on their service. So Microsoft may have lost the console war, it can sell you those gaming services.
Phil Spencer recent statements on xbox retrocompatibility on PC for example are going on that direction.
I m curious to see if Microsoft is going to go deeply in that strategy, but i don't see Microsoft giving up on the gaming revenue (about 11% of their global revenue).
Games sold on PC don't make money for Microsoft, they make money for Valve. And yeah, sure, it makes Windows stronger, but it's not like it needs that. Microsoft would MUCH rather make money directly on games. So honestly, I don't buy the argument that "MS don't care, they make money anyway". Now of course if all these games came out (and were successful) on the Windows Store, it'd be another story. But they don't, and they're not, so…
And I'm glad you liked the show! 🙂
Cassim says:
About the discussion on the end of console generation, I think it's in Sony best interest to pursue the same generation for ever.
Like you said I'm sure next playstation will be able to run all previous ps4 title and yes I think at some point new titles won't work on first gen playstation, but I'm pretty sure Sony wants to keep that transition smooth so they don't give Microsoft a chance to catch up their installed base.
That means that next playstation title will probably work on PS4 Pro. In the end that could turn gaming in a mature long term market, very much like iOS and Android on mobile.
If that's the case, Xbox could be as screwed as Windows Phone, even though Xbox is performing a lot better than phone comparatively.
Tldr : Sony has absolutely no interest in rebooting the market with a brand new gen so it might be the end of generations as we know them.
PS4 and PS4Pro aren't differentiated enough. If the next set of games runs on PS5 AND PS4Pro it's a hinderance (technical and development wise) for the PS5, it won't be able to shine, and PS4 non-pro owners will be SUPER pissed. Losing on all fronts. I don't see that happening. It might not be in Sony's interest to do a reset, but I don't think they'll have a choice… We'll see!
Matthias Keller says:
Personally, I don't like commentated live streams or recordings of it (I hate when people talk over whatever I'm trying to listen to :P). But that's just me and I don't have to listen to these episodes to know that you thought about all the announcements since you also did this roundup, so I'm totally fine with that. 🙂
But I have to disagree with something you mentioned briefly about the Bethesda announcement for the Creation Club: You said 'no one complained this time'. I'm not sure what you base that on; maybe you meant the reaction in the crowd. But there actually was quite a bit of uproar, mainly in the modding community. I guess most of it was Bethesda's own fault since they were kind of vague when it comes to information on the Creation Club, which left a lot of room for speculation and rumors. They were very careful not to use the term 'paid mods' and they even tried to make a little joke with the armored crab reference. But even so, this brought up the memory of the last time they tried to make 'paid mods' happen for a lot of people it seems. A lot of people voiced their concerns that Bethesda is trying to slowly and quietly 'normalizing paid mods' with this, milk their IPs even further by 'making money from mods now' and that this whole thing will create a separate competitive market for mod makers and will hinder their ability to make money by donation etc. which will lead to fewer mods overall. I'm not saying that this all might actually happen; mainly because we don't really know what they are actually planning to do with the whole thing. But apart from the disappointment that Bethesda just seems to be milking his existing products instead of getting out new stuff (e.g. in terms of the TES series which prompted pictures such as this https://i.redd.it/wa8vvw1btc3z.jpg), this was one of the hot topics in some of the communities for a while. And since the longevity of Bethesda's games depends on the modding community it is something you can't completely ignore.
But by now modders have almost forgotten about the Creation Club since Take Two was kind enough to present themselves as a new target for the hate of modding communities. 😉
Oh and btw: Isn't the 'premium version of the XBox for people who want a powerful machine' simply called a PC? (sorry, couldn't resist :D)
> Oh and btw: Isn't the 'premium version of the XBox for people who want a powerful machine' simply called a PC? (sorry, couldn't resist :D)
Haha it's ok, I'm sure that's what every PC gamer is secretly thinking inside. 🙂
As to the Bethesda paid mods thing, I'm sure there is some outrage somewhere (I mean, when is there no outrage about any one thing on the Internet, especially in the world of video games), but I haven't seen that outrage spill into the general public like it did last time. Maybe I just didn't see it and it's actually everywhere, and maybe it's just good communication strategy on Bethesda's part (not making a big deal out of it and announcing the in the very middle of E3), but I think this time it'll stick, and people will get used to it. That's what I meant, in not so many words, in the short comment on the show. As I said, there are many many things we could have / should have expanded on… 🙂
>As I said, there are many many things we could have / should have expanded on…
I know that you have to draw the line somewhere, especially with something as huge as E3, and this wasn't meant as a criticism that you should have talked more about it. It's just something that made me pause while I heard it and I wanted to add to that.
Maybe it was because I saw a lot about it on my feeds, which again leads us to the whole filter bubble/echo chamber discussion. And I agree that the outcry wasn't as widespread as last time but more confined to game communities that have modding as a big part of their game. And maybe in the case of the Skyrim community, it was also a part of the disappointment, something along the lines of 'they didn't give us the long awaited TES VI and they now want us to pay for mods instead'. But arguably it isn't the regular gamer but the modding community's opinion that counts in the end. Because if this turns them away from modding, Bethesda will have a problem keeping their games alive for as long as they do now. (Seriously, making money of a 6-year-old game like they still do with Skyrim is pretty impressive)
Personally, I would like to see the idea fail though. Not because I don't want modders to get money but because I don't see why I should pay Bethesda for it. It makes more sense for me to give money to the modders directly instead of giving a percentage (or even all) to a gatekeeper that does nothing. But a lot of people also hoped that paid DLCs would never be a thing and now we have some games that have more DLCs then initial game content, so… 😉
But again: We don't exactly know what they will do with it and how everything turns out. I just wanted to add to the discussion.
> Personally, I would like to see the idea fail though. Not because I don't want modders to get money but because I don't see why I should pay Bethesda for it.
That is incredibly harsh… Yes the modders put a lot of work into their mods, but it's not like these mods would exist without the platform… Think of it as an equivalent to the App Store or Google Play Store: is it unfair that Apple and Google get money for every app or piece of content sold on their platforms?…
Well, this is a bit of a chicken and egg thing and you can also turn this argument around and say: If people wouldn't mod the game no one would care about it after a few months. So it's not like the developer/publisher isn't gaining something from this symbiosis. And if you argue they should get money because they provide the platform (in this case the game itself) for the modders then I would say: Yes, and they already got something for it because I paid for their game (and in most cases, these titles are not cheap by any means). And it's not as if modding is eating their resources (at least not in an offline single player context), so I don't see why a developer should get money because fans keep their product alive.
The only argument I could see is for them to provide some sort of quality control or to make sure that certain mods work with a game without any problems. Although in most cases this isn't really needed because modders themselves to some QA or even solve problems that the game has and the developer hasn't addressed (yet). And community hubs already do a very good job in filtering out low quality or malicious mods. But at least that would be an argument I could accept to a certain degree.
Pretty sure they will provide quality control, but that's not even the point IMO… Still, you didn't answer my question about the app store equivalence; would you argue, similarly, that Apple and Google are being helped by the app developers, and so shouldn't get money on the apps themselves? 🙂
[I'm just going to start a new comment because your last comment didn't have a reply button anymore, Patrick!]
>would you argue, similarly, that Apple and Google are being helped by the app developers, and so shouldn't get money on the apps themselves?
I would absolutely argue that app developers and their products are a big reason for the popularity of an OS. Maybe not so much for Apple (although iOS first apps are a big factor I guess) but certainly for Google. And to expand that comparison: I think one of the main reasons why Windows Phone failed was that a lot of popular apps were just not available on this platform so people who couldn't live without their Instagram (or whatever it was for them) just decided 'Nope, I stay with Android/iOS because then I can use the app'.
And in the case of Android it is absolutely possible to get apps on other platforms (or sideload the APK). Although the comparison is a bit flawed here because Google is not earning the money by selling their product so much as using the data they gather. Apple with their prem price tags would be a better case here I guess.
Just to wrap this thing up: I know my position is harsh (and I mostly take it for the sake of having a discussion here ;)) but I'm not against developers/publishers making money (I know, it's hard to believe for American's that we here in Europe actually want people to make money :P).
I just think that in a perfect world a developer/publisher would concentrate on making money by creating games and new assets for their titles instead of milking every last drop out of their old games by tapping mod makers as a new source of income.
If you will excuse me now, I'll be in my little pre-horse-armor-DLC fantasy world.
Well, I'm thinking you might be happy after all: from what I've heard, Bethesda is doing a lot of work for those mods, which they call "almost outsourced DLC", because they'll be insured to work with all the other parts of the game and will be properly quality checked and all that. So it seems they're working for the money they'll be getting. A little bit at least… 🙂