Random Gaming Talk Thread

[D3RANG3D]

 

[Nintex]

The PC market is in total shambles anyway
AMD's latest CPU's literally explode and jay2cents and others are seeing their follower counts go way down because everything PC is such a mess

[bork]

The PC market is in total shambles anyway

That would be a wonderful clickbait headline. 

[chronovore]

https://www.reddit.com/gallery/13axjnv

[Polident Hive]

Z13 Acronym 4070 impressions after one month:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

I had to RMA it after a minor keyboard lighting issue started happening.  They made me pay to ship it to them and again to get it back.  Took about two weeks.  Then this morning it prompts for a BIOS update and it fucked everything up and now the machine powers on and does nothing.  Trying to force a reboot and accessing the BIOS menu directly failed so they wanted me to RMA it again- fuck that; had three days left to return so sending it back instead.

Was going to wait for restock and just get another one, but for the same price they now have the 2023 G14 with a a 4080 at 125w and with 12GB of vram.  So back to the G14 I go until next month?

Chiming into say I appreciate the updates. Realistically sometime next year I’ll be moving to one of the 13-14 inch laptops. Been looking at them at shops. Both are the direction I’m looking. As it is, when I’m home and docked, I use my laptop with an external keyboard/mouse. Conceptually having the Z13 like a mini all in one intrigues me. Leave the surface keyboard in my bag.

[Nintex]

For work I have a Zenbook "13 OLED with a Ryzen+VEGA graphics chip (the 5800U I believe). It's worthless for gaming but I love it overall because it's so portable and the battery lasts 16 hours or more.
With gaming laptops I always find you lose a lot of what makes a laptop great, they're often bulky, noisy, run hot and the battery lasts just 2 or 3 hours. You also can't easily upgrade them like a desktop PC.

We'll have to wait and see how the ROG Ally performs but I already prefer the Steamdeck over any gaming laptop I've owned or tried.

The PC market is in total shambles anyway

That would be a wonderful clickbait headline. 

PC market is one of the few that hasn't recovered from the pandemic woes. When I bought my 5800X in 2020 it was very unstable and buggy, they fixed it eventually but some errors like USB ports turning on and off were just ridiculous. Updating the BIOS now is basically Russian Roulette. The Samsung Odyssey I bought in 2021 needed a firmware update before it could provide a stable image and it still has a weird bug where unplugging is needed to get it out of sleep mode (and it automatically enters sleep mode after 3 seconds). Simply upgrading from the Razer Basilisk V2 to V3 this year was such a nightmare that I had to replace the V3 with a Steelseries Rival 600 within weeks. My Blackwidow seems to be dying also, so I'm typing this on a small wireless logitech board.

The only positives I find is that SSD prices have gone down and RAM prices too. As well as the fact that thanks to DLSS my RTX 2070 Super can still run all modern games. With regards to everything else prices went up 50% to 200% and stuff easily breaks or simply doesn't work at all. And this is just the hardware side of things, the software that AMD, Gigabyte, MSI, Razer and other vendors put out is horrendous and keeps getting worse it seems. Once you're past the software and hardware set-up gauntlet the real fun begins with the broken shader caching and the worst optimization I've seen since EA's PS2 -> GameCube ports.

Imagine how shit things would've been without GabeN

[Polident Hive]

The other killer is the size of laptop power supplies. My couple year old Lenovo’s brick is, no exaggeration, 40% inch the size of the laptop itself. Recently there’s the option of USB C charging. While nice in a pinch, the requirements are 100w+ and the laptop is limited to efficiency modes. Defeats the purpose of having a powerful laptop.

[bork]

For work I have a Zenbook "13 OLED with a Ryzen+VEGA graphics chip (the 5800U I believe). It's worthless for gaming but I love it overall because it's so portable and the battery lasts 16 hours or more.
With gaming laptops I always find you lose a lot of what makes a laptop great, they're often bulky, noisy, run hot and the battery lasts just 2 or 3 hours. You also can't easily upgrade them like a desktop PC.

We'll have to wait and see how the ROG Ally performs but I already prefer the Steamdeck over any gaming laptop I've owned or tried.

The PC market is in total shambles anyway

That would be a wonderful clickbait headline. 

PC market is one of the few that hasn't recovered from the pandemic woes. When I bought my 5800X in 2020 it was very unstable and buggy, they fixed it eventually but some errors like USB ports turning on and off were just ridiculous. Updating the BIOS now is basically Russian Roulette. The Samsung Odyssey I bought in 2021 needed a firmware update before it could provide a stable image and it still has a weird bug where unplugging is needed to get it out of sleep mode (and it automatically enters sleep mode after 3 seconds). Simply upgrading from the Razer Basilisk V2 to V3 this year was such a nightmare that I had to replace the V3 with a Steelseries Rival 600 within weeks. My Blackwidow seems to be dying also, so I'm typing this on a small wireless logitech board.

Stop buying shitty products...?  There's a whole host of keyboards and mice out there much better than anything that Razer makes.  They've always been overpriced. I got a nice budget mechanical keyboard the other day for $70 and it sounds 100 times better than Razer's shitty Huntsman Mini.  Better lighting, too.

[D3RANG3D]

[bork]

Chiming into say I appreciate the updates. Realistically sometime next year I’ll be moving to one of the 13-14 inch laptops. Been looking at them at shops. Both are the direction I’m looking. As it is, when I’m home and docked, I use my laptop with an external keyboard/mouse. Conceptually having the Z13 like a mini all in one intrigues me. Leave the surface keyboard in my bag.

It really is a jack-of-all-trades type device that actually works well.  And if you really went all out and got the XG Mobile, you'd then have a dock for it with a more powerful GPU for gaming at home.  But the 4070 by itself is good enough that I don't think it's really even necessary if you're OK with 1440P.

The other killer is the size of laptop power supplies. My couple year old Lenovo’s brick is, no exaggeration, 40% inch the size of the laptop itself. Recently there’s the option of USB C charging. While nice in a pinch, the requirements are 100w+ and the laptop is limited to efficiency modes. Defeats the purpose of having a powerful laptop.

This is another reason why the Z13 is pretty awesome- the power brick is small for a 'gaming' device.  Much smaller than anything else out there that I've seen.  I can see a use case for USB-C charging laptops if you were to go somewhere and wanted to bring your laptop, but don't need to use the turbo modes available that need the included power bricks.  And like you said, it's nice when in a pinch.

For work I have a Zenbook "13 OLED with a Ryzen+VEGA graphics chip (the 5800U I believe). It's worthless for gaming but I love it overall because it's so portable and the battery lasts 16 hours or more.
With gaming laptops I always find you lose a lot of what makes a laptop great, they're often bulky, noisy, run hot and the battery lasts just 2 or 3 hours. You also can't easily upgrade them like a desktop PC.

I've been pretty impressed with how much lighter and thinner a lot of gaming laptops have gotten in the last few years (the power bricks are another story).  If I really want something portable with insane battery life, I'll take my Chromebook Duet 3 along (and have done this on trips) since I can easily get 1-2 days of use out of it without needing to charge it.  Yeah, battery life on most gaming laptops is garbage, but that doesn't bother me.  You're gonna need to plug in to play games anyway.

On the subject of thermals, the Z13 stayed very cool and benefits from the tablet form factor since all the hot air is being pushed up and away from the screen- nothing gets hot when in use that you can feel when in use.  I'm curious to see how the 2023 G14 compares.  It should be cooler than the 2022 models because the mobile 40XX cards use less power and run more efficiently. 

[D3RANG3D]

[bork]

.

I don't get the appeal of playing what are, while close, imperfect ports of arcade games that you could just load up on an emulator.

[MMaRsu]

https://twitter.com/GmanLives/status/1656093020792688641

[Potato]

Can't remember the last time I intentionally went to IGN (or any other major gaming site). Why do they still exist?

[bork]

Did some more GPD Win Max 2 testing.

At 18w TDP:

-Gotham Knights ran at 60 FPS at 720P on low settings.  50-60 when on a bike.
-Elden Ring ran at 45-50 FPS on average at 720P/low.
-KOF XV ran at 1080P 60 FPS with all settings on high.
-Soul Calibur 6 ran at 720P 60 FPS with settings on medium/high- this was the default; need to try 1080P and higher settings.
-DOA6 ran at 1080P 60 FPS with low character shadow resolution and low effect quality.

At 28w TDP:

-Elden Ring ran at 55-60 FPS at 720P/low!
-Cyberpunk 2077 ran at 34-45 FPS on average with some dips at times at 720P/low.  Should be able to get it to run a bit better with some tweaking.
-Persona 5 Royal ran at 60+ FPS at 1080P/high settings.  Framerate was anywhere from 62-100 FPS.  Looks amazing on the screen.

Really impressed with this thing,

Some more GPD Win Max 2 impressions:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

Decided to return it.  Booted it up this morning and had Steam open.  The right side of the screen started going haywire and doing "ghost inputs" (it's a touch screen).  Looked this up and found some other people reporting the same thing.  Discord said it could be drivers, or maybe the charger, or maybe it was a hardware issue.  I rebooted and it seemed OK, then it happened again.  The place I got it from offers a 30 day return policy and I'm still under that, so going to send it back to them.

Picked up an ASUS Zephyrus G14 instead.  It's a lot bigger, but it was also cheaper and the performance is better.  No more GPD for me after this, I swear!

G14 impressions:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

Don't have any problems with this laptop and the price was fantastic, but I decided to get the ASUS Flow Z13 2023 model instead.  It's what I wanted in the first place and the performance is 60% better than last year's model.  Seen some videos and the 4050 runs games really well at 1440P even while keeping thermals low.  ASUS appears to have fixed all the issues the 2022 model had.

ASUS ROG Flow Z13 2023 impressions:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

No 'it's gone' GIF this time! This shit is fire I'm keeping it!

[close]

I was seriously expecting to be sending this right back and getting the G14 back or possibly the Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (both are still on sale for amazing prices), but I was happily wrong- the new Z13 is AWESOME.  Incredibly impressed with the 4050 mobile.  Running everything at 1920x1080 or 1920x1200, I have tried:

-Elden Ring: Ran at high settings at 60 FPS
-Wo Long: Ran at mostly high settings at 90-120 FPS
-Call Of Duty Modern Warfare II: With DLSS enabled for performance, I got 130-140 FPS in multiplayer!
-Cyberpunk: With DLSS enabled for performance, 80-100 FPS
-Control: Also DLSS; got 80-90 FPS
-Resident Evil 4: 80-100 FPS with the settings on performance

And this was without adjusting settings.  Absolutely blown away by this thing.  It doesn't even seem to be running very hot.

More Z13 impressions:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

Yup, gonna return it!    But not because I don't like it- entirely to the contrary.  I like it so much that I decided to upgrade and go for the high-end model.  The difference is that it has 32 GB of ram instead of 16 (the ram is soldered onto all these models) and an RTX 4070 instead of the 4050.  But it is still running at 65w.  Even so, have seen a direct comparison where the FFXV benchmark was getting around 100 FPS average on the 4050 model and 130-140 FPS on the 4070 model.  Plus it has 8GB of vram over the 4050's 6GB.  Should hopefully help to keep it a bit more future proof.

The 4070 model is a weird one, though.  It's a collaboration with the fashion label Acronym.  It's kinda ugly and yet I also kinda like it.  Has these cyberpunk-ish vibes.

The keyboard cover it comes with is also weird and doesn't have RGB lighting (just white), but as long as it's backlit that works for me.  The lighting makes the weird symbols stand out less when enabled.

(Image removed from quote.)

You can also stand it up in portrait mode on this model.  That could be fun for SHMUPs or comic reading.
(Image removed from quote.)

And it has these straps you can put onto it to wear it and use it while standing or carry it without a case.  I doubt I will use this.
(Image removed from quote.)

Can definitely say that had they released a regular model with the same specs, I would have gone for that for sure.  But this is the only way to get it.

Z13 Acronym 4070 impressions after one month:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

I had to RMA it after a minor keyboard lighting issue started happening.  They made me pay to ship it to them and again to get it back.  Took about two weeks.  Then this morning it prompts for a BIOS update and it fucked everything up and now the machine powers on and does nothing.  Trying to force a reboot and accessing the BIOS menu directly failed so they wanted me to RMA it again- fuck that; had three days left to return so sending it back instead.

Was going to wait for restock and just get another one, but for the same price they now have the 2023 G14 with a a 4080 at 125w and with 12GB of vram.  So back to the G14 I go until next month?

Thoughts on this new G14:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

Just not feeling it.  Like the entire time I was setting it up and configuring it, I just kept thinking how much I would rather have the Z13.  So will just wait for restock unless the Ally drops tomorrow and I can get one to mess with.

[D3RANG3D]

 

[Svejk]

Wanted: Dead is on sale for $40 atm.   

[Polident Hive]

Not tomorrow but next month

https://twitter.com/Wario64/status/1656661034990718980

[bork]

Not tomorrow but next month

https://twitter.com/Wario64/status/1656661034990718980

Yup.  I checked Best Buy and shortly after the live stream started, their pre-order page went live.  Got one for delivery on 6/13 for $699.  I may not keep the pre-order if I can get another Z13 before then though.

[bork]

Something to note with the Ally is that it will offer a high-performance Turbo mode, which will give it much better performance-



But it has to be plugged in.  This is the same as their laptops FWIW.

[Nintex]

Got a notification from ASUS. EU price is 799 Euro.
Seems like they will only offer the high end model.

That's quite a markup from both the Switch and Steamdeck so probably DOA in this market.

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/GmanLives/status/1656093020792688641

I don't know, feel like the job of games journalists should be to inform us about things we don't know about. I don't need you to tell me about Call of Duty or Spider-Man or whatever unless it sucks in some special way. Or in the extremely rare case like Batman: Arkham Asylum where the thing you were telling me was going to be more licensed dreck turns out to actually be a Metroid game and is based. This is the fundamental concept of division of labor, you games journalist is devoted to specializing in the video games so you can spend all your time playing everything to see if it's worth informing your audience about.

I think they don't realize this is why market share has moved from "official" games journalist to YouTuber/streamer. Giant Bomb understood this to where they invested in the Quick Look far far more than they did in reviews. The rest of gaming journalism seems to be chasing that, podcasts, etc. because that's what everyone else is doing rather than recognizing why it fundamentally challenges their field. They're obsessed with the "economics" while ignoring why the market exists in the first place.

People read EGM, GamePro, etc. back in the day not to hear what Scary Larry said because Scary Larry was brilliant but because there wasn't another way to find out about the games that were coming out. It's not actually YouTube/streaming that challenges this aspect of gaming journalism it's because Steam (and every other store) can already give me this basic information, the gaming journalist needs to be rethinking himself to offer to make sense of this deluge of information to me, not himself admit his own incapability to do that.

[MMaRsu]

Holy shit this is so awesome

[Nintex]

https://www.ign.com/articles/asus-rog-ally-review

The Asus ROG Ally truly feels like the portable Xbox Game Pass machine that many fans have been clamoring for. While a frustrating user experience, poor battery life, and a lack of Steam Deck-style touchpads do hold it back a bit, it’s undeniable how much fun this handheld is to use when it really gets ticking. With a beautiful 1080p screen that’s marvelously bright and perfect for playing on the go in any condition, alongside its powerful set of specs and a fierce price tag, the ROG Ally might actually be the Steam Deck competitor we’ve been anticipating.

ROG Ally reviews dropped. According to IGN battery life tops out at 1 hours and 30 minutes playing FIFA which is the biggest L it takes apart from a lot of 'trial and error' seen with regular  PC gaming (less the console experience that the Steamdeck emulates).
However it does pack a lot of power with a great screen and is smaller and thus more portable and sleek than the Deck.

[bork]

[D3RANG3D]

[Polident Hive]

Takeaways from reviews, relevant to me, are: not compelled to upgrade from deck. If I didn’t have a deck, the choice would push me towards the ally. regardless I’d wait to see how the lower spec model fares. The significant boost are all higher end PS4 gen games. That’s not what I’m personally using these devices for. But I hope it’s successful and sells well. Seeing this niche grow out of it has been cool.

[pilonv1]

The lack of a suspend feature would be a dealbreaker for me, at least if that's accurate based on what the Verge said. Like Polident I'm not using my Steam Deck for games that need more power so the feature set isn't that compelling.

[Nintex]

Yeah I don't agree with these YouTubers that this thing will instantly sell out. ASUS doesn't have the brand name that PlayStation, Nintendo or Valve has and even for Valve this is an uphill climb.
You also can't be sure that they will actually fix all the bugs as companies like ASUS rarely do.

The biggest market is probably people who couldn't find decent GPU's and sort of gave up on PC gaming, PS5 owners that want to play the handful of GamePass exclusives or those on the fence for a Steamdeck.
This is a great entry level point to have many benefits of PC gaming without having to build your own PC but I don't see how it will broaden its appeal without any notable exclusives or a massive marketing push.

You can also tell that they aren't a gaming company. The X-button getting stuck is a more serious issue than they think.

[Skullfuckers Anonymous]

Actually considering an Asus product in 2023.

 

[Nintex]

My Razer keyboard has magically recovered 

[Nintex]

- Shit is broken ($700 - $1200 motherboards  )
- Use beta bios (at your own risk)
- Beta bios voids your warranty

 

[Potato]

Remember when Polygon launched and they had a whole Microsoft-funded documentary made about how they were going to change the face of video game journalism?

Remember how they wrote ridiculously pretentious articles about ludonarrative dissonance and boasted about getting invited to press events and intentionally having a bad time resulting in wonderful articles like this?

A few of my more effervescent, more gregarious, more alive colleagues in game journalism are on stage "rocking out" to The Killers. We are on the rooftop of a pricey hotel in Santa Monica, at a press event organized by Rock Band 4's developer and publisher Harmonix.

I'm standing at a safe distance, drinking fizzy water, eating puff pastry canapes and chatting to another colleague about politics in the Philippines. I'm having an OK time.

I'm supposed to be focusing my attention on Rock Band 4, but there's more chance of Ferdinand Marcos leaping onto that stage than there is of me mounting the boards, swinging a guitar strap around my neck and yelling "whooooooo."

I don't care about rock music. I dislike crowds and I dislike loud noises. I don't do public performances, excepting "Toastmasters" which I enjoy from time-to-time, along with half a dozen accountants, schoolteachers and self-improvement nutters.

Well, now they're writing thirst pieces about Purah from Tears of the Kingdom.

https://www.polygon.com/legend-zelda-tears-kingdom/23723061/legend-of-zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-purah-fans-react

I think the responses to the redesign are best put by the Purah super fans. One person posted a clip of the video when we see Purah’s new design for the first time. The person captioned the clip and said, “THEY DID NOT NEED TO MAKE MOMMY PURAH SUCH A BADDIE” and then said they wanted Purah to do, “unspeakable things” to them. In this cutscene, Purah isn’t doing anything particularly sexy — she’s merely speaking to Link. But it was enough to inspire several viral videos.

 

[benjipwns]

That video is still on their channel btw, it's going to be hard for games journalism to ever top this really:

[Nintex]

Remember when Polygon launched and they had a whole Microsoft-funded documentary made about how they were going to change the face of video game journalism?

Remember how they wrote ridiculously pretentious articles about ludonarrative dissonance and boasted about getting invited to press events and intentionally having a bad time resulting in wonderful articles like this?

A few of my more effervescent, more gregarious, more alive colleagues in game journalism are on stage "rocking out" to The Killers. We are on the rooftop of a pricey hotel in Santa Monica, at a press event organized by Rock Band 4's developer and publisher Harmonix.

I'm standing at a safe distance, drinking fizzy water, eating puff pastry canapes and chatting to another colleague about politics in the Philippines. I'm having an OK time.

I'm supposed to be focusing my attention on Rock Band 4, but there's more chance of Ferdinand Marcos leaping onto that stage than there is of me mounting the boards, swinging a guitar strap around my neck and yelling "whooooooo."

I don't care about rock music. I dislike crowds and I dislike loud noises. I don't do public performances, excepting "Toastmasters" which I enjoy from time-to-time, along with half a dozen accountants, schoolteachers and self-improvement nutters.

Well, now they're writing thirst pieces about Purah from Tears of the Kingdom.

https://www.polygon.com/legend-zelda-tears-kingdom/23723061/legend-of-zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-purah-fans-react

I think the responses to the redesign are best put by the Purah super fans. One person posted a clip of the video when we see Purah’s new design for the first time. The person captioned the clip and said, “THEY DID NOT NEED TO MAKE MOMMY PURAH SUCH A BADDIE” and then said they wanted Purah to do, “unspeakable things” to them. In this cutscene, Purah isn’t doing anything particularly sexy — she’s merely speaking to Link. But it was enough to inspire several viral videos.

 

https://twitter.com/SUPERKAl64/status/1657558040218927104

[Himu]

 

[Potato]

That video is still on their channel btw, it's going to be hard for games journalism to ever top this really:

And then they went and launched the most vanilla video game website that ever launched. Its only unique selling point was that, for a few months, its visual design didn't look like a billboard on Shibuya crossing.

[Nintex]

It's funny since that video was made games became massive and the only one of the old journo class apart from the YouTube influencers that really managed to benefit from it is Geoff Keighly, Jason (with his books) and a couple of them that found jobs in the industry.
Despite being the 'experts' they completely missed the boat on literally everything from the Souls games, the massive hit that the Switch turned into, early GamePass, Genshin Impact/Gacha and the resurgence of JRPG's and Japanese games in general (that they declared dead). On the flip side they expected much from Amazon gaming and Google Stadia.

Some of them refused to cover the second biggest game of 2023 for dumb reasons and most of them thought the biggest game of the year would be just DLC and wouldn't sell on an old platform. 

Oh and if they do land a job in a newspaper or media outlet they write about how terrible gaming is and that all developers are bad so they get fired 

[benjipwns]

It seems like there's a lot of them from that era who saw the rise of gaming from nerdy backwater to large scale corporate enterprise as integrating with their developing status as a cultural taste-maker that would grant them some kind of elite status and now they're pretty clearly bitter and angry that gaming was no different from every other mass entertainment medium leaving them as irrelevant as any other "critic" who has no unique knowledge, nothing to say and despises the medium they attached themselves to. Some of these guys, like Adam Sessler, basically spend all their time bitching about how their FUTURE WAS STOLEN ala MovieBob as if gamers were obligated to elevate them appropriately alongside the growth of the industry. And that's the ones who haven't been "cancelled" for something like what I assume is probably half the guys in that Polygon video.

[remy]

I've seen sessler's takes on old games and new . my guy does not have the taste to be a tastemaker 

[Coax]

Remember when Polygon launched and they had a whole Microsoft-funded documentary made about how they were going to change the face of video game journalism?

It was a spin-off from The Verge during the Topolsky era so it was naturally going to have an air of pretentiousness

A couple years before it was announced Brian Crecente said on Twitter how he felt he didn't know if writing about games was really something he wanted to be doing in life. He seemed to be fairly on the level at least IIRC.

[Nintex]

The cycle has been broken

Mario 64 / Banjo Kazooie

Mario Kart / Diddy Kong Racing

Ocarina of Time / Starfox Adventures 

Majora's Mask / Kameo

Luigi's Mansion / Grabbed by the Ghoullies

Animal Crossing / Viva Pinata

Wii Sports / Kinect Sports

Breath of the Wild / Everwild 

Nuts & Bolts / Tears of the Kingdom

Remember when Polygon launched and they had a whole Microsoft-funded documentary made about how they were going to change the face of video game journalism?

It was a spin-off from The Verge during the Topolsky era so it was naturally going to have an air of pretentiousness

A time when games suddenly became SKU's.

[Svejk]

Some of the Metal Slug devs..

https://twitter.com/RyoSK1942/status/1658047788066967552

[Potato]

Remember when Polygon launched and they had a whole Microsoft-funded documentary made about how they were going to change the face of video game journalism?

It was a spin-off from The Verge during the Topolsky era so it was naturally going to have an air of pretentiousness

A couple years before it was announced Brian Crecente said on Twitter how he felt he didn't know if writing about games was really something he wanted to be doing in life. He seemed to be fairly on the level at least IIRC.

There's not many people whose death by misadventure with a bus I would celebrate, but Brian Crecente is one of them.

[Joe Molotov]

You might not like it, but this is what peak Games Journalism looks like. 15 articles about Pokemon orgies and Zelda.

[MMaRsu]

ACTI/Blizz takeover approved by eu regulators

[Nintex]

With the sidenote that they will have to license Call of Duty for free to all other cloud platforms.

But yeah this could mean the deal is back on. The UK literally stands alone as the EU is usually the most difficult and Microsoft can use their ruling in their appeal in the UK.

[HardcoreRetro]

Which cloud platforms? Didn't Google's shitty service die?

[benjipwns]

You might not like it, but this is what peak Games Journalism looks like. 15 articles about Pokemon orgies and Zelda.

(Image removed from quote.)

So which developers am I supposed to harass, Kotaku?

[tiesto]

It's funny since that video was made games became massive and the only one of the old journo class apart from the YouTube influencers that really managed to benefit from it is Geoff Keighly, Jason (with his books) and a couple of them that found jobs in the industry.
Despite being the 'experts' they completely missed the boat on literally everything from the Souls games, the massive hit that the Switch turned into, early GamePass, Genshin Impact/Gacha and the resurgence of JRPG's and Japanese games in general (that they declared dead). On the flip side they expected much from Amazon gaming and Google Stadia.

Some of them refused to cover the second biggest game of 2023 for dumb reasons and most of them thought the biggest game of the year would be just DLC and wouldn't sell on an old platform. 

Oh and if they do land a job in a newspaper or media outlet they write about how terrible gaming is and that all developers are bad so they get fired 

Yeah, I think there was sort of an embarrassment for a lot of western critics from that time period as the crash happened and then Japan rose to become the #1 gaming nation. Then the second Japanese devs showed any kind of weakness (360/PS3 era - which I will still argue isn't as bad as the "zeitgeist" thought), western journalists were ready to pounce. You had people like, Che Chu, among others, who would rate the most mid Xbox 360 game a 9 or 10 just to get a position at one of the rapidly expanding western companies in like a "community manager" role. You also had people desperate for validation of their hobby so they'd rave about how these 8-bit looking indie games with gimmicks are "just so deep maaaaan... it's a metaphor for the atomic bomb and stuff maaaaan!", then went all-in on mobile, casual gaming maybe out of a desperate attempt to get women and their parents to legitimize their job? All while a game that went against everything the journos stood for became probably the most influential game of that generation - extremely obtuse, very difficult, story not spoonfed to you, gritty, and Japanese-developed.

[D3RANG3D]

The seething from westoids when Elden Ring sold well.
 

[Polident Hive]

At the time, and more so looking back, the derision of Japanese games during that generation got weird. Even so far as hyping up western studios making sequels to these franchises. Some games writers were hard selling games like DmC and Lost Planet 3.

[MMaRsu]

At the time, and more so looking back, the derision of Japanese games during that generation got weird. Even so far as hyping up western studios making sequels to these franchises. Some games writers were hard selling games like DmC and Lost Planet 3.

Or Dead Rising 3 (which is not the worst of the bunch, that's 4. But still not really Dead Rising)

[Nintex]

It always looked to me that the decline of Japan was a self-inflicted wound of sorts.

It was the perfect mix of some PC devs entering the console space when they finally had the RAM and GPU's that their shoot bangs and real-time RPG gameplay required and Peter Moore money hats to fund or finish them. Japan was still releasing big PS2/GC era games well into 2006 like Final Fantasy 12 and Twilight Princess while most western devs were already 2 or 3 years into development of Xbox 360 games either ported from Xbox or PC.

Combined with the PS3 development issues (obviously the #1 platform for Japanese devs) they just didn't have much to show when the marketing hype started. Japanese devs more often rely on feedback from journalists to get a sense of the US/EU markets and the prevailing opinion at the time was that Japan was done. This got into the head of developers like Inafune, who took a sledgehammer to Capcoms first party offerings (admittedly Clover hadn't made any 'big' hits yet) in favor of outsourcing and Kojima who hired western devs to work on Metal Gear Solid so it would appeal to audiences in the west. Ironically the template for most modern western games celebrated by the press was Resident Evil 4, a Japanese game.

Once Japan started dropping big games again around 2016 they didn't just catch up, they easily exceeded games developed in the US and Europe. To a point where the industry is unable to figure out how Capcom and Nintendo keep pumping out finished and polished games that run well (even on 2015 tablet hardware) without the massive Ubisoft size teams. Nintendo actually tried such a project (multiple devs) on Metroid Prime 4 and rebooted the project in favor of the old school approach. Sony also mostly returned to having just one studio dedicated to building a game.

And most games made by these 'has been' Japanese developers themselves like Bloodstained were received very well or didn't skip a beat in terms of visuals and production values like Death Stranding.

Tears of the Kingdom feels like a turning point more than anything because outside of Elden Ring(but also without complex physics and tools) no other game has replicated the feeling of Breath of the Wild and it has been 6 years since it released. Now Nintendo dropped a sequel on the weakest hardware which doubles down on the complex physics with seemingly zero limitations and they literally allow you to "break" the game with abilities like Ascend and Recall without any crashes or progression blocks. And they also nearly tripled the size of the map, making it possible to seamlessly jump from the highest sky island to the deepest cave. While in the new Star Wars, if you jump on a certain ledge to skip a section you get a message that you will probably encounter errors if you continue playing and don't reset your game back to a previous checkpoint.

The Japanese developers slowly seem to realize that their work is much more popular than they think. Mitsuda mentioned that 50% of the Xenoblade soundtrack collection orders came from overseas so he's now thinking about bringing it to the west.
He had no idea the music was so popular here (obvious, considering a braindead jury handed God of War the Best Music Award and not his insane Xenoblade 3 score).

[tiesto]

^ Yeah, Japanese devs slowly coming to the realization that there's a large subset of western gamers who like their games -as is- and not Americanized was one of the best things to happen in the last few years.

It's awesome to see the shocks on their face when small scale RPGs keep becoming breakout hits. It started with Bravely Default on 3DS, where the devs were shocked that Americans liked turn based games. Fire Emblem and Xenoblade (a game that wasn't originally planned for western release) becoming core Nintendo staples. A sequel to Nier being a 7.5 million seller. Atelier games breaking 1 million sold. Falcom just posted a huge gain to their profits due to the western releases of Trails of Zero and Azure, which are for all intents and purposes, PSP games from 10 years ago with some slight touchups.

Or even other legacy series that the western journos were so quick to declare "has beens" are selling well - Mega Man 11 was the best selling Mega Man ever, BOTW the best selling Zelda, DQ11 the best selling DQ, SMT5 the best selling SMT, Persona 5 being the best selling Persona, same with Metroid Dread (Spanish developed but based on a legacy Japanese franchise with a lot of Japanese input). Wouldn't be surprised to see FF16 and SF6 topping the charts either.

[Himu]

At the time, and more so looking back, the derision of Japanese games during that generation got weird. Even so far as hyping up western studios making sequels to these franchises. Some games writers were hard selling games like DmC and Lost Planet 3.

The DmC guilt tripping was and is hilarious.

[Himu]

The redemption us Japanese games fans have gained after all we had to endure that generation and the amount of good food we are eating now is

"Japanese games are dead!"

"IDK. Nintendo DS and PSP are pretty rad, dude."

"How dare you suggest a handhold?!"

Fight and Heal never forget.

[tiesto]

At the time, and more so looking back, the derision of Japanese games during that generation got weird. Even so far as hyping up western studios making sequels to these franchises. Some games writers were hard selling games like DmC and Lost Planet 3.

Nothing wrong with a western spin on Japanese franchises, in some cases like Sonic Mania (where you had superfans who broke down the physics engine behind the original Sonic games to the most minute detail and have done tons of fan projects before), this works out really well. However, the problem was a lot of these western devs had indifference or outright derision to the properties they were remaking, so you ended up with soulless crap like that Vandal Hearts reboot, Donte Must Cry, etc.

[Himu]

The DmC devs pooping on DMC fans was the most shocking things. Yes let's shit on our target audience.

[Uncle]

It's awesome to see the shocks on their face when small scale RPGs keep becoming breakout hits. It started with Bravely Default on 3DS, where the devs were shocked that Americans liked turn based games.

meanwhile, lumbering corporate giant square-enix designs FF by committee, "the children don't like turn-based anymore, we have to make it an action game" 

and yet nintendo/game freak keep making fully turn based entries in their most-popular-franchise-across-all-media