The Hot Topic Returns

[shinymcshine]

The whole Xbox One announcement fiasco - the needs to be online all the time, needs a Kinect farce - which took MS from the glory of the 360 era into the downward spiral it's in.

[mfnick]

Excellent shout with Xbox.

 

Mine would be for Sega to have developed the Saturn with 3D in mind & cheaper. They may not have lost so badly & still be a threat to Sony in a way Xbox isn’t. I know I’m dreaming btw… (also I love the Saturn. I don’t want it to change)

 

A more serious one - Sonys live service shite. If they’d not gone after that so hard we may have had a nice big collection of excellent system sellers for it by now like back in the PS4 days & companies like Bluepoint would still be around. 

[one-armed dwarf]

I'd go back in time and make it so that all nvidia gpus explode when you try to use them, and prevent their market dominance ascension today. 

[DANGERMAN]

 

this is showing in the popular posts bit on the side, and it's making it difficult not just to say the same again

 

@mfnick's Sega one is a good shout. I think things might be marginally less bad if the Activision acquisition had never happened, although personally it's more Bethesda that I care about

 

I'll say a 2nd analogue stick on the Dreamcast controller. It wouldn't have changed a thing, but it would have helped the games

[shinymcshine]

Nintendo not putting a backlight on the GBA, then not putting a 3.5mm headphone socket on the GBA SP.

[Maf]

On the 2 stick thing, coincidentally Shawn Layden said in an interview recently that the Vita was a mistake and they should have made a PSP2. All the PSP needed was an extra stick and things like the OLED screen and the back touch panel was a waste. I disagree on the OLED screen but yeah, Vita was ass and the ex-CEO saying the same is fortunate timing for this question 

 

Xbox has been fucking up for a decade+ at this point. Most were self owns but they couldn’t even get the little things right. I remember feeling sorry for them when the Minecraft guy appeared in Smash Bros and they had to patch the win screen because he was holding meat where his dick should be. Like damn, literally everything goes wrong. 
 

But I think the no.1 sin they committed was putting Gamepass on PC. Maybe it was better for subscriber growth but it’s the same mistake as putting games on PS5 and “everything’s an Xbox marketing”, it’s a nail in the coffin for the console. You can’t have a successful ecosystem/walled garden thing with gaping gaps in the walls 

[one-armed dwarf]

I don't know why that would be their biggest sin, Gamepass had really poor uptake on PC so it likely didn't make much difference. 

 

Xbox's problem is they just had really boring exclusives. Then, they eventually had really good ones, recently, but tons of people had moved on and it was too late. Also, they cancelled the most interesting one (Perfect Dark)

 

Somewhere in there though, there was a strategic mishap and corporate inertia kept them from ever reacting to it. I guess it's the Don Mattrick stuff. I think the root cause of it all though is that Microsoft as a business wasn't that serious about gaming when it became clear that the console would not be the centerpiece of people's media centers in the future, it would be in-built TV apps/streaming sticks. So it's just been a long decline since then. 

[Maf]

For me it’s the worst thing they did because it was their whole initiative that was new, bold, big and the new centrepiece of Xbox and they just gave it away. Senseless to me beyond the fact CEO bonus’ were tied to subscriber numbers 

[DANGERMAN]

But if they wanted to grow their audience, and deal with the complaints about having to buy things twice, it was a good decision. Of the people who used it and didn't own an Xbox,I doubt it would have convinced them to buy one, but they were getting money from people like me they wouldn't have done otherwise 

[Maf]

I think long term it would have been better to skip that money and instead use Gamepass to try make Xbox more attractive. As you say unlikely to get people to buy an Xbox, but it could have. And instead they terminated that chance altogether. It could have been the defining Xbox feature and they just said fuck it.  
 

Not to run through the entire Xbox saga again, it’s obviously compounded by lots of failures and factors. But of all the things they did, which didn’t just result in poor outcomes but I think was a poor decision from the off, putting Gamepass on PC is the one I dislike the most. 

[Sly Reflex]

I think I'm reverting Bethesda's choice to put horse armour into Oblivion. I'm not saying they were he first to do it, because I'm genuinely not sure, but they were the ones that arguably lit the blue touch paper as to why we have content drops that are not really content in a meaningful way. It started the trend of the least effort for the most return.

[Sly Reflex]

Quote

Show me your favourite screenshot and tell me the story behind it. Why is it your favourite?

 

[one-armed dwarf]

Shit was fucking hard

 

 

In terms of like an in-game screenshot, Phantom Liberty had such a cool, noir vibe to it. Turned a 7/10 game into a 9/10. All the vibes and story was great, maybe this screenshot encapsulates this, I dunno

 

[DANGERMAN]

I'm not really one for taking screenshots. I know I started the HD thread on here, but even then I don't tend to do it

[Sly Reflex]

Not an interesting one to look at, but more of an achievement. Or the start of an achievement.

 

At the time the group I was actively taking part in were playing Art of Rally time trails against each other. This was the first time I got a global top 100 finish,. It wasn't the last, and in some cases the top end of the group was placing in the top 50 or so in the world.

 

To give you some context, there's somewhere between 3 or 4 million that have played Art of Rally. I managed to inspire a moment where people that were not really into rallying or racing games in general were committing so hard they were falling into the bracket of the top 1% of the worlds players. 

[spatular]

yeah similar here as in it's an achievement rather than a cool looking game or something it's the 4th place score thats the important one as it says stage 6, there isn't a stage 6 it means i've completed the game (dodonpachi doj) which was really difficult!  

[Sly Reflex]

Quote

If any game you've played gave you one real-life skill from that game, what skill would you be happiest to have? To clarify, not superpowers, just every day skills.

 

[shinymcshine]

Press X to reload last save....

[OCH]

(Mario) Parkour

[one-armed dwarf]

Dunno if save reloads are a real life skill 🤔

 

High speech-craft/rhetoric. Boring choice but I think being able to pump a stat that's about talking/solving problems just would be very useful professionally.