Dcubed

Oh cool, I forgot that you’re doing that N64 marathon. Looking forward to that! (Ironically, you’ll be playing two of the worst entries in the Castlevania series then; but don’t worry, there are worse ones that you could be playing as well ).

The two Mega Man arcade games kick arse. One of the rare few games that transitioned successfully from home console to arcade (I'm looking at YOU Castlevania and Silent Hill!); and really, it's such a simple concept. Take various bosses from the main series and chuck them into a boss rush. Done. But it's the polished game feel, mechanics and presentation that makes it all work. And the pacing is perfect, just the right running time for an arcade game, but with plenty of replay value. And a fun scoring system too that encourages repeated speedrunning. Boss.

Is that it then? Is this the end of the road? Or will you also be covering the Switch/Xbox re-release of Goldeneye as well? (Though there isn’t all that much to note, since both are just emulations of the original N64 game; the Switch version being untouched and the Xbox one having some control tweaks to better suit the Xbox controller). If this is the end, then what’s next? Will you be tackling another movie/TV license? Or will it be a video game series? If it’s the latter, might I recommend Castlevania? Plenty of tiger electronics versions for you to sink your teeth into there If it’s the former, how about Indiana Jones?

The game’s already a disaster before it was even announced!

I’d LOVE to know who keeps footing their bills. I honestly have no idea how they’ve kept the lights on these past 7 years or so after they ditched Nintendo and their steady stream of income. They’re a privately held company, so we have no idea about their actual financial state. But there has to be some sort of angel investor keeping them going!

Well it looks like you're gonna be waiting a good while... because Level 5 just announced a delay until "post-2024"... This company is cooked.

How do you go from the promise of a 2023 release, to TWENTY TWENTY FIVE!? They're planning to release a Switch exclusive game, in 2025!? Yeah fucking right! This company is cooked.

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/11/mario-kart-8-deluxe-has-been-updated-to-version-3-0-1-here-are-the-full-patch-notes Minor bug fix update is out

Actually perfect for VR!

Not a good sign if they’re trying to squeak this out right before the end of the financial year… That’s usually a pretty big red flag…

007 Legends perfectly encapsulates everything I hate about the modern/Daniel Craig era of Bond. All the fun has been sucked out of the character and the 007 world, no cheese, no charm. No OTT villains, no classic one-liners, no easily-escapable-situations-involving-an-overly-elaborate-and-exotic-death. It’s all played 100% serious, with no fun allowed.

Dave The Diver being in the running for best indie game tells you all you need to know about the legitimacy of these awards. Absolutely sweet FA.

I don't know where else to put this, as we don't seem to have a thread for the Silent Hill 2 remake, but Bloober have just put out a rather bizzare Solumn JPEG out of the blue... ... I'm not sure why I'm worried but... now I'm worried lol!

Happy birthday to the console that burned the brightest for the shortest time. Dreamcast was actually the first SEGA console I personally owned. Previously I was on the Nintendo side of the camp, where a friend of mine had the Mega Drive and I used to go round his to play, but the Dreamcast was the first time I actually went out and bought the console itself. What a console it was! Completely blew away the competition in terms of specs and production values; literally felt like a machine from the future took a time warp to 1999! (and even more insane to think that it actually came out in 1998 in Japan, at the same time as Zelda OOT!). For those of you in the room too young to remember, picture this... ... coming out at the same time as this... Perhaps the biggest quantum leap in technology the industry had ever seen. And in the span of just a hair over 2 years after the N64's release! And while in retrospect, the Dreamcast's western launch was a bit of a cheat when you consider that it came out about 9 months after its Japanese debut, its launch lineup was the stuff of legends. Just a massive library of heavy hitters right from day 1! And for fans of the arcades? The Dreamcast was literally more or less the same hardware as in the NAOMI arcade board. Outside of the NeoGeo (which wasn't even really a commercial piece of hardware that was viable for average consumers), this was the first time that you truly got "arcade perfect" games at home. It's crazy to think that the console only lasted a year and a half from its western debut to its official discontinuation, and yet it amassed a library of 620 officially released titles, more than double the N64! Yeah, it's sad, and a bit of an existential crisis for us oldies; but it does make sense when you realise that SEGA has been a software only 3rd party for longer than they were a console manufacturer now Nobody, for better or worse, would ever take the kinds of risks that SEGA did back in the 90 to early 2000s. Not even Nintendo would dare to put out official fishing controllers, games played with maraccas, mushroom shaped add-ons that would only last 6 months, or online games in the late 90s. God bless SEGA and their utter disregard for fiscal responsibility!

Thanks for that chart, couldn't find it on my phone earlier. The US is usually the last market that falls in line with trends elsewhere though; and is currently the least affected by the ongoing cost of living crisis. I would expect it to start following the trajectory seen in Europe (and to a lesser extent Japan) later on though. Point still stands though. PS5 will be down on its predecessor, as will Series X/S. The fact that the Japanese market has completely collapsed alone will ensure this (keeping in mind that the consoles that have sold there have mostly been scalped and resold to US/EU customers), and the overall market trend that has been ongoing for almost 20 years now is going to continue. While Microsoft already see the writing on the wall and are already moving away from console hardware being their main business driver, Sony will also eventually need to pivot in order to address the overall market decline. What form that will take? I’m not really sure yet, but it will have to happen eventually; because the console business is only going to continue to decline over time if nothing is done to broaden its demographics.

PS5 is still tracking behind PS4, even with the restrictions on supply being lifted now. And there's no signs of it catching up either. Software sales have also totally collapsed in Japan as well, with Sony more or less being completely removed from that market entirely now; even PC now often makes up a larger share of multiplatform sales than PS5 does (going by the discorse on the Install Base forums). Its attach rate is literally the single worst result in the video game industry's entire history (literally less than 1:1, something like 0.3:1; an unprecedentedly bad result. Even the 3DO did far better than that!), with most of the hardware being scalped and flipped for resale in western territories. There's no reason to believe that it's going to achieve a miracle turnaround more than 3 years into its lifecycle. We're far enough into the generation now where we can already safely assume that PS5 will be down on its predecessor when all is said and done (probably will end up reaching around 105-110 million by the end).

These aren't equivalent examples though. Not as many people wanted a PS3 for a Blu Ray player as they wanted a PS2 for a DVD player, not even close. Also we know the PS5 was selling out for a long time and only just now have Sony said stock is unrestricted. So we know that it was selling as fast as it could, so any commentary looking at units sold across generations is pointless and misleading. More like any point of difference is a convinent excuse to brush over the continual decline of the "HD Twin" console business Again, these issues are Sony and Microsoft's problem to solve. It's not the PS2's fault that it was a more appealing console than its successors. If Sony want to be able to continue justifying exponentially increasing costs of making consoles and console games, they need to find a way to expand their audience... ... and so far, their answer is to turn to PC for that much needed demographic expanse; while squeezing more and more juice out of their existing audiences with a huge number of hardware peripherals and subscription services/GAAS titles.

Component shortages also affected PS2 and PS4 in their early days (and even PS3 to some extent). We forget about them now, but the PS2’s first couple of years of shortages were the stuff of legends; and PS4 was also supply constrained well up until 2015. Tale as old as time, nothing exclusive to PS5, and ultimately Sony’s problem to solve. Also worth noting that price cuts are largely a thing of the past now (indeed, this is the age of price rises of consoles!), owing to rising semiconductor prices; another factor that will ultimately limit PS5’s ability to compete with its predecessors. Many people also bought a PS3 as a blu-ray player and the PS4 for its streaming apps, what’s your point? And PS4 was also lightning in a bottle as both of its competitors (Xbone and Wii U) essentially killed themselves, leaving the market wide open for Sony to win by default. That’s Sony’s problem to solve now with PS5.

@Julius The last known sales of each Xbox & PS console are as follows… PS2 = 155m, Xbox = 24m, total = 179m PS3 = 87m, Xbox 360 = 85m, total = 172m PS4 = 117m, Xbone = 51m, total = 168m Xbox totals come from estimates posted here: https://www.installbaseforum.com/forums/threads/xbox-year-console-shipments-finally-revealed.1760/post-172954 Yes, Xbox is responsible for most of the collapse, but Sony haven’t picked up all the slack. And COVID has been mostly beneficial to the video game industry when it comes to hardware & software sales; if anything, it has benefitted PS5 compared to its predecessor. The traditional console industry is shrinking. It posts record profits as it continues to squeeze more and more juice out of a smaller and more dedicated audience, but the actual user base is continuously aging and shrinking in size. Oh, and just for the record, I actually do agree with your sentiment regarding Game Pass. Traditional console video games inherently lack the accessibility and broad appeal of passive media, and pretty much nobody outside of Nintendo and a select few indies are even attempting to appeal to a wider audience outside of the well worn 10-25 male demographic. As such, gaming subscription services will never achieve the wide adoption that the likes of Netflix achieved in their respective field, because these services are unable to appeal to that wider demographic with the type of content that the non-Nintendo console industry produces. But it is still the only real path forward for Microsoft. The traditional console war is lost. It is the only way they can differentiate themselves with a real USP at this point, and while it has yet to bare real tangible fruit, it still has long-term potential to disrupt the existing industry. Whether or not they will ever succeed at breaking out of the existing 10-25 male demographic will depend on the industry’s ability to finally pull its head out of its arse and finally realise that other types of games can be made… which I am not confident in seeing ever happen unfortunately.

It's a shame about what happened to n-space, as they really seemed to hit their stride and carve out a nice little niche for themselves throughout the DS era.

Oh! Interesting... https://www.installbaseforum.com/forums/threads/media-create-sales-week-45-2023-nov-06-nov-12.2134/post-210405 https://store-jp.nintendo.com/list/software/70010000074092.html Looks like Nintendo are launching a separate N64 NSO app in Japan for Cero Z/18+ rated games; with Goldeneye and JFG being the first two games released in this new app. Guess that explains how they're gonna handle the launch of Conker's BFD and Perfect Dark when they eventually come to the NSO service then.

I've never had any issue with JFG's controls on an original N64 controller myself. They're essentially Turok/1.2 Solitaire controls... ... that being said though, if you're trying to play it on anything other than a real N64 controller? Ehh...

Not the Rare game I was expecting next, but I’m very glad to see it nonetheless!

Microsoft is fighting a losing war against Sony when it comes to consoles. There’s no way that they’re ever going to overcome Sony’s built-in brand loyalty at this point, but the traditional AAA industry hardware business is a fool’s game anyway; because… … this is Microsoft’s long-term strategy anyway. The days of Xbox as a hardware manufacturer are numbered… but if there’s anything you can say about Microsoft, it’s that they're the masters of the long-con. Their long-term goal is to get Xbox Game Pass onto every device imaginable; and that includes PlayStation and Nintendo consoles. There’s a reason why they’re getting very buddy buddy with Nintendo, and it’s not out of altruism. Microsoft are planning for the next 10-15 years. They know that the hardware business is coming to an end, and to be honest? The same may well end up being true for Sony eventually as well. PS5 is down on its predecessor in all regions too, the total non-Nintendo console market size is continuously shrinking (and has been for the last ~15 years), and both Microsoft and Sony are failing to bring in new audiences to replace their dying and dwindling customers. And Sony seem to recognise this too, which is why they’re now branching out to PC. So yes, Sony will probably forever remain kings of the traditional console industry. But much like the Blu-ray/HDDVD physical media war? It may well end up not mattering much in the end.

Always shocks me just how far ahead of its time the original TJ&E was. It’s basically a modern day roguelike that came out in 1991! And it has 2 player splitscreen co-op even! Something rarely seen even in modern titles! Still good fun even till this day