The Friday letters page is very impressed by Shawn Layden’s recent prognostications, as one reader is unsure what to make of Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
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Price decision
There’s been a lot of speculation about how powerful the Nintendo Switch 2 is going to be, and one reader recently made the important point that it was all limited by weight and price. I think the biggest variable is going to be how much Nintendo is willing to charge.
The Switch was £280 at launch and decades of Nintendo pricing suggests they won’t want it to be much more than that. But the cheapest Steam Deck is £350 (going all the way up to £570) so there is some argument to be made that they could go a bit more expensive.
A lot of rumours have suggested they might and there’s also talk about two different models. So maybe one around £300 and another around £500. Nintendo has never done that before but then they’ve rarely been in such a dominant position going into a generation.
Even they can get cocky and overconfident, so I wonder if they’ll price higher and whether people will accept that. Personally, if it was me, I wouldn’t go any higher than £300 for the standard version.
Alter
Get rich slow
I’ll be honest, I never liked the look of Shawn Layden when he was in charge of PlayStation America but he is 100% correct about everything he’s said over the last couple of years. Unfortunately, like you said, I don’t think anyone is going to listen to him.
Every publisher thinks their live service game is definitely going to be the next Fortnite and that everyone else trying to do the same thing are the idiots, when in fact they all are. I just don’t know what’s going to stop them and see them give up. How many times are they going to hit their head against the same brick wall? Will it just take some even dumber get rich quick scheme for them to switch plans?
Alego
Nothing to report
I’m not sure you can call the Xbox Partner Preview bad, because they never pretended it was going to be anything major, but it was a bit of a nothingburger. Far too many Soulslikes and nothing, I don’t think, that was actually exclusive to Xbox. You could easily see it as just them doing Sony’s marketing for them, because most people are going to buy these games on PlayStation 5.
I guess there could be a Switch 2 reveal this year, but I don’t expect another State of Play and instead would assume anything else big is going to be announced at The Game Awards. I’ve no idea if that will be big (obviously) but I do hope after that that publishers are going to start making an effort again next year.
Especially after April, when most of their financial years are, can we just go back to announcing more than one game a year and actually having some momentum to this generation. Because what I do know Is that no one is interested in just skipping ahead to the next gen.
Kasko
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A bad feeling
Am I the only that is still not really sure what to make of Dragon Age: The Veilguard? I’ve found it hard to get over that terrible reveal trailer but what I’ve seen since then seems more promising, and like the older games but, I don’t know… there’s something about it which is setting my spider-sense off, making me think it might be a dud.
I hope I’m wrong, because BioWare needs a win at this point, but there’s something about the way it’s being presented which is putting me off. Maybe EA has forgotten how to sell these sort of games, given how long it’s been since they had one, but I hope it turns out all right, for the sake of Mass Effect at least.
Tosco
Positive influence
I recently dug out my old Nintendo 3DS and took it with me on a work trip this week. Bringing it out on the commuter trains was an interesting experience. Most people were head down in their phones or tapping away furiously on laptops while I was sat there with an old pair of headphones on, skidding my way to first place on Mario Kart 7.
I did get a few looks, though. Most notably from a gentleman I sat next to on one leg of the journey. He kept glancing over, and I returned the favour between races to note he was switching between emails and social media doom scrolling.
Well, I’m happy to say that by the time we reached my stop, he was gaming away on his phone. I like to think my old Nintendo provided a little inspiration and reminded someone that the commute can have a little fun injected into it.
James
Licence to ill
I’m really not sure Io Interactive is the best company to be making a Bond game. I’m sure they’ve employed a lot of British people since getting the licence, but the Bond films have a very distinctive tone and sense of humour, and so does Hitman – but I wouldn’t say they were at all similar.
GoldenEye 007 was an amazing game but it being based on Bond had very little to do with the appeal. If you want to make a great James Bond game I don’t think it’s going to work if all you do is focus on combat and driving, which is what most of the other games have done.
You’re going to need to focus on the dialogue and characters and I don’t know if that’s necessarily something Io are good at. We’ll see, but I’m actually quite interested to see how the Indiana Jones games turns out and if that can make itself seem more like the movie through the dialogue as well as just the action. It seems to be doing a good job from what I can see so far.
I feel this was the problem with Star Wars Outlaws, which was fine as an open world Star Wars game but because the characters were all kind of bland it didn’t really feel like the films, or at least not the good ones.
Goldie
Evil economics
Resident Evil already has three remakes. No. Four! Capcom are giving it too much attention. But what about Onimusha? It doesn’t even have one! Not fair, Capcom!
Is it because Onimusha didn’t sell as much? I would love to see just one. Is that asking for too much, Capcom?
Henry
GC: Yes, it’s because it didn’t sell as much. See also: Dino Crisis.
Ever decreasing remakes
Enjoyed the piece about Jedi Power Battles and whether nostalgia has gone too far. I’ve been concerned for a while about the endless stream of remakes and remasters in video games, and the endless period of nostalgia we seem to be currently locked into. I understand why for publishers they look like a good idea… a built in fanbase, lots of the design work has already been done, etc. So there is a guaranteed market and cheaper development costs.
Also, gamers themselves seem to have a bottomless well of wanting these things, pretty much every retro gaming video on the internet is littered with comments along the lines of ‘we need a remake now’ no matter the quality of the original product.
However, the pitfalls here are many. To hook in a recent debate on GC, over the nature of ‘gamers’, the backlash in updating these things can be fierce. Look at the bizarre social media campaigns over Ashley’s skirt in Resident Evil 4 remake, or more recently the updated character designs in Silent Hill 2. Bringing back these older titles seems to bring out the worst in certain areas of the community, and those terminally online mouthpieces do make a lot of embarrassing noise despite being in the minority.
Then there’s the general conservative nature of the whole endeavour. Recent Final Fantasy and Resident Evil remakes are the exception but a lot of these redos are just far too similar to the originals, leading to a ‘well, why?’ sense of unsatisfaction.
I’m playing Persona 3 Reload at the moment, it being one of my favourite Japanese role-players on the PlayStation 2 when growing up. While I am enjoying it, it is just far too similar to the original and still feels very dated. So, if it still feels like an old game… what was the point in remaking it? Just put the old one back out again.
I’m worried, as we lean more and more into cashing in on older titles, gaming will actually end up going backwards and becoming more insular at a time when games are more and more expensive to produce. Those who want to gatekeep it will probably be happy about that, but to them I ask… unless we bring in as many potential players (and so buyers) as possible how on earth do you think the games we all like playing will be paid for?
Marc
Inbox also-rans
The problem with calling it the Switch 2 is what is it going to switch to?
LeighDappa
I still don’t understand why Square Enix has never made a proper Chrono Trigger sequel or even a remake. Isn’t it their most celebrated game? Considering how many times they’ve tried to revamp Mana they don’t seem to care about the Chrono series at all.
Akimbo
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