The idea of releasing games as beta can get a bit tiresome. I quite like playing finished games, not works in progress.

Episodic never really took off either did it? A few Telltales apart.

Well it just means the game can be released when the first bit's done and the money can pay for the next bit. I still believe in it. The idea of a AAA game being released in smaller chunks over the space of a year is very appealing to me. I think most games are too full of doing the same shit anyway.

Trouble ble is with AAA is they tend to need a lot of the work done for the first section and there is a lot of work to do.

Liveinadive wrote:

Trouble ble is with AAA is they tend to need a lot of the work done for the first section and there is a lot of work to do.

I think that goes for most things. The engine needs to be robust and you need to know where the story goes and where the gameplay progression goes. Actually placing a few crates in a corridor with a few more enemies that you've already designed, that use the AI you've already designed, that obey the physics you've already designed, isn't much of a deal.

Isn't that a risk with what we do now though? With episodic you might be able to rebrand the unreleased stuff.

JonB wrote:

I like having most of a game collection on a hard drive, but the idea that when I finally move on from the 360 all those games will be effectively lost is a real pity. At least there's emulation.

Why would they be lost? They'd always be on the HDD wouldn't they?

But there's still the problem of having your games downgraded once a license expires.

IanHamlett wrote:

But there's still the problem of having your games downgraded once a license expires.

PC usually neatly sidesteps this by being a hobbyist platform. There's nearly always a dedicated hardcore that set up servers for all sorts of nonsense if you dig far enough. That doesn't stop big corporate turning all sorts off, but it's not quite the problem it is with Live and PSN's dedicated stuff as far as I know.

On the backwards compatability, I dont think it was such a big issue on the xbox 360 because the original xbox didnt have the same user base or diverse range of games. The PS3 on the other hand (if you got a fat bastard like me) was great. I stayed with pes 6 for a good while once I realised the new games were shit. Until SF4 came out, I still loaded up Capcom vs SNK 2. And had I realised what I would be missing I never would have got rid of Burnout 2 or Gradius V. 

But I think it stung a lot more with this latest gen. I would have been much faster trading up if I knew I could take my digital games with me along with my live/psn profile. I understand not having bc towards the discs, that would just prop up the second hand market, but the digital thing I feel is a big mis-step. You can take your phone and tablet apps with you when you move up and Steam seems to do a pretty good job with keeping your library going. I dont expect servers to be kept going indefinitely for MP but if there is a single player part to a game it deserves to be kept alive on your hard drive if you bought it.

I played Halo 2 on my 360 for ages, pretty much until Halo 3 came out and even a bit after that.

The difference now is key MP games like Titty and Destiny are multi plat.

Telltale are a bad example though. They couldn't code themselves out of a cardboard box. 

I guess for me one concern about the games as a service is that there is no going back once the servers are off. For some games this means you will never be able to get those extra items or play friends online again. 

I suppose what needs to be made available is some kind of fallback option. Either ensure local multi is included, so if for example someone has Splinter Cell 2 they can still play spies v mercs on xbox in a 4 console LAN setup. Similarly, Mario Kart DS can no longer be played online, but it does has local wireless multi. For games that ONLY have online multiplayer (even though the game mode would work offline in local play), there needs to be a step that says "the servers are now offline, here is how to do it yourself" so the modding communities can keep the game going if they so please. 

The biggest concern is that games as a service is going to become ubiquitous. If that is the case, retro gamers in 10-20 years time will find there is a Dark Ages where nothing is available after 2014. Master System or NES or Neo Geo games can still be played, but not PS4/XBO games. 

One of the benefits of retro gaming is you can go back and see what classic games were like. At the time of release we don't know if game X is a classic or not - the test of time makes that decision. Similarly, we don't know which games out now are going to be viewed fondly in the next decade, but we do know that you will be shit out of luck if its one of the games on PS4/XBO. Or on XBLA or PSN on PS3/360 for that matter.

N.B. The only reason I'm not including Nintendo in this is because so far they are 2 from 2 in providing BC support for digital titles (DSi -> 3DS, Wii -> WiiU. So long as there are Pikmin Removalists, there is hope).

No. Thankfully there are plenty of them still coming out, its mainly the AAA end of the blockbuster market that seems to be running headlong into disaster.

I would like to think that the best model is to be found as a compromise between the features found in games and services made by Valve, Nintendo and CD Projekt.

On the other hand, Sony, Microsoft, EA and Ubisoft are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

retroking1981 wrote:

JonB wrote:

I like having most of a game collection on a hard drive, but the idea that when I finally move on from the 360 all those games will be effectively lost is a real pity. At least there's emulation.

Why would they be lost? They'd always be on the HDD wouldn't they?

Yeah, but by move on I mean get rid of the console or pack it away permanently. And even if I keep it, presumably it'll break at some point, or the 360 store will be discontinued and I won't be able to re-download stuff I've already paid for.

As others have said, it just seems like one advantage of digital games should be that they migrate from one platform to another.

When can we start using this infinite power of the cloud properly?

Good job it's infinite then