For the longest time, they couldn’t undercut physical MSRP with digital MSRP because they didn’t want to upset Walmart and have them stop stocking their wares.

And, optimistically, I think there’s less chance of that happening for Obsidian just due to how many other projects they have going on at once. Then you’re constantly rolling people off of one project and onto another rather than having too many people of one discipline that you don’t need at the beginning of a new project in a single-project studio. In the last 10 years, Obsidian’s got 11 games to its name, so it’s not like they’re taking 7 years to put a game out and hoping it does well enough to justify the next 7 years.

I’d normally say this is crazy talk given that Avowed is almost certainly profitable, but they did decide they wanted nothing to do with Tango Gameworks after making Hi-Fi Rush, so it wouldn’t be beyond them to do something this stupid. To Obsidian’s credit, they’ve got a bunch of irons in the fire at any given time, basically everything they make reviews well, and they don’t overscope their projects to the point that they need to sell 3 million copies to break even, so even if they’re small potatoes on a spreadsheet, they still ought to always look good on a spreadsheet. I hear Obsidian ranks highly in “best places to work” polls too.

Sure, but that was sort of the era where everyone was just trying to make another Call of Duty, and that wasn’t really where Rainbow Six shines. Have you played the campaigns in some of the old games?

Rainbow Six 3 was still fantastic.

What was it that interested you about that demo? Because it seemed even less Rainbow Six than what this is today. For the console generation they were building it for, it probably would have been devoid of tactical options or choices.

I loved The Outer Worlds. If you’re going to pay people for positive press, why would you only get a 7/10 out of IGN?

Because even when it’s supported, the people who tend to circumvent it find ways to do so on Linux, because it’s less secure. They choose instead to just not deal with it rather than trying to hire or build up that expertise, which would come at a high cost for little benefit.

Personally, my problems with this type of game go beyond its anti cheat support, so enabling Linux support for their anti cheat still wouldn’t earn my sale anyway.

What part of it baffles you? I don’t like it either, but in order for them to get the same level of security on Linux that they do on Windows, they’d have to do all kinds of work embedding their anti cheat in the kernel. I don’t know if the license of the kernel even allows for that, but good luck getting Linux users to agree to knowingly installing a rootkit to play a video game.

If you like what they’re putting out, I can see that, but when there’s less variety coming out, some of the types of games they used to make aren’t getting made, so there are going to be people with itches that aren’t getting scratched like they used to.

The longer development cycle of AAA games does mean we’re getting fewer of them than we used to, so the author is right that that is different this time around.

Monthly active users - the amount of people playing games on the console - are up considerably, 129m to 90m, on the equivalent period of the previous console.

I’m not convinced that number is the number of people playing games on the consoles but rather the number of people signed into PSN. I haven’t played a game on PS4 in 5 years (and we don’t have a PS5), but we use it daily to stream video services.

They lock up games under exclusivity contracts that others do not, which means you’re stuck with their launcher and all of its problems or lack of features. In this case, they’re the publisher, so it’s a bit murkier. They’ve also got strong ties to Tencent, so some people are cautious of the influence of the Chinese government. For me personally, it’s that they don’t support Linux at all, and unlike GOG, I can’t guarantee that they’ll never push an update that breaks that compatibility. Seeing as my platform is unsupported, I’m not entitled to any kind of make-good, so I’m just not going to spend any money with them. I’ll only play it at this point if it leaves Epic or if it’s one of their free giveaways.

Thanks. My backlog is quite deep at this point, with some very long games filling it, so I don’t know when I’ll ever get around to this one, but that sounds good to me. I’ve never played anything 3rd edition before either, and I’m guessing that’s where most of Pillars of Eternity’s systems came from.

I understand that NWN1 really only let you control one character. Does NWN2 give you a full party to control? And is it a continuation of the story in NWN1 with the same characters, or is it just set in the same setting?

I’d go to bat less for Hellblade at this point, and so would the market, but as a point in Hellblade’s favor, it was using the medium to its advantage to tell a story and evoke a feeling in a way that people hadn’t seen before, and I think The Order was known for just looking good and doing what other cover shooters had done. Now that Hellblade’s been done before, the sequel doesn’t seem to be garnering similar success either.

Until Dawn has branches on branches on branches based on your decisions and how well you react, so I wouldn’t say that supports that argument.

Nah, a revision would be nice, and rumor has it we’ll get just that, but that controller kicks ass.

By modern standards, Halo 1-3 are short games, but there’s a lot of freedom and reason to improvise in any given combat encounter, and the reputation of The Order was that it didn’t offer anything like that.

The Steam Controller has its defenders, but it went from launch to discontinued with no successor in just four years, which isn’t a great sign of success.

No, that was due to a patent lawsuit over the rear buttons, as I understand it.