I don’t know, makes a lot of sense critically to me.

If you think about the last few big games they were behind, Hogwarts Legacy stands out, Mortal Kombat I guess, throw in what ever the last Lego game was.

But you also have Suicide Squad, Gotham Knights, Multiversus these massive games that just have an awful reputation.

Arkham Knight is nearly a decade old, Middle Earth series is around that same time. Back for Blood is newish but that never exactly set the world on fire.

My gut reaction was pretty shocked, cause I have amazing memories and fondness of some WB games, then I remember that was 10+ years ago with MK9, Batman Arkham Asylum and City, Mad Max, Bastion, Scribblenauts…

I feel like this is also the best time to do this.

F1 25 is not great, the game needs to be sorted out and revamped for it to prosper again in my opinion. The best time for them to have done this was last year, so they could come out swinging for 2026.

But I think coming out next year with a new game that has had time for the 2026 cars to be worked on and settled in is a good choice as well. They just need to get their shit together and put out a good game… Which for racing games seems to be almost impossible

Well, that seems like a good time to check things out. Thanks for letting me know.

How much luck am I going to have with my SIM rig? Moza R12 and CRP pedals.

I know Le Mans ultimate will run mostly fine with a custom proton. But I have no idea where to start with the wheel, and what I can find seems like it might be out dated but could be a right pain(especially on bazzite) to get installed.

While you may not need support for the game. The games would not do as well as they do without it. They are predominantly an online multiplayer game. I am no the biggest Tekken fan, but I am a pretty big fan of Street Fighter, I have over 1000 hours on SF6. If it didnt have the good online multiplayer, and just had just had the offline and single player stuff, I would have something like 100 hours maybe and would have moved on to other games.

And that makes a big difference, to how much I am willing to buy into both characters and costumes, and also the next game.

Tekken 8 and SF6 still have good(for fighting games) single player stuff, but you are looking at a simple story and some arcade modes. SF6 has a bit more of a single player RPG almost for its single player, and I have managed to sink around 80 hours into that, they add more with each new character and I believe it is free.

And to go back to Tekken, Tekken 3 had 22 characters, While Tekken 7 had 36, which then increases to 51 if you add in the addition characters, Tekken 8 currently has ~40 with more being added. They are fine games, with all the content that you want(mostly) in the base game, but the biggest difference between Tekken 3 and Tekken 7 or 8 is it isnt being replaced in a couple years by a new full priced game, it is getting patches and support, additional mechanics and moves, new characters. And the online/competitive community can thrive.

Tekken 8 has Volley ball. Tekken 7 got Bowling but that was as a DLC.

I think that fighting games are in a much better place with the season passes(character DLC) than previously.

They are a much more long term game, with better balance patches and additions through mechanics to the game. Tekken 7 for example was supported for 7 years and you can jump in with just the base game. This also applies to other games like Street Fighter 5 and 6, Guilty Gear Strive and so on.

Where as if you go back to Street fighter 4 as an example, The support was limited and then they added more with a new game, Super Street Fighter 4, which then got replaced with Ultra Street Fighter 4, and you could not play someone who had Super if you only had Ultra which sucked for the online community.

I do think there is a lot of issues with where Fighting Games are going, but that is more an industry thing. Like battle passes, avatar clothes and other shit as micro transactions.

Shinobi: Art of vengeance. It is a 2D brawler with stages that end with a boss, but they have metroidvania elements to add value for replaying them. It is about 10 hours to go start to finish while doing a lot of the back tracking stuff. Simple story but incredible combat and good level design(only one level I thought was a bit meh), the art and animations are fantastic as well. Very much a new take on the old games, and has a demo to try as well.

I mean, not advertised as a demo but any beta you get access to as a preorder bonus and it is close to release, I consider more of a paid demo. Has become less common now though.

I would be interested if I was building a new pc. This would make connecting all of my SIM rig nice and easy, as well as my other controllers and peripherals. It is a bit excessive, but I have no doubt every port would end up used.

I would be incredibly surprised if they charge for the update. It makes no sense to do so, you just split the community. And they announced 2 new characters(at least), so V2 will come with a new season pass they will charge for.

I also presume the V2 is the release of the new ranked mode, which hopefully fixes the garbage tower and it’s floor mechanic(preferably just delete it and give us a ranked queue with elo please)

I think(but it has been a long time since I touched gamepass) there is a timeframe between login checks.

So you might be able to download something, use it for a week, then have to re-authorise again.

But I don’t know the time frame, so might be 48 hours or a month.

Game pass isn’t going to come to steam deck. Not as a native app that installs games locally. You can already stream games through the web browser that’s all you will get.

The fact they are making changes to windows and partnering with Asus on releasing Xbox hardware in the same space is more than enough evidence, but also, the steam deck is a tiny part of the market(it might be the best but it is still tiny).

Linux as a whole is also nothing for Microsoft to worry about, it is slowly increasing in market share, sure. But it is nothing on the scale of windows, and won’t be for years at the current growth rate.

In this context, Tekken and other fighting games have competitive and content seasons. Where over a year winners from large international events earn places in a final, and new characters/stages are released

After the final there is normally a very large update to the game which comes with new game mechanics and large balance changes, and the start of a content season pass. With enough time before the first tournament kicks off(street fighter is being weird this year though)

For Tekken that season patch dropped recently but was a massive let down(fuck up) and the community wasn’t happy with it at all.

However that was a limited time bundle which they no longer sell. Cause fucking smarts.

https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Games/Nintendo-Switch-games/Super-Mario-3D-All-Stars-1832369.html

I didn’t even dare to hope. Just look at the games that have been put out over the decade? With such high quality games like Anthem, Andromeda and now Veil Guard.

Yeah, Bioware is just a name, and has no prestige anymore.

Rollerdrome is the name of the game in the picture.

Could also talk about Olli Olli World which also go delisted at the same time.

But I am not clicking on the article to double check.

Yeah, I have a love(like… tolerate)/hate relationship with the battle pass. I don’t mind it, cause it is cheap, pointless and you get your money back, and it is super easy to complete it.

But also, it can fuck off, battle passes suck in their timed implementation, it is pointless, you have to get premium currency to get it which is obviously not purchasable at the exact amount.

Only thing I think was good is that it bought in the emulated game catalogue.

I think that’s missing a lot of the content. If SF6 was free to play, if wouldn’t have the single player portion. And would have had a couple of free characters.

2XKO is going to launch with something like 9 characters(might be missing remembering the number), Maybe they add more before release but it is a tiny roster for a tag game.

There is also massive changes between games, and they don’t disappear, so you can still have those tournaments. If it goes free to play, I feel like they kinda get stuck with the game and systems and no easy way to move onwards, with a bit of a PR nightmare(abandoning the game and all that).

I feel like there is pros and cons to both methods, but don’t really think f2p Street Fighter is a good move. I do think sf7 whenever that is released will be another paid game, and will be more expensive upfront.

While true, the base game is still only 60.

If I had to spend an additional 40 for just the base game(not the 2 seasons of characters), that would be a much harder sell.

I think there is maybe 1 game that I would consider spending 100 for the base game. And that’s because I love the series and it is very much a long term game for me, Street Fighter.

But that would be a very tough sell, it would have to be something really special to part with that much, even though I know I would get 1000s of hours out of it

I have played a lot of FFXIV, but have stopped playing for a couple years now. Spending a fair chunk of time in Street Fighter and Monster Hunter, but I have a feeling that will change over the next year with Assetto Corsa Competizione and AC Evo potentially taking the monster hunter spots.

To me this is more like, the playstation 6 will have online connectivity.

I have recently got into sum racing, and have been having a bunch of fun in the Honda NSX Evo in Assetto Corsa Competizione. It is an absolute death trap and tries to murder me on every corner, but it is very good fun.

I have also had a lot of fun in the Nissan GTR as well, but not spent too much time in it.

They adjusted the rules this year I believe, they now allow DLCs in GOTY, and also things like new seasons to games. It is dumb, and I personally think it removes what little credibility the game awards had(which wasn’t a lot to me).

Will catch up on all the adverts that are if interest the next day.

I don’t think you can compare the deadlock and concord mechanics. The concord one is more like, congratulations you won a round with the M4 in CS… You can no longer use the M4 for the rest of the game.

FFXIV released on Xbox earlier this year.

I don’t know if Blizzard ever did an official controller interface for WoW though, that will definitely be the first hurdle.

I don’t think point 3 is quite fair. There were some new ideas thrown into the game.

The issue is those ideas were not fun, or very badly implemented. I believe it was the ranked mode, where if you won the round you were then locked out of playing that character again. They also had you build out a collection of characters to pick from before the game started.

There were some new ideas, I just don’t know of any that were good and added to the game. The only ones I know of seemed bad(or at least badly implemented) and took away from what enjoyment people had with the game.

I think calling this pc heavy is really really generous.

The War Within is an expansion for an MMO, yeah it is pc only, but there is also no expectations for it to be released on console. Maybe WoW will see some port now MS owns it?

Towerborne is coming to Xbox. I am pretty sure the only reason it isn’t yet, is because of early access, and the Xbox having stricter rules for pushing updates? It is coming to Xbox, when it isn’t a paid beta

And finally, I am surprised Ara didn’t get a console launch. A quick search shows one is coming after launch, but no dates or anything outside of sometime after PC.

Outside of the WoW expansion, these are only temporary exclusives, and one of them is early access. I will admit, I actually thought Ara released on Xbox, so was genuinely surprised to find it wasn’t(yet).

It depends. Is there going to be a new console generation within a few years of release? Cause if so that will be released first, then slap on a few more years for the pc version.

I am not too fussed about remakes. There are so many games to play, I don’t have enough time.

But, one game I would instantly get, Panzer Dragoon Saga. What an absolutely legendary game, that hardly anyone had the chance to play. Cleaning that up and releasing it on modern platforms would be amazing.

Wikipedia is only listing PS5. Spiderman and Miles Morales were PS4, but Spiderman 2 is only on the PS5

It has more than one… But it is incredibly lacking still.

But it got Astrobot, Destruction All-stars are both new IPs. There is also Spider-Man 2 and Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart for first party. And you can throw in Stella Blade and FF7 Rebirth for now as well.

I believe everything else is remakes or not exclusive to the PS5.

Edit - ohhh scratch Ratchet and Clank off as well, that’s on PC. I thought it was the PS4 one that came to PC, but it is Rift Apart.

Yea, I think I would probably say I prefer single player or co-op games over multiplayer.

But I am pretty sure that I put more time into street fighter 6 last year than every other game combined. I do really enjoy my fighting games… But I can’t really stand to play any other competitive multiplayer genre.

You will be happy to know there is online for every game in that collection.

Trailer for it here - https://youtu.be/Hl0D5FK3a50

Power stone and PS2 are both coming out next year in Capcom Fighting Collection 2.

This analogy is so bad, it is not even close to what is happening.

I will try and adapt to cars for you(I dont know why), but this is just really really bad.

Say you have designed a car, you can produce them on a very small scale, but you have come to valve(they make cars now) to mass produce. They do so, for a 30% cut(that reduces the more they sell) for everything they sell from their direct sales at the price you have set. There is no material costs or labour costs, just that cut of the price you have set.

Now valve have a sales page and are selling, and you decide that actually I would like more people to see the car, and so you consider selling it at other dealers. Valve says, sure, you can even have the cars for free from us(no 30% cut) and you can have basically an unlimited supply of free fully built cars to sell else where. We only ask that you sell the car at the same price you have set with us if you are selling a car we made.

You want to go sell it new cheaper? You are more than welcome too, but you cant sell the car we produced.

Such a bad analogy, but that is closer to what is actually happening.

Just think about how this works.

Steam currently allows you to generate keys and sell them for free, only stipulating that they must be sold for the same price as on steam.

Let’s say they are told that stipulation can’t be enforced.

Valve, will probably go with 1 of 2 options.

1 - you can no longer generate keys. So all the great key sites(GMG, Fanatical and so on) no longer exist, because no steam keys.

2 - Valve charge an upfront fee for keys generated. Now smaller pmdevs and publishers can no longer supply keys to sites, because they can’t afford the upfront costs.

What incentive does valve have to continue offering this free service? If it can be exploited for the detriment of steam, they will stop providing it.

Pretty sure he means a deluxe edition upgrade as a mtx.

Where some games allow you to get the base game, try it out and upgrade if you want. Rather than diving in at the deep end and not knowing if you’ll enjoy the game.

So for fighting games, character passes are a good thing(overall).

If you bought SF4 at launch and continued to play the game throughout it’s life, you ended up buying the same game multiple times. This was essentially a few characters and a balance patch(had new mechanics as well). This the fragmented the player base a lot, so if you were playing the base game you couldn’t play with someone on the latest version.

Street Fighter 5 however, switched to character passes and even being able to unlock characters with in-game currency(difficult if you came to the game later but possible). This means everyone got the balance patches and major system updates, so the player base stayed as a single entity.

For a niche genre, this is significantly better than multiple purchases of the same game, and allows for a game to get more updates over a longer time.

However I do wish they kept in more unlockable content like costumes, colours and stages.

Specific to Street Fighter 6 though, they have a battlepass(which is not good, but isn’t terrible either) which the free version gave/gives out a bunch of character rental tokens, so you can play with DLC characters you haven’t purchased.