Real quick "giving consumers more choice" translated from corporate babble = establishing a non standard platform so that we can charge higher prices for "premium" content and make even more money on hardware by releasing new hardware upgrades annually instead of a new console iteration every 3-8 years. Also backwards compatibility isn't new, my PC has games from the 80's on it. Non backwards capability was either pi$$ poor planning or intentional with companies. Allowing customers to bring their old favorites forward lowers the pressure a consumer feels to buy new products they're unsure of, so companies never planned it. It's only a thing now because consumers are finally complaining about it. And the only reason it's getting easier now had nothing to do with effort on anyone's part, they've decided instead of proprietary bs console code to just use pc hardware and coding. Basically they decided to go with the cheaper option and that just happens to enable backwards compatibility. They're not doing anyone a favor or trying, they're saving themselves development costs and trying to play it off like they're doing it for customers
@RyanBurnsRed: you are correct. The budget has nothing to do with it, indie for games is the same for music, it means no major publisher or developer was involved, usually at least, it gets tricky with big publishers like Sony and ubisoft opening up to grab indies though. I feel it also implies that if a publisher was involved (whether the publisher is minor or major) they had zero influence over developer decisions. Personally I feel that indie to most people really means uninfluenced by marketing or the decisions of suits. Of course only in a perfect world is creativity UN molested by financial concerns.
@speed45823: I've been a skeptic since fable back in the day. Operation raccoon city showed me to never buy a game without heavily researching first. Nms showed me company's can completely lie about their product and incur no legal repercussions, so simply don't buy a new title on day one ever. Every few years a game comes out so bad that you have to reinforce your cynical skepticism, but sadly it's well founded! No reservations, no first day buying. Soon enough game quality will slip so low games will only be worth buying once they reach the bargain bin.
@Triton: because it's a multi billion dollar industry and they want paychecks. Wait... Did You think games were being made by passionate creators whose sole desire was to make a fantastic experience they themselves wanted to experience? Well maybe, a bit, but it comes down to "love what you do", the community may be nasty but if you love video games and need a paycheck might well make games. It's not hard to deal with the community, like most people in the social media age, 99.99% of their outrage is just caps locked words on a screen. They don't actually do anything, most importantly including NOT buying the product they're so outraged over. Dealing with the gaming community is as easy as closing your browser. They're just words, they have no real effect. SC is one of the most highly funded crowd sourced games ever, they got their checks and from what I understand they respond to their community about as well as Ark, which is pretty good. Positive relationships with your community creates a much better work environment. Reddit, Kotaku, GameSpot and all the other public forums are just p!$$!ng in the wind overall, SC's internal forum is what they pay the most attention to and it isn't all whiny hate culture.
Seriously? Calm down hello games, getting a really inflated sense of self. No mans sky hasn't even released, whether it's actual success and great product or just a victory for marketing and a scam has yet to be seen. Mentioning your next product when you're still making lofty promises of updates to complete a current project that more and more sounds like it was rushed to gold status and shipped incomplete to begin with is really cockeyed and arrogant. Do something right FIRST and then you can start the hype train for your next product, I swear they're more interested in marketing hype than making actual games.
@magemaximus: this decision had nothing to do with being concerned with the gamers. Sony isn't your buddy, they don't worry about you unless you aren't spending with them. Most likely they didn't want a game that's in such constant flux, licensing used to be about discs, games that were multi disc had to pay a licensing fee per the disc. I'm not sure but possibly that's becoming a per gigabyte deal now. I do know that Sony and ms both charge companies to issue patches/updates, games in early access though update a lot compared to other titles and thus I'm sure early access requires a special arrangement to make the update process cost effective. Most likely is Sony wasn't willing to make a deal, they just want full price which would be ultra costly to the ark group, after a $600 ps3 it's clear Sony is willing commit to pricing structures that make their platform inaccessible to those unwilling or unable to just hurl money at them even to their own detriment.
@jinzo9988: early access is double edged that way. A good start increases your chances of getting funding, but a bad one dooms you. I agree on some standards should be established, possibly some legal policies too. On steam I got an early access called Star forge, made big lofty promises that it never got close to, stupidly they eventually 'released' the game essentially incomplete. They never met their goals, no where close, but it still left early access and was deemed a finished product, it just didn't have any of the features they promised. In reality we got ripped, scammed, but as it stands that's the risk of buying into early access. One could argue that getting early access is like buying a car, looking back now it's obvious Star forge wasnt going to fill out, just as it's clear Ark probably will. There are just signs and things to look for that are marks of quality. However is it really fair and acceptable to expect every gamer to have a well trained eye in the production quality of a game, to be able to identify the markers of both skill and focus a dev team needs to make something happen? I certainly don't think so and feel some black and white legal policies to guarantee at least a few things should be instated. No one should be allowed to make promises and hype over features that never come to be.
@freeformrulz: i believe in your personal experience, however I've got a $1000 home brew system and I run ark on almost max settings, full HD resolution, 55-65 fps. Are you running an AMD gfx solution? Cause Nvidia cards run about 100 times better because Ark is written on their graphic driver code, a issue which was brought up about a year ago in how Nvidia was corrupting the market with ethically twisted software enfranchisement practices. Not saying you're wrong, before my pc upgrade I could barely run the damn thing too. But on a high end pc the thing fly's in my opinion
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