@DarkFrankhs: It baffles me that bad streaming services are still a thing. They couldn't have a more clear model of how they should work. I tried Seeso back when it was a thing and it almost never worked. And then, for some reason, it went under.
Maybe I'm being way to optimistic, but I think it's just possible they've realized that brand damage is a real thing and how that damage can happen. Aside from the console war hold outs, otherwise known as morons, I don't believe anyone likes seeing people lose the ability to play something and it leaves a lasting impression. Turning a historically cross platform game into a system exclusive damages and shrinks the player base. That doesn't mean I expect God of War to show up on xbox, although they did release GoW 2018 on windows...
Dayum, that was a bit of a haymaker! A strategic move and it does actually make sense. If anything, MS shouldn't want this deal to go through. They've been spreading themselves thin, cannibalizing their own library in a very real way, and on top of all that they've let quality standards for their flagship franchise(s) completely evaporate. If they suddenly have to spend billions on aquiring act/bliz they'll pretty much be in the same situation as disney. Lots of aquisitions but none of them doing very well while losing market share and stock value and having almost no operating capital. Y'all know disney is down to less that 300 million in liquid cash? That's enough to keep them going for about a month given their expenses and the fact that they are required to come up with the money to buy out HULU from Comcast, somewhere around 25 billion. Disney says it something like 10 and it'll all probably go to court. To bring this back to MS, they need to learn from the big D. They aquired and aquired but they didn't foster the things they took on an now xbox is floundering because while it does a lot of things, it doesn't do any of them that well. Sony at least has an model that involves exclusivity and an actual drive to buy the things they make. With MS there are too many ways to get their software without a hardware investment and their software isn't great. They need to make quality, not quantity.
You know, all they were missing was a good lineup of exclusive games but that hasn't been microsoft's strategy for a while now. They seemed to think making titles available on both console and PC meant making a Halo game with an underwhelming campaign and multiplayer created by someone who had never played Halo multiplyer.
Something I've never understood about the backlash to man of steel was the whole violent Superman thing. Cards on table, I'm not a comic book enthsiast. I read a lot of Woverine, Batman, and quite a bit of Sandman but not much beyond and it was a long time ago. So from my predominantly normie perspective, what I saw was 3 superbeings with a teraforming engine showed up and started devastating the planet. Zod and his crew specifically tried to hurt and kill people in front of Superman, including his mother. What do you do as the only person on the planet who can oppose the kryptonians, talk to them in a soothing voice while they hurl train cars into children's hospitals? And when he killed he had no choice unless he wanted six people to be cut to pieces in front of him. He bellowed at Zod to stop and and Zod wasn't stopping so, snappity snap. I suppose the argument is that the story should never have played out in a way that put Superman in that position. But that seems kind of, I don't know, nerfed. Unless villains have a way to really challenge heroes there are no stakes. And it's been said for many years that while people love Superman, he's ridiculously overpowered which means his villains generally have to be as well because you only get one cunning-genious-with-no-superpowers per franchise.
Cool. What might help them as a company more than anything is not releasing broken software. I notice jedi survivor still runs like ass. Not letting that go. Fallen order had awful performance issues when it launched making in unplayable. I wound up walking away from it and just three months ago picked it back up. I finished it and really enjoyed it which led directly into survivor, which hitches and stutters and drops framerates into the 20s even in performance mode. This was a massive disappointment. It just didn't occurr to me they'd make the EXACT same mistake twice. This makes two times this year I bought a game without knowing the quality of the product and got screwed. This time with EA and then just a few days ago with blizzard. My fault, I was impatient.
Hmm. So between 6 and 9 thousand peoople play this daily. Not a small number of people but for eff's sake this is Halo. And they're pushing cosmetics. Seems kind of like putting up an ice cream joint next to a bomb crater. Yes we destroyed one of the biggest titles in video game history, but we have twist cones!
So far I'm underwhelemed. The good parts are directly lifted out of D2 but the whole experience is kind of orbiting D2. As a result there's not much you haven't already seen but it's all at a higher resolution. I haven't had any technical issues and the game runs smoothly so if you haven't already played D2R I'd say go for it. If you have played D2 I'd say don't bother unless you've just gotta have the new one, which is something I get. It's very pretty and the differences keep things fresh for a while. But before long you'll star mentally inserting things from D2 into this one.
Ives74's comments