News Activision warns of Xbox 720, PlayStation 4 'uncertainties'

if you churn out the same **** year on year then of course the people who pay your wages finally get sick of it. innovation is the way forward. cant polish a turd all the time.



*well you can , as mythbusters proved but you get the idea*

 

I was just about to say the same thing. All you need is something new and innovative to spark more sales.

WoW loosing subs is pretty much guaranteed at this point, they have done well to keep it going this far.

Perhaps something like the Oculus Rift will renew interest.

 

Apparently you can, just give it a new engine.

Sorry CoD fans.

 

I think mr Bobby Kotick and his company need to actually support the product and not spout rubbish


Activison have 4 *reasonable* titles on Wii U.


http://wiiudaily.com/activision-wii-u-games/


007 tanked as its bad ; cod we all know , skylanders was good as was transformers - project nova will become another skylanders this year (or early next)


but that's it - they have nothing else ready to go. and EA wont publish on Wii U either.

 

I dont think any of the new consoles will sell its an opinion ive had for a long time.

Expensive consoles are just not selling from the Wii U to the Nintendo 3ds to sonys Ps Vita. All have been poor sellers and all have struggled under the cost of the console.

Theres no guarentee a $400 £400 ps4 or xbox 720 will do alot better at a time when most people can ill afford another console with super high priced games. ( rumours of a £60-£70 game price are rife across the net for both new consoles)

People want both to succeed as they assume it will fix the PC gamer market but the biggest game due this year GTA5 does not even have a guarentee of a pc release. If thats the way Rockstar sees the current PC market then other companys will surely look at it as well and may delay or not release ports of games.

Rockstar have listed every other platform except the Wii U and the PC on places where it might launch GTA5. Just because its easier to port for does not mean Devs will do it. Theres very few major dev companies left they are all under Big name publishers now or in house.

If Sony has exclusive deals in place ( similar to what they had on the ps2) then some of the games may never be ported, To this day we have never seen a metal gear solid or Gran Turismo on the pc both would sell well id imagine.

WoW finally loosing subs after 10 years just about is not really surprising, The fact thats not reported here that Starcraft 2 Heart of swarm and diablo 3 were the rank 1 and 2 in the pc game sales chart for the year would of been better news for activision, Simply because both sold very well diablo 3 has broke 10mil in sales and both have not been pirated which is a win for activision.

COD needs a refresh but i dont know if it will happen or not we shall see on that front.

 

Gareth , maybe I was a little harsh BUT as you said - with very few triple A titles , and even less non Nintendo exclusives it will all ways be hard for Nintendo - and now that EA will not be supporting the platform it`ll make things worse.


worst case? even at £99 Nintendo wont sell many , all third party publishers leave the platform and it end`s up going the way of sega.


WOW subs allways decline in the middle of an exp pak - although , this time its not even the middle , only 7 months in.

the decline though has been steady - a peak of 12 million in 2010/2011 , to 10mil in 2011/2012 now at 8million 2012/2013 (like be around 7 million by year end).

if the roadmap is correct from 2010 , we will look at D3 expak 1 this year and the final wow exp pak next year , around the time of titan IF that's still `on track`.

 

Which company is that? There's the Ouya console(launch delayed due to controller lag problems), but it hardly brings anything new to the table to wow gamers. It's unlikely to be a success with all but the most casual of casuals.

The real threat to next gen imho, is if publishers get too greedy and allow game prices to rip. Many AAA console titles are already at the point where price is the main imposing consideration. £70 per game could scupper these new consoles before they even get a chance to shine. It'd be better to keep prices the same as this gen or even to loss lead, to get that big early user base established, anything that stalls uptake will likely harm publishers more in the long run.

 

There's also a considerable lack of disposable income around at the present (I actually want a Wii U, even if it's only for the Nintendo franchises) but even with the price drop It'll be a few months before I can bite...

I'd also heard that a lot of Nintendo's first party titles were held back for the 3rd party titles to have a bit of a push (and then there's complaints that there are too few titles released (which there are))

It's also a game of catch 22, people won't buy a system without games & developers won't make games for a system without a decent sized player-base.

 

Yeah, it's surprising it raised that much. But still, many tech experts think the actual product will flop, and certainly the early reviews have been less than stellar. It's difficult to see who it's actually aimed at or what lasting appeal it can hope for looking at the games.

This fad for casual is a retrograde step for gaming generally and the black or white thinking we're hearing expressed from people within the industry; that it's one or the other, casual or AAA big budget , seems like a false dichotomy. Some say AAA simply isn't as viable anymore, although, this could be just the sheer length of time this gen has dragged on that's now hurting sales of AAA titles (the 'seen it all before' factor). This and the fact that the marketing budget is now often outstripping game development costs.

 

As a PC gamer, I think most PC gamers will be rooting for the PS4. Sony are putting together a very strong console. Those who have some understanding of the underlying architecture realise just how strong that console can potentially become. And in Cerny they've got someone who has clearly thought very deeply about what's needed.

 

Specifically regarding WoW subscriptions - the issue with MOP is that if you're a player that plays to raid and wants to raid heroics, then you need to sink in several hours of play doing things that are not really raid related apart from getting the gear to improve performance....worse at te beginning or each patch because you also run looking for raid to improve you current gear and get new tier 4pc bonus asap.

The amount of time it takes to get a character up to raiding gear levels and to sustain a certain amount of reputation etc, it's simply not sustainable.... if you have a life outside of Azeroth that is.

Some people say Wrath made it too easy, yet that's when it peaked at 12million subs.

Cataclysm made a good game but lacklustre instances in Firelands and beyond, dropped to 10million subs - I got bored during Firelands and was the start of the end of my love for the game.....you know when a game lacks innovation when you're explaining a boss fight and say something like 'it's a bit like (insert random boss name from previous expansion) but as well as that there's AoE like on (insert random encounter from previous expansion)

Pandaria just takes too long - logging on for an hour a day was never enough to get done the pre-requisite things that the game expects raiders to do.....coupled with the boredom felt in Cata, made the decision to stop playing an easy one.....the tough part was leaving the guild I was in, we'd raided together since Wrath but on reflection they were the reason I never stopped playing when I got bored in Cataclysm.

People (including me) are walking with their subs - These are most likely long terms subscribers that are tired of the game concept in general and the changes made in the current expansion are not to their liking making the decision to walk away much less difficult than before.

I am unsure that spending a ton of money (more than was already budgeted) on trying to keep wow alive is a good move, the damage is done and subs will continue to fall until the next expansion now (late 2014 earliest?).

I doubt I will play another mmo they all just feel too samey and require a massive time sink, it's unlilely I'd return to WoW..... life's too short.

Regarding COD etc... I share peoples views here that eventually, the people playing that game will want more innovation than is available today, but also, I think that multiplayer masses still enjoy a simple team deathmatch or two, I certainly do, COD just happens to satisfy this requirement the same way UT2004 did waaaay back then

The whole games industry should be looking for innovation now - before the current concepts reach total saturation and are done to death, resulting in ever falling sales.

 

^^ somewhat like `the next big thing ` of PhysX card owners - who are now sitting on a hardware product with no support and is useless in anything from the last 3 years....

 

I think I heard you say this before and I got distracted by shiny things before I could reply. The 3DS is selling like gangbusters and has many great games already and many more coming in the next 12 months.

I'm not buying one, just saying its doing very well.

 

That's exactly the issue with jumping onto the mobile hardware ship. In a couple of months you'll be able to say "why can my phone play prettier and newer games than my Ouya?". The only use I see it is as a portable emulation machine but guess what, so are phones which can also have a controller connected to them and some can also output to your TV. The Ouya is a nice idea but isn't compatible with the mobile landscape or console landscape.

I do find it surprising that there isn't much mention of the PSVita though. The Wii U has already sold just under half of the PSVita sales in 4 & 1/2 months (latest figures 31st of March) whilst the PSVita has had 17 months of sales figures (9th of May).

I know it is gloomy for the Wii U but I think they'll be able to pull it back. The 3DS done terrible at launch and seemed like an irrelevant console for a while but it really started picking up a year ago in terms of the quality of titles being released and it is booming now. The fact that the constant delayed games on the Wii U hasn't helped it. We were led to believe Pikmin 3 would be a launch title, then we were told it would be released in the launch window and now we're looking at July to September. The same story can be said for a lot of the titles so no wonder it's struggling :-(

 

Another example is OnLive, Studios were telling anyone that would listen PC HW could effectively become obsolete overnight. More sensible tech people did the bandwidth calculations needed for a comparable user experience, to that available to someone with even a mid-range PC and knew it wasn't viable . Leaving aside varying network infrastructure,which was and still is, nowhere near ready for OnLive . But they weren't short of enthusiastic backers. If it were viable a company like EA would probably be all over it.

Ouya may yet sell lots of units mind, if they get the advertising right. I mean, MS shifted shedloads of Kinect units which many Xbox users now feel they were almost duped into buying , most now sit collecting dust according to the forums. That's another reason why Sony might win the next gen imho - if MS put too much presentational emphasis on Kinect 2.0 , in the process alienating both core gamers and those who bought the first Kinect.

 

Personally I'm a fan of COD so I don't mind that but for WoW, its not hard to see why its losing subs.

GW2 is a £30 one time purchase and after that you get to play it whenever you want. WoW, however doesn't offer anything else and you have to sink too much time to feel like its worth the sub. I trialled WoW and GW2, and found them both equal, but I don't have the time nor want to play a game as much as I would have to to justify the game a month price point of WoW.