14th July 2026, 7:58 AM
Id's engine is highly optimized and and the newest IdTech can run on much weaker hardware than the newest Unreal. To see them lose fully half of what makes their games so special... and of course they waited until the DAY that the new expansion for Doom Dark Ages released to announce that. Because, hey, why actually give employees ample time to prepare for such a devastating change in their lives?
XBox is through. If anyone ever trusts them again, it'll be too soon. It's no wonder there's recurring rumors they intend to divest XBox off into it's own distinct subsidiary company.
Sony by comparison are killing off physical media (which was already the path the industry was going to, with a number of games and DLC having no physical version already) and are killing off a number of projects and companies, namely Bungie, as well as ending PC ports of their first party games. While Sony isn't in as bad a place as MS, neither one are doing particularly well right now. With rumors stating the upcoming PS6 is going to be priced north of a grand, and that the next XBox, whatever it's cost, is basically going to be a PC in every sense, I'm not sure either one is going to sell particularly well with the economy in the state it's in right now.
Nintendo, even with their own price hikes, and a rather disappointing Metroid Prime 4, still seem positioned far better than the alternative consoles. Their in-house teams are still intact, and they've been focusing on standard one and done games all this time rather than live service games. The closest they come to "live service" anything is Splatoon, but even then that's not due to micro-transactions but a steady drip of rotating weekly content, which eventually comes to an end while leaving the online functionality intact for a while. Of course, they are not without sin. They FOMO the existence of entire games, like Super Mario 35, and well... requiring you to hand over your personal phone number just to use their online service is a step too far. I mean some people don't have personal phone numbers. Yes, even today. Some people don't have banking either, or internet access.
But, again, price hikes, and even the Steamdeck is now out of reach for a lot of people. It's better for many to just buy the cheapest laptop they can find and play whatever they can actually run on the thing outside of some office suite for school and office work.
Anyway (what do you mean anyway?!), it's now looking like Konami was only the first to engage in such a dramatic purge. Capcom, for their part, didn't want to go that route and have completely changed their business model to one that's sustainable, but only just barely. Remember they RUSHED a glitchy mess of a Monster Hunter to PC in order to fulfill their "10 years of increased profits" promise to their investors. And, well they can't do that forever. At some point, we need to look at the underlying cause of all of this... investor expectations. They're unsustainable for ANY corporation. It's literally impossible for any company to report increased profits every single year forever. That's not how money works.
XBox is through. If anyone ever trusts them again, it'll be too soon. It's no wonder there's recurring rumors they intend to divest XBox off into it's own distinct subsidiary company.
Sony by comparison are killing off physical media (which was already the path the industry was going to, with a number of games and DLC having no physical version already) and are killing off a number of projects and companies, namely Bungie, as well as ending PC ports of their first party games. While Sony isn't in as bad a place as MS, neither one are doing particularly well right now. With rumors stating the upcoming PS6 is going to be priced north of a grand, and that the next XBox, whatever it's cost, is basically going to be a PC in every sense, I'm not sure either one is going to sell particularly well with the economy in the state it's in right now.
Nintendo, even with their own price hikes, and a rather disappointing Metroid Prime 4, still seem positioned far better than the alternative consoles. Their in-house teams are still intact, and they've been focusing on standard one and done games all this time rather than live service games. The closest they come to "live service" anything is Splatoon, but even then that's not due to micro-transactions but a steady drip of rotating weekly content, which eventually comes to an end while leaving the online functionality intact for a while. Of course, they are not without sin. They FOMO the existence of entire games, like Super Mario 35, and well... requiring you to hand over your personal phone number just to use their online service is a step too far. I mean some people don't have personal phone numbers. Yes, even today. Some people don't have banking either, or internet access.
But, again, price hikes, and even the Steamdeck is now out of reach for a lot of people. It's better for many to just buy the cheapest laptop they can find and play whatever they can actually run on the thing outside of some office suite for school and office work.
Anyway (what do you mean anyway?!), it's now looking like Konami was only the first to engage in such a dramatic purge. Capcom, for their part, didn't want to go that route and have completely changed their business model to one that's sustainable, but only just barely. Remember they RUSHED a glitchy mess of a Monster Hunter to PC in order to fulfill their "10 years of increased profits" promise to their investors. And, well they can't do that forever. At some point, we need to look at the underlying cause of all of this... investor expectations. They're unsustainable for ANY corporation. It's literally impossible for any company to report increased profits every single year forever. That's not how money works.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)