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Topic: The everything Xbox thread

Posts 10,661 to 10,680 of 11,953

Dezzy

@Glitchling78

If you're unsure where the DLC is supposed to be played, feel free to come back here and ask. The main game stupidly doesn't tell you when you're supposed to play it!

It's dangerous to go alone! Stay at home.

Grumblevolcano

Game Pass titles through October 22nd:

  • AoE III Definitive Edition (PC) - October 15th
  • Heave Ho (PC) - October 15th
  • Katana Zero (Console + PC) - October 15th
  • Tales of Vesperia Definitive Edition (Console + PC) - October 15th
  • The Swords of Ditto Mormo's Curse (PC) - October 15th
  • ScourgeBringer (Console) - October 21st
  • Cricket 19 (Console) - October 22nd
  • Supraland (Console) - October 22nd

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2020/10/13/coming-soon-xbox-game-...

[Edited by Grumblevolcano]

Grumblevolcano

gcunit

Xbox Remote Play to android devices... it 'currently' isn't compatible with backwards compatible games. Is there much cause for hope that this will change?

I've just set my remote play up for the first time and immediately cheesed when I realise it won't run the games I wanted to play with it.

You guys had me at blood and semen.

What better way to celebrate than firing something out of the pipe?

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.

My Nintendo: gcunit

Dezzy

Yesssss, they've announced exactly what I was hoping for. All of the backcompat "enhancements" for the Xbox One X will also be adapted for the Series S. Meaning the selection of old 360 games will play in 1440p and with advanced texture filtering.

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2020/10/13/xbox-series-x-and-xbox...

They also include this example of their new enhancement of 60fps for Xbox One games. Apparently this will only work automatically with "some" games though, due to differences in how games were originally designed. Hopefully most games that had a PC version will work with it, given that those were designed for 60fps on PC. The Series S/X is shaping up to be the best backwards compatible console ever made! The Series S is probably worth the console price purely based on backcompat, even if no next gen games were coming out.

[Edited by Dezzy]

It's dangerous to go alone! Stay at home.

sixrings

@Dezzy I want a series s. However what I really want to play is Soul Calibur 6. That game was xbox one x enhanced and ran at 1440p. On the One S it ran at 720p? If I buy a Series S will it upgrade to 1440p. That is the real question? Id much prefer a larger amount of games seeing improvements than a few selected curated games.

sixrings

dmcc0

Is there an equivalent website to Deku Deals for Xbox games, wishlist etc? I find it super-useful for Switch games, but have only come across comparison sites for different region stores.

dmcc0

gcunit

@dmcc0 psprices.com can be set to whichever platform you choose and lets you set up price drop alerts.

You guys had me at blood and semen.

What better way to celebrate than firing something out of the pipe?

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.

My Nintendo: gcunit

NEStalgia

@gcunit ugg, the darned quotes never tag the quoted person, but tag anyone the quote tagged! I'll have to reply to that later!

@Glitchling78 " KH3 is also on the list. I lost what’s going on in the plot a long time ago "

That's ok, so did Square Enix!

NEStalgia

Ryu_Niiyama

NEStalgia wrote:

@Ryu_Niiyama also, nl just wasn't nl without perfume avatars flashing!

Wait, do they bother your vision? Not trying to give anyone a seizure.

On topic, just snagged two 1 tb ssds for the ps4 and xbone. Now I can actually beat my games!

[Edited by Ryu_Niiyama]

Taiko is good for the soul, Hoisa!
Japanese NNID:RyuNiiyamajp
Team Cupcake! 11/15/14
Team Spree! 4/17/19
I'm a Dream Fighter. Perfume is Love, Perfume is Life.

dmcc0

gcunit wrote:

@dmcc0 psprices.com can be set to whichever platform you choose and lets you set up price drop alerts.

Thanks, will check it out

dmcc0

Banjo-

Key people and 70 percent of the designers crowd have left Naughty Dog. Some of them are joining The Initiative. People from Bungie, Crystal Dynamics, Rockstar Games and Respawn Entertainment have also joined Microsoft's new studio.

https://www.purexbox.com/news/2020/10/two_more_ex-naughty_dog...

https://kotaku.com/as-naughty-dog-crunches-on-the-last-of-us-...

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-03-14-crunch-once-aga...

Some pieces,

Kotaku wrote:

As a result of these problems, Naughty Dog has seen a steady trickle of departures over the past five years. That kind of attrition can be crushing, not just because people are forced to say goodbye to dear friends but because those friends leave holes that make all of these problems even worse.

After the brutal development cycles of Uncharted 4 and Uncharted Lost Legacy, Naughty Dog has found itself with little choice but to hire a disproportionately high number of juniors and contractors for The Last of Us II, even if that perpetuates many of the problems that caused senior staff to leave.

Some at Naughty Dog who spoke to me for this story said they expect more people to quit, or that they plan to leave themselves, once The Last of Us II has shipped and bonuses come in (which is usually six months after release). And so the cycle will continue.

Banjo-

Switch Friend Code: SW-6404-5318-0807

Dezzy

@BlueOcean

Where you getting "70 percent" from?

It's dangerous to go alone! Stay at home.

Banjo-

Dezzy wrote:

@BlueOcean Where you getting "70 percent" from?

"70 percent of the designers crowd" are my words and the source is linked above.

Kotaku wrote:

Of the 20 non-lead designers in the credits of 2016’s Uncharted 4, a whopping 14 —70 percent— are no longer at the studio.

Banjo-

Switch Friend Code: SW-6404-5318-0807

Octane

Uncharted 4 started development in 2011. So 14 out of 20 people left in 9 years. I don't think that's too bad. People tend to move to other companies a lot in the industry, especially after a game is finished.

They definitely don't hide the crunch, people kinda know what to expect when they start working there, and maybe some do it knowing they'll stay only for one game. If it's unsustainable, they will have to change. It's inevitable.

Octane

Dezzy

@BlueOcean

Oh right, so just that particular group of 20 people.

Well that doesn't really tell us anything. It could be that lots of those people were specifically hired for a 1-game contract, so they were never expecting to stay with the company long term.

I thought you meant 70% of the entire team. Which WOULD be rather alarming.

It's dangerous to go alone! Stay at home.

Banjo-

Octane wrote:

So 14 out of 20 people left in 9 years. I don't think that's too bad.

No. Those are only designers, more people have left.

@Octane / @status-204 If you really think this is not too bad / it is good...

Kotaku wrote:

As a result of these problems, Naughty Dog has seen a steady trickle of departures over the past five years. That kind of attrition can be crushing, not just because people are forced to say goodbye to dear friends but because those friends leave holes that make all of these problems even worse.

After the brutal development cycles of Uncharted 4 and Uncharted Lost Legacy, Naughty Dog has found itself with little choice but to hire a disproportionately high number of juniors and contractors for The Last of Us II, even if that perpetuates many of the problems that caused senior staff to leave.

Some at Naughty Dog who spoke to me for this story said they expect more people to quit, or that they plan to leave themselves, once The Last of Us II has shipped and bonuses come in (which is usually six months after release). And so the cycle will continue.

While reporting this story, I heard a number of anecdotes about individual developers’ experiences. Employees would come in wearing sick masks so they could keep working even with bad coughs (before the recent coronavirus outbreak). They’d skip meals—or showers.

After Uncharted 4 and Uncharted Lost Legacy, even some of the designers and artists who had been at Naughty Dog for more than a decade decided to call it quits. One developer told me that toward the end of 2017 and into 2018, it felt like they were getting new farewell emails every week.

Some of them agreed to say speak publicly,

Jonathan Cooper wrote:

The reason I left is because I only want to work with the best. That is no longer Naughty Dog. Their reputation for crunch within LA is so bad it was near impossible to hire seasoned contract game animators to close out the project. As such we loaded up on film animators.

One good friend of mine was hospitalised at that time due to overwork. He still had over half a year to go. There have been others since.

Naughty Dog's success is due in large part to Sony's deep pockets funding delays rather than skill alone. A more senior team would have shipped TLOU2 a year ago.

Banjo-

Switch Friend Code: SW-6404-5318-0807

Dezzy

@BlueOcean

I don't remotely trust Kotaku's (or Jason Schreir's) ability to report on something like this honestly. They have very clear poisitions of their own that they're trying to push (creating unions)
Maybe that happens to be a fairly accurate portrayal of what's going on at Naughty Dog. It's certainly possible. Or maybe they only talk to the staff who confirm their own beliefs, and ignore anyone who says they're fine with the amount of overtime and love working there.
There's simply no way of knowing without more information. But that information can't be just a series of individual anecdotes. You need representative data on the opinions of staff there if you're going to understand it. We don't have that, and "journalists" often don't even bother trying to get it.

It's dangerous to go alone! Stay at home.

Octane

The moment crunch is mentioned Jason Schreier pops up somewhere. So he's never going to report on crunch without bias. For example, he specifically mentioned 70% of non-lead designers, which is an oddly specific category, and probably the highest, to prove his point.

14 out of 20 non-lead designers, so not even out of all designers. I have no idea how fast the turnover rate is, but I don't think this is out of the ordinary. This is just my hunch though. Like @Dezzy said, so many people are only hired for one game, so it's no surprise they are no longer with the company anymore. Some of these positions are very flexible, and people move between companies a lot.

How many of the total staff has left ND in the last 10 years? And how much is the average for other big studios? Those are the numbers I'd like to know before drawing a conclusion. If this isn't sustainable, they will have to change. It seems like it apparently isn't that bad, because this has been the situation at ND for a while (U4 did have crunch as well IIRC), and the quality of their games haven't suffered either IMO. I'm personally not really worried at the moment.

Octane

Banjo-

It's sad when some dismiss claims and assume that people that actually work at a company have an agenda when their words have been objectively reported by Kotaku, Eurogamer and themselves on Twitter. I hope that this never happens to you and people call you liars on top of that.

Banjo-

Switch Friend Code: SW-6404-5318-0807

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