Darksiders Genesis Hits Switch On Valentine's Day 2020, But Google Stadia Is Getting It Earlier

Will probably hold off for the console version but Stadia release is tempting, glad it finally has a solid date though!

Google Stadia ?
Where is that Futurama laughing Bender gif ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n5E7feJHw0

"... same time as their PS4 and Xbox One-owning pals"
Given the sour-graping over cross-play seen at the sister site, someone should really get the memo about being, uh, pals.

@KitsuneNight

Definitely worth buying a Stadium for.

Everytime a new headline anywhere contains "Google Stadia" I'm realerted that it wasn't just a joke.

This was the last game I was excited about for this year. But I suppose it’s not a big deal! February looks empty from here!

@BarefootBowser It's perfectly possible that Stadia will bite a decent chunk of mobile gaming market

@Pod
I like that someone got mad about you mocking this streaming service, they’d really have to be guzzling the koolaid to think that a gaming streaming service with billions of Googlebucks behind it is anything but pure cancer for this medium.

I hope its better than Darksiders 3... such a horrid game... the graphics were also horrible. They have to gain my trust back in them

@Donutsavant The Last of Us Part 2 comes out like a week or two later so early 2020 already looks a little crowded

@SalvorHardin
I'm not really upset with Stadia, or people who think they might enjoy it. I just think it's a lousy idea, and that it won't be very successful.

Early 2020 keeps looking better and better.

seems like a dumb plan. Because I won't buy a console version for full price while the PC version has, assumingly, already been on sale several times by then

I read that as Darkstalkers and got excited for a second.

Are these games worth playing and if so do I start from the first one?

Stadia is the high budget Ouya. With similar practices.

RIP Lobo Destroyo.

@AxeltheCorvikni

Eh, if only.
Darkstalkers 4 would be cool.

@SalvorHardin OTOH what was the last project with billions of Googlebucks behind it that didn't go down in flames, unceremoniously that wasn't tied to advertising or search?

Schmidt's a lot better at buying politicians than he is at buying marketshare.

If Google is not willing to invest in everyone by making a few AAA titles available to all even without a sub they will get nowhere, they need a good faith gesture. I mean look at epic they are worth far less and give out crazy amounts of games for free all the time. Google you need to win us over and free stuff is how you do it.

@NEStalgia

Android ?

@BarefootBowser

No matter how it does (i'm guessing not too well) Google will cancel it after a couple of years.

I honestly hope that Stadia fails, along with ‘game streaming’ in general. Video game streaming is all about taking away your ownership of the games you play, and if it is well supported, more companies will embrace this cancer.

@Pod
I'm not upset about Stadia in itself either, but more about the potential it has to eventually ruin gaming as we know it. Not completely, but the gaming landscape will change for sure if it's moderately successful (which I doubt, but hey, we never know).

The fact that we're posting on a gaming forum shows that we're close to the gaming equivalent of what audiophiles are for audio and music, and what cinephiles are for cinema. And from the perspective of many (if not most) audiopile and cinephile, the transition to digital and streaming has been affecting their field often in a negative way. Overall sound quality of recordings is lower these days than what it had been over 30 years ago, artists can rarely live from their art anymore, wireless audio is worse than cabled audio, etc. Image quality from movie and TV streaming services is worse than physical discs (that are on their way out). Some movies aren't available in digital (no one picked them up for distribution, even if they won prizes in festivals), and not on physical either (too costly for niche movies)

We live in a world in which "convenience" always win over "quality" or "performance". People buy convenience, so that is where the big bucks are, and so that is where companies put their money.

Artful music and movies are harder to find these days. They still exist, but you need to get out of the beaten, popular paths to find them. This is a direct result of movies and music having transitionned to purely and simply new commercial products like anything else. Digital streaming has been the catalyst for these changes. And it will eventually happen to games.

So Stadia in itself doesn't get me angry. Nor are the people who think it's a good idea (well, a little, maybe). It's mostly where this trend will inevitably leads that worries me, as a gamer.

A shame they moved away from the Zelda-style hame they had with the first two in the series. Darksiders II was phenomenal when I played it on Xbox, and I'm planning on picking it up again for Switch.

@KitsuneNight Google doesn't own Android, and Microsoft-co-owns the commercial part of it. Google did successfully CONVINCE everyone their custom build of it with a play store included is all there is to Android, though, so there's that. In that sens the Play Store was the success, not Android itself, but fair enough.

OTOH that was successful because there was absolutely zero competition sans closed-system lifestyle-brand Apple and the half-hearted "we don't actually care" WinPhone. Gaming has buckets of competition.

You didn't say "Chrome" but I'll give you that one as a free bonus too, even though it's related to search and advertising fairly directly. I'll still never understand how Chrome was successful...it's horrendously awful by any metric except "but it's fast."

@Realnoize
The technology won't be an issue once we eventually achieve instantaneous data transfer via quantum internet.

My issue is that personaly computing won't be personal anymore. But then again, it never was in the arcades, either. And back then, you can bet a lot of kids would have happily paid a monthly subscription for getting to play for as long as they wanted.

Stadia's issue is that you STILL don't get full access to all the games through the subscription. Most of it is still a pay-per-game model. Which won't move anything anywhere.

@NEStalgia Regarding Chrome, I think that's exactly why it was successful - Chrome came at exactly the right time. IE was never really beloved and eschewed web standards (More a pain for developers than users, I admit) and FireFox was rapidly bloating and becoming slower and slower. For sure, that's the reason I initially switched. I don't really think Chrome is horrendously awful, but I don't think it's particularly great, either. It was a fast, lightweight browser that for the most part just worked - which was more than either FireFox or IE could deliver at the time.

@roadrunner343 It's also designed as spyware from the ground up, lacked (at the time) a multitude of standard features, and tried to reinvent web standards to make itself standards compliant - the only difference between it and IE was that it succeeded there where IE didn't.

And then they added the whole horrific plugin system that then bloated it far beyond any other browser (still!)

If it weren't pushed by Google, it would already be forgotten.

Then again "because it's fast" is just about the last reason I'd choose the software to interface with countless external networks.....

This is just awesome! Liked the second, a Zeldalite game, and have yet to play first since I picked it up for my Wii U. But switch getting games day 1 is a huge win and even the fact that games like the Witcher play great despite not looking as good doesn’t bother me. I can play it at work on my break and at home. If you can’t see how awesome switch is for that, then maybe Sony will have to just make a psvita-switch for you too.

Gaming has come a long ways from playing Metroid 2 on a gb fat with a magnifying light at night, to switcher 3.

@NEStalgia Calling it spyware is disingenuous at best, as you know that provokes a completely different emotional response. Of course, it was designed to collect some data for advertising purposes. The EULA is also pretty clear on that. This is completely different from spyware designed to steal your personal information for resale, identity theft, fraudulent purchases, etc... Unless you're also going to count Facebook, Amazon, or pretty much any other web service as spyware as well.

Saying it succeeded because it was pushed by Google is also an odd stance to take, considering no company has proven they are more willing to abandon projects than Google. Browsers were incredibly bloated at the time, and Chrome was fast and simply worked. I can't really talk to the plugin bloat (Even still, I use 2 extensions) and I would imagine most users fall or fell into the same boat.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not an advocate for Chrome (Though, I am a fan of Chromium/V8), I just don't absolutely hate it. The fact that modern day chrome running multiple tabs has consumed 12GB of my RAM is condemning enough on its own. I just don't think using hyperbole and scare tactics is the way to make your point.

@BlueBlur101 but not for Nintendo, at least not yet.

TMS is January, and Animal Crossing is March

@FarkyValentine I say start with the second one actually! The story runs concurrent with the first, but it’s a far prettier game, the music and the art direction are both sublime. It also puts you the puzzle solving dungeon goodness a little faster than the first

PC + SteamLink + iPhone/Android = Stadia.

But Ill wait for Switch. The Last Of Us 2 for home and Genesis on the GO for february sounds like a good combo. 🤔👍

@roadrunner343 Google is in the business of making spyware. It's what they do. Period. No it's not some Nigerian Prince scam, but it's not that much better. They sell and use people's personal information in ways people don't understand affect them, and make sure to be as "clear" about it as most confuses the issue.

Google, Facebook, Amazon, MS....and the myriad of data repository companies whose names are not household names have power over people's lives acting as "Big Brother" that people are still oblivious to, in ways that are not direct. The Nigerian Prince does not.

If a man in a lab coat were to follow you around everywhere you went, recording absolutely everything you did on a clipboard, do you think most people would voluntarily accept that in exchange for some coupons and his willingness to be assistive?

Yet hide the man with the lab coat from sight, and the world simultaneously volunteers to accept that.

@NEStalgia So you're intentionally using a term incorrectly, because you don't like data collection for advertisement purposes. It's fine if you hate it and object to the practice. That doesn't make it spyware, and it's extremely dishonest to use intentionally fear-mongering language to make your point.

Regarding whether or not you want to use web services that collect your personal information is up to you - I for one do tend to stay away from all social media, for example - but that is in no way the same as a dude in a lab coat tracking your every move, especially since (in a perfect world) most of these advertising companies do not store information they can use to personally identify you - at least, in theory. Again, whether you or I trust them is moot - it's not even remotely close to the same thing as spyware. Not the information they collect, nor how they go about collecting it, and to say otherwise is intentionally misleading.

@Donutsavant Honestly I don't even need more Nintendo content at the moment

I might even skip Animal Crossing temporarily because of DOOM Eternal

There's just so much happening

@roadrunner343 There's no such thing as "data that is not personally identifiable." That's another such dishonest term. The reality is that piece of data ON ITS OWN does not identify you. But when combined with all the simultaneous data they're collecting, together, it is all personally identifiable. ALL the data collected, is personally identifiable, when added with the other "non-identifiable" data they collected. Who's being dishonest? May want to look at the spyware vendors. It is spyware.

To pretend there is a distinction between that software and the connotation of what you think the term implies is what is misleading.

@Pod

Still, gaming is headed in the same direction movies and music went into, and the result for those so far is not something most audiophiles and cinephiles like.

The future for gaming (if streaming is the future, and I think it will be at some point) means we're either not in control of our libraries anymore, or a third party decides in our place what we're allowed or not to play.

Personnaly, the day this streaming business becomes the norm, is the day I quit being interested in new games and turn exclusively to all the games I missed before. I have quite a backlog. One that could last me dozens of years, probably, all platforms combined. lol! So I won't lack anything to play...

@BarefootBowser

Hey man; enjoy it. I won't give Google 1 penny.

@NEStalgia If you want to argue I used the incorrect term out of ignorance or stupidity, so be it. I disagree, but that's still a far cry from intentionally using a term entirely incorrectly for the sole purpose of conjuring up a fear driven response. There's no denying that tailored advertising is a far cry from spyware. Yes, putting all the pieces of information together would likely result in you being to identify someone. That's ignoring the fact that an actual human being does not typically have access to any of that data. The user also has to consent. How the data is collected and stored is also highly regulated. I typically find myself agreeing with you/your position, but this is one that is just incredibly dishonest. Even if I agree with 90% of what you're saying, you simply cannot equate data collection for advertising purposes to spyware. I'm not even saying data collection for advertising is a good or honest practice - heck, there's been enough controversy in the news about data breaches from pretty much every major tech company - but that still does not place them anywhere near the same category as intentionally malicious software.

The only game I'm looking forward to that's "Stadia Exclusive" is GYLT (but I've read that it might not be an exclusive at all, which is why I'm looking forward to it). But other than that, I really really don't like the idea of Stadia and what Google has been doing every time a new thing has been revealed, like having to buy the games full priced, just makes me feel like it will just be dead on arrival.

Very interesting as stadia doesn't require a console to play it on

@roadrunner343 You honestly believe "tailored advertising" is what that data is valuable for? Wanna buy a bridge?

The world is not run by humans sifting through data compiled in a file cabinet and a Rolodex. The system itself, the system against which jobs, travel, medical histories, loans, credit, political activity etc. etc. etc processes is based on compiled data sitting in a database. The database people happily feed data into for "targeted advertising and is not personally identifiable." And software like Chrome is designed to harvest that data.

"Consent" is questionable, of the user is not wholly aware, in explicit detail, of exactly how that data is combined with all other data and EVERY entity to which it will be visible to, exchanged with, and compiled against, and EVERY way in which that can affect them. That's not just on Google. That's on everyone. There's the full legal EULA that people agree to without reading or understanding, yet is legally binding. Then there's the shorthand the companies present you with that use words like "targeted advertising" and "not personally identifiable" that are "spin" at best, outright deception at worst. And "consent" is required to participate in any real capacity in the world as expected, often, these days, starting in schools as a requirement. "Consent" under coercion or duress is legally not consent.

You may disagree all you want, but the nature is spyware, pure and simple. You may redefine spyware if you wish, but it is not harmless, it is not merely for advertising (even if that was acceptable), it is an extraction of personal data against a user's knowledge/understanding of use, and that knowledge/understanding is purposefully obfuscated, both directly and in concert with buying enough legislation to be sure there's not much scrutiny placed on the practices.

It's as intentionally malicious as any intelligence gathering organization. Which is to say, it's rarely malicious unless you become the enemy of, a threat to, or simply valuable to exploit by someone with access to it.

@NEStalgia Google and Facebook have made billions that would suggest, yes, the primary use is for advertising purposes =/

I'm not the one redefining terms to suit an agenda - it seems you are against any sort of information gathering - whether personal or not - and deem anything that does so spyware. That's not what 99% of the world's population is talking about when they talk about spyware.

Regarding consent, sure it can be obfuscated at times, but I'd say most users of Google services and Facebook understand their information is being collected. If not, what do you really expect those companies to do about it? They can't force you to read EULAs. I won't disagree that EULAs are sometimes intentionally vague, and it would be difficult to know every entity and every piece of information goes to, but that's also a risk the individual accepts when using the service. You're free to avoid the service altogether, as I do with Facebook. Regardless, that's a separate conversation altogether, but even if there were some shady EULAs, that doesn't make Chrome, Facebook, Windows 10, YouTube, Amazon, etc... "Spyware" just because you don't like certain business practices.

@roadrunner343 The data is worth far more for sale and trade than it is for "advertising" alone.

With all due respect you seem to be pretty under-informed on the extent of data collected by these companies, how they use it, and how they combine a tremendous amount of information into very, very, very complete personal dossiers, and your defense of them would thus seem to stem from believing what they are doing is something other than what they are doing.

I stand by the phrasing of spyware. In truth it's something quite a bit worse than normal spyware, with a less immediate negative consequence but a potentially more severe one later down the line.

The question isn't about whether information gathering is personal or not. It IS personal information. Period. There's no debate around that. That was part of the purpose of them a few years ago changing the EULAs fairly quietly to merge the data gathering between the facets of Google. You don't have to believe me if you don't want to, you can trust Eric Schmidt. "With your permission, you give us more information about you, about your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches. We don't need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about."
I mean, he arrogantly and flippantly announced just how "non identifying" it is, quite some time ago.

It's not just the obvious data. Chrome aside, the layers baked into the OS, and the HARDWARE on an Android device for data gathering (and a Windows device, and was part of the reason for the quiet transition from BIOS/CMOS to UHCI.) Those pieces connect together to form a COMPLETE profile. That's not by coincidence. And at no point did the EULA make very clear to users "by the way, ignore what we said about non-identifying, we harvest enough information to have a full profile and dossier on you, permanently. And we share it with anyone willing to pay enough for it, but not always for actual cash transfer, thus we say we don't 'sell' it. Equity trades aren't a sale, after all....." THAT is what should be the first line of the EULA. Anything else is pure deceit. Most people, seem entirely unaware of the extent of what is collected, including yourself.

As for EULAs....it's a fallacy to pull out the old claim that you can "not use the service" - these services, perhaps not google specifically but the broad category of services were talking about, are a simple requirement to function in the Western world in 2019. Most kids are REQUIRED to do so for school now and are far to young to understand what is involved, and once they grow up with it as a standard part of life, cant, later on, really distance themselves from it even if they know, like a digital Stockholm Syndrome. Most people are REQUIRED to do so for work, either to gain employment or to function within it. The old argument that you are not forced to participate is invalid. You, of course, could refuse to go to school, work, purchase food, use electricity or running water, live in the mountains, drink from springs, and eat only food consumed or stolen while trespassing and hunting without a license. You could eschew society, become an underground outcast, and live with the natives on a subtropical island. To most people have the ability to do that? No. Do most people have the ability to just refuse to participate in modern requirements to live among others? No. No one can tell schools, current, and all future prospective employers you refuse to sign any documents, will not agree to any EULAs and therefore can never use a computer or internet related service, internal or external.

"Nobody forces you" is a not a real argument any time past 1997. Yes, you are forced to. This isn't a question about "do I go into the movie theater and agree to their rules, or not?" This is "can I survive in present society, or do I attempt to go entirely off grid in a satellite telemetry driven world in an underground cave?"

To call it spyware is simply to be honest and not buy the deception. If it has a connotation of only being something used for identity thieves and not, as the name says, spying and gathering data, I can't help colloquial adjustments to the language. The software is spyware.

Skipping over Fury on Switch? Not cool.

@AlexSora89

Ah, there it is !

Definitely will get this day one but not for PC or Stadia. My PC is too busy with other things with no time for gaming right now and Stadia will just sucks.

@NEStalgia Really, the only thing I disagree with is the ease with which you can avoid using the services. Sure, some are more mandatory than others, but it's not that difficult to entirely avoid services you take severe issues with. In your case, there are plenty of alternatives to Chrome. I have no reason to use Facebook. You have a point on the difficulty of avoiding Google search, especially for kids.

However, I'll leave it at this since I really do think we agree on 99% of the issue - including the amount of data collected, the risk it poses, etc... - I think you simply need a new term. That's pretty much it. Nobody views the software you are referring to as spyware, which makes it very misleading. Otherwise, I'd suggest you report the software laden w/Spyware to Kaspersky/Norton/McAffee/whoever and collect your bounty =)

@roadrunner343 Well it's good that we agree on mostly all of it but terminology!

Chrome, regrettably is becoming less avoidable rather than more avoidable, particularly in a business sense. I still avoid it for now, but have to resort to it on occasion. More and more there are sites, particularly corporate portals or media/connectivity/conference applications that require Chrome extensions and work only on Chrome. It's used its extension system to effectively end-run around web standards by becoming a platform instead of a browser. And business software loves to run with the latest trend/fad/obsession to be "current."

Kaspersky....they'd probably know a thing or two about spyware considering their "maybe, maybe not, you can't prove nuthin'!" ties to the FSB.....

@Realnoize
With modding being a bigger thing than ever, I don't think local processing for games ever actually disappears. :3

@Donutsavant TMS might be the only game from them I pick up during early 2020 because Animal Crossing is coming out on the same day as DOOM Eternal, and is being preceded by Final Fantasy VII Remake, TLOU Part II and possibly Persona 5 Royal

And then the following 2 months have Trials of Mana Remake, Cyberpunk 2077 and Avengers

@Pod
Well, in the short term, it sure won't disappear. And I'm pretty sure there will always be a form of indie game industrie who'll still provide people with games in the form of locally executable programs. Exactly like most truly creative music and movies nowadays still exist, but they rarely get any screentime in theatres, and they are often labelled as "too niche" for streaming services to pick them up. You need to go out and find these on your own. But they still exist.... Like these, gaming will continue to be made by passionate individuals who will sell their games to us for running on our own hardware.

But I'm speaking more about the big guys of the game industry. All those AAA productions most gamers are excited about and end up buying. Those are the things I can assume will eventually be mostly cloud-based in the future. Subscription-based content is what we're all heading into for practically everything now, as the various industries actually succeeded in convincing the masses that the convenience is worth never owning anything anymore.

The streaming industry usually requires a lot of server power to run, and thus, require a lot of money. So most of these services will naturally seek out AAA products to put on their network because that's what sells. And given how many people will end up getting most of their content through these services, if you're not on one of these, you'll be mostly unknown.

What will happen, is that all of this will simply mimick the consequences of modern capitalsm. The rift between the biggest and the smallest players will simply expand, eliminating all that's in the middle. In the case of gaming, it'll simply mean that it'll mostly be big productions on streaming services, or smaller indie games available locally, with almost nothing in-between.

I admit I'm a bit worried about the future gaming.

@KitsuneNight
I aim to please.

@AlexSora89

I really should figure out how to post images here though.

So, this game is a spin-off, right?

@Realnoize
For the developers, the future you're outlining means that a game can, once more, be built to run on only ONE chipset, as all that is shipped are the rendered images. Which is VERY alluring.

And as an end user, I will admit that the promise of NO download times and NO patches and updates, as well as NO considerations about prices, discounts, and DLC models all sounds mighty sweet.

But we'll see where things go with music and movies. Already now, people are growing tired of streaming services dragging their feet with licencing the third season of their favorite show, or featuring only the lame sequels of hit movies.

We're already seeing a new wave of alternatives coming out of the woodwork, where you once more, like with iTunes, buy personal digital licences for movies, tv-shows, and music.

Imagine a streaming service discontinuing a game you weren't done with, like Netflix might do with a show you were in the middle of. People would quickly tire of this.

Concerning AAA vs indie, I think games are such a separate creature in the first place, that the marketing appeal of these games already bank on entirely different users buying in. If I were to invest big these years, I see a streaming service that only featured "photo-realistic" looking games as dramatically limited in its marketability. Just like how HBO, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime can't NOT have cartoons and children's shows.

Local computing might eventually be a niche interest for video games, but considering how our devices aren't getting any slower, there might eventually be entirely new reasons for utilizing it.

We have some exciting years ahead of us.

@Pod

I think it all depends on how you look at things (and this is very personnal). Everyone has stuff that they love, and stuff that annoys them. And for most people, things are pretty simple, things need to have advantages that outweights the stuff that annoys them.

What complicates the situation is that something that might annoy somehow might be irrelevant for someone else.

In my case, the future of gaming seems to have a lot more negative aspects than positive ones. But that's me. Not having control over what I can and can't play (my game library) is a big one to me. Not having any guarantee whatsoever that a game I paid for will be playable for as long as I want is another. Games being yanked out of services while I was still playing them. Connection reliability is also a big factor, especially if you have kids that use the internet for everything (especially now that we've cut cable).

Sure, online everything and streamable everything is sure great for its convenience aspect. But it's not for a multitude of other reasons. I admit, many may not care about these reasons and that is probably why these have so much success. But the truth is that it's harder nowadays to find the movies and series you want to watch (unless you only care about mainstream stuff), and to find the music you want to listen to (again, unless you care mostly for top 40 hits).

But hey! All these services have algorithms that will suggest you new things to try that are indeed good recommendations about 10% of the time (in my case at least).

I may sound like I'm complaining a lot like an old man yelling at clouds, but I can't help by looking at where we came from and where we're going, to feel a bit depressed and worried. Oh, how I would like to have your optimism. I truly do. But everywhere I look, I see greatness for corporate greed, not for the consumer. I see greatness for corporations wanting control over what we're allowed to play, listen and watch, not for us.

Nice discussion though. Cheers!

@Realnoize
Personally, I'm not so concerned. Most streaming services offer that you can download music or films you know you want to use while out of internet reach. Game streams that anyone would WANT to subscribe to (which has been NONE so far) will offer the same.

And eventually our devices will all be fast enough that any and all games can run inside standardized virtual machines. Streaming will have it's place, but I find it quite unlikely local computing will be replaced altogether.

Cheers!

@KitsuneNight
Open square bracket, "img" (without quotation marks), closed square bracket, image URL, open square bracket, slash, "img", closed square bracket. Simple as that.

It took until #52 to talk about skipping over Darksiders 3 (...the one with Fury.?). Indeed, what the Hell?! Bless you, @DrDaisy for sharing my ire!

@CodyDogg Maybe it wasn't popular enough. Unfortunately, that happens sometimes.

@AlexSora89

So just standard bbcode then ?

@KitsuneNight
Uhhh... I guess?