this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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Baldur's Gate 3

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Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)

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Microsoft completely misjudged Baldur’s Gate 3 (www.polygon.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Not a great look for Microsoft

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

“This is really a disaster situation for us given all we’ve invested in content across studios at our GP [Game Pass] content fund,” ... “We set a very high bar in 2021 on quality and pacing of content which was awesome to see,” he continued. “But to come off of that year with no big exclusives launching in 2022 is a portfolio planning miss that we can’t afford. If we need to delay launches (understanding there is a financial impact of that) to create more regular beats for us we need to do that. We have to all understand that the situation we are in now is a failure of our planning and production execution.”

My corporate speak is a little rusty, but if I understand the gravity of this statement correctly, is Spencer implying that GamePass is a house of cards that is only supported by the regular timing of new exclusive releases? It seems like that's a very risky business model then, and the consequences of GamePass folding would be consumers lose access to a truly massive number of games. This statement would basically make me lose a ton of confidence in the service, and I'd be looking to take my library (and money) elsewhere.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

It’s no secret that they are “hemorrhaging” money into gamepass just to be competitive. Would have a tough time finding the article, but there was something about them doing it JUST to keep some games out of the hands of other companies.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The way I would perceive it is that mega-hjts in games are very profitable. A hit sells like 200k-300k at launch. But from time to time, a game hits the cultural zeitgeist and can 3x that. Those are you're BOTWs and such.

Platforms bank on having those because they are the big bang for their buck. In Microsoft case, an exclusive like that would move a lot of gp subs. I think that is the idea behind making starfield elusive, and then getting rid of the reduced price trial.

So when people are busy playing BG3, and then ign gives starfield a 7, and people decide its not worth dropping everything to go and play, it can really mess up a company's tire venue projections. Poor babies.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Guess the execs will have to cut back on the avocado toast.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

They are just proving they don't understand what makes games sell at all then. Anybody who had experienced the early access (they had like 3 years to do so) knew this was a special game. Anybody who tried the DOS series also knew and are probably here because of those anyway. The success of this game was obvious way before it came out. This is just another proof that the people running the business have no idea of what they are doing. They just cannot judge of stuff before they have numbers and it's why we should get rid of these leeches. So again, the only surprised people are the idiots that don't understand shit about modern games.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They're not thinking about these things as games, generally, but specifically how they'll be perceived by the Xbox audience. It looks to me like they discounted BG3, at least in part, because it couldn't split-screen on series S. They're thinking about games you play on the couch, in a group, maybe during a party - not games you play solo for hours or days on end.

That may end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy. BG3 isn't out on Xbox (officially) yet. We don't know what their advertising will look like, and it well turn out that everyone who wants to play it will already have gone the PC route.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

They’re not thinking about these things as games, generally, but specifically how they’ll be perceived by the Xbox audience. It looks to me like they discounted BG3, at least in part, because it couldn’t split-screen on series S. They’re thinking about games you play on the couch, in a group, maybe during a party - not games you play solo for hours or days on end.

And that's what I mean. They are wrong on all counts because they don't understand what makes a game successful. They only consider the monetary success of their own. They also think "xbox" audience is somehow different and want something else than other platform users. Sure couch is cool but let's not pretend that this is really how people are gaming nowadays. People like all games when they are well made, complete from the start and just fucking work. Throw a bit of good writing in there and you have a GOTY contender. BG3 is just far above that only and that's why I'm saying if anyone an MS looked into BG3 and Larian and chose not to sign, they are incompetent idiots.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Honestly. This is a fine look for Microsoft. This is inside baseball executives trying to make sure the lineup on their game pass platform is appealing to people throughout the year. They're going to make bad predictions, but they're not doing it out of spite or evilness, they're just trying to maintain engagement in their game pass.

You would see similar discussions behind any other subscription platform. Did they underestimate it sure, but their job is to predict, so they're going to have to make good estimates and bad estimates.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's kinda like saying an engineer builds good bridges and bad bridges.

Ok, not that, but it's still their job to get almost all predictions at least CLOSE to right, so this is the definition of failing to do their job.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe, but most prediction based jobs have a middling success rate.Missing this big is always significant, but not catastrophic in this case.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I guarantee that at least some of them would have been fired if they made the same magnitude mistake in the opposite direction, though, and unless they have specific safeguards to avoid overestimate that aren't in place for underestimates, they WILL.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I don't think they did a bad job at all. They wanted to have a lineup to keep their users engaged. If they underestimate one, even significantly, they still succeed because they insured they had a lineup to keep their users engaged. They're hedging their bets.

Not to mention lorian, themselves underestimated the success, because overestimating causes more problems. And lorien and Microsoft negotiator rate for game pass.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

You wouldn't happen to work in PR, would you? Because the way you keep insisting on focusing on something completely irrelevant to the criticism while still briefly acknowledging the criticism as an aside is actually quite dextrous and would probably work on a lot of people 😄

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Ubisoft’s Just Dance

Will it be assassins dancing? If so, I'll consider it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Archive.ph version in case you don't want to accept all cookies or send a carrier pigeon to headquarters to be exempt in the future.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This just gives me endless recaptcha

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Weird. I've been using archive.ph for years and never had that problem. You sure it's not your browser or an extension?

Either way, here's a 12 foot ladder version that might work better for you

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For me it has something to do with ublock or pihole. If I disable both the captcha works again but I haven't pinned down the real problem.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I use ublock origin on both my phone and desktop, so I think it's probably pihole. Would also explain why lemmy, which has several times more users with piholes by volume than anywhere else I've ever been, is the only place I've ever come across anyone having trouble with the site.

Still anecdotal, I know, but sounds likely to me 🤷