Xbox Boss Is Open To Breaking the Seal On Some Forgotten Games (pcgamer.com) 43
An anonymous reader quotes a report from PC Gamer: Whether you think Microsoft's recent acquisition of Activision Blizzard is a move toward a dry gaming monopoly or a financial windfall for Activision and Blizzard games both, it's definitely happened. The UK's CMA has given the thumbs up, Kotick's on his way out -- the deal's closed, and now we get to see the impact ripples spread. It looks like there's already some great news for fans of Activision Blizzard's older catalogue, as confirmed by Xbox boss Phil Spencer himself in an official interview on the Xbox channel. "I do think with Game Pass that we have the ability to pick a couple franchises every year and almost do like a 'revisited' [version] -- I just made up that term ... when you look across the franchises that are part of our teams, there's an opportunity to go back."
"I wanna make sure that when we go back and visit something that we do it with our complete ability not just create something for financial gain (or a PR announcement), and not deliver." Ultimately, while he's got his own wishlist (the return of FPS classic Hexen is a running gag), Spencer says it's important for these fresh coats of paint to be a result of developer passion: "If teams wanna go back and revisit some of the things we have, and do a full focus on it, I'm gonna be all in. I think there's an amazing trove of [games] we can go and touch on again. I think about things like the Quake 2 remaster that just came out from [id Software], I thought that was awesome. They did a real good job revisiting a game, making it current, but not leaving its history behind. I'd love to see more things like that."
"I wanna make sure that when we go back and visit something that we do it with our complete ability not just create something for financial gain (or a PR announcement), and not deliver." Ultimately, while he's got his own wishlist (the return of FPS classic Hexen is a running gag), Spencer says it's important for these fresh coats of paint to be a result of developer passion: "If teams wanna go back and revisit some of the things we have, and do a full focus on it, I'm gonna be all in. I think there's an amazing trove of [games] we can go and touch on again. I think about things like the Quake 2 remaster that just came out from [id Software], I thought that was awesome. They did a real good job revisiting a game, making it current, but not leaving its history behind. I'd love to see more things like that."
Reinvent the reboot (Score:3)
Fuck off Phil.
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Honestly I think that is good name for games like that and the recent System Shock 2. Games that are updated but try really hard to keep a lot of the old stuff.
Black Mesa would fail in this regard. Since it changes and improves on just about everything. A true use of the term Remastered.
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If you want to take an old game and bring it up to snuff a bit. Higher resolution, a few changes/fixes but still the same basic thing. That's a remaster.
If you want to take an old game, fully remake it or do all new work to put into to start it again then you are doing a reboot.
Quake 2 got remastered. System shock is getting rebooted.
On the other hand if you want to take an older game and make it so it runs on the latest console and do not
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Revisit in this context can also mean making a new game in an old series. It's not a remaster of a previous title, and it's not a reboot because they're building on what came before. What else would you call eg. Portal 3 at this point?
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rereleases, remasters, remakes, and reboots are all ways to revisit
(sequels too, but they didn't fit the alliteration)
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Unpublished games that showed promise (Score:2)
Blizzard's Starcraft GHOST for example. It looked quite promising but besides having something interesting running it needed a lot of (re)work and money/staff had better places to go at the critical moment.
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For Ghost, one factor is that development was delayed several times such that by the time it would have been released, a new console generation would have been out. Doing more development for the next generation hardware would required a lot of work.
Yes and no. The exec is not talking about new AAA releases. He's talking about revising old classics. These will be secondary sort of releases. Plus being a generation behind is necessarily a problem. It will run fine on newer hardware, it won't be pushing the envelope. Isn't it all really a nostalgia thing? I'm just saying finishing the unfinished can yield some stuff as good as the old releases.
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I think people really underestimate the difficulty of getting old games designed for specific hardware to run on new hardware.
I don't. I ported AAA games.
For example the original Xbox CPU was based on x86. The Xbox 360 used IBM's PowerPC.
Been there, done that, not a problem.
Then MS went back to x86 for Xbox One and the current generation. Getting an old game to work with newer hardware sometimes presents the problem that the new hardware is too capable and the game runs faster than the player so the game has to be slowed down.
They have the source code. They would not be hacking up a binary. Given the wide range of x86 speeds even old games ran on they typically have some sort of timing management. I don't think they are referring to 80286 era games where all PCs ran at the same speed until someone introduced the "turbo" button and screwed up many games. :-)
Older games are easier to port because you have excess CPU cycles to work with. You can do inefficient thin
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I don't. I ported AAA games.
I seriously doubt you ported AAA games by yourself. Sure you might have been on a team that did it. Since you claim experience, with porting AAA games, what was your role?
Been there, done that, not a problem.
Again, I seriously doubt that too. There is a difference between something being possible and something being easy. My point again is that it is not easy. It can been done is very different than it is "not a problem."
They have the source code.
You do know that having the source code does not mean the original source code was cleanly written nor the porting will be
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I seriously doubt you ported AAA games by yourself. Sure you might have been on a team that did it. Since you claim experience, with porting AAA games, what was your role?
Of course I was not working solo. I was a senior software engineer at a small company that specialized in porting software, this included games. The games I worked on were mostly Win32 to MacOS PowerPC. With some minor work porting Win32 to Playstation and Xbox.
Again, I seriously doubt that too. There is a difference between something being possible and something being easy. My point again is that it is not easy. It can been done is very different than it is "not a problem."
Did I say it was easy? I said x86/PowerPC was not a problem. C/C++ code generally has some new warnings and errors as you change tool chains. First runs reveal bad pointers that magically did not crash the original platform. Lots of "how the f did th
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They have to pump out cheap games for Day One Game Pass releases somehow since per their own court filings it significantly cannibalizes game sales. Almost as if the purpose of Game Pass is not to generate profit but to try and grow a monopolistic walled garden or something that once large enough will allow them to cut off Steam and Sony entirely.
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Revisit.
Fuck off Phil.
The thing is, a good remaster is a thing of wonder that can drag a good game from yesteryear into a modern masterpiece. I submit the System Shock reboot, modern controls and graphics, old school gameplay (seriously, the control scheme of 1994's System Shock was a horror). OTOH, when it's just handed off to any old team with a deadine, you get some utter shite.. sadly the latter seems more common.
So I really have to echo your sentiment, fuck off Phil.
That being said, I have hopes for the Fallout 3 rema
Translation (Score:3)
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Here's another translation:
it's important for these fresh coats of paint to be a result of developer passion
If the developers could do it for free on their spare time, it'd be great.
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Or simply "a remaster" instead of making old games "available to buy" as they are. With major studios still having the source and binaries, many still don't make old games available in their original form on GOG or Steam at a reasonable price for the age of the game.
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material that hasn't been monetized in decades
Although true, unfortunately we're talking about Microsoft.
Smaller businesses and publishers are great at this because they're hungry. Big businesses are looking for numbers on the balance sheet, and when they've got over 200 billion dollars a year, those need to be big numbers.
Games that aren't bringing in profits in the high six figure range are just noise, and realistically, even bringing in single-million-dollar profits is noise at Microsoft. That means gross revenues of 50M, 80M, or more just to show
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Once we figure out how to incorporate micro-transactions into the game to bleed the fans dry of cash we'll throw together a half-baked remastered version.
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The man just wants to have a LAN party like it's 1998. That's as non-evil as it gets with gaming execs. It's the parasites he's replacing who should be tarred and feathered. Bobby Kotick sold toothpaste before he became Activision's CEO. Toothpaste!
Fix Warcraft III: Re-forged (Score:3)
It was one of the worse re-master efforts and seems today effectively abandoned. The way they managed to screw up the custom games section which has a decades long history of innovative designs. Maybe the worst release from Blizzard in their history, no respect for what the audience wanted.
A real puzzler how it was allowed to get off the tracks especially compared to how pretty much spot on the Diablo II and StarCraft I remasters went.
Release the Star Craft series on Steam (Score:2)
Does anyone know of a base building RTS with a good/fun campaign like these? I have not found anything like it.
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Supreme Commander (Forged Alliance).
I still think it's a better RTS than anything Blizzard's made
Also a shout-out to Beyond All Reason if you want to try a FOSS Total Annihilation successor. No campaign yet, but there's some scenario maps and fun vs. AI modes
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Oh and ditch the ridiculous BS "we own everything" language from the mod tools as well...
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Didn't hear about that either but how short sighted of them to try that considering how much creativity went into those custom maps
The Activision money counters are probably salty about the fact that League and DOTA became such hits off of essentially Starcraft and Warcraft III mod games.
Hexen would be sick (Score:3)
I would fucking love to see Hexen come back. Criminally underrated series.
Lets see it. (Score:3)
I feel like Microsoft has a decent record with updated old games (at least with the Halo series). Certainly they can do better than EA has in the past. I would like to see some Bullfrog classics like Dungeon Keeper get updated. Also, some Sierra point-and-click games could get a facelift. Space Quest, Kings Quest, Loom, or Day of the Tentacle.
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I cant help you with the rest of the games you mention but Day of the Tentacle did get a remaster a few years back. https://store.steampowered.com... [steampowered.com] .
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Loom and Day of the Tentacle are owned by Disney (who bought LucasArts), not Microsoft.
As for EA, the Command & Conquer remasters show that EA (or in this case Petroglyph with backing from EA) can do really good remasters.
Sierra's Tribes .... (Score:2)
I feel like Microsoft has a decent record with updated old games (at least with the Halo series). Certainly they can do better than EA has in the past. I would like to see some Bullfrog classics like Dungeon Keeper get updated. Also, some Sierra point-and-click games could get a facelift. Space Quest, Kings Quest, Loom, or Day of the Tentacle.
Sierra's Tribes. The first one. That deserves a reincarnation.
Of Course He Is (Score:2)
It's essentially free revenue stream at this point.
What I would do is feed all those old games to the latest AI's, under the researcher's and coders controls.
The goal would be to create AI that can perfectly update all that code to the latest and greatest standards, possibly switching languages. Since you have a real world output and the rubber has to meet the road, it's a nice closed test.
Then have AI redo the graphics and sound as well, under researcher's and designer's controls.
Multiple birds for the pr
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I still want a wow-like game with a nwn map editor. Have the game come with it's own storyline module and toolkit. Make the modules releasable to the community and let people build. NWN communities still do this!
I do realize I could download a wow-blizzard like server and run that and play wow on my computer single player like but it's nothing compared to a purpose made game that came with a toolkit to really build new maps and entire modules.
They could even release "expansions" that would include additiona
Here's a Thought (Score:1)
Make Clippy a raid boss.
Morrowind (Score:2)
I would love to see a remake of Morrowind using the creation engine.
Yes, I know about the community efforts to do it on PC - I would really love to just buy this on XBox.
I know Todd Howard has said it is never going to happen. Maybe Phil can take him out for wings or something.
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FWIW: I recently had the best time revisiting that old title on PC with the help of this handy dandy engine. OpenMW. https://openmw.org/ [openmw.org]
The last time I had the itch I got fed up with the low resolutions and poor performance of the unmodified game. OpenMW made it fun again.
Mentioning Infocom here (Score:2)
And Zork, Wishbringer, Enchanter, Plundered Hearts, Ballyhoo, A Mind Forever Voyaging, Starcross, Nord and Bert, etc, etc, in case Microsoft has some AI combing the Intarwebs for mentions in relevant places. Because they need to know there is interest.
Original Warcraft and Warcraft II? (Score:2)
Not really a fan of the Blizzard games myself, but I did spent a tonne of time playing the two Warcaft games on LAN with friends back in the day and so I'd love to see that come back with some graphic updates and the ability to use the larger resolutions we get on modern hardware now. Really miss being able to click on the peons and have them all be "Zug Zug, Zorboo, and WHAAATTT!!!"