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Don Tacorleone posted:Actually most video game companies, let's put them in the list AAA gaming is reaching a point where something's gotta give, the question is who falls first and why. Personally, my money's on Ubisoft. Konami, as horrible as they are, have bailed on basically anything anybody actually cares about, and while Square-Enix have had a lot of smaller problems as of late they have enough profitable sections to keep going strong. Ubisoft's open world machine is starting to break down, though, and they don't really have anything to lean on when it does. They have strong brands they could be pushing further ahead to keep going with when Assassin's Creed inevitably crashes, but rather than elevate a completely different product for that--Rayman, Might and Magic, Prince of Persia, just as quick examples--they seem to be hedging their bets on Farcry and Watch_Dogs, the properties rear end Creed is most likely to take down with it.
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Feb 7, 2016 08:11
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Booblord Zagats posted:Yeah, Square Enix has a license to print money with their RPG franchises, they're really in no place to be worried. Plus their porting of their older games to mobile platforms has been a really solid side bet for them Actually, their big RPG releases are having the most trouble. Their core Japanese development team--so Final Fantasy, primarily--has been struggling to update its product for an audience that it thinks has moved on. Nobody buys JRPGs on consoles anymore. Only its audience quite clearly hasn't moved on, because their ports onto mobile and stuff like Record Keeper make bank, and people eat up more classic JRPG stuff like Bravely Default that comes out on handhelds. JRPGs haven't been popular on consoles in recent years because they haven't been MADE on consoles in recent years. If we draw the line for 'modern consoles' at the PS3/360/Wii generation onwards, the only big JRPGs that have been made are Monolith's Xenoblade games, the Final Fantasy XIII series, and that new Tales Of game that came out this year. The only one of those that was poorly-received was FFXIII, so it's more likely because the FFXIII series is poo poo than anything about the genre. S-E's mobile/handheld titles are making good money, and Eidos is making good money despite some missteps, so S-E as a whole is healthy. But they've got what Sega used to have going, where their biggest franchise is so core to their brand that it failing looks like them failing. So we see them taking a decade to make a game that's barely Final Fantasy, and we see them desperately making a remake of their most popular title to please somebody while misunderstanding the reason many people want it, and we just assume they're circling the drain. Because it doesn't really occur to us that they're also the guys profiting from Just Cause, Tomb Raider and Deus Ex.
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Feb 8, 2016 01:31
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Justin Godscock posted:Nintendo is the only company that hasn't lost its loving mind and understands it needs to be pragmatic to succeed. Sega's doing quite well, too. They sensed where things are going, and have slowly shifted towards western developers. They've really gone in on the PC market especially, making stuff like the Total War games, they've been porting basically every game you could want from them to it, and they've got Football Manager as sort of a no-nonsense constant moneymaker. They're really good at social media, too, especially with Sonic. Basically Sega should be a lesson to all major developers, especially Japanese ones, in handling a shifting market properly. Which is surprising, given that until about ten years ago they were gaming's greatest lesson in 'what not to do'. The Great Sonic Crash of '06 caused them to do a stellar job in getting their poo poo together.
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Feb 9, 2016 04:35
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Tricky D posted:They should put the middle aged, no nonsense janitor in charge. Really shake up the paradigm. Improve synergy. Nintendo's last CEO was originally a programmer, and he was one of the best leaders any gaming company's ever had. You might be onto something.
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Feb 12, 2016 05:04
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Tricky D posted:So Windows 10 is good? That depends entirely on how much you mind their attempt at Siri having always-on access to your personal details and stuff like calendars. Also you can never, ever turn it off or uninstall it. I get why Siri took off, it's easier to talk into your phone than use a lovely on-screen keyboard. It has no place on a real computer, especially with features like that.
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Feb 13, 2016 22:54
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William Stoner posted:Tech startups and Higher Ed seem like massive bubbles. Higher education's going through an interesting (and pretty horrible) bubble here in Australia. A combination of rising unemployment and government subsidies have given rise to a veritable fuckload of very predatory 'colleges' that try to get you on the hook in ways much like how people try to upsell you on phone services; that is, by pretending to be something different and/or just making it really hard to say no. The really poo poo ones go even further, by signing on people who would be literally incapable of doing the actual course, often promising things like laptops, and then shutting up shop and running the moment the government looks in their direction. But even the ostensibly legit ones are often pretty rancid, doing stuff like setting up fake job advertisements solely to pitch courses at the applicants, and more than once I've been approached by people from currently-opening technical colleges in shopping centres, at train stations, or by door-to-door salesmen.
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Feb 15, 2016 08:40
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TacticalUrbanHomo posted:holy gently caress. where do you live? I'm a post-graduate student in melbourne and have never seen or heard of any of this poo poo. While I'm moving to Melbourne myself very soon, until now I've been living in Salisbury, in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. The area's got colossal unemployment rates, we're talking >30%, so it's unsurprising that the on-foot forces are targeting the region and that the fake job advertisers are perhaps focusing a bit more on entry-level jobs in Adelaide than elsewhere. The really heinous ones are generally online, and usually prey on people who wouldn't be able to understand the problems, go elsewhere, or honestly complete the course in the first place--we're talking largely people on disability. It's unsurprising you wouldn't have heard about this as a Melbourne postgrad, they're targeting both very different people and places. It's been sort of a quiet disaster, because it's not like the victims are the type that can speak out very well, but there's been recent crackdowns that have brought it out into the open a bit.
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Feb 15, 2016 09:17
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Woden posted:Desktops are dying, so Samsung, ARM and Google/Apple will just pull and end around like Intel/MS did to IBM and mainframes. It's very doubtful that they're dying, but I think the desktop market will become more specialized and professional. Laptops and tablets are far better for everyday personal use, yes, but certain industries are going to demand stronger and more specialized computers that laptops just can't provide. Then you've got the PC gaming market, where the sheer size and openness in upgrading is a huge part of its strength.
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Feb 18, 2016 09:20
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Sydin posted:It's not a public company but Spotify is probably going to eat poo poo in the next year or two. It was one thing when they were losing money hand over fist as the only game in town, but now they're losing money hand over fist and Apple Music is stealing all their paying subscribers. Pretty much all online radio is playing a tough game. Royalties for streaming music are really hosed, it's basically impossible to make money with online streaming thanks to laws designed to favor conventional radio. Basically all those services are constantly on the verge of failing, but it will never be their fault when it does. Apple Music has an edge not because of the name itself or any integration with iTunes, but because it's Apple, who can afford to make it something of a loss leader.
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Feb 29, 2016 08:54
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KiteAuraan posted:Is Gamestop dying? You'd figure with digital distro for almost everything now on consoles and a growing library of digital releases for old games their days would be numbered. Or do they embezzle money or do some scam with pre-orders and trade-ins that somehow keeps the lights on? I don't know first-hand, but as far as I know most of their revenue has been through pre-owned and trade-ins for a while now. Skeevy as they can be about that sometimes, they're really the most visible choice, and probably the only choice for a lot of people. And in countries with worse internet than the States, brick-and-mortar stores actually thrive. Here in Australia, EB Games (Gamestop wasn't here before the merger, so they kept the signage) is routinely the best choice for buying games for a lot of people, because their internet often won't be reliable enough to download them without either taking a long time or hitting a usage limit. On top of that, the games are often cheaper when you actually take the exchange rate into account; Fallout 4 was like fifteen bucks cheaper to buy in-person.
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Mar 9, 2016 11:21
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Otisburg posted:http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor Well. That was depressing.
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Apr 7, 2016 05:46
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