Upcoming Video Game Releases (2024 & Beyond)

[RIPPA]

Rise of the Ronin

[odessasteps]

Nothing in that Sony thing floated my boat. 

[Cliff Hanger]

I played a truly stupid amount of Sonic Generations, so an expanded remaster sounds great even if it does have Shadow. 

[Andrew POE!]

On 2/1/2024 at 4:53 PM, odessasteps said:

Nothing in that Sony thing floated my boat. 

Stellar Blade (after a discount), Rise of the Ronin and Dragon's Dogma II float my boat definitely. And I'll be there to get Death Stranding 2 despite not having finished the first one much less understand anything that's going on.

[Craig H]

4 days until Helldivers 2. I’m ready to do my part!

SERVICE GUARANTEES CITIZENSHIP

[JLSigman]

There will be a FF 7 Rebirth demo available starting tomorrow. You have been warned.

[JLSigman]

22 hours ago, JLSigman said:

There will be a FF 7 Rebirth demo available starting tomorrow. You have been warned.

There's also a new trailer, and if you want to go in the game unspoilered you'll want to avoid it.

[odessasteps]

18 minutes ago, JLSigman said:

There's also a new trailer, and if you want to go in the game unspoilered you'll want to avoid it.

I was about to make a joke about spoiling a 20+ year game and then I remembered they changed stuff in the new version.

[Raziel]

What's gonna suck is trying to avoid that shit for 20 days and realizing there's no way around it.

 

[RIPPA]

There is a decent chance Borderlands 4 is going to be announced shortly

The official Borderlands Twitter account started reposting its "story so far" videos which was originally released right before Borderlands 3 was announced

Hence the speculation that 4 is about to drop

Also people think they want to have 4 announced to tie into the Borderlands movie which is coming out this summer

[Kevin Wilson]

1 hour ago, RIPPA said:

There is a decent chance Borderlands 4 is going to be announced shortly

The official Borderlands Twitter account started reposting its "story so far" videos which was originally released right before Borderlands 3 was announced

Hence the speculation that 4 is about to drop

Also people think they want to have 4 announced to tie into the Borderlands movie which is coming out this summer

People tend to either love or hate Borderlands but I'm definitely in the 'former' group. If nothing else, so few FPS games have split screen co-op these days so its one of the last series I can do couch co-op with my brother. And its fun.

[Robert C]

I don’t love Borderlands as a single character player franchise.  Even if it is the one shooter that I’m not terrible at.  I’ve had a hell of a lot of fun with coop though.  There’s some nostalgia built into my love of the games too. Hearing Derek Burke in my head saying “prepare to be Trevonated bitches!” will never fail to bring a smile to my face, even if it’s a smile tinged with sadness.  

[Death From Above]

Borderlands 3 has more (and better) endgame than Borderlands 2 but it still didn't stop nerds bitching about the story so I have to admit I'm worried what lessons the studio will learn from that.

[RIPPA]

This technically could go in either thread but I will put it here

Disney is investing $1.5 Epic Games

Much of it is going into Fortnite but per the announcement Epic Games will be making new games based on Disney properties

 

[JLSigman]

2 hours ago, RIPPA said:

This technically could go in either thread but I will put it here

Disney is investing $1.5 Epic Games

Much of it is going into Fortnite but per the announcement Epic Games will be making new games based on Disney properties

 

Those of us who are Kingdom Hearts fans looking at Epic Games fans like, "First time?"

[Cliff Hanger]

Zen announced that they'll be bringing a new System Shock table to both PinballFX and PinballM on 2/15. I'd rather get new Williams classic tables (and preferably pre-solid-state, though I know those have a tiny audience) but I'm still excited.

[RIPPA]

Sony has said (via an earnings report) that it will not release “any new major existing franchise titles next fiscal year.”

This isn't really surprising but I guess some people thought they were gonna drop a stealth Spider man or God of War or something

[odessasteps]

Giving me time to finally play God of War. 

[Andrew POE!]

6 hours ago, RIPPA said:

Sony has said (via an earnings report) that it will not release “any new major existing franchise titles next fiscal year.”

This isn't really surprising but I guess some people thought they were gonna drop a stealth Spider man or God of War or something

It's rumored we'll see more remasters/ports during the year. Until Dawn was already one coming, another one rumored to come is Astro Bot (either a remaster of Astro Bot or a new Astro Bot 2). Sony recently filed a trademark for Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet (new Bend Studios game? Cory's new RPG project at Santa Monica? Naughty Dog's new game? DLC for Helldivers II? DLC for Destiny 2? Who knows)

I'm hoping Sony will give Puppeteer a PS5 version so the PS3 physical copies can come down a bit.

[Villanova Grad]

20 hours ago, RIPPA said:

Sony has said (via an earnings report) that it will not release “any new major existing franchise titles next fiscal year.”

This isn't really surprising but I guess some people thought they were gonna drop a stealth Spider man or God of War or something

The incoming president also hinted that Sony will be more aggressive about getting games on PC.  That went over about as well as you’d expect. Bizarrely, people are interpreting the comments to mean SIE won’t be releasing any games over the next 14 months.

i’m mostly burnt out by the gaming industry these days,  I find the fanboy arguments infiltrating my Twitter feed exhausting.  Honestly, if you’re so invested in a games company you do not work for that porting games to other platforms or not releasing a Triple A system seller in the next twelve months sends you into a rage, you should probably go to therapy. Lots of therapy.  I say that as someone who doesn’t even believe in the value of therapy, really.  Games are supposed to be fun.  I am really skeptical the console warriorz and influencers are having fun.  One of the Nintendo Life guys said on Twitter that the best console is the one you enjoy.  This.  Oh so f***ing this.  My idea of favorite consoles changes at least a few times a year.  My answer to that question now might be different from my answer an hour ago.  There really aren’t any major consoles from the past 25 years that I do not like a lot, usually for different reasons.

i stopped in at a mom-and-pop retro game shop last weekend and got to discussing where the market is going.  The owner thinks we are going to see $100 games soon.  Lol, that’s one of the few emerging trends I do not hate. Games have been $60 for decades.  Inflation and budgets have skyrocketed in that time. Silent Hill 2 - on my short list for best games ever - cost less than $10 million to develop. Spider-Man 2 cost $300 mil.  If we want games to continue pushing the envelope, we’re going to have to pay for it sooner or later.

The rest of the industry leaves me cold right now. Development cycles are way too long & there’s not enough experimentation because no one wants to spend five years and $100 million on a weird arthouse game that might flop when you can pour that money into Call of Duty or a live-service game.  Remember the PS3 generation?  4 Halo games and a remake.  Four Gears of War titles.  An entire Dead Space trilogy.  At least four or five Ratchet & Clank titles from Insomniac.  Etc. Now Sony studios struggle to get one double or triple-A game out the door every seven years.  Ugh.  Halo 3: ODST is great and it was developed in less than a year.  The Peter Jackson Halo game was canceled, leaving half of Bungie without a project. Developers pitched ODST and got it greenlit with the caveat that it had to be done in twelve months so the team could join the rest of Bungie to work on Halo: Reach.

Also, people who won’t buy games that aren’t 60 fps because “it doesn’t feel good” don’t need to talk to me. Ever.

Okay, rant over,  I feel better.

Edited February 15 by Villanova Grad

[Andrew POE!]

3 hours ago, Villanova Grad said:

The incoming president also hinted that Sony will be more aggressive about getting games on PC.  That went over about as well as you’d expect. Bizarrely, people are interpreting the comments to mean SIE won’t be releasing any games over the next 14 months.

i’m mostly burnt out by the gaming industry these days,  I find the fanboy arguments infiltrating my Twitter feed exhausting.  Honestly, if you’re so invested in a games company you do not work for that porting games to other platforms or not releasing a Triple A system seller in the next twelve months sends you into a rage, you should probably go to therapy. Lots of therapy.  I say that as someone who doesn’t even believe in the value of therapy, really.  Games are supposed to be fun.  I am really skeptical the console warriorz and influencers are having fun.  One of the Nintendo Life guys said on Twitter that the best console is the one you enjoy.  This.  Oh so f***ing this.  My idea of favorite consoles changes at least a few times a year.  My answer to that question now might be different from my answer an hour ago.  There really aren’t any major consoles from the past 25 years that I do not like a lot, usually for different reasons.

i stopped in at a mom-and-pop retro game shop last weekend and got to discussing where the market is going.  The owner thinks we are going to see $100 games soon.  Lol, that’s one of the few emerging trends I do not hate. Games have been $60 for decades.  Inflation and budgets have skyrocketed in that time. Silent Hill 2 - on my short list for best games ever - cost less than $10 million to develop. Spider-Man 2 cost $300 mil.  If we want games to continue pushing the envelope, we’re going to have to pay for it sooner or later.

The rest of the industry leaves me cold right now. Development cycles are way too long & there’s not enough experimentation because no one wants to spend five years and $100 million on a weird arthouse game that might flop when you can pour that money into Call of Duty or a live-service game.  Remember the PS3 generation?  4 Halo games and a remake.  Four Gears of War titles.  An entire Dead Space trilogy.  At least four or five Ratchet & Clank titles from Insomniac.  Etc. Now Sony studios struggle to get one double or triple-A game out the door every seven years.  Ugh.  Halo 3: ODST is great and it was developed in less than a year.  The Peter Jackson Halo game was canceled, leaving half of Bungie without a project. Developers pitched ODST and got it greenlit with the caveat that it had to be done in twelve months so the team could join the rest of Bungie to work on Halo: Reach.

Also, people who won’t buy games that aren’t 60 fps because “it doesn’t feel good” don’t need to talk to me. Ever.

Okay, rant over,  I feel better.

I agree - for whatever reason, I've been hooked to PlayStation and their trophy system for a long time. But even then, I see the changes that are happening and they aren't good. As a result, I go back to PS3 days to get Platinum trophies and I'm amazed at how well some of the games from that generation hold up today.

There is no experimentation whatsoever with Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft. They're all guilty of the same thing. Something like Heavy Rain would never have gotten greenlit  today. Microsoft wouldn't have released Sunset Overdrive today. Nintendo wouldn't even have done Eternal Darkness or Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes on the Switch today.

Essentially, the costs of development across all three platform holders have driven games to be an unsustainable market. If publishers sell games for $100 MSRP at launch, just wait awhile, it'll be cheaper.

Eventually, we'll see one console and one publisher if this keeps up.

[Death From Above]

I'm in for well north of $100 on several games including DLCs, it is what it is.

[Robert S]

2 hours ago, Andrew POE! said:

(...)

Eventually, we'll see one console and one publisher if this keeps up.

As long as consoles make good money (and I assume they do) that's not the movement I expect to see. Rather hardware and software architectures will get even more similar so that developing multiple platform games (or at least porting games) becomes cheaper, at least on the Microsoft and Sony front - I don't see Nintendo's business model (underpowered hardware that is sold - compared to the competition and the performance - overprized fueled by exclusive first part games) stop working as long as they are able to put out a new Mario, Zelda, Mario Kart or Smash Bros. once a year.

What I mean: Sony is on the second generation using an x86 architecture, same for Microsoft. Even the bigger game developers nowadays use the same middleware or even full game engines. And the time will come when not even EA fill bother with Frostbite and go Unreal Engine - either that or they will try to sell (license) Frostbite (or whatever they will have by that point).

Of course I might be completely wrong and in ten years there will only be cloud gaming (not that I really believe in that, I can't imagine how latency will even become low and stable enough for action-based games, at least not on a geographically wide-scaled basis).

[Andrew POE!]

2 hours ago, Robert S said:

As long as consoles make good money (and I assume they do) that's not the movement I expect to see. Rather hardware and software architectures will get even more similar so that developing multiple platform games (or at least porting games) becomes cheaper, at least on the Microsoft and Sony front - I don't see Nintendo's business model (underpowered hardware that is sold - compared to the competition and the performance - overprized fueled by exclusive first part games) stop working as long as they are able to put out a new Mario, Zelda, Mario Kart or Smash Bros. once a year.

What I mean: Sony is on the second generation using an x86 architecture, same for Microsoft. Even the bigger game developers nowadays use the same middleware or even full game engines. And the time will come when not even EA fill bother with Frostbite and go Unreal Engine - either that or they will try to sell (license) Frostbite (or whatever they will have by that point).

Of course I might be completely wrong and in ten years there will only be cloud gaming (not that I really believe in that, I can't imagine how latency will even become low and stable enough for action-based games, at least not on a geographically wide-scaled basis).

Where I'm coming from with that is the number of developers and publishers closing their doors in the last several years with IPs being lost forever. It won't matter so much that Sony and Microsoft are using similar hardware as it will matter that there aren't enough publishers/developers to create software on that hardware. Microsoft has the money and resources to purchase developers/publishers for decades (whether they publish any of their works remains to be seen). I think eventually they'll gobble up large publishers after they merge. They did buy Bethesda and Activision/Blizzard which no one thought would happen. I think the next big movement will be Ubisoft and EA merging and Sony buying Square Enix with Microsoft buying Sega/Atlus. I actually also think Microsoft will buy PlayStation wholesale from Sony and will get out of the Xbox hardware business altogether in probably about 20 years. PlayStation Plus will still be there, PlayStations will still be made, it's just the overall structure will be under Xbox and will have GamePass.

I'm probably wrong about all of this though. Also, the US government seems gunshy about Microsoft buying anymore companies after their purchase of Activision/Blizzard.

[Ramo2653]

I think you'll get less big tentpole AAA games since the development cycle is so long and costly. Heck I just finished FF16 and the credits have been going and I've read the entire TNA, AEW, WWE and General Wrestling forums and this thread and it's still going.

More mid or lower tier games will be the move I think. Something like Trek to Yumi, Midnight Fight Express. And more remakes of PS3/XBox 360 games maybe? I'm not opposed since I've been playing FF16 on and off for a month and that was a big time sink for me, enjoyable, but still a time sink.