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Comment by wpdev_63 | Hacker News Reader

Holy sh!t. Bethesda is huge!

Well I was just thinking the other day that Microsoft really doesn't have any first party studio that are really as good as Sony's first party. IMO they didn't release a game 'this' gen that makes picking up a xbox one worth it. This could change that with fallout and doom. Also this allows them to bring the ID tech engine under their stewardship....

I just hope that they don't trash the franchises in an attempt to bolster game pass.

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No Microsoft game has monetization as bad as Fallout 76. So whatever Bethesda does from now on can't be worse than what it does today. ;)

This should be filed under the "Tell me in 2 years" section.

Sure thing. But this also changes the reference point. If the entire video game industry is THAT predatory by 2022, it's hard to single out Microsoft for that and hold me responsible for my optimism today. ;)

Let us hope, at least

What would you say is Microsoft's worst game for microtransactions?

I've played Forza Horizon 4 for a while and you can buy cars in that game, but you earn enough points that they all become pretty cheap after only a few hours in the game.

Forza Street probably. Anything with microtransactions is bound to be bad for customers but FS is probably the most criticized MS product to date (and yeah, it's a re-skinned, acquired product but I'd still count it against Microsoft since they attach themselves to it).

The biggest issue for me was that certain in-game cars were locked behind the spin-the-wheel game, and while(thankfully) there was no way to spend real life money for more spins, it still felt absolutely shit that I could have 100+ in-game hours, hundreds of millions of in-game currency, and yet no, I can't have that Mercedes E63 AMG, because it can only be won through spins. In Horizon 3 you could just buy any car at any point, it was just a matter of getting enough currency.

Horizon 3 was a lot of fun, but 4 just got repetitive and boring. It felt like the same game with really dumb gimmicks like being able to buy houses.

Agreed, I do actually think that 3 was a superior game, even if 4 had a prettier map.

Thankfully Microsoft experimented with the real money payment for sort of the "spin-the-wheel" equivalent in the mainline Forza Motorsport series (off hand I can't remember if it was 5 or 6 that was the absolute nadir), and learned enough from that failed experience (and a similar one in I think it was Gears 4 and Halo 5) that it never infected the Horizon series.

You can't buy them in-game without buying them with real money first. Once you unlock the car pack, or spend 1/3 as much to unlock that particular car, you can buy as many extras as you want with in-game money.

Halo 5, Warzone REQ packs could be a money sink for certain kinds of players. Personally, I haven’t spent a dime on the game except the initial purchase - but it really soured the community that one could spend real money on power weapons. Given that many items in REQ packs are single-use rather than permanent unlocks it can be a whale magnet as well, and I absolutely do not think game developers should be allowed to capitalize on people with addiction problems like this.

The weird thing about F76 is that the monetization doesn't effect the game, it's just not very good. I have never supported a game through microtransactions, but I actually felt I wanted to for F76 as it seems like a candidate for a "Forever Game" fallout world that gets expanded upon. But they have nothing I would ever want to buy.

I hope this acquisition will fix Bethesda. Skyrim was their last game worth talking about, everything since then has either been effectively a Skyrim mod or a cash grab. With exception to Doom.

I loved Fallout 4

Every game has somebody who loves it. Even that terrible Superman game. Fallout 4 wasn't total garbage, but it was huge step down from Fallout 3 or Skyrim.

> it was huge step down from Fallout 3 or Skyrim

In what way?

And how is your opinion better metric than my opinion? You have data to back it up?

It was a huge step down if you liked RPG games, which given Bethesda traditionally made rpg games and that fallout was originally an rpg series is hugely important.

Fallout 4 suffered from quest repetition/duplication, an emphasis on combat over other rpg driven approaches to play and a relatively low ability to effect the world as the player.

It's not a bad game per say but it's a mediocre rpg. It was arguably more disappointing given how incredible an rpg New Vegas was despite not having been finished properly.

How about comparing metacritic scores?

https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/fallout-3

https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/fallout-4

One might slice and dice this by platform, but I think there was a general consensus that 4 was not as good as 3 both in meta score and user score.

Skyrim was a significant technical advancement of Gamebryo, not just in terms of visual quality or so forth, but also in terms of what was possible with the engine. Fallout 4 was a minor upgrade and could have easily been a total conversion mod for Skyrim - there was no innovation and it did nothing new. Irrespective of whether people enjoyed that re-skinned Skyrim, it was a blatant cash-grab.

The argument has nothing to do with anybody enjoying the game, a metric that I did not mention at all in my comment, it has to do with a growing trend where Bethesda has been doing the absolute bare minimum to cash in on their fans' good will.

You do understand that the quality of game engine is completely orthogonal to how good a game is, right?

For some reason you believe that your opinion about the game is universally true, while the opinion on the other is personal preference.

You are just trying to prove that vanilla flavor is universally better than chocolate.

Edit: Retracting "Borderline bigotry."

They left a comment on the internet - I don’t think it’s civil to conflate it to being universal - why not explore their opinion, or just accept that de gustibus non est disputandum?

Also, what if vanilla could be proven to be universally better? That’d be cool, how could one go about doing that? Probably either: eliminate the supply of chocolate world wide, or spend billions marketing vanilla... Probably lots of ways to get a universal sentiment with the right levers!

One ding in chocolate: there’s no chocolate coca-cola... or is there? I should google that :) There do seeeeeem to be more vanilla flavored mass market colas than chocolate, but that’s very much cherry picking.

A ding for vanilla, I’m not sure if it’s ever eaten alone in any meaningful way, but I dunno, I’d have to think about it more.

> quality of game engine is completely orthogonal to how good a game is, right?

That's exactly my point. I haven't once conflated the two, all of your comments have.

I’m feeling like, during the lockdown, we need to have some kind of shit throwing HN comment competition to get all the angst out of our systems.

First rule: make every assumption about the other commenter’s intent. Second rule: never actually directly respond to the other commenter.

It’s like code golf, but to get toxic online interactions out of our systems in a controlled environment. What do you think? :)

Sign me up :)

I don't see it as shit throwing or being toxic. Apologies if I came across like this. I am just trying to argue about something that really doesn't matter for the sake of making arguments

Appreciate you saying this. Consider that your argument counterparts don’t see it this way. Are you saying you’ll sign up for my weird internet argument championships?

> That's exactly my point. I haven't once conflated the two, all of your comments have.

How? The disagreement is if Fallout 4 was a moneygrab or not. Is that correct?

According to you it was because it "Skyrim was a significant technical advancement of Gamebryo, not just in terms of visual quality or so forth, but also in terms of what was possible with the engine. Fallout 4 was a minor upgrade and could have easily been a total conversion mod for Skyrim - there was no innovation and it did nothing new."

Correct me if I am wrong but isn't this "conflatng" the effort gone into a game, and specifically the engine, with the quality of the game?

No. It's measuring the amount of investment into the game.

Some very dedicated folks took the pittance of time/money afforded to them and made a fantastic effort. Imagine what the same people could have done with an engine that wasn't merely a minor graphical improvement. Imagine what FO4 could have been with richer story telling technology (dialog mechanics, interaction mechanics, etc.), instead the content team was stuck with the same scripting power available in Skyrim.

BOTH the effort of people who clearly care about the franchise AND the publisher's shameless money grubbing show in the final product.

I think settlement building was a pretty big step for the engine/gameplay.

That was my big problem with Fallout 3, it felt like an Oblivion total conversion... I had difficulty enjoying it because it still "felt" like Oblivion in so many ways, to me :(

Just to double down on Skyrim - I paid for it at least four times.

Once on PC, once on Xbox, another time to get the remastered special edition, and finally on Nintendo Switch and I had zero regrets tbh. I even played switch and xbox in parallel when I traveled more.

Fallout 1st gives you the currency to buy anything but also the ability to pretry much play fully solo.

I only started Fallout 76 this summer so I can't speak to the bad state it launched in. But the recent major update got good word of mouth and it was on sale for $15. I haven't paid a dime extra and I've had a full single player experience that matches or succeeds Fallout 4.

If you just want another single player Fallout game, this game is a steal and has no monetization problem. What I can't do is build up a camp using a lot of different trinkets from the store, but luckily I don't care about that.

ID tech is one of the biggest Vulkan users. I really hope they don't port it to Directx 12 instead :(

When I saw Doom 2016 running on OpenGL I was shocked. I would’ve never thought you could write an AAA game with it. It made me wonder why game developers use DX instead.

If you want to target Xbox, you need to write a D3D renderer anyway (although the Xbox API has some significant differences, if I understand correctly). There's little point writing an OpenGL renderer if your target platforms are Windows, Xbox, and PlayStation (which has its own graphics API).

Also, my understanding is that on Windows, OpenGL generally runs into more issues with driver bugs than D3D does.

I work for a large video games company and we usually write two backends - DirectX for Windows and Xbox, and a special one for PlayStation. That is changing slightly with Stadia, because that forces us to write a Vulkan renderer too. But on the few games that have it, the DX12 performance is better on windows than that of the Vulkan renderer backend - so we haven't released it to the public.

you should release vulkan for proton / linux users i think

Please do release it to the public! Just for Proton and to experiment/bechmark.

As much as I'd like that, I can hear from here the outcries from the gaming community.

"Your game is bugged! It doesn't work! I want a refund!"

"But the vulkan renderer is only tested on Stadia, it's not officially supported and the game is free."

"I. Want. A. Refund."

Put another way, then: doing so would mean taking on a considerable support burden.

Make it a command line flag ;)

Not a bad idea, especially if it's something like --experimental-vulkan. Unlikely to get blamed if it goes wrong, that way.

Or a beta branch in Steam.

So.....no, because gamer press is ruthless :P We've had one graphical bug in one of our games(which I'm certain everyone on the internet has seen by this point), and in reality it was only happening if you played on one specific GeForce card, and only when using beta Nvidia drivers. But of course no one cared that the bug only happened when using experimental drivers - it was somehow a proof of how broken our games are. If this(the vulkan backend) lead to any graphical bugs in our games, I can almost guarantee that they would be paraded everywhere, no matter how clearly we mark it as experimental and unfinished.

> Also, my understanding is that on Windows, OpenGL generally runs into more issues with driver bugs than D3D does.

I'm not sure if that's the case anymore, but it definitely has a bad rep on Windows. Initially (throughout XP and maybe some of Vista) OpenGL support on Windows was done by a OpenGL -> DirectX translation layer, so performance was always worse in OpenGL mode unless a game's Direct3D implementation was especially awful. This stopped being the case when NVIDIA started shipping a full OpenGL driver. (I'm not sure when AMD/ATI started shipping theirs)

> Initially (throughout XP and maybe some of Vista) OpenGL support on Windows was done by a OpenGL

Initially (Windows 95), OpenGL support was provided directly by the OS. Starting with Windows 98, Microsoft stopped updating the OGL version of their reference driver, so users were stuck with OGL 1.1 unless the graphics card driver shipped with a custom OpenGL implementation.

So whenever an application uses an OGL version higher than v1.1, it is provided by the graphics card driver and that has nothing to do with DirectX. There is no translation layer in that case (unless of course, that's what the driver does internally, but that's up to the manufacturer).

TL;DR Custom OGL drivers shipped with every graphics card that supported OGL in Windows since 1998.

That hasn't been the case, then, because I clearly remember OpenGL being translates to DirectX in XP/Vista days. Whether it was because anything >1.1 called that up or because the driver vendors chose translation over native, I don't know.

Original link seems to be dead but Slashdot references Vista layering OpenGL on top of Direct3D:

https://slashdot.org/story/05/08/06/177251/windows-vista-may...

That comment references something else entirely - namely the Aero rendering system of the OS. This didn't affect applications that didn't use the Aero glass scheme (it was an option during window creation), however, or apps running in full-screen mode.

The Aero glass scheme was hardware accelerated and only worked with Direct3D, thus any OGL context created for a window using this renderer would have to run via Direct3D.

This is a very special case and as noted earlier, easily circumvented by simply not using this feature in your app.

Because game developers mostly don't pick the backend, game engine developers do. The vast majority of game developers pick a game engine and that drives most of their other technical decisions. There are really only a dozen game engines that have enough market share to matter, and a decent chunk of the biggest ones were built on top of DX for various reasons. OpenGL, while a great concept, was a fairly flawed execution for quite a while (its gotten a lot better in the last 10 years or so), so I can at least partially understand why in the past someone who doesn't care at all about cross-platform support might have steered clear of it.

Reading this the second time, I think it might be one of the best "we're being acquired by X" announcements I've ever read. Excited but restrained, and it acknowledges (somewhat implicitly, but still) that there's going to be _quite a bit_ of trepidation in Bethesda's fanbase over the change.

"WHEN THE HELL WILL YOU TELL ME ABOUT STARFIELD?" and the rest of that paragraph actually fills me with a pretty high degree of confidence that this will go well. That, and Nadella-era Microsoft's surprisingly good track record in recent acquisitions.

Really? I was immediately unimpressed when they started trying to claim they did it so they can make better games, rather than because Microsoft offered them a boatload of money.

Why not both? So far Microsoft has been pretty "hands off" with the development process of a lot of the IPs it has acquired.

No, not at all.

They've been pretty hands-off with their most recent acquisition, but one studio does not a trend make.

Looking outside of the gaming space their recent acquisitions seem to have gone fine, no? For example Github seems to go well, Linkedin was always pretty shit and unethical, so I'm not sure it's any better or worse. Citus seems to still be going well and still offers on-prem or enterprise versions on other clouds than Azure. Xamarin is more open-sourced since Microsoft took over.

IMO, (and if you told me I'd say this 10 years ago I'd say you're crazy) of the big tech companies right now I think MS might be the best steward.

Maybe, but that really depends on how independent Microsoft's gaming business is from the rest of the company.

I'm still waiting on the other shoe with github.

Skype is a very loud example of a poorly handled acquisition by Microsoft.

The client has been turned into a real fan-spinner and it seems like they sacrificed a great standalone service for something that pushes consumer and business users towards tight integration with Microsoft's platform.

2020 could have been a banner year for Skype; instead Zoom is now shorthand for any video meeting whatsoever.

Yes, Skype was handled incredibly bad. I don't think MS knew what they bought and both the client and the platform turned from being the kleenex of voip to similar to seeing a yahoo email nowadays.

I think MS'es ways have changed since then though, looking at acquisitions since 2013 to 2015-ish they seem to have been handled better IMO.

Also, an argument can be made that some of Microsoft's mess was being too hands off with Skype. A lot of Skype's own development woes were projects they started back while owned by eBay and simply finished in time for Microsoft to get the blame. Also the whole "Skype for Business isn't Skype and doesn't share anything but the brand name" was a hands off decision that was dumb in retrospect.

> Also this allows them to bring the ID tech engine under their stewardship.

It doesn't have to be id tech, but can they make Todd Howard use some other engine than whatever Gamebryo monstrosity Bethesda Softworks been using for 20 years?

Only do that if you never want to see another Elder Scrolls/Fallout game release again.

Combining Bethesda with Id could be a winning formula as long as Bethesda is bullied into getting out of their comfort zone

There's no way they could trash any franchise worse than Bethesda has trashed Fallout.

I think that's overstating it. Fallout 4 was well received even if it was a little disappointing. So it really is just Fallout 76. They can recover from that, especially considering that Fallout 76 wasn't even a proper mainline sequel.

A lot of people think that Fallout 76 did recover with the last expansion pack (and cross-play and Game Pass). Microsoft acquiring Bethesda even further insures at the very least it will stay a Game Pass mainstay for some time now.

(Also, it is interesting to note that with the Bethesda purchase, Microsoft will now own "all" of Fallout and the "Fallout diaspora" caused by Interplay's death, as Microsoft already owned development studios Oblivion [made FO:Vegas, had developers involved with FO1 and FO2] and inXile [had developers on FO1, FO2, and FO-predecessor Wasteland 1/2/3, and was in a blood feud of sorts with Oblivion].)

>Oblivion

Obsidian, the company is called Obsidian Entertainment.

That said, the folks at Obsidian (especially the creators of the original Fallout and New Vegas) have said they have no interest in doing a Fallout game. Tim Cain specifically mentioned during the Outer Worlds Q&A that the Fallout ship had sailed.

Hah, an easy typo/slipup to make when talking about Fallout/Bethesda (due to ES: Oblivion).

I think that Obsidian is better off doing non-Fallout things (and personally Outer Worlds is so much "Fallout Alternate Space Timeline" already that I'd much rather see them continue with Outer Worlds as the closest thing they ever again do to Fallout). It's just interesting to point out how many of the "Fallout birds" will come home to roost at Microsoft.

This is right of nose and defines exactly why MSFT pivoted to the Game Pass strategy - there were no console-moving titles (besides Sea of Thieves, that game rocks)

What we could see now is these games coming to Game Pass early, or even getting Xbox exclusive content. Theres a low chance they dont drop on other platforms (Skyrim on your Windows phone?) but still a big chip for MSFT to have on hand.

>Also this allows them to bring the ID tech engine under their stewardship....

I'm surprised that isnt more commented on here. Everyone is focused on creative IP. Owning id Tech 6 is or should be a play against Epic, Unity, Crytek etc. 1-4 were open source, and ZeniMax clamped down 5-6. I can see Microsoft marketing id Tech's long open source history, and transforming it into an Amazon Lumberyard competitor.

>Owning id Tech 6 is or should be a play against Epic, Unity, Crytek etc.

Does Microsoft even want to compete against their customers/partners in this space? After all, MS may not want to alienate them to the point they won't release their games for the Xbox.

Microsoft is a developer company and their oldest division is developer tools. They've made several attempts into the game engine / game engine adjacent space over the years, though rarely saw wins outside of low level DirectX. (XNA will be most remembered as an indie dev play, but a key piece of XNA was its content pipeline and Microsoft tried but didn't succeed that well at trying to replace the mostly mish-mash of custom tools that most AAA studios use for content pipelines for something somewhat more standardized; though of course with the easy retrospect failure of being hobbled by focusing on Xbox first/primarily.) So productionizing id Tech 6 isn't an entirely crazy idea for Microsoft in terms of something that makes cultural sense for them. Game Engines can be an important dev tool; especially in the increasing interest in non-game capital-E Enterprise in game engines for visualization tools (including AR/MR/VR).

But yes, Microsoft seems to have a good working relationship with Unity at this point and probably wants to try to keep a good relationship with Epic, so I don't envy whatever product strategist would have to figure out if that minefield would be worth disturbing.

I honestly don't see it being the kind of competition that ruffles those feathers. Microsoft wants developers developers developers to fill Game Pass and run their Infrastructure on Azure, and Microsoft Hearts Open Source. Microsoft open sourcing id Tech 6, and then saying Azure/XboxStore is the best places to build your game and host it, regardless of which engine you want, is the cold war, mutually assured rising tide raises all boats, kind of competition.

What Microsoft doesn't want is Epic or Google getting all the power, becoming the standard, and then being able to strongarm them. Competition, especially open competition, keeps the players more honest.

It's just another entry on this page, albeit a strong one. https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/gaming

Though Epic being a very loud squeaky wheel right now (versus Apple) is exactly why Microsoft may show concerns of rocking the game engine boat right now. Xbox Game Studios is using the Unreal engine in a lot of projects (Rare's projects like Sea of Thieves; though divorced from Epic for several years now, The Coalition still sometimes seems to get "second party tech demo" support from Epic on Gears) and probably couldn't quickly switch everything to id Tech if Microsoft got into a showdown with Epic like Epic has been fighting Apple lately. Which partly means it is already too late for Epic getting "too much" power to strong arm in the engine space (and thanks to Fortnite increasingly having the confidence to use it).

I want to think that Microsoft can do it, regardless of Epic (and even Unity), but I still think it is a minefield.

I wouldn't see Microsoft pulling an EA and mandating ID tech like Frostbite. Maybe far down the road there would be a preference.

Indeed, which is why the potential threat of Epic trying to end support for Microsoft for Unreal would be a very credible threat that I think Microsoft would have to deal with. Xbox Game Studios has a lot of projects invested in Unreal today.

That hasn't been true for a while now. Xbox Game Studios has acquired Rare, Obsidian, Double Fine, Ninja Theory, Mojang...

Yup, I have the same feeling. I've had an Xbox since the Xbox 360 days:

Xbox 360 -> Xbox One S -> Xbox One X

But, looking at the different showcases. Definitely getting a PS5 this time. I don't do many multi-player games and actually enjoy story based single player games. Looking forward to play God of War, Unchartered, Spider Man, etc.

Maybe this will give Microsoft the boost they need to make some fun next gen games.

Then you might be getting the best deal with the new PS Plus Collection offer. You'll get to play some of the best games of the past generation immediately on release of the PS5.

If I am not mistaken they have some few PS5 exclusives under development. Is there any new IP that Bethesda is working on, which can be potentially a Xbox/PC exclusive?

Sans Socom 2 remake, PS5 is going to be absolute garbage.

Demon Souls remake?

Given how many of the PS4 exclusives were absolutely amazing (some of the best games in the last decade in my personal opinion), I have no reason to think that PS5 won’t have some incredible games too. Hell, between Demons Souls and the next Horizon Zero Dawn, there’s enough there to make me want one.

Deathloop too, which was just shown off in the PS5 event.

Microsoft doesn't care about exclusives that much, imo. Sure, a few here and there, but overall they just want people to use their software. That's why their new "exclusive" titles are also on Xbox One. Microsoft will make money by selling their Bethesda titles to PlayStation users, etc. They might make a few of their titles exclusive, but Fallout and Doom won't be among them.

Isn't XBOX ONE from MS?

What? They absolutely will make them exclusive.

Can you play Halo on the PlayStation? No, for the same reason you can’t play Uncharted on the Xbox.

Microsoft will happily support Windows gaming, for obvious reasons. But the PlayStation for a franchise like Fallout or Elder Scrolls?

I will believe it when I see it. It makes little strategic sense to offer those titles on Sony hardware when Microsoft have their own console.

Microsoft's Mojang titles are still on PlayStation and with the xCloud partnership with Sony, things are probably going to get weird on what is considered an "Xbox Exclusive" to the point where "Xbox on PlayStation powered by xCloud" sounds almost a reasonable expectation to happen this console generation.

Isn't Minecraft a bigger game than anything Sony makes? It's owned by Microsoft but isn't an xbox exclusive.

Minecraft is just a single game. Sony has a bunch of very good console exclusives under its name.

Yeah but that single game has sold as much as ten 'The Last of Us'es. Microsoft sells their best games on Sony's platform too.

And that's just the game itself, on top of that there's millions of kids running around in Minecraft merchandise.

(source: there's one in my house <_<)

It was cross platform before the Microsoft acquisition. I think Minecraft is sort of a special case, it's essentially its own genre.

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