Everything Everywhere Once A Week (10/28/22)

Welcome to Everything Everywhere Once A Week, the weekly newsletter where I try to go over some gaming stories from the past week and provide my thoughts on them. This one is going to be a bit shorter because I’m currently writing it from a Baltimore hotel room while I attend a friend’s wedding, but I’ll try to pack in what I can here.

The Witcher Remake Announced

A few weeks ago, CD Projekt Red announced essentially their next ten years in projects, including a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 and three new Witcher games. One of those Witcher titles was announced at GDC earlier in the year and another has been revealed just this week — a remake of the first CDPR Witcher title originally released in 2007.

It’s not hard to understand why CDPR wants to go back to the original Witcher title over a decade later. While I wouldn’t call it unplayable, that first game is definitely on the archaic side. It had a lot more to do with planning and strategy than swinging your sword good and more streamlined versions of those mechanics made it into later games. A lot of the character designs of the comparatively lower budget game also don’t match the more modern ones, especially for returning characters like Triss.

Moreover, the game had a decidedly weird collectible where, upon Geralt sleeping with a woman as he does in nearly every village in the game, you receive a collectible card with nude art of said woman to keep. It has no real purpose, though I am unsure if a purpose would make it better or worse. I have to imagine they’re kicking this particular antique to the curb for the remake.

With new fans coming in through word of mouth and the TV show, I am guessing CDPR wants to put their best foot forward by remaking the game while removing cruft like that.

That Bayonetta Thing is Still Ongoing

I won’t get too deep into it this time as most of it is still covered by last week’s post. The main updates are that Taylor essentially confirmed Bloomberg’s report about the $15,000 number and has asked fans to donate to charities instead of buying the game, one of which being a pro-life Kentucky charity that puts up anti-abortion billboards over the south.

Read into that what you will, though not much deep interpretation is required there. Taylor also, more generally, implied that Schreier's report is part of a conspiracy by the gaming industry against her. You do you, I guess, but I'd probably not insinuate that the most prominent Jewish game journalist is part of a cabal that's trying to take you down at this moment in history.

Either way, the game is out. I’ll play it and write something about it in the coming days and weeks. I think that Taylor’s 15 minutes in this whole thing are probably over.

Rocksteady Studio Founders Leave Ahead of Suicide Squad

Sefton Hill and Jamie Walker, two co-founders of Arkham series developer Rocksteady, have announced that they are leaving the studio for “a new adventure in gaming” before the release of Suicide Squad next year. It’s surprising to see the pair leave before their next major game in nearly a decade and we can only really speculate on why, as it does not seem like they’re leaving gaming, just Rocksteady.

My guess is that they sense WB Games is likely not long for this world, whether that means a sale or a closure, and they would probably be better off leaving now than waiting to see what happens next. I know that publicly DIscovery has said that they are standing behind their gaming division, but I am of the belief that they’re saying that publicly because they want to fluff up the price for a sale and tilt any negotiations to the idea that they can walk away at any time.

But I also suspect that these things are not going their way so far and their likely plans to be out of the video game development business by late next year are probably not achievable. So who knows what happens when Suicide Squad comes out with whatever demands WB Discovery is making and they still haven’t found any wholesale buyers who are also willing to license the IPs that those studios made famous in the gaming space.

Especially when it’s very, very clear that Gotham Knights came out much earlier than it should have from a game quality perspective. I genuinely do not think Discovery has the stomach for the investment-forward game development business anymore. We’ll see!

Game Pass Prices Will One Day Go Up, Obviously

Closing out this week, let’s talk about a recent quote from Xbox chief Phil Spencer from a recent Wall Street Journal live event.

"I do think at some point we'll have to raise the prices on certain things, but going into this holiday we thought it was important to maintain the prices," Spencer said. "We've held price on our console, we've held price on games, and our subscription. I don't think we'll be able to do that forever. I do think at some point we'll have to raise some prices on certain things."

This is, like, kind of a nothing quote on its face. Spencer is correctly pointing out that eventually prices on things will have to go up, with the unsaid implication being that there’s a recession, supply chain issues, and just general cost adjustments that affect the top consumer level at some point or another. Unlike Sony, Microsoft has said they will not be raising the price on their consoles right now, but that’s not a guarantee that they will never do it.

I have seen some people freak out about the idea of Game Pass raising prices, suspecting that we’re in for a Netflix-style bamboozling of constant price hikes and largely original programming. Which…yes, probably! That’s always the path things like this will eventually take! I think people who are pretending this will never happen in even broad terms are crazy, but the way it happens absolutely matters.

I’ve been beating this drum for years, but a successful execution of Game Pass eventually runs into the Netflix problem. The more successful the service — be it Netflix or Game Pass or whatever else — the more money it costs to put content on that service. So you have to start making your own content to fill the holes that licensed content creates when the owners decide to raise their prices. It may end up more expensive but at least you own it.

Xbox, for their part, saw this coming and was very proactive with acquisitions. Ignoring whether those things are good or bad for the industry health as a whole (it’s complicated) for a moment, for Xbox it’s an absolute good to have developers constantly making games that fill a Game Pass library up and never go away or get renegotiated.

But that doesn’t come at zero cost. It comes at a massive upfront cost and then a slightly more manageable constant cost from then on. Those multi-billion dollar acquisitions have to be paid for somehow and as much as Call of Duty sells, it’s not going to subsidize the entire bill on its own. Someday, maybe soon, Game Pass prices will have to raise to start paying the piper.

Is that unexpected? Shouldn’t be! Does it make Game Pass a worse deal? By definition, yes, but also the trade off might be more content in the library so value is in the eye of the beholder. Either way, it will happen one day and people should not be shocked when it does.

Other Things This Week:

• For Inverse, I wrote about my time playing The Callisto Protocol, which I think is a very interesting combat puzzle box.
• I also interviewed Glenn Schofield, who had thoughts about the Dead Space remake, how the original game arose from frustrations with Resident Evil 4, and crunch at Striking Distance Studios.
• It’s not up yet so check the Patreon feed later, but Nerium Strom, Michael Higham, Andrea Shearon, and I recorded the second episode of Materia Possessions! We broke down the FFXVI trailer, talked about a lot of games, and clarified who is and is not Larry King.