What is it anyway?
Adult entertainment. It has evolved many times to suit that market, adults that want to be entertained. Most of us are contented with mainstream TV shows, movies, and video games.. but some people actually used to enjoy something designed for adults.
That might mean tough subject matter, nudity, realistic depictions of murder etc.. With the majority of those things already being mainstream.. what was actually left over? I mean that was worth producing and paying for?
Earlier today I added some new tweets on the subject of Phil Spencer being a total moron when it comes to delivering entertainment for Xbox fans. But honestly Xbox hasn't managed to deliver AAA titles like it could have been doing for the last decade due to lack of investment from Microsoft and people knowing they could find those games on PC and PlayStation.
It isn't like the audience of people paying for videos games is going anywhere. Because thankfully it isn't like there's really yet an alternative for getting AAA video games from mobile. Most people will say PC gaming isn't accessible or cheap. So consoles are it for a large portion of the video gaming market.
But porn.. and Xbox seem to be shrinking.
The issue was this nugget and how Microsoft released information about Xbox Scorpio last year, which I'm thinking is ruinous to Xbox One hardware and software sales. As far as they've said so far Scorpio will be another Xbox One version that just brings it in line with what gamers need today to be properly entertained.
No price. No games of its own to justify the purchase. No explanation of why anyone should care about it when they can just jump to PC and get access to Steam.
All they tell is is that it is bigger and better.
That's 4K resolution, Dolby Atmos support, VR capabilities and all the rest.
But what Phil does is tweet, much like Trump does, out loud as it were to his twitter followers about what he thinks is happening in the industry and what he needs his team to do to keep pace.
The concept of We Need a Netflix for Videogames bit me. It pisses me off that he'd talk about that now.
My knee jerk reaction to which has been for quite a long time now.. is both No Shit, and what the hell is that going to solve?
Asking people to pay a monthly subscription on top of their Xbox Live yearly subscription which is aside from their office 365 subscription.. how much money does Phil think Xbox needs from each gamer to be able to actually give us what we want? Games.
He talks about how Sony makes all these cool games but that making those games is still risky. For who?! Sony makes those games because that's their goddamned job! Plus, yes, that's what gamers expect. They expect a steady release of great games and they are willing to pay for them.
BUT THEN he's like well it is a risk because for new players, I mean, the players that haven't played these games for years, it is hard for these new players to get into the experience of playing games when all of these new games are based on old methodologies.
THAT WORK!
YOU FOOL!
..claws eyes out..
I really didn't expect that. I really didn't expect that the reason Phil Spencer's Xbox division isn't investing in video games is because there's so many 'new' players that don't know how to play video games.
That's like GM going fuck it guys we can't make any new cars because all these young drivers have no idea how to drive.
Are you fucking serious?!
Because this is the dude ALSO making Xbox Scorpio. WHO FOR then!? Us old timer gamers that keep wondering where all the AAA exclusives are?
Nah...
Meanwhile..
Going back to the thing that's been pissing me off for years now though is that TV had funding issues, but ads fixed that problem.
Movies also had funding issues but somehow they still manage to get by on ticket sales. Many movies fail horribly but it isn't like the movie industry is imploding. Some video games back in the day failed horribly but that shouldn't really be a thing anymore due to betas and focus testing and the majority of game developers not being complete morons that will blindly put millions into a game they think is awesome while ignoring their customers who are telling them the product is shit.
The last example of that was Sim City.
Why mention it?
Its the type of game Phil Spencer thinks we all want, online connected games that pretty much require you to play with other people but arguably adding NOTHING to the experience.
Putting myself in the shoes of a game development studio with only so much money to spend and time to work on a game I'd really not want to waste the project trying to support something I didn't believe in just because Phil Spencer thinks it's a the next wave of the future that's somehow going to save the Xbox brand.
Besides it adds extra expense and complexity. AND Microsoft has been working on a poster child game for Azure, their cloud platform for years with nothing to show for it.
Why would anyone bother?
Where's the money going to come from?
TV and movies both are supplemented by box set sales. Some movies that did bad in theaters still managed to make enough back in DVD sales to not be considered total failures. So you could watch a TV show and see ads which pay for the production, distribution and marketing costs.. The shows go into syndication which earns a bit more money. But today people are into binge watching. Getting all episodes of a show and watching them on our own schedules. You can buy that box set, same as you can buy a bluray, or you can subscribe to an online service.
But that's assuming you have internet.
I'd be happy to rent those box sets from Netflix on physical media if that was still a thing to avoid having to download hundreds of gigabytes per week on this new binging habit.
What I'm hearing is that internet is the problem here. But we knew that. We knew that was a problem since Sega announced that dreamcast could be a connected console. If the games are available digitally that almost guarantees they will be pirated. Also it shortcuts content delivery for most people, it is almost expected that you can just subscribe to Netflix and enjoy all the shows and movies you want and Netflix becomes a revenue nexus for production for existing and more content that you want to see. Where does the ad revenue come from?
Seeing ads in the Netflix app was one reason I dumped it. Same with Spotify.
But the subscription cost should still cover them right?
Netflix makes the most money when they make their own content and delivers it to their subscribed viewers.
Original Content.
Sounds really familiar to Sony making original content in the form or long running AAA exclusive titles. But shockingly they still have enough money and talented studios that can make NEW games. Those do need great advertising too but you know.. shit.. if they manage to sell then.. yeah, the business model works! OMG!
Porn has been using that model for ages though. At least those bigger studios that have their own websites. Except over the last decade many big studios have been buying up smaller ones which makes each site home to tens of thousands of videos. It makes each one of them a mini-Netflix because you can browse that back catalog while waiting for high production quality videos to be released daily.
Why? Why did they decide that it made sense to flood their own sites with so much content? Recently they've started pushing premium content. Bullshit really because it's the same daily content they used to release but they want you to pay more to access new content since you have access to so much existing content for what you pay for your subscription.
That's like Netflix upping their rates.
Oh wait.
But it works for Netflix. Apparently not so much for porn. Feels like they are telling all their subscribers to go fuck themselves. So why should they feel bad about turning to piracy?
Porn being an industry that has such a huge problem with piracy.
It is nearly impossible for the industry to make money when no matter what they produce.. no one takes them seriously. Stiffing people to the point they turn to piracy... just seems stupid.
I'm confused by this, I really am, because not too long ago the porn industry was really huge! I mean the bigger part of it that was comparable to TV and movie studios. Those studios would make all kinds of content and they would stream it to their viewers.
Every other site was trying to get you to try VR, or 4K, or high quality live streaming. Same as when porn pushed use into the VHS and then the DVD era.
One argument was that thanks to the internet and technology, porn was a great factor in pushing people to commit to HD tvs and high speed internet connections. But if they want you to watch a live stream.. then what's stopping you from just going to a cam site? Those are for the most part free. They aren't HD usually, but the content is overflowing. You're bound to find an interesting cammer. And at free that beats paying a big pornsite a monthly subscription and a premium on top of that to get their daily updates. If those updates were really worth it then people would stick it out and deal with the extra cost.
Apparently they aren't. Actually I'll pitch in here and say there are really only a handful of sites that are worth the money because of the content and production values. There are a few sites out there that have Netflix Original series style production values.
That used to be AMC, HBO, Shotime production values. Or Starz. Those big production houses that demanded that extra $5 or more a month on your cable bill.
I can understand then that yeah maybe millenials don't pay for cable for starters. But they can pay for Netflix.
Once those physical media avenues went away.. poof. So did paying customers who could just get online and visit a streaming site.
Porn didn't really have an alternate revenue source.
You could watch the outstanding series Hot Girls Wanted : Turned On on Netflix if you need clarification.
Porn I wouldn't say requires the internet to find talent, to market itself, and to distribute its wares.. I was shocked that the actual number of people that support the industry is actually so tiny.
I mean I've heard from representatives from production companies for years now how hard it is but just 3%? 3% of your billions of dollars entertainment industry actually pay for your products?
How the hell did that happen?
The show kind of makes it seem that it's millenials to blame. They don't have much money and they have no need to purchase the best of the best quality smut. It's doubtful that they'd want to view it on a 4K TV versus their.. claws eyes out, 2K to 4K cellphone.
If you're watching your porn on a phone it's frankly easier to just stream it from a tube site. Which is actually not a bad thing. What once would have been seen as just piracy, the tube sites were free marketing. If you liked what you saw you would hopefully get linked back to the production studio's website and sign up.
What I think Phil means then is that he doesn't want to copy the Netflix model so much as he wants Xbox and Xbox Live to model porn.
This though, again, I say is a vexing topic because Microsoft has had all kinds of opportunities to copy the porn model while it was still hot.
But they opted to not have a mobile platform. Why does that matter? Mobile could have been boosted by Microsoft and Nvidia back in the Xbo 360 days when Microsoft was really backing mobile friendly games. ID@Xbox games, indie games made by small studios that generally didn't require the full brute force of Xbox 360 should have been offered on a mobile platform.
Having that, and bigger studios redirect at least some of their resources toward mobile versions of their games would have been easy.
Sony wouldn't have gone at it alone with VITA. It felt like VITA failed over here because of that omission. All of the games that could have been made, just look for them in the app stores and on Steam.. that could have been profit and marketshare for Microsoft.
So Phil Spencer comes along and he's talking about finally setting up a model for Xbox games where those are the games they need. Why would anyone bother now?
It isn't like getting more people to buy games directly from Microsoft will solve anything. I mean.. do people buy games from Microsoft? I buy games from Amazon and Steam.
There's no reason to buy physical copy games anymore.
But I don't see trying to force games to have an online component solving anything.
Taking the Horizon Zero Dawn example again, I love that game. BUT I do hate that it doesn't have an online component. It is almost nonsensical that Sony could have released the game as a single player only story game. Like what the fuck were they thinking?!
Make a great game, market it, make millions. End of story.
Thinking about it another way, adding 6 more months to a year to the dev schedule, shortening the campaign to make room for an online campaign and free for all modes (like GTA), overtaxing the hire talent even more to complete the campaign and multiplayer sections.. that might have launched buggy and required a few more months to clean up.
You get Destiny. No one wants that.
He goes on to say everyone is tired of DLC adding extra cost to otherwise great games.
I haven't played HZD in a long time now and would kill for DLC. That's the point of DLC with the classic model. After a while, once you know what people think of the game and what direction you can go in, feel free to freshen the game with some new content. Heck that new content could have the online modes some of us might have expected from the initial game.
It prints money!
Seems like Xbox and Porn are just wasting money on all the wrong things.