With a capital ‘S’

Yes, it happens, we all find tuff and wonder how it was possible to make that mistake? It is called Sloppy, sloppy with a capital ’S’. In this I am referring to Skyrim PS5. Now, lets be clear. This is a free update. Yet this is also the 5th iteration of the same game. In this I am ignoring the Nintendo Switch edition. So there was the Xbox 360, the PS3, the PS4, the Xbox One and now the PS5, I did not get the new Microsoft console as it is soon to get the wooden spoon award (dead last in the race), that is if Amazon accepts my offer which will set them back $25M, but it will give them 50M additional consoles sold and that is a careful cautious estimate, it might get a lot higher in 2023. So after 5 iterations I played it again and in this I tool the stormcloak side. It was fr the mere reason to get Hjerim earlier in the game. I also took the Vampiric side, because I needed those 11 perks achievement. So when the Stormcloak campaign starts and we take Whiterun (as we do), the city marker is removed from the map, as is dragonreach and the personal housecarl of the old Jarl remains in the castle, the music is now set to battle music all the time and that is merely what I found. All these glitches (not really bugs) are here and update 1.001.001 does not solve them. So why is that? The PS4 edition did not have this, as far as I remember. The updates fix something (I reckon) yet issues remain. Now lets be clear, it is a free edition, yet it should be better. I did not buy it because if I spend A$80, it better come with a physical PS5 disc, that is how I roll. 

And there is more, but I want to make sure that this is not some bitch against Bethesda who gives away a PS5 edition free of charge (you still need the PS4 disc). I also recognise that the game is so good I never had any second thoughts about the 4 versions I bought, the game has brought 10 years of joy and in gaming time that is more than a lifetime. Yet the design I made of my new RPG as well as the initial TESVI: Restoration was a continuation of the excellence that Bethesda had brought. And there are options of making it TESVII: Restoration, but to be honest it was never with Microsoft at the helm and with them ‘sort of’ announcing that TESVI will not be a PS5 title, the option of Restoration will fall of the map as well. I get it, there was a tactical reason for Microsoft to dish out $8,500,000,000 for Bethesda, but that does not mean that I like it. A brilliant strategy but a flawed one. So should Amazon take the offer I will make it my duty to hand Phil Spencer the Wooden spoon (with golden engraving of ‘Microsoft’), that is what is required. This is not against Phil Spencer. He was given a lousy hand and he is still standing. Giving us that this man could have reached legendary status if the coins did not fall where they did. And consider that their marketing division will have to spin the setting that ‘the most powerful console’ will end up being dead last in a console race. And before Microsoft did what it did, it was never a consideration. I was not mulling over options and hardware opportunities. Anger did that and when I found what I did, I also did not expect to find the option this open. How could no one see it? And even now I am still in awe of the oversight others made. The question for me to me is whether the show of ‘sloppy’ in others had anything to do with it. In a total time that was smaller than a week I came up with TESVI: Restoration, Watchdogs IV, Far Cry VII, Mass Effect 5 and a few more games. Even a new approach to board games on streaming systems. Another week for a film setting, a mini series and a TV series over three seasons. I need to be careful not to blow my own horn but I did this, I found this, I created these elements, so why could they not? 

And the issues is not merely the setting of what is and what could be, the idea that can propel the Amazon Luna has never been done before and that is merely the first wave, the second wave will offer a hell of a lot more and that is when the big bucks come rolling in (minus 10% for me, I hope). And that is all before you realise that the bulk of gamers would really want another Marvel: Ultimate alliance, not version 2 or 3, but version 1. Why? Because it was close to perfection. It brought joy back to gaming. They took the 1985 game Gauntlet and made some serious upgrades and Ultimate alliance was the result and it was awesome. But after that the wrong people got involved. With their ‘what if’ and ‘if only gamers could’, and they never checked with actual gamers and the result was sloppy. The first one I played over and over (I never found all the figurines the first time) and it was awesome to finally find the 5th daredevil figurine (I think it was daredevil). No matter what, the game was awesome and I wonder what would happen if DC takes a shine to Gauntlet, or a Diablo minded game. There are plenty of options for loads of games, yet the setting is up to the designers. I am not a game designer, I am a storyteller and in RPG I have value. I do not feel that I am a great asset towards a new version of Ultimate Alliance. 

So whilst we are criticising Sloppy with a capital ’S’, there is a rather large lack of ‘Standards’, ‘Supremacy’ and ‘Superbness’ all with a capital ’S’, gaming should embrace all those needs as well, not the old discussion of ‘What if we only please 80% at launch date?’ It might sound nice, but that sets the stage of pushing 1 out of 5 to another platform that does not embrace it and so far the Sony exclusives embraced perfection (as close as it is possible), so after three games the other consoles face the risk of having lost three out of 5 gamers. Yet it is a slippery statistical slope, but it is not unrealistic. It is the danger of pleasing 80%. And that is why Microsoft is in danger of getting the wooden spoon (well, my idea is still part of that danger for Microsoft), so it now lies with Amazon (Google does not create games), as such they are absent of the discussion. 

A stage of gaming that required console makers to listen to their gamers, Microsoft blew that stock royally in a few ways, but that is what they signed up for. Angering gamers was the one mistake they could not afford to make.