Tag Archives: Ubisoft

July 17, 2020 · 01:30

Second ride to the other place

Ubisoft has released a non-leaked first view edition and it is only fair that I take a look at it. It does look a little better, yet I still fear that Ubisoft has taken its Assassins Creed franchise and put it in a casket and the grave that is where it is headed. 

In the first, no matter how it is dressed, it is no longer an Assassins Creed game, they had the option of making an optionally powerful new franchise, but Ubisoft clearly waged against it. What we see does look good, the graphical section of Ubisoft always knew what it was doing and they moved on on this trip towards excellence. Yet I see more things, and more options that make sense in one way, and seem overly pushed for in another. The fear that I had that some is a trial to push Far Cry elements into this game is not gone, but it was slightly diminished. Yet there it was, chasing tattoo sheets, just like Black Flag chasing songs, or was it the almanac pages in the third game? More of the same, trying to appease all makes for a stage that pleases none. 

The second part is yet to be proven, merely as I had to download more for Breakpoint, I decided to delete it, the patches are well over 50Gb (in total size), and I started the game late, so I missed a few patches, that is the darkest moment that this game faces. The large comments of the video poster seems to indicate the idea that was left with me. It is an RPG that has a lot towards Witcher 3, there is an attempt towards the older AC games, but I was not satisfied from what I saw. Some parts are familiar and you have done it before, some seem new and surprisingly so. The entire station is upgraded and the lack of tools are perhaps felt, but there are skills that are there now. There are feelings in me, but Ubisoft destroyed the faith to it. It seems to me that there is no questing to the degree of the past, as you need to discover events by exploration, AC Odyssey hinted at the route, but I will await a more complete edition. In shadows of ignorance, I would see this as Witcher IV, the UK travels, and that is how it looks and feels, yet it is not a CD Project Red game, it is not a Gerald of Rivia game, but the sandbox feeling is better done now than it was in AC Odyssey. The game has new parts, or basically vastly altered applied parts. Skills and inventory are the ones that stand out. Weapons and armour are not merely altered, they have been vastly upgraded. Weapons does not merely have a damage part, there is speed and impact as well, so the choice of a weapon will be more towards the gameplay and chasing the right weapon and sticking to it will matter. Armour had elements like weight and evasion, so what looks cool might not be efficient. It is an essential upgrade that matters, so do the skills, there are major and minor upgrades there and it is shown in a new light, as such, the game will have new and improved sights on this, yet this is Ubisoft, so how many patches will it require? There is no way to tell, the game is close to 3 months away from completion, but unlike the leak, this does show me that Valhalla is not an auto fail, Ubisoft might have lost a lot of credibility, there is a decent chance that this game is a game changer not unlike AC Origins was and that was a breath of fresh air, as such Valhalla might be another one, time will tell, yet that would enable Ubisoft gain some essentially required credibility. I hope that they will all it off, I might have been opposing some of their actions, but I do not hate them (hate is useless, always). 

I will advice all to take another look and not rely on the leaked part, there are a few videos out there and most will give a similar view. I personally do not go for those making a ‘my honest opinion’ approach, for the simple reason that a sandbox game is too large, and the game relies on a much broader taste in gaming as such, it applies to more and everyone has their own playing style, in the AC games for me it was stealth, which is why I found AC Odyssey disappointing. I did like the overall adaptability of Valhalla, yet I felt that the stealth part is lacking, which makes it not an AC game, but let’s be fair, when did we consider ANY viking to be a person who understood the concept of stealth? Yet the game looks impressive, there is no denying that. Yet how many patches will it face? A setting that keeps on nagging in the back of my head. 

Time will tell, but I do feel it is important for anyone taking the ‘leak’ as gospel to take another look as the leaked video is definitely selling the game short.

 

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July 11, 2020 · 22:52

Project One Fiver

We all have the setting in our heads, we have an idea and we partially roll with it. It is there where we get the problem, some see problems, some do not. I am the one in category two, yet I also have flaws and they show themselves rather quickly. I am the entire opposite of those, I am one who quits as the challenge is gone. It is a basic law, it is stupid, but in 1989 there was a different stage, the BS artists were in charge, I was new, I knew nothing, but I had my 

Nantucket clipper compiler and a book on how to program and within weeks I was ahead of a lot of people.  I was asking container programs, admin programs and I loved it. But it came with an inner flaw. Someone in the cinema world asked me for a solution, I was not thinking like a consultant, because I was self trained, I rejected the offer, not because it was hard, but because it was easy. I had in my mind set the stage and developed the solution in an hour, I saw what was needed and my mind set the stage in minutes. The shows, the cinema’s the date’s, it was the simplest application of Clipper and dBase 3, as such I saw the premise that I was doing all the work and getting almost nothing for it, because people would state that it was too easy, and in those days the rent was due. I leaned a lot over time and I went in a different direction, but the ability to see solutions remained in me. 

So as I am watching the Battlestar Galactica series (again) an idea came to mind, what if the premise of the RPG is changed? What if the game is not one game, but 15? All linked into one massive game, into one large game that is in part driven by the parameters of other gamers? Not just that, but your achievements will be an added parameter for them? Over time your stage will be the overbearing one, but you are not one voice, you are one of a choir and over time you are the choir. As far as I can tell, that has never been done before and even as my idea grasps some idea’s from others, the stage of philosophical drives, the stage of a limited stage is not new. Other games programmed around it, I am considering it to be part of the game. And over that stage we see the ability where we intersect in a much larger stage. Yes, it sounds confusing, me talking about stages, about parameters and about requirements, yet games are like that and we fill in the blanks in stages, the stage of where we play, the stage of where a character is and we have the ability to set a much larger field of play in a  game that could set a new record in gaming in the next console war. 

A stage that has several planets, a stage that is set where we have a formula that creates 15 planets, and you have no idea where you are. This is not for the weak of mind, or those walking around in Minecraft, this is Elder Scrolls Oblivion on a scale that is 15 planets big and we do not set out to gain a flag or to kill a monster, we set out to create a dynasty and that is never a clear sailing premise. I see the solutions that other greats did before this, There was the Ultima series an RPG by Richard Garriott that is something that still drives me and why it was never refurbished in a new coat with new graphics still puzzles me. But they were not alone, there were others, to some perhaps forgotten, but with gems in its coding. Hopefully we will see a remade System Shock soon, yet it was not alone. Whist Ubisoft is all about triggers and respawning enemies, the stage is out there for a different kind of RPG, I believe that the PS5 will open up more options and different sets of games. The problems is not the game, the issue will become where is the IP, who owns it and how can it be staged in different ways. We see series like Westworld and we wonder how it can become a game. There was someone with the Westworld Shelter approach, I never saw it, I would have liked to have seen it, but it was removed before I could see it. This is not a random phrase, the question becomes that in the age we face, sources are limited, so how can we make a game enjoyable, repayable and original without it becoming a mesh of Minecraft and Animal Crossing? Whilst Ubisoft showed us how not to do it, w still need to do it and we need to do it right. It needs a hand that looks outside of what coders look at. We need to consider the creation of a strategy guide before there is a game, so that we can ensure the long term existence of the created game. And to be there for the long term you need to look with different eyes, to see in a different scope. I saw the option of scope when I created the foundation for Elder Scrolls VIII: Restoration, I saw the option of views when I considered Watch Dogs IV: Refugee, it also gave me the idea to set different dimensionalities (there was was an example in System Shock), yet the combining of elements is a much larger stage and it is a different stage. It is not like we go to the theatre, it is the entire block around the building that houses the theatre as well. That is the stage we work from, because when the surroundings are there, that is when we give size to the stage in that theatre. It has always been that way, yet in the past the computers could not deal with that stage, computers are finally catching on and even as the remade Pirates (Sid Meier) was betrayed into a diminished stage and labeled Assassins Creed: Black Flag, does not mean that it was so, we had no reason to give up on a time honoured classic, yet that stage was burned before it flourished. I wonder what we can get done when that is ignored in a future project, what happens, when we have a planet making program like we see in No Mans Sky and we prepare 15 codes, 15 places with enhanced detailing, 15 stages where the plant is the stage, where we are a person in a much larger field and we get to set up the stage of history, I reckon that it has never been done before, not to this degree and not to this reference of options, a stage much larger than ever before and to the degree where we at the end of 200-600 hours want to play it again, so far only Bethesda and CD Project Red have come anywhere near that stage, there is off course GTA5, no one denies that, so out of 2300 game developers, only 3 only got that near, would it not be the right challenge to be one of 10 ever to get that near? It is not a hard question to answer. 

I’ll let you simmer on the question and the questions that will be in your mind at this time.

 

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July 7, 2020 · 23:52

Picture this!

Yup, we all have these moments, I whilst facing the jabberwocky of insomnia ended up facing a new bout of creativity and I thought of sharing it right here, it can use the benefits that 5G brings but is not reliant on it, it is an altered way of looking at pictures. It is however a little more, ad to be honest, the issues at Ubisoft brought them forward, with an undisclosed part that is depending on certain pats that might come up in WatchDogs 4 (if Ubisoft still exists by then).

OK, to get you there, this needs to go in stages. 

Digital picture frames. We have all seen them, the cheap solutions in some asian setting that allows for some resolution and has some memory to show pics at 480dpi, not the greatest resolutions, but for the family snaps it is OK. There are more expensive versions, that have much higher resolution (and are more expensive), some will allow for an SD card to keep the pics and that is what they display.

The second stage is a new stage, what if the picture frame is whatever you need it to be? Now we move from the family snapshot to the presentation gigs. There are versions that call themselves ‘Clear 3D Rear Holographic Projection Screen film’ solutions and they are good for the usual presentation that are in a preset stage, but presentations on trade fairs tend to be anything but preset. Trade fairs tend to be dynamic, consider E3, ECTS, Horecava, Efficiency Trade Fairs, it is you against the world and sometimes that is quite literal. What if the display technology is adaptive?  Consider the projection screen film, it is a great option for some, but is depending on rear projection and that is not always a solution.

So what happens when we change the equation? What is the film is triple layered and the plasma technology is not set to dimensions? So whatever you screen you cut with scissors, has a determined point 0, but the size at that point allows to become whatever we need it to be? That sheet can placed in whatever frame we need it to be in and at that point we attach the thingamajig (technobabble for Display engine with embedded projection core). And it has what it needs to start the display, it needed a point 0. The rest can be set in the stage of side 2. So we have a sheet, it has two attachments, one with point 0, one with point Y, after that the image can be presented. Any image when one side is known, the rest can be made, no matter the size. If the size grows beyond a stage the engine needs to reflect display technology to deal with the matter (different subject). The issue is only partially solved.

3. The leaks that Ubisoft shows, is also a larger need to keep things confidential, so what happens at trade shows? So what happens when these displays are all set with a Micro SD card that has the cloud encryption so that a player like Ubisoft can keep its presentation on a Paris server, or Microsoft on their Seattle PCXT, IBM on their, you get the idea, marketing HQ keeps their presentations under wrap and the presentations would not be able to get leaked. 

4. The displays are merely part of the solution, there would be SD/MicroSD options to reflect that, but the larger stage is that not merely in trade show, in EVERY shop, the location can decide what display format fits them best. Almost like a TV to fit your exact size and that is where we go with this. 5G will allow for that approach and not all requires the internet. Mobile 5G stations can present whatever they need. Like the Schwarovsky Rose presentation is saw a few years ago, the option to localise whatever you need to present, a stage absent of one of the most important parts, heavy TV’s monitors, whilst most of that device is never used, a stage where we overthrow the part we require to be left with the part we need. 

A TV that is set to size using a pair of scissors, I wonder if we see that in Cyberpunk 2077, I might just have given a few idea’s to the technical nerds on planet internet.

 

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July 7, 2020 · 01:04

Death of the creed

Before I begin I must warn you, if you are an AC fan, a fan of what Ubisoft produces, you will hate this story. The second part is that this is based on personal views, speculations and what the ‘leaked’ 30 minutes of AC Valhalla brings. The game is still in development, so the end result could differ. Keep all that in mind!

We saw the creed getting killed, its fans have seen a steady decline since the third game, and that is where we stand, it took 8 years. It took this long because no one will argue that AC4 (Black Flag) and ACO (Origins) are indeed excellent pieces of work, but it was marketed by what I like to call a group of people without any backbone, softcovers the lot of them. Black Flag is an excellent game but it is not an AC game (the escape from prison level is perhaps an exception). Black Flag is the pirate game that Sid Meier dreamt of making, but technology stopped him and Ubisoft had the inside track here to make a new piece of memorable IP, but they moved away and set the stage to a much larger IP hoping to set new standards, perhaps they partially succeeded, I will let you decide. After that the quality went down fast and as I see it they had a chance to make a new IP with Origins, they took a separate detour and it was truly an amazing product, but they spoiled it with Odyssey and now we have Valhalla, one person had the same idea I had, it is Odyssey with a new skin, it feels like that. Graphically it does look good, but the parts I saw is all about spicing and lacking substance, one viking goes into the fray, onto the breach and into the masses and slaughters what can be slaughtered. A lot of posturing, it feels off and I was afraid of this from the beginning, their marketing was so intent on creating hypes, this early, 6 months before the game is out, that usually reeks of shallowness and in all this, the game is as disappointing as I feared. The Creed was murdered by its own friendly forces. An IP dragged to death by shallow idea’s and a lack of creativity and staging of braced ego, or is that braised ego? It is a shame, for even as the first one lacked to some degree, it was an amazing start, after which we got Ezio in 2 and Brotherhood and legend status was reached. There is a decent case for revelations, but it was downhill from there, which is a shame, including AC3, the story was pretty amazing, there was a much larger stage and even as some (including me) did not consider AC3 to be a great game, it did bring surprises, there was no denying that. The Graphics department has never disappointed and that must be stated out loud, graphically the game remained at a high point all the way to Odyssey, even as we dread the last game, it was close to sublime in the graphics department. 

Perhaps this is the future for all who wants to make a game pleasing everyone, as I see it you are left with a product that pleases almost no one, it is my view on the matter.

So as I consider the Valhalla leak (no idea how the game was leaked, I think it is marketing, afraid of what is most likely to happen), I see a game that is shoddy on several fronts, but I do realise that I was watching something that had not been released yet. However, the stage I saw is in line of what AC had become. Yes, it is a game, as was Odyssey, but when you realise that not one fort on the planet had thousands of arrows, their aim was not that great (especially as they cannot shoot things in the night that moves), we see a much larger lag in gaming and a lag in the AC series. You merely need to see the first two seasons of Vikings to get that picture across to a much larger degree. To create arcade gaming situation in sandbox games implies the game needs triggers and that leaves you in a stage moving from mini game to mini game, did you sign up for that?

It is hard to write anything positive, and that too is an issue, apart from the graphics which has been far above par again and again. So even as we see the ‘leaked’ footage, we realise that the stage that Ubisoft created was the makings of hypes with no game play, it was perhaps the most stupid thing they could have done, and they should not have started the creations of hypes until October at the earliest, perhaps the birthday of the board of Directors on October 4th might have been a good idea (World Animal Day). If the game continues the way it is (as I saw it) there is every chance that it will be the last AC game to be made, I only bought AC Odyssey as it was on special at 80% discount, I stopped playing it after day 2 as the game was massively inferior to Origins and as I see it Valhalla is going to be even worse. If not, then Ubisoft better make it very clear in a next presentation with actual gameplay. 

Can the IP be saved? I am not certain whether it should, there have been too many massive misses, a new IP station makes a lot more sense and they have options there, they merely decided to ignore them (as I personally see it). So whilst we might consider bashing the Guillemot members (which is never a bad idea), we need to realise that they have bigger problems at present, because as I expect Valhalla to disappoint us, they only have one shot let, Watchdogs: Legion better be a slam dunk home run, if not the existence of Ubisoft might be done for. After Odyssey and Breakpoint, Ubisoft cannot handle any more disappointments, even as the Division 2 is heralded by its fans as a serious step forward, it does not get bonus points, Valhalla needed to be a win and there is every indications that this is not going to happen, implying that the life of Ubisoft will be in the hands of Watchdogs: Legion. It might not be fair, but that is how it is and even as it is shown to be pretty amazing, the failure of Valhalla will impact Watchdogs: Legion as well, unfair, but that is life, often not fair. Can I give Ubisoft any advice? Yup, they should have listened to me when I stated again and again that games need proper testing and both Odyssey and Breakpoint can be seen as evidence that this was not done. 

Could I be wrong?

Yes, of course I can, but those who have seen and flocked to the 30 minute leak will agree with me that Ubisoft has massive problems and not everyone is a Rainbow 6 lover, a game that so far has remained well above par (according to those who play it). So whilst the Creed is that ‘everything is permitted’ the Ubisoft board might have taken this too literally and releasing below par games should have been prevented, it is merely my view on the matter.

Oh and in the coming stage of the PS5 (and the Microsoft alternative), they better stop the entire stage of 25GB+ patches, it will hurt their business even more as I personally see it, and Ubisoft actually knows this, you merely need to see the opinion of internet in Rural France for that (which is France outside of Paris, Bordeaux, Cannes, Lille, Lyon, Marseille and Nantes) and Europe has a few of these places, as such, the people interested in Ubisoft games will be dwindling down faster than they are happy with.

 

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July 2, 2020 · 22:08

It’s not a problem

When was the last time you had the idea of ‘What if this is not a game, what if this is real?’, that is the stage that I faced this morning. Now, I have never made a secret of the fact that I have given views against the (a personal observation) stupidity of Ubisoft. Yet this morning, I had the idea that puts Ubisoft in the forefront of technology in real life. A stage where they could add billions to the value that they have. This advantage can be seen in Watchdogs 1 and is a lot more visible in Watchdogs 2. Can you guess what it is?

What happens when the head up display is visible when you are on route? What if you add Google glasses, or a google eye screen to the Apple Watch and an iPhone? You get a personal tracker and navigation system. So what happens when the arrow system in Watchdogs is reflected on the road via a google glass? It would enable you to find your way faster, especially when you are new to a location and add to this the option of enhanced tracking that 5G offers, we see that the IP that Ubisoft has already is entering an entirely new frame, a global frame where we can navigate in other ways too. I wonder if Ubisoft has considered what they have. Even as there are flaws in the game, the device will offer a much larger stage, and of course a stage to fix what is currently slightly below par. I wonder if game makers have considered the benefit of what their game offers (unless it is Kid of Rock), I do not think that the unicycle has a large benefit, but tracking and projection technology goes a long way, especially in light of where we need to be and for what we seek. It is not connected to my IP, but I can see the joint benefits that they have and there is a much larger stage in the viewpoint of the people who might need this, those who are elderly, bad in manoeuvring and limited in the freedoms of movements that they have. It is not an adaptation of a few thousand people, it will be the adaptation for millions of citizens, all consumers of a much larger need and Ubisoft might be able to provide there.

I personally do not think that they had considered the approach to this, games are there to mimic life and to give alternative options, not set the stage of project what the consumers need and there Ubisoft might be the first to set the way. It is fine if Electronic Arts wants to follow, but we already have Soccer players, Football players and Basketball players. Still, a few companies might want to reconsider the IP they have and how it might be applied to the 5G realm. And this is where it hurts, you see Huawei is close to ready for what is needed, Ericsson and Nokia are close to 3 years away from setting that stage. A union of smart mobility, smart wearables, and Domotics and the two non Huawei players have not made a dent in those approaches, their software is lacking and as I see it opportunities for Huawei and optionally Ubisoft as well. 

Good business is where you find it and the creative mind will always find alternatives based on less than perfect events. It was not about the perfection, it was about application.\

So in the end, whatever market Ubisoft loses, the IP they have can be set in a who range of optional new ways, even in ways that they had not yet considered. 

 

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June 20, 2020 · 21:38

Multiple rulers

We have a ruler at times. A ruler so we can see whether the size measures up to the setting we held ourselves to, and a size to what we hold others. We are all like that, and sometimes we use more than one, it is almost like we set a standard metrical and then another one to get the inch setting. There is one stage we avoid; not on purpose, but the stage we set because we did not think of it. That is the stage that I found myself in this weekend. Anyone who has a Playstation 4 (or better) has either been playing the Last of us part 2, or has been contemplating playing it. There might be the smallest group that did not (and that is fair) but that group is really really small. It started in 2013, a (small) player named naughty dog, famous for Crash Bandicoot and a few other titles, had an idea and made that game, that game was titled The last of us, we might not have realised it at the time but gaming history was written that very moment. They made the game that heralded the end of the Playstation 3 on a high. The game was graphically, musically and technically at the very top of gaming, do not take my word for it, the game got over 200 game of the year awards, which is a record by itself, so when it was remastered for the Playstation 4, I did not hesitate to get it, now there is the second part and what I have seen so far is blowing my mind (again). It als gave me the idea to come up with the two ruler rule. So far the only three passing that standard are Naughty Dog, CD Project Red and Bethesda. This does not mean that others are not good, some are great. Yet to fit this measurement you need to be better than the best. I believe that those makers could have turned their game into a movie and it would be as groundbreaking and as appreciated as the game. As I see it CD Project Red did that by getting the Netflix the Witcher made. OK, they cheated by getting Superman to play the lead, but still they got it done and it is every bit as amazing as the game was. Excellence is transcendental (or so I believe) and I feel certain that the Last of US (both 1 and 2) would make amazing movies/mini series. I played part 2 to some extent and then I remembered (I thought back to the first one) and I decided to play it again. Even now, 7 years later, the first game is as overwhelming as any new game is, yes, the second one surpasseds the first one by a fair bit, but both of them leave most others in their wake, the games are that good. This is not bad for the others, there will always be rocksteady, there will always be rockstar and they will endear the gamers in their own way, there is no doubt about it, yet when we see the bullet point memo people at EA and Ubisoft, they are done for. The few franchises they hide behind will not help them, even now, their games at 70%-80% reduced rate are a debatable buy and that is not a good place to be in. When a two billion company like Ubisoft gets passed over by what some regards as small studios, we need to realise that gaming has been on the fringe of technology since the 80’s. Some people decided to give the thought that gaming too is iteration (like every year an Assassins Creed game), some exploited other means, some good and some bad, and before some think that Ubisoft is all bad, they did bring us Assassins Creed 2 (and brotherhood), Far Cry 3, AC Origins, Watchdog 2, The Division and a few others, when we look past the iteration, we see that they make good games, if only they were properly tested and vetted before release, it is the largest flaw that Ubisoft brings us today. And it is getting noticed more and more as we take notice of games like The Witcher and The Last of Us. Wecan add games like Elite Dangerous and Subnautica and the remastered edition of System Shock (hopefully 2020), we see that the original ideas are still there and they are wiping the floor with the iterative wannabe’s. You see the stage is changing and gamers are not completely aware.

We see the created hypes and we see how Microsoft is hiding behind the marketing cry ‘the most powerful system in the world’, yet they got defeated by the weakest system of them all (Nintendo Switch) and as Microsoft hides behind the hype screen we are all missing the larger point. As 4K gaming hits the front yard of many gamers this holiday season, they tend to forget that the games will be twice the size and so will the patches. In this situation consider that in places like Greece and Turkey a Ubisoft patch will take up to a day (estimated), a day per game downloading a patch. The UK, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Italy and a few others have better connections, yet in these places in Rural areas their internet is not great, so the long term view of the approach that they are currently holding is that they will not be in a great place. Yes, France, Spain and Scandinavia the connection is well above decent, yet is that the same in rural areas? In France it is not and I just set the pulse point on millions of gamers who will be in an extremely agitated state soon enough, yet not if Ubisoft continues as it currently is. And we need to review that too. A game might seem amazing, yet in the 4K life, patches will be increasingly larger and larger. So what do you think will happen when a patch is not 38 GB, but 70 GB? How long until gamers lose their shit over this, because the second time it happens might already be enough for the gamer to demand a refund, and with some places having the 7 day purchase option in place, that cooldown will be enough to end the lifespan of places like Ubisoft, Electronic Arts and Activision. Yes, I get it, others will be in a similar place, but consider keeping a list of all your games and all the patches that come through, who will win the patch race agitation list? 

Yes, we get it Bethesda will also be in a bad place, yet RPG games like Skyrim are too great and will always have patches coming their way, yet overall when I look back at the games like Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fallout 4 the amount of patches have not been overwhelming. As I see it one breakpoint patch has had more to download then the sum of nearly all Bethesda games, that is the station we see, yet we forget that the station we face is nothing more than a small way station, the stations we are about to hit are proper terminals with larger needs. We need to measure what was and what will be to a much larger extent and use two rulers, the size of the game and the size of the patches, whilst we tally the number of patches. Breakpoint was regarded by gamers as the most disappointing game of 2019, 38GB of patches later and it is still up for debate, as I see it, they no longer have any freedom of movement, gaming will change but not in their direction, the games will need to be better and their infrastructure is not ready, the patch notes give a clear indication of that. So yes, we will see a console war, but we will see a lot more than that. Santa Monica Studios, Naughty Dog and a few others are ready and they make Playstation games. The people at Microsoft are not ready for the issues that sme games bring and their Azure cloud is useless at this stage, it is about innovative gaming, the iterative clowns have no place being here. We are about to see a console war and Microsoft could soon end up in 4th position, so when we consider the big three, who else will surpass them? Their marketing hype of the most powerful console for sale, and they forgot that they still needed good games to stay in that place, with less than half a dozen exclusive games, the pickings are slim for Microsoft, to see that you needed an additional ruler, a different stage of measuring. Just like the measurement of power, there are two ways of measuring it, all whilst the elements for both formulas were readily available, too many players were looking at one formula and forgot about the other one, and that is what the limelight will show at the end of the year and when that limelight shows bright, we will see that some players are done for, one ruler would not have shown it, they all focussed on the revenue and they forgot that revenue is hindered by the resistance that patches bring, these players forgot or basically ignored the danger of large patches and now that they are 26 weeks away from a new standard these players will panic, they will panic more and more and let marketing do the fight of the public arena all whilst it will merely stop activities for a few days and some patches required months. Now, we accept that both Sony and Microsoft have that house of Pox looming, but as I see it, Sony has more alternatives and in this fight, the one with alternatives is the most likely to win. In all this there is strength to any marketing endeavour, but its flaws are there too and once your board of directors start to earnestly believe the stories they tell, they have already painted themselves into a corner. 

 

 

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June 13, 2020 · 16:57

To knowingly intentionally ignore

There is a state in any person’s mind to ignore anything that does not fit the need of the receiver. This is not a bad thing (at times), and we can ignore all we can, yet to deceive ourselves that it does not exist is another matter. 

To look at the station we need to look at the consideration of two settings. The first is ‘an organized effort to gather information about targer markets or customers’ this is the foundation of market research. After this we consider the second part, which is ‘the process or set of processes that links the producers, customers, and end users to the marketer through information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems’, as I personally see it, some do not see the difference (or ignore that there is one), or as I would imply, to knowingly use one as the other. The first difference is the population. In market research we investigate a population and we set our hypothesis based on the station of it. We dabble, we slice and dice this population, and we draw conclusions. The problem is that some hide behind the slicing and dicing, calling it the arbitrary process. For the most I have no issues with it, or better stated I do not care one hoot about some of these analysts. Yet lately I see the impact of decisions and business processes and I wonder if the people accepting the marketing stories whether they are in the dark, they do not care or if they are clueless. 

It started with Microsoft, then Ubisoft, after that there was a stage at Apple as well as a stint in the US administration. All acts based on what some would call ‘a market research into the people and the impact of view’ yet it seems like the marketing research of passing a bitter pill to the extent of surviving the action. That is clearly how it feels and the first act on my side was remembering a previous conversation, a conversation I had roughly 20 years ago. The premise was that a board was cutting expenses and setting the stage of having the environment where they stopped getting a 90% approval on their product and settling on an 80% approval. It is a dangerous and slippery slide. Yes it seems cheaper and it might in the beginning be cheaper, yet the station as we see it is dangerous as the degrees of freedom diminish (intended pun). As a product drills down in different areas, the 10% shift implies that on three fields the danger grows that the overall approval rate is optionally down to 60%, especially if the 20% missed rate hits any consumer 3 times. This is where Ubisot is at present and that is where Microsoft was in the last few years. In that stage we see “to develop technology that will enable them to stream games to whatever piece of tech a person is holding – be that a smartphone, console, or something yet to be invented”. It is the Ubisoft statement and that is fine, yet with the testing and inadequate versions over the last two years alone gives the consumer (the player) a much larger lag, especially when these players are only relatively happy and get hit again and again with downloads that tend to exceed 20 GB, how long until the player has had enough?

It is nice to drill down unto a group of satisfied players, yet the larger issue is that the non players are too often disregarded making the story told one that is largely built onto a shallow base of shifty sands. My view is supported by one small detail, as the PS5 was viewed, we saw an absence of Ubisoft games, the station of that 20% is now growing is it not? One of the largest software makers in history had no business not being present at this Sony show, whether they are going forward on both systems or not. It seems to me that this is not a small part, this is a much larger part and it seems to me that the predictions that I gave last year is slowly coming to fruition. 

Could I be wrong?

Absolutely! I cannot state that there is certainty, that would be short sighted on my side, but the symptoms are there, the lack of excellent gaming, dozens of updates that are several GB in size, there is a lack of testing there is a lack of listening to the gamers and the ones setting the stage of listening are rolling the dice which they optionally loaded themselves. They look better that way, yet the consequences for Ubisoft seem better, until the gamers move away, when you set the stage of a non-assassins creed game to call it that, something they did once before, the stage changes. Even as we were given last year “Ubisoft didn’t provide numbers, but said that it had made a “sharp downward revision” in the revenues expected from both games, which it blamed on a failure to differentiate Breakpoint from its predecessor, an overall lack of interest in sequels to live games, and excess bugs for the game’s failure.” (source: PC Gamer) There are two parts in this, the first is that the game sucks, the basic failures seen only yesterday by myself give a larger rise to that Ubisoft has much larger issues at present. The fact that I ended up with the game at 20% of the full price only 6 months ago, and the fact that to start the game I needed a 38GB patch shows that the issues are close to massive. It is not ‘to differentiate’, but to ‘properly code’ a game that is at the core of it all. The difference of Market research where Ubisoft investigates their game against ALL gamers, to a stage of Marketing research where Ubisoft merely investigates the Ubisoft players is part of that optional setting. When anyone hides behind the message and not behind the quality of product, we have a much larger issue and in the next console war, it would optionally set the deck to a very different stage. 

This is not about Ubisoft, Apple and Microsoft have shown similar failings for too long, and the stage where the US administration is in shows similar flaws, even as it is not a product, trust is, and it is faltering on several levels in the US. We can blame several stages in this, but it is not the blame, it is the investigation into the analysts and the conclusions drawn seems to be a much larger stage of marketing research, not market research. One optional stage is the way evidence is rejected and optionally completely ignored. We might look at the Coronavirus, it is not the point, that element merely brought it to the surface faster. Huawei is the first one that matters, no evidence was ever brought to light, it shows a stgs where the US is close to economic collapse, at that stage we see the greed driven marketing research where the actions are at disposal to the US assets, not the US citizens. This matters because it shows that the slicing and dicing of data is not getting the attention it is due, it is happening on corporate and political levels and elements like ‘How Austin Tech Is Democratizing Data’ might seem nice in theory, yet the larger issue is that some views are now seemingly solely supported by the topline makers, not actual academics with the education required to make some conclusions based on data, not the presented views that those in charge of governments and corporations would like it to be. So when we learn that “Imagine business analysts, marketing teams and even the C-suite having the power to interpret data without the help of the entire IT department”,consider that we are now in a phase where those who have are about to decide the fate of those who have not and those people are in for a massive rough ride, or so they believe. When we see the corporate players like Ubisoft and Microsoft folding on strategies as they lose larger and larger market shares, we will see destabilisation of a much larger degree and there the game is up for grabs. Even as some resorted to terms like data democratization, it is a much older principle, it is the discrimination between those who matter to some, against those who do not. Corporations will find out the hard way what their choice brings them, in politics it is a different story and the impact there is nowhere to be seen. We cannot predict it until it is too late and there I expect (or is it dare I expect?), is the stage larger, even as places like YouTube is flooded in some positive light, the negative impact is much larger. The US riots are merely a consequence to part of what happens in data, it is not the cause but there will be much larger and much more defining then we ever expected, the problem there is that after the fact, repairing damage is close to impossible. You see it is not ownership of data, it is the fact that decisions are made on a level where too much data is disregarded. Hiding behind entrepreneurial action is close to a farce. The largest danger of misinterpretation and as the sources are less and less trustworthy and that is disregarding any ethical consideration, or to make it slightly more simple, as data democratization moves forward, the essential part of comprehensive information will be filtered and optionally disregarded too often, a such a full view is not available, implying that the decision makers are merely looking at a limited scope and consider that action when it is done by a billion Euro company. 

We are only seeing this because the surrounding scope was pushed to the forefront, as such those reacting are doing it too late having to disregard increasingly larger consumer markets. When was the last time that such an action was an actual benefit to that company?

 

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June 12, 2020 · 07:27

Playing the fifth station

I am watching what is to come and even as the first part was not my bag of tea, the New Spiderman game definitely was, a new Gran Turismo and now I stop with shouting titles, a lot more publications will do that. What was interesting was the response the game makers had (the man behind Insomniac games to name one), the additions that the PS5 enabled, and so far I am watching actual gameplay and it is blowing me away. The presentation is giving new titles from franchises we love and new titles from origins we never saw and so far it is pretty mind boggling, but Sony is pretty good in that respect, so I am not overly dumbstruck, yet the graphics and the environment as we see it in the game Stray leaves me with thought, Sony, not unlike Microsoft is going in a direction we expect, as such I see a gap that players like Apple and Google can touch on. Sony has well over half a dozen exclusive titles that players want, and there we see the first part that I sort of expected. We see the exclusive and the likely less exclusive games, yet after 30 minutes still nothing from Ubisoft. I am certain that Ubisoft will be on the PS5, no doubt, but the stage where the small software houses are taking the limelight and sharing it with Sony shows just how bad the stage of Ubisoft is at present. Then we get to see Ghostwire, a game teased before, now we see it on the PS5 and this game alone is reason to get the PS5, and even as it is not the most expected game, it is certainly taking the limelight and that is a new feeling. When we see what comes with Hitman 3 I feel certain that no Microsoft Hype has a chance at present, I am cautious because their show a few years back was really good, but they have to take all the stops out to even equal what Sony is bringing. And that is important here as Hitman is most likely coming to both systems. With a lot of titles handing out the Holiday 2020, the expected image that PS5 will come with an overwhelming amount of launch titles (or first month titles). At the end of the presentation it is clear, there is no Ubisoft, they are in trouble, because there is no way that they want to miss the event, Bethesda was there with 2 titles, so why not Ubisoft? 85 minutes after the start, we get the power hammer, Eloy is back and what we see on PS5 blew me away, Horizon 2, Forbidden West is a PS5 Gem andI can’t wait to get my fingers on this console, which was shown right after, it is gorgeous, you should see the video on YouTube yourself and see what is there, words cannot describe it. No matter how some Microsoft fans shout that their system is the biggest and the strongest, without good games it does not add up to much, so far they are 3 million systems behind Nintendo and that is not all, 4 reviewers were completely blown away, it is that overwhelming and most of us will be waiting with bells on for the next 20 weeks. 

Sony, you’ve done it again!

 

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June 12, 2020 · 01:18

Between fact and speculation

There are two parts in all this. The first is fact, the second is speculation, the facts come from what we know and have seen. First fact given by the BBC is that the PS4 has so far sold 108 million worldwide, the Xbox 49 million, which is 3 million less than the Nintendo Switch, The PS4 and Xbox both started in 2012. The Nintendo in 2017, surpassing the Xbox in half the time. As such, that so-called strongest console was surpassed by the weakest console and in 4 hours we get to see what the new PS, the PS5 will bring us. In all this there is no surprise for me, I saw this coming in 2016, and as the Xbox One X showed us the face of Microsoft and their short sightedness, I saw how they would lose the market more and more, even as Microsoft is trying to create hype after hype, selectively giving us missing information, the consumers are waking up to the colossal error that Microsoft has become and I firmly believe that it is about to get worse. If it was up to me I would direct Google and Apple towards alternative paths making Microsoft the system in 4th or even 5th position. I am that mean at times. 

Speculation

Speculation is another path, yet that is not about the hardware, that is set to the business practices of Activision and Ubisoft. To give you the example, I have been an Elite fan since its release in 1985, In 2016 it was on early release on the Xbox and it was pretty much the ONLY reason I got it. The game is still fantastic and since that point, over 3 years, the game has had a speculated 53 updates, the last one 3.4 GB, Ubisoft released AC Odyssey in 2018 and has a speculative 54updates, the last one 24 GB, almost 800% of the Elite Dangerous one. Activision seems to have a new record, Call of Duty has seemingly a 85 GB patch. That is way too massive and games on the PS5 will end up being larger, a lot larger. Under that given situation, the entire patch system needs to change. Ubisoft especially (Breakpoint 38 GB, AC Odyssey 2 GB) is a setting that gamers will no longer accept, it is a little bit ridiculous that Ubisoft cannot properly test its games. The AC series especially has shown a lack of proper testing, yet that will dwarf in both the PS5 and Xbox X series life. Under the new setting, the makers can hide behind ‘everyone has broadband’ and ‘there is unlimited download’, yet it is clear that rural Germany and France are not on the big internet page and the entire Coronavirus work at home part with congestion all over the place, in the same setting whilst players like Netflix is pushing 4K series more and more, the entire mess of congestion will only increase. Players like Ubisoft will not survive the quality they have brought so far and there is no doubt in my mind that both Sony and Microsoft will have to protect their player sooner rather than later. This is the speculative part and we will hopefully learn more in 4 hours when Sony gives us the works on the release of the PS5. The time of  release is nearing more and more. As I see it, it is a mere 22 weeks away and some will have to save up for both a 4K 125Hz TV as well as the PS5. As I see it, Sony is extremely likely to have a massively great 2020 soon enough and an even better 2021. None of this matters to Nintendo, it will work great on the new TV and they have already surpassed Microsoft, who will need the largest part of 2021 just to break even with the weakest console. They are not in a good place and whatever hype they create, it will not look good, yet that is still speculative of me and I hope to be proven right no later than March 2021. 

Gaming is about to change and we are only hours away from seeing it ourselves. 

 

 

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June 3, 2020 · 22:34

30 cents to the dollar

Yes, we all have moments where it is about the discount, and I had a promise to keep. So when I noticed that Breakpoint was available for less than 30 cents to the dollar from opening night 7 month ago, I decided to give it a go. There was a good point and a bad one. The bad was the bug I noticed last october, was still not fixed, it is seemingly part of the system, even after the 19GB patch (which was to be expected 7 months later) the game still has a lot to be desired. The bug I saw was that when you enter a bunker in the first mission, it immediately leaves you 4 hours later, it is suddenly late morning daylight. A lot of the reviews still applied 7 months later, and to some extent it is to be expected, but let’s be fair, do we need a mission for every bloody handgun? It is my personal expectation that I will still be able to end the lives of a lot of people with a trusty HK Model 23 (1991), that handgun 29 years later will still correctly end lives, it has a laser targeter (I never used one) and it also has an excellent silencer. So going onto missions to find some HP USP, even if it is 2 years younger, does not really load my canon. Now, I get the option that soldiers (non military) have their own preference to what is the most deadly solution (if they can aim) and YES, this is a video game, but Ubisoft could have thought it through. Some reviews of ‘they added everything, so you end up running for nothing’ and it applies to this game. I get the loot part, I get the lets look fun part, but a game that has more chopper and drone support then the entire US army had in both Afghanistan and Iraq is a little over the top. Oh, and the amount of opposition outnumbers the US army as well, as such there are more questions, but this is a game, I get it. 

The good

The good are the graphics and the environment, yet the game has its share of glitches (I personally only experienced non essential ones) like winelines in midair (a meter above the ground), yet that is a non-essential glitch. The graphics are pretty good and I felt like I was in the middle of nowhere shooting people I never cared about, just like some people in real life. Th sounds were good, yet debatable, if soldiers talk that loud for real, they deserved to get themselves killed #Justsaying. So, the area was brilliantly selected (read: designed).

The Irritating

Yves Guillemot, you bloody idiot, every time I got killed in action, I got the ‘join and invite people’ yellow blinking part. You idiot, I don’t like others joining me, I don’t want to join other players either! It is a personal thing, learn and switch that bloody part OFF! The second irritating part is the Ubi Club redeem part, especially as the Ubisoft server was apparently not working, even though I was online. There was the issue of redeeming in game perks and for some reason that jut did not work, so when we consider that some published 16 hours ago ‘Ubisoft Making Accessibility Part of Company DNA’ all whilst I cannot redeem Ubisoft club points, clearly lost the plot. In the light, I reckon that David Tisserand needs to clear his speaking points with the Ubisoft internal IT department #JustSaying.

The past

Yes, we have seen the references to other games from within Ubisoft, yet the island made me remember the 1989 Rainbird achievements Midwinter. I keep on remembering this game towards that game. One review did give me that Wildlands is a much better buy than this game, but I felt it essential to try this game, especially as I reviewed parts of it on someone else’s dime (it was their game), so whilst I see the point that some reviewers made (boring and repetitive for example) I see that the biggest issue is that it had to be released to a closed circuit of testers and after that look at the final version, I personally believe that the Marketing non gaming department at Ubisoft has too much power. This game required 4-6 months more of testing and development. The second part (which was nice) was the gunsmith, yet in the middle of nowhere, there is no space to improve my rifle, add a silencer on a rifle I took off a dead person (headshots are an effective way to remove hardware that a person will no longer care about). I would have limited the gunsmith part to the base between the waterfalls, but that part did look pretty awesome. For me it was an interesting two days, but in the end, there is a stage where I accept that the game is optionally not for me, others will like it, I get that, but when I like a game mode and I see that there is still a dubious level of acceptance even at 30 cents to the dollar, the game has more than flaws, it has essential issues, especially when you get to a wharf and you are suddenly surrounded by 3-4jeeps, all with heavy miniguns and around 10 opponents, all triggered by talking to a person about a boat, we see the oldest flaw of all, event triggers, all whilst the army needing that much to stop one person (optionally four for someplayers) has a lacking trust in their own army. 

Conclusion

In the end the games has good and bad sides, there is just that feeling that it still has too many bad sides and the fact that it is at 70% discount does not take that feeling away, that’s just sad (read irritating), I personally believe that Ubisoft should have done a lot better, it angers me because the stage of an open world of this size should have been more inviting, it makes me sad. And yes, I get it, I might be accusing their marketing department on a personal feeling, but where is it stated that Guillemot needed the money desperately enough to let a game be released before it was ready is a much larger nightmare than we would like to consider. Half a dozen games and all of them released before they were ready, that is how I see it, look at CD Projekt Red, they merely keep people waiting until it is ready and the perfection that Witcher 3 brought is still heralded 5 years later, that means something and it is time for Ubisoft to catch on, preferably before they waste every bit of IP they have. 

 

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