Major gaming news at WWDC: Metal and New games

[Homy]

The Lost Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology for Mac is out.

The Lost Legends of Redwall™: The Scout Anthology on Steam

A narrative puzzle-adventure game based on Brian Jacques' Redwall™️ book series. Vicious searats are invading the once peaceful Mossflower wood and it's up to the Lilygrove Scout Corps' newest recruit to save the day. Play as Sophia or Liam on their adventure to Redwall Abbey!

store.steampowered.com

 

[Homy]

World of Goo 2 is coming to Mac on May 23.

World of Goo 2

worldofgoo2.com

 

[goro123]

World of Goo 2 is coming to Mac on May 23.

World of Goo 2

worldofgoo2.com

The first game was incredibie. Very unique.

I wasn’t expecting a follow up, nice surprise.

 

[Nugat Trailers]

MiHoYo and HoloVerse announces the release date of Honkai Impact 3 Part 2, for Feb 29.
More interestingly though, is this line in the presser:

Honkai Impact 3rd will also come to Mac App Store in the near future, bringing the immersive experience to more fans and players around the world!

There was a brief screenshot of the announcement in the livestream they did, but that's an hour long.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gachagaming/comments/1ayu67i

 

[Homy]

The Haunting of Joni Evers is coming to Mac this year, only for Apple Silicon.

“This game is just the beginning.” says Greg Rogers, Co-Founder and Creative Director of Causeway Studios. “The Haunting of Joni Evers is the first installment in an anthology universe filled with memorable characters, compelling locales, and meaningful moments. All of these serve our goal of helping players find their places in our stories, to jump into the cockpit and take this wild ride alongside us."


“On the same note, this is just the beginning of what we hope will be an evergreen and sustainable indie studio. We’re a small team right now, yet look at what awesome art is already pouring out. Imagine what the Worlds Across the Causeway will look like five years from now. That excites me, and I hope it excites gamers and story-lovers everywhere as well."

The Haunting of Joni Evers on Steam

The Haunting of Joni Evers is an emotional tale of a broken family from small-town Oklahoma, driven apart by a malevolent haunting. Uncover the mysteries of Joni’s family and the Cunningham House, digging through memories, facing the family’s past to break the curse.

store.steampowered.com

 

[bousozoku]

MiHoYo and HoloVerse announces the release date of Honkai Impact 3 Part 2, for Feb 29.
More interestingly though, is this line in the presser:

Honkai Impact 3rd will also come to Mac App Store in the near future, bringing the immersive experience to more fans and players around the world!

There was a brief screenshot of the announcement in the livestream they did, but that's an hour long.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gachagaming/comments/1ayu67i

I hope that they'll have the other three available, as well.

 

[diamond.g]

The rumor mill says Saber Interactive and Gearbox are probably going to be up for sale. I wonder if Apple would be interested in dipping their toes in the waters of game developer studio ownership.

 

[Homy]

New Mac games:

Save 75% on Ultros on Steam

ULTROS is a psychedelic metroidvania where you wake up stranded on The Sarcophagus — a cosmic uterus holding an ancient, demonic being. Trapped in the loop of a black hole, you will have to explore The Sarcophagus and meet its inhabitants to understand the part you play...

store.steampowered.com

Helskate on Steam

Helskate is a skateboarding action roguelite. Grind, perform tricks, and chain combos to power up your attacks to slay the monsters of Vertheim. Combine unique weapons and gear to suit your playstyle as you fight, die, and upgrade your abilities to come back to this labyrinth over and over again!

store.steampowered.com

Moonbreaker on Steam

Moonbreaker is a turn-based strategy, tactical skirmish game. The game is designed to be a true digital miniatures experience, set in an expansive sci-fi universe crafted by Brandon Sanderson. Direct Captain and Crew in gripping, ever-changing competition and adventure.

store.steampowered.com

 

[Homy]

Space Crew: Legendary Edition for Mac is free on Steam.

Space Crew: Legendary Edition on Steam

Time for your toughest mission yet! Recruit and train your crew to tackle the growing threat from alien and android armies as you defend Earth to become a Galactic Legend in Space Crew: Legendary Edition. All new content free to existing owners of Space Crew!

store.steampowered.com

 

[Homy]

Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars: Reforged and Broken Sword - Parzival’s Stone is coming to Mac later this year.

Save 40% on Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars: Reforged on Steam

The classic multi-award winning adventure "Broken Sword - the Shadow of the Templars" returns with glorious 4K visuals and iconic remastered audio, pitching intrepid American George Stobbart and fearless journalist Nico Collard into a journey of perilous adventures and ancient conspiracies.

store.steampowered.com

Broken Sword - Parzival’s Stone on Steam

The genre-defining adventure series returns with the explosive Broken Sword - Parzival’s Stone. Intrepid George Stobbart and fearless journalist Nico Collard face danger and deception as they are drawn into a terrifying conspiracy involving brutal treasure hunters, and sinister cabals.

store.steampowered.com

 

[Homy]

Hex Gambit: Respawned and Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley for Mac are released.

Hex Gambit: Respawned on Steam

Hex Gambit: Respawned is a quirky and competitive digital board game for 1-4 players that’s easy to pick up and hard to put down!

store.steampowered.com

Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley on Steam

Join Snufkin in this musical adventure about restoring harmony and balance to Moominvalley, protecting it from the industrious Park Keeper.

store.steampowered.com

 

[Homy]

Astro Duel II is released for Mac and free in Epic Game Store.

 

[Nugat Trailers]

An interesting little sale on the Mac App Store.

‎Amazing Mac Games—on Sale Now! : App Store Story

‎Learn about collection Amazing Mac Games—on Sale Now! featuring DEATH STRANDING DIRECTOR'S CUT, Stray, Lies of P, and many more on Mac App Store. Enjoy these apps on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

apps.apple.com

Don’t miss some of our favorite Mac games—available at a discount for a limited time.
Death Stranding Directors Cut
Stray
Lies of P
Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil Village
SnowRunner
Myst
Fort Solis
Firmament
The Forgotten City
Neon Beats

 

[loui100]

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (an Unreal Engine 5 game) works great via Crossover and looks beautiful, highly recommended

 

[Homy]

This is interesting and explains why Apple is trying to make mobile gaming bigger with AAA titles.

Microsoft Will Be Debating Right Now Whether Xbox Consoles Have a Future, Says Peter Moore

And he should know, he used to run Xbox.

sea.ign.com

"You've got a generation coming through now that’s more likely to be utilizing their smartphone for everything, including gaming. I don't think people are gaming less, they're just gaming differently. And more and more you're seeing a generation coming through that is not about to sit down for an evening in front of the television with whatever the game du jour is this week."

"Gen Z is coming through and they're going, why do I need to spend four or 500 bucks on a bespoke piece of gaming hardware when I've got my smartphone, or I got my PC or my Mac, and I can do things there with a pretty decent controller?"

"Microsoft I'm sure would love it if everything moved into the cloud. The only thing that Microsoft doesn't get to play in as well as anybody else is the smartphone business, right? Because that's where Apple, Google, the handset manufacturers will benefit from enormously and they already are. They're making tens of billions of dollars without really trying in gaming with the 30% royalties."

"And at the same time you're gearing up for another cycle where gamers may not embrace the console and just say, you know what? I don't need this, times are tough. I've got my phone, I'm enjoying what I've got on my phone. There's plenty of games I can play. Failing that, of course I have my PC or my Mac, I can go do whatever I need to do there. And do I really need to be spending what could be five, $600 on a bespoke piece of hardware just to play games? So both the companies and gamers themselves are asking this question."

"I'm not being a doomsayer. What I think Phil is doing is setting up some smoke signals that we're thinking very differently. And then the idea of, well, we bought Activision Blizzard King, but we may not make those games ultimately exclusive on our platform. There may not be a platform, and we turn into what we really had at our roots, which is a software and services company."

"Those hardcore are getting smaller in size and older in age. You've got to cater to the generations that are coming through, because they're going to drive the business over the next 10, 20 years."

 

[diamond.g]

If MS gets out of the hardware business I could see them buying more publishers/developers.

I'm not sure they would bother making native AAA iOS games though. We haven't gotten any indication that AAA iOS games make as much money as well as F2P(P2W) titles do.

 

[goro123]

If MS gets out of the hardware business I could see them buying more publishers/developers.

I'm not sure they would bother making native AAA iOS games though. We haven't gotten any indication that AAA iOS games make as much money as well as F2P(P2W) titles do.

Nintendo also quickly pulled out of iOS gaming shortly after releasing a few games (Mario, Doctor Mario…). Although they seem to maintain MarioKart and Mario. Not sure how to interpret that.

Maybe they are afraid that it calls into question the current price of Switch games. Or maybe it’s that performance could be better on iOS than Switch ?

 

[Plutonius]

Nintendo also quickly pulled out of iOS gaming shortly after releasing a few games (Mario, Doctor Mario…). Although they seem to maintain MarioKart and Mario. Not sure how to interpret that.

Maybe they are afraid that it calls into question the current price of Switch games. Or maybe it’s that performance could be better on iOS than Switch ?

Or it could be that Nintendo doesn't want to cannibalize their own market (Switch hardware).

 

[MRMSFC]

Or it could be that Nintendo doesn't want to cannibalize their own market (Switch hardware).

I think that’s far more plausible. And as I recall Nintendo didn’t make those games themselves, they contracted it out.

Nintendo is very protectionist after all.

If MS gets out of the hardware business I could see them buying more publishers/developers.

MS was always in a weird place with the xbox in my opinion.

They’re de facto owners of desktop gaming, and have been since the Pentium days.

With so few IPs being console exclusive anymore, I have difficulty in seeing the value in making game consoles as a company that monopolizes the pc gaming market.

That said, I still would be surprised if MS announced the end of the Xbox.

 

[MRMSFC]

doublepost because this got me thinking about the broader industry.

Consoles exist in limbo right now, imo, because they're not really either a "value proposition" or competing with high end hardware anymore.

Sure, big AAA titles might not run well on dogwater hardware, but we're seeing (again, in my opinion) AAA games not really being worth the money as each release seems to be lower quality than the last, even with budgest in the hundreds of millions.

And the smaller titles that gain popularity, can run on potato hardware that sometimes cost less than the Xbox or PlayStation.

As a business practice, I think Nintendo had the right idea to stop trying to outdo the competition on performance. All of their massive successes have been on hardware that is massively underpowered. That, and the fact that buying their hardware means access to their exclusives, which most of the time are top notch.

In any case, I think it's safe to say that we're in a transformative era of gaming, for better or worse.

 

[diamond.g]

doublepost because this got me thinking about the broader industry.

Consoles exist in limbo right now, imo, because they're not really either a "value proposition" or competing with high end hardware anymore.

Sure, big AAA titles might not run well on dogwater hardware, but we're seeing (again, in my opinion) AAA games not really being worth the money as each release seems to be lower quality than the last, even with budgest in the hundreds of millions.

And the smaller titles that gain popularity, can run on potato hardware that sometimes cost less than the Xbox or PlayStation.

As a business practice, I think Nintendo had the right idea to stop trying to outdo the competition on performance. All of their massive successes have been on hardware that is massively underpowered. That, and the fact that buying their hardware means access to their exclusives, which most of the time are top notch.

In any case, I think it's safe to say that we're in a transformative era of gaming, for better or worse.

IT is a double edged sword for sure. People expect games to look really pretty and run at 4k native @ 120fps. All on hardware that costs 500 dollars at most. Nintendo has stayed out of that race, but folks still complain about games running like poo on the platform (LZ:TOTK is a good example).

I imagine Sony is talking to Kojima to see how Death Stranding does in order to determine if porting Horizon Zero Dawn is worth their time.

 

[MRMSFC]

IT is a double edged sword for sure. People expect games to look really pretty and run at 4k native @ 120fps. All on hardware that costs 500 dollars at most.

Well yes and no,

I’m more referring to the fact that it seems like consoles are being squeezed from both the low end and high end.

Generally, you can play most popular titles with low end hardware:

And of course, consoles could never compete with the top of the line PC.

I don’t think consumer expectations are necessarily the issue, so much as the value proposition isn’t there for the Xbox or PlayStation. And if it’s not value a particular consumer is looking for, then performance can be had elsewhere.

Thus, as a business strategy, a company has to sell their product on a gimmick or exclusivity.

As it stands, I don’t think that Xbox has either going for it.

Nintendo has stayed out of that race, but folks still complain about games running like poo on the platform (LZ:TOTK is a good example).

Oddly enough, the Switch is perfectly capable of running totk and botw faster:

All it took was clocking the memory higher.

Tears of the Kingdom dropped frames badly though. I hadn’t seen frame drops that bad since Majora’s Mask on the n64.

As an aside, I looked at the top played games on Steam, expecting a lot of titles from five to ten years ago to be up there, but was surprised to see a lot of post-2020 games. I must just be out of touch now.

If I were an executive in the console industry though, I’d probably go all in on a shift to mobile like the Switch. The GabeGear has proved there’s a non-Nintendo market for it, and a handheld would be an easier sell for lower performance in exchange for portability.

Combine that with a few exclusives and you have a market.

 

[Homy]

Brighter Shores, a new free RPG from the man behind RuneScape is coming to Mac this summer. It will be a native AS port according to Steamdb.

Brighter Shores on Steam

Brighter Shores is an all new adventure from award winning MMORPG designer Andrew Gower. It is an enchanting point-and-click style RPG with hundreds of hours of gameplay, set in a land of magic and mysteries, with a huge number of professions to try, and something new to find around every corner.

store.steampowered.com

 

[salamanderjuice]

Well yes and no,

I’m more referring to the fact that it seems like consoles are being squeezed from both the low end and high end.

Generally, you can play most popular titles with low end hardware:

And of course, consoles could never compete with the top of the line PC.

I don’t think consumer expectations are necessarily the issue, so much as the value proposition isn’t there for the Xbox or PlayStation. And if it’s not value a particular consumer is looking for, then performance can be had elsewhere.

Thus, as a business strategy, a company has to sell their product on a gimmick or exclusivity.

As it stands, I don’t think that Xbox has either going for it.

Oddly enough, the Switch is perfectly capable of running totk and botw faster:

All it took was clocking the memory higher.

Tears of the Kingdom dropped frames badly though. I hadn’t seen frame drops that bad since Majora’s Mask on the n64.

As an aside, I looked at the top played games on Steam, expecting a lot of titles from five to ten years ago to be up there, but was surprised to see a lot of post-2020 games. I must just be out of touch now.

If I were an executive in the console industry though, I’d probably go all in on a shift to mobile like the Switch. The GabeGear has proved there’s a non-Nintendo market for it, and a handheld would be an easier sell for lower performance in exchange for portability.

Combine that with a few exclusives and you have a market.

I think it's still pretty tough to get a $500 PC that has as good performance as a PS5 or XSX even 3 years after launch. And for $300 XSS is still a good performer for the money.

The price of GPUs is IMHO kinda killing PC gaming. There's just no good value GPUs anymore. You used to be able to get something decent for less than a console. Steam Deck is a nice shot in the arm but it really struggles to play newer more demanding titles.

Switch is largely it's own thing with enough exclusives and portable gamepad centric ports to make it make sense.

 

[diamond.g]

I think it's still pretty tough to get a $500 PC that has as good performance as a PS5 or XSX even 3 years after launch. And for $300 XSS is still a good performer for the money.

The price of GPUs is IMHO kinda killing PC gaming. There's just no good value GPUs anymore. You used to be able to get something decent for less than a console. Steam Deck is a nice shot in the arm but it really struggles to play newer more demanding titles.

Switch is largely it's own thing with enough exclusives and portable gamepad centric ports to make it make sense.

I blame nvidia for "being greedy" to the detriment of pc gamers. 10-Series pricing was normal, and from there things got out of hand.