This. Gears is exactly what it is and while great, those who are into it like me always will be and those who aren’t most likely never will be.
Having an expansion received positively like Hivebusters has been which was unexpected until two months ago or whatever is actually a good thing going into 2021. Give the brand some more momentum going into the new year along with the reveals/announcements at TGA and good things are coming down the line. Best of all, when everyone involved with Xbox under-hypes stuff and then over-delivers, it’s so much better overall than doing the opposite.
I will say that their marketing does need to get better for their future full fledged games. Hopefully it does but we’ll have to wait and see if that actually happens.
You are not wrong but miles morales is a 7 hour expansion to an even older game and was hyped.
Ms did not need to pretend it was THE reason to own an SX like Sony did but even acknowledging it existed more than 1 month before release would be better.
I mean they are all about transparency but somehow fails to communicate what’s on the immediate pipeline.
And they are doing it again because according to themselves they still have games to announce that are going to launch in the next year. So why not announce them already and let the hype build?
I mean…its a 3 hour long story DLC…How can you market it exactly? TV ads? Web ads?
While I’m glad they made it and I’m excited to eventually play it, likely putting it at the front of Game Pass when you load it up on PC/Xbox/xCloud and marketing via social media is really the best they could do.
They do the same thing for MCC Updates, Age of Empires 2 expansion that just came out, Sea of thieves updates, the Super 7 Forza Horizon 4 DLC etc…plaster it on Game Pass and market it on Twitter, IG and other social media.
The IP is a juggernaut. It pulled similar launch numbers as God of War 2018 and Spiderman, the 2 most successful games of Sony ever. It didn’t have the same legs as those two, but I don’t see why the next entry couldn’t be the most successful one yet. Gears 5 already had the best launch and it was basically the first big game to launch on gamepass.
7 hours is more than 3 hours though and you are in the realm of the length of your average single player game. Plus Sony put it as a standalone game and that brings legitimacy to the eyes of a consumer in terms of how ‘important’ it is and marketed it that way. I also think the fact Microsoft announced it was coming a week later actually helped with the marketing because people reacted in a way that was surprised, it is a similar marketing strategy musicians use when they drop a new album unannounced.
Why don’t we wait to see what these games are before asking why Microsoft has not started the hype train yet. Before we know they could be small, niche games. However, not every game needs years of hype behind them and Microsoft already experiences this with the Forza series, which are normally announced the same year they come out.
Similar launch numbers in which metric? Sales? Or do you mean people playing it via Game Pass? Huge difference between people buying God of War or Spider Man day one for $60 compared to playing Gears 5 on Game Pass for a $10 monthly rental.
Game Pass is excellent and is the third reason why I chose Series X as my primary gaming console for this generation but I do believe that a lot of Xbox fans put too much emphasis on it in regards to measuring a game’s success and here’s why - if there was no Game Pass or exclusives weren’t on it, would the high numbers for say Sea of Thieves or State of Decay 2 or whatever other game be as high as they are via Game Pass?
Let’s be honest, the realistic answer is no simply because vast majority are not buying a lot of Microsoft’s games for $60 a pop. They just aren’t so while Game Pass is excellent and all, Microsoft and Spencer made the decision to put the games on Game Pass day one because they’re not stupid, they saw the sales numbers for all the exclusives pre-2018 and none of them were even remotely impressive.
Xbox fans should stop comparing player engagement to sales numbers from Sony/Nintendo because it is nowhere near the same thing.
As for the length of Hivebusters, everyone keeps saying 3 hours but what difficulty level is it being played on, is aim assist on or off, etc.? If you play on easy with aim assist on, you’ll breeze through it in 3 hours but if you’re playing on normal and especially hard with aim assist and other options off, I seriously doubt that anyone is beating it in 3 hours unless they’re trying to speed run it which kind of defeats the purpose of playing it on the harder levels to begin with.
Same applies to Miles. Everyone says 6-8 hour campaign. I will be playing it on hard with aim assist and other options off and I already know it will take me longer to get through the campaign. Whenever I see people give a “time estimate”, I automatically double it for me because majority of critics if not all of them always play on normal or easier difficulty levels which aim assist on, enemy detection arrows on and all hints/tips on so this honestly is not a fair comparison for either Miles or Hivebusters because not every gamer is going to play it exactly the same way as critics do.
The amount of hours for a game is interesting, I think I agree with you. Take a game like The Outer Worlds, in one review I read it was stated that it was about 12h with the reviewer “doing the main quests and most side quests”. I have seen other mentioning 15-20h. My first playthrough clocked in at 54h… Idk what people do in their games, but I always at least double the amount of hours stated.
It’s not always about what difficulty you play on either, I like to immerse myself by reading lore, talking to people, explore etc.
Exactly. The Witcher 3 took me 300 hours on normal to complete everything 100% because I died a lot as im horrible at parrying and because I traversed the world on foot 90% of the time to immerse myself in the game world which I do for every open world game. GR Wildlands took me 150 hours on normal for the same reasons.
So I always automatically double what critics say the game length is because I know im not going to play it the same way as they did and while I play some games on normal, majority of the third person games I play are always played on hard and I turn off a lot of HUD options to make the game harder in regards to enemies and whatnot.
When I eventually play and complete Hivebusters, I will post how many hours it took me and what my settings/options were set at.
This is very true. When they say they’ve done the main quests and most side quests/activities, they’ve generally pretty much only done the main quests and sped through it at that. Reviewers are under immense pressure to get through the games, they certainly don’t play them like the average player will. It’s also why they tend to only notice the most egregious bugs or issues with a game. They’re moving too fast or not interacting with the game systems off the beaten path to even notice the issues.
There’s a difference between purchasing a single unit game versus playing on a subscription, but there’s also way more competition for your time on a subscription, which is why not every game maxes out the number of players.
Also keep in mind Gears 5 pulled 3.3mi players in the first 24h in a time where gamepass subscribers was below 5mi. We are now past 15. Perhaps past 30 by the time Gears 6 hits.
Still, another thing to consider is that there’s more than double ps4s than there are xbones around there. Did their games used to sell more because they were bigger ips or because they simply are on the vastly more popular console?
Of course they wouldn’t have the same audience, but that’s kinda the point. But that doesn’t mean that anything without quality can just release and fijd success, in today’s scenario time is more valuable than money. If the audience doesn’t see your game as worth of their time you could make it free and see it fail.
Even on gamepass we have some failure stories (Crackdown 3).
But they are. And one aspect that affects Sony: Their games have steep price drops in less than a month. In less than a year they are usually around half of the full price. Meanwhile the monthly price of gamepass is constant. Which means that as long as people keep playing the games they are actually paying much more on average than the single box purchase.
So seeing games like SoT and Forza Horizon 4, years away from release still pulling millions of monthly active users is absolutely insane.
I’d add that besides any issues many times they also don’t notice the qualities of some games. There a lot of games that really shine on the higher difficulties or NG+ where you have to actually use the various mechanics and systems, since we are in a Gears thread I’d use it as an example of this. Experienced and even more on Insane is where the game really shows it’s strengths like picking the right weapons for a particular situation, analyzing and taking advantage of the level design or realizing how smart and good of an addition Jack was, on lower difficulties Jack is a fun tool that you don’t have to use that much (because you don’t have to) but on higher difficulties it becomes the most useful and important thing on your arsenal. Most reviewers commented on it at their reviews as a “cool” addition but the reality is that it’s a great asset to the player if used right and a great addition to the gameplay of Gears. As you said though sometimes it’s probably the time constraints that cause all of this difference between reviews and opinions from gamers that played a game a lot more.
Same thing happened to me when I played Prey, I read a review where the reviewer said that it took him 20hrs on Hard but it took me 40hrs to finish the game (also on Hard).
Very good points! They tend to play on the easiest difficulty so they can get through the game faster, and only dabble with non-core game systems. To be clear, I’m not blaming them, it’s not malicious, they really don’t have much of a choice to get the content out in time or in-line with competitors.
Obviously I have to admit that it’s true because the reality of it is in my face every day, but it will always be hard for me to accept that so many people are influenced so greatly by marketing or a lack there of.
People not doing their homework with a hobby that they have even a casual interest in boggles my mind.
Base campaign is kicking my ass on Experienced difficulty. Finding it hard to keep track of active reloads, ability cooldowns, and all the death traps that can sneak up on you. I guess I appreciate the challenge but i could do with a little less frustration.
Dont know why I didnt just play on the normal difficulty lol
The marketing of Gears 5 and Gears Tactics has been badly handled from the start anyway.
Poor presentations at E3 for Gears 5, Gears Tactics releasing first on PC with almost zero marketing (and thus the console released lacked the ‘new’ effect), etc…
Like the XBOX Series S. And weirdly enough those kind of organic viral marketing has worked better for MS than their traditional approach. Not saying that they should abandon the traditional marketing
Its not just a problem with Microsoft, all AAA games have huge expectations and if there are issues people come out with pitchforks, sony exclusives get more slack because the PS4 has the highest userbase so theres more soldiers fighting for sony.
I disagree. Miles Morales is essentially a more expensive Hivebusters, with a tiny bit more content. A short, 5-7hr campaign. Hivebusters took me 4hrs to finish.
I would not mind an annual Hivebusters adventure that was about 3-4 hours long. In fact, I’d prefer than to a 12hr blow out every 3 years. I’m always racing to finish games at that point.
