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Everything Everywhere Once A Week (8/25/2023)

Added 2023-08-25 21:46:13 +0000 UTC

Hello and welcome to Everything Everywhere Once A Week, a weekly newsletter about the goings on in the video game industry over the last week. I’m back after getting married last week in an event that was supposed to include a Pokemon battle between me and my wife. We had spent a while creating teams of Pokemon, EV training them, and essentially manufacturing a team of Pokemon that referenced our relationship. Unfortunately, the battle never happened because there was some weird connection issue — both local and online — at the reception. We later figured out that there was a mismatch between our Wild Area events and when that happens Pokemon Sword & Shield just kinda doesn’t want to do multiplayer. Great design, Game Freak!

Baldur’s Gate 3 Comes to Xbox with a Caveat

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how a policy decision to keep Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X at feature parity was preventing Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian’s wildly successful new D&D RPG, from coming to the Xbox before 2024. The issue at hand was local co-op, which was possible on all the other platforms of the game, but caused problems on the comparatively weaker Xbox Series S. Due to said existing policy, neither version could come out. This week, Larian announced that they will be able to bring the game to Xbox this year after all thanks to an exception in that policy.

Larian CEO Swen Vicke tweeted that they have “found a solution” after meeting with Xbox chief Phil Spencer. That solution seems to be that the Xbox Series X version of Baldur’s Gate 3, like its PC and PS5 brethren, will feature local co-op, while the Xbox Series S version will lack it. It’s good news for the Xbox audience that wants to play this game but doesn’t care about local co-op, bad news if you deeply cared about local co-op, and weird news for the Xbox in general.

On one hand, this is overall a win for Xbox, which is why I think Phil Spencer granted this exception in the first place. It was embarrassing for the Xbox version of Baldur’s Gate to be months later, especially when it feels like a big deal right now. It, among other things, provided a PS5 counterargument to Starfield with high review scores and good sales on PC. Making sure it comes to the Xbox sooner rather than later ensures that the Xbox doesn’t look like an also-ran ecosystem.

On the other hand, it does make the Xbox Series S look like an also-ran system! If you have a Series S and found out you just couldn’t do something literally everyone else with the game can do — even the Steam Deck with a command line addition — then it doesn’t reflect well on this console that Microsoft said could do everything the Series X could do. Resolution and framerate tolerance levels are in the eye of the beholder, this is an entire feature that some people may have been looking forward to using themselves. In co-op, one player can sneak around a room and loot it while another player engages the victim in conversation, something you can’t really do in singleplayer.

On the other, final hand, this puts that policy as a whole into question. Baldur’s Gate 3 was granted an exception, but would it have were it not an incredibly successful game critically and commercially? What do you say to other developers and publishers that are struggling with the Series S? Do they also get exceptions? In cracking a window, Spencer has opened the door to a flood of speculation. It is not like they can or should ditch the Series S — it makes up a significant portion of the install base and is their gateway into subscription sales. But this is the first major case of it not being able to do something the other consoles can do and Microsoft deciding such a thing is fine given an unattractive alternative. Are they going to find themselves in a similar rock and a hard place again? It’s hard to assume that’s impossible. And with Spencer’s recent insistence that they won’t be doing any mid-gen upgrades, the Xbox Series S could turn out to be equal parts sail and anchor.

BioWare Eliminates 50 Roles Ahead of Dreadwolf’s Release

BioWare, an internal studio of Electronic Arts, announced that it is eliminating 50 roles from their studio. The people being laid off are almost entirely senior staff that command higher salaries, with some having been at the studio for nearly two decades. BioWare says this move is necessary to make it a “more agile and more focused studio.”

A few people I talked with connected to and still employed at the company paint a more dire picture, though. Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, which they don’t believe is ready for a launch in the first half of next year, absolutely has to hit or it might be it for the studio. They point to confusing comparisons during development, with games like God of War 2018, Jedi Fallen Order, and Persona 5 all being named as what the studio is aiming for without a clear sense of what path between those Dreadwolf is charting for a lot of the game's development.

For their part, EA seems frustrated with the game’s development going wildly out of scope and seems to want both a critically and commercially successful game that isn’t in development for another year. It remains to be seen how any of this is going to shake out, but it sounds like morale is at an all-time low for BioWare at an extremely pivotal point.

The PlayStation Portal is Detailed

The PSP is dead, long live the PSP. Sony has finally given details on their streaming-only PS5 companion, the PlayStation Portal. The device is essentially a bifurcated DualSense with a screen in the middle that can stream games from your PS5 over WiFi. Unlike a Wii U, there is no direct connection between the Portal and the console, but also unlike a Wii U, you can bring the Portal to anywhere with a WiFi connection and play your PS5 remotely from there.

At $199, it’s a bit high of an asking price for the use case. I’m sure there’s a few people for whom the PlayStation Portal solves a home problem but I’m not sure it solves a home problem a $150 TV doesn’t already solve for most. For travel, it's a gamble that the Steam Deck is not and leans heavily on the quality of the WiFi and whether it's $199 better than using your phone or a tablet and a controller.

Wireless headphones are also not compatible, presumably because it would likely lead to audio desyncing, so PlayStation is creating unique earpieces to work with the Portal. Probably better for the long term quality, but it makes an expensive proposition more expensive.

This seems like something to own rather than something to use, which doesn’t make me particularly enthused about owning one. But for the people that it does something for, go with God.

Charles Martinet Retires as Mario’s Voice Actor

So earlier this year, before the Mario movie came out, I was speaking with someone at Nintendo who had Japan’s ear about upcoming games. This person mentioned that Nintendo was unsure of what the future of Mario as a character looked like, contemplating whether a successful movie would change the perception of what Mario is supposed to act and sound like. If the movie were successful, which we eventually discovered it was in spades, then does that mean an entire generation will grow up expecting Mario to speak in full sentences?

I am not saying that is why Charles Martinet is retiring as the voice of Mario. It could be that he’s older, maybe he has trouble doing the voice, maybe his legacy is secured and is being offered money to do nothing rather than play four characters. But it does coincide with Nintendo’s apparent contemplation of what Mario sounds like for a modern audience.

I expect Nintendo is also kind of tired of having a Mario that sounds vaguely like a weird little cartoon stereotype. It’s not widespread, but some people have expressed some concern about it and maybe they want to tamp down on it.

I guess we’ll find out, as Super Mario Wonder is the first game without Martinet’s voice since the plumber started talking. I imagine any big changes will have to wait for the next appropriately sized 3D game.