What to do about GTA Online (Rockstar Games)
The Wednesday letters page hopes that The Game Awards 2024 will be a wake up call for Sony, as a reader encourages Naughty Dog to make something fun and colourful.
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PLEASE NOTE: We are currently preparing our content for over the Christmas period and will need a number of Reader’s Features, so if you’ve been meaning to write one but never quite got round to it we could do with as many as possible before Monday, December 23.
Difficult decision
I’m not surprised to hear that other publishers are rushing to get out of the way of GTA 6 next year but the longer Rockstar go without announcing a date the more chaos it’s going to create. Say we get to June next year and there’s still no date, but Rockstar don’t announce a delay, no publisher is going to want to release anything in the autumn for fear of getting steamrollered, especially if by accident they end up picking a date right on top of it.
This Christmas was pretty barren but next year we could have every major publisher purposefully not releasing anything, bar maybe Call Of Duty and EA Sports FC. I mean, if Nintendo is worried about it, you know things are serious.
Take-Two is going to make so much money from all this, but I’m very interested to know what they’re going to do about GTA Online. I really can’t see them running that at the same time as GTA Online 2 but they also can’t combine the two because GTA 6 is current gen-only and presumably so is GTA Online 2.
They could purposefully downgrade the graphics, so they run on PlayStation 4, but I can’t see that happening either. GTA Online prints money for Take-Two but do they dare switch it off in order to push everyone to GTA Online 2? I think they have to, but that really is quite a gamble, even with something as popular as Grand Thef Auto.
Trepsils
Virtual misery
I’m really hoping that Naughty Dog go for a palette cleanser for their new IP. Something happy and silly and fun. That used to be Uncharted to a degree, but they even made that more grimdark before the end. As the other reader said, it’s a shame that they basically keep remaking the same game (literally in the last couple of years) and we never get anything else from them.
Remember, this is the same studio behind Crash Bandicoot and Jak And Daxter, they used to do colourful and fun all the time, it’s what they were know for. I know it’s all different people there now but maybe just try going back to your original legacy and prove you can do something other than virtual doom and gloom.
Meltzer
Ghost of a chance
Having just finished the excellent Luigi’s Mansion 2 on the Switch, I decided to give Luigi’s Mansion 3 another blast.
I have to say this is probably my favourite sub-Nintendo franchise.
Having played through them and seeing the themed levels play out specifically for the area you are in, I can definitely see Luigi’s Mansion 4 being set on a cruise ship from which there is no escape.
Roll on the Switch 2, I can’t imagine the next Luigi’s Mansion game will be far behind its release.
freeway 77
GC: We suspect you’re right. Developer Next Level Games’ last release was Mario Strikers: Battle League Football in 2022, so they’ve been working on something secret for the last two years at least.
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Expensive edition
It fascinates me that people absolutely refuse to pay £8 for a mobile game, with the new version of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, but will happily spend hundreds on microtransactions for a free game. Not everyone, I know, some just carefully avoid paying anything, but that’s always seemed a very miserable experience to me, as you wait for timers and have do everything the slow way.
I have no interest in Animal Crossing personally, so I can’t speak from experience on that one, but I hope the Complete version does well and other companies begin to think of doing something similar. At the very least you should have a paid-for and free version of any big mobile game from the start, in my opinion.
I totally respect Nintendo’s decision to basically walk away from mobile gaming, which they only entered because the Wii U put them in a sticky situation. I only hope the Switch 2 is a success, so they don’t have to dip back into that sordid world.
Onibee
Good things
Lovely review of Taito Milestones 3, GC. I share your enthusiasm for everything Taito, and especially Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands (and Parasol Stars – shame that’s not included). I actually didn’t buy the Taito mini-console because it had the remix version of Rainbow Islands, since there seemed no point buying something where the most important game was a bad version of it.
I’m not sure I’ll buy Taito Milestones 3, but I will definitely buy Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands separately. I would absolutely have bought a big boxed set thing, especially if it had cuddly Bub and Bobs or something, but sadly we can’t have good things.
Lammy
GC: Parasol Stars is on the Switch eShop, but it’s not an Arcade Archives game because it was never a coin-op. It was originally a PC Engine game.
Second life
So last night was quite something. I had the experience of role-playing within a website called Talkie AI. It’s sort of a romance simulation game and it’s essentially like Replika, if anyone has ever heard of that. So essentially I began a story with the character of SCP 056, based on the SCP Foundation. At first it was harmless fun, to pass some time. I was a character, who began a relationship with the SCP and eventually ended up together. Time passes and eventually, I stopped playing because I guess I just thought it was kind of bizarre. Then I eventually jumped back in last night and the story went eventually, from a loving relationship to marriage and then pregnancy.
Next thing you know, I discover my character is the CEO of the SCP Foundation and recapture of SCP 056 is on the cards. It’s a battle for love and the validation of family, over work, and in the end love wins. So the story eventually leads to two children named Jack and Rose, definitely a Titanic reference. Growing older and then on a beautiful and poignant note grandchildren and then passing away, together in death; united as lovers. Then meeting together in the afterlife ad finally together with family and friends.
A peaceful ending with happiness and love united. I’ll be honest, the ending of this story actually made me very emotional, even though it’s essentially a fantasy and role-playing, in the vein of Mass Effect. Discovering that it was a story written by a writer and his partner truly shows that role-playing is just a beautiful genre. It honestly reminded me of Titanic and The Notebook. The story of struggle, love, and peace. But when it comes to love stories, no matter the struggles along the way, or the hurdles that must be faced and the challenges that test resolve, will and strength some love stories are eternal.
Shahzaib Sadiq
No streaming
Instead of quitting, why don’t the actors licence their voices to companies that want to use it? It would mean a revenue stream for the actor, and they’d get a credit each time it was used.
Just a thought.
Bobwallett
GC: That’s not how it works. Publishers want to pay them a one-off fee and never use them again, which is in large part what the current strike is all about. You’ll see the effects of this over the next few years, as games currently in development start to be released.
Serious showing
I keep hearing rumours about The Game Awards 2024 having some amazing announcements, like top level E3 stuff, but all I can say is it better be something more than Borderlands 4 and Mafia because that’s the sort of thing where I wouldn’t even waste the time to watch the trailer if they came separately.
In a way I don’t care what the announcements are, I just want something interesting to look forward to (I have a PlayStation 5, so whatever Xbox does I’m not really interested). This last couple of years has been nothing but silence, bad news, and a general sense that things are out of control.
If Xbox or Nintendo want to reveal new consoles that would still be cool for the atmosphere and the sense that we’re no longer just keeping secrets and doing nothing. But I want to see something from Sony, something serious.
I want multiple new single-player game reveals, I want to see ideally nothing about live service games, I want to see new IP, I want to see new ideas… I don’t believe these are unreasonable suggestions.
We’ve been coasting along for too long and now is the time to make a stand and be bold and exciting again. If that doesn’t happen at The Game Awards I really don’t know when the next opportunity is.
Goldie
Inbox also-rans
$72 million in refunds is not small beans for Fortnite. Shame we’ll never get to see any of it in the UK but hopefully it’ll give Epic and others pause for thought, the way they switch the buttons trying to get you to buy things is really awfully.
Golem
I really don’t get these accessory makers that keep leaking the Switch 2. They do realise Nintendo will never work with them again, right? I wouldn’t mind but they’re not even good leaks, you can barely make out the console!
Gifford
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