Assassin’s Creed Unity to me, is an ominous sign of how the 8th generation will play out in terms of AAA releases. Let’s go down the list:
1: Development focused on the lowest common hardware denominator. This, in-and-of-itself, is not a bad thing. After all, if you’re developing a multi-platform game, then you want to make sure that it will run on even the weakest hardware setup. However, too much focus on said LCHD(Lowest Common Hardware Denominator) can jeopardise the game on other platforms, as it becomes
very noticable which platform was the development platform
(see for example Skyrim), and in an industry where perception has a very big impact, a multi-platform game being perceived as being
for a certain platform can jeopardise the success of other platforms
(see for example the first two years of the Playstation 3).
See also what I said here regarding multi-platform games
2: New game released? “Welcome to the Beta!” Hey anyone remember when you bought a console game, you could put it in and play it right away without any major issues? Remember that when a game like
Unity is sold, it
isn’t sold as an early access game, and consumers have some expectation that the game will work as advertised without any major issues. Also, not everyone lives in the internet utopia of
the United States of America South Korea, thus major patches right from launch aren’t very appreciated by those of us with slow, or capped, internet services.
3: Bullshit excuse-making, 2.0. If the platform’s hardware cannot handle the jandle, then
just say that, instead of hiding behind bullshit excuses like “30fps is more ‘cinematic’.” I’m pretty sure that most people aren’t expecting these games to bring about the second coming of Christ, so why pretend that what is
obviously is a limitation due to hardware, is in fact an “artistic decision”? Going by that logic, I guess that preorder DLC, season passes, and microtransactions are
also “artistic decisions,” right?