What the hell is Fromsoft doing, why are they pushing everything to online play now? Second game in a row with a heavy multiplayer direction.
They are going to alienate their fanbase if they keep doing this.
This new game looks good visually but it's an 8 player versus game, that sucks.
To be clear, my interest in another Nightreign type thing is basically nothing as well. Not what I, personally, want to see.
That said, their vision for Souls games has always incorporated multiplayer - the only single player Fromsoft game like that since
Demon's Souls has been
Sekiro. It's just something a lot of us turn off.
At this point, I'm optimistic that highlighting the player count could be due to it being higher than before. SoTFS bumped things up to 6 players max, which DS3 also had.
Elden Ring went down to four.
Nightreign back up to 6, but for 3v3 team play.
Between that, Nintendo's touting on the Switch 2 having the online communication capability of a launch Xbox 360 (though, with a PS2 Eyetoy as well?), bigger multiplayer (a la the new
Mario Kart), etc...leading with the multiplayer part could make sense at this time. Could still end up being a full Souls style game, just one that supports more robust co-op and PVP for those that want it. If they can figure out scaling outside of bosses (unlike SoTFS) that'd be just fine.
I remember when flagship new games were £40 (2002 say) and they're now at least £60. Prices definitely have not remained the same.
Even outside of inflation, back in the day, the media cost played into it a lot. Higher capacity cartridges and/or ones with other chips could get very expensive. Seeing some RPGs hitting $70-80 wasn't unheard of, and I think the Genesis Virtua Racing port came out at $90-100. In early 1990s money.
The switch to CDs is what drove a lot of prices down, $40-50 was more the norm there. N64 stuff still often was $10-20 more expensive though, because they just cost more to manufacture.
Physical Switch 2 games are probably going to see that happen too, since there'll be a variable cost to the game card production depending on how capacious they are. If they don't just end up being license keys that is.
New normal for AAA type releases has risen to $70 on PS5/Xbox and the Switch 2 seems to be following that.