13 years and no Star Citizen!!

[Bandit LOAF]

I actually think it's the other way. Wing Commander is EA's chance to do something big with Mark Hamill and cash in on nostalgia, because Star Wars won't be doing that much anymore. If they were going to do something with the license they would have done it when they still had exclusivity.

I mean, it all already happened: they saw the bump in interest for space games and they made a Star Wars one that didn't do great. I don't think it's likely we'll see that kind of investment agan any time soon!

Command & Conquer confuses me more because EA, without fail, will throw out a new project every few years, which is almost always horribly received, and yet they've been doing it for the better part of two decades through multiple regime changes. Why? How many of them actually made them money, or even released? It's a significant game but EA owns dozens of those.

I think this just comes down to the fact that EA's leadership today includes a fair number of people who rose to the jobs coming fromthe Westwood acquisition... while pretty much anybody from Origin left as soon as they could.

 

[Bob McDob]

I mean, it all already happened: they saw the bump in interest for space games and they made a Star Wars one that didn't do great. I don't think it's likely we'll see that kind of investment agan any time soon!

Part of the reason I never tried that one was because (and I know that this is an excuse) I haven't had a modern gaming system of any kind in about a decade. It's not so much out of financial circumstances and I probably could if I really wanted. I just haven't. It's a fairly big initial investment and there are other things I could put that to. My computer still works but more than that, it can run a lot of games that I'm interested in. It's not like the 90s any more where not having something from the last year and a half locked you out of most things.

Of course it does still lock you out of the most modern stuff and AAA, but then I'm not interested in most of that. How big is this a dilemma for big studios: I know that they care about the largest possible audience, but how much? Systems on par with the most popular consoles? Which right now is what, still the last-gen PS4s? I assume this is one reason why mobile games are so big nowadays, since most people will have fairly modern hardware.

I wonder what setups people here have. That might be a good front page poll.

 

[MartySheen]

Didn't Erin Roberts recently get drunk at some conference and reveal S42 wouldn't launch until at least 2025?

 

[Oggy]

I keep fantasizing they use the SC engine to make the first two levels of Wing Commander 1 and sell it to EA for the full remake.

I would LOVE that game.

Howard Days Wing-Leader looked really promising. What I liked about C&C:R (apart from the trip down memory lane) was that I could swap back and forth between the graphics but the game play was the same or barely any different. If they were to remaster Wing 1 and Wing 2, I think EA could do a hell of a lot worse than to commission Howards Wing Leader. My concern would be swapping to 3D realised solution would not play the same, and whether there is enough interest in a remaster.
3D sort-of worked on Rtype dimensions, but that was always constrained to a side scroller.

I am really impressed with with the WingIV remake, but that was a 3D realised game from the start.

My own thoughts on Starwars squadrons was that the room got misread about what the older gamers expected perhaps? It was.....ok, but it was competing against the memories of Tie Fighter. The multiplayer and the graphics of squadron was nice, but it felt sort of hollow, I am not sure where they were aiming with it in retrospect? younger players, older players, nostalgia? there was a fair amount of reference in the marketing videos to the old xwing and tie fighter games, but I just didn't get the same 'feel'. Tie Fighter total conversion scratched the itch better.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Part of the reason I never tried that one was because (and I know that this is an excuse) I haven't had a modern gaming system of any kind in about a decade. It's not so much out of financial circumstances and I probably could if I really wanted. I just haven't. It's a fairly big initial investment and there are other things I could put that to. My computer still works but more than that, it can run a lot of games that I'm interested in. It's not like the 90s any more where not having something from the last year and a half locked you out of most things.

Of course it does still lock you out of the most modern stuff and AAA, but then I'm not interested in most of that. How big is this a dilemma for big studios: I know that they care about the largest possible audience, but how much? Systems on par with the most popular consoles? Which right now is what, still the last-gen PS4s? I assume this is one reason why mobile games are so big nowadays, since most people will have fairly modern hardware.

I wonder what setups people here have. That might be a good front page poll.

It's definitely more than just 'the most people possible'. I've been working on a piece on the history of the Hobbes message that talks quite a bit about this exact thing circa 1994. Origin had a LOT of success pushing the envelope when it came to install base; they found with Wing Commander I that if they could build a game good enough to impress the much smaller segment of early adopters then they could sell a lot more units than an average-seeming game that could be played by anyone. It's one of those things that a marketer can take apart piece by piece but otherwise seems a little bit like magic… but if you hit the sweet spot of a game that impresses the group of people who both have the most money to spend and who act as tastemakers then that's the ideal. Wing Commander I was so successful in this regard that it pushed adoption of 386ses, Sound Blasters, etc… and that group of converts was then set up to pick up its technology spinoff, Wing Commander II (and then any number of other games with the same requirements backfilled by the company).

But there's also a fair amount of risk to that strategy! Strike Commander, for instance, was positioned to need the next generation of PC technology… but it didn't move 486ses and the sell through was nowhere near as good as Wing Commander. (Strike Commander wasn't some disaster but a LOT of heavy lifting was done by Origin's sales team who locked Radio Shack into 70,000 units pre-release). That's why sales asked the WC3 team to support 1X drives very very late in the process, necessitating the video cuts… because they were nervous there wasn't an install base yet (particularly in light of Armada selling 60/40 CD/3.5" when they were hoping it would be closer to 80/20). They didn't need to worry, WC3 sold multimedia PCs and CD-ROMs like nothing before… but it was a big concern during rollout (CD-ROM itself had stalled for exactly this reason in 1994… the drives came out in 1988 but adoption was insanely slow despite everyone in the industry being desperate for it to happen… remember the letters Richard Garriott used to include with games!... and that boiled down entirely to "it holds more megabytes" being way less interesting to the average consumer than "YOU CAN PLAY A MOVIE!"). So anyway, my guess is EA doesn't care about you or me, they care about a 25 year old with disposable income who is going to influence a lot of other 25 year olds to buy their game.

Didn't Erin Roberts recently get drunk at some conference and reveal S42 wouldn't launch until at least 2025?

I feel like variations on this story have been making the rounds since it was the shockng reveal that it wouldn't be out until *2016*.

 

[ChrisReid]

Of course it does still lock you out of the most modern stuff and AAA, but then I'm not interested in most of that. How big is this a dilemma for big studios: I know that they care about the largest possible audience, but how much? Systems on par with the most popular consoles? Which right now is what, still the last-gen PS4s? I assume this is one reason why mobile games are so big nowadays, since most people will have fairly modern hardware.

I wonder what setups people here have. That might be a good front page poll.

I don’t even know what the poll options would be anymore. I don’t think my main computer even supports graphics cards.

 

[Jdawg]

I liked Star Wars squadrons but there was not enough there to keep me coming back. I'm more of a single player person these days, and the story in that game was barely serviceable. I didn't get lost in the universe like I did with Wing Commander. It seemed like any competently made space Sim with a slap of Star Wars paint on top, if that makes sense.

 

[Bob McDob]

So anyway, my guess is EA doesn't care about you or me, they care about a 25 year old with disposable income who is going to influence a lot of other 25 year olds to buy their game.

Despite everything that I just said I don't think that my tastes are that out of line with people ten or even twenty years younger, or at least they aren't that different from when I was twenty years younger. The big difference is just cynicism and lack of enthusiasm that keeps me from getting excited over games as much as I used to.

Howard Days Wing-Leader looked really promising. What I liked about C&C:R (apart from the trip down memory lane) was that I could swap back and forth between the graphics but the game play was the same or barely any different. If they were to remaster Wing 1 and Wing 2, I think EA could do a hell of a lot worse than to commission Howards Wing Leader.

I completely missed this for some reason! It does look great, better than I thought that it would, but Howard is just one guy whose professional experience is exclusively in art (as far as I know). Petroglyph is a studio with decades of experience. That and I can't imagine anyone rushing to remaster a 2.5D action game. Retro aesthetics have mostly skipped over them, and the original Doom is a separate ecosystem from the rest of the industry.

I don’t even know what the poll options would be anymore. I don’t think my main computer even supports graphics cards.

I was thinking more along the lines of any gaming system at all, though the fact that I never got into consoles skewed my thinking there. Trying to cram all the possibilities into six or seven options would be impossible I'm sure.

 

[ChrisReid]

I was thinking more along the lines of any gaming system at all, though the fact that I never got into consoles skewed my thinking there. Trying to cram all the possibilities into six or seven options would be impossible I'm sure.

Oh, that poll exists! We rerun it every cycle (or half cycle):

 

[Bob McDob]

For me at least those two aren't exactly the same. I would need to buy a new system to play any new game, unless that game ran on computers well over a decade old which is not something I would expect or support.

(I believe I voted for Quine 6000 because I am dedicated to truth in polling statistics.)

 

[Gaz]

For me at least those two aren't exactly the same. I would need to buy a new system to play any new game, unless that game ran on computers well over a decade old which is not something I would expect or support.

(I believe I voted for Quine 6000 because I am dedicated to truth in polling statistics.)

I'm still rocking a GTX 780SC on an 10 yo x58 Intel Xeon X5680 with 24GB DDR3 ram. (essentially the same as the i7 980)

Still a great system and there have been tests on youtube of this CPU running an RTX 3080 with no problem.

Lack of some of the latest SSE instruction sets and no windows 11 support etc could be an issue going forwards however.

Either way, as long as your GPU is high end, you can still use much older second hand high end systems from a few years ago.

Most of the work is done on the GPU nowadays.

 

[Gaz]

I'm still rocking a GTX 780SC on an 10 yo x58 Intel Xeon X5680 with 24GB DDR3 ram. (essentially the same as the i7 980)

Still a great system and there have been tests on youtube of this CPU running an RTX 3080 with no problem.

Lack of some of the latest SSE instruction sets and no windows 11 support etc could be an issue going forwards however.

Either way, as long as your GPU is high end, you can still use much older second hand high end systems from a few years ago.

Most of the work is done on the GPU nowadays.

Just tried to install Star Citizen again after a few years absent and it now required a processor with AVX support! This means that my CPU no longer will load the game! .

If you have an X99 system or newer however, you will be OKAY. Looks like an upgrade maybe on the cards after all!

 

[ChrisReid]

Just tried to install Star Citizen again after a few years absent and it now required a processor with AVX support! This means that my CPU no longer will load the game! .

If you have an X99 system or newer however, you will be OKAY. Looks like an upgrade maybe on the cards after all!

Might want to be careful with the timing of that too so you don't have to upgrade multiple times for it.

 

[Gaz]

Might want to be careful with the timing of that too so you don't have to upgrade multiple times for it.

Yes. Star Citizen does indeed seem like a never ending story at the moment. Just want this single player campaign done and dusted already ! lol

 

[BonkusMaximus82]

Oh, that poll exists! We rerun it every cycle (or half cycle):

View attachment 13311

Hmmm...I now am tempted to look for two Quines for cosplay (a handheld AND a wrist mounted). This way, I can try a crossover character (you know, one who can use a handheld AND wrist mounted Pip Boy)!

 

[dizzibits]

Didn't Erin Roberts recently get drunk at some conference and reveal S42 wouldn't launch until at least 2025?

That minimum speculative date seems rather likely at this point. At least it is being done!!

When I met Erin in Manchester all we spoke about was football.

I also met Toast in Manchester and shocked him by remembering what a good Wing Commander pilot he is! I also asked Ortwin Freyermuth to take our photo to which he declined, presumably because he is too important. I personally found a photo with Toast far more important, and still do!

 

[Bob McDob]

Hmmm...I now am tempted to look for two Quines for cosplay (a handheld AND a wrist mounted). This way, I can try a crossover character (you know, one who can use a handheld AND wrist mounted Pip Boy)!

You could probably build one with a RaspberryPi or similar system. Quite a lot of homebrew 3D printed electronics.

 

[Quarto]

I liked Star Wars squadrons but there was not enough there to keep me coming back. I'm more of a single player person these days, and the story in that game was barely serviceable. I didn't get lost in the universe like I did with Wing Commander. It seemed like any competently made space Sim with a slap of Star Wars paint on top, if that makes sense.

(yeah, I know I'm replying to a three-month-old post)
I bought Star Wars Squadrons almost right after its release (to be precise: the first time it had a 50% discount)... and then I only got around to playing it two years later. That's how excited I was about it . What persuaded me to finally install and play it was the fact that I had just started working on a VR title, and therefore had a VR set at home (which I wouldn't have been persuaded to buy otherwise).

You say the story was barely serviceable. I think that's excessively high praise. Ok, yeah, the story as such was all right, but the dialogues... oh, it hurt. I couldn't understand why they asked an angsty teenager to write the whole game. Surely they had a budget for an actual professional writer?

BUT - I must say, playing the game on VR, I was positively blown away in spite of the terrible dialogues and the relatively poor story. Even though controlling the game was at times a little bit annoying (after all, you've got VR goggles on your head, but you're using your keyboard or a gamepad, and either way, you can't see what you're pressing), it was an amazing experience. Work has forced me to play quite a lot of VR titles on the last couple of years, but Squadrons remains one of my favourite experiences. It's just too bad that the game really doesn't give you any reason to bother replaying it.

So, I guess this is my long-winded way of saying: gosh, darn it, give me a Wing Commander game designed from the ground up to support VR. I understand such a game can't be huge, because the VR market remains close to non-existent. But that's fine, I'll take a tiny budget title along the lines of Academy/Arena.

 

[MartySheen]

If S42 receives high praise from the 'gaming journalists' of the world and is highly successful in terms of sales (some might say the latter has already been achieved), one would wonder if it will see a console release at some point. Perhaps not this gen.

I only bring this up cause it's been a while since I invested in high end computer hardware. Due to lack of interest in many of today's games I've had no reason to do so.

This is the one game that could get me back into pc gaming. I backed the game from the beginning but never actually played any iteration of SC.

Now that the launch of Squadron is finally on the horizon I may need some advice in the near future.
I know I'm guaranteed to get that here at the CIC.

So, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the staff, community and all involved with running wcnews over the years. It's one of the best, most resourceful and most informative fan sites I've seen. Can't help but feel a little emotional, and it occurred to me that I've always kinda taken this place for granted without contributing much myself.

 

[FredDude32]

Speaking of upgrades. I upgraded earlier in the year eventhough I don't really play much of anything anymore. I feel as SQ42 and Star Citizen will be the final games I'd do upgrades for in my life. There are no other AAA-titles I'm interested in and haven't in a very long time. Starfield killed several hours but after the fact I don't see myself replaying it.

I am currently replaying Wing Commander on a Commodore CD32 emulator.