The day Mariina Hallikainen received a communique detailing first day sales stats for Cities: Skylines, she was very happy.
The numbers were wildly ahead of all projections. She decided to splurge on a decadent and indulgent treat.
It’s amazing that a small team from Finland managed to build the SimCity EA could not. Cities: Skylines is completely and utterly worth it, and the best city builder currently available, by a huge margin.
On a related note, an artist who used to work on SimCity for Maxis/EA is currently earning a decent buck through donations because he’s designing a lot of additional buildings for Cities: Skyines and releasing them to the community for free. Amazing.
Cities: Skylines is still a bit of a work in progress but what is there and working is great. There could be a very bright future for this game. I certainly felt I’ve got my money’s worth.
Uh…how is it amazing? It’s more like what is just to be expected, especially considering the kind of games EA are interested in making (that is, more of the same).
It’s rather typical for the IT industry that only smaller companies make interesting things (and then they are bought out by a big company and stop making interesting things).
The game in general looks good, but one aspect I do not appreciate about it is the lack of good support for intel graphics on the mac side. On Windows I could understand, but if you are releasing a version for the mac – most of the macs sold have only intel graphics in them.
Then add a $3000 graphic card to your $20000 Mac
The fruit company doesn’t like it when you change anything in their products. Actually I don’t think there are any products left in their line up that would allow upgrading the graphics card.
Yeah, upgrading is not green enough. Throwing away and replacing seems to do it. Strange fruitful policy…
eGPUs (graphics card via Thunderbolt) work, but are a bit hackish, because nobody sells a finished solution for it.
I think it’s a very worthy way to boost the graphics for any Thunderbolt capable Macbook Air or Macbook Pro. I run a GTX970 on my Macbook Pro and it works very well.
Paradox hav single handedly eaten up years of what could have been social life. In particular the EU series of games!
I tried to avoid this one for as long as I could… I failed.
With their background in political management games they could extend this franchise in so many directions/editions (think tropico cold war politics).
Bye bye sun
I just hate how about every game is named around the « franchise : random word » format today, and how it makes taglines about them totally confusing.
Has this been influenced by film titles?
“City Skylines” works for me.
I don’t really get all the hype and happiness around Skylines – there is nothing in the game that would be new or better from SimCity, and honestly speaking game is in pretty crappy state – starting with no multiplayer option – seriously? It’s 2015, obviously I don’t want an online only version, but I want to have an option to play this with friends. Now day/night cycle doesn’t exist – really? Last but not the least — traffic system which is screwed, even developers admitted it is screwed, but – not gonna fix.
So maybe in Skylines Cities of Tomorrow – we would finally see something worth, but for now – back to SimCity – have a region to develop
Have they upgraded yet from Sim Village to Sim City?
Please define village versus cities? Do we have modular buildings, multitiered buildings, external market that can influence city buget, regional resources – do we have any of these in skylines? Oh right – map is bigger – ok.
If you’re going to astroturf a site like osnews.com, you need to be a lot less obvious.
Astro-what? Are you one of those who is trying to argue implying that opponent is trolling and makes that the one and only argument? I listed a number of gameplay components that are not present or broken in Skylines, only two arguments I got so far is – Skylines has larger map and your attempt to imply I am trolling. I am still to see something like “oh Skylines so so much superior to SimCity because it has so many new gameplay features that were not present for example…”. The only real argument is SimCity vs SimVillage – and I agree with that one – yes, that is an improvement, but everything else is a step back – good job!
Everything a step back?
– far, far larger map
– incredibly mod-friendly
– cheaper!
– no online requirement
– no multiplayer (yes this is a plus for many people – fuck multiplayer encroaching on my single player)
– terrain editor
– building editor
– the game’s on Steam, not Origin
– traffic, water, and power mechanics and pathfinding that aren’t utterly broken
– much more advanced road tools (seriously, you have no idea just how liberating Skylines’ road tools are)
This is just from the top of my head.
Yes, that’s what I said
Yes, this I already agreed with – map is larger
I don’t see it as a plus, but rather an attempt to add content to the game which lacks content – no day/night switching – make a mod – well light will stay out, there will be no difference in game play, but mod will dim lights – and so on and so forth [/q]
Less content == cheaper – I’d rather pay more for quality and content
I guess you are not aware but SC doesn’t have online requirement – you can play it offline perfectly fine
In SC you have an option – multiplayer or singleplayer – in Skylines you don’t have any options and a forced to play singleplayer only – I like the idea of sharing services, building together with other guys in the region and all that – and I bet I am not alone
Right – so way to generate lacking content
Same here – all these editors and modding abbilities just shout – “we won’t provide content, so make content yourself” – like all the “early access games” – we made something that could be a fun game, please buy it and add content to it – this doesn’t look right to me
How is this a game feature? From marketing and sales perspective I can see why EA went for origin instead of Steam – I guess you do as well. Convenience of the sales platform doesn’t make the game worse or better – also I am not a huge fan of steam either – would still prefer good old standalone games sold through Amazon
But this is not true, traffic is broken and dev’s even admitted it and even more as expected they said – “not gonna fix” – do you need a quote?
This is rather a question of preference – I am fine with Skylines road tools as much as I don’t see a problem with SC’s – so I don’t see progress there, on the other hand I see lack of all those game features that I listed in another post earlier
Thanks!
It looks like you opened an account specifically to write positive comments about Sim City and negative ones about Cities: Skylines.
Maybe I’m being too cynical and you’ll be commenting on non-Sim City stories and this was merely the one that got you out of lurking.
Well being honest I made this account to comment on this particular story – perhaps will be commenting more in future – long time osnews read-only follower, decided to comment on this one because I like city building sims and liked SimCity series a lot, was very interested in Skylines and tried it out – was very upset and really was wondering “what the hype” and since I know that osnews is a rather serious place was planning to have a good and interesting conversation about it.
No, he was trying to imply that you are paid to make these posts, because they look exacly as a marketing bullet point list.
This is not trolling but astroturfing. I would have believed you to be honestly misguided until you got to the “no multiplayer” part. Sim City needs multiplayer like a fish needs a bicycle.
I am not payed for these – but you won’t believe me anyways. I honestly love multiplayer part of SC – really – I like resource market, ability to share services, sharing resources, building regional sights – that is game content and gameplay – if you want – you use them or you don’t, you have an option – so how “more options” in game are anywhere bad?
2000 had cities
4 barely had cities
societies and 2013 have towns/villages
How you can have a New York on a 100Mhz pentium but that becomes impossible in 2013 with a 3000Mhz 4 core mystifies me.
When SimCity2013 comes out on GOG.com I will try it.
Then don’t buy a Mac. You knew what you were getting when you bought it. Apple’s laptop and consumer desktop lines aren’t designed for 3D anything including games. It’s not on Apple’s radar.
It’s 2015 sure, but to the EA conglomerate that just means more bling and less substance. Grind the games out as fast as they can while capitalizing on a brand till people are so sick of it they can’t make enough money any longer. EA is about stock holder value, not making great games. If they make a hit, it’s because they just bought a company and its staff hasn’t quit or become drones, yet. I won’t be buying new SimCity games even when they are on GOG, because I’m going to remember just how bad those games have gotten in the past 10 years or so. They may be Old, but they aren’t Good!
Also, about “not having multiplayer”: That’s a mixed blessing and there’s plenty of people that are ambivalent, or tired of the toxic players that tend to infest the communities that form around games with online elements.
I’d agree if it were a chess game, or another community game of some sort, multiplayer is fairly necessary for those. For a city simulation? I doubt there’s a huge number that would consider that a deal breaker. It just adds another layer of complexity that can break (See the recent SimCity Online fiasco).
Edited 2015-04-10 10:35 UTC
Why did you reply to me?
There’s nothing wrong with franchises. Look at Wing Commander. Approximately 13 games and some of the best titles in the entire genre. It’s more publishers abandoning genres that’s a bigger problem than too many sequels being made. EAs neglect of their back catalogue is why we’re seeing successful Star Citizen (Wing Commander Remake), Road Redemption (Road Rash), and Satellite Reign (Syndicate) kickstarter campaigns popping up. EA should fire whoever is making their big decisions for not hiring a team (at no massive cost) to review their back catalogue and start making modern updates.
Edited 2015-04-10 23:45 UTC