yep those remasters are horrible for gaming, i dislike them nearly as much as anime vn-s

Very true. I have seen some backlash when it comes to movies, but not enough when it comes to gaming. Hopefully as these companies inevitably keep getting greedier and providing worse products, people will start to realize. I think a lot of that would require breaking herd conformity though. Many people will engage with media they don't even like simply to be part of the watercooler conversation, for instance. I don't think games are much different in that respect. It is "cool" or "acceptable" to play some games, but not others.

But by that logic they'd be stupid to not at least sell the Legacy version on GoG if the remastered version, for obvious reasons can not be sold here.
Hard to believe they'd not want to repeat what Diablo + Hellfire achieved in terms of sales figures which, going by its rank in the alltime-bestsellers list should equate to at least 1 million(?) sold copies, maybe even double that.

No idea if that's what they'll go for, but to me this was immediately my first thought. Yeah, the Warcraft movie bombed (kind of) but these are still IPs worth a second fortune if turned into franchises in other media. I can easily see Starcraft being "the next big thing" on Netflix or Amazon Prime, Call of Duty hitting the big screen with Michael Bay in the director's chair... hell, they could make a Carbot-style animated comedy show for Netflix and it could do well.

Microsoft's net income is more than sufficient to buy EA.

I had totally forgotten there was a Warcraft movie!

Now, here is what I think to be the problem with games-based movies: the story and plot serve only the gameplay. It is gameplay that makes or breaks the game.
However, on movies (books, series) the story should serve the characters. You can make a successful movie without good characters (action movies like The Fast and the Furious) but I would argue against them being a good movies.

I remember being a kid and hating seeing when a movie's take on some franchise to be too different from what I knew. I wanted to see a simple transposition to the big screen. But as I became more mature I started to understand that that take was the right thing to do. (I'm not talking about movies based on videogames; I'm not sure any of those was even decent).

Is it possible to pull off? Certainly. But the screenwriters need to take a few steps back and risk alienating the silly kids that expect to see their games on the big screen. They will complain that too many liberties were taken. But if you take one additional step back... then the IP only matters for marketing. It is a difficult thing to balance, I think.

Even for the earlier versions, you can disable the disc check with a version switcher, like this:
https://github.com/fearedbliss/Cactus

So you can play even the pre-expansion versions without a disc. Just recently did a playthrough of 1.05 using this.

Oh, this is great! Many thanks for the reference.

I wish there was some place where you could lookup info on a game a find a list of good mods and add-ons.

Nice, useful for mod specific version requirements!

Battle.net is Win32 therefor it actually at least functions some of the time unlikely the buggy ass UWP Windows Store (which is Win 10/11 exclusive too)
Xbox got achievements though
That's why they should just move to Steam but you're right if they did that they'd probably wanna push their own instead of Steam. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if once they got enough Game Pass subs and they wanna go all in on it, they just delisted all their games from Steam so you're forced to rent them. One of the only reasons I think this is a good thing is that we may get some of those older games back on storefronts.
I'm not sure if they'd actually let Raven make Singularity 2 and stuff but the old games coming back is good enough for me and more realistic than expecting MS to invest in dead IPs when they can just milk COD.

You forgot about one important nuance. Good action movies rely on spectacle and stunts. But the thing is, looking at stunts and spectacular moments can never be as exilirating and engaging as participation in stunts and making spectacle yourself. And that's why action movie based on a game could never match the game itself, where you feel like you are the character that performs all the tricks.

And thus, I agree with you, that game adaptation should focus on characters and the world lore, showing things that in the game wouldn't get much focus. And what proves it better than anything else is that there are very few good movies based on games, but there are many good series based on games - Sonic the Hedgehog, Higurashi, Arcane, and other series that have enough time to show characters and other things in depth. Even not very good series, like Castlevania have bright moments, when they explore something that was mentioned in games but didn't get a spotlight (like Dracula's relationship with LIsa).

I have exactly the same problem. I spend a lot of time with what ultimately boils down to a select few titles. Sometimes something new comes along and gets itself added to the collection but the principal remains the same. The only use Game Pass would have for me is to find those games at a smaller expense. Actually then buying them would still be necessary for me though.

I wonder what will happen with future Fallout and Elder Scrolls titles now that MS have all these studios and their respective talents to draw from?

To be honest, I don't know the series you mention; but I believe in what you are saying. It makes sense.

I do wonder if anyone, at some time, tried to develop the interactive and non-interactive entertainment side-by-side. It would be a big gamble.

You mean as distinct parts of one big project, rather than one being an adaptation of the other? It's been tried a few times. Shadows of the Empire comes to mind.

[url=https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Wars:_Shadows_of_the_Empire]https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Wars:_Shadows_of_the_Empire[/url]

Sorry, for some reason the forum just won't let me post a working link. >sigh<