So... now that Cities XXL has been announced....

[Akeem J Lenoir 9]

Considering both Cities XXL and Cities Skylines, developed by different entities, utilize the same "Unity" engine, therefore will look alike in comparison, which game will win in the competition for consumers, assuming they both don't lose to Simcity? Will you want to buy either... or both? Where will your money go? Also, with the limited information we have on these projects, do you sense any similarities between the two?

 

My curiosity has gotten the best of me, at the moment. LOL. 

[Xenocity 343]

I'll buy which ever is the better game, provided it is stable program that doesn't crash regularly. 

It has to be able to run on OS X if they want my money (yes I have Windows partition, but I don't use it very often these days). 

 

With that said i'll probably wait until the games are stable, I've been burned every time since Simcity 3000.

 

With that said Cities XXL has me more interested...

[CapTon 592]

I'm going to buy both of them without a doubt they both look extremely appealing and seem worthwhile. I'm probably gonna have to watch some gameplay videos, however, to ensure that I know what I'm getting into.

[Prophet42 1,503]

I will certainly investigate both games, and like Xenocity wait to make a purchase until the games are stable and most bugs are worked out.  I did that for SC4 (waited until Deluxe came out) and SC2013 (waited until single player mode came out).  Quite frankly, SC4 is still able to satisfy my city building needs.

[roberto tomás 3]

With that said Cities XXL has me more interested...

 

Cities XL (including the Platinum edition) has serious user interface issues. I'll have to see because this Unity engine is completely different, and maybe they got multiplayer working in XXL too ...

 

Cities Skylines looks best to me because of the promise to make it open. If you don't like something, then just use the modding tools released by the company.

[Mr Saturn64 742]

Cities Skylines will be great. That may be a prediction, but I have every reason to say so.

Cities XXL will either be magnificent or so unbelievably atrocious. Id say it's a gamble.

Cities: Skylines will draw new people to the genre, and some of us veterans of city builders, while Cities XXL will need better interface, better graphics (ever look in the background), and and end to re textured buildings to succeed.

I will likely get both.

[LivingInThePast 364]

From first impressions, I thought CXXL looked a bit better in terms of building graphics (maybe the shadows), but C:S has the advantage of being connected with the well-liked Cities in Motion while CXXL is connected with CXL, which is...less well liked.

[DONCOR 0]

Actually I find the situation with citybuiler games now rather bad. On one hand we've got pretty much of these games nowadays, none of them, however, is even close to be perfect. Each of the simulators has its own special feature which attracts me and 10 years ago when I've just started there was only one game: SC4 which had everything I expected and needed that time. So in 2005 all players were improving only one project, that helped to create such a huge amount of mods. Now all the players are divided, it might seem nice that customers have a choise now, but as for me it's better not to have a choise and use something which is good (sc4) rather than coosing between "rotten tomatoes". Plus for now it's impossible to create big base of mods just for only one game, since modders are working on different projects, you can say that it's possible to buy and play a few games, but when you've spent months or maybe dven a year on one city, you will not be happy to start over.

So the situation for such players as me (I enjoying building one huge metropolis) is catastrophic. SC4 with all the respect is too old, without curved roads and normal camera moving it seems antic now, I use CXL (since saves can be transported I've the newest version). But now with coming CXXL and C:S I'm cosidering changing a game (second time in "builder" life). What do you guys advice to choose? CXXL or C:S or should I keep playing in CXL? Does anyone know whether I'll be able to transport my saves from CXL to CXXL?

[Nesral Sredna 62]

Simcity 4 is good enough for me, allthough its an isometric 2,5D game. Cities XL was ok, but felt incomplete. 2012 was a disappointment, it felt more like an expansion pack than a new game, it sure wasn't worth all that money. Ive been kinda lukewarmly interested in XXL,  but then I noticed it was DirectX 10 only while Cities Skylines (It's silly with these confusingly similar two names) still supports DirectX 9. With my aging computer, thats a nobrainer, unless there comes a PS4 version.... (no it wont)

[Darth Apple 54]

I actually really liked Cities XL back when I had time to play it. The notorious memory leak was actually not much of an issue because it's very easy to evade simply by returning to planet view and by going back into the city every 30-45 minutes or so. Because that so happens to be the easiest way to save your city, I was never bothered by that at all. I'm sure they have taken the time to fix that in the new game though. The lag will hopefully be better as well. 

 

A few concerns really made the game a little harder for me in the end, however. 

 

1. The cities didn't have a whole lot of low-level life to them. One of the really nice things about Cities XL was that the cities were freakin' huge once you had the time to really get them built up. You zoom out and you look from the vantage point of a nice little hill in your city upon the skyscrapers in your downtown area with the suburban areas in the background, and there is a huge level of satisfaction just knowing that you built this! But then, when you feel like going deep into the neighborhoods of your cities, it feels more boring and lifeless. Apparently Cities XXL is supposed to fix some of this. We'll see how well they do this. 
2. The trading system was too integral to the game. It got to the point with large cities where it was flat-out frustrating to constantly keep everything in perfect balance. That is part of the game of course, but if you want your city to grow, everything has to be in perfect balance, and especially once you get larger cities, that's when it starts to feel more like a school project than a game. I wouldn't mind if there was a little bit of a grace interval when it came to variables where businesses would adjust a little bit if there was so much as 0.5% more workers than were needed in the city, and Cities XL was very particular about this. It gets really frustrating to build larger cities because of this once the city needs get more complex. Of course, that's not even to mention the awful bugs in the trading system! They have made no announcement or comment on this yet, so we'll see what they decide to do with this. 
3. Hundreds of residents for a little house, seriously? I'm honestly not bothered by the fact that all lots are the same size with the same tier (tier 1 and tier 2, then high densities of course being larger). The cities are so large that it's perfectly fine for me. I do sometimes think it'd be nice if they tried to make the occupancy levels a little more realistic. However, in the grand scheme of things, it's really not a big thing to complain about. Other issues, however, include the difficulty in upgrading roads, the poor parks and areas systems, etc. None of these details are dealbreakers, but they do make some very simple traffic issues a little harder to resolve without demolishing stuff. It's hard to go out and demolish a bunch of houses to make a very small adjustment to the roads in an area once you finally do get a historic feel of some sort. We'll see what they decide to do about some of these issues. 
4. The roads in the game are great. The highways and mass transit were horrible. The highways look the same in the trailers for the new game, which is a little disappointing. Hopefully they have at least made some improvements, because honestly, they were barely usable in previous versions of the game. If not, I guess mods will be the solution to that problem. However, the latest trailer for the game has a train in it. This seems fairly promising! 

 

Overall, the new game looks like it will at the very least address some of the performance issues and will also address the lack of low life feel in the cities, which is promising by itself. The fact that there is a train in the most recent trailer means that there is the possibility that some of the transportation options have been revamped a bit as well, but we'll see. I think it's a game I'll be buying. 

 

Now, for Cities Skylines, I have to admit, I'm flat out impressed. As long as they don't go bankrupt when they are 90% finished like Monte Cristo did, we may have a great game on our hands, but I'm not saying anything here that hasn't been said before. 

[Ocram's Razr 964]

*Note: List is enumerated in order I thought of, which is random compared to what this is responding to.

1. Cities: Skylines is made by a more famous and successful studio and is funded by a big company with plenty of money. Bankruptcy is not an issue.

2. All Cities XL games and even City Life had cars and pedestrians but Cities XL has high polygon citizens that get replaced with shadows at medium zooms and high polygon cars that turn into moderately-high polygon cars at medium-close zooms and grey boxes at medium zooms. Neither are visible at far out zooms.

3. Cities XXL seems to have fixed performance and gives the player an opportunity to upgrade polluting industry to be cleaner. It also has a new UI and a skybox. I don't know much more than that even though release is next week.

4. Non-linear population growth is super annoying in Cities XL. I would far rather see each worker count for 4 population instead of 1 population when starting and 500 when you full up your map with skyscrapers.

--Ocram

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Cities XXL has been released and I must say that instead of becoming competition to Cities: Skylines, it has just pushed more people to get interested in C:S instead. The bad choices of FHI has pissed off a large portion of the city builder and city simulator fanbase. You really have nothing to worry about. Everyone who bought CXXL will jump at the opportunity to get C:S (myself included). Everyone who read the bad reviews for CXXL won't be likely to preorder C:S but are extremely likely to buy the game shortly after release (because the reviews by "normal" gamers will show how good it is). I look forward to buying C:S as soon as it is available and I am willing to pay up to $50 (after tax) for preordering it.

By working hard on your game, communicating with all potential customers, and showing off all your hard work and dedication, you have proven yourselves far better than the competition. Monte Cristo tried to do what you did but they did not have the resources and the time was not right yet. The gaming environment is perfect for Cities: Skylines to succeed where others have failed, partially because you all now know what players want and have seen where others have failed. I would be surprised if you sell less than 2 million copies. I would NOT be surprised if you sell more than 3 million.

Keep up the good work!

--Ocram

[mgomrjsurf 16]

I would buy City XXL because people have made lots of Real Buildings but won't work on my Dell all in one becuase can't upgrade the Graphics card.

[Sap59 3]

it's getting to the point where pre-ordering city building games (or any games for that matter) isn't worth it any more. 
I'm glad I waited to see the reviews on Cities XXL.
I'm happy to see Cities Skylines keeping their game open to modding and communicating with the base through developers blogs. I feel much more positive with them and am happy for what I see, it's much more of what I'm looking for in a city builder.

[Nesral Sredna 62]

has pre ordering ever made sense????

[Xenocity 343]

has pre ordering ever made sense????

Only when the goods justified it (or the lack of supply).

[Nesral Sredna 62]

 

has pre ordering ever made sense????

Only when the goods justified it (or the lack of supply).

 

 

Steam is a mostly bottomless pit of supply, and the community will create better bricks. If not, the pre-order might not have been worth it....