Ainu20

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare Judging by how tastefully they handled the Japanese setting in the first game, I'm not overly concerned.

My biggest wish for this game, other than a more compelling narrative, is that the world is more RDR 2 than Ubisoft. Less structured, less formulaic. So this sounds great to me.

I've seen the Hokkaido of that era described as a lawless part of Japan, which automatically makes it seem more like a Western. The music in the trailer also gave it that Western vibe. I love everything I've read and seen about it so far.

@DennisReynolds It has (whisper it) a wooman, so it must be pandering.

It's clear that a lacklustre preview cycle hurt the enthusiasm around the game. That, coupled with a conditioned expectation of significant discounts within the first 6-12 months, has led to these sales.

The only way Ubisoft can turn this around, is by focusing on quality at launch. That will lead to better previews, a better day one experience and eventually, better sales. For Outlaws, it might already be too late, unless they can do almost a soft relaunch with a huge update.

Not my future. There will always continue to be offline, single-player games out there. More than enough to sustain me for life.

I'll just leave this future for the shareholders.

@Xeno_Aura They were not ads. On both other articles I commented that this didn't look like an intentional feature. Only two of my games showed these screens: Amnesia The Bunker with a Halloween update from 2023 and The Quarry with a Halloween update from... 2022. Oh the ads!

But, since Push Square added to the controversy and kept calling them ads, we're now seeing a bunch of people on here adamant that this was somehow testing the waters, when that just didn't make sense at all.

@LifeGirl While it's true that companies are making huge money from microtransactions, it's also worth noting that Sony have largely stayed away from that, especially in their in-house single-player games. I mean, compare that to Ubisoft...

Did we really need another article on this? And once again it is called advertising, when many commenters have pointed out it's simply displaying the latest post of the Official News section of the game. At this point, it is entirely unclear whether this is even an intended feature.

Does this site really need to contribute to fabricated controversy on what seems like a dialy basis now? We don't need an article every time "the internet" is outraged on Twitter.

The Type A or Type B comment is a strange one. There are plenty of games releasing in the West with a simple male or female choice, so who exactly are they blaming? If they're being forced to do this, then it can only be by their own publishing company, which is Japanese.

I honestly think Kojima's storytelling outside of video games is going to be god awful, and I say this as someone who has played and loved almost all of his games. He's full of interesting ideas and when combined with his talents as a game director, it leads to weird but intriguing and often excellent games.

But as a writer, I think he's pretty terrible. It's just one big mess of nonsensical monologues, he barely even knows how to write proper dialogue. He needs a very, very good co-writer and an even better editor if we want the end result to be watchable.

Calling it a deluge of unwanted ads is absurd, it's just the last post of the "Official News" section of the game showing up on the background, and not even for all games that have posts in there (which not all games do).

Some of those looks in the article look a bit ugly and busy, but that might be because they were never designed to be shown on full screen like that. I doubt that's completely intentional.

But hey, another chance for Push Square to make a big deal out of something. It's been happening more and more on here.

@get2sammyb Could be just to support specific studios. I usually do that for indies, but did it for Astro Bot as well.

@OldGamer999 The transition between the Switch Pro controller and Xbox controller is definitely the worst. Why oh why did MS ever chose the same ABXY that the SNES used, but then put them all in different places? Such a pain!

Ghost of Yotei, Hell is Us and Soul Reaver. But there were a couple of other good ones as well.

There's just no excuse for this, it's abysmal stuff from Sony. I hope they don't sell a single copy at this price.

@ChrisDeku I had to do a double take when I read that GoT had "copied" the Arkham combat system. Sometimes you read stuff on here that just doesn't make any sense. I guess some people think the Arkham games invented the counter-attack and any game that features it must be a copy.

@wiiware That's two different things. I was talking about his character, you're referring to a possible angle for another story with him.

Anyway, I'm glad they didn't cover the second Mongol invasion. We've done that story, we don't need to do it again. And now we get to see Hokkaido, which is great.

I have to say I'm perplexed by how attached people seem to be to Jin. Despite really enjoying the game, I found him to be pretty forgettable. He wasn't a bad character or anything, just not a particularly strong one either.

I'm still angry at that Samus Aran reveal from 38 years ago on the NES! NintenDEI right?!

@djlard Include all DEI? What on earth is that supposed to mean? They chose to tell a story about a female main character, that's all there is to it. Making it a choice isn't just a cosmetic change, it could fundamentally alter everything about the story.

Ghost of Yotei was always going to be the big winner, but interesting to see Stellar Blade above Monster Hunter Wilds. And I'm glad people still have a lot of fondness for Soul Reaver.

@Athrum Yeah the article has been updated now, I guess I saw it just after it was posted without reasons given.

Interesting stuff, sounds like Star Wars Outlaws triggered some alarm bells within the company.

Such a late delay, and no details given. Feels like there's a story here beyond the usual "needs more time to polish".

I still think this is an unnecessary remaster, but I've got not complaints about how they're handling it. A substantial update with a reasonably priced upgrade path and save file compatability, it checks all the boxes.

If this is how they're handling remasters going forward and provided it doesn't take significant time away from new game development, I don't mind it.

My initial thought was the Ghost of Yotei reveal was needed to make it a good show. But even without it, it wasn't too bad. Perhaps nothing spectacular, but there were several games that I can see myself playing at some point, so I can't complain.

A solid show with a stunning looking first-party reveal trailer at the end, I'm happy with that.

@ATaco As weird as it sounds, I think in video games Assassin's Creed is probably a greater guarantee of success than Star Wars. But I could be wrong and it could flop, it more or less happened with Syndicate so it could happen here.

@ATaco It's fun for us gamers to think Ubisoft are scared of Ghost of Yotei or will be screwed by it, but in reality, AC Shadows will do just fine for them. Valhalla was one of the best selling games in the entire franchise an even Mirage sold really well for a smaller stop-gap release.

As the first big AC release since 2020, Shadows is undoubtedly going to find a large audience.

Dead Space is a big one. And I'm actually interested in finally trying out Doki Doki Literature Club. Good month.

@Ralizah Almost, it's DEI now!

@TheMysticOne The "Part I" subtitle was only introduced with the remake, so it's definitely referring to that game.

If this list is true and there isn't a major announcement among the remaining slots, I expect this will be the worst received showcase we've seen yet, across all platform holders.

Consumer trust in Sony has to be approaching an all time low this side of the PS3 price announcement, this is not going to turn the tide.

It'd be great to get these playable on modern consoles in remastered form, but that's definitely not the sort of news that belongs in a State of Play. Remakes would another matter, but I doubt that would happen.

It is unfortunate but there are simply too many games out there these days (despite people on here constantly complaining this gen has no games). I have both of these games on my wishlist, but I'm so far behind there's no point in buying them in the first year.

I've actually played and enjoyed quite a few of their games: Remember Me, Life is Strange 1 & 2 and Vampyr, so I will get around to these as well. Makes me sad to read they're considering changing their approach to reach wider audiences.

Yeah sorry but I don't believe this. These stories are just getting more outlandish. 400 million for that? Come on.

While I can understand not wanting to support it in future updates, taking something away that already works is absurd. It's a very specific use case, but someone might've actually bought it for the VR mode. This shouldn't be legal.

It's a little surprising because this game came at a time when most people agreed Bioware's standards were starting to slip, on the back of the middling Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3 ending debacle.

It wasn't a bad game, just not particularly great. Definitely an uninspired GOTY compared to a year later when we had The Witcher 3 and Bloodborne fighting for the crown.

Bungie badly needs a win, for their sake I hope they get it. Without a PvE element, this game is not going to be for me, but at least the trailer had a unique look about it. That's more than could be said of Concord, so I don't necessarily think Marathon will follow in that game's ill fated footsteps.

Struggling to think what would be even less exciting. Something that already looks and runs great I guess, like God of War or Ghost of Tsushima?

It's Jeff Grub though, so I'm not convinced it's legit. He's not the worst but I wouldn't exactly call him reliable either.

@nessisonett They're constantly releasing turn-based games on the Switch. Octopath Traveler 1 & 2, Dragon Quest 11 S, Bravely Default 2, Live a Live, SaGa: Emerald Beyond, soon Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D. There's more to Square-Enix than just the blockbuster releases.

The only positive here is that the ESRB lists it as "Remastered" rather than remake, which gives me hope it could a €10 upgrade path. A remake would surely be full price, and completely unnecessary.

@Blaze215 You can't really approach the PS5 Pro from a mindset that PSSR is a negligable improvement. It's kinda the entire point of the machine. We don't know how well it performs yet, but if it's closer to DLSS than FSR, it's anything but negligable.

Judging from your comment, you're not particularly interested in PSSR, as is your right. It just means you're not really the target audience. That's what I mean by value being subjective, if you're not interested in what the machine offers, you're not going to see much value in it, while others might.

Same with the argument that a PC does more. There is no question that is true, but there are a lot of people out there that might not need or want anything more than a gaming machine and use a phone, tablet or lightweight laptop for all the rest. Again, subjective value.

It might seem like I'm defending the PS5 Pro here, but I say all this stuff as someone who doesn't want to buy it at the current asking price. At roughly €150-200 less, I probably would, but as it stands it's a bit steep for me personally.

@Blaze215 Not to get into the whole value argument, because I think that's ultimately just really subjective, but that article doesn't really present a compelling case.

The PS5 Pro's biggest selling points are PSSR and its ray tracing capabilities. To then present an AMD GPU that lacks those selling points as an "equivalent" alternative, is at least misleading.

If you're being defended by people like former Blizzard exec Mike Ybarra and now an EA exec, you're probably doing something wrong.

@McTwist It's not much to go on, but I agree, it looks soulless. Being a f2p live service game doesn't help either. I have zero expectations here.

@Northlander Or it just means that PS4/5 games you already own will continue to be playable, just like PS4 games on PS5. Though I would not at all be surprised if the PS6 is discless by default with an attachable drive sold separately.

@Medic_alert Holding the platform and taking a cut on all transactions works today, but there is a potential future where that could change. After the Epic vs Apple case, it is not unthinkable that the likes of Sony might have to open up their own platforms to third party stores at some point.

Of course, that would have much wider ramifications - subsidised hardware would surely be a thing of the past - but it's easy to see why Sony would want a live service cash cow of their own in such a future.

@Nei I don't get it either, I must be living in some alternative universe where the PS5 is drowning in great games. Both this year and 2023 have seen numerous fantastic releases on the platform.
Yes, first party output is not where we'd like it and yes, some of the best games are available on other platforms as well. But does that really matter? You're still getting that entire catalogue on your PS5.

Just these two years combined we've seen (take a breath): Spider-Man 2, Baldur's Gate 3, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Alan Wake 2, Jedi Survivor, Dead Space, Lies of P, Diablo 4, Final Fantasy 16, Armored Core 6, Sea of Stars, Cocoon, Resident Evil 4, Hogwarts Legacy, Octopath Traveler 2, Remnant 2, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, Stellar Blade, Rise of the Ronin, Black Myth Wukong, Astro Bot, Helldivers 2, Dragon's Dogma 2, Granblue Fantasy: Relink, Shadow of the Erdtree, Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Tekken 8, Animal Well, Balatro, ... and, well I'm going to stop now.

"PS5 has no games". I guess if you don't like any of the above, but then maybe it's time to switch hobbies.

@GeeForce Maybe you're right, apologies if I came on strong. Now I'm the one contributing to the negativity.

@GeeForce There has never been a mere 2 month gap between the announcement and release of a new generation. The PS5 was released 19 months after it was first announced, thought that was a longer gap than usual.

What you are suggesting is so far removed from the spirit of the statement you quoted that it loses all meaning.

@GeeForce It says it could revealed then, which first of all is complete speculation and seems incredibly unlikely, and secondly revealed is not the same as released.

Christ, this comment section is utterly miserable. Feels like people only visit this site to complain these days. There are still plenty of great games out there people, maybe try playing some of them?