Art_Vandelay

@LiamOliver Have you tried the following?

• Resident Evil 8 and 4.
• Tetris Effect
• Synapse
• Red Matter 1 and 2
• Moss 1 and 2

All excellent games.

@Kanji-Tatsumi They can claim credit for these games in a financial sense, but most definitely not in a creative one.

And that's what I hate about Microsoft. It's a soulless money making machine.

Look, I'll be the last one to parade the anti-capitalist mumbo-jumbo. Companies exist to turn a profit first and foremost, but that just can't be your only reason to exist. Cause that ends up reflecting on your products, apart from the few exceptions that just happen to prove the rule.

@UltimateOtaku91 Just look a little further away...

"Wait, Satya... thought we had agreed on 'just these four'" lol

@MrBook Couldn't have said it better.

@MrBook Yeah, and it should also be factored in that some outlets gave the game lower scores because of predictable criticisms like "scantily clad heroine" and "obvious sexualization".

Now granted, other outlets may have given higher scores exactly because of that.

@NEStalgia You're right, this seems to be the path. But I don't like it one bit. The PCfication of consoles has pretty much ended the days of exotic, sexy hardware designed specifically for the living room. Those were the days.

Now, we get the same bloated general computing device that is unoptimized for games. Which then calls for similarly bloated APIs and SDKs, not to mention general purpose game engines that seem powerful from a feature set point-of-view, but result in games that often look and run worse than the previous generation.

I know, old man yelling at the clouds here. But that doesn't make my opinion wrong. The market does dictate reality, which in turn doesn't make it good.

The bubble has burst. Tough times ahead. Brace yourselves.

It won't be a catastrophe, or course, but the correction has begun and anyone who doesn't see it yet is in denial.

Blaming the "loss of jobs" on the employer is just empty virtue signaling. If the market is healthy, a job lost equals at least another job created.

In the case of Embracer, they were obviously to blame, but not on job losses per se. The real losers here were the investors, but that is a really unpopular opinion even though it's a cold hard fact.

@Shepherd_Tallon Right, and I believe Valve will try to get back to that Steam Machines well, too. So, we should have Valve and Microsoft competing in the consolized PC space, while Sony and Nintendo compete in the more traditional console business model for the foreseeable future.

I personally hope that the old model prevails, but the industry has kinda been moving towards this PCfied games machine for years now, unfortunately.

"many indie devs have come to rely on these deals to finance their projects"

This was a strategic mistake that borders on stupidity. Look, anything that seems too good to be true usually just is. Game Pass has always been an obviously unsustainable proposition from the start, as I (and many others) have been trumpeting for years.

Now, the inevitable future has arrived and those who believed in fairy tales are suffering the consequences for being so naive. I hope they learn from their mistakes, but I'm not holding my breath.

@Luigia Well, the latest Forza was developed exclusively for the current gen and look how that turned out: not all that special. In fact, one would argue it is worse than GT7 in pretty much every aspect, including graphics and simulation. And Turn 10 is no slouch.

People need to grasp with the new reality, where console generations are completely blurred. Not only because hardware is not advancing as fast as it once did, but also because software has become way too complex.

"he didn’t meet a 'single person' at the show that understood the point of Sony’s mid-gen upgrade"

What did he expect when asking developers what they thought about this new thing that will make their work harder?

@silverspeed Are you progressing through the Cafe Menus? It masterfully addresses the lack of structure usually found in racing games. Now granted, you gotta love cars to thoroughly enjoy it. But if you are a petrol head like me, it's car porn at its finest.

@Mikey856 Yes, it keeps on selling as new people get their PS5s and PSVR2s. The movie, which I thoroughly enjoyed, must have helped, as well. No wonder it's the bestselling PlayStation franchise of all time. Polyphony really are masters of their craft, and their commitment is laudable.

GT7 on PSVR2 is hands down the best gaming experience of this generation, especially when combined with a good racing rig.

1) Hire based on merit and merit alone.
2) Be obsessive about improving efficiency company-wide. Rinse and repeat. Then again.
3) Manage expectations. Games cannot continue to get bigger with each new release.

Not a popular formula, but people need to understand that corporations are not job programs and exist to make money. So either they do make money, or their products eventually cease to exist.

@AverageGamer I agree, but I'm afraid iVRy (the creator of the unofficial PSVR PC driver) doesn't. Just saw his tweet saying Sony's solution will probably involve streaming.

And note the wording in the blog post: "the ability for PS VR2 players to access additional games on PC". I think the verbiage here does imply indirect play. And the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that streaming will be it, since Sony has been investing in this tech for years.

@AverageGamer What further complicates things, is the variability of USB implementations on PC. The fixed-platform nature of consoles is a big advantage here.

One path would be for Sony to offer some sort of bespoke adapter to separate the video signal. Or maybe we're wildly misinterpreting how this whole thing is going to work, and the solution would involve some kind of streaming from PC to PS5.

@AverageGamer "Type C does not have enough bandwidth to support the high native resolution of the Quest 3."

I think you're spot on, which makes me wonder how exactly PSVR2 will work on PC if it's also wired through a USB-C connection. Will it be hindered by the same constraints?

What about the Sense controllers? Is their input data actually processed by the headset's chipset or will the PC have strict Bluetooth requirements? Is it even Bluetooth?

What about software? Will PSVR2 connect to SteamVR or is the PlayStation PC launcher finally coming out? And if so, will games need to be ported over? Maybe that would explain the weird "additional games" wording in the announcement?

@SirRealDeal "It could be a Steam app on Playstation."

I'm afraid it's not that easy. Besides the app, any game running within it would have to be ported to PSVR2. Which, in turn, would defeat the purpose of the app in the first place.

Sure, another route would be to have a translation layer akin Steam Deck's Proton. But that is a much, much more complex task that would involve millions of investments and years of R&D. Not impossible, but very unlikely.

@MrMagic Just ignore the guy. Apparently, he won't rest until eeeveryone else hates PSVR2.

Wanderer is surely looking like it could turn out to be a top 5 contender.

@SirRealDeal Exactly. But people just looove to complain, ya know..

With that said, a sequel would be awesome. Now, rumors of a new Astro game have been circulating, but I don't think it's a VR exclusive. Maybe a hybrid (fingers crossed)?

People need to be realistic. The industry is in a tough position right now, with investments being subject to an unprecedented level of scrutiny both internally and from shareholders. Hence, it's unrealistic to think Sony will mobilize a first-party team to develop an exclusive to a platform with about a million install base. So, they're actually being smart by funding smaller teams to develop or port a diverse range of titles.

Although SEO matters somewhat, the real issue Sony must address is how mind bogglingly bad the web-based PS Store is.

Just yesterday, I tried to use the search function and the term "Hubris" returned zero results. I then proceeded to manually browse filtering for "PSVR2" and "Adventure" genre and again, no success. So I tried "Action" and finally found Hubris on the second page, if I recall. Just ridiculous. And this is not the first nor the second time it happens.

Not to mention it looks very outdated and yes, the page for each game does a very bad job at selling it.

The floodgates are open.

@IOI "A simultaneous launch on PS5 and PC can definitely make a game more successful."

Careful now. Although it makes total sense to launch a multiplayer shooter day and date on PC, it's dangerous to extrapolate that "lesson" to single player games.

Launching all (or most) games day and date on PC makes your console substantially less attractive. This notion that there's almost no overlap between console and PC gamers is flawed. People change and adapt. If PC becomes the de-facto platform for all games from all (or most) publishers, people will flock.

I've been an avid PC gamer in the past, but these days I don't even consider installing a game on my PC. The console experience is the only way I want to play my stuff. So it worries me that in 10 or 15 years, this model could no longer make business sense.

@Godot25 It's not about protecting corporations. It's about protecting our favorite hobby. It's a business venture after all. It exists to make money first and foremost. Your entertainment is a means to an end.

If a business is not sustainable, it won't be around for long. It either dies or readjusts. It happened to Sega in spectacular fashion and is now happening to Microsoft right in front of our eyes.

I believe Microsoft never actually said that Game Pass was profitable. What they did say however is that the service was sustainable.

The difference is clear: the latter term suggests that Game Pass might eventually become profitable, a reality which obviously hasn't materialized yet.

And to be frank, even the "sustainable" narrative now looks very weak.

@Nei That's not true. The shill I follow said Game Pass is profitable.

These are testing grounds. It's right there in the quotes: "we're [...] learning from the experience" and "we'll see what happens for our business".

"That's not the plan today". Keyword here is "today". They're planting the seed.

@Stragen8 Exactly, and Game Pass is clearly not helping.

@lightningbolt79 Either you're living in denial or you didn't watch the whole thing. When one says "exclusivity will play an increasingly smaller role in the industry", one is clearly signaling that exclusive games will dwindle. They won't just say it flat out because it's a long-term strategy. The transition will take years, as Phill himself has alluded to. Read between the lines. It's coming.

So, they've planted the seed: four games (for now).

They've signaled the future: "exclusivity will play an increasingly smaller role in the industry" and "we're enabling creators to reach new players beyond the console ecosystem".

The path is laid out. Exclusivity will dwindle and Xbox will gradually morph from a hardware platform to a games publisher. The console will be nothing but a reference PC, more akin Steam Deck than Series X.

And honestly, I expect Sony to follow suit sooner or later. In fact, it's already happening: Bungie games will all be multiplatform and Helldivers 2 has just released day and date on PC.

The industry has reached an unsustainable state and needs to change.

All things considered, the future does seem to be the death of exclusive titles. Microsoft will simply lead the charge because they have to, but Sony will follow suit eventually.

I don't like this future as it also implies a "PC-fication" of consoles, but the industry is clearly heading towards an unsustainable state, so things need to change.

There's just no point in fighting or denying reality... And if things do change in a way one does not enjoy, there's always a new hobby.

I bet it will be a hybrid, kinda like Humanity.

A fully fledged VR exclusive would be awesome, but it's probably not financially feasible at the moment.

@3Above "If it's not that expensive or time consuming then releasing on other platforms should be a no-brainer."

Except that it makes your platform dramatically less attractive.

Of course they won't come out swinging, as that would disrupt the ecosystem to a breaking point. But they will plant the seed, and attentive listeners will be able to read the tea leaves.

It will be a classic Phill Spencer moment: tell'em what they don't wanna hear, but do it in a way they want to hear. Then let them go through the five stages of trauma until they reach acceptance (mostly) so we can finally spill the beans.

@NinjaNicky Funny how your second argument completely nullifies the first one.

The latest rumor points to the next-gen Xbox being designed by the Surface team, which makes total sense. Microsoft's next console will probably run PC SKUs, a path they've been tracing for years now. It will be more Steam Deck than PlayStation. Another rumor even points to a mobile version, which would substitute the Series S.

I don't like this future as I've always loved the good old days of the exotic gaming-oriented hardware. But honestly, those days are far gone and consolized PCs might actually be the only feasible way forward from and investment perspective. It would dramatically reduce R&D costs, time to market and also development expenses since studios would need to target a single SKU.

@Deityjester ABK's yearly net income for 2022 was reportedly $1.513B. Microsoft acquired them for $69B. I don't know about you, but 45 years surely doesn't qualify as "easily" to me.

@Americansamurai1 Well, I'm not a Jim Ryan hater, but it has to be said that Bungie was PlayStation's biggest acquisition ever. It's one thing for Microsoft to make a bad 4 billion bet, but it's another thing entirely for Sony to eat that loss.

Granted, Ryan had his hand forced by the ABK deal, and it's a lot easier to analise that retroactively. But it was seemingly a gigantic mistake, and that alone would be reason enough to evict him.

Now, it must also be said that the ABK deal itself was a mistake big enough even for Microsoft, to the point where they now will have to pivot the whole business to course correct.

@K-Wud That's my line of thought, as well. In a way, Xbox is already what you described. It runs a stripped down version of Windows, to the point where the graphics interface is the exact same - DirectX 12 Ultimate.

The APU itself is very slightly customized, especially compared to what consoles used to be. Digital Foundry's Richard Ledbetter even has a PC running a repurposed Xbox APU. At the end of the day, Xbox is nothing but a consolized PC.

Granted, PlayStation is not all that different, but Sony still makes a little more effort to differentiate its consoles, with slightly heavier customizations and unique features.

Well, there's a fourth competitor already: Valve. Maybe there's really no room for 4 big players in this space.

@get2sammyb I think the idea is to allow some time for the hardcore fans to go through the five stages of trauma before it gets official. Seriously.

Moreover, if they announce, say, Hi-fi Rush and Sea of Thieves as originally rumored, fans will go "phew, I thought they were porting Gears and Halo." A bad thing becomes a good thing.

Then, Gears and Halo will eventually make their way on to PlayStation and nobody will complain. Similar to how no one cares when new PS5 games are announced for PC nowadays.

@lightningbolt79 Xbox is obviously failing as a console brand, but it might become a successful games publisher.

The moment Microsoft's first-party games such as Starfield begin to release on PlayStation, there will virtually be no logical reason to buy an Xbox.

This has "Sega" written all over it.

@NotSoCryptic That's a good point, but it has been in motion for a while now as you rightly suggested.

In fact, the industry-wide movement towards UE5 has a lot to do with productivity tools and tech. Dynamic GI (Lumen) has the potential to be a massive time-saver for devs, and so does virtualized geometry (Nanite). And there's Meta-human, AI assisted terraforming, and so on.

The issue is that, as UE5 becomes bigger, it doesn't necessarily becomes better. Complexity mounts, further compounded by the sheer number of hardware platforms to support. The industry has become too big for its own sake.

Regarding Decima, I was quite impressed with Death Stranding 2's recent trailer. I'm with you here: it's shaping up to be a great alternative to Unreal Engine, and Sony is clearly investing a lot in it.

@__jamiie We're clearly in the later stages of diminishing returns when it comes to gaming tech, so new-gen hardware will simply fail to impress.

AI and path-tracing might stir things up a bit come next-gen, but I don't think they'll give us anything close to the mind-blowing leap we experienced when the PS2 came out.

As John Linemann from DF rightly says, the actual limitation today is not hardware, it's budget.

They're both value adds. They make the platform more attractive because they offer different ways to play. PS5 is outselling Xbox three to one, and it's because of its superior ecosystem as a whole (exclusive games, peripherals, services).

Even if one might not get a PSVR2 or a Portal down the line, it's nice to have the option. So, most people will opt for PlayStation when choosing their next console.

I was never a fan of rhythm games on flat, but VR just makes them awesome. I had a lot of fun with Drums Rock, and now I'm massively enjoying Pistol Whip. Beat Saber and Synth Riders are next.

To be fair, VR makes pretty much everything awesome. I hadn't played a Resident Evil game since the original RE2, but VR brought me back to the franchise with Village. And man, what a blast! RE4 Remake will be amazing when I get to it. Just need a little recovery time lol.

@kcarnes9051 Exactly. And to make matters worse, gamers are usually a lot pickier about the titles they choose to play. So having the service curating your backlog is an issue for many.

Subscription services are great for a subset of gamers, but not for a big enough audience to sustain the day-one model.