B0udoir

@Balaam_ Not unpopular, this is the popular opinion of the majority of gamers. Ragnarok failed to achieve the masterpiece level of GoW2018 and was indeed poorly executed. Probably one of the worst letdown of this generation, I think mostly due to pandemic that made difficult to complete the project. That said, I’m not surprised that it will not be a huge success on PC compared to other Sony’s masterpieces.

So is implicitly telling us that it is ok to release a poorly optimized PS5 game because the Pro will fix everything by AI?

GoW 2018 is classic and a masterpiece. Ragnarok failed to reproduce the experience, mostly because of the bad pacing and lack of consistent scenario. The epic moments that defined GoW 2018 were absent, or just falling flat because poorly prepared.

I have spotted some graphics glitches, like if you move the camera, the reflection of light from a small part of an object can take 1 second to appear. But this is very minor and I spotted that while taking my time to enjoy the vistas!

@GigaGaia most people confuse ray tracing and physics based rendering. I agree that ray tracing is not always looking good. It’s a technique, it will not replace the talent of an artist….

@KundaliniRising333 I think you are mentioning their video about Wukong, where the upscaling and frame generation is poorly implemented, generating visual artifacts and a sluggish feeling. I’m afraid most of games will be like that on PS5 Pro. If you cannot optimize your game for PS5, it will not run perfectly on the Pro by magic…

@GymratAmarillo My point is that right now families are more busy with buying school supplies, scheduling all the sport and arts activities for the year, and getting used to the new routine, rather than rushing buying a video game. Spring or Fall break would be a moment where people cool down and are more inclined to enjoy this kind of game.

Assuming kids are the main audience target, releasing the game almost at the same time it’s back to school day, not sure it was the best strategy to maximize the sales.

@Frmknst you are exaggerating. There were FF16 and FF7 Rebirth, so poorly optimized for the next-gen console that you need to pay $700 to get the next-gen experience that Sony promised. Sarcasm appart, yeah Sony should think about building a quality catalog (like Nintendo) rather than chasing high performance.

It’s amazing that Sony is focusing on hardware while Nintendo is focusing on games that will squeeze their outdated machine. The PS5 had some success because there was the PS4 catalogue to discover for the people who missed that generation. But for the PS6, I don’t really see Sony building a game catalog to support that console. Not even mentioning the PS5 Pro that is really questionable.

@NEStalgia IRQ 5, DMA 1. It’s still vivid in my memory. Could be a good nickname.

Building a PC and configuring it for gaming is complex today? It has never been so easy! Damn, my first PC was in the mid-90ies and I can tell you that it was WAY more difficult to setup at that time. Remember creating a boot floppy disk for each game and spending hours in the IRQ management to get the sound card popping a noise without a crash? MS-DOS gaming was an hardcore thing!!!

I should have voted 0 just to be the only one troll on this poll

So it implicitly telling us that either the PS5 was useless and should not have been released, or FF7 was poorly optimized and should not have been released. All this “next gen” stuff has really a bitter taste. Cost a lot of money for false promises. Will wait for PS6 to play the PS5 catalog, or maybe build a PC, it’s going to be more sustainable at some point.

Let’s see if games will run at 60fps. Down the line if developers don’t make an effort, this Pro will be useless.

I bought Astro physical so that I can wrap it in a gift paper and give it to my son for his birthday. Call me old school. Oh and I got Ratchet and Clank physical for $20…

@BeerMonster Because PS5 is 4 years old and obsolete, should be sold at $300, and the PS5 Pro that brings fresher technology should be at $500 max. This is just pure greed from Sony. And a good example of why the customer needs competition in the market.

What pissing me off is that Sony implicitly acknowledges that they lied about the performance of the PS5, and if you want to get what they promised 4 years ago, you have to rack $800 today in a new system.

Personally I am now very excited to see the Switch 2.

@SleeplessKnight That said, Neo Geo had some success because it was an arcade console originally. But the 3DO was indeed a total commercial flop. But damn, a Panasonic/ARM console, I feel old now

Imagine Nintendo announcing the Switch 2 with Breath of the Wild: now you can play our 8 years old game again and see more mountains in the background !!!!

@SleeplessKnight Same for the Neo Geo. It was so ahead of its time in terms of technology, but the price was so high that people were told to go play this console in arcade places…

@Maubari Well, like the PSVR, the early adopters will early adopt, and then it will die.

Personally money is not a problem, but my interest for PlayStation is the first-party exclusive games collection. GoW, GT, R&C, Final Fantasy, etc… Same for Nintendo with Metroid, Zelda, xenoblade, etc… If Sony is only trying to sell me a facsimile of a PC, with all the exclusivity being also released on PC, then I’m going to buy a PC and I don’t see the point of PlayStation anymore. I hate to be taken for someone stupid.

I said it a thousand times, but let’s go one more time: if Sony doesn’t announce the addition of a chip dedicated to AI like the new iPhone 16, this so-called PRO is useless.

Sony chasing the technical power of a PC will probably end up like chasing GaaS with Concord… Customers are asking for innovative and fun single player games, is that so hard to hear?

Days Gone gets old pretty fast, especially after you start to get decent weapons that transform the game from a stealth and scary experience where you must be careful to a boring FPS where you can shoot everything to move forward. Same for the story and characters, at some point it feels uninspired and you just want to go straight to the end of the game and move to another one. So yeah, AstroBot a small game? I would say that he should learn a thing or two from this masterpiece.

Sometimes I feel dumb to not recognize the references. I get it for Bloodborne or Ratchet&Clank, but most of the time the game is reminding me that I grew up with Nintendo instead of PS.

The solo campaign is only taking 10 hours? It sounds like CoD, a game targeted for multiplayer but with a solo campaign to get warmed up.

If I’m trying to find Concord on Best Buy, it’s giving me Astro Bot ! Is this just a random glitch or a strategy from Sony? 😊

At least Sony is fair and is refunding people. Not like the Kotor2 scam for example. I’m pretty sure it’s not a 100% loss for Sony. At least they have an engine, some knowledge how to put a server for multiplayer, etc.., tech people will probably be reused elsewhere. On the artistic side, however, yeah it was not a good job.

@Bez87 Cloud save + multiplayer access cost $20/year for Nintendo. Assuming you don’t care about the free games, it’s 4 times more expensive on PS. Not even mentioning the lack of family account. So yeah, PS+ is not a great deal for most people.

If 20k concurrent players is considered a fail to the point of shutting down the game, what about Concord and its barely 60 players.

I wonder if the PS5 Pro will appear in the playroom. Could be a cool way to announce it.

@QiaraIris this is interesting. Push Square is getting fundings from Sony through advertising so they need to promote Concord the best they can while staying honest about the flop status. But the more you talk about it the less it incites people to play it. Something like an inverse Barbara Streisand phenomena.

@Blackmagehobbit you are right in principle, but certainly wrong in practice. The loss of 100M will be matched by gains elsewhere, and at the end of the fiscal year Sony will still generate profits and Concord flop will not even appear in the numbers. It’s like venture capitalist investing in tons of startups. Most will fail but the good one will bring billions. So I’m pretty sure we will see more Concord stuff in the future.

25k seems high compared to the number of people actually playing the game. Less than 10k is probably more realistic.

Publishers will learn that releasing a game at $40 will bring them more money than releasing at $80. This is equivalent to the Laffer curve for taxes.

Looks more AAAA than a Ubisoft game. Day one purchase.

I’ve attended to a baseball game in the US, it looked like more a community event than a real sport competition, with local school kids singing, the local animal rescue foundation letting the dogs running on the field, people grilling bbq on the parking lot, etc… it was fun, but just one time in the life. Will definitely not play that on PS5 😊

On another article, it is said that Foamstar is going f2p because it’s failing to keep pace. So it’s possible to change the business model and Concord should go that way.

I remember that for SNES, the quality of games significantly improved between launch and the end of the era with the N64, as the developers were mastering the technology. For PS5, the best technical games I’ve seen are from the previous generation. We are at a saddle point where we get a diminishing return. I still don’t believe that a PS5 Pro is going to be released, that just doesn’t make sense.

The geometrical details of the level are fairly low. Look at these buildings made of cubical primitives, it looks like a 20 years old FPS.

@Tecinthebrain I know, I was just sarcastic. I cannot believe this game took 8 years to develop. It looks so generic that it seems to be a low effort mobile game. As always, the management chain is clearly questionable.

Right now roughly 250 players on Concord. That’s still twice than Suicide Squad, so it’s not yet an epic fail.

@LifeGirl Fate of Atlantis was an amazing game, it should have been the scenario for an Indy 4 movie.

Wow, 204 comments so far. It’s more than the maximum number of players in Suicide Squad!

My wife is Asian and explained to me the story. First it’s not really a mythology but a novel, and second, Wukong story is only two chapters and is mostly a succession of fights with monsters without much story and characters development. So it fits pretty well to a boss rush soul-like style. The interesting thing is that the whole story is closely related to Buddhism, so I am curious if such religious aspect is still present in a Chinese game, because the Chinese government is now censoring everything related to religion.

@BoldSolz The "franchise" has already provided two masterpiece in the 90ies: Dune, an innovative RPG/strategy game, and Dune 2, which invented the RTS genre, 2 years before Warcraft.

Looks boring, generic and outdated. Another shooter looter/MMO GaaS? According to steam.db, Suicide Squad has right now 67 players. Yes, 67. It's giving an idea how far such games are irrelevant, whatever the IP is used to decorate the void. Not to mention that the Dune universe will be stripped from its essence in this game, making it more empty than empty.