BacklogBrad

There is a rumor going around that Sony is developing their own store front for PC and at least 1st party games will have cross entitlements (ps5 purchases are playable on pc and vise versa).

I assume this would mean day 1 pc releases. Also the games probably wouldn't be sold on Steam, Epic, GOG, etc. I also wonder if they would try to force a subscription on pc players for online play.

The rumor could be false or they could scrap whatever they are working on but still interesting to consider.

There is a rumor going around that Sony is developing their own store front for PC and at least 1st party games will have cross entitlements (ps5 purchases are playable on pc and vise versa).

I assume this would mean day 1 pc releases. Also the games probably wouldn't be sold on Steam, Epic, GOG, etc. I also wonder if they would try to force a subscription on pc players for online play.

Sony should be concerned about statistics suggesting that younger generations are not interested in the home console market as much as previous generations were at that age.

The sad part is we haven't really seen a game actually push the current gen to its limits. Doing so would cost a fortune, take a decade, and not return much for the publisher. We are already looking at "pro" models and what next gen is going to offer but I have to ask why?

The bottleneck right now is the games. Newer/better hardware is not going to help. The insane cost of cutting edge games and lack of youth interest will probably push companies further into the mobile space or games that lend themselves to portable gaming.

I was pretty lukewarm on the first one (and just finished it a couple months ago). I'm going to wait for a sale before committing to this one. Hopefully it hits $20 sometime next year.

@DennisReynolds saving 700 employees would be a massive pay cut, especially if they are US based employees with health care. I'm guessing a good chunk of them are in their company's home state of California so even more expensive for the rent, wages, electricity and other utilities/equipment needed to employ 700 people.

Since the job market fluidity in America works both ways, that CEO or other executive would quickly jump to another high level position with another company/industry before giving up that much money.

It's pretty messed up that Jim Ryan paraded around London Studio last week knowing full well that the team and their current project(s) were being scrapped. I cant imagine sitting there and letting these developers congratulate me on retirement while knowing I would be there longer than they will.

@Darylb88 I also want this but if anything they probably lean heavier into the known franchises and licensed IP. New IP is risk and everyone is avoiding risk right now.

Sequels, remasters, reboots, and licensed IP is probably everyone's plan for the next few years.

90 out of 300ish is quite a bit more than the 8-12% trend of other recent layoffs. This is a pretty substantial restructure compared to other companies.

I like their games. They capture the campy horror vibe that I love.

@Paramahansa so far I really like it. Asgards wrath 2 is great.

I went with the quest 3 after feeling burned by psvr1.

"This documentary is not like anything you have ever seen before."

-Hideo Kojima (probably)

Grounded is my favorite of the 4. That game rocks.

I enjoyed the demo. I don't want to pay $70 for it but I do want to eventually get back into it.

Not really shocking that they would follow the industry wide trend. I will wait them out for a steep sale or an inclusion in a subscription service. I don't have the FOMO for DD2 or Capcom in general.

Enough people will probably jump on this $8 dip to even it out somewhat tomorrow. I doubt there is any longterm stock effects of news from either platform this week.

There is almost certainly an official announcement at the nintendo partner direct whenever that finally lands.

@lacerz i have no idea where you were going with metacritic or how that ties into exclusivity on xbox. But your homework assignment is to buy all 4 of these xbox games and get your friends to buy them too. Then you have to spread the word on how much you love those xbox games. Otherwise, they will be the only 4 xbox games to come to playstation.

If the plans didn't leak early (with false details). This announcement would not have garnered much attention. It's hilarious that it got to a point to where people live reacted to this podcast.

We wouldn't even be having the starfield/Indy discussion without the false rumors.

@lacerz if you want to keep the "full multiplatform" candle burning, more power to you. It sounds like you will be in for a long wait on anything other than these 4 games and probably nothing outside the live service, small project, remaster titles.

Host - "What was the criteria for selecting those 4 games?"

Phil - "We looked at games that are over a year old. A couple of the games are community driven games [live service]. Two of the other games are smaller games that were never really meant to be built as platform exclusives but games that our teams really wanted to build and we want to support those creative endeavors."

This should tell us all we need to know about future titles. Live service and small passion projects after 1 year as xbox exclusive.

This would have been a nothingburger if not for the gross overreaction to false rumors last week.

My guess is Hi Fi Rush, Pentiment, Sea of Thieves, and Grounded. Games that can live comfortably on other platforms and not harm the brand in the slightest.

This is not even new behavior from xbox. They have ported games like Ori and cuphead to other consoles. They have released minecraft legends, minecraft dungeons, quake 1 and 2 reremaster

The industry is better this way. I'm glad sony is opening up to the idea of multiplatform.

Fluctuating frame rates is often worse than a stable 30. It will be interesting to see how this one runs.

"1st party can be grown with multiplatform" - Hiroki Totoki

The industry is changing fast. Is this another case of Sony letting Xbox take the heat for future plans (like supporting previous gen for years)? Are they considering day 1 PC? Putting select games on rival platforms? Time will tell.

The interesting part of his message was the quote "1st party can be grown with multiplatform."

He only referenced "computers" but either way it is enlightening to know that they also don't see exclusives as sustainable. The industry is changing.

@Flaming_Kaiser ABK at the time was rocked by the allegations and lawsuits. Their stock was in the toilet. Their future was pretty bleak enough where they were actively trying to sell themselves. I would categorize that as struggling.

The pattern so far leans heavily towards small, well-received titles having 1+ year exclusivity window. Even more so when Ori and cuphead switch ports are included. We will see if there is a threshold for a size of game that is untouchable for PS. Hellblade 2 will be interesting to watch for over the next year or two. It's bigger than Hi Fi but still firmly in the smaller title category

@lacerz apparently this business update was a planned event but for next month. It's possible they just moved the whole thing up to address the discourse. I agree it's probably a non committal take on future projects.

If it is just the planned event intended for next month instead of solely a response to the out of control rumors then exclusivity tactics could be just a small part of whatever they have.

@NinjaNicky do you have a part list for that pc? By "outperform" do you mean something like Celeste ran at higher fps because the pc version has no fps cap?

I doubt they announce what the future hardware devices are but it would be great if they at least allude to the handheld rumor being true.

There probably won't be the laundry list of multiplat games that people are expecting. It will most likely be the Hi Fi Rush confirmation and an idea of what kind of game qualifies as multiplat. Since they are adding Hi Fi Rush to a lengthy list of already multiplat titles (Ori, cuphead, minecraft legends/dungeons, quake 1&2 remaster) it will probably continue that pattern of the smaller titles.

He is the worst at marketing his games. He uses the same "closest thing to a movie" line for every one. There is almost no way it can be more of a movie than metal gear solid 4 with its 8 hours of cutscenes including a 71 minute uninterrupted cutscene.

Does he think his target audience is children or that they are adults that live with their mother?

@jedinite certainly some exclusives will go to playstation. They wouldn't schedule a business update otherwise. The question is which games and how long of an exclusive window will they have on xbox.

Just a guess on my part but I'm thinking it's mostly going to be smaller games and at least a year delay.

The key thing is its not every game and there is still incentive to buy xbox hardware. The industry isn't going go be changing drastically like many assumed. Not sure why everyone went immediately to the assumption of full 3rd party, no more hardware, etc.

@twitchtvpat it remains to be seen which games or how many. If I had to guess I would say more than half will remain exclusive to xbox/pc. If it's not going to be starfield, it puts the other "AAA" size titles in doubt. Guess we will find out next week but if the starfield rumor was false then they obviously won't be fully 3rd party.

My big takeaway from the recent rumor is if not starfield, why not? It puts the all Bethesda titles theory to bed and casts doubt on other big titles. Makes me wonder if it's only going to be AA, live service, remasters, etc.

The rumor is 2026 with a higher power box in the vain of the Series X or PS5 and a lower powered handheld that can dock to a tv/monitor similar to the Switch. Basically, the same as now but the Series S will be switch-like device.

The Starfield rumor sounds pretty dead right now too. XboxEra walked it back to "it was being discussed" and Nate the Hate full on says it is not being ported.

With the new rumor that Starfield info was false it is looking like it is back to AA level games like Hi Fi Rush, pentiment and live service like Sea of Thieves. Nate the Hate is saying that he can confirm the starfield information was wrong but the January report(hi fi rush/sea of thieves) is still correct.

Basically undoes all the wild speculation of the last week.

@Slayer25c I'm criticizing the government that cares even less about us.

At least microsoft, sony, nintendo, etc. work for my money. This money the govt wastes on crap like this I worked for.

@Weebleman best of luck to them in another unwinnable case. It won't be the public spectacle that their last lost was but it would be fun to watch them argue that Microsoft and ABK are not allowed to adapt to the industry constraints every company is facing.

Meanwhile they don't bat an eye at deals with national security concerns like US Steel being sold to foreign companies. But God forbid a videogame company bought a struggling videogame company in a deal that was already ruled to not disrupt the industry.

The FTC seem to be ignoring the thousands of other layoffs from nearly all publishers in the gaming industry. Every single one of those layoff cases falls right in line with the 8% of the workforce that microsoft laid off. The FTC continues to show they don't know anything about the industries they are trying to regulate.

What is the end goal here for the FTC? Unravel the deal and leave ABK in shambles as their leadership is gone and are in the midst of a major restructure? I'm sure that would be a positive in their eyes as they only care about hurting big companies. It would be horrible for the Industry and consumers but the FTC hasn't shown any concern for them yet.

Minecraft dungeons, Minecraft legends, quake 1&2 remaster. This doesn't necessarily mean anything. Xbox has been on PS and switch for awhile now.

I really doubt it is going to be all xbox games. It's very likely just a select few games.

As weird as it would be, I think the free to play halo infinite multiplayer would make the most sense. The game is driven by micro transactions and the Xbox community has largely moved on from it due to the slow content release at launch. I actually think it is the best FPS on the market right now. Getting a new audience checking it out and talking about it might give it the rejuvenation it needs.

"Very positive (85%)" rating on Steam. Maybe it will survive the all out blitz the gaming media put on it pre release. That's a pretty good place to be at this point of a live service. Hopefully the content is there to keep it going.

IGN was pretty disgusting over their behavior. The article/social media posting saying the game was already discounted was a horrible display. They casually bury the fact that they referenced a single ebay listing as the "sale." They framed it, especially on social media, as a sign the game was dead on arrival but it was just one ebay code seller that probably got them by shady means.

If it's not green lit for production yet it's kind of a non story. Their r&d department is always experimenting with stuff, most of which never makes it to market.

I'm curious of what the price point would be. It takes a hefty $600+ to get a capable handheld with decent storage and screen and those still have pretty poor battery life. Would this handheld have a dock like every other handheld or would we be expected to shell out for the home console too?

Why not even mention their upcoming 1st party game, mlb the show 24? It's a month and a half away and one of the only 1st party games coming this year. They seem to have disowned that title since it went multi platform.

Xbox and gamepass do more to market it than Sony does. If they don't attempt to market it more, it will be more associated with xbox than their own platform.

They tweeted the cover athlete and game announcement 1 day ago. I feel like they could have found 2-3 minutes to squeeze in the announcement of their own game.

Probably working on Crackdown 4 or reboot for xbox.

Edit: it is clockwork revolution they are working with xbox on. Working as a support studio for inxile.

I tried one of the closed betas from a few months ago. It was better than I expected but not great. There was some fun to be had so i am interested a little bit. Releasing it full price is a mistake, it should be budget priced if not free to play.

@naruball nothing says progress like shouting they took our jobs at every new innovation. The same thing was said about computers and automated factories but do we really want to live in a world without those? Maybe AI makes a meaningful contribution to our lives, maybe it doesn't but we shouldn't be staunchly opposed to it simply because the current long, expensive dev cycle means a few extra jobs (despite recent layoffs). The market will adjust if needed, there will be opportunity for everyone in some capacity. If it is anything like the computing innovation more jobs will be created in its wake but in a different form than the manual jobs they replaced.

I really doubt that AI will ever get to a point where there is no room for artists, actors or other job title to find work. Did the milk delivery workers live on the street when that model collapsed or did they find another way to contribute? There were plenty of other delivery opportunities or the chance to go into a new skill.

Not sure if taking to Twitter and making the desperate plea is the right choice here. Would you feel confident backing a game when they admit they have been showing their project to everyone willing to listen and gotten no interest? Not a good sign for the quality of the project.

Maybe gamepass will bail them out for the day 1 content.

Saints Row reboot (not great but decent fun).
Civ 6 (can't help it, still addicted)
Paper Mario (n64)

This is how little take two/rockstar think of us, the consumers. They are trying to argue that we will be incapable of distinguishing between these two completely different logos and we may end up buying a Remedy game instead of one of the 2 original games Rockstar have published since 2013.

Didn't they confirm that they used AI in some capacity in the development? For some of the art according to VGC.