Comments 945

Re: A Massive 75% of UK Game Sales Were Digital Last Month

ChrisDeku

I saw that Astro Bots week one sales in the UK were 55% digital. That seems like a pretty big step forward for digital takeover as first party week one sales are normally lower, especially in the uk which has a lower digital ratio than the US.

We might be looking at a first party game like Astro Bot having a lifetime 70%+ digital ratio lifetime worldwide

Re: PS5's Building Insurmountable Lead Over Rival, Outselling Xbox Almost 3:1

ChrisDeku

@MasterChiefWiggum

Embracer doesn’t have anything close to a reputation equal to their portfolio though. Let’s see if MS is able to do better. Their last 2 major games, Forza Motorsport and Hellblade 2 both had peak concurrent user counts on Steam lower than Redfall and both have sold under 100k copies on steam. That’s not really the results of a publishing powerhouse. Let’s see if they can find a way to sell serious amounts of software while pushing their Gamepass model.

Re: PS5's Building Insurmountable Lead Over Rival, Outselling Xbox Almost 3:1

ChrisDeku

@__jamiie

And when you talk about gaming revenue rather than systems sold, Xbox wins by a huge margin.

No, it’s still not even close to overtaking PlayStation. Yearly revenue for Xbox division(with 3 quarters now accounting for the ABK revenue) was $21.5b, with full ABK revenue absorbed into accounts it will be something like $23b. Thats with all the CoD revenue, mobile revenue from King, and big third party games like Minecraft, Gamepass across Xbox, PC, cloud etc.

PlayStation’s last full yearly revenue was $29.64b. For the last 12 months up to June 30th it’s around $30b.

The PS2 sold an absolute truckload because it was one of the least reliable consoles ever to exist and plenty of people bought more than one

The PS2 sold more software than any other console in history until the PS4 overtook it, so that doesn’t track. The least reliable console in history was the Xbox 360 and that’s an established accepted fact. I’ve never even heard of the PS2 being particularly unreliable.

Re: PS5's Commanding Console Position Is Seemingly Insurmountable

ChrisDeku

The 3:1ratio or better started the first month of 2023 when the PS5 was no longer supply constrained. The lifetime ratio at that point was 1.5:1. Now it's 2.18:1 and still growing. The peak ratio last gen was 2.02:1.

So the situation this gen is much much worse for Xbox. Their internal projections for gamepass were also leaked and they predicted 60m around now. They stalled at 30m and added gold subs into gamepass to pad the number.

Re: PS Plus Members Get Hundreds of PS5, PS4 Discounts in New PS Store Sale

ChrisDeku

@Max_the_German You only require PS plus when you buy them, you will own the game forever and be able to play forever, regardless of having PS Plus anymore. Therefore it’s not really important to know which ones involve the PS Plus discount and which don’t, if you are viewing them in the store it will show the cheapest price available to you.

Re: Dragon Age: Inquisition Massively Oversold Projections, Remains BioWare's Biggest Game

ChrisDeku

making it BioWare's best-selling game to date; for perspective, the entire Mass Effect trilogy, Legendary Edition, and Andromeda combined totalled nearly 14 million, so Commander Shepard, eat your heart out

This is almost certainly not even remotely true. No official sales data exists because EA doesn’t really do that but Andromeda and ME3 were both very likely close to 10m over their lifetime.

Re: Horizon Zero Dawn's PS5, PC Remaster Is Very Much the Real Deal

ChrisDeku

They really should just have called this the PS5 port so that people on the internet won’t lose their mind and be unable to use simple logical thinking and consider the possibility that this game probably took less than 1% of the total resources that would be needed to make a new game. It’s not an either/or situation, it’s purely additive. Just ignore it if it’s not for you(it’s primarily for new players who want to buy “Ps5 games” not old PS4 games, need that white box)

Re: PS6 Is Already Deep in Development, Backwards Compatibility of High Importance

ChrisDeku

@themightyant The existence of physical games has no effect on the price of a first party game, a digital copy and a physical version of the same product are not competing products. The prices are set by the same company, they can just raise both of them simultaneously. The price is determined by competitive market factors, ie the existence of competing products(other games made by other companies)

Re: PS6 Is Already Deep in Development, Backwards Compatibility of High Importance

ChrisDeku

@themightyant Sony don't set the prices of third party software and have almost no ability to influence without getting hammered by anti-trust investigations.

The price of software(and how quickly and deeply it is discounted) is determined by how competitive the market is. The market here is a single specific ecosystem, the main competitors for your software is the competing software products on the same system. Thats why software by Sony and MS is discounted quite often and deeply, because they have very competitive software markets on their systems. Nintendo on the other hand face almost no competition from third party games on the Switch, that’s why their prices stay high. The main competing products for Nintendo first party games are other Nintendo first party games(sony games compete with GTA, Red Dead Redemption, FIFA, CoD etc. etc.)

Re: PS6 Is Already Deep in Development, Backwards Compatibility of High Importance

ChrisDeku

@GamingFan4Lyf

With Microsoft spending to become the biggest publisher in the world and making significant bank on that investment by having a multi-platform approach, Microsoft can afford to subsidize consoles.
With Sony spending its way to being the only console on the market and having to turn to PC to help with getting an ROI, Sony will be putting the price on the backs of consumers instead because it can't afford to subsidize

What a load of absolute bunk. We know from financial releases that Gamepass total revenue is still at “almost $1b per quarter”(which is less than PS Plus makes, last quarter was $1.07b). Their first party software sales are awful due to gamepass. Starfield was the 37th best selling game in Europe last year and Forza Motorsport was somewhere around 300th. On Steam Forza motorsport Is estimated to have sold 94k and Hellblade 2 is at 79.9k (Ghost of Tsushima is at 686.7k having released a few months ago, not to mention Helldivers 7M+ on steam).

Sonys first party games make much more money, Ragnarok at 15m in a year, helldivers 12m in 3 months, Spider-Man 2 at 11m in 6 months etc.

Third party software sales on the platforms(which generate 30% royalties to the platform holder) are even more in Sony’s favour than last gen as the gap between the PS5 and series consoles(as a ratio) is bigger than any ever seen in the previous gen.

The only games that MS has that makes serious money are the ones they paid billions upfront to capture.

If Sony are struggling to make money this generation then you can bet everything you own that Xbox as a sector has never made a single profit all generation, and must be losing billions per year. They can’t subsidise anything, that’s why they’re releasing a $600 console variant, putting hardware prices up, putting gamepass prices up, scaling back gamepass tiers etc etc.

Maybe people will start to wake up to the current reality when Nintendo releases their $500 Switch 2 that’s barely able to play PS4 levels of fidelity

Re: Blizzard Reportedly Made $150 Million in Diablo 4 Microtransactions

ChrisDeku

@LifeGirl

It corroborates everything that we've been saying against live service games, yes.
Why ever invest in a quality experience when whale farming is so cheap, quick and easy? Just shovel out that slop and make millions

Does it actually though? It seems to me like the premium game sales accounted for $850m sales and the microtransactions accounted for $150m. That $150m encompasses an entire years worth of premium season pass sales too. That seems fairly unspectacular to me.

The next premium expansion is coming out and it will make more than $150m in day one.

This information seems to me me to be saying that the premium game model with premium expansions will make a lot more money than the season pass/mtx model for certain kinds of games.

Re: Inhale Dangerous Fumes in Helldivers 2's Chemical Agents Warbond on PS5, PC

ChrisDeku

@KundaliniRising333 Peak player counts is a nonsense metric for judging how many people are still actively playing. The game is still in the top 10 on Steam in NA for monthly active users and weekly active users every single month.

That means millions of people still play the game every month, they’re just not playing 10 hours a day constantly and not all overlapping.

Re: Poll: Would You Buy PS5 Pro If It Was Cheaper?

ChrisDeku

@__jamiie

And the storage isn't slow at all. I don't know if you've actually used both systems but installing, transferring, loading are all faster on Xbox for multiplatform games.

This isn’t true at all, only backward compatible games will load faster because backcompat games on PS5 don’t take full advantage of the custom tech. For example a current gen game like RE:Village will load into a save file in 6-7 seconds with a loading screen and the PS5 will have no loading screen, just turns black and then immediately loads the room in. There’s potentially a few outliers that don’t leverage the custome i/o tech properly.

Hence why Xbox have been doing this for years. You can play Gears of War at 120fps on Series S.

This is not even remotely the same thing. The PlayStation upscaling solution is a full custom upscaling technology that works like FSR or DLSS, it uses machine based learning to leverage AI based upscaling. It can output the games at lower resolution, and upscale it to achieve higher frame rates than would be possible at those framerates while getting close to native looking visuals.

Xbox has no such custom technology and must only leverage third party solutions(that were created primarily for PC) at the full effort of the developer.

You can play older games at higher Framerates because Xbox simply forces them to run at a higher resolution. It is not upscaling, there’s no efficiency gains, it would have no benefits on current gen games. It doesn’t allow you to run games at higher upscaled res while maintaining higher FPS. It simply allows games to run at a resolution they were already capable of doing if they’d been patched to do so. It only affects games that already have the overhead necessary to run at a higher resolution.

PSSR likely means that UE5 games on PS5 PRO can probably hit a stable 60 FPS with a reasonably upscaled res. Hellblade 2 would almost certainly be able to hit 60 FPS on the PS5 Pro specs.

Re: Astro Bot PS5 Sales 'Aren't Huge' in UK, But There's Still Hope

ChrisDeku

Looking at large player samples available from various tracking websites it looks like the game sold around 2m in launch week. I’d imagine that’s a super strong number. Seems to be about 3x as many people playing it on PS5 compared to the launch week for Star Wars: Outlaws.

Also, the comparison with R&C is an extremely poor one, no idea what he’s thinking. Rift Apart was a pack-in title and practically the only Hardware available the launch week(when the PS5 still 100% sold out every day) and this data tracks pack-ins as physical sales.

Re: Surging Space Marine 2 Early Access Numbers Portend a Golden Future

ChrisDeku

@riceNpea I have no recollection of MGSV being widely available for early access, and when I google it I can’t find any. Are you sure this was full access to the whole game?

From what I remember of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided it was a very different scheme where access was based on overall pre-order numbers and the whole scheme was very complicated with lots of editions. That also got scrapped after a fan backlash and they never went through with it.

Even if there are some examples thats clearly not the same as what’s happening now where it is now a fully embraced and accepted part of the system. There will probably be something like 20+ examples of this early access this year. That never happened regularly before the last couple of years.

Re: Surging Space Marine 2 Early Access Numbers Portend a Golden Future

ChrisDeku

@riceNpea There was some early access before for games that were online games, but nothing like we have now. It’s now common for games that are primarily single player games(or with a significant single player portion) to have 3-5 day early access when the game is basically ready to be played for everybody and people are forced to wait a few days longer if they dont pay extra. The first examples of this modern style is probably the Microsoft games starting with Forza Horizon 5.

Edit: Also of note is that Steam Early Access has been around for a long time but that is real Early Access where the game isn’t actually finished

Re: Surging Space Marine 2 Early Access Numbers Portend a Golden Future

ChrisDeku

@Stickleman You haven’t actually played it have you? I’ve literally never had to create an account to play any game that uses EOS for crossplay(Returnal has it too for example).

You can also delete EOS if you want but you won’t have full cross-play enabled.

How's it misinformation when they don't say anything about epic

Do games that use Unreal Engine warn you that you are installing something made and owned by Epic? Do you just not buy any games made on UE or what? Is it only bad if it has Epic in the title? What’s the deal exactly?

Re: Black Myth: Wukong Is Blowing Up Big Time on PS5, PC

ChrisDeku

@DennisReynolds OK, there there's been 82 'great games' already this year but only one of them is the most successful single player game of all time on steam. The one by a new studio with no history and it achieved it's peak on launch day, not over time though positive word of mouth. 3-4m+ people just showd up on day one to buy a game with no history based solely on what videos and reviews were available before launch. Seems pretty normal I guess, happens every week.

Re: Black Myth: Wukong Is Blowing Up Big Time on PS5, PC

ChrisDeku

@DennisReynolds that's not how aggregate scores work, especially in video games where journalists use inflated scores and the average Is like 72. 50% of all games very made are 72 or higher.

Black myth is currently the 77th highest rated game of the year

Re: Alan Wake 2 Still Hasn't Made Remedy Any Royalties, But Work Is Underway on Max Payne's PS5 Remakes

ChrisDeku

@LowDefAl

The 20-25% figure is taking all physical sales on a platform versus all digital sales on a platform (which includes digital only titles, dlc and longer exposure time due to sales and never ending "stock")

The actual break down between physical copies and digital copies of the same game is much more competitive (it's closer to half on many games) , some games even sell more physically than digitally at launch.

Only a small number of games on PS5 will be close to 50%, mostly first party games or big casual games.

You're also overlooking the fact that AWII has 3 platforms, PC is 100% Digital and Xbox is like 90% digital. PC is Remedys core format and Alan Wake was originally an xbox exusive that didn't release on PS for like a decade.

Remedy have even clarified in the past that Control was over 90% digital after it's first year(didn't release on steam for one year)

Re: Dragon Age: The Veilguard Won't Let You Control Companion Characters

ChrisDeku

@NEStalgia

Party driven CRPGs are dead and never coming back. It's smart to streamline for modern audiences who will never, ever bother with a proper CRPG in this day and age. I, for one, believe Baldur's Gate III is doomed, it'll never hit 1 million copies

It should be noted that BG3 has a party size limit of 4, compared to all previous BG games, infinity engine games, and infinity inspired games that were all full parties of 6.

So even BG3 was making compromises that people were angry about at the time, obviously no one remembers all the complaints now or the fact that the initial early access release was received a lot more lukewarmly than the final release.

Re: Monster Hunter Wilds Marketing Suggests Early 2025 Release Window as Fans Speculate

ChrisDeku

Street Fighter 5 - February
Street Fighter 6 - June
Dragon’s Dogma 2 - March
Deil May Cry V - March

Monster Hunter World - January
Monster Hunter Rise - March

Resident Evil 7 - January
RE2 Remake - January
RE3 Remake - April
RE Village - May
RE4 Remake - March

It looks like Capcom exclusively target the first half of the year for their big games, and the majority in Q1. I think RE6 was the last big game to get a H2 release.

Re: Two Star Wars Outlaws DLC Packs Set for Fall and Spring 2025

ChrisDeku

@dskatter You can preorder tons of things that don’t exist yet, that’s not really an issue. Is the $120 the only version of the game? No. You can buy the standard edition. You can buy it all when the DLC is released. You can wait for it to be on PS Plus/Gampas or is available for $20? It’s completely up to you. If you feel you’re getting ripped off then you probably chose the wrong option.