Cikajovazmaj

@Rich33 I'd say there is a huge overlap between companies that don't care, and ones that are having issues in current environment.
I might be wrong here, but it has been my theory for some time. There is an "overoptimization" going on in software development industry, and there is a reason why any systems optimal state is not at it's lowest cost. Through aggressive lowering of costs by pushing quantity over quality of talent, and ignoring "real life" factors like employee satisfaction, working conditions, education, personal development and health, etc. quality of output has decreased over the point of diminishing returns. With all the improved mechanisms in software development protecting code quality, there still was never more bugs reported per line of code. Similarly in other roles like design, never have there ever been a bigger stagnation in overall game creativity. It seems like only Nintendo stops to design a refreshed mechanic or visual style these days.
My guess is this is what is going to bring the next downfall of gaming industry. Nintendo is an evidence that production budgets don't need to be as large for the cost of stunning visuals. Customers voting with their wallet are obviously choosing quality gaming over "easier to staff" graphic fidelity. It's just that with current "overoptimized" process in the West, it's hard to promote creativity when all your employees are overworked and unmotivated.
Might just be an old man yelling at clouds, but it's been a long time since I've met somebody motivated to make a change in SD vs. rig the metrics to survive another quarter mentality.

@RBMango theory is people play COD whole year round, so they would be sticking around.
I'm not sure there are many who play COD for campaign (BO6 seems to be better in that regard, but recent titles had like 3 hour campaigns).

Damn, to be a fly on the wall in an internal meeting when they finally reveal if putting BO6 resulted in GP numbers boost..
We'll most likely never know how much it helped (or not).

Not a good month for me. Ghostwire is not that good, and it's also free on Epic Store starting tomorrow. Hot wheels 1 didn't feel satisfying to me, so that's probably a no from me too.. oh well

Honestly expected it to get 9/10, but I also didn't expect a scored review in the first place (as it's a modernized game from few years ago). I'll play it either way.

@RBMango only 2 games by Ubi I own..

Nothing in my village yet...

Goty for me. Hopefully it continues to do welland prove there is place for more than Mario in platformer genre.

This might be the most obvious thing in the world. I'm guessing these conversations with devs look like "yes, we understand your concerns, and you probably won't make any sales, but we can eventually put your game on GP. Isn't that great?"

Tried the demo, seems decent. Little bit on the low budget side, but passable. It's biggest issue is that Astro bot did everything it does better days ago. Hopefully this get's added to PS Plus in not to distant future.

Technically, it should be at the top, where triangle button is, as Nintendo kind of did it first
But he did make me laugh!

@nessisonett I won't be buying a PS5 Pro, but PC is the least future proof gaming platform out there.
I used to play on PC too, but decided to fully transition to just consoles maybe 6-7 years back. Reason why, I've bought a new, shiny rig that allowed me to play on high or medium settings for all of two years. Year three I had to make considerable compromises and test settings until I get the game to look decent and play smooth. Year 4 and later there were games I couldn't even run at all.
So yeah, PC ain't future proof

Ended up being a good move by Sony, instead of releasing a full price remake making it a $10 upgrade.. Everybody went from pure hate mode to "I'll buy that, at least to see how it looks for myself".

Patch notes: we fixed stuff we inadvertently broke in last big release

Awesome game, bit disappointing it's not huge success, but hopefully it's good enough to warrant sequels/DLC.

I guess everybody's different. For me, this is the first Diablo game I haven't bought at all. As long as there still are games for my taste, I don't mind..

@ShogunRok I don't understand how these poor sales numbers are possible. In my country Astro bot has been continuously sold out at retail, and some people who pre-ordered are still waiting for their copy to be delivered.
I believe it was sold out on EU variants of Amazon too.
Did they just not distribute enough physical copies?

Nothing for me.. and during a month my Extra is running out. Ok then..

Videogame graphics have reached a point where I'm satisfied and am not bothered paying extra to make it slightly better.
That said, if Sony removes performance mode completely, and locks me into playing at 30 FPS on PS5 Amateur... I still won't go Professional, but will get very mad at them

For 799€ it should be literally creating free sequels on it's own 😃
I love how everybody is laser focused on 699$, when there is a small European market of 450 million getting scalped..

Completely agree with you, and I felt the same way when I read TheGamer article. Absolutely misses the point.
Just having the pool of over 150 characters to use is amazing. But you don't get that pool unless you are willing to constantly reinvent yourself. And that is hard, that is risky. And I hope Sony goes back to being that company that is willing to take the "innovation" risk (as lately they have been playing it safe) imagining new IPs and ideas.

This review (let's be honest, metacritic too) has made me happy. Very happy. Tomorrow can't come soon enough. GOTY!!

@Ilyn I completely agree with your theory. I would only add this is what MS has been doing for a while. Behind the scenes, MS has been lending resources through ATG among others, to release games on Xbox without delays. All that is to "hide" the fact platform is not No. 1. priority to smaller teams, and it is harder to develop for 2 SKUs (all of which are logic 101 conclusions being thrown money at to obscure).

Honestly, expected it to last for 6 months before being taken offline and adapted to F2P, as that was a semi-established model for live service game failures.. but this is something completely new. I hope they bury returned copies into desert and make a documentary out of it.

I really hope this game does well. I'll love it either way, as it's one of my favorite genres, but I so want it to sell well and warrant a sequel/continuation of this path for Sony.

@get2sammyb I feel it's mostly because this whole game looks like it was AI generated. Completely by the numbers, no creativity or originality at all.
Whatever happens with Concord, I don't care. I'm waiting on Astro to release

The price of the renegotiation was most likely in the range of what would have saved Tango studio...

Phil is like a nothing-burger restaurant. Everything this guy says is vague and undetermined. And even with that, he still sounds like defending a sinking ship here.

Hopefully not Starfield. IMHO that game has been a failure and people are just hanging onto the dream of "big Bethesda RPGs" still being alive. However, reality is the game is outdated, clunky, and boring.
I'm genuinely worried releasing on PS5 this late after public opinion settled might result in a sales debacle (which is not what I want for MS multiplat releases, ideally they release all games to PS5).

Sea of Stars was awesome, just wanted to give it a shout (maybe somebody plays it )

In all honesty, Sony is handling this situation the way it should. Take control, clean up management, reassess, recover in time. It s*cks for employees let go, but at least there is a chance studio survives.

Well, Ender lilies for me. Which is actually fine, whenever Plus gives me at least one game of my list I'm happy

For those interested, demo is actually almost 100 GB. Quite a chunk.
But I really want to try this, and assuming performance issues are not too great I'll be dumping the cash..

Version of this question has been asked multiple times since PS Plus re-imagining, and every time I have voted against adding first party games day one.
Decent permanent discounts however, would be a great addition.

Finally Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion, I've been toying with buying it for a while between PS5 and Switch, but always aborting last minute expecting it to join a service.. and here we are

Nothing for me... That's a shame.

I can already see myself crying once I'm done with this game. That is what getting old feels like, you already mourn the good times before they even happen.

@get2sammyb bit of a late reply on my end, I'm Croatian. I'm sure they will update local shops soon, I just don't want to preorder before it's "clear".
Unfortunately, had previous experience where "fine print" was read and side-by-side offer listing was examined for some extra content, so I'm just going "better safe then sorry" route these days.
Edit: One of the popular shops actually updated their page to include preorder bonus today, so that settles that

@get2sammyb absolutely, can't wait for these to release. I'll be getting both day 1. Unfortunately, it seems like in my country they have not yet listed pre-order bonuses for Astro, so I'll be waiting on some transparency on that.
Lego Horizon looks stunning, I knew it was gonna be a good fit, but not this much.

I have the upmost respect for this man, and can only hope he will one day make a channel to share his views/knowledge. I'm not sure it has been confirmed, but I believe his are the best hands PS6 can be in.

I might have slept through this, but when exactly was this moved from rumors to news (and something like Project Latitude confirmed)?
Don't get me wrong, lovely to hear, just legitimizing it is sort of a big deal..

I don't believe this gets saved by a $40 price.. It really depends on what gets released, but trailer/presentation looked subpar and in comparison to Helldivers 2 of all things it looks significantly less fun. Admittedly, Helldivers also looked "meh" in trailers, however delivered big time on release.

It's really simple Sony, nobody needs Yet Another 5vs5 Shooter. Why can't they just drop this nonsense and go back to making games I genuinely enjoyed and paid for?

@PuppetMaster might be selfish, but I don't want Team Asobi to touch anything else except Astro. They need to ride this success and make Astro Sony's Mario, instantly recognizable.

However, Sony should look at this and give other first party studios "a licence to kill by fun".

As an occasional PC player, all I can say is this is just a bunch of bo**ocks by frustrated people needing excuse to rage and youtubers making up a story to spike their channel viewership. There is no problem!

You missed Ballad of Antara and Where winds meet, which both happen to look decent to me..

Astro was by far the best part of the show. It's not even a competition. This is Sony's Mario Odyssey (in the world of platformers, there is not much higher praise I can give it).

Yeah, seems like I'll have to let my sub expire in September to resub during Black Friday.. because Sony is a bunch of loonies?
I have enough owned backlog games to be able to hold for couple of months but making users lapse and wait for next sale oppo is lunacy, not to mention losing money.

If this gets to be similar to Astro's Playroom, buying it day one. That game was very underappreciated.

Honestly, not sure why they bothered.. most of the people who wanted GTA5 already owned it. Seems like a last ditch effort on Rockstar end to try to upsell Online to few other folks before GTA6.
Out of the list, The Talos Principle is the only one I would care to finish before removal, if you have not done so yet.