@Paramahansa please can you describe the glaringly obvious (should be easy for you) difference between the diversity in Game of Thrones, and that within Rings of Power?
Not asking for a value judgment. Just describe how they differ.
If you are incapable of doing so, then any sensible discussion will be impossible.
I’m not interested in arguing with political extremists who are motivated by ideology for example.
If you can at least demonstrate a basic understanding of how there are different implementations of diversity and what they look like, then we can at least start a discussion as to the merits or drawbacks of each.
If you only want to fling mud at people based on your ideology and baked in narrative/prejudices against anyone disagreeing with you, then you can do that on your own.
@Paramahansa because forced diversity isn’t constantly occurring in the opposite direction.
99% of forced diversity is only in one direction, hence 99% of complaints are in one direction.
The rest of your post is a strawman.
The complaint is about obvious artificial forced diversity. Not a complaint about diversity per se. Do you understand the difference?
Google “nuance”.
Game of Thrones has a diverse cast and it’s presented inaccurately a way that is believable, logical and makes sense.
The Witcher and Rings of Power have artificial forced diversity, that makes no sense, looks bizarre and fake.
Study the differences between those shows and how they portray diversity, then it will make sense and you can drop your conspiracy theory about racists, and hold these firms to account instead for their insulting and patronising tokenism.
Sony are 100% to blame. Not even for the artificial scarcity, as whilst it is deliberate, all goods have some level of scarcity.
Rather they sold the item below the equilibrium market price that many consumers were prepared to pay for it. Scalping is just “the market” correcting that error, as it always will.
Note that the market isn’t sentient, and doesn’t care what any individual thinks of it, care whether any individual can afford or it, or care about anyone’s feelings.
Either sell it for the correct price, or find some way of locking it to the purchasers psn account for 6 months (likely illegal under UK consumer law).
I’ve got an Outlaws key that came with my GPU. I haven’t even bothered installing it even though it won’t cost me anything. I won’t even play it for free.
So I’ve no difficulty boycotting this travesty instead of spending £70.
Hope for their sake the target audience turn up. As Disney can testify, those who are vocal on social media and forums, aren’t so loud when it comes to slamming 70 no-nonsense notes down hard on the counter top.
When demand exceeds supply at your price point, it means you sold below the market equilibrium price. That’s dumb. Smart businesses don’t do it.
It typically leads to scalping, where someone else sells it at the correct market price for you, and takes the profit that would have been yours.
At the equilibrium price, you will see what is happening here. Hovering in and out of stock, where demand and supply are in balance.
Sony will have new stock constantly coming off the production lines and are taking orders on additional units that will be produced and shipped to the destination market in time for launch.
They will be sailing close to the wind in terms of what can ship on launch day, and likely robbing from stock that would have been allocated to other retailers. Some production may be reallocated to markets where it sold well, from markets that didn’t.
Eventually those tricks would all have been done, and then we will see if the factories can keep up.
But TLDR: if your product goes out of stock for a long time, you are incompetent and sold it too cheaply.
@Weez concur, I’m in the UK and my observation of UK and US censorship is that it is Left Wing ID politics based, and not religious Right, and that the religious side of the Right isn’t really a prominent part of that side of the political spectrum now.
Mary Whitehouse is long gone.
@Ainu20 interesting point that they may be engaging in unnecessary self censorship.
Out of interest, what new games use Male/Female instead of A/B or non descriptive options? I’m struggling to think of any that outright state male and female.
@Jrs1 the "no way I'm paying that" brigade are in for a shock when they see the PS6 launch price and that won't be coming with a disk drive as standard either!
As someone else said, Switch is the only issue for me where forward and back are reversed in menus etc!
If I've been on holiday and using my Switch for a week, then try to use my PS5, it's extremely irritating!
Otherwise I don't really care much for what is written on the buttons, as I think of them more by their location in the diamond.
Anyway Phil should have had a dig and asked if the battery would go flat before he'd had time to read all the symbols, as PS5 (and PS4) pad batteries are an utter joke.
They have about a tenth of the power of an Apple watch.
As my post history will reveal, I said many times from the day it was announced, that it would sell out.
It’s like everything else, either people give it the big man talk on forums and do the opposite when no one is looking, or there is a loud vocal minority who aren’t representative.
Oh and no, it’s not scalpers. Also for every scalper there is a real consumer buying it off them. Nurses, builders, plumbers, bus drivers and everyone else couldn’t sit in an online queue for an hour at 10am.
Agree with what Medic-alert is saying. This applies to discs in the days of incomplete, unplayable and broken code on the disc, which in effect is just a physical license key for a digital game, and not a physical game of itself.
This regulation is worthless in that it’s a “no S Sherlock” type deal. Just tells us what we already know. Completely ineffective, when what we needed were guarantees as to how long the license would have to be honoured in terms of the product being available, regardless of if the license is on a disc or a digital key.
@Pranwell Anniversary stuff has far more scalp/investment value I reckon, so a lot of people who don't necessarily want one for personal use, will be looking to buy one.
Suspect that most standard Pro buyers will be those wanting for personal use.
Edit: just saw someone say it is £959?! I don't think many profiteers will bite at that, so hopefully it will just be for enthusiasts who want it for themselves.
Let's be honest, what percentage of gamers have played and completed a DA game?
It's 2024 now remember....
A lot of gamers were little kids when Inquisition came out, and most people (me included) lost the will to live in the Hinterlands and quit.
Percentage wise, of the prospective audience, very few played any of the previous games, especially those before Inquisition.
That's why it's smart not to call it DA 3 or something.
Make something that gives new gamers the feeling of starting something fresh from the beginning. Nothing puts me off a new game more, than it being the 7th in the series or whatever as I feel I've missed so much I won't really get it.
Nothing should carry over. It should have been a fresh start.
A more accessible and casual Dragon's Dogma type game, with some Shadow of Mordor type combat. But alas it was not to be... By still trying to appeal to the die hards, I fear they have limited the appeal.
I mean...I liked Aiden Pearce, and with hindsight think he is a better character than people gave credit, even if there was that ludonarrative dissonance where you are playing a hypocritical vigilante whilst also being a thieving scumbag!
So I'm not the best judge of character..... but I found Jin to be "ok". I'd put him a shade behind Deacon St. John.
Neither are Joels or Drakes.
But I'd definitely put Jin ahead of the most recent Lara Croft or Aloy in terms of likeability.
I quite liked the English language voice actor too, made Jin sympathetic to me. But not especially memorable.
@jrt87 well people can join the scramble for a brief chance at one on Amazon, but as I've said before, you will be lucky to get one before the Switch 2 is released.
My WoW, Division, Destiny, Guild Wars 2, TESO, Skyrim, Cyberpunk, Starfield, Valhalla, Odyssey etc etc etc characters are all female. I even play as Rosalina in Mario Kart.
I will probably buy this game and look forward to playing the character.
But please. Cmon. Even I can see what’s going on in the industry from a mile off. Don’t pee down my neck and tell me it’s raining, else I will withdraw my support and good will.
This likely did not start with someone saying “I’ve got a great idea for a character “. Just like the new AC game, it started with politics.
The concern is that experience tells me that projects with such origins are often mediocre. It makes me nervous and inclined to wait for more reviews when the day comes.
Also if representation is important, seems odd then to not represent 90% of those whose cash you need to stop this being the next Concord. Might not want to tell people not to buy it.
Dumb and lazy.
Should have done what Ubisoft did with Odyssey. If they can do it, don’t tell me you can’t.
@Matroska what evidence do you have that the two groups are the same?
I haven’t even played Nioh for a start, let alone given it my seal of approval. Curious why you felt you had the right to come here and make inferences about my feelings towards a game that I and others hadn’t even played.
The fact I haven’t played it, and won’t buy or play Shadows either, could tell you something that contradicts your assumptions.
@naruball a 1/10 for a game that critics have awarded 8 to 10's is perfectly legitimate.
E.g. I felt a certain PS3 exclusive was a merely average third person shooter, but with a great story and characters.
I smacked some hard cash down on the counter for the sequel on PS4, expecting more of the same.
Instead I got another merely average shooter, but with those good bits stripped out.
So for me that is a 1/10, because at that point it becomes an absolutely no-buy, and had it been on Steam, I'd have refunded it at a key point in the game when it's true nature was revealed.
That's not "bombing", that's my personal assessment of what that game is valued in my eyes. That's how reviews work, it's all subjective judgement.
Back on topic:
I have no issue signing into PSN on my PC. Or linking my PSN/XO accounts to my Ubisoft account etc. They are just gaming accounts I set up for that purpose, and not even using my main email address. What possible harm is there?!?!?
I bet if it were an adult website with spicy pics of a popular celeb, my PC gaming peers wouldn't be able to sign up fast enough. They seem a bit selective with their complaints at times.
@Starkei there is nothing wrong with a “modern audience” type approach in this style of game. It’s clearly a caricature type, fun game, and not serious.
It’s only in serious material like Rings of Power, where appealing to the “modern audience” creates bizarre, illogical, lore, immersion, and suspension of disbelief-breaking inconsistencies that would bother me.
Loved Days Gone. For me, it was the game TLoU 2 should have been, and took away the bitter disappointment of how that awful dross title turned out to be.
A sequel would have made a profit, yet it doesn’t exist in a world of 100m money burners like Suicide Squad and Concord. We truly live in a clown world.
Have been considering playing it again on PC in ultra wide etc.
If a PS5 remaster had a new set of trophies, I’d pay a tenner or fifteen for it and do that instead.
Casual mode appears to be great. More like “quality of life” mode.
I think as ever, the very loud vocal minority who aren’t happy about it, don’t realise that they aren’t representative of the wider player base.
If anything it doesn’t go far enough and a lot of people will still bounce off or not even buy it due to “no lifer” design choices.
E.g. I actually think carry and fast travel limits in any game should be in an optional hardcore more.
I bounced off the trash that was Starfield, primarily because I have better things to do with my precious time than to spend 90% of a rare gaming evening when my GF grants me a pass, faffing around playing an inventory management sim.
I remember playing the older Train Sim on PC back in 2012.
It should have come with a health warning as I ended up spending scary amounts on tracks and loco's.
Personally though I think PS5 is desperately missing American Truck Sim. Another title that will set you back megabucks with all the additional States DLC, but a better "game" in my personal opinion.
@MrMagic as a PC gamer I do find it rather bizarre how things have gone.
1, GPU's have doubled in price.
2, the performance has increased by a decent amount, but bang for buck has not increased as much as it used to.
3, resolutions have plummeted!
I remember when I got my 1080ti. Cost about £600 as I recall. It was considered "a solid 4k GPU".
I actually had a 4k monitor at the time but since had to DOWNGRADE to a 1440p monitor, as successive generations of GPU's regressed from the 1080ti in terms of resolutions, and took steps back.
Until we reach today, where it's common on a £1100 RTX4080 Super, to be playing at 1440p with DLSS quality mode, which as you say is around 960p.
So GPU costs have pretty much doubled, but resolutions have dropped from 4K to 960p over the same period!
Obviously the bit I'm missing is that we've seen a big visual leap, as resolution isn't everything. I don't even bother with RTX as it's not worth the hit to frame rate, heat, fan noise and electricity, but still games look a lot better now than they did when the 1080ti launched.
@tameshiyaku PS5 base model owners gave Sony the Ok.
The prices people were prepared to pay for scalped versions at launch, showed Sony exactly how much a large percentage of buyers really think a console is worth to them.
Sony learned a lesson. Why sell for £450 and allow a scalper to make £550 profit off your back, when Sony can just sell it directly for £1000.
Then lower the price over time once all the fans have bought one, and you want to sell to the more casual audience.
That was how it worked 25 years ago. Launched at a high price and gradually dropped.
@cardcrusher29 Arkham Knight was notorious for stutter in the day. I got a free key with my brand new top of the range graphics card, and it was so unplayable that I remember running to Asda in my lunch break and buying the PS4 version.
Despite having literally the most powerful GPU on the market.
Same issue with Watchdogs. Countless other titles too back then.
Nowadays there is a lot of shader compilation stutter. Many games resolve this by running the process before playing the first time, or annoyingly every time you update your drivers.
E.g. last night I went to play Dragons Dogma 2 but had to sit there waiting and watching a bar slowly go along the screen, because I’d just recently updated my NVIDIA driver.
Total non issue on console. Don’t get me wrong, DD2 runs GALAXIES better on my PC than PS5, but the money and knowledge required creates a big barrier to entry.
I've been PC gaming since 1994. Those were the golden days when games ran entirely on the CPU with software 3D. Sure, you had your config sys and autoexec bat to edit, so that your mouse and sound driver would load, and to ensure you had enough base memory, but generally once that was sorted the games ran great.
Since the 3D accelerators came in, and we started gaming within Windows and using things like Direct X, they've been a royal pain in the backside in many ways.
Just at the PC level, I find after six months of constant Windows, driver and Software updates, they start developing odd bugs and quirks that necessitates a full clean install.
Then on a game level, don't even get me started. Forget playing games on launch day.
You will spend the entire day downloading third party home brew drivers, and Googling forums for ini file edits to fix the various problems.
When it stutters all over the place, the same web forum mouthpieces who will tell you that PC is cheap and simple, will call you a peasant for "only" having a £1050 card like the RTX4080, when of course "you should have spent £1800 on a 4090, so shut your mouth and stop complaining about game performance when it's your own fault scrub".
The idea that a PC of the same price as a console can match it, is also one of the worst pieces of gaming misinformation in history. You can typically multiply the cost of a console by 4, before I'd even get out of bed for a PC.
That's just the tower..... not including the monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers etc. You guys moan about having to pay £30 for a vertical stand?!
Furthermore, if you imagine a typical console generation on the day the consoles are first released to the public, and imagine a PC that is four times the cost on that day........come back in 6 years when that console is still going strong, and see how well that PC plays the latest games.
You can get 7 years from a console, where as I'd potentially go through 2 complete PC's in that period (new MOBO, RAM and CPU), and possibly multiple GPU upgrades in between. Christ, the top of the range PC with 2 x top of the range GPU's in SLI that I had when the PS4 launched, had been in landfill for years at the point you were all playing RDR2.
Over the same period you can easily spend 8x what you paid for the console.
Even if you e.g. buy a PS5, then sell it and fund the cost of the Pro, you are still spending less in total than any PC I'd consider gaming on. Then you just turn it on and it works.
@JP80 agree. Sony and MS need to stay out of the headset hardware game.
Simple agree a standard like Steam VR etc, where you can use any headset. Game Developers could throw in pre-optimised graphics settings for the common models, with manual options for those with rarer units.
A wireless version would no doubt help and appeal to some people.
Producing a wireless version would be great news for existing PSVR2 owners, as it would demonstrate that Sony isn't abandoning the headset. So as the owner of a launch PSVR2, I'd welcome it.
It's the least of the headset's problems though.
The lenses are the real issue for me, and the reason I only use the Quest 3 days. Where a game exists on Quest 3 and PSVR2, I prefer to play it on Quest.
The graphics settings are lower, but the lack of fresnel blur-o-vision actually results in a far superior image overall.
My PS1 was £299 at launch in 1995. Didn't come with a game or a memory card, so you had to pay extra for that. The console alone cost £595 in today's money, so not far short of the PS5 Pro once you include the memory card.
With the Pro being a premium version of the console, that £700 is right on the money. So please stop crying about it - it's a numerical fact that the price is fair.
That's also why as a student in 1995, I was not out drinking and living the party lifestyle, rather I was working every hour under the sun at Asda, including Fri and Sat nights when all the action was happening in town. If you want a Pro, you know what to do...
If you want a reason to cry, think of this:
When the Amiga was released, it was £1400 in today's money. Remember actual consoles weren't really a thing back then, so "that's more like buying a PC today" is not an argument.
In the late 80's, all the kids in my school had Speccy's, C64's and then upgraded to Amiga's as the 8bit's were replaced with 16bit's. So that was the cost of a games machine in my era.
Oh and the £1400 wasn't the end. You had to buy a Joystick and pay more to upgrade the RAM from 512 to 1 MB.
@NEStalgia same here. I sold my XSX but have just recently upgraded my PC.
Don't like the idea of paying stupid money to play games like Wukong at 27fps.
I've got a lot of games tied up in that PSN library, and whilst I'm still likely to get a Pro for the exclusives, I'm not risking getting more third party titles locked into that ecosystem. I'm feeling exposed now.
PC is the safe bet when buying most games with an eye to the future.
Exactly what I said yesterday but was faced with snarky remarks. Yes, I will have my cookie now thanks boys.
As I said, those cheering at PS5 dominating the console market thought they had one won, when really they hadn't.
Sony won. You all lost. You are not Sony and Sony doesn't care about you. They have proven in the past they will take you for every penny you have, and ironically it was the presence of your "enemy" Microsoft who were tempering Sony's worst instincts.
They are going to pulverise you when PS6 is released. Better get saving up boys because that price tag is going to hurt.
Proves what I said yesterday to the "omg £700, no one will buy it" brigade.
These things are going to sell out big time, and thirsty gamers will be queuing up on ebay to pay £1000+ for one for months whilst awaiting more stock.
A lot of people have a lot of money to spend. Sony will sell every pre-manufactured console and then some. They will be going out of stock as soon as new shipments come in, and you won't see one on the shelf of a store until way into next spring.
@ButterySmooth30FPS don't need a cookie, I'm getting enough pleasure from the Schadenfreude.
@LogicStrikesAgain yes because Microsoft aren't competing anymore either.
Price competition between Sony and Microsoft is now over.
Those new Xbox consoles are just for the die hard Xbox enthusiasts. No one will forgo a PS5 purchase to buy one of those.
No one is sat there umming and aahhing over whether to buy an Xbox or PS5 anymore.
No one is saying "hmmm should I get a PS5/PS5 Pro or one of those new Xbox's, let's look at the pricing".
The choice of console is no longer price dependent. Granted price was only ever a small factor, with exclusive games and the ecosystem one's friends were on being bigger factors.
But still they had to maintain rough parity on pricing - if the PS5 had been £700, a lot more of you would have got a Series X in 2020.
Now all bets are off. PS6 - £800. What are you going to do about it?
Spend £2500 on a PC? Bad news, that's your choice and boy oh boy do Sony know it.
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Re: Hans Zimmer, Lorne Balfe Behind Dragon Age: The Veilguard's Rousing Soundtrack
@Maubari wouldn’t you at least keep an open mind and wait for reviews before getting so invested in it???
I mean it’s your 140 bucks I guess…
Some of it looks good, but my concern is the writing and story.
How can you possibly know what that will be like?
Yet you’ve already decided to buy two copies….
Re: Sony Fights Scalpers in Japan By Demanding PS5, PS4 Playtime
Or just sell the things for the true price that people are prepared to pay for them?
Then there won’t be any profit to be had from reselling.
I don’t see people scalping LG OLED TV’s as just one of a million examples where firms sell at the true market price.
If LG were as thick as Sony, and sold the 55” LG C4 for £500, it would be out of stock and getting scalped and resold for £1299.
As they have brains, they sell it for £1299 themselves.
Rocket science /facepalm.
Re: Assassin's Creed Shadows Hasn't Removed Yasuke, But Dev Focused on Historical Accuracy
@Paramahansa please can you describe the glaringly obvious (should be easy for you) difference between the diversity in Game of Thrones, and that within Rings of Power?
Not asking for a value judgment. Just describe how they differ.
If you are incapable of doing so, then any sensible discussion will be impossible.
I’m not interested in arguing with political extremists who are motivated by ideology for example.
If you can at least demonstrate a basic understanding of how there are different implementations of diversity and what they look like, then we can at least start a discussion as to the merits or drawbacks of each.
If you only want to fling mud at people based on your ideology and baked in narrative/prejudices against anyone disagreeing with you, then you can do that on your own.
Re: Assassin's Creed Shadows Hasn't Removed Yasuke, But Dev Focused on Historical Accuracy
@Paramahansa because forced diversity isn’t constantly occurring in the opposite direction.
99% of forced diversity is only in one direction, hence 99% of complaints are in one direction.
The rest of your post is a strawman.
The complaint is about obvious artificial forced diversity. Not a complaint about diversity per se. Do you understand the difference?
Google “nuance”.
Game of Thrones has a diverse cast and it’s presented inaccurately a way that is believable, logical and makes sense.
The Witcher and Rings of Power have artificial forced diversity, that makes no sense, looks bizarre and fake.
Study the differences between those shows and how they portray diversity, then it will make sense and you can drop your conspiracy theory about racists, and hold these firms to account instead for their insulting and patronising tokenism.
Re: PlayStation Fans Gleefully Snitch on 30th Anniversary PS5 Pro Scalpers
Sony are 100% to blame. Not even for the artificial scarcity, as whilst it is deliberate, all goods have some level of scarcity.
Rather they sold the item below the equilibrium market price that many consumers were prepared to pay for it. Scalping is just “the market” correcting that error, as it always will.
Note that the market isn’t sentient, and doesn’t care what any individual thinks of it, care whether any individual can afford or it, or care about anyone’s feelings.
Either sell it for the correct price, or find some way of locking it to the purchasers psn account for 6 months (likely illegal under UK consumer law).
Re: Assassin's Creed Shadows Hasn't Removed Yasuke, But Dev Focused on Historical Accuracy
I’ve got an Outlaws key that came with my GPU. I haven’t even bothered installing it even though it won’t cost me anything. I won’t even play it for free.
So I’ve no difficulty boycotting this travesty instead of spending £70.
Hope for their sake the target audience turn up. As Disney can testify, those who are vocal on social media and forums, aren’t so loud when it comes to slamming 70 no-nonsense notes down hard on the counter top.
Re: Bickering Begins Over PS5 Pro's Inability to Sell Out
When demand exceeds supply at your price point, it means you sold below the market equilibrium price. That’s dumb. Smart businesses don’t do it.
It typically leads to scalping, where someone else sells it at the correct market price for you, and takes the profit that would have been yours.
At the equilibrium price, you will see what is happening here. Hovering in and out of stock, where demand and supply are in balance.
Sony will have new stock constantly coming off the production lines and are taking orders on additional units that will be produced and shipped to the destination market in time for launch.
They will be sailing close to the wind in terms of what can ship on launch day, and likely robbing from stock that would have been allocated to other retailers. Some production may be reallocated to markets where it sold well, from markets that didn’t.
Eventually those tricks would all have been done, and then we will see if the factories can keep up.
But TLDR: if your product goes out of stock for a long time, you are incompetent and sold it too cheaply.
Re: Dragon Quest Veterans on Dealing with 'Ridiculous Country' USA Amid Censorship Row
@Weez concur, I’m in the UK and my observation of UK and US censorship is that it is Left Wing ID politics based, and not religious Right, and that the religious side of the Right isn’t really a prominent part of that side of the political spectrum now.
Mary Whitehouse is long gone.
@Ainu20 interesting point that they may be engaging in unnecessary self censorship.
Out of interest, what new games use Male/Female instead of A/B or non descriptive options? I’m struggling to think of any that outright state male and female.
Re: Fans Appear to Be Coming Around to PS5 Pro
Data speaks.
The numbers using performance modes suggests console gamers are more performance oriented than people made out.
Same with the numbers buying LG OLED’s for HDR, VRR, 120hz/40fps modes.
£1100 and £1800 PC GPU’s selling out, people paying £1200 for scalped PS5’s. Lots of people willing to pay.
The complaints about the trash tier performance in DD2 and Wukong etc.
The narrative that £700 was too much or that console gamers don’t care enough about graphics, is just vocal minority baloney.
Re: Star Wars Outlaws' Rescue Roadmap Provides a Snapshot of Modern PS5 Gaming
When you have basic issues such as lack of check points in instant fail missions, I have to ask who they’ve recruited to manage these projects.
When the problems are game design 101, stuff that was learned and we’d got past 20 years ago, something is seriously wrong at your studio.
Especially when you are supposed you be the mass market, mass appeal, big numbers outlet.
Re: Poll: Did You Pre-Order a PS5 Pro?
@Jrs1 the "no way I'm paying that" brigade are in for a shock when they see the PS6 launch price and that won't be coming with a disk drive as standard either!
Re: Random: Xbox Boss Complains About X Button After Being Handed PS5 Pad
As someone else said, Switch is the only issue for me where forward and back are reversed in menus etc!
If I've been on holiday and using my Switch for a week, then try to use my PS5, it's extremely irritating!
Otherwise I don't really care much for what is written on the buttons, as I think of them more by their location in the diamond.
Anyway Phil should have had a dig and asked if the battery would go flat before he'd had time to read all the symbols, as PS5 (and PS4) pad batteries are an utter joke.
They have about a tenth of the power of an Apple watch.
Re: In the UK, PS5 Pro Has Already Completely Sold Out
As my post history will reveal, I said many times from the day it was announced, that it would sell out.
It’s like everything else, either people give it the big man talk on forums and do the opposite when no one is looking, or there is a loud vocal minority who aren’t representative.
Oh and no, it’s not scalpers. Also for every scalper there is a real consumer buying it off them. Nurses, builders, plumbers, bus drivers and everyone else couldn’t sit in an online queue for an hour at 10am.
Re: With Timing Being Everything, French Union Calls on Ubisoft Workers to Strike
Their games don’t suck because of WFH by coal face employees.. They suck because of poor decisions by management and those directing these projects.
Re: Newly Signed Law May Restrict Sony's Use of Terms Like 'Buy' or 'Purchase' for Digital Games
Agree with what Medic-alert is saying. This applies to discs in the days of incomplete, unplayable and broken code on the disc, which in effect is just a physical license key for a digital game, and not a physical game of itself.
This regulation is worthless in that it’s a “no S Sherlock” type deal. Just tells us what we already know. Completely ineffective, when what we needed were guarantees as to how long the license would have to be honoured in terms of the product being available, regardless of if the license is on a disc or a digital key.
Re: How to Pre-Order PS5 Pro
@nicc83 I’m guilty of calling them stupid. But I guess they pay what they feel it is worth to them and so I can’t really judge.
A kid starving in Africa would think a base PS5 was a stupid purchase.
I think of those city traders who spent £60k on Diablo Immortal, and to them that was no more costly than me buying a costume in AC Odyssey.
Re: How to Pre-Order PS5's 30th Anniversary Collection
@Intr1n5ic what's an unopened 1995 launch PS1 still fresh in the box worth today?
I doubt a 30th anniversary edition Pro will ever be worth that much, so that would be my cap on what I'd ever pay for one.
Re: How to Pre-Order PS5's 30th Anniversary Collection
@Intr1n5ic how long did the email take mate?
Re: How to Pre-Order PS5's 30th Anniversary Collection
@Pranwell Anniversary stuff has far more scalp/investment value I reckon, so a lot of people who don't necessarily want one for personal use, will be looking to buy one.
Suspect that most standard Pro buyers will be those wanting for personal use.
Edit: just saw someone say it is £959?! I don't think many profiteers will bite at that, so hopefully it will just be for enthusiasts who want it for themselves.
Re: How to Pre-Order PS5's 30th Anniversary Collection
@ZeD yeah so much for "no one is going to buy one". As I predicted, a lot of people have a lot of money and £700 consoles will sell like hot cakes.
Re: How to Pre-Order PS5's 30th Anniversary Collection
Has it just changed? It's saying my estimate wait time is more than an hour? Can't remember it saying that before?
Re: Just Three Decisions from Dragon Age: Inquisition Will Carry Over to The Veilguard
Let's be honest, what percentage of gamers have played and completed a DA game?
It's 2024 now remember....
A lot of gamers were little kids when Inquisition came out, and most people (me included) lost the will to live in the Hinterlands and quit.
Percentage wise, of the prospective audience, very few played any of the previous games, especially those before Inquisition.
That's why it's smart not to call it DA 3 or something.
Make something that gives new gamers the feeling of starting something fresh from the beginning. Nothing puts me off a new game more, than it being the 7th in the series or whatever as I feel I've missed so much I won't really get it.
Nothing should carry over. It should have been a fresh start.
A more accessible and casual Dragon's Dogma type game, with some Shadow of Mordor type combat. But alas it was not to be... By still trying to appeal to the die hards, I fear they have limited the appeal.
Re: Don't Give Up on Jin Just Yet, More Ghost of Tsushima Spin-Offs Planned
I mean...I liked Aiden Pearce, and with hindsight think he is a better character than people gave credit, even if there was that ludonarrative dissonance where you are playing a hypocritical vigilante whilst also being a thieving scumbag!
So I'm not the best judge of character..... but I found Jin to be "ok". I'd put him a shade behind Deacon St. John.
Neither are Joels or Drakes.
But I'd definitely put Jin ahead of the most recent Lara Croft or Aloy in terms of likeability.
I quite liked the English language voice actor too, made Jin sympathetic to me. But not especially memorable.
Re: How to Pre-Order PS5's 30th Anniversary Collection
@jrt87 well people can join the scramble for a brief chance at one on Amazon, but as I've said before, you will be lucky to get one before the Switch 2 is released.
Re: PS5's Ghost of Yotei Triggers Social Media, Ex-Sony Exec Says 'If You Don't Like It, Don't Buy It'
My WoW, Division, Destiny, Guild Wars 2, TESO, Skyrim, Cyberpunk, Starfield, Valhalla, Odyssey etc etc etc characters are all female. I even play as Rosalina in Mario Kart.
I will probably buy this game and look forward to playing the character.
But please. Cmon. Even I can see what’s going on in the industry from a mile off. Don’t pee down my neck and tell me it’s raining, else I will withdraw my support and good will.
This likely did not start with someone saying “I’ve got a great idea for a character “. Just like the new AC game, it started with politics.
The concern is that experience tells me that projects with such origins are often mediocre. It makes me nervous and inclined to wait for more reviews when the day comes.
Also if representation is important, seems odd then to not represent 90% of those whose cash you need to stop this being the next Concord. Might not want to tell people not to buy it.
Dumb and lazy.
Should have done what Ubisoft did with Odyssey. If they can do it, don’t tell me you can’t.
Re: Ubisoft Backs Out of Tokyo Game Show at Eleventh Hour, Cancels Livestream
@Matroska what evidence do you have that the two groups are the same?
I haven’t even played Nioh for a start, let alone given it my seal of approval. Curious why you felt you had the right to come here and make inferences about my feelings towards a game that I and others hadn’t even played.
The fact I haven’t played it, and won’t buy or play Shadows either, could tell you something that contradicts your assumptions.
Re: God of War Ragnarok PC Mod Removes PSN Login Requirement
Signing in is great if that enables features like cross save and even trophies.
Cross save should be a bare minimum expectation if there is a sign in requirement.
Assuming one has the basic PSN sub for cloud saves obvs.
If Sony don’t want grief, they need to shape up and ensure all games with sign in offer cross save and trophy support.
Re: God of War Ragnarok PC Review Bombed Over PSN Requirement
@naruball a 1/10 for a game that critics have awarded 8 to 10's is perfectly legitimate.
E.g. I felt a certain PS3 exclusive was a merely average third person shooter, but with a great story and characters.
I smacked some hard cash down on the counter for the sequel on PS4, expecting more of the same.
Instead I got another merely average shooter, but with those good bits stripped out.
So for me that is a 1/10, because at that point it becomes an absolutely no-buy, and had it been on Steam, I'd have refunded it at a key point in the game when it's true nature was revealed.
That's not "bombing", that's my personal assessment of what that game is valued in my eyes. That's how reviews work, it's all subjective judgement.
Back on topic:
I have no issue signing into PSN on my PC. Or linking my PSN/XO accounts to my Ubisoft account etc. They are just gaming accounts I set up for that purpose, and not even using my main email address. What possible harm is there?!?!?
I bet if it were an adult website with spicy pics of a popular celeb, my PC gaming peers wouldn't be able to sign up fast enough. They seem a bit selective with their complaints at times.
Re: Lord of the Rings Life Sim Tales of the Shire Out for PS5 in March 2025
@Starkei there is nothing wrong with a “modern audience” type approach in this style of game. It’s clearly a caricature type, fun game, and not serious.
It’s only in serious material like Rings of Power, where appealing to the “modern audience” creates bizarre, illogical, lore, immersion, and suspension of disbelief-breaking inconsistencies that would bother me.
Re: Rumour: Concord Cost $400 Million, Sony Believed It Was the 'Future of PlayStation'
It was staggering mismanagement by highly paid individuals who clearly shouldn’t be in their jobs.
A hero shooter lives and dies on players wanting to invest hundreds of hours into playing their favourite heroes. They have to be inspiring.
Within ten seconds of seeing it I immediately knew it would fail.
I bet a large number of people in the company knew it too, so questions have to be asked of the management and culture.
Serious questions and consequences given the loss. I mean blimey, retail workers get fired over their till being a few quid short.
But 400m lost and execs get parachuted into other high paying management positions.
Re: Rumour: Concord Cost $400 Million, Sony Believed It Was the 'Future of PlayStation'
Removed
Re: New PS5 Firmware Update Aims to Fix Final Fantasy 16 Issues, Available to Download Now
Do Sony have a firmware preview programme, where people can opt-in to advanced access to firmwares?
If not, why not?
If so, how did this get past testing/analysis of crash reports? Not like it was some obscure Indie game that had the issue.
Re: Days Gone PS5 Remaster Rumours Start to Snowball
Loved Days Gone. For me, it was the game TLoU 2 should have been, and took away the bitter disappointment of how that awful dross title turned out to be.
A sequel would have made a profit, yet it doesn’t exist in a world of 100m money burners like Suicide Squad and Concord. We truly live in a clown world.
Have been considering playing it again on PC in ultra wide etc.
If a PS5 remaster had a new set of trophies, I’d pay a tenner or fifteen for it and do that instead.
Re: Big Dragon's Dogma 2 Patch 2.01 Out Now on PS5, Boosts Performance, Balances Vocations
@Yagami yeah and I’d happily support achievements for those who do turn on a hardcore mode.
That would incentivise you to not switch it back and use the convenience.
On another note I just tested the patch. I’m playing on low quality on an LG CX with VRR.
Doesn’t get any better than that, but it still feels terrible, both in variable and capped frame rate modes.
Re: Big Dragon's Dogma 2 Patch 2.01 Out Now on PS5, Boosts Performance, Balances Vocations
Casual mode appears to be great. More like “quality of life” mode.
I think as ever, the very loud vocal minority who aren’t happy about it, don’t realise that they aren’t representative of the wider player base.
If anything it doesn’t go far enough and a lot of people will still bounce off or not even buy it due to “no lifer” design choices.
E.g. I actually think carry and fast travel limits in any game should be in an optional hardcore more.
I bounced off the trash that was Starfield, primarily because I have better things to do with my precious time than to spend 90% of a rare gaming evening when my GF grants me a pass, faffing around playing an inventory management sim.
Re: Train Sim World 5 (PS5) - A Solid Update Stuck on Familiar Tracks
I remember playing the older Train Sim on PC back in 2012.
It should have come with a health warning as I ended up spending scary amounts on tracks and loco's.
Personally though I think PS5 is desperately missing American Truck Sim. Another title that will set you back megabucks with all the additional States DLC, but a better "game" in my personal opinion.
Re: PS5 Pro's Alan Wake 2 Upgrades Will Be a 'Pleasant Surprise'
@MrMagic as a PC gamer I do find it rather bizarre how things have gone.
1, GPU's have doubled in price.
2, the performance has increased by a decent amount, but bang for buck has not increased as much as it used to.
3, resolutions have plummeted!
I remember when I got my 1080ti. Cost about £600 as I recall. It was considered "a solid 4k GPU".
I actually had a 4k monitor at the time but since had to DOWNGRADE to a 1440p monitor, as successive generations of GPU's regressed from the 1080ti in terms of resolutions, and took steps back.
Until we reach today, where it's common on a £1100 RTX4080 Super, to be playing at 1440p with DLSS quality mode, which as you say is around 960p.
So GPU costs have pretty much doubled, but resolutions have dropped from 4K to 960p over the same period!
Obviously the bit I'm missing is that we've seen a big visual leap, as resolution isn't everything. I don't even bother with RTX as it's not worth the hit to frame rate, heat, fan noise and electricity, but still games look a lot better now than they did when the 1080ti launched.
But that much better, hmmmm not sure....
Re: PS5 Pro's Alan Wake 2 Upgrades Will Be a 'Pleasant Surprise'
@BossBE yeah I opted for the quality mode as the performance mode was awful.
Same with FF16 where I chose to play in the fixed 30fps mode instead of the stuttering PS1 resolution mode.
Hoping Pro can make those games worth continuing.
Re: Sony Boss Says 'PCs Are Difficult to Set Up', Firm Will Focus on PS5
@tameshiyaku PS5 base model owners gave Sony the Ok.
The prices people were prepared to pay for scalped versions at launch, showed Sony exactly how much a large percentage of buyers really think a console is worth to them.
Sony learned a lesson. Why sell for £450 and allow a scalper to make £550 profit off your back, when Sony can just sell it directly for £1000.
Then lower the price over time once all the fans have bought one, and you want to sell to the more casual audience.
That was how it worked 25 years ago. Launched at a high price and gradually dropped.
Re: Sony Boss Says 'PCs Are Difficult to Set Up', Firm Will Focus on PS5
@cardcrusher29 Arkham Knight was notorious for stutter in the day. I got a free key with my brand new top of the range graphics card, and it was so unplayable that I remember running to Asda in my lunch break and buying the PS4 version.
Despite having literally the most powerful GPU on the market.
Same issue with Watchdogs. Countless other titles too back then.
Nowadays there is a lot of shader compilation stutter. Many games resolve this by running the process before playing the first time, or annoyingly every time you update your drivers.
E.g. last night I went to play Dragons Dogma 2 but had to sit there waiting and watching a bar slowly go along the screen, because I’d just recently updated my NVIDIA driver.
Total non issue on console. Don’t get me wrong, DD2 runs GALAXIES better on my PC than PS5, but the money and knowledge required creates a big barrier to entry.
Re: Sony Boss Says 'PCs Are Difficult to Set Up', Firm Will Focus on PS5
I've been PC gaming since 1994. Those were the golden days when games ran entirely on the CPU with software 3D. Sure, you had your config sys and autoexec bat to edit, so that your mouse and sound driver would load, and to ensure you had enough base memory, but generally once that was sorted the games ran great.
Since the 3D accelerators came in, and we started gaming within Windows and using things like Direct X, they've been a royal pain in the backside in many ways.
Just at the PC level, I find after six months of constant Windows, driver and Software updates, they start developing odd bugs and quirks that necessitates a full clean install.
Then on a game level, don't even get me started. Forget playing games on launch day.
You will spend the entire day downloading third party home brew drivers, and Googling forums for ini file edits to fix the various problems.
When it stutters all over the place, the same web forum mouthpieces who will tell you that PC is cheap and simple, will call you a peasant for "only" having a £1050 card like the RTX4080, when of course "you should have spent £1800 on a 4090, so shut your mouth and stop complaining about game performance when it's your own fault scrub".
The idea that a PC of the same price as a console can match it, is also one of the worst pieces of gaming misinformation in history. You can typically multiply the cost of a console by 4, before I'd even get out of bed for a PC.
That's just the tower..... not including the monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers etc. You guys moan about having to pay £30 for a vertical stand?!
Furthermore, if you imagine a typical console generation on the day the consoles are first released to the public, and imagine a PC that is four times the cost on that day........come back in 6 years when that console is still going strong, and see how well that PC plays the latest games.
You can get 7 years from a console, where as I'd potentially go through 2 complete PC's in that period (new MOBO, RAM and CPU), and possibly multiple GPU upgrades in between. Christ, the top of the range PC with 2 x top of the range GPU's in SLI that I had when the PS4 launched, had been in landfill for years at the point you were all playing RDR2.
Over the same period you can easily spend 8x what you paid for the console.
Even if you e.g. buy a PS5, then sell it and fund the cost of the Pro, you are still spending less in total than any PC I'd consider gaming on. Then you just turn it on and it works.
Re: Feature: PS5 Pro's Been Clowned on By the Entire Internet, and the Memes Will Make You Laugh
People won't be laughing and memeing when it sells out.
They won't be laughing and memeing when the next FromSoft game runs at 23fps on the base PS5, with only the Pro having a decent presentation.
Re: PS5 Fans Think Sony's Accidentally Leaked a Wireless PSVR2 Headset
@JP80 agree. Sony and MS need to stay out of the headset hardware game.
Simple agree a standard like Steam VR etc, where you can use any headset. Game Developers could throw in pre-optimised graphics settings for the common models, with manual options for those with rarer units.
Re: PS5 Fans Think Sony's Accidentally Leaked a Wireless PSVR2 Headset
A wireless version would no doubt help and appeal to some people.
Producing a wireless version would be great news for existing PSVR2 owners, as it would demonstrate that Sony isn't abandoning the headset. So as the owner of a launch PSVR2, I'd welcome it.
It's the least of the headset's problems though.
The lenses are the real issue for me, and the reason I only use the Quest 3 days. Where a game exists on Quest 3 and PSVR2, I prefer to play it on Quest.
The graphics settings are lower, but the lack of fresnel blur-o-vision actually results in a far superior image overall.
Re: Poll: Would You Buy PS5 Pro If It Was Cheaper?
Let's look at the UK Inflation Calculator.
My PS1 was £299 at launch in 1995. Didn't come with a game or a memory card, so you had to pay extra for that. The console alone cost £595 in today's money, so not far short of the PS5 Pro once you include the memory card.
With the Pro being a premium version of the console, that £700 is right on the money. So please stop crying about it - it's a numerical fact that the price is fair.
That's also why as a student in 1995, I was not out drinking and living the party lifestyle, rather I was working every hour under the sun at Asda, including Fri and Sat nights when all the action was happening in town. If you want a Pro, you know what to do...
If you want a reason to cry, think of this:
When the Amiga was released, it was £1400 in today's money. Remember actual consoles weren't really a thing back then, so "that's more like buying a PC today" is not an argument.
In the late 80's, all the kids in my school had Speccy's, C64's and then upgraded to Amiga's as the 8bit's were replaced with 16bit's. So that was the cost of a games machine in my era.
Oh and the £1400 wasn't the end. You had to buy a Joystick and pay more to upgrade the RAM from 512 to 1 MB.
Re: PS5 Pro Pre-Orders Will Be Exclusive to PS Direct for Two Weeks
Sell out highly likely within 30 minutes of going live.
Hoping we get some info as to the time of day so we can avoid missing out. I think stock will be hard to come by well into 2025.
Re: Lack of Competition from Xbox Partly Why PS5 Pro Is $700, Says Analyst
@NEStalgia same here. I sold my XSX but have just recently upgraded my PC.
Don't like the idea of paying stupid money to play games like Wukong at 27fps.
I've got a lot of games tied up in that PSN library, and whilst I'm still likely to get a Pro for the exclusives, I'm not risking getting more third party titles locked into that ecosystem. I'm feeling exposed now.
PC is the safe bet when buying most games with an eye to the future.
Re: Lack of Competition from Xbox Partly Why PS5 Pro Is $700, Says Analyst
Well well well well well well.....
Exactly what I said yesterday but was faced with snarky remarks. Yes, I will have my cookie now thanks boys.
As I said, those cheering at PS5 dominating the console market thought they had one won, when really they hadn't.
Sony won. You all lost. You are not Sony and Sony doesn't care about you. They have proven in the past they will take you for every penny you have, and ironically it was the presence of your "enemy" Microsoft who were tempering Sony's worst instincts.
They are going to pulverise you when PS6 is released. Better get saving up boys because that price tag is going to hurt.
Re: Prospective PS5 Pro Buyers Cause Disc Drives to Sell Out
Proves what I said yesterday to the "omg £700, no one will buy it" brigade.
These things are going to sell out big time, and thirsty gamers will be queuing up on ebay to pay £1000+ for one for months whilst awaiting more stock.
A lot of people have a lot of money to spend. Sony will sell every pre-manufactured console and then some. They will be going out of stock as soon as new shipments come in, and you won't see one on the shelf of a store until way into next spring.
Re: Talking Point: Is PS5 Pro Way Too Expensive?
@ButterySmooth30FPS don't need a cookie, I'm getting enough pleasure from the Schadenfreude.
@LogicStrikesAgain yes because Microsoft aren't competing anymore either.
Price competition between Sony and Microsoft is now over.
Those new Xbox consoles are just for the die hard Xbox enthusiasts. No one will forgo a PS5 purchase to buy one of those.
No one is sat there umming and aahhing over whether to buy an Xbox or PS5 anymore.
No one is saying "hmmm should I get a PS5/PS5 Pro or one of those new Xbox's, let's look at the pricing".
The choice of console is no longer price dependent. Granted price was only ever a small factor, with exclusive games and the ecosystem one's friends were on being bigger factors.
But still they had to maintain rough parity on pricing - if the PS5 had been £700, a lot more of you would have got a Series X in 2020.
Now all bets are off. PS6 - £800. What are you going to do about it?
Spend £2500 on a PC? Bad news, that's your choice and boy oh boy do Sony know it.