Fath

@TheLobster Glad I could help!

With how late this article was posted, you guys could've stalled for a few more hours and put Trails in the Sky Second Chapter in the list, if only for the novelty of having a PSP section

As an American, so distant from this mythical paper of days and mail, I'm glad I came across this pleasant ballad a few years back to fill me in on what a beacon of truth I'm missing out on: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI

@tudsworth Good question, maybe they're going full digital? I forget if these charts track download games.

The article's premise sounds great, but the direct quote is littered with red flags - "smart phones," "engaging content," and "marketing." Color me cautiously reserved.

@sonicmeerkat What's the motive, if not saving the world? For most people in real life, saving yourself, or maybe your friends and family, is enough to keep you going. Games don't have to go big, they just have to go home - if they can make you honestly care about even one character, it's enough.

Or their gameplay could just be fresh and fun. Either works.

Like @Observer-Hunter and @RenanKJ , subscription services in general aren't what I'm looking for in gaming. I live with a pretty big backlog, so I value the peace of mind physical games yield, of being able to put them on my shelf and play them when I'm ready, whether it's in a day or a decade. I like the tangibility that comes with physical games, too; I find it really does give a game a certain weight for it to have, er, real weight.

A subscription service that's continually adding ephemeral games to my backlog, regardless of whether I want them or not, lacking any weight or presence, and for which I have to continue paying a monthly fee until the day I die for lest they disappear into the ether, is the exact antithesis of what I'm looking for as a gamer.

To each his own, but neither PS+ nor EA's service appeal to me.

So that video link had a pre-video ad for me of... The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone. Really, Youtube? Sigh.

@rjejr You're really, really good at guessing those install base numbers - VGChartz puts them at 19.13mil vs. 1.67mil. Nice job on that. Good suggestion on what a better comparison would be, Bloodborne was just the first thing I could come up with for "actioney PS4 exclusive" during my lunch break.

Finding numbers for The Last of Us Remastered's Japanese launch week was much harder than it should've been, since Pushsquare apparently just didn't care to report the Media Create charts in late 2014, but according to http://operationrainfall.com/2014/08/27/media-create-aug-18-24-2014/, that game charted 30k in its first week in Japan, for a title containing only one game as opposed to this one's three, and whose original version had launched only one year prior (mid-2013) instead of the 4-8 years prior (2007-2011) of the Uncharted series. Though, coincidentally, it also lost the top spot to a Yokai Watch game - those things are indeed scary.

Anyway, the whole point I was trying to make in my post was that after headlining this article with "Uncharted Climbs High" and "There's a cheeky little grin on Nathan Drake's face," the actual numbers for the Uncharted Collection are... not that impressive. I come here from Nintendolife for news from the other side, and it just bugs me that compared to its sister site, this one acts more like a fansite than a news site. Maybe that's just selective persecution from my Nintendo fanboyism talking, though.

@SonyInfinity So Bloodborne is a classic JRPG, and Uncharted is a niche game, whose niche is apparently... dudebros? Roger.

I should've just left it at Dominican's concise assesment: still a disappointment for debut numbers.

I agree with the article, there's nothing wrong with playing through a game in a reasonable timeframe, being able to say "What a ride! That was great!", and then moving on to the next game.

This massive-content open-world frenzy seems to be a pretty reckless scorched-earth move by devs/pubs to try to suppress used sales by gluing their game to the customer for the next year (or for life, if they can't bear to ever complete it). Either that, or they're just responding to the buzz of the crowd that, like a kid with a sweet tooth, pooh-poohs anything that's not toxically imbalanced, and doesn't know what's good for them.

Either way, it's going to end in burnout, and everyone's gonna suffer for it.

@adf86 From www.pushsquare.com/news/2015/04/japanese_sales_charts_playstation_4_and_bloodborne_slaughter_the_competitionn , Bloodborne sold 150,000 copies in Japan its first week. Not a perfect analogue, but I'd think the target demographic should at least be close.

I guess if you extend the list far enough down, sure, you can say Uncharted placed relatively high. Losing to a three-month old game and a 3DS baseball game(?) in your debut week isn't exactly setting the charts on fire. I'd say it was still respectable given Japan's handheld bias, but Uncharted could barely even edge out the month-old Super Mario Maker.

11. Digiots.

Calling it now, Until Dawn 2: Until Dusk.

@SonyInfinity Video games aren't the only industry out there, and history has shown that it's possible, at least with judicious government protection, to have a reasonably stable market shared by multiple strong companies. Do you really think social media has so fundamentally changed the zeitgeist as to make this model unworkable?

If so, then maybe the government needs to start stepping up its game in monopoly-busting in this modern day and age. If there's any engine driving these sort of markets to this end, it's connectivity lock-in, and that's something that seems viable to tackle from a regulatory perspective. Sony players only being able to play with Sony players is a principle that's taken as a given in modern consoles, but at heart it's a pretty anticompetitive practice. Imagine the outrage if phone carriers collectively decided that their customers would only be able to place calls to other customers of the same carrier- it seems crazy, but the same principle is being blindly accepted for online play on consoles, as I understand it (I'm actually pretty behind the times on modern gaming, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).

At least Microsoft is seen as being in competition with Sony; Nintendo can't even reach that level of momentum.

At the end of the day, though, for any brand, "winning" isn't what matters, just turning a profit.

I've never been a huge fan of Transformers in general, much less the original series stuff, but somehow I just couldn't take my eyes off the trailer in this article. Nice work, Platinum, you've made a strangely compelling game.

Yeah, WoW said their microtransactions would never impact gameplay either, and look at them now. Mazeltov, Destiny, you're becoming a real MMO!

This list isn't inclusive enough. I demand a list of the top 100 pieces of recreational media ever released across all of human history. How will I ever know how to feel about anything, if I don't know whether Ico or Beowulf ranks higher?

Why is this article so defensive? I acknowledge it's an opinion piece, but even so, it sounds like the writer is taking the failure of the Vita more personally than is healthy.

It's a great little system, but the market is a fickle beast, and sometimes crushes beautiful things. 'Nough said.

There will always be a market for games that demand more from the player than jabbing at a touchscreen.

@SteveButler2210 I've heard the UK isn't known for its fine food, but if what you Brits eat makes THAT look good, your cuisine is truly a force more terrible than I could have ever feared possible!

Metal Gear was a multiplatform release, right? Simply stunning that it managed to shift a whopping 12 Xbox Ones in Japan, compared to 35,955 PS4's.

Surprised this ended on a score of eight; the review read like a justifiable 9. Oh well, subjectivity of boiling a complex experience into a petty number and all that. Sounds like a fun romp either way!

@Matroska From my understanding, the gamepad in ZombiU is used largely to forcibly divert your attention from the tv, challenging you and creating tension by forcing you to split your attention between two simultaneous always-on inputs. Claiming that's functionally the same as toggling an overlay on a single screen is as reductively absurd as saying "All video games are fundamentally just manipulating a state machine to reach a specific win state, therefore everything since Pong has just been a gimmick."

Likewise, to claim that the screen layout of the DS had no effect on games designed for them is just denial of reality to fit your ideals. It sounds like you play a lot of games on emulators, because you seem to be in denial that the medium a game is played on can fundamentally shape the end experience

Kind of silly to conflate "the home console" with "Playstation 4," especially in Japan. That aside, more proper Dragon Quest is always good news.

Watching the first half of this kind of just made me wish Uncharted was a movie series instead of a game series, so those graphics and citybuilding could be appreciated without people ceaselessly shooting at you (and missing) for at least 70% or so of the time to create "compelling gameplay."

Once they got going in the car (and lost the mounted machine gun still shooting at you) it started to look pretty fun.

Calling this a "megaton of Sony's press conference", much less "one of the biggest megatons," and much less again "Easily one of the biggest megatons," does a huge disservice to FFVII, Shenmue III, and The Last Guardian.

Putting a timed DLC deal for CoD in the same league as a veritable kitchen cupboard of the holy grails of gaming is just insulting.

Do you suppose this game would still be playable if I taped a picture of a certain bear and bird to the center of my tv and pretended REALLY REALLY HARD?

For my part, I do actually respect the quality platform Sony's built up here; I'm just perennially bummed that Nintendo's let itself get marginalized so much in the market after holding the keys to my childhood, so it makes me feel better to take potshots at the juggernaut from time to time.

A dedicated Playstation site describing its own resounding lead as a "stranglehold" was just too poignant for me to let go. Y'all are doing my job for me, making me all warm and fuzzy-like

A "stranglehold on consoles" is supposed to be a good thing... right? Carry on, then.

Curious to see what, if anything, the PS4 can do to improve on the graphics for this game, then; the style already looks so polished.

Sony's already HAD weekly sales going for about halfway to forever now, both with and without Plus, posted on their weekly store update. Then those started slowing down a few months ago, then a few weeks ago they stopped posting the actual sales on their blog completely and just started linking to their dubiously-accurate-and-navigable storefront.

At the time people were confused and annoyed by it, but I guess now the reasoning's clear: it was so they could relaunch what they were already doing, but for only half the audience, and claim it as being something new.

Oh well; I guess as a non-Plus plebe, checking their sales page weekly is dead to me now either way.

So this article is basically saying that Gamescom should just be cancelled outright this year? The same logic used to claim Sony's absence is a good move could be used to justify literally anyone skipping this show.

Suppose I'll probably get a nice discount by getting the "inferior" PS3 version then. Or just not get it if it moves to PS4-exclusive for some reason.

@ferrers405
1) It's Japan, man, mobile ate all the consoles' lunch, not just the 3DS'.
2) Mobile's an established presence by now. Nothing's actively dying from mobile; it's already killed everything.
3) The 3DS (family; splitting its models makes about as much sense as splitting PS4 sales based on what size tv the buyer's going to play it on) is still the top seller in both the hardware and software charts in question here, so this entire debate is moot to begin with.

Anyway, good on Nep-Nep, that's an impressive bump to PS4 sales for such an understated franchise.

@ferrers405 If the market's so saturated that there's nobody left to sell systems to, it means that there's a massive base to sell games to. Which, y'know, is kind of the whole point.

I'm a big fan of physical swag as a thank-you to the early buyers that bear the brunt of making a game's money back (before it goes on perpetual sale for a tenner), but holding pieces of the actual game itself hostage is pretty rotten. Not to say it doesn't work... we can't all be Liam Neeson when it comes to dealing with hostage crises.

The needs of "the PS4" as a platform and the needs of PS4 games as individual, er, games, are two different things that should be discussed separately, even if (especially if!) they align on some occasions.

Maybe this article does that alright, I just kinda skimmed it, but that's my 2c.

Cool video, and that voice, I just want to eat it up, and the game looks fantastic as usual, but... the headline here is kind of shamelessly taken out of context, when the fellow was talking about modern fantasy games in general. The full text of what he's saying, after the extended character-voice section, is as follows:

"The whole, well, rise in the popularity of fantasy, now, is quite extraordinary really. It's no longer the realm of children's entertainment. It is real. So, the whole thing now, appeals to quite discerning adults, because the special effects are so real, the worlds that are created are so believable, but it also employs the most wonderful cinematic techniques.

What I saw of video games ten years ago, I mean, it's like a whole other world."

PS4 install base: 20 million.
PS3 install base: 85 million.

This game will do fine on the PS3. With the graphics, judging by the trailer, already rock-solid on the '3, porting it to the '4 really wouldn't accomplish anything besides jacking up the price for both consumer and developer.

But that's a moot point anyway. Everyone knows the modern industry release methodology is to double your sales by first launching a game as PS3 only, then six months after release to announce the superspecial PS4 remaster and get people to buy it all over again. This game's right on track.

I guess I'm in the minority in being nonplussed on new game pluses; I prefer a game that covers everything the first time through, then ends when it says it does. Always too damned many other fantastic games to get to, why would I need or want to spend half a year endlessly repeating the same one again and again?

32nd article tagged Bloodborne in the last two weeks.

So my takeaway from this article is that watching Let's Plays is psychologically scarring and should be tightly regulated.

@Quorthon "I play it for the stories, honest!" Sounds like a porn defense to me

It was probably unfair of me to single out GTA, since I don't think the source here really does, but generally speaking I don't think kids are generally drawn to the games in question for the deep and soul-searching storylines they present. Adjust the degree as you will, but I still think there's merit in looking to restrictions on sexual material in debating restrictions on violent material (or other mature subjects), and the violence (et al) in some games out there gets pretty graphic.

It's probably fair to treat things like GTA about on the same level as porn. If a teacher caught a kid with some hardcore porn, would they be obligated to report it?

@KAPADO No, you don't get to play the disenfranchised media conspiracy card here. Bloodborne's current 93 metacritic score is two points higher than any Xbox one game ever, excepting GTA V, which has the same score across both systems (97). Playstation fans have no cause to be maudlin.

You reap what you sow. The writing's been on the wall for years now that chasing ever-more photorealistic megagraphics is bound to run into a price wall at some point. Why do you think Nintendo's focus for the last decade or so has been on finding something, anything special they could do to set apart a safe haven for gaming away from billion-dollar games running on thousand-dollar GPU's?

Running looks painful in this game D: