Grumblevolcano

@dskatter There's a gigantic goldmine of pre-PS4 games that can't be played on PS5 waiting to be tapped into for remasters/remakes which would provide much more value to the PS community than PS4 remasters.

This is very much to be expected considering it's not a free upgrade and the remaster forces PSN requirement. Lego Horizon Adventures will be the most interesting data about Sony's PC strategy considering it's also releasing on Switch.

@twitchtvpat I did say near future, it might be that 2027/2028 are big years for single player games but 2025/2026 are more live service focused so a showcase would give the impression that Sony's focus is still live service.

This gives me the impression that there's still a load of live service games releasing in the near future. Remember Playstation Showcase 2023 when the PS Studios presence was:

• Spider-Man 2 (traditional single player)
• Fairgame$ (live service multiplayer)
• Helldivers 2 (live service multiplayer)
• Concord (live service multiplayer)
• Destiny 2 Final Shape (live service multiplayer)
• Marathon (live service multiplayer)

If the near future of PS Studios is still very live service heavy, doing a showcase would end up being a repeat of the 2023 showcase which would make people more negative about the future of Playstation than if Sony were silent.

I could only see it being playable on Xbox in the form of the next Xbox being a PC and hence can access Steam. Sony's only porting to Xbox when they're forced to (i.e. MLB forcing MLB The Show, Bungie acquisition forcing Bungie games).

I could see a situation where the lineup could make it look like things are slowing down but they're not really. For example if for the 1st half of 2025, you had:

• February - Fallout 3 (PS4/PS5/Switch)
• March - Oblivion (PS4/PS5/Switch)
• April - Indiana Jones (PS5)
• May - DOOM The Dark Ages (PS5)
• June - Flight Sim 2024 (PS5)

Fallout 3 and Oblivion are PS3 games, Indiana Jones and DOOM The Dark Ages were announced for PS5 this year which would leave Flight Sim 2024 as the only Xbox exclusive to be announced for release in that time window.

But I absolutely don't believe that the backlash from the Xbox community over the Indiana Jones PS5 reveal would have any effect.

@Medic_alert That exactly why I don't think Sony will go digital only. The competition mechanism for digital only would probably harm Sony a lot like if the EU forced Sony to add Game Pass to PS.

@Medic_alert Epic Games has been pushing very aggressively for closed platforms to open up and they've managed to do it in some cases (e.g. Apple devices in the EU, Android devices worldwide).

I feel that if Sony went fully digital only, Epic Games would try to force Sony to allow Epic Games Store on Playstation.

The rate at which Sony's porting over their games to PC is so extremely fast that I could see them running out of legacy games they want to port over around 2026/2027. I guess 2026 is when "day 1 on PC" grows to even include their big 1st party single player games.

Maybe they're going to announce a playable demo/beta? World's beta was announced in October for taking place in December.

Sony was used to reveal the past few RE games via SoP/Showcase so perhaps a SoP/Showcase sometime in December - March. They may do something special in December for the Playstation 30th anniversary or there may be an event in the usual January - March slot.

The wording on the PS Direct page for Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered is odd. It's suggesting that you can use the PS5 physical version to play on PC.

Guess it must be time for Microsoft to do something really stupid in the near future to distract people from Sony doing this.

@mountain_spider I think Ghost will be April - July. Won't be January - March because of Hiroki Totoki's comments back in February meanwhile Fall/Holiday would mean competing with GTA6 which sounds unwise.

Sonic X Shadow Generations got a trailer earlier today via the Sonic Central stream, would be surprising if there was another one in the State of Play.

Maybe the list isn't completely accurate for stuff that's appearing?

20 sounds more than normal so maybe there's a PSVR2 montage of like 5-6 games?

Aren't the numbers partially skewed because of a lack of new releases and those that did release were right at the end of month (e.g. Star Wars Outlaws)?

The best chance physical had of getting a big boost in August was if Concord ended up being a Helldivers 2 scale hit.

The whole situation of forced PSN account requirement for PC ports this year does make me wonder if Sony's going to delist the current PC ports of HZD/Days Gone/GoW 2018 when remasters appear.

Maybe it's a PS3 style situation where there's a more expensive model that has more backwards compatibility than the other?

The aggressive push by Sony to do PS5 remasters of PS4 games (even PS4 games that are already on PC like HZD) gives a sense that maybe the base PS6 won't be able to play PS4 games.

@KilloWertz If the remaster's real, Sony will no doubt remove the game from PS+ Extra/Premium like they did with Horizon earlier this year.

In normal circumstances, those regular temporary PS5 price drops in July 2023 - March 2024 would've been a permanent price cut.

The way things are going it feels like the State of Play will be something like:

• Start the event with Fairgame$
• Have those 2 PS5/PC remasters (HZD, Days Gone) in the mix
• Release date for Lego Horizon Adventures
• PC port for TLoU 2 Remastered, Demon's Souls, GT7 or Spider-Man 2
• A bunch of 3rd party announcements
• Something about PS+ and PS5 Pro
• End with Death Stranding 2

It's currently September 2016, Sony has just revealed the highly anticipated PS4 Pro and are using gameplay from the upcoming brand new IP games Horizon Zero Dawn and Days Gone to show off the new hardware.

@Rob_230 Imagine if Sony took the PS5 Pro remake remaster memes seriously like they did with Morbius and we ended up with a PS5 Pro remaster of the 2022 PS5 TLoU remake.

I think it's God of War 2018 or Days Gone, those 2 and HZD are the 3 PS Studios PS4 games that don't have a PS5 version but are already on PC.

Considering Ragnarok releases on PC tomorrow and Sony killed off Days Gone 2, I'm leaning towards Days Gone being the remaster.

Considering even Tomb Raider 2013 failed to reach Square Enix's expectations, I'm pretty sure the real problem is Square Enix's expectations. Multiplatform will probably lead to more sales but Square Enix's expectations would also be higher which cancels out the gains from multiplatform.

I also think Jim Ryan is to blame. Naturally the actions of a platform holder affects 3rd party exclusives and Jim Ryan did a lot of damage to the Playstation brand.

@WizzNL The game already released on PC in 2020 so it's not like the previous remasters/remakes that came to PS5/PC.

The existence of this remaster is concerning.

No console except the original $599 PS3 has full backwards compatibility for more than 1 previous generation (Xbox's backwards compatibility approach for original Xbox and Xbox 360 games on XB1/Series X|S are only partial with lots of games lost in the process). Is this remaster perhaps an indication that while PS6 will be able to play PS5 games, it won't be able to play PS4 games? Push Square did report about PS6 decisions happening in 2022 which is when rumours of the remaster started appearing.

@Judal27 SE seem to be removing games 2 years after added. There was a big FF batch added at the Asia launch of the service in May 2022 and that was removed from all regions in May 2024. The big DQ batch was added in October 2022 and now being removed in October 2024.

The KH batch was added in November 2022 so it's a safe guess it'll be removed in November 2024.

Is this maybe about the Game Awards? 10th anniversary is a big milestone and Sony supports Geoff a lot. Considering GotY will probably be Rebirth or Astro Bot, I could see Sony wanting to take advantage of that with some PS Studios single player announcements.

Kind of like how Nintendo made a bunch of announcements at Game Awards 2017 when they knew it was likely that either BotW or Mario Odyssey was going to win.

@NEStalgia Multiplatform does seem to be the more immediate thing, I mean look at the Gamescom saga. They chose to make Indiana Jones on PS5 be the "one more thing" announcement and then warn people that change is coming.

To me that sounds like a future where you can play PS exclusives on Xbox because Xbox hardware has become Xbox branded PCs (and hence has stores like Steam) meanwhile Xbox has an aggressive PS/Nintendo porting strategy.

The Nintendo side of things is the big unknown. I don't see Nintendo porting to other systems unless Switch 2 went the way of Wii U. Also it's hard to tell whether Sony seeing Lego Horizon Adventures on Switch (a decision seemingly forced by Lego) being a success would tempt an aggressive porting PS exclusives to Switch 2 strategy.

@NEStalgia I think Xbox's next move will be to put Halo/Gears/Forza (leaning towards FH5) in the Switch 2 reveal to kickstart the next batch of multiplatform ports.

I saw on Smyths that the disc drive is out of stock but that there's no new stock incoming "Out of Stock. Expected in stock: No Longer Available" so it looks like Sony are discontinuing the current disc drive.

Oof, that pricing is ridiculous and also probably means next gen will be $799 minimum with no disc drive.

@themightyant Sounds to me like they're completely splitting the two up. Tomorrow is solely about the hardware and then later on in the month there'll be a State of Play which is solely about the software.

Live service means microtransactions (mostly appears in the form of some sort of cosmetics store, loot boxes or battle passes) and there's none in this game.

It's definitely a celebration but it is also sad seeing that so much Sony IP is going unused. Hopefully Sony use appearances in Astro Bot as an opportunity to bring back dormant IP.

Maybe PS5 Pro is releasing in December then? December 6th would be the closest Friday to the 30th anniversary.

Really happy to see it being received so well.

Nice to see them use Astro Bot's launch as the start of PS 30th anniversary celebrations. Would be really cool if a PS event during the celebrations brought back dormant IP.

@get2sammyb At least there's been the classics line but you have situations like the only remasters/remakes greenlighted by Jim Ryan being 2013 games onwards and the only new games for legacy IP being from franchises that got PS4 entries.

Hopefully Astro Bot does well enough to convince Hiroki Totoki and Hermen Hulst that Sony has a gold mine of IP to pick from.

@Rob_230 The impression I'm getting is that ever since Jim Ryan took over, Sony considered 2013 to be the beginning of Playstation rather than 1994.

@AdamNovice Nintendo have some franchises that showcase well that just because there's been a long gap between entries doesn't mean there isn't an opportunity for a comeback to work out.

A good example of this is Pikmin which has had franchise gaps as long as 10 years yet the franchise has grown such that the newest entry (2023's Pikmin 4) turned out to be the best selling game in the franchise.

Remasters/remakes would be a good way to bring pre-PS4 franchises into the spotlight.

I desperately hope that Astro Bot succeeds and at the same time shows Sony that live service isn't the answer.

I hope they give Astro Bot some room before announcing PS5 Pro. It's concerning that it already feels like news about the game is getting buried under endless articles about Concord's failure.

I desperately want to see Astro Bot succeed.

So close, only got the DoA question wrong.

I think the fate of consoles lies solely in the hands of Nintendo at this point. If Switch 2 is reasonably priced, has a strong exclusives lineup and backwards compatibility then I think consoles will be very safe. Xbox just won't be a part of it.

But if Nintendo started releasing their 1st party exclusives on PC like Sony did in 2020, I think consoles would die out as the message sent would be that PC is the place to own everything.

Sounds like PS5 Pro and the rumoured State of Play are 2 separate announcements. I hope this means PS5 Pro is part of a bigger event rather than it just being a blogpost announcement.

In any case, no disc drive is concerning. All digital future is extremely bad.

Would be very surprising if a State of Play rather than a showcase, surely they'd want the console to be announced alongside strong 1st party software lineup. State of Play gives the impression they're repeating May where Fairgame$ takes the role of Concord.

Considering the game was announced in the last Playstation Showcase, perhaps the release date would be given in the next Playstation Showcase.