Comments 613

Re: Baldur's Gate 3's Accidental PS5 Console Exclusivity Truncated as Xbox Backtracks

IOI

@NoToSheep I understand this is a PS blog but the hate towards Xbox and every other platform that is not PS is getting absurd.

I see this as he actively looking out to have more games in the Xbox ecosystem therefore pleasing Xbox gamers and I can only WISH and dream for Jim Ryan to care the same way about PS gamers.

I remember Shawn Layden and Jack Tretton used to do the same thing to bring some acclaimed games to PS3/PS4, just remember that E3 2010 when they got Gabe Newell to announce Portal on PS3 (after being very harsh on the platform) and NO ONE ever said they were “desperate”, they were looking out for PS customers in a way Jim Ryan has never done once, and yet many of you choose to criticize Phil Spencer…

Re: Microsoft to Sell Activision Blizzard Streaming Rights to Ubisoft in Revised Deal

IOI

@UltimateOtaku91 Not really, this doesn’t seem to affect customers in the slightest, Game Pass subscribers will be able to download or stream ABK games, the only difference is that Microsoft will have to get the license through Ubisoft, making sure that Xbox Cloud Gaming isn’t the only streaming platform to have those games.

So this also opens the door for someone like Sony to get the rights to stream all ABK games in PS Plus Premium through Ubisoft.

Re: PS5 Sales Surge a Frankly Flabbergasting 244% in Europe

IOI

@PixelDragon That’d be the worst thing to happen in the video game industry, I seriously don’t get why there’re fanboys who want a brand to have absolute supremacy when the best scenario is to have more competition across the market.

Currently PS and Nintendo don’t compete directly with each other, so leaving PS the absolute control of the current gen market is a dreadful scenario, we’ve seen time and time again Sony being complacent when they are the market leader, just look at the great sales they have and compare it with the latest showcase, they’re already being complacent so just imagine how they’d be without any competition whatsoever.

Re: Microsoft Urges UK Regulator to Renege on ActiBlizz Block, Points to PlayStation Deal

IOI

@TheCollector316 Jeez are you still that bitter that this deal is going through?

Sorry but no, CMA blocked only because of cloud gaming, they didn’t have any concerns in the console and PC markets, and everyone agreed that it was unreasonable to block the whole merger based on a market that is currently almost not existent, sure there might be some legitimate concerns, but the EU tackled them by making an agreement with Microsoft which is actually beneficial for every company currently pushing for Cloud Gaming.

There’s a reason as to why 40+ countries approved the merger, some even unconditionally, and that is because it’s not anticompetitive, sure PlayStation might stop getting long-running franchises (not CoD) but the same thing happens to every platform as everyone has their own exclusives, I’m actually excited to see PlayStation compete more aggressively with Xbox since in recent years they’ve been rather complacent, and honestly everyone who’s not a fanboy should be able to see it.

Re: Diablo 4 Devs Front Irate Fanbase in Frank Campfire Chat, 'We Know It's Bad, We Know It's Not Fun'

IOI

@StrawberryTurtle Lol you just had to throw some hate at Microsoft when this is totally unrelated to them, really don’t know how people can be so toxic basically 24/7…

I actually hope this is the kind of things that they can improve under Microsoft, at the very least they listen more to the community feedback than Blizzard which currently seems so keen on upsetting their own players.

Re: Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart PC Doesn't Actually Need an SSD

IOI

This was a great game but they definitely oversold it, in all the trailers and gameplay they made you think you could switch worlds or levels in seconds leveraging the power of the almighty SSD and it’s not like that at all, those transitions we saw are either cutscenes or just a level within a level (like going down a pipe in Mario games), but you still have to load every level and world albeit a really short load on PS5, but I see how this game doesn’t really require the SSD as they made us think.

Re: Sony and Microsoft Sign a 'Binding Agreement' to Keep Call of Duty on PlayStation

IOI

@TheCollector316 Talk about being over dramatic…

Regulators did try to stop this but the unequivocally conclusion was that this deal is not anticompetitive, and in fact it will spark way more competition in a market where Sony has comfortably been the market leader for the past decade and many of us argue they’ve been too complacent about it, I’m open to see new competition as we’ll be the ones who benefit the most when Sony starts to compete more aggressively.

And of course there’s plenty to keep them for buying more publishers, after spending 70 billion dollars do you think they’ll look to spend another 50B in buying EA or Take Two? Of course not.
And even if they do, after clearing this there’s absolutely no way that regulators will allow them to buy another big publisher like that, sure, they will continue to buy smaller studios, but this is it for publishers.

Re: Poll: Are You Happy with Your PS Plus Extra, Premium Games for July 2023?

IOI

After a year with PS Plus Deluxe (as in my country we don’t have Premium) I’ll definitely be downgrading again to the Essential tier, Premium/Deluxe has almost been a ripoff with bare minimum additions to the classic catalogue, and while Extra has great value I found that most of the games I want to try out I already have them purchased whether on PS5 or Xbox and there’s not many new games (such as Stray or T’Chia) to keep paying for that tier.

Re: Sony Is Increasing R&D Costs to Fuel Live Service Games, Report Claims

IOI

@AdamNovice Honestly that’s not plenty, and Firesprite is actually making a live-service game too, the fact that we currently know more about live-service projects than single-player ones is very concerning and the recent showcase only validated my concerns (showing 3 PS Studios live services and only one single-player game).

Re: Sony Is Increasing R&D Costs to Fuel Live Service Games, Report Claims

IOI

I’m honestly way more concerned about Sony’s current obsession with live-service games than Microsoft acquiring Activision, they are putting aside the type of games that gave Sony the prestige they currently have in favor of seeking their Fortnite and we just know for a fact than 95% of the games that tried this fail spectacularly and close their servers within months of being launched.

And honestly having seen what Sony is bringing to the table from the showcase I’m not hopeful at all.

Re: Reaction: What Happens to PlayStation if Microsoft Buys Activision Blizzard?

IOI

@kyleforrester87 Exactly this, currently I do feel that Sony lacks competition and they’re being too complacent about it, but people here are more concerned to what happens to a big corporation who is already a juggernaut in gaming, instead of focusing how will it impact us.

Just think about it, if Microsoft starts eating up some market share from Sony it will force Sony to compete more aggressively by benefiting US, PS users, but some people are so blind to their fanboyism that they care more about the financial performance of a corporation rather than our own financials lol

Re: Reaction: What Happens to PlayStation if Microsoft Buys Activision Blizzard?

IOI

Of course it’s going to have an impact, but not at all concerning, Sony is a juggernaut in gaming, they will absolutely find a way to keep being the market leader for the rest of this generation at the very least, and in fact I’m way less concerned about Microsoft-Activision than Sony themselves with their current obsession seeking a cash cow in live-service games.

Re: Meet the Master Assassin Basim from PS5, PS4's Assassin's Creed Mirage

IOI

I was kinda excited for this because of the smaller scale and “back to the basics” approach they described, but since watching the gameplay demo it fell completely flat, this looks exactly the same as Valhalla/Odyssey/Origins albeit in a smaller map, and after Valhalla burned me out I’m just done with this formulaic generic-feeling games.

Also this releasing just before Alan Wake 2, Spider-Man 2 and Super Mario Bros. Wonder there’s zero chance I’ll consider playing this even if it somehow got into PS Plus or Game Pass.

Re: Poll: What Review Score Would You Give Final Fantasy 16?

IOI

I’m torn between 9 and 8, it’s fun, the combat feels great, story has been amazing, characters are interesting, but there’s some clear issues.

Pacing is the worst of any recent game that I can think of, an epic mission is immediately followed by 2 hours of doing absolutely nothing but running errands that doesn’t advance the story at all, side quests are also mostly bad since most are even more errands without offering worthwhile rewards, and finally the map and traversal itself feels outdated as it sometimes feels exactly like FFXIII being a step back from FFXV and FFVII Remake.

Overall I’d say a great game but I did expect more and currently I don’t think it’s worth to call it a GOTY contender with so many other great games already released and planned for later this year.

Re: Canada Joins UK, US in Questioning Microsoft's Activision Blizzard Buyout

IOI

@YonkoBuggyTheClown Yeah honestly Pure Xbox hasn’t been better, both sites are trying to radicalize their readers to push more views and while understandable (the sites are also a business) it just creates a toxic community I frankly don’t want to be a part of.

I have to applaud The Verge’s coverage of all this, not only they’ve had all the information available at the moment, they tried to avoid bias to either side as much as possible, just pointing out the information and leaving it to the reader to form an opinion about it (except when the FTC made wild claims that needed to be point out).

Re: Canada Joins UK, US in Questioning Microsoft's Activision Blizzard Buyout

IOI

@awp69 Yet another clickbait article by Push Square regarding this whole thing.

I’m honestly very disgusted about how Push Square has handled all the information that has come out from the trial, grim comments have come out from both sides (Sony and Microsoft) however here they’re trying to radicalize it to extremes, as if Microsoft had a personal vendetta against all of Sony’s users when it’s nothing like that, it’s just business and Sony has said and done pretty nasty stuff too.

Re: Sony Will Have More PS5 Presentations This Year, Sources Say

IOI

The copium is out of control, people saying there’ll be a second showcase, Days Gone 2 in development and Sony reportedly buying CD Projekt Red…

None of this is true, it is what it is, people are having a hard time accepting that Sony had a disappointing showcase and are trying to make up for it literally coming up with rumors out of nowhere, who could seriously think that after waiting more than 600 days to make a showcase they would hold the major announcements until later in the year? It’s nonsense.

Re: Rumour: Naughty Dog's Troubled The Last of Us Multiplayer PS5 Project Was Sniped by Bungie

IOI

@get2sammyb I agree, and it isn’t like Naughty Dog has no experience into making multiplayer games, Uncharted 2, 3, 4 and TLOU had pretty great multiplayer modes, so i just don’t get that after 3 years of full development they’re basically pausing development because a newly acquired studio suggested it, wasting almost half the generation into a game that just won’t come out and honestly maybe never will.

Re: Rumour: Naughty Dog's Troubled The Last of Us Multiplayer PS5 Project Was Sniped by Bungie

IOI

This f***ing obsession with live-service games will be the downfall of PlayStation.

All of this reminds me to Marvel’s Avengers, where Square Enix forced Crystal Dynamics (a studio renowned in making single-player games) into making a live-service multiplayer game, and we know how that turned out with a big failure and even Square selling off Crystal Dynamics for scraps.

Let that be a lesson to Sony, don’t force your studios into making something they’re not familiar with or even uncomfortable making it, 3 years of development time is HUGE waste of Naughty Dog’s time, at this rate we’ll be lucky if we get a single game from them in the entire generation, which is beyond disappointing.

Re: PlayStation Showcase Completely Divided Fan Opinion

IOI

It was bad as a PlayStation Showcase, made even worse by the fact that we haven’t got a showcase in nearly 2 years, and after all that time we wanted to see what PS Studios is working on but what they showed from their own studios was by far the most disappointing thing about the event with 3 generic-looking multiplayer live service games aside from Spider-Man 2.

It would’ve been okay as a Summer Game Fest presentation as honestly the most interesting stuff outside of Spider-Man 2 were third-party games and it’s quite interesting that the people more satisfied with the showcase are actually players from other platforms such as PC and Xbox.

Re: Reaction: Sony Flubs First Proper PS5 Presentation in Over 18 Months

IOI

@MoorePs5 Lol of course not, we waited 18 MONTHS for this only for them to say the real showcase is happening later in the year? Don’t be so naive.

Besides, this is branded as “PS Showcase 2023” meaning it’s most likely the only planned for this year, this was it, this was the big one, if you expect more you’re going to get even more disappointed.

Re: Reaction: Sony Flubs First Proper PS5 Presentation in Over 18 Months

IOI

They single-handedly destroyed the excitement you got when watching the PS Studios logo, 3 out of 4 games were generic-looking multiplayer games as a service announced with a CGI.

This is exactly the thing I feared when they said they’re going to be investing 60% on live service games, only I didn’t expect to show its effects right now, what a terrible outlook it is after Spider-Man 2 releases.

Re: Poll: Was This Sony's Best PlayStation Showcase Yet?

IOI

It is disappointing, the single only game of PS Studios that I’m interested in is Spider-Man 2, the WORST thing about this was watching the PS Studios intro followed by a generic multiplayer game, and with yesterday’s news it’s looking really bad.

Re: Sony Aiming for At Least Two Big PS5 Exclusives Each Year Across 'Every Major Genre'

IOI

That fact that in a couple of years 60% of all PlayStation resources will be used for live service games is EXTREMELY concerning, and I’ve been saying it since they day they announced they had dozens of GaaS in development, they’re using a ton of resources into making those games instead of the single-player experiences that they’re praised for, and now we’ve gone from 4 big games per year to just 2.

And yes, we’ll still be getting some of those single-player games but with so much money going to seek out a live service cash cow there’s inevitably going to be less single-player developments, and even worse, if they have just one big hit it with a live service game I don’t doubt for a second that they’ll steer all current developments into that direction.

Forget about Xbox, Activision, or whatever, the true downfall for PlayStation could be this obsession with live service games, it’s obvious they desperately want to own a Fortnite/Warzone/Apex, but for every successful game as a service we’ve seen countless failures across the industry and they’re not learning from it at all.

Re: Another Game as a Service on PS5 Is Being Abandoned

IOI

Sony should really take note of this before investing heavily trying to find a cash cow in games as a service, specially with the recent rumors that Sony is pulling away from Deviation games and even that their game might be cancelled, l really don’t like this trend of buying unproven studios only for multiplayer games at the same time they neglect their own studios with unique ideas such as PixelOpus.

Re: Sorry, But the Drama Over Xbox's Activision Buyout Ain't Over Yet

IOI

@BeerIsAwesome That’s obviously not gonna happen, do you seriously think that after 2 years of scrutiny the regulators will allow MS to buy another publisher? Of course not.

They’ll continue to buy studios for sure, but I don’t think they’ll dare to attempt to buyout another publisher, not even a smaller one such as Ubisoft, if they do regulators would never approve it as they already got Bethesda, Activision, Blizzard and King at that point.

Re: Sorry, But the Drama Over Xbox's Activision Buyout Ain't Over Yet

IOI

Been saying this for a while, if the EU approves it then this will drag out for another year but the deal will 100% close eventually as the FTC always loses in court and I don’t doubt that MS will circumvent the CMA one way or another even if the appeal fails (there’s no way they’ll drop it if only the UK is the one opposing the merger).

Honestly at this point I wish the CMA also approved it so we’d have reach the end of this drama this month, but now it’s getting dragged out another whole year.

Re: Rumour: Next Assassin's Creed Now Apparently Sneaking into October

IOI

@Rmg0731 I disagree, Origins is by far the better of the RPG-like Assassin’s Creed, but if you didn’t like you’re going to hate Odyssey and Valhalla.

And while I actually enjoyed both Origins and Odyssey, Valhalla is so unnecessarily massive and repetitive (and the story so laughably bad if you followed the lore of the franchise) that it literally burned me out of the franchise, and then Far Cry 6 burned me out of all Ubisoft games, it really feels they’ve been releasing the same games for 10 years only changing the skins and scenery so I’m definitely done with Ubisoft until they actually make a different game.

Re: Former PlayStation Boss Saddened by PixelOpus Studio Closure

IOI

@UltimateOtaku91 I’m sorry but saying that “others have done it too” doesn’t justify it in the slightest.

This is sad because we’ve seen Sony buying tons of multiplayer studios that haven’t released a single game while at the same time they’re shutting down a studio creators of unique experiences such as Concrete Genie, it just doesn’t seem fair and proves again that resources that could’ve been used to fund single-player experiences is being spent seeking their live-service cash cow.

Re: PS5 Pro Is '100%' Happening, Says Reliable Report

IOI

I still think this is BS as it’s the same guy repeating the same thing over and over while not a single other “insider” has reported on something similar, so it’s just Tom Henderson and his “sources” claiming there’ll be a PS5 Slim with a detachable disk drive (which already sounds unlikely), a PS5 Pro and the most bizarre one a PS5 handheld that only works with remote play.

Also, there’s just absolutely no reason for a Pro system to exist this generation as it’s barely starting 3 years after launch, most games are still cross-gen, there isn’t a push for 8K as there was for 4K in 2016, PS5 hasn’t dropped in price as PS4 did in 2015-2016, it’s even gone up in every region outside the US, so a Pro system would come out at $600 or even $700 which is ridiculous and would even hurt the entire brand (remember that PS3 price reveal).

So long story short, it doesn’t make any sense and it’s BS.

Re: UK's Activision Buyout Block Prevents Microsoft from Trying Again for 10 Years

IOI

@rjejr In the US the FTC is basically irrelevant at this point because a federal court can override their decision and honestly Microsoft has more solid arguments than the FTC to win at court, so currently it all depends on the EU, if they approve it then this will drag on another year but the deal will close eventually, however if the EU blocks I can’t see Microsoft fighting all 3 regulators and winning so it’d be over.

I’m honestly tired of this, I’d take any result if that meant we’d stop hearing about this a whole other year but so far it doesn’t seem that way.