NoxAeturnus

Time is my most valuable resource. So let's say they saved about $1000 off scalp price by waiting 24 hours. That's like $42 an hour. I can see how it seems worth it to someone who lacks patience, which gamers are not well known for in the first place. The real jerks are Gamestop corporate for making them available in store when Sony specifically didn't want to physically stock retailers due to the pandemic. And also any Gamestop location employees who didn't go out to the line and say, "Hey guys, I've only got 2 of these. So if you're 3rd or later in line, you're wasting your time."

I'm excited to customize mine once I'm able to buy a PS5. But they could also bundle themed plates with special editions of games. Any publisher could take advantage of this. Negates the need for a special edition console, plus if you collect different ones for different games you can always switch things around depending on your mood.

@Woogy First, tone it down bud, you're coming in a little hot. Consider that I didn't say that scalping has no downsides for anyone and that I might have and definitely did mean that scalping has no downsides FOR THE SCALPERS. Scalpers won't suffer at all. Unless they broke a law to obtain their stock (like the Amazon fiasco), what they've done is legal even if reprehensible, and it's being consistently rewarded by people with more money than patience. Retailers might be able to act to slow or stop it, but why should they? Their stock is sold out either way. It is what it is. The PS5 is a luxury good and I don't have the energy to be angry about it when I can certainly survive without one even if I am disappointed that I can't buy it yet. Supply will eventually catch up with demand.

I feel like what they initially did is sort of what happened with Switch's "HD Rumble." Other than a few outliers, most devs seem to have just used that as a flat rumble too. I feel like it's an easy feature to ignore when you're trying to get the game out the door to market but a prime candidate for a later update. Glad Dirt's going to get the upgrade and I hope more devs implement it initially or add haptic upgrades in the future.

Scalping has no downsides (edit: for the scalpers). Even if the market gets flooded, they'll be able to offload any additional stock at MSRP for little to no loss.

Hopefully I'll be able to get one once the customers with more money than patience have dried up.

Well, at least he stayed on brand.

What has been seen cannot be unseen.

@GREGORIAN Re: My "puzzling" comment. Consider this. You go to the grocery store with a list, buy the things on the list and leave. Alternatively, you go to the grocery store hungry, peruse up and down the aisles and leave with something you never would have thought was there. Which one is exploration?

Exploration is about satisfying the hunger of curiosity. Maps don't have to ruin exploration, but they often do. Objective markers nearly always do. Compasses and GPS are helpful for getting to a specific place...and also have a tendency to ruin exploration along the way. As soon as the game starts telling me where to go, it's adding something to my grocery list. And frankly, if the game world isn't interesting enough for me to want to learn my way around it, I'm probably not interested in the game.

@JJ2 If they had a digital edition it would be $3.99. If I could download a piece of cheesecake it would already be in my mouth.

They really need to figure out digital file management. I can't imagine having purchased a digital edition right now. What a pain that will be to deal with.

I'm excited for this one, I hope it eventually gets a physical release.

@Peach64 All Souls games have an easy mode already. It's called leveling up.

@1_W1NG3D_4NG3L Unless they changed it (which I doubt) there's no map. This is a feature in souls, not a bug, but it may just not be for you. Personally I hate maps, GPS's, and objective markers because once a game starts telling me where to go it stops being about exploration and starts being a checklist. Edit: Although, Demons Souls is much less open world and more linear than Dark Souls or Bloodborne, so might be worth a shot for you anyway. I think it's hard to get lost in Demons Souls.

I'd love to be able to create activity cards for myself to jump into a game at a specific point of my choosing. Would have been awesome when I was practicing speedrunning Bloodborne.

I've heard legends of people owning a PS5, but no one I know has yet been able to secure one. My first impression is that it might be a myth.

I feel like I should be excited about this game but every time I see it my response is, "eh."

Good energy. I like his style.

@Shepherd_Tallon I hated those weapon trophies. What a tedious waste of time waiting for an RNG.

I'd be happy if GT7 hits by the end of next year, but they've got enough waiting in the wings at this point that it's looking like a great year regardless. Glad the first year slate looks so packed from Sony, gotta fill in that gap until the 3rd parties really catch up.

@talocaca I wouldn't say the games are hard so much as relentlessly fair. They really pushed the super hard game narrative with Dark Souls' "Prepare to Die" marketing campaign, but in my opinion it's become overblown. If you see death as a learning experience you'll be fine, if dying frustrates you it's probably not for you. If when you die you're the kind of person who says, "what did I do wrong?" And then you use that to adjust how you approach next time, you'll do great.

Kinda wish they'd do a physical release for PS5 with everything on disc. I'd honestly pay full price for it because of all the work they've done since launch. I know they did a new physical release with Beyond, but they've done a ton of work since then. But I mean...when does it end? They can't keep this going for free forever can they?

Will there even be any in stores to buy?

@TheFrenchiestFry : "There's no reason they wouldn't localize a game that's a sequel to their best selling title in their entire history as a company."

Atlus: "Hold my beer."

Spotify integration would be awesome with some games. GT for example. I really wish Beat Saber would add a map editor and then integrate that with Spotify.

Good list. So little decent couch co-op out there these days. Unfortunate.

I don't think Microsoft cares about platforms in the future. Game Pass is where the money is for them. Buying an Xbox is just buying a cheap gaming PC for Game Pass. MS wants Game Pass on as many platforms as possible. If Sony or Nintendo let them launch Game Pass on their platform, I think they'd do it in a heartbeat.

I don't care about any of these features. If they're nonintrusive then I'm happy to ignore them.

Oh weird, it's almost as if people online blew the backwards compatibility issue way out of proportion.

So basically: "But wait, there's more!"

I wonder if pre-order bonuses and special editions will start offering game specific panels.

"What follows is an incredibly uninteresting clash filled with forgettable characters, dire voice acting, and twists you can see coming a mile off."'

So business as usual for Star Wars then?

@Mintie Mandatory permission to play a retail game is indefensible. They can revoke my purchase at any time. If it's a subscription service at least when they shut it off it's clear that I received what I paid for or they should refund charges for service time not delivered. If it's not a service it shouldn't need this crap. And if the co-op is non-optional then it should be local. There's not enough local co-op anyway and I can't afford online co-op. Right now, to play this game with my wife, I need two TVs, two consoles, two copies of the game, internet service, a PS Plus subscription, and the mandatory permission of the game's maker. And wanting to play with people in the same house is not an unusual use case, but online co-op is so expensive for it.

If anyone is deciding to buy a PS5 based on the share button or user interface I think they've got their priorities mixed up. Do I want to know more information about the things listed in this article? Sure. Does it affect my purchasing decision? Nope. Even the handling of tentpole titles. Will I be disappointed if Ghost doesn't get a free PS5 upgrade? Yes. Will I have to live with whatever they do decide to do about it even if that's nothing? Still yes. Will it affect my purchase of a PS5? Nope.

That being said, the launch game silence is much more problematic, and there's no question that I agree that Sony's messaging has been anemic. They really need to be trumpeting the confirmed launch lineup and list of launch window games.

Feels like there are two drivers on this. Things get hot fast and then fade, so for some there's a fear of missing out on being part of the trend. And the internet has made it way too easy to accidentally see spoilers, so there's a fear among some people that if I don't buy it and play it now, it'll be ruined.

Unfortunately, games release in such an unfinished state so often now that it's hard for me to justify paying a premium to play the worst version of a game on day one.

I suspect they know their market. Early adopters are likely to be enthusiasts, and enthusiasts have been the hardest to convince to go 100% digital, so the initial shipments needed to be skewed towards the disc version. I expect the ratio will skew more digital as the generation progresses.

Do they really need more exclusives to create more demand for the system right now? Demand seems too high already. If many of the big hitters are cross gen in the first year, they won't suffer in sales being on a platform with a smaller install base. Meanwhile PS4 owners still get some support instead of being abandoned entirely because there's a shiny new thing AND they get a free upgrade path when they finally do put down for a PS5. Year two titles won't be cross gen, and then sales will ramp up from there. This is a really smart strategy to ease into the generation and spread out conversions from PS4 in a manageable way. Early gen games rarely take full advantage of the hardware anyway, and these cross gen games likely began life in PS4 development anyway.

@Zuljaras I agree with you, it is ok to make a trans character evil. Trans people aren't automatically good people, they run the gamut just like everyone else. However, there are not enough examples of good trans characters in creative works at this time. This lack of representation means that making an evil trans character contributes to skewing public perception. The danger is particularly bad if the author engages in tokenism and frames the character using dehumanizing or outdated stereotypes, because then the character becomes a non-representative caricature masquerading as a true representative of that community or culture. People outside or unfamiliar with that community or culture can't tell the difference between the two.

When my dog misbehaves, I use a negative marker and withhold reward for that behavior, but I continue to reward for good behaviors. Rowling's adult books don't deserve any attention or money. HP though? Are we going to ignore the immense good that HP has done for so many people? Rowling deserves her royalties for HP. And frankly, HP is bigger than her at this point anyway.

If you're feeling squeamish because some of your money for this game goes to Rowling, ask yourself how much of a cut she's getting from the (assuming) $80 you'll spend on this game. Surely no more than 25%, and probably much less on each individual copy. So you gave someone reprehensible at most $20. Ever shopped on Amazon? How about at Game Stop? No one has perfect ethics. If you want to feel better about balancing the scales, why not donate to a pro-trans support organization after purchasing the game? If that's too expensive for you then it's possible you care more about being outraged than taking action.

I think the bigger questions is CAN you buy a PS5?

I don't care about the "issue" of cross-gen games. BotW wasn't made worse by being cross gen, and I'll bet Horizon won't be less than a 10/10 for it either. I also don't care about the silence on the UI features. Playstation's UI has always been garbage. If the SSD is to be believed, I won't be spending much time on that screen anyway. I buy a console to play games, and PS5 definitely has the games.

Which brings me to the game price hikes. I don't mind...if a game launches at a high quality. I certainly won't buy a game blind at launch, or at launch at all if it has issues. If they want me to pay that price, then the product's quality needs to reflect that, and quite frankly the industry's standard day one update followed by numerous patches to fix issues because the game released too early doesn't cut it for me at $60. At $80 it's a complete non-starter.

Wow, some people are impossible to please huh? Price is where I thought, and totally reasonable. Plenty of good looking games coming and Demon's Souls is there at launch. I couldn't be happier.

Whelp, guess I really do need to buy a PS5 day one. Fantastic news.

I think $500/$400 is probably spot on. However, if they want to be aggressive about transitioning people to digital and away from physical, imagine the base model is $450-$500 and the digital comes in at $300-$350. The mid-lifecycle refresh could be an all digital Pro. If they can get the majority of people onto digital editions by the end of PS5's lifecycle, the PS6 probably won't have physical as an option.

My priorities are: Price, Release Date, Launch Lineup. In that order.

I mean...it looks ok I guess? If this is $20 I might buy it. Sad to see how far PoP has fallen these days.

Really looking forward to this one. I think it's shaping up to be a real early gen breakout hit.

Every time I see more Demon's Souls screenshots something in my brain just starts screaming: OH MY GOD IT'S SO PRETTY! WANT! NOW!

I'm curious to see if the discount for going digital will be bigger than people expect. Imagine that the PS5 comes in at $500 and digital edition comes in at $350 or lower. This might be the last generation with physical media consoles regardless of how Sony prices PS5, but if they're aggressive enough about it they could certainly hasten that future.

Who is this even for? The best second console on the market is the Nintendo Switch. Gaming enthusiasts are going to buy a PS5 or Series X instead of this "Roku for Game Pass" box. Maybe it'll find its market, but right now it seems to me that the S is for sucks.

I loved Sands of Time, but somehow I find myself disappointed if it turns out to be that. Would really have loved a remake of 2008 and a proper sequel to finish that story. An unfinished story just gnaws at the edges of my brain. Or barring that, a whole new PoP would have been awesome.

Murray could have taken the money and run. He didn't. Hello Games absolutely redeemed NMS in my estimation, and there's no doubt they've learned valuable lessons about messaging.

As for the new game, I kind of hope they step up their game design. NMS is pretty chill, and it has its fun moments, but I have to make a lot of them myself. It's pretty bland overall. And their new campfire game is pretty bland puzzling overall. What they've done so far has been pretty good, amazing really for such a small team, I'd be really excited to see them kick it up a notch in the gameplay department.