RadioHedgeFund

They pulled it off really well I thought but my take away was that there is no way Abby’s squeamish crew would follow her through a wilderness of sheer peril for 5 straight years looking for a person they don’t even recognise. They’d have drugged her in her sleep and left her for the infected years ago.

Video-put from laptop/phone + Game Pass streaming = immunity to console price hikes?

I’m not there yet but the increasing prices of console gaming makes the PC, and by extension handhelds like the Steamdeck seem like the future.

You have a back catalogue of decades of releases, multiple storefronts, can store away your digital purchases, hoard free giveaways and emulate anything else.

1. Hire Studio Mir
2. Make it into an Anime

It’s a lot cheaper, lets you use the voice actors from the games and still lets you do the whole story properly. Horizon is too expensive on CGI to make live action.

We as gamers never asked developers to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on game development.

As sales of titles like Hades, Stardew and Balatro will attest, graphics are still second fiddle to a game just being fun.

The answer to spiralling development costs is to just not spend that much money on making a game.

The fact Ubisoft still think the modern day story is anything other than a waste of development time speaks volumes about the company.

The whole premise of the Animus was added in to the first game so they could market a title in the USA, against a backdrop of the ‘war on terror’ where you basically play as a historical Muslim out to kill Christian Invaders. (The premise of the Crusades)

Except you don’t play as the Muslim character; you’re playing as a white American barman in the socks of his ancestor. They even have the same voice!

The ‘Assassins vs Templar’s’ historical conspiracy was enough of a plot driver. It’s what makes AC2 such a compelling game in spite of Desmond. They should have ditched the whole Abstergo premise after AC3. Surely nobody enjoyed the forced breaks in piracy in AC4 where you have to wander through offices of Google?!

You had me at ‘Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture X Fallout’

Microsoft may finally achieve the ‘dream’ of the Nuon and create not a console but a chipset that can be integrated into a variety of 3rd party devices. This would mean you’d be able to buy an ‘Xbox’ from ASUS or some sort. I could see them allowing 3rd party store access as a Trojan horse to get Sony’s PC titles on Xbox platforms.

Unless it’s primarily a streaming platform a handheld Xbox will be terrible. Games will have to be properly ported over like they will on Switch 2 for ARM compatibility. Anyone launching an x86 handheld will have about 30 minutes of battery life.

I never really clicked with XIII but XIII-2? Now that was a game!

@Frmknst I’m not disagreeing with you but you can’t say ‘at least 10 things better’ and not mention what you think they were!

That moment will be the end of season cliffhanger. No way it will happen halfway through.

Weird this comes from the same Microsoft who let me play Xbox games I bought 20 years ago on modern hardware.

@Balosi The early days were games between £Free - £5. It quickly became a consumer mental image that £5 was the top of the pricing scale. It’s all very well hobbyist devs making a free app (with some ads?) but how do you monetise a games studio from that? There was an FPS called ‘Eliminate’ in the early days of iOS that used a daily energy limit to stop its servers being hammered. They knew most people wouldn’t pay for more time but some would. Freemium gaming was born.

To its credit mobile gaming tends to wear its IAP on its sleeve. It’s obvious to most customers that a game like Genshin or Nikki contains some optional purchases with the initial game being free. Contrast this with an EA Sports game that makes you pay £60 for the privilege!

@Balosi It’s more the parallel attitude to mobile gaming, that somehow console gaming is special and by releasing it on mobile it will automatically be crap.

@WiiWareWave There are about 250m active consoles on the market, which if we’re being generous is about 125m households as many people own more than one amongst a family, housemates etc. There are 7.2bn active smartphones on the market, each capable of playing most games.

Now take off more casual console gamers, perhaps buying a PS5 to just keep up with sports titles or a Switch for some family gaming and the market for a JRPG like Suikoden is incredibly small. They might sell 2-3m copies (based on Octopath Traveller) but get that many downloads in a day on mobile.

It is, whether we like it or not where the money is. In the non-Japan Asian market consoles are barely a blip. Personally I prefer playing JRPGs on my iPhone just because of the convenience.

There is a lot of entitlement from console gamers who struggle with the idea that they are not top of the food chain. Fact is dedicated gaming devices are a niche, hobbyist industry compared to mobile.

Konami is an Asian company making games primarily for their culturally shared area and the most popular gaming devices there are mobile phones.

I’m not saying the market is perfect nor full of predatory IAP games designed to make money rather than entertain the player but then so is the console space; it’s just here they make you pay upfront for the privilege (Hello, FIFA). One of the best games on console, FFXIV is full of IAP, level skips and a subscription on top of content purchase but that gets a free pass because the store isn’t baked into the game?

But console is also full of great titles of all sorts of shapes and sizes. But then again so is the mobile market too. Don’t be snobbish just because Konami hasn’t saved you a spot at the front of the queue.

Let me play them on my phone and I’ll give you all the money you want.

When the PS4 was riding high the only (only) reason to buy an Xbox beyond supporting your purchases was Forza Horizon. I’d still argue the PS4 (and 5) still have nothing as good.

Of course it’s worth £55.

@HappyGamerGirl It was never about shifting headsets. Just the fact the console is capable of VR made it look more futuristic than the Xbox.

The 2nd game will likely be split in two and fleshed out with you-know-what as the ending to the 2nd season.

It’s kind of weird to think that the only modern console you can play every FF game up to (but not yet including) 16 is an Xbox.

Wouldn’t shock me if they had two titles in development.

If it means Outrun 2026: Coast 2 Coast I’m in.

I’m honestly hoping we get Rare Replay because cross-platform online Perfect Dark 64 is the frikkin dream.

@Deadlyblack Amazingly you can still play the first game cross platform online between PS4, PS3 and Vita!

I mean, people can imagine what they want but in all versions of the game Aeris isn't around for very long. It's quite difficult for Cloud to date a corpse.

Id put good money on the majority of PS5 owners being the CoD/FIFA crowd who are a welcome part of the industry but don't buy many games. They will have bought the console on name alone.

If Sony want to recoup their mega game budgets then the Xbox and Switch 2 might be the places to do it. They would hardly lose business porting over games older than, say 4 years.

The PSVR2's mere existence was only to show on the fence gamers that the PS5 was more future forwards than the Xbox. This is Sony, a company that made Robot Dogs and Bluetooth RC cars (in 2004) so that people associate it with cool ***** and they sell more TVs.

Never underestimate the value of mind share.

If digital purchases are not ownership then rental seems e better option

It's never good to see a monopoly but it's Nintendo. After putting up with endless forum posts stating 'Nintendoomed' during the GameCube years it's bloody good to not only see them on top again but doing so with a steady release of pay-once titles that emphasise offline fun instead of online moneygrabs.

It's a shame Astrobot is the outlier for Sony because it used to be so easy to recommend a PS3 then 4 for all the family games that were available, from Littlebigplanet to Singstar. Instead they write off $200m on an online game nobody wanted. Imagine how much it would have cost to make a new Buzz title or a Sackboy 2 instead.

Riddle me this: why has every console since the PS3 required a lengthy shutdown process whilst you can just turn off the mains on an Xbox and it’s fine?

Perhaps platforms just need to completely remove user reviews altogether?

Critics exist for a reason.

I still don’t know why they changed their strategy from the PS4 days: use smaller ports, remasters and indie exclusives to fill the void and audience appetites whilst you bring out some decent single player titles. This is what people want!

The PS5 has only sold so well because Microsoft threw their ecosystem in the bin with the Xbox One and the FIFA crowd (a huge pay of the market) will buy it for the brand reliability.

As an Xbox owner who only stayed to keep his 360 collection I thought the PS4 a treasure trove of delight yet there isn’t anything, bar the release of Horizon 3 that autos currently make me but a PS5.

The Switch 2 is likely to out a dent in that plan.

Since they started pulling their own games from storefronts it seemed pretty obvious a streaming service was on the cards. I’m amazed no outlets picked up on this months ago

At this point you’re knee deep in an ecosystem. Sony customers won’t budge to Xbox because they want to keep access to all their old titles.

Microsoft lost the console war the minute Sony posted that game swapping meme. It’s easier for Xbox players to jump this way than the other.

@somnambulance You have the second best portmanteau based username on here!

@somnambulance And you don’t lose any real money when you lose!

I’d be interested to see how deep this partnership goes. Sony doesn’t view Apple as a direct competitor. They allowed the port of games like Flower, Journey and even Death Stranding on iOS whilst under Sony publishing licence for example.

As Sony happily release PlayStation games on agnostic devices like the PC and we know have iOS devices capable of playing PS4 titles I wonder if we will see games like Horizon or Spider-Man on Apple devices?

Probably dying a lot on Fortnite OG.

Fortnite is at its best when it completely embraces its theme. Too many battle passes are just one or two matching skins and a load of junk. The best recent season was the Ancient Greek gods one because they went all in. Although the lack of Zagreus as the guest icon skin was grating, I’m a big Avatar fan so it gets a free pass.

This season looks absolutely sick. And for people that don’t want to play there is still Reload and the upcoming C1 OG cycle.

@Th3solution The mobile version is the worst. Imagine having it available to play in your pocket all day, every day 😰

Clearly the enemies are influenced by Horizon but the gameplay looks a little more PSO2/Monster Hunter.

The whole point of the instant kills in an rpg environment is rewarding player skill rather than just stacking the odds through grinding.

I like the idea that certain enemies can only be killed by certain types of stealth kill. It makes the little bases and hideouts into even more of a puzzle box.

@SleeplessKnight Amazingly it’s actually better!

@LogicStrikesAgain So I can forego a PS5 and just set it up from cold with my PSN account?

Can it be used without aPS5 at all?

To add insult to injury Sony are also asking for £60 for a game that should probably be £30.

@HonestHick Halo Infinite was a cracking title and that didn't help. Fact I'd that as far as new games go the shooter genre has died. Nobody plays anything that isn't Call of Duty, Fortnite or CSGO

@nomither6 Clearly this is not true though. The Legend of Zelda is the biggest franchise in gaming and on a careful 5-year Dev cycle for mainline entries. We haven't seen a sequel to Mario Odyssey in 7 years because they're likely cooking up the next one for the Switch 2 launch.

How do we define AAA anyway? Technically superior? Games that last ages? Big open worlds? Regardless I would probably have listed Tetris Effect as the best AAA title of the last generation because of how bloody good it is. 10/10 from most places yet it's still just the Tetris.

I'm not trying to make out Nintendo as a better company that anyone else. I enjoy Playstation titles and only actually own an Xbox as my main console. But they had a plan for the Switch with regards to the ongoing release schedule and it worked.

Fact of the matter is this generation is weird. Sony are only beating Xbox because of the FIFA and Madden crown just wanting the next PS4 to play their annual games on, Microsoft have had way more exclusives out and aren't ahead in any way and Nintendo might actually topped the PS2 with a sequel to the WiiU.

@get2sammyb I think it's more than the money could have been better spent on a few 7/10 smaller exclusive titles to fatten out the release calendar.

Nintendo knows what it's doing with a fixed budget for games and a 3-year dev period.