First, remasters of recent games are relatively cheap to make. Assets for recent games are likely easy to locate, and the ownership isn't usually a mess making licensing easy. It may be harder to track down the source code and graphics for older games, and studio ownership may have changed making it difficult to figure out who really owns what.
Second, they're selling. It's like microtransactions - you can complain about them all you want, but SOMEONE is still spending money on them, so we see more. So long as sales justify the cost, they'll keep coming.
I love that game, but I'm not sure I'm interested in a remaster. It was a lot of fun and I wouldn't mind playing again for a bit, but there's other stuff I haven't played that I already own or will cost less than a remaster.
If they decide to resurrect the franchise for a sequel, I might change my mind.
Personally, I want MORE PS5 Pro news - but not just yet. I want it when people like Digital Foundry have a real one in their hands and can do some honest comparisons to the base PS5.
It drops on my birthday, so it seems like a perfect gift, right? But even if I was willing to spend $800 right now (if I buy it, I need the disk drive...but that's outside my current budget given recent expenses), I'd want some real-world comparisons first, before I decide.
We're still too much in the wild speculation stage, and not enough in the true side-by-side comparison stage. Let's see what the real-world improvements actually are before we celebrate it or condemn it.
I don't understand why people are willing to pay more to start a few days earlier - but then, I've learned to curb my FOMO and wait until a good sale, so I'm rarely leaping in on release day for any game.
It makes more sense to me for season-based games like EA Sports titles, where a few extra days could give you a competitive advantage early.
You're asking for a list - who says Microsoft has such a list?
This presumes that Microsoft has a master plan already written that they're just waiting to tell us about when they feel like it. Business rarely works like that.
They tried something with a few former exclusives, and watched how that worked out. If they'd bombed, or caused enough backlash to scare them, that would have been the end of it. Now, they're trying some more. They can afford to try a variety of different things to figure out what seems to give them the best chance to make the most money. THAT is what they'll do.
I think it's absurd to argue that this hurts Microsoft's brand. Look at all the conversation, all the speculation about which game SHOULD go next or MIGHT go next! This is free PR for Microsoft, and it only helps them. Every game people mention as a possibility is an advertisement reminding everyone they could go play that game on XBox, and every actual announcement is an invitation to a new market to pay full price for an old game. It's a win-win.
@UntilRespawn Who would have thought an article with the headline "15 Minutes of Astro Bot PS5 Footage Has Leaked Online" would have spoilers? It was impossible to predict!
Absolutely. I played 4 a TON, and had a blast with it. For some reason, I never got into 5. I can't really explain why, it just didn't resonate with me the way 4 did, for some reason.
It seemed to have everything 4 had - maybe I just felt like I was playing the same game with a new map? I'd think that would be awesome, but it wasn't.
Here it is six months later. I picked up the disk version, and I've been playing it more than is healthy. I'm obsessed. The game itself would tell me that's a bad sign.
Half the time I'm also frustrated, yelling at the car if I forgot to put it in park, or at the bunnies attacking it (they're called bunnies, but they're not furry, that's all I'll say), or at the fact that it seems when the bunnies attack it the car goes out of park on its own. I wonder if I can fix that when I get back to the shop?
If you like arcade-feel driving games, this is a blast. There's view freedom while you're driving, so you can peer out the left or right window at speed (and run into something), but that helps you see the map on the passenger's seat or the health display on the dash or the thing you're passing that you definitely need to stop to scan or pick up or both.
Biggest issue is you need to scan everything, which you can only do on foot. Failing to do that will lock upgrades you will need - and it may not be easy to figure out what you need to find again so you can scan it again.
I got past the first boss exactly ONCE in Returnal. I loved the idea, and the use of adaptive triggers was awesome (and not repeated anywhere I recall), but I just never got into it enough when I couldn't survive long enough to finish it.
What I'm absolutely hooked on right now is Pacific Drive. It's a rogue-like, in that you're constantly upgrading your car and yourself to survive deeper and deeper into the zone, though it's perhaps not the kind of game people think of when they say rogue-like. But once I got a few runs in, I fell in love. I'm probably getting close to the end, and a bit wary of coming to the conclusion, but I love it.
I like it. If it cost the same as a regular Dualsense I might have bought it, but I'm not paying a premium for another controller. I have enough. It definitely looks cool, but who looks at their controller while they're playing, anyway?
I've got nearly a quarter million unread emails in my "Promotions" folder in gmail (234,689), and 48,145 unread emails in my "Updates" folder where these announcements go. Who cares? I see the subject, nod my head, and forget about it until I see an article like this.
We know Sony had overproduced, and had inventory on hand. If this is a fire sale to dump that inventory, and then no more will ever be made, then this isn't the beginning of a bright future but the first nail in the coffin.
It's not clear to me that Sony sees PSVR2 as something to support going forward. The history of the original PSVR speaks to that, not to mention the Vita. I'd like to be optimistic, and perhaps third-party developers making games primarily for other VR products will port their games to PSVR2...but that's hardly a guarantee.
Given that, it's really hard to jump in now, unless there are games already available you know you want to play. I'm generally a fan of more arcade-style driving games, but GT with PSVR2 has me wondering...probably not enough to drop $400+ on it, though.
I'm all for arcade-style basketball - but "streetball culture” makes me balk a bit. I'm more a fan of NBA Jam than NBA Street. I'm more interested in gameplay than characters.
I really hope they do a demo. I might end up loving this, or hating it - and I'll probably avoid it until it's cheap if I don't get a chance to try it out to be sure which way it goes for me.
I buy a lot of digital, both with games and movies. It makes it easier to switch between titles.
For movies, the quality often suffers compared to disk, especially with UHD disks (less so for DVDs). So as long as consoles with drives also play movies, I'll be buying the console with a drive. But my wife just wants convenience, and she'll stream content rather than pull out a disk. I suspect most people are like that - and honestly, some of the streaming video content can be pretty darn good quality, if you've got the bandwidth for it.
I think the same is true of games. Since you can't just pull out a disk, put it in the console, and start playing any more - not until you wait to copy the content to the system (if there's anything to copy from the disk other than a key) AND download patches and upgrades - then the convenience between disk and digital for games is already 100% in favor of digital. With no quality difference between the two, digital makes even more sense for games than for movies.
STREAMING is another story. I think the disk-vs-digital battle is essentially over, with disk being a niche market from now on. The real battle now is whether streaming is good enough compared to playing it on your own hardware - and that has a chance to really change as higher-bandwidth, lower-latency internet continues to expand.
There's not enough difference between the PS5 Pro specs, as previously discussed, and the PS5 itself to justify them waiting any longer. If it does not drop in 2024, then it's either not coming at all or it won't be the same hardware that's been widely discussed in recent months.
Never had that problem - might be a PS Plus Super Ultimate Top Tier Edition (or whatever they call it) problem.
What bugs me is that there are screenshots and videos for some games some of the time - but ONLY on the console and never in the web/app version of the store.
At the moment, my wishlist is broken on the web store, so I can't even test anything out. Good work, Sony.
Not much of a bundle. I'd be more impressed if it was a special edition with artwork on the panels and controller - heck, I'd probably try to import some.
I guess it's a story because any new SKU is something of a story. But it's not a big deal.
One thing I'll throw in that I haven't seen mentioned yet. Do you like the F2P model, where the game costs nothing but there's paid DLC content or gacha or pay-to-win or cosmetics for sale? Because GamePass games are, in a sense, F2P and are more likely to lean into after-purchase monetization.
Now, I acknowledge that's a weak argument in a sense; any more post-purchase content for sale is almost a given, whether the game ends up on GP or PS+ or not. But at the same time, I think it solidifies the NEED for such content to help pay for the game development. If you're nearly giving away the game itself (and there's evidence the revenue third-party developers get from these service deals is dropping), the money has to come from SOMEWHERE.
But all that revenue gets split HOW many ways, to how many developers? If a developer releases a game that sells 1 million copies at $60 each, they know they're probably getting something like $30 million in revenue (after stores and publishers take their cut). If you're going to pay a developer (you don't own) to put their game on Game Pass, you have to find some way to make them think it's a deal - a guaranteed minimum, a scale based on engagement, something. There's little transparency in what these deals look like, so we don't really know how good a deal it is on that side.
In other words, four billion in revenue for Microsoft is great if they have two billion in costs, but it's pretty awful if they've got over four billion in costs (including revenue sharing). It's also pretty awful if selling the games instead of putting them on GamePass would have brought in six billion in revenue, isn't it?
We don't really know the cost on Microsoft's side - but I suspect it's a lot higher that you seem to think. I've read plenty of experts who believe it's a money-losing proposition, still. Perhaps a 33% price hike (from $15-20) will change that. Perhaps not.
@KundaliniRising333 Let's be entirely really here. If it were Sony offering first and third party big budget AAA, AA, and promising indie titles day one to their subscription service and MS not doing so near everyone on here would be praising it as a pro consumer move and amazing value and trashing Ms.
True enough - it would be an amazing value and people would praise it. Heck, I'd sign up for it, even as I questioned its sustainability, and I'd be waiting for the bait-and-switch to hit.
It's amazing Microsoft has gone as long as they have without raising prices, but that really seems to be due to the deep pockets they have where they can sustain losses many businesses can't. And their willingness to sustain those losses seems to be dropping. I suspect this won't be their last price hike.
I don't question GamePass because I don't like Microsoft - I question GamePass because it doesn't seem like a sustainable business model (especially when I dropped my subscription after my initial 3-year deal expired, and didn't really miss my Series S sitting idle for a year). With the prices going UP, I'm less likely to renew than before.
@trev666 I personally would like the option pay more for ps+ premium and then day 1 games go on there.
How much more?
If PS+ Premium was $60/month with one free day one release every month, is that still a deal? Sure, if you were willing to buy 12 games a year at $80 each, then it's a good deal...but for most people, it wouldn't be.
The question is, what price point does it make sense for both sides? It's higher than $15/month, I think Microsoft just admitted that. I bet it's higher than $20/month, too. We'll see how long it takes to hike those rates again, or restrict the number of day one releases, or both.
If I wasn't already into Genshin, I might try it. But like the first two commenters, I don't have that kind of time. I'd like to play something else now and then, not all Hoyoverse all the time.
@OldGamer999 No reason to think world=level - if the 50 and 80 numbers are both accurate, it either means some worlds have more than one level (perhaps as many as half of them), or there are 30 other levels not associated with a world.
It's too early to be sure - but if they're saying 80 levels, I'll believe them until someone can show it's wrong.
Sounds like this might eliminate the feature/issue many kart-style racers have - the player who memorized the track the best usually wins, especially if there are hidden shortcuts not commonly known yet. With a new track every time, the advantage goes to the twitchiest racer, not necessarily the one with the more hours in.
Anybody who is the slightest bit interested in Borderlands 3 surely has bought it by now. I'm getting nostalgia vibes from it. I had a lot of fun with that game, what feels like a long, long time ago.
The same is surely true with Among Us, right?
So what's left - a sports game which might appeal to a few people who were holding off on the latest iteration until a month or two before the next annual release drops and this version goes on sale for under $5 everywhere? Yep.
This isn't the same environment where the first Playstation helped usher in CD-ROMs, and the PS3 helped usher in the Blu-Ray format as the winning HD format. With streaming as popular as it is now, even the UHD disks are selling in lower numbers. So while Sony is a movie studio and may have a reason to try to help the Blu-Ray UHD market, it may not be enough to keep the disk in the device.
I'm hopeful the new PS5 format will be something Sony keeps around - all digital by default, but with the option for a connected, semi-integrated drive. But I think the analyst is right - what matters isn't what the die-hard community wants, what matters is what the mass market will buy.
I'm pretty sure that paragraph was not there when I posted my comment - if it was, then yes, I missed it. I'd looked at articles from two different sites trying to find that answer, and neither said anything about existing owners at the time.
Personally, I prefer games with adjustable difficulty. And I prefer games that I feel I can leave and come back to, without being completely lost and having to start over. Elden Ring doesn't seem to be either of those things.
So, they just won't get my money, and I just won't play it. Oh, some day I may give it a shot, if it's free or nearly free, but I might not. And that's okay - clearly they're not missing my money, and I have enough things to play I'll be fine without Elden Ring. We call that a win-win.
The XBox Series X, the original XBox, and all the XBoxes in between are more or less the same hardware design, just with upgraded components. They all ran on 8086-based chips, they all ran Windows DirectX APIs under the hood, they're all the same in many fundamental ways.
The same is not true for Playstations before the PS4. It's particularly not true for the PS3, which had a radically different architecture than anything before or since. The hardware and the software has changed over time in more/different ways than the XBox.
I know you all look at black box that runs games and think they're all fundamentally the same, but that's simply not true.
Is there any upgrade for people who bought the original Atari 50 when it came out? I do like having some of these games around, but I'm honestly not spending much time playing the original Combat or Breakout on my PS5 (though I did a run through Adventure, for old time's sake).
Now if they came up with a paddle PS5 controller like the old paddle controller for the 2600, THAT is what made so many of the paddle-based games playable and fun! They don't translate well at all to modern game controllers, even mice or trackballs.
So it's been a little over a year...anybody know if any of the issues are patched? Since this is coming to Plus Extra I might give it a look, but I don't have high hopes given the review.
But at some point, they'll shut it down and you won't be able to play it any more even if you bought a copy (see also, The Crew, the original).
I tried to like The Crew Motorfest, and tried both a beta version (which was practically unplayable with all the beta notices plastered over the screen obscuring your view) and a free weekend of the release version, and it's just not the right balance of arcade and realism for me. I'm not sure what it was, but I didn't feel I could control any car reasonably well, and wasn't going to spend the time to sort it out, I just gave up.
For those who enjoy it - it's awesome to get more free content!
Will I be buying both? Absolutely, unquestionably.
Will I own either one in 2024? Maybe...no, probably not. I'll wait for a sale and pick them up in 2025 - though if my kid who is a huge Horizon fan buys Lego Horizon, I might borrow it.
Preorder cosmetics almost always end up free eventually - nice to see that. And it's nice for everyone else to get to play the Playstation-exclusive side quest, it was short but fun.
I finished the game once, and started again with a new character so I could try a different house, but I just fizzled out. Maybe I've been away long enough to give it a shot again (and to re-learn flying a broom, the controls on that are slick once you master them, but didn't feel intuitive at all, at first).
People are upset that Keighley squashed the hype - would you rather go in hyped up and expecting a lot, so you get disappointed during the thing? Or would you rather be disappointed now, leading up to it?
It does beg the question of what's the point of doing a showcase (sorry, a "Fest") if you don't have much to showcase, though.
It's not national security secrets - nobody is going to be killed or injured or start a war over this stuff.
That said, if Sony and studios really care about a big reveal, they need to figure out how to protect the big reveal. From what I heard, this didn't have much worth protecting, so....
@MrGawain If you own a shoe shop and you notice you’re selling far more wellingtons than anything else, you don’t stop selling trainers and sandals because they only sell 20% of what the wellingtons do. You offer as many different designs so you can attract the most customers.
Actually, no - no you don't. Not if you want to stay in business.
You don't EXPAND the selection of the stuff that isn't selling to try to bring in the customers that aren't there any more, not unless you have some solid proof those customers are coming to your store and leaving without buying because they can only find wellingtons. If only wellingtons are selling, then you get a bigger selection of wellingtons, not a bigger selection of trainers and sandals - because you only have so much store space, and you don't want to take up space with things that won't sell at the expense of space for what DOES sell. You may not like it if you want sandals or trainers, but that's reality, and it repeats across industries.
Sony may not have the inventory and shelf space management issues a shoe store does, as PSN can hold a nearly infinite number of games, but they do have a finite number of developers which limits how many first-party games they can produce. Meanwhile, all the independent developers are reading the same tea leaves and trying to make games they think will sell. Sony can't run a 24-hour State of Play to highlight every single game that might come out in the next six months (though that would be a cool thing to try, wouldn't it?).
So they make what they think will sell. And some of that will miss the mark.
@jamiestogden You can use it away from home, but bandwidth and latency are more likely to start being an issue. A lot depends on the quality of your Internet connection - both the upload speed for the network the PS5 is on, and the download speed on the connection for your Portal (or any other Remote Play device - I don't personally have a Portal, but a ROG Ally, and I have similar issues). You won't have a great experience if either connection is low bandwidth or high latency, or if the route between the two is bad.
The better the connections, the better the experience will be. And I do miss not having the full DualSense support with my ROG Ally (just not enough to buy a Portal as well).
I think this week is the first discount for Spider-Man 2 in PSN - doing that much in sales at what was mostly full price (maybe some discounts for some physical sales?) is bonkers.
Once it starts going on the sale rotation and we get deeper discounts than the $20 this week, I think it will continue to sell. I'm toying with picking it up, finally, but haven't decided yet.
They need something to announce the PS5 Pro. That could be in late summer.
What if they're combining that with a Showcase or State of Play, to show all the new games that will be awesome on the PS5 and even "awesomer" on the PS5 Pro, all in one big reveal? Is that possible? Crazy talk?
Lots of memories playing SingStar with the family.
Played EyePet, too - had to import a copy as I recall, it either wasn't available in the US or hadn't arrived yet, but was a bit underwhelmed with that one. Fun idea, mediocre implementation.
Sad to see these closures. It's not quite the same level of desolation as over on the green side, but the whole industry seems to be downsizing. Here's hoping people can land on their feet and find success and profit in other projects.
The holdouts who play on a PS4 but don't own a PS5 will likely start upgrading as more and more games come out they can't play. But we're just NOW at the end of the PS4/5 cross-platform era, we're only NOW seeing PS5 exclusives without PS4 versions. As new exclusives hit, especially first-party exclusives, the pressure to upgrade will rise.
And maybe, as the PS5 Pro drops, people will be able to pick up used PS5s for less, or even skip to the PS5 Pro.
Counter that with inflation making it harder to drop a lot of money on entertainment, though, and it might be a bumpy ride for Sony. I still think PS5 adoption is only going up from here, but there are obvious challenges. It's always easier to grow in a healthy economy.
Comments 626
Re: Reaction: Why There Are So Many Unnecessary PS5 Remasters for Games That Don't Need Them
This is absurdly simple - they're profitable.
First, remasters of recent games are relatively cheap to make. Assets for recent games are likely easy to locate, and the ownership isn't usually a mess making licensing easy. It may be harder to track down the source code and graphics for older games, and studio ownership may have changed making it difficult to figure out who really owns what.
Second, they're selling. It's like microtransactions - you can complain about them all you want, but SOMEONE is still spending money on them, so we see more. So long as sales justify the cost, they'll keep coming.
Re: Rumour: Days Gone PS5 Remaster Speculation Starts to Spread
I love that game, but I'm not sure I'm interested in a remaster. It was a lot of fun and I wouldn't mind playing again for a bit, but there's other stuff I haven't played that I already own or will cost less than a remaster.
If they decide to resurrect the franchise for a sequel, I might change my mind.
Re: PS5 Pro Shows Real Promise in First Expert Analysis
Personally, I want MORE PS5 Pro news - but not just yet. I want it when people like Digital Foundry have a real one in their hands and can do some honest comparisons to the base PS5.
It drops on my birthday, so it seems like a perfect gift, right? But even if I was willing to spend $800 right now (if I buy it, I need the disk drive...but that's outside my current budget given recent expenses), I'd want some real-world comparisons first, before I decide.
We're still too much in the wild speculation stage, and not enough in the true side-by-side comparison stage. Let's see what the real-world improvements actually are before we celebrate it or condemn it.
Re: PS5 Fans Who Paid $110 for Star Wars Outlaws Early Access Asked to Restart Saves
I don't understand why people are willing to pay more to start a few days earlier - but then, I've learned to curb my FOMO and wait until a good sale, so I'm rarely leaping in on release day for any game.
It makes more sense to me for season-based games like EA Sports titles, where a few extra days could give you a competitive advantage early.
Re: Fatal Run 2089 Revives Atari's Classic Combat Racer on PS5
Arcade racing, shooting...sign me up.
Re: Reaction: It's Time for Xbox to Tell Us Which Games It's Bringing to PS5, and Which Games It Isn't
You're asking for a list - who says Microsoft has such a list?
This presumes that Microsoft has a master plan already written that they're just waiting to tell us about when they feel like it. Business rarely works like that.
They tried something with a few former exclusives, and watched how that worked out. If they'd bombed, or caused enough backlash to scare them, that would have been the end of it. Now, they're trying some more. They can afford to try a variety of different things to figure out what seems to give them the best chance to make the most money. THAT is what they'll do.
I think it's absurd to argue that this hurts Microsoft's brand. Look at all the conversation, all the speculation about which game SHOULD go next or MIGHT go next! This is free PR for Microsoft, and it only helps them. Every game people mention as a possibility is an advertisement reminding everyone they could go play that game on XBox, and every actual announcement is an invitation to a new market to pay full price for an old game. It's a win-win.
Re: Beloved PS2, PS1 Sports Series Backyard Making Shock PS5 Comeback
Let me see a gameplay trailer (and a price tag), and we'll see.
Re: 15 Minutes of Astro Bot PS5 Footage Has Leaked Online
@UntilRespawn Who would have thought an article with the headline "15 Minutes of Astro Bot PS5 Footage Has Leaked Online" would have spoilers? It was impossible to predict!
Re: Rumour: Xbox to Announce a 'Big' Game Coming to PS5 at Gamescom
Absolutely. I played 4 a TON, and had a blast with it. For some reason, I never got into 5. I can't really explain why, it just didn't resonate with me the way 4 did, for some reason.
It seemed to have everything 4 had - maybe I just felt like I was playing the same game with a new map? I'd think that would be awesome, but it wasn't.
Re: Pacific Drive (PS5) - The Car Is the Reasonably Priced Star of Deep, Dense Survival Game
Here it is six months later. I picked up the disk version, and I've been playing it more than is healthy. I'm obsessed. The game itself would tell me that's a bad sign.
Half the time I'm also frustrated, yelling at the car if I forgot to put it in park, or at the bunnies attacking it (they're called bunnies, but they're not furry, that's all I'll say), or at the fact that it seems when the bunnies attack it the car goes out of park on its own. I wonder if I can fix that when I get back to the shop?
If you like arcade-feel driving games, this is a blast. There's view freedom while you're driving, so you can peer out the left or right window at speed (and run into something), but that helps you see the map on the passenger's seat or the health display on the dash or the thing you're passing that you definitely need to stop to scan or pick up or both.
Biggest issue is you need to scan everything, which you can only do on foot. Failing to do that will lock upgrades you will need - and it may not be easy to figure out what you need to find again so you can scan it again.
Re: Poll: Rate Your Favourite PS5 Roguelike Games
I got past the first boss exactly ONCE in Returnal. I loved the idea, and the use of adaptive triggers was awesome (and not repeated anywhere I recall), but I just never got into it enough when I couldn't survive long enough to finish it.
What I'm absolutely hooked on right now is Pacific Drive. It's a rogue-like, in that you're constantly upgrading your car and yourself to survive deeper and deeper into the zone, though it's perhaps not the kind of game people think of when they say rogue-like. But once I got a few runs in, I fell in love. I'm probably getting close to the end, and a bit wary of coming to the conclusion, but I love it.
Re: Poll: Have You Pre-Ordered an Astro Bot PS5 DualSense Controller?
I like it. If it cost the same as a regular Dualsense I might have bought it, but I'm not paying a premium for another controller. I have enough. It definitely looks cool, but who looks at their controller while they're playing, anyway?
Re: Movie Review: Borderlands - As Bland As the Brand It's Based On
So from the review, it sounds like all the best bits are in the trailer? Typical.
I'll definitely watch it, when I don't have to pay extra to do so. Sometimes these kind of dumb movies can still work if you're in the right mood.
Re: Oh No, PS Plus Email Spam Has Suddenly Returned
It's weird anybody cares about this.
I've got nearly a quarter million unread emails in my "Promotions" folder in gmail (234,689), and 48,145 unread emails in my "Updates" folder where these announcements go. Who cares? I see the subject, nod my head, and forget about it until I see an article like this.
Re: Talking Point: Is It Finally the Right Time to Buy PSVR2?
We know Sony had overproduced, and had inventory on hand. If this is a fire sale to dump that inventory, and then no more will ever be made, then this isn't the beginning of a bright future but the first nail in the coffin.
It's not clear to me that Sony sees PSVR2 as something to support going forward. The history of the original PSVR speaks to that, not to mention the Vita. I'd like to be optimistic, and perhaps third-party developers making games primarily for other VR products will port their games to PSVR2...but that's hardly a guarantee.
Given that, it's really hard to jump in now, unless there are games already available you know you want to play. I'm generally a fan of more arcade-style driving games, but GT with PSVR2 has me wondering...probably not enough to drop $400+ on it, though.
Re: The Spirit of NBA Street Lives on in The Run: Got Next on PS5
I'm all for arcade-style basketball - but "streetball culture” makes me balk a bit. I'm more a fan of NBA Jam than NBA Street. I'm more interested in gameplay than characters.
I really hope they do a demo. I might end up loving this, or hating it - and I'll probably avoid it until it's cheap if I don't get a chance to try it out to be sure which way it goes for me.
Re: Capcom Says It Won't Give Up on Physical Games, Despite Utter Domination of Digital Sales
I buy a lot of digital, both with games and movies. It makes it easier to switch between titles.
For movies, the quality often suffers compared to disk, especially with UHD disks (less so for DVDs). So as long as consoles with drives also play movies, I'll be buying the console with a drive. But my wife just wants convenience, and she'll stream content rather than pull out a disk. I suspect most people are like that - and honestly, some of the streaming video content can be pretty darn good quality, if you've got the bandwidth for it.
I think the same is true of games. Since you can't just pull out a disk, put it in the console, and start playing any more - not until you wait to copy the content to the system (if there's anything to copy from the disk other than a key) AND download patches and upgrades - then the convenience between disk and digital for games is already 100% in favor of digital. With no quality difference between the two, digital makes even more sense for games than for movies.
STREAMING is another story. I think the disk-vs-digital battle is essentially over, with disk being a niche market from now on. The real battle now is whether streaming is good enough compared to playing it on your own hardware - and that has a chance to really change as higher-bandwidth, lower-latency internet continues to expand.
Re: PS5 Pro Still Likely to Launch This Year, Tokyo Game Show Reveal Possible
There's not enough difference between the PS5 Pro specs, as previously discussed, and the PS5 itself to justify them waiting any longer. If it does not drop in 2024, then it's either not coming at all or it won't be the same hardware that's been widely discussed in recent months.
Re: We Find This PS5 Wishlist Issue Irrationally Irksome
Never had that problem - might be a PS Plus Super Ultimate Top Tier Edition (or whatever they call it) problem.
What bugs me is that there are screenshots and videos for some games some of the time - but ONLY on the console and never in the web/app version of the store.
At the moment, my wishlist is broken on the web store, so I can't even test anything out. Good work, Sony.
Re: Free-to-Play Phenomenon Genshin Impact Gets Its Own PS5 Console Bundle in Japan
Not much of a bundle. I'd be more impressed if it was a special edition with artwork on the panels and controller - heck, I'd probably try to import some.
I guess it's a story because any new SKU is something of a story. But it's not a big deal.
Re: Talking Point: Was Sony Right to Resist Adding PS5 Exclusives to PS Plus Day One?
One thing I'll throw in that I haven't seen mentioned yet. Do you like the F2P model, where the game costs nothing but there's paid DLC content or gacha or pay-to-win or cosmetics for sale? Because GamePass games are, in a sense, F2P and are more likely to lean into after-purchase monetization.
Now, I acknowledge that's a weak argument in a sense; any more post-purchase content for sale is almost a given, whether the game ends up on GP or PS+ or not. But at the same time, I think it solidifies the NEED for such content to help pay for the game development. If you're nearly giving away the game itself (and there's evidence the revenue third-party developers get from these service deals is dropping), the money has to come from SOMEWHERE.
Re: Talking Point: Was Sony Right to Resist Adding PS5 Exclusives to PS Plus Day One?
But all that revenue gets split HOW many ways, to how many developers? If a developer releases a game that sells 1 million copies at $60 each, they know they're probably getting something like $30 million in revenue (after stores and publishers take their cut). If you're going to pay a developer (you don't own) to put their game on Game Pass, you have to find some way to make them think it's a deal - a guaranteed minimum, a scale based on engagement, something. There's little transparency in what these deals look like, so we don't really know how good a deal it is on that side.
In other words, four billion in revenue for Microsoft is great if they have two billion in costs, but it's pretty awful if they've got over four billion in costs (including revenue sharing). It's also pretty awful if selling the games instead of putting them on GamePass would have brought in six billion in revenue, isn't it?
We don't really know the cost on Microsoft's side - but I suspect it's a lot higher that you seem to think. I've read plenty of experts who believe it's a money-losing proposition, still. Perhaps a 33% price hike (from $15-20) will change that. Perhaps not.
Re: Talking Point: Was Sony Right to Resist Adding PS5 Exclusives to PS Plus Day One?
True enough - it would be an amazing value and people would praise it. Heck, I'd sign up for it, even as I questioned its sustainability, and I'd be waiting for the bait-and-switch to hit.
It's amazing Microsoft has gone as long as they have without raising prices, but that really seems to be due to the deep pockets they have where they can sustain losses many businesses can't. And their willingness to sustain those losses seems to be dropping. I suspect this won't be their last price hike.
I don't question GamePass because I don't like Microsoft - I question GamePass because it doesn't seem like a sustainable business model (especially when I dropped my subscription after my initial 3-year deal expired, and didn't really miss my Series S sitting idle for a year). With the prices going UP, I'm less likely to renew than before.
Re: Talking Point: Was Sony Right to Resist Adding PS5 Exclusives to PS Plus Day One?
How much more?
If PS+ Premium was $60/month with one free day one release every month, is that still a deal? Sure, if you were willing to buy 12 games a year at $80 each, then it's a good deal...but for most people, it wouldn't be.
The question is, what price point does it make sense for both sides? It's higher than $15/month, I think Microsoft just admitted that. I bet it's higher than $20/month, too. We'll see how long it takes to hike those rates again, or restrict the number of day one releases, or both.
Re: Arcade Racer Distance Launches This Week on PS5, PS4 After 10-Year Wait
Price is up. $20 on PSN. Same regular price as on Steam...though it's on sale for $5 right now over there.
Re: Arcade Racer Distance Launches This Week on PS5, PS4 After 10-Year Wait
@TheMightyImp2 A quick Google search shows it's on Steam.
Recent Reviews: Very Positive (32)
All Reviews: Very Positive (5,314)
Release Date: Sep 18, 2018
Re: Poll: Are You Playing Zenless Zone Zero?
If I wasn't already into Genshin, I might try it. But like the first two commenters, I don't have that kind of time. I'd like to play something else now and then, not all Hoyoverse all the time.
Re: Astro Bot's PS5 File Size Is About Six Times Bigger Than Astro's Playroom
@OldGamer999 No reason to think world=level - if the 50 and 80 numbers are both accurate, it either means some worlds have more than one level (perhaps as many as half of them), or there are 30 other levels not associated with a world.
It's too early to be sure - but if they're saying 80 levels, I'll believe them until someone can show it's wrong.
Re: Make Way Is Micro Machines with DIY Race Tracks, and It's Out Now on PS5, PS4
Sounds like this might eliminate the feature/issue many kart-style racers have - the player who memorized the track the best usually wins, especially if there are hidden shortcuts not commonly known yet. With a new track every time, the advantage goes to the twitchiest racer, not necessarily the one with the more hours in.
I'm intrigued.
Re: PS Plus Essential Games for July 2024 Announced
Meh.
Anybody who is the slightest bit interested in Borderlands 3 surely has bought it by now. I'm getting nostalgia vibes from it. I had a lot of fun with that game, what feels like a long, long time ago.
The same is surely true with Among Us, right?
So what's left - a sports game which might appeal to a few people who were holding off on the latest iteration until a month or two before the next annual release drops and this version goes on sale for under $5 everywhere? Yep.
Re: PlayStation Likely to Go All-Digital By PS7, Analyst Predicts
This isn't the same environment where the first Playstation helped usher in CD-ROMs, and the PS3 helped usher in the Blu-Ray format as the winning HD format. With streaming as popular as it is now, even the UHD disks are selling in lower numbers. So while Sony is a movie studio and may have a reason to try to help the Blu-Ray UHD market, it may not be enough to keep the disk in the device.
I'm hopeful the new PS5 format will be something Sony keeps around - all digital by default, but with the option for a connected, semi-integrated drive. But I think the analyst is right - what matters isn't what the die-hard community wants, what matters is what the mass market will buy.
Re: Atari 50 Enhanced Adds Another 39 Titles to Excellent PS5, PS4 Collection
I'm pretty sure that paragraph was not there when I posted my comment - if it was, then yes, I missed it. I'd looked at articles from two different sites trying to find that answer, and neither said anything about existing owners at the time.
Re: FromSoftware Boss Puts Elden Ring Difficulty Discourse to Bed, Once and For All
Personally, I prefer games with adjustable difficulty. And I prefer games that I feel I can leave and come back to, without being completely lost and having to start over. Elden Ring doesn't seem to be either of those things.
So, they just won't get my money, and I just won't play it. Oh, some day I may give it a shot, if it's free or nearly free, but I might not. And that's okay - clearly they're not missing my money, and I have enough things to play I'll be fine without Elden Ring. We call that a win-win.
Re: Rumour: Sony's Still Working on PS3 Emulation for PS5
The XBox Series X, the original XBox, and all the XBoxes in between are more or less the same hardware design, just with upgraded components. They all ran on 8086-based chips, they all ran Windows DirectX APIs under the hood, they're all the same in many fundamental ways.
The same is not true for Playstations before the PS4. It's particularly not true for the PS3, which had a radically different architecture than anything before or since. The hardware and the software has changed over time in more/different ways than the XBox.
I know you all look at black box that runs games and think they're all fundamentally the same, but that's simply not true.
Re: Epic Mickey PS5, PS4 Remaster Gets a 24th September Release Date
I read it once as "Epic Mickey: Refurbished," and now that's all my brain will let me see.
Re: Atari 50 Enhanced Adds Another 39 Titles to Excellent PS5, PS4 Collection
Is there any upgrade for people who bought the original Atari 50 when it came out? I do like having some of these games around, but I'm honestly not spending much time playing the original Combat or Breakout on my PS5 (though I did a run through Adventure, for old time's sake).
Now if they came up with a paddle PS5 controller like the old paddle controller for the 2600, THAT is what made so many of the paddle-based games playable and fun! They don't translate well at all to modern game controllers, even mice or trackballs.
Re: After Us (PS5) - Big Swings and Some Big Misses in This Artsy Platformer
So it's been a little over a year...anybody know if any of the issues are patched? Since this is coming to Plus Extra I might give it a look, but I don't have high hopes given the review.
Re: The Crew Motorfest Is Adding an Entire Island for Free Because It's a Ubisoft Game
But at some point, they'll shut it down and you won't be able to play it any more even if you bought a copy (see also, The Crew, the original).
I tried to like The Crew Motorfest, and tried both a beta version (which was practically unplayable with all the beta notices plastered over the screen obscuring your view) and a free weekend of the release version, and it's just not the right balance of arcade and realism for me. I'm not sure what it was, but I didn't feel I could control any car reasonably well, and wasn't going to spend the time to sort it out, I just gave up.
For those who enjoy it - it's awesome to get more free content!
Re: Reaction: You Said You Were Sick of PS5's Sad Dad Sims, So You Better Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
Will I be buying both? Absolutely, unquestionably.
Will I own either one in 2024? Maybe...no, probably not. I'll wait for a sale and pick them up in 2025 - though if my kid who is a huge Horizon fan buys Lego Horizon, I might borrow it.
Re: Hogwarts Legacy PS5, PS4 Summer Update Detailed in New Video
Preorder cosmetics almost always end up free eventually - nice to see that. And it's nice for everyone else to get to play the Playstation-exclusive side quest, it was short but fun.
I finished the game once, and started again with a new character so I could try a different house, but I just fizzled out. Maybe I've been away long enough to give it a shot again (and to re-learn flying a broom, the controls on that are slick once you master them, but didn't feel intuitive at all, at first).
Re: Poll: Are You Hyped for Summer Game Fest 2024?
People are upset that Keighley squashed the hype - would you rather go in hyped up and expecting a lot, so you get disappointed during the thing? Or would you rather be disappointed now, leading up to it?
It does beg the question of what's the point of doing a showcase (sorry, a "Fest") if you don't have much to showcase, though.
Re: The Latest State of Play Was Completely Leaked, and It's a Growing Problem with YouTube
It's not national security secrets - nobody is going to be killed or injured or start a war over this stuff.
That said, if Sony and studios really care about a big reveal, they need to figure out how to protect the big reveal. From what I heard, this didn't have much worth protecting, so....
Re: Reaction: PS5 Livestreams Are No Longer Speaking to the Fans Who Built the Brand
Actually, no - no you don't. Not if you want to stay in business.
You don't EXPAND the selection of the stuff that isn't selling to try to bring in the customers that aren't there any more, not unless you have some solid proof those customers are coming to your store and leaving without buying because they can only find wellingtons. If only wellingtons are selling, then you get a bigger selection of wellingtons, not a bigger selection of trainers and sandals - because you only have so much store space, and you don't want to take up space with things that won't sell at the expense of space for what DOES sell. You may not like it if you want sandals or trainers, but that's reality, and it repeats across industries.
Sony may not have the inventory and shelf space management issues a shoe store does, as PSN can hold a nearly infinite number of games, but they do have a finite number of developers which limits how many first-party games they can produce. Meanwhile, all the independent developers are reading the same tea leaves and trying to make games they think will sell. Sony can't run a 24-hour State of Play to highlight every single game that might come out in the next six months (though that would be a cool thing to try, wouldn't it?).
So they make what they think will sell. And some of that will miss the mark.
Re: PS5's Streaming Handheld PS Portal Is Proving a Huge Hit
@jamiestogden You can use it away from home, but bandwidth and latency are more likely to start being an issue. A lot depends on the quality of your Internet connection - both the upload speed for the network the PS5 is on, and the download speed on the connection for your Portal (or any other Remote Play device - I don't personally have a Portal, but a ROG Ally, and I have similar issues). You won't have a great experience if either connection is low bandwidth or high latency, or if the route between the two is bad.
The better the connections, the better the experience will be. And I do miss not having the full DualSense support with my ROG Ally (just not enough to buy a Portal as well).
Re: Marvel's Spider-Man 2 Swings 11 Million Sales as Sony Calls PS5 Exclusive a 'Great Success'
I think this week is the first discount for Spider-Man 2 in PSN - doing that much in sales at what was mostly full price (maybe some discounts for some physical sales?) is bonkers.
Once it starts going on the sale rotation and we get deeper discounts than the $20 this week, I think it will continue to sell. I'm toying with picking it up, finally, but haven't decided yet.
Re: PS Plus Essential Games for June 2024 Announced
All the PS2 games AND the PSVR2 games are for the Premium level only - the way you list them imply they're for Extra as well as Premium.
Re: Poll: Will the Rumoured PlayStation Showcase Be Announced Soon?
They need something to announce the PS5 Pro. That could be in late summer.
What if they're combining that with a Showcase or State of Play, to show all the new games that will be awesome on the PS5 and even "awesomer" on the PS5 Pro, all in one big reveal? Is that possible? Crazy talk?
Re: Yes, the Next Madden on PS5, PS4 Is Called Madden NFL 25 Again
I only came here for the "it's the same game anyway" jokes. There were fewer than I expected.
Re: PlayStation London Studio Shares a Farewell Message Following Closure
Lots of memories playing SingStar with the family.
Played EyePet, too - had to import a copy as I recall, it either wasn't available in the US or hadn't arrived yet, but was a bit underwhelmed with that one. Fun idea, mediocre implementation.
Sad to see these closures. It's not quite the same level of desolation as over on the green side, but the whole industry seems to be downsizing. Here's hoping people can land on their feet and find success and profit in other projects.
Re: A Lot of PS4 Owners Have Yet to Upgrade to PS5
The holdouts who play on a PS4 but don't own a PS5 will likely start upgrading as more and more games come out they can't play. But we're just NOW at the end of the PS4/5 cross-platform era, we're only NOW seeing PS5 exclusives without PS4 versions. As new exclusives hit, especially first-party exclusives, the pressure to upgrade will rise.
And maybe, as the PS5 Pro drops, people will be able to pick up used PS5s for less, or even skip to the PS5 Pro.
Counter that with inflation making it harder to drop a lot of money on entertainment, though, and it might be a bumpy ride for Sony. I still think PS5 adoption is only going up from here, but there are obvious challenges. It's always easier to grow in a healthy economy.