RobN

If someone is willing to pay for something, and someone is willing to sell that something, and they both have the freedom to act on their desires, then this is the result.

The developer can solve this if they want to. If they said "We'll invite some people to the beta for free, but anybody who wants in can pay us $100 for an invite (full game not included)," then would people still be upset? Even if they only sold one such invite...why not?

@TheCollector316 I am an NBA fan, and I'm not interested, either. This feels like a very narrow interest group, but it's probably more about the cross-promotion opportunities than it is about hoping to make a lot of sales.

It's worth noting that Minecraft has an XBox Series-specific build out (and has for years, at this point), but still doesn't have a PS5-specific version. Minecraft still depends on backwards-compatibility to run the PS4 version on a PS5.

So it's not like sharing information with Mojang - assuming Sony did share with them - has resulted in anything beneficial for Playstation customers.

That said, it's not clear a PS5-specific version would run better or take advantage of any DualSense capabilities. But it seems clear Microsoft isn't going out of their way to support Sony hardware capabilities. There's PSVR1 support in Minecraft, but it's unclear if it will ever get PSVR2 support. There's no ray-tracing support (in any console version, including XBox).

Is Team6 the cut-rate version of Team7, of Worms fame? I don't think I'd heard of Team6 before.

I do like my arcade-style racers, but I'm more Motorstorm and less Hot Wheels - this looks like Hot Wheels. Which wasn't a bad game, just..."same-y" after a while.

@thefourfoldroot1 Absolutely - there are some games that are just made for paddles, and nothing else really works for them. I just can't play Tempest on a modern controller - I've tried, it's just painful.

I so wish the Atari 50 game had paddle controllers that came with it!

I don't see them replicating paddles with the VR controllers, that just wouldn't really work, would it?

YES!!! I nearly pulled the trigger on FC6 a few times, but I was sure it was coming to Plus sooner or later. I'd rather it was on the essential tier, but this is fine.

Really a lot here that's interesting, with some great variety. Home run, for me.

I don't expect people are cheering to hear there's a delay, but I do trust people are reasonable enough to be happy they aren't pushing something out the door that's unfinished. Hope it all works out.

@Tharsman

devs want to make every game bigger than the last.

Go read game reviews of sequels that are smaller than the previous version (if you can find them - Mile Morales is the exception rather than the rule). SOOOOO many will complain that the sequel is smaller. Don't add enough new mechanics, and they'll complain it's the same.

If sales show that smaller sequels can make money, then we'll get more smaller sequels. There's a reason why there's a trend for bigger - it sells.

EDIT: I think this understates the impact of new technologies, especially early in development. If you're trying to figure out how to best use the incredibly fast storage of a PS5 to deliver something new that old hardware truly couldn't handle, then it's going to take time and experimentation to figure that out. If you're developing for multiple platforms it will take more time to figure out how to benefit from that speed while still supporting all (or most of) the variations you encounter in the PC world. The studios that do it best will set new standards - and as they become standards, it will be easier to replicate and leverage for future projects. So eventually, that time to write to the new hardware shortens...at least until there's NEW hardware to figure out how to take advantage of, like a PS6 or PS5Pro.

So as someone who owns the game but hasn't actually played it yet, would you advise me to play it now to finish the story (at least once) before the changes, wait for the upgrade to play the base game with the post-patch fixes without paying for the DLC just yet, or wait and get the DLC before I start?

Honestly, what did anybody expect when they heard "Twisted Metal TV Series?"

If I give you those four words and have you go make something, can you honestly say you'd come up with anything better than this? It's not aiming very high in the first place, and I'd say it does fine job limping over the low bar I set for it.

I'd feel better about it if EA offered something like, $5 million plus 10% of sales after the first $X million. That way if it's a bomb, EA doesn't lose money and they're more willing to do it again - but if it's a huge hit and does better than expected, they can chip in more to the players and colleges who will be a big part of why fans buy the game.

Also, comparing the income for "EA Sports" to the offer for name and likeness for this one game isn't really fair - you're lumping in revenue from pro football, basketball, hockey, soccer, golf...a whole lot of different fan bases, and using that number to say they can afford to lose money on this one game. They aren't making games to lose money on them.

@Ravix Wonder if he doesn't want to complete against the NBA Finals - game 3 is tonight at 5:30 Pacific, half an hour after this is supposed to be over. Not sure how much crossover audience there is, but I expect there's at least some.

[EDIT]: or I'm an idiot, because this is tomorrow and game 3 is tonight. Stanley Cup finals are also going on, and they play Thursday, so maybe my comment wasn't 100% irrelevant. But maybe it was.

@TheArtfulDodger Comparing things don't mean they're identical. Robocop was rated R, so it was pretty clear it wasn't for kids. Jurassic Park was PG-13 - clearly less intense (thus the lower rating), but still inappropriate for young kids, and rather famously surprised a lot of parents who hadn't bothered to pay more than the most superficial attention to the marketing for it. That was the point - kid seeing material they may not be ready for. It can happen a lot of ways.

And while they did remake Robocop (I haven't watched the remake to see if it's any good), I think they could still do a lot with the violence today. For some reason we're more offended by someone saying a word prevalent in Huckleberry Finn (which is a powerful story attacking the roots of racism) than we are watching someone's body parts shot off by gleeful villains. The level of violence was noteworthy back when it came out, too - there wasn't much out there in mainstream releases that pushed quite as far as Robocop, at least not outside the horror genre.

@TheArtfulDodger Neither was Jurassic Park, but there were toddlers there opening night, crying as the dinosaurs ate people.

@Stevemalkpus Doh! You're right, of course. Where's my head?

Not in a mechanical body, I know that much.

@durxll123 [EDIT: -Android-] Cyborg, not robot. It's still a human brain and human reflexes, with a largely metal and hydraulic body that isn't the fastest. It's the definition of the tank character.

And if it doesn't have a story that's much different from the movies, so what? The movies were solid, and most kids these days probably haven't seen them.

If you can forge your own path, becoming a bad cop and dealing with those consequences, that might just be a bonus.

@TrickyDicky99 Talk to me when the specs are out and we're comparing apples to apples.

If they're leading with the price - and it's this low - but keeping back the tech details, it's because the tech details are bad news. It's why you heard so much about PSVR2's stats before they finally got around to the price - they keep the bad news out until the last minute.

People get mad when they don't hear news.

People get mad when the news they hear isn't what they wanted.

People get mad when games are announced far, far in advance.

People get mad when games are delayed.

People get mad when games are released before they're finished.

People get mad when studios make sequels that look too much like the last game.

People get mad when studios make sequels that change the formula too much.

It feels almost like a miracle anybody likes anything. I think we've forced studios to go silent, because the less they say the less people can dump on them.

If all Sony is going to do is bankroll a bunch of shooters, then it’s got an uphill battle ahead of it.

That's even truer than the fear of live service games. They could be single-player shooters and not get any traction if there isn't something compelling to make me care.

The rest of the points about the live service model are all very valid - it's not necessarily all shooters, it's not easy to break out that big hit, and a lot of new attempts are dying early out of the gate. I'm not sure Sony cares - I think they're gambling there will be ONE hit in those dozen attempts, and that will be enough to make up the losses.

I think they're failing to see the damage they can do to their brand with those failures, though - it's not just losing some money down the hole. They'll also be throwing away goodwill from every player who DOES like the failures and gets the rug pulled out from under them. They'll be throwing away goodwill from the players who try them and hate them. Those failures may not break the balance sheet, but they'll cost more than the numbers show.

I had low expectations going in. This met those low expectations. I'm happy. All you folks who expected a whole lot more are upset, as predicted, but the realists out here are happy.

Now, I predicted significantly more PSVR2 content than we got, so I flubbed that prediction, but I think I was fairly close on the rest.

@arsmolinarc: Nice surprise award: Marathon. Single player FPS from Bungie? Sign me up.

Ummm...you know that's multiplayer only, without even an SP campaign, right? From the official PS blog:

Marathon is designed from the start as a PvP-focused game and won’t have a single-player campaign.

@AliceInChains Nobody seems to be mentioning this, which I think is weird. At 1:15:16 of the official Sony video, Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol 1 - "Sneak back into the original games on PlayStation 5 Autumn 2023" - It's only on the screen for a second or two, blink and you might miss it. And the official trailer for the remake cuts it out.

Apparently includes the first three games, presumably running in emulation?

Too early for the trend lines to mean anything yet, but the small portion they show make it look like PSVR2 will fall behind PSVR at the same stage in lifecycle soon, IF the trajectories hold.

That's a huge IF, especially since the graph doesn't show where PSVR went after the first 6 weeks.

So yeah, WAY too early to tell - but as you pointed out, clearly some of the early reporting was just flat-out embarrassingly wrong.

@Grumblevolcano - given the attention they're giving it, I expect at least a quarter of the content to be PSVR2, maybe a third. That's my prediction.

Speaking of Atari and VR - now that PSVR2 is out, any chance Battlezone might get an upgrade?

I've avoided playing much of the non-VR version, but I get the impression it didn't sell all that great.

Currently at 49% super-hyped.

That's 49% setting themselves up for disappointment.

I expect to see two or three things I'm interested in, a whole lot I don't care about, and at least a couple things I'll be seriously disappointed by. I expect I'll come out of it happier than nearly every one of those "super-hyped" voters.

@MattBoothDev At this point, she trusts him. She doesn't like him much, didn't agree with all his choices, resents how little he's willing to share and how manipulative he can be, but despite all that she does what he suggests.

It would have to be well written, and she'd have to be making choices she thinks he'd be calling naive and short-sighted, and it would need to be used at a few key place and not at every turn - but it could work.

It's pretty simple. The character dies or is otherwise out of the action for the bulk of the story. Beta has to figure out how to be the tech guru (she ought to be more qualified in some ways) to try to step into that part of Sylens' role, while Aloy asks herself what Sylens would do when she faces major decisions (as well as what Elisabet would do), and how he would disagree with whatever choice she makes.

He survives as a voice in Aloy's head - not literally, but as a touchstone Aloy thinks about from time to time. Honor the character (and actor) without ripping off the voice with AI.

If the earliest it's likely to release is April 2024, I don't see why Sony and Take-Two would want to start promoting it now.

GTA6 will suck all the air out of the room whenever it is formally announced - at the end of a 1-hour Sony promo, it will make everyone forget everything else announced in that hour. No chance - not unless it's coming out a lot sooner than this speculation says.

Announcing it too far in advance is just setting themselves up for negative press if there's any delay, so announcing it early can't help them nearly as much as it can hurt them. There is absolutely 0 risk in waiting until they're confident of a release date before announcing it officially.

Best game of ALL TIME? Yikes.

Descent is number 1 for me - bought so many flight joysticks for that game, I kept going through them, and rarely has 3d navigation been replicated anywhere nearly as well as Descent and Descent 2, even all these years later.

World of Warcraft and Ultima Online were never my thing, but ought to be on the list.

GTA also is one I never got into, but the most recent one seems like it ought to make any list, given its longevity and popularity is largely unrivaled - even over Fortnite, I'd say.

But personally?

Descent
Betrayal at Krondor
Burnout Paradise
Horizon Zero Dawn
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
King's Quest IV - The Perils of Rosella (it's the one I finished)

@jgrangervikings1 ModNation Racers let you build your own tracks to share, which few others seem to have attempted. It had a ton of customization for the characters and karts, too, but it was the racetrack customization that set it apart.

Otherwise...no, they're all various attempts to copy the same formula.

@bpomber I haven't seen anybody mention Chromecast - certain Chromecast fobs could stream Stadia games, too. I got a "free" fob and controller that way, for trying it out for a month.

Their controller was interesting, too - it was primarily a wifi controller, with bluetooth on board only to help with syncing the wifi credentials, which meant it ONLY worked with Stadia. It was supposed to help with latency - one step fewer between the controller and the cloud. With Stadia dying, Google now (for a limited time) allows you to unlock those Stadia controllers to run over the bluetooth connection, so they can work with Android and some other devices.

It was just crazy expensive AND subject to all the issues with latency and bandwidth that every other streaming service has to deal with. Google had the resources to put servers near where people are, to help reduce that, but unless you were in an area with Google Fiber you still couldn't be sure how well it would work.

Too limited an audience and too expensive and SO proprietary (no cross-buying of games) killed it. Google didn't treat it like a loss-leader, the way Microsoft does with Game Pass.

@Relygon Thanks, I appreciate a review from someone who wasn't in love with the last one. That sounds like it addresses my sense of a bad Tomb Raider clone quite well. I'm interested, though I have enough on my plate to wait for more patches and a sale.

@Kevw2006 Not only that, but the annual prices have had sales in November for the past several years, which makes them an even better deal. My "Extra" subscription expires more than a year from now, thanks to that deal and others (there was an upgrade discount some time after the tiers were introduced).

@Relygon Hmm...I also wasn't crazy about Fallen Order (it felt like a Tomb Raider ripoff that didn't quite pull it off, to me). Any chance you can explain what worked this time, without spoilers? Or am I asking too much?

@Member_the_game Depends on the application - water makes me less thirsty.

I'd comment on what makes a person wet, but given the potential for innuendo, I'll refrain.

I know this is a UK-centric site, but let me tell you a very brief US story about a deal falling apart.

Once Upon a Time (2011), AT&T was going to buy T-Mobile, but that deal fell through due to antitrust suits. AT&T had to pay T-Mobile $3 billion in cash plus $1 billion in wireless assets for abandoning that deal.

After that, T-Mobile went on their "UNcarrier" campaign, pointing out all the things wrong with cell phone service. They broke phones out from contracts, so you didn't get a free phone every year or two but your cell contract was cut in half. They got rid of (most) penalties for cancelling your service to switch providers. They eventually brought back unlimited talk/text/data. They became the third-largest cell phone company, nearly put Sprint out of business, before buying them up.

It's possible a free Activision with a $3 billion cash infusion could come out stronger than when they started. But...T-Mobile had a leadership transition as well, which led to the transformative change in the company. From what I've heard, Activision likely needs the same.

Honestly, I hadn't noticed Descenders was on Essentials - but I'll wait until Tuesday to redeem it, to avoid any hiccups that prevent me from "owning" it as long as I have Plus, rather than just while it's in the Essentials catalog.

@Neverwild For just a second I thought you were telling me there WERE side panels with artwork for all those games, and I'd missed them.

Surely the side panels aren't too expensive to churn out on their own, but if they're selling a lot of plain, single-colored panels at (checks site) $55/each, then they're already printing money. Maybe they want sell out of those before they introduce more, hoping people will buy multiple sets. I don't get it.

It's starting to be surprising that custom side panels aren't yet a thing from Sony, beyond the single-colored ones you can buy separately. I expected bundles like this to start featuring artwork on the side panels by now.

Maybe they think too many people put the PS5 on its side and hide it away...?

@NinjaNicky "Any option you can turn on and off is a good thing, no matter what that option is."

Absolutely. I don't understand why that's ever a consideration. Sure, I can see an argument about where to spend limited development resources, but if it can be easily offered as an option, why not - no matter what it is!!

@LifeGirl If an accomplishment in a single-player game is what makes you feel special, then you need some help.

I would agree with disabling such features in competitive multiplayer games (especially in tournaments where money is at stake), or possibly having some specification on what accommodations are allowed based on proof of need, sure. But this ain't that.

So long as they aren't being promoted to their level of incompetence - always a risk, never a certainty.

Before anyone moans about a favorite studio changing, it's always good to remember that even if the people don't change, people still change. That is to say, none of us are the same person we were 10 years ago, we all change, even if we stay in the same job. So the team that made the last game you loved (or hated) won't be the same team making the next game - even if it's the same people, they've changed, hopefully grown, hopefully improved, but changed.

Grammar police time.

elude - to evade or escape from

allude - to make an indirect reference

This isn't just gaming - you can read similar articles about streaming services in general. People aren't signing up for new stuff. Many, like me, are surfing - sign up for one service for a month or two, catch up on whatever it has I like, cancel, then sign up for the next one and repeat.

That can happen for Game Pass and PS Plus, too. Why pay every month if you can skip a month and spend your time elsewhere? That's even more true for Game Pass which doesn't offer huge discounts for buying a lot in advance - as opposed to PS Plus, where if you wait for November you can get an annual subscription for half price, making it a better deal.

Many of us switched to streaming services because cable's all-you-can-eat pricing was too much. Streaming is turning into the same thing - unless you pick and choose, and cancel what you're not watching.

Given all the details in that video, it could be a stupid card game or something.

I reserve judgement. Not excited or disappointed yet - but not exactly trusting, either.

@Mauzuri "What's next, locking some button configurations behind DLC?!"

Shut up and don't give them any ideas.

@ATaco That's the thing, with all of these games. It doesn't matter if 90% of the people hate microtransactions or some particular season pass benefit - if those willing to pay DO pay, and pay enough, then it will stay even if the 90% hate it. Money talks louder than complaining.

The day that doing these things doesn't bring them any extra money - or makes them start losing revenue - is the day they will change.

I've been thinking about picking up Alan Wake on the PS5, after getting stuck partway through on PC. With this announcement, I think I may hold off - surely it's hitting Plus a month or two before the sequel releases.

The new game is PAINFULLY slow to start on my PS5. I need to time it, and compare it to FX3 (running off my external SSD, which is much slower than internal storage). The new in-game menu is uglier, clunkier, and a LOT slower than FX3. There's nothing I've seen that would make me want to re-buy any of my tables - heck, there's not much I've seen to make me want to download them if they were free, to be brutally honest. I don't like this version at all, yet.

That could change, and I hope it will. If they add PSVR2 support, I'll be interested. And I'll have to look at wall mounts, because flipping my TV 90 degrees to play these on a vertical 65" would be AWESOME...wonder if there's even room to do that trick on my wall, at the height I prefer...??

I'm with @thefourfoldroot1 - the MP-only really kills my interest. But I love the sound of what they're doing with the tech - zooming in when you close one eye, or mitigating flashbangs if you cover your face or close your eyes, those are great ideas that I hope other games "borrow."

@tomassi I've toyed with pulling the trigger on Far Cry 6 since the version with the season pass (not the GotY version) now costs less than the season pass. But I'm holding off for the same reason you just gave - it will come sooner or later, and if I like it the season pass will be on sale some day, too.