RobN

With Need for Speed Unbound coming out after this list was created, I wonder if you think it's worthy of making the list?

So much depends on whether you value realism or arcade-style racing - I have yet to try Gran Turismo 7, but I suspect I'll find it too realistic to really be what I enjoy the most. I don't necessarily want over-the-top arcade-style racing, but ultra-realistic racing can actually feel either boring or overly stressful, as one little mistake can be unrecoverable.

I burned out on Hot Wheels pretty fast - it's more about collecting boost than just about anything else.

Stars program is silly, but perhaps a few people here or there really care about it. Cashing in points for PSN credit is worth a few minutes of my time.

But making rewards available for earning a trophy during a particular time period is annoying for those who already own the trophy. If I've already got the platinum, I just can't get that reward. Boo.

Then again, I don't really care about the silly display case, so I'm annoyed at myself for being annoyed. How annoying is that?!?!

@Ravix Rift Apart doesn't have DLC coming soon, with the possibility of increased sales if you get people who haven't jumped in yet getting hooked when they play the main game for "free."

@GuttyYZ Hate to break this to you, but the reality is that most fiction is an iteration or remake of what came before.

History, too, if we're honest.

@K1LLEGAL "So much hate for Gamepass here but it has saved me a lot of money"

Every single person who says that proves the point Activision was making. Game Pass lets you spend less than you would have spent otherwise.

Now you can certainly argue that's good for the consumer, and for certain consumers that is clearly true - as you said, you saved money! However, you can also argue it's bad for the developers who would have otherwise had all that money you saved, to help them pay their staff and start on the next project. If those developers are still happy with the situation despite getting less revenue from sales, it has to be because Microsoft is running GP at a loss, and paying those developers something near what they would have received if you and others hadn't saved so much money through GP.

That's pretty awesome...while it lasts. Eventually it will stop. When it does, the more heavily you're hooked on GP the more it will hurt.

@dschons Totally, unsarcastically agree - it's shocking a company that close to being bought by Microsoft would admit the truth that's obvious to everyone. I expected them to fall in line and lie.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's a net benefit to small studios who aren't expecting major sales in the first place, though it could hurt them as well if they're not paid a bonus based on engagement, and a huge hit gets pitiful sales due to being on a subscription service. So much depends on how the (secret) contracts are written.

@Cutmastavictory That means 0 sales through their retail partners, which might have contractual implications. It also means 0 sales to new users. Either alone probably makes it impractical.

@Cutmastavictory "Scalping was an easy thing to fix"

Seriously? If it's so easy, patent and sell your solution, and you'll be rich. It's not only a problem for Sony - look at how big an issue it's been for Ticketmaster. Or Nvidia. And I'm just scratching the surface - scalping shoes drove some of the bot technology that really went after the PS5 when it came out.

I don't think scalping is as easy to fix as you think it is.

I'll be honest - if this was from anyone but PixelJunk, I'd say I think I've seen enough and pass on this unless it showed up for free on Plus some day.

Since it's from PixelJunk, I'll take a closer look and watch for the reviews. There's probably a lot more fun and complexity there than what you see in the trailer. We'll see.

I am thrilled to see demos starting to become a thing again - it's felt like we've had a long drought of demos being released for games. I hope this drives sales for them (even if it's unlikely to be one I pick up), because I want to encourage the practice.

@Nem I agree with much of what you said, except that I think you vastly underestimate the value of having that hit winner and its power to wash away all the failures. Sony is big enough - and has enough different studio brands - that it can risk 9 failures chasing one mega-hit.

Probably waiting for a sale, but...clearly there's some value here, despite the price. That's just a lot to ask, when I'm saving for a down payment on a truck (if Ford ever makes the Maverick I ordered).

It's very simple.

They're working on 10 live service games. If ONE of those games is a hit on the level of Fortnite or Genshin Impact, it pays for the other nine to be absolute, abject failures. It would still be a net win - a major win.

For anyone who did get a voucher - can you share the subject line? So I know what to check for in my spam folder, just in case it got sent there? Strip out any personal info in the subject, of course!

@NEStalgia Okay, that makes a lot of sense. If they bought them for $300 million AND acquired 1.2b debt, then selling one asset for $600 million only covers half the loss of the debt. While I assume you're dealing with mostly made-up numbers just as an example, it explains how this might happen without threats of a lawsuit over the original acquisition.

@UltimateOtaku91 Not going to happen - not when the rewards of being "the next Fortnite" juggernaut are as big as they are.

@thefourfoldroot1 You seem to have a problem with comparing a game's availability on Game Pass vs only available for purchase on Playstation - specifically, "Why do people confuse subs and purchasing?" I have no problem with that comparison (and nothing in the article seemed to confuse the two). The comparison is fair, legitimate, and noteworthy for those interested in the title.

If GP did this with more sports games that I care more about, I'd probably subscribe. But they don't, and since my three-year conversion of Gold-to-GP ran out, I haven't bothered to renew.

@thefourfoldroot1 "and totally unworthy of comparison" - that's patently absurd. They're both methods you can use to acquire and play the game - they're absolutely worth comparing.

For some people, Game Pass is a sunk cost - which means the game IS "free" for them. For others, the difference in cost might be enough for them to make the switch - even without a deal, you could get a half-year of Game Pass for the cost of this one game.

As for the whole own vs rent argument, if there was ever type of game worth renting rather than buying it's the annual sports game, which gets minor updates each year. Heck, if you buy two different sports titles ever year, and if both those titles were on a service such as Game Pass, those titles alone would pay for the entire service.

@Thenewguy It so much depends on the quality and variety of the content. 100 sidequests where 70-90 of them are fun and interesting to me (maybe a different mix of them fun and interesting to someone else) sounds awesome. 100 sidequests that feel like the same four sidequests repeated 25x each with different labels on them...that sounds tedious.

What version of the app has that option? Mine shows last updated Dec 2, 2022, and I don't have that option - but it also shows no updates available. Version 22.11.1 (which looks like a date-driven version number to me).

Might be worth specifying if you've verified this is available on all platforms, or if so far it's just an iOS or Android thing.

@roadhog I'd be THRILLED with a modern Motorstorm - I've been tempted several times to go fire up my PS3 for some Motorstorm lately.

I've got a Series S and have played the new Forza Horizon 5, but it just never grew on me. It felt too much like I was still playing the last Forza Horizon 4, just with a new map that didn't feel different enough or special enough to care about. It felt like it was an expansion, not a new game. I'm not sure what I wanted, but...not that. I liked 3, loved 4, and I'm back to just liking 5.

And The Crew has bored me. I played the original a bit, and fell out of it. I played Crew 2 several times when I had access to it for free, but never got too far into it, either.

I'm not sure what the magic sauce is for me, personally, so I really can't predict what the wider community will enjoy.

Interesting that, as of now, "have you bought a pro controller before" has 31% with some form of yes, while "did you buy the edge" has 30% with variations of yes or undecided.

Sounds like there's a specific population that buys pro controllers, and those of us who haven't still aren't interested.

If a pro controller was a 50% premium, I'd be tempted. At roughly a 200% premium, I'm not.

@Jaz007 When I play Horizon (FW or ZD), I rarely used the traps unless there was some bonus reward for using them on a mission, but often fought while circling an enemy so they couldn't get a bead on me. Sure, there are a lot more options in the larger, traditional-format game - but this doesn't sound bad to me at all.

i don't have $600 to drop on it right now, but I toyed with the idea.

Worked in my browser on a PC, and on my phone. Creeped out one of my kids.

@LN78 It is ALWAYS a red flag when big game developers don't release review copies until just before release - not just for this game, but for any major release. Even releasing copies with an embargo a day before release is cause for concern. If it's an indie, maybe they don't have enough marketing experience and sophistication to have review codes ready, but someone like Square Enix knows how to make it all happen.

If they know they have something people will love, they want those reviews out there making a couple news cycles before release day to build hype. It's tremendous free PR, when they believe the reviews will be good.

Waiting for the last minute says they're hoping to lock in preorders and prevent anyone from having time to cancel when they see the initial reviews. It smells like a bid for short-term cash, either (hopefully) to help them finish the beta they just released as though it was ready, or to grab all they can before it flops.

EDIT: I did really hope this was going to be a great game, in part because the studio had the courage to release a demo before they game was out. I want to ENCOURAGE that behavior from studios - I want to get a feel for a game, especially new IP, before I plunk down my cash for it. The fact the demo may have hurt this game's sales is bad news on that front.

@thefourfoldroot1 A review about VR in general for people with bad eyesight over on CNet this week says the PSVR2 fit over his coke-bottle glasses (my description, not his) just fine. If you can wear glasses with them, maybe it's not so bad.

My eyesight isn't as bad as his, but it was interesting to see how those headsets that do have adjustments usually don't go as far as he needs. It's something vendors need to consider if they don't want to write off portions of the population as potential customers.

@somnambulance It's not the people buying them that are stupid partisans, it's the people hating on them.

That's not to say every criticism against either game is stupid or partisan - just specific criticisms, the type which can be made without playing the game (or demo).

Personally, I've largely sworn off buying games Day 1 as a general rule. GoW:Ragnarock got me to break that rule, but it released within a couple days of my birthday, so I made an exception. Any more, I wait for a price drop AND a couple rounds of post-release patches for pretty much everything.

Part of me wants to buy this game AND Hogwarts Legacy day one, just to anger the partisans on each side who are hating on these games for stupid political reasons.

Being me, however, I'll pick them both up on sale in a few months - after the patches clean up whatever day 1 problems there are.

@Shinnok789 I doubt we'll ever have a generation again where there isn't a choice between improved graphics quality or improved performance.

If you're pushing the limits of what the hardware can do, it will always make some sense to push it a little harder in the two competing directions and give users a choice. Those choices at some point in the future will be different than they are now, maybe a tradeoff between true 8k at 60fps with more objects/reflections or lower quality at 240fps, as one made-up example, but you'll always be able to have a trade-off between eeking out a little more performance or a little more detail.

Sounds like they have the right goals, for me. The open world is great, but the best Assassin's Creed games - the ones that stood out as unique - focused on characters, especially a mix of characters in different times. If they can get back to that, great.

We won't really know until the finish and release the thing, though. I don't trust promises.

I watch UHD movies on my PS5, so I'm glad it has an optical drive. Streaming is good, but the compression is almost always higher than from disk, and sometimes you can tell the difference.

As for games, I've got a few games on disk because they were cheaper that way, but I generally prefer the digital version because I'm lazy and don't want to get up and swap disks to switch games.

If I had a dedicated UHD disk player for movies, I'd probably be fine with the digital only game console, despite the occasional savings from buying physical copies of games. The cost difference doesn't make it worth it, though.

I'm interested in whether or not the PS5 drive would be able to connect to any other devices - a laptop, perhaps? Also, will it work (for UHD movies, in particular) if the internal optical drive is broken?

@themightyant I bought an extra controller for my release day PS5, so I had two from the start. Both were returned within the first year for drift (free warranty service), and one of the replacements has it again (minor, so far, but out of warranty by now).

My third - one of the colored ones with the slightly updated internal hardware - doesn't show any signs of drift yet.

Does grabbing the free upgrade to Witcher 3 PS5 count as a sale? I grabbed it and downloaded it, as I suspect many who own the PS4 version did, but didn't pay anything, so I wouldn't expect that to count as a sale. Then again, I had to add it to my cart and check out my $0 order, so maybe it is a sale.

When they talk about downloads, it makes sense that installing it would trip the download counter, but when they talk about sales for something with a free upgrade, it's confusing to me.

I wear glasses. Will I need to wear my glasses under the headset, or does the headset have an adjustment so it can adjust things so I don't need my glasses?

@R-Soub Sony answered this months ago [EDIT: though many, many months after your post, sorry I missed the year part of the date] - PSVR2 is NOT backwards compatible. You won't be able to play PSVR games on it unless they are updated for the new system.

I'll definitely pick this up. Not in January, though - "despite some rough edges" means that waiting for a sale also likely means waiting for a more polished game to enjoy. That's a win-win.

EDIT: I also played most of the demo. Not my favorite game from what I played in 2022, by a long shot, but it has potential. I'm interested in trying the full game - at a less-than-full price, when it's as polished as it's likely to get. So, maybe a Black Friday sale in 11 months.

It's hard to verify what a couple repair shops think might be a problem, not without hearing from Sony themselves - and even that won't matter if Sony isn't asking on all returns how the PS5 was oriented during use.

It would be difficult for me to have my PS5 horizontal instead of vertical, so I don't plan to change unless I hear more/better evidence than this. Even if they're right, this doesn't appear to be on the scale of the RROD or similar issues, so I may just take my chances.

I wasn't that interested in GT, really - I'm sorry, but I prefer arcade racers to realism.

I wasn't that interested in PSVR, not at that price and without a compelling game.

Put the two together, though, and...dang, I'm intrigued. I'll wait to see more details on what's included on the VR side, and my wallet still doesn't like the idea, but a realistic racer with VR is a lot more interesting to me than either by itself.

@CutchuSlow Pretty sure it's just for consistency - like those reports with a page that says nothing other than "this page intentionally left blank."

@get2sammyb Pretty sure the 20 minutes is an exaggeration, but there are a few places here and there where they do get long, and they don't generally warn you that the next action you trigger might kick off several minutes of talking. You learn to tell what's likely to trip it, but that's it.

Much of the time you CAN simply skip the talk, but often it's JUST interesting enough to at least want to read everything.

If you like games-within-games, then Genshin has several of them - frequently seasonal. There's a new breakout-style game that's going on now (you have to be able to reach Inazuma, at least, so you may not be able to join that one yet), they've had a tower defense game (not really fond of it, despite generally liking the genre), and over Christmas break I believe they're bringing back the clone of Prop Hunt (hide-and-seek).

Genshin CAN suck almost as much time as you're willing to give it. But it can also be a lot of fun. And Kuki, the character you describe and show in your screenshots, is one of my favorite 4-star characters - the damage AND healing her ring can cause (especially as you level her up) are an awesome combination. It's best to fight mostly as another character to generate the reactions between different elements, swapping back to her just long enough to trigger that skill again when the ring times out, and then swapping to someone else to carry on the fight. Reactions between elements are almost always more powerful than the damage from a single element.

No nostalgia factor for me...not for the pinball game, at least. All the mentions of Motorstorm make me want a PS5 reboot of the series, though - imagine what they could do with that today!

@The_Moose I wouldn't trade my PS5 for a slim, but I would totally trade it for a Pro if the price was right.

I think 2023 is way too early for a Pro version and a slim makes a lot more sense - but if I'm wrong, I'll probably upgrade, depending on the details (price, specs, features). My two kids who also have PS5s - I doubt they'd upgrade.

@NEStalgia Your thoughts on Sony switching to a more standard Gen4 SSD sure makes a lot of sense, though a lot depends on wholesale pricing of components, so I can't guess how accurate you may be. If you're right, so long as they still have the second storage bay for expansion I'll be happy. I'll be less thrilled if they say the m2 slot is now the only storage, and they're shipping with a choice of a 500GB or 1TB stick, and you have to swap it if you want to add more. That would suck.

The m2 slot is one of the serious wins for Sony this generation. The price of 2TB sticks dropping down to match what XBox's smaller/slower 1TB custom expansion sells for is fun to watch.

@Abarth_71 Probably because there's more of US than there are of U (K).

Yes, that was bad. Don't care, I laugh at my own puns.

Love the image you made for this article - that's awesome!

Looking forward to Far Cry Primal - I've come close to picking that one up a dozen times, and never have.

Wish I could get excited about Far Cry 5 - I'm just going to have to skip that one. Tried in for a free weekend once, and just can't get past the cult using Christian symbolism and twisting Christianity around into something else...I'm not about to try to get it banned or convince others not to try it, but it's too uncomfortable for me to have fun with. Plus, from what I played, it felt SO much like a copy of Far Cry 4 that I didn't feel like I was missing much.

Now with Primal using the same map as 4, I'm sure that sounds absurd, but...oh well, it is what it is.

Yakuza might be worth a shot, too. We'll see...I played one (can't remember which) back on the PS3, but never got into another one since then.

Never finished it on PS4, not sure if I'll start over because I don't remember it well or if I'll pick up on my save.

But not now - stuck on a fight in Ragnarock, and want to finish that, first.

We all know people will complain about some versions being delayed - the same people, in large part, would also complain if it was released and was unplayable on the older consoles. I expect developers have stopped listening to such nonsense - you can't please all the people all of the time, but you also can't please some of the people ever no matter what you do.

I owned a Touch Me (boy, you couldn't release something with that name today). And I fondly remember playing Food Fight in an arcade - no clue which arcade, the game wasn't around for long I'm pretty sure, but I loved that game - though I'd forgotten all about it until I saw your mention of it, and the brain cell holding that memory just flared to life and screamed in excitement!

Waiting for Christmas...I already made sure this disk will be under the tree.

If the main game had as many problems as it did, why would you expect the multiplayer - which is more difficult to do well than single-player - would be any good?

If anything, I criticize them for putting resources into the multiplayer in the first place, when the initial game clearly needed more attention. How good might it have been on release day if the studio hadn't been distracted by multiplayer?

@jrt87 "new game prices...about as inflation busting a thing as I can think of."

Absolutely. People compare video games to the movie industry - well, compare ticket prices from when the PS3 came out (2006/7) to today. Using US numbers (because I'm American), the average ticket price in the US rose from $6.55 to $6.88 in 2006-2007. [source:Yahoo Finance] Meanwhile, today they're (probably - good numbers are apparently difficult to track down in 2022) around $11, at least 20% higher than 2019 [source: indiewire].

So movie ticket prices may not have doubled the price, but they're roughly 2/3 higher today than when the PS3 came out. So to be comparable, the new price point ought to be $100 for new video games, not just $70.

If Cyberpunk taught us anything, it's to never preorder a console version if the developers won't release the console versions for review. Expect trash.

Personally, I see "card-based" and I'm out. That's just not my thing. Maybe if I get a free trial or it hits a flavor of Plus for free I might be convinced to give it a try, but...that's assuming the rule-of-thumb from my first paragraph proves unfounded in this case. No way I'm betting on that.

For those who like this type of thing - good luck, hope this works for you. Cancel your console preorder, though, and make them prove it's what you want.