breakneck

@ChrisDeku Yakuza probably has less than a third of the budget of a FF game with a far better release schedule.

Persona and Yakuza are liberal in their re-use of assets to reduce costs. FF is not. It is the same with Resident Evils success.

They are cheap to make since the bulk of the hard work was done with RE7 and RE2 Remake and the newer games don't feature too many graphical improvements or animation changes.

Also of note is Bandai's game division also saw a pretty bad decline in profit for the year. I think on a macro level games are going to have to deal with the fact that a lot of the covid boom provided inflated growth.

@get2sammyb It isn't once upon a time FF7 in HK would've been HUGE but now it is a whimper while people get excited for Persona and Yakuza instead which have built a base with a younger audience.

@tameshiyaku Not really. Games like Helldivers and Spider-Man 2 do prove that there is success to be found. But Square has a history of poor budgeting, high sales expectations and poor release schedules.

Both the FF games have also been decent but not great in terms of quality with poor console performance, bloated stories, empty worlds and an inconsistent tone.

@Kraaatos The Insomniac leaks recently had digital data on revenue and downloads for all playstation published games. So many of these games people cry about did horrible business.

I am happy that they still promote from within rather than just hire an outsider.

@Strikke Did it? Because in Asia it only went on sale in April. So if it did it was probably only in EU/America regions.

@Anthony_Daniels They need to cut budgets. FFXV Needed 10 million units sold to breakeven. That is an insane amount of money.
More than that you cannot see that money on screen.

Square has an identity crisis. They do not know what they want their franchises to be. The major reason for Yakuza and Persona exploding is because they've grown more comfortable in what they are and build on it. Ever since FFX, the franchise has not had a identity and Square hasn't had one either.

Also SE puts their games on sale so often that only a fool buys them full price (I am a fool)

@koffing They said they plan to focus their studios to collaborate more on big games. So say good bye to seeing smaller titles. All major devs are going to drop smaller titles soon by the looks of it.

@j2c Yeah he's been saying it for at least a year now.

He may be quite a weird guy with his opinions but his news/leaks are usually pretty good.

Anyone who watches/listens to Last Stand Media already knew this.

@Blaze215 I ended up hating the game because it was so long and was going for completion (my brother was the one who told me to stop and just move on seeing my visible disappointment). I recommend you try to push through the story and ignore the open world crap. Because you still have Nibel and the end game quests and you'll hate it even more. I loved Remake but Rebirth learned all the wrong lessons imo.

Loving Stellar Blade. Maybe the most fun I've had with a new release for moment to moment gameplay since Spider-Man 2 and Mario Wonder.

Baldurs gate 3 act 3 has me frustrated. May quit the game. Every fight takes sooooooo long. I hate how buggy it is. I hate how talking can never solve anything. I love the companions but Act 3 just feels like a slog. I do not know how the game gets a 10/10 with this act. Act 1 and 2 are absolutely 10/10s but act 3 is a 6/10.

@Foxhound We are still missing Persona 5 VR! Come on Atlus milk people one more time!!

LMAO absolutely saw this coming and I cannot wait to see the quality drop. I already have Yakuza burnout and Persona burnout. The direction every company will go in is this: constantly release sequels/spin-offs to popular franchises and no more new IP.

It looks pretty cool! I love seeing China and Korea are really stepping it up in the premium gaming space and I cannot wait to see what India has to offer!

Huh not sure how to feel about the complete lack of new releases on that list. Only sequels, Live services and IPs. HD2 is the only 2024 game on that list.

@Shepherd_Tallon That price Everywhere on all platforms.

I'm more curious about the long term growth of the game. 2.6 million is great launch but the game disappeared from Steam and console stores quite fast and in Asia had a pretty tepid reception overall. Even now its Steam rating remains mixed too even among recent scores.

Been getting a lot of ads in HK and China as well. Looks kinda meh though.

WOW! Who woulda thunk that the moment you spent 70 billion and got the eyes of the entire world on your obscure gaming division the higher ups would actually start taking a more direct role and see that growth is non-existent and they've over-invested. How Xbox even got Microsoft to buy ABK is a enigma to me unless they thought they would get away with COD Xbox and PC exclusivity.

Xbox are so god damn dumb.

@CWill97 Platforming is quite fiddly in general but there isn't too much of it so far so it is okay but otherwise that's my only gripe so far.

@Korgon People love pirates in the west and the only competition is the dead Skull and Bones. In HK and Japan it is at 40-50 on the best selling chart.

As per Genki JPN the game is out of stock with many retailers. Might be that they didn't assume such high numbers. 67k for a new IP from KOREA (a place Japanese people have a lot of messy history with) is really good imo

43k for playstation is pretty good after the last few weeks have been really low. Cost is still too high for many to buy (60000 yen is a lot in an economy where salaries and spending are low)

I like Media Molecule and it is quite clear that Sony likes them too, how many studios get 10 years to make their dream project with unlimited funds. Unfortunately it didn't work out because both sides didn't really understand the product fully.

I do hope they bounce back strong, they have great charm

@get2sammyb Media kept supporting them and Arrowhead keeps egging them on... well now they run the community and not the other way around. Arrowhead can enjoy the toxicity they created and fostered.

Also, Sony if you read this... The PC community is only going to get worse and more toxic as devs and pubs keep acquiescing to their demands.

@Nem I feel it was gonna close under Zenimax too. They were not doing well with most of their studios prior to the acquisition either. Dishonored 2, Prey, EW2, Wolfenstein 2 were all sales disappointments. It still sucks but the writing was on the wall imo.

I remember last year some youtuber said that HIFI Rush was a sales failure. It became a bit of a big deal and MS replied saying it was a success for them. It always felt weird how quickly they felt the need to reply to that when Xbox usually loves talking player count.
It always felt like they were pissed that Starfield never got the reception of HFR.

"didn't make the money that it needed to make".
-what the youtuber said

"was a break out hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations. We couldn't be happier with what the team at Tango Gameworks delivered with this surprise release."
-Aaron Greenburg of Xbox

Notice the language never responded to what the insider said just broadened the definition of success.

I hope it is good! I wanted to like Inquisition but it was too bloated and the world too empty. Great cast though and fun story and the dragon bosses were great.

I hope they show a non-VR Astrobot or Astrobot with the ability to play both versions like Resident evil. Give me this and I'll be happy.

Well here's the good thing:
Playstation hasn't done day one for its heavy hitters unlike the idiots at Xbox which means they still have a "healthier" ecosystem. The problem, a lot of indies rely on that money and with these payments drying up we me see even more reduced visibility for new indies.

This sucks
During the PS4 Era there were three gems which I bought on sale just because I loved the cover art:
1. Gravity Rush Remastered
2. Prey (2017)
3. The Evil Within 2

Prey was such a great experience and quite frankly the best Arkane game after the first Dishonored (it was much better than all of Lyons other games).

The Evil Within 2 was my horror game of the year and I really did prefer it over RE7 which I just could never click with. The enemy designs are some of my favorites. Especially the Obscura.

@MrMagic Seriously people in Afghanistan, Chad and Togo are probably dealing with far more important stuff like making a living to care about stuff like this. First world problems.

As I said earlier, the PC community has slowly grown more and more toxic since 2020. Every week they have new issues with games. Hopefully Playstation reduce their dependence on the market and start focusing towards consoles again.

@Nepp67 Steam would never put in that much effort.

I just enjoy playing games.

The PS5 is my main gaming machine but since 2022 It's been non-stop releases for games third party, first party sony, timed exclusives or Switch first party.
From catching up with Miles, Integrade, Returnal and Rift Apart to Elden Ring, Forbidden West and Ragnarok, Pentiment.
2023 having Jedi Survivor, FFXVI, Sea of Stars, Humanity, Cocoon, Armored Core, Spidey 2, Alan Wake 2, BG 3, Tchia, CP2077 2.0, Ragnarok Valhalla, Mario, Metroid Prime Remaster, Zelda, Pikmin
2024 still has me slowly going through BG3 while playing through a 80 hour FF7 Rebirth and now Stellar Blade while I haven't had enough time to buy Ronin, P3 Reload or Unicorn Overlord.

These are just the new releases in this time and don't include the fact that there are more classics than ever to catch up on if you missed those games originally.

Seriously there are so many games from AAA and indie devs I genuinely struggle to understand how people have no games to play or can call this gen disappointing. I am too busy juggling all these games to remember ND, Bend and the others exist. I love the first party studios and will buy the games day one if they appeal to me but Single Player gaming on consoles has never been better and most games I mentioned performed well too.
Heck being on Playstation usually means you're getting the best version of the game for a few months until the PC versions are fixed.

Finally done with Rebirth and my oh my was this game a giant disappointment until the very good last chapter and lovely last cutscene. I will be generous and give the game a 6/10 but it is actually a 5/10.

It is so long and so boring for most of the game. Sephiroth (now officially comic relief) pops up twice every two chapters to say "Cloud" and disappear. The cutscenes are so long with very little happening most of the time. Emotional scenes become comedic. The open world is so repetitive it gives Ubisoft a run for their money. Mini-game controls are not great most of the time. The combat is still great but it doesn't have enough depth for a 100 hour completion. Aerith has no role to play for most of the game until the last chapter.
This game didn't under-perform because it is exclusive, it under-performed because it is a 15 hour game stretched to 80 hours with nothing actually happening. I can talk a lot more about its faults but I just want to be done with it.

After uninstalling Rebirth, I started Stellar Blade, So far the combat is great, performance is great on balanced, music is excellent, story slow but has potential, platforming is fiddly. Really fun and a much needed palate cleanser.

stop making games for PC. They are never worth it. The worst group of gaming fans.

***** Larian has one if you want access to your backup saves. Bethesda has one.

@Ken_Kaniff It is probably true especially looking at the Xbox hardware sales figures in the Americas but I hate how he puts speculation as fact and then acts like it is the reader who misinterpreted his comments.

Just another clout chaser looking for virality.

I mean it is the number one accessory in the US for Q1 and I've seen most who own it be quite positive towards it. It is a device for single tv households and I think that it suits that purpose well. It was number 2 on Amazon Japans best sellers in Gaming last month. In the UK it goes out of stock within a day or two.

I think the time has come to just ignore online consensus and actually use critical thinking to understand why a product is being made before passing judgement.

@IOI Also it is Jez Corden and with him it is always 50-50 with accuracy where next week he'll suddenly revise his stance or say it was taken out of context.

The game is just not very good. I've rarely played a game that has 5 hours of actual story spread across 60 hours of game (I dropped the open world stuff by the time I was at Nibel).

The worst part, that 60 hours doesn't give any character additional depth (Aerith is non-existent until the end of the game, the other characters experience zero growth minus Red XIII)

Sephiroth is an absolute joke with how frequently he appears to say "Cloud" like its either a slur or he's horny. Scenes like Barrett and Dyne go on for so long that they shift from sad to unintentionally hilarious. Yuffie's humour falls flat. The open world mini-games suck.

The final cutscene and boss being great is the only thing that saves the game from being a 4-5/10 in my eyes and bring it to a 7/10 (very generous of me if I am being honest).

Remake took itself a lot more seriously for the most part, characters actually had arcs, mini-games were not forced onto you that often, the weird Shinra plot was better integrated.

That leads to my main takeaway: A lot of my criticisms with Rebirth were already discussed when Remake launched. I felt it now but many already felt this way with the 2020 game, the story adaptations (it has gone full Kingdom Hearts without Goofy and Donald) do not really earn their place despite actually being interesting conceptually.

So I can see the huge drop-off, especially in Japan where Yakuza does everything Rebirth does but better.

@Deoxyr1bose When I got my PS5 Frozen Wilds was the first thing I played and I was still stunned by the visuals especially the with the fluid 60fps added. But then I played Forbidden West 6 months later and the tech improvements were a lot more pronounced than I expected.

I don't think a full Remake is needed or wanted by most but the tech improvements are big between the two games.

I keep saying this but while the media is focused more on the AAA layoffs, Indies are in a far worse situation than ever before.

Engines like Unreal and Unity have opened the market to everyone which means there is a constantly overcrowded indie scene and getting noticed in near impossible.

Then you add the subscription services and the day one release system and suddenly the value of most indies drop to "I'll play it when it comes on GP/Plus" for huge number of consumers.

Publishers are nervous about funding games because games are more expensive and riskier than ever before (we are at a point where 10-15 mil budgets are considered indie)

@carlos82 Wow that is fascinating. More interesting that first party playstation is doing so much business physically. Explains why they're pushing those 80 dollar digital deluxe editions.

@carlos82 Can you cite your source? I'm more than happy to be proven wrong since I'm a big advocate for physical still existing,

@ChrisDeku Physical is only worth it when they launch a complete/definitive DLC included in disc collectors set/LRG edition. Those usually have decent profit mark ups. Otherwise physical is absolutely irrelevant right now.
The overall marketing was just pretty non-existent with the occasional trailer dropping every two months.

AW2 had really poor marketing, the game is too weird for the mainstream, lack of Steam and it is generally not a very good "GAME". It is a good youtube movie.

The show is extremely weird to me. It has the bones of a good idea there but it is so scattershot. You have genuinely talented comedy actors like Edi Patterson (The Righteous Gemstones) and Adam Pally (Happy Endings) phoning it in. Knuckles actually disappears for chunks of the episode (Idris was either too busy or the VFX were too expensive). Episode 3 is funny for the wrong reasons (Knuchles).

There are also issues with the very basic framing of shots which again show a lot of cost-saving.

Great! Started playing it today! They've tightened up the controls a bit and the performance on console is "stellar"