Comments 2,666

Re: More Spicy Helldivers 2 Drama as Freedom's Flame Backlash Boils Over

sanderson72

@anon_pel222 Some do, ESO being a classic case in point - there were some nerfs and buffs a few years ago which included Wood Elves going from being excellent at thievery and sneaking to wandering around in a fluorescent jacket and honking clown shoes overnight, ruining some player characters forever, all due to some whinging sorcerers being taken out by bow wielding Bosmer.

Hopefully Arrowhead will eventually leave well alone but such is the pain of any live service game where the rules and balance (or lack of) can be altered at the studio's whim.

Re: Reaction: PS5 Needs a Price Cut

sanderson72

Thing is, Sony were recently selling the PS5 disc version for about £400 - so was that not sustainable or were they just offloading the old fatties before the new slightly slimmer fatties came in?

@x3King84 @Matthewnh I don't think it's developers being obliged to make PS4 versions, they're thinking of profits and if the old one is still capable of running a game, why not? Even if every PS5 owner has sold/retired their PS4, there are as many PS4s out there as PS5s and if they can sell it on the old platforms then they'll do it. Some studios can only prioritise one platform and it makes sense to aim for the PS5 going forwards but for the others, the PS4 will still be a thing for the next year or two. The Star Wars Jedi: Survivor announcement is one such case - no need for it but potential profits talk. Might run quite well on the Pro.

Re: Reaction: PS5 Needs a Price Cut

sanderson72

@x3King84 I have a PS3 Slim 2500 series and a PS4 Pro 7200 series and I'd be gutted if either died. I really couldn't care less about the PS5.

@Matthewnh Started at £450, rose to £480 (everywhere apart from the US for some reason), intermittent cuts down to about $430 and then the cheaper to make not-very-slim is erm, £480. Yes, it's due a price cut. Or we need the PS6.

Re: Reaction: PS5 Needs a Price Cut

sanderson72

By this time in its lifecycle, after 4 years, the PS4 had cleared 80 million units so the 5 isn't doing as well as it should.
I assume a big uptake of the 4 came with the price reduction to about £300.
Some of the PS5 failing to keep up with its dad is its high price (when 90% of games are available on the PS4) but also, bar a few titles, the PS5 just still doesn't have a system seller and, thanks to backwards compatibility, its sales so far have been on the shoulders of the 4.
While it's true that GTA6 will push the sales up a bit, the 5 is struggling to a certain extent when it's up against the still enduring popularity of the PS4.

Re: PS5 Pro Is Seemingly Starting to Appear in Source Code

sanderson72

Current one has been a waste of £500 - not going to be dropping another £500+ on a console with zero exclusives worth playing. I miss the old Sony and PS devs.

@NEStalgia Even the SSD is a bit of a hard sell if you had a PS4 Pro and upgraded the internal drive to an SSD. SATA 3 has max throughput of 6GB/s which is faster than the PS5 SSD in uncompressed mode (5.5GB/s, which might be one of the reasons why my Pro seems quicker downloading PS4 titles than the 5?).

Re: PS5 Simply Can't Match the Pace of 2023 in Europe

sanderson72

@rjejr I think Brexit can be blamed for most problems in the UK, unfortunately.

Consoles have always been built to a price. However, with the Tub o' Lard, I'm getting the impression that Cerny went a bit over the top in what he wanted to create and the bean counters then came along and made it cheaper.
I mean the DriftSense (thanks for the term @nomither6) seems to be made out of the cheapest plastics and the number of replacements/repairs because of drifting sticks and broken triggers seems to be off the scale - certainly way more than any generation of DualShock. Yes, they broke eventually after a LOT of punishment, whereas the DS5 seems to break as soon as you look at it,

Sony peaked at the PS3/PS4 era and then it seems to have stagnated.

Re: PS5 Simply Can't Match the Pace of 2023 in Europe

sanderson72

@wiiware Even the PS4 Pro regularly reduced to about £300.

Switch decline was expected as everyone that wanted one has got one and the next gen box is just over the horizon.
XBox - well, what can you say? Shot themselves in the PS4 era and keep doing it over and over again.

Sony are just profiteering - entire point of the not-very-Slim is that it was supposed to be cheaper to manufacture. They haven't even reduced the price of the PS4, it's still at £260. That should be down to £200 by now, with a free game.unless doing that will hurt fatty sales?

Re: Talking Point: Was Sony Right to Resist Adding PS5 Exclusives to PS Plus Day One?

sanderson72

If Sony did a lower tier of PS+ with only online play and save game backups ('cos they don't allow PS5 saves to go to a USB stick for some reason - $$$) then I'd sign up for that.
I'll be dropping to Essential in December as Extra (which I've had for about 18 months) and Premium, in my eyes, are not worth paying Sony over £100 for a year's game rental.

Sure, it was useful when you used to get PS3, PS4 and PS Vita games as part of the sub, but these days, a few questionable PS4 titles and a PS5 remake of a remake of a remaster and the whole 'free' games option seems a bit overpriced.
Money off a game or add-on for being a PS+ subscriber is something I've made use of but only if I can't obtain the same thing physically for an even lower price.

Re: Astro Bot's PS5 File Size Is About Six Times Bigger Than Astro's Playroom

sanderson72

@__jamiie I've just got a 1TB external drive plugged in which has PS4 games on.

What I can't fathom is the amount of space that the PS5 uses for 'Other' (for 'system data so games can run correctly', etc. apparently) which is currently chewing up 23.03GB but apparently this can change depending on what the console is doing? I'm assuming that this is Windows-esque swap space (for Unix, obviously)?

Re: Rumour: Sony's Still Working on PS3 Emulation for PS5

sanderson72

@nomither6 @astro911 Eventually got my white DriftSense (love it!) back from Sony repairs a week or so ago. Barely used in a year and when we tried using both controllers, that one just pulled to the left constantly!

Posted it with about 3 days of warranty remaining and Sony's repair tracker is just as broken as the controller innards!
First it said 'hand it in at the post office' status, then updated to say 'on its way to us' status, then reverted back to 'hand it in at the post office' and no sign of where it was. Eventually, I got an email saying it was on it's way back on the same day it a full replacement was returned!
Must be a lot of busted DS5s for them to fix...

Re: Rumour: Sony's Still Working on PS3 Emulation for PS5

sanderson72

@Anti-Matter You're right on the game prices. My lad wanted to continue his F1 games collection on the PS3 and he picked up F1 2010 for £1 from our local CEX!
I do wonder if it might be because the games aren't useable on the PS4 & PS5 but they are very cheap these days?
Hope my Slim keeps going for many more years (and the 3 official DS3s) as there's so much good stuff trapped on there, and being the 2500 series, it's very quiet and so is the disc drive.

@trev666 That's true as none of the Motorstorm games were released digitally.

Not tried it recently but I think the bizarre thing is, if you have Driveclub on disc, you could download patches and extra DLC content (if you had already purchased it) even though it's been de-listed!

Re: Rumour: Sony's Still Working on PS3 Emulation for PS5

sanderson72

Still got a 2503 Slim PS3 after the fatty popped its clogs. Still playing Worms 2: Armageddon and Motorstorm: Pacific Rift on the old, old stager.

To me, emulation would be nice (if the PS5 can hack it?) but we need some of those PS3 IPs being brought up to date:

1, Motorstorm (unlikely due to Evolution being no more - thanks Sony)
2. ModNation Racers (unlikely due to United Front being no more though San Diego, who helped with the original & Road Trip, could step in) and of course
3. LBP 1 & 2 (MM still exist but the servers for all LBP versions don't exist any more - just after MM uploaded all their textures and objects - again, thanks Sony)

Re: UK Video Game Retailer GAME Will Reportedly Stop Stocking Video Games

sanderson72

I remember buying Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance on release day from Game - I then had to go back and buy a PS2 Memory Card as I didn't have enough storage space on my other two!

Bought my PS3 fatty (R.I.P.) from Game too just after Sony announced that they were finishing off the 60Gb units and only making the 40Gb ones. Stock had completely sold out within a week! That said, PS4 original from Argos, PS4 Pro from Shop To & PS5 from Currys.

Game's used selection was dwindling anyway and CEX is just so much better.

Re: 14 More PS Plus Extra, Premium Titles Available to Download Now

sanderson72

@kailun Unfortunately the PS5 doesn't have enough grunt to natively emulate the PS3's Cell so unless the PS6 gets a serious power jump, you'd be better off finding a decent condition used PS3 and a load of (cheap in CEX, these days) discs!
Some Vita games could come across though some will be stuck due to the rear touchpad not being supported.