vyseofhr

@Oxy The Zelda title released this year is the weakest since the OG DS titles, imo.

”Hilariously uninformed”…

Or doesn’t like RPGs.

@breakneck That’s definitely… an opinion.

Will preface this by saying I adored both Rebirth and Astrobot… but wow that’s a weak year. When they need to scrape the GOTY barrel with DLC that’s a pretty good indicator of where we’re at right now.

Hope 2025 is stronger.

Taking the PSSR.

Skipped it at launch because of the digital-only release, and will wait now until the physical copies go down in price.

The Live Service cycle:

1. Start off by offering a service with some value, watch people sign up in their masses.
2. Make terms steadily worse and worse over time, degrading value from consumer point of view, but maximising profit company side.
3. Disband service citing lack of engagement/user interest.
4. Replace or reboot, citing lessons learned, and start cycle from point one, repeating exact same cycle.

@Mikey856 What you’re describing there is literally platform bias, yes. “I play Sony, so therefore Astro > Mario.”

@PuppetMaster - You’re not wrong. However, none of those franchises has a game that comes even remotely close to the inspiration that AstroBot has taken from Mario Galaxy. And the Venn diagram of people that enjoy platform games but don’t like Mario games must be almost vanishingly small in 2024.

@Mikey856 Astrobot is literally a (very, very good) Sony-badged rehash of Super Mario Galaxy. That you “don’t get the hype” says more about your personal bias than the quality of Mario games. They’re objectively fantastic, just like Astro.

This is awful (and ultimately unsurprising given Roblox is essentially the Wild West), but kudos to PS for also pointing out that this is also a short-selling group who are doing this because there will be money to be made, not because they are altruistic social justice champions. They likely primarily see an investment opportunity in tanking a company’s share price.

Stand up, stand up if you love football

@Blofse It’s better than Mario Wonder, agree. After a week with it I don’t think it hits the heights of either Galaxy game or Odyssey though. It’s still fabulous mind.

Yeah no thanks.

Rather it was 4, tbh.

2024 and we’re still crossgen. What do we need a PS5 ‘Pro’ for, again?

This has been my one experience with PSVR2 that has really rocked my socks when I’m playing it. The words game changer get thrown about pretty lightly sometimes, but it is genuinely hard to go back once you’ve tried it.

I can’t believe the F1 games still aren’t taking advantage of it.

My jaw hit the floor when I heard Joy Formidable on the soundtrack during my first playthrough on XSX. Was so awesome to hear such a niche band in a relatively high-profile game.

Hi-Fi Rush rocks; just play it!

I loved Gwent so much I bought a physical version, and would absolutely do the same for Queen’s Blood.

I don’t think it really matters with a global overview as such, but sub-categories would be more interesting.

The top 10 would likely be EAFC, COD, GTA etc but drill it down to genre level and I think you could get the boon of visibility for titles that might not normally get the exposure. I think that would definitely have some worth, both for the gamer, and for Sony.

@nessisonett Would love that too, but can’t see it with E&C and the Hardyz being in AEW now.

I’m glad for the people that are hyped, for me this just reinforced my view that if you don’t like shooters or 3rd person action games, 2024 looks pretty dry.

Looking forward to the FF7 SoP next week though.

I’m possibly a sceptic here but Star Wars and FFVII aside, what a step down from 2023 this year is shaping to be…

Not every year can be a banger though I guess.

Had it been physical - Day One.
Without a disc, I’ll be waiting for a discount to <€20.

Exactly the same with Baldur’s Gate. I want to play it, but can wait.

If they take away the resale value of a physical product, the overall value proposition sinks massively. I want it on my shelf if I love it, I want to be able to sell it if I don’t.

@Loamy In need of an upgrade?! Half of all new titles are still crossgen

@gomersoul

Consumer habits have changed. Before, people would only buy a new release every few months. Now, a lot of people buy a game a week. A game with a great core hook but released without DLC will only sell for a short time. In 2023 Battle/Premium Passes, constant drip feed of new content to keep the FOMO alive and stop players from lapsing or moving to something else is just as important as attracting them in the first place, and will have been budgeted as such by the publisher. The clicks, social media interactions, and dripfeed of ‘content’ attempts to stop people from moving on to the next hot thing a week later.

I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but the days of complete multiplayer games being released on day one are long behind us.

This is the first month in ages I actually want to download the “big” game of the month. Haven’t played anything from PS Plus since Toem, but looking forward to all three this time around. Good work!

My thought is… why is an article like this on PushSquare apart from to inspire a bit of mouth-frothing?

The article doesn’t mention Sony or PlayStation one single time. This is Xbox news. I don’t think the acquisition is good news either but this article is pure flamebait, right down to the negative editorial slant.

@Beerheadgamer82

You really think that TLOU TV series is in the same league as the Mario film? And that game that Nintendo just released that sold 10 million copies in 3 days earlier this month? The fact that the Metroid remake was EVERYWHERE on the internet a couple of months ago?

Regardless of what Sony says, the metrics don’t back up what Sony is saying. The PS5 is doing great, I understand that, now that the console is readily available. But they have not caught the gaming zeitgeist once yet in 2023 and that makes the “momentum” chart a total sham.

@R_Ryder They’re piled high and not selling in both Media Markt and Giganten in Sweden. At least near me anyway. I would estimate that both stores in my town have 20+ each.

@Feena Yep, seems like calling Shenmue 2 an Xbox original or Samba di Amigo a Wii original. Really strange bit of revisionism.

Especially as the eventual PS2 port of RE4 was seen as inferior to the GC original in pretty much every way at the time.

Infantino is not a pleasant character, but isn’t this site above taking a derisory tone toward’s someone’s command of English? Seems like a bit of a cheap shot.

The PS2 Original!?

@Wiggo So, you mean they’re acting entirely logically if they want to increase the quality of their output, and thus market share, via acquisitions, then?

Won’t be anywhere near as good as KO and Chris Jericho’s.

@GuyProsciutto Reacted in exactly the same way when I read the article. It’s a PS2 classic in the same way that FFVII is a Switch classic.

Won’t FIFA be on EA Play any week now?

Huge recency bias.

The GameCube is the most comfortable controller I have ever played with. Great sticks, good, instinctive button placement, and (wonderfully contoured) analogue triggers ten years before they became standard. The only thing that felt like an afterthought was the Z trigger. Everything else was perfect.

The DualSense is a great controller, and feels great in the hands. The rumble is something else, the first time I felt rain landing on the controller in Astro’s felt sensational. I have always thought that Sony controllers have the worst analogue sticks of the major controller manufacturers though, and PS5 is no different. And for that reason it doesn’t quite reach the pinnacle for me.

@nessisonett Spot on.

@CupidStunt

SE are starting to remind me of Game Dev Story, where you’d become proficient in one genre and just pump out the same formula over and over again.

Goldberg looked incredible in that video.

Interest has gone up with that trailer, still No Chance in Hell that I am preordering though…

200% fewer copies!? Surely they can only sell 100% fewer copies before they’re back at zero….

I get that you’re saying they only made third of sales but the sentence is a bit odd…

@Deljo

Martin Tyler wasn’t any better though. I had no idea the Kevin de Bruyne was the long lost son of Kenneth Branagh until I heard Tyler utter his name, over and over again, on FIFA’s commentary…

I thought the intro to the next gen upgrade at Anfield last year was fantastic too.

@nessisonett Now I feel old. They had Black Wax on the soundtrack yes? They were a bit of a buzz band when I was at uni.

And now a member was a poster’s uncle.

#midthirtiesanxiety

@RunGMhx Relax, the consoles won’t come anywhere near their potential while all major releases are cross gen.

Still can’t for the life of me understand who at EA listens to Derek Rae and thinks “now THAT’S the voice of football right there!”

Really enjoyed this on Series X. Gameplay isn’t exactly challenging, but the story is interesting and the graphics are great (rendering two different, equally beautiful worlds at the same time is the only thing that’s really made me think “wow next gen” so far).

It was absolutely worth a playthough on Gamepass, not sure I’d be as likely to pay €49,99 though.

It’s Starfox Adventures all over again! Look at that fur!

@LordSteev That's ok, I have no skin in the console wars. I own all three.

Although I do think calling Nintendo games for children is also a misnomer. Completing a Mario platformer (particularly to 100%) is often way more challenging many of the mature games out there.

Personally, I think with very few exceptions 'mature' games tend to be the antithesis of what they are trying to be; cliched, pandering to teenage blood/nudity lust, and altogether immature. I played the Medium on Gamepass at the weekend, for example, and in more than a few places I was rolling my eyes.

Different strokes for different folks.

@LordSteev You think any of those three Nintendo-developed titles in the top 5 are BAD games?

Two of them are lazy(ish) ports of Wii U titles, I give you. But as this site so gleefully spouted last week, the PS5 has outsold the Wii U's lifetime sales in a matter of months. So nobody played them first time around. They had a very valid excuse for both releases imo.