Topic: PlayStation 5 --OT--

@JohnnyShoulder I’m not really sure what she’s supposed to do about it. They’re not even consistent in their death threats.

It's grim, who has enough time or so little else to care about that you could get so fired up about a game delay?! Long term it must drive talent out of the games industry.

@R1spam It’s easy to see why so many people burn out. Devs are underpaid, overworked and underappreciated. And they’re qualified to work in plenty other fields with a lot less problems. The industry uses their passion, chews them up and spits them out.

@nessisonett yep, I guess it's like a lot of fields in that it attracts shed loads of new, impressionable graduates, abuses them and spits them out as every year there are a whole tranche of fresh faced replacements. Working in the indie dev scene must be more rewarding though

@JohnnyShoulder It's absolutely ridiculous, especially given the fact that you would have had to be a complete moron to truly believe the game was ever coming out in 2021. I pretty much knew it right after it was announced, or at least once they started talking about their upcoming slate after launch. If things were normal, maybe it would have had a slim chance of coming out before Christmas, but honestly, even then I would have had my doubts. Factoring in the pandemic made it a certainty. A person really has no right to be upset when they are the ones at fault for being so stupid.

Also, all of this cross-gen crap is a joke. Yes, Sony kind of brought it on themselves by criticizing Microsoft for doing exactly what they are doing now, but it still shouldn't be that big of a deal in the end. The vast majority of these people will be praising whatever game (God of War, Horizon, etc.) like it's the love of their life. There will be the rare person that purposely looks for things wrong, like "I'm deleting this Game of the Year contender because the trees in the background look last gen! I don't care if I've been having a blast with the game. PS5-only or bust!" Ultimately though, this should end up being almost completely forgotten, and at most remembered for the joke it is.

This is all coming from an Xbox owner, btw. I'm not even a PlayStation fanboy and I'll admit how ridiculous all of this has been lately.

I wasn't holding my breath for God of War making 2021 after so long without any information (even though I'm used to that as an Atlus and Square fan), but Ratchet, Returnal and Horizon are more than enough for me personally in terms of launch window stuff. Early 2022 is still a pretty quick turnaround in terms of release gaps after how long we had to wait between Ascension on PS3 and GoW PS4

I also don't personally care that God of War and Gran Turismo are cross gen. It's likely those games started development on PS4 anyway only to transition to next gen during development which means as a PS5 owner I only have more to gain from getting a better version of the game since Sony is standardizing performance presets on their first party stuff across the board

I will say though, Jim Ryan really needs to learn when to shut his mouth and avoid driving the irony stake up Sony's ass whenever they announce something that doesn't reflect off what he says, and this is coming from someone who thinks that Halo Infinite should've flat out been a Series X/PC only game and thought it was being severely limited by their adherence to older gen hardware based on the early gameplay stuff

Insomniac killin' it again

I moved the discussion over here because it probably makes more sense here....

@Voltan @JohnnyShoulder
You guys don’t have the “Explore” Tab? It’s on the app too. I’m not in front of my console but on the app it looks like this:

With the icon that look like a paper airplane. It’s where all the news and blog stuff is posted and on the console it’s a little more densely presented with a bunch of links to random “news”, videos, sales, etc.

@Th3solution Yeah, I know how the icon looks - I saw it in the UI previews and other places. I don't have it at all on the home screen, never did. I do have it in the app and the console's control bar (the thing that appears when you press the PS button) though.

@Voltan I think I have it at the bottom when I press the PS button too, which is customizable to put the icons you want down there, but I also have it on the top bar, between the icons of the recently played games and the PS Store icon which is all the way to the left. How come I have it up there too? I wonder if there’s a way to customize it off the top bar. I’ll have to play around with it the next time I’m on my console. Maybe it’s a U.S. thing. Not sure why the presence of an entire icon would be a regional thing.

When you click on it at the bottom (after pressing the PS button) what sort of content loads up?

@Th3solution Yeah same as @Voltan. On the PS5 control bar i have 3 news stories and my latest screen shot. I can't say it bothers me that much, but I did unfollow a load of games when I first got the console so only the games I'm interested in come up. It is on the app too, but it is not something I go into really.

@Th3solution I'll take some screenshots for you after work
On the control bar it's something like "news from your games" - not much there really.
And yeah, I believe it's a US thing. It could be something about European laws regarding privacy and unsolicited ads and stuff. I'm pretty sure those are way more strict over here than in the US.

@Voltan @JohnnyShoulder Ah, yeah I’d be curious to see how it looks differently. And it’s fascinating how the user experience can differ depending where you live. You’re probably right about the laws. But honestly, the ads, news, and videos from Sony and publishers is reasonable, like links to the interview with Herman Hulst, Combat tips for Ninja Gaiden (a game I’ve never owned or played), Resident Evil Dead by Daylight crossover release “news”, a bunch of VR news (which I also don’t own), links to the Horizon FW merch store where they’re selling T-shirts etc. ..., But the more annoying aspect is there is a bunch of user content icons in there too, like icons with links to random people’s twitch and live streams. I absolutely have no interest in just randomly watching people I don’t know play Destruction All-Stars new Blitz mode, or stream their Sackboy playthrough. It’s just way more cluttered than including a simple link to buy avatars for your profile.

@Th3solution Took a short break so I powered up the console while at it. Unfortunately all my USB thumb drives decided to hide from me and there’s still no other good way to take screenshots from the console, so some pictures of the screen will have to do: https://imgur.com/a/MQbQDyM

As you can see there’s no Explore at all on the Home Screen. There’s an activity card called “official news” but that’s it.
Some games have a “trending videos" section on their respective pages if you scroll down.

@Voltan Oh great - thanks for that!
It looks similar on my end, but with the Explore icon pinned next to the Store icon.
And the videos and content as you scroll down under each game are present on my end also. And when I press the PS button it defaults to the official news cards also. Just all a little busy for my taste. Nothing horrible, but just ironic how there’s this jumbled assault of graphics and videos but that the trophy list and friend list is buried out of the way where it takes a little searching to find. After learning the ropes, I accustomed to the structure, but it requires just ignoring all the ad and news content while I just scroll directly to the place I want to go. Which I guess was present on the PS4 UI also, but less cumbersome and the ads seemed less assertive since they were tucked away in the XMB.

It’s the Facebookification of the PS experience, with constantly squeezing in imagery from things they want you to see, even if only momentarily, as it places the idea in your mind to maybe buy something.

After work I’ll see if I’m able to unpin the Explore tab, but I suspect not.

@Th3solution I think you might be able to get rid of it if you unfollow all games.
I don't mind seeing news for games I play but I liked the PS4 screen that showed your friends' activity a lot more.

@Th3solution I think @Voltan is right, GDPR got introduced a few years back in Europe which would tie into something like this.

@JohnnyShoulder Maybe that’s another reason why Sony is sticking it to you all with the game pricing (in addition to the VAT issues). They aren’t making near as much advertising revenue from Europe and UK vs. the U.S. 🤔

Not sure which I’d rather have — more ads, or higher game prices.

@Th3solution I doubt the ads affect prices much. It’s mostly taxes and logistics and stuff (like having everything done in multiple languages).

Personally, I wouldn’t trade lower taxes for the other differences between the US and the EU (even though Poland is on the lower end of standards in Europe) but this is probably not the thread to discuss that 😉

@Th3solution You guys may have lower base prices, but at least we don't pay extra taxes. What price you see on the shelf/item page is the final price you pay.