Roguelite is quickly becoming one of my favourite genres. I’m definitely up for it. You also mentioned a “paltry price point”, so not much to lose. Did you mention what it was?

Edit: £14.39 at 10% off, which does indeed fall into my impulse buy window digitally.

Kingdom Come 2 Deliverance. And for a while to come, especially as I bought all the DLC now. Such a brilliant game. What Elder Scrolls always promised to be, but never was. The only annoyance are largely unmarked timed and missable quests combined with a trophy challenge for completing most of them. Makes sense for the story and world, just not for a 150+ hr game.

Still, can’t put it down.

The Eminence in Shadow and Final Fantasy games appeal. Everything else is just DLC or dour looking.

I was with them until they said only one entity could own a game, as if there aren’t multiple (read infinite) copies.

Immediately one of my most anticipated games. Look fantastic!

I’m presuming the game will be a more modest price then. Perhaps £45-50. Hopefully the trophy challenges provide some additional run time. Will likely get it, but wait for a sale.

It obviously isn’t going to work on stylised games like the FF7 Remake, but all the overs look better to me.

Kingdom come Deliverance 2. And I think I will be for quite a while. This game is really what Elder Scrolls has been promising to be.

What this shows is that the PS5 has been seriously underutilised as we all suspected, because only the biggest and richest of devs, confident in huge profits, can afford to commit the time and money to make the most of them.
This doesn’t bode well for next gen without serious AI help I suspect.

Chained echoes sounds very good, so happy with that.

The skin rendering and lighting is indeed a step back, but other than that the changes aren’t bad in my opinion. Maybe they’ve had to take a step back to get it to run on systems most people have.

They just want as many people as possible to buy the non resaleable copy. Not really a surprise, it means everyone buys from them rather than secondhand, and they can keep the price higher for longer.

@Markatron84
Unless you are talking purely in terms of polygon numbers, yes, the design of the original is far superior.

@Markatron84
That still looks much better than what they are making her look like now.

I always prefer older designs, especially with female characters. It’s like certain devs are under very strict instructions about such things these days, and it leads to bland copy paste “designs”.

@Dogbreath
To answer your question - because it’s a huge time commitment as you say, so I’ve been clearing other games, which also gives me the benefit of waiting for big new games to work out all the kinks, plus drop in price.

I think you severely underestimate the backlog we all have when we don’t only like the known franchises. A large game like this can easily be a once or twice a year event.

KCD2! Well that saves me a good amount of money! Looks like I know what my next big game will be. Hopefully the combat is more fun as that’s the reason I didn’t finish the first game, despite loving most other elements, it became tiresome to play. Not helped by really clunky and sluggish menus and such. Plus the missable / timed quests and stuff put me off a bit if I remember…Not sure whether to go back and finish it now or just watch the story element online if available. Does anyone know whether there is a strong story throughline from the first game?

Some other decent games for me too, and that’s with me already having Helldivers 2 and vampire survivors

Exactly as it should be. Even if it stops me being able to plat a game, I do prefer not to have the constant nagging temptation to just destroy the challenge. This does that for me, while still allowing those who need it and don’t care about trophies to finish the game. Let’s face it, most people don’t consider trophy challenges to be part of a game anyway.

Away from home this weekend. Was going to continue Soulstone Survivor but I can’t stream it for some reason, so will be continuing Broken Sword.

Thank god for that! Been waiting for this game to be finished for ages. Currently elbow deep in Soulstone Survivors, but this is definitely next on the roguelite list

So they are saying they didn’t negotiate a great deal. Why would they look to clear that up?…oh, I suppose MS must have been pissed by the story.

I would say they only need to hold out 1 generation of gamers to reap big rewards, about 15 years; just like with Microtransactions, it’s now completely normal and nobody questions it…but then will there be another strong generation of PlayStation gamers without the ability to give games to your kids or younger siblings? Without cheap second hand games allowing kids to experience all PlayStation’s has to offer and get people into the franchises? So short sighted by Sony.

Unless they at least allow digital game ownership to be gifted away, this is the start of PlayStation decline. All so they can make some fast bucks by further monetising those already in the ecosystem, like they admitted.

@VeldinX
This is a censored version? If so that’s me immediately out.

If it’s just the lack of rewind features then I’m completely fine with that, I’d rather not have the temptation of that crutch. I presume as it’s a PS4 game it still has trophy challenges

This obviously doesn’t count all the second hand game purchasing and trades between friends that physical allows. No short term money in that so it’s not looked at, despite keeping gaming alive and active between generations and those on lower income, like teenagers, who will spend more money when older.

Forced to visit my wife’s friend this weekend, but brought the portal and will stream broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars: Reforged. Haven’t played it since PS1 original.

Actually looking forward to trying this. Will there be added trophy challenges?

All they need to say is that they are committed implementing a digital return policy and lending/sale ability before discs are scrapped.

Without that they may as well stay silent and just take the loss.

Might be helpful to mitigate next gen potentially not having a disc drive, but it won’t solve the real problem of discs going bye bye.

@nomither6
What do you mean? My time is limited so I need fewer game options to fill that time, thus I don’t need multiple systems 🤷‍♂️ pretty self explanatory I thought.

@nomither6
I have limited spare time to play. Maybe 90 minutes a day. If I can’t play all the games I want on one platform, having more than one would be a needless waste of money.

@Sweetz
I think it’s obviously fair to say that people that engage with gaming websites like this are more enthusiast that the general PlayStation user base.

Sony clearly don’t care about them as much, as the more discerning usually skews older, and it’s the Fortnite pocket money kids and COD/FIFA young adults that spend all the money, so certainly good they avoided saying this poll is representative of PlayStation players, hence their categorisation.

@johnedwin
Why do you not consider the poll representative? If you force me to buy digital, which is already going to be massively more expensive due to the inability to resell, then I want the best sales (steam) and the option to return a game if I don’t like it after a few hours (steam). As PC also has more games (including VR, which Sony seem to have abandoned) and I’m bored with Sony’s cookie cutter narrative adventures by now, I really see no reason to stay with Sony. They already killed a good amount of my goodwill with their increased censorship policies over Nintendo and Steam from 2018, and this announcement, along with the increased price pushing console gaming into a more premium cost category anyway, absolutely makes PC a much more logical proposition for me. And no, I haven’t had an Xbox since the 360 and don’t expect any better of MS.

Actually looks quite good. Obviously designed around being easily released on Switch, but at least the character models are fun.

I’ll stick with P4 Golden on the trusty VITA then (luckily I have the physical game). Ridiculous change, especially given the character arc.

I’ve had PlayStation since PS1 (my first system was a secondhand Commodore 64 and, thanks to two brothers, I’ve had all Nintendo, SEGA, and Xbox consoles too (well, only the original XBox and 360). Basically I’m system agnostic but have mained PlayStation most of the time and never had a true gaming PC.

I’ll probably get one once I’m finished with PS5 though. Partly because I don’t believe they’ll allow the same refund policies as Steam, nor as low prices, but mainly because their first party games bore me now and they’ve pretty much abandoned PSVR2. Much more choice on PC, including far more VR games, plus cheaper prices, makes it a pretty each choice now I’ve actually been forced to think about it.

I think there are a lot of people like me who just really haven’t had a reason to consider leaving the PlayStation ecosystem until this gen (well, I did during the 2018 censorship run, but not enough given my investment up to that point).

Thinking of that, I wonder how much my PS Account is worth with its uninterrupted PS Plus run from the end of the PS3 era…)

@naruball
I said the devs, not Sony. The devs are just getting more views, it’s Sony getting the bad press (rightfully so).

You know, I do wonder, are some devs happy for their game trailers and other announcements to be flooded with these comments? I imagine they are getting a lot more views because of it. Sure the comments aren’t relevant, but has that ever been important?

Will probably try this the . I like rogue likes and have only heard good things.

I like how they specified that none of the first part “public ally announced” games are being cancelled.

I wouldn’t be surprised if MS actually release their own streaming platform and clamp down hard on YouTube.

What people need to understand is that, what Sony and MS mean by “players” is not the traditional player. We are not profitable enough. They mean a load of kids spamming their pocket money on skins and gatcha rolls, and loads of people playing candy crush and spending money on time gated…whatever. Of those there could be billions. If they focus more on China and India. But of traditional players, these companies can’t get the growth that capitalism demands.

This actually happened to me on Xbox. I lost all my 360 games and achievements and that stopped me even considering a later console from them. It’s crazy how these companies can just steal purchased products.

@CallMeDuraSouka
Remains to be seen, but they do clearly say

“ We’ll continue to prioritize our resources to drive innovation in how players can access games and provide choices as to where players prefer to purchase new games, whether that’s at retailers or PlayStation Store. ”

Gotten into granblue fantasy relink and really liking it so far. The only annoyance is it’s another game with cheat codes (listed as “accessibility options”) that allow for gradients of reduced damaged all the way up to invincibility. It’s hard to play a JRPG based on levelling up when you can effectively do so immediately from the options menu. Please devs, stop doing this! It just makes you constantly feel like every enemy is a needless damage sponge and that you are wasting your life by playing properly. At the very least turn off trophies when using such options.

@Old-Red
I completely take your point about second hand sales and game lending, but I would also say it is more of a younger person thing, and gamers are aging. I swapped games with friends when I was younger too, but they’ve all since stopped gaming other than live service tosh, and are young kids still playing single player games?

CEX is still the cheapest way to game by far, but as disposable income exceeds time available with age, that becomes less of an issue.

I do flip flop between the idea So y want to destroy the second hand market and that they don’t care much. Especially as Microtransactions take over as the dominant way to make money. When someone gets bored with a game and passes it on they are less taking away an important revenue stream and more opening one up with a new player…

@Old-Red
Thanks, I’ll read the table later.

On the bullet points though, it is obvious to see that the ones highlighted as selling way more physically are games bundled with the console. So I would point that out.

Also, I can’t really get on board with the idea that you can’t count games that don’t have a physical option. Market economics would indicate that if it’s not released physically it’s because the publishers has indications there is no demand for physical.

Ultimately this isn’t useful data I don’t think. What would be useful is to see the percentage of gamers who are only digital. Because Sony can still lose much of those digital sales if consumers buying mainly digital would choose another platform if they couldn’t get some games physically.

@Old-Red
I’d like to see a source for that please. Everything I can find says this 15% figure includes all DLC and Microtransactions on the digital side (although I find that hard to believe given I’d think a good 95% of total revenue comes from the likes of Fortnite and other “gaming” hangouts).

I’m interested to find out how much Sony lose in digital sales when everyone who wants the option to get physical moves to the green walled garden next gen (assuming Xbox still allow physical media, which they absolutely should if they want to win back market share now), or move to PC, because they had previously been put off by the lack of physical games. It’s not only the 15% Sony are putting at risk because those who buy tentpole physical games also buy lots of smaller digital games. Not to mention all the Microtransactions.

@Nf157
Of course they wanted to do it, they just needed an excuse, even a bad one (and it is a bad one, as 15% of the current market is still way more than 85% of the ps3 market in financial terms).

The reason they want it is virtual store monopoly and the destruction of the second hand game market, giving them greater pricing control. The same reason every publisher wants it.

It’s short sighted as it will reduce the future player base, but then business is designed around short term gains.

@Titntin
You mean “saleable/tradeable download tickets”, which is the main point when digital doesn’t have that option, nor a semblance of a return policy.