Ainu20

Really, really looking forward to Saros gameplay. Returnal is still my favourite PS5 exclusive and Housemarque are always brilliant.

Saros gameplay confirmed!
https://blog.playstation.com/2025/09/23/state-of-play-returns-this-wednesday-september-24/

When an article makes a claim in the title ("PS5 Pro users starting to feel shortchanged"), you sort of expect the body of the article to offer some support for that claim. Which PS5 Pro users? Did someone hold a poll? Where is this coming from? It might well be true, but I'm not seeing it here.

Why do Push Square keep giving Grubb attention? He's a total fraud. The living embodiment of a broken clock.

@DreadfulDragon There's a huge difference between copying an art style and basically copying exact designs. Neither Path of Exile nor Bloodstained are guilty of the latter, while it could be argued that Light of Motiram is. Note that I specifically say it could be argued, not that it necessarily is. That is for courts to decide.

@wiiware Sony isn't trying to patent a genre. I don't get where this narrative even comes from.

@LifeGirl Several people have already pointed this out, but I'll add my voice to them as well. The clones you speak of were always mechanically similar, but that's not the case here at all. Light of Motiram is basically a different genre. The problem is that much of its art and assets are far too close to Horizon's for comfort, it's pretty blatant.

Whether it is blatant enough to hold up in court is not for any of us to decide, and I'm no expert, but it's certainly blatant enough for Sony to take legal action against them. Any other company would've done the same in this case. So no, I definitely disagree Tencent has a point here.

I love Yakuza 3 and will definitely replay it if they give it the Kiwami treatment. The core of the game remains great but there's so much that can be improved here. The presentation is the obvious one, but its combat system is very sluggish and some of the side activities, like the hostess game, are awful. So yeah, let's hope it's real and we get a glorious dragon engine version of Rikiya.

This is not even in doubt. Whether you like GTA or not, there will be no escaping the game when it releases. Its impact will be felt far beyond gaming media.

@Andy22385 You must not be very familiar @Czar_Khastik's history on this site.

@atthegates I was referring to you implying Sony are moving to an all digital future, which just doesn't seem on the cards right now.

I've said this on another site but Team Cherry just did what they felt was best for their game and are absolutely in their right to do so. It sucks for others caught in the blast radius but calling them callous because of it is a bit of a joke. They played it perfectly, creating hype with their Gamescom presence and then capitalizing on that with a release so soon after. Had they announced all of that sooner, it would still have been big, but not nearly as astronomical as this.

They went for a release strategy that will leave its mark in the history of video games. Are we really arguing that this tiny, three man studio were somehow wrong to do that? That they should have provided a courtesy to other studios and lessen the impact of their own game? In my opinion, that's just completely ridiculous.

@atthegates All accounts seem to point to the PS6 still offering a disc drive, so I don't get where your posts are coming from. If or when an all digital future happens, it will be because the market dictates it and not because Sony says so. Sony isn't perfect but they also aren't oblivious to their own financials.

@Gooseman42 It's not really a matter of optimization. Capcom have built RE9 with RTGI in mind for even its lowest spec target platforms, and then it just doesn't make any sense to go through the resource intensive process of baking lights and having to include all of that in the game files.

The endgame of RT is to provide better, more dynamic and reactive lighting in games while at the same time drastically reducing development effort. If we're going to keep expecting studios to provide a fallback option, we're eliminating the second half of that equation.

@nomither6 That's more or less the same thing as @Th3solution is saying, is it not? Astro Bot is one of the most critically acclaimed and decorated games in recent PlayStation history, was lauded as one of the most relentlessly creative games they've ever made and celebrated all over the internet by PlayStation gamers with a message of "see Sony, this is what we want, not all this live-service stuff". And at a reasonable price point as well.

Yet even that game barely sold. Less than a third of Horizon: Forbidden West, less than a quarter of Spider-Man 2, less than 1/6th of Ragnarök, all games that have been lambasted on here for being by-the-numbers sequels. Yet the message PlayStation gamers are sending to Sony is very clear: more of the same, please! If even Astro Bot can't change this, then what chance do the Concrete Genies and Gravity Rushes of this world have?

I'd love a new Judgement game, it's time. And please, return to Japan.

@ShadowofSparta It's indeed an insane take, and it also seems factually incorrect. The base game was listed at $59.99, the deluxe at $69.99 and the premium at $89.99. But only the premium edition was supposed to have those two classes, so instead of paying the "normal" 70 like that post claimed, it would've been a whopping $90 to play the game with all of its classes.

Looks absolutely stunning, and I love the relaxing music. A beautiful montage you can only get positive vibes from. That's until I checked this comments section... Some people just really love their relentless negativity under the guise of being critical.

It was always going to have a detachable driver after they introduced it during this generation. I personally think it's the ideal way to go about it. It means even those who buy a digital edition have the chance to change their mind later on and go physical, something you didn't get at the start of the current generation. As long as they offer a version with the drive included from the start, it's perfectly fine.

@Ricky-Spanish I could go on about latency and compression artifacts, but let's just assume all technical hurdles will eventually get resolved. It's about control, or rather the lack of it. You no longer have even the slightest sliver of control over your gaming environment. If your internet connection is gone, your entire library becomes unplayable. If something about the streaming service changes, you are completely powerless against it. Physical ownership is of course gone.

Now, games becoming unplayable without internet connection or when the servers go down is becoming an increasingly big problem already, which is a whole discussion on its own. But crucially, with local hardware, you at least have the option to own your games and keep them locally. If they don't require a connection and you've got them installed, or better yet you own them physically, you are safe. You don't need to pay another cent to keep these games playable, and you don't need to fear that they might become unavailable at some point.

Signing up for an all subscription and/or streaming future means giving up all those things.

@Ricky-Spanish Your description of gaming being nothing more than an app and a subscription to stream your games is exactly the sort of dystopian hellscape I'm dreading. I can't for the life of me understand how anyone who is passionate about gaming could want something like that.

Fortunately, I'm optimistic that there will always be an audience for local hardware and purchasing games. And as long as there's an audience, there will be those looking to serve that audience.

Edit: huh wait, the comment I was referring to seems to have disappeared. Am I going insane?

@Scottyy If you've played the first you probably know what it is, it's just downslashing on top of an enemy, which bounces you up. Only now the move is diagonal instead of straight down.

I'm only a little way in but I'm loving everything about it so far. It's such a joy to control.

@KundaliniRising333 You can do whatever you want, but calling it "literally just online viral hype" is categorically false. It has very little to do with opinions at that point.

@KundaliniRising333 Or perhaps other people just have different opinions? I personally think it's the greatest game I've ever played, poured about 300 hours into it. I've gone on to play about 35 other 2D metroidvanias since then (really, I kept a list with ratings and all, lol), and nothing has come close to Hollow Knight for me.

So stop trying to push your opinion on others as if you can see through the hype while others can't. There is a genuine love for the first game out there, it didn't just happen for no reason.

@DennisReynolds Well this is what I mean with communicating. If they're intentionally withholding the game to avoid crashing, then communicate that. Likewise if they're doing a staggered release.

I personally think you're giving them too much credit and they just didn't update the store in time, and it not crashing is just a byproduct of the fact no one is buying it.

Honestly this is a bit of a farce from Sony. I know the other storefronts are having their issues, but at least the option to buy the game was there on its official release time. We're 2 hours after release and it's nowhere to be seen on the PS Store.

It doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things, but why is it so hard for them to get the basics right, and communicate transparently when they don't?

@Bsb56 The PS Store is working fine, you just can't buy the game on it.

@Frmknst Impressive that you've already been able to play through it and conclude that it's overrated.

Can't purchase it on the PS Store yet (in Belgium at least). Not that it matters much, I'm still at work.

A lot will depend on the technical state it arrives in. There's still some time to go, but what was shown here definitely has me worrying that it could be another one that releases in a broken state with promises of fixes later on. Let's hope that isn't the case.

Can't say I particularly care about another Marvel property, but I'd love another State of Play with first-party updates and new announcements soon. Would they do it just before Ghost of Yotei's launch on October 2, though? Maybe shortly after that.

Let's hope this is just a rumour and doesn't turn out to be true.

@themightyant My immediate thought at seeing Embracer mentioned was that this wouldn't have been rescue at all, considering how much of a destructive force they've been in the gaming industry. No IP is better off under their stewardship (if you can call it that), not even compared to Microsoft.

@Porco Sony did subsidize the PS5 at launch, but no one would subsidize a console 5 years into a generation. I'm a bit puzzled why you feel they would need to do that to grow the install base at this point, given that it's on a similar trajectory as the PS4. Regardless, I already gave my comments on subsidizing and why prices aren't coming down in comment #22.

The reason I mention the Switch 2 is because it's relevant context. Switch 1 also needed a screen and launched $150 lower than the Switch 2. Series X is also 5 years old and is $100 more expensive than what it launched at. That should give you an idea where we are right now. It's all context, and it's all relevant. Once again, PlayStation does not exist in a vacuum.

You can choose to ignore all of this context, and instead just tell people who disagree with you that your arguments go over their heads, or accuse them of sounding like slaves, but none of that makes your arguments any stronger. It is of course easy and tempting to blame it all on good old greed, and given that it's business, that's always at least a small part of the story. But it isn't the full story, even if you aren't interested in that.

@Porco You would price the non-digital PS5 at $380 in 2025, so $70 cheaper than the Switch 2 which offers significantly less performance, and $220 cheaper than a non-digital Series X which offers equivalent performance.

Playstation does not exist in a vacuum.

@BAMozzy Define a "typical" console price point. The PS4 launched at $399, the Xbox One at $499. PS5 DID have a version at launch that matched the PS4's launch price, and its most expensive version didn't go beyond the Xbox One launch price. Compared to that generation - a generation everyone agrees Sony knocked out of the park - the PS5 launched at a perfectly reasonable launch price.

You have to go back a whopping 25 years to find a generation when Sony has launched their consoles cheaper than the digital PS5. It feels like your entire argument falls apart when held against that information.

@Americansamurai1 That was only ever true for the initial stages of a console's life cycle. Manufacturing costs would then start decreasing, mainly due to die shrinks, leading to price decreases and often smaller footprints as well. Due to a combination of factors, including the fact that Moore's law seems to be dead, manufacturing costs haven't gone down this generation, causing platform holders having to keep the price stable to start making a profit, and in the worst cases even having to increase costs.

I realize it's easier to just blame it all on greed, but companies aren't completely stupid either. Sony would no doubt love to get even more consoles out there, but they also don't want to sell at a loss 5 years into a cycle. It's a ***** situation us and late stage capitalism doesn't help, but it can't all be reduced to simple one-liners.

For the record, Nintendo has generally adopted a different model, usually selling their hardware at a profit from the start.

This makes very little sense to me. The PS5 is almost 5 years into its life cycle and on a similar trajectory as the PS4, so clearly the install base has not been hindered by the system's price. Maybe consumers have become more discerning about game prices, with an increasingly large offering of quality titles at lower prices and the expectancy of heavy discounts, while Monster Hunter Wilds is an unoptimized mess at the full €80 price point. Maybe they should start by looking closer to home.

@AdamNovice Technically possible, yes, but based on past evidence extremely unlikely. Not something to call people stupid over. In the previous 3 years, they've done a single SoP/showcase in September, so the assumption that this is it for the month is not a particularly wild one.

If they have another one lined up, then obviously that would be great.

@Bez87 That's just it, the disappointment stems from the implication that Sony has nothing to show right now.

Well that is disappointing. A whole State of Play dedicated to a third-party title that will release on all platforms, feels like a huge waste in my opinion. Does a game like this really need a 30 minute gameplay deep-dive?

@Nepp67 Not sure I agree. I still interpret the normal or default difficulty setting as the difficulty that the developers intended for the majority of players. Ideally, any review should start there. If the difficulty is noteworthy enough that the reviewer had to change it, I'd like to know why.

Morale among Haven devs has to have sunk beneath sea level at this point. They will surely be aware of how hostile the public sentiment is, and now both their studio founder and creative director have left, following what was described as a disastrous internal test. I can imagine more than a few of them have mentally checked out at this point.

@nomither6 It still exists, just not as much in the AAA space.

@LifeGirl Not sure about that. Not to go into the whole PC vs console discussion, they both have their place, but GPUs getting sold at their actual MSRP is a rarity these days, and that's an understatement. It doesn't exactly look like it's going to normalise any time soon, so unfortunately, building a PC has become an very expensive hobby, even if you're not going for the high-end.

This feels like a bizarre discussion. There's no reason to entertain the possibility of the PS6 arriving anytime soon. Of course it's coming at some point, but not for a while yet. So why even talk about it?

Some of those others mentioned in the article surely can't be attributed to Silksong's release. Aeterna Lucis is delayed to 2026, there's clearly more going on than just avoiding Silksong. Yes, it's extremely similar to Hollow Knight, but a delay of around 4 months or more?

@wiiware I've never agreed with the blanket rule of 2 hours. You can easily complete a game like A Short Hike in under 2 hours, and there are plenty like it. It doesn't sit well with me.

Of course, not getting a refund just for downloading a game is the other end of the extreme and isn't ok either.

@Jey887 That bit about how it's cool to hate on Hollow Knight nowadays is something I've noticed lately as well, and I just don't get it. Team Cherry are a tiny, 3 man indie studio. This type of success story is everything we should love about the gaming industry, regardless of whether people like the game or not. But we're actually seeing people actively wish Silksong fails.

It's that old saying: "People will forgive you for anything but success".