The last tweet referenced in the article shows how out of touch some of these people are. Is the choice to stop doing physical disks bad? Yes…but to say “that’s what happens when you launch on PS5 after everything they’ve done”
An indie developer is supposed to pull their ps5 port of their game that was always going to be digital? In an industry where developers are closing left and right - cutting off a massive portion of their potential player base would be suicide…
The issue with the gaming community is that when you complain about everything whenever something really worth complaining about comes up no one will listen. Will have to hit them in the wallet - and it won’t.
@K-Wud the casual consumer likely wont do anything. The casual consumer isn’t invested and doesn’t care about physical going away, studios closing, lack of first party titles - they don’t pay attention at all.
Not defending Sony - but In the end gaming has become such a mainstream form of entertainment. And most casual gamers play on their couch and don’t want to mess with a PC
@For-Kier 100%. What people seem to miss is that keeping studios around to fund projects that no one buys take money and resources away from viable projects.
There is absolutely corporate greed associated with the issues we see today but in reality is simple supply and demand economics. There are too many studios producing games into a customer base that isn’t buying them at full price. That’s it. Thats why this is happening.
People can argue all day WHY we got here but in reality it doesn’t matter - there is a mess that needs to be cleaned up.
What DOES really annoy me is that people up in arms about a lot of the studios closing likely didn’t buy their games or didn’t buy them at full price.
@Bot_Bot_69 I don’t see how that’s the case at all. I was replying to one of your comments which said “they have far less overhead due to the digital market”
That’s just not a true statement. At all.
Your comments after the fact acknowledge what you’re saying now but I didn’t see those when I replied originally. I agree with you that they should be spending less money on mega releases and make great projects with less people…but that will result in mass layoffs which a lot of people will struggle with.
But on the flip side - you can’t be angry and up in arms about the layoffs in the industry and then turn around and demand that the price of games stays stagnant forever.
Those of you who hate the live service push, loot boxes, paid DLC. Those are forced into games to produce profits - the price of games has stayed relatively stagnant but the cost to develop hasn’t.
I hate the never ending push for profit but it’s the unfortunate reality we live in and refusing to pay more is going to cause more of the problems everyone complains about.
@Bot_Bot_69 - not defending corporations but saying they have far less overhead is 100% false.
Game budgets have blown up. Teams are massive compared to teams making SNES games. Everything other than selling digitally is so much more expensive than it’s ever been.
@cainhurst94 Yoshida greenlit Concord as a second party title. He had nothing to do with deciding to buy the team and heavily invest into it. There’s a huge difference between saying yes to a second party title and devoting a ton of resources to a live service push across all platforms.
Helldivers was a huge success - he made the right call on that one.
It’s pretty clear to me that Ryan had this idea of a massive Live Service push. He was a business man who saw the money and went after it. Yoshida and Ryan didn’t see eye to eye so he swapped him out for Hulst - someone who would push his vision.
Yoshida made a few mistakes along the way but the state the company finds themselves in is mostly on Jim Ryan.
@cragis0001 was Bethesda perfect? No. But let’s look at the track record here - can you honestly name one Microsoft acquisition that has been better post purchase?
Sounds to me like a guy who helped build something and wasn’t on board with selling and hated seeing a heartless mega corp gut his teams post acquisition. I’ve been in that spot and trust me - it sucks bad.
@viktorcode destiny is still a live service game. There is no way you can twist the words there…Destiny is a live service game.
It’s ok if you don’t like Marathon. It’s ok if you wanted them to do something else and you are disappointed.
Actively rooting for a game like this to fail is so weird. This isn’t Concord…this isn’t High Guard.
Marathon started development prior to Sonys live service push. Bungie wanted to make this game. It’s not the same stuff we’ve seen before…it’s ok for games like this to exist. If Marathon fails - Bungie is going to be gutted and you’ll never get a new Bungie game. Is that what you want?
@viktorcode get back to what the studio does best…which has basically been live service games? Destiny is a live service game…Halo was the gateway to live service games…
@HRdepartment I have no dog in this fight but Marathon is a GaaS that is made by a company that has basically always made GaaS…the online discourse of hoping this particular game fails makes no sense.
Bungie was never going to make a single player game…that’s not what they do.
It’s no wonder Sony is pursuing live service. A 2% boost in topline sales which would amount to hundreds of million of what i imagine is high margin business isn’t good enough.
So - as a recent fan of the series…played 0, Kiwami and Kiwami 2…do I play Kiwami 3 and wait until this “new series” is launched or play 3 remastered and go to 4-5-6 from there??
@StitchJones what I disagree with you on is that the game is trash. It’s not trash…it’s just not good enough to warrant attention in a very competitive environment. Lord of the Rings Gollum was trash…this game was just fine and while it’s free to play - it still takes up the most valuable currency which is time. People arnt going to make a “fine” game their life style game.
@nessisonett I actually think The last spot and hate helped High Guard. It released to something like 97k concurrent people playing on Steam and it dropped off instantly. Your argument about good games failing is valid but it’s because people don’t play those games. High Guard simply was just meh and not good enough to make people switch from their preferred GaaS. Geoff did High Guard a favor in my opinion
@MrPeanutbutterz I stopped paying attention to video games for about 7-8 years from around 2011-2018ish… In that time the online discourse went from the “Everything is the absolute best” hype train to “everything sucks and I’m going to send death threats to developers” mentality. I don’t know why people choose to be mad and hate everything all the time
I’m starting to believe the internet is doing way more harm than good.
@Bamila your assessment of older players having jobs is not correct. Average age of a video game player is 35-36 and rising.
Everyone is upset but everyone has also been really hard on the games Ubisoft has made for years…maybe the cancellations were more games in the Skull and Bones / Xdefiant realm of things.
Bad leadership? Yes - but it’d be even worse to keep going down the road they were going down.
@Max_the_German the difference is photographers take their own pictures and even though DJs might remix other songs they put new ideas and their own touch.
He said it in the article AI is based on information pulled in using other people’s art. It won’t continue to get better and innovate unless there continues to be new ideas.
@Shigurui I’m not a UK citizen. I am terribly sorry for what happened to you in the 70s and 80s…
But I get concerned about people downplaying the horrific things a government is doing today. The Chinese government is using slave labor and committing genocide against a minority Uyghur population who are citizens of china.
They are currently disappearing people who don’t agree with them, monitoring the social scores of their citizens and practice some pretty nefarious international policies through belt and road policies.
And even if you don’t believe any of that is bad - they product 35% of the carbon emissions world wide…the US is second at 4%.
No one bats an eye because - cheap labor means cheap goods.
So let’s not pretend the UK today can even hold a candle to China.
It’s all about balance. Love playing games but I also have about 30 other things I do. I think a lot of people who only play games are bored with the hobby and can’t admit it to themselves.
Lurking the comment section of this and other posts over the last few years with only making a few comments.
These forums are so funny - fans demand the following:
New IP but want multiple Old IP revised or remastered and new games in proven and loved IP,
They want shorter development cycles, more polished games,
They’ll complain about studios laying off employees and closures but don’t want to pay more for games or wait for them to come out on subscription services
They’ll criticize the most minor graphical issue but complain that Sony needs to spend less time on graphics.
They get mad about companies chasing the dollar instead of taking risk - but the risk doesn’t always work out causing more layoffs.
There is so much to play. So many great games - the people complaining about HFW or Horizon in general - be happy this studio’s games are selling and they don’t have to lay people off.
It’s impossible for any of these companies to make all of you happy - and if nothing in gaming is making you happy go find another hobby and come back later!
Perhaps releasing everything immediately on a subscription service and generating $0 of new revenue when a game releases was a bad idea in the long run for Microsoft?
The people who arnt buying this due to the lack of WOL content are just hurting themselves in the long run. If you want more FF tactics buy the game - if everyone boycotts because they left out a relatively small amount of additional content than our chances of getting any more FFT content drops significantly.
@Art_Vandelay you are correct here but it might not be that easy.
Unless I’m missing something we don’t know the cause of this situation- was the team shut down because EA needed to cut cost across the board or was the team shut down because they were not performing, unable to hit deadlines, not working well together and the project was canceled?
Maybe Disney force the project to cancel due to them owning the license for some reason?
I do generally agree with you though - a lot of people who complain about the layoffs don’t understand the price of keeping people and how much pressure it puts on a business if that team isn’t producing profit. They are typically the same people that complain that game prices are too high…
@wildcat_kickz I agree that it’s sad and absolutely the fault of EA. What bothers me is the people who make the decisions to invest in something like this should be the ones held accountable. People might have left stable jobs for new opportunity and are now left in a bad situation.
That being said - I’m in a decision making role at a company and have had to shut down underperforming teams (thankfully nothing I started) and I always have to take into consideration the risk of keeping a team on and how that will effect the future compensation, stability and viability of the rest of my employees who are not effected by layoffs. You don’t want to put more pressure on teams that produce well to keep on high cost individuals that don’t produce…it’s a really hard balance and not always just “corporation bad”
I want to be clear that I’m not defending corporations across the board. I’m sick of the corporate greed as well - it’s just not ALWAYS so black and white.
@wildcat_kickz that’s not how things work. They have to recoup profit losses - it was a bad decision to start this to begin with but it’d be a worse decision to double down on the expenses and put other teams at risk of cuts.
You don’t just cancel a game if things are going well. So if things aren’t going well you don’t double down on a bad investment by giving an unproven team another shot to lose more money…
I got it well after launch for like $5.99. The setting and idea were awesome - had the game been 10 -12 hours and had a few gameplay tweaks I think it could have been a great IP launching point.
I really like Rayman especially the most recent ones. Maybe it’s because it’s Ubisoft but I just feel like this is a “failed to meet sales expectations” article in the making.
@themightyant I’m not saying it’s not a good deal for consumers. It’s a great deal for consumers.
In the business world from a financial standpoint Xbox would record monthly subscriptions into a financial bucket for revenue and the development costs for Doom in a separate bucket for losses.
If monthly subscriptions don’t increase upon launch of the product then you could make the argument that they’d be better off not developing the product at all because it would’ve been better for their bottom line.
I’m interested in that balance - they have to keep new development coming in to keep game pass viable. They obviously understand they have to keep pumping the beast with new offerings…
But how do they make decisions based on that? Why did the HI-FI rush team get dissolved? I’m interested in how they make decisions based on the P&L of their gaming business - but they can’t just count the revenue from current subscribers as revenue for Doom because it doesn’t work that way…
@themightyant the issue is a majority of those two million would have still payed that much regardless of Doom launching on the service - so in reality Xbox might have been better off not developing and launching Doom at all unless it can recoup dev costs through retail sales.
I’m less interested in how this performed and more interested in how Xbox can really measure performance of first party games.
Current subscription revenue cant be applied to a release like Doom. New subscribers would have to stay subscribed for 7 months in order for it to be considered a win and there is no way to measure how many people kept their subscription due to Doom.
Every time someone subscribes and then cancels after a month or two should be viewed as potential revenue lost.
It’s no wonder they had to start moving games the PlayStation - they are kinda flying blind. Hard to decide what games to green light if you don’t have actual sales numbers.
@SMJ that question doesn’t really have anything related to my comment to you but they would classify the earnings differently by region… its pretty straight forward.
I guess what I don’t understand is the gate keeping of what constitutes first,second, third party. It really doesn’t matter to anyone unless you’re a shareholder.
@SMJ well you might not care about what Nintendo says on their earnings report but this is an article referencing the Sony earnings report where they classify them at first party…which is how all the companies classify first party games.
Thats how the industry works. Push Square is just reporting on it
Maybe I’m in the minority but I’ll say it because no one else on these comments does…
I got back into gaming in 2019 after around 10 years off and I love the PS5 pro I bought last year. It’s easily the best gaming hardware I’ve owned and think it was worth the price point.
While everyone complains that gaming has gotten too expensive I actually think it’s one of the most budget friendly hobbies you can have. Just don’t buy all your games when they come out - gaming is actually way less expensive than it was years ago.
Happy with this generation - would recommend anyone on these comments fence to buy a PRO…I’m Happy with mine
@The_Elder not defending Dragon Age here but you are on the record with being happy with last months games.
It’s a subscription- there are going to be a lot of months you don’t like. If you like 2-3 games a year it pays for itself.
There are likely going to be millions of people that try Dragon Age as a result of it being on here…PlayStation isn’t going out of their way to hand pick games for you specifically.
Ive played hundreds of games perhaps the single best “boss” encounter I’ve experienced was at the end of shadow of Mordor when they use the nemesis system at the end and make you fight your top living nemesis. I hated that guy and was so happy when I killed him - he was such a pain in my butt the last part of that game. Was really well done in my opinion
@Lyrick7 not to defend the corporation but how is Sony being immature here? They fired a guy for what seems to be clear gross misconduct with female employees and responded to a lawsuit.
Would you have preferred Sony retain someone like this? Would that have been the “mature” thing to do?
@Bramble Sony didn’t develop Helldivers 2. Arrowhead isn’t a 1st party studio.
Why would Sony invest in a smaller game with in house assets, take on the associated risks with employment, overhead etc to develop AA games at this point when they can outsource and publish or just collect 30% rips on the stuff that gets dumped into PSN?
They are only going to use their studios for known quantities / sure things or big gambles that might pay off massively like concord (bad gamble).
@johncalmc the issue is Sony is a business and there is no reason to gamble on small games when the over saturated market can do it for you.
They collect a 30% rip on the AA market right now and with games constantly coming out the chances of them making that type of money back on an investment is very small. Let someone else gamble and make the 1% smash hit - gamble small win small.
If they are going to make games from here on out it’ll be either known entities that are sure things or massive gambles like Concord. Thats it - and it’s because it makes 0 financial sense to invest in anything else.
@nessisonett this isn’t a marketing issue it’s an industry wide saturation issue. There are too many releases - too much choice is good for consumers but bad for business.
This year PS5 will pass PS4 in cumulative releases with 5 less years on the market. PlayStation isn’t going to put any money in creating or marketing small releases because it’s not worth it. Why would you market a small game when the ROI is going to be low? Sony isn’t going to waste time and resources on something that has minimal returns when there are more development teams than ever churning out AA quality games.
Pair that with the fact that people don’t want to pay more for games when costs are raising and the majority of playtime is spent in live service - it’s not smart business for Sony to invest in AA games. If they are going to do something it’s either go back to the well and release stuff they KNOW will do well or bet big. All the live service ***** was a result of that.
According to a quick google search the entire PS3 catalog was around 2,000 total games.
From 2014-2025 there were 3,479 games released for PS4.
From 2020-2025 there has been 3,194 games released for PS5. With all the trash that gets put on the store the average consumer isn’t going to buy smaller titles because of the risk associated with buying really crappy games. Pair that with live service which takes up so much time and you have the answer.
That market is saturated and a large subset of people either don’t buy games at all or just wait until games drop in price substantially and get a better experience anyway because it’s content complete.
It’s not sustainable and seems like every time we’ve seen a studio lay people off a new studio pops up so the problem is getting worse.
@The_Pixel_King best way to try it out is to try streaming to your ipad with a controller for a few play sessions - if it can handle it there then the portal will be fine. That’s what I did - glad I have a portal…I think based on the yearly stats I played like 70% on it last year
@Lowdefal while those things may be true the number 1 aspect of digital games is that I have access to 100s of games and I don’t have to have 100s of games sitting around my house.
@Decimateh-xblz yeah it was insane and had gotten to the point where I was worried every time I turned on the Xbox. After the fourth time I sent it in and when they sent the new one I instantly went to GameStop to exchange it lol
360 was a great platform and I have a lot of nostalgia for that platform because it was during college when I had a lot of time to play games…I just got super unlucky with the hardware.
@djlard as much as the games as service idea did fail and slow output - there is no way you don’t have enough to play.
2024 got the following games published by sony. There are also so many games coming out that arnt published by Sony that I have no idea how anyone is looking for things to play
Astrobot Helldivers Lego horizon Rise of ronin Stellar blade Until dawn
Comments 91
Re: Irate PlayStation Fans Want You to Buy Games Anywhere But PS5
The last tweet referenced in the article shows how out of touch some of these people are. Is the choice to stop doing physical disks bad? Yes…but to say “that’s what happens when you launch on PS5 after everything they’ve done”
An indie developer is supposed to pull their ps5 port of their game that was always going to be digital? In an industry where developers are closing left and right - cutting off a massive portion of their potential player base would be suicide…
The issue with the gaming community is that when you complain about everything whenever something really worth complaining about comes up no one will listen. Will have to hit them in the wallet - and it won’t.
Re: PlayStation to Show More Upcoming PS5 Games at Tokyo Game Show 2026
@Dragon83 - do the math man. $70 for 15 hours of play time is less than $5 per hour.
What else can you do for $5 per hour from an entertainment standpoint? I don’t understand this mindset.
I don’t know if Wolverine is going to be good or.not but let’s say it’s really good. By this logic…
$70: Great game at 15 hours =no buy
$70: mediocre game at 25 hours =buy
I will never understand this logic
Re: Poll: Are You Considering Leaving PlayStation for PC?
@K-Wud the casual consumer likely wont do anything. The casual consumer isn’t invested and doesn’t care about physical going away, studios closing, lack of first party titles - they don’t pay attention at all.
Not defending Sony - but In the end gaming has become such a mainstream form of entertainment. And most casual gamers play on their couch and don’t want to mess with a PC
Re: New Senua Game Reveal Used as a Way to Sell Ninja Theory to Suitors
@For-Kier 100%. What people seem to miss is that keeping studios around to fund projects that no one buys take money and resources away from viable projects.
There is absolutely corporate greed associated with the issues we see today but in reality is simple supply and demand economics. There are too many studios producing games into a customer base that isn’t buying them at full price. That’s it. Thats why this is happening.
People can argue all day WHY we got here but in reality it doesn’t matter - there is a mess that needs to be cleaned up.
What DOES really annoy me is that people up in arms about a lot of the studios closing likely didn’t buy their games or didn’t buy them at full price.
Re: PS5's 'Recently Played' Section Wiped as Sony Contends with Another Security Concern
@GirlVersusGame what trophy did you earn between those two screen shots? The world wants to know
Re: USA Bank Wants You to Pay $80 for GTA 6 So Other Devs Can Charge More Too
@Bot_Bot_69 I don’t see how that’s the case at all. I was replying to one of your comments which said “they have far less overhead due to the digital market”
That’s just not a true statement. At all.
Your comments after the fact acknowledge what you’re saying now but I didn’t see those when I replied originally. I agree with you that they should be spending less money on mega releases and make great projects with less people…but that will result in mass layoffs which a lot of people will struggle with.
Re: USA Bank Wants You to Pay $80 for GTA 6 So Other Devs Can Charge More Too
Inflation sucks. Corporations suck.
But on the flip side - you can’t be angry and up in arms about the layoffs in the industry and then turn around and demand that the price of games stays stagnant forever.
Those of you who hate the live service push, loot boxes, paid DLC. Those are forced into games to produce profits - the price of games has stayed relatively stagnant but the cost to develop hasn’t.
I hate the never ending push for profit but it’s the unfortunate reality we live in and refusing to pay more is going to cause more of the problems everyone complains about.
Re: USA Bank Wants You to Pay $80 for GTA 6 So Other Devs Can Charge More Too
@Bot_Bot_69 - not defending corporations but saying they have far less overhead is 100% false.
Game budgets have blown up. Teams are massive compared to teams making SNES games. Everything other than selling digitally is so much more expensive than it’s ever been.
Re: 'I Didn't Listen to Him': Ex PlayStation Boss Shu Yoshida on Why Jim Ryan 'Fired' Him
@cainhurst94 Yoshida greenlit Concord as a second party title. He had nothing to do with deciding to buy the team and heavily invest into it. There’s a huge difference between saying yes to a second party title and devoting a ton of resources to a live service push across all platforms.
Helldivers was a huge success - he made the right call on that one.
It’s pretty clear to me that Ryan had this idea of a massive Live Service push. He was a business man who saw the money and went after it. Yoshida and Ryan didn’t see eye to eye so he swapped him out for Hulst - someone who would push his vision.
Yoshida made a few mistakes along the way but the state the company finds themselves in is mostly on Jim Ryan.
Re: 'I Saw How It Was Getting Damaged': Ex-Bethesda Exec Goes to Town on Xbox's Mistreatment
@cragis0001 was Bethesda perfect? No. But let’s look at the track record here - can you honestly name one Microsoft acquisition that has been better post purchase?
Sounds to me like a guy who helped build something and wasn’t on board with selling and hated seeing a heartless mega corp gut his teams post acquisition. I’ve been in that spot and trust me - it sucks bad.
Re: Review in Progress: Marathon (PS5) - Bungie's Extraction Shooter Is Brilliant, and It Only Gets Better
@viktorcode destiny is still a live service game. There is no way you can twist the words there…Destiny is a live service game.
It’s ok if you don’t like Marathon. It’s ok if you wanted them to do something else and you are disappointed.
Actively rooting for a game like this to fail is so weird. This isn’t Concord…this isn’t High Guard.
Marathon started development prior to Sonys live service push. Bungie wanted to make this game. It’s not the same stuff we’ve seen before…it’s ok for games like this to exist. If Marathon fails - Bungie is going to be gutted and you’ll never get a new Bungie game. Is that what you want?
Re: Review in Progress: Marathon (PS5) - Bungie's Extraction Shooter Is Brilliant, and It Only Gets Better
@viktorcode get back to what the studio does best…which has basically been live service games? Destiny is a live service game…Halo was the gateway to live service games…
Re: Review in Progress: Marathon (PS5) - Bungie's Extraction Shooter Is Brilliant, and It Only Gets Better
@HRdepartment I have no dog in this fight but Marathon is a GaaS that is made by a company that has basically always made GaaS…the online discourse of hoping this particular game fails makes no sense.
Bungie was never going to make a single player game…that’s not what they do.
Re: Rumour: Sony Backtracking on PC Strategy, Shifting Towards PS5 Exclusivity Again
It’s no wonder Sony is pursuing live service. A 2% boost in topline sales which would amount to hundreds of million of what i imagine is high margin business isn’t good enough.
They are in home run swing only mode right now.
Re: No More Yakuza Kiwami Games After Kiwami 3 Story Changes, New Series Could Happen
So - as a recent fan of the series…played 0, Kiwami and Kiwami 2…do I play Kiwami 3 and wait until this “new series” is launched or play 3 remastered and go to 4-5-6 from there??
Genuinely asking for advice.
Re: Most of Highguard's Dev Team Laid Off Just Two Weeks After Live Service Shooter's Launch
@StitchJones what I disagree with you on is that the game is trash. It’s not trash…it’s just not good enough to warrant attention in a very competitive environment. Lord of the Rings Gollum was trash…this game was just fine and while it’s free to play - it still takes up the most valuable currency which is time. People arnt going to make a “fine” game their life style game.
Re: Most of Highguard's Dev Team Laid Off Just Two Weeks After Live Service Shooter's Launch
@nessisonett I actually think The last spot and hate helped High Guard. It released to something like 97k concurrent people playing on Steam and it dropped off instantly. Your argument about good games failing is valid but it’s because people don’t play those games. High Guard simply was just meh and not good enough to make people switch from their preferred GaaS. Geoff did High Guard a favor in my opinion
Re: February 2026 PS Plus Essential Games Available to Download Now
@MrPeanutbutterz I stopped paying attention to video games for about 7-8 years from around 2011-2018ish… In that time the online discourse went from the “Everything is the absolute best” hype train to “everything sucks and I’m going to send death threats to developers” mentality. I don’t know why people choose to be mad and hate everything all the time
I’m starting to believe the internet is doing way more harm than good.
Re: Prince of Persia Remake and 5 Other Games Cancelled by Ubisoft
@Bamila your assessment of older players having jobs is not correct. Average age of a video game player is 35-36 and rising.
Everyone is upset but everyone has also been really hard on the games Ubisoft has made for years…maybe the cancellations were more games in the Skull and Bones / Xdefiant realm of things.
Bad leadership? Yes - but it’d be even worse to keep going down the road they were going down.
Re: 'I Don't Think Prompting Is Art': The Last of Us Co-Creator Isn't a Fan of Generative AI
@Max_the_German the difference is photographers take their own pictures and even though DJs might remix other songs they put new ideas and their own touch.
He said it in the article AI is based on information pulled in using other people’s art. It won’t continue to get better and innovate unless there continues to be new ideas.
Re: PS5 Outsold by an Unexpected Rival in the Run Up to Black Friday
@Shigurui I’m not a UK citizen. I am terribly sorry for what happened to you in the 70s and 80s…
But I get concerned about people downplaying the horrific things a government is doing today. The Chinese government is using slave labor and committing genocide against a minority Uyghur population who are citizens of china.
They are currently disappearing people who don’t agree with them, monitoring the social scores of their citizens and practice some pretty nefarious international policies through belt and road policies.
And even if you don’t believe any of that is bad - they product 35% of the carbon emissions world wide…the US is second at 4%.
No one bats an eye because - cheap labor means cheap goods.
So let’s not pretend the UK today can even hold a candle to China.
Re: Sony's Horizon Franchise Has Sold a Wild 38 Million Units Worldwide
@Coffeeglitch - amen to that.
It’s all about balance. Love playing games but I also have about 30 other things I do. I think a lot of people who only play games are bored with the hobby and can’t admit it to themselves.
Re: Sony's Horizon Franchise Has Sold a Wild 38 Million Units Worldwide
Lurking the comment section of this and other posts over the last few years with only making a few comments.
These forums are so funny - fans demand the following:
New IP but want multiple Old IP revised or remastered and new games in proven and loved IP,
They want shorter development cycles, more polished games,
They’ll complain about studios laying off employees and closures but don’t want to pay more for games or wait for them to come out on subscription services
They’ll criticize the most minor graphical issue but complain that Sony needs to spend less time on graphics.
They get mad about companies chasing the dollar instead of taking risk - but the risk doesn’t always work out causing more layoffs.
There is so much to play. So many great games - the people complaining about HFW or Horizon in general - be happy this studio’s games are selling and they don’t have to lay people off.
It’s impossible for any of these companies to make all of you happy - and if nothing in gaming is making you happy go find another hobby and come back later!
Re: Gran Turismo's Primary Console Competitor May Be No More
Perhaps releasing everything immediately on a subscription service and generating $0 of new revenue when a game releases was a bad idea in the long run for Microsoft?
Re: Interview: 'We've Made So Many Improvements': Final Fantasy Tactics Veterans on Remastering an All-Time Classic RPG
The people who arnt buying this due to the lack of WOL content are just hurting themselves in the long run. If you want more FF tactics buy the game - if everyone boycotts because they left out a relatively small amount of additional content than our chances of getting any more FFT content drops significantly.
Re: Final Fantasy Tactics Enhanced Remaster Announced for PS5, Out in September
Favorite game of all time. I never buy games day one - this will be an exception.
Re: EA's Black Panther Game Cancelled, Studio Shut Down
@Art_Vandelay you are correct here but it might not be that easy.
Unless I’m missing something we don’t know the cause of this situation- was the team shut down because EA needed to cut cost across the board or was the team shut down because they were not performing, unable to hit deadlines, not working well together and the project was canceled?
Maybe Disney force the project to cancel due to them owning the license for some reason?
I do generally agree with you though - a lot of people who complain about the layoffs don’t understand the price of keeping people and how much pressure it puts on a business if that team isn’t producing profit. They are typically the same people that complain that game prices are too high…
Re: EA's Black Panther Game Cancelled, Studio Shut Down
@wildcat_kickz I agree that it’s sad and absolutely the fault of EA. What bothers me is the people who make the decisions to invest in something like this should be the ones held accountable. People might have left stable jobs for new opportunity and are now left in a bad situation.
That being said - I’m in a decision making role at a company and have had to shut down underperforming teams (thankfully nothing I started) and I always have to take into consideration the risk of keeping a team on and how that will effect the future compensation, stability and viability of the rest of my employees who are not effected by layoffs. You don’t want to put more pressure on teams that produce well to keep on high cost individuals that don’t produce…it’s a really hard balance and not always just “corporation bad”
I want to be clear that I’m not defending corporations across the board. I’m sick of the corporate greed as well - it’s just not ALWAYS so black and white.
Re: EA's Black Panther Game Cancelled, Studio Shut Down
@wildcat_kickz that’s not how things work. They have to recoup profit losses - it was a bad decision to start this to begin with but it’d be a worse decision to double down on the expenses and put other teams at risk of cuts.
You don’t just cancel a game if things are going well. So if things aren’t going well you don’t double down on a bad investment by giving an unproven team another shot to lose more money…
Re: The Order 1886 Could Have Been a Big Trilogy of PlayStation Games
I got it well after launch for like $5.99. The setting and idea were awesome - had the game been 10 -12 hours and had a few gameplay tweaks I think it could have been a great IP launching point.
Re: DOOM: The Dark Ages Attracts 3 Million Players, Over 2 Million Estimated on Xbox
@themightyant that’s true but my argument is that there is no way to tell which games are keeping people subscribed.
Player engagement really doesn’t tell them that. I guess I’m saying it’d be interesting to see how they use the data to fuel decisions?
Engagement on hifi rush was high but they closed that studio.
Re: Ubisoft Hiring for a 'Prestigious' Big-Budget Rayman Game
I really like Rayman especially the most recent ones. Maybe it’s because it’s Ubisoft but I just feel like this is a “failed to meet sales expectations” article in the making.
Re: DOOM: The Dark Ages Attracts 3 Million Players, Over 2 Million Estimated on Xbox
@themightyant I’m not saying it’s not a good deal for consumers. It’s a great deal for consumers.
In the business world from a financial standpoint Xbox would record monthly subscriptions into a financial bucket for revenue and the development costs for Doom in a separate bucket for losses.
If monthly subscriptions don’t increase upon launch of the product then you could make the argument that they’d be better off not developing the product at all because it would’ve been better for their bottom line.
I’m interested in that balance - they have to keep new development coming in to keep game pass viable. They obviously understand they have to keep pumping the beast with new offerings…
But how do they make decisions based on that? Why did the HI-FI rush team get dissolved? I’m interested in how they make decisions based on the P&L of their gaming business - but they can’t just count the revenue from current subscribers as revenue for Doom because it doesn’t work that way…
Re: DOOM: The Dark Ages Attracts 3 Million Players, Over 2 Million Estimated on Xbox
@themightyant the issue is a majority of those two million would have still payed that much regardless of Doom launching on the service - so in reality Xbox might have been better off not developing and launching Doom at all unless it can recoup dev costs through retail sales.
Re: DOOM: The Dark Ages Attracts 3 Million Players, Over 2 Million Estimated on Xbox
I’m less interested in how this performed and more interested in how Xbox can really measure performance of first party games.
Current subscription revenue cant be applied to a release like Doom. New subscribers would have to stay subscribed for 7 months in order for it to be considered a win and there is no way to measure how many people kept their subscription due to Doom.
Every time someone subscribes and then cancels after a month or two should be viewed as potential revenue lost.
It’s no wonder they had to start moving games the PlayStation - they are kinda flying blind. Hard to decide what games to green light if you don’t have actual sales numbers.
Re: PS5 First-Party Game Sales Will Increase Over Next Year, Sony Says
@SMJ that question doesn’t really have anything related to my comment to you but they would classify the earnings differently by region… its pretty straight forward.
I guess what I don’t understand is the gate keeping of what constitutes first,second, third party. It really doesn’t matter to anyone unless you’re a shareholder.
Re: PS5 First-Party Game Sales Will Increase Over Next Year, Sony Says
@SMJ well you might not care about what Nintendo says on their earnings report but this is an article referencing the Sony earnings report where they classify them at first party…which is how all the companies classify first party games.
Thats how the industry works. Push Square is just reporting on it
Re: Opinion: If You're on the Fence, Consider Buying a PS5 Now Before the Prices Inevitably Rise
Maybe I’m in the minority but I’ll say it because no one else on these comments does…
I got back into gaming in 2019 after around 10 years off and I love the PS5 pro I bought last year. It’s easily the best gaming hardware I’ve owned and think it was worth the price point.
While everyone complains that gaming has gotten too expensive I actually think it’s one of the most budget friendly hobbies you can have. Just don’t buy all your games when they come out - gaming is actually way less expensive than it was years ago.
Happy with this generation - would recommend anyone on these comments fence to buy a PRO…I’m
Happy with mine
Re: Talking Point: Is Forza Horizon 5's PS5 Price Point Too High?
@ParboldCoder - $34.99 USD in 1990 to today is $81.00…so I don’t know what you’re complaining about…
Re: PS Plus Essential Games for March 2025 Include Some Massive Names
@The_Elder not defending Dragon Age here but you are on the record with being happy with last months games.
It’s a subscription- there are going to be a lot of months you don’t like. If you like 2-3 games a year it pays for itself.
There are likely going to be millions of people that try Dragon Age as a result of it being on here…PlayStation isn’t going out of their way to hand pick games for you specifically.
Re: Fans Are Fuming Warner Bros Patented the Nemesis System But Isn't Using It
SPOILER
Ive played hundreds of games perhaps the single best “boss” encounter I’ve experienced was at the end of shadow of Mordor when they use the nemesis system at the end and make you fight your top living nemesis. I hated that guy and was so happy when I killed him - he was such a pain in my butt the last part of that game. Was really well done in my opinion
Re: Sony Hits Back Hard at Bungie Lead's $200 Million Lawsuit
@Lyrick7 not to defend the corporation but how is Sony being immature here? They fired a guy for what seems to be clear gross misconduct with female employees and responded to a lawsuit.
Would you have preferred Sony retain someone like this? Would that have been the “mature” thing to do?
Re: Talking Point: Has the Market for AA Games on PS5 Really Disappeared?
@Bramble Sony didn’t develop Helldivers 2. Arrowhead isn’t a 1st party studio.
Why would Sony invest in a smaller game with in house assets, take on the associated risks with employment, overhead etc to develop AA games at this point when they can outsource and publish or just collect 30% rips on the stuff that gets dumped into PSN?
They are only going to use their studios for known quantities / sure things or big gambles that might pay off massively like concord (bad gamble).
Re: Talking Point: Has the Market for AA Games on PS5 Really Disappeared?
@johncalmc the issue is Sony is a business and there is no reason to gamble on small games when the over saturated market can do it for you.
They collect a 30% rip on the AA market right now and with games constantly coming out the chances of them making that type of money back on an investment is very small. Let someone else gamble and make the 1% smash hit - gamble small win small.
If they are going to make games from here on out it’ll be either known entities that are sure things or massive gambles like Concord. Thats it - and it’s because it makes 0 financial sense to invest in anything else.
Re: Sony Japan Studio Closed Because AA Market 'Disappeared', Says Shu Yoshida
@nessisonett this isn’t a marketing issue it’s an industry wide saturation issue. There are too many releases - too much choice is good for consumers but bad for business.
This year PS5 will pass PS4 in cumulative releases with 5 less years on the market. PlayStation isn’t going to put any money in creating or marketing small releases because it’s not worth it. Why would you market a small game when the ROI is going to be low? Sony isn’t going to waste time and resources on something that has minimal returns when there are more development teams than ever churning out AA quality games.
Pair that with the fact that people don’t want to pay more for games when costs are raising and the majority of playtime is spent in live service - it’s not smart business for Sony to invest in AA games. If they are going to do something it’s either go back to the well and release stuff they KNOW will do well or bet big. All the live service ***** was a result of that.
Re: Talking Point: Has the Market for AA Games on PS5 Really Disappeared?
The issue is there are too many games coming out.
According to a quick google search the entire PS3 catalog was around 2,000 total games.
From 2014-2025 there were 3,479 games released for PS4.
From 2020-2025 there has been 3,194 games released for PS5. With all the trash that gets put on the store the average consumer isn’t going to buy smaller titles because of the risk associated with buying really crappy games. Pair that with live service which takes up so much time and you have the answer.
That market is saturated and a large subset of people either don’t buy games at all or just wait until games drop in price substantially and get a better experience anyway because it’s content complete.
It’s not sustainable and seems like every time we’ve seen a studio lay people off a new studio pops up so the problem is getting worse.
Re: This PS Portal Commercial Is One of the Cutest Things You'll See Today
@The_Pixel_King best way to try it out is to try streaming to your ipad with a controller for a few play sessions - if it can handle it there then the portal will be fine. That’s what I did - glad I have a portal…I think based on the yearly stats I played like 70% on it last year
Re: Embattled US Retailer Trolls Customers for Picking Digital During PSN Outage on PS5, PS4
@Lowdefal while those things may be true the number 1 aspect of digital games is that I have access to 100s of games and I don’t have to have 100s of games sitting around my house.
Re: Ex-Sony Boss Says Xbox Can Find Multiplatform Software Success, Just Like SEGA
@Decimateh-xblz yeah it was insane and had gotten to the point where I was worried every time I turned on the Xbox. After the fourth time I sent it in and when they sent the new one I instantly went to GameStop to exchange it lol
360 was a great platform and I have a lot of nostalgia for that platform because it was during college when I had a lot of time to play games…I just got super unlucky with the hardware.
Re: Shuhei Yoshida Remembers Scariest Moment for Sony, When Nintendo Signed Monster Hunter As a 3DS Exclusive
@djlard as much as the games as service idea did fail and slow output - there is no way you don’t have enough to play.
2024 got the following games published by sony. There are also so many games coming out that arnt published by Sony that I have no idea how anyone is looking for things to play
Astrobot
Helldivers
Lego horizon
Rise of ronin
Stellar blade
Until dawn