I can see the good intention, but burying your head in the sand is not helping, Sam. Consoles installed base has notoriously stalled, while the PC platform keeps growing. That's why the next Xbox will essentially be a PC.
Think about it: PS5 sales are in line with PS4, while Xbox has sold considerably less this generation. This is worrying for console gamers, because companies don't tend to focus on shrinking markets.
Cherry picking an isolated datapoint like RE9 to pretend that everything will be fine is damaging to the overall perception of reality.
@Flaming_Kaiser I was not referring to you specifically, but it's been a meltdown alright.
I get the criticism and I'm personally disgusted by gen-AI just like the next guy. But people are overreacting for reasons that go way beyond what DLSS 5 is aiming at. They see "AI" and immediately have this gut reaction that, deep down, is pure survival instinct. "They're coming for our jobs!"
Look, AI will not steal jobs. But people who can leverage AI will. There's no fighting this beast. I'm not pro-AI at all, but I try to adopt an agnostic stance that recognizes it will be a massive force for both good and bad in equal measure.
@Flaming_Kaiser Which is exactly what DLSS 1/PSSR do: they add to the game. They "hallucinate" based on previous training.
DLSS 1 adds pixels. DLSS 3 adds frames. DLSS 5 adds lighting. Sure, the results are increasingly more transformational but, as I commented in another article: it's optional, repeatable, and parameterized. Total artistic control. Just another tool. Don't like it, don't use it. No reason for this meltdown.
Dear God, this is an early look at something that is optional, offers fully repeatable results, and is highly parameterized. Total artistic control. Just another tool. Don't like it, don't use it. So much fuzz about nothing.
People seem to automatically loathe anything AI because they think it will eventually steal their jobs. Guess what? What will actually steal people's jobs is people who can leverage AI.
@Feffster Makes sense, since TAA is being applied on native 4K. PSSR is rendering from a lower internal resolution, which might introduce artifacts but opens up frame times to add RT effects on the car dashboard. Fair tradeoff in my opinion.
@Postie85 Good question. Afaik, Sony did say that PSVR2 would be getting a PSSR implementation some time after the Pro's release, but we never heard anything about it ever since.
The flat version of PSSR doesn't work well in VR because there needs to be consistency between the frames rendered for the left and right eyes.
So, it's been promised, but I would not hold my breath given that Sony's investment in PSVR2 doesn't seem to be a priority now. Anyway, it could also happen stealthily on a random Tuesday like the positional reprojection introduced exclusively in GT7. Who knows...
How ironic to see PSSR 2, an AI-based upscaling tech, is received with universal praise while, in the very same day, DLSS 5 is met with nearly universal disgust in the very same way that DLSS 1, an AI-based upscaling tech, was 7 years ago. Fake pixels, ya' know. I guess people are not ready for that yet.
@somnambulance Yeah, I guess we do mostly agree. Now, the point that we seem to differ is this idea that the "hate crowd" is responsible for the failing of games.
Sure, they do contribute somewhat, but to what degree? Not enough to explain the recent catastrophes in my view. These live-service attempts are simply coming out too little too late in an oversaturated market. That fully explains.
@somnambulance Yes, there's a culture component as well. And Sony has also been in the wrong side of it. In fact, I'd argue the right side from a business standpoint would be to choose no side at all.
Look, I didn't want to bring it up because it's a charged subject, but the ideological messaging in many games (including PlayStation's) has been unbearable.
I don't know whether culture or the live-service push is the biggest contributor to the hate campaign, and these things get conflated a lot, but my point is that Sony has brought this onto themselves.
@Vertere You can over rationalize, twist the facts and bootlick as much as you want, but you can't change the sentiment. This generation feels flat and incomplete when compared to the previous one, and first-party output is a major part of it.
No wonder a staggering majority of people in this very website want Sony to extend the generation.
PlayStation's strategy has just been dreadful, and Sony knows it. Jim Ryan was kicked out, and Herman Hulst was demoted. What further evidence do you need?
@somnambulance "But I’ve also been fascinated by the hate culture all generation. It’s a PS5 era thing and it’s gotten out of control, but why is it happening?"
C'mon, man... Is it that hard to understand? PlayStation has made its name on single-player action/adventure games. They used to represent the lion's share of its releases, and the output during the PS4 era was legendary.
Cut to the PS5 generation, and suddenly we start seeing headlines such as "we have a dozen or so live-service games in development", and "Naughty Dog is working on one", and "Bluepoint is working on a God of War live-service game", and "we bought the team that is developing Concord", then came the wave of cancelations and studio closures...
I'm sure you're familiar with the term "opportunity cost". Sure, games take longer to be made this gen, but the first-party output has just paled in comparison to PS4 or even PS3-era.
Sony has turned its back on its most loyal users, and it's no wonder we're not happy.
@Krlozgod "PS5 owners are not going to migrate to PC when the game are released there after a year or more of their original release, porting those games is not a threat."
That's anecdotal, but two of my brothers did. One from PlayStation and the other from Xbox. And I have a suspicion that they're not the only two people on Earth who did this.
That's a moot point. Even if PS5 users were 5x the number on Steam, the usage trend is what matters. And they'll very rarely deviate much, if ever, for this kind of game.
@SaucyPapi Microsoft will either return to exclusives or exit the console hardware market entirely. There's simply no space for this in-between nonsense they've been playing.
Besides the obvious business and brand implications, developing for a single fixed platform is way more efficient than having to design your game and engine around the constraints of a multiplatform release, even if the port is outsourced. This is particularly true when a platform as heterogenous as the PC is added into the mix. Scalability doesn't come cheap.
PSVR2 is by far the best time I've had with gaming since the Sega Genesis days. I truly thought it would be impossible to recapture the magic of that era, but here we are.
With that said, the tech still needs a few iterations in order to be viable as a mainstream proposition. It's heavy, uncomfortable and presents way too much friction. And motion sickness needs to be overcome, if that is even possible.
I don't think Sony will be the steward of that evolution, but it's been a hell of a ride. RE4, RE8, Synapse, Tetris Effect and even Call of The Mountain have made it more than worth it. Not to mention GT7, the PSVR2 killer app that I'll be playing for years to come.
@Reeneman Most probably, as this sounds more like frame-gen than upscaling. Not that it's impossible for PS5 Pro to do frame-gen (aham.. wukong), but it feels more likely for it to be implemented in the next-gen SDK as a system feature.
Here's the real deal: Roblox has been around since 2006 and it's not profitable to this day. What's the point of having this many DAUs when they're all kids with no money?
The guy is making a simplistic linear prediction, which almost never works in a 10-year timeline. What usually happens in these gold rush scenarios is an overshoot that is proportional to the size of the opportunity. Which leads to an inevitable bubble burst that follows the same proportionality rule.
What people need to understand is that said bubble-burst does not mean that the opportunity was never real. It just means that investors expected a bigger return in a shorter period of time. So they grow impatient, then nervous, then scared, until enough of them disinvest simultaneously and boom! Everyone panics at the same time.
This will inevitably happen in the next few years, and the market will self-correct. RAM prices will follow. Remember Bitcoin and GPUs?
I'll play the optimist here for a change, but these things do ebb and flow. I've heard there's a growing trend among the young in which some deliberately minimize the use of tech, particularly phones. Sure, that doesn't bode well to consoles either, but I can see a future trend towards longer form content such as "old school videogames".
The real bad news for Sony and the gaming industry in general is a clear saturation of the market. Regardless of momentary trends, there just doesn't seem to be a path to growth. This kills momentum but doesn't necessarily mean the death of the industry, even in the long term. Anyway, that is a much wider issue driven by decreasing birth rates.
There's something else at play here. The decision to close Bluepoint simply cannot be explained by people unfamiliar with whatever happened behind closed doors.
I'm not trying to defend Sony, as I've been quite critical of their actions over the last few years, but this just doesn't make sense.
Delaying the PS6 could be either fine or catastrophic for Sony, but the reason is not rooted in market demand as most people seem to think.
It all depends on how far the APU design is at this point. If it's mostly finalized, delaying the launch will be a nightmare. Either we'll get an immediately obsolete console, or Sony will redesign the chip wasting millions in R&D.
Launching an obsolete console may have worked for Nintendo, but PlayStation's appeal leans heavily on its tech capabilities.
"Pleasing the majority in this era of gaming discourse is truly a remarkable feat."
No, it's not. Or at least, it shouldn't be. The problem is that corporations and the legacy media have lost the ability to listen to their audience, labeling every dissident opinion as "hate".
Sure, there's gratuitous hate out there, but it's your job to properly calibrate the filter. At least, this SOP is a promising sign that the noise got louder enough to start slipping through the cracks.
Look, of course I was being facetious but, since you bit the bait: different art styles generally appeal do different age groups. This new Horizon game is obviously aiming at the Fortnite crowd, which is overwhelmingly comprised of teenagers.
I'm 47, but have an 18-year-old brother who used to love Fortnite and is now "sooo over it", you know? "It's for kids", he'd say.
Everyone is free to enjoy whatever tickles their fancy, but if someone likes stuff that is aimed at a younger age group, one is immature by definition.
It's not like saying adults shouldn't play videogames at all, because there's a barrage of games entirely aimed at adults.
@Dogbreath Exactly. Developed nations had had inflation that was too low for too long until covid, so people don't have a full grasp of what it does to the value of money.
I live in Brazil, so I know that damn well.
I wouldn't qualify gaming as 'cheap', but it's as expensive as it's ever been.
Now, the middle class has definitely got poorer over the last few decades, which is the actual reason for this feeling. It's not that gaming became more expensive. It's that people became poorer.
@Boxmonkey That is not how human brain works. Everything is obvious in retrospective. At the height of the pandemic, no one know for how long that charade would last. And the tech industry was all-in on the 'new normal' bs.
Was it naive? Yes, I can totally agree with that. But it also felt like the opportunity of a lifetime in the heat of the moment. The truth is that those expectations didn't materialize and we're now seeing a market correction. Which, by the way, is also completely normal. The market moves in swings, just like culture and politics. It's too big and complex in a way that favors momentum that gets irrational when it nears the extremes.
In fact, we're discussing points of view that are much more complementary than they are opposing. What I'm saying is definitely true, but you're also coming from a valid perspective.
I mean, yes, people have been more selective with their purchases. Which is also downstream from the pandemic. And yes, games have been more quantity than quality for a while now.
Sure, great games have come out, but there's too much 'middle of the road' sh*t. And again, executives thought there would be a market for it, but there's no space for good games. Just for the great ones. For both reasons we're presenting.
@Boxmonkey Investment decisions are made based on future outlook, and covid inflated expectations in the gaming industry to unreasonable levels. Just look at all the M&A movement over those years, with the Embracer Group being the most notable.
Games take 5 years on average from conception to release these days, which means we're at the height of those investments coming to fruition.
The number your mentioned just means the market is bigger than it's ever been. But problem is that the industry thought it would be much bigger at this point.
Aaand the covid bubble keeps on popping, both culturally and financially. Last week, Meta. Today, Ubisoft. Some of us have been warning about it for a while now, while being called doomers. Sure, there's no hard crash, but it's a considerable market and cultural correction.
This is one of those weird cases in which both sides of the argument are simultaneously right and wrong. And as always, the market will dictate the final outcome regardless of all the internet noise.
Old jobs will be substituted by new jobs and people will become more productive because of better tools. But unfortunately, we'll feel busier than ever even though there will be an overall marginal gain in free time for leisure activities.
The rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. Yeah, that will increase the general sense of dissatisfaction in the population and social pressure will continue to build up.
The changes will feel way too fast even though the deeper ones will only happen over the span of decades. Humanity will adapt and life will get better by every measurable statistic, but people will have a sense that life was so much better back in the old days. And it probably was, especially from a more humanistic perspective. But mostly, we were just younger.
The hope is that PSSR 2.0 will address the original's shortcomings, which is a fair assumption judging by how AI based models tend to improve with time. Ideally, it should offer a more generalized and less implementation dependent solution, but we should temper our expectations.
FSR4 is very good, but RDNA 4 has some extra hardware capabilities (FP8). PS5 Pro's implementation should be based on the INT8 format which is less precise, thus meaning image quality should be inferior. By how much, it remains to be seen.
Also, I'm skeptical of getting both better image quality and performance, particularly on the performance side. If it offers substantially better image quality with a marginal increase in frame-time cost, consider it a win.
And lastly, I'd assume this march release pertains to the availability in the developer SDK, which means it will be rolled out in games from that point on. And not every developer will go back and retrofit it in games that have been already released.
@ThomasHL Content-wise, maybe. But it's worth remembering that GT7 has its roots on the PS4, so the core game has a lot of room for improvement if they target the PS5 as a base for GT8. Sophy would be the low hanging fruit, but the CPU power disparity between these console generations could allow for a much-improved handling and physics model. Not that GT7's isn't already great, but I trust Yamauchi and team to always have another trick up their sleeve.
@nessisonett I have close to 400 hours in GT7, and more that 90% of it is in single player. Sure, you must be connected to the internet, but that has never been an issue for me. There's endless "offline" content and the cafe menus are very engaging for car lovers.
@DennisReynolds If by "grind" you mean "race" well, that's the whole point of the game. Earning credits is a mere consequence and, buying cars, a nice distraction. And to be honest, I find the rewards to be pretty generous.
The game was already great at launch, and they've given us years of free updates. The physics model has been adjusted to perfection, the AI is night and day where Sophy is available, VR support is sublime, PS5 Pro support is stellar both inside and outside of VR, and so on and so forth.
Spider-Man 2 must be up because of its aggressive recent sale. I just picked it up for 62% off and it is fantastic. But dear God, is it preachy. The writing is unbearably bad in absolute contrast to the top-notch gameplay and visuals.
Comments 783
Re: PS5 Leads Resident Evil Requiem Sales as 'Consoles Are Dead' Chat Falls Flat
I can see the good intention, but burying your head in the sand is not helping, Sam. Consoles installed base has notoriously stalled, while the PC platform keeps growing. That's why the next Xbox will essentially be a PC.
Think about it: PS5 sales are in line with PS4, while Xbox has sold considerably less this generation. This is worrying for console gamers, because companies don't tend to focus on shrinking markets.
Cherry picking an isolated datapoint like RE9 to pretend that everything will be fine is damaging to the overall perception of reality.
What matters is the direction of travel.
Re: 'This Looks Like an AI Generated Dating Profile Picture': Nvidia's Attempt to P*ss on PS5 Pro's Parade with DLSS 5 Backfires
@Flaming_Kaiser I was not referring to you specifically, but it's been a meltdown alright.
I get the criticism and I'm personally disgusted by gen-AI just like the next guy. But people are overreacting for reasons that go way beyond what DLSS 5 is aiming at. They see "AI" and immediately have this gut reaction that, deep down, is pure survival instinct. "They're coming for our jobs!"
Look, AI will not steal jobs. But people who can leverage AI will. There's no fighting this beast. I'm not pro-AI at all, but I try to adopt an agnostic stance that recognizes it will be a massive force for both good and bad in equal measure.
Can't beat 'em, join 'em.
Re: 'This Looks Like an AI Generated Dating Profile Picture': Nvidia's Attempt to P*ss on PS5 Pro's Parade with DLSS 5 Backfires
@Flaming_Kaiser Which is exactly what DLSS 1/PSSR do: they add to the game. They "hallucinate" based on previous training.
DLSS 1 adds pixels. DLSS 3 adds frames. DLSS 5 adds lighting. Sure, the results are increasingly more transformational but, as I commented in another article: it's optional, repeatable, and parameterized. Total artistic control. Just another tool. Don't like it, don't use it. No reason for this meltdown.
Re: PS5 Game Devs Collectively Clown on Nvidia's Controversial DLSS 5 Tech
Dear God, this is an early look at something that is optional, offers fully repeatable results, and is highly parameterized. Total artistic control. Just another tool. Don't like it, don't use it. So much fuzz about nothing.
People seem to automatically loathe anything AI because they think it will eventually steal their jobs. Guess what? What will actually steal people's jobs is people who can leverage AI.
Re: New PS5 Firmware Update with Anticipated PSSR 2 Toggle Available Now
@Feffster Makes sense, since TAA is being applied on native 4K. PSSR is rendering from a lower internal resolution, which might introduce artifacts but opens up frame times to add RT effects on the car dashboard. Fair tradeoff in my opinion.
Re: New PS5 Firmware Update with Anticipated PSSR 2 Toggle Available Now
@Postie85 Good question. Afaik, Sony did say that PSVR2 would be getting a PSSR implementation some time after the Pro's release, but we never heard anything about it ever since.
The flat version of PSSR doesn't work well in VR because there needs to be consistency between the frames rendered for the left and right eyes.
So, it's been promised, but I would not hold my breath given that Sony's investment in PSVR2 doesn't seem to be a priority now. Anyway, it could also happen stealthily on a random Tuesday like the positional reprojection introduced exclusively in GT7. Who knows...
Re: 'This Looks Like an AI Generated Dating Profile Picture': Nvidia's Attempt to P*ss on PS5 Pro's Parade with DLSS 5 Backfires
How ironic to see PSSR 2, an AI-based upscaling tech, is received with universal praise while, in the very same day, DLSS 5 is met with nearly universal disgust in the very same way that DLSS 1, an AI-based upscaling tech, was 7 years ago. Fake pixels, ya' know. I guess people are not ready for that yet.
Re: Review in Progress: Marathon (PS5) - Bungie's Extraction Shooter Is Brilliant, and It Only Gets Better
@somnambulance Yeah, I guess we do mostly agree. Now, the point that we seem to differ is this idea that the "hate crowd" is responsible for the failing of games.
Sure, they do contribute somewhat, but to what degree? Not enough to explain the recent catastrophes in my view. These live-service attempts are simply coming out too little too late in an oversaturated market. That fully explains.
Re: Review in Progress: Marathon (PS5) - Bungie's Extraction Shooter Is Brilliant, and It Only Gets Better
@somnambulance Yes, there's a culture component as well. And Sony has also been in the wrong side of it. In fact, I'd argue the right side from a business standpoint would be to choose no side at all.
Look, I didn't want to bring it up because it's a charged subject, but the ideological messaging in many games (including PlayStation's) has been unbearable.
I don't know whether culture or the live-service push is the biggest contributor to the hate campaign, and these things get conflated a lot, but my point is that Sony has brought this onto themselves.
Re: Review in Progress: Marathon (PS5) - Bungie's Extraction Shooter Is Brilliant, and It Only Gets Better
@Vertere You can over rationalize, twist the facts and bootlick as much as you want, but you can't change the sentiment. This generation feels flat and incomplete when compared to the previous one, and first-party output is a major part of it.
No wonder a staggering majority of people in this very website want Sony to extend the generation.
PlayStation's strategy has just been dreadful, and Sony knows it. Jim Ryan was kicked out, and Herman Hulst was demoted. What further evidence do you need?
Re: Review in Progress: Marathon (PS5) - Bungie's Extraction Shooter Is Brilliant, and It Only Gets Better
@somnambulance "But I’ve also been fascinated by the hate culture all generation. It’s a PS5 era thing and it’s gotten out of control, but why is it happening?"
C'mon, man... Is it that hard to understand? PlayStation has made its name on single-player action/adventure games. They used to represent the lion's share of its releases, and the output during the PS4 era was legendary.
Cut to the PS5 generation, and suddenly we start seeing headlines such as "we have a dozen or so live-service games in development", and "Naughty Dog is working on one", and "Bluepoint is working on a God of War live-service game", and "we bought the team that is developing Concord", then came the wave of cancelations and studio closures...
I'm sure you're familiar with the term "opportunity cost". Sure, games take longer to be made this gen, but the first-party output has just paled in comparison to PS4 or even PS3-era.
Sony has turned its back on its most loyal users, and it's no wonder we're not happy.
Re: Study Claims Sony's PS5 Games Are Leaving Big PC Sales on the Table
"when comparable AAA titles launch simultaneously on PC and console, PC contributes closer to 44% of players in the same period"
Good grief, it's the other way around. Launching day-and-date on PC means Sony would be selling less on PlayStation. How is that a good thing?
Re: Crimson Desert Confirms PSSR 2 on PS5 Pro, But Glowing Previews All Based on PC Version
@FamilyGuyFAN44 Sure, maybe they simply want to show the game at its best, thus PC.
I believe it will look great on Pro, but I'm skeptical about performance. Game is too ambitious. Expect a variable FPS.
Re: 'We're Discussing Ways to Improve': Marathon Dev Tweaking Monetisation and Difficulty as FPS Fails to Blow Up
@GamerDad76 "This Steam numbers trend is getting boring."
Sooo boring and, yet, so revealing.
Re: Opinion: Sony's PC Pullback Is the Right Move for PS5
@Krlozgod "PS5 owners are not going to migrate to PC when the game are released there after a year or more of their original release, porting those games is not a threat."
That's anecdotal, but two of my brothers did. One from PlayStation and the other from Xbox. And I have a suspicion that they're not the only two people on Earth who did this.
Re: Opinion: Sony's PC Pullback Is the Right Move for PS5
@RBMango "I will forever resent Xbox for driving this crap narrative".
Exactly. It's not all that surprising that people would fall for it, but it baffles me that Sony did.
Re: Flop FPS Highguard's Stats Show Steam Concurrents Are Just One Piece of the Puzzle
That's a moot point. Even if PS5 users were 5x the number on Steam, the usage trend is what matters. And they'll very rarely deviate much, if ever, for this kind of game.
Re: Crimson Desert Confirms PSSR 2 on PS5 Pro, But Glowing Previews All Based on PC Version
It's always worrying when publishers clearly hide the console version's footage, especially in the case of a game this ambitious.
And remember, PSSR 2 is excellent but it's no silver bullet, especially if a game is primarily CPU-bound.
It's a wait-and-see sort of situation, but the signs are not promising so far.
Re: Sony Returns to PlayStation Exclusivity and Stops Single Player PC Ports, New Report Says
@SaucyPapi Microsoft will either return to exclusives or exit the console hardware market entirely. There's simply no space for this in-between nonsense they've been playing.
Re: Sony Returns to PlayStation Exclusivity and Stops Single Player PC Ports, New Report Says
Besides the obvious business and brand implications, developing for a single fixed platform is way more efficient than having to design your game and engine around the constraints of a multiplatform release, even if the port is outsourced. This is particularly true when a platform as heterogenous as the PC is added into the mix. Scalability doesn't come cheap.
Re: Sony Quietly Decided to Scale Back PC Ports Last Year, Insider Claims
It's pretty funny how "angry fans" have been better at business analysis than corporations:
All failed experiments that many have warned about from the get-go. The truth does eventually emerge, I guess.
Re: Rumour: Sony Backtracking on PC Strategy, Shifting Towards PS5 Exclusivity Again
Removed
Re: Video: Silence as PSVR2 Turns Three Years Old - Is Sony's PS5 Headset Dead?
@charliecarrot That's awesome. I'm glad you had the same feeling I was describing above: that gaming is suddenly fresh and exciting all over again.
Now, you mentioned some great games, but don't sleep on Synapse and RE4/RE8.
Re: Video: Silence as PSVR2 Turns Three Years Old - Is Sony's PS5 Headset Dead?
PSVR2 is by far the best time I've had with gaming since the Sega Genesis days. I truly thought it would be impossible to recapture the magic of that era, but here we are.
With that said, the tech still needs a few iterations in order to be viable as a mainstream proposition. It's heavy, uncomfortable and presents way too much friction. And motion sickness needs to be overcome, if that is even possible.
I don't think Sony will be the steward of that evolution, but it's been a hell of a ride. RE4, RE8, Synapse, Tetris Effect and even Call of The Mountain have made it more than worth it. Not to mention GT7, the PSVR2 killer app that I'll be playing for years to come.
Re: PS5 Pro Upgrade Details Spotted, as Sony Patents PSSR 2.0 Tech
@Reeneman Most probably, as this sounds more like frame-gen than upscaling. Not that it's impossible for PS5 Pro to do frame-gen (aham.. wukong), but it feels more likely for it to be implemented in the next-gen SDK as a system feature.
Re: PS5 Pro Upgrade Details Spotted, as Sony Patents PSSR 2.0 Tech
@Dogbreath I don't think we can get away from frame-gen. Hardware evolution is right there at the top of the S-curve, so software is the new frontier.
Moreover, latency can be largely mitigated as the latest iterations of DLSS frame-gen have shown.
The problem with dynamic res is that it only addresses GPU bottleneck, whereas games are mostly CPU bound these days, where frame-gen can help a ton.
Re: PS5 Pro Upgrade Details Spotted, as Sony Patents PSSR 2.0 Tech
@Angelus3K Exactly my thoughts.
Re: Roblox Is Being Played More Than PlayStation and Steam Combined
Here's the real deal: Roblox has been around since 2006 and it's not profitable to this day. What's the point of having this many DAUs when they're all kids with no money?
Re: Memory Crisis Threatening to Delay PS6 Could Last 'Another 10 Years'
The guy is making a simplistic linear prediction, which almost never works in a 10-year timeline. What usually happens in these gold rush scenarios is an overshoot that is proportional to the size of the opportunity. Which leads to an inevitable bubble burst that follows the same proportionality rule.
What people need to understand is that said bubble-burst does not mean that the opportunity was never real. It just means that investors expected a bigger return in a shorter period of time. So they grow impatient, then nervous, then scared, until enough of them disinvest simultaneously and boom! Everyone panics at the same time.
This will inevitably happen in the next few years, and the market will self-correct. RAM prices will follow. Remember Bitcoin and GPUs?
Re: Mobile App Addictions Are Quickly Becoming a Serious Threat to Video Games, Report Claims
I'll play the optimist here for a change, but these things do ebb and flow. I've heard there's a growing trend among the young in which some deliberately minimize the use of tech, particularly phones. Sure, that doesn't bode well to consoles either, but I can see a future trend towards longer form content such as "old school videogames".
The real bad news for Sony and the gaming industry in general is a clear saturation of the market. Regardless of momentary trends, there just doesn't seem to be a path to growth. This kills momentum but doesn't necessarily mean the death of the industry, even in the long term. Anyway, that is a much wider issue driven by decreasing birth rates.
Re: Sony's Left Bloodborne Fans More Frustrated Than Ever Following Bluepoint Shutdown
There's something else at play here. The decision to close Bluepoint simply cannot be explained by people unfamiliar with whatever happened behind closed doors.
I'm not trying to defend Sony, as I've been quite critical of their actions over the last few years, but this just doesn't make sense.
Re: Opinion: The Euphoric Reaction to PS6's Rumoured Delay Really Confuses Me
"Maybe I’m increasingly out of touch" - Yes.
"New generations – iterative or not – reset the conversation and spark enthusiasm." - Meaning it's good for business.
I get it, we all have our biases. But you need to get out of your bubble, Sam. Here's the deadly combo:
Re: Sony Considering PS6 Delay to 2028 or Even 2029, New Report Says
@twitchtvpat Actually, I'm a famous architect.
Re: Sony Considering PS6 Delay to 2028 or Even 2029, New Report Says
Delaying the PS6 could be either fine or catastrophic for Sony, but the reason is not rooted in market demand as most people seem to think.
It all depends on how far the APU design is at this point. If it's mostly finalized, delaying the launch will be a nightmare. Either we'll get an immediately obsolete console, or Sony will redesign the chip wasting millions in R&D.
Launching an obsolete console may have worked for Nintendo, but PlayStation's appeal leans heavily on its tech capabilities.
Re: Sony's Latest State of Play Now Officially the Most Watched Ever
"Pleasing the majority in this era of gaming discourse is truly a remarkable feat."
No, it's not. Or at least, it shouldn't be. The problem is that corporations and the legacy media have lost the ability to listen to their audience, labeling every dissident opinion as "hate".
Sure, there's gratuitous hate out there, but it's your job to properly calibrate the filter. At least, this SOP is a promising sign that the noise got louder enough to start slipping through the cracks.
Re: Sony Finally Confirms Horizon Co-Op Game, Horizon Hunters Gathering for PS5, PC
Look, of course I was being facetious but, since you bit the bait: different art styles generally appeal do different age groups. This new Horizon game is obviously aiming at the Fortnite crowd, which is overwhelmingly comprised of teenagers.
I'm 47, but have an 18-year-old brother who used to love Fortnite and is now "sooo over it", you know? "It's for kids", he'd say.
Everyone is free to enjoy whatever tickles their fancy, but if someone likes stuff that is aimed at a younger age group, one is immature by definition.
It's not like saying adults shouldn't play videogames at all, because there's a barrage of games entirely aimed at adults.
Re: Sony Finally Confirms Horizon Co-Op Game, Horizon Hunters Gathering for PS5, PC
@PuppetMaster Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that only 14-year-olds could enjoy this. I meant up to.
Re: Sony Finally Confirms Horizon Co-Op Game, Horizon Hunters Gathering for PS5, PC
@get2sammyb "Not sure what the earlier comments are smoking, I love how this looks."
If you're 14, yeah.
Re: Highguard Player Count Is Actually Hanging in There as It Makes 5v5 Mode Permanent
I have to say, the Highguard apologists are as cringy and tiring as the haters.
Re: Despite Its Price, PS5 Pro Enjoyed a Very Respectable 2025 in USA
@Dogbreath Exactly. Developed nations had had inflation that was too low for too long until covid, so people don't have a full grasp of what it does to the value of money.
I live in Brazil, so I know that damn well.
I wouldn't qualify gaming as 'cheap', but it's as expensive as it's ever been.
Now, the middle class has definitely got poorer over the last few decades, which is the actual reason for this feeling. It's not that gaming became more expensive. It's that people became poorer.
Re: Prince of Persia Remake and 5 Other Games Cancelled by Ubisoft
@Boxmonkey That is not how human brain works. Everything is obvious in retrospective. At the height of the pandemic, no one know for how long that charade would last. And the tech industry was all-in on the 'new normal' bs.
Was it naive? Yes, I can totally agree with that. But it also felt like the opportunity of a lifetime in the heat of the moment. The truth is that those expectations didn't materialize and we're now seeing a market correction. Which, by the way, is also completely normal. The market moves in swings, just like culture and politics. It's too big and complex in a way that favors momentum that gets irrational when it nears the extremes.
In fact, we're discussing points of view that are much more complementary than they are opposing. What I'm saying is definitely true, but you're also coming from a valid perspective.
I mean, yes, people have been more selective with their purchases. Which is also downstream from the pandemic. And yes, games have been more quantity than quality for a while now.
Sure, great games have come out, but there's too much 'middle of the road' sh*t. And again, executives thought there would be a market for it, but there's no space for good games. Just for the great ones. For both reasons we're presenting.
Re: Prince of Persia Remake and 5 Other Games Cancelled by Ubisoft
@Boxmonkey Investment decisions are made based on future outlook, and covid inflated expectations in the gaming industry to unreasonable levels. Just look at all the M&A movement over those years, with the Embracer Group being the most notable.
Games take 5 years on average from conception to release these days, which means we're at the height of those investments coming to fruition.
The number your mentioned just means the market is bigger than it's ever been. But problem is that the industry thought it would be much bigger at this point.
Re: Prince of Persia Remake and 5 Other Games Cancelled by Ubisoft
Aaand the covid bubble keeps on popping, both culturally and financially. Last week, Meta. Today, Ubisoft. Some of us have been warning about it for a while now, while being called doomers. Sure, there's no hard crash, but it's a considerable market and cultural correction.
Re: Razer Boss Lashes Out at Gen AI, But Says Gamers Would 'Love' AI to Streamline Dev Cycles
This is one of those weird cases in which both sides of the argument are simultaneously right and wrong. And as always, the market will dictate the final outcome regardless of all the internet noise.
Old jobs will be substituted by new jobs and people will become more productive because of better tools. But unfortunately, we'll feel busier than ever even though there will be an overall marginal gain in free time for leisure activities.
The rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. Yeah, that will increase the general sense of dissatisfaction in the population and social pressure will continue to build up.
The changes will feel way too fast even though the deeper ones will only happen over the span of decades. Humanity will adapt and life will get better by every measurable statistic, but people will have a sense that life was so much better back in the old days. And it probably was, especially from a more humanistic perspective. But mostly, we were just younger.
Re: Rumour: PS5 Pro's Big PSSR Update Releasing by March, Improves Graphics and Performance
The hope is that PSSR 2.0 will address the original's shortcomings, which is a fair assumption judging by how AI based models tend to improve with time. Ideally, it should offer a more generalized and less implementation dependent solution, but we should temper our expectations.
FSR4 is very good, but RDNA 4 has some extra hardware capabilities (FP8). PS5 Pro's implementation should be based on the INT8 format which is less precise, thus meaning image quality should be inferior. By how much, it remains to be seen.
Also, I'm skeptical of getting both better image quality and performance, particularly on the performance side. If it offers substantially better image quality with a marginal increase in frame-time cost, consider it a win.
And lastly, I'd assume this march release pertains to the availability in the developer SDK, which means it will be rolled out in games from that point on. And not every developer will go back and retrofit it in games that have been already released.
Re: 'Sony's Never Experienced This Phenomenon Before': PS5 Smash Hit Gran Turismo 7 Getting Stronger Over Time
@ThomasHL Content-wise, maybe. But it's worth remembering that GT7 has its roots on the PS4, so the core game has a lot of room for improvement if they target the PS5 as a base for GT8. Sophy would be the low hanging fruit, but the CPU power disparity between these console generations could allow for a much-improved handling and physics model. Not that GT7's isn't already great, but I trust Yamauchi and team to always have another trick up their sleeve.
Oh, and what about a path-traced PS6 version?
Re: Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve Revealed, Soars onto PS5 in 2026
"other features to be revealed in the coming months"
C'mon... That's gotta be VR, right? Right? Between this and GT7, I'd be set.
Re: Gran Turismo 7's Power Pack DLC Is a $30 PS5 Add-On
@nessisonett I have close to 400 hours in GT7, and more that 90% of it is in single player. Sure, you must be connected to the internet, but that has never been an issue for me. There's endless "offline" content and the cafe menus are very engaging for car lovers.
Re: Gran Turismo 7's Power Pack DLC Is a $30 PS5 Add-On
@DennisReynolds If by "grind" you mean "race" well, that's the whole point of the game. Earning credits is a mere consequence and, buying cars, a nice distraction. And to be honest, I find the rewards to be pretty generous.
The game was already great at launch, and they've given us years of free updates. The physics model has been adjusted to perfection, the AI is night and day where Sophy is available, VR support is sublime, PS5 Pro support is stellar both inside and outside of VR, and so on and so forth.
Entitled much?
Re: Call of Duty: Black Ops 7's Lacklustre European Sales Continue Trending Downwards
Spider-Man 2 must be up because of its aggressive recent sale. I just picked it up for 62% off and it is fantastic. But dear God, is it preachy. The writing is unbearably bad in absolute contrast to the top-notch gameplay and visuals.