Art_Vandelay

@B0udoir Very true. People get passionate about their hobbies and forget that, at the end of the day, it only exists because it's a business that makes a lot of money. And when the business side of things is treated the way Ubisoft has done, reality eventually emerges. We're probably talking about the most bloated company in the gaming business.

I might be looking at it from an overly simplistic perspective, but it sounds like Tencent wanted to raise its share while Ubisoft needed that billion Euro injection quite badly. And that new corporate arrangement was the way to address both wants and needs.

Yes, the old Ubisoft will go down, but it was going to anyway.

@Glorioso You said "The game is for 0.1% who want a Renault Kangoo". Glad you corrected that absurd.

Now, 100/13 equals 7.7 million copies sold. This is an average, which should take into account that 5 of those 13 games are spinoffs. GT7 is estimated to have sold 14-15 million copies.

Not only is that very impressive, but it easily makes Gran Turismo the most valuable IP in PlayStation's portfolio.

@Glorioso Gran Turismo is the bestselling PlayStation IP of all time, with over 100 million copies sold. That should put it a little bit above 0.1%.

@Glorioso GT7 with a good racing rig and PSVR2 is not a game, it's a lifestyle.

@QiaraIris Couldn't have said it better. The flagrant toxic positivity around this game by the games media can only result in two parallel outcomes:
1) Fuel the very negativity it's trying to combat.
2) Reduce the public's trust even further in case things turn out like Veilguard.

On the one hand, this has the potential to be the best game on PS VR2, just second to GT7, of course. But on the other hand, it could also be a bit of a disaster as it's not a trivial port. I just hope IOI has put enough work into this, I'm so ready.

@Machine_T Dump girlfriend, get PS VR2.

@nessisonett Which just goes to show how different people's taste really is. I happily paid $600 at launch and haven't regretted for a second. It was the best time I've had with gaming since the Sega Genesis, and I still use PS VR2 regularly.

@Oram77 Lol, nice try. I don't want to get into TLOU2, because its controversial nature has been discussed to death, but you forgot the TV show. I guess that "we're communists" line could not, under any circumstance, be considered preachy. And that is just one obvious tinny little example.

Look, the games are good, and the show is good, provided one can overlook the decidedly preachy aspects. And maybe you align with Neil's values and don't even notice these things, but it doesn't mean they're not there.

@Oram77 Based on Neil's body of work, we can certainly be worried.

The last competitive GPU architecture from AMD before the new one was RDNA2. It was heavily codeveloped with Sony to form the basis of the PS5, and I suspect this had a lot to do with its relative success.

Now, AMD suddenly turns up with another banger, and I'm inclined to believe PlayStation has had its fingers all over it once again. RDNA4 will probably form the basis of the PS6, which is in active development right now.

@KoopaTheGamer The difference in TOPS between the PS5 Pro and these new GPUs is massive. That probably explains the seemingly better results with FSR4, but I would bet it shares a lot of tech with PSSR. And to be fair, it's still early days for both.

Think of it as the APUs that go into Sony's consoles: it's mostly standard AMD's PC CPU and GPU, but Sony tweaks it to get that maximum console efficiency.

@Ultimapunch Chill, mate. We enthusiasts like to talk and speculate about the future. It's exciting, but you shouldn't let it detract from your enjoyment of the present. Both sentiments can coexist. FOMO only lives inside your head.

Given its multiplatform nature, I assume it won't support PSVR2, which is a deal breaker for me.

@Godot25 To be fair, some games do offer this best of both worlds scenario, with Kingdom Come being a recent notorious example.

Small correction: 40fps mode does not require VRR, but a 120Hz panel. These days, pretty much every TV has both, but there was a time when many 120Hz TVs did not support VRR.

Series X is beating PS4 4 to 1 in Japan, console war is over.

"this generation has always been expected to run longer due to the disruption caused by the pandemic"

That's not the main reason at all. Generations will run increasingly longer simply by virtue of, well... physics.

Reducing the size of transistors inside a microchip has been by far the biggest driving force that pushes performance and architectural innovations in CPUs and GPUs.

It just so happens that shrinking has a hard limit: the size of the atom. And the more we approach that limit, the harder it gets to shrink nodes.

@NeonPizza That's the thing, PSVR2 was my entry point into VR, hence that "magic". Imagine loading up Thumper on the first day and going "wooaaah, what the hell is going on?!" (pardon the pun).

And frankly, VR still amazes me two years later. I still get that tickle at the "3, 2, 1... boom, GT7 switches from the virtual screen to VR mode" when entering a race. This game with a good racing rig on PSVR2 is my child's dream come true.

And regarding Astrobot, yeah... I mean, they've got to bring it over at some point, right? Right??

Buying a PSVR2 at launch was the most magical moment I've had with gaming probably since the Sega Genesis. I've been gaming for 40 years now, and one eventually gets to a point where everything feels like "been there, done that". But VR came to the rescue and totally flipped gaming on its head to me.

I played VR exclusively for almost two years, and now I've been alternating with flat on and off. I still very much love VR, but these last couple years off flat-screen gaming have been great to refresh my love for gaming in general.

To sum it up: I strongly recommend it. It's not the new way to experience games, but it's an awesome alternative.

Not sure if it's the case with this one, but one thing that Polyphony does consistently with these updates and I rarely see mentioned, is further refining the physics model. The simulation is night and day when comparing its state at launch (which was pretty good already) with what it is now.

It's embarrassing how clueless Satya is when it comes to gaming. His enthusiasm to push AI in the most absurd ways is sickening.

AI is undoubtedly the kind of disruptive tech that will cause a deep societal restructuring, maybe even deeper than the internet did. But the technocrat looks at it and immediately sees all kinds of really bad use cases.

For now, generative AI is transformative as a tool for quick prototyping, just like chatGPT is quite useful for initial document drafts. But to imply that "soon" these models will be employed to generate the final game (or even parts of it) is the perfect recipe for absolutely soulless games.

I own a Pro, but I've always been super skeptical that Sony would even release this mid-gen upgrade simply because AMD couldn't provide a meaningful hardware bump.

And while I did get one, because I'm an enthusiast, I have to say it's been quite underwhelming. Is it worth it? For the vast majority of users, no. Again, the performance upgrade is tiny. Is it worth it for me? Yes, because I like to know I'm getting the best experience possible.

And the improved motion reprojection in GT7 on PSVR2 is the icing on the cake. But that tidbit also goes to show how niche this thing really is.

@SMJ Exactly, they've massaged the terminology to obfuscate the declining volume of the in-house output.

@viktorcode C'mon, mate. Let's try to be honest here and compare apples to apples.

There are bad cancelations and catastrophic cancelations. It is always a "stop loss". The earlier you cancel, the better. But what really needs to be analyzed here is the reason why those Sony games were canceled, when they were cancelled (Concord), and the size of the investment ("Factions", Bungie).

It was obvious from the start that this trend chasing towards live service games was a fool's errand. Sony bet too high on the wrong horse. Just look at Nintendo: they've stuck to their guns and ended up as the most successful of the big three this generation.

Diversifying one's portfolio is fine, but calibrating your bets is paramount.

And negative sentiment in fanbase means nothing? Really? Alright, then.

@LogicStrikesAgain Two things can be true at the same time.

While Astrobot is great, it's a project on a much smaller scale than the likes of GOW, Horizon, TLOU or Ghost. Make no mistake, the aforementioned bad decisions inevitably have an impact on Sony's output, and first-party has been meager as of late.

And please, don't mix "exclusives" with first-party. We both know they're not the same thing.

Sure, Microsoft is bigger. But the negative sentiment among PlayStation fans has nothing to do with that. Sony's slow output of late is the result of sheer incompetence, plain and simple, and it shows. Do I need to remind you of how much investment has been recently burned by a ton of horrible decisions from PlayStation Studios?

Naughty Dog wasted years on its online service game.

Concord sucked a truckload of cash only to be cancelled post release.

Then there's Bend, Bluepoint and so on.

"Oh, games are cancelled all the time!" Yeah, right.

@nomither6 Lol, sorry. *Hybrid (cough)

@PuppetMaster You know what? You're right:

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/new-report-says-pc-games-are-outselling-console-games-calling-pc-gaming-a-bright-spot-in-a-troubled-industry/

I'll make it easier for you: title reads "New report says PC games are outselling console games, calling PC gaming a 'bright spot' in a troubled industry".

Further down: "Compared to the previous console generation, the current Microsoft and Sony console lines had, after 49 months, sold nearly 7 million fewer systems.
PC gaming, meanwhile, has only continued to grow. 'While console has stagnated since 2021,' Epyllion says, PC gaming revenue 'has grown 20%.'"

Have a good day yourself too, sir.

@PuppetMaster Mate, I love these conversations, but I'm a little short on time here. I could search for the data, but so could you. Or you can take my word for it. Or better: observe how Sony and Microsoft are behaving. Why the sudden interest in PC gamers?

Now, regarding the Switch: yes, it's obviously a major success, but its 150 million mark just does not compare to PS2's. It's way more common for households to have multiple Switches than it was to have more than one PS2. The Switch is primarily a handheld, so it's not a fair comparison.

Anyway, you're confining your analysis to the short-term. Demographic shifts take decades to consolidate. Consoles have been gradually becoming specialized PCs, which frankly saddens me. But I won't pretend I don't see the trend because I don't like it.

It's neither here nor there. PlayStation is doing just fine, but the increase could easily be explained by the shrink in players numbers over at Xbox. Overall, consoles do seem to be on a very slow decline, driven by two major factors:

1) Gamers are flocking to PC, which is growing at a faster pace than PlayStation.

2) The younger generation isn't as interested in consoles as the previous one.

If these trends continue, the traditional console business model will be at risk in a few years. PlayStation has a lot of momentum, and this has been driving its good numbers. All is well in the rearview mirror, but the mid to long-term future is uncertain indeed.

The first season was pretty good but I'm really, really worried about season 2. I just don't see a way they could tackle the game's story, even if tangentially, without the show ending up as a train wreck.

And look, I'm not even craping on TLOU Part 2. It has its merits and its issues. It's bold and it's divisive for a reason. But it's evidently much harder to translate than the first game. Unless they deviate greatly from the source material, which I don't think egos would allow.

@naruball Exactly. The problem is that Sony shares this vision that consoles will eventually be replaced by 'consolized PCs'. Which might the case, but it kind of feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Every platform holder starts porting their games to PC because they fear obsolescence, then eventually consumers start flocking to PC.

Now, one justified reason I can see is the following: if Microsoft releases their games on every platform, they'll naturally sell much better. Which in turn allows for bigger budgets and thus potentially better games, leaving Sony in an awkward position with comparatively weak exclusives.

It's a tough nut to crack, although I fully agree that they should stick to their guns like Nintendo.

Yeah, but Sega's revenue is about 3 billion a year, while PlayStation brings in about ten times as much. Going the multiplatform publisher route is a mere survival strategy. It's very hard to foster a loyal community of fans without a box to parade around.

Sure, Microsoft Games will be massive considering they own the likes of Minecraft and COD, but this obviously wasn't the original strategy when they started acquiring other publishers.

It's funny how most opinions on AI are on exact polar opposites. Either it's the greatest human invention or the beginning of the end when, in fact, the truth is usually in the middle.

Just look at the internet as a parallel example. It's certainly one of humanity's greatest achievement, but it's also the cause of many, many issues. This pattern will probably repeat itself with AI and with every disruptive new technology.

In games development specifically, it will be successfully used as a productivity tool by many, and it will also be abused to the detriment of many games and studios. Some will turn out great, while others will certainly be soulless disasters. The market will be the judge of that, as usual.

@RoomWithaMoose "There are many reasons products succeed and fail."

Bingo.

I never said that culture is the only thing that matters. All we're saying is that it does matter. To what degree? We can agree to disagree on that, because time will tell.

And stop fixating on identitarian characteristics, man. It's not about that. In fact, it's the exact opposite. I'm freaking Latin, ok? Race, gender and so on should not matter at all. We need to look past this stuff and see each other as just fellow human beings.

@RoomWithaMoose If you can't see the trend by now, I don't know what else to tell you.

@RoomWithaMoose "you should consider the myriad of other reasons a game called 'Unknown 9' might've failed"

Now, you're missing the forest for the trees.

"When a live-service title set in the God of War universe is cancelled, it's difficult to have much confidence in something like Fairgame$ making it to market either."

I mostly agree with the article, but not with this quote. Releasing a disastrously bad GOW live-service game could have severe implications for the franchise. It's probably better to risk burning a new IP.

Oh man, Bend is probably the worst case of mismanagement among PlayStation's first party. Sony really made an effort to screw these guys.

Sure, the competition is stiff with Bungie and Firewalk but, at least with these two, there's the excuse that Sony bought damaged goods.

It's a shame, because I really think Days Gone was criminally underrated.

If there is one game that can afford to be priced at $70 and still make exorbitant amounts of money, it's GTA.

Hell, this game will probably sell over 100 million copies. If they charged $10, it would still recoup the estimated one billion cost.

@Th3solution Yep, but those people were always fighting against common sense, right? A misture of naivete, bias and downright deceitfulness. Everyone is happy while all bellies are full. The surprising part is that people that weren't really invested in Game Pass just went along. Or weren't they?

"If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything."

They're terrified. This is a make-or-break release for Ubisoft.

It's a little depressing how far ahead Nvidia really is. Mark Cerny just gave a presentation raving about the CNN (convolutional neural network) based PSSR, and a few days later Nvidia presents the Transformer-based DLSS 4 that looks so much better that it immediately renders CNNs obsolete.

I don't game on my PC for a number of reasons and Nvidia's gear does come at a cost, but the technical gap between PCs and consoles does seem to be widening.

@StopBeingTribal "Perfectly good" is not good enough. Lead characters have to be awesome to carry an IP, and Aloy just doesn't cut it for most people. Again, the two mainline games are great, but not because of her.

Sexual appeal is surely one way to make a character stand out, but it's far from the only one.