I'm very happy with prince of persia. arcade paradise I've heard good things about too, so those two are just about sufficient offerings for me.
however, it does feel like a big title is missing this month, almost like something was pulled from the lineup last minute and not replaced.
Old armoured core games coming to the service makes sense with sony's investment into fromsoft, expect we'll see the new armoured core on there too in the coming months.
Unbeatable value for a game with a large online aspect that seemingly is flooded with micro transactions and whose servers will be shut down in as little as 18 months rendering it all unplayable if the past is anything to go by. Seems like it's anything but unbeatable value to me.
Hard to blame the publishers anymore when the audience have shown they're willing to continuously buy their product regardless.
Oh no!! I have to make a free account for something that takes seconds before playing. However will i cope? It's a complete non-issue just as it was when psn required it for PC players only for them to ***** the bed and cry about it.
@breakneck could be a whole range of things but I don't think it will be a licensing issue as they've got licenses for all those sports games too that are on there.
@breakneck yep loads actually having just looked at what they've published.
Multiple WRC ganes have been on. More than 1 of the tour de France games have been on. Pretty sure we've had a cricket, rugby and handball game on there before, werewolf the apocalypse was on ps now. rogue lords (which is excellent btw and well worth a play if you enjoy slay the spire) and roguebook are both currently on extra, bloodbowl, overpass, AO tennis, steel rising, the Styx games, bee simulator.
The more i read the list of what they've published, its becoming very evident that pretty much the entirety of their back catalgoue is or has been on ps+ in some form. I didn't realise they were such a big contributor when I made that prediction to be honest, only strengthens my view considerably
First Styx game was genuinely fantastic. Didn't know it was the same guys that did werewolf: the apocalypse-eaethblood, which was essentially a ps2 filler title released 20 years too late.
Rogue city is definitely coming to ps+ in some capacity very soon. It's a prime extra/premium contender before this announcement, it's surely a certainty now.
take the ps+ windfall on rogue city and promote the new dlc to the massive new audience. Payday.
Whilst I don't put too much weight into metacritic scores it's impressive l, fair play to Sega. It wasn't all that long ago that segas future existence was in question. Long may it continue.
Sounds to me an awfully lot like the devs aren't very good at their job. The hundreds of other games on the system, a lot of which being bigger and more complex than this and working fine would suggest the tools aren't the problem the people operating them are.
Shame as I absolutely loved the first cities skylines on ps4 and would be well up for a working and good ps5 sequel. Doesn't look like that's coming though.
A game that didn't need to exist. If they were unable to secure funding, it's logical to assume they didn't have any ideas worth backing. No company has a right to exist.
There are too many game companies popping up with a run of the mill idea, having an unfeasibly large budget for it that's entirely reliant on it being a major, unprecedented success to survive long enough to get a second game out. Too easy for chancers to create a company in an attempt hit big and sell up knowing that it's far likelier to fail.
The constant over dramatisation of lay offs in the industry has been tedious to read for a while now.
The people that lost their job have done so because their job was no longer required, nobody is going to pay people to do nothing in any industry.
If you work in a factory producing one thing with staff that has skills tailored to producing that one thing and that company suddenly ceases producing that product, there's no use for those employed specifically to produce that product anymore so of course they're going to lay them off. What's a person employed to make background art for a now cancelled game going to do everyday?
1+2 remake was brilliant. Had the perfect mix of feeling modern and inflicting nostalgia, it's how I think 1+2 played rather than how it actually played. Also a bloody hard platinum which I enjoyed. Don't have the same nostalgia for 3+4, I'm sure I probably played them but I don't remember anything of them and nothing in the trailer rang any bells. Will be something I'll play once it inevitably comes to ps+
As with all games now, I'll play it when it comes to ps+ and if it doesnt, ill play whatever does instead.
extremely rare I buy games now, I basically play daily and yet I've bought just 3 games this decade. Once you get passed the initial sense of being left behind as each new big thing comes out and you build up a backlog of games you've not yet played, there's really no need to ever purchase anything else other than my ps+ subscription.
Time to stop blaming it on suicide squad and identify the real culprits here, the suits who instructed rocksteady to make the suicide squad. That needs to be distinguished.
Decent price drop. It's something we used to see with all hardware as the tech got better and cheaper, rare nowadays though.
Still not going to make me jump on board. I have a passing interest in VR but they'd have to almost literally give it away for me to ever jump on. It will always be too much money for me to justify for what is a very niche sector.
Dunno why everyone is assuming a game has to have failed spectacularly to come to ps+ that quickly. A lot of people are forgetting what month it is, it's far, far more likely that EA simply want to get that ps+ money in the backend of this financial year to boost their figures and are willing to write off any potential DA drip sales to do so.
Either way, it's a really strong get for Playstation and a genuinely good month.
I was expecting one of our annual titles this month. One from Fifa, NBA, F1, CoD, and WWE that we are basically guaranteed every year at this point so that's a very welcome surprise.
These things arent always the doom and gloom they're portrayed to be. Nothing stopping the people who sold the company in the first place to essentially recreate the company under a different name and re-employ all those let go. They could even potentially buy back IP if cost cutting measures are that extreme.
They really can't follow the game closely for this one, it just wouldn't work for tv so it will be very interesting to see how they approach it. what they add, what they leave out, what they change and how they reorder stuff.
One thing is for certain, there will be a vocal moaners galore regardless, can't wait for that...
Couldn't give a toss either way. Did PC gaming in the past, it isn't for me.
Its free revenue so why wouldnt Sony do it. Only thing I'd always want is the ability to choose not to play with PC players for any multiplayer game, there is a potential competitve advantage aspect to with k/m vs controller but mainly to let the pc community deal with the cheaters themselves.
This should be a shock to absolutely nobody. It's not the doom and gloom story it's being painted out to be either.
In the 24 fiscal year they released what? Skull and bones which was always going to tank hard, star wars outlaws which was a big let down and the prince of Persia game that was a much smaller indie-like title. Anything else? AC got pushed from the fiscal year, they cancelled a division game and probably others im missing. in 2023, the year they're comparing last year to, they had an AC game release, a crew game, that avatar game, there's not a person on the planet that couldn't look at what they had for that year and predict that downturn.
Had AC released on schedule their numbers would almost certainly be up. As a result of it slipping to this fiscal year though, the annual report in a year's time is going to show a huge upturn instead as the AC sales will effectively count double for sales missed last year and extra sales this year along with whatever else they end up releasing this year.
Phoenix Wright and resident evil 3 have both been downloaded sitting on my system for almost a year now without every starting either. Not sure I'll bother with either to be honest.
Giving it as much distance as possible from the concord disaster is the best thing they can do right now. Still predict it's destined for failure but perhaps it won't be as bad the longer they leave it.
Had the outer worlds on my next to play list for a few months now and still haven't got around to it as i haven't touched a single game this year. shame to miss out on it, it's one I've wanted to play but the beauty of the subscription model is there's always plenty more games to play.
Laughed hard at this as don't these games servers have a notouriously short shelf life?
"Come join our online game and buy some of the abundance of cosmetic micro transactions we'll have for sale until we close it all down in 12-18 months"
Knew it was housemarque from the go. Returnal was fantastic, all for what seems to essentially be a sequel. Still a little bummed we won't get any more dead nation/alienation style games from then. I know they've moved on to bigger stuff but I'd kill for an offshoot studio going back to those style of games as smaller projects too.
Really enjoyed days gone, think it easily deserved a sequel. Absolutely no interest in a remaster though, same as horizon or any other game I played just a few years ago that won't have changed much if at all. I'll maybe play it again when it eventually gets put on ps+ extra
They keep finding new lows to reach. Has to be the poorest selection since the relaunch. The numbers are declining rapidly, gone are the days where we were looking at almost 20 titles with extra and premium combined and the quality is also declining.
Jedi survivor is the only one noteworthy but all EA games can be played on their own subscription service for practically nothing when they do their yearly month long sub sale. Incredibly weak offering, makes you wonder why they bothered saving it for state of play, should have got that lineup announced at the usual time and then mask over it with the state of play.
@breakneck not true. The quotes are directly pulled from the annual report.
Metaphor: ReFantazio is currently "exceeding expectations," while Sonic X Shadow Generations has "steadily increased its sales" and has surpassed two million units in global cumulative sales.
There's the quotes. Quite literally says "exceeding expectations." So the complete opposite to not selling as well as you'd think.
Why would it be a surprise if we read the article? Its explained large parts of it are due to the loss on the sale of a studio that needed to be written off and the cancellation of FM25 which is huge. Perfectly understandable given that information.
@breakneck games aren't selling as well as you'd think? It literally says in the article the games are selling really well. metaphor exceeding expectations and sonic at least matching them. In a world where expectations are nearly always unreachably high, that's very impressive.
So now they're doing the game they should have done a decade ago? Add another half a decade to the dev cycle and we're looking at a game 15 years late by which time I doubt they'll be many of the people still there from the other titles to guarantee its quality and the gaming world will have moved on.
Suicide squad might not have killed the justice league but it all but killed Rocksteady.
Good decision. Annual titles are near impossible to churn out nowadays with significant worthwhile improvements unless they do a COD and have different devs cycle in. they have to switch up the schedule and start making it at least bi-annually. Commendable decision.
Playstation max was my favourite here in the UK. Wasn't the biggest publication going but it always had a bold eye catching front cover and crucially was cheaper. Still got all my issues boxed up somewhere too.
The biggest question is will it consistently corrupt saves losing hours upon hours of gameplay forcing you to start from scratch again like 6 did? And will it regularly slow to a crawl before crashing when you get mid to late game? I loved 6, even bought the expansion which I never normally do but I'm not going to bother if I can't be sure these issues won't happen again. I love Firaxis games, civ 6, xcom and midnight suns are some of my favorite games, xcom series being my absolute favourite series but the games are always infested with technical problems. I see it's releasing on ps4, no chance this doesn't blow up ps4's at this point.
Stopped feeling anything about the latest online multi-player game to come to ps+ in a bid to either save a dying game or give a DoA new release half a chance of surviving 6 months. Payday 3 is just the next in a very, very long list of them.
High on life I was expecting at some point. Seemed like a fairly mediocre game but the Rick and morty appeal being enough to elevate it to worth a go status. Happy enough with that although felt like an extra game if anything.
Pac man I think I recall playing the original and enjoying it. Do find a lot of these games are best left in memories though, they rarely stand up to the level my memory has of them. Might give it a go, wouldn't be something I'd ever actively want on the service but not complaining.
Decent month overall that isn't going to set the world alight. More likely to play one of them than last months offerings.
Good. This only really impacts people outside the industry looking to profit from it and having no real interest in the actual product.
This isn't really about DA or Fifa(FC) underperforming. It's about expectations of constantly bigger audiences being far too great and a need to recognise the reality that the industry is close to hitting the ceiling in terms of pure audience numbers. Even games like FC, one of the biggest titles in gaming cannot show perpetual growth, there's always a cap. The financial vultures have just found that out in a very expensive manner.
Jesus christ. We know they were going all in on the live service stuff but this is taking the piss. 2 big teams that should never be doing that, they've just ensured both teams give us nothing until next Gen now.
If a team as respected as bluepoint making something using the GoW IP cannot produce anything worth releasing, there's not much hope for the other live service garbage they've got on the go either.
This is potentially a complete waste of an entire generation now. Could go down as the most catastrophic decision/mismanagement in gaming history.
Poor lineup for me. There's too much weight on the headliners which means the other titles suffer a dip in quality.
Also think they should space out the like a dragon/yakuza games more, we've only just got ishin added and they're always huge games.
Already own GoW. LaD im not in the mood for yet and ive got ishin still to play so Atlas fallen is the only one i'll probably take a look at from that list as I really liked the surge. Rest of the games don't interest me.
@RobN Exactly. Nobody needs QA testers when theres nothing to test in the games infancy, that's just one of the easy to comprehend examples of which they'll be many. The industry has to accept and adapt to the evolution of how a game's made and what that means for jobs.
Contract work is the natural progression for this industry. Think of a building site, thats the most accurate analogy i can come up with for comparison. you're not bringing in an electrician day 1 to wire a building when the foundations havent even been laid yet. Likewise, once the shell of a building is up, you dont need a bricklayer hanging around being paid to watch electricians install plug sockets. Most people involved will come in as required, do their role and move onto the next thing as soon as their part is done. And once the building is complete, its common most people involved move on to other projects and only a core, small number of staff remain to seek and start the next project. Nobody has a problem with this, it makes perfect sense, and it now makes perfect sense for the games industry too, which is why I do not understand the constant highlighting of job losses.
Rocksteady aren't really the right sample case to make this point though given they have had an abnormally large budget and time frame to make suicide squad and have the Arkham success behind them and have the financial power of WB games backing them meaning they can easily afford to keep all staff on if they so choose, but for many other game companies now, they quite literally live or die by their last release and so cost cutting will be essential for survival.
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Re: 12 PS Plus Extra, Premium Games for March 2025 Announced
I'm very happy with prince of persia. arcade paradise I've heard good things about too, so those two are just about sufficient offerings for me.
however, it does feel like a big title is missing this month, almost like something was pulled from the lineup last minute and not replaced.
Old armoured core games coming to the service makes sense with sony's investment into fromsoft, expect we'll see the new armoured core on there too in the coming months.
Re: WWE 2K25 (PS5) - Unbeatable Value from 2K’s Dominant Wrestling Series
Unbeatable value for a game with a large online aspect that seemingly is flooded with micro transactions and whose servers will be shut down in as little as 18 months rendering it all unplayable if the past is anything to go by. Seems like it's anything but unbeatable value to me.
Hard to blame the publishers anymore when the audience have shown they're willing to continuously buy their product regardless.
Re: Forza Horizon 5 Will Require a Microsoft Account to Play on PS5, Raising Preservation Problems
Oh no!! I have to make a free account for something that takes seconds before playing. However will i cope? It's a complete non-issue just as it was when psn required it for PC players only for them to ***** the bed and cry about it.
Re: RoboCop Returns in Unfinished Business, a Standalone Rogue City Expansion for PS5
@breakneck could be a whole range of things but I don't think it will be a licensing issue as they've got licenses for all those sports games too that are on there.
Re: Preview: Atomfall Proves a Must-Play Mystery on PS5, PS4
Everything about this is looking promising.
Re: RoboCop Returns in Unfinished Business, a Standalone Rogue City Expansion for PS5
@breakneck yep loads actually having just looked at what they've published.
Multiple WRC ganes have been on. More than 1 of the tour de France games have been on. Pretty sure we've had a cricket, rugby and handball game on there before, werewolf the apocalypse was on ps now. rogue lords (which is excellent btw and well worth a play if you enjoy slay the spire) and roguebook are both currently on extra, bloodbowl, overpass, AO tennis, steel rising, the Styx games, bee simulator.
The more i read the list of what they've published, its becoming very evident that pretty much the entirety of their back catalgoue is or has been on ps+ in some form. I didn't realise they were such a big contributor when I made that prediction to be honest, only strengthens my view considerably
Re: Styx Returns for a Third Stealth Game on PS5, Blades of Greed Out This Year
First Styx game was genuinely fantastic. Didn't know it was the same guys that did werewolf: the apocalypse-eaethblood, which was essentially a ps2 filler title released 20 years too late.
Re: RoboCop Returns in Unfinished Business, a Standalone Rogue City Expansion for PS5
Rogue city is definitely coming to ps+ in some capacity very soon. It's a prime extra/premium contender before this announcement, it's surely a certainty now.
take the ps+ windfall on rogue city and promote the new dlc to the massive new audience. Payday.
Re: SEGA Dethrones Capcom, Crowned Metacritic's Highest-Rated Publisher of 2024
Whilst I don't put too much weight into metacritic scores it's impressive l, fair play to Sega. It wasn't all that long ago that segas future existence was in question. Long may it continue.
Re: Cities: Skylines 2 PS5 Still Under Construction, Structural Issues Still Need Fixing
Sounds to me an awfully lot like the devs aren't very good at their job. The hundreds of other games on the system, a lot of which being bigger and more complex than this and working fine would suggest the tools aren't the problem the people operating them are.
Shame as I absolutely loved the first cities skylines on ps4 and would be well up for a working and good ps5 sequel. Doesn't look like that's coming though.
Re: Until Dawn Remake Dev 'Effectively' Closed, Says New Report
A game that didn't need to exist. If they were unable to secure funding, it's logical to assume they didn't have any ideas worth backing. No company has a right to exist.
There are too many game companies popping up with a run of the mill idea, having an unfeasibly large budget for it that's entirely reliant on it being a major, unprecedented success to survive long enough to get a second game out. Too easy for chancers to create a company in an attempt hit big and sell up knowing that it's far likelier to fail.
Re: PlayStation Struck by More Layoffs in the Aftermath of Multiple Cancelled PS5 Games
The constant over dramatisation of lay offs in the industry has been tedious to read for a while now.
The people that lost their job have done so because their job was no longer required, nobody is going to pay people to do nothing in any industry.
If you work in a factory producing one thing with staff that has skills tailored to producing that one thing and that company suddenly ceases producing that product, there's no use for those employed specifically to produce that product anymore so of course they're going to lay them off. What's a person employed to make background art for a now cancelled game going to do everyday?
Re: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 Is Finally Official, Ollies onto PS5, PS4 This Summer
1+2 remake was brilliant. Had the perfect mix of feeling modern and inflicting nostalgia, it's how I think 1+2 played rather than how it actually played. Also a bloody hard platinum which I enjoyed. Don't have the same nostalgia for 3+4, I'm sure I probably played them but I don't remember anything of them and nothing in the trailer rang any bells. Will be something I'll play once it inevitably comes to ps+
Re: Talking Point: Is Forza Horizon 5's PS5 Price Point Too High?
As with all games now, I'll play it when it comes to ps+ and if it doesnt, ill play whatever does instead.
extremely rare I buy games now, I basically play daily and yet I've bought just 3 games this decade. Once you get passed the initial sense of being left behind as each new big thing comes out and you build up a backlog of games you've not yet played, there's really no need to ever purchase anything else other than my ps+ subscription.
Re: Capcom's Crappy Microtransactions Are Back in Monster Hunter Wilds, Including Paid Character Edits
This is a preferable thing. I'd much, much rather a game charge for completely pointless and optional cosmetic stuff and deliver free gameplay dlc.
Re: Suicide Squad Bombed So Bad, It Basically Took Wonder Woman and Monolith Down with It
Time to stop blaming it on suicide squad and identify the real culprits here, the suits who instructed rocksteady to make the suicide squad. That needs to be distinguished.
Re: PSVR2 Gets Enormous Price Reduction Starting March 2025
Decent price drop. It's something we used to see with all hardware as the tech got better and cheaper, rare nowadays though.
Still not going to make me jump on board. I have a passing interest in VR but they'd have to almost literally give it away for me to ever jump on. It will always be too much money for me to justify for what is a very niche sector.
Re: PS Plus Essential PS5, PS4 Games for March 2025 Announced
Dunno why everyone is assuming a game has to have failed spectacularly to come to ps+ that quickly. A lot of people are forgetting what month it is, it's far, far more likely that EA simply want to get that ps+ money in the backend of this financial year to boost their figures and are willing to write off any potential DA drip sales to do so.
Either way, it's a really strong get for Playstation and a genuinely good month.
I was expecting one of our annual titles this month. One from Fifa, NBA, F1, CoD, and WWE that we are basically guaranteed every year at this point so that's a very welcome surprise.
Re: Yakuza Creator's Next Game Will Be Sent to Die As NetEase Implodes
These things arent always the doom and gloom they're portrayed to be. Nothing stopping the people who sold the company in the first place to essentially recreate the company under a different name and re-employ all those let go. They could even potentially buy back IP if cost cutting measures are that extreme.
Re: HBO's The Last of Us Season 2 Locks in 13th April Release
They really can't follow the game closely for this one, it just wouldn't work for tv so it will be very interesting to see how they approach it. what they add, what they leave out, what they change and how they reorder stuff.
One thing is for certain, there will be a vocal moaners galore regardless, can't wait for that...
Re: Ex-Sony Exec Says PC Ports of Old PS5 Games Are Almost Like Printing Money
Couldn't give a toss either way. Did PC gaming in the past, it isn't for me.
Its free revenue so why wouldnt Sony do it. Only thing I'd always want is the ability to choose not to play with PC players for any multiplayer game, there is a potential competitve advantage aspect to with k/m vs controller but mainly to let the pc community deal with the cheaters themselves.
Re: Ironwood Studios' Pacific Drive Cruises Past 1 Million Copies Sold
Good milestone. I suspect a strong financial boost in the form of ps+ essential/extra money won't be far off.
Re: Ubisoft Revenue, Net Bookings Decline 31%
This should be a shock to absolutely nobody. It's not the doom and gloom story it's being painted out to be either.
In the 24 fiscal year they released what? Skull and bones which was always going to tank hard, star wars outlaws which was a big let down and the prince of Persia game that was a much smaller indie-like title. Anything else? AC got pushed from the fiscal year, they cancelled a division game and probably others im missing. in 2023, the year they're comparing last year to, they had an AC game release, a crew game, that avatar game, there's not a person on the planet that couldn't look at what they had for that year and predict that downturn.
Had AC released on schedule their numbers would almost certainly be up. As a result of it slipping to this fiscal year though, the annual report in a year's time is going to show a huge upturn instead as the AC sales will effectively count double for sales missed last year and extra sales this year along with whatever else they end up releasing this year.
Re: 10 PS5, PS4 Games Removed from PS Plus Extra, Premium Next Month
Phoenix Wright and resident evil 3 have both been downloaded sitting on my system for almost a year now without every starting either. Not sure I'll bother with either to be honest.
Re: Poll: Are You Happy with Your PS Plus Extra, Premium Games for February 2025?
Jedi survivor doing all the heavy lifting this month. Without it it would be horrendous. Even with it, it's still piss poor.
Re: Rumour: One of Sony's Last PS5 Live Service Games Fairgames Out in 2026
Giving it as much distance as possible from the concord disaster is the best thing they can do right now. Still predict it's destined for failure but perhaps it won't be as bad the longer they leave it.
Re: Reminder: PS Plus Extra, Premium Lose These 8 Games Next Week
Had the outer worlds on my next to play list for a few months now and still haven't got around to it as i haven't touched a single game this year. shame to miss out on it, it's one I've wanted to play but the beauty of the subscription model is there's always plenty more games to play.
Re: PS Plus Members Are Upgrading to Higher Tiers on PS5, PS4
In other words, "we know enough of you will pay it so prepare yourselves for another price hike"
Re: Lies of P DLC Overture Announced, Coming to PS5, PS4 This Summer
I was expecting lies of P to come to ps+ extra off the back of this announcement. Reckon it will come before this is released.
Re: Mysterious Puzzle Adventure Blue Prince Is Coming to PS5, Day One on PS Plus
Into this. Looking forward to it.
Re: WWE 2K25 Is Adding a Social Sandbox on PS5 Similar to the NBA 2K Games
Laughed hard at this as don't these games servers have a notouriously short shelf life?
"Come join our online game and buy some of the abundance of cosmetic micro transactions we'll have for sale until we close it all down in 12-18 months"
Re: Ex-GTA Producer Reveals Futuristic Third-Person Action Shooter MindsEye for PS5
I got a cyberpunk Just cause vibe from this.
Re: Octopus Platformer Darwin's Paradox Isn't the Next Game We Expected from Konami
This made the biggest impression on me of all games actually shown. Looked genuinely intriguing.
Re: Saros Is the Next PS5 Exclusive Game from Returnal Dev Housemarque, Coming 2026
Knew it was housemarque from the go. Returnal was fantastic, all for what seems to essentially be a sequel. Still a little bummed we won't get any more dead nation/alienation style games from then. I know they've moved on to bigger stuff but I'd kill for an offshoot studio going back to those style of games as smaller projects too.
Re: Days Gone Remastered Is Real, Out for PS5 This April
Really enjoyed days gone, think it easily deserved a sequel. Absolutely no interest in a remaster though, same as horizon or any other game I played just a few years ago that won't have changed much if at all. I'll maybe play it again when it eventually gets put on ps+ extra
Re: 9 PS Plus Extra, Premium Games for February 2025 Announced
They keep finding new lows to reach. Has to be the poorest selection since the relaunch. The numbers are declining rapidly, gone are the days where we were looking at almost 20 titles with extra and premium combined and the quality is also declining.
Jedi survivor is the only one noteworthy but all EA games can be played on their own subscription service for practically nothing when they do their yearly month long sub sale. Incredibly weak offering, makes you wonder why they bothered saving it for state of play, should have got that lineup announced at the usual time and then mask over it with the state of play.
Re: Xbox Game Hellblade 2 Might Be Out for PS5 'Very Soon'
Wasn't it supposed to be incredibly underwhelming? Why not at this point but i don't see it making a dent of any note.
Re: SEGA Revenue Declines 8%, Despite a Seemingly Strong Year
@breakneck not true. The quotes are directly pulled from the annual report.
Metaphor: ReFantazio is currently "exceeding expectations," while Sonic X Shadow Generations has "steadily increased its sales" and has surpassed two million units in global cumulative sales.
There's the quotes. Quite literally says "exceeding expectations." So the complete opposite to not selling as well as you'd think.
Re: Balatro's Breakout Success Hasn't Changed Creator's Lifestyle Much
My life would be filled with strippers and cocaine, so no it wouldn't change in the slightest...
Re: SEGA Revenue Declines 8%, Despite a Seemingly Strong Year
Why would it be a surprise if we read the article? Its explained large parts of it are due to the loss on the sale of a studio that needed to be written off and the cancellation of FM25 which is huge. Perfectly understandable given that information.
@breakneck games aren't selling as well as you'd think? It literally says in the article the games are selling really well. metaphor exceeding expectations and sonic at least matching them. In a world where expectations are nearly always unreachably high, that's very impressive.
Re: Free PS Plus Extension for All Members Affected by PSN Outage
More than fair. Didn't even notice personally so I'll gladly take the near extra week.
Re: Rocksteady Lining Up New Single Player Batman Game After Suicide Squad Disaster, It's Claimed
So now they're doing the game they should have done a decade ago? Add another half a decade to the dev cycle and we're looking at a game 15 years late by which time I doubt they'll be many of the people still there from the other titles to guarantee its quality and the gaming world will have moved on.
Suicide squad might not have killed the justice league but it all but killed Rocksteady.
Re: Football Manager 25 Hooked Before Kick Off on PS5
Good decision. Annual titles are near impossible to churn out nowadays with significant worthwhile improvements unless they do a COD and have different devs cycle in. they have to switch up the schedule and start making it at least bi-annually. Commendable decision.
Re: Browse a Colossal Library of Classic US Video Game Magazines Now
Playstation max was my favourite here in the UK. Wasn't the biggest publication going but it always had a bold eye catching front cover and crucially was cheaper. Still got all my issues boxed up somewhere too.
Re: Firaxis Unveils Civilization 7 Content Roadmap for 2025 and Beyond
The biggest question is will it consistently corrupt saves losing hours upon hours of gameplay forcing you to start from scratch again like 6 did? And will it regularly slow to a crawl before crashing when you get mid to late game? I loved 6, even bought the expansion which I never normally do but I'm not going to bother if I can't be sure these issues won't happen again. I love Firaxis games, civ 6, xcom and midnight suns are some of my favorite games, xcom series being my absolute favourite series but the games are always infested with technical problems. I see it's releasing on ps4, no chance this doesn't blow up ps4's at this point.
Re: PS Plus Essential Games for February 2025 Announced
Stopped feeling anything about the latest online multi-player game to come to ps+ in a bid to either save a dying game or give a DoA new release half a chance of surviving 6 months. Payday 3 is just the next in a very, very long list of them.
High on life I was expecting at some point. Seemed like a fairly mediocre game but the Rick and morty appeal being enough to elevate it to worth a go status. Happy enough with that although felt like an extra game if anything.
Pac man I think I recall playing the original and enjoying it. Do find a lot of these games are best left in memories though, they rarely stand up to the level my memory has of them. Might give it a go, wouldn't be something I'd ever actively want on the service but not complaining.
Decent month overall that isn't going to set the world alight. More likely to play one of them than last months offerings.
Re: EA Stock Price Plummets After Dragon Age: The Veilguard, FC 25 Disappointments
Good. This only really impacts people outside the industry looking to profit from it and having no real interest in the actual product.
This isn't really about DA or Fifa(FC) underperforming. It's about expectations of constantly bigger audiences being far too great and a need to recognise the reality that the industry is close to hitting the ceiling in terms of pure audience numbers. Even games like FC, one of the biggest titles in gaming cannot show perpetual growth, there's always a cap. The financial vultures have just found that out in a very expensive manner.
Re: Sony Cancels Bluepoint, Bend Studio PS5 Games, One Being a Live-Service God of War Title
Jesus christ. We know they were going all in on the live service stuff but this is taking the piss. 2 big teams that should never be doing that, they've just ensured both teams give us nothing until next Gen now.
If a team as respected as bluepoint making something using the GoW IP cannot produce anything worth releasing, there's not much hope for the other live service garbage they've got on the go either.
This is potentially a complete waste of an entire generation now. Could go down as the most catastrophic decision/mismanagement in gaming history.
Re: 11 New Games Are Coming to PS Plus Extra, Premium Next Week
Poor lineup for me. There's too much weight on the headliners which means the other titles suffer a dip in quality.
Also think they should space out the like a dragon/yakuza games more, we've only just got ishin added and they're always huge games.
Already own GoW. LaD im not in the mood for yet and ive got ishin still to play so Atlas fallen is the only one i'll probably take a look at from that list as I really liked the surge. Rest of the games don't interest me.
Re: Suicide Squad Dev Rocksteady Suffers More Layoffs as PS5 Game Hits PS Plus
@RobN Exactly. Nobody needs QA testers when theres nothing to test in the games infancy, that's just one of the easy to comprehend examples of which they'll be many. The industry has to accept and adapt to the evolution of how a game's made and what that means for jobs.
Contract work is the natural progression for this industry. Think of a building site, thats the most accurate analogy i can come up with for comparison. you're not bringing in an electrician day 1 to wire a building when the foundations havent even been laid yet. Likewise, once the shell of a building is up, you dont need a bricklayer hanging around being paid to watch electricians install plug sockets. Most people involved will come in as required, do their role and move onto the next thing as soon as their part is done. And once the building is complete, its common most people involved move on to other projects and only a core, small number of staff remain to seek and start the next project. Nobody has a problem with this, it makes perfect sense, and it now makes perfect sense for the games industry too, which is why I do not understand the constant highlighting of job losses.
Rocksteady aren't really the right sample case to make this point though given they have had an abnormally large budget and time frame to make suicide squad and have the Arkham success behind them and have the financial power of WB games backing them meaning they can easily afford to keep all staff on if they so choose, but for many other game companies now, they quite literally live or die by their last release and so cost cutting will be essential for survival.