Carnage

@RoomWithaMoose Liking Playstation for PlayStation games is reasonable. For me Playstation games are the games I play on the system.

I see consoles as game delivery devices. The PlayStation has always been heavily defined by third parties. People tend to forget that Nintendo and Sega regarded 3rd parties as both rivals and parasites and treated them accordingly. Square openly complained Nintendo charged them more to produce a cartridge of FF6 than they sold larger first party game cartridges for and often told them they’d have to wait months before a spot in the production line would open up to meet additional demand.

By way of contrast Sony recognized that most people just wanted to play good games so playing nice with third parties was the key to success. To be fair that is something MS took even further (through the hard drive, digital distribution and encouraging indies) and even Nintendo took to heart. The past two generations Nintendo has been pretty assiduous in courting third parties though their hardware (a key to their success) has often been a stumbling point for publishers of technically demanding games.

My point is not that first party games don’t matter (of course they do) but that I and most people see them as a piece of the whole library of releases. I get there are multiplatform gamers out there who play most of their games on top of the line PCs but most gamers judge systems by their releases.

I am not into competitive multiplayer anymore so I didn’t even give Marathon’s beta weekend a shot but I like the art style, Multiplayer is a very tough market and I think the recentish Arc Raiders is still going strong.

Speaking from bitter experience layoffs are heartbreaking when you imagined you would spend the rest of your career with a company. Unfortunately it happens everywhere.

@RoomWithaMoose I’ve never given a game more or less weight because it wasn’t made by a first party. Don’t get me wrong I’ve liked a lot of Sony (and Nintendo and Sega and MS and NEC and 3DO and Atari) made games over the generations but 3rd party games have consumed more of my gaming time than first party offerings every generation.

@Dodoo Shrugs You’re entitled to your opinion. Nothing appeals to everyone.

As for the Vita at one point both Sony and Nintendo decided that splitting pipelines between two radically different systems was no longer viable. Sony killed its handheld and focused on its strong console, Nintendo pretty much ignored the Wii U and focused on its strong handheld (the 3DS is lightly regarded because like the Wii U its gimmick didn’t capture the imagination of gamers but 75 million sales is a threshold very few pieces of dedicated HW have crossed) until it introduced the hybrid Switch.

@RoomWithaMoose If your happiness with a platform depends not on the games but on cancellations and closures fine and good (to each their own) but I judge game platforms by their games.

Between the likes of Resident Evil Requiem, Iron Guard Salvation, Dispatch, Baldur’s Gate 3, Two Point Museum, The Alters, Helldivers 2, Unicorn Overlord, Ghost of Yotei, Cronos The New Dawn and Roboquest VR I’ve got no complaints on the game front.

@Balaam_ The first two LBP games were phenomenal. They were physics based four player platformers whose UGC gave them incredibly long legs. After LBP2 MM decided they wanted to try something different which focused on the creation aspect of LBP.

Dreams was a commercial failure but a noble effort. Very powerful tools (I cobbled together a simple 2600 style shooter in a week and an half) and a website which made discovery pretty easy. It’s big flaws were a weak campaign and the fact it was single player only (offline MP was introduced many months later but online MP never came). A lot of good stuff was released in Dreams (some of it by Media Molecule members) though a lot of the most avid creators were put off by the fact that MM not only didn’t charge for the many post release modifications they made (no paid DLC which meant the only money they made was when the game was purchased), they didn’t let creators sell stuff for money. I talked with creators (I wasn’t much of a creator myself but I wrote a lot of reviews offering useful feedback and creators often wrote me back) who were frustrated by that.

Most of MM’s leadership I am familiar with (the ones who were always giving interviews) left the company after Dreams failed but a lot of talent remains (many MM guys made good stuff in Dreams, check out the trailer below) and of course the servers are still up and a small but dedicated community remains.

https://youtu.be/pvd9GDZ8yvc

@Yor-sama Lol. True. I doubt one poster in a thousand could have named this studio before this article. It’s just an excuse for some people’s simmering anger. There will always be another excuse. It might be a game succeeding or failing or a studio closing or opening.

@Yor-sama Pretty common for this forum.

I’m not sure what these guys were working on so I don’t feel strongly about this as a gamer but I hope the unemployed land on their feet.

Unfortunately studios founded by guys (and gals) famous via their association with big franchises tend not to do well.

The control issues and the freezing/crashing bugs factored into my decision to wait for a bit but I’m unsurprised it has been successful. The devs showed off (and allowed others to play and post) a bunch of PC and PS5 Pro gameplay footage so it was pretty clear it was going to be a big, crazy sandbox in which one could do a lot of stuff.

Wow. I was hoping the worst of the layoffs would be over last year. No such luck. There is a high rate of inflation and a lot of economic uncertainty so hobbies like gaming will be negatively impacted. I hope the laid off land on their feet.

I’m a FF fan (my first RPG was probably Wizardry though my first jrpg was the original Phantasy Star) who is 51 going on 52 so I’m skewing the average.

My daughters are in their very early 20’s and are both big rpg fans (my oldest still plays BG3 with her friends) though I’m pretty sure the closest they came to FF is Kingdom Hearts back when they were kids.

I’d say the big problem is FF’s only recent original game is 16, which is fun (as a big FF12/Vagrant Story fan I loved the combat) but the plot and characters were unmemorable. I don’t have any objective data to point to but I suspect that FFX was the last FF to really connect with gamers story/characterwise.

I’ve been playing a lot of Helldivers 2. The new alien exosuits are as entertaining to watch as they are fun to fight, They go down pretty quickly if you have a solid gun and focus on them but of course given the Illuminates’ love of swarm tactics you often have 99 other enemies on the battlefield to worry about at the same time.

I recently started Iron Guard Salvation, a VR tower defense game, I literally finished its predecessor and jumped right into Salvation. It’s an iterative sequel which improves on every part of its predecessor but its story but that is skippable. There are a lot more weapons and enemies, the interaction between them is complex and there is more freedom in turret placement. Very good stuff.

I am still chipping away at Demon School (a somewhat Personaesque indie rpg) mostly in the afternoons on my Portal.

I expect Helldivers will continue to thrive for a while. Arrowhead has been killing it lately with Helldivers content drops. In addition to the recent Entrenched Division warbond a new illuminate subfaction that uses attack drones and heavy mechs (half of which sport comically oversized humanoid arms) just hit yesterday.

To focus on the main point of the article I’m unsurprised the PS5 continues to thrive. It’s the only current gen console on the market (the Switch 2 is fine and good but makes power and storage concessions for the sake of portability) has a great library and a relatively reasonable price (as I’ve noted many times the price being higher than it was at launch is without precedent and surely hurts sales).

I’m curious to see if PSSR 2.0 (which is a nice upgrade that is getting a lot of positive coverage) meaningfully alters the sales split between the Pro and the base system.

I’m sure the Switch 2 will continue to sell well and will sometimes take the sales lead. Pokémon fans seem to be really happy with the latest game.

Weird headline since the studio has been gone for a while now. I’m pretty sure Pavlov is the dominant game in the ‘PvP PSVR2 shooter’ subgenre.

I do most of my gaming on my Pro/PSVR2 in my den early in the morning before work but later in the day once everyone else is up and about I tend to game on the Portal in my living room.

Streaming works equally through my PS5 and over the internet. I tend to stream from my console but it’s nice to have the internet as an option when one of my kids and/or their friends is playing my console. Also it’s nice I can stream games I own but haven’t downloaded.

The demo convinced me to preorder. I didn’t care for the kid but the combat/enemy design was really fun.

I enjoyed my first playthrough of F (that was some thoroughly twisted stuff) so maybe now is the time for a second.

Thus far I’ve played RE Requiem, Iron Guard (VR tower defense game), Demonschool and Helldivers 2. Going to try to squeeze in some GT7 today.

It looks like a crazy sandbox to mess around in. I’m not sure it will succeed beyond that but fun sandbox would be enough for me.

I loved the concept and the visuals but didn’t enjoy the demo so I didn’t buy the game. However I’m glad Slitterhead found enough fans to keep the studio going. I’ll give their next project a look.

As a Pro owner who loves open world games this is a must buy for me based on old PC previews and the new footage. I can see why base PS5 owners want to see footage running on their hardware though. Hopefully like RE Requiem this will run well on everything.

Nice. I don’t own one IRL but I love driving American muscle cars in GT and the Camaro Z28 looks fun.

Like most avid divers I have earned more than enough ingame currency to unlock the upcoming warbond so I’ll do so even though none of the weapons are game changers.

Helldivers’ many fire enthusiasts will no doubt welcome the addition of two new ways to cook enemies. As a guy who prefers poison (relatively light danage but the disorientation effect is great) I am most looking forward to the poison mortar.

The defense themed warbond leads me to believe that H2 will soon be getting some new defensive mission types (kinda like what happened with the stealth warbond) in which trenches rather than walls and gates are what keeps the team and the assets they are protecting safe from enemies.

I hope the unemployed land on their feet but I skipped this remaster. I loved the original but there are enough choice driven games out there (including the Quarry) I just never felt a need to replay Until Dawn in higher definition.

What a tragedy. I remember reading EA expected BF6 to hit 100 million players.

https://www.eurogamer.net/ea-reportedly-expects-battlefield-6-to-have-100-million-players-three-times-more-than-the-series-best-seller

"Obviously, Battlefield has never achieved those numbers before," stated one source, while another said: "It's important to understand that over about that same period, 2042 has only gotten 22 million."

The sex minigames didn’t make a big impression on me one way or another but I think they should be kept in. For those who feel strongly about the matter there could be a toggle to turn them off (or on).

I’m 51 and have been a fan of RE since the original (and was a fan of the 3DO’s Alone in the Dark before that).

I just played the Pragmata demo. I loved the action and the boss fight though I could see the robot wearing out her welcome.

This is gross. I am fine with targeted promotions (ie notifying horror game fans of horror games on sale) but everybody in the same market should be offered the same deals.

Though its existence was the worse kept secret in the industry I don’t see the point in announcing the follow up to wildly unpopular systems a year out with no game footage or details.

I don’t think it hurts anything (the dead don’t feel and practically speaking the Xbox is dead this gen) but I also don’t think it helps.

I’m curious to see if Valve remains committed to jumping into the console space (they seem to have roughly the same strategy as MS, an unsubsidized but open system you plug into your tv). Valve been conspicuously silent about details since component prices started skyrocketing.

@Oram77 @Scottyy Sounds like I need to try the tower.

Saros is day 1 for me. I loved the bullet hell action of Returnal and beat it a couple times (it beat me many, many times 😋) though I confess I didn’t return for the post launch tower that was eventually offered as a free update.

Physical has been declining everywhere (nods towards movies, books and music) and games are distinct from other commercial art in that they tend to get post-launch modifications.

I’m only familiar with Stellar Blade but that was a a lot of fun so I’m going to give Shift Up’s next game a look no matter who the publisher is.

@TrollOfWar I also have no stock in Sony but as a player I appreciate polish and as I noted in a Forza Horizon 6 thread a few months ago (defending MS’s choice to not release it on the PS5 at launch and noting how polished and popular FH5 was at launch on the PS5) picking and choosing platforms to focus on rather than trying to be everywhere all at once makes for better tested, more polished games.

@TrollOfWar So you believe to succeed on PC Sony needs to abandon their current strategy of having most of their studios focus on their proprietary hardware (with PC ports being handled by a different studio after the game is done) and emulate MS’s strategy of everything being day 1 on PC?

MS has done wonderful things for consoles (gamewise and designwise) and still makes some quality games but I think the success of their recent strategy speaks for itself.

I’ve been playing Resident Evil Requiem (playing on default difficulty but I’ve died a lot), Gran Turismo 7, Iron Guard (a VR tower defense game whose sequel hits next week) and a bit of Helldivers 2.

I an fine with PC ports and have defended them in this forum (as an avid Helldiver I have fought alongside gamers of all stripes to the battle for liberty) but given that PlayStation games not named Helldivers 2 haven’t done that well on PC, PC gamers broadly reject buying games through platforms other than Steam and Valve has announced their intention to (again) try to release a console type system for the living room Sony’s decision is perfectly reasonable.

Between this and the ability to stream Portal games without a PS5 (useful for me because I’m not the only gamer in my house) I’m really liking these software upgrades Sony is doing.

I’ve had to do a lot of work and errands today but I did start Requiem on my Pro and it’s an astonishingly beautiful game despite it having a lot of ugly monsters in it. Looking forward to seeing how PSSR 2.0 boosts other games when the system update hits.

Niche and dead are different things. VR is dedicated hardware which blinds and deafens the user to the outside world so it’s sales are going to be fraction of that of more open dedicated hardware like consoles and portables whose sales are of course a fraction of generalist hardware like cellphones and PCs.

Along those lines VR games are niche. If you spend vast amounts of money on them or slap an expensive license (such as Marvel) on a VR only game, some will applaud you, but that won’t grow your audience, it just means you lose more money. Spending the big money some claim they are waiting to see spent clearly doesn’t mean anything since Meta burned tens of billions on VR without growing the market.

I would have liked to see Sony fund a VR studio or three though as a guy who happily plays good games regardless of their publisher I wasn’t too put out.

Setting aside the continued strong VR support of the ever growing GT7 and No Man’s Sky, PSVR2 has had a steady stream of quality games. Recentish examples that spring to mind are Roboquest VR (which has been dominating my VR playtime in recent weeks), Demeo x DnD: Battlemarked, VRacer Hoverbike, Ghost Town, Lumines Arise and Aces of Thunder. Of course if past games like Humanity, Synapse, Pistol Whip, RE4, Arken Age, Hubris, Rez Infinite, Moss Book 2, Arizona Sunshine 2, Before Your Eyes, Ironguard and Max Mustard didn’t turn people’s heads it’s logical the current and upcoming slate isn’t going to either so I don’t expect sales to radically improve anytime soon, though the recent (temporary?) price cut to $300 will certainly help sales a bit.

So no, PSVR2 in particular and VR in general aren’t dead, but they are niche so budgets and expectations have to be set accordingly (I think realistic big budget games are either going to be flat to VR ports or games than run on both). Speaking of setting, one can set your watch to yearly articles declaring the niche dead because it’s a niche inbetween articles bemoaning the industry’s obsession with growth and profit maximization 😋.

I’ve enjoyed all the Disgaeas but 6 and enjoyed quite a few of the adjacent spin-offs like Makai Kingdom, Soul Nomad and the World Eaters and the Phantom Braves but this spin-off doesn’t do anything for me.

So at a moment of crisis MS gave the boot to Phil Harrison and Sarah Bond and replaced them with someone with no prior interest in games or the business of gaming? Curious and curiouser.

@Leinad7 I agree that Sony studios that find commercial success tend to make sequels before moving on. Sequels are fine and good so long as the developer is fired up (and of course the audience responds to that fire). If a developer wants to move on its good to let them rather than force them to crank out games in franchise X until they retire or quit.

Unless MS Central snd it’s shareholders decide that its worth it to again spend lots of money to try to save the Xbox I doubt the new boss will be able to change things.

I think the most helpful thing they could do short term is a sharp HW price cut (which would be opposite the way component costs/prices are going) but given that MS has been more enthusiastic about raising hardware prices than its competitors that is a forlorn hope.

@Leinad7 Did you miss the opening line of my post when I stated Sony did its share of framchise milking but was less enthusiastic about it than its competitors?

Sony allows studios to walk away from even successful franchises and try other things, which sometimes works out and sometimes doesn’t. Returnal is a current gen example of an original game that worked out commercially.

@PuppetMaster As a small, traditionally one project studio I’m not sure Bluepoint could have developed a new game and remade an old one at the same time.

I agree dissolving Bluepoint was a mistake though as I’ve said elsewhere I’m less shocked and offended by Sony’s multiplayer push than most seem to be. MS was in the middle of a massive acquisition spree and had a history of making their games exclusive (though Minecraft was a notable exception) and Sony has historically sought to counterpunch its opponents (remember the wave of butt bouncers released by Sony in the PS1 and PS2 era?).

@PuppetMaster I am sure I am in the minority on this but for my money Sony being less enthusiastic than its competitors about milking IPs (though it does its share of milking) is a strength, not a weakness. Chaining developers to a franchise forever once they strike gold is the safest bet but giving those who want to the opportunity to continue to explore other ideas can pay off quite well (Insomniac and Naughty Dog tend to move onto new franchises every several years and thus far those leaps have been successful).

Of course failure is a risk with such a strategy. I personally played Media Molecule’s Dreams as much as I played the first two LBPs but Dreams was a commercial failure (though the servers are still up and the admittedly small community is active). Shrugs But sticking to a framchise until people become sick of it is a risk too.

The Bluepoint layoffs are stupid not because they were great at remasters but because they were a talented team which Sony should have worked something out with. They clearly wanted to branch out and one stumble shouldn’t have doomed the studio.

https://www.ign.com/articles/sony-acquires-bluepoint-next-game-playstation-exclusive

"Our team is a very highly experienced team, the average experience among most people is about 15 years, and all of them come from original development. It's not like we're a bunch of developers that got trained up on making remasters and remakes. We have that original game development mindset in our hearts, and that's what we're now ready, finally ready with the support of Sony to push forward and show what we can do, and show what PlayStation can do," he said.