Carnage

Unsurprising list but I don’t really get why people are angry or disappointed about it. When looking at the commercial state of the industry I think it’s useful to look at what succeeds (by the standards of the developers) rather than merely what sells best.

For example games like Dragon’s Crown, Returnal, Street Fighter 6, Disco Elysium, Helldivers 2, Balatro, Baldur’s Gate 3, Pacific Drive, Returnal and Stellar Blade all met or exceeded the expectations of their developers. Their success encourages (and enables) the developers to keep doing what they are doing and encourage other developers with similar visions to try their luck. Shrugs That’s just my personal view of what sales data is really important.

@SuntannedDuck2 I see where you are coming from but I don’t have a problem with the fact the average gamer (or consumer of other forms of commercial art such as movies and books) doesn’t do a lot of research and just settles on what looks fun and familiar or maybe what their friends and social media favorites are enjoying rather than doing research to find less conventional/more obscure stuff they might enjoy. People should play what they enjoy and if they don’t have to look far or hard to find said enjoyment, good for them. That doesn’t make them stupid or lesser, it just means they have other life priorities.

I’ve been gaming since the Magnavox Odyssey but I don’t get why some people get so stuck on franchises. I don’t have anything against sequels, remakes or even revisions (I bought 4 versions of SF2 on the SNES and Genesis back in the day) BUT I am fine with creators saying ‘I’ve done everything I want to do with this, now I want to move onto something else’.

Cool. I’ll pick this up the next time the base game goes on sale.

I played a lot of Helldivers 2. The chaos and brutality of Superhelldive missions is currently way up there. Between burrowing bile spewers (bloated mostly squishy bugs who hide underground and just pop their tiny armored heads up out of the ground like sprinklers to spit a long stream of corrosive bile at the nearest diver), chargers (heavily armored, truck sized), dragon roaches (whose penchant for hovering and laying down a field of fire makes them incredibly deadly foes) and of course hive lords (giant acid spewing worms who are effectively the bosses of whatever level they are on and take several minutes of applied heavy munitions by multiple divers to kill).

Still, divers (even randoms like me) have risen to the challenge. Generally half the team focuses on killing and distracting enemies and half who focus on hitting the mission objectives. Often one or two divers has a mech with dual auto cannons. Good times.

I also started on Cronus: The New Damn. It’s creepy, intense and the fact enemies grow stronger by eating their fallen really forces you to strategize. You not only have to figure out how to most efficiently kill enemies (bullets and other resources are very scare) but where you are killing enemies in relation to each other. Killing four out of five enemies does you no good if the fifth enemy has gone Captain Planet by absorbing the different powers and the health of those you killed. I’m still early in (I have six hours on the clock though some fights killed me many times) but so far so good. Anyone looking for a creepy but intense horror action game along the lines of Dead Space and RE4 should take a look at this.

I also spent a bit of time playing The Wandering Village (a really wonderful indie strategy game) and GT7.

Helldivers 2 is a well deserved success and Halo warbond aside, Xbox fans are jumping on at a good time. The invasion of the bug homeworld has kicked the brutality and difficulty up to the next level.

Cave fighting is nasty because it’s generally dark, tight and stuffed with smaller but still dangerous bugs and there are only a few widely spaced holes where you can call down for equipment or reinforcements. However wandering around in open desert is arguably even more dangerous because of Hive Lords (ginormous acid spewing worns which I haven’t seen die in several matches though I understand it’s possible) and giant dragonish insects.

I agree that all things being equal, higher prices translate into fewer sales but given that Monster Hunter came out huge on PS5 and PC before it’s momentum died and community fell apart I suspect MH’s biggest problem is the game itself.

Still, the fact that consoles have reversed the long successful pattern of declining in price over time has no doubt kept a lot of people from jumping onboard.

I played a lot of Helldivers 2, Shinobi, GT7 and The Wandering Village. My run in The Wandering Village has lasted 80something in-game days but the dinosaur that my village is built on is infected and starving and my villagers are on the verge of rebellion so I fear the end is in sight.

As a regular Helldiver who plays at least a couple matches a day I can attest Helldivers 2 saw a massive uptick in players with the release of the Xbox version and the Halo themed warbond (the rifle and the shotgun are good stuff). The more divers the merrier. Liberty for all.

Each of the three stages in the single player mode is more gorgeous and trippy than the last. A worthy follow up to Tetris Effect. Shame the demo isn’t VR but it still made me preorder the digital deluxe edition.

Elite developer who leave their old companies (often after encountering creative pushback and/or a commercial disappointment) for new ones which promise them a blank check and complete creative freedom has been a pretty common phenomena in recent years.

I’m hoping for an awesome game (Itsuno is top tier) but keeping my expectations in check..

I agree 2026 feels too early for the PlayStation 6 but 2027 or 2028 might not. Hardware designers need to plan and refine HW and it’s supporting software at least several months ahead of time so that they can get kits into developers’ hands and give them the opportunity to learn and design for it.

The bile dragon looks like a nightmare. The burrowing bugs and mostly underground missions look cool too though. The resupply constraint is really going to encourage team loadout coordination.

As a guy who favors poison loadouts (on bug and squid missions) the weapon that intrigues me most is the poison spear. Poison is a tool a lot of divers sleep on but like a lot of H2 weapons it’s extremely powerful when used judiciously.

Helldivers 2 ODSTs dlc hits today. It (and the Xbox player influx) hadn’t hit when I last played H2 an hour ago (lead a squad of randoms on three missions against the squid) but the player count (70k+) was already double what it normally is on a weekday morning. It’s going to be crazy when everything hits later today.

I’m sure there will be chaos (high explosives are always dicey no matter how experienced a team is) but most of the new players will do fine. H2 is easy to pick up and a lot of YouTubers have posted a lot of videos offering advice about etiquette, strategy and early load outs, I have the day off but I have social commitments and errands to run so I can’t defend democracy all day 😢 but I’m sure today will be a sweet day for liberty.

I am also looking forward to Shinobi. I was so impressed by the demo I stopped playing after about half an hour and decided to wait for the full game. I don’t know how faithful it is to the old games (I played through the first three Shinobis when they were new on the SMS and Genesis) but it had some callbacks and suchlike I recognized. The audio visuals are just pure goodness. Sega has really been killing it recently.

I am also interested in the MGS remake (loved the original) but I only have so much time in the day and this years gaming release schedule is pretty packed so I will hold off for a bit.

I wasn’t expecting this remake of one of my favorite games (and my favorite MGS) to turn out so well. Not a day one for me but certainly something I’ll get down the line.

The names involved impressed me more than the game but I’ll keep an eye on this.

I love the trailer. I’ll keep an eye on this.

Looks like the only recently back on track SH series is staying on track despite this being the work of a different developer (NeoBards). I’ll be there day 1 for this and Bloober’s Cronos.

The English VA struck me as fine though I’m not the toughest critics of such things. I might play it in Japanese eventually just out of curiousity.

@Americansamurai1 It’s a warbond so it won’t be time limited.

Looks cool. Nothing really crazy weaponwise (I was hoping for the needler) but I recognized some of the guns from my Halo days. The fact the armor passive boosts stealth and detection radius is great since scouting is a key part of Helldiving.

The fact it costs $15 in game credits as opposed to the normal $10 can probably be chalked up to it being a crossover since HD2’s Killzone content wasn’t part of a warbond but the collective price was higher than the price of a normal warbond. Still a reasonable price and I have already earned the credits so I’ll be happy to spend them on new ways to defend democracy.

This weekend I played Helldivers 2 (using a mix of fire and poison against the bugs, the target of the current major order), The Wandering Village (a lovely but sometimes brutal city builder set on the back of a dinosaur), Gran Turismo 7 (driving and getting the feel of different cars in VR never gets old for me), Death Stranding 2 (messing around exploring and doing side stuff) and even a bit of Phoenix Point (trying to start a second successful playthrough though it’s been so long I’m relearning some stuff).

@Scottyy I generally play with a full squads of randoms (teams in open games usually swell to four) nowadays but I’ve played a lot of great two person matches in H2. How well teams of any size work depends a lot on the difficulty level, skill/experience of the players and load outs.

You can freely dive into any planet and against any foe that borders territory held by SuperEarth so you never have to pay for access to maps and enemies.

The mission variety is good but of course all missions involve lots of fighting (and often a lot of running). All three alien races are very different things and two of the three groups have meaningful variants (the Jet Brigade, Incinerator Corp, the Spore Burst and Predator Strain) so there is a lot of variety in terms of the fighting and many weapons and vehicles (which right now are just jeeps and two types of powered battle armor) are viable against many types of foes.

I couldn’t pick ODST out of a line-up but as an avid Helldiver I’m curious to see what comes of this collaboration.

Interesting. I had thought Arrowhead was the big push behind Helldivers 2 coming to Xbox. As an avid Helldiver (over a thousand hours in) who mostly plays with randoms I welcome all regardless of platform. I really hope that the Gears chainsaw gun makes its way to H2.

I wish him luck in his future endeavors. I’m going to keep an eye on his future work and that of MM. Shakes head Dreams is a great thing and was a huge, noble swing who I (like many avid MM fans) expected to do a lot better than it did BUT in hindsight I can see some of the flaws that doomed it commercially.

Dreams was a brilliant creative tool which MM and a small creative community that cut its teeth using LBP’s level creation tools did lots of fun things with (I put over 500 hours into playing and revising various community creations though my own efforts were unmemorable).

Some of the really hardcore, ambitious creators I talked with (I wasn’t much of a creator myself but I reviewed a lot of levels and the community was small enough creators often took the time to thank me for my feedback even when it wasn’t positive) expressed frustration they could neither charge for stuff they created within Dreams or export (and sell) said stuff.

I blame the failure primarily on its weak campaign (more of a demo of the variety of the toolset than anything else) and lack of any form of multiplayer out of the gate (offline multiplayer eventually came to Dreams after months and months but online MP never did). By way of contrast the LBPs shipped with on and offline MP and had robust campaigns. My daughters and their friends latched onto the LBPs the way they later latched onto Minecraft and Roblox,

Also the lack of monetization in Dreams was generous (once you bought the game for $40 you got access to everything and MM and individual staffers released a lot of content postlaunch) but almost certainly hurt profitability. By way of contrast the LBPs offered a mix of free and paid DLC (they tended to give out the substantial level creation stuff for free and sell cosmetics though they did hand out some costumes for free).

I wrote more than I planned to but said less than I want to. I’ll just close this out by saying I still have faith in those who remain at MM (some of them came up from the creative communities of Dreams and LBP) even if they aren’t founders and that while it isn’t being actively supported Dreams servers are still up (one can browse indreams.me to view the games, music videos and art the community has/is generating) and it can be picked up cheap nowadays.

https://indreams.me/

After The Alters, This War of Mine and of course the original Frostpunk l’ll be there for the console release (which has taken a while) on Day 1. 11 Bit excels at management games where sometimes the morally abhorrent choice is the ‘best’ choice for the community (and vice versa).

This is the second round of layoffs in two years for Supermassive. IIRC they had a Blade Runner game cancelled last year and I’m not sure how well The Casting of Frank Stone did commercially. I hope they come out of this okay.

https://www.eurogamer.net/until-dawn-dark-pictures-developer-supermassive-to-lay-off-around-90-staff

The studio confirmed it would shed staff via a statement posted to social media platform X, in which it blamed "significant challenges" facing the games industry to which it was not "immune".

A Bloomberg report states around 150 people were told their jobs were at risk this morning, with around 90 staff eventually expected to leave the business following a consultation period. Supermassive is believed to currently employ around 350 staff in total.

I bounced off Warframe when it first launched and have ignored it since then. It’s wild to read it has thrived and now is so popular it has a massive community and a yearly IRL festival. Probably still not for me, but everything doesn’t need to fit that criteria and I tip my hat to the developers and wish them continued success.

Looks great and I love the concept. Downloading now.

Impressive numbers. Clearly the fact it’s a late port to the PS5 didn’t mean much. Not too shocking since most people just buy a single console and word of mouth on FH5 is very positive. I prefer my arcade racers more over the top but as a genre fan I’m glad FH5 is doing so well.

@naruball People buying 3rd party games doesn’t mean games aren’t king. Especially in the era of crossplay it supports my argument that HW pricing is important because if people can play the games they are interested in on multiple systems they will look at the price and performance/power of the systems and make a choice.

As for first party Playstation games I’m not sure I understand your point but if you are saying that third party games have always played a massive role in driving PlayStation hardware sales, I agree though I’ll add that is true of every system (there is generally a positive relationship between developer support and HW sales).

Brand strength is a thing but it’s not immutable. Stupid mistakes, bad decisions or just bad luck have pushed a lot of companies that used to be household names into extinction (think Blockbuster, General Motors, Borders, MySpace, Toys r Us and Pam Am).

@naruball I don’t pay much attention to smartphones but I see a lot of IPhones and Androids IRL (I live in the US) and a Google search indicates Samsung currently edges out Apple as the biggest cellphone maker (20% global marketshare vs 19%).

Moving back to consoles, I can think of multiple instances in recent history where price has had a strong impact on sales. The PS1 was a hundred bucks cheaper than the Saturn, the X360 launched $200 cheaper than the PS3 and the PS4 launched a hundred dollars cheaper than the Xbox One.

Don’t get me wrong games are king (no matter the price people won’t buy something if it doesn’t appeal to them) but price matters quite a bit because the vast majority of people live within budgets.

https://www.counterpointresearch.com/insights/global-smartphone-share/

Nightreign topping the charts is impressive. I haven’t put much time into a From game since Demon’s Souls (I will tackle Elden Ring some day when I am feeling the need to get my teeth kicked in 😋) but commercially From hasn’t missed in a long while. Lots of SP studios decide ‘I can do multiplayer too’ but few succeed.

I’m a little saddened but unsurprised by the fact Days Gone Remastered (in stark contrast to Oblivion which also hit at the tail end of April) doesn’t seem to have charted. Days Gone eventually shaped up to be a good game (the rough state in which it launched is pretty common now but was unusual at the time) but it had the bad luck to be released in the same timeframe as The Last of Us (a better game and one which launched in a finished state) and unfortunately for Days TLOU still looms large. Dealing with a massive horde of running zombies is great fun though so maybe like the original game the Days Gone Remaster will have decent legs.

Moving on to hardware, sales estimates from Installed Base put the number of PS5s sold at 225, vs 75K Switch 1s (Switch 2’s launch was imminent) and 70K Xboxes.

Like I’ve noted before Sony is now the only one of the three committed to the old ‘subsidized hardware one plugs into a tv’ model. The Switches are strong rivals but they make power and storage concessions in order to maintain portability. As for the Xbox MS seems to be cutting bait in the game division. While gaming forum dwellers talk about lots of stuff (Gamepass, layoffs, exclusivity etc) IMHO for casual gamers the important bits are higher than the competition HW prices and the very expensive proprietary storage.

https://www.installbaseforum.com/forums/threads/circana-may-2025-1-elden-ring-nightreign-2-doom-dark-ages-15-f1-25-19-capcom-fight-collection-2-ps5-1-units-rev-up-yoy-console-unit.3871/#post-338254

PS5: ~225K
NSW: ~75K
XBS: ~70K

Never bothered with the MP of Naughty Dog games. I love Naughty Dog’s games but while I enjoy single and multiplayer games I generally pick a mode of a game and focus on it.

All that being said I wish the guy well and will give his game a look when it comes out.

I am avid fan of Helldivers 2 and this is fine by me. I would like to see that Gears chainsaw gun whose name I forget pop up in H2.

I picked up The Alters at launch and it’s a great game for those who enjoy management games in general and 11 Bit’s past work in particular.

I haven’t had occasion to read the text on the background monitors (there is always stuff to do) and wouldn’t have cared if it was gibberish so I can’t make myself care that somebody read it and deduced it’s AI generated.

It’s a cool cape. I wore it today while fighting the new and much bulkier Jet Brigade with a squad of randoms. The fights (on Helldive difficulty) were often brutal and sometimes chaotic but always fun.

I picked up a PSVR2 at launch. Games including but not limited to Underdogs, Rez Infinite, Humanity, Before Your Eyes, Synapse, GT7 (insanely the interiors of the cars are fully modeled), Pistol Whip, Humanity and Tetris Effect are a lot of fun.

Still the entry price is high, the lack of B/C is disappointing (and I get that VR gaming (like every other type of gaming and of course gaming itself) isn’t for everyone but there have been great games built around the tech and great games which merely benefit from the tech (after Wipeout Omega Collection on the PSVR1 and GT7 on the PSVR2 I can’t enjoy flatscreen racers anymore).

Also one can’t say enough nice things about the excellent OLED lens. Bright colors and deep blacks.

Clearly support is declining but I expect my PSVR2 is going to keep seeing regular use (though most of my gaming is flatscreen) until the PS6’s PSVR3 (with B/C with both its predecessors and a surprisingly low price point) in 2030 😋.

I don’t equate commercial success or failure with quality but as a longtime gamer (since the Magnavox Odyssey) who is currently playing The Alters, Helldivers 2, To a T, and Two Point Museum I am perfectly happy with my PS5.

More broadly the PS5 being a big success makes sense. People looking for powerful, relatively affordable hardware to plug into their TVs tend to buy Playstations. The fact the PS5 boasts cheaper and faster memory expansion options than its competitors probably helps sales in an era where most games are bought digitally and both paid and free DLC (like Shadow of the Erdtree and BG3 Patch 8 respectively) are wildly popular.

This is a big loss. Not even my personal favorite rhythm game (nods towards Pistol Whip) and far from my favorite VR game but it’s certainly the evergreen VR game. If Beat Saber’s developers don’t see a profit in continuing to release DLC for Beat Saber on the PSVR2 it’s certainly the harbinger of a broader shift (further) away from it.

I started To a T (IIRC from the maker of Katamari Damancy). It is a weird, sweet, funny and sometimes sad coming of age game about a kid (13) stuck in a t pose. His loving mother has crafted and/or bought stuff which lets him get through the day with minimal assistance (that comes mostly from his specially trained dog) but he initially doesn’t enjoy school all that much because while the adults are sympathetic and supportive, school often bores him and most kids view him as a weird annoyance (he does walk around with his arms fully extended which tends to make for a lot of collisions) and a few are even bullying him.

Minigames revolve around stuff like brushing your teeth (you have a special sink and a very long toothbrush), eating, picking up dog poo, gym exercises and science experiments. You can sometimes walk around freely (collecting tokens though I’m not sure what they do just yet).

I’ve also played several matches of Helldivers 2. The new law enforcement:/electricity themed warbond and associated loose gear is fun. My highlights thus far are the electric grenade launcher (great for crowd control though because electricity jumps you want to make sure no teammate or civilian is in the vicinity 😅) and the pistol, which has homing bullets (take a bit to lock on and aims for center mass rather than weak points but great for light, fast moving enemies at midrange).

I am also planning to start The Alters today. I am absolute faith in the developer so I have avoided trailers (past the announcement trailer) and reviews but I love the concept so I’m expecting a fun time.

It’s a great game which deserves success. I confess I didn’t quite finish it (on PS5) but I am going to go back sometime soon.

I hope the newly unemployed quickly find their feet somewhere and that the studio’s next project finds success.

I was a longtime fan of Sony Bend (Syphon Filter wasn’t MGS or Splinter Cell but tasing people until they burst into fire was fun) but the series got shaky towards the end and I remember the developers openly stating they felt they had taken it as far as they could. For a while they worked on other studio’s IP so I thought they were near the end.

I picked up Days Gone near launch due to my respect for the studio but quickly dropped it because I was let down by all the bugginess (a rare phenomena at the time) and there were games that shipped complete that demanded my attention.

I paid the $10 upgrade fee for the remake and am enjoying it in measured doses but while biking around and taking on human camps and freaker nests is fun and somewhat dynamic since other variable(s) often comes into play it gets samey (the formula is very Ubisoft) so I suspect it’s not merely the game’s technical issues and it’s release proximity to TLOU that kept the original and apparently the remaster from achieving the success they were aiming for.

Shrugs Anyway I look forward to the next project of the studio (no doubt years off unless it’s very small scale) and hope the unemployed quickly get reemployed.

I play Helldivers 2 on a daily basis in the morning before work and often find myself playing alongside a Chinese player or two so this move makes sense for Arrowhead.

I expect continuing strong support for H2 in the medium term but I am eager to see what Arrowhead’s next game no matter who the publisher is or what the game is. Arrowhead is great at developing and refining multiplayer games.

I came to The Order 1886 shortly after its launch (didn’t take long for its price to fall) with measured expectations but I was still very disappointed. It was poorly paced (half of the six hours I played it was spent in boring walking and talking bits featuring boring characters), was shallower than a puddle in terms of gameplay, had very, very little enemy variety and it ended abruptly right after you got the best weapon. IMHO the only thing praiseworthy about it was it’s visuals (loved the weapon/character designs).

Hopefully the developers’ future games will reflect lessons learned, though I’m not convinced that will happen based on their rationalizations for its poor reception.

Last weekend I mostly played Helldivers 2, Two Point Museum and Underdogs.

The Helldivers 2 invasion repulsion missions (where your team has to try to take out 50 enemy ships/bases as they land, losing if you let 12 land at once or of everyone on your team dies) are brutal fun and certainly the toughest mission types. Personally I like brutal but those missions tend to cause lots of drop outs.

It’s Helldivers so players quickly jump in midmatch to fill empty slots but in a short match (IIRC those missions are on a 15 minute timee) being shorthanded even for a minute or two increases the likelihood of enemy victory since fewer people are trying to cover a big area (ships land randomly around the map).

Underdogs is wonderful. Being in a virtual mech whose arm movements mirror yours (so big and hard swings do the most damage) is really fun. Swatting a leaping enemy out of the air, uppercutting an enemy into a grinder, grabbing an enemy using it as a club or a shield or just throwing it at distant foes are all possible.

I am also really enjoying Two Point Museum. I just like messing around in it rather than focusing on the objectives. I am currently running a seaside museum which is functionally an aquarium. There are a few artifacts and suchlike but most of museum’s real estate and my attention is taken by live fish, turtles and sea monsters captured from various places which is cool because the live animals are breedable and a source of cash on top of the usual donations, tickets and merchandise sales,

My other museums toe the financial line (one even went bankrupt once though it’s now doing okay) but my aquarium tends to make a healthy profit. I am trying to get better at staff retention though. Hunting sea monsters and sharks is dangerous work which has cost the lives of a half dozen staffers but it can be made less dangerous with the knowledge and the right training and equipment.

It’s clearly been a done deal for a long time now. I now don’t see the harm in the acquisition, though like many I had been concerned since MS had made some games from purchased developers into console exclusives in the past.

Happily the opposite happened. MS’s struggling game division buying up the thriving Activision wound up being the snake that swallowed the elephant in that the resultant creature is a lot more like an elephant (a multiplatform third party) than a snake (a first party).

I have been an avid gamer for 47 years and I have watched a lot of shows and read a lot of coverage about them in that span of time. Shows are still fun for me (I try to watch them in their entirety though not necessarily at the time they debut) and clearly thrill a certain segment of the internet but I don’t believe they mean much to the vast majority of gamers anymore. Word of mouth and YouTube are very powerful things nowadays.

Show the game when it’s done or close to done (trailers, developers explaining their visions, and of course live playthroughs) and that is all most gamers need. Few are going to say ‘This game looks great but I can’t get excited about a game unless it’s preceded by five years of target renders’.

The success isn’t a big surprise. Bethesda games not named Starfield have done well commercially because Bethesda fans have never expected polish at launch. Skipping reviews had the benefit of sucking in new players curious about a glossy remake of a famous game who otherwise might have been put off its tech issues.

Unfortunate. Getting five or ten bucks every several months for a bunch of stuff I’d do anyway (play X game) was nice.