Cikajovazmaj

I don't want to sound ignorant, but if you are running a business, now might be the time to re-evaluate how much of it you want to have located in the US.
This sucks for regular working folk, but at the same time if you decide to push you need to expect to be shoved.

Are they purposely sending these to die? It's 4 years of Xbox exclusives (it was very dry 4 years) they are releasing in the matter of months.
People have limited budgets and overall sales will suffer..

I really hoped they would do a Metroid Dread sequel, that game was best 2D Metroid in a looooong time (as since Super Metroid).
But I'm willing and looking forward to checking out what they can offer in GoW alternatives world. Looks right up my alley!

EDIT: While it undeniably takes inspiration from GoW, I also felt some Immortals: Fenyx Rising, and BotW vibes. Am I crazy?

Ok, best month in a while. DA has tanked and there are obvious "political" reasons, but there is still a decent game in there. Other two are genuine fun games.

@Toot1st at least as of now, and most likely while the generative AI models we currently use are not replaced with different approach, this is not true. But it is being marketed and sold (very well) as if it was.

@Balie3000 nope, almost zero regulation. We are still in the "steal now, be sorry later" phase most new technologies go through before they either cause a catastrophe or market stabilizes (typically the former).

What this technology is gonna do in relatively immediate future (and it has been worded carefully to be able to be used for this without lying to the "fans"), is fire a whole bunch of artists and turn a senior artist into a "senior AI prompter". Instead of manually creating beautiful levels and biomes, AI will be prompted to generate decent/mediocre ones for a fraction of the cost.
Looking at the GP model and offerings over last 4-5 years (they did have good last few months though) that outcome is very much on brand. I'll be skipping, thank you very much. I have limited gaming time and I'll be using only for the best experiences.

One has to love how "there was nothing shown" during the SoP and excitement poll having like almost 30 entries..
Anyway:

• Tides of Annihilation
• Split Fiction
• Saros
  But there is at least 3-4 more that I weighted upon before settling on these 3.

It is like this game exists in an alternate universe, where there is almost no Sony corporate greed, and games are built for fans.
Not being in SoP proves it!

Definitely would have upgraded for $10, but only Nintendo can make me pay full price for the same game multiple times.

If the price is exactly the same every 2 weeks, is it even a sale?

Terrible list for me. It's 2025. and the only game appealing from that list is Pac-Man. High on life is just abysmal, less funny than Borderlands movie.

Yesterday I tried this game and learned a couple of things. Firstly, game is buggy, glitchy, and all types of bad. Secondly, in it's essence game elements are the same as in the latest Indiana Jones, just done poorly. As I never played it before, I believed everything in Great Circle was completely original take, when it ends up being quite similar to a core of a really old game. It's a far better take though

Most of these games aren't really for me, so I'm OK with the list. Arise I've tried and it didn't quite click, Outriders is just plain bad in my opinion. Outer World is a good game, but it has been handed out for free before on other available platforms (arguably more fitting for an FPS), so not a huge deal.

Hear me out, there is a world in which AAA games don't mean "state of the art" graphics but instead, mean awesome gameplay. Which is cheaper to produce if you hire creative and experienced people, and invest in them to polish ideas and evolve game design concepts. Instead of throwing money at a gazillion contractors (you'll abandon immediately post-completion) to produce stunning assets.
Note:
Look under Nintendo to see more.

Finally, finally a good month for me. There is like 4 games on my wishlist there, and another 2 I wanted to try out. Phewww

@Rich33 "It has had 1 upside though - any 3rd party game launching on GP was an immediate red flag that the devs / publisher thought their game was no good!"

Absolutely agreed. I don't think there was a 3rd party game released to GP I would buy, once the reviews hit (sometimes hype gives me false hope).

Yesterday I fired up my 3DS and played some Donkey Kong because I didn't want to purchase the same game twice. That's all I have to say about all digital, all subscription future.

My understanding is sales numbers for Horizon games are significantly stimulated by the "bundle" offering, but some of those 32 million consumers are bound to like the game at least due to first-hand exposure.
Either way, I happen to be one of them appreciating the IP and believe it to be an excellent basis for a movie.

Hopefully big wigs take notice and we see more games like Astro.

Happy New Year everybody!! 🥂🥳

I'm totally fine with Stalker 2 staying on Xbox. Matter of fact, please keep it there.

@Northern_munkey I can respect that
But yeah, to further explain my stand, it's based on the setting being overdone: 80s throwbacks mixed with futuristic visuals, bad jokes, overly familiar character dynamic (for the first 2 characters introduced in the game world), Escaping from New York coms and visual filter.. It just looked uninspired and rehash of existing ideas. Doesn't have to be bad, Uncharted looked like an unlicensed Indiana Jones game on paper, but ended up being one of the best series ever. Just not what I would present the new original IP with.
Some of the visuals reminded me of Kung Fury and Far Cry: Blood Dragon, and it would probably be better off if it tapped into that sort of silliness instead of trying to be semi-serious.

Honestly, PS5 users are not missing much if Hellblade 2 never makes it over. Visuals (assuming XSX) and audio are great, but there is a reason people are referring to it as an experience instead of a game. There is no gameplay in there, you keep forward button and occasionally press another. Fights are scripted and not challenging at all.
I've said this before, but for a walking simulator with limited interactivity I've enjoyed Nobody wants to die way more, produced on a fraction of a budget.

Genuinely like her as an actress and I wish her well. However, Intergalactic looks like a world/story that was AI generated, soulless and stereotypical. I would say it is giving me Concord vibes in all the wrong ways.
I'm a fan of Naughty dog's games and I would rate Uncharted 4 and TLOU2 in my top 10 games of all time, but this looks like a miss :/

Finally started working for me..
At 426h played, I have officially played my PS5 8 times more compared to my XSS (admittedly, I sold it in September as it wasn't being used). Nintendo stats are going to be interesting as I think this will be my most played year since childhood

502 Bad Gateway unhandled error. Level of incompetence so high, this might be more embarrassing than Concord.
I can just imagine a junior dev who said they can pull this off in half the time for the fraction of the cost (it's gonna scale itself), going insane now..

Sony did good with this update! Would be cool to keep these indefinitely.

I just got this game on sale for my PS5 not professional, and I'm pleasently surprised. There were few not graphics related bugs, with conversation triggers etc.. but in general awesome game.
PS5 Pro enhanced version will be pure joy once they polish the early PSSR adopter quirks.

Got myself a PS Plus Premium sub on a discount, and will probably get Alan Wake 2 Deluxe Edition. Not bad.
I really hoped for a bigger Baldur's Gate 3 discount, but that game seems to be holding value long-term better than gold.

After watching few reviews (including SkillUp) I have no idea hiw this game scored even 77% on metacritic. It's completely broken and unplayable. And what is there is flawed and needs fixing or rethinking. What is the basis for such a high score?

Feels like 50% of subscribers (myself included) is waiting for BF sale to resubscribe
There is a "hold, hold, now" meme somewhere in there.

@Voltan exactly what went through my head. Probably the only way to sort all the legalities to make a Bloodborne Remaster PS5 Ultimate Patched Edition.
@breakneck on a more serious note, I agree. FromSoftware is most likely just a nice bonus here, but anime juggernaut that Sony has become is producing so much "healthy" profit that it makes sense to acquire additional proven properties.

@Rich33 I'd say there is a huge overlap between companies that don't care, and ones that are having issues in current environment.
I might be wrong here, but it has been my theory for some time. There is an "overoptimization" going on in software development industry, and there is a reason why any systems optimal state is not at it's lowest cost. Through aggressive lowering of costs by pushing quantity over quality of talent, and ignoring "real life" factors like employee satisfaction, working conditions, education, personal development and health, etc. quality of output has decreased over the point of diminishing returns. With all the improved mechanisms in software development protecting code quality, there still was never more bugs reported per line of code. Similarly in other roles like design, never have there ever been a bigger stagnation in overall game creativity. It seems like only Nintendo stops to design a refreshed mechanic or visual style these days.
My guess is this is what is going to bring the next downfall of gaming industry. Nintendo is an evidence that production budgets don't need to be as large for the cost of stunning visuals. Customers voting with their wallet are obviously choosing quality gaming over "easier to staff" graphic fidelity. It's just that with current "overoptimized" process in the West, it's hard to promote creativity when all your employees are overworked and unmotivated.
Might just be an old man yelling at clouds, but it's been a long time since I've met somebody motivated to make a change in SD vs. rig the metrics to survive another quarter mentality.

@RBMango theory is people play COD whole year round, so they would be sticking around.
I'm not sure there are many who play COD for campaign (BO6 seems to be better in that regard, but recent titles had like 3 hour campaigns).

Damn, to be a fly on the wall in an internal meeting when they finally reveal if putting BO6 resulted in GP numbers boost..
We'll most likely never know how much it helped (or not).

Not a good month for me. Ghostwire is not that good, and it's also free on Epic Store starting tomorrow. Hot wheels 1 didn't feel satisfying to me, so that's probably a no from me too.. oh well

Honestly expected it to get 9/10, but I also didn't expect a scored review in the first place (as it's a modernized game from few years ago). I'll play it either way.

@RBMango only 2 games by Ubi I own..

Nothing in my village yet...

Goty for me. Hopefully it continues to do welland prove there is place for more than Mario in platformer genre.

This might be the most obvious thing in the world. I'm guessing these conversations with devs look like "yes, we understand your concerns, and you probably won't make any sales, but we can eventually put your game on GP. Isn't that great?"

Tried the demo, seems decent. Little bit on the low budget side, but passable. It's biggest issue is that Astro bot did everything it does better days ago. Hopefully this get's added to PS Plus in not to distant future.

Technically, it should be at the top, where triangle button is, as Nintendo kind of did it first
But he did make me laugh!

@nessisonett I won't be buying a PS5 Pro, but PC is the least future proof gaming platform out there.
I used to play on PC too, but decided to fully transition to just consoles maybe 6-7 years back. Reason why, I've bought a new, shiny rig that allowed me to play on high or medium settings for all of two years. Year three I had to make considerable compromises and test settings until I get the game to look decent and play smooth. Year 4 and later there were games I couldn't even run at all.
So yeah, PC ain't future proof

Ended up being a good move by Sony, instead of releasing a full price remake making it a $10 upgrade.. Everybody went from pure hate mode to "I'll buy that, at least to see how it looks for myself".

Patch notes: we fixed stuff we inadvertently broke in last big release

Awesome game, bit disappointing it's not huge success, but hopefully it's good enough to warrant sequels/DLC.

I guess everybody's different. For me, this is the first Diablo game I haven't bought at all. As long as there still are games for my taste, I don't mind..

@ShogunRok I don't understand how these poor sales numbers are possible. In my country Astro bot has been continuously sold out at retail, and some people who pre-ordered are still waiting for their copy to be delivered.
I believe it was sold out on EU variants of Amazon too.
Did they just not distribute enough physical copies?