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@DennisReynolds @Drago201 sure, they have competition, which is great. They also had that back in the sonic/Spyro/Crash/Banjo days. Competition is good for us consumers.

But Astrobot didn’t bring the genre forward (yet), there’s no mechanic or feature that Nintendo has not done themselves or that hás to be implemented in the next 3D platformer because otherwise the game is lagging behind. It might actually lack a bit in the moveset department. Bob Wulff describes my opinion well in below video:
https://youtu.be/KnDDHR-OMxw?t=2796&si=-yZcZKHWQD7SDGoF (50:32 onwards specifically)

Again, it’s great, I liked it a lot, and it’s good that there’s competition. But Nintendo doesn’t have to adopt anything from the game in their next Mario game.

I also hope Sony will acknowledge it as a success, and move away from their attempts at live service high price games.

@DennisReynolds what makes it better specifically? What has Nintendo to learn from Astrobot?

@DennisReynolds sorry, Dennis, but Nintendo has nothing to learn from Astrobot. I played it, it’s absolutely great, but not (better than) a Nintendo Mario 3D platformer.

It’s a great tribute to everything Playstation though. Nostalgia did hit hard, and I’m sure it did with others on this forum too.

@Overmind @judal27 86 on metacritic bad.

Which would probably be bumped up to a 90+ on more modern hardware

@Jay767 cause of price hikes to milk the consumer more and more.

A merry Christmas to you too! And thank you for all the hard work of last year! 😊

They found some votes somewhere

@LogicStrikesAgain i understand the context you’re trying to bring. But yes, the publishers you mention act the same. I’m also staying away from their practices as much as possible. Haven’t bought an EA game for years, except an ‘EA original’ branded game. Same with acti-blizz, even though I was a big fan of WoW and Starcraft back in the 00’s. Gaming landscape has indeed changed, and I’m turning away from all the companies that mostly or only seem to be focussing on profits.

And unfortunately that also does include Sony nowadays. And yes, I have a PS1, 2, 3, 4, psp and vita. But I can’t support their current practices. And I do not feel that I’m missing out, the only PS5 exclusives that have allured me a little into buying a PS5 are FFXVI and FFVII reintegrade. But they’ll be multiplat soon, I think, I’m sure they’ll come to the next Nintendo platform because of its reach in Japan.

@gaston yes, you are correct. Buzz has become very important. The lifestyle. It generates a continuous trickle of $$$ to investors.

Then again, that’s with every medium. They just want to be inside your head all the time. I think there are also some rules on (game) news websites for instance that one should not post many articles within a few minutes, but spread it out over the whole day to make sure people come back.

I am one of those persons, checking PS and NL multiple times a day…

@LogicStrikesAgain your comment seems to suggest i’m not looking at it from a bigger picture. I disagree, i’m actually comparing it to the sony of 10 years ago, and to their competitors. Also, i don’t see why i’m not allowed to criticize the leading figure if he’s part of the group that makes the decisions. And ‘gaming prices going up’ as an excuse that it’s fine that Sony is closing down studios…. I hope you understand that the prices go up only because of the decisions made by these larger companies. Nobody has ever forced them to go into 8 year development cycles or take these massive live service risks. They are the ones setting the standards and who are closing down the smaller studios with smaller development cycles (e.g. Japan Studio). That’s not a trend that magically happened without their consent. Current Sony is more foreign than Japanese, and owned by mostly American capital management firms. And it shows.

Anyway, as a summary: most recent earnings call, Sony made the largest profit ever, yoy 184% increase, with quarterly margins of 12+%. And as a reaction: they increase the price of their controller.

Yes, sony’s in an active state of milking the consumer. In every way they can. And I don’t want to be the direct object.

@LogicStrikesAgain there's growth, and there's milking. There's a reason Sony's been focusing on live service games, price hikes, golden PS5's, shutting down studios and larger profits for shareholders ever since he became CFO. Not really working out now for the consumer, is it? Only 6,5% of last quarter's games sold on Playstation were 1st party because the offering hasn't been to what it used to be on PS4, PSVR2 has been forgotten, services have never been so expensive (absolute and relative), and we got a 700+ dollar console, relatively one of the most expensive playstations ever (2nd behind PS3).

Just my 2 cents though.

Yes, Sony’s a business. But hopefully the narrative will change a bit for the consumer’s better in upcoming years.

I'm also curious whether Sony will be able to support 2 systems this time. They forgot the Vita existed pretty quickly. And they have also mostly forgotten about the PSVR2 it seems.

If a Sony handheld releases I will hold off for at least a year to see where they plan to go with it.

Good, competition drives the market forward.

I hope Sony will get some more competition on the higher specs market. They’ve become arrogant and have developed anti-consumer practices. And their CFO is ‘addicted to growth’, as he says.

@LogicStrikesAgain ‘scale of the move.’ Nothing so far has been lost for Sony fans with the actiblizz purchase btw. Every game has been multiplatform so far. So it was an outcry that playstation owners would ‘lose’ stuff based on nothing.

So, consumer has gained nothing gained, lost nothing. Except tons of layoffs. And lost creativity. Again.

@LogicStrikesAgain good you’re calling it hypocrisy, cause it absolutely is.

I don’t see why anyone is defending sony here. Because again: it doesn’t bring any consumer anything, other than the feeling that their purchase is ‘winning’ or similar dumb reasoning.

Unless you’re a person that likes seeing headlines next year again of ‘x amount of persons laid off here, studio y shut down there.’

@MeanBeanEgg what is unfair about keeping games at launch price for most of the year?

Btw, there’s a black friday sale going on, a lot of first party nintendo games are 33-70% off, both physical and digital.

@TeiGekiLord people in general were cheering because of game pass. Not because of the consolidation. And also: Not me. I don’t care about CoD for instance. I already own Starcraft, Starcraft 2, Warcraft III and Diablo. No need for the rest of Actiblizz to be on gamepass for me.

So I do not see where you get that from.

I am not for big corporates gobbling up smaller ones, because there will always be layoffs and apart from the higher ups nobody will benefit from it.

@TeiGekiLord where do you see me saying those things you stated? I prefer BOTH not doing it.

@TeiGekiLord @Sanquine @MeanBeanEgg Nah man, I don't feel that I'm the hypocrite here.

The people commenting on PushSquare were afraid of consolidation, and angry at Xbox / Microsoft. I always said in my comments that I did not like it but since Sony is the market leader there's not really something regulators could do against it. And they indeed couldn't. Also because Sony had bought companies as well.

And now again, i'm saying I do not like this consolidation. So I feel that I'm consistent with all my comments up to now. But a lot of comments here cheer for the consolidation 'because Microsoft did it'. And that's stupid reasoning imo. In my opinion there's absolutely nothing you as a consumer will get out of Sony buying this company. The only thing that will happen are layoffs.

As I've pointed out earlier: I own a Switch, xbox series S and PS4. And I absolutely do not like Sony's take on this generation (with their 'addiction to growth' as their CFO has pointed out, their price hikes and bad behavior towards their customers, and their focus on games as a service), hence why I have not upgraded to PS5 yet. I also do not see the need to upgrade to Xbox series X.

You will therefore also mostly see me comment on Nintendolife, not here, not at purexbox. Because in my opinion, Nintendo does business in a fair and fun way this generation.

@RoomWithaMoose i completely share your view.

@TeiGekiLord @meanbeanegg because of game pass.

Not because of consolidation.

@MeanBeanEgg i don’t recall people ‘cheering microsoft’ for consolidating the market.

Also, Sony is still the market leader, even after the acquisition.

@LogicStrikesAgain i have to correct you there. Ghibli has 190 employees, Toei around 900. Meanwhile Kadokawa has 5300+ employees. All numbers are from 2023.

So pretty big size difference, I’d say percentage wise comparable to Actiblizz and EA (for instance).

The net revenue of Kadokawa is the same as the net revenue of the whole anime industry in Japan combined. https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2024/09/80f571570416-japans-animation-industry-keeps-momentum-after-record-sales-in-2023.html#google_vignette.

It’s a much larger conglomerate and therefore much larger potential deal than you think.

@LogicStrikesAgain wish more people would have responded that way when ActiBlizz wanted to join Microsoft.

The head of actiblizz personally got 200 million+ out of that deal btw. I don’t know what the board of Kadokawa gets out of the deal.

And neither what the personnel gets out of the deal. But money usually doesn’t go their way.

@LogicStrikesAgain i see now that you’ve commented that you were not against the actiblizz merging because its business. I agree.

But business can be dirty. The actiblizz merger was, and so is Sony buying this company. Because it will result into something comparable to a monopoly of Sony in the Anime space, and it will result into layoffs and other bad stuff for people involved.

And i absolutely don’t agree that this is a defending move. It is an aggressive move targeted at something else than tech, and therefore much less expensive, but because it will result into a huge stake in the anime space for Sony (also with Crunchyroll and their studios), it is still comparable to actiblizz merger, if it goes through.

So yeah, this will be bad for everybody, apart from the higher ups at Sony. Nobody else will benefit from this potential merger.

@LogicStrikesAgain yes.

So what I feel that you’re saying: Sony’s a good guy only. Or at least, worth it defending. It’s not as if it’s the market leader and has been for 20 years. I’m sure one could defend their price increases and the closure of 5 studios in a year with the same statement.

I don’t agree.

Also, Sony was buying stuff way before the activision blizzard deal. So it’s not as if ‘microsoft set the tone’. Sure, it was a big one. Not the first one. I’m not sure who actually set the tone.

Long story short: microsoft is scum, sony is scum, consolidation is bad for any consumer.

@LogicStrikesAgain

So a lot of people here can throw their earlier arguments away that consolidation in general is bad.

Sony’s also been doing it for a very long time. Has never changed. Sony’s a very bad guy, just as Microsoft is. I don’t like consolidation because I prefer choice. And also, because consolidation will result in a lot of layoffs. But here, while stated otherwise, to me the argument seemed to be that people hated consolidation only because Microsoft does it.

Well. Turns out I was correct in those discussions. Consolidation for a lot on here is good when the coin flips Sony’s way, apparently. Being cheered and liked at in the first few comments already. Again: this will result in a lot of layoffs and a lot less artistic freedom. Don’t know why everyone is cheering. The games were on Sony’s platform anyway.

@Mikey856 remember the closure of 5 Sony studios just this year? Because I do.

Well, with price increases by Sony profitability swiftly goes up, indeed.

Imagine working on the game for 4 years, your studio being bought by Sony, spending another 2 years of your life on the game, and then having the game shut down after two weeks on the market.

Hulst: ‘this game is the future of Playstation’

Man… the suits up top suck. And internally, they never get the blame they deserve.

Eggs and chickens. Which came first?

Nah, although incredibly well crafted and very cool for a single player game,
this world doesn’t have the appeal and world building to me of for example WoW, Final Fantasy, Monster Hunter or LotR. It’s just not a really ‘fun’ world imo to stay in for a long time. It takes itself too serious. And not enough diversity between characters, races, etc.

I do not see this succeed but am keen to learn more of what they come up with. Hope to be proven wrong, I spend tons of hours in WoW back in the day.

But have to say, it’s a shame that so much resources are still being poured into this live service stuff at Sony.

@Staroceanblue i was a Sony fan. I have the PS1 up to PS4 and have played a lot of the big Sony games. I want them to return to what made them great in the PS2 and PS4 era.

Unfortunately they have lost their way, and especially this comment has made me angry, ‘obsessed with growth’:
https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2023/02/sony-shakes-up-corporate-ladder-by-promoting-exec-obsessed-with-growth

You see this obsession everywhere. Bizarre choices made by the higher ups: focus on live-service games, abandoned psvr2, abandoned vita, greed: increase of prices while they make a ton of profit, …

So yes, I’m salty, but for a reason. Corporate greed doesn’t benefit us players. As long as Sony behaves this way I won’t support them. But I’ll be one of the first to return if they return to be there for the players.

@LogicStrikesAgain no. Not for backwards compatible games. And not in the way Xbox did it with their all around performance boosts (auto hdr, improved fps). https://www.pocket-lint.com/xbox-backward-compatibility/

@EbolaGW lol 😅

There were arcade cabinets back in the day who did that. I’m sure they were / are expensive too.

So something Xbox has introduced at the start of this generation and included with every series S and X now comes with a price tag of 700 dollar?

@themightyant the patch is just the removal of the fidelity-performance slider.

700 bucks before taxes

Because of course they do this. 1.9 billion net profit isn’t enough for greedy fingers.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/08/07/sony-earnings-q1.html

This is why we need more competition and why it’s a shame Microsoft screwed up so massively during the Xbox One days.

I love it that all FF are so different that it results in so many different answers in the comments.

I love VI the most. But I also have a soft spot for I, the original, on my GBA, which got me into the series. Of the more modern ones, XII is my favorite.

Because of course they do this. 1.9 billion net profit isn’t enough for greedy fingers.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/08/07/sony-earnings-q1.html

This is why we need more competition and why it’s a shame Microsoft screwed up so massively during the Xbox One days.

Good to see this honest reaction on Push Square.

It’s what I’ve been saying for years here already, but which a lot of fans here were flaming me for: Sony has lost its sight of what made it great. Its suits are just focussed on infinite growth, ever since the PS4 became a success in its first years and the wrong people got promoted.

This is not an incident. All GaaS games released by Sony so far have been horrible, which consists of 60% (!) of Sony’s investments of last year. But also the PSVR2 has been an utterly disaster, where adopters must feel that they’ve been ripped off. We could have seen it coming, with the earlier example when Sony abandoned the Vita incredibly quickly. And then there’s all the price increases on services and the hardware itself. Absolutely unnecessary, when you look at their turnover and profit figures, but they did it anyway “because of the economy”. I believe they did it because they could.

Sony can’t be trusted, it has become a horrible company. And the suits are to blame. Especially mr. “I am obsessed with growth.” 🤮
https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2023/02/sony-shakes-up-corporate-ladder-by-promoting-exec-obsessed-with-growth

Less than 1% concord. Ouch

Feels to me as if I’m reading the previews for Foamstars.

And we know how that game is doing currently.

@OldGamer999 Nintendo is very often present though.

This article is inaccurate. Nintendo President Iwata foresaw this apocalyptic state of the gaming industry back in 2002:

https://youtu.be/3VO8EWdK_t8?si=2sPAh7aI5uUcK8oN

Good that Layden finally agrees, shame that he’s claiming the fame of a true foreseer, and too bad he’s not steering Sony’s ship anymore.

No ps4, no xbox.

Just pr talk. They want to do business and earn as much money for as little effort as possible.

Sony, EA, Embracer, Ubisoft, Bungie, Epic Games, Niantic, Microsoft. All obscene rich companies that did layoffs last months. Don’t make Phil the bad guy, they all are. Gaming business is more business than pleasure these days.

For a showcase you need to have games to show. And you can show live service games only so many times…

This trailer was too much.

The warning at the start was justified.