GravyThief

I don’t have a PS5. I didn’t get a PS4 until 2018, roughly 5 years after its release, so the same point in its life as the PS5 is now. All I can say is that when I got PS4, there were so many games I wanted to play that I was spoiled for choice on what to get, and I was buying games for months and months just to catch up on everything. Looking at PS5’s library, I honestly can’t think of any games I really want to play other than Astro-bot. It’s just such a different landscape to what is was with the PS4.

“Based on the complicated way Sony does its accounting, the company only recognises full revenue from physical first-party games, while it writes down a lower royalty value from physical third-party games.”

There’s nothing complicated about it. The only revenue Sony gets from third party physical game sales is the royalty. They’re not their games, so why would they recognise the full sale value?

The only way to get a true reflection of physical sales is by looking at volume/value of all physical sales across PlayStation, from all developers and publishers. And even then, it’s going to be skewed because most games these days don’t even release physically. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy.

This chart is barely more insightful than the UK chart. If it only includes digital sales for PlayStation then it may as well be just a PlayStation chart.

One question, are those top 10s based on number of units sold or $ value? I’d always assumed that if charts included digital sales (based on no. of units sold), you’d just see all the tat games at the top that sell for a few quid but sell loads, as opposed to the proper games which sell for a much higher price but lower volumes. Maybe I’m wrong.

Do LRG plan to sell the GBA rom at all does anyone know? I have no interest in buying it physically (these ‘new’ retro games always seem really cheaply made) but I’d love to get the rom on my Everdrive to play it on a GBA, and I’d be happy to play for the privilege.

Either way, I’ll likely buy this game on modern console too (probably Switch) as I do love the Shantae games.

A portable PS4 sounds darn good to me

I’ll just continue to call it Solitaire 2

I totally agree with this sentiment. I’ve just finished Cocoon, which is what, three or four hours, if that? And I got the physical version so paid £20 odd for it. And do you know what? I don’t feel like I was ripped off at all. Those few hours with one of the best games ever made will always be worth it. I cannot stand open world games or slog-fest RPGs for the simple fact they’re just full of boring, time-consuming checklists for the sake of boasting how many hours they take to complete.

I haven’t played Astro Bot because I don’t have a PS5, but if/when I do get one, this is the first game I’ll be buying.

@LiamCroft that’s understandable. Thanks for the reply!

I’d also like to know what it’s like on the PS4. I think my wife would like this, but we only have a PS4.

All my games are stored in thick, grip seal baggies, with one or more silica gel pouches in the bag for good measure. No idea if it’ll make a difference, but it can only help. Plus I’d put them in the bags anyway to stop the cases rubbing against each other.

I still can’t believe the PS5 has shipped 75m. It only feels like yesterday it was released, I can’t believe it’s been nearly 4.5 years.

I bought a PS4 about 4.5 years after it first came out (I got the Pro), and I was absolutely overwhelmed by the amount of games I had to choose from. I don’t have a PS5, and I still don’t have much urge to get one looking at the games (admittedly I’m not a AAA type of guy). It’s definitely a different landscape now than it was last generation.

I think I only really play Indie and AA games these days. And a lot of Nintendo games. I’m not sure I’d class Nintendo games as AA or AAA, they’re just Nintendo games.

What would Shadow of the Colossus and The Last Guardian be classed as? I love those games, but in my head they’re not AAA games.

For me, I associate AAA games these days as Open World, 50+ hour games filled with crafting, skill trees and/or menu management. And that’s precisely the reason I don’t play them.

I do find it amusing reading some of the pro-digital comments here. I mean, if people are happy to pay higher prices for the convenience of digital games, fine by me.

But when I think that if I sold my physical PS3, PS4, Wii U and Switch game collection tomorrow, I would literally get over a thousand pounds for it, I’m happy to stand up from the sofa and switch the game disc/card over.

Priorities and all that.

I read this, inserted my single player disc game into my console, started playing it, and shrugged.

I’m sure I’ll be happy whatever power it is. I don’t think my mate Ray Tracing will be bothering with it though.

I don’t know if I’m old, it’s late, or because I’ve never once had a Twitter account, but I literally don’t have a clue what any of this is going on about or what the issue is. I don’t see why journalistic integrity is mentioned on something so seemingly trivial.

Then again, I am commenting I suppose.

It’s hard to take this list seriously when there’s no Overblood in it

I do think Switch probably won’t pass PS2’s sales. I wouldn’t be surprised if Nintendo stop making the Switch not long after the Switch 2 releases. They haven’t really given it a price cut either, which if they were going to they would have done it by now, certainly for its last Xmas before its successor releases.

Whereas the PS2 was still being made 6 years after the PS3 released, had big price cuts and was actively sold in some markets where PS3 wasn’t as affordable.

But we shall see!

Is the soundtrack completely re-written and new? Or are the original compositions still present too? The original soundtrack was iconic and a major part of why I enjoyed it so much. A new one would have to be truly amazing to hold up.

@jrt87 oh I know. And without hindsight I would be unlikely to spend £1k on something I don’t want in the hope I’d sell it on for more. But still, it’s easy money for those who managed to get one to flip

Damn. If I’d have known I could have sold it straight away for 4x the value I’d have tried to get one. I don’t have an interest in the system itself, but I most certainly have an interest in making a £3k profit on a £1k outlay in a matter of hours!

@EchoRange I do! The second print was like a year or two later as well. I specifically hunted down the second press (it had a different publisher or distributor, with different logos on the discs) just so I had the unbroken version. Such is my devotion to Overblood and Raz Karcy, the greatest videogame protagonist to have ever gone AAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH!! PIIIIIPOOOO!

(Sorry) 🤣

Really wish I’d had a chance to play this. By the time I got a PS4, it had already gone. Booooo!!

“an enormous 33 per cent of you polled on Push Square said you had zero interest in the device. Well, as it turns out, you’re in the minority”

I mean, yes, 33% is a minority.

I don’t know much about this device (I don’t even have a PS5), but I own a Switch and I mostly play in handheld mode at home, AND I rarely (if ever) play it away from home. So I totally get the convenience of this device for PS5 owners and why it’s proven popular. Of course there’s a question of expense, as you don’t need to buy anything extra for the Switch, but that doesn’t seem to have impacted its popularity.

I disagree. Protagonists with whiney teenage American voices that don’t suit the character look like idiots.

I really want to get into Dark Souls. The world looks amazing and I love that it’s handcrafted and winds back on itself. I haven’t got around yet to playing it (even though I own it) because I know I need to invest time in it. I don’t mind the difficulty if I’m able to eventually overcome it, I love levels on platform games where you have to repeat them hundreds of times to complete them for example.

That said, as my gaming time is so limited these days, I don’t want to spend days/weeks learning the ropes. Does anyone know of a guide to Dark Souls that will quickly get me going, but won’t ruin the experience?

Good. Because I have no desire to experience cult classics from the past without pop ups every few minutes to tell me I’ve successfully watched a cutscene or collected my first widget, and also collected 50, 100 and 250 widgets.

Why should I bother to explore an expertly crafted world that’s had thousands of man hours lovingly put into it if they can’t even be bothered to give me a collection of pixels that loosely resemble metal cups for every virtual acre I walk through?

I played the original GameCube release of this only recently, and I can see why people like this game so much. I can only imagine how much of a fan I’d be if I’d played it when it first released.

Although let’s face it - given how long the sequel’s been in development, and I’m guessing none of the original team are working on the sequel, it’s only going to be a disappointment isn’t it?

How does AI (or deep learning) help all this happen? And why couldn’t this be done 10 years ago?

There’s no ‘intelligence’ here, it just sounds like really good algorithms to upscale better than current upscalers.

I’m just curious as to why this can happen now. And what do these do differently to make the upscaled image look better and cleaner and not be as blurry? It’s still an upscaled image at the end of the day

@Czar_Khastik the Switch version got an Asian physical release, which plays in English and may even have English box art too (other Asian releases tend to). No idea if the same will be true for this version.

And it’s not quite a ‘normal’ physical release, but I find getting Asian releases of games in Europe infinitely easier and better than Limited Run Games (playasia or bazaar-bazaar for example).

It’s not actually a spoiler, because Aeris died in the original, not Aerith.

The problem I have with digital games is that they’re not sold like other digital media. I’m thinking music via iTunes.

When I buy music from iTunes (what’s this streaming nonsense?) I receive a file that sits on my computer and I can play it via various media players, various hardware, and I have it on my hard drive for as long as my hard drive survives. I can also back it up. If iTunes stops selling the music file, the music file I have already purchased is unaffected.

Digital games should be more like this.

As someone who hadn’t played the first game when I bought a PS4, I bought the remaster there and was very grateful it existed. So I understand the guy’s point. And for those who have played it on PS4 but want to play it again on PS5, £10 seems more than reasonable to me.

I haven’t played my PS4 for a while. I got my first Switch in May’23 (yep late to the party) and that’s been my console of choice since. However, my wife surprised me for Xmas and got me Stray on the PS4 as a present. I didn’t even realise it released on the PS4, I thought it was PS5 only. So I fired up the old PS4 to play that game (which I’m enjoying so far).

At my current rate I’ll probably get a PS5 around 2028 🤣 Although to be honest I can’t think of many games encouraging me to buy one at present. If Fumito Ueda’s next game ever comes out I’m sure that would convince me.

@LiamOliver is that how it works with iTunes? I’ve bought a fair amount of music from them over the years, but I have the m4a files (or whatever they’re called) on my computer and I’m able to play them on any software or hardware that accepts that format (which is most things these days). I was even able to play them on Android phones when I went over to the other side for a brief period.

@TrannosaurusBex yeah I thought the use of the word ‘just’ there was inappropriate too. It sounds like the writer is implying that 900 staff being made redundant isn’t that much, which I doubt was their intention. An oversight I’m sure, but as you say, language is important.

I saw a PS5 in the flesh for the first time at the weekend. It’s was even bigger and uglier than pictures on the internet let on. I think it may just be the ugliest console ever released!

Not that I’m in the market to buy one anytime soon, but I’m glad they’re doing a slimmer model. Although hopefully by the time I’m going to buy one they’ll have a super slim model out!

@Terra_Custodes that’s the inherent problem with assigning a numerical score to something that isn’t numerical (i.e. an opinion, or a review). Unfortunately the general public aren’t very clever and so need a score to avoid them having to read words.

I’ve always said I’ll need to wait for a Slim version of the PS5 before I buy one, but from what I can tell I’ll be waiting for the Super Slim version 🤣

In fairness I’m not going to buy one for a few years regardless. I got a PS3 in 2017, a PS4 in 2018 and a Switch in 2023. So I’m well off the curve!

The number of endings is still only 0.0004% of the number of crafting materials that will be available.

There certainly needs to be a ‘slim’ type revision before I buy a PS5. The current model is just too big and weird looking. Not that I’m ready for the next (current) gen yet anyway.

I didn’t buy a PS4 until 2018, and I only bought a Switch this year. So I’m a bit behind the curve, shall we say 🤣

I don’t know much about this guy, but if he was at Sony from 1992-2008, he was there during the runs of two mildly successful consoles, the PS1 and PS2. So not too shabby.

“There’s no quest log, no navigation system, no mini map, or convoluted combat mechanics. No health bars, skill trees. or weapon upgrades. No character customisation, side quests. or dialog options.”

A lot of that is stuff I hate from modern games. Probably explains why I like this game so much. And that’s not nostalgia speaking. I first played this at the start of 2020. How did I go so long without experiencing this amazing game?

On a positive note about Open World games, real life businesses should adopt the same business model that shops in those games all follow: your customers are also your suppliers!

Your customers give you the raw materials for your products (for free no less), and then you charge them for the end product as normal. Almost a 100% operating profit margin! Of course it helps they can find the raw materials just dotted around the wilderness in bushes and fit a billion of them in 1 backpack.

Easier to make, and better too. So let’s just stop making Open World games now please yeah? They can join Funko Flops in landfill. In fact Open World games are full of pointless tat to collect, the Funko Flops should go there.

What are the absolute numbers, out of curiosity? Percentages don’t really mean anything without some numbers.

Bit fed up of the HBO stuff in the UK always being on Sky or Now TV. Two things I will never pay money for. So looks like I’ll be waiting for 2nd hand DVDs in a few years’ time, or other means….

I must be seeing the future as the time stamp for this article says “Tomorrow 00:00”.

It was Overblood that cemented PlayStation’s dominance. It wasn’t until you heard Raz Karcy’s death scream in CD quality audio that you realised PlayStation was the king.

@Vacuumator their site says it will be in stock Q1 2023. A bit of a wait but at least it means you’ll get it at RRP and direct from them. They have the expansions on their site too. Just sign up to their mailing list and you’ll get an email when they’re back in stock.