Grumblevolcano

@Americansamurai1 The mobile market only accepts FTP games, the traditional model of buying a game doesn't work well there.

I think the corporate strategy meeting on May 23rd 2:30am UK time will announce PS5 Pro (and any other hardware) as well as what the aggressive PC strategy is which then allows the showcase to be focused on the games.

Sounds like either they'll price hike or force ads into every tier of Game Pass.

@Fiendish-Beaver Whatever the strategy is, it'll likely be announced on May 23rd at the meeting about Sony's long term vision for the future. More details on aggressive PC strategy feels more like a corporate meeting type thing rather than something you'd announce in a PS showcase.

@Beerheadgamer82 Agreed, at this point it seems most likely that Sony announces showcase on May 23rd at the Sony long term vision event for airing on May 30th.

@Frmknst Time is running out to announce a showcase if it is on the 23rd considering they announce a week in advance. Only State of Play has a shorter window between announce and airing.

If true, this is starting to sound like it may turn out to be annual franchise territory:

• 2022 - Horizon Forbidden West
• 2023 - Horizon Call of the Mountain, HFW Burning Shores DLC
• 2024 - Horizon Zero Dawn remaster/remake
• 2025 - LEGO Horizon
• 2026 - Horizon multiplayer game
• 2027 - Horizon 3

I figure that the June Xbox showcase will have a load of PS announcements meanwhile the June Nintendo Direct has a segment dedicated to more Rare games coming to Switch (including Diddy Kong Racing).

It's likely because of the Xbox multiplatform saga combined with Sony putting the PS5 on sale frequently during January - March 2024. That 2 week period when the rumours spiraled out of control and Microsoft just said nothing would've especially done a load of damage to people's interest in buying Series X|S.

@thefourfoldroot1 I'm hoping enhancement means like aiming for more frequent releases via variety of scope while maintaining quality. So like there being your usual big releases (e.g. TLoU, Horizon, GoW) and then there's a bunch of smaller projects in between (e.g. the rumoured Astro Bot game).

This further gives the impression that GTA6 is earlier on in the year like March/April. Have GTA6 start the year and then 2nd half of 2025 onwards being a packed 1st party lineup.

@Th3solution My guess is that 3rd party PS exclusives/marketing deals are coming to an end (like CoD marketing has come to an end and no more Square Enix exclusivity from next month outside of Foamstars) but people still naturally come to PS5 anyway.

@Zenos @NEStalgia I think it's more about GTA6 than anything else. In 2015 you had stuff like GTAV 360/PS3 updates ending and Black Ops 3 missing out on content so for the typical mainstream player, you knew you needed a PS4 at that point.

This generation has stuck around with last gen for a lot longer than usual. 2025 is the big current gen moment with GTA6 so you'd probably see a spike in hardware sales start this holiday season.

@pharos_haven I don't know how powerful but I think it would be like how the Switch had some "miracle" ports of games from the PS4/XB1 era (DOOM 2016, DOOM Eternal, Witcher 3, Nier Automata, etc.).

That's really promising for Switch 2 3rd party support. Hopefully we see a situation where the Playstation Showcase has stuff like Octopath 1 and Triangle Strategy meanwhile the Switch 2 reveal has stuff like Remake/Rebirth/FF16.

Maybe it's something to do with LEGO Fortnite?

@tomic20 Sony's clearly not happy, otherwise they wouldn't have made the statements they made back in February and they wouldn't have tried to force PSN integration into their PC ports (Sony haven't given up on that one considering they've delisted GoT's PC release in regions that don't have PSN). But the reason they're not happy is likely that the CEO and investors are being extremely greedy rather than PS actually doing poorly.

Most of gaming's problems are caused by investors and people higher up in companies (like the CEO) being extremely greedy. They want infinite growth and treat devs as disposable when there's not enough growth. In hindsight, this is probably the real reason why Playstation moved from Japan to California in 2016 considering American laws are really weak when it comes to worker protections. This is all really disgusting stuff.

While Sonic X Shadow Generations is my most anticipated upcoming game (the original Sonic Generations from 2011 is fantastic), I do feel that annual is a bad thing. The Pokemon Scarlet/Violet saga especially comes to mind.

@AdamNovice They may leave it for PS Blog as there's only been 1 PC only announcement in a PS event before which was Spider-Man in the June 2022 State of Play. All the other PC announcements in State of Play were PS5/PC announcements.

They may pull a "By the way it's coming to PS+ Extra/Premium" if it was to appear in the showcase but I think it's more likely that Sony have realized the Game Pass model is toxic for 1st party games.

Was rather obvious considering Horizon Forbidden West's approach (announcing in September 2023, release in March 2024). Announce in May 2024, release in November 2024 would line up with the 2 year timing that Jim Ryan was talking about.

@Americansamurai1 I could've seen it be present if PS5 Pro was being announced in the showcase to try and convince people that the console isn't meaningless. But the timing here is all off, Sony announces showcases a week in advance so it's unlikely the showcase would air before May 22nd (PS events are most commonly on Wednesdays and Thursdays) which is too late for GTA6 news if Rockstar wanted to announce release date and preorders before May 16th.

In some regards yes and in others, no. There's definitely plenty I'd play if I got a PS5 but I'd need to see a stronger 1st party lineup before making the jump.

@KoopaTheGamer I think the backlash here being more is because Helldivers 2 is a viral hit. It's like how Fortnite adding crossplay between Switch and Xbox back in 2018 caused a massive backlash towards Sony's stance on crossplay because PS Fortnite players couldn't play with their friends on other platforms.

Would be nice if this backlash forced Microsoft to remove the Bethesda account requirement for DOOM Eternal.

@Americansamurai1 I think Dragon's Dogma 2 DLC instead of MH considering they said Summer for next Wilds info.

@termiki Don't know whether it works with Windows 11 but with Windows 10, you can skip Microsoft account stuff by turning on airplane mode during the initial setup.

@Americansamurai1 Agreed, the last few RE games were announced via Sony events so it's a reasonable guess that the next one is too.

I think either the Xbox showcase ends up a fully multiplatform event like after each trailer you see the PS5 logo (and sometimes the Switch logo) or some other event like a Nintendo Direct or Summer Game Fest reveals phase 2 in May/June to be smaller in scope. The main thing being that whatever phase 2 is, it'll likely be announced by the end of June as Microsoft's fiscal year ends in June.

@Ultrasmiles If you redeemed it as part of the Play at Home free games program in 2021, you own it forever. This is about those who don't own it but rather are playing it via the PS+ Extra/Premium subscription.

I guess this confirms the existence of that rumoured Horizon Zero Dawn PS5 remaster/remake from awhile back. Sony did the same thing with Spider-Man PS4 when they made Spider-Man Remastered available standalone on PS5.

@NEStalgia I think the negativity of that port was justified like the Game Pass requirement on Xbox when PS+ isn't required on PS. It looks like nothing more than greed on Microsoft's part.

Maybe it's Xbox related? There was a lot of negativity over how Microsoft handled the FF14 Xbox port and now the Octopath 2 Xbox port is nowhere to be seen despite Early 2024 being over.

@BloodyBlact That was last year's showcase. While there probably will be a Playstation Showcase in May considering the last Playstation Studios release with a release date (Stellar Blade) released on Friday, it's very unlikely they'd do a showcase on a Friday as Friday announcements are generally associated with bad news.

I'm surprised people were expecting game announcements considering we're fast approaching event season (e.g. last year had a Playstation Showcase in May). Would make more sense to put game announcements in an event.

Sounds believable, Square Enix seem to be aiming for 1 big game a year:

• 2023 - FF16
• 2024 - FF7 Rebirth
• 2025 - KH4
• 2026 - DQ12 perhaps?
• 2027 - Final part of the FF7 Remake trilogy

@Titntin I did see a report from Famitsu that Rebirth was the best selling game in Japan for March and wondered why Push Square never reported on it.

I think it’ll come down to what the future of physical gaming is. Physical keeps prices in check because if retailers are unhappy with the RRP, they’ll just sell games for cheaper anyway. Like I remember Spider-Man 2 being around £60 physical at some retailers at launch (RRP being £70).

If Microsoft gets their wish of digital only future and Sony follows however, I think prices will skyrocket. 1 month of PS+ Premium/Game Pass Ultimate for £30, £100 to buy Spider-Man 3/Halo 7, etc.

I get the feeling that watching the Xbox showcase in June will be like watching a multiplatform showcase. So like they reveal the Shattered Space expansion for Starfield and then after the release date appears it shows that Starfield is coming to PS5 as a complete edition, they reveal that a Marcus Fenix collection is coming to PS5 same day as Xbox/PC, etc.

It would be interesting to see how the Push Square list would be today, Playstation has changed a lot since 2018.

Makes sense given PS Studios doesn’t have any PS5 games with specific release dates after Stellar Blade. Showcase in May allows April releases like Stellar Blade and FFXVI’s 2nd DLC to get more attention.

It honestly feels as though despite Jim Ryan leaving, the Jim Ryan era has only just begun. Like games tend to take around 5 years to make nowadays and Jim Ryan became head of Playstation in February 2019 (a bit over 5 years ago).

Jim Ryan’s main legacy so far is the really bad stuff like the mess regarding Bungie, the recent layoffs and studio closures, the gigantic push towards live service in general (Factions 2 even got caught up in the crossfire), the end of smaller single player games, etc.

The one positive that Jim Ryan has done was fighting against the Activision acquisition. While he failed to stop it, his efforts were not wasted.

It all comes down to the software, right? I mean look at Playstation Meeting 2016, they announced the hardware (PS4 Slim and PS4 Pro) and presented a bunch of games to show off the Pro (Spider-Man, Horizon Zero Dawn, Days Gone and a load of 3rd party games).

@NEStalgia I feel that Gen 9 has been a situation of going deeper into Gen 8's strategy, realizing it was a mistake too late and using emergency strategies (usually very bad ones) to try and make up for those mistakes.

@NEStalgia Nintendo's still mostly safe from that kind of stuff (microtransactions contained to mobile) though I do worry about next gen. Tactics seem to mirror the generation's power so like Switch is 7th gen power and we saw a lot of PS3/360 era strategies.

The main things that happened with 8th gen were:

• Unsustainable AAA
• Live service (loot box model and then the battle pass model)
• PC ports of 1st party exclusives
• PS Now/Game Pass model
• Trying to push people towards digital and always online

Seeing this gives me the impression that MH Wilds will be your typical live service game where the gameplay focus is battle passes + microtransactions store.

Impressive showing from Rebirth especially from only 1 day of sales.

@NEStalgia I wonder how much new hardware is driven by 3rd party requests so like Square Enix wanting PS5 Pro for a stable performance mode for FFXVI/FFVII Rebirth/KH4, Capcom wanting PS5 Pro for stable Dragon's Dogma 2/MH Wilds/whatever the next RE game is, Rockstar wanting PS5 Pro for more visually impressive and/or stable GTA6, etc.

I think back to the Nintendo comment about how they said recently that they don't need more power for 1st party games (current Switch is powerful enough) so by that logic the only reason Switch 2 would exist is for better 3rd party support.

All the games listed have at least 1 out of a native PS5 version and a PC version. That said, they could've varied the list more by including Days Gone (got a PC version) and Sackboy (got PS5/PC versions).

Maybe they're teasing that HZD and GoW (2018) end up getting PS5 remasters later this year as they're the only ones that have a PC port but not a native PS5 version?

@NEStalgia I think Microsoft will keep only 2 Xbox consoles on the market at a time (they made sure to discontinue 360 before XB1 got a revision and XB1 X|S before Series X|S released) so like if a handheld happens, the Series S is discontinued.

I think the holiday 2024 Xbox hardware will either be the September 2023 leak or the September 2023 leak with Series S replaced with a handheld. They may tease next gen but I don't think there'll be a Pro.

The focus being on trying to get people to subscribe to Game Pass and porting Xbox exclusives to PS5.

All the pieces coming together gives the impression that GTA6 will be rather early on in 2025 (e.g. March/April), Sony would take advantage of PS5 Pro being the best performing version of that game and then flesh out the rest of the year with a big 1st party PS5 lineup (e.g. Wolverine, Ghost of Tsushima 2, next Naughty Dog game).