Haruki_NLI

@Deoxyr1bose It's hard to say if it'll change in the interim. Obviously what's already in the pipeline will still come, and with an interim leader being the CFO, the guy counting the money Jim made them by doing his controversial moves....don't get hopes up too high.

In the future? Who knows.

Epic Games and GODOT just had a great week of free marketing.

But yeah, the statement doesn't really sound like they'll change the policy, rather they seem to think people don't know how it works.

Jokes on you, I never have to see it, I haven't turned my PS5 on in over a year.

I should probably go do that actually.

It's amazing to me how Spyro started off as equal to Crash in status, right through the PS2 generation and even into their reboots where they both faded from obscurity (Crash went first there somehow with only 2 games to Spyro's three).

And then the remakes started with Crash, the safer bet, then Spyro, both back on equal treatment as it used to be and then....Spyro became a Crash Bandicoot character.

And here we are. He's gonna be added to Crash Team Rumble at some point, because of course he is, and that'll be about it.

@Luigia Bluetooth on the Switch was used for controllers first and foremost, with it opening to audio later.

This device has no need of Bluetooth, even though I wouldn't be stunned to see a Bluetooth chip in there anyway given factory level teardowns have revealed it's basically an Android tablet.

So that'll be fun.

@get2sammyb I think buying up every developer, IP and publisher within arms reach and having over 400 games in active development with thousands of staff was already.....very weird, especially when we see just how few of those games actually come out over the past few years, and how.....eh.....they all are.

The money had to keep flowing, which meant constant investment into Embracer, and evidently, cold feet happened and it became unsustainable.

It almost reeks of a Ponzi scheme.

@KaijuKaiser You also get the vouchers to be fair, which, for a new game at launch over on my side of the pond, is a pair of vouchers for £84 (Not including gold points for a discount).

If I was to go buy Smash and Tears of the Kingdom with those two vouchers, that's £120 worth of games for £84. I'd say that's a pretty good discount on any Nintendo published digital title.

But, that's not the point. And I do believe @Smiffy01 also missed the point at large, for 8 people to get the highest tier of NSO...is the same price as the base tier of PS+ for one person. Think about that. 8 people get online access for the same price as one on another system. Sure there are other perks around it, but when you really break down what this is, a fee to play online, that's not a good look.

You also seem to have missed the rest of the post, which is about Sony going full proprietary again and price gouging, simply because they can. It's gonna keep happening, it always does with every company, it's now a matter of how far are they going to go.

Now they arent even using inflation as a justification, there has been no justification, and the quality of the service thus far, which they are already getting more money for than they used to by the way, which they have openly stated, hasn't improved.

So what is this price hike doing? Nothing. And we all know it's simply for profit.

I don't think there will be any improvements to the service. Sony has a history of this kind of stuff and we all know it.

Take the PlayStation Link accessories for instance, $150 or $200 for a headset or earbuds, but these are the only wireless options for your PS Portal because they omitted Bluetooth in favour of a new proprietary tech and gave some vague reason as to why. It reeks of the Vita needing memory cards because they expect certain speeds, but turns out SD Cards work just fine thanks.

I'm willing to bet if we open the PS Portal, there's a Bluetooth chip in there.

I also expect, for the new PS5 revision, that the existing, expensive, Pulse headset the system launched with wont work, because it'll use PS Link accessories instead. So that'd be two seperate headsets in not even 4 years, all because.....reasons?

It's the same with PS+, its a price increase....because they can. Sure, Xbox just raised the price of Game Pass and PS+ works out cheaper yearly, but the value proposition you can argue isn't there for that highest tier compared to the highest tier of Gamepass.

But also, $80 a year to play online? What in the hell is this? It says something that people online are starting to look at the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack Family Plan (For 8 people) and realise that's now the same price as as the base PS+.

When your traditional expensive and overpriced competitor is offering a bundle for 8 people at a discount to their highest tier for online and its the same price as you basic offering, there's something wrong.

If you're doing things with accessories that even Apple wouldnt do, there's something wrong.

Live services, increasing prices on consoles, games, services, locking you into new accessories by forced compatibility, it's all so unnecessary and yet here we are.

@ED_209 See, I can get that idea, but my thought is Sony wants to maintain the PS Plus sub levels that CoD brings in, because let's be honest that's basically it for them in terms of paid multiplayer games.

So they're honestly more likely to have their live service games be paid retail releases that you then need to subscribe to PS+ for, with in game purchases. Just like Call of Duty.

@NinjaNicky Yeah, we know. But much like with the Switch and people moaning you couldn't pair Bluetooth headphones with it, here we are again.

@lightningbolt79 and you can only use wireless headphones with it if you buy the new expensive ones that use a proprietary tech for connecting because Sony does that again, and you can't use Bluetooth because it's not supported.

So you can't even use your expensive PS5 headset from when the PS5 launched. It's insane

I find it interesting that some of the best and most played "live service" games are the ones that didn't really start out with that goal.

Fortnite, Mario Kart 8, Splatoon, Call of Duty managed to adapt into it.

A lot of the failures seem to come from diving head first into trying to force it when almost all the big hits got there slowly, or by complete accident.

Wow. Ubisoft not only got a game out, but it's coming earlier? Hell must have frozen.

Can't wait to see the potential state this launches in.

Cook it with bacon, a tomato and chilli sauce, freshly chopped veg like a bit of cucumber and onion.

And lots and lots of salt. No reason.

What's Nigel Mansell with a mullet doing in the back?

@Splat Unfortunately some storefronts, platforms or publishers don't provide digital sales data, and more often than not, that digital data is paywalled even to outlets.

So until both of those things changes, sales charts are by and large meaningless as an objective look at sales. Though even now through extrapolation and the idea of "roughly half of sales are digital" you can still get some rough estimate.

@Khayl I don't blame ya. It's two games called Sonic the Hedgehog released in 1991 and some of the zones are the same. 🤣

But it does prove that SEGA can never rerelease a game without issues.

I'm gonna say, that certainly is in fact the Game Gear version of Sonic 1. Same zoom in and sound as it was back when it released.

Not exactly sure why the article brings up the Mega Drive version because they aren't the same game.

You know it's bad when even Nintendo is going and they have nothing announced past July yet.

So Xbox is just....dire, Switch is doing shockingly well only 8% down this far and it's on its 7th year, and PS5 is selling as it should have done since launch.

All three are surprising for different reasons.

The battery on this is gonna be "Moderately lower" than the Dualsense Edge then.

@Amnesiac If it's anything's like Bloombergs false reports on Nintendo to the point they had to create an investors relations Twitter account to refute the stuff hard....minimal impact on consumers at best.

@get2sammyb True. But this is Game Freak. They did Legends, guided BDSP, did Little Town Hero and Sword and Shield DLC all simultaneously alongside Scarlet and Violet.

Right now we know of Project Bloom, SV DLC, probably the next two Pokemon games in the world already.

One of these has got to give, and Pokemon can definitely get worse. Way worse.

It's a shame Game Freak just can't get the manpower to do all the things it wants to do because with that they'd consistently have good games. Maybe with that nice new office space Nintendo just gave them...

Either this is a small team working on it, or the Pokemon games are about to get even worse 🤣

They seem unwilling to realise that yeah, these are all different genres, but you're going to need to either start pulling people away from their current handful of choice, or do the impossible and make an additional one that people also somehow find time to play.

And when you make that many in such a short time? Most of them won't stick.

But if even one sticks, it's good money.

Have they acquired Bubsy, or specifically Bubsy 3D?

So it's not even going to be all on the disc 🤣Might be a few gigs and then download the rest

Game of the Year is gonna be wild this year. Top rated games this far are a remaster of Metroid, a remake of Dead Space and a remake of Resident Evil 4.

@Flaming_Kaiser Or how Xbox worked with the 360.

They've all done it, but you can't claim any of them had truly organic success. It's a mix of dumb luck, coercion and borderline bribery.

@4kgk2 Sony earned the right to dominate through "natural" means?

Don't look up how they got all those games to go to the PS1. And how they kept it that way.

@Khayl To be fair, Metroid Prime Remastered isn't on their website either, but they sure as heck are in the credits for running support on the game. Odd.

Gonna say they did the first release too, and considering the games aren't being emulated, rather natively running new versions, it makes sense.

It's just they gave those new (or existing remakes for three of the games) to SEGA to slap into the Hedgehog Engine and THEN the problems began.

This guy has said a lot of different things about the console manufacturers lately, to the point at least two of them had to come out and outright (In one case very very bluntly) refute the claims to investor relations, because what he says is gonna cause issues when it comes out he was wrong and the market takes it as gospel.

So yeah, lets not put any weight in this.

It never made sense since the Hermit Koco takes seeds and upgrades both Offense and Defense in bulk in one go. So having Elder Koco require you to pick and choose each level for both Rings and Speed one by one was bizarre, including the lengthy animation and delay on the menu.

But then upon finding out that you can use Hermit Koco to transfer levels from Rings to Speed or vice versa, which almost logically you think since its not a choice and just transferring from one to the other, you can choose how many levels to swap.

Nope. One at a time.

So thank god they added this in.

It's a shame the ports weren't emulated.

@Gremio108 It's 12pm somewhere bud.

May have something to do with needing either an SSD, or 32GB of RAM if installing into a hard drive, just so the game can load everything it needs to like on PS5.

As more PS5 only games the jump, expect to see that requirement a lot.

Handheld gaming console.

It's a console. A console is a device designed for the interface of a user to data in some interactive fashion.

Therefore a device that requires a user to interact is by the broadest definition a console.

Granted, this is in the same way you fridge is a computer.

All medicines are drugs but not all drugs are medicines.

And here we go. Epic has Fortnite, Rocket League and Fall Guys. They tried a 4th game, and realised that yeah, people don't have the time or funds to devote to that many at once. So something has to give. Even when the juggernaut does it.

Heck look at all the others that have come and gone from smaller publishers.

And here we have Sony wanting 12 of them in a matter of years. We all know what's gonna happen.

Either only one or two land and the rest are a sunk cost, or none of them land because yet again, people already have their live services of choice and won't budge.

Dropping the boost after Frontiers wouldn't be weird, given it no longer damages enemies as of Frontiers, and is only used for speed and getting from A to B faster. Even then, the boost doesn't actually make you any faster in 2D.

So it's gone from what it was to only actually doing anything in 3D and not damaging enemies anymore.

But removing it would require making traversal of large open spaces speedier. Sure we have the Drop Dash now, so maybe just bring back the Spin Dash?

Only thing the boost really adds now is the air boost anyway.

@NintenGuy Persona 5 PS5 also dropped of the charts like a hit rock.

Maybe Japan is fed up of Persona 5 after it's third rerelease.

@dasd2 Not gonna happen. Historically Sonic games have sold best on Nintendo systems even when multiplatform. Heck, Colours surpassed the HD version of Unleashed if I remember correctly. The only exceptions were the Wii U ones, obviously.

So as long as SEGA wants to target that market, and for Sonic there will always be a need for that large market, then it won't be next gen only. They tried that once.

@NintenGuy No, I couldn't give a toss about the Game Awards. It's always gone on for too long and felt too....artificial, I suppose is the word.

I also happened to be asleep so just saw who won what and called it a day while reading any interesting news.

No hard feelings though, it's an older meme sir, but it checks out.

@NintenGuy Two points.

1) Sonic Frontiers was remarkably mediocre. I dont think it was deserving of an award, regardless of how good it was relative to the series as a whole.

2) The Horizon joke was a popular meme in 2017, which I replied to what I assumed was a similar style joke from yourself. Apologies.

@NintenGuy Sonic Frontiers got no awards.

Horizon also got no awards this time as well as in 2017, as per the internet meme "Horizon Zero Awards", circa December 2017 or thereabouts.

Explanation fulfilled. Sorry if the joke was too obtuse.

@NintenGuy Same goes for Horizon then

@MisterXpoSay But Sony would get the same money from CoD then as they do now. They get their split of third party sales, the rest goes to the publisher. It's in this case the publisher would be Microsoft, not Activision. Sony would get the same 30%.

They're just arguing against something Microsoft has repeatedly said they won't do, and would be stupid to do: once they own CoD, they go from 30% of the revenue on Xbox, to 100% of the revenue on Xbox, plus 70% on Playstation, Steam and Nintendo.

In what world Sony really thinks ANY business would be that stupid is beyond me and this legally binding contract now proves it.

What this really is is Sony crying about losing the marketing rights that propelled PS+. They get the same revenue from the games and IAPs.

@Cyrus29 Maybe, maybe not. Nintendo budgets are lower, the hardware sells at a profit, and the games sell so well that the massive additional profits fund other games, whereas for Sony and Microsoft it would seem that while games turn out profitable, the lower (relatively) sales means less profit overall given those games also have far higher budgets, which means whatever they make back goes largely into the next entry, not other games as well, thus higher prices to offset that.

It's the one place where you can argue Nintendo stepping away from the power race has helped. Games for them are $60, cheaper to make, much more profit with massive sales funds everything else. I recall Miyamoto said Breath of the Wild needed to shift 2 million copies to make a profit. And you can bet all that Mario Kart money isn't going into Mario Kart 9, but games to expand the library that won't do as well like Bayonetta.

There's some black comedy in Sony throwing a fit about Xbox potentially taking games away from them that they've had for years when that's how Sony themselves started.

@LifeGirl It's not a lot of money in November 2022.

It was even less money in September 2022.

But it'll be more money than now in January 2023.

Sure, most adults pay the difference every few days on other things. Other things they need. And that's going to become tighter and tighter.

That £16? That's a week of travel too and from work. And as management on just above minimum wage? That £16 I could spend on PS+ Premium for things I'm not going to use, or don't work great like the streaming, or having little to no value added to it each month? That's gonna have to go into something that gives value.

Subjective yes, but people place needs before wants and they then divide what little wants they can have by value offered.

And to many Premium is low down that list.