IOI

46% down compared to MW2 being the last big launch should be concerning for Microsoft if Game Pass subs have not grown substantially, which I don’t really see happening.

We’ll see in the upcoming months if MS sticks to Game Pass or they begin to phase it out.

@get2sammyb Sure, but not having those generational leaps while having the most expensive console hardware in history just don’t go well together, it’s all just diminishing returns now, you used to get a $300 console and get a generational leap with it, even PS4 Pro at $399 was noticeable as we went from 1080p to 2K/4K.

But now the improvements are negligible, my takeaway from Cerny’s presentation was that most games wouldn’t make you choose between performance and quality mode but no, most games still make you choose and you literally have to zoom in to notice any difference.

@dskatter Not necessarily, no one said Nixxes should be a remaster-only studio, they could be a support studio that evolves into making their own game just like Bend, and whatever time and money spent on this could’ve been spent on the next installment of the trilogy, instead of making prettier an already made and readily available game, and even if they were a remaster-only studio I’d argue those same resources could’ve been used to remaster a game that actually needs it, like half the library of PS3.

Sony could literally announce an Astro Bot remaster tomorrow and some could still try to justify it somehow…

Honestly, good. The only way to stop these unnecessary remasters that only take away time and money from new games is to not buy them.

At first I wondered why a Fortnite bundle, but it’s the first time since 2015 that there isn’t a PlayStation bundle with Call of Duty, I guess that’s why.

Lmao “seriously improve” with not a single example of it…

This highlights perfectly how disappointing this generation has been…

@Jay767 It’s already confirmed that the game costed at least 200 million, if you add the acquisition and marketing (going all the way to pay for a TV episode based on the IP) the 400 million mark is likely to be true.

Hulst has to go, we were too focused on Jim Ryan but maybe it was Hermen pushing for the live services all along, I’m baffled how no one at Firewalk or SIE could see Concord’s issues during more than 2 years of development directly under Sony.

Quick question, if I got the platinum back on PS4 I’ll get it in the remaster by loading my save file?

I’m really baffled at how Hermen Hulst is now CEO as he pushed for this game so much, convinced Sony to buy the studio and for years he never noticed how it could go wrong?

Even in his statement he says some aspects of Concord were ‘exceptional’ but honestly absolutely nothing about it was “exceptional”, some well done but absolutely nothing stuck out, there’s MUCH to learn from this flop…

The writing was on the wall but daaaamn, that’s honestly very sad for the studio that spent 8 years working on this, and it might be the biggest flop in Sony’s history.

@Medic_alert I already saw it at $30 on disc, it’s gonna be $10 in a month lmao

Only Ubisoft breaks their games 2 months after launch instead of patching them…

I have a feeling this is entirely intentional and not ever coming back, they’ve been trying to nerf the cashback since the program was introduced lmao

@Khwarezm89 I feel like I know exactly what I’m going to play which would be more AC Valhalla with some tweaks and a different skin, that’s exactly what AC Mirage was, and Valhalla from Odyssey, and Odyssey from Origins…

Ubisoft is done for, the one legitimately great game they come out within a decade and not even a year later they disband the team. Just pathetic.

This f***ing live service push will end up wasting the entire generation, so much time and money poured down the drain…

@get2sammyb I think his point was that there’s no point in paying to keep a third-party game off Xbox and instead that same money should be invested in their first-party output or not trying to milk out customers to offset their low profit margins because of losses from a failed live-service push.

I do agree that Sony most of the time has good eye and the fact they’re willing to pay for exclusivity means that the game is promising, but it won’t be better or worse if being kept as a Sony exclusive.

That’s sad, I kinda hoped they’d homage his character but given how Forbidden West ends it’s very difficult to set Sylens aside.

I’m not disappointed in the lack of DLC but the main story and the game itself feels really cut short, and we know from the leak there’s indeed lots of cut content, when I replayed the game in NG+ focusing only on the story I noticed how badly it’s paced and some bits feel like they just stitched it together, that just didn’t happen on the first game nor even in Miles Morales which I’ve replayed both for 3+ times, I didn’t noticed it that much in my first playthrough since I was doing side content at the same time than advancing the main story.

It gives me the feeling that Insomniac are being rushed around, they got SM Remastered, Miles Morales, R&C Rift Apart, SM2, Venom and Wolverine all launched in around 6 years while many other studios haven’t been able to deliver ONE game for the PS5, but it’s clear they needed more time for SM2 and I hope they give them enough time for Venom and Wolverine, as they plan to release them a year between each other.

@DennisReynolds Yeah but in the same leak those expansions were not in the roadmap so maybe they were already cancelled for the Venom game, who knows but I also can’t shake the feeling that SM2 ended up being disappointing, I recently replayed it in NG+ and tbh I struggled to finish it, without the hype I realized many flaws with the game but specially the pacing is much worse than the first one which I’ve played like 4-5 times.

@get2sammyb I’m convinced that Venom started as an expansion for SM2 and since Miles Morales sold so well they’re instead selling Venom as a standalone experience, for more money of course.

Why sell a $20-30 DLC when you can sell a $50-60 “standalone expansion”? It already worked with Miles Morales (which was in every way a DLC for the first game), and we already know a Venom expansion is being sold as a full game next year (Insomniac’s leak).

It seemed wrong since they wanted to start from the Norse saga when the Greek one is arguably more important for Kratos character, without telling the full tale his character wouldn’t have made sense, less so his relationship with Atreus which is what the 2018 game is all about.

@themightyant It actually is a problem since budgets have gone upwards 300+ million and profit margins for Sony are very low even if they manage to sell tenths of millions, imo we need more Astro Bot type of games as it’s a fun game that doesn’t really need to sell millions of copies to have some return on investment.

Absolutely if we look at big publishers and platform holders, just taking a look at Sony specifically it’s very noticeable how currently they focus on big blockbusters of mostly existing franchises, just look how many sequels, remakes and remasters we’ve seen this generation opposed to the PS3 generation when Sony was firing on all cylinders into every game genre with new and existing IP and that’s just one example, Ubisoft, EA, Activision and basically every big publisher have gone way worse.

@boogieman117 It’s confirmed it’ll only have third-party titles.

Btw, this fanboy talk about killing Xbox has become exhausting, just enjoy the good games they show.

@LowDefAl Competition doesn’t necessarily mean having to also come up with a Pro model and price it cheaper, if MS was more competent this generation and managed to shorten the gap between the Xbox Series and PS5 I would bet that the PS5 Pro wouldn’t have crossed that $699 line, but since Sony is outselling them 3:1 or even 5:1 in some regions they can absolutely price it however they want.

Lets say that in a somehow scenario in 2024 both consoles are neck-to-neck as in the PS360 generation, do you really think any of these companies would introduce a $699 console with no disc drive? What would the reaction to this be back on 2009 if Sony came up with a PS3 Pro?

And again, my criticism isn’t against Sony, but towards the fanboys that keep wishing Xbox is dead without even realizing how MS’ incompetence is already costing us (literally more money), and yet even the author of this post seems to fuel this wish with a rumor that at least right now has been debunked.

With all due respect, wtf is this article?

Yes, the rumor came up several weeks ago but Microsoft themselves have said it isn’t true and they’re not leaving any region at least right now, yet you chose to post this when it was already debunked.

These posts only fuel console wars between the fanboys, just read at the comments, and may I remind you that MS getting out of the console market in whatever way just isn’t good for any PS users, a $699 console with no disc drive that has no direct competition should be indicative enough that we NEED more competition in the console space, and yet there’s people wishing that Xbox cease to exist, if y’all get your wish we’ll get even more expensive consoles, games, services, and more, but for some it doesn’t matter as long as Sony is on top…

If it was cheaper than the remake then it’s 100% getting delisted.

They're paving the way for egregious pricing next generation, I've no proof but no doubt either, PS6 will be $699/€799 with no disc drive AT THE VERY LEAST.

If Microsoft keeps f**ing up and by next generation they become irrelevant you can add another $200 to this price.

I’m burned out of both the Horizon franchise and multiplayer games so it’s a default skip for me.

@ButterySmooth30FPS Current Sony doesn’t seem to be willing to sell anything at a loss (for investing billions into the failed live-service strategy), if they couldn’t price down this thing when they only upgraded the GPU just imagine next generation as they upgrade all the internals, plus now Xbox seems to be not competing anymore.

This even feels like low key preparing us for the next-generation pricing tbh…

@JohntheRaptor Lmao it is slightly better, even with FFVII Rebirth which is the most dramatic difference we’ve seen so far it’s literally just a crisper image, which sure I’ll appreciate at first but actually playing it won’t make the experience substantially better.

People are not being “reductive”, it’s just the way it is, visual difference was way more noticeable with PS4 Pro as we went from 1080p to 1440p or 4K, with the PS5 Pro we’re still getting 1440p resolutions or much lower leveraging on PSSR and so far every comparison shows just slightly better visuals not worth the $300 difference in MY opinion, specially when the PS4 Pro was only $100 more than the standard PS4, I’m just stating my own thoughts, if you have the privilege to not care about spending nearly $800 (with disc drive) and not gaining that much from the console itself Sony will be happy to sell it to you.

Is there really some people thinking this will not set a precedent for next generation?
It absolutely will even if it ain’t successful, there’s no way a PS6 comes out costing less than a PS5 Pro and given that they didn’t even bother to include the disc drive in the 30th anniversary bundle it’s now a given that PS6 won’t have a disc drive either.

In my country the normal Pro ended up costing more than the equivalent to $1000 USD, there’s just no f**king way I spend that much on a console that still requires a subscription to play online, that doesn’t sell digital games outside of their own store, that keeps raising prices without justification, I’d rather skip it and save up for a PC next generation.

I could have gotten it but I kept asking myself why would I gain with this? Playing the same games I’ve played several times with slightly cleaner visuals?

And tbf the improvements described so far seem really meh as all they’re doing is lowering the native resolution to achieve higher framerates and hope PSSR makes up for the visual difference.

There’s not a single justification to get it right now, in just some months it’ll be on sale and there will be more games that take advantage of it (hopefully).

There’s a noticeable difference but I have zero interest in replaying the Horizon series in a long time, Forbidden West kinda burned me out.

Ghost of Yotei saved it from being very poor, ended up being okay just for that reveal imo.

I expect ZERO new games from PS Studios, probably the only first-party announcement is gonna be yet another unnecessary remaster…

Handheld for $999, console for $1499 lmao

Hence the $700/€800 console tbh…

The fact they don’t even want to disclose the price is TERRIFYING!

What bothers me the most is that we’re only getting completely unnecessary remasters and remakes, like how exciting would it be if they bring back God of War (Greek Saga), Sly Cooper, Resistance, Twisted Metal, Killzone, Infamous or any franchise/game currently stuck in the PS3!? But no, I think Astro Bot is due to a remaster already guys…

@get2sammyb Come on, you really think current Sony would give away a remaster for free? ZERO CHANCES it happens, at most we’ll get a $10 upgrade but like this is the most unnecessary remaster ever in history…

And I do think that Sony is trying to milk this franchise a bit too much, already a couple of games with DLCs and complete editions, this remaster, Lego Horizons, the sequel to Forbidden West and the leaked multiplayer game.

Second? 😪

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a flop by any means and the game itself is just perfect, but I really did hope this to become a runaway success for Sony so that we might get more of these smaller scale but such fun games, it’s looking we’re just not in that scenario…

Best platformer we’ve EVER got from PlayStation, easily a 10/10.

@LogicStrikesAgain For us vivid PS users which this game is basically tailored for of course not, today I’m getting the platinum and it’s my second favorite game of the year (after FFVII Rebirth).

But it’s clear we’re not representative of the entire market, taking a look at gaming outlets or media surrounding gaming almost no one is talking about Astro Bot anymore, Sony really made a huge mistake unveiling the PS5 Pro with such a big controversy due to pricing, it basically stole all thunder Astro was getting.

It’s not looking good for Astro Bot, you can already see how the hype is nearly gone after just a week (PS5 Pro certainly didn’t help), and the sales in both Japan and UK have been disappointing…

This is what I feared to be honest, PS audience have never been too excited about platformers, I really thought that Astro’s demo on PS5 would sell the full game to millions of people and so far it just didn’t happen.