KidRisky

Her Story was a great game, and Immortality is one I hope to play soon.Barlow makes unique and interesting games so I’ll be on the lookout for the next one.

A game from a major publisher should be better than “playable,” just as a meal from a Michelin star restaurant should be better than “edible.”

Unless there was another announcement you haven’t quoted, I don’t see where Bethesda has promised to patch the game. They are “looking into it.”

If the point of the game is to withstand punishment and keep trying, then it makes sense to deny a platinum for playing on lower difficulties. To turn off all trophies seems excessive, unless the only trophies are for reaching milestones.

I don’t play games like this one. When I keep getting punished for playing a game, I stop playing it!

@GirlVersusGame Recently my Sony.Bravia OLED started displaying a bright white static button on top of my screensaver, asking me to try the “Glance” screensaver, which is just an ad billboard.

There was no way to dismiss the prompt. Again, it’s a bright white unmoving button on top of my screensaver on an OLED TV. It took about a week to learn how to disable it, and now I’ve had to turn off receiving any updates to my TV for fear of what they’ll try next.

I no longer want to buy anything that connects to the internet unless I have complete control over it (e.g. PC). Convenience and ease of use has become a trap for the customer.

@Th3solution Tried Amazon Prime streaming for the first time in years to see Project Hail Mary, and it was ad-free, but there are a lot of ads on everything else. Not even regularly spaced; you get 3 two-minute ads in a twenty-minute stretch, and then none for a half hour. Watched an episode of a TV show, got fed up, and won’t be back until there’s something else I really want to watch.

@get2sammyb I like the spam comments. Granted, I don’t interact with official PlayStation channels anymore so I don’t see a lot of them. People should speak their minds, and if that bothers the PlayStation marketing department that’s not a problem.

I say, if you can’t beat ‘em, annoy ‘em.

Are there any other PS5 games that are available worldwide but only in Japanese? I hope the store listing makes this clear, because it’s not like you’ll be able to return it.

So the tariffs were a big windfall for Sony? Pass them along to customers, then pocket the refund. Nice work, if you can get it.

Although many are framing this as a business decision made to maximize profits versus forgoing extra profit to placate sentimentalists, it’s worthwhile to point out that making your platform attractive to as wide a range of potential customers as possible is also a way to increase revenue, but over the long term.

The PS6 is not going to sell well at the projected price. If in the years to come the AI bubble pops or chip manufacturers are able to increase production, prices will (may?) fall, but they’d also fall for PC components and the Steambox. If the only benefit you offer over a PC platform is access to first-party games, is that going to be enough to increase market share? If not, then you’ll have to keep extracting value from your dwindling customer base, driving more people off the platform.

You can say that Sony is making a rational business decision, but by removing the one advantage that PlayStation has over PC, Sony seems to be trading long-term viability for short-term profits.

I did enjoy the puzzles in The Witness, though I didn’t have the patience to engage with the environmental puzzles. I also tend to like more of a narrative surrounding the puzzle elements. I’ll keep an eye out for reviews when it releases.

When Xbox started gobbling up studios, the only games I was upset to lose were the Senua sequel and Elder Scrolls VI. The Senua game has been out on PS5 for some time and I haven’t been tempted, hearing the reviews; and Bethesda inspires no confidence that ES VI will be a worthy entry in the series,

They can do what they want, for all I care.

Skyrim is one of my favorite games, and Fallout 4 bored me. I couldn’t tell you why, because I generally like science fiction. So, I don’t plan on trying out Starfield since it looks like Fallout without the humor.

The comments here in support of Starfield seem to be in the same vein as most defenses of the game: “I don’t understand the negativity, it’s fine.” I think Bethesda has shown they’ve been capable of great things, and calling a game of theirs ‘fine’ is kind of proving the detractors’ point.

If one year a professional team with a history of success barely ekes out a winning season, I wouldn’t say. “What are you complaining about? They won more than they lost.” Disappointment is relative to expectations.

@ButteredCrumpet For what it’s worth, I stopped buying digital games when it came out that Sony was engaging in targeted pricing. I deleted my wishlist, unfollowed every game, unsubscribed from their YouTube channel, and haven’t visited the PlayStation store since. My plan was to whittle my backlog down then buy physical copies, and now that they’ve done this it feels like the last straw.

The attitude of the announcement is what really got under my skin: “To better serve this community we’ll be focusing our efforts on the format you’ve chosen…blah, blah, blah.” They think we’re all idiots—or addicts.

Good talking to you.

@ButteredCrumpet I didn’t mean to come off as angry at you, I’m simply confused by what you are saying.

If you and I are voting for the same politician in an election, but for different reasons, would that bother you as much as this situation seems to? If I vote for a candidate because I believe his policies will lower inflation, and you vote for him because you believe his policies will reduce the deficit, should we hash that out before trying to convince the undecideds?

I don’t think the motives of the petition drafter matter at all, and I don’t think anyone could believe Sony’s decision wouldn’t be controversial absent the petition.

Since motives seem important, I’ll volunteer that I own a grand total of 10 physical games against several hundred digital titles. I’ve found that when you have a backlog and wait a couple of years to buy a game, it’s much cheaper to buy digital so that’s what I’ve done. I care about price first, and know that, absent competition from physical game resellers, games will not get discounted as frequently or as deeply.

So, given my motives, would you prefer that I not speak up about Sony’s decision and embrace the digital future? Honestly, if it’s digital everywhere I’ll just go to PC. I don’t think I’ll be missing much given Sony’s recent first-party output, and at least there are multiple storefronts, which benefit customers even if they only buy from one.

@ButteredCrumpet So without the petition this would all have blown over in a few days? No one can prove a counterfactual, but it seems reasonable to think that people heard about the petition through social media, rather than running to social media after stumbling across the petition.

I have to ask if you have some kind of animosity towards that lady in Canada, who is milking money out of people wanting to play retro games. Is that your attitude towards every used game seller, or just her?

@ButteredCrumpet I think some people might have been upset about Sony’s announcement even if one store owner in Canada hadn’t said anything.

“ …PlayStation has cowardly disabled comments…”

I’m just curious, but is using cowardly as an adverb common in British English? I haven’t seen that before and I enjoy learning about these differences.

I haven’t been buying digital PS games since I was offered half the discount on Stellar Blade that other customers were, so I don’t know how to respond to this poll.

I share the sentiment of the people blasting Sony, but I’m not going to take it out on every game that releases on PlayStation. Especially indie games that invested serious money to release their games on the platform and can’t risk even more to print discs.

I also don’t like that places like the GameCross YouTube channel, which highlights digital and physical deals on PS games, are getting branded as some kind of traitor when they talk about good deals on digital games. Millions of digital consoles are out there, so those customers are supposed to… what? Never play another new game?

@Supern0va Few people seem to understand that the appeal of PC (at least for me, a mostly digital buyer) comes from the competition on digital storefronts. Without physical retailers and resellers, Sony can charge absolutely any price they think will maximize its revenue. I’m not seeing why they’re not seeing this.

I will probably not move to PC, because sitting at a desk is not how I want to play games. I might dust off my old Nintendo consoles and get into retro gaming, or stick with the PS5 until it dies.

In the poll I picked “Sony ending physical games,” but since I buy the majority of my games digitally it’s not because I can’t get a disc, it’s because then Sony will jack up their prices to even more absurd levels.

I don’t think this is new. Some time in March I turned off auto-renewal when I realized everyone was getting better deals on the PS store than I was. They offered 50% off.

I tried this when I had PS Plus Extra and didn’t understand the combat at all. I got to the first boss, fought it for ten minutes without doing any damage, tried a few different things, then quit and deleted. If I’d been enjoying the game I would have looked up what I was missing.

@BearsEatBeets I don’t have a lot of physical games so it’s a small sample size, but my PS5 discs all show my play time, but my PS4 discs don’t. My PS4 games are Skyrim SE, The Witcher 3, The Walking Dead Definitive Series, and Ken Follet’s The Pillars of Eternity.

Are game times tied to the account or the console? It’s possible I never played the PS4 version of Skyrim or The Witcher on my PS5, and I know I didn’t play Pillars since I’ve had this console. I know I played Walking Dead, though.

It’s showing a time for the PS5 versions of Skyrim and Witcher, which would have needed me to have the disc in the drive, but I don’t know if that counts as a digital or physical version.

Re: the headline

In a sane world, PlayStation would never have had fans, just customers.

“For the foreseeable future?”

But Sony is so short-sighted!

I only got the GTA6 screen the first time. I don’t recall if I did anything to dismiss it (or if that was even possible). Maybe because I didn’t pre-order/wishlist/follow it? I also have the PS news widget disabled.

I’m becoming more and more used to the idea that my base PS5 will be my last gaming hardware purchase. When I reach the point that I have more books in my backlog than games, I’ll just switch pastimes.

I haven’t really clicked with the action-based Final Fantasy games (I’ve tried FF15 and Remake) but I enjoyed FF7, so I’ll keep an eye out for reviews when this releases.

Yesterday I was looking at discounted games on the PS Deals app, and all “The Jumping…” games were listed as currently discounted. Anyone know why that might be? Are they just hidden on the store but not removed, and automatically discounted every time there’s a sale?

I never played Stellar Blade so forgive me if I’m wrong, but aren’t Eve and presumably this new character fighting machines? Are there romantic subplots? What does it matter how old they appear?

Fumito Ueda is a master of tone, but I’’m not sure I want a shooter from him. I’m glad to know it’s coming so I can watch for reviews.

Sony should issue refunds to people who bought the upgrade without owning the game. I wouldn’t expect them to give away the base game though.

@LowDefAl I had already played Fallout 4 on Extra when it was offered as part of the PS5 instant game library. When I downgraded to Essential, I lost access to it. Same thing happened with Control, which I actually miss playing.

@SuplexingTrains Best comment I’ve seen in a long time. But then I don’t usually read comments, in much the same way I don’t usually stroll through minefields.

@AdamNovice Overly quippy dialogue and reluctance to let a serious moment land without undercutting it with humor.

@somnambulance I don’t think the Forspoken comparison will be a net benefit.

Makes me glad that I almost always play games weeks to months after I buy them

I wonder if PS Plus titles claimed could be used as a transaction for this purpose?

I answered “not sure” because I’ve decided it’s not worth it for me, but that wasn’t the question. I don’t know if it’s worth it in an objective sense and nobody else does either. When we’re talking about monetary value, things are worth exactly what people will pay for them. Whether you pay happily or resentfully, Sony only hears you say, “it’s worth it.”

BTW, the cloud save service is deceptive. I use less than 10% of the advertised 100 Gb of space but have bumped up against the unadvertised cap on the number of saves allowed. Not being able to back up PS5 save data to an external hard drive is a deliberate and shady decision to hold your save data hostage to a steep subscription.

When talking about Darksiders, the first word that springs to my mind isn’t “dated.” It’s not a new game, but the PS4 version (I never played it on PS3) seems more modern than say, Uncharted or Shadow of the Colossus.

I might have tried the PS5 version if it didn’t cost me more, but the PS4 edition is just fine as it is so I’m good.

@Stevemalkpus I’ve looked at that and I think it’s a selection of cases in VR, not the whole game.

@dschons Oh! I guess I was expecting something more subtle.

I’ve tried to play this a couple of times but always end up losing interest. It reminds me of a cross between the first two Mafia games and the Sherlock Holmes games like Devil’s Daughter, so I should really like it though.

I suppose it’s because I could never get the hang of the interviews, which is really the heart of the game. I’d think a prompt would cause me to ask a follow-up question but when I’d try it, I’d be wildly aggressive and accusatory.

Surprising that there’d be trophy bugs on a first party game.

I liked the first two games, but I’ll hold offf on this one until the DLC comes out and the complete edition is available. I get annoyed when I buy a game at launch and DLC is quickly made available for an extra 30% of the base game’s price. Then a few months later the “ultimate” edition is the same price I paid for the base game.

Since I can’t remember a time when I regretted waiting to buy a game, I’ll just wait.

@BearsEatBeets Okay that makes sense. And it’s testable, right? If PS5 sales are around FY2025 levels, and profits are even, then the price hike is due to the external factors. If the sales drop but profits don’t then they raised prices beyond what they needed to.

I guess if the units sold increases, you could subtract the percent increase in units sold from the increase in profits and see what the “let’s milk our customers” surcharge would be?

@Flippygruffle That confused me too.

Why does there have to be either utter secrecy or a big trailer reveal? How about developers letting people know what they’re working on and saying, “it’s a ways off yet, and once we have something to share we’ll certainly do that.”

If sales are lower, but Sony “expect[s] hardware profitability to be essentially the same as fiscal year 2025,” then the price hike can’t be solely due to external factors like tariffs and memory costs, right?

I don’t have an MBA, but fewer consoles sold but the same total profit means more profit per console, doesn’t it?

I shelved the PS4 version after 40 hours on one play through, and I’m a long, long way from the platinum. I intend to go back to it one day, but I don’t have the stamina to begin a fresh game because of a few upgrades.