@Areus indeed it had lan play but not online. However you could use Xlink Kai to play it online as I did with some people I knew.

@Vertere

Well I’ve some bad news for you. Valve isn’t exactly the bastion of ethics and values. Gabe still has one of the biggest yachts in the harbour

Of course he does, Valve is a private company, Gabe owns 50.1% of the company. It also means they have no shareholders and aren't driven by the "line must go up" demands of them that Microsoft and to a lesser degree Sony are driven by.

However this means that the rest of the company is owned by employees. What was that about ethics and values?

@UltimateOtaku91

There's even articles on Microsoft thinking about selling off the Xbox business.

A reminder that Nadella was previously convinced by Spencer to keep the division open. This wouldn't be the first time they considered sacking it off.

Allowing a developer to announce a game on your own event and then telling them they are being closed a week later is just gross incompetence. Regardless of anything else going on or why Microsoft may wish to close the studio it’s just more evidence that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

@kcarnes9051

FF16 is basically FF in name only with iconic visual and naming elements from the series as window dressing

Many concepts in 16 are repurposed from, based on or influenced by 14. The whole people as summons concept originated in 14 (same writer wrote those bits) for example.

Yes, it still counts.

@Sweetz any story choice now is a trope in all media now because everything has been done to death already.

I don’t think I did any of the side quests (if I did they didn’t seem like SQ’s) and that was just a natural process and not from any advice.

It’s weird. I like the game yet I can see why people might be put off by it. But also as a 14 player some of my time was spent noting all the elements cribbed from 14, given it was written by the same writer who wrote ARR and Heavensward

Ralph Ineson does a good job as CID but it’s also impossible to not instantly be reminded of all his advertising voice overs given his extremely distinctive voice.

@Voltan new Hildy quests were released in March, with more coming in September.

@themightyant

Users like me are stacked for 3 years on Game Pass, they can't just end it at no notice easily.

Given they deleted the original "Game Pass" tier and replaced it with "Standard" which doesn't have day 1 games, they absolutely can. Services are always subject to change and people buying multi year subs isn't going to cause them legal issues if they have a tier at that price. if they delete the tier entirely, then yeah sure you'd be entitled to a pro rata refund.

If (and it's a big if) they were going to make any changes to Ultimate, they would reduce the number of games rather than remove them I would expect. CoD is now a precedent of sorts.

GN says that the game has a goofier, more vibrant flavour than other recent Final Fantasy game

Hildibrand Manderville enters the chat

@JAMes-BroWWWn it’s a decent enough result it’s just that Switch/2 dominates especially for family games.

@datamonkey PS3 had its own hardware failure issue, which was actually quite similar (Yellow Light of Death).

@datamonkey the difference is 3m. The Xbox figure is two years before official discontinuation, the ps3 figure is after the western discontinuation and two months before the Japanese discontinuation.

I don’t think you can claim definitive positions with this in mind. It’s quite a small gap anyway.

@Rich33

And clearly still are, if they are still offering Day 1 access to all Xbox studio games.

It should be noted that this only applies to Ultimate, in Sept 24 as the first indicator of issues developing they replaced the normal GP tier with Standard which never included day 1 (they appear later) , and Core never had them. It also doesn't include COD on any tier, from the next game.

@LogicStrikesAgain I was disappointed when they changed to digital copies of games for bundles for PS5 onwards. On the PS4 they were the only platform still supplying physical media with console bundles.

I'm not aware of a Sony game that isn't entirely on the disc, unless that game had free content added later.

@ElectricWizard

Better than no disk at all, like in the Collector's Editions that Sony put out - still waiting on an article highlighting that and the subsequent outrage.
I mean, that's Sony doing it to it's own customers and yet nothing...

Simple, 1 large physical SKU instead of 2. They only have to make up one package, can sell the same item to users of either media and they don't have to guess how many of each they can sell. It's a very different thing to slipping in a code in a game case.

The same reason Square stopped putting out FFXIV expansions on disc (for other reasons) but still sell collectors editions.

@ThroughTheIris56 My assumption is that the discs cost the same to produce regardless of data on them, they are pressed like any other optical media so it shouldn't make any difference.

The money saving would be to only pay for 1 disc and not 2.

@cburg For better or for worse, Microsoft is heavily involved in playstation on many levels and Microsoft are both deliberately and accidentally brining attention onto themselves for many reasons that involve playstation directly or indrectly.

Ignoring that would be foolish. I'll raise many comments about the site but Microsofts actions are making them more and more relevant to Playstation discourse over the last few years and that means articles. If you don't want PS to talk about them, just don't read the articles or post on them.

@Deadlyblack At this stage it seems less a plan and more appeasement to the vocal fanboys of things they want to hear.

Only time will tell if that’s a good strategy or not. It’s too late for them to turn things around regarding console sales this gen, but their publishing role is making them a lot of money and this is all steering to the approach next gen.

An ICO remake would have made more sense than Re-remaking SOTC

@4fold I think it’s more a case of signposting what has rewards behind it and what they are, and what doesn’t have any rewards.

I’m thinking of a XIV approach where quests with unlockable content or rewards have different quest markers and rewards are listed in the quest window

Excellent. The Wii version was good but suffered from the Wii's awful video output and less than ideal controls. The Vita version is good but I've been wanting a bigger version to play for years.

I'll definitely buy it, but probably not at launch.

@Sunraku To be fair, Amazon haven't exactly covered themselves in glory in games. No one is likely to take them seriously if they get too involved.

I'm with you, if they just put up the money and let IO get on with it it'll be fine. However If they start deciding they know better, it'll risk being a disaster.

@Oram77 and the Jenova cells Hojo shoved inside him (and Zack), which are actually a variant based on Sephiroth.

@SMJ Indie games (actual indie games made by a half a dozen or less people not the mess of a PSN sale category where 45 year old Nihon Falcom counts as indie) are not subject to certification. They are a Unity export away.

Certification is a block for indies so it was made easier to encourage developers but some people predictably took the piss.

@Bigumamiflavor no because Kemco are a proper established developer/publisher who have to undergo the certification process. These 1 or half dozen man indie games dont.

Kemco games might be low budget, but they are proper games. I think of them as embracing the ps1 age where you could put out functional but basic games, at least in Japan. The turn around speed is because they are publishing rather than developing most of them.

@AhmadSumadi I played it and even finished it. It’s not going to win any awards but It was a perfectly playable game that worked on day one, I’ve played worse from bigger developers. However I rented it at launch so that’s worth noting.

I doubt most of the people who ever complained about it even bothered to try it.

@1UP-HUSKY I would settle for being able to buy replacements. I can replace a lot of cases on my Japanese games as they often used normal cd cases, but not the ones that use the case used for pal games. And even if I wanted to use old pal cases, I can’t because of the holograms stuck very firmly to them.

@Deadhunter man I love DS9 and I think the first two series are very underrated. There are some weak spots there for sure but Duet for example is one of the finest episodes ever produced of any Trek. Right next to In The Pale Moonlight.

I think Nana Visitor really grew into the role from that point, but I want to visit the alternate universe where Forbes didn't turn down the offer to "have her own show" and Ro was kicking ass on DS9.

Just going to put this out there because people are squabbling. Star Trek has been "woke" since 1966. Get over it.

That said, Kurtzman is an idiot who can't decide wether to make bad shows or put people off the good show by retconning half of the series its a prequel to.

Anyway, a horror Star Trek game was not on my bingo card. Have there even been any good (offline) Trek games since Elite Force?

We've had bullshots and CG announcements for years, this one just happens to be an AI bullshot. I'll stay the pitchfork until a later date.

@Dodoo He may well have done with an example like that, just probably not with someone like Square.

@Dodoo I don't think Shu has dealt with major third parties since 2000 when he moved to internal development, then head of first party. He was then specifically offered the Indies relationship role because of his strong interest in that segment.

I'm not sure him leaving or not has affected anything with regards to major third parties.

@Rich33

Not to mention I cannot see anyone buying part 3 who hasn't completed 1 & 2 - so they are appealing to the wrong audience here.

Rebirth launched on Switch and Xbox in the last week or two, it's not an issue. By the time the game comes out everyone will have had chance to catch up.

@LemanRusk

Square as a company came into existence in 1986.

Square started in October 83 as a division of an power company owned by the founders father. A lot of Japanese game developers started as divisions of "traditional" companies.

September 1986 is when they divested from the parent company. By that point they had already developed 5 games for Japanese computers, published Thexder on Sharp X1 and Famicom for Game Arts, and Dragon Slayer for Falcom on MSX (of which I own a boxed copy). Sakaguchi and Tanaka (who would later almost kill the company by botching XIV 1.0) worked on the first game The Death Trap, and Uematsu joined part time in 85.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner

SE and Sony have fallen out. That’s obvious and has been for a while.

There's no evidence they've had an actual falling out, and lots of evidence to suggest that SE think catering to Sony specifically is holding them back.

This isn't even new, Square said over 25 years ago that they can't be tied to heavily to a single platform holder, which is why they started releasing games on the handheld Nintendo platforms after years of ignoring Nintendo. Even since then even when they've prioritised Sony they've released lots of games for other platform holders.

It's not war, they just want to be neutral.

@KawakiisaFraud

Even if it’s just the PS Channel, that says a lot. Sure, AoT is easily one of the most popular anime out there, but we’re talking about the third installment of the most popular remake of all time.

Right so FFVII has 7x the amount of views but because it's split over 5 channels instead of one, it looks bad?

Give over mate.

@Matroska

FF has always targeted the most powerful hardware

No it hasn't.

F1-3 were on the Famicom. Without memory mappers on the cart itself the Famicom is a poor console on a technical level, weaker than the Mark III/Master System.

FF4-6 were on the Super Famicom by default. the Mega Drive's market share in Japan was not good enough even though the MD was the faster of the two consoles.

7 was released on playstation because of its multimedia capabilities rather than its general hardware performance. N64 carts simply made the game they wanted to make impossible. 8 and 9 were a continuation of that. if they wanted power they would have used N64.

X was on ps2 by default, it was the first console of that generation released and was in development while 9 was being finished. As was XI which again was on PS2 (and PC) by default. XII could have been on gamecube or Xbox, both are more powerful than PS2 but wasn't.

13 was on 360 and PS3. This was determined by marketshare. The 360 version was not released in Japan until the PS3 version hit budget, the 360 was far more popular outside Japan, at least at that point. The ps3 version has uncompressed video and audio at higher qualities but the 360 version runs better.

15 was multi plat, 16 was just the result of a business arrangement, probably coupled with the Xbox marketshare nosediving.

FF targets the consoles with the biggest marketshare, not performance. Which can also be observed in the fat that even when Square were ignoring Nintendo consoles, they still made games (some of which sequals or side stories to Playstation games) for GBA, and DS.

@UltimateOtaku91

Damn, Attack on Titan getting more views than Final Fantasy is definitely not a good look for Square.

They are talking about on the playstation channel. The AOT trailer is mostly being watched on the PS channel.

The FF trailer has 500k views on the FF channel, 680k on the Japanese SE channel and another 350k from IGN and Gamespot, along with the 250k on the Playstation channel. So 1.7m+ total views from what I'm seeing.

The gameplay specific overview has another 350k on the FF channel, and 380k on the IGN channel.

Square has nothing to worry about apart from people missing the context, which is hardly new.

@Oram77 yep, Intergalactic was a notable exception and I suspect they felt pressured by people demanding a ND game.

Previously they announced games stupidly early and then went radio silence on them for 2 years. Some weirdos want them to go back to that 🤷

Edit: not sure why they announced the GOW remakes so early either

@Imaculado_Lord Sony can make as many games as they want but they can’t fill a SoP just from their own games and that’s not the point of the show unless it’s a shorter game specific video.

No, because this is just how the industry is now, especially with Geoff’s ego trip forcing himself into everything meaning there are big multi platform shows which potentially have more eyeballs on them.

Unless you are still living in 2015, this is normal. Especially given platform holders know what games are belong developed and can “poach” them first. This is how Microsoft immediately posted a graphic what games were coming to Xbox immmediately after a previous SoP.

Fair play they sorted this far quicker than the whole Obsidian Outer Worlds mess.

@SuperSilverback right but X didn’t have a world map, whereas they already implemented that in Rebirth so I don’t think there was any danger of rhat

@Yor-sama it’s MGS Revengeance all over again

Not sure how you can have exclusive content when people can play your games on linux through modern abstraction and translation layers. Windows is a joke for gaming, and the only reason more people haven't shifted to Linux for gaming on their desktops is a lack of proper driver support for dedicated gpu's.

@Northern_munkey People have been moaning about Destiny 2 for years, it didn’t start simply because they decided to turn an old single player ip into a online only game

Honestly Sonys backend at handling editions and ownership with Plus tiers is probably the main issue here. This is hardly the first game effected by such a convoluted system that stops you even buying games or editions of games you played on Plus that are no longer available on it.

@Haruki_NLI It’s Shadowbringers now. Which is pretty nuts given what that expansion represents.

@Neither_scene

he 100M figure, whilst very impressive, does somewhat flatter to deceive when compared to other past generations.

Time to 100m so far
Ps1 - 9 years
PS2- 5 years 9 months
PS3 - N/A
PS4 - 5 years 7 months.
Ps5 - 93m so far in 5 years 5 months.

Given PS5 launched into the market during Covid, with supply constraints, has had to suffer with increasing prices due to a combination of covid, global financial and tech production issues and Ramageddon, and crucially, no decreasing prices over time, I would say it's doing very well.

All the other generations benefitted from staged price reductions increasing the market size. Even the PS3 managers to hit £99.99 eventually. PS4 never got the benefit so much but it was still effectively half the price at the end. PS5 was matching PS4 for a long time sales wise

I don't think it's a case of flattery, if anything PS5 has outperformed previous generations when taking into account the very real issues affecting tech pricing these days. If pricing wasn't subject to the issues affecting all other tech devices, they would have smashed 100m ages ago.