@Gelloh I would argue overpriced collectors editions will make more profit than that same copy sold as a digital edition. They are usually made to an obvious cost low cost.

Ubisoft made a number of good editions but they were always half price a month or two later

@Matroska That was my thought too but as I keep saying, we need to stop treating the Player base as an organised collective of people who want the same thing.

There is always someone who wants a collectors edition and many of them will complain afterwards about being tricked into buying it when it’s not what they expected quality wise

Frankly I find all preorders in the current era fundamentally pointless.

In the 90s and early 2000s when effectively everyone bought their games in a store it made sense to ensure the store actually received your game (many games would have never been sold in store or location a or b or only had a small day one supply that was never restocked but if you ordered it they would get some copies ). Sometimes you even got a T-shirt or some other physical merch you might actually use.

Now you either get skins or items that are either crap or should have been in the game by default or you get asked to pay more for a early access period that some people will get for free because their copy is sent out early and you may not even have the day one patch available.

Yippee.

I would like to learn a little more about what Sony’s process is here, and why it can’t stop these types of titles at source. I think it’s good it’s removing these releases over time, but why not block them before they even reach the PS Store?

I believe these are all taking advantage of Sony’s arrangements with Unity to make it easier for
Indie developers ( actual individual or very small team indies)to get their games out. Compared to the cost and effort in “professional” releases. That it’s open to abuse and has taken this long to deal without is a side effect of that.

But ultimately Sammy, isn’t this the sort of investigative journalism the site should be doing more of and informing users of the reasons rather than posting random people whining on twitter?

I still haven't played the previous two GoW's so I'm not going to comment on the direction of travel.

However I think that the argument that doing things differently is bad ignores the fact that not doing things differently creates its own problems.

Judge the game when it comes out and we can see what game it has become rather than the first 20 minutes of story and because it doesn't have Kratos as the lead.

Bitter man still bitter about being kicked out is still bitter about everything associated witht the thing he is bitter about.

@Yor-sama that’s the game awards

@wildcat_kickz And based on the majority of games, those contracts only affect sale, not use by people who own the game.

Forza Horizon 1's servers were shut down 6-7 years after the game was delisted due to licenses expiring. There is usually a delay between end of sale and end of servers for games using licenses.

I think a licensor demanding a game be turned off for owners just because the license they already paid for expired would struggle to be justified in court. They would look very foolish. I don't see a developer signing such a deal.

@SquishyTia @Luna-Harmony Per the blog article its a custom designed joystick with proper mechanical switches. No word on buttons but they are also mechanical switches,.

@wildcat_kickz I can't speak for every game ever but music and brand licensing only effects the ability to sell the game, not to keep it online. Ultimately server closures are for cost reasons and/or to push people onto the newest title.

@RomanRiz People make custom servers for Dreamcast and Gamecube games (one DC game was brought back online last week iirc) , the community has brought back Unreal Tournament servers, This happens a lot.

@get2sammyb Isn't that kind of the point? Developers/Publishers choose to do it this way because they know they can wash their hands of it. If they have to do it pro-consumer, they'll soon learn to adapt.

If fans can make custom servers for 20 year old games, then if a publisher wants to close a game server then they should be able to hand over the keys to someone else.
*Edited for brevity

@themightyant I do think MHW is a somewhat misleading example because it was measured against the unsusual success of its previous games which all had very long tails, Capcom's very high numbers for their other games and arguably sufferred from franchise fatigue. It's a lot of baggage to deal with.

However I agree its too early to assume 007 will sustain it's trajectory, but I assume IOI are confidant because there was no need to release any figure, never mind day 1 oppossed to first week.

@Swandivetotheasphalt While I can’t disagree with the sentiment, I think IOI would have been fine. They’ve had another project in development for a while and they have several locations. If this doesn’t break even they may lose some staff but I don’t think they would be at immediate risk.

Ultimately they control their own destiny so would have done due diligence before committing to it. They’ve kept developing content for Hitman even though they could have moved on.

@MrStark Single player games, apart from that one, which would have stopped the studio from making the single player games people are complaining they haven’t been making the last few years.

I think you underestimate how much of the “fan base” is interested in that game. What you have described is precisely my point. Stop trying to speak for everyone. We have direct evidence from Sony that the biggest games on the platform are live service games and even the people who only want single player games can’t decide what they should be.

@MrStark

inconsiderate of what its userbase wants.

The user base doesn’t know what it wants.Some people want Sony to focus on small games, some people want them to focus on the expensive to make triple aaa single player franchises. Some
People want Sony to revive old properties, some people would rather they didn’t.

People need to stop talking about the user base as if it’s a monolithic entity that only wants one thing. The majority of the user base doesn’t care what Sony do, they only play one of five games and they play on ps5 because it’s the “main console” for their game.

People need To stop trying to speak for 100m users all of whom want different things. People can’t even agree what they want on this one web site, which despite Sammys poll results titles is not representative of the user base.

@Oram77 if people can’t do it for a normal SoP then they can’t do it for an “e3” SoP.

Not sure why it took them so long to just give people what they promised. This should have been the approach from the offset of realising their mistake.

@1970sGamer I would love pt3 to come out for the 30th anniversary of the Japanese release of the original game but it does seem unlikely.

Collapse Of Dignity
Call Of Desperation

@belmont There is nothing stopping Konami using a public psp (or any other) emulator under GPL terms (credits and publishing any modifications they make). This happens all the time. They don’t need to use the official Sony emulator.

@TurboTom MM had less than 135 employees before the layoffs when Dreams closed. Their studio philosophy is to have a low cap on employee count.

They aren’t making a live service game with those sorts of numbers.

I mean people do this in these very comments sections all the time. It’s not purely a social media issue.

@Naterbater611 Not really. Probably overkill as a spoiler but hey:

@Noone2025 The status of PO's canon status is all very odd. Both MGS4 and V The Phantom Pain reference events of PO. PW has a line by Kaz referring to it. Kojima conceived the idea of PO during early planning of 4 and produced the game and refused to finish MGS4's story while PO was developed suggesting changing either of the games means changing the other. I see people saying nothing happens that affects the series, yet all the above happens. Events in the game influence how PW and V happened even if they are not front and centre.

The series retconned stuff all the time, I don't see why different versions of the official timeline missing different things is evidence for non-canon-ness.

I've found some MGS fans like to invent their own weird semiheadcanon which contradicts things that actually happen in the games.

@Number09 Unless I’m missing something the entire MG franchise will be playable on current consoles, minus Survive on Switch but no one cares about that game. Twin Snakes is just MGS1 with bad cutscenes and completely broken gameplay.

Edit:forgot Ac!d

@get2sammyb yeah that rings a bell

Semi related but reading this reminded me that the PS3 had an app in Japan where Misato from Evangelion would read the news to you.

@Oram77 Sure, I get that. In an ideal world in house engines would be more popular, but as with everything else it's just become a resource and cost anchor for many, Although I would argue that Horizon and Death Stranding both run on Decima but look very individual.

In house engines do sometimes cause issues, Capcom not updating MT framework after switching to RE Engine caused some issues for native versions of last generation games not being made but I guess that's what happens when you use a proprietary game engine as a wrapper for some roms and GPL emulators.

@nomither6 Epic are just like a console developer, the process never ends, it just comes in cycles. UE5 didn't magic itself into life just because UE4 was x years old, it would have started as a small team very early. UE5 as a project was probably 2+ years old before it was ever shown, and there was a further 2 years before announcement and public release.

I don't see how Ue6 will get a public release before 2028.

edit: UE4 took 11 years to develop from the first work by Tim Sweeny on it and has currently been supported with stable releases for 8 years

@Oram77 It's quite simple really, and the same as every other developer doing it.

It's all well and good having in house engines but they require substantial ongoing development time and resources and it only gets harder as time goes on. It's not for everyone.

If you have a custom engine you also increase the difficulty and speed of onboarding new team members, slowing down a project.

If you move to Unreal as many developers are, you save significant time and resources which can be used elsewhere, including customising UE or the tools you bolt onto it. You also make it easier to hire staff and quicker to put them to productive use on your team.

The bigger and more complex games become, the easier it is for bean counters and dev staff to find issues with in house engine development. Some big development houses will use a variety of in-house and multiple external engines because it makes sense to use the best choice for each individual game. That's why Square use UE4, UE5, Unity and custom tech. For others it makes sense to make an engine that can do all your games (Capcom) and if you are Sony, you just let teams decide for themselves.

@Rich33

E5 has, in my opinion, been an absolute disaster.
Framerates and image quality/clarity are much reduced from UE4 and a number of proprietary engines.

Open world games on UE4 can run in excess of 1080p (pre upscale) at well over 60fps; UE5 is lucky to get much over 720p, with framerates that often can't even stick solidly to 60fps, in non open worlds.

Older engine doing less things runs faster than more advanced engine doing more complicated things on the same and/or newer hardware shocker. I'm not sure what you expect?

There's an argument over UE5 versus in house engines which are written for specific usage cases rather than an everyman engine, but some of this can be levied at the developers for what they are doing or not doing with it. Some developers are clearly not focusing on working within reasonable expectations and using upscaling as a crutch for their own bad decisions. Scale back some of your decisions 10% and you'll get better performance.

besides, there are plenty of badly running games running on proprietry engines, RE engine is well regarded but Dragons Dogma 2 is a mess. As is Monster Hunter Wilds.

@sanderson72

After Sony shafted them with the closure of Japan Studio

Clap Hanz was an external developer not an Japan Studio team and talked about wanting to work with other platforms. The closure of Japan Studio wouldn't have stopped Sony working with them, they were making Easy Come before JS was closed and JS's external producing moved to Xdev who expanded their operations from Europe/NA to Japan/Asia.

It should be noted that Japan Studio was half developer, half producer for externally development Sony published games until 2001 when it shifted more to internal development with some external producing.

There's clearly some bad blood between Clap Hanz and Sony, which lead to the putrid turd that plopped out from Namco Bandai which had the audacity to try and clam it was a legitimate entry in the Everybody's Golf franchise!

Setting aside your assumptions, Clap Hanz didn't invent EG anyway and Sony own the IP. The first game was made by Camelot before Nintendo got them them up to make Mario Golf. CH were a contractor.

Hey here's a big new mode FOR FREE.

users: why are you not giving us more free content, I hate you and will tell everyone how terrible you are.

Further proof that modern gamers are idiots who shouldn't be listened to when they come along demanding company a or b do thing x or y.

The PS Blog has been full of self entitled a r s e hats for years, stop giving them attention.

I played Second Son and enjoyed it but I was never interested in the original games so no.

@4fold It's worth noting that "hang out" online games have been around since the late 70s as MUD's and MMO's are effectively scaled up graphical versions of them.

@Boxmonkey

What baffles me is why anyone would want to keep playing the same game for 10 years+

I've been playing FFXIV for 12 years as of last month.

However, this is a game with a strong continuous developing narrative and with a constantly evolving set of gameplay systems and new activities, many of which have their own developing narrative taking place around the core story (often expanding on side characters and supporting secondary plot or lore points) so there is always something to come back for.

I would not be able to spend the same amount of time playing fancy deathmatch. But I suspect most of those players aren't either, a lot of people would have moved on or be newer probably younger players.

@UltimateOtaku91 TGS hasn’t really been for reveals for decades. It’s a hands on consumer event just like Gamescom. E3 reveals didn’t even happen at E3, they happened at locations around the actual event (both in terms of timing and location) not at the event.

The last couple of years have had their highest ever attendances so they must be doing something right

@KawakiisaFraud

You really just need to look at the credits to see how many developers from XDEV worked on SB. And now Shift Up seriously believes they can handle all of that on their own? Yeah—good luck with that, especially with UE5.

So you don't think with their new found success Shift Up won't have hired more developers?

@themightyant

In reality the games we ultimately play are usually not the game that was envisaged at the start of development. This is pretty normal. Hence I don't understand what makes this game different?

I think you underestimate the level of interest in finding these things. It's not a new thing to be interested in the versions of games we didn't get, people spent decades solving the mysteries of Sonic 2 and there are plenty of games people are still trying to find early versions of.

Games with a story about significant changes always carry a large interest in finding those old versions. Even games with relatively minor changes are examined in detail. You just aren't going to read about many of them on sites focusing on contemporary releases and for the most part contemporary games rarely go through such significant changes "in public" due to changes in how marketing and promotion works in the 21st century.

So Uncharted might be an exception for a modern title, but this sort of interest in itself isn't unusual.

@DennisReynolds

Asia doesn't like nudity in games and usually censor games with it. You would never get the level of sex and nudity you see in games like TLoUP2, Kingdom Come 2 and Baldur's Gate 3 from Korea, China and Japan.

I can't speak for China or Korea but Japan has been putting out games with nudity (and a lot more) for over 40 years. Most of Japan's historic publishers released at least one such title in the 80s, They just aren't console games or are heavily edited for their console versions.

Your examples have nothing on Japan's Eroge games.

@RagnarLothbrok I can't speak for TLOU but the DMCV thing was dumb on both sides, Capcom knew what they were doing and they didn't have to do it, it was completely superfluous.

@Yaycandy High capacity cartridges cost a fortune, and if Sony’s portable plays ps5 games than they need to be extremely fast which pushes the price up further.

Two reasons why Switch 2 games are game key cards for downloading the game and not actual games.

@Robocod it isn’t supposed to.

@thechetearly leaks come from many sources, not all of them directly in the industry.

How many games get leaked or otherwise revealed because they turn up on a ratings board website, or a voice actor lets slip or a game even turns up on a retailers website.

It's also difficult to blackball someone when they hack your servers.

Sometimes games are so secretive their voice actors don't know what game they are making , yet the cast members work it out themselves (FFXVI, RDR2)

@IOI Inded but Preservation is about a lot more than just releasing games. IIRC the projects scope is all media associated with the game, development materials, all builds of the games and a substantial amount of work was on edstablishing efforts on PS4 onwards to make sure this work is done "along the way" in future rather than scrambling to find potentially lost materials and source code after the fact.

I don’t realise it was even possible to milk this game even more.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked the game the first time but I didn’t even think the last remake was a good idea.

@Matroska FWIW the Naomi and Dreamcast are effectively identical, they use the same chipset. There are minor differences like streaming support for DC and some ram diffeerences but cpu and gpu are the exact same. Dreamcast games ported from Naomi were arcade perfect at a minimum (stuff like Crazy Taxi had content added for value purposes).

The reason why VMU and even controllers are supported is because they both use the same controller bus, Maple. You can for example play keyboard Naomi games (Typing of the Dead, Lupin The Typing) with a DC keyboard, just by changing the cable to the correct end,

It's also why vga is supported on `DC, since the native arcade cabinets used for Naomi used it and support is baked into the chipset.

Note: Sega's STV arcade board was a Saturn that took cartridges, Radiant Silvergun being one such game that is arcade perfect in such a way,

@Dalamar it’s a very good console game. Namco out a lot of effort into it and added an entirely new game to it.

What it needs is a light gun rather than a pointer but that’s why I have a crt

@wildcat_kickz Sony never really update their sales
Figures after first announcements unless they have a good reason like in or for a sequel or side project
And even then not often. I don’t think the Demon Souls remake figure has been updated since it passed 1m and that was five years ago. Even in their financial reports they just list the previously announced numbers. It’s hard to read too much into them when they are so outdated. People were talking about HFW the other day based on outdated data and ignoring all the context of the first game being in a very different game economy.