Game specific vouchers are a good idea in theory and may have made sense in the ps360 days but the constant sales (at least on Ps, I don’t know about Xbox these days) mean that you will usually be overpaying for them anyway. Certainly in the uk the game specific vouchers were never competitively priced, although granted there were a lot less digital only games worth worrying about back then.

Find a supply of discounted PSN credit (shopto in the uk for example) instead and ideally buy the games on sale with it.

@chatbot oh these were popular games to pirate for sure, partly because Sony didn’t implement any protection on them and Steam’s own protection is easy enough to crack it seems.

However it doesn’t really tell us anything in regards to its effect on sales for a variety of reasons.

@VenomUK There is no present day storyline, it’s been removed in favour of more historical content.

Frankly I’m not sure it’s a bad thing with this game. Even when it released the modern day section wasn’t great.

@Veritas7Ax or it’s just a statement to tell us they haven’t changed the gameplay wholesale so Black Flag fans know it still plays like Black Flag

I’ll happily play either type of AC game, but I would have been irritated if they had changed the nature of Black Flag’s systems. (I’m still bitter about THPS4’s hack job)

@Alpine021 They did the same last year I think.

@nolifebr I don’t buy the exploit line, pretty much all the exploits are due to bugs in the firmware, usually through common code used in licensed/open source libraries. All PlayStations since ps3 have used freebsd which is effectively UNIX so it’s exposed to any outdated or compromised elements of that code until those components are updated.

@RawnDawn No I think the system was created to deactivate ps plus extra/Now as it was titles.

It’s usually a bug, it’s happened several times before and people always kick off as if it’s deliberate even though the clues are there that it isnt.

People like Lance McDonald should know better before making assumption posts like that blaming draconian drm rather than asking the question of it being a glitch, especially given he quotes a post that in full points out it might be a bug due to previous evidence.

@Boxmonkey mate, no one buys £1500 tvs unless they buy giant oleds and that isn’t as big a sector as you think , the mass market will be buying £500 and below. Maybe £800 at a stretch. Even the dedicated will stick to a circa £999 budget.

@IntrepidWombat

Maybe this is a No Man's Sky kind of turn-around

Not really? This was just a bit rough around the edges due to coming in hot, whereas NMS, Cyberpunk and FFXIV 1.0 were all games that needed serious reworking rather than a bit of spit and polish.

Ah yes the "leak" 4 hours before the actual announcement.

@jgrangervikings1

Internet says Bill Gates is worth $104 to $107 Billion, former CEO Steve Ballmer is even richer than Gates, and Paul Allen’s estate is worth more than $20 Billion. It’s about time the rich start giving back to the people.

Gates has given over $60bn to charity and he was suggesting last year that was now $100bn and has pledged to double that.

Gates has been giving it back for the last 25 years at least.

Ballmer’s charity organisation has given 3 universities $100bn for youth mental health projects on top of other charitable donations.

Paul Allen also has multi decade charity donations of various types.

And yes Satya Nadella also has multiple charity contributions.

The last thing Microsoft CEO’s can be accused of is not giving back. They have all founded charitable organisations with their own money , as well as encouraging their peers to do the same and funding additional projects. Usually in healthcare and education.

@tameshiyaku Too short or too long? If we are talking an adaptation of the first game, It’s only 6 hours from start to finish even as a game.

@_Nightsever_

I really wish Square Enix would put the effort into putting their JRPG classics for Plus

They had loads up on Extra at one point but then the deals all expired. Sony should probably make an effort to get them back.

The basic tier is going to be a hard sell, because I think SE will want a lot for them.

Hardly surprising news, it falls within announcement season. It doesn’t need an industry leaker to tell us.

@danzoEX Japan is obsessed with announcements of announcements to make you wait before they actually announce the thing.

Often it is just merchandise or some other non gaming item or side media.

This isn’t the first time and won’t be the last time.

Not the cheapest but not the most expensive either. If anyone is bothered about the price, a few pound off in a sale and it’ll be fine.

I think you are overthinking things.

I saw the news earlier, shrugged and went back to what I was doing. It’s not exactly a deep announcement, it’s a glorified competition and the premise won’t last much beyond it. Let’s not make it into more than what it is.

Of course, sports games over the years have allowed you to scan your likeness into the likes of NBA 2K and WWE 2K for years now through smartphone apps

You could use the eyetoy on Tony Hawk Underground 2 on ps2 to do this or you could email an image to an address and then download it within the game on the previous game

Side note: Tony Hawk was very progressive with weird stuff on ps2, THPS3 had usb modem support because the ps2 network adapter didn’t exist yet (at least outside Japan)

@Enuo FFX has a similar issue and that was never fixed even in the HD versions (at least on console)

@GoodOlDubs My understanding is that submission is relatively easy for “entry level” developers. Once you’ve registered with Sony you get the PlayStation build functions for Unity for free and aren’t subject to the certification process that “more advanced” games might be.

@nomither6 Sony still have a good prescence in the sub 1k camera market, it’s not all Alpha 7’s. Their “vlogging” cameras are pretty good but I don’t know how common any type of camera is “out in the wild”, most people just use their phone of course. Prosumer video focused cameras are largely split between Sony and Panasonic I would argue.

With headphones the WM’s are probably one of the most popular models at those prices outside of Apple which is obviously its own market. But honestly wireless headphones all look much of a muchness visually so I dont really pay attention to wha other people are wearing.

@nomither6 Sony are still big in cameras, their headphones are quite popular and some of them are very good, they are still very visible in the AV receiver and portable media player sectors. I agree it’s harder to spot them amongst casuals but that’s due to heavy competition in many traditional Sony activities coupled with the direction of travel of many traditional devices into the mess they are now. Obviously everyone having an infinite music library on their phone killed most of their portable audio product line some time ago

It would be nice if Sony led a charge back towards actual Hi-Fi’s and other items where modern tech has made them worse (seriously, give me buttons not phone apps or at least make the device itself capable of everything on the app) but they are risk averse these days due to the competition just like everyone else so it’s often hard for them to compete or stick out amongst the youth.

@Colour This sort of purchase is usually for merging into the wider company. The team and their tech will simply exist within Sony rather than be a separately operated entity owned by Sony.

@SMJ Realistically this is going to be aimed at people who want a portable PlayStation and less at taking market share from pc handhelds. Any of that they can grab is a bonus.

If enough people can buy a dumb device like Portal, that it can completely defy all logic in sale terms than Sony are going to think they can sell enough to make it worthwhile.

Then again, pc handhelds probably aren’t selling 10m units if you combine all of them released so far including Deck. If the device is good they can sell 5m of them over a few years . Price will determine its success.

Pachter? Then the opposite will happen.

🤡

@SoulofBashar No chance of oled becaue that will just drive up the price or require other components to suffer. Especially given the ram/storage situation.

There are good lcd panels, I wouldn't use the Switch2's terrible screen as a benchmark for what is possible

Remember when everyone said Square were mad to sell them?

Mega Man skin coming?

@AnginaPectoris @Icey664 @PuppetMaster I don’t know about Korea but Japan regularly announces financial adjacent announcements on the first of April, as I believe it’s the start of their financial year (technically it’s the governments but it’s common for companies to adopt it too)

@Neonix some weird revisionism if you think Japanese management is inherently better than western management given the ps3 debacle. It was the western offices who had to fix that mess and a large reason why Jim Ryan got the top job as he was running SCEE when they turned it around in Europe. Also, while Yoshida helped, it was the American office and execs that devised and developed the ps4 to fix the issues of the ps3 era.

Anyway, Hideaki Hoshino has been ceo for a year and nothing has changed outside of a Japanese locked console to counter the yen being a binfire.

The only thing that would change by moving back to Japan is a focus on the Japanese market at the expense of the rest of the world when the Japanese market is as much a product of Nintendo being successful again after the Wii U and because of the merging of their handheld and tv operations.

The nationality of the decision makers is far less important than what those decisions are. Either nationality can be good or bad and PlayStation is making the most revenue it’s ever made, so it isn’t changing.

Hulst can do one though, for sure.

Crazy Ken.

Also designed the Snes sound chip, behind his superiors backs. Which ultimately got Sony into the console market. He didn't just create the first Playstation (and 2 and 3), he got them into the entire market in the first place.

@Andy22385

No idea why people need super high storage tbh. Why do you need 25 games installed? Just download when you want it in advance

While I've been keeping my level of installed games low ironically since the PS5 expansion bay was unlocked, you can easily fill 1gb with less than a dozen games. Heck, you could fill a launch/recent digital model ps5 with 4 if you picked badly as actual end user space is only 650gb and some games take 150gb+ once patched.

Even if your games take up a small amount of space, not everyone has the internet connection to downlaod games when they actually think they might play them and installing from disc is hardly quick on many games. There is a cross over point where any of these options makes sense and its different for everyone.

Do people need 50+ games on hand to choose from, probably not. Is standard base console allocation too small for many semi-casual users? Yes. SSD bby default has benefits as well as cons, but the cost of storage is getting worse. It was quite good for a few years.

@themightyant

But it depends title by title.

Developer effort being the key issue. In theory next gen should be better in this regard, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Like a lot of sectors, there is simply too much competition for Sony to succeed now. Vaio, Xperia, Sony TV’s, they were all effectively crowded out of the market leading to reorganisations or sell offs, in whole or part.

Sony haven’t had a decent market share of TVs for years and simply don’t have the economies of scale to compete on pricing with the competition. while you might profit more on high end sets, you won’t sell enough of them. It’s a vicious cycle. Unlike the CRT days where they made tubes for themselves as well as selling them to other brands, they are buying in all their flat panels which raises costs.

LG succeed in displays in the same way that Sony succeeds in cameras, make the key component in house for your own gear and then sell the same components to other brands which reduces the costs for your own products through scale.

@Noone2025 It isn't, Playstation is a seperate division from the rest of Sony. This isn't Playstation related.

@Gravity_Bear I believe all of Sonys chip production are camera and medical image sensors, as well as automotive and presumably some audio. They are market leaders in those fields. Sony own approx half the cmos sensor market, the next competitor is Samsung with 19%.

Making ram and storage chips at enough volume for it to be worth doing and gain market share is sufficiently difficult and expensive for it to be too risky for Sony. While not directly comparable, Just look at Intels difficulties getting running on internal fabrication. It only makes sense with the benefit of hindsight and current events. It would have made no sense before ramageddon and it’s far too late to start now.

Sony no longer make computers (Vaio was sold in 2014 and their 4% share is a rounding error for the branding) and it’s probably cheaper to buy in bulk from the market leaders to make their own because even console scale isn’t really enough to match the competition.

@Yousef- they are when you consider. CFexpress is basically a single lane nvme for high end cameras

@Rob_230 The yen has been an absolute binfire for at least 6 months and even before that it was getting bad. I think gbp currently buys you more yen than in the last 16 years and it’s not like gbp is doing gang busters.

I imagine the domestic Japanese model is being subsidised by the rest of us.

@DOOMndGLOOM Things change and none of the various world factors involved are getting better. At some point something has to give.

Not that I'm condoning any price rise, I'm sure Sony could eat more of this themselves given the money beign made from digital sales.

@LeeBB_Art I only really use them for a guess the game thing on a particular website.

@trev666 most photo modes release after launch. I’ve never really understood it because the time to use them is during first run imo. However:

• It’s probably more important they work on the actual game first.
• I wonder how may people actually use them for more than 30 seconds.
• it’s very much optional. No one’s making purchase decisions based on there being a photo mode or not
• it’s a free feature update, it’s very churlish to complain about it.

@Stepan I don’t see timed exclusivity on this one even with Yakuza/LAD it was just the once and that was for a new console (it was only next gen exclusive, the ps4 version released as normal with Xbox One). It’s not even certain if this is a marketing deal or it just happened to be ready to show but it doesn’t really make sense for Microsoft to pay for exclusivity under their recent trends.

@Questionable_Duck oh I didn’t hear that

@BleedingDreamer I can certainly understand a few units suffering from a dodgy seal etc. but I think we can see that it was made out to be a larger issue than it was. It was made out to be the next RRoD.

@Rhaoulos remember this is a timeline where even the ps3 got to half the price a PS4 did.

There is zero chance they would have talked pc even if it was being worked on unless it had been announced. I know they question has to be asked but I’m sure anyone asking it already knows the answer they will get