MattBoothDev

Good, because I still but physical whenever possible and I've actively avoided some games that don't have a physical release.

I think Lost Legacy should be higher up the list. It's an amazing game and definitely a direction I want the series to continue in.

Uncharted 4 was a great end to Drake's story, but the series and formula work so well.

That's when I'll check out of console gaming, then. I have no interest in a digital only console future. Less rights and control over my library. Higher prices.

@Arnna pretty much most third person games have a better control scheme, in my opinion.

Like I originally said, it's great that people enjoy their games so much, but they're not for me. I don't enjoy being frustrated and the games seem designed to frustrate.

@Arnna I knew someone would come along with a boneheaded comment like that.

The controls are rubbish, slow and clunky, in my opinion. You don't need to be personally offended that someone else has a different take.

FromSoftware games are hard because the controls are rubbish and the gameplay is unrelenting. It's great that people enjoy them but they aren't that good, in my opinion.

Of course. That makes sense, but it's still a bit indicative of how Sony is mistreating the PSVR2.

It was nice to finally get some games on PS Plus for it, recently, but otherwise, since Horizon: Call of the Mountain there hasn't been a Sony first party title built for it.

Symbolically, Astrobot was a Sony first party game the was designed to show off the PSVR so VR fans looking to Team Asobi for an Astro VR game isn't too far wrong.

Edit:

Equally, I'm definitely buying the new Astro game. Playroom was loads of fun and nostalgia.

Yeah, no, Phil.

You had no choice. That's the fact of the matter.

Doom, Fallout and The Elder Scrolls are three Bethesda/id games that will cause you a lot of bad press if they went exclusive. I, for one, would not buy an Xbox just to play them and would be very bitter towards Microsoft as a result. Those were previously multiplatform games that belong to the fans across all platforms they were published.

Those games will sell much better if they're widely available. Phil Spencer isn't doing anyone and favours here.

Ah, no, no thanks...

As a former PC gamer I never saw the issue with accounts necessary for things like this, especially something like this, Sony publishing first party games on PC.

The line for me would be having a separate client, like Epic or Uplay.

Having to sign up for a PSN account is free and not a problem.

@PuppetMaster ... There's another way. PS3 has since been abandoned so homebrew is an option.

I think you can still buy it on the store on PS3 as well.

@PuppetMaster for the Ratchet games, you can play the original PS2 games via the PS3 HD Collection they did, which is a very good way of playing them... But then you need a PS3 😐

@djlard I have two, a Phat with the (official) network adapter and a SATA drive and a slim with a dodgy disc drive 😁

@djlard that's a good idea, but what if they charge £70 for it?

They need to work on a PS3 emulator.

Streaming PS3 games absolutely sucks. PCs can emulate PS3 very well these days and they own the IP and should have privileged access to sources.

There's no real reason a third party publisher like Square-Enix should be publishing on a single platform without a really, really good reason.

I mean... If I had any interest in these games I'd own an Xbox. Them being on PlayStation doesn't really move the dial for me.

Jesus Christ, they might as well not bother

Rebirth is a badtardised version is a beloved 90's franchise and this is a new thing... So hardly surprising

@Vaako007 Fully agreed. I'm not adverse to digital games, though. They have a place in the market and they're more ecologically friendly, but the industry can't be trusted at all

As for movies... Well I used to buy those but now I acquire elsewhere where formats and quality aren't a problem... And neither is the matter of ownership of the files.

It was another live service, so I automatically had no interest in it, even for free.

I don't think this van be repeated enough, but physical sales are not flagging.

At least, not entirely naturally.

Publishers are intentionally publishing less physical releases and then pointing to lower physical sales as their reasoning.

Platforms like Sony don't allow for complete editions on a disc and DLC is a code and this counts as DLC. So if you bought the Phantom Liberty edition of Cyberpunk 2077, for example, your purchase counted towards both because the code usage is registered as a digital download.

There's some serious fudging going on and it's to try and convince everyone there's no need for a physical market and that we should accept digital.

Now, I'm not against digital and I have a decent TV digital library on many platforms, but physical is my preferred format.

The problem is that publishers get less money from a physical sale because there's additional costs. Retailers take the most risk because they buy and hold the stock. A £69.99 game sold physically is probably sold to the store, via the publisher/distributor for about £30.

As we know, digital has none of that, just a 30% cut to the platform holder.

I think Sony and Microsoft are in cahoots with publishers (and both of them are a publisher anyway) to get rid of physical media so that they can reap all the benefits.

The problem is that a strong physical market keeps the digital one in check. When retailers have been holding stock too long they cut the price. When you can buy "NewGame 2" for £69.99 on PSN or £39.99 on Amazon, there's a clear choice there and an incentive to drop the PSN price to £39.99 as well.

Without a physical market, digital prices will go to and remain higher for longer because your choice and competition has been removed. Without physical releases, Sony and Microsoft have a monopoly on buying games for their platform.

@Rich33 yeah I made the PS5 my primary gaming platform at the start of this generation because GPU prices were stupid. They_still_ are but if the PS5 Pro is going to continue the trend of pushing fancy graphics over playability then it makes sense to jump back to PC.

Games like FF16 don't even look that good and struggle to push 60FPS in battles without sub-1080p resolutions... Something's wrong there.

@GamingFan4Lyf I don't think those games should be banned or locking to 30FPS should be banned but they shouldn't be allowed to say something has been "enhanced" for PS5 Pro when it's still running at 30FPS.

I expect a mid-gen refresh to take what was 30FPS and make it better, otherwise there's no point in the refresh.

And, on the one hand, sure there's some good looking games but on the other hand 30FPS is terrible and pretty much most games are better when there's a 60FPS option.

It should become the standard.

@GamingFan4Lyf fixed framerate is basically not a variable framerate. Basically, 30FPS locked. Which needs to die in a fire anyway.

Most games will target the enhanced ray tracing and leave the framerate at 30FPS 👎 Sony should enforce 60FPS to be able to get the "Enhanced for PS5 Pro" label.

The random items in Tekken have been around for a while and, honestly, totally ruin the experience for me. I wish they weren't there at all and there were, instead, several good costumes for characters.

But I wouldn't pay a single penny for those costumes anyway. They should be free or unlockable as part of the game.

This is a fully priced game that doesn't warrant extra monetisation like this. The DLC characters are fine. Extra maps and features, sure. But coins and costumes? Scam.

Flat lining hardware sales should tell them the price is too high.

They (Sony, at least) are gouging us on PS Plus, nudging the industry towards digital, where they get a 30% cut off every sale. If they want to move more consoles (and get more 30% cuts) then they need to cut the price massively so people can afford them. They've likely reached saturation on people able to afford these prices now.

What with the PS5 Pro supposedly due this year, they need a price cut now so that this new thing is appropriately priced too, otherwise the PS5 Pro A6 over £500 is going to be a wash.

What a shame. I'll never play it, because I've got zero interest in live services, no matter the studio or gameplay loop.

The Premium offering is utterly rubbish, as per usual.

Hopefully we're seeing the end of these kinds of takeovers anyway. It would be better to have lots of independent studios, instead of loads of publisher or platform owned studios.

This goes for some of the big dogs, too. It's worked wonders for IO Interactive and hopefully Toys for Bob can make a good go of things in their own.

Deals like Sony and Bungie are a lesser of the evils, where they're owned but remain independent and publish widely, but still open to f***ery.

@Kidfunkadelic83 i wouldn't have touched it with a barge pole.

On the one hand, Naughty Dog want to branch out and try new things, that's a 👍 from me, even if it's multiplayer.

On the other, it was bound to have unnecessary monetisation, "firefly tokens" or some other bollocks that detracts from the experience (for me).

@LifeGirl sure but they're failures for a reason. They're mostly games no one wanted in the first place or games ruined beyond recovery by live services and *****.

I'd rather they cancelled this rubbish and set people working on something else, than laying anyone off.

@themightyant I agree with that.

Sony owning Bungie is fine, as Bungie are still a multiplatform developer and have the freedom to publish wherever they want.

I don't like the paid or timed exclusivity, though. There's no reason why Final Fantasy 16 shouldn't be available on Xbox. There's no reason to lock a DLC or multiplatform game to one platform for a year. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

The biggest issue is what Microsoft have done. They're basically holding lots of multiplatform IP hostage on their system. Games like Starfield and Indiana Jones makes sense because they're new IP and therefore, basically, Microsoft's IP. But games like Doom and Fallout are multiplatform and should remain so.

If Microsoft basically take away those games from Sony then it'll just embitter me against Microsoft and not make me want to buy an Xbox.

Hopefully the live services and GaaS rubbish leaves with him.

@themightyant I don't think there's anything wrong with exclusives.

It just depends on how they're exclusive.

Sony's first party studios should be exclusive, Xbox first party studios should be exclusive..

Paid exclusivity is pure BS and just harms the industry. As does buying to publishers and making their games exclusive.

I don't care about any of these.

@themightyant Considering I paid £430 in 2021, then £410 is terrible in 2024.

£380 in 2023 was the right price but it was only temporary.

@Fyz306903 yeah, I'm not going to 😞

If the Xbox was more compelling and selling better, Sony might have a fire up their rear end and decide to cut the cost to move more units, but that's not an issue for them.

I won't be paying £500-700 for a PS5 Pro. If they price it there, then it becomes unreasonable.

The PS5 is currently really overpriced at £480. It should've come down significantly by now. When they were clearing the old disc stock at £380, that was the price or should've been and should be right now.

Even if the Pro means games can run 4k@60 within "Fidelity" mode, it's going to depend heavily on studios patching games to work properly, which means it won't happen.

@djhegzy there's better looking games that perform better, though . Neither one of those FF games look that good, though to warrant the poor performance - just shoddy work in my eyes.

Helldivers 1 was never released on Xbox and was almost entirely a PlayStation game. Sony published and funded Helldivers 2.

Why should it be on Xbox?

This isn't like Doom or Fallout, which are/were multiplatform titles. This isn't "console wars". Buying up two large publishers and making their IP exclusive is console wars.

I may buy when it's vastly cheaper. They've added simple controls and you can be matched with someone online who's using that scheme. It's like playing someone button mashing one of the capoeira characters.

The original control scheme is one of the reasons Tekken is better than any other fighting game and I will die on the hill saying they didn't need the fisher price scheme.

So long as he remembers that one of the things that made Metal Gear really successful was the gameplay loop and the story exposition via long cut scenes.

MGS5 had the gameplay loop sorted but was seriously lacking in story quality and exposition. The tapes were not enough. They were severely lacking and the storyline wasn't good. Forgetting that the Konami "Survive" thing even exists, MGS5 is easily the weakest in the series in terms of storyline.

Death Stranding as a storyline didn't really grab me and felt, being honest, worse than MGS5.

Sega have also reported to be making around $5bn a year now, which has increased.

The problem is these corporations think they need to make more profits each year. It's driving inflation through the roof and then analysts blame employee wage growth for inflation and not soaring corporate profits.

What needs to happen is corporations, on the backs of ever increasing profits, need to take a hit to the percentages for a few years, rather than people taking real-terms wage cuts.

It's ok.

I'm probably buy it day one, though. I've run out of things to play 🤷‍♂️

@Stickleman not from what I've seen

@Toot1st Nope. All those games are multiplatform.

@Loamy your are 100% right. It's not "entitlement" either. They are all multiplatform games taken over by Microsoft, not Xbox games.