Max_the_German

@Sanquine I still stand to my position that it was and is the right move for Sony to move to live service games. But I think that Ryan and Hulst executed it poorly.

They bought Bungie for a very high price, knowing that cheaper studios could make blockbusters as well, as we see it.

They forced their studios, which are experienced in single-player games, to make live service games. And ALMOST ALL of them at the same time! The main exceptions are Team Asobi and Housemarque, and their games are the defining games for five years of PS5, at least to me.

It is this all-in mentality, this „narcissistic men turning the very big wheel“, and when they hit a rock with their ship, they don’t take the consequences. THAT is disgusting to me. That move from Ryan to celebrate his retirement with London studio, where he started his career, and a week later on his last day, closing the studio without fanfare.

I‘m just p*ssed by these business practices.

@LowDefAl

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

• Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I‘m engineer, and this reflects a key aspect of good design to me. The probably best example in gaming is Shadow of the Colossus. What an ordinary and forgettable game it would be with optional bloat to stretch the playtime.

@Sanquine I buy Sony‘s games if they are original and not annoying. And now we are in the infamous „sequel“ discussion. I don’t want bloated games like Horison Forbidden West and GoW Ragnarök with annoying hints (even Myles MacKenzie wasn’t as bad as Aloy and Atreus) and repetitive stuff to do. These games feel like a five-course fast food menu to me, assisted by a waiter who tells me how to eat the chicken wings. And I always have the feeling that I ate the same menu before.

@Sanquine I care because of business decisions, I find them interesting. And the decision to buy Bungie for 3.6b dollars was controversial, because it wasn’t the Bungie of old days. Would Sony have bought Bungie in hindsight?

I admit, I don‘t get the link to Demon‘s Souls. I‘ve bought it, and I don’t like it, due to both the original game design (FromSoftware was still experimenting) and many design decisions from Bluepoint.

@GamerDad76 Steam tells also other boring stuff: That Marathon‘s highs are below ARC Raiders‘ lows.

Marathon: https://steamdb.info/app/3065800/charts/

ARC Raiders: https://steamdb.info/app/1808500/charts/

But you don’t care, because „A game from PS Studios performs better on PS5“ or other reasons or no reason at all.

Believe me: Sony cares a lot.

The real problem here is not „PS Studios games on PC or not“. The real problem is that Sony obviously doesn’t know what to do with its studios.

The games which defined PS4, AAA third-person action adventures, are expensive to make, while their share of SIEs income is very small, because that’s dominated by live service games from other publishers.

THAT‘s the reason why Ryan and Hulst pushed their development teams to make live service games. Without success.

Now, Sony owns many studios which cost a sh*tton of money every month, unable to generate adequate profits, and they’re not needed, because people buy PS5s regardless for having access to PSN. Only a small fraction of them are deeply interested in PS Studios games.

The role of these studios changed over time:
1) Generating profits with PS4 exclusives like Spider-Man etc.
2) Generating profits with PS5 exclusives, also ported to PC to cover the now enormous development costs
3) Generating profits with live service games, on PS5 and PC

I think the new role is:
4) Create exclusives to set PS apart from PC (incl. Xbox), without the need to directly generating remarkable profits

Problem with such a new role 4) is: You need just a few exclusive games for that. Many studios are not needed anymore, because they serve no purpose. Remember that when the next studio shrinking or closure is announced!

The good thing for Sony is: If enough copies get sold, the development costs are covered, and Sony can bury Marathon whenever it wants without much pain (especially when monthly income sinks below monthly maintenance costs).

But how much copies needs to get sold for break-even? 3m? 5m?

@Lukardi This can be true. And I‘m certain that carefully curated content in written form from professional journalists will find its audiance also in that younger generation.

The audience here is much older than I‘d have guessed. I‘m also in the 41+ team btw.

I‘m waiting for the PushSquare Marathon review with a title like

„Ignore The Haters, Marathon Is a Good PS5 Shooter We Can't Wait to Play More Of“
or
„Live Service Continuation Beats the Hate with Stellar Presentation and Good Gameplay“

@LogicStrikesAgain Saros is a prime example for a „hardcore gamer game“, with limited to no appeal to a huge player base. That’s a typical first-party game to make the platform more interesting, but sales expectations from Sony won’t be sky-high.

Pragmata is so novel in its mechanics, it’s hard to assess the game based on a short demo of an early section of the game. Will there be enough variety? Will it be tough, annoying, boring?

I need to read the reviews before buying that game.

I have read many comments here over the years that Nintendo wouldn’t be competition to PlayStation.

Let’s see whether Marathon or Sprint is the better title.

It’s not often that a non-exclusive wins when there is also an exclusive. Thankfully, quality wins.

These evil forces even manipulated Gerhard‘s mind, resulting in the stupid idea to create a low-budget GTA-like by using the tools UE5 offers in a quick-and-dirty way.

It wasn’t Gerhard‘s fault!

@UltimateOtaku91 That is 2) with the assumption that Sony earns something with selling consoles.

Great that such a huge majority says that exclusivity is the only right thing. I am not that certain. There WERE and still ARE reasons why Sony decided to port its games to PC, and the most prevalent one are the huge development costs of today’s AAA games. And while the live service strategy was bonkers with its all-in approach, this PC strategy was always pretty balanced in my opinion.

So what are the results of the new strategy? I see three possible outcomes:
1) Budgets of new PS Studios‘ games will be cut drastically, with effects on game length, graphical fidelity or cut scenes/voice acting.
2) Sony swallows the minimal margins/losses of its own portfolio of games, to support the platform.
3) Sony significantly reduces the number of new releases. People buy PlayStations nevertheless, and less games mean less studios to pay.

Choose the one you prefer. It is illusionary to think that there are no downsides of this change in strategy.

Hulst finally has a new studio to close, Nixxes, which was acquired to port PS exclusives to PC.

Hulst learned from Ryan, who closed London Studio (were he worked for some time) basically on his last day before retirement.

What a nice guy, showing the middle finger to potential customers who want to know more about a game for their platform of choice.

Comparing that and Cyberpunk 2077 is a nice way to express concerns. Let’s see whether it’s more of a Cyberpunk or more of a MindsEye.

About length: There are games which are too long in my opinion. Prime example for me is The Last of Us Part 2. As much as I enjoyed the gameplay, there was a lot of repetition. 5 or 10 hours less would be perfect, Part 1 was perfect in that regard.

@Shinnok789

Don’t forget the bias. The typical gamer buys between 2 and 4 games per year and spends only a low number of hours per week playing them. The number of players willing to spend 30 or even 100 hours for a game is limited, and they focus this huge amount of time on titles like Elden Ring or GTA6.

And if you buy only a handful of games per year, many people can easily spend 80 dollars for each of them.

Many people have more money to buy games than time playing them! For them, RE9 is perfect, with its medium-long playtime, high tension and memorable, eventful story.

@iNightfarer

And after this Concordian Epic Trilogy, we will get Concord: Andromeda in the form of Fairgame$.

The PS App doesn’t show ESO in the list of March PS Plus Essential games. You must search for it, then you can claim it, especially the Gold Road Collection.

This is much too direct for just trolling. Iron Galaxy wouldn’t try to risk losing future collaborations with Microsoft. This is not the proof of a fire, but thick smoke nonetheless.

I‘m not sure about the gameplay. Looks like Breath of the Wild with a much more complex combat mechanic, and it’s hard to track what’s happening on screen.

Uncharted had a humour which feels a bit outdated, too much like Myles McKenzie, which didn’t go down well. Nathan was coined by Amy Hennig, and Uncharted is Nathan Drake. The series will probably never lose that humour.

The Last of Us allows for a wide, intense, mature spectrum of emotions. That universe can still tell a lot of interesting stories!

RE Requiem is a real 10/10 for me, and I‘m pretty hesitant with this verdict. AAA at its finest. Wouldn’t be surprised if sales numbers would exceed 30m copies, an absolut evergreen!

I‘ve never really played a MH game. I‘ve heard that MH Rise has arguably the best gameplay, but only with the DLC.

Is this PS Plus version a good entry point for getting into MH?

That scary game

@get2sammyb PlayStation is so strong as a platform in the moment, people buy PS5s without PS5 exclusives. No wonder SIE closes studios to reduce the payroll.

This must be really frustrating for the SIE publishing department:

Sony‘s great games like Spidey and God of War find only limited resonance, while Microsoft games like Forza Horizon are a huge success on PlayStation.

I understand why FromSoft isn’t interested in a Bloodborne Remake from Bluepoint. I‘m playing Demon‘s Souls 2020, and it doesn’t look like a FromSoft game, while the original definitely does (based on a lot of footage I‘ve seen).

A Bloodborne Remaster would be a much better idea, but this option is likely gone forever.

Let’s hope that one day, there’s a massive PS5 security breach, and we can play Bloodborne with the 60 fps patch from Lance Mcdonald!

From what I’ve seen in videos, the art style may look terrific. But I think that after playing for a long time, it could become stress for the eyes.

Last year at GamesCom Fan Zone:

This rumour gives us relief, but I‘m a bit scared of it.

Sony hoped for good PC sales to co-finance the development of the big, identity-shaping titles with absurd budgets.

Without this perspective (which should be the case for a few years now, seeing the poor PC sales), Hulst (or his successor) will hesitate to give his OK for development even more.

@themightyant No, there are many games out there, but most games just not interesting or good enough for me.

I started RE Requiem just 30 min ago, and it is great. But I don’t need an PS5 for it, it looks good and runs well on my Switch 2.

My original message is about Sony trying out so many things and getting distracted a bit by it. And if Sony focuses, it is neither on cinematic single-player games and especially nor on VR, but live service. It’s about the compass what once made PlayStation (and in particular PS4) so great, and I‘m interested whether you also got the feeling that the compass is lost or not.

@LogicStrikesAgain And still, nine games on this list are very similar sequels, one game a remake.

Returnal, Astro Bot, Wolverine, Intergalatic. That is the list with completely new experiences from PS Studios, and with Astro Bot, I’m generous.

This Eurogamer article from November reflects my feelings about the PS5 very well:
https://www.eurogamer.net/five-years-from-launch-the-ps5-is-a-roaring-success-so-why-doesnt-it-feel-like-it

Sony puts its toes in many waters: VR, live service, PC games, mobile games, games on other consoles, streaming and streaming devices, headphones, luxury controllers, the list goes on.

But where the f*ck are the great cinematic single-player games, for which people chose PS4 over Xbox?

Has Sony Interactive Entertainment lost its compass? And if so, when did it start? When In 2021 when JAPAN Studio was closed? Or in 2016 when Japan-based SCE was transformed into California-based SIE?

GT7 is the most successful live service game of a PS Studio. Popularity of GT7 im Japan is high I assume. Japan is Nintendoland nowadays. Sony has already brought Hermen’s baby, the Horizon IP, to Switch. And why should Nintendo hesitate to give Polyphony a devkit? Nintendo can only benefit from it, making the Switch platform more interesting and earning money with game sales.

GT7 on Switch 2 makes perfectly sense to me.

@AaronBayne

Being only a little disappointed that no disc is included, but not too surprised. The sad testament of years of bad business practices from Sony, and many people just swallowed it.

Hey Mika, people are still pi**ed. Could you please make a short video with actual gameplay, nothing spectacular, just enough to post something? People already love Saros, and this will help distracting them, the Wolverine release date release wasn’t enough. Thank you! Best, Hermen

This trailer shows captivating gameplay and is exactly the way Embark made Arc Raiders such a success.

Finally I‘m hyped!

@sonicmeerkat

Wolverine T-rated? You made my day.

@AhmadSumadi

„They did remakes and you all hate remakes.“

This isn’t true. Many here would love to see remasters of games like Ico, The Last Guardian and Bloodborne for PS5.

What they don’t like („hate“) are remasters of games that already run great and look fine on PS5 like The Last of Us Part 2, Horizon Zero Dawn, Days Gone. Remakes that distract the original developers from making new games like The Last of Us Part 1, Until Dawn.

Bluepoint was perfect for making remasters and remakes, so the original developers could focus on new games. Too sad that both Bluepoint and Sony didn’t see this as the best way forward for this team.

The purchasing button also shows the regular price crossed out.

This new extra information is an indication that we could see permanent price reductions in future, as it’s the case with FF7 Rebirth:

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2026/02/final-fantasy-7-rebirth-permanently-cheaper-on-ps5-from-next-week

@EfYI

I bought PSVR2 day-one, and Sony didn’t even port Astro Bot Rescue Mission or paid/supported Capcom to port RE7 and Bandai Namco to port Ace Combat 7.

Sony did everything to make the PSVR2 a „must-own“.

These games are cheap for Sony. And so feels the whole Essential service quality.

@get2sammyb

"We will celebrate our roots with a renewed commitment to Xbox starting with console which has shaped who we are"

After years of „This is an Xbox“, I am not sure that she’s talking about a closed system.