MrGawain

The whole point of turn based combat is it’s more about strategy than twitch button pressing. I love games like Suikoden, and I love games like Bayonetta but they are deeply different experiences. What Square did to Final Fantasy would be akin to making Mario a first person shooter.

The question is can you put the toothpaste back in the tube? I’m not sure you can.

More playground bickering from both sides of the gaming world.

I think Nintendo are trying to market the Switch 2 as a power rival to disillusioned Playstation fans at the expense of their own customer base.

I think Playstation 5 still doesn’t have much of a library of games for Sony to crow about.

Frankly I’m quite sick of console gaming at the moment as companies aren’t listening to their current fans.

The biggest complaint I have about the PS5 and Xbox is they were designed for core gamers, and seem to ignore casuals and families for the most part. Nintendo seem to be aping this business model with the Switch 2, and there’s a feeling the console is powerful so the developers can make the games what they want to, not to provide what the majority of Nintendo’s fans have grown accustomed to buying. This goes against Nintendo’s ‘Blue Ocean’ strategy they’ve stuck by since the Wii. Do you really need to see Mario’s overalls in 4K?

I wonder if a new generation of kids are being priced out of console gaming, and will just stick with their iPads and PC’s.

I’ve had a lot of concerts cancelled 8 months after buying the tickets. If the venue is undersold, they just pull the plug now.

You can tell it’s a hard market to be in when there has been news Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones, and AC/DC have all had trouble selling tickets.

This is not a good look for PlayStation when they’re supposed to at full stride in the generation, and soon to be competing against the Switch 2.

Yeah, we get games are hard and expensive to make, but the whole point of buying a games console is to give us new stuff to play, otherwise what was the point of moving on from the PS4?

@BecauseBecause

I tried cleaning them, but it seems to be underneath the plastic. They’re from 2006, and I remember buying all the sets on sale for about £8 each, so I’ve had my value for them. When enough go I’ll get the blu-ray box set.

I have a couple of Star Trek TNG discs that have gone a bit cloudy and freeze a bit, but that’s from a collection of over a thousand discs. Nothing lasts forever, but it still made sense to buy something once and enjoy for 30 years than trust you can find it on a digital store or streamer. Plus I have libraries of physical dvds, cds and games and have no desire to access them for a subscription when I already own them.

It’s inevitable Playstation is going all digital soon, but I’m seriously considering this Gen if the games they make are even for me anymore. The lack of competition in pricing games on a proprietary storefront is just another reason why I probably won’t bother with the PS6.

Suikoden was and is better than final fantasy seven- gameplay and story wise. And it did it before ff7. Then Suikoden 2 came along and improved on the formula.

It has on PlayStation because they stopped making them.

In the meantime Nintendo has cleaned up with quirky, fun, humorous, colourful, family friendly, local multiplayer, moments of escapism.

Sony could compete. They don’t want to.

Tech companies need something to make the previous generation outdated so you buy the new thing. Your television isn’t big enough, your tablet isn’t thin enough, your amp needs to be one louder, your phone can’t recommend a nearby vegan restaurant that allows pet gorillas.

At a certain point we as customers start to question the reason why it needs to be twice as special when it’s already doing a better job than we need. Capitalism collapses and anarchy reigns.

And the AA gaming scene was never seen again.

Looks at Nintendo Switch library….

The reality is neither the output of Sony or Microsoft interests me at the moment. The entirety of triple A gaming bores and depresses me with cliches, overused game mechanics, predatory business practises and gloomy presentation.

Hoping Nintendo can have something to cheer me up with the Switch 2.

Sony and their partners have released games for the PS5, but in reality I’ve only enjoyed Astrobot, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Eiyuden Chronicles as new games for the PS5 this generation. I enjoy fun, weird, bright games with a bit of humour in them.

The PS5 has not lived up to previous generations for variety and innovation, and that’s why I find myself dismayed about the state of the console. If they want people like me to keep playing on Sony platforms, they need to broaden their product variety.

It took them how long to figure out the PS5 was a one trick pony and wasn’t catering for a huge potential customer base in family gamers?

I question if offering more live services will sell any consoles however.

There are games on the PS5… I just don’t want to play most of them.

Sony have put all their eggs in one basket for this generation with a certain type of game and have lost the interest of so many other genre fans. Bland and not fun.

If it’s successful on the Switch 2, it will only be a matter of time until Sony and Microsoft have their version.

The biggest problem with the industry is people think we play games for the IP, and are willing to pay forever for access to those characters, but in reality we want a fun game above anything else.

Realistically after the PS5, I’ve already decided not to upgrade to a PS6, FF7 p3 o4 not.

I’m imagining a 4 on 4 live service where you have to watch 20 minutes of cutscenes about how sad all the characters feel every match.

Yeah, not my sort of thing.

I can understand Sony wanting a live service to compete against everyone else, but why would they release six around the same time to compete with each other? This is moronic business sense.

Sony (and Microsoft, Ubisoft, Square Enix and the rest) are caught in a culture that promotes ‘bigger is better’. The reality of this is narrative games with all the graphical trimmings are costing too much to make back budgets, so developers looked at live service as a way to make super graphic games where the customers pays non stop with the cost of the base game, subscriptions, dlc, and microtransactions.

The problem is they’re not listening to their customers. The majority of us don’t want live services, and a large portion of that don’t want to play online AT ALL.

So these games companies are going to have to figure out how to reduce costs instead of expecting us paying infinitely for something we have no interest in.

The graphics debate never meant much to me, and especially now with graphical fidelity heading down a bit of a cul-de-sac.

For me this year the winner between PS5 and NS2 will be the one with the most fun games to play, and PlayStation has been pretty poor up to now with a few exceptions. The question is will Nintendo have the sort of lineup they had for the original Switch?

Gamepass is aimed at a certain player who likes triple A shooting and fighting games. I personally think Microsoft has limited themselves with this model, both on gamepass and Xbox in general.

@Juanalf

I have played both. To say Astrobot is nothing like Mario Galaxy is very naive.

Meanwhile PS5 owners are wondering if the PS5 will have more games like Mario Galaxy than just Astrobot.

I know I’m wondering that.

I guess the problem Sony has is that people want another Astrobot style game this year (that would be nice), but they haven’t had their development teams working on that for 5 years.

Instead they have put all their development eggs into one basket with a bunch of live service games. No way to alter them into single player experiences, just shoot people online and pay for fancy hats for bland characters to wear.

It makes sense. The Switch has already proven this, but in general people now watch Films, TV, and listen to music in a more solitary smaller fashion.

The question is does Sony’s current output of big visually impressive, cutscene filled, little text, long playtime style game naturally fit on a handheld, or will they have to slightly rethink some of their design choices?

Stuff like Ape Escape and Parappa would add variety, colour, and humour to an otherwise very limited palette of brown and grey, depressing, story heavy sandboxes that makes up most of the Sony produced lineup.

Unfortunately they’ve only just figured this out four years in and it will take at least a couple of years to produce just remasters of these games. A new game in this style will be 5 years away.

PlayStation had gotten too big and lumbering to react to trends, hence why they couldn’t pivot on the live service front.

I don’t think the sales are FF7R’s problem. It’s how much it cost in the first place.

Fun game, but too big for it’s own good.

There are 3 games that were released this year on the PS5 that interested me enough to purchase- Eiyuden, Astrobot and FF7R.

FF7R is a really wonderful game, but in ‘A Tale Of Two Cities’ or ‘The Extended Peter Jackson Cut Of Lord Of The Rings’ way. It’s a lot to take in. Probably also harmed by dividing opinion on how the story has been playing out.

I think console gaming has grown up with its gamers. At 5 we had fun Mario, at 15 we had sexy Tomb Raider, 25 violent Call Of Duty, 35 graphic Witcher 3, 45 a bunch of monthly charges for something that doesn’t work properly.

But that’s the problem. Although consoles are for everyone no matter how old they are, they should also be for everyone no matter how young they are. Aside from Astro Bot, Sony hasn’t really convinced families little Timmy needs a PS5 when the games he likes are on the iPad. Xbox hasn’t anything for this demographic. Add this to the fact consoles will be more expensive and you alienate the audience consoles were originally for. This will continue to shrink the market and force someone out.

Game developers need to make games for the audience that is there, not the audience it wants to exist.

Both Tifa and Aerith are both rounded, fun, intelligent, caring, and sensible characters.

Cloud however is a grumpy, selfish, untalkative twit that occasionally spaces out and puts Tifa and Aerith in mortal peril. Why would either of them want anything to do with this spiky haired pillock is beyond me.

This was the year Japanese and Asian made games stood out as the best. Astrobot, Final Fantasy 7, Metaphor Refantazio, Black Myth Wukong.

Western developers could learn to put a bit of fun and escapism back into their games.

Maybe this isn’t the same for games, but when it comes to music and dvd I own a lot of stuff that isn’t available on streaming. And I’m sure if certain big companies one day decide to only offer the media they have produced, they will dump a bunch of other stuff and there won’t be a way to access it. Plus I don’t appreciate the playlist format instead of finding what I like for myself on an album, or being told I’d like this because I watched that.

Also I already paid for it once, why should I need to pay a rental fee to watch what I already paid for? And if I have to pay for streaming, I want that money to go to the artist, not a holdings company that owns the platform.

I may have to buy an emergency Blu Ray player for when my one gives up the ghost.

The problem I have with the game awards is it makes a big deal out of the stuff I don’t care about in the games industry- dlc and microtransactions for online shooty games with Hollywood celebrities in them talked about by twitch influencers sponsored by Mountain Dew and Doritos.

We’re constantly told video games are for everyone in the world, and then they focus on the stuff they think that the key demographic for their advertisers like. Great for those people, irrelevant for me.

It’s undeniable that Playstation made gaming something more than a child’s toy.

I just think Sony has just got to open the appeal of the PS5 up to more than middle aged men’s hero fantasies, and I say that as a middle aged man.

I’m not surprised because the PS5 is now very US centric. Where previous consoles have had lots of 1st party games from Japanese and European publishers, PS5’s 1st party lineup is probably 90% US made. This has concentrated on narrative action games for young adult men with certain types of interests.

But then this isn’t really panning out as a global business strategy, is it?

Personally I think this year is written off. Currently PS UK pushing ads out using previously released games and trying to get PS4 players to move up and appeal to lapsed Playstation owners. There is lots of Black Friday game reductions.

The reality is Sony needs a nice solid 2025 with lots of games, and more importantly lots of different games. The people that like God of War and Horizon already own a PS5, but there is a huge untapped market of kids and families that Sony hasn’t been catering for. They are going to have to compete with the Switch 2 next year, and they need a showcase just after Nintendo to show they are just as if not more relevant in 2025.

Will it happen? I’m slightly doubtful.

Just to think it was only 5 years ago Sony were desperate to eradicate any connection to Japan and bulk ordered mini American flags….

All the nominations shows is it’s been a pretty bad year in gaming. At least in the triple A side of it.

Astrobot unfortunately won't win back bunch of people that feel their interests aren't being served by the PS5. It also won't cause a bunch more similar games to appear in the next year.

It may however hopefully prove to PS bosses they need to diversify their games lineup for the PS6.

This time next year Martians could land in a Morrison’s car park in Slough.

D’ya remember that Dress meme where some people thought it was Blue and Black, while others thought it was White and Gold?

Well like that but some people see a discernible upgrade in graphics, and the others don’t.

I’m not a Horizon fan, but I do remember when Nintendo remastered Super Mario 1, 2, and 3 for the SNES which was a much bigger graphical leap than this. Mechanically they were the same games just one generation on. When people play Mario now, they play a version with the original graphics. I really don’t think Horizon made enough cultural impact for most people to pay more money 5 years later to play it again.

Now is the best time for you to buy a PS5.

For Sony, as they need to fill in a $300m black hole in their finances.

In fact, you should buy 4.

I wonder if anyone in triple A gaming knows how to make anything other than live service shooters, open world collectathons with cutscenes, high end racing games and copy paste sports games?

The problem with this forward thinking is you have to guarantee that Playstation will still be around, you will still be around, and that you’ll be bothered about what Sony is offering.

Trust me, nothing is guaranteed and things change.

I get the feeling the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing at XBox, and that doesn’t even count the Head, Legs and Bum into the equation.

One day something will really happen and we’ll know that it happened.

I think the concept of a Spider-Man game is actually very limited. If you think about other games you can take your character and put them on a horse, or in a car, or speedboat or jet pack or whatever, and place them in the Jungle, Desert, Space or depths of hell.

Spider-man swings on webs in New York, and that’s hard to spin into 3 games.

Because the PS5 has been such a disappointment to me this gen so far, if the PS6 is digital download only I don’t think I would invest in another generation. I accept the world moves on, but it doesn’t mean I have to. Playing more expensive games I don’t really care with lots of extra charges on a more expensive system where I have no security just seems like a brilliant jumping off point.