MrGawain

Clone/reskin characters could take up a lot of spaces. US Agent, Miles Morales, War Machine… pretty much every classic hero has a replacement or a mirror image villain.

My TV is about 14 years old, and it’s stopped supporting the apps that came with it, so the PS5 is handy to watch streaming through.

Now if Sony could make a consistent stream of varied games for the thing, it would be a worthwhile purchase!

I have motion sickness issues, even with FPS games on the TV so VR isn’t for me. My only passing time with it was LABO VR, which was a short experience that was impressive and allowed me to take the headset away from my face, but was not going to replace TV gaming an RPG for me.

I think that’s the real thing about VR; it’s an experience, not a full time way to game or watch Telly.

@AhmadSumadi I own a PS5 and frankly I find very little on it I want to play on a TV, let alone on a Bus. These long narrative sandbox games that Sony focuses on are making them a one trick pony. There are more flavours to gaming than Sad Dad stories and finding beacons to open up a map. I think they’re ignoring a large customer base who want fun instead of drama.

As a Switch and Switch 2 owner, I’m dubious if narrative games with long cutscenes and lengthy fetch quests work on a handheld device where you only have a short time to play. But at least Nintendo are using these sorts of 3rd party games to add variety to their offering.

@get2sammyb

Exactly. And now they have nothing else to follow up the success of it. I very much doubt many under 16 year old are going to be playing either Death Stranding 2 or Ghost Of Yotei.

The fact Sony has stopped caring about family gaming just shows how thick as a brick the company is. A diverse profile makes you stronger in the long run.

The Switch 2 looks great on a big telly, but the reality is the next generation of gamers aren’t as fussed with graphical fidelity. That’s why they’re playing Fortnite, Roblox and Minecraft of phones, tablets, Switch 1’s, laptops and base PS4’s.

Sony has dug themselves into a hole of aiming for more power that costs more money and resources. Every so often they say they’re aware the spiralling costs have diminishing returns, and then carry on what they’re doing.

At this point average looking product available to buy is far more profitable than cancelled jaw dropping triple AAA game that you spent 7 years developing.

Wouldn’t making games that appeal to younger people be a better idea?

I’m sorry but Horizon is devoid of any fun or joy whatsoever. Aside from watching soulless Aloy getting eating by robot dinosaurs.

I would say there were more games that looked fun instead of trying to win a visuals contest, and that’s what I want from the games I play these days- fun.

I’m not surprised kids are playing this on the PS5, because there’s so little else new aimed at a younger audience.

PS5 is really marketed to 18-50 year old men.

“We could cut our budget by $50m, or we could spend it on tech that enables us to have girls running around in their bra and pants in our studio.”

The price of the thing was never the problem, the problem the PS5 has is the selection and variety of games hasn’t really improved for a more casual gamer. I’ve been disappointed Sony has become so narrow minded in what games people want, and I do regret buying the PS5 for the little use I’ve got out the thing.

If you love playing games lie God Of War, Horizon, and The Last Of Us then more power to you, but the chances are you bought a PS5 early on.

I’m of the opinion you need a big game, 2 more reveals, 5 solid 3rd party games, a bunch of indies and some odd updates to make a worthwhile Direct-style presentation everyone is happy with. If you don’t have that then it feels like a bit of a round up of all the dregs.

With game releases few and far between for the past few years, I wonder if they can produce State of Play that feels worthwhile?

More 1st party games than last year, but for me personally this year is worse than the last with very little variety, humour or colour.

All the very expensive eggs in a very uncertain basket.

I think Xbox pretty much giving up with exclusives has given Playstation a bump this generation. I bought a PS5 because I assumed it would have the sort of games I like that the PS4 did, but this has been a very lacklustre generation. I doubt I would buy a PS6 if this is the way console gaming is going.

In general all tech is suffering from one thing lacking- the audience. Our eyes and ears aren’t strong enough to appreciate advancements, our lives are too dull to take advantage of all the extra QOL features, and our wallets are too empty to afford the things.

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.