You wonder what pictures Phil Spencer has of his bosses to be still employed after Xbox being 3rd place; reducing profit by going subscription model, losing ground in Europe and Asia, buying somewhere around $100bn of studios only to close a bunch of them, and then make all those exclusives you paid for 3rd party? At this point I wonder has Xbox listed as a charity to explain the money they throw at it without return.
Let’s be honest what XBox is doing is not about making money now, it’s attempting to force the industry and the customer into a different business model. And it really isn’t working at the moment.
It’s odd but despite the recession if people want to buy two tickets to Taylor Swift for a grand, they will. If someone wants an iPhone 37 for £1300 they will get it. Steamdeck has sold well. People bought expensive new TV’s to watch the World Cup.
The PS5 is an expensive item, but more the point it’s an expensive item that only appeals to hardcore gamers. Families aren’t buying PS5’s to play the next Just Dance or Minecraft or Crash Bandicoot. The big seller last year was the Harry Potter game, because it’s the sort of thing that more casual gamers and kids are interested in. Software sells consoles, and more variety sells consoles to different markets, and that’s something Playstation and Xbox have neglected.
Let’s be honest: every trailer or image released for a big video game is to be inspected with a fine tooth comb by at least one person on the internet. I’m guessing whoever put the banner in the game copied it from a picture of this reenactment group thinking it was historic, but couldn’t read Japanese. If you’re fluent in Japanese it’s probably obvious (remembering there are people who translate Hyrulian in Zelda game trailers).
If you think about it, it could have said anything; Swearing, Political comments, Advertising, ‘We will kill everyone’ or ‘We are fond of cheese on toast’. Ubisoft got lucky it didn’t say anything offensive.
The gameplay loop was more Warriors than traditional Final Fantasy. It was fun while I was learning the controls, but at a point I just found myself doing the same list of stuff to win. If the game was 10-15 hours shorter I doubt it would have been so noticeable.
I was part of a whole generation who bought the original Bubsy because they saw very impressive static pictures in a magazine and read about the voice acting. Then we played it and realised our mistake.
Any subsequent generation has no excuse in a world with YouTube and comment sections.
In any business you have to offer a product that will cost less than it will make so you turn profit. The truth is the audience for video games isn’t growing exponentially, and the audience who wants to spend $70 to sit and play a AAA game for 70 hours is dwindling. They need to find a sustainable product that will appeal to these people by cutting down budgets.
Stuff like Fortnite and Roblox is popular, but that market is saturated, plus it relies on the game lasting a long time with people constantly paying into it to turn a profit
. It doesn’t take a video games expert to figure out Nintendo is popular at the moment and they are making mid tier games that don’t cost $300m, and cut costs by changing art styles and being sensible on cutscenes, voice acting, and excessive NPCs and scenery. Even PlayStation must of noticed this when Astro Bot was more popular in their State Of Play than anything else combined. I’m guessing a game like that didn’t cost the same as Spider-Man 2 or Horizon to make.
I took it as that he adores the PS2 and PS4, but the PS3 and the PS5 don't live up to what came before. The PS1 is a great console, but it was improved upon by the PS2.
Despite having lots of new games, I do think there is something inherently broken about Xbox’s business strategy. I don’t think they will ever hit the subscribers they need to make gamepass profitable. And let’s not forget they canned Tango Gameworks amongst others. The truth is Xbox has a lot of coming soon games and few customers and Playstation has lots of customers but few coming soon games (I like the look of Astrobot but not enough to buy it at £60-£70). It’s in both companies interest to work together for the meantime.
I think we can figure out the rule of porting to other systems is-
-If it’s a true green XBox game like Halo, Gears, or Fable there’s no chance. They couldn’t have these games fail to perform elsewhere, and Xbox fans wouldn’t like it.
-If this franchise is proven on other consoles it’s getting ported (COD, Doom, Fallout). Big money is big money.
-If this game failed to reach expectations on Xbox it’s fair game. Might as well get something back.
-When it comes to hype machines like Starfield or Indiana Jones it won’t be happening day one to keep Xbox owners happy, but if they drop off after a year or two they could be ported.
Facing a very big precipice of irrelevance, Microsoft did what they had to do and show games. It made their fans happy. I don’t think it will radically change their fortunes as people won’t rush out to buy an Xbox, but I guess they’ll have a bit of an uptick on PC gamepass, then find a drop again because that’s how people use streaming services.
Playstation just doesn’t have any more games ready at the moment, but that doesn’t mean more aren’t coming in 2025. If we’ve seen anything with Astro Bot recently it’s that players would like some variation in the types of games Sony puts out.
Are we getting originality from Triple A at the moment? Aside from graphical textures and lighting we’ve never seen before? To me it seems more of the same but slightly better detail in facial expressions.
Indie games and Nintendo are keeping their budgets and development times in check, and those business models are a lot healthier. It’s nice to make art, but they still have to produce a product enough people want to buy so they sell more than they spend. How can you tailor a game to a console if it takes longer to make the game than the console?
Fans have been criticising this development model. Journalists and Gamer Commentators have been criticising it. Now people who work in the system have been talking about it.
The question is do the people who make the decisions force a change? Or are they so blind or worried that this is the only way to get customers attention by super sizing their game? And if there is a change will we see more sensible budget games before the PS6?
It’s an advert, just like State Of Plays, just like Nintendo Directs. The problem with that is there wasn’t enough to sell for the advert. When there is 2 or 3 tentpole titles firmly planted you can get some goodwill for the other announcements, but triple A gaming is dead at the moment and having a big party with no jelly and ice cream is just reminding us how bad gaming is at the moment.
I enjoyed SMT 5 for 70 hours. Unfortunately I played it for 90.
And I think that’s what’s really happening to the triple A gaming landscape. At a certain point you’ve played enough of COD or Spider-Man or Assassin’s Creed or whatever and it turns you off of that gameplay loop. Sequels tend to be more of the same and you become tired of it.
I liked the game, I just never want to play that gameplay ever again.
The fact barely any of these games or patches will be out before the Christmas period means we don’t need to see an announcement live.
The only real reason to watch these things is if you like mocking a developers facial hair or to see how much importance an executive places on social media numbers connected to their game dressed in a suit jacket and jeans.
To be honest it’s easier to exceed expectations when you’re taking over a bad business than a good one. Of course time games take to make, we won’t really know how good or bad they are doing until about 5-7 years in.
If you own a shoe shop and you notice you’re selling far more wellingtons than anything else, you don’t stop selling trainers and sandals because they only sell 20% of what the wellingtons do. You offer as many different designs so you can attract the most customers.
Sony have convinced themselves big open world action games with deep narratives are the only games anyone cares about (like Microsoft thinks about fps), and have forgotten you need a mix to build a customer base. If you can get someone to buy a PS5 to play an obscure JRPG or weird racing game, they may also buy God Of War or Spider-Man to try them out.
Oddly enough both Japanese produced games with some zany stuff in them. And 3rd and 4th most liked Dynasty Warriors and Silent Hill are also Japanese games.
Astrobot looks fun if slightly the same as the last game. I can’t tell if Infinite Nikki is an RPG or a dress up Dolly game from what they showed, but I would like another solid JRPG so I’m slightly interested. Everything else was standard fare for people who like that sort of thing, but not for me.
For actual presentation, it really was just a bunch of trailers strung together that didn’t need to be tied together as a presentation.
As a PS5 owner for almost 2 years now I’m disappointed with my purchase. There are games… just not many I want to play. To me Playstation has gone too heavy for the 18-30 metric with a lot of deep narrative lead games and sandbox games, but they’ve neglected the casual gamer, the family gamer, the party gamer and fans of weird styles of games. I suspect this is the large majority of groups of people who haven’t bought a PS5 yet. This applies to XBox even more, and shows why Nintendo have cornered those markets.
Hopefully they can offer something for those customers with the upcoming State Of Play.
Naughty Dog has been and is making games for the core PlayStation fan- narrative driven 3rd person action games. There is nothing wrong with that or the fans of that.
Unfortunately they’ve already bought a PS5 but Sony needs something to get the people who don’t like those games to buy one, which they won’t get because they’ve shut down all the quirky and weird studios.
If they had a couple of big headline games and some smaller 1st party stuff and then some traditional 3rd party PlayStation games then I think they would go head to head with their competition.
But we know they don’t.
Instead I can see them holding back for a random Tuesday sometime later, show the Lego Horizon thing, maybe a new game or a sequel to something smaller and a bunch of standard 3rd party yearly drops like Assassin’s Creed. They will tell people what they’ve got for this year, but won’t set themselves up for hype and then criticism.
It’s not about ‘The Presentation’ or ‘The Direct’ or ‘The Showcase’, all they are is long form adverts. The reality is you need a good product/products- basically games. And hopefully you can show them no more than 6 months until they are released.
Realistically we know Sony don’t have that much in the bag for the rest of the financial year. I think the apathy for PlayStation will continue as triple A gaming struggles with budgets and coming up with any new ideas.
Hope we get an Astrobot game soon. That had loads of new ideas from 3D Mario games I enjoyed.
I’m guessing pretty much all of the core PlayStation fan base now owns a PS5.
The real sell for Sony now is attracting the casual gamer and families. I still think the PS5 library is very heavy on story based sandbox games and is lacking in party games, platformers, and colourful stuff.
The whole point of a console is plug and play- you can easily experience lots of different games by simply swapping out one disc or cartridge for another, and the box costs you a standalone £300-£500. If you’re only going to play one game as service you might as well bypass the box and get an all in one PC instead. That’s why World Of Warcraft was a big PC game. Without showing the variety of what their console offers Playstation are sort showing it’s a bit pointless.
Sony has always sat somewhere in between XBox and Nintendo. Mature and Family, Big Budget and Smaller Clever Idea.
Currently it’s pretty obvious the market cares more about the latter than the former, and I think it makes sense for Sony to support the mid tier and indie titles, with a few triple A games scattered between. Not every game has to sell 10m copies for £70. There is a land underneath where games can be turned around quicker and are more fun. This is the market Nintendo has completely, and the Playstation has lost ground on. They also need to stop mentioning the more powerful successor and the PS5 being in the end of its life. All it does is make people uncertain and drive people away.
These services are only worthwhile if they have stuff you want to try. If you love indie games then it’s great- but then it’s probably greater if you could play them on the go on Switch or Steam.
Current AAA games have not been up to par recently.
The numbers for PS4 3rd party exclusives is about the same as the PS4, but not the 1st party numbers.
And I get there isn’t a parity in graphics, but the Switch has had at least twice as many exclusives in all flavours per year as XBox and Playstation COMBINED.
Remake released on a console with 100m+ user base.
Rebirth did not.
The biggest issue with sales for PS5 games is Sony has just assumed people would buy a console and wait patiently for games to release on it. In reality it’s becoming a Wii U situation where it doesn’t matter if a few good games are appearing on the system because all the general consumer sees is the droughts in between. Plus I bet £70 puts a lot of people off of the game.
It's great to see his legacy will keep going and we'll get more games like Suikoden with Eiyuden.
Although as a fan of Suikoden I wonder if some of those unanswered questions about certain Suikoden characters (Viki, Jeanne, Clive, and Yuber and Pesmerga to name a few) will remain unanswered with his passing. It's these story threads that has kept the Suikoden fandom going.
I loved the 2018 one, but I felt the sequel was just larger and wordier. Such a big world to traverse but I felt there wasn’t really a choice but to go down the path set out for me so I could listen to all that waffle dialogue.
Comments 512
Re: Mark Cerny's Feedback on PS5's Astro Bot: 'Now This Is a Game'
If ‘this’ is a game, what have Sony been doing for the last 4 years?
Because most of us fans have been thinking the same thing.
Re: Xbox Renegotiated Indiana Jones Deal to Exclude PS5, Then Ported It Anyway
You wonder what pictures Phil Spencer has of his bosses to be still employed after Xbox being 3rd place; reducing profit by going subscription model, losing ground in Europe and Asia, buying somewhere around $100bn of studios only to close a bunch of them, and then make all those exclusives you paid for 3rd party? At this point I wonder has Xbox listed as a charity to explain the money they throw at it without return.
Re: Poll: What Did You Think of Gamescom Opening Night Live 2024?
For the people who like that sort of thing it was a thing people like.
Again there is nothing that looks original or just weird or fun that I like to play.
Re: Poll: What PS5 Games Do You Most Want to See at Gamescom 2024?
I'd like to know if Suikoden 1&2 remaster still exists.
I'm likely to play The Plucky Squire and Astrobot on PS5, but I really don't need to see any more spoilers for those at the moment.
Re: Don't Worry, Gamescom Opening Night Live Will Feature New Game Announcements
Games used to need presentations, now presentations need games.
Re: GTA 6 Won't Be on Subs Like PS Plus at Launch Because Take-Two Makes 'Rational' Decisions
Let’s be honest what XBox is doing is not about making money now, it’s attempting to force the industry and the customer into a different business model. And it really isn’t working at the moment.
Re: Reaction: PS5 Needs a Price Cut
It’s odd but despite the recession if people want to buy two tickets to Taylor Swift for a grand, they will. If someone wants an iPhone 37 for £1300 they will get it. Steamdeck has sold well. People bought expensive new TV’s to watch the World Cup.
The PS5 is an expensive item, but more the point it’s an expensive item that only appeals to hardcore gamers. Families aren’t buying PS5’s to play the next Just Dance or Minecraft or Crash Bandicoot. The big seller last year was the Harry Potter game, because it’s the sort of thing that more casual gamers and kids are interested in. Software sells consoles, and more variety sells consoles to different markets, and that’s something Playstation and Xbox have neglected.
Re: Poll: Are You Sick of Soulslike Games?
The reason there is so many Soulslikes is because FromSoftware are really good at sticking to budgets and schedules.
In general there isn’t enough innovation in triple A games, Soulslikes included.
Re: Preview: Ignore The Haters, Concord Is a Good PS5 Shooter We Can't Wait to Play More Of
I don’t think it’s a question of quality, it’s a question of frequency- it’s aping a lot of other games that people are a little tired of.
Re: Ubisoft Apologises for Using Re-Enactment Group's Flag in Assassin's Creed Shadows Art
Let’s be honest: every trailer or image released for a big video game is to be inspected with a fine tooth comb by at least one person on the internet. I’m guessing whoever put the banner in the game copied it from a picture of this reenactment group thinking it was historic, but couldn’t read Japanese. If you’re fluent in Japanese it’s probably obvious (remembering there are people who translate Hyrulian in Zelda game trailers).
If you think about it, it could have said anything; Swearing, Political comments, Advertising, ‘We will kill everyone’ or ‘We are fond of cheese on toast’. Ubisoft got lucky it didn’t say anything offensive.
Re: Poll: One Year Later, What Are Your Thoughts on Final Fantasy 16?
The gameplay loop was more Warriors than traditional Final Fantasy. It was fun while I was learning the controls, but at a point I just found myself doing the same list of stuff to win. If the game was 10-15 hours shorter I doubt it would have been so noticeable.
Plus the story was pure waffle.
Re: Bubsy Is Back in the Purrfect Collection on PS5
I was part of a whole generation who bought the original Bubsy because they saw very impressive static pictures in a magazine and read about the voice acting. Then we played it and realised our mistake.
Any subsequent generation has no excuse in a world with YouTube and comment sections.
Re: Ex-Sony Boss Shawn Layden Explains How to Make Games Faster, Cheaper
In any business you have to offer a product that will cost less than it will make so you turn profit. The truth is the audience for video games isn’t growing exponentially, and the audience who wants to spend $70 to sit and play a AAA game for 70 hours is dwindling. They need to find a sustainable product that will appeal to these people by cutting down budgets.
Stuff like Fortnite and Roblox is popular, but that market is saturated, plus it relies on the game lasting a long time with people constantly paying into it to turn a profit
. It doesn’t take a video games expert to figure out Nintendo is popular at the moment and they are making mid tier games that don’t cost $300m, and cut costs by changing art styles and being sensible on cutscenes, voice acting, and excessive NPCs and scenery. Even PlayStation must of noticed this when Astro Bot was more popular in their State Of Play than anything else combined. I’m guessing a game like that didn’t cost the same as Spider-Man 2 or Horizon to make.
Re: As If There Was Any Doubt, a Sequel to the Uncharted Movie Has Been Confirmed
Tom Holland has a 6 picture Sony deal.
Sony has a recognisable bankable franchise that you could get any room full of monkeys with typewriters to develop in a weekend.
Bish. Bash. Bosh. Bad film that people will go to because of the star and the title.
Re: Ex-PS5 Exec Shawn Layden Isn't Holding Back His Feelings on Xbox
I took it as that he adores the PS2 and PS4, but the PS3 and the PS5 don't live up to what came before. The PS1 is a great console, but it was improved upon by the PS2.
Re: Ex-PS5 Exec Shawn Layden Isn't Holding Back His Feelings on Xbox
@get2sammyb
IGN video on ‘where you will be playing games in the future’. Also including Michael Pachter….
https://youtu.be/KHf5avkORyc?si=heVXUBycyuzZfrPp
Re: Ex-PS5 Exec Shawn Layden Isn't Holding Back His Feelings on Xbox
Layden was on IGN’s panel about the future of gaming, and said he thought the greatest console of all time was ‘any even numbered Playstation’.
Obviously he isn’t too impressed of what’s happening with this generation.
Re: Xbox Bigwig Confirms Many More Microsoft Games Are Coming to PS5
Despite having lots of new games, I do think there is something inherently broken about Xbox’s business strategy. I don’t think they will ever hit the subscribers they need to make gamepass profitable. And let’s not forget they canned Tango Gameworks amongst others. The truth is Xbox has a lot of coming soon games and few customers and Playstation has lots of customers but few coming soon games (I like the look of Astrobot but not enough to buy it at £60-£70). It’s in both companies interest to work together for the meantime.
I think we can figure out the rule of porting to other systems is-
-If it’s a true green XBox game like Halo, Gears, or Fable there’s no chance. They couldn’t have these games fail to perform elsewhere, and Xbox fans wouldn’t like it.
-If this franchise is proven on other consoles it’s getting ported (COD, Doom, Fallout). Big money is big money.
-If this game failed to reach expectations on Xbox it’s fair game. Might as well get something back.
-When it comes to hype machines like Starfield or Indiana Jones it won’t be happening day one to keep Xbox owners happy, but if they drop off after a year or two they could be ported.
Re: PS5 Fans Beg Sony for a More Fulfilling Livestream in the Aftermath of Xbox Show
Facing a very big precipice of irrelevance, Microsoft did what they had to do and show games. It made their fans happy. I don’t think it will radically change their fortunes as people won’t rush out to buy an Xbox, but I guess they’ll have a bit of an uptick on PC gamepass, then find a drop again because that’s how people use streaming services.
Playstation just doesn’t have any more games ready at the moment, but that doesn’t mean more aren’t coming in 2025. If we’ve seen anything with Astro Bot recently it’s that players would like some variation in the types of games Sony puts out.
Re: PS5 Hardware Architect Says It May Take Less Time to Build a Console Than a Game Now
@Cutmastavictory
Are we getting originality from Triple A at the moment? Aside from graphical textures and lighting we’ve never seen before? To me it seems more of the same but slightly better detail in facial expressions.
Indie games and Nintendo are keeping their budgets and development times in check, and those business models are a lot healthier. It’s nice to make art, but they still have to produce a product enough people want to buy so they sell more than they spend. How can you tailor a game to a console if it takes longer to make the game than the console?
Re: PS5 Hardware Architect Says It May Take Less Time to Build a Console Than a Game Now
Fans have been criticising this development model. Journalists and Gamer Commentators have been criticising it. Now people who work in the system have been talking about it.
The question is do the people who make the decisions force a change? Or are they so blind or worried that this is the only way to get customers attention by super sizing their game? And if there is a change will we see more sensible budget games before the PS6?
Re: Poll: Was Summer Game Fest 2024 Great or a Letdown?
It’s an advert, just like State Of Plays, just like Nintendo Directs. The problem with that is there wasn’t enough to sell for the advert. When there is 2 or 3 tentpole titles firmly planted you can get some goodwill for the other announcements, but triple A gaming is dead at the moment and having a big party with no jelly and ice cream is just reminding us how bad gaming is at the moment.
Re: Sony's New PS5, PC Shooter Concord Confirmed as a $40 Game
I wonder if this would be £70 if it had positive reactions in the State Of Play? Or has Sony lost faith in the £70 RRP in such a hard time?
Curious to see what they price Astro Bot at.
Re: Interview: Why SMT 5: Vengeance Devs Decided to Revisit the RPG and Bring It to PS5, PS4 Players
I enjoyed SMT 5 for 70 hours. Unfortunately I played it for 90.
And I think that’s what’s really happening to the triple A gaming landscape. At a certain point you’ve played enough of COD or Spider-Man or Assassin’s Creed or whatever and it turns you off of that gameplay loop. Sequels tend to be more of the same and you become tired of it.
I liked the game, I just never want to play that gameplay ever again.
Re: Poll: Are You Hyped for Summer Game Fest 2024?
The fact barely any of these games or patches will be out before the Christmas period means we don’t need to see an announcement live.
The only real reason to watch these things is if you like mocking a developers facial hair or to see how much importance an executive places on social media numbers connected to their game dressed in a suit jacket and jeans.
Re: It's 'A Truly Exciting Time' for PlayStation as New Sony CEOs Take Control
To be honest it’s easier to exceed expectations when you’re taking over a bad business than a good one. Of course time games take to make, we won’t really know how good or bad they are doing until about 5-7 years in.
Re: Reaction: PS5 Livestreams Are No Longer Speaking to the Fans Who Built the Brand
If you own a shoe shop and you notice you’re selling far more wellingtons than anything else, you don’t stop selling trainers and sandals because they only sell 20% of what the wellingtons do. You offer as many different designs so you can attract the most customers.
Sony have convinced themselves big open world action games with deep narratives are the only games anyone cares about (like Microsoft thinks about fps), and have forgotten you need a mix to build a customer base. If you can get someone to buy a PS5 to play an obscure JRPG or weird racing game, they may also buy God Of War or Spider-Man to try them out.
Re: Monster Hunter Wilds, Astro Bot the Biggest PS5 Winners from State of Play
Oddly enough both Japanese produced games with some zany stuff in them. And 3rd and 4th most liked Dynasty Warriors and Silent Hill are also Japanese games.
Exactly what the PS5 has been a bit thin on.
Re: Poll: What Did You Think of Sony's State of Play for May 2024?
Astrobot looks fun if slightly the same as the last game. I can’t tell if Infinite Nikki is an RPG or a dress up Dolly game from what they showed, but I would like another solid JRPG so I’m slightly interested. Everything else was standard fare for people who like that sort of thing, but not for me.
For actual presentation, it really was just a bunch of trailers strung together that didn’t need to be tied together as a presentation.
Re: PS5 Players Are Buying Fewer New Games, But Spending More Than Ever Overall
Maybe there's less games that interest people these days?
Re: PS5 Sales Trend Ahead of PS4 in US, Leads Console Market By 'Significant Margin'
As a PS5 owner for almost 2 years now I’m disappointed with my purchase. There are games… just not many I want to play. To me Playstation has gone too heavy for the 18-30 metric with a lot of deep narrative lead games and sandbox games, but they’ve neglected the casual gamer, the family gamer, the party gamer and fans of weird styles of games. I suspect this is the large majority of groups of people who haven’t bought a PS5 yet. This applies to XBox even more, and shows why Nintendo have cornered those markets.
Hopefully they can offer something for those customers with the upcoming State Of Play.
Re: Neil Druckmann Claims Comments of Next Naughty Dog Game 'Redefining' the Mainstream View of Gaming Was a Sony Misquote
Naughty Dog has been and is making games for the core PlayStation fan- narrative driven 3rd person action games. There is nothing wrong with that or the fans of that.
Unfortunately they’ve already bought a PS5 but Sony needs something to get the people who don’t like those games to buy one, which they won’t get because they’ve shut down all the quirky and weird studios.
Same problem as Microsoft.
Re: Rumour: Full Astro Bot PS5 Game to Be Announced Very Soon
Let’s be honest, 99% of us are excited about this because it’s something slightly different with some humour and colour in it.
Re: Poll: Will the Rumoured PlayStation Showcase Be Announced Soon?
If they had a couple of big headline games and some smaller 1st party stuff and then some traditional 3rd party PlayStation games then I think they would go head to head with their competition.
But we know they don’t.
Instead I can see them holding back for a random Tuesday sometime later, show the Lego Horizon thing, maybe a new game or a sequel to something smaller and a bunch of standard 3rd party yearly drops like Assassin’s Creed. They will tell people what they’ve got for this year, but won’t set themselves up for hype and then criticism.
Re: The Next Naughty Dog Game Its 'Most Thrilling Yet', Says Neil Druckmann
What has redefined ‘the mainstreams perception of gaming’?
Pac-Man
Super Mario Bros
Tetris
Street Fighter 2
Pokemon
COD
GTA
Wii Sports
Minecraft
Quite a statement. I doubt a 3rd person perspective narrative game will make the casuals turn their head.
Re: Feature: Revisiting PlayStation Showcase 2023, an Event Sony Must Improve Upon
It’s not about ‘The Presentation’ or ‘The Direct’ or ‘The Showcase’, all they are is long form adverts. The reality is you need a good product/products- basically games. And hopefully you can show them no more than 6 months until they are released.
Realistically we know Sony don’t have that much in the bag for the rest of the financial year. I think the apathy for PlayStation will continue as triple A gaming struggles with budgets and coming up with any new ideas.
Hope we get an Astrobot game soon. That had loads of new ideas from 3D Mario games I enjoyed.
Re: Reaction: Why You Shouldn't Worry Too Much About PS5's Year-on-Year Decline
I’m guessing pretty much all of the core PlayStation fan base now owns a PS5.
The real sell for Sony now is attracting the casual gamer and families. I still think the PS5 library is very heavy on story based sandbox games and is lacking in party games, platformers, and colourful stuff.
Re: Sony Increasingly Focused on PS5 Playtime Alongside Hardware Sales
The whole point of a console is plug and play- you can easily experience lots of different games by simply swapping out one disc or cartridge for another, and the box costs you a standalone £300-£500. If you’re only going to play one game as service you might as well bypass the box and get an all in one PC instead. That’s why World Of Warcraft was a big PC game. Without showing the variety of what their console offers Playstation are sort showing it’s a bit pointless.
Re: PS5 Sales Reach 59.3 Million as Sony Falls Just Short of Fiscal Year Forecast
They’re lucky to get to that seeing how poorly they’ve run the business.
Software sells hardware, not season passes.
Re: Sony: The Future Is Incredibly Bright for PlayStation
Sony has always sat somewhere in between XBox and Nintendo. Mature and Family, Big Budget and Smaller Clever Idea.
Currently it’s pretty obvious the market cares more about the latter than the former, and I think it makes sense for Sony to support the mid tier and indie titles, with a few triple A games scattered between. Not every game has to sell 10m copies for £70. There is a land underneath where games can be turned around quicker and are more fun. This is the market Nintendo has completely, and the Playstation has lost ground on. They also need to stop mentioning the more powerful successor and the PS5 being in the end of its life. All it does is make people uncertain and drive people away.
Re: Rumour: SEGA Wants Persona to Be an Annual Franchise Alongside Like a Dragon, Sonic
Click and Paste, bish bash bosh, wait for the money to roll in!
Re: Gaming Subs Like PS Plus, Xbox Game Pass Aren't Growing At All
These services are only worthwhile if they have stuff you want to try. If you love indie games then it’s great- but then it’s probably greater if you could play them on the go on Switch or Steam.
Current AAA games have not been up to par recently.
Re: Sony Wants You To Aid Your Fellow Gamers via Community Game Help
At this moment the PS5 has surpassed the Wii U in pointless gimmicks.
Re: Talking Point: Have Sony's Third-Party PS5 Deals Made Up for Its Lack of First-Party Games?
The numbers for PS4 3rd party exclusives is about the same as the PS4, but not the 1st party numbers.
And I get there isn’t a parity in graphics, but the Switch has had at least twice as many exclusives in all flavours per year as XBox and Playstation COMBINED.
Re: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Sales Remain Muted in the USA, Compared to Past Games
Remake released on a console with 100m+ user base.
Rebirth did not.
The biggest issue with sales for PS5 games is Sony has just assumed people would buy a console and wait patiently for games to release on it. In reality it’s becoming a Wii U situation where it doesn’t matter if a few good games are appearing on the system because all the general consumer sees is the droughts in between. Plus I bet £70 puts a lot of people off of the game.
Re: Eiyuden Chronicle Sequel Will Move Forward, Despite Death of Creator
It's great to see his legacy will keep going and we'll get more games like Suikoden with Eiyuden.
Although as a fan of Suikoden I wonder if some of those unanswered questions about certain Suikoden characters (Viki, Jeanne, Clive, and Yuber and Pesmerga to name a few) will remain unanswered with his passing. It's these story threads that has kept the Suikoden fandom going.
Re: Poll: Are You Playing Final Fantasy 16: The Rising Tide?
I got the game and played it over Christmas. It was fun at the beginning but it really became copy/paste/repeat after a while.
The idea of more of the same really turns my guts like the 8th helping of treacle tart.
Re: Sony Santa Monica Studio Seemingly Hiring for New God of War Game
I loved the 2018 one, but I felt the sequel was just larger and wordier. Such a big world to traverse but I felt there wasn’t really a choice but to go down the path set out for me so I could listen to all that waffle dialogue.
Re: 'Smaller' PS5 Exclusives Still Reportedly Coming Later This Year
I’m very critical of what they’ve delivered on the PS5 so far, but if they can bring some fun games like Astrobot I’ll be happy.
If Nintendo isn't willing to make a Mario Galaxy 3, then Sony might as well do it.
Re: Rumour: Sony to Host Big PlayStation Event Next Month
Sony didn’t help themselves by announcing they wouldn’t have any big games for the financial year people would actually be excited about.
Even if there is fun stuff to announce, they’ve already poured cold water on it themselves.