Mythologue

Well, this certainly has all the appearances of a day one flop.

I've been with PlayStation for over a decade now, but this Xbox showcase was possibly the first time that I've genuinely thought I might be on the wrong platform. They absolutely crushed it: the much anticipated Fable, leaning into comfortable territory with Forza, then Payday, Avowed, Starfield, and those are just the ones I recall. Sony need to up their game for sure. It's clear Xbox aren't playing around anymore.

Following Forspoken, I'm not really sure how to take this news. Aren't there better developers they could build a relationship with? Devolver, Frictional, CDPR?

Dragon Age Origins and then the rest (2 and Inquisition) on Steam, to get ready for whenever Dreadwolf releases.

Better than Sony's, I think, but only just marginally. My expectations were practically beneath the floorboards so I suppose that might be why I was a little more receptive to this showing.

Clever devs. Can't have microtransactions if you don't have a game. A stroke of pure genius.

Unless they can draw the attention of the hardcore Apple fanbase, this thing is absolutely DOA. I'm still trying to figure out who it's even meant to appeal to. This seems like Apple's Meta moment.

I'm a little more excited about Test Drive, assuming that shapes up well and doesn't end up in development hell. I've heard this game is more of an expansion type deal with TC2, including most of the same vehicles and allowing a transfer of your vehicles from that game.

I thought The Crew was quite revolutionary back when it was announced but, like most Ubisoft franchises such as Far Cry, Trials, Watch_Dogs, Rocksmith, Assassin's Creed, etc., it ended up becoming quite derivative down the line. Right down to the whole racing festival thing.

Am I missing something, or are we now really at the point where people are paying money for demos?

Latency is one of the reasons why I stopped with PSNow a few years back. It was fun playing PS3 games on PS4 but really just uncomfortable, and a little bit anxiety inducing considering the fact that a single drop out could erase a not insubstantial amount of progress. It seems like Sony have lofty goals that don't much align with the broader gaming community. I suppose time will tell if that's correct.

I don't know tbh. Never really played sports games (especially given how predatory they are these days) and the whole Jurassic World thing sounds like a by the numbers licensed game to profit off brand recognition.

The character swapping mechanic in GTAV was very well implemented and quite forward thinking for its time. I'm hoping it's implemented just as well here, maybe introduce a new layer of creativity to the level design and allow for players to pick multiple approaches.

The first couple of games established some great foundations. I'm really hoping this game builds on it in more than just superfluous ways.

I never saw these over the top visual effects to be all that necessary. It might just be me, but I actually find that they can be a little uncomfortable. A bit too excessive IMO.

It won't be a lot. I can't imagine so, anyway. There'll be maybe two or three very big games that see some tepid reception, and perhaps a handful of indies, ports, remasters, and some accessories / peripherals. The rest of the show will be conversations with devs.

@naruball I can't personally think of any instance where a lack of competition would be a good thing.

@naruball Sony have attempted much the same. The idea of third party publishers and developers seeking exclusivity deals with platforms is practically universal. So yeah, it's good. The alternative is a monopoly. You probably don't need me to tell you that it's a universally bad thing.

It's not too surprising. It was only a matter of time before Sony would begin to take advantage of their significant presence in the market. This is why competition is not only good, but entirely necessary.

This just seems to indicate that a game's financial success is never really indicative of its quality.

It just occurred to me that this is going to be one of those live service, packed to the brim with microtransactions things, isn't it?

Let's save some time here: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. I'm going to apply that philosophy here and suggest that this game never sees the light of day, or is anything like what we expect it to be. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but being cautious never hurt anyone.

I'm starting to wonder if there's really much point in following these showcases in the first place. If a game releases, and is good, then you get a good game. If a game is announced and looks good, that doesn't really say anything. If a game isn't announced at all, you torture yourself wondering if it does, in fact, exist. Take it from someone who's been waiting on Half Life the Third for roughly a decade and a half: it's not really worth it.

The gap that Sony repeatedly fail to fill is that of the arcade racing market. We used to have Burnout and Motorstorm. What do we have now?

Let's hope it's the much anticipated Bubsy sequel.

@andrewsqual That doesn't change the essence of the game, which was deeply uninspired.

I'm all for the "eat the rich" narrative (see: The Outer Worlds), but this game certainly isn't doing it. It's purely ironic.

I never found Days Gone to be all that special. It was just a fairly uninspired zombie survival / action game with Mad Max type vehicle upgrades. I only played it for roughly four or five hours before I completely lost interest.

I'm not so much upset by the lack of heavy hitters so much as I'm perturbed by the emphasis on multi-player titles. Sony is supposed to be an innovator, heavy emphasis on world building and ingenuity and flavour, why are they now leaning so heavily into clichés? It feels like the days of TLoU, God of War, Uncharted, Motorstorm, etc., are well and truly behind us.

@KundaliniRising333 Definitely. The first entry in this series was fantastic with respect to combat mechanics, story was OK as well. Everything else was tired and very outdated (we're talking open world elements that we saw all the way back in 2010 or so, probably earlier).

But how would that work? Isn't the point of DBD to be deliberately generic with respect to horror tropes? And now the game is structured almost exclusively around already existing horror franchises, so what's the story actually going to be?

@Markatron84 GaaS won't die, it'll just be concentrated in the hands of developer/publishers who do it best or got there first. That's actually a positive, because it means that other developers will give in trying to compete with behemoths. Fortnite and Overwatch aren't going to fade away and vanish, but they'll probably remain the only extant instances of live service titles, forcing developers to actually be creative and genuinely innovate.

MK is good for a burst of fun but I never really understood the whole appeal. I suppose it's more of a multi-player thing rather than a solo thing. Unless there's some substantial single player campaign, I'll wait probably a couple years at the least.

I don't think I can personally name a game that's worth £60, never mind £70.

Expect to compete with FFXIV and WoW, at which point you may as well just call it a day here and now.

It's unsurprising. Nintendo are frequently in a league of their own when it comes to the software gaming market.

@ROTTIEMAN16 I still remember those free trials you'd download off XBLA. Suggesting that trials are an incentive for a subscription seems a little off.

@sjbsixpack Probably the main exception here is Elden Ring. I recall the PS5 version being somewhat inferior to the PS4 version but I can't recall precisely why.

It's DOA, I'm calling it now. There's no way an MMO like this will survive in the current climate.

@Arnna I played it on PC roughly half a year ago, and it was still pretty broken. Not unplayable, but enough visual / behavioural bugs to make even Bethesda blush. Besides that, it's just not especially well designed on a fundamental level (dull, generic environments and weird NPC behaviour), and really makes me feel like it's Deus Ex with less appeal and charm.

On the other hand, I think it's offered on one of the PS+ tiers...? If that's the case, you could always just test it out on there I suppose.

I'd rather there be a heterogeneous array of engines being explored rather than a single, homogeneous mass. At the very least, allow new engines to be built upon the foundations of the old, as with Source engine. Otherwise, it could get to be quite worrying if things like, for example, physics end up feeling almost identical across half a dozen games or more.

@kyleforrester87 Musk is another example of someone who inherited wealth and grew it. He's often assigned attributes like "genius" when, more realistically, he's a product of generational wealth.

@nessisonett I like to imagine that Stephen King was the sole reason why Musk dropped the initial proposed cost for Twitter verification.

Maybe I'm just too cynical, but I have to wonder if "impressed with their work" is just corpo speak for "will generate money", rather than "will be enjoyed by players".

May or may not be true, but if WB is the publisher, it doesn't surprise me. Remember Shadow of Mordor?

I often tend to wait for GOTY editions (or any likewise releases) so I can just get it all together and judge for myself on the whole. I don't think I would ever buy DLC by itself since it usually tends to be just OK, regardless of how good the core game is (Hearts of Stone, Blood and Wine excepted).

@Dekker451 VR is more comparable to 3D TVs and motion controls.

It could be an astounding success or a bleak failure, I don't think it makes much of a difference. Of course I want Sony to succeed, being that it's my core platform at the moment, but I just can't see VR as anything more than a gimmick. I still contend that it's best employed in serious and professional environments (medical training, flight simulators, sims to handle and fight anxiety, etc.) versus a small fraction of the gaming population.

This makes a lot of sense, actually. Remember Witcher 3, or Dragon Age: Inquisition, and how they each had locations distinguished by their own climates, ecosystems, cultures, and so on? Now imagine how jarring it would be to skip to Toussaint from Velen, like it's just over the hill or something.

Breaking games down into locations helps keep the world more believable and organic. Gone are the days of jumping from the greenery of Lumbridge to the sweltering desert of Al Kharid. I hope more games follow this design structure.

@Zander1992 VR was always going to contribute to the obligatory decade long stretch of misfired experimental tech. Last time it was motion controls. Before, it was 3D TVs. It's bolstered by a small portion of the community, backed by a tiny hardcore install base, and eventually dropped entirely, just in time for the next gimmick.

So, basically another, "we bought some stock assets, here you go" game. Glad to see those still exist.

If you considered the PS1 retro when the PS3 released, then yes. If not, then I guess not.

I only hope that big name companies stop placing emphasis on virtual reality. It seems to work best in socially and community driven environments, for simulations and education, medicine, research, etc. I don't think VR is all that good for games, and in general I don't think it's going to be a success (this includes all iterations of VR). It works on PC because you can employ it in a number of situations, like development and simulators. On console, I think it's always destined to fail.