NEStalgia

@Nowings There was America's Army back in the late 90s that was developed by the US army..... Didn't sell great though 😂

@Northern_munkey At the prices people are paying on eBay for those 30th pros my monster rig reels like a bargain .

@Ralizah And charge iap against it!

@KundaliniRising333 Yeah, and Sony in particular keeps doing this luxury office thing like that new guerilla studio. They seem to overpay for everything. Though that's Jim and Herman. The Japanese don't do that stuff.

Rockstar spending what over a billion? On one video game? On WHAT?

@Deoxyr1bose The upshot for PC gamers is an even greater focus on PC though 😂. But you KNOW the games will start pandering to replicate cultural relevance in China to duplicate this and it'll get cringe.

@Sequel ohh yeah! The vr mods were there on launch week lol! Haven't run it myself, but between this, hzd, hfw, got, elden ring, there's a heck of a lot of amazing mods for big games in VR. A lot of them you do need to subscribe for $10 to Luke Ross' Patreon because he has to patch them every game patch.

Pimax was heavily promoting the mod for wukong and their recommended settings etc. They're a Chinese hmd mfr, so this game is huge for them!

I think this one just uses uevr, not a luke Ross mid.

@KundaliniRising333 Weeell, while I agree in concept, the difference is if course Sony places is studios the the absolute most expensive places on earth to do anything and wants customers to pay. Seattle? Northern California? Places where making 6 figures as a janitor leaves you homeless? Meanwhile Working is made in China where the whole economy is based on cheap everything and low pay. So unless sie moves ND to Guangdong they can't do that. And if GS was in Seattle, Wukong would cost $300m. I guess it goes with their premium image. When Junior intern animators make six figures because it's basically minimum wage where they're building studios, no kidding their budgets are high...

To be fair no other game can really replicate this. It's just the right set of conditions if being effectively a cultural touchstone and the first of its kind domestically in a particularly nationalist county that also happens to be the most populous. I daresay even another Chinese developer could only dream of this kind of phenomenon happening. But many will, unfortunately, futilely try to clone it over the next decade. Brace yourselves.

I hope to play it with vr mods on PC once discounts start arriving though. Supposedly it's excellent.

@Sequel @NomNom never underestimate the mayhem of physical sales. People have literally died being trampled to death to get $99 DVD players on Black Fridays in American Walmarts..... The bots are actually preferable to people that will actually kill you to get it before you..... 😬

@nessisonett Humanity didn't devolve, it was always this way. Though I'm not a religious person in any way, and I deeeeeefinitely get the vibe you're new wave human secularist and all that yourself lol, you can directly trace the current state of human morality to the collapse of religion and the dominant factor on society. Love it or hate it, ultimately human behavior being decent was dependent upon Christianity being the driver of Western values and more specifically even the naturally indecent having an instilled terror of their soul being excruciatingly tortured for infinite eternity if they scalped a PlayStation. Once that ended, the idea of ethics ended. If the cops can't put you in prison for it or can't find out, is a-ok to do.

Progressing "past" religion was a disastrous mistake as every human became their own god. At least until the most powerful on earth build mechanical gods in AI data centers. (No joke, Wozniak once said the point was to become gods like he was out of a James Bond film...)

I realized we're were screwed 25 years or so ago when someone told me, and I quote "morality is just opinion". I realized then what happened. Without a common binding morality system without a divine entity that can't be swindled, this was inevitable. And only restoring fear of actual gods or building omniscient mechanical gods to replace them, this is all there will ever be.

I love the thumbnail image, it looks like every single youtube reaction video thumbnail ever......

Scalpers with bots are now in the age of AI. If a company ACTUALLY wanted to avoid these problems, they would not make "limited quantity" anything, ever. Anything limited, this is it's fate. The companies know that. The companies WANT that.

This whole "collectors" thing has become so out of hand. IDK why people would pay $5k or $10k for a painted Playstation, but they do, because it's there, they can. For $5k people could have bought an ultra top of the line super premium glass tube hard line custom loop gaming rig with every last premium option bell, whistle, and STILL bought a buttload of games on sale. Instead they're buying a painted PS5. There's something fundamentally broken in the human psyche when so many people are both so monied and so depraved they'll pay extreme prices for a thing simply because it exists and is uncommon.

If Sony wanted fans to celebrate a thing they liked, these would be unlimited or would be sold as plates for the rest of the PS5 gen or at least in unlimited quantity for the duration of the anniversary year.

Even though I have the plat on the PS version and will probably never play the game, and even though I still have the unending bloat of HFW ahead of me, and had decided while it was on sale last week that I didn't need HZD on PC, I just grabbed the og version while $10 keys are still available after they jacked the price back up just in case I want the PC version of the OG later (especially since it has a VR mod, though the remaster will probably get one too, OG probably runs way better.) There's no upgrade for PC copies, but still, for $10 at least I have it.

I just played the game through to platinum not even 2 years ago and I honestly can't think of anything that really felt particularly badly voiced that it needed to be rerecorded. Maybe it is "better" but nothing jumped out as needing to be made better. It's not "arrow to the knee" territory here.

Plus did they re-record main characters or just randos? Because to me I think having the voices from actors 10 years older than the first time changes the feel, and especially if it's not 100% of all dialogue will sound too jarring.

For $10 it's not a bad deal, it's a fair mod, but I still find the choices here confusing.

Better scaler = better finished result. Surprising no one but PS customers apparently.

@StylesT Why buy a PS5 to play PS5 games when you need a PS7 to play PS5 games properly? PS5's are ok for PS4 games but you really need a PS5 Pro to see PS4 games they way they were meant to be seen.

Both on console and PC at this point I think the best way to experience gaming is to buy games at least 5 years old or more, play them on current hardware, enjoy them at their best, then in 5+ years when the currently releasing games are half price, fully patched and stable, and run properly on the hardware you have at the time, that's when you buy those. GoY will be properly playable circa 2031.

@Deadlyblack 4 years?? They did do uncharted 4 and the Chloe standalone expansion, but that exception aside it's the only thing we've heard from them since 2012!

@Ralizah I really don't know how Sony and other AAA's are going to manage. It's clear they spend more per game than they can realistically make back unless they hit a lucky strike. They spent all their time building games they wanted to make to push tech that they didn't bother looking at the market itself and realizing there's insufficient demand for that product, nor the cost it bears. "AAA" just doesn't work. It never really did. It only works if they're exceptionally rare, rather than the norm, and even then it only works if they're so incredibly generic that it "appeals to everyone" and becomes just snack food.

Everything about this game still feels off. I've seen nothing that makes me think it's Dragon Age outside name. I've seen nothing to make me think it looks like a particularly interesting or unique game at all, and the art style looks like some weird mesh of generic fantasy, Fortnite, and Lost in Random, and while the latter is awesome, looks really out of place in a "human world." I really don't know what they did to this game, but none of it seems to gel with itself, the genre, or the series, and on top of that it's another "fight a giant enemy boss with a health bar over it's head game" like 70% of "hyped" games from the past 6 years. Maybe it can surprise, but instead of being disinterested, I nearly look away when they show it.

DA1 (DA:O) was supposed to be the spiritual successor of Baludr's Gate II. We now have BG3, while DA has become....what even is this? A generic boss slasher? Another Soulslite but easier, game? Still can't really tell what it is.

Whatever it is, you can get it on eBay.

I demand this becomes the standard format for all State of Play presentations going forward!

I "get it" that they don't want people to buy the PS4 version for cheap and pay the $10 upgrade fee. But....oh well? The PS4 game fell to $20. End of story. If the $10 upgrade fee is $10, great. This wouldn't be the problem if they weren't backdoor trying to sell the same game as a new game with a gfx mod at full price to begin with. They don't want to sell their gfx mod for a $20 game for $30? Tough cookies to them. Eat it.

Nobody liked Coke's vending machines that changed the price based on how hot it was, nobody liked Wendy's suggesting their digital menu boards would change prices based on how busy they are, both companies had to hang their heads in shame publicly and apologize and back down and give away freebies to make up for it, and now Sony wants to introduce dynamic video game pricing based on how trendy and marketed their newest reskin mod for it is.

Sony has always been, but now has doubled down in the new economy as more other companies have been doing, the kind of company that would rather sell one widget for a million yen, than a million widgets for 1 yen. PlayStation never operated that way off to the side of Sony corporate, but corporate has sunk their teeth into them wholly now.

But that model doesn't work when you're trying to sell software on the hardware. They still think it's like TVs.

A decade later and bioware basically repeats star child and left door right door middle door?

@torquex family, friends, associates in the scalping game not scalping the same item, business addresses, etc.

In the theft version of the game they send to the legit address of the stolen cc holder and then have the carrier change the delivery address if it's not, like Sony, signature required. Or actually wait or have an associate wait at the right address to swipe it.

It's amazing what criminals and sleazy people. Sell a $1k pro bundle for $1600 give the delivery crony 100 to do nothing....

Much as I like Ghost and horizon, Sony REALLY needs to tell their Sony Pictures people to f off of SIE. Already they're trying to turn everything into a multiverse franchise factory a decade after that already went passe.

I guess this means we're getting Lego Jin? And is it really sad that that's not even a hyperbole for Internet hysteria but an actual likely prediction?

People mocked "Halo, gears, Forza, Halo,Gears, Forza" only to get "Horizon, Ghost, GT, Horizon, Ghost, GT"

Nintendo might sue them for the patent of combining bicycles with mechanics involving capturing monsters.

@Yousef- ridable Veliciprey monstie or we riot.

@Bigmanfan @jrt87 I want to love Capcom but for the love of Amaterasu they seriously need to fix this garbage engine. World still looks trash and chokes high end gpus. This series made it big on PSP, Wii, and 3DS ffs. They learned nothing from DD2 and the moment a saw the trailer going for perfect photo realism I knew this game was going to be a choppy mess even on high end. And MH is NOT a game that works on.

@IamJT I'm not sure there were any decisions in that movie that WEREN'T questionable, other than maybe casting Liam Nisson. Which I'm sure he thinks was questionable.

It was so amazingly bad it took me many years and a Bioware fanfic to actually get me to watch anything SW again.

But is she still 3'8" tall like in Call of the Mountain? 🤣

@IamJT Mesa nosa know what a yoosa be saying!

@Xbox_Dashboard Deus Ex was Ion Storm published by Eidos, then Squeenix. Nope, not Ubi!

Taro for President!

@kcarnes9051 Fair point. I forgot marvel anything existed because it doesn't to me lol 😆.

Though it's not Sony ip or Sony exclusive IP in the stellar blade sense, it's Disney ip. Youre right but I was really thinking of actual Sony franchises, not just Disney licenses. For actual Sony franchises (forgot to include concord because the lead was clearly....err whatever her name was for a week and a half....). Still, yeah games was nothing but burly space Marines and effeminate anime dudes for ages, but humans always have a habit of overcorrecting everything until they have the same problem they started with and then do it all over again.

@GamingFan4Lyf day and date is the big one. Sonny's plan is to get people to play on console for fomo. And to a degree that does clearly work so maybe they're right. But they're also losing market on those that don't because it's an old game outside the marketing up against trendier things then it launches. If course the point was also reaching markets they don't sell consoles and then annihilated that with the PSN requirement.

I agree Lego horizon is made for switch. Cute as it is, ps and pc players already played the real game. And the sequel. And the remaster now. Why play it again in Legos? Is an odd release. Why not make a new side story at least?

@Medic_alert "As for the idea that the upscaler was available when PS5 launched, it just isn't right. Console hardware is locked in years ahead of time and as stated not all features will be current on console and on PC at the same time. "

And staying current on PS, for an all digital consumer is now $1100-1500 for the generation. So a $1500 PC for the generation, or a $1500 PS for the generation. One offers more, one is more convenient. The choices now really come down to that. Your points are correct, but that's why the pricing is absurd. The consoles are naturally years behind, but are now creeping steadily towards similar total cost.

@Medic_alert Comparing the GPU price to the base console price doesn't really pan out and never does, and obviously Sony was taking a loss while Nvidia was making mad profit on each sale, so that doesn't match up either.

It kind of goes back to PS5 and XSX never should have launched in 2020 AT ALL to begin with. It was far too many steps behind the current paradigm to have been justifiable.

And yeah, I very much don't like what Sony is doing here, where they're basically doing a "do over" of the original console, more or less admitting that it's not actually good enough to meet the marketing promises on the games made now (while also hedging that the Pro won't be either), and following the PC route of instead of pushing developers to make games for their console, even exclusive games, the onus is on the consumer to keep ponying up for more hardware to make up for the games and brute force them. Except it's kind of expensive for a 45% power bump (which is next to nothing in the 4k realm) and adding on an AI scaler that was already current back when the base model launched, for nearly double the original launch price of the digital console, 4 years into it's obsolecense. If you're going to follow the PC route, why bother with a locked ecosystem at all?

Obviously the answer comes back to "convenience" and hassle free as originally said. But where consoles used to represent convenience, value, and budget, we're down to a PC-style upgrade cycle, with PC-style cost structure simply distributed differently, with all of the disadvantages of a locked ecosystem. IMO they're undermining the whole argument for buying into console ecosystems by going this route. Won't affect those already invested, of course.

But I do still find it silly that people are talking about this like it's some kind of revolution. It's not a revolution. It's playing catch up on the consumer's dime with where they said they were already supposed to be years ago.

@Medic_alert "Game changing for consoles"

Well...yeah, I suppose....kind of a shame that it took a $700 console 4 years later to implement what was already current gen back when the $400 console launched and just didn't include obvious current gen features.....

@Medic_alert "If PSSR is very good it will be game changing"

Why are people acting like Sony's hand-rolled proprietary upscaling is "game changing" as though AI upscaling hasn't existed before for the past 6 years on PC hardware? As though the existing PC handhelds aren't already using AMD's RSR and FSR in quality mode (not that lousy performance mode that the base consoles are using that looks like Vaseline) to excellent results? As though Nvidia hasn't been pushing this since years before the PS5 released? Do people seriously never look outside the Sony bubble that they think this magical tech is new to the world just because Sony made their own version and trademarked a name?

I'm really not comfortable with how DF, as a selected, favored, blessed chosen ones allowed to touch a PS5 Pro seem to be acting as a marketing arm for this product given their clout. However, at least they hedged slightly with "here is a conversation to be had between the value of a PS5 Pro and a PC, but for a hassle-free gaming experience...." At least they put the label on it that, for the hassle free angle there it is. But acknowledge that the PC comparison for value is there....

They're not wrong that it's a certain type of gamer, but I think it needs to be italicized, underscored, and bolded in every conversation about it that this is an "acceptable compromise choice" if convenience and no-hassle is your primary concern but want more PC-like performance. And yes, I don't think there's an argument against that. It's a classing how much are you willing to pay/value lost for the sake of convenience and expediency vs the alternative. And for someone where that's a priority, this is a good enough fix.

But good grief is that an incredibly mediocre upgrade for the money. It's a $700 AI scaler plus a tiny raw performance boost.

Why are we still having articles pretending that the PS5 Pro enables all new functionality in a game that already has a PC version that already has access to much better features than even the Pro can handle? The pro is merely getting "closer" to a version of the game that's already been out for a while, and it won't be until PS6 that it can match it. If that.

@LifeGirl @ButterySmooth30FPS It was literally designed for PS4 as the primary platform, directly stated by Guerilla. If "Made for PS4" isn't "last gen", then all these remasters are even more pointless than believed. They're all current gen already!

@Ralizah They're only on their 3rd CEO. Patriarch Yamauchi was the big bad that everyone loathed (and caused PlayStation to happen ), Iwata who cleaned house. We're only on the 3rd exec, and they're radio silent and finding backdoor reasons to sue people. I'd say Iwata was the exception. We're back to the lieutenants acting for the old patriarch again. After spending nearly a decade being the big kahuna of console gaming again.

@GamingFan4Lyf IDK, I want to play it but still haven't even finished the first lol. Might play it this year, and be anxious for goy, but I have like 60 other backlog games dating through last Gen to get through so I'm sure I can wait for the inevitable far superior PC version that includes the inevitable dlc, and has vr mods day one 😂

Not sure where Sonny goes with PC. They seem as consistent in messaging as Xbox. They talk about expanding PC. Totoki told investors the pc expansion is a big part of their strategy. Then Herman keeps talking about using PC to sell more consoles, and the other CEO taking about console first etc. Seems like the same dynamic as Phil and Sarah saying one thing and Satya and Amy saying another.

Though their games don't seem to be selling that amazing in PC so that might affect their effort. Otoh got was the best ever launch of single player on steam until the once in a lifetime China only event that was wukong.

@GamingFan4Lyf Maybe, but the recent games would GoT which was, quite a few years after console launch, and Ragnarok which fits the 2 year mold-ish, so I'm still going to assume it's the 2 year thing unless it's remasters or online games. (or TLOU2 that's still missing but I suspect that's due to ND's incompetence more than a plan given the state 1 released in that made Ubisoft look good.)

Plus as long as Herman's plan is to get PC gamers to buy consoles for sequels (which is insanity) they'll make the console exclusivity thing as drawn out as they can, though Totoki may not like that, he's big on the PC push and Herman's probably in his doghouse after Concord. )

@DennisReynolds IIRC the patents that are likely in question are related to databasing (FFS), were registered in Japan prior to Palworld, but registered in the US, elsewhere, AFTER Palworld, so this suit could only actually work in Japan and not outside.

Still my whole impression is that they hated that the game literally copied their art style to use their brand power to sell the game (scummy on Palworlds part) ,but couldn't find a solid suit. They were allegedly pressuring retailers and media in Japan to ignore the existence of Palworld. And meanwhile had their lawyers just search for "anything" they could find to hang it with.

It makes me hate everything about Nintendo more, and yet, I can't say Palworld is innocent, they intentionally copied Pokemon's aesthetics for obvious beneficial reasons like waving a piece of meat in front of a wolf.

@Ralizah "at least now"
I was gonna say...half the companies in the industry exist because of their hatred of Nintendo and Nintendo's inability to play nicely with anyone. EA exists because Nintendo sucked. They improved under Iwata, but I suspect they're back to their old chicanery these days. Nintendo never improved, they simply borrowed Iwata for a time.

Once consoles decided to follow the PC route where games aren't optimized to hardware and the solution for every poorly made game is just to buy more hardware to run everything fasterer, consoles outlived the entire purpose of consoles.

How about instead of selling people $700 more in hardware, the devs actually built their game to run properly on the hardware they already knew the player was using.? That's what consoles are for! If having a fixed spec to build for to make it run right is no longer an asset for developers to make their games run properly out of the box on consoles, I really don't see the purpose of consoles at all anymore.

@Octane It's slang for what happens when you can't afford a separate stand for your vertically off balance external disc drive equipped PS5 Pro and your Kat brushes up against it.

I reeeeallly hate to wade into this whole misguided gender wars conversation but I never actually realized until reading this thread and it occurred to me that Sony main characters actually ARE turning into a matriarchy where most Sony franchises are now headed by female leads.

Ghost: out with Jin in with new female prograg

Horizon: Aloy

Ratchet: Rivet Co hero

Uncharted: presumed to be Drake's daughter

Tlou: female protag murders male PC then takes rest of game.

Stellar blade (not Sony IP Sony pushed)

Gravity Rush: Kat

Infamous: Fetch was the latest and much better protag than CardboardMan.

Sack Boy and Kratos are the only male protags left they haven't killed, retired, or abandoned.

The show wasn't mind blowing, but it's much better than they've had for years. Presentation was human instead of the Nintendo format of disembodied robot announcers talking over a YouTube playlist of trailers. The astrobot free dlc and got were the big highlights, Sakaguchi was a highlight to me. Fell asleep a while when Cerny soothed us. Mon Hun picked it up. Goy (lol) looks great. Not the old PSX/E3 experience but more watchable than anything they've had in 4 years.

Looks good, I do hope they manage to make it less repetitive than the first where I think content was a step back from infamous 1 and 2. The wolf sidekick has been done in other games, Arashi comes to mind and obviously Torgal, so it doesn't feel as unique as they were hoping there but get we know a game is coming and it's a good one. And SP is STILL more productive than ND ....

@AdamNovice Indeed, Jim's story is done .

@GamingFan4Lyf solidarity my friend. We need the PC port though it might be years later. Plus I need my VR mod for it as I'll be playing the first in VR

Nothing about this seems... Good? IDK it's very generic, doesn't really feel like DA, the combat feels.... Messy? Neither RPG strategic nor action game precise, the cutscenes seem heavy yet not amazing, and something about the art style makes me want to look away all the time. IDK what I didn't like about the art but I just don't.

Maybe it'll surprise but something about the game feels just plain wrong. Which is weird because usually EA single player games are actually very good, just attached to terrible policies and rarely existing at all

They're so remarkably vague about what people should actually expect from a device their own statements reveal isn't all that. 60fps (except when it isn't). On select titles. They keep highlighting rebirth because it's so amazingly horrifyingly badly made as an exclusive that it brute forces extremely well. Even though nobody bought the game anyway. Then they show everything else in a flash and half the images still look soft. We'll see how reality pans out but this thing feels like an as seen on TV marketing infomercial. "It really does ALL that and MORE! ORDER NOW!"

@Arkz ROFL, I snorted my coffee as I read that. So completely on point! 🤣

Lol stellar blade finally became automata as it always wanted to be. That's actually pretty awesome in it's own way though. if Nintendo owned automata they'd have sued them for violating patients on methods of animating jiggle in playable characters. But square actually approved a crossover instead. Props to square.

Also, avoid deviantart for the next year or two 😂

Highlight of the show other than got right here.

Price genuinely matters for something like this and Sony uncharacteristically got it right on this one. It's completely unnecessary as the game already looked great, but $10 for a texture and model mod basically? Sure, fair enough.

If I hadn't already got platinum and hadn't already switched switched to PC I'd have upgraded. Even for $12 on steam for the old version though, I already played it and can't see playing through it again, much as I love it.

@themightyant And those things are nice to have. Meanwhile books, as I said can have problems with bindings, print, pages being bound out of order. It happens. Having instant feedback on these things would be helpful to the publisher of books as well.

Obviously it's not a 1:1 comparison. But you know what? Doesn't matter. There's a simple solution. DO NOT mandate that customers opt into sending that data and allow them to opt out. DO NOT force consumers to permanently and unalterably link their favorite store to an account with the publisher so that the publisher can ride roughshod over the store/DRM management scheme and meddle with the ownership rights of a product license which are between the licensor and licensee and not the license issuer. Ba da bing, problem solved!

@LogicStrikesAgain Yeah, also totally agree on the latter. Weird thing is PC gamers in particular tend to be a group that's much more data concious than almost any other group other than actual protection and rights advocacy groups and such.

Why go after Sony? Because they're new, vulnerable, originally were NOT on the hitlist and they randomly decided they wanted to be, they were originally a paragon of the right way to do it before they went bad (Hulst?) At some point "the buck stops here". EA and Ubi did it and it was met with surprise. Now it's one too many.

But I also think that if they can get Sony to back down with enough pushback the argument will grow and start pushing back on Ubi and EA too. Ubi's weak right now. Their shares are in the tank. They don't need a big uproar from consumers right now. Sony first, Ubi next. Take them down, then EA and R* can be in the sights as the holdouts. R* won't back down, they're even more pompous than Sony. But I do think this is a tipping point if the momentum against Sony can actually succeed in getting them to back down.

@LogicStrikesAgain A fair reply. On your second post, they may well be a platform holder, but on PC, they're just another publisher, like every other publisher. It's not their platform. Which should be fine to them, after all they were a publisher, themselves, before they had a platfom as well.

Cross saves would make sense, if the game had cross-buy (like MS/XB Play Anywhere), but it doesn't. It's a totally separate license. Maybe cross-save is a good feature, and it's great feature to offer as an OPTION to opt into to get. But mandating logging in for crossplay for a game with no online, and cross saves when you own only one license, doesn't check out. Again, it's a FINE option to have, and a great offer for anyone who wants it. Making it manditory is the problem. Being able to link to PSN and being required to are two different things. Additionaly Sony did not require this until recently on their single player games, and the previous single player game they released, GoT, does not require it for the main single player game, only for the Legends online component, while GoWR which has no online component at all requires it for the single player content. Again Sony's even inconsistent with themselves, paying attention to the market one moment then ignoring them the next.

Similarly they already put the game on Steam which already is a DRM platform. The idea of requiring TWO DRM platforms, goes back to exercizing draconian control over the consumer which is the point. PC owners play on PC because they reject that from console. And again, Sony is being inconsistent with themselves, ratecheting the noose tigher and tighter, where HzD and I believe Gow2018, and TLOU are all also on GoG (CDPR) - which has ZERO DRM whatsoever, of any kind. That's the whole point of the platform. Shocking Sony of all companies would do that? Yes. But this sense of tightening the noose more and more with every release is not helping them develop good will, it's doing the opposite.

Trophies, sure, but again that goes into an OPTIONAL thing that would be nice to offer, but not require, while Steam also has achievements, and dedicated PC players that do value trophies would only care about their Steam achievements, not console focused ones on PSN. It's, again, a place where choice matters.

Going back to Piracy, yes, I'm sure it's a "piracy" thing, too, which is a bit ironic as we're a week in and have a mod to remove it already, but that still goes back to only a few handfulls of publishers, the most disliked ones, taking that step.

I don't agree with it, and yes, I do see from a business standpoint the logic, but that's also the whole point of consumers gathering to put their foot down to demand they won't be tolerating it. Sony may not give consumers a choice, but sony did have a choice. They could have continued their ORIGINAL path on PC which was well regarded and seemed actually consumer friendly in the extreme, even supporting DRM-free games which few big publishers do. Or they could join EA and Ubisoft on the most-hated publsihers list. This is the choice they made. Seems fitting they should face trouble for choosing it.

@LogicStrikesAgain Are typos, binding failure, out of order pages, smeared or blurred print on pages not real problems books face? Would not the publisher benefit by knowing these things? And assocating them with a complete and total personal profile would benefit the publisher's marketing efforts just as much as for video games?

The only difference here is one CAN require this and he other can't, partially because the medium enables it and partly because one has trained their customers to expect it.

They aren't FORCING you to share all of your information with them so they can benevolently help you. They could ASK. But by making it a requirement, they made it clear they're not doing it to make your experience better.

And I would not read very far into "privacy laws", mostly written by the companies themselves to enable them to do what they were already doing in a way that looks "trustworthy". Whether through forked tongue or sheer incompetence, or silver tongued wording, they've enabled everything they want from it. The only way to "respect your privacy" is to let you say "no thanks" when they ask for your information. "Laws' also state that whatever information they have on you, they OWN it, not you. Not handing it to them begin with is the only way to not transfer ownership of that data to them. Which brings us back to the problem of people wanting choice of who they share information with.

Going back to the book, perhaps it's a particularly naughty book, and you don't want the local bookstore to know you buy naughty books, so maybe you buy it from a select retailer that specializes in that with a separate account. You don't really want to then have to mail out a form with all your data to be allowed to open the book to the publisher and/or other book retailers. That's why you bought it where you did!

We're unfortunately legally 30 years behind where we need to be regarding data, and shadowy data brokers own everyone. Fighting it will be a long and difficult battle, but it's one that needs to happen. People insisting we just embrace it have missed the entire landscape that has unfolded, and, though @naruball will be appalled by my analogy once again I'd like it to, during the time of American slavery, a great many slaves did not want slavery to end, they wanted things to stay as they were as they had reasonably benevolent owners who treated them ok and the idea of freedom and leaving the comforts of things being taken care of them was much worse to them than the status quo. That's the human psyche in a nutshell. Even the idea of being owned as property can be considered acceptable, and even fought for as desirable if it's stable comfortable enough to make being free seem scarier. Our digital personas are far closer to slavery than people are willing to see. We may not be bought and sold as property physically, but our whole identity of who we are is. As long as our owners buy us invisible fences instead of leashes and posts, many seem fine with that.

@HarmanSmith Exactly right. That was kind of the whole point and place of consoles. And I also agree that was where Xbox seemed to be trying to go but fumbled it badly. It was better then, and it's what the S represented.

I think in Sony's case the problem is 3 fold. First, it's Sony's own corporate culture to perceive their electronics as luxury lifestyle electronics. They haven't been that since the 80's but it's what they perceive themselves as. Playstation was the red headed step child Sony didn't want. They didn't even want the Sony name on the box because they thought it would fail and devalue their prestige lifestyle luxury brand of electronics. Playstation thrived in exactly the same way Phil's Xbox did prior to ABK - by kind of doing their own thing off to the side of the parent corp.

But when PS became wildly popular and started turning more profit than the "lifestyle" electronics, much like with Satya and Amy, the money men from corporate came in to incorporate it into their core strategy of lifestyle luxury goods.

Their second problem is they accidentally cultivated this culture of "premium" gaming mimicking their own Hollywood film division. Once they did that, they started running their gaming like their Hollywood division. With the same goals, expectations, and management methods.

And the third is as you noted, that mass market to bring "blue collar" gaming to which is what consoles represented moved onto phone gaming. Which seems to have cleared Sony (and others' in the industry) to view the remaining market as only this super premium elite market of distinguished media consumers.

And with brand power that means competitors won't really directly impact their base, they keep going in directions that are likely to end very badly in the long term even if they seem ok in the short term. I think if we can get a next Xbox that tries to shift the paradigm to open platforms and meld with PC properly, it will finally knock sense into Sony to join the party. Somewhat. They can't do what Nintendo does, that works only for Nintendo, only because they have household brands in a way only Disney could compete with. Without Mario and Pokemon, they'd have a hard time selling their hardware to anyone, now that the novelty of handheld dockable has become common.

@AdamNovice True, it was safer with Astrobot because it continued with more of what was already proven, though. There's nothing about Astrobot that could cause controversy because it just continued the adventure from the free game to full length.