@Flaming_Kaiser Yeah, but that was Square under Masuda. And remember Xbox "doesn't have a big marketing budget like Sony" lol. But to be fair to it all, I think MS does allocate generally low budget to Xbox itself, and the ABK merger wasn't Xbox, it was MS corporate (It was Amy Hood, CFO, and Witch Queen of Ice, that approached ABK, not anyone at Xbox), really because they wanted King, and they were more or less using it to disband the Xbox that was.
@thefourfoldroot1 "Which is a bit sad as far as I’m concerned, as devs focus will start shifting from coding just for the base model."
If the Pro is similar levels of adoption as PS4 Pro was, they won't. Getting a "pro mode" means just adding a mode with higher target resolution or fps targeted. A lot of devs will just set the slider and build to meet the requirement if it doesn't seem like a big portion of their market. SOME devs will release terribly performing games and say "well it works well on Pro" though. And looking at MH Wilds' PC specs being absurd, I'm betting that's a big one that will do that. 4060 to do 1080p@60 with DLSS+Frame Gen? Yikes. REEngine sucks.
@HonestHick LOL, yep, and who can forget Jimbo's "why would anybody want to play this" (old Ridge Racer), and here they are with their newest console and can't stop talking about PS4.
@Medic_alert Fair enough. But, yeah, a game that's already uncapped should already be able to do this on PS5, and a game that is capped, can't just magically do this on fast hardware, not even on PC, the game needs to be modded, which is more or less what MS was doing before publishers started refusing. If it had fuzzy upscaling before it will probably scale sharper if it's using PSSR.
@Yousef- Square is a bad example because they had some weird strategy of excluding games and shaking down platforms under the old CEO. Meanwhile octopath1 was on Xbox and not ps for ages, and ps got the weird incomplete dq11 while switch got the real version and then Xbox and ps got that one together.
I think under the new CEO they'll have platform party from now on. I think they were trying to shake ms down for game pass money and Ms wasn't always buying.
@LavenderShroud It's still an uphill battle. The platform will always be a place people don't play a particular genre until they cultivate a market for it. They've been working on getting Japanese devs to support them but it's been slow going. If the games don't exist on the platform, a market for those games will never exist. Catch 22. Sony and Nintendo didn't have to work to get it because it's where they started, but Nintendo has often struggled to get Western devs supporting them until switch so it's the same kind of issue.
Has to start somewhere. Only once all the games are there can they try to court fans of those games.
One big thing that's helping finally get all these jrpgs on Xbox it that before, Japan didn't touch PC at all. It was console only. Suddenly PC is big in Japan and every game is on it. That's where PC ports to Xbox make it reasonable for devs to participate where they wouldn't have before.
It's a catch 22 for Xbox. They'll never get jrpg fans if they don't get jrpgs. But them getting jrpg marketing means it doesn't reach as many people.
Fwiw Microsoft sent an email blast highlighting the game to customers, which means Xbox PC app, console, and gp subscribers got the direct marketing on it which is a lot of what Nintendo does too. It's not flashy marketing like Sony but it's effective.
Still, Xbox marketing just flat sucks in general which is a huge part of their problem.
PS4 Pro Plus Premium. The best PlayStation 4 (TM) console yet!
I find out interesting that the main thing they keep promoting about the pro is what a great PS4 it is. Plus rebirth.
"We believe in generations. Specifically the 6th and 8th generations."
Yeah any psvr2 games that were held back by performance issues will get a bump, and vr devs are usually responsive with updates.
@Enuo By "fresh pine" you mean "heated plastic outgas" right?
@Medic_alert No, he specifically said games that have "variable fps" (uncapped). So it does what PS5 already does only even more power if any games still weren't hitting 60 (or 90 In VR) . Xbox game boost was about patching games that were capped to double their fps. This isn't that. And publishers stopped approving those so they could sell it as a $70 remaster instead.
@zupertramp Yeah, I just realized I've done some Expert ones via the campaign and didn't know it. I think I have 3 or 4 levels left at the top of the campaign ladder. So I did a lot of it. Oh, I know the one you're talking about with moving just the wrists. It was tense but I had no problem with that one, I think I had only half the max motion on try one. The ones I HATED and avoided, were the ones where you had to move your arms a lot. I guess I tend to use minimal motions by default and all that flailing around was not fun at all.
I kind of hate the ones you're supposed to miss a certain amount of blocks and badly slice a certain amount. It becomes too much about watching the health bar, and not enough about playing beat saber.
For the regular ones, I hate the ones I do perfect the whole way through, and then the finale at the last 30 seconds throws a million blocks in a new pattern at you and you end up missing a bunch and losing at the very end....that's the most frustrating of all!
@StrickenBiged Fair enough then, to a point. The risk of heavy intervention should apply to public companies only. However, Epic is a different kind of case, and is kind of a backdoor around even the existing rules. It's more of a public-private setup. One person owns a little over half, but the rest is owned by other public corporations. And interestingly, all foreign interest.I think a line would have to be drawn around what constitutes public, and when very nearly half is owned by public corporations, it's hard to say it's not a public company.
Not that in Sweeney's case it would matter if he were the sole owner, the guy's always been a giant stick.
@UnlimitedSevens Funny you'd compare it to the Pope, as I think that used to be part of it. Judges were revered as above the law and in traditional American, indeed informed by religious values (allegedly), and able to put the final word on the corruptible elected officials without fear of retribution. Maybe it's the robes? Or just idealism. People seemed to believe they were above corruption because to be fair the role was attempted to be designed as above corruption at inception, without somehow noticing that if they're appointed by politicians....there's a reason?
Yeah, the biggest problem in the system is that it was designed around the free market that existed in the 18th century. BUSINESS meant Samuel the butcher, Edward the blacksmith, and the bankers (always the bankers.) Business meant one or a few people trading goods and services for coin. And the laws were based on that. With everything decentralized and infinitely redundant. It was not based on central conglomerates of which there's 2 for the entire planet and they have more money than the government itself. None of the rules are equipped to handle that. Though, the be fair, Jefferson warned about the central bankers even in freaking EIGHTEENTH CENTURY! And here we are.
Though it also goes back to the loss of ethics in modern society, even businesses, for the most part, used to be guided by people that had a sense of ethics and sense of right. As society, and the people lost the sense of ethics, and really "will Satan torture my immortal soul for all eternity if I do this" vs "will I net more cash if I do this and will I be subject to prison time?" took hold, this was inevitable. Rule of law was designed around fear of divine punishment (right down to swearing on bibles in court, which used to make people afraid to lie, and now does not), and without fear of divine punishment it nets a society of children looking to see what they can get away with. If you're not cheating, you're losing.
IDK that just banning the corporate donations solves anything. Just like everything else you describe, the corporations would just route the money different, and of course soft funds that can't be banned. You had the infamous 2008 election where Eric Schmidt was INSIDE a campaign headquarters partying while sharing Google data with their campaign. Even without a dollar spent, Google's head was directly a part of a campaign and leveraging the entire datamined information bank of their corporation to benefit a single party's candidate. And that wouldn't ban that. Unfortunately I think "rule of law" isn't enough to fix it alone. Restoring societal ethics is necessary. But how is that accomplished. It took 10,000 years to build religion to successfully do that. And it still fell apart in a decade or two. Even a social revolution is usually just backed and sparked by the 2nd tier nobles that want to become first tier.
@Weez Thanks, great explanation and it made total sense! I've not been a fan of how UE5 has turned out which felt like 3 steps backward, but it seems like it's finally shaping up with some good stuff.
@2here2there Standard politics, it's true. At least alternating administratiions can switch witch hunt them for partisan brownie points and apply uneven justice. Sam Eagle approved. Bad as it is, it's better than economic policy exclusively by, for, and of a tiny cabal of tech bros and their hedge fund financiers.
@Weez Ohhh, I thought metalights whole point was a software rendering alternative to RT. Especially since the had it running well on PS5 which has poor acceleration for RT.
There really needs to be some form of legal checks and balances that make these kinds of statements impossible for publicly traded companies. Private business? No problem. Public companies? Mass layoffs need investigations and legal accountability as to the finances of the company and it's use.. want to be public? That's the risk.
@Flaming_Kaiser To be fair it seems like a key problem is the game is simply designed for 30fps, and the fact that infinite brute force still doesn't make it correctly run 60, it's VERY poorly designed with key parts of the game loop and rendering locked into a 30fps cycle. I think this game goes beyond lack of optimization and is very poorly designed with deeply built in 30 fps logic. But.... Why? It was built as a fast action combat game with the DMC director. Why would they design around 30 in the first place?
I think 7r as a sort of sequel makes a lot of sense. But not dragged out for 3 games for like 13+ years after announcement. Everyone wanted remake and got this instead. I think as a single sequel/retelling it could have worked, but not stretched out like it was.
@Balosi I can kind of believe it, it's true with any rhythm game in general (and instruments) but still, it's just inhuman . Especially when it starts switching sides my impulses just are not fast enough to think it though! What's that last track on the electronic mix tape that just throws everything on opposite sides at once? Not sure I'll ever complete that on even hard let alone expert lol.
@zupertramp Daang, I can barely handle hard. I can consistently get Bs and often As, got one S, can't remember what track. But expert, I really didn't know ..
Haven't tried that track! One thing I do enjoy though is just the regular tracks vs the campaign. The gimmick rules are interesting but brutally hard and imo not as fun as plowing through the song normally.
The one thing my beat saber obsession did for me though is encourage me to go back to Rocksmith, too. Was on the fence but ubi emailed last week the biggest one year subscription discount I've seen from them for it only through ps store. I'm really playing on PC, but it applies to all. I fell off that one because I didn't have a PC to handle it last time I tried and it wasn't on console, but if I can take my newfound rhythm game affinity and brush on on the old axe, it's awesome!
@LuXifer Funnily I was a late adopter of Beat Saber. Always saw it as "oh one of those games you show VR to non-VR people to wow them but I'm soooo beyond that and into real VR games!" And then one day tried it out of curiosity and got instantly pathetically hooked and started buying up the DLC music packs lol. You can say "it's the same game with different music" but because the blocks are arranged (some tracks better than others) in ways that "feels" right with the music, every track is really different gameplay. Green Day's Father of All gives a great drumming feel, etc. Makes me really wonder how the real drummer's doing it 5x faster lol.
@LuXifer It supports 120fps on Quest, not sure about on PSVR2, but it's absolutely a psychedelic experience. Brutal. But if you get in the groove it's amazing. Most insane pack is the Daft Punk pack. Not only are they harder than average, but the tracks are like 10 minutes long and you start getting hypnotic by the time you're in the last quarter and that's when the darned tempo changes and you lose your whole combo and end up a B.
I absolutely love Beat Saber. I have no idea how people could ever play on the hard difficulties. I play on hard and find it hard enough to get above an A at best. How people are playing 2 difficulties higher and getting S's I will never understand how human reflex can move that fast, at all. And the campaign is brutal. MusicSouls.
I can't actually stand Spears, but, I can like music I hate in BeatSaber when it has a really great box setup that feels great with the music. Might be worth it. And I think Toxic at least would be fun to slice to.
Also, where's that Britney super-fan that used to be a regular here, and why are they not the first post?
I said it in the PureXbox article about "why I'm glad Xbox doesn't have a pro", and I'll say it here in this article: It's just bad form to be writing these articles on a platform fan site about internal issues with another platform. Everyone knows i think the Pro is walking doom for the benefits of console, but I don't think that argument belongs on an XB site. I think this investigation is a joke and they already know the answer, and so does everyone else, but that's an argument for the Xbox community to have, not the PS community. Just poor form in both articles to fish for engagement.
The endless narrative from posters on this site of "Xbox trained customers to not buy games" gets tiring. Xbox game sales have been roughly equivalent relative to install base to Playstation. Obviously first party game sales are much lower, and that's the loss leader of the platform, you get the first party games for a subscription, but as most major third party games are not on GP, their sales in percentage of install base are roughly similar to PS, taking into account different genres perform better on each, where a new JRPG will do better on PS while, say, a new Assassin's Creed might do better relative to install base on Xbox.
The biggest problem is just that the install base is still much smaller so it becomes the lowest priority of all systems because the total possible sales are simply lower. If they intend to fix that by making the next Xbox a full Windows PC running PC games they can eliminate that problem. Time will tell. But they're not going to suddenly sell a bunch of consoles.
@SlipperyFish FWIW Wukong isn't skipping Xbox, it's just delayed like Baldur's Gate 3 was.
I think a lot of it is that Disney milks everything till it's gone. They've squeezed SW so that there's so much it doesn't feel rare and exciting anymore, it's just background noise. Add in the Ubisoft controversy and it was going to be rough.
That's a problem with long dev cycles. They start something while a thing is popular and by the time they're done, the thing isn't popular anymore.
That's impressive. Much as I've been unhappy with Epic with the so far disaster that is UE5.0 and Fortnite, got to admit they basically just declared that after years and thousands of dollars in hardware per gamer, we don't need RT anymore... Which devs may groan about but every gamer should cheer relentlessly about getting their fps back.
@Flaming_Kaiser That all speaks to the collapse of Western society sadly. For thousands of years society worked because one parent was mostly always home raising kids. The modern world was duped into that becoming a luxury of the rich and everyone else is conscripted into perpetual labor and the kids are raised by wolves and other kids, or worse, corporations and government institutions.
Honestly I think the zero dawn fix would probably be for the best.
@somnambulance Yeah you have a lucky break there. Most modern kids seem to be like jackals, moving only in groups and coordinated via discord. And seem completely hyper. I remember everyone being like they were zombies even I was their age, now suddenly they act like they have an IV drip of Speed.
IDK that 1-6 will ease you into xiv that much. The feel and vibe yes, but very different combat where 1-6 is classic turn based and 14 is based on real time skill rotations and cool downs. 14 is awesome though no doubt. Monstrosly huge thigh. I played nothing else for 5 months or so and only got half way through the first expansion. I love it but it might be another year before I touch it again lol.
Ahh, yes, parenting for the parents of Fortnite addicts. Times up kids, no more Fortnite today, you've had too much, now go wash up and snort all your coke lines and hit the Caesars app for some blackjack before bed.
@somnambulance The appeal of fortnite isn't as a game. It's a digital hangout space. 3d Facebook. VrChat without headwear. 2nd life without smut. It's popular because it's a social media platform kids can hang out with friends in. Same with gtav.
Of course a social media platform in 3d would be more popular than a video game.
"Fortnite is the metaverse! Also we're never making VR Fortnite in the actual metaverse"
-Tim Sweeney
Between this and his POS UE5 engine that runs well on absolutely nothing, I'm starting to really dislike Sweeney. Didn't really like him in the 90s either though.
Easy for the guy that's at the top of live service to say live service is the future. He's also the reason it's NOT the future for other games. Maybe after he loses all his players to someone else's live service he'll be all in on jazz jackrabbit 4.
I respect Hello Games immensely, but I always find these comments from devs weird. They make a multiplatform game. The game already does way more on PC than it can do on the Pro. There's nothing new the pro introduces it just does more than the previous console did, but still not as much as the game already does on PCs that are higher end. "For a console, it's really good" makes sense. A blanket statement that sounds like it introduces new capabilities to the game that didn't already exist on other platforms, no, that makes no sense. There's so much hyperbole around this thing already and I'm not sure why devs throw themselves into that, though Hello of course has a close history with Sony, I doubt that still applies currently.
@Bobtheking It was unusable blurry at launch. It was basically broken from Feb 2023-April 2023. Had a big improvement in May. They patched it multiple times, added foveated rendering, etc, it's now one of the sharpest games on the platform with draw distance for miles and miles. The Jun 2023 patch turned it into pure eye candy.
@Tomato_Goose NMS is, IMO, the PSVR2 system seller.
IDK, I have probably thousands of hours since PS4, and I probably don't have that many trophies and only 2 platinum. But as long as it's a reasonable and stated value it seems like a fair idea. It does hurt first time buyers, of course. And also highlights very clearly that the target market for the Pro is not new customers but upgrading existing customers. New customers can't even buy one.
@get2sammyb I'm sure the bots could play Pet the Kitty or whatever that game was to rack up trophies, lol.
@Flaming_Kaiser Oh man there's a name I haven't heard in ages. I played a a little bit waaaaay back when it was new, but I couldn't get very far because the PC I had at the time just couldn't handle it.
I agree, though, I'm not a big multiplayer person, but I enjoy XIV's group dungeons, and I'm a huge Splatoon nut, so I'm not anti-multiplayer, but the problem with multiplayer is that by nature you can really only absorb one or two of them (friend coop aside), because they become a dedication of time by necessity.
@Flaming_Kaiser I'm not sure what devs are thinking with one of this stuff. The thing, though is, that ray tracing is much easier and faster to implement and looks better at the same time. So I can see why devs prefer to implement it. Pretty much hit a button, it's automatic, and looks better than anything done manually becuase it makes lighting work like it does in reality. Plus devs just like playing with the tools they have.
But at this point they have to all know that it just isn't viable for modern hardware. The simulations of lighting an entire real world are just too much for current hardware and will continue to be so for quite a long time. So I'm sure they did it because it's fast and cheap to do and looks good.
But what I don't get is YoshiP is the guy who had to clean up the mess of FFXIV OG, he's the guy with the dev diaries about the original team focusing on gfx above anything else and had issues like the flower pots that had more polygons than the player character. Then he goes on to make XVI that cripples a 4090 and simply can not run at full speed on any hardware that money can buy because it focused too much on gfx...?? Isn't he the one that complained about other devs in square doing that?
Totally agreed, about square (and every dev) needing to work to the limitations of the platform. It's bad enough that multiplats don't do it, but now we have exclusives that don't even run right on the only hardware it runs on.
Masuda was a horrible leader, and it seems like the new CEO may be a lot more level headed. That said, my own theory on selling half the company to Embracer is more complicated. I don't think they sold the whole thing for peanuts. I think they were swimming in debt up to their eyeballs and sold off half the company for "peanuts" with all their debt bundled into the sale, I.E. the real price to Embracer was much more than the purchase price, as they had to absorb a mountain of debt commensurate with the real price of what they bought, and magically Square was in the black again.
@themightyant Switch is only about 45M ahead of 3ds+wiiu, which is still a lot of course but less dramatic. And Nintendo of course is a bit of it's own market while ps and Xbox are direct competitors if not outright clones. I'm terms of Xbox being only somewhat down, it's true, but also remember that the series s is its biggest seller, where the goal was to reach a new market, and they did, but at the cost of just trading it for losing part of their existing market to ps due to blundering.
I would still say Sonys current hardware success is similar to PS4, lack of a competitor. And Xbox is never going to pull their head from their backside on console because they don't really care (even though they should.). But I still see Sony taking that and running, PS3 style, until they start creating competition where the previously had none, if only in the shape of mobile, streaming, etc making easier inroads to consumer sentiment. And you're still forgetting that adding the China market boosts that hardware sales number, yes, but also hides the overall declines in existing markets
The fact that the inclusion of Yasuke is generating non stop screaming about this game is mission accomplished. He's there to flare controversy to push the game up the media ladder. It's the same reason bear sex was in the BG3 trailer.
To the people screening "racism", get over yourselves. Assassin's Creed fans don't object to playing an African. most assassins creed fans will point to the game you play an African (Bayek) as one of their top 3 or 5 AC games and would be all over a sequel. But nobody wants to play an African in the Japanese ac game. Nobody wants to play a Peruvian in the American AC game. Nobody wants to play a German in the Italian AC game. Nobody wants to play a Russian in the British AC game.
@JayJ Gotta get those 33rd anniversary PS6 Amateur preorders in now! Only 666 units available (bundled with 90" OLED Bravia only.)
@LogicStrikesAgain I think the issue with "AAA" gaming is that while there still will always be a market for it, that market is decreasingly large enough to support ever increasing costs of making it. Either the market for it needs to dramatically grow or the prices need to dramatically increase which necessarily shrinks the market again to unsustainably small numbers. Neither can really happen, so either "AAA" needs to cost less to make, or be refined as something other than "looks indestinguishable from live action".
I can't tell what direction (s) the industry will take. I can't tell if it'll be all bad or mostly good. But I do know it'll be very very different than it was....
Glad the bug people were right on this one. It says a lot about how much we trust Sony at this point that most of us including staff instantly assumed it was a new ad initiative.
How a bug like that got into the wild is inexplicable. Gone are the halcyon days of PS4 stability.
@themightyant #1, not officially. Xbox, Nintendo, steam etc sell keys though official vendors and third parties. Sony officially pulled selling game cards in most markets. The key vendors selling ps keys are selling from markets that they didn't kill it, which is how cheap keys exist for other stores too, but while the others officially do it in primary markets, Sony ended doing so. (Notice on major retailers you can buy digital Nintendo games and digital Xbox games but not digital ps games. You used to be able to until JimStation ended it
#3 PS5 is selling close to PS4 in the same way Xbox is selling 1:2. The fomo launch drove a lot of momentum until reality kicked in and sales have slumped. Keeping in mind they're picking up a lot of Xbox lost customers in that number and that they entered China this generation yet are merely nearly at PS4 levels... They're missing that surge of customers from the slim discount period.
To the last point. They're working on pricing themselves to irrelevance. Yes it's super famous now, but attrition continuing across hardware lifetimes, and eroding software sales will have an ongoing cumulative impact until it's top heavy.
@LogicStrikesAgain Agreed, printing money is the only cause of inflation and decades of QE was the most idiotic possible thing that ever could have been imagined. But a lot of the issue is also congressionally driven and the Fed is caught trying to put the pin in the grenade after throwing it.
As for consoles, we're already there at that point and it's getting worse. Yes we need to roll back technology and we need to roll back games themselves. Gunpei Yokoi knew this is where it would end up back in the mid 90s even before 3 financial crisis. is why Nintendo took that advice and keeps technology back. Yes they overcharge. Badly. I don't like their practices but they have the idea on tech in check so they don't end up here.
We've got to the point where "AAA games" aren't practical to make for a reasonable price and then we need hardware all but enthusiasts can't justify affording to barely adequately run it, meanwhile sales on said games are cratering as prices rise. On top of that the masses have mostly moved to playing far simpler games on far more accessible devices and the money in those is far greater. The games and tech need to roll back in time to manage reality. And it is happening with it without Sony and Xbox following already.
At this point this "aaa" console gaming crowd is more and more becoming a niche of old guys with money and doesn't represent the bulk of gaming which is dangerous for Sony because that leans into their natural inclinations and also doesn't have a future for long term gaming customers and also misses the core of who most games are made for. Young people don't even buy TVs
@HonestHick Sony is the only one in court because they're the only one locking customers to buy on their store only. Xbox, steam, even Nintendo sell keys through many third parties and retailers. Only Sony actively REMOVED that option to control pricing and eliminate middle men, placing them in the same position as Apple and Google while the others are still selling though channels of competition.
@themightyant Sony has fine revenue. Their problem isn't a need to increase revenue it's the need to cut their absurd expenses. And I didn't mean more layoffs.
Comments 7,028
Re: Atlus Fans Don't Think Xbox's Marketing Is Doing Metaphor: ReFantazio Justice
@Flaming_Kaiser Yeah, but that was Square under Masuda. And remember Xbox "doesn't have a big marketing budget like Sony" lol. But to be fair to it all, I think MS does allocate generally low budget to Xbox itself, and the ABK merger wasn't Xbox, it was MS corporate (It was Amy Hood, CFO, and Witch Queen of Ice, that approached ABK, not anyone at Xbox), really because they wanted King, and they were more or less using it to disband the Xbox that was.
Re: PS5 Pro Will Reportedly Boost PS4 Games, and Reduce PSVR2 Motion Sickness
@thefourfoldroot1 "Which is a bit sad as far as I’m concerned, as devs focus will start shifting from coding just for the base model."
If the Pro is similar levels of adoption as PS4 Pro was, they won't. Getting a "pro mode" means just adding a mode with higher target resolution or fps targeted. A lot of devs will just set the slider and build to meet the requirement if it doesn't seem like a big portion of their market. SOME devs will release terribly performing games and say "well it works well on Pro" though. And looking at MH Wilds' PC specs being absurd, I'm betting that's a big one that will do that. 4060 to do 1080p@60 with DLSS+Frame Gen? Yikes. REEngine sucks.
@HonestHick LOL, yep, and who can forget Jimbo's "why would anybody want to play this" (old Ridge Racer), and here they are with their newest console and can't stop talking about PS4.
@Medic_alert Fair enough. But, yeah, a game that's already uncapped should already be able to do this on PS5, and a game that is capped, can't just magically do this on fast hardware, not even on PC, the game needs to be modded, which is more or less what MS was doing before publishers started refusing. If it had fuzzy upscaling before it will probably scale sharper if it's using PSSR.
Re: Atlus Fans Don't Think Xbox's Marketing Is Doing Metaphor: ReFantazio Justice
@Yousef- Square is a bad example because they had some weird strategy of excluding games and shaking down platforms under the old CEO. Meanwhile octopath1 was on Xbox and not ps for ages, and ps got the weird incomplete dq11 while switch got the real version and then Xbox and ps got that one together.
I think under the new CEO they'll have platform party from now on. I think they were trying to shake ms down for game pass money and Ms wasn't always buying.
@LavenderShroud It's still an uphill battle. The platform will always be a place people don't play a particular genre until they cultivate a market for it. They've been working on getting Japanese devs to support them but it's been slow going. If the games don't exist on the platform, a market for those games will never exist. Catch 22. Sony and Nintendo didn't have to work to get it because it's where they started, but Nintendo has often struggled to get Western devs supporting them until switch so it's the same kind of issue.
Has to start somewhere. Only once all the games are there can they try to court fans of those games.
One big thing that's helping finally get all these jrpgs on Xbox it that before, Japan didn't touch PC at all. It was console only. Suddenly PC is big in Japan and every game is on it. That's where PC ports to Xbox make it reasonable for devs to participate where they wouldn't have before.
Re: Atlus Fans Don't Think Xbox's Marketing Is Doing Metaphor: ReFantazio Justice
It's a catch 22 for Xbox. They'll never get jrpg fans if they don't get jrpgs. But them getting jrpg marketing means it doesn't reach as many people.
Fwiw Microsoft sent an email blast highlighting the game to customers, which means Xbox PC app, console, and gp subscribers got the direct marketing on it which is a lot of what Nintendo does too. It's not flashy marketing like Sony but it's effective.
Still, Xbox marketing just flat sucks in general which is a huge part of their problem.
Re: PS5 Pro Will Reportedly Boost PS4 Games, and Reduce PSVR2 Motion Sickness
PS4 Pro Plus Premium. The best PlayStation 4 (TM) console yet!
I find out interesting that the main thing they keep promoting about the pro is what a great PS4 it is. Plus rebirth.
"We believe in generations. Specifically the 6th and 8th generations."
Yeah any psvr2 games that were held back by performance issues will get a bump, and vr devs are usually responsive with updates.
@Enuo By "fresh pine" you mean "heated plastic outgas" right?
@Medic_alert No, he specifically said games that have "variable fps" (uncapped). So it does what PS5 already does only even more power if any games still weren't hitting 60 (or 90 In VR) . Xbox game boost was about patching games that were capped to double their fps. This isn't that. And publishers stopped approving those so they could sell it as a $70 remaster instead.
Re: Nixxes Dev Refers to Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered as 'First Big PlayStation Content Project'
@GamingFan4Lyf "I'll still support Sony's games; I just want nothing to do with the rest of it."
Yep exactly that. I like Sony the studio. But they've killed any interest I had in PS as a platform.
Re: Beat Saber Will Give You More with Britney Spears DLC Song Pack
@zupertramp Yeah, I just realized I've done some Expert ones via the campaign and didn't know it. I think I have 3 or 4 levels left at the top of the campaign ladder. So I did a lot of it. Oh, I know the one you're talking about with moving just the wrists. It was tense but I had no problem with that one, I think I had only half the max motion on try one. The ones I HATED and avoided, were the ones where you had to move your arms a lot. I guess I tend to use minimal motions by default and all that flailing around was not fun at all.
I kind of hate the ones you're supposed to miss a certain amount of blocks and badly slice a certain amount. It becomes too much about watching the health bar, and not enough about playing beat saber.
For the regular ones, I hate the ones I do perfect the whole way through, and then the finale at the last 30 seconds throws a million blocks in a new pattern at you and you end up missing a bunch and losing at the very end....that's the most frustrating of all!
Re: Epic Games Boss Says Firm Now 'Financially Sound', Following the Firing of Over 800 Staff
@StrickenBiged Fair enough then, to a point. The risk of heavy intervention should apply to public companies only. However, Epic is a different kind of case, and is kind of a backdoor around even the existing rules. It's more of a public-private setup. One person owns a little over half, but the rest is owned by other public corporations. And interestingly, all foreign interest.I think a line would have to be drawn around what constitutes public, and when very nearly half is owned by public corporations, it's hard to say it's not a public company.
Not that in Sweeney's case it would matter if he were the sole owner, the guy's always been a giant stick.
Re: Epic Games Boss Says Firm Now 'Financially Sound', Following the Firing of Over 800 Staff
@UnlimitedSevens Funny you'd compare it to the Pope, as I think that used to be part of it. Judges were revered as above the law and in traditional American, indeed informed by religious values (allegedly), and able to put the final word on the corruptible elected officials without fear of retribution. Maybe it's the robes? Or just idealism. People seemed to believe they were above corruption because to be fair the role was attempted to be designed as above corruption at inception, without somehow noticing that if they're appointed by politicians....there's a reason?
Yeah, the biggest problem in the system is that it was designed around the free market that existed in the 18th century. BUSINESS meant Samuel the butcher, Edward the blacksmith, and the bankers (always the bankers.) Business meant one or a few people trading goods and services for coin. And the laws were based on that. With everything decentralized and infinitely redundant. It was not based on central conglomerates of which there's 2 for the entire planet and they have more money than the government itself. None of the rules are equipped to handle that. Though, the be fair, Jefferson warned about the central bankers even in freaking EIGHTEENTH CENTURY! And here we are.
Though it also goes back to the loss of ethics in modern society, even businesses, for the most part, used to be guided by people that had a sense of ethics and sense of right. As society, and the people lost the sense of ethics, and really "will Satan torture my immortal soul for all eternity if I do this" vs "will I net more cash if I do this and will I be subject to prison time?" took hold, this was inevitable. Rule of law was designed around fear of divine punishment (right down to swearing on bibles in court, which used to make people afraid to lie, and now does not), and without fear of divine punishment it nets a society of children looking to see what they can get away with. If you're not cheating, you're losing.
IDK that just banning the corporate donations solves anything. Just like everything else you describe, the corporations would just route the money different, and of course soft funds that can't be banned. You had the infamous 2008 election where Eric Schmidt was INSIDE a campaign headquarters partying while sharing Google data with their campaign. Even without a dollar spent, Google's head was directly a part of a campaign and leveraging the entire datamined information bank of their corporation to benefit a single party's candidate. And that wouldn't ban that. Unfortunately I think "rule of law" isn't enough to fix it alone. Restoring societal ethics is necessary. But how is that accomplished. It took 10,000 years to build religion to successfully do that. And it still fell apart in a decade or two. Even a social revolution is usually just backed and sparked by the 2nd tier nobles that want to become first tier.
Re: Crickets as Suicide Squad Endures Another Muted Launch
@LuXifer Any Day Now. Is that a new GaSS that crashed and burned? Hadn't heard about that one.
Re: Watch Unreal 5's Seriously Impressive MegaLights Tech Demo, Running on a PS5
@Weez Thanks, great explanation and it made total sense! I've not been a fan of how UE5 has turned out which felt like 3 steps backward, but it seems like it's finally shaping up with some good stuff.
Re: Epic Games Boss Says Firm Now 'Financially Sound', Following the Firing of Over 800 Staff
@LavenderShroud yep. A few more million this quarter and the share value goes up. Screw next quarter. Battle passes will sell anyway.
Re: Epic Games Boss Says Firm Now 'Financially Sound', Following the Firing of Over 800 Staff
@UnlimitedSevens Meanwhile the court is supposed to be apolitical with lifetime positions............................
Re: Crickets as Suicide Squad Endures Another Muted Launch
THE FUTURE OF GAMING!!!!!!11!
Re: Epic Games Boss Says Firm Now 'Financially Sound', Following the Firing of Over 800 Staff
@2here2there Standard politics, it's true. At least alternating administratiions can switch witch hunt them for partisan brownie points and apply uneven justice. Sam Eagle approved. Bad as it is, it's better than economic policy exclusively by, for, and of a tiny cabal of tech bros and their hedge fund financiers.
@gollumb82 Try being a Jazz Jackrabbit fan....
Re: Watch Unreal 5's Seriously Impressive MegaLights Tech Demo, Running on a PS5
@Weez Ohhh, I thought metalights whole point was a software rendering alternative to RT. Especially since the had it running well on PS5 which has poor acceleration for RT.
Re: Epic Games Boss Says Firm Now 'Financially Sound', Following the Firing of Over 800 Staff
There really needs to be some form of legal checks and balances that make these kinds of statements impossible for publicly traded companies. Private business? No problem. Public companies? Mass layoffs need investigations and legal accountability as to the finances of the company and it's use.. want to be public? That's the risk.
Re: Final Fantasy 16 Receives Permanent Price Cut on PS5 as Complete Edition Launches
@Flaming_Kaiser To be fair it seems like a key problem is the game is simply designed for 30fps, and the fact that infinite brute force still doesn't make it correctly run 60, it's VERY poorly designed with key parts of the game loop and rendering locked into a 30fps cycle. I think this game goes beyond lack of optimization and is very poorly designed with deeply built in 30 fps logic. But.... Why? It was built as a fast action combat game with the DMC director. Why would they design around 30 in the first place?
I think 7r as a sort of sequel makes a lot of sense. But not dragged out for 3 games for like 13+ years after announcement. Everyone wanted remake and got this instead. I think as a single sequel/retelling it could have worked, but not stretched out like it was.
Re: Beat Saber Will Give You More with Britney Spears DLC Song Pack
@Balosi I can kind of believe it, it's true with any rhythm game in general (and instruments) but still, it's just inhuman . Especially when it starts switching sides my impulses just are not fast enough to think it though! What's that last track on the electronic mix tape that just throws everything on opposite sides at once? Not sure I'll ever complete that on even hard let alone expert lol.
@zupertramp Daang, I can barely handle hard. I can consistently get Bs and often As, got one S, can't remember what track. But expert, I really didn't know ..
Haven't tried that track! One thing I do enjoy though is just the regular tracks vs the campaign. The gimmick rules are interesting but brutally hard and imo not as fun as plowing through the song normally.
The one thing my beat saber obsession did for me though is encourage me to go back to Rocksmith, too. Was on the fence but ubi emailed last week the biggest one year subscription discount I've seen from them for it only through ps store. I'm really playing on PC, but it applies to all. I fell off that one because I didn't have a PC to handle it last time I tried and it wasn't on console, but if I can take my newfound rhythm game affinity and brush on on the old axe, it's awesome!
@AdamNovice There's always one..... 😂
Re: Beat Saber Will Give You More with Britney Spears DLC Song Pack
@LuXifer Funnily I was a late adopter of Beat Saber. Always saw it as "oh one of those games you show VR to non-VR people to wow them but I'm soooo beyond that and into real VR games!" And then one day tried it out of curiosity and got instantly pathetically hooked and started buying up the DLC music packs lol. You can say "it's the same game with different music" but because the blocks are arranged (some tracks better than others) in ways that "feels" right with the music, every track is really different gameplay. Green Day's Father of All gives a great drumming feel, etc. Makes me really wonder how the real drummer's doing it 5x faster lol.
Re: Beat Saber Will Give You More with Britney Spears DLC Song Pack
@LuXifer It supports 120fps on Quest, not sure about on PSVR2, but it's absolutely a psychedelic experience. Brutal. But if you get in the groove it's amazing. Most insane pack is the Daft Punk pack. Not only are they harder than average, but the tracks are like 10 minutes long and you start getting hypnotic by the time you're in the last quarter and that's when the darned tempo changes and you lose your whole combo and end up a B.
@ItsBritneyB_tch There you are! Right on cue.
Re: These LEGO Horizon Adventures Machines Will Make You Want a Real Life Set
@MikeOrator ChatBot NEStalgia says: "Ok. I understand you are looking for 18+ adult tall neck models..."
Re: These LEGO Horizon Adventures Machines Will Make You Want a Real Life Set
With the price of real Lego kits today I think it's cheaper to buy the game and a PS5 Pro than real Legos.
Re: Beat Saber Will Give You More with Britney Spears DLC Song Pack
I absolutely love Beat Saber. I have no idea how people could ever play on the hard difficulties. I play on hard and find it hard enough to get above an A at best. How people are playing 2 difficulties higher and getting S's I will never understand how human reflex can move that fast, at all. And the campaign is brutal. MusicSouls.
I can't actually stand Spears, but, I can like music I hate in BeatSaber when it has a really great box setup that feels great with the music. Might be worth it. And I think Toxic at least would be fun to slice to.
Also, where's that Britney super-fan that used to be a regular here, and why are they not the first post?
Re: Microsoft Is Investigating Why Devs Are Prioritising PS5 Over Xbox
I said it in the PureXbox article about "why I'm glad Xbox doesn't have a pro", and I'll say it here in this article: It's just bad form to be writing these articles on a platform fan site about internal issues with another platform. Everyone knows i think the Pro is walking doom for the benefits of console, but I don't think that argument belongs on an XB site. I think this investigation is a joke and they already know the answer, and so does everyone else, but that's an argument for the Xbox community to have, not the PS community. Just poor form in both articles to fish for engagement.
The endless narrative from posters on this site of "Xbox trained customers to not buy games" gets tiring. Xbox game sales have been roughly equivalent relative to install base to Playstation. Obviously first party game sales are much lower, and that's the loss leader of the platform, you get the first party games for a subscription, but as most major third party games are not on GP, their sales in percentage of install base are roughly similar to PS, taking into account different genres perform better on each, where a new JRPG will do better on PS while, say, a new Assassin's Creed might do better relative to install base on Xbox.
The biggest problem is just that the install base is still much smaller so it becomes the lowest priority of all systems because the total possible sales are simply lower. If they intend to fix that by making the next Xbox a full Windows PC running PC games they can eliminate that problem. Time will tell. But they're not going to suddenly sell a bunch of consoles.
@SlipperyFish FWIW Wukong isn't skipping Xbox, it's just delayed like Baldur's Gate 3 was.
Re: Report Finds Lack of Star Wars Outlaws Sales Disturbing
I think a lot of it is that Disney milks everything till it's gone. They've squeezed SW so that there's so much it doesn't feel rare and exciting anymore, it's just background noise. Add in the Ubisoft controversy and it was going to be rough.
That's a problem with long dev cycles. They start something while a thing is popular and by the time they're done, the thing isn't popular anymore.
Re: Watch Unreal 5's Seriously Impressive MegaLights Tech Demo, Running on a PS5
That's impressive. Much as I've been unhappy with Epic with the so far disaster that is UE5.0 and Fortnite, got to admit they basically just declared that after years and thousands of dollars in hardware per gamer, we don't need RT anymore... Which devs may groan about but every gamer should cheer relentlessly about getting their fps back.
Re: Ghost of Yotei's Gorgeous Open World Will Be Less Repetitive Than Tsushima's
That's good, that's the one complaint I'd had with the original. To think it takes 300 years to make an AAA video game now.
Re: Curb Your Kid's Fortnite Consumption with Epic's New Suite of Parental Controls
@Flaming_Kaiser That all speaks to the collapse of Western society sadly. For thousands of years society worked because one parent was mostly always home raising kids. The modern world was duped into that becoming a luxury of the rich and everyone else is conscripted into perpetual labor and the kids are raised by wolves and other kids, or worse, corporations and government institutions.
Honestly I think the zero dawn fix would probably be for the best.
Re: Games Workshop Noticed Saber's Minor Space Marine 2 Armour Error
Tim Willits is on Warhammer these days?!? Wow had no idea. I think if him as at id forever.
Re: Ever-Evolving, Live Service Experiences Like Fortnite Are 'the Future of Gaming'
@somnambulance Yeah you have a lucky break there. Most modern kids seem to be like jackals, moving only in groups and coordinated via discord. And seem completely hyper. I remember everyone being like they were zombies even I was their age, now suddenly they act like they have an IV drip of Speed.
Re: Ever-Evolving, Live Service Experiences Like Fortnite Are 'the Future of Gaming'
@Yousef- lol depressingly true 😂
IDK that 1-6 will ease you into xiv that much. The feel and vibe yes, but very different combat where 1-6 is classic turn based and 14 is based on real time skill rotations and cool downs. 14 is awesome though no doubt. Monstrosly huge thigh. I played nothing else for 5 months or so and only got half way through the first expansion. I love it but it might be another year before I touch it again lol.
Re: Curb Your Kid's Fortnite Consumption with Epic's New Suite of Parental Controls
Ahh, yes, parenting for the parents of Fortnite addicts. Times up kids, no more Fortnite today, you've had too much, now go wash up and snort all your coke lines and hit the Caesars app for some blackjack before bed.
Re: Lords of the Fallen PS5 Sequel Prioritising 'Elevated Production Values', More 'Commercial' Art Style
What is a "more commercial art style" and why does he say that like it's a good thing?
Re: Ever-Evolving, Live Service Experiences Like Fortnite Are 'the Future of Gaming'
@somnambulance The appeal of fortnite isn't as a game. It's a digital hangout space. 3d Facebook. VrChat without headwear. 2nd life without smut. It's popular because it's a social media platform kids can hang out with friends in. Same with gtav.
Of course a social media platform in 3d would be more popular than a video game.
Re: Ever-Evolving, Live Service Experiences Like Fortnite Are 'the Future of Gaming'
"the future of gaming is Facebook!"
-Tim Sweeney
"Fortnite is the metaverse! Also we're never making VR Fortnite in the actual metaverse"
-Tim Sweeney
Between this and his POS UE5 engine that runs well on absolutely nothing, I'm starting to really dislike Sweeney. Didn't really like him in the 90s either though.
Easy for the guy that's at the top of live service to say live service is the future. He's also the reason it's NOT the future for other games. Maybe after he loses all his players to someone else's live service he'll be all in on jazz jackrabbit 4.
Re: Hans Zimmer, Lorne Balfe Behind Dragon Age: The Veilguard's Rousing Soundtrack
I love Zimmer but "we hired Hollywood talent" as a selling point makes me even more dubious about this game...
Re: PS5 Pro 'Absolutely Rocks', According to No Man's Sky Engine Programmer
I respect Hello Games immensely, but I always find these comments from devs weird. They make a multiplatform game. The game already does way more on PC than it can do on the Pro. There's nothing new the pro introduces it just does more than the previous console did, but still not as much as the game already does on PCs that are higher end. "For a console, it's really good" makes sense. A blanket statement that sounds like it introduces new capabilities to the game that didn't already exist on other platforms, no, that makes no sense. There's so much hyperbole around this thing already and I'm not sure why devs throw themselves into that, though Hello of course has a close history with Sony, I doubt that still applies currently.
@Bobtheking It was unusable blurry at launch. It was basically broken from Feb 2023-April 2023. Had a big improvement in May. They patched it multiple times, added foveated rendering, etc, it's now one of the sharpest games on the platform with draw distance for miles and miles. The Jun 2023 patch turned it into pure eye candy.
@Tomato_Goose NMS is, IMO, the PSVR2 system seller.
Re: Sony Fights Scalpers in Japan By Demanding PS5, PS4 Playtime
IDK, I have probably thousands of hours since PS4, and I probably don't have that many trophies and only 2 platinum. But as long as it's a reasonable and stated value it seems like a fair idea. It does hurt first time buyers, of course. And also highlights very clearly that the target market for the Pro is not new customers but upgrading existing customers. New customers can't even buy one.
@get2sammyb I'm sure the bots could play Pet the Kitty or whatever that game was to rack up trophies, lol.
Re: Sony's Live Service Push 'No Joke', A Lot of People Working on Horizon Online
@Flaming_Kaiser Oh man there's a name I haven't heard in ages. I played a a little bit waaaaay back when it was new, but I couldn't get very far because the PC I had at the time just couldn't handle it.
I agree, though, I'm not a big multiplayer person, but I enjoy XIV's group dungeons, and I'm a huge Splatoon nut, so I'm not anti-multiplayer, but the problem with multiplayer is that by nature you can really only absorb one or two of them (friend coop aside), because they become a dedication of time by necessity.
Re: Final Fantasy 16 Receives Permanent Price Cut on PS5 as Complete Edition Launches
@Flaming_Kaiser I'm not sure what devs are thinking with one of this stuff. The thing, though is, that ray tracing is much easier and faster to implement and looks better at the same time. So I can see why devs prefer to implement it. Pretty much hit a button, it's automatic, and looks better than anything done manually becuase it makes lighting work like it does in reality. Plus devs just like playing with the tools they have.
But at this point they have to all know that it just isn't viable for modern hardware. The simulations of lighting an entire real world are just too much for current hardware and will continue to be so for quite a long time. So I'm sure they did it because it's fast and cheap to do and looks good.
But what I don't get is YoshiP is the guy who had to clean up the mess of FFXIV OG, he's the guy with the dev diaries about the original team focusing on gfx above anything else and had issues like the flower pots that had more polygons than the player character. Then he goes on to make XVI that cripples a 4090 and simply can not run at full speed on any hardware that money can buy because it focused too much on gfx...?? Isn't he the one that complained about other devs in square doing that?
Totally agreed, about square (and every dev) needing to work to the limitations of the platform. It's bad enough that multiplats don't do it, but now we have exclusives that don't even run right on the only hardware it runs on.
Masuda was a horrible leader, and it seems like the new CEO may be a lot more level headed. That said, my own theory on selling half the company to Embracer is more complicated. I don't think they sold the whole thing for peanuts. I think they were swimming in debt up to their eyeballs and sold off half the company for "peanuts" with all their debt bundled into the sale, I.E. the real price to Embracer was much more than the purchase price, as they had to absorb a mountain of debt commensurate with the real price of what they bought, and magically Square was in the black again.
Re: Tech Experts Reckon PS5 Pro Could Help Pave the Way to PS6
@themightyant Switch is only about 45M ahead of 3ds+wiiu, which is still a lot of course but less dramatic. And Nintendo of course is a bit of it's own market while ps and Xbox are direct competitors if not outright clones. I'm terms of Xbox being only somewhat down, it's true, but also remember that the series s is its biggest seller, where the goal was to reach a new market, and they did, but at the cost of just trading it for losing part of their existing market to ps due to blundering.
I would still say Sonys current hardware success is similar to PS4, lack of a competitor. And Xbox is never going to pull their head from their backside on console because they don't really care (even though they should.). But I still see Sony taking that and running, PS3 style, until they start creating competition where the previously had none, if only in the shape of mobile, streaming, etc making easier inroads to consumer sentiment. And you're still forgetting that adding the China market boosts that hardware sales number, yes, but also hides the overall declines in existing markets
Re: Insider Report Adds Context to Assassin's Creed Shadows' Big Delay
@KeenAerondight Err one of the most popular AC games is set in ancient Africa? Dunno why they didn't have a Mayan protagonist though.
Re: Insider Report Adds Context to Assassin's Creed Shadows' Big Delay
The fact that the inclusion of Yasuke is generating non stop screaming about this game is mission accomplished. He's there to flare controversy to push the game up the media ladder. It's the same reason bear sex was in the BG3 trailer.
To the people screening "racism", get over yourselves. Assassin's Creed fans don't object to playing an African. most assassins creed fans will point to the game you play an African (Bayek) as one of their top 3 or 5 AC games and would be all over a sequel. But nobody wants to play an African in the Japanese ac game. Nobody wants to play a Peruvian in the American AC game. Nobody wants to play a German in the Italian AC game. Nobody wants to play a Russian in the British AC game.
Re: Dragon of Dojima Roars in Official Like a Dragon: Yakuza Trailer
I love how they're actually calling this "Like a Dragon: Yakuza", since Makoto references that name as a move playing at the theater in p5 Strikers.
Re: Tech Experts Reckon PS5 Pro Could Help Pave the Way to PS6
@JayJ Gotta get those 33rd anniversary PS6 Amateur preorders in now! Only 666 units available (bundled with 90" OLED Bravia only.)
@LogicStrikesAgain I think the issue with "AAA" gaming is that while there still will always be a market for it, that market is decreasingly large enough to support ever increasing costs of making it. Either the market for it needs to dramatically grow or the prices need to dramatically increase which necessarily shrinks the market again to unsustainably small numbers. Neither can really happen, so either "AAA" needs to cost less to make, or be refined as something other than "looks indestinguishable from live action".
I can't tell what direction (s) the industry will take. I can't tell if it'll be all bad or mostly good. But I do know it'll be very very different than it was....
Re: Sony Product Manager Urges PS5 Fans to 'Settle Down' Over Ads
Glad the bug people were right on this one. It says a lot about how much we trust Sony at this point that most of us including staff instantly assumed it was a new ad initiative.
How a bug like that got into the wild is inexplicable. Gone are the halcyon days of PS4 stability.
Re: Tech Experts Reckon PS5 Pro Could Help Pave the Way to PS6
@themightyant #1, not officially. Xbox, Nintendo, steam etc sell keys though official vendors and third parties. Sony officially pulled selling game cards in most markets. The key vendors selling ps keys are selling from markets that they didn't kill it, which is how cheap keys exist for other stores too, but while the others officially do it in primary markets, Sony ended doing so. (Notice on major retailers you can buy digital Nintendo games and digital Xbox games but not digital ps games. You used to be able to until JimStation ended it
#3 PS5 is selling close to PS4 in the same way Xbox is selling 1:2. The fomo launch drove a lot of momentum until reality kicked in and sales have slumped. Keeping in mind they're picking up a lot of Xbox lost customers in that number and that they entered China this generation yet are merely nearly at PS4 levels... They're missing that surge of customers from the slim discount period.
To the last point. They're working on pricing themselves to irrelevance. Yes it's super famous now, but attrition continuing across hardware lifetimes, and eroding software sales will have an ongoing cumulative impact until it's top heavy.
Re: Tech Experts Reckon PS5 Pro Could Help Pave the Way to PS6
@LogicStrikesAgain Agreed, printing money is the only cause of inflation and decades of QE was the most idiotic possible thing that ever could have been imagined. But a lot of the issue is also congressionally driven and the Fed is caught trying to put the pin in the grenade after throwing it.
As for consoles, we're already there at that point and it's getting worse. Yes we need to roll back technology and we need to roll back games themselves. Gunpei Yokoi knew this is where it would end up back in the mid 90s even before 3 financial crisis. is why Nintendo took that advice and keeps technology back. Yes they overcharge. Badly. I don't like their practices but they have the idea on tech in check so they don't end up here.
We've got to the point where "AAA games" aren't practical to make for a reasonable price and then we need hardware all but enthusiasts can't justify affording to barely adequately run it, meanwhile sales on said games are cratering as prices rise. On top of that the masses have mostly moved to playing far simpler games on far more accessible devices and the money in those is far greater. The games and tech need to roll back in time to manage reality. And it is happening with it without Sony and Xbox following already.
At this point this "aaa" console gaming crowd is more and more becoming a niche of old guys with money and doesn't represent the bulk of gaming which is dangerous for Sony because that leans into their natural inclinations and also doesn't have a future for long term gaming customers and also misses the core of who most games are made for. Young people don't even buy TVs
Re: Tech Experts Reckon PS5 Pro Could Help Pave the Way to PS6
@HonestHick Sony is the only one in court because they're the only one locking customers to buy on their store only. Xbox, steam, even Nintendo sell keys through many third parties and retailers. Only Sony actively REMOVED that option to control pricing and eliminate middle men, placing them in the same position as Apple and Google while the others are still selling though channels of competition.
@themightyant Sony has fine revenue. Their problem isn't a need to increase revenue it's the need to cut their absurd expenses. And I didn't mean more layoffs.