PlayNation5

'Factoid' actually means "an item of unreliable information that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact" ('oid' suffix denotes that). I blame Steve Wright for totally misusing it for over two decades.

In that context, it isn't retro but enough people may say it is, so it is I suppose.

They took around 90 minutes to sell out as I kept track. I got my order in at 9:59am, weirdly, and I'm looking forward to getting it 😊 Already seen them up on eBay at £125, though, and that is tempting when you think it's £50 for nothing. That said, it's a limited edition one and I don't yet have a black controller, so I think I'll be hanging onto it 😊

@get2sammyb Totally agree - the timing couldn't be worse, but the value for money is through the roof all the same.

The interesting thing is that, originally, The Duke was meant to be one of the Lords (bosses) that you fought against. Looks like they went back to this idea for the DLC.

I thought PushSquare had turned a corner on the Sony negativity recently, and it was so refreshing.

As several others have said in this thread, it looks like a return to form for the author. I get that outrage drives clicks, but the facts are that MS will not turn down the amount of money CoD makes for PS fans. That'd be like making Fornite an exclusive. Shareholders will NOT allow it for the sake of a 'war' that doesn't exist.

@Intr1n5ic Same! I looked down and thought 'Yep, had to be'.

It's clearly another case of a very vocal minority in an echo chamber online not sharing the mainstream sentiment that digital/disc-less is king. Largely due to the convenience, but Sony's frequent sales and game-sharing will also likely play a part.

I've been digital-only for years on PlayStation and Xbox. No mess of discs to store, never need to get up multiple times to change games and our group of friends shares purchases. Win-win-win.

GTA Online has been so well supported with story-based DLC that tbh this is no great loss to me. Plus the new QoL updates coming soon that make it a viable solo game - but it's miles better with a friend or two for sure.

I always knew RDR Online would be incredibly held back due to its time period, and this is also why we're likely never going to see an 80s GTA ever again.

@LiamCroft Pulse is perfectly comfy to me - I wear mine for hours with no issues at all...

Nice to see some praise given to Sony for promising a fix - I was expecting another berating of them from Sammy! I agree, though, that they should have just gone with NTSC globally and that surely would've been less work!

Downloaded Returnal, Death Stranding PS5, Ape Escape and Toy Story. I already own Ghost of Tsushima (PS4 version), so will my save move over to the PS5 one automatically?

Also, should Sony remove it from the service and I have to go back to the PS4 edition, will the save carry backwards?

I imagine the RT performance could get patched; Sony may even demand it if there's a lot of bad press written about it.

Very nice feature. They're getting your money anyway and high subscriber numbers are more meaningful to them than another few quid on a game sale that needn't have taken place. Not to mention the loss of goodwill when the user discovers they needn't have bought it.

My Series X is ready!

Does it support KB/M on PS5?

Sony definitely needs more shooting and racing games, IMO. Not so many that they end up with Xbox's problem of them being all there is, but a new Killzone/SOCOM and something like 'Gran Turismo Horizon' would be great.

I feel so lucky I pre-ordered one as soon as they went live as easily as I did. At the time I couldn't understand why my colleagues were having issues, but even then the majority who pre-ordered day one got them and the others have used Twitter trackers to get them since.

Mad situation that 18 months in they're still so hard to get.

IMO, Cold War has a great multiplayer and certainly miles better than Vanguard's. I bought Vanguard, loved the single-player but ended up deleting it and re-installing Cold War for the multiplayer aspect since Vanguard's was dire in comparison. Cold War is still my go-to multiplayer FPS on PS5, although me and my mate have been hammering GTA Online and having a blast since it came out (both relatively new to it).

I'd hoped the Bungie acquisition would lead to better FPSes on PlayStation as, Killzone and Resistance aside, it's had a shocking representation on the platform. Xbox and PC, by contrast, have many great ones. But they seem to be letting them still do their own thing for now.

I'd also like to see something like 'Gran Turismo Horizon' - a more arcade and festival-based light-hearted take on the series. I love Forza Horizon and there's no exclusive like it on PlayStation.

I own a Series X as well, but when both brands do well with a variety of exclusives it's ultimately us who win.

@Husker You're sorted mate, you'll get the top-tier for the duration of your longest current subscription period.

No issue at all with this - people were 'taking the Michael'. The communication should have been better, yes, but that's by the by. You'll get your extension, just not now. You've not lost out.

Xbox can afford to do it with Game Pass as they're in a numbers game to get subscribers - you can bet they'll do the same, and raise prices, once those numbers are there. Anyone thinking otherwise is delusional - look at Netflix for evidence of this happening. Microsoft also have the cash to do it, and Game Pass was a last-ditch attempt to rescue the brand (Nadella almost killed Xbox in 2016).

I was way too young to get into many of the PS1 classics, so the chance to play them is quite exciting since I pay for Plus and Now anyway. I'll be much more of a cork-sniffer on the PS2 side of things onwards, but my most grown-up PS1 game was either Batman & Robin (that beat-em-up one) or Action Man 😂

@Scob If I had my parents' Internet speeds, I'd have bitten the bullet on the 2TB. We're lucky where I live, as ours is the only estate that can get both Virgin and BTs gigabit services (perks of a new-build). Pricing is therefore pretty competitive from both.

You need to remember that larger SSDs offer faster speeds by their nature (more flash cells = faster). Generally, 500GBs will be slower and 1-2TB will be faster, and 4TB+ will be faster again. It's not a hard setting, though - sometimes the best performance starts on 2TB and greater drives. It all depends and is worth considering whenever you either buy an SSD or a computer with one in.

@Relygon If you're in the UK, they're half-price at the moment on Amazon. I went with the WD over the 980 Pro because there are reports that you need to update the firmware on the 980 to get the advertised speeds and this requires a PC to do (can't do it on the PS5 as it needs the Samsung Magician app).

Now, I wouldn't be surprised if the latest 980s ship with that firmware straight from the factory but you can't be sure and I don't want to faff with returning it. Even though it's easy, I don't own a PC to do the firmware update on so the WD was a safer bet and seems to have identical performance anyway.

@Relygon Yes, the 980 Pro and WD SN850 will be as they saturate the PCIe 4.0 spec at 7GB/s, whereas the PS5 internal SSD is around 5.5GB/s. It's a case of diminishing returns, though, as the load time differences are negligible - half a second to a second at the very most.

I took advantage of the 1TB SN850's pricing yesterday - basically half price makes it an easy investment. I have 600meg broadband as a fallback if I ever do still need to content-juggle years down the line, as I was considering getting the 2TB and keeping everything local but there's no real need to.

I am indeed 😊 Although, having both Now and Plus I've really already paid for it!

@DomGC PS1 and PSP games will be new, Now only has PS2-PS4 titles.

@mrtennis1990 https://blog.playstation.com/2022/03/29/all-new-playstation-plus-launches-in-june-with-700-games-and-more-value-than-ever/

All the details are here, and monthly payments are available on all tiers. They should have included the link in the main article.

Answered my own question - it's £99.99/year for the Premium plan. Annual pricing is as follows, from the PlayStation.Blog article:

Essentials - £49.99/year (same as current PS+)
Extra - £83.99/year (meh)
Premium - £99.99/year

So it's just PS+ and Now merged into one sub at the Premium tier. Pricing is about £100/year for the two currently, so we'd better not be seeing anything in excess of that at the top tier.

@nomither6 Agreed, but the Pulse 3D is lovely and well worth checking out if you haven't. Used it since launch day and all my friends upgraded to one over the months, coming from really quite decent branded ones too (not Earth-shattering ones but very respectable all the same).

I legitimately play CoD online much better with the DualSense than I do with the latest Xbox (standard) controller. I also have much more precision with half-throttling on GT7 than I do in Forza Horizon 5, and GT7 being a sim would be more unforgiving I think.

They need to add a way of changing the track in a multiplayer lobby without having to back out and create a whole new lobby.

MAJOR Game Pass vibes on this.

@RubyCarbuncle Wouldn't worry. Polyphony can, at that time, push one last update to disable the always-online requirement.

Everyone saying it's annoying (I agree, it should be a Control Centre icon if anything) - tweet Sony/PlayStation and tell them. That's what will get it changed.

@Martsmall Wow, just saw that myself!

This week's lottery numbers are...

Excited for this, but it's got Game Pass written all over it so I'm hesitant to buy on day one...

@Max_the_German Surely that'd be 'Dumb Delivery' compared to 'Smart Delivery'.

@KidBoruto My Mrs. got me Spyro last-gen on the Xbox (at the time I played far more Xbox than PS). Non-90s kids won't care where they play it, and I think the notion of gaming requiring a box under the TV doesn't have long left at all. By next-gen, I think Xbox Game Cloud, PS Now streaming and all the others will be close to the 'favourite' way to play games in developed countries with the broadband infrastructure.

I have a PS5 and Series X and get Game Pass Ultimate free with work. I bought a PS5 for the exclusives, superior controller and UI. It absolutely feels more next-gen than my Series X, which really apart from the load times feels very similar to my One X before it. I got a good price on the One X, thankfully, so it's not too bad plus I've got it for the future games.

I wish the DualSense had the grips that the new Xbox controller has, but that's really about it. I look forward to the updated GTA Online with my PS friends while enjoying Forza, Halo et al. on Xbox with those friends.

I can sadly see a number of my PS friends going to Xbox, though. Many of them own a Series S as well purely for Game Pass and if it keeps getting better and better then they've already said a future PS console could be a hard sell to them.

*****, we've potentially lost Spyro AND Crash now. Wowzers.

Game Pass is gonna be £30/month soon at this bloody rate.

@get2sammyb - they're saying the same about GTA V: E&E as well today.

@Reeneman It kinda was, or very very close to it all things considered. Since a lot of people still can't get them, maybe all games so far should be considered as being 'launch window' titles 😛

@Flaming_Kaiser Agreed. They've even said that they're 'overhauling' the new Forza Motorsport game to be more of a live service and they've kind of gone that way too with Halo Infinite. Still a great game, mind, at least on the single-player.

I've got a day-one PS3 under the stairs if I get really itchy to play classic games, but I could also play PS1-2 games on a potato PC using a DualShock 4 or DualSense.

I'm more excited for PlayStation's future than I am nostalgic for its past. Some of my best childhood PS2 memories, GTA aside, were playing GT3-4, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Simpsons Hit & Run (of all things) with my sister. We've got a killer system in the PS5 and I want to see that maxed much more than old games appearing.

But that's just, like, my opinion, man.

@__jamiie But you can't guarantee that MLB will still be there after x months. Look how quickly GTA V and RDR 2 disappeared from the service. Don't get me wrong, I love Game Pass (I get Ultimate free with work) but it's a rental service.

So if they're removing the cards 'in favour of regular PlayStation Network voucher cards', surely they'll be doing the same for PS+ then? I just renewed my PS Now as I got a 12-month card as a Christmas gift - not worried as they'll do what Xbox did and add x amount of time onto the 'new' subscription in exchange.

If they go for tiers of PS Now as rumoured, where the Classic range is on the top-tier, people will be worse-off for that change than they are now. It needs to be PS+ and PS Now available separately (as is the case now) and a 'PS++' tier where both are included for a slightly discounted price and some games get a period of exclusivity on the higher tier before coming through to the main PS Now membership.

If I buy the game from the US PS Store, which works on my UK account, I presumably have to buy the DLC from the US Store too for it to work?