@LogicStrikesAgain most games i listed are in fact AAA games with high production values. many of them are ps5 and pc only. sony is most certainly forming partnerships with many publishers. i suppose nothing will convince you that sony's output has been lackluster the past 5 years and i cannot see how you would call this cycle successful from a AAA software standpoint. agree to disagree. the number of asian games hitting the ps5 is no coincidence under the circumstances. had things been different, many of these games would have remained on pc only, but sony is going the extra mile to ensure they hit the ps5 to make up for its void of releases and project mismanagement.
@AhmadSumadi naw, just pointing out sony's over reliance on unproven AAA games from asian territories because it has fumbled and mismanaged its own projects the past 5 years. see my post above. sony should have had an additional 3-5 noteworthy 1st party releases by this point but they don't exist due to being cancelled or because they wasted time and resources on service games (that were also cancelled or failed) that otherwise would have gone into a traditional release.
@LogicStrikesAgain first off, you listed 5 games that are cross gen with ps4... so you can remove those if we are discussing sony's ps5 output.
i don't blame you for not knowing the extent of this over reliance on asian games because there are a ton and it's hard to keep track of them all. also, i was not referring to sony published games specifically... yes, they published some asian games, but the majority i am listing below are not sony published. that doesn't mean there are not partnerships in place to score exclusivity or timed exclusivity. they are relying on these games to fill the void of their own 1st party releases. at this point, they outnumber sony's own output of AAA releases.
China:
-Genshin Impact
-Honkai: Star Rail
-Black Myth: Wukong
-Black Myth: Zhong Kui
-Phantom Blade Zero
-Wuchang: Fallen Feathers
-Lost Soul Aside
-Where Winds Meet
-Project: The Perceiver
-Swords of Legends
-Project Jinyiwei
-The Legend of Jin Yong's Heroes
-Tides of Annihilation
-Daba Land of Water Scar
-Ballad of Antara
-Blood Message
-The Grass of Genesis
-Lingxu: Return
-The Lost Heaven
-Light of Motiram
-Loulan the cursed sand
-Longevity Yin and Yang
Korea:
-Project TAL
-Woochi the Wayfarer
-Stellar Blade and its sequel
many, many more games in addition to those. other games that i didn't list are only announced for PC at the present time, but will likely make their way to PS5 as well! also, i haven't even listed the india hero project games or most of the china hero project games released and currently in devleopment. i mean, are we really going to praise sony for its 1st party output when this cycle has clearly been its worst showing in 30 years?
@NoNameLad yup. i just built a PC earlier this year and i'm very thankful i did. It would likely have costed me 25% more had i purchased the parts with current market prices. take good care of your PC and you should be able to get 10 years out of it
@NoNameLad there is no law against that because the US government is all in on AI. the current administration will gladly manipulate the stock markets to make money (as we have seen with their tariff strategy). in fact, i will goes as far to say that donald trump became president precisely to make money, not to run the country. in the past year, he has become $3b richer than he was prior. unless there is a government actively against AI investment (i have not heard of any), they will gladly sacrifice their land, energy and water supply to build AI data centers and screw over the average citizen in the process by way of job losses, higher utility bills and absurd inflation on tech components due to massive supply shortages. once the bubble bursts, our investments will crash (unless you invest in options outside of the stock market). we are on our own to fight against this
@BrownOwl we can agree about your latter point — it will change the world and our lives in many ways (i see it being far more negative than positive).
but on the subject of the bubble, the market could very well crash and we will still have a future of AI influence and dependence. both things can be true at the same time. i just don't see how they can go all in to this extent without any fallout in the process if so many AI companies are losing vast amounts of money on a daily basis. the moment the financials take a sharp turn downward, investments will slow and investors will sell and walk away with their millions (or billions). half of this AI nonesense is merely a get-rich scheme for investors and an excuse to keep the markets up at a time that would otherwise be a recession. it is superficial and short term in that sense. 30-50% of the entire stock market is currently tied up by AI stock investments which tells me this is a bubble and gamble of the worst kind.
so yes, AI is here to stay and will alter the world whether we like it or not... but the current rate of development and investments will eventually nosedive and take the markets down with it. once that happens, AI will continue to evolve, but at a much slower pace. just an educated guess of course
@BrownOwl you have no way of knowing that. there's little chance that the AI investments can continue at this aburd pace if there is no return in the short run. i.e. open AI is losing billions of dollars and has no way of turning a profit. if enough AI investment are ***** the bed, the market will crash...eventually.
i want nothing more than AI bubble to burst and these corps to lose billions of dollars of investments. i think its a very possible scenario, seeing that they have no clue where this road leads... they are heading for a wall or a cliff...
that said, i'm starting to look at the shortage of tech components as no accident. i think one of their end goals is to prevent us, average people and customers, from having access to build our own computers, so that we have no choice but to rely on AI and other subscription for work and game related tasks. they want to get the entire population into some sort of AI ecosystem and certainly don't want any stranglers. i think they are underestimating the potential pushback that is coming their way. people such as myself will never give into AI when an option is available. i am happy to spend more time on a task if it means i do it entirely on my own without AI assistance. it is more fulfilling and i stand by my own principles. besides, what is the point of more efficiency in daily work if all that means is your boss will just expect more productivity out of you anyways? it's a fool's errand.
sony continues to rely on chinese and korean games for its AAA output. it's a very odd strategy since most of these developers are unproven (many projects having already disappointed the masses). but it tells me that sony knows how barren its own 1st party output has and continues to be. they had no choice but to throw all these potential games at the wall and see what sticks. if sony had a good roadmap of its own, these asian games would be gravy, but as the main course, all you can do is cringe.
@OldGamer999 agreed. the fight with nintendo has already begun. sony is trying to retain as many japanese customers as possible with the ps5 so that when its handheld (deck-like device) releases, it has a head start with customers in its ecosystem. gaining ps5 users (with subsidized hardware) is not a fool's errand since their software purchases will transition to sony's new handheld which will be heavily targeted to the japanese market and compete with nintendo 1:1. there are far too many people on here claiming that selling ps5's to the japanese market is a waste of time — they simply don't see the strategy. and let's be honest, sony should have created it's native handheld 5 years ago, but better late than never.
(if true) barely a month away without a peep of marketing behind it? heh, yea, that's not how this is supposed to work. i enjoyed the original, but this is very tough sell. even a perfect remake would struggle considering how niche this genre is... they simply don't make them anymore... actually, they never did. this is a true platforming/puzzle game with some basic combat sprinkled in (weakest element of the game). this remake will bomb and ubisoft will be convinced that the franchise is dead. again. good times
wow, this is head scratching. they milked the shovel knight franchise and banked on royalties by featuring the character in so many other indi games over the years... you would think that they were doing well. there is absolutely no excuse for this other than they are horribly mismanaged and simply got lucky with shovel knight. i'm genuinely shocked by this... the studio might be better off forcing the co-founders out and getting some people in there who know what they are doing. 4 years of development time for a sprite-based indi game is certainly excessive. hope they figure it out, but there are bigger problems that need to be addressed here.
@Repo_Dog let's put it this way: 90% of IPs that are still relevent today started out in the ps1/ps2/ps3 eras... how many new IPs do you count from the ps5 era? that should be all you need to know to make an informed judgement and understand just how impactful sony's earlier consoles were. the AAA space at large was firing on all cylinders. the ps5 is a laughing stock by comparison. the only good thing from this era of gaming is the indi scene, but sony and the AAA space has nothing to do with that
haha. it really isn't as good as many remember it to be. i played it upon release and couldn't get into it... at the time i thought the battle system was a slog, to put it politely.
fast forward 20+ years and i played the game in its entirety a few months ago. lots of potential there but man is this game an unpleasant grind. the encounter rate is very high, yet experience points are dished out at a very low rate so it is difficult to level up outside of boss fights. the battle system is slow beyond belief, and repetitve in all the wrong ways. most of the dungeons are very poorly designed and frustrating to navigate through, especially those in the second half of the game. there is a ton of backtracking! also, you have to exit dungeons the same way you entered in many cases and put yourself through the same dread over again... inexcusable design, even for its era. o yea, the very limited inventory space is outright frustrating to manage.
as for the positives... good vibes, atmopshere and music, generally speaking. servicable story and characters, again, generally sepaking. inventive battle system, so points given for originality, even though it falls flat on its face due to repetition and its mollssses-like tempo. graphics were great for the time... one of the few jrpgs that could contend with squaresoft in the presentation department. great art direction.
so yes, a very flawed game. i couldn't score it higher than a 6.5 or 7 in good conscience. with a more engaging battle system, it could have been a true classic. instead, it remains a fan favourite of those who had never experienced a jrpg before (as a first jrpg, i'm sure it would be quite memorable)... for everyone else who had already been exposed to squaresoft, lod's flaws were too obvious to ignore. that said, i think lod showed a lot of potential and deserves a remake. a complete reimagining of the game with a focus on improving the lackluster elements of the original would be great to see. sony desperately needs a modern 1st party jrpg franchise and there is no better excuse to get back into the genre than a lod remake.
@Repo_Dog
putting the ps5 ahead of the ps1/ps4 and on par with the ps2 is just factually incorrect. all you would need to do is refresh your memory on prior console generations and their game libraries. they all put the ps5 to shame and are simply too vast to have such a misunderstanding so i think people such as yourself are unable to seperate themselves from the moment. your opinion is clouded by recency bias. i will go beyond that and call your list blasphemy. each to their own i guess
@Noone2025 sorry, but you are wrong. sony hasn't cared about japan for the past 5 years, but NOW they do. big difference there. it's literally impossible NOT to care about japan if sony is gearing up to release a handheld device, which caters to the japanese market far more than the western market. if they didn't care about japan, a handheld would be out of the question.
@twitchtvpat yea, the FPS genre had too much competition and neither killzone nor resistance managed to break free and do amazing numbers... but 2-3m copies for each killzone and a bit higher for resistance isn't bad. different era, different genres, different budgets... but i'm not entirely sure how that relates to my post. i think a killzone reboot on ps6 could be cool to see... everything is relative... it might be given a smaller budget than horizon but could be just as profitable, if not more so. sony seems hellbent on chasing live service, so killzone would be a likely candidate in that space (or maybe a socom reboot).
it's a good sign that ubisoft handed the project over to montreal, considering their talent and that they had designed the original game... but it makes me wonder why ubisoft management initially treated this remake as a junk project by having an unproven studio (mumbai) work on it for years, nearly canceling the project in the process? shouldn't this have been a high status remake deserving of top talent and resources? i guess the suits thought they could get away with the bare minimum and save a few bucks in the process haha... with all the delays, project mismanagement and exchanging of studios, they likely had to triple their budget for this... so much for their cost saving strategy. goes to show that greediness can often backfire on you.
with all that said, i don't think this remake has a chance at selling well regardless of the finished product since remake fatigue is a thing now and the original game, while a success at the time of release, didn't exactly set the world on fire. initial sales were so poor, that ubisoft resorted to a promotion where they gave out free games with the purchase of sands of time. the game went on to sell 2m copies but the financial "success" of the game on its own merits remains unknown... how profitable was it considering the free games ubisoft gave away in the process? i really enjoyed the game at the time, but it is for a very specific audience and won't appeal to most gamers in this era. this remake is questionable to say the least.
sony is getting crushed in the comment section on a myriad of topics lately, including how people rate and perceive the ps5, five years after launch etc. (not surprising to see that it is deemd a disappointment by most people with perspective on playstation history).
as others have pointed out, nintendo releases many games in the same franchise but they are not direct sequels. the main difference here is that nintendo often "re-imagines" an IP with each game release... similar to how sony re-imagined the god of war IP for the 2018 release. this is very different than a by-the-numbers sequel that builds on the very same elements as the game that came before it, with only incremental improvements or changes.
the problem with sony is that it is in a rut with its sequels. they are boring, predictable and do little to excite the audience. over the span of a decade, people are essentially playing the same game when so little is altered from the first entry. if ps6 is planned to have a ghost, god of war, horizon and spiderman sequel (built on yotei, ragnarok, forbidden west and spiderman 2's foundation) that is going to be yet anothet blunder. instead, sony should release some new IP's, reboot some old franchises (not seen since the ps1/ps2/ps3 eras) and re-invent the aforementioned franchises above (or let them sleep for another 5+ years) or else people are just going to lose interest. i mean, people already have lost interest, judging by the steep decline in sales that the ghost, god of war, horizon and spiderman sequels have garnered! is this a coincidence?
@KawakiisaFraud if sony didn't care about japan, they never would have created a japanese exclusive SKU at a very reasonable price point. they are trying to change the culture in japan, but doing so after many years of neglect will take time. you might ask yourself, why care now? it's simple. sony is gearing up to release its native handheld device and japan will be one of its main target markets (they clearly prefer portable devices over home consoles over there). sony is going head to head with nintendo for the first time in... 10 years? (ever since the vita was deemed to be a failure and sony pulled reasources away from it).
well, this is yet another tactic to push physical game sales away: treat your customers like second class citizens who have supported all your games for decades, just because they purchased them physically... that's a new low for a major publisher. perhaps it has happened before, but considering how loyal the yakuza fanbase is, this is real slime ball behaviour from sega.
i guess there will be a day where physical editions of games don't receive patch updates either huh?
@Coalescence yup. a modded ps3 is bliss with a library of ps1 games in .bin/.cue format. no need to install the pkg files. a modded psp go with the dock is awesome as well if gaming on a crt.
@dodgykebaab agreed. i would argue that there isn't another gaming hub in the entire world as important as japan in terms of sheer cultural significance. that culture still exists in japan and has no equal. sales may be in decline for home gaming consoles compared to what it used to be, but that doesn't mean sales are down across the board. the general population has shifted towards portable devices... like switch. since sony is prepping a portable device of its own, it would be completely foolish to give up on japan... the japanese market will soon transition to sony's new ps handheld which will steal potential sales from nintendo. sony is going to war with nintendo again and significant market share is at stake.
so, i agree, japan is still very important to sony, otherwise they wouldn't have bothered to a) make a new handheld which will be catering to the japanese market more so than the western market and b)release a japanese exclusive SKU of the ps5. i won't be surprised if sony develops a new internal studio or two based in japan as well. under jim ryan, sony disgraced itself. we are nearing the end of sony's worst console generation bar none, but hopefully they will get back on track with the ps6 and their new handheld.
translation: sony just doesn't care anymore. these days, this initiaive is just a PR stunt to shut up the retro game enthusiasts.
sony already released hundreds of classic ps1/ps2 games on the ps3 platform. it's just a matter of extending the ps3 licenses over to the ps4/ps5. this interview sounds like nothing more than damage control for sony in how it has decided to throw the entire program under the bus. it's not like extensive amounts of work is required to re-list the games on modern platforms. if it isn't viable to do trophy support, that is fine. but to say it might not make business sense to essentially add a ROM file to an emulation wrapper at $5-10 a pop is absurd. a couple thousand copies would more than pay for it. in addition to sony not caring, this more has to do with some publishers preferring to (possibly) make their own compliation releases and they are concerned that an a la cart model will eat into their sales. funny thing is that most publishers never actually go through with this and they just leave money on the table.
so... we as gamers will take initiative and emulate the games for ourselves. for free. no worries
parenting is about doing what is best for your kids, regardless of the social pressures and normalization of certain, toxic trends. a good parent will stay clear of these predatory money pits and encourage their kids to play real games.
@StitchJones i already took the 2 extra years into consideration when i said 10 years (assuming the 3rd entry will launch in about 2 years time). it's only been 8 years since zero dawn got released. this is a fact-based argument and doesn't leave much room to subjectivity. trying to justify all the releases by comparing it to annualized franchises is very silly
@CP2 yup, agreed. there is a clear bias and the franchise is quickly nearing oversaturation levels. i think sony needs to take a more balanced approach and diversify its software library with new IPs, reviving dormant IPs, and focusing less on sequels in general. one sequel is fine, but not every franchise needs to be a trilogy, that's for sure. god of war, last of us and the ghost games feel feel like they are in that boat as well (yet another sequel is going to be boring and uneventful unless enough time passes first...10 years or so between entries.). one game per console cycle basically. that allows the devs to keep the games fresh with new concepts and ideas, and generates far more excitement and anticipation leading up to release. meanwhile... in between those 10 year cycles, sony will be releasing new IPs and alternate between the new and old franchises.
@StitchJones
-2 mainline entires, with a third on the way
-ncsoft mmo
-mysterious multiplayer game
-lego horizon adventures spinoff
-call of the mountain psvr2 game
-live action horizon movie in the works
-animated show was in the works at netflix (cancelled...for now)
all within... a decade? call it what you want, but there is a fixation here that you simply do not see with most franchises.
i mean, you can't do a review for this game and not mention one of its biggest influences: wild guns. this game already has a score of 80 on open critic so a 6/10 will be an outlier. perhaps a 7 would be more reasonable.
@themightyant to be honest, i haven't played any of these releases so i'm not an expert on this... but I have followed the reviews and press around them. DQ1+2 HD, Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter, final fantasy tactics - Ivalice Chronicles and to a lesser extent (due to poor performance and lack of optimization) Metal Gear Delta stood out to me the most. based on everything i have seen, i would award trails in the sky as the clear winner all things considered.
@UltimateOtaku91 at this point, there should be a category for best remake/remaster since they have become a staple in the gaming space. trails in the sky would find its way in that category at the very least.
@Areus i wish that were true. nothing in the gaming industry is sacred or immune to radical change when the goal for the suits is to keep increasing their margins. at the very least, i can see sony downsizing its internal studios significantly and keeping them on as consultants, thereby offloading most of the hands- on work to asian territories. i mean, most AAA games already rely heavily upon support studios for a big chunk of the work so it's not that far off.
i wonder if sony will eventually outsource its projects to chinese and korean developers rather than develop them in house. if everything is about profit margins, then surely sony will shut down its studios to save on costs and take advantage of the cheaper salaries in asian territories. this game may set a very bad precedent going forward. nothing will surprise me considering how things are unfolding with the likes of AI and other cost saving tactics. i'm looking at this long term, of course, and not something that will happen overnight. but i'm really starting to get the impression that all these companies have lost their souls and are headed in the wrong direction.
i disagree with all your points. playstation as a brand is losing relevence by the day. a sony console is no longer enticing if exclusive software no longer exists, or is merely timed in nature and will eventually find its way to pc. if what you say is true, nintendo would have gone this route a long time ago.
nothing comes for free. there are major tradeoffs that you are overlooking. sony potentially losing its users to the pc market is bad for its business in the long term. i.e. there is a cost to porting its games to pc in the sense sony will inevitably lose console customers for life (whether it was a pc user who considered buying a ps console but now doesn't need to, or a dual user who will no longer pick up a ps6 since owning a console and pc is now redundant).
if you retain more users in the sony ecosystem, that amounts to hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of software purchases per user per year. if you discourage console game exclusivity, a given customer may purchase a sony game on steam here and there, but the revenue generated from that is a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of dollars worth of software that sony would collect if that user was still in the playstation ecosystem (since sony is getting a cut of all purchases and not just the sony published titles).
sony is playing with fire here. the revenue generated with pc sales is so miniscule relative to total sales, that even if i was more open minded about the pc ports, the entire venture would be questionable when you factor in piracy as well. its a lose, lose scenario for everyone involved other than a few pc gamers who are being catered to.
@TrollOfWar the pandemic boosted the disirability for ps5 hardware (as people spent more time indoors) while sony coasted and relied on 3rd party software. ps5 sales are not sustainable and are still trailing the ps4 by a few million (the decline is here already but guess what, sony will be saved yet again by gta 6 next year). there is just no way sony can repeat the ps5 generation with the ps6 and expect the same results. only the most naiive gamers without any analytical skills would consider the ps5 era noteworthy in any way and not a step down from everything that came before it. if you cannot see that sony has been complacent (and lucky) this generation, that is just your loss and nobody will be able to help you there.
it would be a wise move if sony did pull away from pc (at least for single player games). why?
1. ps5 as a console has lost its perceived value from core gamers. as true exclusives have become more uncommon and outright rare, the value of the ps5 has diminished. this does not help sony sell consoles. many people claim the ps5 has been an utter disappointment — it has — the lack of exclusives has only made this argument stronger.
2. sony's games have not fared well on pc, outside of a few exceptions. spiderman 2 only managed 150k copies sold in its first few days which is a complete joke. to make matters worse, it was cracked on day one and 300k people pirated the game in the same 2 day timeframe. this is very bad news for sony. they lost a good number of sales to piracy. perhaps most of those people would never have purchased the game to begin with, but there is no data to prove how many would have purchased the game on ps5 if the pc port never existed.
3. sony's pc output only accounted for 2% of its revenue. of that revenue, how much of that is actual profit? porting games to pc takes a lot of time and money, in addition to marketing expenses. if sony is only netting half of that 2% as profit, sounds like it might not be worth the struggle since sony would be far better off converting some of those pc gamers into ps gamers and bringing them into sony's ecosystem. nothing comes for free so sony will need to evaluate this pc experiement and see if it makes any sense. i truly believe its pc sales have underperformed significantly.
1. little to no marketing and retail presence to compete with sony. only those in the know will even be aware of the steam machine. it will be niche and far from mainstream, just like the deck which has sold under 5m units in 3 years.
2. outdated specs. the base ps5 is more powerful than the steam machine. i.e. steam machine will be outdated the day it releases and many games won't even run well on it such as mgs 3 remake and silent hill f.
3. due to economies of scale, it is very unlikely that valve will be able to match ps5's price. currently, it is listed at $500USD for a base ps5 slim digital. sony orders parts in the tens of millions. valve cannot do this for such a niche product so the pricing will likely be a bit more expensive, despite worse performance.
4. steam machine doesn't have a target demographic. who is it for? ps5 users have no reason to jump if they are getting a better experience on ps5. core pc gamers will find the steam machine underpowered. those who are undecided likely don't have the knowledge to get into the pc space and would be far better off buying a console (no tweaking, troubleshooting or fuss required). those who are already pc gamers and are gaming on underpowerwed laptops: the steam machine seems most suited for them.
5. there is a world where a steam machine could have posed more of a threat, but this is not it. in the future, if valve puts out a steam machine that can rival ps5 performance at $100 cheaper, then they may be onto something. as it stands, this looks like a weird experiment that is not going to sway many people. its a neat idea but the pc space still has ways to go to be as user friendly and seamless as consoles if they hope to attract that mainstream user. perhaps that day will never arrive. also, while software optimization on console is not what it used to be, it still provides an advantage over the pc space — you generally get more out of your hardware on console due to the nature of game development and devs focusing their resources on a single hardware configuaration. for this reason alone, a console will remain relevent far longer than any pc (unless you spend more money upgrading).
price still remains to be seen of course... maybe valve is willing to take a major hit on the hardware in exchange for market share. that used to be the console business model for the ps2 and ps3 and it paid off for sony... valve needs to be very agressive if they have any hope at disrupting the console space. a $400USD steam machine could make some people take notice. anything more just means valve has no interest in competing with sony and wants to carve out its own niche in the pc space instead.
if people manage to find an exploit for the japanese SKU (i.e. remove region locking), sony will have a problem on its hands... although i imagine sony will block international shipments from japanese retailers, such as amazon japan etc to make it more difficult to import brand new.
for a franchise where the sequel sold 50% fewer copies than the first entry, going all in with 3+ additional games is uncalled for. there is waning interest in this IP from everyone but sony. how's that going to work out for them?
prior console generations also never experienced a pandemic, where people were isolated and spending absurd amounts of money on home entertainment to pass the time by. i wonder how many ps5's were purchased during that duration which otherwise would never have been purchased? the amount of software? we will never know, but if sony thinks the ps6 will sell at the same pace as the ps5 for doing the bare minimum and riding on the coatails of 3rd party software, including the service game slop that is keeping sony profitable via microtranslations, they are in for a rude wake-up call.
@Rich33 complete hyperbole. anyone who agrees with this sentiment likely never grew up in the 90s and 2000s and experienced the ps1/ps2 era of gaming. it is a night and day difference. the ps5 brought absolutely nothing new to the table and this is easily the worst generation in sony's history as far as the software library is concerned. i can guarantee that if push square decided to take a poll of how we as the community would rank sony's consoles, the ps5 would rank last by a wide margin. if not last, second last. the best thing about this console cycle is the plethora of great indi games... all of which can be found on pc anyways. by comparison, the AAA and AA industry has fallen flat on its face and is void of innovation and fresh ideas. that side of the industry has been complacent over the past 10-15 years, but at least we were getting new IPs from the likes of sony on the ps4... new IPs on the ps5 have been lacking to a great extent.
@PuppetMaster i don't think these companies are in the business of diminishing returns. they want to grow the franchise with each new entry. note, that i did not say that yotei was at risk of not being profitable. i am questioning how "successful" the game is being perceived by the suits. in 5 years time, if yotei only managed 50% of tsushima's copies sold, i don't know what world you would have to be living in where the suits and shareholders cheer and consider that a success.
you are entitled to your opinion (and honestly, it would be great if what you described was "good enough" and how the games industry was run since that would lead to more risk taking), but i don't think that is how this cuthroat business operates. numbers have to keep going up, even when the goals become unrealistic.
"The first comparison we should make is to its predecessor, Ghost of Tsushima. It sold 2.4 million copies in its first three days after going on sale exclusively on PlayStation 4 on July 17, 2020, then hit 5 million after 118 days (just shy of four months). It’s now up to 13 million copies sold, including sales of the PC and PS5 Director’s Cut." - ign
yotei has a long way to go before it is considered a financial success. any sequel that fails to meet or surpass the first entry should be considered a financial failure since it does not accompish the entire point of a sequel (and that is to grow the franchise and become even more profitable for the publisher). only time will tell.
Comments 2,659
Re: PS5 Action RPG The God Slayer Getting Full Support from Sony, First Gameplay Footage Is Jaw-Dropping
@LogicStrikesAgain most games i listed are in fact AAA games with high production values. many of them are ps5 and pc only. sony is most certainly forming partnerships with many publishers. i suppose nothing will convince you that sony's output has been lackluster the past 5 years and i cannot see how you would call this cycle successful from a AAA software standpoint. agree to disagree. the number of asian games hitting the ps5 is no coincidence under the circumstances. had things been different, many of these games would have remained on pc only, but sony is going the extra mile to ensure they hit the ps5 to make up for its void of releases and project mismanagement.
Re: PS5 Action RPG The God Slayer Getting Full Support from Sony, First Gameplay Footage Is Jaw-Dropping
@AhmadSumadi naw, just pointing out sony's over reliance on unproven AAA games from asian territories because it has fumbled and mismanaged its own projects the past 5 years. see my post above. sony should have had an additional 3-5 noteworthy 1st party releases by this point but they don't exist due to being cancelled or because they wasted time and resources on service games (that were also cancelled or failed) that otherwise would have gone into a traditional release.
Re: PS5 Action RPG The God Slayer Getting Full Support from Sony, First Gameplay Footage Is Jaw-Dropping
@LogicStrikesAgain first off, you listed 5 games that are cross gen with ps4... so you can remove those if we are discussing sony's ps5 output.
i don't blame you for not knowing the extent of this over reliance on asian games because there are a ton and it's hard to keep track of them all. also, i was not referring to sony published games specifically... yes, they published some asian games, but the majority i am listing below are not sony published. that doesn't mean there are not partnerships in place to score exclusivity or timed exclusivity. they are relying on these games to fill the void of their own 1st party releases. at this point, they outnumber sony's own output of AAA releases.
China:
-Genshin Impact
-Honkai: Star Rail
-Black Myth: Wukong
-Black Myth: Zhong Kui
-Phantom Blade Zero
-Wuchang: Fallen Feathers
-Lost Soul Aside
-Where Winds Meet
-Project: The Perceiver
-Swords of Legends
-Project Jinyiwei
-The Legend of Jin Yong's Heroes
-Tides of Annihilation
-Daba Land of Water Scar
-Ballad of Antara
-Blood Message
-The Grass of Genesis
-Lingxu: Return
-The Lost Heaven
-Light of Motiram
-Loulan the cursed sand
-Longevity Yin and Yang
Korea:
-Project TAL
-Woochi the Wayfarer
-Stellar Blade and its sequel
many, many more games in addition to those. other games that i didn't list are only announced for PC at the present time, but will likely make their way to PS5 as well! also, i haven't even listed the india hero project games or most of the china hero project games released and currently in devleopment. i mean, are we really going to praise sony for its 1st party output when this cycle has clearly been its worst showing in 30 years?
Re: This RAM Crisis Is Looking Like a Nightmare for the PS6
@NoNameLad yup. i just built a PC earlier this year and i'm very thankful i did. It would likely have costed me 25% more had i purchased the parts with current market prices. take good care of your PC and you should be able to get 10 years out of it
Re: This RAM Crisis Is Looking Like a Nightmare for the PS6
@NoNameLad there is no law against that because the US government is all in on AI. the current administration will gladly manipulate the stock markets to make money (as we have seen with their tariff strategy). in fact, i will goes as far to say that donald trump became president precisely to make money, not to run the country. in the past year, he has become $3b richer than he was prior. unless there is a government actively against AI investment (i have not heard of any), they will gladly sacrifice their land, energy and water supply to build AI data centers and screw over the average citizen in the process by way of job losses, higher utility bills and absurd inflation on tech components due to massive supply shortages. once the bubble bursts, our investments will crash (unless you invest in options outside of the stock market). we are on our own to fight against this
Re: This RAM Crisis Is Looking Like a Nightmare for the PS6
@BrownOwl we can agree about your latter point — it will change the world and our lives in many ways (i see it being far more negative than positive).
but on the subject of the bubble, the market could very well crash and we will still have a future of AI influence and dependence. both things can be true at the same time. i just don't see how they can go all in to this extent without any fallout in the process if so many AI companies are losing vast amounts of money on a daily basis. the moment the financials take a sharp turn downward, investments will slow and investors will sell and walk away with their millions (or billions). half of this AI nonesense is merely a get-rich scheme for investors and an excuse to keep the markets up at a time that would otherwise be a recession. it is superficial and short term in that sense. 30-50% of the entire stock market is currently tied up by AI stock investments which tells me this is a bubble and gamble of the worst kind.
so yes, AI is here to stay and will alter the world whether we like it or not... but the current rate of development and investments will eventually nosedive and take the markets down with it. once that happens, AI will continue to evolve, but at a much slower pace. just an educated guess of course
Re: This RAM Crisis Is Looking Like a Nightmare for the PS6
@BrownOwl you have no way of knowing that. there's little chance that the AI investments can continue at this aburd pace if there is no return in the short run. i.e. open AI is losing billions of dollars and has no way of turning a profit. if enough AI investment are ***** the bed, the market will crash...eventually.
Re: This RAM Crisis Is Looking Like a Nightmare for the PS6
i want nothing more than AI bubble to burst and these corps to lose billions of dollars of investments. i think its a very possible scenario, seeing that they have no clue where this road leads... they are heading for a wall or a cliff...
that said, i'm starting to look at the shortage of tech components as no accident. i think one of their end goals is to prevent us, average people and customers, from having access to build our own computers, so that we have no choice but to rely on AI and other subscription for work and game related tasks. they want to get the entire population into some sort of AI ecosystem and certainly don't want any stranglers. i think they are underestimating the potential pushback that is coming their way. people such as myself will never give into AI when an option is available. i am happy to spend more time on a task if it means i do it entirely on my own without AI assistance. it is more fulfilling and i stand by my own principles. besides, what is the point of more efficiency in daily work if all that means is your boss will just expect more productivity out of you anyways? it's a fool's errand.
Re: PS5 Action RPG The God Slayer Getting Full Support from Sony, First Gameplay Footage Is Jaw-Dropping
sony continues to rely on chinese and korean games for its AAA output. it's a very odd strategy since most of these developers are unproven (many projects having already disappointed the masses). but it tells me that sony knows how barren its own 1st party output has and continues to be. they had no choice but to throw all these potential games at the wall and see what sticks. if sony had a good roadmap of its own, these asian games would be gravy, but as the main course, all you can do is cringe.
Re: Japanese PS5 Sales Slump as New Model Hype Begins to Die Off
@OldGamer999 agreed. the fight with nintendo has already begun. sony is trying to retain as many japanese customers as possible with the ps5 so that when its handheld (deck-like device) releases, it has a head start with customers in its ecosystem. gaining ps5 users (with subsidized hardware) is not a fool's errand since their software purchases will transition to sony's new handheld which will be heavily targeted to the japanese market and compete with nintendo 1:1. there are far too many people on here claiming that selling ps5's to the japanese market is a waste of time — they simply don't see the strategy. and let's be honest, sony should have created it's native handheld 5 years ago, but better late than never.
Re: Rumour: Prince of Persia: Sands of Time PS5 Remake Out as Early as 16th January
(if true) barely a month away without a peep of marketing behind it? heh, yea, that's not how this is supposed to work. i enjoyed the original, but this is very tough sell. even a perfect remake would struggle considering how niche this genre is... they simply don't make them anymore... actually, they never did. this is a true platforming/puzzle game with some basic combat sprinkled in (weakest element of the game). this remake will bomb and ubisoft will be convinced that the franchise is dead. again. good times
Re: Octopath Traveler 0 (PS5) - Perfectly Fine JRPG Action
had no idea this was based off a mobile game. well, that sucks. this can probably be skipped and isn't considered canon.
Re: Shovel Knight Dev Might Live or Die Based on the Sales of Mina the Hollower
wow, this is head scratching. they milked the shovel knight franchise and banked on royalties by featuring the character in so many other indi games over the years... you would think that they were doing well. there is absolutely no excuse for this other than they are horribly mismanaged and simply got lucky with shovel knight. i'm genuinely shocked by this... the studio might be better off forcing the co-founders out and getting some people in there who know what they are doing. 4 years of development time for a sprite-based indi game is certainly excessive. hope they figure it out, but there are bigger problems that need to be addressed here.
Re: Poll: Five Years of PS5 - How Would You Rate Sony's Console?
@Repo_Dog let's put it this way: 90% of IPs that are still relevent today started out in the ps1/ps2/ps3 eras... how many new IPs do you count from the ps5 era? that should be all you need to know to make an informed judgement and understand just how impactful sony's earlier consoles were. the AAA space at large was firing on all cylinders. the ps5 is a laughing stock by comparison. the only good thing from this era of gaming is the indi scene, but sony and the AAA space has nothing to do with that
Re: Mark Cerny 'Loved' Legend of Dragoon, But Admits It 'Can't Possibly Be as Good' as He Remembers
haha. it really isn't as good as many remember it to be. i played it upon release and couldn't get into it... at the time i thought the battle system was a slog, to put it politely.
fast forward 20+ years and i played the game in its entirety a few months ago. lots of potential there but man is this game an unpleasant grind. the encounter rate is very high, yet experience points are dished out at a very low rate so it is difficult to level up outside of boss fights. the battle system is slow beyond belief, and repetitve in all the wrong ways. most of the dungeons are very poorly designed and frustrating to navigate through, especially those in the second half of the game. there is a ton of backtracking! also, you have to exit dungeons the same way you entered in many cases and put yourself through the same dread over again... inexcusable design, even for its era. o yea, the very limited inventory space is outright frustrating to manage.
as for the positives... good vibes, atmopshere and music, generally speaking. servicable story and characters, again, generally sepaking. inventive battle system, so points given for originality, even though it falls flat on its face due to repetition and its mollssses-like tempo. graphics were great for the time... one of the few jrpgs that could contend with squaresoft in the presentation department. great art direction.
so yes, a very flawed game. i couldn't score it higher than a 6.5 or 7 in good conscience. with a more engaging battle system, it could have been a true classic. instead, it remains a fan favourite of those who had never experienced a jrpg before (as a first jrpg, i'm sure it would be quite memorable)... for everyone else who had already been exposed to squaresoft, lod's flaws were too obvious to ignore. that said, i think lod showed a lot of potential and deserves a remake. a complete reimagining of the game with a focus on improving the lackluster elements of the original would be great to see. sony desperately needs a modern 1st party jrpg franchise and there is no better excuse to get back into the genre than a lod remake.
Re: Splinter Cell Remake Gets Its Original Game Director Back
if the development cycle is as seamless as the prince of persia remake, splinter cell remake is going to be fantastic!
Re: Poll: Five Years of PS5 - How Would You Rate Sony's Console?
@Repo_Dog
putting the ps5 ahead of the ps1/ps4 and on par with the ps2 is just factually incorrect. all you would need to do is refresh your memory on prior console generations and their game libraries. they all put the ps5 to shame and are simply too vast to have such a misunderstanding so i think people such as yourself are unable to seperate themselves from the moment. your opinion is clouded by recency bias. i will go beyond that and call your list blasphemy. each to their own i guess
Re: PS5 Sales in Japan Quadruple as New Model Launches
@Noone2025 sorry, but you are wrong. sony hasn't cared about japan for the past 5 years, but NOW they do. big difference there. it's literally impossible NOT to care about japan if sony is gearing up to release a handheld device, which caters to the japanese market far more than the western market. if they didn't care about japan, a handheld would be out of the question.
Re: Geoff Keighley's Cryptic Post Has Fans Speculating Wildly About The Game Awards Announcement
tomb raider franchise under embracer and amazon is dead. i thought all the layoffs going on at CD made that clear
Re: Talking Point: Does PS5 Have a Sequel Problem?
@twitchtvpat yea, the FPS genre had too much competition and neither killzone nor resistance managed to break free and do amazing numbers... but 2-3m copies for each killzone and a bit higher for resistance isn't bad. different era, different genres, different budgets... but i'm not entirely sure how that relates to my post. i think a killzone reboot on ps6 could be cool to see... everything is relative... it might be given a smaller budget than horizon but could be just as profitable, if not more so. sony seems hellbent on chasing live service, so killzone would be a likely candidate in that space (or maybe a socom reboot).
Re: Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Is Already on Sale Just Two Weeks After Release
haha desperate measures i guess... don't want those investors running now do we. hopefully this is the beginning of the end for COD as we know it.
Re: Leaked Footage of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Remake Almost Two Years Old, Ubisoft Confirms
it's a good sign that ubisoft handed the project over to montreal, considering their talent and that they had designed the original game... but it makes me wonder why ubisoft management initially treated this remake as a junk project by having an unproven studio (mumbai) work on it for years, nearly canceling the project in the process? shouldn't this have been a high status remake deserving of top talent and resources? i guess the suits thought they could get away with the bare minimum and save a few bucks in the process haha... with all the delays, project mismanagement and exchanging of studios, they likely had to triple their budget for this... so much for their cost saving strategy. goes to show that greediness can often backfire on you.
with all that said, i don't think this remake has a chance at selling well regardless of the finished product since remake fatigue is a thing now and the original game, while a success at the time of release, didn't exactly set the world on fire. initial sales were so poor, that ubisoft resorted to a promotion where they gave out free games with the purchase of sands of time. the game went on to sell 2m copies but the financial "success" of the game on its own merits remains unknown... how profitable was it considering the free games ubisoft gave away in the process? i really enjoyed the game at the time, but it is for a very specific audience and won't appeal to most gamers in this era. this remake is questionable to say the least.
Re: Talking Point: Does PS5 Have a Sequel Problem?
sony is getting crushed in the comment section on a myriad of topics lately, including how people rate and perceive the ps5, five years after launch etc. (not surprising to see that it is deemd a disappointment by most people with perspective on playstation history).
as others have pointed out, nintendo releases many games in the same franchise but they are not direct sequels. the main difference here is that nintendo often "re-imagines" an IP with each game release... similar to how sony re-imagined the god of war IP for the 2018 release. this is very different than a by-the-numbers sequel that builds on the very same elements as the game that came before it, with only incremental improvements or changes.
the problem with sony is that it is in a rut with its sequels. they are boring, predictable and do little to excite the audience. over the span of a decade, people are essentially playing the same game when so little is altered from the first entry. if ps6 is planned to have a ghost, god of war, horizon and spiderman sequel (built on yotei, ragnarok, forbidden west and spiderman 2's foundation) that is going to be yet anothet blunder. instead, sony should release some new IP's, reboot some old franchises (not seen since the ps1/ps2/ps3 eras) and re-invent the aforementioned franchises above (or let them sleep for another 5+ years) or else people are just going to lose interest. i mean, people already have lost interest, judging by the steep decline in sales that the ghost, god of war, horizon and spiderman sequels have garnered! is this a coincidence?
Re: PS5 Sales in Japan Quadruple as New Model Launches
@KawakiisaFraud if sony didn't care about japan, they never would have created a japanese exclusive SKU at a very reasonable price point. they are trying to change the culture in japan, but doing so after many years of neglect will take time. you might ask yourself, why care now? it's simple. sony is gearing up to release its native handheld device and japan will be one of its main target markets (they clearly prefer portable devices over home consoles over there). sony is going head to head with nintendo for the first time in... 10 years? (ever since the vita was deemed to be a failure and sony pulled reasources away from it).
Re: PSA: The Original Yakuza 0 Will Be Delisted Forever When Director's Cut Drops on PS5
nothing is delisted forever when the original pc and ps4 files will be preserved on the internet... forever
Re: Yakuza 0, Kiwami, Kiwami 2 Get Discount PS5 Upgrade Paths, But Only for PS4 Digital Owners
well, this is yet another tactic to push physical game sales away: treat your customers like second class citizens who have supported all your games for decades, just because they purchased them physically... that's a new low for a major publisher. perhaps it has happened before, but considering how loyal the yakuza fanbase is, this is real slime ball behaviour from sega.
i guess there will be a day where physical editions of games don't receive patch updates either huh?
Re: Poll: Five Years of PS5 - How Would You Rate Sony's Console?
ps1: 10/10
ps2: 10/10
ps3: 8/10
ps4: 9/10
ps5: 6/10
Re: 'I'm So Happy': Japanese Players Rejoice Over Finally Buying Cut-Price PS5
great. now bring this price over to the west. the ps5 is stupidly expensive here too!
Re: 'Financial Viability Is a Big Deal': Emulation Studio on Why More Retro Games Aren't Coming to PS Plus Premium
@Coalescence yup. a modded ps3 is bliss with a library of ps1 games in .bin/.cue format. no need to install the pkg files. a modded psp go with the dock is awesome as well if gaming on a crt.
Re: PS5 Sales Collapse in Japan as Sony Readies Overdue Rescue Plan
@dodgykebaab agreed. i would argue that there isn't another gaming hub in the entire world as important as japan in terms of sheer cultural significance. that culture still exists in japan and has no equal. sales may be in decline for home gaming consoles compared to what it used to be, but that doesn't mean sales are down across the board. the general population has shifted towards portable devices... like switch. since sony is prepping a portable device of its own, it would be completely foolish to give up on japan... the japanese market will soon transition to sony's new ps handheld which will steal potential sales from nintendo. sony is going to war with nintendo again and significant market share is at stake.
so, i agree, japan is still very important to sony, otherwise they wouldn't have bothered to a) make a new handheld which will be catering to the japanese market more so than the western market and b)release a japanese exclusive SKU of the ps5. i won't be surprised if sony develops a new internal studio or two based in japan as well. under jim ryan, sony disgraced itself. we are nearing the end of sony's worst console generation bar none, but hopefully they will get back on track with the ps6 and their new handheld.
Re: 'Financial Viability Is a Big Deal': Emulation Studio on Why More Retro Games Aren't Coming to PS Plus Premium
translation: sony just doesn't care anymore. these days, this initiaive is just a PR stunt to shut up the retro game enthusiasts.
sony already released hundreds of classic ps1/ps2 games on the ps3 platform. it's just a matter of extending the ps3 licenses over to the ps4/ps5. this interview sounds like nothing more than damage control for sony in how it has decided to throw the entire program under the bus. it's not like extensive amounts of work is required to re-list the games on modern platforms. if it isn't viable to do trophy support, that is fine. but to say it might not make business sense to essentially add a ROM file to an emulation wrapper at $5-10 a pop is absurd. a couple thousand copies would more than pay for it. in addition to sony not caring, this more has to do with some publishers preferring to (possibly) make their own compliation releases and they are concerned that an a la cart model will eat into their sales. funny thing is that most publishers never actually go through with this and they just leave money on the table.
so... we as gamers will take initiative and emulate the games for ourselves. for free. no worries
Re: New Report Finds Almost Half of US Kids Are After In-Game Currency for Christmas
parenting is about doing what is best for your kids, regardless of the social pressures and normalization of certain, toxic trends. a good parent will stay clear of these predatory money pits and encourage their kids to play real games.
Re: Horizon Sales Update Cements It As One of Sony's Strongest Franchises
@StitchJones i already took the 2 extra years into consideration when i said 10 years (assuming the 3rd entry will launch in about 2 years time). it's only been 8 years since zero dawn got released. this is a fact-based argument and doesn't leave much room to subjectivity. trying to justify all the releases by comparing it to annualized franchises is very silly
Re: Horizon Sales Update Cements It As One of Sony's Strongest Franchises
@CP2 yup, agreed. there is a clear bias and the franchise is quickly nearing oversaturation levels. i think sony needs to take a more balanced approach and diversify its software library with new IPs, reviving dormant IPs, and focusing less on sequels in general. one sequel is fine, but not every franchise needs to be a trilogy, that's for sure. god of war, last of us and the ghost games feel feel like they are in that boat as well (yet another sequel is going to be boring and uneventful unless enough time passes first...10 years or so between entries.). one game per console cycle basically. that allows the devs to keep the games fresh with new concepts and ideas, and generates far more excitement and anticipation leading up to release. meanwhile... in between those 10 year cycles, sony will be releasing new IPs and alternate between the new and old franchises.
Re: Horizon Sales Update Cements It As One of Sony's Strongest Franchises
@StitchJones
-2 mainline entires, with a third on the way
-ncsoft mmo
-mysterious multiplayer game
-lego horizon adventures spinoff
-call of the mountain psvr2 game
-live action horizon movie in the works
-animated show was in the works at netflix (cancelled...for now)
all within... a decade? call it what you want, but there is a fixation here that you simply do not see with most franchises.
Re: Mini Review: Neon Inferno (PS5) - Beautiful Layers, Chaotic Bullets
i mean, you can't do a review for this game and not mention one of its biggest influences: wild guns. this game already has a score of 80 on open critic so a 6/10 will be an outlier. perhaps a 7 would be more reasonable.
Re: Talking Point: The Game Awards 2025 Nominations Announced: Who Are Your Winners?
@themightyant to be honest, i haven't played any of these releases so i'm not an expert on this... but I have followed the reviews and press around them. DQ1+2 HD, Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter, final fantasy tactics - Ivalice Chronicles and to a lesser extent (due to poor performance and lack of optimization) Metal Gear Delta stood out to me the most. based on everything i have seen, i would award trails in the sky as the clear winner all things considered.
Re: Talking Point: The Game Awards 2025 Nominations Announced: Who Are Your Winners?
@UltimateOtaku91 at this point, there should be a category for best remake/remaster since they have become a staple in the gaming space. trails in the sky would find its way in that category at the very least.
Re: Mobile MMO Horizon Steel Frontiers Seems to Have Captured Lots of Attention Already
@Areus i wish that were true. nothing in the gaming industry is sacred or immune to radical change when the goal for the suits is to keep increasing their margins. at the very least, i can see sony downsizing its internal studios significantly and keeping them on as consultants, thereby offloading most of the hands- on work to asian territories. i mean, most AAA games already rely heavily upon support studios for a big chunk of the work so it's not that far off.
Re: Mobile MMO Horizon Steel Frontiers Seems to Have Captured Lots of Attention Already
i wonder if sony will eventually outsource its projects to chinese and korean developers rather than develop them in house. if everything is about profit margins, then surely sony will shut down its studios to save on costs and take advantage of the cheaper salaries in asian territories. this game may set a very bad precedent going forward. nothing will surprise me considering how things are unfolding with the likes of AI and other cost saving tactics. i'm looking at this long term, of course, and not something that will happen overnight. but i'm really starting to get the impression that all these companies have lost their souls and are headed in the wrong direction.
Re: 'Very Vague' Rumour Claims Sony May Scale Back PC Ports of PS5 Games
@TrollOfWar
i disagree with all your points. playstation as a brand is losing relevence by the day. a sony console is no longer enticing if exclusive software no longer exists, or is merely timed in nature and will eventually find its way to pc. if what you say is true, nintendo would have gone this route a long time ago.
nothing comes for free. there are major tradeoffs that you are overlooking. sony potentially losing its users to the pc market is bad for its business in the long term. i.e. there is a cost to porting its games to pc in the sense sony will inevitably lose console customers for life (whether it was a pc user who considered buying a ps console but now doesn't need to, or a dual user who will no longer pick up a ps6 since owning a console and pc is now redundant).
if you retain more users in the sony ecosystem, that amounts to hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of software purchases per user per year. if you discourage console game exclusivity, a given customer may purchase a sony game on steam here and there, but the revenue generated from that is a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of dollars worth of software that sony would collect if that user was still in the playstation ecosystem (since sony is getting a cut of all purchases and not just the sony published titles).
sony is playing with fire here. the revenue generated with pc sales is so miniscule relative to total sales, that even if i was more open minded about the pc ports, the entire venture would be questionable when you factor in piracy as well. its a lose, lose scenario for everyone involved other than a few pc gamers who are being catered to.
Re: 'Very Vague' Rumour Claims Sony May Scale Back PC Ports of PS5 Games
@TrollOfWar the pandemic boosted the disirability for ps5 hardware (as people spent more time indoors) while sony coasted and relied on 3rd party software. ps5 sales are not sustainable and are still trailing the ps4 by a few million (the decline is here already but guess what, sony will be saved yet again by gta 6 next year). there is just no way sony can repeat the ps5 generation with the ps6 and expect the same results. only the most naiive gamers without any analytical skills would consider the ps5 era noteworthy in any way and not a step down from everything that came before it. if you cannot see that sony has been complacent (and lucky) this generation, that is just your loss and nobody will be able to help you there.
Re: 'Very Vague' Rumour Claims Sony May Scale Back PC Ports of PS5 Games
it would be a wise move if sony did pull away from pc (at least for single player games). why?
1. ps5 as a console has lost its perceived value from core gamers. as true exclusives have become more uncommon and outright rare, the value of the ps5 has diminished. this does not help sony sell consoles. many people claim the ps5 has been an utter disappointment — it has — the lack of exclusives has only made this argument stronger.
2. sony's games have not fared well on pc, outside of a few exceptions. spiderman 2 only managed 150k copies sold in its first few days which is a complete joke. to make matters worse, it was cracked on day one and 300k people pirated the game in the same 2 day timeframe. this is very bad news for sony. they lost a good number of sales to piracy. perhaps most of those people would never have purchased the game to begin with, but there is no data to prove how many would have purchased the game on ps5 if the pc port never existed.
3. sony's pc output only accounted for 2% of its revenue. of that revenue, how much of that is actual profit? porting games to pc takes a lot of time and money, in addition to marketing expenses. if sony is only netting half of that 2% as profit, sounds like it might not be worth the struggle since sony would be far better off converting some of those pc gamers into ps gamers and bringing them into sony's ecosystem. nothing comes for free so sony will need to evaluate this pc experiement and see if it makes any sense. i truly believe its pc sales have underperformed significantly.
Re: Poll: Does the Steam Machine Pose a Threat to PS5?
no, it will not for some obvious reasons:
1. little to no marketing and retail presence to compete with sony. only those in the know will even be aware of the steam machine. it will be niche and far from mainstream, just like the deck which has sold under 5m units in 3 years.
2. outdated specs. the base ps5 is more powerful than the steam machine. i.e. steam machine will be outdated the day it releases and many games won't even run well on it such as mgs 3 remake and silent hill f.
3. due to economies of scale, it is very unlikely that valve will be able to match ps5's price. currently, it is listed at $500USD for a base ps5 slim digital. sony orders parts in the tens of millions. valve cannot do this for such a niche product so the pricing will likely be a bit more expensive, despite worse performance.
4. steam machine doesn't have a target demographic. who is it for? ps5 users have no reason to jump if they are getting a better experience on ps5. core pc gamers will find the steam machine underpowered. those who are undecided likely don't have the knowledge to get into the pc space and would be far better off buying a console (no tweaking, troubleshooting or fuss required). those who are already pc gamers and are gaming on underpowerwed laptops: the steam machine seems most suited for them.
5. there is a world where a steam machine could have posed more of a threat, but this is not it. in the future, if valve puts out a steam machine that can rival ps5 performance at $100 cheaper, then they may be onto something. as it stands, this looks like a weird experiment that is not going to sway many people. its a neat idea but the pc space still has ways to go to be as user friendly and seamless as consoles if they hope to attract that mainstream user. perhaps that day will never arrive. also, while software optimization on console is not what it used to be, it still provides an advantage over the pc space — you generally get more out of your hardware on console due to the nature of game development and devs focusing their resources on a single hardware configuaration. for this reason alone, a console will remain relevent far longer than any pc (unless you spend more money upgrading).
price still remains to be seen of course... maybe valve is willing to take a major hit on the hardware in exchange for market share. that used to be the console business model for the ps2 and ps3 and it paid off for sony... valve needs to be very agressive if they have any hope at disrupting the console space. a $400USD steam machine could make some people take notice. anything more just means valve has no interest in competing with sony and wants to carve out its own niche in the pc space instead.
Re: Here's Why Sony Is Making a Japan-Specific PS5 Console
if people manage to find an exploit for the japanese SKU (i.e. remove region locking), sony will have a problem on its hands... although i imagine sony will block international shipments from japanese retailers, such as amazon japan etc to make it more difficult to import brand new.
Re: Another Horizon Online PS5 Game Is Coming Before Horizon 3, It's Claimed
for a franchise where the sequel sold 50% fewer copies than the first entry, going all in with 3+ additional games is uncalled for. there is waning interest in this IP from everyone but sony. how's that going to work out for them?
Re: PS5 Is the Second Fastest Selling PlayStation Ever in the US, Despite Price Hikes and Production Issues
prior console generations also never experienced a pandemic, where people were isolated and spending absurd amounts of money on home entertainment to pass the time by. i wonder how many ps5's were purchased during that duration which otherwise would never have been purchased? the amount of software? we will never know, but if sony thinks the ps6 will sell at the same pace as the ps5 for doing the bare minimum and riding on the coatails of 3rd party software, including the service game slop that is keeping sony profitable via microtranslations, they are in for a rude wake-up call.
Re: PS5 Is the Second Fastest Selling PlayStation Ever in the US, Despite Price Hikes and Production Issues
@Rich33 complete hyperbole. anyone who agrees with this sentiment likely never grew up in the 90s and 2000s and experienced the ps1/ps2 era of gaming. it is a night and day difference. the ps5 brought absolutely nothing new to the table and this is easily the worst generation in sony's history as far as the software library is concerned. i can guarantee that if push square decided to take a poll of how we as the community would rank sony's consoles, the ps5 would rank last by a wide margin. if not last, second last. the best thing about this console cycle is the plethora of great indi games... all of which can be found on pc anyways. by comparison, the AAA and AA industry has fallen flat on its face and is void of innovation and fresh ideas. that side of the industry has been complacent over the past 10-15 years, but at least we were getting new IPs from the likes of sony on the ps4... new IPs on the ps5 have been lacking to a great extent.
Re: Ghost of Yotei PS5 Sales Surpass 3.3 Million Units, Crush Boycott Nonsense
@PuppetMaster i don't think these companies are in the business of diminishing returns. they want to grow the franchise with each new entry. note, that i did not say that yotei was at risk of not being profitable. i am questioning how "successful" the game is being perceived by the suits. in 5 years time, if yotei only managed 50% of tsushima's copies sold, i don't know what world you would have to be living in where the suits and shareholders cheer and consider that a success.
you are entitled to your opinion (and honestly, it would be great if what you described was "good enough" and how the games industry was run since that would lead to more risk taking), but i don't think that is how this cuthroat business operates. numbers have to keep going up, even when the goals become unrealistic.
Re: Ghost of Yotei PS5 Sales Surpass 3.3 Million Units, Crush Boycott Nonsense
for context:
"The first comparison we should make is to its predecessor, Ghost of Tsushima. It sold 2.4 million copies in its first three days after going on sale exclusively on PlayStation 4 on July 17, 2020, then hit 5 million after 118 days (just shy of four months). It’s now up to 13 million copies sold, including sales of the PC and PS5 Director’s Cut." - ign
yotei has a long way to go before it is considered a financial success. any sequel that fails to meet or surpass the first entry should be considered a financial failure since it does not accompish the entire point of a sequel (and that is to grow the franchise and become even more profitable for the publisher). only time will tell.