@BigRadical agreed. people fail to realize that publishers want nothing more than to make sales announcements to their shareholders and public at large when they have good news to share. there has been no celebrating whatsoever with ff16 and yet some people want to believe that it's done well for them and even exceeded 5m copies sold simply because they liked the game. the damage control and denial over this game is really weird.
funny how people are jumping to the conclusion that the game has sold 5m copies. based on what, exactly? the game SHIPPED 3m copies at lanuch, yes, but that doesn't suggest those were hard SALES. it may have only sold 2.5m copies at launch, for example. that would mean it has sold an additional 1m copies in the past 24 months? maybe a bit more than that, but yes. i'd estimate the number is close to 4m at best (which includes the poor PC sales) which is still very disappointing and not enough to justify its existence for S-E. don't know why it is so difficult for some people to accept the possibility that the game may be a financial failure. it happens.
if the game had already surpassed 5m copies, we would have heard about it because that is what publishers do to prop up their shareholders when they have good news to share.
i would be shocked if gow is getting a standalone "expansion" the likes of miles morales or uncharted 4: the lost legacy. that's nothing to lower your expectations for because who in the world expected anything better than that? i would argue that a barebones remstered collection is very uneventful considering gow 3 is already available on ps4 and gow 1/2 would only be ported from the ps3 release. so who cares about the collection... is it that hard to pull out your ps3? oh, right, the majority of gamers cannot stand their old hardware and throw it away the moment a new console launches haha
well, it's not because the game is too "scary" like the headline suggests then haha... it's likely due to overly graphic and grotesque imagery and as stated in the article, depictions of drug use and possibly child abuse and torture to some degree. rule of rose for the ps2 faced similar controversies at the time and was banned in multiple countries. an overraction to be sure, but the themes of child bullying and torture were the main reasons behind it.
so atlus is giving us a SECOND remake of p4? no thanks. you can keep it. great game and all, but i got my fill with the first release on ps2. besides, p4 is widely available on every modern platform already! fans really want to see a remake of persona 2...that is most in need of quality of life updates and some modern mechanics. when publishers consider what to remake, shouldn't they also look at factors such as age and accessibility when determining what game is most deserving or higher priority? atlus didn't even release the second part of persona 2 (eternal punishment) for the psp when those remasters came out aeons ago... it has since been fan translated, but the point still stands. sheesh.
it's only sold roughly 3.5m copies... is that really enough for a game of this scale and in development for 5 years? probably not. they will need to release several expansions (and hope people return) to turn a decent profit all things considered... or... just stop investing in the game altogether if they deem this franchise to be too niche. sometimes it's best to cut your losses.
@Gabe-_-Logan agreed! had a blast with the trilogy on the ps1. it was my mgs fix when all we had was mgs1 at our disposal. i've yet to play any of the psp/ps2 syphon filter games, but have been meaning to some day. wouldn't it be amazing if bend studio released syphon filter 4 as a ps6 launch game?
perhaps it will be released on the ps6 in 3-4 years time. this is likely not even in the conceptual phase yet. new killzone or socom sounds like a good idea, though.
grew up and loved the ff series since the ps1 era. unfortunately, the franchise is not what it once was and has been in a steady decline with regards to the new numbered entries. final fantasy xvi only contributed to 3.5m of those 200m sales which says a lot about where we are today.
wow, gotta say, that is easily the best thing "konami" as a publisher has worked on (not including kojima productions' work or remakes) since... this is going to sound crazy, but since suikoden v in 2006! one thing that has me spooked is this devleloper though. neobards? they look to be a porting house and have never developed a proper game on their own. cautiously optimistic but this shows promise.
@PuppetMaster ultimately, we are just making predictions here. but come on now... nioh was not an open world game. there is zero possibility that the costs are similar considering ronin is open world game, has much larger scope and marketing budget.
i made similar, educated predictions, about ff 16's abysmal sales and was attacked by a few people in the comments, including that "ChrisDeku" guy here. i did not buy the narrative for a second that s-e was happy with the sales, despite misleading people early on. i said ff 16 would go down as the worst selling mainline ff game since the ps1 era and lo and behold, it is looking that way. recently, Hideki Yasuda, stated that it has sold around 3.5m copies. since the launch of the game, it only garnered an additional 500k copies, which includes pc sales, some two years later. it is a bust and goes against everything you were saying about games having a long tail of sales. sure, it does happen from time to time, but more often than not, majority of sales are going to be generated in the first quarter and first year on the market.
i don't just pull my predictions out of thin air. also, i am objective about it, unlike some people who don't want to imagine for a moment that something they are emotionaly invested in could not meet expectations. i don't get it. it's just a game. some games fare well, others do not. usually, let's say 9 times out of 10, when a game does well for a publisher, they are proud to announce sales data to shareholders very loudly. that is certainly not the case here with ronin or recent final fnatasy games.
@PuppetMaster correction, he said it was selling faster than the nioh games. another meaningless data point if it fell of a cliff and garnered mixed reactions. in either case, rise of the ronin likely has a budget many times larger than nioh so an equal sales comparison won't cut it with this one. if ronin has a budget 3X larger than nioh, then it needs sales 3X larger than nioh and we know that is a tall order considering its moderate sales in its first quarter.
@PuppetMaster long tail of sales is entirely dependent on the game or franchise. in the case of this game, being a new IP that people were luke warm about and having since disappeared into the ether the way it has, i just don't see it. if tecmo-koei never gives a sales update or annaounces a sequel, we will know for certain that it severely underperformed i suppose... for the time being, i'll use the data that we do have to make the assumption that it was not successful for them nor sony. 1m in sales for a 3 month window (with a ps5 install base of about 60m at the time) just isn't going to cut it in the AAA space any longer. 3m+ and it would have had a chance.
@ChrisDeku just because it sold the first 1m copies faster than their previous games doesn't mean it met sales expectations. far from it. also, 5m copies was their sales expectation. it's out there. look it up. thankfully, some dedicated people have done the legwork as tecmo-koei will not announce sales figures directly (it might have something to do with them not being thrilled about the sales, but that's just a hunch). you can go educate yourself here:
odd that this is getting a switch release but is not getting a ps4 release? last time i checked, the ps4 is a more powerful console than the switch. please explain falcom.
it sucks, but people are already days and sometimes weeks late due to the media outlets and influencers having early access for their reviews. this is a model as old as time and affects movies as well. it really doesn't matter to anyone other than the FOMO crowd... so whatever.
looks like this is will be a fedex simulator i spent 100+ hours the first time around and promised myself i wouldn't do that again unless kojima subverted expectations and switched up the genre. imagine if 5 hours into death stranding 2, he did exactly that? not likely, though...
look, the current xbox consoles are hitting their peak at just 30m units sold. i imagine that a future xbox console/pc hybrid will sell only half of that. this is a last ditch effort for microsoft and doesn't make a whole lot of sense. sure, give it a try, but how loyal do you think the casual xbox community is? they expect a "console" experience and when they realize this is clearly not that, there is going to be a lot of disappointment and yet more bad PR for the company. this appears to be a transitional phase for microsoft, before they pull out of hardware entirely and become a sega equivalent. until then, continue to waste your money releasing hardware nobody is going to buy, i suppose.
they still haven't perfected enemy AI for stealth or FPS games, etc... you know, to the point where it looks as if another human is controlling the enemy's movement and behavior... outsmarting you and doing things that are less predictable. and yet, here we are, posing the idea that we will be talking to our characters haha... oh, people get too caught up with the latest trends and love to skip steps. this is no different than marketing 4k/60 gameplay to people before we even standardized 1080p/60. one thing at a time and in a logical order please...
these days, i think people would be more than happy to get another game with the same design philosophy as ff xiii (yes, with a better story to go along with it). by most metrics, it was certainly a lot better than xv and even xvi!
most divisive? xii (love it) and xvi are the most divisive, along with viii (also love it) perhaps. xv and x-2 are probably the most despised. xiii sits comortably in the middle of all those... ultimately non essential but featuring a fantasic battle system! seriously, the battle system was among the best the series has ever seen and its a shame that s-e has steered so far away from it over the past 10 years. i still need to finish xiii-2 and xiii-3 and look forward to it for the battle system alone.
@nessisonett yea, i'm sure you are right. i was fortunate enough to not come across any of them myself. as time goes on, i appreciate the older generations of gaming consoles more and more for their simplicity and no nonsense approach to gaming. i imagine there is no going back now, but retro gaming will always exist i suppose. these days, despite having a rather large collection of ps4 games on the shelf i still need to get through, i find myself gravitating to the ps1/ps2/ps3 more
@trev666 that's fair but i'm generally not an EA or activison gamer. the only games i played in the past few years from those publishers were crash bandicoot trilogy (ps4), crash bandicoot 4 (ps4) and titanfall 2 (ps4) and i don't think an account was required for those. could be wrong, though. this is just a foreign concept to me and my gaming habits on ps consoles.
in the 25 years i have been a playstation gamer, i don't think i have ever been required to create a non-sony account for a ps console game. let's not act like this is normal behaviour for a console. for pc, yes, it is common place (for good reason) but we aren't talking about pc here. ah well, just viewing this as an outsider that doesn't even own a ps5 yet and will likely hold out for ps6 at this point (or not) haha. i think its the lack of a physical release, compounded with the account requirement that really elevates this to a higher level of grievance, though. sure, we all know physical media will be a no go with the ps6, but people were hoping to enjoy the ps5 as their last console to collect for.
its a strange time to be a gamer. people get more excited about remasters to games they can already play than looking forward to new, innovative experiences. what does that say about the current state of the industry?
@GloriosaDaisy actually, its likely going to release by fall 2027 or 2028 at the latest. the chip design is complete and considering that this gen has already peaked, this seems probable. of course, ps5 support will continue through 2030 so i'd expect ps6 to be another disappointing cross-gen affair.
@Jimmer-jammer i guess it was a tossup between: the remake won't exist at all or the remake will have concessions to cut down the budget. i bet they picked the second option since they know that people will buy the remake for the third game anyways and they will turn a profit nontheless. just a little while ago, this project had been cancelled and was dead in the water, so its a miracle this is even getting a release in the first place.
none of this stuff makes gaming better. don't know how people can still be interested in bs marketing points about graphics when the gaming industry has been suffering as much as it has and is close to falling off a cliff. people should be clamoring for better gaming experiences and that might actually mean taking a step back and focusing more on what used to make games innovative, fun and memorable. halt the graphics arms race. look where its gotten us with the ps5 (worst console gen in playstation's history).
i'm good with that. the franchise has already overstayed its welcome. i would have been perfectly happy if it ended after the first game and there was no TV show. find something else for ND to do, neil!
@Foxhound the inventory management is quite terrible in lunar sssc due to the limited item slots available to each character. you will constantly be re-shuffling items around in a very unintuitive way which really does hurt the experience. the unbalanced and excessive grinding requirements of the game (unless they addressed these issues in the remaster of course) don't help either. good game otherwise but i'd consider giving it a 7 for the reasons mentioned.
a device sells a few hundred thousand units worldwide and its declared a big success and game changing? haha. nobody actually believes that other than the few people who own one. not sure what the purpose of this article is because its not changing the perception of this very limited device to anyone who actually knows what it is and for good reason — it sucks.
dropping the price AFTER psvr2 is dead? this sounds more like a last ditch effort to get rid of all that dusty, leftover stock sitting in warehouses. you can do better sony. make it a firesale!
it sold extremely poorly.. far worse than even the most cynical predictions... we're talking about 1.5m total copies. ea's sales expectations were only 3m and it couldn't even manage that. this is a disaster of epic proportions. if this studio manages to keep the doors open and release another game, i'll be shocked. clearly, ea is having a hard time giving this game away for FREE
@arsmolinarc with that way of thinking, they will never tackle persona 1/2 then... even though persona 2 in particular was tied with persona 3 for most deserving of a remake by the fans in a recent atlus questionaire (close to 80% or respondents voted for p3/p2). p2 should be next in line based on this data, otherwise why do they even bother?
i commented about this happening when news broke about nagoshi leaving sega and partnering with netease a while back now... and what a grave mistake it was. writing was on the wall, wasn't it? can't say i flinched at this news but its sad nontheless. i'm more concerned about grasshopper being shut down completely... was there no other way for them to pivot or was it merely one final act of desperation to find funding when nobody else would oblige? grasshopper has been around a long time so you would expect another japanese publisher to step up...
the beginning of the end for the yakuza franchise? well, it wouldn't be unexpected with over 20 releases, including the spinoffs, not to mention brain drain at the studio in recent years. i think many fans liked the balance of serious drama and slapstick comic relief of the earlier titles... perhaps the new team is losing the "essence" of what this franchise was all about.
@EfYI unfortunately that strategy won't work because steam users will review bomb the game to oblivion as we have already seen with the PSN account fiasco. piracy is here to stay and won't be going anywhere unless you are a publisher willing to be hated and boycotted in that space. you have to understand that the pc community has a great sense of "entitlement". now, if you are rockstar/take2, you can absolutely pack 10 DRM measures into gta 6 and get away with it but that's an exception.
@Molsenalan generally speaking, the sales of PC ports are a drop in the bucket compared to console releases. we're talking anywhere from 5-20% of total sales being attributed to PC. god of war (2018) sold 20m copies on ps4 and just 3m on pc... people tend to grossly exaggerate the impact PC sales have. case and point, this article headline is bogus. i doubt spiderman 2 even cracked 500k sales on PC thus far.
sure it is... yet spiderman 2 is selling poorly on steam (sony's worst selling game on steam so far), not to mention, being pirated excessively. just like printing money huh... oh, and that revenue is squandered by going into the blackhole of service games that will never see the light of day. a job well done guys!
@Lowdefal seeing that sony was funding all these projects, shouldn't there have been more oversight and understanding as to how japan studio should pivot if their games weren't selling? why were so many projects being greenlit that had no chance of succeeding according to their metrics? by the looks of things, it isn't japan studio that failed sony, it is sony that failed japan studio.
it is the job of the publisher to figure out the markets and determine what works at the end of the day. otherwise, it would be akin to sony encouraging one of its studios to create a product that is not desireable... and after repeated attempts at not reaching a demographic (that barely exists), sony was left with no other choice but to close the studio. that's a paradox if i've ever seen one. i believe jim ryan's warped, US centric bias also had a lot to do with this.
the solution to this would be to simply reduce the budget and scale of the teams at japan studio, thus lowering the margins required to be profitable and successful and/or focusing on concepts that might have wider appeal and be less niche by their nature. sony did neither. closing down the studio was mismanagement on top of mismanagement.
a bit of nonsense all these yoshida takes. does anyone actually believe that gamers were disappointed by the budget of gravity rush 2 and that is why it didn't sell well? how many people are even able to tell the difference between AA and AAA? with good art direction and polished mechanics, that line can be blurred rather well. it was a great game, but it was a bit niche and there was a lack of marketing in the west just like the first game. this has nothing to do with its budget and trying to justify the closure of japan studio like this is really sad.
Comments 2,697
Re: Journalist Apologises for Adding Fuel to the 'Final Fantasy 16 Flopped on PS5' Fire
@BigRadical agreed. people fail to realize that publishers want nothing more than to make sales announcements to their shareholders and public at large when they have good news to share. there has been no celebrating whatsoever with ff16 and yet some people want to believe that it's done well for them and even exceeded 5m copies sold simply because they liked the game. the damage control and denial over this game is really weird.
Re: Journalist Apologises for Adding Fuel to the 'Final Fantasy 16 Flopped on PS5' Fire
funny how people are jumping to the conclusion that the game has sold 5m copies. based on what, exactly? the game SHIPPED 3m copies at lanuch, yes, but that doesn't suggest those were hard SALES. it may have only sold 2.5m copies at launch, for example. that would mean it has sold an additional 1m copies in the past 24 months? maybe a bit more than that, but yes. i'd estimate the number is close to 4m at best (which includes the poor PC sales) which is still very disappointing and not enough to justify its existence for S-E. don't know why it is so difficult for some people to accept the possibility that the game may be a financial failure. it happens.
if the game had already surpassed 5m copies, we would have heard about it because that is what publishers do to prop up their shareholders when they have good news to share.
Re: Rumour: New God of War PS5 Game Returns to Greece This Year
i would be shocked if gow is getting a standalone "expansion" the likes of miles morales or uncharted 4: the lost legacy. that's nothing to lower your expectations for because who in the world expected anything better than that? i would argue that a barebones remstered collection is very uneventful considering gow 3 is already available on ps4 and gow 1/2 would only be ported from the ps3 release. so who cares about the collection... is it that hard to pull out your ps3? oh, right, the majority of gamers cannot stand their old hardware and throw it away the moment a new console launches haha
Re: Silent Hill F So Scary Australia Has Already Banned It, Sight Unseen
well, it's not because the game is too "scary" like the headline suggests then haha... it's likely due to overly graphic and grotesque imagery and as stated in the article, depictions of drug use and possibly child abuse and torture to some degree. rule of rose for the ps2 faced similar controversies at the time and was banned in multiple countries. an overraction to be sure, but the themes of child bullying and torture were the main reasons behind it.
Re: Persona 4 PS5 Remake Hopes Higher Still as Domain Registration Is Noted
so atlus is giving us a SECOND remake of p4? no thanks. you can keep it. great game and all, but i got my fill with the first release on ps2. besides, p4 is widely available on every modern platform already! fans really want to see a remake of persona 2...that is most in need of quality of life updates and some modern mechanics. when publishers consider what to remake, shouldn't they also look at factors such as age and accessibility when determining what game is most deserving or higher priority? atlus didn't even release the second part of persona 2 (eternal punishment) for the psp when those remasters came out aeons ago... it has since been fan translated, but the point still stands. sheesh.
Re: Capcom Celebrates Dragon's Dogma 2's 1st Anniversary, But There's Still No Sign of an Expansion
it's only sold roughly 3.5m copies... is that really enough for a game of this scale and in development for 5 years? probably not. they will need to release several expansions (and hope people return) to turn a decent profit all things considered... or... just stop investing in the game altogether if they deem this franchise to be too niche. sometimes it's best to cut your losses.
Re: Yooka-Replaylee Narrows Release Window, Still Wide on PS5
yooka-laylee is only 8 years old. a remake is lazy and foolish. any other developer would likely have released the sequel by now.
Re: Ex-Xbox System Seller Starfield Edges Ever Closer to PS5
it was a bad game on xbox. it was a bad game on pc. it will be a bad game on ps5. who cares about starfield?
Re: PlayStation Employs Bulletstorm Dev to Make New PS5 Game Based on Sony IP
@Gabe-_-Logan agreed! had a blast with the trilogy on the ps1. it was my mgs fix when all we had was mgs1 at our disposal. i've yet to play any of the psp/ps2 syphon filter games, but have been meaning to some day. wouldn't it be amazing if bend studio released syphon filter 4 as a ps6 launch game?
Re: PlayStation Employs Bulletstorm Dev to Make New PS5 Game Based on Sony IP
perhaps it will be released on the ps6 in 3-4 years time. this is likely not even in the conceptual phase yet. new killzone or socom sounds like a good idea, though.
Re: Final Fantasy Series Surpasses 200 Million Total Sales, Pixel Remasters Reach 5 Million
@heavyartillery56 they are talking about 200m copies sold, not generated revenue.
Re: Final Fantasy Series Surpasses 200 Million Total Sales, Pixel Remasters Reach 5 Million
grew up and loved the ff series since the ps1 era. unfortunately, the franchise is not what it once was and has been in a steady decline with regards to the new numbered entries. final fantasy xvi only contributed to 3.5m of those 200m sales which says a lot about where we are today.
Re: Silent Hill F Revealed for PS5 in Debut Trailer
wow, gotta say, that is easily the best thing "konami" as a publisher has worked on (not including kojima productions' work or remakes) since... this is going to sound crazy, but since suikoden v in 2006! one thing that has me spooked is this devleloper though. neobards? they look to be a porting house and have never developed a proper game on their own. cautiously optimistic but this shows promise.
Re: Rise of the Ronin Would Not Have Been Made Without Sony
@PuppetMaster ultimately, we are just making predictions here. but come on now... nioh was not an open world game. there is zero possibility that the costs are similar considering ronin is open world game, has much larger scope and marketing budget.
i made similar, educated predictions, about ff 16's abysmal sales and was attacked by a few people in the comments, including that "ChrisDeku" guy here. i did not buy the narrative for a second that s-e was happy with the sales, despite misleading people early on. i said ff 16 would go down as the worst selling mainline ff game since the ps1 era and lo and behold, it is looking that way. recently, Hideki Yasuda, stated that it has sold around 3.5m copies. since the launch of the game, it only garnered an additional 500k copies, which includes pc sales, some two years later. it is a bust and goes against everything you were saying about games having a long tail of sales. sure, it does happen from time to time, but more often than not, majority of sales are going to be generated in the first quarter and first year on the market.
i don't just pull my predictions out of thin air. also, i am objective about it, unlike some people who don't want to imagine for a moment that something they are emotionaly invested in could not meet expectations. i don't get it. it's just a game. some games fare well, others do not. usually, let's say 9 times out of 10, when a game does well for a publisher, they are proud to announce sales data to shareholders very loudly. that is certainly not the case here with ronin or recent final fnatasy games.
Re: Rise of the Ronin Would Not Have Been Made Without Sony
@PuppetMaster correction, he said it was selling faster than the nioh games. another meaningless data point if it fell of a cliff and garnered mixed reactions. in either case, rise of the ronin likely has a budget many times larger than nioh so an equal sales comparison won't cut it with this one. if ronin has a budget 3X larger than nioh, then it needs sales 3X larger than nioh and we know that is a tall order considering its moderate sales in its first quarter.
Re: Rise of the Ronin Would Not Have Been Made Without Sony
@PuppetMaster long tail of sales is entirely dependent on the game or franchise. in the case of this game, being a new IP that people were luke warm about and having since disappeared into the ether the way it has, i just don't see it. if tecmo-koei never gives a sales update or annaounces a sequel, we will know for certain that it severely underperformed i suppose... for the time being, i'll use the data that we do have to make the assumption that it was not successful for them nor sony. 1m in sales for a 3 month window (with a ps5 install base of about 60m at the time) just isn't going to cut it in the AAA space any longer. 3m+ and it would have had a chance.
Re: Rise of the Ronin Would Not Have Been Made Without Sony
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Re: Rise of the Ronin Would Not Have Been Made Without Sony
@ChrisDeku just because it sold the first 1m copies faster than their previous games doesn't mean it met sales expectations. far from it. also, 5m copies was their sales expectation. it's out there. look it up. thankfully, some dedicated people have done the legwork as tecmo-koei will not announce sales figures directly (it might have something to do with them not being thrilled about the sales, but that's just a hunch). you can go educate yourself here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/riseoftheronin/comments/1iecdd8/ronin_did_not_meet_sales_expectations_but_neither/
Re: Trails in the Sky PS5 Remake Looks Outstanding in New Screenshots, Trailer
odd that this is getting a switch release but is not getting a ps4 release? last time i checked, the ps4 is a more powerful console than the switch. please explain falcom.
Re: Rise of the Ronin Would Not Have Been Made Without Sony
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Re: Death Stranding 2 Puts Early Access Incentives Under the Microscope All Over Again
it sucks, but people are already days and sometimes weeks late due to the media outlets and influencers having early access for their reviews. this is a model as old as time and affects movies as well. it really doesn't matter to anyone other than the FOMO crowd... so whatever.
Re: Death Stranding 2 PS5 Release Date Set for 26th June
looks like this is will be a fedex simulator i spent 100+ hours the first time around and promised myself i wouldn't do that again unless kojima subverted expectations and switched up the genre. imagine if 5 hours into death stranding 2, he did exactly that? not likely, though...
Re: PS6 Could Be the Only High-End Next-Gen Console, As New Xbox Touted to Be a 'PC in Essence'
look, the current xbox consoles are hitting their peak at just 30m units sold. i imagine that a future xbox console/pc hybrid will sell only half of that. this is a last ditch effort for microsoft and doesn't make a whole lot of sense. sure, give it a try, but how loyal do you think the casual xbox community is? they expect a "console" experience and when they realize this is clearly not that, there is going to be a lot of disappointment and yet more bad PR for the company. this appears to be a transitional phase for microsoft, before they pull out of hardware entirely and become a sega equivalent. until then, continue to waste your money releasing hardware nobody is going to buy, i suppose.
Re: Sony's AI Leak Reveals a Creepy Sci-Fi Future PS5 Gamers Don’t Necessarily Want
they still haven't perfected enemy AI for stealth or FPS games, etc... you know, to the point where it looks as if another human is controlling the enemy's movement and behavior... outsmarting you and doing things that are less predictable. and yet, here we are, posing the idea that we will be talking to our characters haha... oh, people get too caught up with the latest trends and love to skip steps. this is no different than marketing 4k/60 gameplay to people before we even standardized 1080p/60. one thing at a time and in a logical order please...
Re: 15 Years Ago, Square Enix Released the Most Divisive Final Fantasy Game
these days, i think people would be more than happy to get another game with the same design philosophy as ff xiii (yes, with a better story to go along with it). by most metrics, it was certainly a lot better than xv and even xvi!
most divisive? xii (love it) and xvi are the most divisive, along with viii (also love it) perhaps. xv and x-2 are probably the most despised. xiii sits comortably in the middle of all those... ultimately non essential but featuring a fantasic battle system! seriously, the battle system was among the best the series has ever seen and its a shame that s-e has steered so far away from it over the past 10 years. i still need to finish xiii-2 and xiii-3 and look forward to it for the battle system alone.
Re: Forza Horizon 5 Will Require a Microsoft Account to Play on PS5, Raising Preservation Problems
@nessisonett yea, i'm sure you are right. i was fortunate enough to not come across any of them myself. as time goes on, i appreciate the older generations of gaming consoles more and more for their simplicity and no nonsense approach to gaming. i imagine there is no going back now, but retro gaming will always exist i suppose. these days, despite having a rather large collection of ps4 games on the shelf i still need to get through, i find myself gravitating to the ps1/ps2/ps3 more
Re: Forza Horizon 5 Will Require a Microsoft Account to Play on PS5, Raising Preservation Problems
@Nei yea, there were a handful of games that required it for ps4, but i guess i was fortunate enough to never run into them
Re: Forza Horizon 5 Will Require a Microsoft Account to Play on PS5, Raising Preservation Problems
@trev666 that's fair but i'm generally not an EA or activison gamer. the only games i played in the past few years from those publishers were crash bandicoot trilogy (ps4), crash bandicoot 4 (ps4) and titanfall 2 (ps4) and i don't think an account was required for those. could be wrong, though. this is just a foreign concept to me and my gaming habits on ps consoles.
Re: Forza Horizon 5 Will Require a Microsoft Account to Play on PS5, Raising Preservation Problems
in the 25 years i have been a playstation gamer, i don't think i have ever been required to create a non-sony account for a ps console game. let's not act like this is normal behaviour for a console. for pc, yes, it is common place (for good reason) but we aren't talking about pc here. ah well, just viewing this as an outsider that doesn't even own a ps5 yet and will likely hold out for ps6 at this point (or not) haha. i think its the lack of a physical release, compounded with the account requirement that really elevates this to a higher level of grievance, though. sure, we all know physical media will be a no go with the ps6, but people were hoping to enjoy the ps5 as their last console to collect for.
Re: Rumoured God of War PS5 Remasters Won't Be at 20th Anniversary Event
its a strange time to be a gamer. people get more excited about remasters to games they can already play than looking forward to new, innovative experiences. what does that say about the current state of the industry?
Re: AMD Hypes Up PS6 Collaboration, FSR 4 Upscaling Tech
@GloriosaDaisy actually, its likely going to release by fall 2027 or 2028 at the latest. the chip design is complete and considering that this gen has already peaked, this seems probable. of course, ps5 support will continue through 2030 so i'd expect ps6 to be another disappointing cross-gen affair.
Re: Activision Confirms Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 Won't Be Free Roam on PS5, PS4
@Jimmer-jammer i guess it was a tossup between: the remake won't exist at all or the remake will have concessions to cut down the budget. i bet they picked the second option since they know that people will buy the remake for the third game anyways and they will turn a profit nontheless. just a little while ago, this project had been cancelled and was dead in the water, so its a miracle this is even getting a release in the first place.
Re: AMD Hypes Up PS6 Collaboration, FSR 4 Upscaling Tech
none of this stuff makes gaming better. don't know how people can still be interested in bs marketing points about graphics when the gaming industry has been suffering as much as it has and is close to falling off a cliff. people should be clamoring for better gaming experiences and that might actually mean taking a step back and focusing more on what used to make games innovative, fun and memorable. halt the graphics arms race. look where its gotten us with the ps5 (worst console gen in playstation's history).
Re: 'Don't Bet' on The Last of Us 3, Warns Neil Druckmann
i'm good with that. the franchise has already overstayed its welcome. i would have been perfectly happy if it ended after the first game and there was no TV show. find something else for ND to do, neil!
Re: Suikoden I & II HD Remaster: Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars (PS5) - Timeless JRPGs Ride Again
@Foxhound the inventory management is quite terrible in lunar sssc due to the limited item slots available to each character. you will constantly be re-shuffling items around in a very unintuitive way which really does hurt the experience. the unbalanced and excessive grinding requirements of the game (unless they addressed these issues in the remaster of course) don't help either. good game otherwise but i'd consider giving it a 7 for the reasons mentioned.
Re: PS Portal Keeps on Defying Odds, UK Makes It a Best-Seller
a device sells a few hundred thousand units worldwide and its declared a big success and game changing? haha. nobody actually believes that other than the few people who own one. not sure what the purpose of this article is because its not changing the perception of this very limited device to anyone who actually knows what it is and for good reason — it sucks.
Re: Terminator 2D: No Fate Looks Like a Modern Day Mega Drive Game for PS5, PS4
fantastic work here. spot on. should be a banger!
Re: Talking Point: Is PSVR2 Worth Buying In 2025?
dropping the price AFTER psvr2 is dead? this sounds more like a last ditch effort to get rid of all that dusty, leftover stock sitting in warehouses. you can do better sony. make it a firesale!
Re: Acclaimed Castlevania, Metroid Dev Reveals Blades of Fire for PS5
underrated developer, mercury steam. but this... looks quite a bit cringey. i was expecting more to be honest.
Re: PS Plus Essential PS5, PS4 Games for March 2025 Announced
it sold extremely poorly.. far worse than even the most cynical predictions... we're talking about 1.5m total copies. ea's sales expectations were only 3m and it couldn't even manage that. this is a disaster of epic proportions. if this studio manages to keep the doors open and release another game, i'll be shocked. clearly, ea is having a hard time giving this game away for FREE
Re: Warner Bros. Games Closes Multiple Studios, Wonder Woman Cancelled
shut it all down. all of it. WB is a terribly run company and a disgrace.
Re: Evidence Mounts for Seemingly Inevitable Persona 4 Remake on PS5
@arsmolinarc with that way of thinking, they will never tackle persona 1/2 then... even though persona 2 in particular was tied with persona 3 for most deserving of a remake by the fans in a recent atlus questionaire (close to 80% or respondents voted for p3/p2). p2 should be next in line based on this data, otherwise why do they even bother?
Re: Evidence Mounts for Seemingly Inevitable Persona 4 Remake on PS5
it's already readily available so why? give the "fans" what they want - a persona 2 remake!
Re: Yakuza Creator's Next Game Will Be Sent to Die As NetEase Implodes
i commented about this happening when news broke about nagoshi leaving sega and partnering with netease a while back now... and what a grave mistake it was. writing was on the wall, wasn't it? can't say i flinched at this news but its sad nontheless. i'm more concerned about grasshopper being shut down completely... was there no other way for them to pivot or was it merely one final act of desperation to find funding when nobody else would oblige? grasshopper has been around a long time so you would expect another japanese publisher to step up...
Re: Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii (PS5) - Madcap Majima Does the Job
the beginning of the end for the yakuza franchise? well, it wouldn't be unexpected with over 20 releases, including the spinoffs, not to mention brain drain at the studio in recent years. i think many fans liked the balance of serious drama and slapstick comic relief of the earlier titles... perhaps the new team is losing the "essence" of what this franchise was all about.
Re: Ex-Sony Exec Says PC Ports of Old PS5 Games Are Almost Like Printing Money
@EfYI unfortunately that strategy won't work because steam users will review bomb the game to oblivion as we have already seen with the PSN account fiasco. piracy is here to stay and won't be going anywhere unless you are a publisher willing to be hated and boycotted in that space. you have to understand that the pc community has a great sense of "entitlement". now, if you are rockstar/take2, you can absolutely pack 10 DRM measures into gta 6 and get away with it but that's an exception.
Re: Ex-Sony Exec Says PC Ports of Old PS5 Games Are Almost Like Printing Money
@Molsenalan generally speaking, the sales of PC ports are a drop in the bucket compared to console releases. we're talking anywhere from 5-20% of total sales being attributed to PC. god of war (2018) sold 20m copies on ps4 and just 3m on pc... people tend to grossly exaggerate the impact PC sales have. case and point, this article headline is bogus. i doubt spiderman 2 even cracked 500k sales on PC thus far.
Re: Ex-Sony Exec Says PC Ports of Old PS5 Games Are Almost Like Printing Money
sure it is... yet spiderman 2 is selling poorly on steam (sony's worst selling game on steam so far), not to mention, being pirated excessively. just like printing money huh... oh, and that revenue is squandered by going into the blackhole of service games that will never see the light of day. a job well done guys!
Re: Sony Japan Studio Closed Because AA Market 'Disappeared', Says Shu Yoshida
@Lowdefal seeing that sony was funding all these projects, shouldn't there have been more oversight and understanding as to how japan studio should pivot if their games weren't selling? why were so many projects being greenlit that had no chance of succeeding according to their metrics? by the looks of things, it isn't japan studio that failed sony, it is sony that failed japan studio.
it is the job of the publisher to figure out the markets and determine what works at the end of the day. otherwise, it would be akin to sony encouraging one of its studios to create a product that is not desireable... and after repeated attempts at not reaching a demographic (that barely exists), sony was left with no other choice but to close the studio. that's a paradox if i've ever seen one. i believe jim ryan's warped, US centric bias also had a lot to do with this.
the solution to this would be to simply reduce the budget and scale of the teams at japan studio, thus lowering the margins required to be profitable and successful and/or focusing on concepts that might have wider appeal and be less niche by their nature. sony did neither. closing down the studio was mismanagement on top of mismanagement.
Re: Sony Japan Studio Closed Because AA Market 'Disappeared', Says Shu Yoshida
a bit of nonsense all these yoshida takes. does anyone actually believe that gamers were disappointed by the budget of gravity rush 2 and that is why it didn't sell well? how many people are even able to tell the difference between AA and AAA? with good art direction and polished mechanics, that line can be blurred rather well. it was a great game, but it was a bit niche and there was a lack of marketing in the west just like the first game. this has nothing to do with its budget and trying to justify the closure of japan studio like this is really sad.