@psmr this is the only direction it should go for the third IMO. Pvpve as you described with maybe multiple different squads of differing factions battling it out would be so dope.

@Fishysensei the development issues are actually not really with the suits coming in to ruin the original vision. It was more of a very very very ambitious plan not coming together in the pre production phase and then during production, things had to be changed massively, R&C Rift Apart directors being brought in to salvage what they could to avoid a complete disaster.

Unfortunately as far as I can recall, the original world sprawling version was not something that they could make in time and that is why it cost $300 million. Suits stepped in, put R&C Rift Apart directors on board and massive content cutting and story changes ensued.

One thing I think is clear is that PlayStation's old and trusted method of letting game devs do what they want is not going to work anymore. We saw what happened with Bluepoint, ND, Bend, MM, I could go on. Just spending time making not garbage but questionable decisions. Still think Factions could have been taken off ND and handed to another dev to finish and maintain as a live service but whatever.

When Mr Spencer HAS to do anything and everything to keep his job, keep Xbox relevant, we get Xbox One X and Gamepass. When Sony are going by just fine, with minimal effort and riding on heavy success, we get the failures of Concord, Bungie, ND, Bend, Bluepoint, MM, Pixelopus, I could go on.

Point I am trying to make? Not really sure anymore. But I can see that by trying to chase PlayStation, Phil Spencer and Xbox made one great product and one awfully unsustainable one. But they were "For the players". The players were happy and impressed. But it didn't result in sales did it?

Sony however? Had the players and still made awful, awful decisions in a row, not benefiting us. But yet, Sony still have the players. I guess this is why they will continue down the line they are. It really doesn't matter about making us happy does it.

Regarding Gamepass, it was so obvious it was unsustainable. I cannot count the number of comments I and many others made about the sustainability of the service. Which is minimal if not negative by the way.

Unfortunately physical media is just not as big as it should be or as it used to be anymore. Hard pill to swallow for us but one, we are part of the problem, two, it is far more convenient, three, future generations will prefer it and see physical media as a novelty. A fun or an unnecessary and laborious novelty, depending on the person.

@PeteyPiranha ever since the pandemic it just seems as though critical thought and fun, nerdy conversations about stuff is just gone and filled with overly negative discourse. Reflects the state of the world I suppose.

I simply can't believe the amount of sh*t this game got for being a decent fun game. I can't believe there were comments and articles about how Insomniac would close after this and Sony's entire Marvel Games contract would be gone after this inevitably flopping.

Dislike the game, criticize the game, fine but use logic. This is a good and fun Wolverine game. Wolverine is one of the most recognisable Marvel characters after Spider-Man and Hulk. Of course it was going to sell well unless it was utterly abysmal. Having on rails motorcycle segments or those trail clouds isn't going to stop the game from being fun and it definitely wouldn't harm sales that much. Social Media is too loud, toxic and too stupid. Touch grass. What are people smoking?

@Can-You-Believe-Sith in all fairness they sank a lot of resources into Hellblade, I remember following the dev progress way back when and they seemed very proud of it and it did do well. I can understand them wanting to create a saga, but then the sequel released 7 years later and landed with a barely a splash from a raindrop. Awful gamble to make, unless they had a turnaround time like Insomniac did from Spider-Man to Miles Morales, which was what, 2 years?

I just think modern gaming and game dev makes AA games a very hard gamble. If that is what your studio is capable of then great, but don't have extended dev times or workloads of AAA projects. I can't fault them for giving a sequel a go but just took way too long from NT.

@PuppetMaster yup. And the data shows why they keep doing so. Had to shut Japan Studio because sales were not there. Unfortunately just look at the best selling games every year, they are all the same; sports games and GaaS.

I don't understand how we get away from it but the answer is not to keep making the same type of games over and over again!

Might be in a world of my own but I remember when one of the first PS games that use that all too familiar menu nav (where you have R1 and L1 to go between the submenus and there is a map and a crafting menu as well) came out and then Horizons, GOWs, Day's Gone, TLOUs, Spider-Men, Ghost of Tsushima - I could go on. All of the games use it, every single one and it made me so mad because you can just tell when a company wide mandate has gone out and this just doesn't suit all the games they are appearing on. Just let games be made, no mandates please.

I remember the GTA V screenshots; the workers with the crop duster going over them, the homeless people tents. I remember thinking that was the level of fidelity we would see throughout the game and coming away slightly disappointed that it was just in a few cutscenes.

This however is more or less how the game looks like in gameplay. We are in for something DIFFERENT.

@CallMeDuraSouka between that and third person extraction shooter, seems PS Studios is creatively stuck (or being funneled into making the same types of games!)!

@Oram77 I think this depends on the age / generation. I always frowned upon buying digital because older siblings instilled it into me. Things like ownership, sharing games, cool things inside the instruction manual sometimes. We'd go to Game, Argos, HMV or Smyths and buy games we wanted.

Was shocked when University friends were scrolling through their library on their PS4 and jumping from game to game without putting anything in. I still get my games physical. Even got Yotei physical from Amazon. I don't know why I prefer physical but the convenience of digital for gaming doesn't do anything for me.

I would hope Sony Pictures has changed its strategy with its releases because even outside of the Sony Marvel Universe, most of their live action movies for a while were just phoned in, easy watching with nothing really captivating.

Looking at their movies like Ghostbusters, 65, Until Dawn etc. Like they were making ~2 hour nothing movies that go to streaming weeks after release. And they put the full plot in their trailers to make it ultra easy for the audience to know exactly what is happening. I hope they can stop with that as Sony have dominated the box office with actual good movies this year.

Doing that in 3 days is nice. I don't understand how game after game there is so much negative and baiting for likes discourse but yet like clockwork, people get pulled into it again and again.

I am an Insomniac fan, a massive one and there is a big pull towards their games. But something they all have in common is that they are not ultra realistic, life sim type games or have crazy in depth combat or insane difficulty. Their games have very very fun gameplay loops. I don't understand why all of a sudden everyone is focusing on missions having trails or the combat which is sick being shallow. The main question is "Did you have fun?", "Was it a good game?".

I love RDR2, one of the best games made, but did I have as much fun playing it as I did GOW or GOT? No, I did not. And for that I rate them above RDR2, doesn't mean there needs to be discourse on every aspect of the game that isn't good. I really don't understand why it happened for Wolverine of all games.

I thought it would get an easy pass being a game that clearly was smaller scale, hacked and had its development absolutely derailed and probably had its budget ballooned as a result of all that.

I absolutely believe that any game should get reviewed and that every game has its place. I find it repugnant when a discourse about certain things that a particular gamer dislikes makes them dislike the game yet that is the entire narrative and the game gets overlooked when it is actually pretty good. Watch it happen again with GOW Laufey.

Honestly PlayStation as we knew it and loved it is dead. I'm not overreacting but look at the state of this gen and what is lining up for next gen. Poor leadership, poor management, poor communication, constantly choosing and pruning the wrong projects, not satisfying fans AT ALL. Just a shambles from Sony.

@asdfghjklz it is 2026. PS6 comes out 2028 earliest. Discussions of after PS6 - which is the future - is probably coming into effect from 2033 or later.

Cloud is not going to be what it is now in 7+ years time. Places getting fibre optic for cheap when internet in those areas were poor not too long ago shows the trend. So yes, Cloud is the future.

PS6 is probably the last actual physical home console. Future is hybrid or cloud.

This is looking like a day 1

@PloverNutter some jobs were lost. Asobi were already existing within Japan Studio so yes, jobs and studio autonomy were lost.

@Lavishturtle what about this unreleased and only 5 minute trailer shown game do you hate?

Hopefully we can get back to Rockstar creating games again !

Wonder if NorthernLion still plays this

@TDHorizon I saw a lot of Wolverine from the hack but thankfully for me it was quite disjointed and I only really got a feel for the mechanics rather than spoilers apart from some characters which were expected. That hack was just awful. Not just games but company secrets and employee data too, very sad tbh.

Yes so I think what happened was EnragedCinema somehow got his hands on an early physical release of the game and it does happen a lot but most people just keep it to themselves. I think the one that got sued was the GTA 6 hacker that released all that early early build footage where you can see dev tools and artifacts on the screen. It showed the test runs for robbing a store and the strip club footage too. I do love me some GTA leaks.

@TDHorizon he's such a deep cut! Talk about GTA and leaks instantly made me remember refreshing Google everyday looking for videos back then. If I recall correctly, he was constantly reuploading and livestreaming the videos because they kept getting taken down, no idea how he still has his account.

I do think the move to digital will stop leaks but as we saw with Insomniac, no one is immune to a classic hack.

@Yousef- that is GTA tradition! Watched this guy called EnragedCinema release gameplay of all of GTA 5 about a month or more before its release back in 2013. Not new unfortunately for Rockstar.

@Bingoboyop bingo! People will complain, still buy. And repeat.

Feel bad for Hurst. Thought he did well as mentor in The Odyssey and loved him in Sons of Anarchy.

Watching some previous Marvel releases to get me up to date for Doomsday. In 2022 or 2023, I had previously checked out after the two piece garbage combo of Love & Thunder and Quantumania. Missed Wakanda Forever, Guardians 3 (apparently amazing), Daredevil Born Again (love the Netflix seasons 1-3), The Marvels, Echo, Loki S2 (S1 was amazing).

I did get sucked back in with Brave New World, Thunderbolts and F4. The latter two were actually very good.

I don't believe in fatigue. If it is good, it is good. Marvel was releasing what one can only categorise as slop, maybe even AI slop for a good 2-3 years. That has damaged them beyond repair I fear. Multiverse of Madness hit almost $1bil and it was very very flawed. F4 should have hit that yet it couldn't.

Brand New Day will obviously hit $1bil, it is Spider-Man after all. But I worry for Doomsday, without much setup, inflated egos, questionable recent CGI, fragmented plots and too many characters. Infinity War was the perfect Marvel movie, Endgame was a lot worse but still good. I fear Doomsday will be more of an Endgame.

As an aside, why did they not just feature Doom in F4 apart from the credits scene. Would have at least meant there was a bit of a setup. Also if Secret Wars does follow through with a reboot, that means RDJ as Doom continues, which I don't love. Doom showing up or appearing when unexpected is so cool in the comics, Marvel's issue in the last few years is that it feels so segmented. I can't see them convincing RDJ to show up in random movies unless it is a big item.

This game was a complete slam dunk, not perfect but still amazing. Insomniac gets so much hate and with that data breach as well, heart goes out to them.

Story wise the first game was literally perfection, the second is not, not awful but nothing more than a 6.5/10. But we get some cool moments. I think the gameplay is enough for me to love the game. And Venom.

As a business, if all you can show is losses year after year, you will be shut down. It is unfortunate but this is how the market works, Sony would not have restructured Japan Studio and shut most of it down if their model was working. It was not. Great games though.

@ButteredCrumpet thanks for clearing that up. Found it ridiculous when they stopped doing that. Could go on CDKeys and get say Horizon for £12 while on the PS Store it was still £40.

Love physical media due to the reselling aspect and sharing copies amongst friends. If I was them I would implement a similar feature for digital purchases, but of course it won't happen because profits first.

Sony needs to allow third-party storefronts to sell digital game download codes again. While other digital storefronts don't need to be directly on the PlayStation console, alternative retailers should have the right to sell game codes to PlayStation users to restore fair price competition.

@Yaycandy I think they did cast for an Asian actor in the mould of a Mr Negative. Only thing is since then all trailers and leaks now point to them doing Jean Grey as the mind controller rather than Mr Negative. However I have a sneaky suspicion that Mr Negative is still in the movie albeit a lesser role now maybe.

@Yor-sama I do think there are a lot of loud vocal minorities on this site to be honest. If people are happy with these practices (most people honestly don't care), then like you said, the data would agree. And it does. Obviously it isn't a good thing though.

I just know that for myself, if I am in a situation that doesn't work for me, be it a job, a relationship, a phone, a new car, an environment, I will protect my mental health and move on / rectify it.

I don't come on this site to complain non stop, but that's all it has become to be honest. A lot of it is warranted to be fair, but like maybe just stop consuming stuff that you don't like. An article about GTA 6 comes out and all the comments are "I'm not buying this", "No physical media, I'm not buying", but who asked you? If it is not for you, then don't buy and move on maybe? It's just misery slop. If people had the sense to not spend money on things they don't want to support, goodwill would matter again and companies doing what they are doing will not stop but it would maybe reduce. Instead we have the gaming industry ruled by out of touch executives who are vindicated in their actions, out of touch parents who want to shut their kids up with Fortnite and Fifa, some other groups, but worst of all we have people who don't like anything, complain about everything and STILL buy the games that they are complaining about.

Obviously gaming will transition to a cloud based thing, digital media, neural interfaces and what not. This is a natural step in that but it just feels a bit like a harbinger of a post console era.

@Yor-sama if people don't like the continued practices, the trend of the gaming industry, if these things make people constantly negative and cause them to dislike something they once liked, maybe instead of constantly complaining and bitching on this site, people should boycott and move on. This is a reminder for people who this affects and care about physical media so deeply to maybe boycott and vote with your wallets.

If the street vendor raised prices by 50% and you still go there, that's on you because you're giving them vindication in their actions.

@Yor-sama if people are complaining about practices they don't want, why are they still consuming and buying games when it only makes the decision makers more brazen?

Boycott. The. Gaming. Industry. Simple

This was inevitable after the hemorrhage of cash from poor sales, poor performance, over investment and ruining the gaming landscape (Activision / Zenimax), poor leadership, acquiring studios that don't necessarily fit the Xbox philosophy and another big one subsidising Game Pass to make it affordable for users.

The sad thing is many many many people saw it coming and it culminating like this is just inevitable. I'm not convinced this is the last of it either.

Would be a costly endeavor but next gen would benefit from a big delay now. At first I was of the mind that just release in 2027/28 but all this is not uncertainty, it is certain that hardware cannot be released at a sensible price due to AI. It is certain that hardware that should be priced at $400 - $600 is being inflated by 2x due to AI.

Delay the PS6 until further notice, redesign it, maximise the PS5 and the pro because this is not it. A PS6 launching at anywhere near $1,000 is the end of console gaming. Simple.

I get the need for physical ownership and having physical media but honestly maybe let's get priorities straight. To be a part of and contribute to this industry which spits out normal working people by the masses every month, uses predatory practices to prey on children, crunch culture, Rockstar's very own union busting and sacking, is normal, yet it is getting upset over a missing disc that you choose.

Surely just accept that you vote with your wallet. If you don't want it to continue, don't buy the game. But of course it will still continue, because everyone will buy it anyway. Everyday we give publishers the confidence to keep doing stupid and egregious things with both our games and the people who make them.

@KundaliniRising333 you gave GTA 4 a 10/10 and GTA 5 a 1/10, while I agree GTA 4 gameplay is more enjoyable for me, what made you give such differing ratings? And based on that I'm assuming you feel as though GTA 6 will be more like 5 than 4? (I think so too)

Standard £70. I still think it'll do more harm than good if they price it above that. It is a premium game yes, but they will still make so much money if they keep the pricing normal. But capitalism right.

@TheTexMurphy in all fairness this game was done a while ago. Due to the leaks they had to rework some story elements though

@naruball exactly! Only two choices in life. Agree with me or lie.

The only honest answer is that it has been mixed but trends towards negative. There have been many negative points with Sony's first party lineup and some positive but the negative ones are many! Mishandling of developers, projects, acquisitions, lack of positive impact making projects, poor marketing, inability to create hype around games that should be exciting.

Just been some real mismanagement with Jim Ryan and Herman Hulst. That should hopefully make them focus on getting back the goodwill they got in PS3 and PS4 gen during the next gen. (Fingers crossed no PSN for online play!)

@Dodoo not necessarily. I can see it coming by 2028 which isn't that far out

@TDHorizon unfortunately though a big contributor IS over inflation and salaries and time. Because it takes time to find concepts, time to make those concepts into something tangible and time to develop it further, that time amounts into salaries being paid and other overheads to be managed. But an even somehow bigger contributor is strategic stupidity or just plain short sightedness.

Publishers have a delusion of scale. They assume that inflating a games scope, forcing 200 hours of bloated open world checklist padding and paying premium Hollywood salaries for celebrity led cutscenes somehow guarantees a mass market hit. When in reality, it leaves the core gameplay feeling hollow and drives the price tag to an unforgiving £70.

When it is applied to a franchise that has hype / mass appeal, budget inflation is dangerous (we see this with TLOU 2), but when applied to an inherently niche genre like the kinda sci-fi roguelike framework of Saros, it is such a gamble and almost even corporate suicide. Like Saros can only be made at PlayStation because they are one of the only corporations that can throw money at such a niche thing and keep it single player. They love Housemarque and they want to back them no matter what in my opinion (Housemarque have earned it though). But it is still financially a risk.

At £70 the casual crowd will go elsewhere and it just burdens the game with a financial expectation it cannot possibly meet based on its genre constraints. You cannot price a niche title like Saros identically to a generational hit like Elden Ring and expect the same results. FromSoftware spent over a decade getting global goodwill required to make a difficult, niche genre mainstream. Bumping a studio's budget into the tens of millions and adding celebrity voice talent does not grant a niche IP that level of prestige. What studio has done that and actually succeeded from it?

By ignoring audience fatigue and over scoping targeted, more niche and stylised games, publishers create their own financial failures and then they use those self inflicted failures to justify why they must abandon single-player games for the safety of live service monetisation.

In my opinion that is why single player games have stupid budgets attached to them. Not ONLY because of time and how long it takes to make games these days but because I guess in short, publishers don't know the place of their studios and chase things that most gamers don't want, don't care about or simply probably don't want to spend their money on.

@TDHorizon I agree, which is why it should also have been released on PC. Yet you see people praising Sony not releasing games on PC anymore and then being annoyed when some studios shut.

Ultimately games performing like this are literally why publishers seek live service games. If they fail, move on, maybe try again, maybe shut the studio.

If a single player game with years of development and millions in the budget fails, it sinks everything. As we know, publishers view live service as a portfolio where one massive hit like Helldivers 2 can subsidise ten rapid failures. Single-player games don't enjoy that safety net. They don't bring almost as much revenue even when successful, they are all or nothing gambles.

When a prestigious, first-party single-player game underperforms, it will hurt the developer and worse it will scare the publisher away from funding original, creative IPs and force them back into the cyclical safety of live service monetisation.

That is what this entire generation has been. Publishers are chasing that rainbow and while people get annoyed and wonder why there are less single player games, they fail to support the ones that come, only fueling the dive into live service more and more. Wonder why Guerrilla are pouring so much into the live service Horizon title, and if it fails, there will be another thing to take its place. Sad

Make gaming positive again! Don't be surprised if over the next few months and years there is a lot of reversing bad practices and good PR so people can be positive about gaming and subconsciously buy into the next generation.

I absolutely called this. Shame a lot of people on this site and in the gaming community are just fickle, sad and somewhat pathetic. All people want to do is hate and watch games crash and burn yet at the same time complain that the types of games they want aren't being made. They are, you just don't support them!

@AK4tywill yes!! These new portables are like tablets with gaming focus. Not a terrible thing but they all do look like rectangular slabs with controllers attached (quite literally describing the portal and switch).

I love the portal though, feels like a natural evolution for the Vita, as its pebble shape and lack of things to hold onto sucked for me growing up and any time I fire it up now. The portal is just more comfortable to hold.