ProfessorNiggle

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.

Without consoles half the games that exist simply won't be made. Action adventure games, open world games are made and best played with a controller in mind. Fact. PC games and stats back it u[p. The games that perform best on console don't always perform well on PC. I guess with the inflating costs in production it just makes it not worth porting over for a measly few hundred thousand sales.

Ohhh so this is how they would do it. Fits the reports that it feels like a new IP, also relies on some amazingly deep existing lore and world building that can only make anyone interested in history and gaming excited. I guess GOW is Sony's Assassin's Creed now.

Traversal looks great. Hopefully grappling hook is an early unlock like with Returnal

Will it just become PlayStation? PlayStation Online Services? Ew

Boy Rahul Kohli has come a long way from iZombie

In other news, water is wet!!

Unfortunately this game is just flawed on a foundational level. Hope they learn from this

@cainhurst94 if Housemarque become a support studio or feel the need to pitch a live service game due to not moving enough units whilst sinking millions into their game development, let's circle back to this.

Returnal sold less than 2 million copies. Around 1.8 million on PS5. It earned around $9 million on Steam. I think losing that market may hurt but I will continue to support Housemarque with every release. They captured me since Dead Nation.

Edit: Numbers may be lower than that, with some reports of less than 1.1 million copies total, so around 900k copies on PS5.

Selling a few hundred thousand copies (if that) on PC is not worth Sony bastardizing their console in their eyes. It kind of makes sense to me. But console exclusivity isn't as beneficial to developers or publishers as it once was. Especially when everyone on console is playing Fifa and Fortnite. Wouldn't hurt for some more niche games (especially roguelites) to be on PC.

You can't really do what Xbox have done and then reverse it in such short time. It isn't like PS putting a few games onto PC after they've been out for a few years. It would be like Sony buying 25 Bungie's and then putting all the games on all platforms then deciding to halt and cancel all future multi platform releases, wasting money and time to then make them exclusive again. Not possible.

@nomither6 making a poster for games you want to flop is really some strange online activity. The world needs healing

Some of you need to look in the mirror and love yourselves

@Bob_Tempura Sorry but I disagree.

I agree that all games should be cheaper.

I disagree that Saros should be priced lower than the "premium" £70. Because this is a "AAA" game in all sense of the term and if you played Returnal you know that!

@Carnage the post launch update is amazing. Play the tower and do a co-op run with someone. Such fun!

This looks amazing. Looks so much more polished and clean than Returnal does. Returnal is literally one of the best looking games of this gen. Can't wait

This isn't the good news people think it is sadly lmao

Never really understood the hate with this game or its visuals. Breath of fresh air, like Helldivers 2 and Horizon is looking.

As an aside, Horizon Hunters Gathering better get an extra year or so in the tank to iron out some of the issues I am seeing with it. I do think the NCSOFT game should've been the more arcadey one and Guerrilla make the realistic looking one but oh well.

@Orpheus79V if they can somehow get a native handheld that can play PS4, PS5 & PS6 games, use streaming as well as have access to older platforms due to the extensive PS library AND have it at a price between £200 - £300 then Sony have produced probably one of the greatest consoles ever made.

I see it being £300 - £450 though. But yes I agree with you here it cannot be online connection only.

By the way, the first paragraph reads: "Sony is considering delaying the launch of the PS5 ..."

Should say PS6.

Either way this is good but I really want the portable console now.

@roe Returnal was definitely unfair. I can remember when I beat the second boss. Got to the third biome and just endlessly being killed by some crawling robot or the drones. Having to go back to the start sucked because coming back to the third biome, your gun either sucks or you haven't picked up anything which leaves you under prepared. So you have to do a bit of each biome to get some equipment and guns and proficiency. Making sure you don't take up too much damage just to get killed 5 minutes into biome three. Probably a skill issue but whatever.

It is just punishing by design but it is one of my favourite games ever. I can't understand being disappointed by these changes. I genuinely feel like Saros might top Returnal. If it does, might be my game of the generation.

@MrMajeeny I just thought it was weird that people were complaining about an optional feature made to reduce power consumption. I think it is helpful as well

Returnal released on the same day in 2021 I believe!

Is David Cage gone? What happened to star wars?

@nomither6 XMB comeback for PS6 would be stellar

I pray this studio learns from Telltale and doesn't just make the same game over and over again.