RadioHedgeFund

Makes me wonder if John Hare can score a bargain and buy back the rights to Sensible Soccer once they shutter Codemasters.

None of this is important. Sony should be lobbying the US government for a change in copyright law so that customers can extract the files from defunct storefronts for personal enjoyment. There is absolutely zero economic arguements as to why this shouldnt be allowed.

If we've ascertained one thing from the relative cold reception to the PS5 Pro and the success of games like Stardew and Balatro is that gamers care a lot more about technical competence than graphical fidelity.

With this in mind there is very little reason to even bother with a new generation of consoles at this point. Lowering the specs would even be a better idea.

Who knew Gunpei Yokoi would still be saving the games industry so long after his death?

@Dman10 An MP3 can be enjoyed on numerous devices or burned to disc because it contains no DRM (largely due to Steve Jobs leaning on the music industry at the time)

There is no logical reason why the filetype used by a console should be anything different. Licencing and DRM are plainly anti-consumer. I'm not advocating for ways to circumvent piracy laws. Companies should be able to charge for their IP. But once the stores close down and there is no way of exchanging money for software then it should be fair game for emulation and so on.

The irony of course is that if Sony bought PPSSPP and properly licenced it by integrating the PSN so you could download (say) all your old PSP games to play on mobile and PC theyd actually continue to make money from those old titles. Devs might use it as a way to lower their costs and treat it as another storefront.

What an utter waste of time. The fractious nature of gaming as a hobby means we will all lose out because they tried to find a different answer instead of asking a better question, namely what should digital preservation look like in the 21st Century.

Discs and carts were always going to go. That much is inevitable. Gaming drove the internet and digital distribution as a medium in the first place. We should be happy physical media is finally dead.

But instead of PlayStation owners petitioning Sony, gamers at large need to be joining forces to petition state actors to change their outdated copyright laws to allow for file extraction from defunct storefronts.

That's the war we should all be fighting.

This is only a good idea if I can connect an external disc drive to my Xbox Series S!

@Llamageddon 100%. It’s all conjecture on the part of the writer until the game comes out and we get to play it. If people are put off, just replay the original.

You had me at “no modern day sections”

The issue was never physical discs but software DRM. I’d put money on most of the people complaining about the lack of discs not having a CD collection anymore. But this is because you can rip a CD and do what you like with a purchased MP3.

@Oram77 Gaming is big enough that you have other options. If you’ve always been a PS gamer pick up an Xbox 360 and suddenly your games are all physical and £2 each. If you miss experimentation then grab a Gameboy emulator handheld and go nuts on itch.io most of which is largely free.

The problem isn’t the lack of physical media but the software licensing terms of digital purchases. We should legally be able to archive goods we have exchanged good money for once their host platforms become void.

There is no real argument as to why I shouldn’t be able to download the roms of PSP/Vita/3DS titles I have purchased once the consoles have gone under. Nobody is losing any money. And before they chime in with continued access, I’ll point out Sony’s recent movie licence massacre.

The right thing to do is petition the EU. They might be a little reticent to go after US companies at the minute but Japan has no political leverage in its favour.

The fact is that modern games don’t fit on a Blu-ray so nearly always need an additional download after installation. Should those servers go offline one day it means that the disc game will be useless.

What players should now be campaigning for is for games to be $5-10 cheaper now they no longer need to be burned to disc and shipped.

All very ironic given this is the first game in history that doesn’t need any marketing

I mean, it could be a new WipEout

So you still won’t be able to play co-op with your kids without first invading their privacy by making not one but two online presences for them to play something as simple as split-screen?

Modern gaming really is a big mess isn’t it?

The reason for this is you can’t set up local accounts on Xbox like you can on the PS5. Every account on an Xbox is automatically a Microsoft account, an annoying holdover from the Xbox One I can assure you. Rather than create a different protocol just for PS owners they’ve kept the same requirements.

It sucks on both levels

We’ve not even hit a performance ceiling on the PS5 yet. It’s best looking game is still Forbidden West and that was held back by its PS4 origins. Nobody, and I mean nobody is asking for the PS6 in the next 4 years.

@RatmCky This was in the original P4 so should be in the remake

@1970sGamer I think a lot of it stems from people wanting gaming to step out from its cliched past as overly violent murder simulators which is hard when the poster child for the entire industry, and indeed entertainment as a whole is Grand Theft Auto.

It’s a two-edged sword really. There will be millions of lapsed gamers who will end up buying a PS5 just for this game and the amount of money it will make is probably more than the entire output of Hollywood this year alone. And yet the cliched image of teenage boys playing violent games will persist as a result.

I’m sure the end product will be really good and people should enjoy it as they wish.

I mean it probably plays well enough but you’re selling nostalgia with a game like this and some things have to be exactly as you remember them. All of those actors are still prolific and should have been recast.

I bounced off more than 2 decades of FF games for many reasons but 16 pulled me right back in. It wasn’t the combat (every FF has different combat. 10 vs 12 vs 13 anyone?) but the commitment to being a Final Fantasy game: ridiculous bosses, melodramatic plot and a protagonist not out the save the world but just his Brother. Clive Rosfield isn’t just the best acted protag in the series but probably the most well-rounded as a hero and a wonderful exploration of modern masculinity.

Maybe you couldn’t control his friends but I actually gave a crap about Jill and Cid and Gav and Joshua which is more than I can say for Prompto, Gladiolus, Fang or Vanille.

Microsoft should get rid of GP Ultimate and then roll in 1st party games after a year of release when they debut on PS5. They’d make bank both ways then. They’d easily have sold 10m copies of FH6 at launch.

As long as it doesn’t have blue shells I’ll be happy.

So when they said AI was going to take jobs, what they really meant was by sending silicon prices so sky high that everybody has had to castle up to make ends meet.

The lack of the same voice actors is a little jarring. Yuri Lowenthal et al are all still around!

People might question the logic but it makes more sense to keep Gears an Xbox exclusive. It’s not got a high enough profile to sell well on PS and it remains the original system seller for the Xbox 360.

Halo on the other hand is a game Xbox players have been through numerous times and PS owners have been starved of decent FPS material for a long time. This will sell a lot more, even if it doesn’t include the valuable multiplayer component.

I mean, yeah but it’s only a problem if you’re a fan of grimdark gothic overly violent combat games.

9000+ releases and apparently every other title is a grimdark fantasy with particle effect porn.

@Hundred_Hand_Slap If you’re not old enough to remember having an invincibility cheat in the 1990s was awesome for certain games. I might actually have enjoyed Sekiro if it had those options. I mean, you still have to actually beat the game still.

Honestly I’m at an age now where open worlds, crafting and grinding out levels just holds no interest. Give me some cheats and let me enjoy the world and the story.

These are useful accessibility features. It’s worth remembering games used to be full of these cheats, only they required a secret code to activate.

It makes me ill if I’m honest. It’s why I still can’t stomach playing as the Necromancer on Diablo 3. Glad I have the option.

I predict that they will have farmed off more franchises to Namco after the success of Patapon and Everybody’s Golf.

Surely Locoroco has to be next?

And there has been some motion on rumours of a remaster of the PS1 WipEout trilogy.

Sony seem to have spent a lot of money on developing projects nobody seems interested in. I could have told them for free that porting some PSP titles to mobile would have cleaned up. The likes of Locoroco, Patapon and Jeanne D’Arc would clean up.

Sackboy needs to return somewhere.

I was there for Destiny since the OG beta. It took the races, classes and gameplay of Phantasy Star Online and rinsed them through Halo.

But the game and its sequel failed to maintain the simple gameplay loop of its influences (PSO and Diablo 3) by bogging them down with silly currencies, stingy loot drops and nonsensical lore. The series was never at any point welcoming to new players.

@zebric21 Destiny 1’s campaign was a whistle stop package tour of the inner planets with Peter Dinklage. Nobody surely wants to experience that?!

As Sony will never get any ROI why not just spin them off into an independent entity and leave them to it?

I’d be shocked if this wasn’t canned. During the Sharma rejig they will have been reevaluating everything and whilst Forza was likely too long in development I expect Halo and Fable to get pulled.

Issue smaller budgets to make more games, support the indie market.

So in other words: we over invested and promptly cancelled loads of live service games leaving us with a pretty bare first party plate.

Two overly gory games that so get boring within the first 2 hours.

@twitchtvpat It was never really a problem with the number of games per se, just the number of PS exclusives. Sony dropped the ball with their live service push and there is a lack of smaller games as a result. Let all the studios put 20% of their staff on creative projects and the results would pay for themselves.

@twitchtvpat Objectively the majority of PS5 sales went to the FIFA and COD crowd though who buy 3 games a year. Those people are no less gamers than anybody else but PlayStation will sell just because it says ‘PlayStation’ on the box.

@PuppetMaster My original point was that Sony need to set a launch date of 2029 for the PS6, budget it and then use the change to fund a whole swathe of remakes, indie exclusives and under the radar titles to enrich the PS5 library. Saros and God of War are ironically the exact sorts of games I mean: not system sellers but preaching to the converted but these are currently rarities.

During the 3 and 4 the rich library was a reason to be jealous or jump ship as an Xbox player. There are maybe 2-3 really good PS5 exclusives but the rest of the library, even the smaller titles are replicated or clones elsewhere. I mean what’s left this year: a gory Marvel action title and a Marvel beat ‘em up. Gaming isn’t short on those genres.

Take last year: Death Stranding 2 will eventually be released elsewhere and if I want an open world Japan fix I can play AC Shadows rather than Yotei. 2023: Helldivers is on Xbox, Astrobot was amazing though. Ditto Spiderman in 2022. All the 2021 exclusives came to PS4.

I’m sure many people would agree that for a lot of reasons (Sony over investing in live service titles for one) the PS5 just doesn’t seem to have been around long enough to build up its own identity. It’s a good console, but in terms of decent exclusives the worst PlayStation console.

PS5 owners are hungry for more titles. Doesn’t have to be more AAA titles. There’s a big pile of unavailable PS3 games itching to be ported into the modern era. Who wouldn’t go for a Motorstorm collection or even a quick port of Calling All Cars? And let a 3rd party pitch a new WipEout.

@PuppetMaster But I don’t need a PS to play them and the God of War game is the sort of ten-a-penny platformer we see all the time.

@PuppetMaster All great games but none of them scream ‘PlayStation’ to me. Saros is brilliant mind.

@MrPeanutbutterz I’m talking the smaller releases that used to add value to Sony consoles. In this generation I can play just as many great games on the Xbox. But my Xbox One didn’t have Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture or Locoroco. My 360 didn’t have Flower or Journey.

They and Microsoft would be suicidal to launch any new console this side of the RAM crisis. Things need to be at 2024 wholesale prices before they even bother.

In the meantime how about some games, Sony? Microsoft are selling big on the PS5 because of gaps in the release schedule. Gamers are hungry: feed them.

@Matroska Surely Lego games are for playing on the sofa with your kids though? Who buys them on the PC?!

@Oram77 I would say VII is one of the greatest JRPGs of all time and a stone cold classic. But it’s nonsensical world building arguably makes it the worst FF on the PS1.