RadioHedgeFund

• Buy PPSSPP
• Bolt on the PSP Store that aready exists
• Profit

Oh Sony.

Just port all your PSP titles to mobile and charge a $10 unlock fee after the first hour of gameplay.

It's not that hard.

@Terra_Custodes The point is that those classic games are all under a tenner and still available nearly 20 years later. Horizon Zero Dawn is nearly 7 years old and also under a tenner. I am sure when 2028 rolls around Forbidden West will also be available on the PlayStation 6 for under a tenner.

But to circle back to the original point: videogame prices haven't risen with inflation and digital preservation is easier than physical.

@DaniPooo Actually any PS1 games you hold a digital licence for that get released onto PS+ you can redownload at no additional cost or indeed buy new for the first time. So my 2006 Wild Arms purchase would still work and carry over

But will they ruin it by investing their profits in more big single player titles or failed live services?

@Terra_Custodes My point is that whilst the prices for some digital titles might seem high given the lack of physical infrastructure to manage, they stay in place for decades. I can still download a new copy of Wild Arms on any PlayStation platform made in the last 20 years but I cannot walk into a store and buy a new sealed one. And where a sealed copy might exist it is a lot more expensive than the digital one because it is a collectors item.

Somebody further up the chain was saying how digital prices should be lower than physical because there are no store shelves to think about but the presence on those shelves is a fraction of the time it exists in a digital store.

@z0d15g0d Nope, £60 each. I paid £85 for Majora's Mask because I had to buy the expansion pack with it!

I found BG3 to be just another po-faced WRPG with far too many game mechanics that get in the way of having fun.

Give me the whimsy of Fable 2 any day of the week.

@Robinsad Due to inflation that £500m for Forbidden West in todays money is only worth. Based on £1 in 2000 equating to £1.80 today like for like its £300m vs £150m. It also cost £100m to develop Forbidden West whereas Perfect Dark was probably a lot cheaper.

The point is that videogames have not risen in cost due to inflation. A £60 videogame today is tremendous value for money.

@Terra_Custodes Perhaps for modern titles. But Can I wander into a store and buy a new, sealed copy of Parasite Eve 2 for £9?

@knowles2 Whilst the lack of infrastructure and manufacturing plays some part what we have with online stores is server space, perpetual rental, SDK funding and the like.

The chances of being able to walk into a store (if you can find one) and buying a new copy of Wild Arms from the PS1 are pretty slim yet I can log onto the store on my PSP/Vita/PS3/PS4/PS5 and buy it.

Price of videogame in 2000: £60 for Perfect Dark or Majora's Mask on.N64.

Price of videogame in 2022: £60 for Horizon Forbidden West or Gran Turismo 7 on PS4

What did I miss?

Dear Sony

You spent years making great games for a portable console. Buy the PPSSPP emulator, attach the PSP store and call it a day.

@Kevw2006 I was being sarcastic and pointing out how crappy Sony have been rolling out their PS1 catalog.

Some old Winnie the Pooh title or Parasite Eve 2?

I live in hope it's Microsoft. They'd dump their entire back catalog on Gamepass in one day whereas Sony would release one Disney-themed title every 2 months and leave the rest to rot.

Destiny 2 started out great because it massively streamlined a lot of game mechanics and added in an action packed, focussed campaign.

Fast forward a few years and they're back to square one with a game collapsing under the weight of its own lore and mechanics.

What is needed is a reset. I still think Destiny can be salvaged as a property but remade as a single player RPG like Starfield. Set it across the whole solar system, allow us to fly the ships and tell a new story. Heck, send us back in time to when the traveller just prior to the collapse when the human race is at its zenith to prevent the Darkness from ever winning.

It was never the bulk that was the issue but the height. I would have actually bought one had they made it significantly shorter so it actually fits under my TV

And that £3.5bn was the money needed to stop Microsoft buying Bungie and getting them to rebuild Halo. I'm not for consolidation practices but let's not pretend Sony aren't as underhanded as Microsoft in all this.

@thefourfoldroot1 the layoffs and cancellations make me think that the GaaS idea won't ever pan out. PS5 is selling like hotcakes based on classic single player Playstation titles rather than the promise of a Fortnite competitor; whilst the layoffs are a shame they are also probably cuts of an overhiring of staff for projects that no longer exist.

Slim as in 'I lost 3ib by giving up one chocolate biscuit'.

It's only 5mm shorter than the old model and still too bloody tall

This was inevitable. Players only have so much time and the market is saturated as it is. Fortnite doesn't get the attention it once did from Epic having morphed from a live service title to more of a bi-monthly update one. They've not for example done a good live event scenario in over 18 months.

I would argue strongly that Final Fantasy VII is in fact the worst PS1 FF game. Despite still being a bloody good title in and of itself (don’t forget I said that!) VIII and IX had much more believable, cohesive worlds and IMO better battle systems.

No effort is made in VII to really explain how the heck an evil utility company came to replace all world governments and why their endgame was in fact cheaper bills for their customers.

@Smash41 It would be alright if they actually wheeled out some decent titles but the selection of PSP and PS1 games has been terrible.

It’s only games they already sell (sold?) on the PS3/PSP store. I can understand why the likes of MGS or Final Fantasy haven’t come out but how about Alundra, WipEout or Soul Reaver?

Converting people who already paid for online services into subs was pretty easy as on the whole they are getting a better deal. Expanding that service is another thing entirely. We can see by the sales of Sea of Stars that people still like to own their games rather than perpetually renting them.

“Spin the wheel for a chance…”

Loot box mechanics inbound then?

Say what you like about Fortnite’s battle pass but at least none of it is random

As Shigeru Miyamoto once said: “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.”

I think this maxim is still true even in an age of instant updates. I can’t think of one live service title that was crap at launch that eventually became something actually worth playing.

Even the poster boy for post-launch updates. No Man’s Sky was still a good game at launch; it just wasn’t what was promised. That’s a very different thing. If it wasn’t for Hello Games’ push to make it better it would have been another indictment of entitled fans.

@KaijuKaiser Starfield is No Mans Sky x Destiny.

In Destiny you have superb gunplay but can’t fly the ships; in NMS the combat is kinda sucky.

Brought together and strained through Skyrim it could be something very special.

It’s probably worth mentioning that if you already bought these games in the past on PSP or PS3 then they’re available to re-download for free as your licences carry over.

Are they available for sale?

But can I buy them selerately?

I thought there was just supposed to be one model with an external drive? That one has it built in.

What was the point of even ‘redesigning’ it?

I assume it will be a collection of outfits from previous titles like Altair and Ezio.

And whilst we are there they really need to remake the first game.

Despite being a big name franchise in gaming and always being marketed well FF is still a niche title. 3m sales is pretty bloody good on a console the majority of players are buying just to play the next iterations of Call of Duty, FIFA and Madden on.

This isn’t a knock on those players; it’s just PlayStation is a mass market brand. Had the game come out on the Switch I imagine it would have easily don’t 5m by now because those players buy into more niche titles.

Given Sony is going to flood the market with a slimmed down £400 model in a couple of months a lot of that scalped stock for the old models is going to be worth a lot less.

😂😂😂😂😂😂

@Czar_Khastik You can, but you have to watch it 50 times first.

Don’t apologise to these infantilised fans. You only Make them worse.

I imagine it won’t be more than an average movie but I’m looking forward to it all the same. It’s been a while since we had a good motorsport movie.

I liked the use of the fixed 3rd person camera on that police chase!

The need for it to be always online was enough for me to ignore it. However games like this get balance updates all the time and you have to roll with the punches. It’s like in a war game when your favourite unit gets nerfed. You either act like a little kid and rage quit or you grow up and take it on the chin.

The PSP has replaceable batteries. Being able to take a few spare cells on a long trip was a godsend.

@djlard If I can enjoy the book on a weekly basis with some friends on the other side of the country/globe with a plot that reacts to our own input as much as changes every few months, why not?

@playstation1995 All the money that bankrolls the big tent pole titles comes what Sony takes in on IAP from other service titles.

Not a lot as it happens. Microsoft know that the CoD market on PS is massive and will be wanting some returns on that deal.

At the same time there isn’t really anything else from Activision they’re going to miss. Overwatch 2? Crash Bandicoot? Spyro the Dragon? Do me a favour.

Microsoft’s big play was King, because $80bn is a small slice of the console pie but a big one on mobile. Those are the revenues they want streaming into their coffers.

What will be interesting is seeing if Sony retaliate. They already took away their only chance of redeeming Halo. I do wonder if they will start to sew up the Japanese market a little more. Square Enix have got to be awfully tempting. Promise to keep releasing games on Nintendo platforms and that will sail through regulation.

@Nepp67 Right? I’m not against it at all but unless it adds anything to the plot (say, Outlander) or adds something to flesh out a character (Game of Thrones) then what’s the point?

If it adds nothing to the story (as in this is to point out its some warped villain or something) then what’s even the point? It’s about as artistic as a porno.

Now can we get a new wipeout?

Given how much they managed to shrink the boards in the current revision the new model might be smaller and cheaper as Sony pass the cost savings onto consumers.

I also wonder if they would release ‘PSFour’ to go alongside it?

@UltimateOtaku91 You reckon? I think they’d make a big effort to rebrand the Series S as a Sega console. Plenty of space for a nice orange swirl. They could have offered every retro Sega title as a Gamepass addition.

It does warm my heart a little to see the top 3 selling games in one week in 2023 be Final Fantasy, Legend of Zelda and Sonic the Hedgehog.

Microsoft still have themselves to blame. They wouldn’t let Square launch FFXIV on the Xbox because they didn’t want them to have a way around taking 30% of that sub fee which Sony were happy to accommodate, for example.

In that case it was a combination of MS burning that bridge and the 20% sales share of FFXV on Xbox. (Stats from UK, not Japan)

Microsoft could have done their homework. It took Nintendo 2 generations to recover from the loss of FFVII to the PS1.

Honestly I’d like Ac!d and the Gameboy Color versions in there as well, if only as a portable Switch release.