Ralizah

This is reviewing so much better than I expected.

I haven't played any of these, but I'm tempted to pick one up eventually. I've pretty much written the original off, so it'll be between II and 0, I think.

Just do a soft re-launch campaign once it's patched up and the expansion drops. If the game is solid, people will come back.

The game is pretty complete now. All I want at this point is The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2.

The Japanese-ness of the series is one of its appeals. Nobody wants them to change that.

I'll be honest, though: the degree to which they expect people to have played 10+ previous games to fully appreciate the newer ones is alienating, just like it's alienating with Trails games. And it's why they'll never be big, day one purchases for me.

In general, if you have a strong platform preference, it pays to wait. Almost nothing is exclusive anymore in any lasting sense.

I'll be honest, considering Sweeney's views on AI and the soullessness of his major product, I'd be more surprised if Fortnite WASN'T pretty heavily utilizing gen AI already.

@nessisonett FF is best when it's wide-linear, like the older games in the series. Some choice, but it keeps the pacing and story on track, at least until the end game. Square literally figured this stuff out ages ago. I have no idea why they're struggling with the balance now.

That said, I'll always take an open world as opposed to something totally on-rails. FFX was far too close to the latter end of the spectrum, and only compares well to the cartoonishly railroady Final Fantasy XIII.

Not even top five for me. It was technically impressive at the time, but I found XII to be wildly more impressive as an evolution. X felt inferior even compared to the PS1 entries with its lack of exploration.

@Pequod Yeah, losing out on potential console owners is leaving a lot of money on the table. No PS+ revenue from subs. No gradual dips into the PS store during sales. And, frankly, owning hardware creates a psychological incentive to actually justify the expenditure with game purchases I might otherwise think twice about.

I'm a PC-first gamer, so I'm happy to play their games on Steam if they keep porting them, but, speaking from my own vantage point, I do think they lose a fair bit of money from people like myself, and the damage is already at least partially done, because I know if I wait they'll probably continue to port most of their games to my preferred platform. Why buy the cow when you're getting the milk anyway?

Nintendo does exclusivity right. I bought a Switch 2 day one, despite broadly preferring my Steam Deck, because I knew there wasn't a shadow of a chance the next Fire Emblem, Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Xenoblade, etc. games were coming to anything other than Switch 2.

Didn't sales trend down hard for the sequels on PS5 as well? That's pretty normal for direct sequels to older games. Especially Sony sequels that are as iterative as SM2/Ragnarok/Forbidden West are.

The ports are ultra-profitable, so I don't see that as an issue. The larger issue is giving people a reason to abandon Sony's console ecosystem in the first place.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I'd be a PS5 owner already if they hadn't started porting their games to PC. But they didn't, so I'm not. Why buy one when I have a wildly more powerful PC that can play almost all of the "exclusive" games they've released?

@Megabeenz At this point, they're pretty much just trying to stop any additional bleeding from the hardware division, I imagine, and have totally given up on competing any traditional sense.

Getting GTA VI and (possibly) Half Life 3 before anything Bloodborne is legitimately pretty wild to think about.

"But considering the Steam Machine is weaker than the PS5, its overall value proposition would have to be questioned if it ends up costing more than Sony’s console."

Honestly, the overall value proposition of a PC becomes better every year you own it. No paying for online. Better sales from multiple storefronts. Even day one discounts from key resellers for big titles that you don't get on consoles. Emulation, if you're into that. Plus, it'll still be a fully functioning PC.

They've said affordability is a factor, so I don't think it'll be too expensive, although probably not $500. But they have no reason to loss lead with this hardware.

No problem. Still have yet to touch 7 and Village somehow lol

So... what, you fight Scarecrow in the new Call of Duty? lol

I'd probably try it out for cheaps if it wasn't online only. No reason a campaign shouldn't be single-player. That's an insane choice. Multiplayer modes already exist.

GTA VI will be PS5's biggest game, probably. Along with the PS6.

I do think the PS5 deserves its own God of War, untethered from the limitations of last-gen technology. At this point, though, I could see a lot of their games, that included, being cross-gen releases. Games take so long to make now that I wouldn't be surprised if we see increasingly fewer platform-exclusive titles.

@3Above Sure, but generally people who care about that in Japan will already own a PS5. Who are these people who only gamed on Switch until this show and realized that games on PS5 run better? 😛

@3Above Then it failed at that, too. Nearly all the good games were already announced in previous Nintendo shows. What's here that would get someone to buy a new PS console vs one that gets popular exclusives?

It was a terrible show by any metric.

Nearly nothing new. This didn't need to be a show. It could've been a PS Blog post.

Hogwarts Legacy was "boycotted" and is one of the most successful single player games of the generation.

Switch 2 was "boycotted" and is still selling wildly well. Ditto with Mario Kart World, which has almost sold as many copies as the console has hardware units.

Almost like these "boycotts" are coming from a small number of disgruntled people online who don't represent any broader consumer trends.

This could be okay if they don't load this up with references and make it more of a classic adventure film. This can't have the same children's film vibe as something like The Mario Movie.

I'm ready to talk about the wisdom of adopting full digital purchases when the industry is willing to talk about improving consumer rights for digital purchasers. Regardless of what the fine print technically says, you own something when you buy digital, and you're only purchasing a theoretically time-limited license to use something when you 'buy' digital products. It's an important distinction.

For something like video games, I'll just go digital anyway since true physical isn't really a thing anymore for my preferred platforms (PC/Switch 2), but for books, movies, music, etc.? I'm going to need a lot of convincing to pay for digital licenses instead of just buying them on physical media.

@Th3solution PC gaming is more accessible than ever once everything is set up, but there's absolutely a learning curve to figuring out what to get in the first place, and setting it all up if you're building your own. Which is the big reason prebuilt PCs exist. I watched my boyfriend build his new PC the other day, and boy, there is a LOT involved in that process.

With PC gaming, though, once you're good, you're mostly good. While you can tinker and optimize settings to your heart's content, most games auto-detect your hardware configuration so that you can just go in and start playing without needing to worry about messing with them. Steam, Nvidia/AMD software, etc. all streamline the process of installing and maintaining driver support as well.

There'll always be more to setting up and maintaining a gaming PC than a console, but, especially if you have tech-savvy friends who are willing to help you out a bit, it can definitely be worth the hassle, depending on your gaming needs.

Makes me think they might be planning a PC launcher/storefront for their games. Fine if purely optional, with stuff like crossplay and crossbuy used to incentivize buy-in. If this is what happens, hopefully they lead with the carrot and not the stick.

@Oram77 I don't think anyone on PC "happily" signs up for those services. I won't even play EA or Ubisoft games on PC for just that reason.

In the case of Sony, it's easier to push back and correct the missteps of a company that's newly branching out to PC than ones that have had a presence on the platform for generations.

@DrVenture69 I've only played a bit of the Switch 2 Edition of TotK (planning a full replay next year, actually), but it's pretty nice not seeing the framerate drop every time I activate Ultrahand. It's also MUCH prettier on Switch 2.

Like the PS5 early on, we're in crossgen territory for the system right now. Performance issues are pretty much gone on Switch 1 games, although undocked visual quality varies, since most games topped out at 720p undocked, so they need to be patched to support the tablet's higher resolution screen properly. Should just be a straight improvement for everything if you're more of a docked player, though. Tightly optimized games won't see as much of an improvement, but there's some stuff on Switch 1 that I found almost unplayable performance-wise that's basically just... perfect now when played on the system. The messier it was on Switch 1, the more improved it tends to be on Switch 2.

It's not my primary system, either (or even primary handheld, since I have a Steam Deck OLED), but playing it at more of a relaxed pace, there's more than enough here for me so far.

@DrVenture69 Will +1 the Bananza recommendation. It's awesome, easily the best Donkey Kong game ever made, and was made by the team that created the last 3D Mario game, with a lot of that same DNA evident in the game design.

If you're a Metroid Prime guy, the fourth game looks to run tremendously better on the new hardware as well.

Capcom burned a lot of their considerable good will coming from World with this launch. Especially when they started gaslighting their PC fanbase about the game's terrible performance instead of immediately taking responsibility for releasing a low-quality product.

Granted, I do wonder how much can be done with it, given the misuse of RE Engine for open world game design also seemingly tanked the performance of Dragon's Dogma 2.

@Moonvalley2006 Why not? The Steam Deck is pretty cheap (especially on sale, where it goes for well under Switch 2 price points) and plays the vast majority of games reasonably well. SteamOS stomps all over Windows 11 in terms of ease of use, you have full access to Steam's customization suit (so easy to configure gyro controls for pretty much any game, for example), and, most importantly, as far as I know, it's the only PC handheld on the market with good trackpads to play games that are more mouse-oriented.

It may be marginally less powerful than the competition, but it also, in many cases, is half the price.

I would still very much direct anyone interested in grabbing a handheld PC toward a Steam Deck in 2025 unless they were specifically interested in the most demanding (and often most poorly optimized) games on Steam.

Saw Reze Arc this weekend at the cinema and was pretty blown away. Easily the best anime film of the year to date, and definitely best seen on a big screen!

Anime hitting the big screen outside Japan is nothing new, but these films topping the U.S. box office certainly is.

They're unmitigated losers in the console marketplace and this is their strategy for survival now. At least Sega bowed out gracefully instead of acting like the competition wasn't legitimate in the first place.

Microsoft goons wouldn't be saying this stuff if the Xbone and especially Series X were competitive.

@themightyant 3D and motion controls weren't new when Nintendo ran with them, but they also weren't 'fads' because nobody else was doing stuff with them when Nintendo took them on. I think the idea isn't: 'Nintendo created these concepts wholesale,' but: 'Nintendo took existing concepts that others had forgotten/abandoned and made them popular/fads.'

@UltimateOtaku91 I actually really enjoyed HZD as well (one of the few PS4 titles I bothered to platinum), but the similarities between them, along with the close release dates, definitely started the narrative that the Horizon games release next to more popular open world games that overshadow them.

I'm not actually hopeful for either film, but I'd love them to be good. 👍

Same year as the Zelda movie. Would be the funniest thing if it ended up getting overshadowed again in an entirely different medium. 😂

I'll wait and see what the exclusive games, if any, are like, what the price point is, and what features emerge.

It's gonna need some really cool exclusive games to shift me away from the PC/Steam Deck combo that works so brilliantly.

As it stands, I skipped the PS5 gen pretty much entirely, and I'm prepared to do so with PS6 as well if Sony doesn't course correct in terms of first party game development.

That said, I go back to the early PS1 days with this brand, and would love them to wow me again.

PPV to watch people play a video game. 😂

I absolutely love how much better Bloober's games have become since SH2R. That classic Japanese horror game design mix of exploration, puzzles, and combat is just so much more satisfying than dull Western walking sims where you run and hide from enemies the entire game.

Anyway, Silent Hill 1 is possibly my favorite survival horror game of all time. The sense of atmosphere is unmatched. While I feel like it'll be more challenging to realize successfully in a big budget remake, the potential for improving on aspects of the original is also much greater than in SH2 where, let's be real, the technology was much more equal to the task of realizing the vision of the game.

MORE expensive with LESS hard drive space than back in 2020. This generation sucks lmao

Two months seems excessive. October would've honestly been perfect for a game like Demonschool.

Really glad I didn't pop for the OG release lol

I'll wait and see how Switch 2 performance compares to the game running on Deck, though, before deciding where to cop it.

Either way, glad this version is finally making its way overseas!

Good lord that Donald Pleasance impersonation is bad. 😂

Nice to hear that it'll have a sp mode, though.

Absolutely one of my favorite games of all time. It nails the tactical gameplay in a way so few other SRPGs do.

NG+ mode is also heavily rewarding.

Looking forward to Shantae. Don't care about the rest.

@nessisonett An 80+ hour experience that combined both games would've been awesome.

Instead they went the FFVII Remake direction and bloated the heck out of this.

I still really like the new combat and visuals, though, so thankfully the gameplay itself won't be such a slog.

@nessisonett oml 😭

Why does every JRPG need to be a million hours now?

Almost nothing happens in this game. It's just build up to the sequel.

@Northern_munkey I'm talking about publishers, love. These cards are apparently wildly expensive even compared to Switch 1 cards (and ESPECIALLY compared to bluray discs), making it where proper physicals eat into profit margins to a heavy degree. Everything on a key card would be a code in a box otherwise, and Nintendo is probably hoping the optics of these cards, which can be shared and resold, are less damaging.

LOL Nobody wants to pay for these expensive Switch 2 cards compared to bluray. Hopefully costs come down significantly soon, or, yeah, Switch 2 won't even have a physical media library outside of first-party releases.

@Haruki_NLI Pretty sure Hyrule Warriors is exclusive.

But yeah, the third party exclusive is pretty much dead at this point. Hell, at this point, apart from Nintendo first party releases, exclusives are dead altogether.

@Fizza The Edgerunners anime was a pretty big part of Cyberpunk's public sentiment turnaround as well.

inb4 Studio Trigger announced a Monster Hunter anime series

@Fizza Yup.

Hopefully the B-team is watching this unfold and the successor to Rise doesn't replicate Wilds' technical failings on Switch 2.

World + Rise did so much to boost the brand to megahit status, and now this is causing pretty severe brand damage and has killed their sales' momentum.

I have to imagine that Capcom will probably be making pretty huge changes to what tools they're designing their open world / sandbox games with going forward.

Yeah, performance optimizations on PC should probably be a priority.

No excuse for a release this big to release in the state it's in. They need to retire the use of RE Engine for open world / large sandboxy games. Dragon's Dogma 2 also has performance issues.

And this is in a year where games like Stellar Blade are showing just how optimized console-to-PC ports can really be.

Really happy about this. I've been wanting a new Shantae game for ages!