Rimebreaker

@Wilforce

From an editorial perspective, I’m curious why the team chose to single out PS5 in the headline considering that it is a PS5 exclusive.

Search Engine Optimization, they been doing it for a while. Dont be misled by reading "on PS5" on any article about multi-platform games either, the news likely applies to almost every platform.

@ChronoBreak777

I’m fine with that. Too many games are way too open for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

Its one thing when linear games like God of War or Gears of War decide they want to try being open world experiences, but its a whole other thing when games rooted on open world designs all the way back to their NES days, start closing their design into Call of Duty like corridor experiences just because its easier to do.

Not that this is the first Final Fantasy to go that path...

@Titntin Consulted with my partner and they were actually rather indifferent about it (actually asked "why?"), they have quite slowly transitioned to be nearly exclusively PC gamers in the last 3 years, as they just feel it's the best way to play crafting/survival games like Valheim.

I still thinking about it for my own selfish reasons, but now thinking I'll just wait for the new model. One cool thing of my multiple PS4s is that once I entirely retire them, they all can go into my historical game console museum/shelf because they are all different models (launch/slim/pro) and would be nice if I get to do the same at the end of the PS5 life cycle.

@rjejr I don't really disagree with you, just noting as a bundle it's not a terrible one, especially at this price.

At the previous price it was a dumb bundle just forcing people to buying a game they possibly didn't want out of scarcity, because the sum of the game and the console was actually 1 cent higher than buying them separately.

I always felt a bundle should save you money, not cost you more, not even a cent more.

But anyways, agree, the header of this article should had stated "PS5 [Bundle] has been discounted for the first time".

@Ohdear you do if it’s impactful enough and if investors are extremely upset at how much money you have losing value and potential in the bank. It’s not like ABK is a gamble, they make ridiculous profits every year, and have a huge foothold on mobile, a gigantic growth opportunity for MS.

MS almost acquired Discord for 40 billion, they are desperate to get rid of that money and convert it into growth.

Funny enough, had the Discord deal gone through, they would have had not enough money to afford ABK.

@UltimateOtaku91

so excluding those what other new games have they put onto playstation?

Two new Minecraft games, Minecraft Dungeons (already out) and Minecraft Legends (coming soon.)

They also released the Quake Remaster on PS5 post acquisition, without being bound by any contractual obligation.

Not a stellar list (unless you love Minecraft) but it’s also not “nothing”.

As for taking things away, this is nothing new in the industry. Nintendo also did it with Xeno when they acquired Monolith.

@rjejr people that like digital games, and want that specific game, might find it a good deal… then again those people might rather buy the all digital PS5 bundle that is not on sale…

mrpunisher always do.

@mrpunisher if you mean a single console is not enough, never. At my peak, I had 4 PS4s in the house so I could play games on any room I happened to be in. 🙃

Gave away one of them when I got the PS5... now I ... technically still have 4 PlayStations hooked up to different screens😅

@get2sammyb hmm well given that, I'll give myself till the end of the weekend to make some budgeting and decide if I should or should not pull the trigger on that second unit. My partner might appreciate it.

I guess its a cut on the bundle, but still above base price. Wish the game included was a disk and not a digital code. I would not mind a second PS5 for the living room but don't care for digital code game bundles.

Edit: just noticed they also have the base unit in stock on Amazon.... that's odd... these no longer selling out? I know they said their stock issues were fixed, but didn't expect the thing to be easily found online.

@johnny30 what about all other PlayStation first party games? Even if they make it to PC, they seem set to have a 12 month gap, and not all games are likely to be ported.

@johnny30

Wonder what this means for diablo 4 and beyond if it goes through

It wont mean anything for Diablo 4, even if the acquisition closes before launch, it takes months for restructuring to actually happen, so I doubt it will even launch of Game Pass, even in such a situation.

All this means for D4 is that eventually it will hit Game Pass, likely by the end of the year for sure.

Diablo 5 is likely another 10 years away, though, and that I expect to be PC and XBox only.

@Ohdear

And before you ask, I know they won’t because I work in finance for a multinational company. So this will be serviced by debt to some extent. And debt has become very expensive in the last 12 months. The days of cheap game pass are numbered.

For someone that works in finance, you don't seem to have a good grasp on equity and how bad it is to keep so much cash at hand during a period of high inflation.

I obviously have not read this whole comment thread but... about the constant "CoD killer"... there already is one... it's called Fortnite. Just because it's not an FPS, does not mean it isn't competing for a very similar audience.

We must demand regulatory agencies make sure they don’t make System Shock remake exclusive to the Atari VCS!!!

@sentiententity I think it has a lot to do with the broader adoption of public transportation, people are a lot more likely to have time to kill with mobile entertainment, and it’s just convenient if you can dock that thing once you get home to play on a bigger screen.

Those software sales… yikes, Nintendo…

And total switch units 48,985. Vs 40,381

Gives Sony plenty of time to figure how to sell us The Last of Us Part II PS5 “Remake”.

I would not mind this even on console if there is a story and the gatcha stuff is entirely optional. Hell, tempted to just hook up my android phone to the TV and hook up a controller to it, if this allows for it, play it that way.

@NomNom NFTs are not needed for that to happen. All a platform holder needs to do is to just allow transfers of games, but no one wants to do that.

Closest thing we have to it is on Steam with some traceable digital cards and junk that don’t need any NFT garbage to work. But let’s face it: devs and platform holders like that digital games are practically disposable.

Isn’t this like comparing the Ps5 to the Switch?

@nomither6

how do you think they could pull it off ? isnt superman invincible ..whos even his villain , a clone ? lol .

There is an endless array of foes that can give Superman a run for his money. Doomsday, Darkseid, Bizarro, Metallo, General Zod, Brainiac, Lobo, Mongul, Parasite, Ultraman (technically himself from another universe) etc etc.

There are plenty of beings in DC that can go toe to toe with him, including some fellow heroes like Wonder Woman or Captain Marvel.

Thats on top of anyone wielding an small green rock, or enough magic. It does not help him when it's a combo, Wonder Woman and Captian Marvel are both examples of characters that are almost as physically strong but on top wield magic.

TLDR: a Superman game can easily be made where you are not just yawning at enemies, it would just not be a game where you are dealing with street thugs. You would spend most levels exploring alien planets and/or fending off extra-dimensional threats.

Any developer buying assets from epic or Unity stores needs to be very aware how full of pirated assets those stores are.

If you are caught selling a game that uses those assets, and are sued, the “I just bought them from x store” defense won’t save you. You will lose such a lawsuit.

Don’t buy assets from vendors that don’t have a long vetoed history unless you only plan to use them as placeholders for quick prototyping and replace them all during development, and even that I would advice against because it’s easy to “forget” or let some slip through.

It’s very interesting how inverted gaming and tv are at the moment.

While certain companies find it unsustainable to offer games day one on subscription services, TV shows are day one streaming without an option to buy at all, and only become available for sale after everyone had a chance to watch the whole thing for free.

Yet you don’t see show producers complaining about unsustainability, or what not.

@johnny30 by modern definitions, its a live service game, and what you describe is what makes it one of the best service games out there.

You seem to have stopped just as they started introducing a fix to your issue, starting with Shadowbringers, and continuing with Endwalker, they added NPCs you can run the dungeons with, no need to bring anyone along and you can take all the time you want appreciating the dungeon design and the small details added by the devs.

I have not played in quite a while now, but they started going through all old story dungeons to add that NPC aid system. Their plan is slowly phased so will take them a while to add it to all story dungeons, but it's headed that way. I usually go back every time they release an expansion, and take my time playing through the story, then only come back when the next expansion is coming near, and the current expansion extra story content is all out.

As another Game Pass Day one game, will be interesting to see the impact of being in Game Pass will have on PS5 version adoption. My prediction is it wont have any impact, and most people will play where they prefer to play it.

@johnny30

Open for people to change my opinion though

Final Fantasy XIV is, IMO the best service game out there. Playing it from start to finish, its the longest and most immersive Final Fantasy story arc ever, can be played almost entirely solo (with scripted AI companions,) and you never are time pressed out of FOMO to complete some ridiculous season pass grinding.

Mind you, there can be some grinding if you are done with the story and just want to achieve the strongest super boss content, but its optional and one can easily complete all story content, cancel the subscription, and come back later when enough story content has been released to enjoy another month of awesome story content, maybe never bother with those super boss encounters.

I could see them starting work on an offline mode, but yea, there is no way they will address any of the main issues without a way longer delay.

@Shstrick

They made public statements about the offer, but didn’t mention to the public that the offer included Sony paying a licensing fee that would be larger than the entire profit margin of PS+ Extra. “Sure, you can put COD on PS+, but it’s going to cost you $30 a year per user, even if they never download a COD game.”

There was a lot redacted on that document (funny enough, I have the pdf open to the left of this window right now since yesterday) and I am assuming the $30 you mention is an assumption, unless you found a leak of an unredacted document somewhere.

Based on the document I am looking at, there is too much redacted to jump to firm conclusions, but I am rather certain that the "per user" fee is only based on users that download and actually play the game for X amount of hours, not every active user.

There is also a reason why MS does not offer yearly bundles, upgrade tricks aside (can only be done once per account) the yearly cost of Game Pass is minimum $120, if you want to play online [on xbox] you need the Ultimate tier, thats $180 a year.

Sony underpriced their multi-game subscription plans, and that makes it harder for them to find the margins to include games day one. They could always just add it to the Premium tier, they already been rather arbitrary at adding some games to that tier only, or they could revamp the Premium tier entirely, bump its price further and actually add look at adding more day one titles at that point.

Anyways, I rambled a lot already, my original point remains: I am certain the licensing is only applicable based on subscribers that actually download and play the game.

@Nem getting into the realm of monopoly concern in the gaming industry would require MS to buy Tencent or Sony itself.

It's an extremely fragmented industry with hundreads of developers and publishers. It's almost impossible to control the whole market.

And MS does not have infinite funds. After this, they will be left with around 35 billion cash in hand, and that fund has been getting smaller every year. It's not realistic to expect MS to be able to do another acquisition of this scale.

They might still get their hands on another household name, but not one that is actually that large. I could see them trying to acquire Sega Sammy Holdings (a 3.93 billion market cap, and a company that has struggled in the last few years) but Sega isn't that big.

@Artois2

Sells better on PlayStation though

what does that have to do with the discussion?

@Artois2

final fantasy hasn’t performed exceptionally on Xbox though has it? So yeah there is that

If selling millions of copies does not cut it for you...

Edit:
Keep in mind the point of reference here is Tomb Rider, a game where the first entry actually disappointed Square, everywhere. MS paid about 100 million to even make the sequel happen, it is way above what any timed exclusivity deal would usually go for, and without it Square likely would had never made that sequel.

So if you are going to say that FF never did "exceptionally" on xbox despite selling millions of copies, well, Tomb Rider did worse on PS3.

@naruball

It would be as if Sony took a game that performed exceptionally on another console and paid for exclusivity. Has there been such a case?

… are you honestly asking that in a year where one of the biggest PS5 exclusives is going to be Final Fantasy 16?

Lots of FUD from Sony, that does not hold water given how they have treated Minecraft on the platform. They even gave Minecraft PSVR support, something they Xbox version lacks.

Microsoft is not going to sabotage their game on any platform for the lols.

Wait, this wasn’t a thing already???

@sjbsixpack Take Two has a market cap of $19.7 billion. I think it’s safe to say they are slightly out of Sonys budget.

Also see this thread full of wishful thinking, but you don’t just go and acquire any publisher or developer you feel like just because you can pay the market cap + premium. The entity itself must want to sell, and that is rarely likely unless the entity is struggling, be it financially, with legal issues or both.

We do know Sega had had some issues in the past and forced to sold some assets. We know Square Enix is also struggling. Other than that, nothing that has been brought up seems to fit the bill.

@ImGumbyDammit Final Fantasy is a big name, but it’s not that big of a profit maker. In fact I predict they will claim they are disappointed with the sales of FF16, not because of low sales but because SE is doing some very garbage accounting.

Again, they basically gave away Tomb Rider, thad is not, as you say, a “yahoo”.

@IOI indeed, was just noting that the current market cap itself was above the max spending budget for the entirety of Sony, making it a very unlikely acquisition, at leas in full.

There is also my hypothetical scenario of SE only selling some studios and IP, specifically the Final Fantasy stuff, but I doubt they would want to part with such a household name… then again they basically gave Tomb Rider away for pennies.

@NomNom

Square Enix however is worth less than 5 billion

As of this writing, Square Enix Holdings Co. Ltd market cap is $5.58 billion.

@IAmAshCohen17

I still maintain Square is a bit pointless given how much of theirs is exclusive anyway.

if Square Enix (or just the Square side goes up for sale, Sony will have little choice but to bid on it, as the next owner can likely be less kin to exclusivity deals, or they might actually approach Xbox themselves if they can’t find a buyer.

@Nem Microsoft had never been considered a monopoly in gaming, by any stretch of the word. It only ever was considered a monopoly in the OS arena, back in the 90s, and they used that power to push into the internet browser market.

These days, the OS marker is no longer a monopoly, most consumer computers might run windows but in the overall market iOS and Android give Windows a run for its money. This is a bit of topic though, my point is that MS is using its bank account to expand its gaming portfolio, but not its power in the OS market. A monopolistic power move from MS would be to find a way to force Windows users to buy from the Windows Marketplace and block Steam, yet they do the opposite: sell their games on Steam.

I know it’s not popular, especially around here, that MS is making big acquisitions, but it’s still nowhere near the realm of monopoly concerns.

Personally, I would like it if Sony acquired Square off Enix. Would not mind seeing Sony take responsibility over Final Fantasy, but really would like the Dragon Quest and publishing side to stay independent entities.

Given how Square has been shedding studios and IPs like a gecko sheds tails (first IOI then Edios) I think it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibilities.

But I have a feeling they rather use the capital for more anime industry takeovers. It seems Sony want to get the same grip they have on music over Anime.

@ShogunRok @Snake_V5 Microsoft does not have unlimited money, although it sure can feel like it. As of December 2022, they had $104 billion (cash in hand) and based on the amount on hand on previous years it’s hard to guess if the 69 billion for ABK has been deducted or not.

I am assuming it has not, that would leave them with about 35 billion, give or take as many billions as they have made or lost in the last 3 months. That’s a big chunk of change, but not enough to make another ABK size deal.

@Nem your statement to me could had been better phrased then:

Iwould think that the fact Microsoft has a history of monopoly abuse to be the main argument. Not so much Sony.

That final “not so much Sony”, in that context, sounded like Sony has never abused its influence on any field, while they actively do it to this day.

@DeathlySW don’t know how Austria works but I’m sure this is equivalent to the US small claims courts, that tend to be designed precisely with the hurdles of legal costs in mind. In the US for example, in such courts lawyers are not allowed for either party.

@rjejr gambling is legal in Austria but very closely regulated, and taxed. I don’t have all the details and didn’t have the time to hunt it down but running a gambling operation in ways that hide from the law likely runs afoul of multiple laws, including tax evasion ones.

@Nem if you think Sony does not have a history of monopolistic practices, you need to do some homework on their behavior in the music industry and their recent steps to devour all anime distribution they can get their hands on.

@Gamer83

What's more pathetic, MS has been buying studios and publishers left and right with squat to show for it.

Sorry for the double reply but wanted to reply to this point separately. MS has had nothing to show for it of personal gain yet, but most of those studios have been delivering content since them being acquired, it just happens most of those titles were already committed to be delivered on multiple platforms or locked on deals.

• Obsidian: The Outer Worlds, Grounded, Pentiment, and working on Avowed and Outer Worlds 2
• inXile: Wasteland 3, Wasteland 1 Remastered, who knows what they working on next.
• Mojang: Minecraft Legends, Minecraft Dungeons
• Double Fine: Psychonauts 2, who knows what they working on next.
• ZeniMax: Deathloop, Ghostwire: Tokyo and multiple ESO and FO76 expansions, Skyrim Anniversary, with Redfall is around the corner and Starfield coming later this year.

Only acquisitions that have not delivered anything since being acquired are:

• Undead Labs (technically they been adding content to state of decay 2)
• Ninja Theory (they did deliver Bleeding Edge, but that didn't manage to compete with Overwatch)
• Compulsion Games (who knows what on earth they are doing...)

My point is, I guess, all these people been working (I do question Compulsion Games), and it can take 5 years or more these days to deliver a Triple A game from scratch, which I guess is what most people refer to when they say "Xbox has not delivered anything with all their studios", other than Mojang, none have been around for long enough to deliver such a thing, and only ZeniMax already had Triple A projects in development at the time of acquisition.

@Gamer83 every case is different, nothing is "as simple as we getting exclusives or not".

Bethesda's case, they were not doing well. The quality of their games was going downhill in a search for MTX to save them, and as of late they were taking money to make games exclusives, something they had never done before. They were struggling financially and would had likely gone the way of the old THQ had MS not swooped in to buy them.

Do you think it would had been better for players, developers, and the industry all if Zenimax simply collapsed and was sold in chunks to random publishers, and have many of their teams simply disappear?

Activision is a different situation, but at least we know they wont be taking CoD away from anyone, in fact, this whole thing will bring CoD back to Nintendo platforms.

It's not like MS is going out there and forcing publishers to sell either, or doing hostile takeovers. The publishers they have gone for so far are ones that wanted to sell. Who else would be able to buy ABK in whole? And also want to do so? Only one I can think of is Tencent, and although Tencent would likely keep every game multi-platform, that would be a true monopolistic threat. Tencent is too large already on the game publishing arena.

I do think post this it would be very sketchy for MS to buy yet another publisher... but at the same time, if the option is between MS buying Ubisoft, or Ubisoft going the way of THQ... I think I would prefer it be acquired in whole by someone that will keep them running. I do hope somehow the company [Ubisoft] can recover, though. I think we all have heard that they been trying to sell themselves off, with no success.