RobN

@Wiceheid This may be a nuanced point of argument, but I think it's important.

I would argue that machine learning would be even better than human QA testers at trying strange things that weren't intended - heck, it could throw billions of random keyboard/controller inputs at the application in more iterations than a human tester ever could, 24/7 for however long you let it run.

However, training it so it understands when the results aren't acceptable is going to be difficult. Humans will need to be heavily involved, probably manually reviewing results - to an extent that you may lose the benefit of millions of attempted playthroughs, because nobody can review all that output and see game-breaking bugs the AI didn't realize were bugs.

So I agree with you - to a point. But there are certain strategies QA teams are going to try with certain objectives in mind - can I find some way to move that gets me "out of bounds" in the game? Those strategies can probably be taught to AI and it can try many more permutations than the human testers can.

It won't be perfect. But it might do a better job capturing the low-hanging fruit that the current QA system seems to be doing. That's not a knock on the current QA testers so much as, as you pointed out, the industry not devoting the resources to them at all the right stages of development.

There are things current AI can do well, and there are things it can't. Creativity is one it can't.

Debugging is one it might actually be useful - if the computer can find a bug in a tenth of the time it takes a developer, the developer likely isn't out of a job so much as they're on to building the next thing. An AI can play a game thousands of times and be taught to look for certain QA issues, and find them faster than real play testers. But at the same time it may not recognize other game-breaking issues as problems if it hasn't seen them before to be trained on them - it won't understand the way a human does what is acceptable and what isn't.

I'm generally pessimistic on AI as we are currently building it - but this is a use case that might actually make more sense than 98% of the use cases I've seen out there.

@Exerion76 Cutscenes from actual game are still better than dramatic cinematic clips that aren't directly related to ANY game, as the ads they released last week depict.

This ad helps tie the others together better. It ties the "extreme experiences" to actual games, where the prior ads were just sensational, but not actually tied to any real PS5 experience.

I'm still waiting for the game that lets me jump a tanker truck over a skyscraper, though. Motorstorm isn't a surprise drop on the PS5, is it?

I couldn't choose Alan Wake 2.

I know, it's not a new game for October - but since it hit Plus in October, it was new to me, and I'm enjoying it. Hope to finish it before my Plus subscription expires.

I even picked up the DLC on sale - I was thrilled to see Jesse from Control show up!!!

Here's an attempt to get at perceived value.

I got an email from Sony today bragging that the free Essentials titles offered "More than $99 worth of games for you to keep"

So I went to psdeals.net, looked up the lowest recorded price (US dollars) for each of the three games:
Stray: 17.99
TABS: 9.99
WRC 24: 12.49

That's $40.47 of "value," not "More than $99" as Sony is claiming (which I assume is based on MSRP).

I think the best sale price is a reasonable indicator of value, as it's a price you realistically could have paid and typically reflects (at least in part) the age of the game.

It would be hard to do that for all the titles for all time - in part because you'd need to stick with pre-Plus sale prices only. But I think tracking those numbers would be more interesting than the metacritic numbers.

I'm old enough to remember when MySpace was some new thing the kids were doing, and thought every page I saw was horrible and it wouldn't last.

Screen shot reminds me of PC Link, I think it was - exclusive to Tandy computers (from Radio Shack), and a precursor to AOL. It was DOS-based (or rather, tied to their proprietary GUI on top of DOS, which was an early competitor to Windows before Windows was anything anybody used), with an interface that looked a lot like that. It was screaming fast on my whopping high-speed 2400-baud modem, too!

I get the idea of advertising the brand, but this feels odd to me. What happens when someone says "That looks awesome! I want the game where I jump a tanker over a skyscraper - where do I buy that game?"

It doesn't feel as obviously abstract as some earlier examples of Playstation advertising, where players encountered game characters from multiple franchises, or put on gear over their work clothes and started fighting.

First off, you CAN argue with numbers and charts - saying otherwise tells me you haven't ever looked at sports statistics. Who's the greatest basketball player EVER?

But second, I think the methodology used here has a fatal flaw. It bases everything on the metacritic score - EVERYTHING. Which is fine, you need some metric to measure. But I argue two games with the same score might have a very VERY different value.

Here's a simple example: a game with a 90 metacritic score that was just released and has never gone on sale from its $80 retail price is not the same as a game with a 90 metacritic score that's been out for 5+ years and has regularly been on sale for $10 or less. This chart would treat both game identically, but fans are going to be a lot more excited about one over the other - for good reason.

As a specific example, the Plus list is padded with sports games (Madden, NBA, FIFA, etc) for the prior year dropped into Plus just before the next year's edition rolls out. Anyone who really cared much about those titles already own the version that's being retired even as it's dropped on Plus, so the metacritic score doesn't really mean much for that title - most people either own it or don't want to own it, with a very small group in between who might appreciate the prior-season's game that's also $10 in the bargain bin.

So I'd tinker with the metric, and add something like a "lowest sale price prior to release on Plus" value as another factor in the calculation.

I see a LOT of people here saying some variation of "the next Xbox will just be a PC." You're all missing two points.

First, the CURRENT Xbox is basically a PC - it's running a version of Windows under the hood, with DirectX for everything just like a Windows PC. It's just a locked-down game-centric PC that can only play games from the XBox store.

Which brings me to the second point - if the next XBox can play games from the XBox store, then it won't be "just" a PC unless they open that XBox store to all PCs. If the store remains locked to XBox-branded hardware, then that hardware won't be "just" a PC, even if it's even more PC-like than it is now (with the ability to run Steam or Epic or GOG or whatever).

Now, there's a lot we don't know yet, and a lot of time for Microsoft to change their mind on anything we think we know.

I don't pay for PS5 multiplayer now.

I pay for Plus, but not for multiplayer.

I pay for the online game backup (especially since the PS5 doesn't allow local backups to an external device), I pay for "free" games in the Essential or Extra tier, and - because they had more than 2 of them when I got a deal on an upgrade to Premium - I pay for "free" PSVR2 titles that were exclusive to the Premium tier.

The fact that Plus is required for online multiplayer has ALWAYS been ridiculous, even though I rarely ever take advantage of that benefit from my subscription.

I will definitely give this a shot - though not day 1. I've worked up a backlog of some PSVR2 titles that I'm having a blast with, so I can wait for a sale (and, of course, the inevitable patches).

First off, the people who frequent a site like pushsquare are not representative of the general public, so don't read much into the survey results.

Secondly, physics is a thing. Time is real, at least to the way we experience reality. You only get 1440 minutes in a day, and each minute you spend on social media is a minute you're not spending playing a game, more or less by definition (I'm sure someone will point to some game leveraging social media, but my statement is still generally true).

Gaming competes with all other forms of entertainment, gaming competes with work time, gaming competes with sleeping and eating and going out with friends or family. That's just reality.

@KillerBoy Can we normalize releasing a finish product on release day

Unfortunately, that ship has sailed.

@Americansamurai1 Maybe.

They weren't asking "can it recoup 3 years of development plus what it will cost to finish," they were asking whether spending the next year (or whatever the expectation was) finishing it would be more productive than spending the next year starting over. The expected quality of the end product certainly matters in that decision, as does expected sales based on that quality and the overall market.

But the time and resources you've spent so far matter less than how close to the finish line you are - so the progress is important. Add to that the pace of the prior three years, as opposed to the pace needed to wrap it up and sell it (and no guarantee you can change the pace), and the progress so far is incredibly important.

@Americansamurai1 You're falling into the sunk cost fallacy - because they've spent three years on it, they have to keep spending on it or they've lost all that time and effort and money.

But that time and effort and money is gone no matter what happens.

Moving forward, can they be more successful working on something new, or trying to work themselves out of a dead end? Sometimes you need a fresh start, because what you're trying just isn't working.

Let's be honest about Day 1 releases in 2025 and beyond - they're almost always a beta version, even with the Day 1 patch. In most cases, you'll be better off waiting 3-12 months for the bulk of the patches to be released (and you'll save money waiting for a sale, too).

If it's a multiplayer game where early play gives you an advantage, you might have an incentive to jump in early. And if it's had an extended early access period or some form of real beta test, there's a chance Day 1 will be great. But if it's single player and it hasn't been through some sort of early access/beta window, there is no good reason to buy Day 1 unless you're a reviewer.

People say "support the devs," and I get that - but what about supporting the customers?

A suggestion for this and future reviews of headsets for the PS5 - test it with PSVR2, and cover how well they fit when wearing both.

@AdamNovice THIS. I want The Motorstorm Remastered Collection, with all the titles in one massive PS5 super bundle.

The sales for Motorstorm must have been really awful, for them to go this long without touching them as remasters/remakes. We're getting remakes of everything else.

For a lot of us, Burnout Paradise is the only game in the franchise we've played, so comparisons to earlier games in the series just aren't possible. The PS3 was my first Playstation, and while I played some racing games on PC before then, I'd go back to arcade games (as far back as Night Rider - yes, I'm that old) before I'd go to prior Burnout games.

So I'm interested in comparisons to Burnout Paradise - it was the first (and maybe still ONLY) online multiplayer where I really enjoyed the online component. As @Member_the_game pointed out, it's got competition with Forza Horizon on the Playstation now, but I'm not sure how big a deal that is for me - especially given how much I fell in love with FH4 but was underwhelmed by FH5, which felt like a cookie cutter clone on a map that somehow wasn't as interesting to me.

I want to give it a shot, but I get the feeling I'll be disappointed if offline play is seriously lacking.

The ability Epic has to print money thanks to Fortnite keeps turning a lot of heads - just like the big Powerball jackpots have millions of people buying lottery tickets. From a big-picture perspective of someone managing a portfolio of studios, having 10 studios each try to make a game where just one moderate success can pay for all the other failures seems like a good bet.

What are acceptable odds for someone managing a lot of studios are lousy odds for any one of those studios. And that's assuming the 1/10 chance of getting lucky holds - but when everyone else is making the same bet, it's more like 1/100 chance, if that.

What's even worse is that if one of your 10 studios has a hit which pays off, that means 9 studios fail. It's tempting for the portfolio manager to let those 9 just fold up and go away, rather than leveraging the one success to keep the other studios alive.

Studios have to start making some games that can turn an acceptable profit on lower overall sales (lower prices, fewer sold, whatever). Have your blockbuster releases, but mix in some smaller experiences which don't take so many resources to make. If your game has to break sales records to break even, you're in trouble.

Let's say this prediction is 100% correct. I guarantee that day one, PC enthusiasts will be complaining about how bad the new XBox is (compared to what they bought for 2-4x the price), and of course they'll absolutely hate the PS6.

But third party developers will optimize for both pieces of hardware as they'll become standard platforms to target, and they'll both do really well for several years.

I don't buy multiplayer military shooters, unless I'm doing it just for the campaign - so I'm rarely interested in Battlefield or COD.

For those of you that love this stuff, hope it's good.

I might install this and run around a while to see what it looks like now, but it's been so long since I last played, I don't know how much fun it will be trying to relearn the...Control controls.

But hey, new outfits to try again, why not? Because dress-up is why I play these games. (no, not really)

The snarky part of me wants to know why you gave short shrift to [checks notes] Barbie Horse Trails. Surely something with a built-in fan base.

The serious part of me says "PixelJunk Eden 2? I didn't know PixelJunk was still making stuff! Cool!!!"

@Oram77 True, I didn't listen to any of it - just reviewed the chapter stops.

"And for the record, we're not including PS5 ports of existing PS4 games here;"

Umm...you're not? How did these make your list, then?
TLoU Part 1
Cyberpunk 2077 (PS4 only at launch)
Demon's Souls

I guess a PS3 port isn't the same, even if it had a PS4 port in between.

Or did you mean you're not including PS4-native games which perform better on the PS5?

This sounds like a critique from someone who has never read literature.

Shakespeare dealt with these themes. You'll find these themes in some of the oldest surviving writings, and in modern movies. They're appealing because they're universal.

Get off your PS or PC and go read a good book, if you can handle encountering some of these same themes yet again.

Look closer - not just a mark on the wall, bricks from that gap lying on the ground!

Are those real bricks, or art attached to the wall?

The only thing worse than social media is the fact that people like this likely GET PAID from the traffic they generate (as someone pointed out, including traffic from the link in this very article). Monetization sounds great in theory, but like so many other things, the unintended consequences have proven to be very, VERY bad for society at large.

People forget a key element here - Microsoft is not interested in maximizing revenue per game. Game developers/publishers are, because they only profit when you spend money on THEIR game, but Microsoft (and Sony and Steam and Apple and all other storefront owners) are interested in maximizing overall revenue. They want us to spend more, collectively, even if that means spending less per game but on more games or services.

They're all setting their prices and services accordingly - whether it's Plus or Game Pass or Steam sales, they're trying to get the most money out of us. If Microsoft were to double their prices and lose less than half their subscribers, that's a net win - especially if the ones they do lose end up buying individual games they would not have purchased as subscribers. It's about total overall revenue, not individual success.

And like a lot of subscription services, they really love the people who are paying but not using. There are probably a lot of GP and Plus subscribers who aren't getting decent value from their subscription, objectively comparing the cost of buying what they play against what they pay. I assume Microsoft and Sony LOVE those folks.

$30/month (with no discounts for annual purchases) means you're not getting much of a discount on those $80 games unless you play at least five of them during the year on/around release day.

I suppose you can tweak the math a bit, it's $20/month more than the basic GP, so playing four day-one releases gives you some savings - so long as you also finish them before they leave the service, of course. If you bought them at least you'd "own" them (understanding that especially with digital sales, ownership doesn't always mean what it used to).

Game Pass isn't at all the same value proposition it was at the start - reality is coming.

Comparing it to Plus is still a challenge, because Plus simply doesn't have a tier like GP Ultimate - or even GP Premium, if we're honest.

I'm all for repairable controllers, whether it's a replaceable battery or replaceable joysticks.

Personally, I haven't had much of an issue with controller batteries. My old PS3 controllers basically don't hold a charge at all any more, so I have some USB cables to play with those. My DualShock 4 have short battery lives, but both those and the DualSense will play while plugged into a power source, so it's less critical.

But my DualSense controllers have ALL had stick drift, most before they're a full year old. I've had some replaced, and those have stick drift again. Dealing with dying batteries are easier than dealing with stick drift, I'd rather they focus on fixing the drift over the battery.

Crazy, CRAZY unlikely idea, but...with Microsoft Flight Simulator getting PSVR2 support, what if FH6 is delayed for Playstation to allow PSVR2 support at console launch?

No, I don't think it's likely...but I can dream big crazy dreams.

An exclusive store could be a cool concept - but it's only cool if it's stuff you really REALLY want to buy AND everyone else knows the merchandise is exclusive so wearing it is proof of your in-game accomplishments.

Since I'm not interesting in buying t-shirts or pins, it doesn't matter if it was free or discounted, exclusive or rare - I'm still not interested.

It's nice for the people who do want to buy that stuff, I guess.

I prefer the rewards program before Stars - a flat percentage back as store credit ($5 minimum) so the more you bought the more you got, with no other incentives or bonuses for jumping through arbitrary hoops, and no virtual or real-life gear.

Hmph. My prediction that they wouldn't announce the list this early, with two weeks before they drop, aged poorly.

NICE. I've come close to pulling the trigger on this one, but it felt like it was bound for Plus sooner or later. On the Essential tier is awesome, means I'll "own" it any time I have Plus active.

Okay Sony, do Assassin's Creed Mirage next. Awesome sale right now, just feels ripe for showing up on one of the Plus tiers.

Oh - but an announcement during State of Play is unlikely. The normal announcement date would be next week, on Oct 1 - the Wednesday before the first Tuesday of the month. I predict there will be no announcement of Essential titles during today's State of Play.

This is why you learn some patience, and play something else while you wait for a sale. I'll pick up BL5 on Black Friday, probably - next year. And I'll play a better version than what you're all playing now, too.

The ability to pair your controller with multiple devices is VERY nice - but it's also more complicated than it ought to be. I found it hard to tell which button is associated with which device or to force a button to associate with one device over another. I swap from a PS5 Pro to a PS5 to a PC sometimes, and the functionality works - but it's a bit cumbersome and you almost need a cheat sheet. I see room for improvement - I'd love a small app on the PS5 or PC to manage those pairings and associate them properly.

If you're in a very power constrained environment, perhaps running on generator or battery backup, I could see the benefit...but if you're running on battery backup maybe you have more important things to do than play Death Stranding?

The only practical use case I see is if this is preparing for a handheld device or a "Series S" type device.

I'm waiting for a Black Friday sale...2026. By then it will not only be cheaper (maybe with bundled DLC), but it will be patched and will have better performance.

Unless it hits Plus between now and then.

@RoomWithaMoose Wait, you're telling me a site that is explicitly about Playstation has a pro-Playstation bias? I'm stunned.

It's like waking up one day to allegations one political party is biased against a different political party - surely it can't be true! Snark aside, I genuinely don't understand what point you think you're making - nobody expects pure unbiased editorial from a site for fans of X, they expect some bias in favor of X because it's a site for fans of X presumably run by fans of X.

I'll repeat the summary I said before: Both things can be true at the same time - [subscription services] can be bad for the industry AND good for an individual developer's game.

That doesn't have to mean a pro-Plus anti-GamePass bias (though such a bias might lead to the same conclusion for less-than-logical reasons). I think it's a reasonable conclusion to draw - it's hardly the only thing in life where people make personal choices (perhaps remaining silent about something political to keep their job) that may not be in the best interest of society overall.

I don't trust any developer that won't let reviewers release reviews until the last minute, or any who won't let them review on specific platforms. Not every time this happens is it as bad as Cyberpunk, but it DOES tell you they don't trust their own game. Listen to them.

I'll wait for a sale - a year or two for a good sale, if I must - and everyone knows that means I'll end up playing a more polished game than what anyone else will experience this weekend.

Never good news when the console version isn't reviewed before release day. I don't know if it will be a Cyberpunk-level fiasco, but then nobody else does, either, right?

I think anyone who preorders is a fool - sorry, nothing personal, it's just not a smart response to the current industry. I'll wait for it to go on sale - even if it's an extra-long wait, when I do start it I expect it will be a much better game than it will be this weekend.

@themightyant I picked up Premium on sale, for none of the benefits you mentioned but because of something else - some PSVR2 titles are available free only on the Premium tier. That list has been shrinking since I upgraded several months ago (it was well over a dozen, now there are only about six titles left).

Yes, I understand the free PSVR2 catalog is a niche feature - but I would argue that streaming and PS1/PS2 games are each also niche features.

The math here is really simple.

If we collectively spend less money because of Game Pass or PlayStation Plus than we would spend without them, that's basically bad for game development as an industry, because that's a smaller pie to pass around. If we spend roughly the same, it may still be a bad deal depending on who is taking how large a cut, and how that compared to other distribution methods. It's only good for the industry as a whole if we, collectively, end up spending more money as a whole OR if a higher percentage of what we do spend goes to the people making the games.

Yes, it's really that simple...for the industry as a whole.

Now, for each individual developer and each individual game, the math is different. There's a reason why you don't see Madden or FIFA free on day 1, but they DO often show up on these services at the end of their season, just before the next version comes out. And there's a reason why indies are more likely to take a deal, get some sure money, and put their game on a service.

Both things can be true at the same time - it can be bad for the industry AND good for an individual developer's game.

I've had my eye on The Invincible for a while now, and didn't pull the trigger on multiple recent sales. Now I'm glad I held off.

That's one of the tradeoffs of Plus (or Game Pass) - even when a game isn't on the service, there's some resistance to picking it up if you think it's a good candidate for the service. Not that I'm complaining, but I wonder if the developers would be happier if I'd picked it up on sale.

@rjejr "So is this 96 straight hours of gameplay?"

I suppose that depends in part on whether or not their servers survive for the entire window. Hopefully the crashes are kept to the racetrack, and not the servers.

@Anke I loved FH4 [set in England]. I've played several of them, including FH5, but 4 was my favorite by a mile.

Can I tell you what was different about it, especially compared to FH5? No, not really. But it worked for me in ways FH5 didn't.

They're removing PSVR2 games much faster than they're adding any - despite a ton of PSVR2 games coming out this summer. They had a nice PSVR2 collection, including some for only the Premium tier, but they're all dropping off.

This month it's Pistol Whip leaving, with nothing joining to replace it, AFAIK.