RoomWithaMoose

@Nei Yes, very clever. Pokopia is similar to Builders. No one has pointed that out, and everyone is surprised the same developers made similar games with two different IPs. Given that neither play like Dragon Quest nor Pokemon, not too sure how that's relevant. But yes, good thing to point out...

Pokemon is certainly inspired by Dragon Quest V. I never disputed that. But it's disingenuous to act like Pokemon is a DQ ripoff; you might as well say every JRPG is. They looked at this little, insignificant mechanic in DQV and thought, 'could we expand on that and make an entire game around it?' They did. To the effect that Pokemon was quite unlike anything else at the time.

Does that mean that Pokemon should have exclusive rights to 'catching a monster in a monster ball'? Probably not. But the whole Dragon Quest angle is a really senseless place to start that argument.

@Nei It amuses me how silly Internet people think everyone's a silly fanboy incapable of nuanced thought.

No wait, the other thing — it incredibly annoys me.

Pokemon isn't Dragon Quest and Palworld isn't Pokemon.

@Nei Always feels like this is the argument of people that haven't played Dragon Quest V, Pokemon, and/or Palworld.

You don't even really 'catch' monsters in DQV, they can just randomly join you after buying an arbitrary item at some point in the game. The whole idea of raising and evolving them is non-existent.

I think Pokemon's lawsuit against Pocketpair is a tad ridiculous, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if they lose it. But your defense of Palworld should come from saying they didn't blatantly copy Pokemon, not that Pokemon blatantly copied Dragon Quest/SMT. The former is an admission that Palworld IS a blatant copy, when it really isn't. And ignoring everything about Pokemon that was unique at the time is extremely reductive.

Also, it's plainly obvious Pokemon didn't steal the concept of 'cartoon bat' from DQ. It's likewise obvious Lucario is in Palworld. Nintendo isn't even suing about that, though, so there's little reason to debate it.

@JohntheRaptor All of which reviewed very well.

@Exerion76 Which is why Elden Ring and Breath is the Wild are some of the best reviewed games of all time...

@KundaliniRising333 I'm not upset at you for being excited for this game. Looks like it still has plenty of redeeming qualities; I hope you enjoy it.

I was criticizing your criticism of reviews of the game. If you're excited to play the game, why are you on here arguing with people about it? Just wait until tomorrow and play it. Doing this isn't going to make your experience with the game any better.

@DennisReynolds Based on expectations, yeah it's disappointing.

I'm not really going to defend how the article presents this. I haven't really appreciated a lot of headlines lately... However, 'disappointing' isn't synonymous with 'bad.' I thought the recent Metroid Prime 4 was a decent enough game, but it was a MASSIVE disappointment for me.

@KundaliniRising333 Or maybe you think a well-designed, 'silent' guiding hand is the same as NO/S*** guidance.

Elden Ring opens proper with a big ass, tree-shaped map marker right in your face.

@DennisReynolds People like it, others don't. Collectively, the reception is positive, but it's undoubtedly not the industry-breaking, generational release it was being hyped up as.

If you think you'll enjoy it, you probably will. But these reviews aren't indicative of you having a flawless, exceptional time.

Also worth noting that a lot of reviews, positive and negative, cite an acute lack of polish. I'm not reading through them extensively, so maybe they mean from a purely design perspective, but that doesn't bode well for the PS5 version otherwise.

@KundaliniRising333 One day you'll play a game and realize the difference between implicit hand holding and legitimately poor, obfuscated design.

Maybe tomorrow...

@Haruki_NLI Because PS5 sales made up less than 50% of profits despite being the lead platform — leading over PC by a wide margin.

Let's say PS5 was 45%, say "wide margin" is 10% — so PC was 35%. That leaves 20% between Switch 2 and Xbox. Which isn't nothing, and we're being very conservative with these numbers.

@psmr Doing a stupid because someone else did a stupid doesn't make said stupid any less stupid.

More importantly, though, the negative reception of Starfield was not primarily a response to desperate fanboys pre-appraising it. It was a disappointing game that disappointed a lot of people. The vitriol seems so harsh because everyone was hoping for better and it didn't deliver. Simple as that.

Loud fanboys are NEVER the crux of the discourse.

@psmr Or it's not a stupid fanboy response to stupid fanboys, and the game just legitimately disappointed a lot of people.

Plenty will focus on the displacement from expectations well before general quality.

@lazarus11 They locked physical copies. One would presume they all shipped with the street date lock, otherwise the lock wouldn't really do anything. The implication there being you would have to download an update for your disc to lock the game; people could hypothetically just not download the update and access the full game, then.

Downloads are already all auto-locked until launch day regardless of pre-loads. I would know, 80% of my pre-orders are downloaded a week before launch and I can't open any of them without passing a digital access check.

Which is all to say: this Korean guy probably didn't show real PS5 footage. It was only removed because either he figured he couldn't lie about it after the physical copy lock news or Pearl Abyss marketing didn't want his videos to obfuscate their marketing efforts.

@Balaam_ This is the ownership argument, indeed.

Although, to play devil's advocate:
You don't own software...ever. Buy physical or digital, and you're just licensing access to software from said software's legal owner. You own a physical device with software data burned onto it if you buy physical, but that's it. Practically no different from buying digital and storing that data on a hard drive. Either way, you own a hard copy of the data.

This is important, because your license to play a physical game can be revoked just like your license to play digital. Because you don't own anything. Crimson Desert's street date enforcement should be all the evidence you need of that — nothing technologically stopping a company from saying one day, "nope, all physical copies of 'BLANK' won't work after this update."

Do I think any company would ever do that? No, but I also don't think any company's going to revoke your digital purchases aside from perma-bans for braking the user agreement. Should revoking access to purchases after a perma-ban even be legal? Probably not, and this is where I think the conversation should be.

The big difference between owning a HDD with game data and a Blu-ray with game data is the latter doesn't need account authorization to work. Maybe...digital shouldn't either. Maybe, once we buy a game, physical or digital, it should be our prerogative to do what we want with that data. Be it ripping disc data, burning digital data onto a disc, storing data on any hard storage, and playing if off of any hard storage.

THAT is true ownership.

I like that they're actual SEGA characters this time. Probably didn't need two Yakuza reps. But this roster is all over the f***in' place, so why even scrutinize the nitty gritty.

Should've had ball-form Red, though. Weird anthropomorphic movie Angry Birds are — I'm going to assume for no good reason — why the franchise is dead. At the very least, it turns fairly charming li'l guys into generic, 'whatever' cartoon birds.

@Frmknst Why are you buying it in the first place if you plan on selling it? Just rent it or stay on PS+ Premium/GamePass/both's offerings.

If individual ownership isn't a part of the equation, I see zero reason to be anti-digital.

Didn't Silent Hill f launch with — and maybe still has — s*** PSSR? Do we really care that much what the s*** PSSR developer thinks about PSSR 2.0? Unless it completely fixes f's implementation.

Hopefully that means no one on the team is crunching right now. Given the dev cycle, hopefully no one crunched at any point.

Very much looking forward to the game. Even though it'll likely just be worse Arkham. Although it has an advantage over the other worse Arkham game thanks to local co-op.

Anyone else see Digital Foundry's '4 Hours In...' PS5 Pro preview? Anyone else think it looked significantly worse than their promotional videos, and doesn't hold a candle to Yotei?

Scale was impressive. Varied and meticulous world details were impressive. Early-game traversal is ripped straight out of Zelda. DF's preview kinda sucked ("look how effortlessly you can jump off a horse," "it's crazy how enemy AI can climb houses.")

Doesn't the day 1 patch basically make most physical copies without downloads incomplete? And just...updates in general.

If you wanna preserve games, download the most up-to-date version onto an external hard drive. Discs have been ill-equipped to preserve games for over a decade now; they're mostly just collector's items for people that don't trust digital in a digital world (a controversial statement, I'm sure). To put it bluntly: there's a reason companies don't store all their data on a bunch of Blu-rays.

And, even considering all that, every subsequent issue of physical copies will probably have this pre-downloaded. So there ya go.

This is a stupid outrage.

EDIT: They never even said they were releasing every game on everything.

It'll probably be a fun sandbox of ideas that never quite come together into anything remarkable.

At a certain point, I just get tired of both sides of this conversation. Spirited analysis is good fun, but no one should deeply care if games sink or swim besides active players.

If you want a game you've no intention of playing to fail, do something else. If you want a game you've nary an intention of playing to succeed...maybe play that game and help it out. No one's gaining anything from these debates, and it does little if anything to actually sway a game's chances. Either way you think, you're better off waiting to see what happens than spitting vitriol into the void.

@Nyne11Tyme You realize you just said the 3 biggest non-Pokemom JRPG franchises don't sell enough to be seen as massive successes.

And you think a PlayStation exclusive new IP JRPG presumably from a newly founded, unproven studio is going to blow them out of the water, and then some?

@Haruki_NLI Considering there are still notable Squeenix games not on Xbox or Switch, you are probably right.

@3Above The Adventures of Elliot isn't a Switch exclusive. Or are you talking about the demo?

Pretty likely the demo will be released on PS5 before launch. Why's it exclusive to Switch 2 in the first place? I don't know. Does it really matter?

@Ken_Kaniff All because of out of touch execs? You wanna see hundreds of developers lose their jobs and fabled gaming franchises die just so you don't have to hear business blabber?

@cragis0001 It's either a hiccup, or some strife between Squeeney and Sony that likewise doesn't involve Nintendo or Microsoft.

Either way, I'm honestly curious how many people complaining here intended to buy Bravely Default HD in the first place.

@KawakiisaFraud What if I want PlayStation news?

@Vyse_the_Legend I like this idea.

@cragis0001 Or...neither Nintendo or Microsoft had any input in this.

Seems much more likely to me that this is some hiccup in the PS5 version rather than any behind the scenes conspiring over this game no one cares about.

@Areus Tell that to Sony.

Also...why are people hyping up Sony's marketing as though they have the best selling games in the industry?

@Cloud34156 Maybe they gave ports of Bravely Default HD and Octopath Traveller zero marketing budget, and it generally takes longer to get PlayStation certification but they didn't see a need in delaying other console ports to have universal launches for these low-selling games.

Maybe people should calm down about this game they probably don't care about in the first place that will likely come to PlayStation within a month...

@Areus Like Sony would ever do that. Or a Sony produced JRPG has any chance of competing with Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest.

This article reads so spitefully. Especially with this unfounded speculation that Microsoft sought out a not-actually-exclusive deal just to spite Sony, I guess? Like, why would Microsoft go out of their way to get a Switch exclusive remake of a 3DS game out on their console before PlayStation? As though any of their users would give a s***.

@Andy22385 That's splitting hairs, though. If someone wants a handheld with the Dualsense form factor, it's a sensible purchase. But it's not like other options are massive downgrades.

It's like, if Netflix released a custom OS tablet that only streamed Netflix. Say it was somehow the best official way to stream and browse Netflix; I could see Netflix enthusiasts being really into it, but no one else would be impressed when their phone or tv app works just fine.

@GirlVersusGame What did you want clarification on? The article?

@Andy22385 That's not easy?

For one, you could get a grip for your phone for cheaper than the Portal. So that's a comparable handheld option.

Me personally, I remote play onto the designated living room tablet, if I'm ever inclined. That tablet has a case with a built-in stand (makes propping up really easy) and is the second saved device on my Dualsense (switching is as easy as holding a face button while turning on the Dualsense). A very easy, not fumble-worthy process. I would probably play this way a lot more if I didn't just default to the Switch for any off-TV shenanigans.

@Propaperpusher But you don't need the Portal to get any of the benefits PS5 Pro-streaming affords.

@Slayer25c Me? Well, I wasn't referring to myself in that response, but yeah. I cry about old games I can't currently play all the time.

Do you not like old games? Honestly a shame if you don't; a lot of them still hold up.

Streaming is a fine feature. I was just pointing out that if someone subbed to Premium specifically for old ass games rather than streaming, I reckon they're pretty justified in crying over the offerings.

@CallMeDuraSouka Doesn't...this literal article dispute the Portal being the "The Best Way to steam PS5"? Or do you mean cloud stream?

Unless you're saying Greenlight is the best. I mean, if Greenlight is buttery smooth, but playing it on Steam Deck gets uncomfortable, wouldn't Greenlight on a more ergonomic port-PC be the winning combo?

@lazarus11 "he started the game from the dashboard so its not fake"

Ooo-ho, you might be surprised to learn how easy it is to fake literally everything. That the footage was low quality doesn't help its case, either. Also...is the game even Gold yet...?

@Slayer25c But if someone got it to play old ass games, don't you think they're justified in freaking crying?

For the extra $25 annually, you might as well get a NSO sub and a yearly pizza.

@CielloArc Read about it for 10 minutes. I guess you can say SAG-AFTRA's pressures on actors and companies is a little asinine. But, at the same time, I don't know how else it could function. If actors do non-union work, they might as well not be in a union. If companies have a massive pool of non-union workers, they wouldn't employ the union at all. To try and force actors to stay in-union and companies to commit to that union fully seems the only feasible way to ensure there's a powerful union with any pull in the industry.

Given that this all started with SAG-AFTRA pushing for protections in light of AI developments really doesn't paint them as the bad guy at all. And, for MiHoYo specifically, the only real ethical excuse they have for not signing the contract is saying they're a Chinese company that already adheres to their country's applicable protections. Anything else, and MiHoYo is definitely the bad guy.

Even though I didn't read up on it much at all, I'm guessing the anti-SAG-AFTRA stuff comes from accusations of corruption or internal bullying, the idea that they dismiss MiHoYo's Chinese-affiliated protections specifically because they want MiHoYo money, and/or presumable incompetence concerning international government protections. Do let me know if I'm missing more, but in regards to these:

Corruption sucks, but if it's still functioning as intended, I can't fault the organization over it.

Bullying sucks, but that's just a moral failure to enforce the necessary pull the union needs to be relevant.

MiHoYo money is good for the actors it represents, so wanting MiHoYo money can be seen as ethically justified.

I'm no professional on internationally-sourced labor, but I would imagine that if MiHoYo is using American actors, it would need some level of compliance with American labor laws. Even if they aren't an American company, they kinda are by proxy if they're hiring workers in America (again, not a professional on this ). For that American labor, Chinese labor laws are irrelevant and likely doesn't protect them in any way. I'm not really sure why MiHoYo couldn't comply with American union contracts and Chinese labor laws simultaneously, or petition SAG-AFTRA for a contract that adheres to the union's guidelines about AI without following any other demands that wouldn't be logically feasible for a Chinese company to comply with. I guess maybe that's where the presumable, presumably condemned SAG-AFTRA bullying could come in — I dunno.

I guess in conclusion, I'm still not really seeing how SAG-AFTRA is the bad guy. At most, they are being needlessly aggressive with a foreign employer about prerequisites outside of said employer's hands (although, if I was understanding correctly, the current strife between MiHoYo and their english VAs isn't really a full SAG-AFTRA-approved strike. I'm assuming I'm missing context there, though). But that this all comes down to wanting to protect voice actors against AI facsimiles, still seems like they're generally in the right.

@LogicStrikesAgain @UltimateOtaku91 Fair enough points. I actually thought you could cloud stream in the official app, but I wouldn't really know.

Although I should've clarified that I'm not saying the Portal isn't a worthwhile device. Just that any amount of fanaticism its seemingly garnered is odd to me given it could be argued as a glorified remote play tablet with a special grip. Completely fine it is that, and completely fine people like that. Some people just talk like it's one of the greatest peripherals, which is weird praise in my eyes.

@CielloArc It's very hard for me to ever see a company as the brave one standing up for what's right in any business/union discussions. But I'll bite: why's SAG-AFTRA the bad guy?

Always a little confused why people swear by the Portal when you can easily replicate everything it does without buying it specifically. This fanmade Remote Play app just adds to that.

@JDINCINERATOR Aloy is way out of his league.