RoomWithaMoose

@ShadowRJ Does an ampersand count as a word? Obviously, it's shorthand for a word. But, like...is '+' a word? Or any numbers?

Your comment legitimately has me thinking about this...

I got excited for a second when I saw Ratchet...

Can we get PS4/5 releases of the PS2 trilogy + Deadlock to celebrate the occasion, Sony...?

Was super excited for this, but the demo kinda turned me off. Still definitely wanna buy it, but not really a priority at the moment.

Glad it's well received, though.

@8th_Observer To be fair, I think South of Midnight's reception is what killed the hype for a lot of those types — me included.

Specifically that the action/level design sounded archaic and generic. Everything else about the game looks like a slam dunk, but actual soul isn't always an equatable substitute for remarkable design.

Personally, I still plan on buying it very soon. I just need a slower month so I can actually play it instead of sit on it.

@Zuljaras There's two big things here: when you download a digital game, you basically OWN a hard copy of that game just the same. It's just a different type of storage. There is still a difference in reassurance between an online and offline license. But the hard copy aspect doesn't really matter.

And two: we absolutely need better protections here, but there's really not any precedent for a game company taking away licenses. People with it downloaded can still play P.T., for instance, a game Konami seemingly wanted wiped off the face of the Earth.

The real takeaway here is that physical games make money. I know we were unsure about that, since there's several sustainable businesses entirely built around making physical prints of games developers only launch digitally. And since Nintendo's more expensive to produce disc analog continues to stay in print for the foreseeable future. And since the much more dead physical movie industry continues to sell presumable millions. And since PlayStation managed to run an incredibly successful game company providing physical media for 30 years. But we still really couldn't be sure it was profitable, could we?

I really think Sony could've thrown physical collectors a bone and just committed to limited prints of every PS5 game past 2028. And explained how back-comp will work for their next console disc-wise. Digital is certainly the future, but it's not Sony's hands are tied here.

@wildcat_kickz There was certainly a time when I would've agreed with you about diction. But eventually I came to the realization that popular consciousness dictates definition, not pedants like us (I'm very upset with what's happening with "larping" and never forgave the Internet for asserting "inception" means 'a thing within itself' rather than what the movie went out of its way to define).

My shill comment wasn't really meant to attack so much as dismiss the reductive. If that makes any difference — SEMANTICS. And while I absolutely agree that we should be focused on the heart of the matter rather than ad hominem, that's sort of the exact issue I'm having here. Most arguments in favor of Sony, even the indirect ones, are based on the idea that those yelling at them have some sort of issue of character or the movement is fundamentally false. I'm being dismissing of the side here that's uninterested in understanding the outrage.

@8th_Observer "And that's all that should really matter."

@8th_Observer I guess to lighten my previous statements a bit: you're annoyance at public hysteria doesn't mean the core of their argument is wrong. And that's all that should really matter.

@wildcat_kickz I'm very tempted to argue the contemporary definition of "shill," as well as whether or not changing terms matters to the core of the discussion. But that's all semantics, so I'll pass.

But you've brought up exactly the point: this isn't a case where Sony had to act to preserve their wider business. There could've been tons of middle ground that would've left both parties relatively happy; Sony opted to f*** over a decent chunk of their consumer base for control and convenience. That's why there's really no sense here in defending them. I've doesn't have to join the outrage, but there's no point being reductive of it.

@wildcat_kickz @8th_Observer "There's no reason to sympathize with big corp besides being a shill."

I'm not saying there can be no nuance in someone's opinions. I'm saying if you're on Sony's side in all this, that's shilling behavior. You can be apathetic. I'm pretty apathetic, honestly. But I don't feel bad for Sony, nor do I think any reasonable person should.

@8th_Observer As with any movement, you have your fighters and your sympathizers. No one is asking anyone to spam social media accounts. But there's no reason to sympathize with the big company here aside from being a shill. And, to bluntly reiterate, if you feel more sorry for the corp that dug its own grave rather than the individuals passionately dismayed, you are probably a shill and no one expects or cares to sway you anyway.

@8th_Observer If someone is more annoyed with a social media post than legitimate anti-consumer practices, I'm not sure they were ever going to be apart of the cause.

@danzoEX I dunno, mate. People have been on about physical media for decades now. I don't think the outcry for such a blatant attack on it will simply go quiet...ever.

@8th_Observer I more subscribe to the idea that there's no wrong way to protest. Sans actively harming others.

The singular goal of protest is to show discontent en masse. If that's accomplished, regardless of how obnoxious certain protests might seem, progress is being made.

I'd argue obnoxiousness doesn't turn off the 'normal person.' Rather it gives corporate, etc. sympathizers an excuse to side with the big guy.

@ButteredCrumpet @The_Hooligan Y'all really got me thinking there's a market for this...

@Oram77 I can probably put one together. But if I have to record it, I'm gonna have to be stupid drunk the whole time.

Don't worry, it'll add texture.

@Oram77 Just buy it. It's a fantastic game. I might say it's the only Halo one really NEEDS to play (3 and Reach are nearly there, but not quite).

Also, unless they add anything to the end, it's also pretty self-contained. The war isn't over at the end of the game, but there's no immediate cliffhanger or anything. Kinda like A New Hope; the galaxy is still out there, but this specific story is over.

EDIT: Also, I'm more than willing to tell you everything that happens in lore afterwards from memory. And I can guarantee about 40% accuracy. And 80% flippantness.

I suppose I outta give it a whirl, then. I was pretty excited when it was announced, but that excitement has just dwindled to next to nothing at this point.

Nothing I've seen has really convinced me I'd prefer this to Mv.C3, FighterZ, or Guilty Gear (or any of the other modern ArkSys games). I reckon this beta is the game's only real chance to sell me.

@rjejr I feel like sunsetting the Switch in EU is less an act of spite and more a reasonable means to comply with the ordinance. They don't really have any reason to R&D a new model of a decade old console when they already have a new version out. That doesn't mean it's pro-consumer, obviously, but it's a fairly logically outcome.

It's like, I would assume phone manufacturers aren't going to make a compliant model of any of their old phones and will just make future iterations comply. And I think that makes reasonable sense.

Which is all to say, I don't think Sony would cut out an entire market for their next piece of hardware. It doesn't financially make sense the same way retiring the Switch instead of developing a new model does. Especially when this bill doesn't really specifically target Sony or apply to any of their games, and would only change how the PlayStation Store words purchases.

@Oram77 Hahahaha — SOBS

I love this cyclical news cycle with this useless President of ours! At least him and his buds get to constantly play the stock market!!!

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

While I don't explicitly care about the impending death of physical games (they should always remain an option, though!), I'm glad Sony's decision is catalyst to some long overdue conversations about digital ownership.

While this effort really doesn't go into the changes I personally want to see, it would go a long way towards beating into publishers' heads that they can't do whatever the f*** they want.

Yeah, even though I don't remember my stats class very well, it does take more than doing a poll to have good data.

Even just the structure of the poll itself can yield bad data, not even getting into proper randomness and appropriately sized samples. You also then have to do a s***ton of math (or input into programs; I preferred doing the math myself when I could) before you can really apply that data to a wider population.

I don't really care about the accuracy of the headline given the data being referenced. But since the legitimacy of it was brought up in the comments...well there's the two cents of not-a-statistician who likes math and did a stats class once.

@CheesyOatcake Always happy to evoke random sentimental memories!

@CheesyOatcake Well, that's just the thing. Despite how destructive regulation can be here in the States (REPRESENT), especially for small communities federal officials are out of touch with, it still tends to be a good thing. The reason our regulation is so bad is because we don't have enough of it, because half country thinks a free market of businesses unfettered by big government is the best thing ever, because Cold War propaganda taught them the only alternative was a dictatorship.

The worst thing about our government is how easily it's bought out. Often times, those buy outs lead to deregulation at the behest of some rich guy.

@gordonps I give zero s***s about Trophies. Still, government regulation is generally a good thing. Without that, there would be a lot more deaths caused by negligence, the holistic health of the populous would be at a nadir, and any consumer protections we have would be thrown out the window.

I don't know why anyone trusts businesses to sustain quality of life better than governments.

Well, it's certainly not the first game heavily influenced by Monster Hunter.

So...what are we mad about?

@Dragon83 I do not recall Origins: Wolverine — a likely relatively cheap, quickly made movie tie-in, mind you — being ANYWHERE near that long. Pretty sure I beat it in two days way back when, and I wasn't marathoning it.

In fact, according to howlongtobeat, DEEP BREATH @AdamNovice beat me to it. But yeah, that's to 100%, even. Just beating it took about 9 hours. Not sure if that 12-15 hour estimate is for beating or completing. But, either way, likely very comparable to Origins.

Also, without getting into it, replay value.

@AdamNovice Honestly, seems TOO long. You usually want high-octane games primarily comprised of similar combat sequences to be short and sweet. Otherwise, you risk the gameplay loop getting repetitive and endgame becoming a slog.

@Dragon83 Is this...a joke?

@Dragon83 To be fair, this is very likely more the result of senseless spending rather than GamePass.

Unless we want to assume the Xbox Series would've been a massive success with exclusives not on GamePass and that the only reason PlayStation/PC players didn't buy these games was GamePass, there's not really a direct through line pinning these closures on GamePass.

@Resurrected-X460 I think '16 and Eternal were both brilliant in their own ways. The former was the perfect power fantasy shooter, while the latter was the tightest "shoot-'n- slash" we'll probably ever see (although some recent indie shooters are definitely eyeing that crown). I really wouldn't say one's better than the other, they're just different games sharing the same skeleton.

Although, tonally, Eternal was a bit off.

Well, it's a s*** strategy from Xbox. I get that Phil bought up WAY too much and the return in investments just wasn't there. But if the plan is to invest in exclusives to reinvigorate your hardware...ya kinda need developers to do that. Now their best studios are either gone or have half the ability to output games.

Short of a Breath of the Wild level generational title, Halo and Gears just aren't ever going to be that relevant again. Yet it feels like that's where Xbox expects to make all of its future money. Well, those and Elder Scrolls/Fallout. But Bethesda — and Obsidian, for that matter — is 1 more dud away from being entirely irrelevant, if they aren't already. So, again, either Fallout 5 is the best WRPG since The Witcher 3, or that's not paying off. And I'm not even thinking in terms of any of these being system sellers, just massively successful games per se.

Then there's CoD. A success for sure, but I can't imagine it has better days ahead. And that's the best their established portfolio has to offer. Xbox has desperately needed a big new thing since Halo: Reach. And, despite the many failures therein that has gotten us here, entirely giving up on the next thing as though they have Nintendo-comparable IPs to live off of will only end in disaster.

I do think those that want to jump on PC are really missing the point of all this. It's not that physical games are inherently better. Nor that PC store fronts are objectively better. It's that we still don't have the legal precedent to protect our digital purchases.

That's what we should all be grumbling about. And it's a long time coming, encompassing basically every entertainment industry.

Kiiinda, but not really.

I already was planning on the PS5 being my last PlayStation. Unrelated to the physical thing. And, while I have no explicit plans to start primarily gaming on PC, I wouldn't be surprised if that's where I end up in the future. Well, if I give any s***s about keeping up with the contemporary industry.

Eww.

Nuff said.

Better idea: The adventures of Ellie and ZOMBIE Joel.

Say it with me everyone: stocks are stupid and not necessarily representative of the value or trajectory of a company.

Really, just about all video game stocks should start declining year-over-year as the AI boom destroys the industry.

Can we get a KP Demon Hunters Platinum Games joint with the same style and framerate as the movie?

@Nakatomi_Uk So if you buy a game on GOG, you don't have to connect to their or anyone else's servers to play it. But do you still need the GOG launcher to play? Like, does the game just run natively on your PC or it runs through a launcher layer?

@Oram77 Who would've guessed that, after the game key card spat, Nintendo would become the bastions of physical media.

@Bot_Bot_69 Legitimate question: aren't PC games licenses just as closed? The OS and hardware isn't. But if you buy a game on Steam, aren't you beholden to playing it through Steam?

There is GOG, which from my understanding is open. But I'm never too sure if people saying they'll be going PC over stuff like this understand the difference. I'm also not sure how good GOG's library is.

@Runex2121 That's fair.

But losing complete access to digital movie purchases is not at all a new thing. About a decade ago, I even lost a couple movies I bought on Google Movies (now for movies, I buy them physically and rip my own digital copy which I can store/access however I want — which is how ideally all digital purchases should work, but piracy). It's somewhat hard to explicitly blame Sony for that instance, either, when it was really a distributor deal falling through and probably a bit out of their hands.

In the game space, we really just have delistings as far as I'm aware. Delisted games can still be downloaded, and, of course, you don't even have to worry about losing access to the download if you already have a hard copy of the data. This is the bare minimum I would expect in the future.

@Scratchz46 But PC is also all digital.

@twitchtvpat I mean, pushback is fair and expected.

I just don't think a lot of people ardently against digital purchases know how they work. Which makes sense, because they've never made them.

@S1ayeR74 You don't seem to be understanding what I'm asking.

Let's try this: What are examples of games that have suffered the same fate as those movies?

@S1ayeR74 It does matter. A lot.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume those movie purchases were not downloadable. Or, if they were, the download only served as an offline option for streaming them. Which is basically an indefinite rental.

Digital games are, like I said, essentially a license to make a hard copy of data. Which is more like select purchases on Vimeo, wherein you can download content and store it however you want.

The biggest hurdles for digital ownership are revoking licenses for breaking terms and agreements, renewing licenses if servers permanently go offline, and data only being compatible with proprietary storage formats. Companies straight up deleting purchases is about as likely as them releasing system updates "bricking" physical discs. There is no precedent, and the movie thing really doesn't prove anything.

@S1ayeR74 Digital movies are different from digital games.

I don't want to sound like a corporate shill, and this is definitely bad news that limits the options of consumers. But, man, it always feels like people are too f***ing dramatic about physical vs. digital.

I think the issue is how many misconceptions there are about ownership and digital purchases. Basically, whether digital or physical, you have no ownership over the game — or really its data. Buying physical, you own a hard copy of the game's data, and that's it. Buying digital, you own a digital license that allows you to download and store the game's data. Which is to say, it's the same d*** picture. If you buy digital, you can have a hard copy of the data, and no company can take that away from you (though there should be more thorough legal protections to ensure that).

This does effectively kill the resale market (technically, it probably wouldn't be that hard to implement a digital resale system, but no company would put money into that). And this is definitely a preservationist nightmare (ignoring that modern gaming has already been that regardless of physical releases). So, again, BAD news. But digital purchases are not as bad as people are asserting.

@8th_Observer It was still an article whose only new bit of news was a Switch 2 trailer. I'm just saying, man, it's not hard to make a connection.

"10% Pay Raise at Nintendo Puts PlayStation on Notice"

Really easy to tie it back to PlayStation. It's noteworthy, relevant news, I would say.

EDIT: Also pretty sure they've written articles to the effect of, 'BLANK announced for Switch, seemingly skipping PlayStation' on several occasions. Which deflates this whole game needs to be on PlayStation to justify writing about it thought. Just like how a game skipping PlayStation can be seen as relevant PlayStation news, so too can a rival company's ostensible success be relevant to PlayStation.