RoomWithaMoose

@RiverGenie None of my criticism was directed at your diction.

And you can't say you expect and respect differing opinions when the closest thing to a funny in your original comment was at the expense of AI critics.

@King_MFW That's what I'm wondering, though. What real benefit does it provide for early concept art?

I can understand if they used it in a pre-concept stage for research — even though a professional artist should have all the references/starting points for research they need. But once you're actually conceptualizing the look of the game, I think AI would just compromise its visual identity

@RiverGenie So you used a common idiom, made a nonsensical point that isn't reflective of reality, and dismissed it all on the basis that life's indifference towards day-to-day activities makes it all meaningless. You consider that 'having a laugh'? Maybe try telling an actual joke, if that's your prerogative.

Both our comments are indeed meaningless, but at least I said something.

@RiverGenie Why shouldn't we be upset about AI? You sure you're not just using it as an excuse to dismiss valid criticism?

@King_MFW What's the use in having AI make concept art, though? Seems like that would just made your game look generic, since it's visual concept would just be an amalgamation of existing assets.

Dunno why the users of this site seem generally accepting and, at worse, ambivalent towards AI use in games.

Even here, the AI paintings just...actually suck. The game was in development for over half a decade; you're telling me they didn't have time for an artist to just crank out a few Medieval-style art assets? How did it help this production? What value did it provide? None? Then why aren't we upset about it, even from just a quality perspective?

Can people on this site stop saying only AAA Sony games ever sell now?

@somnambulance Since I just remembered I could check, I went looking at everything I played during the Switch's first year. Already played BotW on the Wii U, so that's missing. Literally just...

Super Mario Odyssey
Mario + Rabbids
Sonic Mania
Thumper
Shovel Knight (just the Specter Knight campaign, if I remember)

Mmm, yeah, I've definitely had a better year with the Switch 2.

@Scottyy I mean, it didn't work for Dreamcast, or the PSVita. Really don't see how it worked out for Xbox in any sense.

You'd really have to define 'peak Nintendo,' since the Wii U's failure lead to them screwing over Wii U owners, putting out a console a lot of people at the time said was overpriced, and putting out games pretty consistent with their Wii U lineup. I don't see how greed wasn't present, or they improved themselves over the Wii U. The only real difference was the Switch was conceptually ambitious and sold amazingly well.

@Scottyy It's not humility you're seeking. It's desperation.

That doesn't always translate to pro-consumer practices.

@somnambulance I never know what people are on about saying the Switch 2's game catalog is lacking. They act like Bananza and Mario Kart World don't exist because some parts of the Internet didn't like them. They count Mario Kart 8 Deluxe as an example of the OG Switch's fantastic launch lineup, then act like Nintendo Switch 2 Editions don't count.

They outright ignore the Switch 2 having the best 3rd-party support of any Nintendo console since the SNES. They never bring up Air Riders or Mario Tennis. Are only now mentioning Pokopia as it's getting rave reviews, as though it hasn't been a known entity for months. Don't talk about Yoshi whatsoever. Ignore the indie exclusives — feels like people always forget Hades II remains a S2 console exclusive. Act like there's absolutely NOTHING coming up, even through Fire Emblem is one of their top franchises and is coming up.

I'd say the S2's launch has been significantly better than the Switch's. It just doesn't have the one-two-punch of BotW and Odyssey — ignoring that BotW wasn't actually exclusive. But really, what console has that? It's particularly annoying seeing this sentiment when I recall the launches of the PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series, and Wii U all being pretty abysmal.

@Scottyy At this point, I'm not too sure Nintendo or Sony can afford to have a dud console. Wishing that upon either of them might mean the death of traditional game consoles.

Regardless, there's no guarantee a hypothetical struggle would bring Nintendo back to this peak, you speak of. I'm also not sure how modern Nintendo isn't a steady continuation of their early Switch days. I don't know how you can really argue their last year isn't comparable to every year of the Switch. Honestly, this last year has probably been better than most of the Switch's.

If you're just upset about pricing, the Switch probably spent most of its life overpriced. Well, not really 'overpriced,' since people were still buying it... But priced at a higher margin than Nintendo really needed to be profitable.

These are always the articles where you can tell the normal gamers from the fanatics...

@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.