RoomWithaMoose

@somnambulance Yeah, the 'must-have' factor I'd say is a huge part of it. And I really don't feel like many of these games score very high in those regards. I'm probably most excited for Fire Emblem and Silent Hill, yet could go the rest of the year without playing either. On this website specifically, I guess Wolverine is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. But, man, despite loving Insomniac and liking Wolverine, I swear that game looks ridiculously boring to me.

Just talking quantity, I don't actually think September is anywhere near the busiest month just this year.

I feel a tad confused by the hype, because this doesn't seem like a biblically massive release schedule to me. Even taking Xbox and Nintendo releases into account.

Packed, for sure. But not much crazier than any busy holiday season in gaming.

Maybe what helps is there's only 5 games from that calendar I'm really thinking about buying. And none of which I'm particularly dying to play at launch. Also definitely helps that I give zero s***s about GTA in the first place.

Kinda feel like that SoP just incepted everyone into thinking September was insane...

@somnambulance Death of mono-culture, baby!

Yet another little reason everyone feels more lonely and isolated these days.

I say recommit to physical. Commit to physical, make online free, open the ecosystem up to PC launchers, bring back the back-comp program, start a physical-to-digital program, discount digital, very clearly commit to one exclusive a year, and launch a budget Series X power level console with all the service/OS changes of the new overtly premium console (go all out, $1500-2000 utter powerhouse). Make cloud gaming without subbing free with ads and no limits IF you own a neXtBOX. Keep GamePass, but the XBOX exclusive games aren't Day 1 anymore. Downsize GamePass Ultimate to make a $15-20 monthly price viable for business. If Nintendo agrees, get cloud gaming through GamePass on Switch 2 and start advertising it like the perfect companion to XBOX.

Do ALL that, and maybe Microsoft can flip the script. Basically, give hardcore gamers the ultimate consumer friendly experience that supports every single seemingly incidental want. Meanwhile, Sony will be trying to sell an overpowered, overpriced Switch 2 only marginally more powerful than a PS5 Pro. That's a lot of potential to unseat them if that's the plan.

Or, option 2: Release a console nobody wants, lose all the money because you don't make games anymore, and be bought out by Disney in 4 years and forced to make a direct Fortnite clone.

@Czar_Khastik Sony was pretty down with NFTs until that market imploded.

Is it petty of me to be critical of Astro's inclusion rather than an ACTUAL PSone character?
Yes.

Am I wrong?
No.

Still neat. I can't be bothered with LEGOs, but I am tempted to get Astro, Sonic, and Mario minifigs and start a little collection of game characters.

Kinda missed the beta (didn't realize it was the same week as Splatoon...of which I only played about 1 hour's worth that weekend anyway...)

I did play the basic tutorial, though. And it seemed...fine. I honestly think the tutorial just doesn't do a good job of selling the game, but I definitely didn't see much reason to pick this up instead of FighterZ or MvC3. But I didn't really get a chance to play it, so what do I know.

@Dalamar Eh, I reckon it's all right. It does actually have intent, so that's cool.

Still, its AI-ness really just holds it back. Logical inconsistencies, noticable continuity errors, bad sound direction, inconsistent scene transitions. It's all very distracting.

Compared to something like Avatar, I can see where you're coming from with your preference. But I likewise don't think you're appreciating the artistry that goes into making those movies the technical marvels they are. Yes, they are banal, but they've still a lot of artistic merit.

@Dalamar I posted one on this thread and that comment's still up. So presumably yes.

@Dalamar What's a Pengmin and should I be mad about it?

How many more things can the Spider-Man cast and crew praise PlayStation for during this press tour?

Incidentally, to be somewhat gatekeepey, I don't like hearing celebrity's favorite games. They always sound too obvious. I'm certain the majority of celebrities do not play many games — they're too busy being beautiful and rich — so it always comes off as ill informed and even insincere.

Like if I told someone my favorite book was Anthem and left out the part about how I've only read 10 books.

@Sunraku Can I have a woke anime AI girl boss waifu?

@Dalamar In the context of quality, I think it's more about how AI art can only equate to the most soulless, boring human art. For any piece of human slop, there's about a dozen works displaying effort, intent, and creativity — even if competence isn't always a feature. AI art can just barely compare to the worst human art.

I also think it's important to remember that people actually quite hated that generic, corporate animated stuff the tech industry was advertising with a few years back. We just instinctually identify and dislike textureless art.

@For-Kier Even ignoring all the rightful criticisms of AI itself, human slop is still leagues above AI slop.

The Room is an uncanny disaster, yet still has the humanity and warmth AI ostensibly just can't replicate.

When she looked at that can and softly smiled, I felt that. Anyway, here's a video with actual soul to compensate:
https://youtu.be/_2quiyHfJQw?is=hlERmYdjQ_oqwkhz

@TheArt I guess.

I'm not saying people can't play and enjoy long games. I just don't think games often benefit from being so long.

Even for those that can't afford many games and just want stuff to play, there's a lot of forever games they could be playing instead. Many of which are free to some extent.

The ability to store and manage data on common storage formats.

EDIT: Also, the functionality to torrent (download from other users) hard delisted games.

@TheArt I like playing games. I'd prefer to not play 1 game that got tiresome after 10 hours in the time I could've played 12.

It has MUCH less to do with fomo over new games and everything to do with actively wanting to play hundreds of games throughout gaming history simultaneously while only having precious little time to play any.

HEEEEEYYY, HEEEEYYY, HEEEEY! IT'S TIME FOR OUT-OF-POCKET TAXXXIIIII!!!

YEEEAAAHHHH, YEEEAAAHHHH, YEEEAAAHHHH, YEEEAAAHHHH, YEEAAAHHH!

@For-Kier I much prefer a short and sweet 6 hour game to a padded out 20-30 hour game. AAA, or otherwise.

I don't mind the occasional 50 hour open world or RPG, but I don't think many games are better for being lengthy. Nor do I really consider length an aspect of quality.

@Oram77 Mostly Switch stuff. Star Fox, Rhythm Heaven, Splatoon. But also Halo and Denshattack (couldn't afford, actually, but do want). Also would've bought Avatar, DoA, and/or Elliot if it was a slow year. And I was eyeing Gothic and SolarPunk, but I think I would've skipped both regardless.

Maybe depends how you define "packed." All I know is I feel overwhelmed.

30 hours is too many... I mean, it's not inherently bad. But I still think 8-15 hours is the ideal range for almost every game.

@Oram77 Personally, I've had a packed June/July.

As long as there's no parent-daughter beach party, I'll hold my judgement.

But still...what a premise.

@nyr2k2 Ehhh. I wouldn't assume that sentiment is isolated. At the very least, a lot of casual PlayStation owners haven't been inspired to become brand loyalists and many of the loyalists from yesteryear have lost their passion.

Is it wrong that I assumed ~$150 was already the loss Xbox and PlayStation were used to eating on console sales? Not this late in a generation after multiple price increases, certainly, but I figured as far back as the 360 and PS3's launches they were losing at least $100 per sale. I don't know why else they would need 80% of their consumer base to pay $60-$100 yearly for basic features.

Anyway, just last year Nintendo got seemingly endless s*** for $450 and Steam's $1050 somehow negated their ostensibly infinite good will. So Xbox and PlayStation have zero chances of pulling off a $1000+ console launch.

@get2sammyb I honestly don't think many PlayStation players care about this. For one, a lot of contemporary PlayStation fans likely had an Xbox at some point. If not an Xbox, they probably had/have a PC capable of playing the MCC or Infinite. So, most have already played Halo. For those who haven't, it just never appealed to them on the first place — otherwise they would've already gone out of their way to play it.

'Halo on PlayStation' really only matters to people at all invested in the console wars. It's not a big deal to anyone else. And of the subsect invested, half of them are invested to the point where they completely dismissed Halo years ago and ain't changing their mind now.

@Oram77 I imagine it'll do about as well as STALKER 2 did. Well enough to support the studio, but it's not going to set the world on fire.

Which is a shame in both cases. I definitely think there's more potential in making a cult classic into a household name rather than reinvigorating a long-past-its-prime IP (see the MCU now vs. at its start). Yet Xbox probably fumbled both. And Psychonauts 2, to an extent.

Well, Halo isn't a top seller anymore.

This is why Xbox's plan to capitalize on their established IP is stupid. No one cares about Halo and Gears anymore — and this is coming from a fan of Halo and Gears. Nothing else they have is nearly as big, save for maybe Elder Scrolls and Fallout. But those certainly aren't insanely popular at the moment either.

@Oram77 Oh. Well, given that I have so many accounts, I'm inclined to agree.

@Oram77 I'm honestly surprised everyone doesn't had a Google and Microsoft account at this point.

I have, like, three of the former and two of the latter. And one Apple account.

@Contimaloris I guarantee you their next game isn't going to look half as pretty as Keeper.

Unless they get picked up by a big publisher.

@Rich33 If we could have a report on the actual costs of providing physical copies, that would be a much more compelling argument in my eyes than physical's downward trend.

So long as physical is selling, I don't see much reason to not provide it. If we learn a game has to sell an extra 200k — or something — just to recoup the costs of producing physical, there'd be something there.

@Max_the_German Kinda my takeaway here.

Using the same logic to justify abandoning physical, we might as well say consoles are clearly trending downward and developers should stop bothering with them soon.

I'm getting increasingly confused by this argument. Unless it's 0%, I don't really see why the ratio would matter.

@TheSingularity They almost certainly had different opportunities and grander ambitions while apart of Microsoft. Hence the bigger size.

Now they probably expect to go back to cheaper, smaller, less lucrative games. A scope that wouldn't make sense for their former size.

@SBBuds It's very likely they only grew to that size because they had Microsoft money. I wouldn't say this news is necessarily indicative of their prospects.

@Oram77 I feel the opposite. Their storytelling is some of the best on the industry, but a lot of their gameplay could be argued as shallow. Polished, but shallow.

I don't know if I would say three games of presently uncertain quality would make for "an incredible year."

Pedantic b**** moose strikes again!!!

@DennisReynolds Is that what that other guy's on about? Some Critical Drinker bulls***? I was wondering who told him to hate whoever that was he name-dropped.

@DennisReynolds We don't have to get back into it. I just got a kick outta that title.

@TheDarts People love Woman of Tomorrow, and were explicitly excited to see a movie heavily inspired by it.

And you were absolutely not clear people wanted a relatable Spider-Man. And you can say plenty about movie Supergirl, but I don't see how she wasn't relatable. Personally, I also found her quite likable. In fact, I wouldn't say Supergirl was at all the problem of the Supergirl movie

@DennisReynolds Our whole talk on BND being a Sony or Marvel movie. And here it's just blatantly called "Sony's new Spider-Man movie."

@TheDarts That's not at all the line of reasoning you implied originally.

'Spider-Man makes money because it's Spider-Man. Supergirl didn't make money because it's not Spider-Man.'

Is this what you're now claiming you originally claimed? Just completely ignoring your "filmmakers want c***py scripts" statement that implied there was some artistic decisions consistently in all Spider-Man films that make them profitable.

@TheDarts That's making money.

It's only giving people what they want in the sense that they want Spider-Man.

@Dalamar Really? I always though Halo 2 was overambitious and under-baked. It doesn't have the atmosphere of CE, and most of the action design changes I think were for the worse (I actually hate dual-wielding in Halo).

Its story is a mess. A lot of its set pieces fall flat. Those...F***ING snipers!

Not to try and say you're wrong. I just always thought most felt the same as I in regards to 2. I mean, it's still all right, and a lot better than 5.

@Dalamar Very surprised by all the people I've seen say they love 2. Always thought it was pretty easily the worst Halo campaign.

Unless we're talking about multiplayer. But, even then, take out the impact of Halo 2 multiplayer and it's probably my least preferred iteration. Kinda just a quainter version of 3.

Hoping for a Switch 2 port (pretty hard to read Xbox at the moment to tell if that'll happen).

Gonna sub to GamePass for a bit to play this with a friend. But I already have the MCC on Xbox and PC (anyone here played Cursed Halo?), so it's hard to really care about this release. I only want it on Switch for portability, otherwise I'd just rather play the original.

@somnambulance Or Sly...