StrickenBiged

@Czar_Khastik You can go read their annual accounts over on Companies House. It looks like their continued support of the game is giving it a very long tail in terms of game sales. The latest accounts are for 2023 and show Hello Games made over £28m in revenue and over £18m in profit.

So, when you ask how it's profitable, while we cannot see the minutiae, in the words of Sean Murray from the Director's Report in its latest filed accounts: "Hello Games has continued to focus on the game No Man's Sky and has continued to release new content through new updates, still at no extra cost to the players. These have been popular and continue to engage our customers as the universe they explore grows."

I guess somebody's buy-out vested recently...

£20 is a steal for the amount of enjoyment I get out of Powerwash. Day 1 baybee!

I can answer why at least one copy of Metaphor hasn't sold: I haven't bought it yet because I don't want to have to buy the "Golden" or "Royal" version at full price a little while later once they've added what should be DLC content to the game.
AFAI am concerned, Atlus only has itself to blame for the weird way it adds post-release content to its games. Unless I'm totally off base, that would put some people off who think to themselves "I'll wait for the full version to come out later".

Probably the only release of 2025 that I am going to get Day 1. (Maybe Go Yotei too.)

The demo was quite fun, but it wasn't quite as flow-ey as its aesthetics implied. Will wait for reviews on this, personally. Soundtrack does sound like it'll be a banger... now I want to listen to some Static-X or Spineshank...

No interest from me. Nothing I've read or seen of Starfield makes me think I'd enjoy it.

@get2sammyb Thanks mate!

I'm a console pleb, not part of the PC master race. Just citing these specs in a vacuum gives me nothing. How do these specs compare to the PS5 or PS5 Pro? Giving them some context would be helpful.

I don't particularly care, but, I think Sony would be foolish to put its tentpole titles on XBox.
Firstly, the example of Final Fantasy 16 shows that even relatively recent, well reviewed games do not sell on that platform; Game Pass has trained that audience (generally) not to buy games, but to wait for them to come to the subscription.
Second, I think exclusives are a long term strategic investment in your own platform. People know, for instance, that the only place to play Nintendo games is on a Nintendo console.
Thirdly, there is no need to do it. XBox has all-but confirmed it's next console/device will run Steam, where select PlayStation games can be purchased, and more are coming. Why let XBox, your more direct competitor, take that platform fee instead?

Wishlisted, but at £18 on PS5 I won't be pre-ordering. That seems a little steep for what was (in 2010, when I bought it) £1.79 on iOS. Or when I bought it again on Vita for £8.99 in 2014. I'll wait for a sale on PS5.

@Bramble It really pays off to be a focused gamer, AND only buying a game the moment you decide you want to play it.

1000% this. I made that choice a while back and I've saved so much money compared to when I'd get lulled in by the digital sales and buy a load of stuff I'd never actually get to.

PS+ Essential has been great this year so far. I've played a tonne more of them than I did in 2024, that's for sure.

@gaston I was thinking more how players might react to being in that cutscene from Abby's point of view, not any technical issues.

I feel like the casting for this is going to be impossible, and that they should maybe just make it animated. Let's see.

The first PvZ is a great game, but I'll wait to see what justifies the price tag. If it's just an up-rezzed version of the game I've already played on my iPhone and Vita, then I'll wait for a sale.

@gaston That cinematic between Abby and Owen on the boat would be... interesting... in VR.

Just seeing how they iterated on the base-game of GoT with the Ishi Island expansion gives me a huge amount of faith in the team. I can totally believe what SP are saying here.

Never heard of it, but it looks like something I'd check out if it came to the PS+ monthly games. Can't see myself getting to it otherwise.

What're these Leader/Shooter/Vertical/Assault roles in team selection, and how come the same character can fill different slots?
Intriguing...

@Ellie-Moo That, and you save a tonne of cash too. I finally bought Cyberpunk in the Amazon sale last week or the week before, for under £30 for the complete edition.

I completed a few campaigns earlier this month to get the points I needed for a £5 voucher, so will end up with 47 points left in digital purgatory.

Fingers crossed PlayStation replace this system with something, as I did use it and got around £30 in vouchers across its lifetime. I've definitely made PSN purchases where I would have otherwise gone physical because of the reward scheme. But that's probably not typical if they've decided Stars doesn't make sense to maintain.

Nice, I'm increasingly happy that I've waited this long before giving Cyberpunk 2077 a go.

It's a shame that PS never really figured out what they wanted to do with PS Stars (at least, that's how it felt) but I'm grateful that I managed to get ~£30 in PSN credit during its time. It should have been integrated into the PS5 and PS4 operating systems to give it half a chance. Here's hoping that PS replace it with another iteration on a loyalty scheme - in my case, being close to the requisite number of points to redeem for PSN credit pushed me to make digital purchases over physical ones on at least a couple of occasions, though I suspect that that might not have been typical if they've decided maintaining PS Stars wasn't good business.

@graymamba Yes it does. Looks to be a fairly easily achievable trophy list overall, mainly story and side-quest based trophies with one or two that may be missable. Nothing difficulty-based.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk for me. Never played Jet Set back in the day, but enjoying this.

If my buddy returns my copy of Death Stranding I might upgrade and jump into the Directors Cut.

Unless Xbox is contractually obliged to bring this to market (though even then, contracts can change by agreement...) I would not be surprised to see this cancelled too. Compared to what Xbox chose to cut and layoff, and where it seems to be focussing its efforts (low-risk, reliable properties), this seems more akin to the sort of project that got canned.

I dunno why they stopped making Ultimate Alliance games... those were awesome and would probably do better now following the MCU (the good bits anyway).

If you’re into this sort of thing, I can personally recommend an indie title called ‘Art of Rally’ that I played earlier this year. A bit on the artsy end, but I enjoyed it immensely as a wind-down kind of game.

Careful on those Scandisk external drives. I got one to put all my PS4 games on, and left it plugged into the PS5 full time. After around 8 months it stopped being recognised by the PS5 and my PC cannot see it either, so it looks like it completely failed.

@get2sammyb I was thinking it would be something more along the lines of Kurosawa mode, and that Yotei's version of legends might launch later (like Tsushima's did). I look forward to finding out though!

I get people's concerns, but I truly don't understand why people are so bothered. Presumably the PlayStation beancounters have done the modelling and think this is the best thing for PlayStation's and Helldivers 2's business? If you love PlayStation so much - as I do too! - then surely they're owed a little trust? Sure, they don't always get it right (Concord), but who does? Hell, maybe if and when Helldivers 3 comes out, an XBot will think "hey, I could play that earlier if I bought a PlayStation" and become a Sony Pony?

Microsoft seem to just want completely safe bets at this point.

Any updates on that Blade game? I wouldn't be surprised to see that get canned next.

Stop Killing Games!

And yes, even Anthem. Don’t wait for it to be a game you care about.

Ok XBox owners, time to see whether you pay for games or not. This one’s a banger, you shouldn’t miss it.

Judging by what’s getting the cut, Xbox isn’t taking anything remotely resembling a risk with any of its projects. We can all look forward to future Bethesda, ABK, and Xbox properties becoming hollowed out, repetitive, bland, and stale. How sad.

I'm happy at Essential. I recently went through the part of the PS5 library that shows all the games you've gotten via PS+ over the years and there are tonnes I want to play but haven't gotten around to. More recently it's seemed like the games offered have been of a higher quality too.

I’m currently replaying GoT and just started the Iki Island content for the first time a couple of days ago. The new systems on display in the expansion have me even more excited for Yotei than I was before. I still love the feeling you get from the combat when you pull off a perfect parry and your enemy is opened up for a punishing counterattack, even all these hours in.

The golden rule of using these systems is to check it with human eyes - and a subject matter expert if needed, e.g. translation or advice of any kind - before you ship it. And that the dev was too lazy to do that is concerning.

UPDATE: Read the developer's response. Seems fair-do's to me. Mistakes happen.

Essential has been good for me lately. A few days ago I decided to browse the PS+ tab in my PS5 library and was shocked at the amount of games I want to get to. The backlog never ends.

£50! Bwahahaha! My that's ambitious. Did they not read or see the reviews of their own game?

Excited for Jusant. I've almost pulled the trigger on that one a few times already, so it's a good month for me.

As Ben Starr and Jennifer English explain it, this was one of the easiest VO gigs they've ever had, because the creators knew what they wanted from the actors and the key decision makers were at the recording sessions. So as soon as the actor got the line correct, they knew they had the line recorded and they moved on. And the story was nailed down so there was no coming back for more sessions. See Skill Up's recent video on the making of the game.

Death Stranding 1 provided my 150th platinum trophy. Maybe I'll plan on making DS2's platinum my 300th for the symmetry.

I had and still have my issues with the game's opening, which I feel involves too many characters acting out of character so that the instigating event of the plot can happen.
Once you get past that, then there's a tonne of convenient happenstances to allow the plot to keep progressing.
In the latter half, I thought that the stuff with Lev was poorly handled. Anyone with half a brain realised what Lev's situation was ages before they just came out and said it, leaving the impression that the writers thought we might be too stupid to get there ourselves.
But overall, I think it was an effective story. I emphasised with the characters during their respective journeys and felt the feelings the writers wanted me to feel at the right beats.
Not as good as TLoU, but a solid 7/10.

Looking forward to this, but a way to play the original Greek Trilogy on modern systems would entice me more.

Delaying seems like a good plan to me.

I'm still kind of perplexed why this game has anything to do with Marathon and isn't a completely new IP though.

@PlaystationPortalFan You misunderstand me. The original concept for the Vita reportedly had an HDMI-out socket so that you could also play your games on the big screen, but that was taken out to save costs. Had they left it in the Vita then it would have basically been an early Switch, and then who knows, but the Vita line might not have become the abandoned handheld that it is today.

Aaaah, there's the giblets I remember...

I bet they feel damn silly for taking the HDMI port out of the Vita right around now.

I'm partly responsible for all this, because I bought the horse armour in 2006. I'm so f***in sorry.