ThomasHL

Large mergers shouldn't be allowed full stop. Massive corporate consolidation is never a good thing.

The current system is absolutely barmy where we allow behemoth companies to employ armies of lawyers to argue that basic economic theory doesn't exist, and make promises they immediately break after the merger goes through.

I think the IGN article is way off the mark with the content of the stories. "Grief" and "Revenge" are way too broad brushes.

But there is a similarity in style and delivery between many Sony games that is a little too common. I.e. Mocap driven linear stories, which are fairly serious with a bit of banter dropped in.

Astrobot is exactly the kind of thing that breaks this mould and I wouldn't mind more of that level of difference.

Not just in goofiness, but let's have civilisation spanning grand stories about kingdoms clashing, or world-building obsessed space operas.

It's not a big deal, but there was a point in time where God of War, Horizon, and Naughty Dog games were beginning to blur together.

IMO Ghosts of Tsushima was a welcome change of pace with it's attention on Japanese films and artistic backgrounds over and above the in-house Sony mocap.

I love the Aloy and Atsu art. This is a great tradition

I don't think I even spend $360 a year on games that I get to own.

I found the demo very frustrating, so I'm sad to hear that it doesn't shake off some of those problems as the game goes on.

I don't understand why so many Japanese games / anime feel the need to continuously reexplain the plot to you - even for the kids - the explanations are often more confusing and nonsensical than the initial event.

Cairn is a pinned down purchase on release for me. They've got something special with that climbing system. (Also Haven was top notch)

Great trailer, but the dev could have sold that so much better. Maybe it's part of the indie vibe? But like a five minute conversation could have made it so much snappier.

Why are you telling people that you can activate the shield with L2? How is knowing it's on L2 convincing people to buy your game?

If you're going to talk about the shield at all, tell me what's cool about it, tell me the strategy, tell me how they've combined that ability with another ability in a smart way, tell me it's one of many other ways to play out a run...

I wonder if Xbox sales have tanked so badly that they've lost efficiencies of scale.

Being able to bind to gyro is very cool

Zombie games are the Isekai of our medium. It doesn't matter how many exist, or how popular they seem to be online, hordes of people will always consume them

People talked a lot about this killing Overwatch, but it's Steam daily player count is already only twice that of OW2 (after being 15 times as high 6 months ago), whilst OW2s is the same as it was 6 months ago.

If they had sense they would actually do the Modern Warfare plotline.

As they don't, it will join the list of middling videogame adapations that were "just an X movie" which did middling well. I guess it's fun to have another war movie.

I dug the theory - not that it would be released as a Mega Man game, but that there would be some deep lore in game suggesting that it kind of was

HyperBitHero has been doing some Fear Effect retrospectives. What a strange franchise!

I'm amazed at how poorly some game trailers are edited, given how much it costs to make a game these days.

Battlefield has got them scared

The PS5 is the first Sony generation where I don't feel over the moon about buying in. I don't regret it exactly either, but what I got was a mild upgrade over the PS4 and basically PS4 games that ran a bit better.

I'm sure a PS6 will sell fine, but I'm going to wait a bit and maybe even see how SteamOS goes. PCs have access to a lot more games these days.

I'm intrigued but I know as soon as I download it and boot it up, I'll get ten different currencies on the screen, five ads, and five sets of daily busywork that look like every other gacha game, and all my interest will drain away.

The trailer was mostly good, but why would you ever put "You can have emotes" in your trailer? Sell the dream, not the in-game store.

I remember commenters telling us that tariffs wouldn't lead to price increases. It just sucks the whole globe is being dragged down along with the US

It looks great, but I was struggling to distinguish between the main character and the NPCs (and sometimes the background), they're all the same flat grey

That's a pretty sad Top 20 all in all. There's only been a handful of good games this year so far and most of them have been indie

I still can't get over how much Pixar fumbled the ball on animated films. Sony routinely puts out animation now that makes Pixar look flat, stodgy and dated. That would have been unthinkable 20 years ago

If I want to find a good co-op game, I'm better off going to another website and then coming back to the PS store. It's really bare minimum functionality

I'm surprised Ready or Not didn't even take second. It's a game with incredible sales figures, but people don't seem to talk about it much

The PR blitz for Battlefield 6 is just about the best EA have ever done.

They see a serious gap in the market now CoD is Fortnite, and they're gunning for it.

I doubt they could actually fix Starfield's problems in a serious way, but it'll still sell like gangbusters

Another reminder that all the money you stick into an online game could vanish one day, if you aren't willing to upgrade an entire console.

The factory building is a pretty bg change on the formula, but I'm pretty much done with grinding for pulls. It's so nice playing Expedition 33 and just enjoying the game, instead of needing to do homework to unlock something

I thought I had misunderstood Stains. It seemed weird that Thermal Transfer had no downside

I'm pretty sure most games follow the curve of a massive player count at launch and a big drop off after. That's how people consume entertainment

@Lowdefal I bet people used their wallet and didn't preorder the game

There's only room for Great now (or Great In It's Niche). I will probably never even play all the great games on my wishlist now. You have to do something really special to get played

I'd subscribe just for a Mass Effect show. That's a universe with so much you can do with it

That turns it from a never play to a might play for rme

People are reading way too much into this, its a game in a bin. It's not disrespecting Neversoft

And it could mean anything. It could be about Activision binning off the franchise

I'm not a military shooter guy, and even I feel like this is too much.

Respect the core fantasy at least a little bit

I tried Jusant but I just didn't find the climbing engaging enough. Cairn seems to be what I was looking for

I can't believe the number of people suggesting if FFXVI sold more than Metaphor it must have been a success.

It takes one glance to see the budgets of the two games are not close to the same. Metaphor has a much cheaper aesthetic and relies on a lot of very repetitive dungeons. FFXVI is heavily reliant on expensive cinematics and action set pieces.

Selling 50% more doesn't mean squat if the game took 60% more to make. And if they made FFXVI cheaper there's no guarantee it would have sold the numbers it did.

The question for Square Enix is, if Metaphor is a success financially and FFXVI isn't, are they making the right kind of game? Could they make something less cinematic, less photorealistic that still sold well.

How do keepers work? Is it a dedicated role, or can anyone in a game run into goal? Is it difficult to get people to play keeper?

Here's a rough estimate of the absolute max #4 is in sales.

Let's assume every single person in the UK owns Hogwarts Legacy - not household, not every console, every person.

And let's assume as many people are buying it this week as the first week it launched.

There's 68 million people in the UK, and Hogwarts has been on sale for 100 weeks. So that would mean #4 sold less than 680,000 copies.

If you think 1 in 10 people in the UK own a physical copy Hogwarts Legacy, we're down to #4 being at it's very most 68,000 sales already.

Now actually Hogwarts Legacy sold 870k physical copies in its first year. So a much more realistic, but still way too large, maximum number of sales for #4 would be 870k / 52 ~ 16,000 copies. That assumes legacy is selling as well this week as it sold on launch.

I don't think it's realistic to think #4 represents even 10,000 sales. I wouldn't be shocked if it was under 1k

#4 in physical media means nothing. Hogwarts Legacy sells well, but it's not selling a million copies every week. Otherwise it would have sold 100 million games or something by now.

And MindsEye was less than that.

I bet a lot of weeks there's only one chart position which has any number of sales worth speaking about. Remember even Gollum charted

Meanwhile Final Fantasy Magic The Gathering cards are set to outsell Lord of the Rings and Spiderman. The audience is there, they just need to deliver

Witcher music, Witcher combat. Not Witcher writing or polish yet

I'm addicted to the Cairn demo. I genuinely think playing this game will make me a better climber in real life. That's how legit the climbing mechanics are.

I was already going to buy it, because I love Haven, but this game is everything a climbing game should be

I've tried the demo and this climbing system is legit! This is the game I wanted Jusant to be

I'm very excited for this. I love Haven and I've only grown to love it more with time. I've been waiting for their next game for a long time.

Jusant felt a little too simple, I wanted something a bit more challenging and technical. There were loads of different real climbing techniques in that trailer. And the vibe looks incredible.

And that music!

EA used to be so big. Nowadays they've got so little going on. Just clinging to their couple of successful franchises and hoping they can resurrect a few others

Andor really is that good

Souls like combat, high difficulty with no levelling, weapon degradation, crafting, weak story, weak art - I think it would be harder for a game to be more outside my niche.

All it needed was first-person and six different currencies