So that's an attach rate of 1.2 games per console sold. That's... not good. The PS4 attach rate was 9.6 games per console sold. Historically, the attach rate hovered around 4-5 for consoles prior to the PS4.
Listen I am a discerning consumer and I know what I want. Cerny could make the consciousness transfer happen, he is just saving that for PS7. I mean, he made Knack - the man is capable of anything.
Our bodies are not ready. I am undertaking a naked spirit quest in the woods in the lead up to the Pro release to cleanse my spirit, so that I may properly take communion with its glory.
I bought a physical copy day 1 after the ill-advised decision by their publisher to release digital only. Not Remedy's fault that happened, not their call. Talented group of people.
You are absolutely right, EA doesn't need us to speculate in this video game website comment section on an article about game sales. I mean it's just shameful, really.
Who wouldn't trade their firstborn for 4K AND 120 FPS. I mean, wow how do they do it. It's a Pro thing, you regulars wouldn't understand. That Cerny is a straight up wizard or something.
Have fun playing with your Okama Gamespheres and Ouyas, haters.
You want yer disc drive? Here's yer disc drive! * proceeds to hit customer with folding chair, then mugs them before running into a nearby crackhouse *
I mean, Baldur's Gate 3 was 472,000 on launch day. Call of Duty 6 somewhere around 229,000.
Probably apples to oranges, but do with those numbers what you will. I guess time will tell whether EA considers it a financial success. Apparently publishers are expecting bigger and bigger numbers these days as AAA costs balloon.
Loved Origins and Inquisition too to a lesser extent, but still on the fence about this game due to personal qualms with the art style and lighter tone. I've waited 10 years, I can wait another 12 months for a definitive edition.
I look forward to the impending PushSquare article about Veilguard getting review bombed. I really wish there was an option to filter out all the 1/10 and 10/10 user reviews on sites like Metacritic. Eliminate the noise.
All those brave culture warrior soldiers will be battling it out against one another in the review sections of every aggregate website shortly. Wish we could throw them all on an island sort of Hunger Games style and just watch them enact their holy war against one another in real time away from the comfort of a computer or phone. Now wouldn't that be a sight to see?
As someone who has soured on Sony lately, I'll concede one thing to them: they have a tough job ahead of them in their games division. The "fans" are not a monolith, it's all kinds of people in all different walks of life.
You got the kids using their parents' credit to buy v-bucks in Fortnight, the high-spend dedicated AAA consumer that wants more of that, the old farts that want the return of old IP and the introduction of new IP on a steady basis. And dozens of variations in between.
As Playstation has passed 30 years and counting, the market has become increasingly segmented and "spread out" to multiple demographics with different priorities, and I just don't think Sony has what it takes to meet all their expectations adequately.
Ideally they could meet the expectations of all their different customer bases, but it's just not realistic. Even a Fortune 500 company has only so much resources. And of course, they have to consider that almighty return as well.
What I think Sony has been doing - maybe smartly - is prioritizing the younger gamers at the expense of their original customers. PushSquare readership is not the younger segment of the market they are catering to, hence all the recent bad feelings in the online discourse. Do I blame them? No. Am I disappointed in this strategy? Oh definitely.
What can I say? Age happens and things move on. Gaming is like that too. It's a really fun hobby but as odd as it sounds it's a natural evolution for us to be left behind somewhat. I think modern gaming is gonna progress to a point that is entirely unrecognizable to us in the near to mid-term future.
Three points of consolation: 1.) Retro gaming will always be there and is more accessible than ever right now with emulation. 2.) I don't think the older market segment will ever be completely abandoned, as they are high-spend consumers with oodles of disposable income, and 3.) There are always alternative hobbies to consider, like golf or restoring a Buick 😆
A lot of independent reviewers I trust are throwing up some big red flags for this game.
Sticking points seem to be the extremely simplified combat, the Disney-esque art design, and juvenile writing/dialogue. Sounds way far off the mark for me.
One thing is for sure, this game is going to be divisive down the road. I'll have to wait and see where the reviews actually land in a few weeks, especially considering some accusations floating about Bioware / EA engaged in access journalism and declined to provide review code to outlets that gave middling feedback to the preview event.
Then again, Mortismal Gaming loved it and he is a CRPG freak. I usually line up with his tastes pretty close. I guess it's just wait and see at this point.
I am legitimately confused at this point haha. I guess I will have to do the unthinkable and just formulate my own opinion.
I wouldn't bother haha. I mention this in nearly every PushSquare 'Top 10 Horror Games' article. Visage, Darkwood, and Signalis get snubbed every time for more mainstream (read: less scary) stuff. I mean, I know it's all opinions at the end of the day, but at this point I suspect there are not any huge horror fans among PushSquare's staff.
You get the standard AAAs and a couple flavor of the week indies which benefit from recency bias in these lists, but don't go expecting deep dives or to see any deep cuts like Darkwood on here.
Why not, if they have the resources? More the merrier for a live service title like this.
That said, I never bought into the widespread idea exclusives are bad, an idea that seemed to get some steam around 2020 and usually used as some way to malign Sony. Exclusives built the industry, built Sony into a market leader. How do you attract users to your box, your ecosystem, if you don't have unique experiences and every console does the same thing?
I don't think the people that argued it ever thought about it too hard or are very aware of the history of the video game industry.
Sure! Here in the states, you get 10 points per dollar spent. You need 1250 points for a $5 store voucher. Meaning, you have to spend $125 dollars to get $5 back. 5/125 is 0.008, or in percentage terms, 0.8%.
They obfuscate the low return by not using round numbers (in this case, 1250 points to redeem a $5 voucher.) This is a tactic seen commonly in premium currency sales (not using round numbers, like 1000). But some straightforward math always tells the tale.
Welp. We've reached the critical mass of greed, where returning less than 1% of your purchases in PSN funny money is just too high an ask of this multimillion and record-profiting company. Literally less than 1 cent back... One. Cent. (Not even an actual cent because it is store credit, but I digress...)
Sony is so greedy they snatched the penny back. And it's actually become hilarious how much of a meme they've become for this stuff recently.
Well apparently returning 1 cent for each dollar spent was just a bridge too far for old Sony.
Edit: My bad, after running the numbers it is less than 1% back. Comes to 0.008 of a return on spend. So by any metric or comparable reward program it's among the worst I've ever heard of.
And that was too much for them? Fortune 500 company here, folks. 😆
I was aware it was a good game and I'm in to Metroidvanias big time but I didn't buy. I just don't have the time for all these releases.
Brass tacks, I worked 76 hours last week. Trying to keep the lights on and meeting financial goals has become harder for most of us in recent years and the most valuable resource - time - is in precious short supply. Just too many games.
I had just enough time to plat Silent Hill 2 this month and honestly I'm surprised I was able to even do that. Cost me some much needed sleep but soooo worth it.
Had a whole lineup of horror games I wanted to get to for spooky month but nope, absolutely not happening. Just threw the games on the 750+ game backlog like throwing bodies in a mass grave.
I dunno, they just released a Doom compilation Collector's Edition that came with a steel book case but all the games are digital codes (no actual disc included). As crazy as it sounds, it happens.
Further back, several PS3 games did this as well. Marvel vs Capcom 2 and DuckTales come to mind. They sold empty cases with code vouchers inside at retail. One wonders what a person does with a game case that doesn't come with a game...
Definitely will give it a preorder. Gotta support physical.
Waited over a year after release for Baldur's Gate 3, Alan Wake 2, and Psychonauts 2 because the lack of physical editions this gen, and was waiting for this as well. You love to see it, even if the new normal is to expect delays. I guess that's what backlogs are for.
Nah, The Medium has around a 70% aggregate review score, plenty of people liked it well enough. It probably had the most actual gameplay of any of their games, which were all straight up walking simulators up to that point.
It was alright. Just alright. I liked it well enough. Some cool perspective tricks. Sort of like an off-brand Amnesia game, and I don't mean that necessarily as a bad thing.
The part where the ghost baby repeatedly runs into the wall in the looping corridor had me laughing out loud. They took that part out for the Layers of Fear remake unfortunately :/
Another company I'd add to the list: SquareSoft. They were releasing straight garbage for years, dud after dud. Uninspired clones of better games.
Then, under threat of the studio being shuttered, they released a little game called Final Fantasy. The title was actually meant to denote it might very well have been their final game. The rest is history.
You just never know. Maybe it's time for Bloober's hot streak.
I dunno, I think sometimes it takes a small studio time to find its specialty. I mean, I collect From Software games. You should see the utter crap they put out the first ten years of their existence.
From Adventures of Cookies and Cream to Elden Ring. Wow
I don't think any of their games were terrible. But (with the exception of Observer) they were all aggressively average.
Layers of Fear was their first game and while rough, it was decent. Problem was, they could never manage much better than "decent". Until Silent Hill 2.
Oh, and the voice actor for James (Luke Roberts) deserves a best performance award or something for this. Angela's voice actor knocks it out of the park too. I actually thought Mary's voice work was a slight step down though, but the original voice actor (Monica Horgan) was legendary so that was a tough hill to climb.
I normally don't even notice voice acting in a game, it's just there. But this was really good stuff.
It's been a great year for third party indies, and I'm really happy about horror games getting a proper resurgence with games like RE4 and Dead Space remakes.
I won't spoil anything but they added new endings to SH2 for the remake and one of them basically supersedes any of the other endings in my own personal head cannon based on how well it was done. Obviously Bloober are massive fans of Silent Hill and it shows. They kept what needed to be kept, and made meaningful changes on top of it in a really masterful way.
Yeah it definitely gave me RE2 remake vibes, which is a big compliment. I played the original SH 1 and 2 back in the day and loved em, but I like the remake even better.
I'll have to think about it a bit more, but I think this is my favorite horror game of all time now. And I'm a huge horror game buff, I try to play everything I have time for.
Bloober really pulled it off and I am shocked how good they did.
My only small gripes are it is overall too easy (highly recommend setting combat to hard, even for new players), some of the areas - Toluca Prison and The Labyrinth - are so dark on standard settings on an OLED I can barely see what's going on, and the red effect on the screen when you get injured looks really cheap and is very distracting.
I ended the game with a pharmacy full of healing items and a ton of bullets on normal difficulty, even though I wasn't really conserving anything. I've started a second playthrough on hard and it feels more balanced.
Sutherland definitely lent a different angle to the voice. Sort of a reading-his-lines-over-the-phone, half asleep quality that really established Venom Snake as his own thing.
Appoint Hermen Hulst as the new CEO of Ubisoft. I mean it would hurt to see him leave Playstation but Ubisoft needs his business genius more right now. It's just the right thing to do.
We'll just have to find some way to go on without him.
Oh absolutely, it all goes back to our Puritan and English common law roots in our legal system, which still influences a lot of what we do and how we do it. At least on the surface. Swearing on the bible for court testimony comes off as almost laughable and quaint in the modern setting, a relic of a relic of a bygone time that somehow survived. I provide some court testimony now and then for work, it always comes off as a bit of a bad joke.
For the lobbying, the law(s) prohibiting it would have to be airtight and prevent alternate backdoor channels of "donations". Sort of how applying trade sanctions creates two dozen other problems / secondary abuses and it becomes this game of whack-a-mole. The law would be have to be written well and foresee these issues in advance. Now I don't know about you, but I don't have that kind of faith in our elected representatives to pull this off. But in theory, it could be done. In theory.
If the problem is cultural, we are all screwed. Once something becomes baked in to how we think and act as a society, nothing short of a megaton bomb can change it. Let's hope it isn't that and we are being overly pessimistic here. I have faith that there are a lot of people out there who still believe in equity in their business dealings and wouldn't cheat even when presented an opportunity to do so. I don't think a lot of these commenters, if placed in this CEO's position, would go through with these layoffs. Now maybe that's because they are naive to the business realities, but regardless I think that most here would take a 5% pay cut to their multimillion dollar salaries to make it happen. I truly believe most people are good. Its just by design the good people, who outnumber the bad, are not given these positions of authority. Of course we have all heard the studies that CEOs and executives test well above average for psychopathy, narcissism, and other personality disorders. It's a feature, not a bug.
To bring the scope in a bit, look at scalpers. They exist in significant numbers, sure, but on the whole the general audience feels the act is unethical, even if only because it negatively affects them. I believe some people over time develop this idea they can or even need to cheat to get ahead, that to believe anything else is to be a rube. And this is generally a result of them being treated unfairly or cheated in the past themselves. They feel being a cynic means they are more aware of the reality when ironically they completely lack self-awareness. Being cynical is very "in" right now, unfortunately, a product of an overall lack of faith in any formal institution - religious, social, or governmental. And granted, those institutions haven't given them much good reason to have any trust.
I guess my point is there will always be "cheaters", but most people aren't and can freely recognize bad conduct. We just need to stop giving the outlier bad faith actors positions of power. Or at least I need to believe this to maintain my sanity.
Trust me, I remember a better time where Ubisoft put out good stuff - the first couple Assassin's Creed games, some original IP like Child of Light, and the awesome Rayman Origins and Legends come to mind. They have talent. Further back into the PS1 and PS2 era they were a truly impressive and creative company.
I don't want anyone to lose their jobs, but my logic here is if the company goes under, that talent will be snapped up quickly by other devs or publishers. It's an institutionally rotten company for sure, but there's always some good with the bad.
If there was a path forward for them to be better, I can't help but think they would have already pursued that. This has been a long time in the making. Maybe if they sell and get new management, scale down, and change up their business model? I really don't know. Here's to hoping.
I was pretty hard on Bloober and was a big detractor of the decision to allow them to do the remake. If this turns out good, I will never have been more happy to eat my words. I don't put much stock in Famitsu by itself, but other preview footage and impressions have been really positive as well. I'm excited and will give it a go.
If it's good, let them have Silent Hill 3 and 4 and maybe eventually a new entry.
Wasn't WB considering divesting itself of its video game business a couple years back? After seeing the microtransaction hellscape they turned Mortal Kombat into, I wouldn't shed any tears.
Call it Schadenfreude, but I am so ready for this company to die. Ubisoft, EA, Activision, and TakeTwo are the Axis of Evil of video game publishers as far as I'm concerned.
Ignore the discussion about DEI and historical accuracy that is dominating the news cycle, there are so many other totally legitimate reasons this company is where it is. A culture of sexual harassment, predatory microtransactions, live service push, uninspired releases. This didn't happen overnight. They check all the boxes.
Yeah the Supreme Court is definitely apolitical and known for its sound legal decisions, as evidenced by the Jim Crow rulings.
I always found it kinda funny how we Americans ascribe an almost divine infallibility to the decisions of the Supreme Court, like it's the Pope making papal decrees. Until recently that is, with US approval ratings of the Supreme Court nosediving to finally join nearly every other public institution in the doldrums of public opinion.
Corps will do whatever they can get away with doing legally. They internally weigh violating laws and regulations through the lense of 'will this action net more profit than the potential fines / lawsuits?' It's an actual managerial accounting task. They literally do risk-benefit assessments to determine whether or not they follow the law, as the only penalty is monetary, something they tend to have quite a bit of. And they get to do this while having all the rights and protections of a person. No accountability anywhere you look in this system.
Meanwhile, the FTC and SEC (the supposed check on corporate abuses) are about as toothless as my 90 year-old grandmother and have been for decades. The corporations know it. In this environment, decisions like these mass layoffs are not only expected outcomes, they are inevitable.
Banning corporate political donations (lobbying) would cure about 60% of this country's ills in one swoop. It gets talked about now and then, but not with any earnestness and usually only as a bad-faith political platform for some up-and-comer to campaign on. But I guess I'm not telling anyone anything they don't already know.
Comments 872
Re: PS5 Pro Pre-Orders Are Stronger Than PS4 Pro, But Scalpers Are Losing Money
When scalpers lose, we all win.
Re: Sony Ships 65.5 Million PS5 Consoles, in Line with PS4
@NEStalgia
Ah apologies, I misread. It seemed insanely low, I guess I should have put that one together.
Re: Sony Ships 65.5 Million PS5 Consoles, in Line with PS4
So that's an attach rate of 1.2 games per console sold. That's... not good. The PS4 attach rate was 9.6 games per console sold. Historically, the attach rate hovered around 4-5 for consoles prior to the PS4.
Re: Round Up: PS5 Pro Reviews Love New Tech and Its Glimpse of PS6 Potential
I'm not exactly hearing any ringing endorsements in any of those reviews.
Re: Golden Joystick Reveals Nominations for 'Ultimate Game of the Year'
Silent Hill 2 or Astro Bot? That's a tough one.
Re: Silent Hill 2 Fan Solves the Mystery Behind PS5 Remake's New Photos
Shape forces the mind
Re: How to Transfer Data from PS5 to PS5 Pro
@Mikey856
Listen I am a discerning consumer and I know what I want. Cerny could make the consciousness transfer happen, he is just saving that for PS7. I mean, he made Knack - the man is capable of anything.
Re: Bloodborne PS5 Pro Comparison Appears As Consumers Receive Console Early
Pretty astounding stuff. How does Sony do it?
Re: How to Transfer Data from PS5 to PS5 Pro
For $700, it better allow me to transfer my consciousness into it so I can achieve immortality.
Re: Marvel's Spider-Man 2 Will Literally Melt Your Face Off on PS5 Pro
Our bodies are not ready. I am undertaking a naked spirit quest in the woods in the lead up to the Pro release to cleanse my spirit, so that I may properly take communion with its glory.
Re: Alan Wake 2 Trapped in Financial Dark Place, 'Most' Development, Marketing Costs Recouped
I bought a physical copy day 1 after the ill-advised decision by their publisher to release digital only. Not Remedy's fault that happened, not their call. Talented group of people.
Re: Ready Your Rizz for PS5, PS4 Dead or Alive Dating Game on 6th March
This game looks mad skibidi Ohio.
Re: Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (PS5) - The Strongest Return to FPS Form
That moment you die in Call of Duty multiplayer and an eight year old comes over the mic and starts smack talking you. That's what it's all about.
Re: Dragon Age: The Veilguard Comes Out Swinging, Already EA's Biggest Single Player Game on Steam
@Darylb88
You are absolutely right, EA doesn't need us to speculate in this video game website comment section on an article about game sales. I mean it's just shameful, really.
-slowly leans back in armchair-
Now then, where were we...
Re: Matthew McConaughey Details Exodus' Sci-Fi Horrors in Signature Charismatic Drawl
"You gotta pump them numbers up. Those are rookie numbers."
Re: PS5 Pro was a '5-Year Project', In Development Before PS5's Launch
@Futureshark
You are playing the short game there, partner. Everyone knows the smart play is to wait for the PS7.
Re: PS5 Pro was a '5-Year Project', In Development Before PS5's Launch
Who wouldn't trade their firstborn for 4K AND 120 FPS. I mean, wow how do they do it. It's a Pro thing, you regulars wouldn't understand. That Cerny is a straight up wizard or something.
Have fun playing with your Okama Gamespheres and Ouyas, haters.
Re: PS5 Pro was a '5-Year Project', In Development Before PS5's Launch
You want yer disc drive? Here's yer disc drive! * proceeds to hit customer with folding chair, then mugs them before running into a nearby crackhouse *
-Sony, probably.
Re: Dragon Age: The Veilguard Comes Out Swinging, Already EA's Biggest Single Player Game on Steam
@Orpheus79V
If you say that three times fast and turn off the lights, the ghost of Concord will appear behind you in the mirror.
Re: Dragon Age: The Veilguard Comes Out Swinging, Already EA's Biggest Single Player Game on Steam
I mean, Baldur's Gate 3 was 472,000 on launch day. Call of Duty 6 somewhere around 229,000.
Probably apples to oranges, but do with those numbers what you will. I guess time will tell whether EA considers it a financial success. Apparently publishers are expecting bigger and bigger numbers these days as AAA costs balloon.
Loved Origins and Inquisition too to a lesser extent, but still on the fence about this game due to personal qualms with the art style and lighter tone. I've waited 10 years, I can wait another 12 months for a definitive edition.
I look forward to the impending PushSquare article about Veilguard getting review bombed. I really wish there was an option to filter out all the 1/10 and 10/10 user reviews on sites like Metacritic. Eliminate the noise.
All those brave culture warrior soldiers will be battling it out against one another in the review sections of every aggregate website shortly. Wish we could throw them all on an island sort of Hunger Games style and just watch them enact their holy war against one another in real time away from the comfort of a computer or phone. Now wouldn't that be a sight to see?
Re: Sony Adopting 'Show Don't Tell' Strategy with PS5
As someone who has soured on Sony lately, I'll concede one thing to them: they have a tough job ahead of them in their games division. The "fans" are not a monolith, it's all kinds of people in all different walks of life.
You got the kids using their parents' credit to buy v-bucks in Fortnight, the high-spend dedicated AAA consumer that wants more of that, the old farts that want the return of old IP and the introduction of new IP on a steady basis. And dozens of variations in between.
As Playstation has passed 30 years and counting, the market has become increasingly segmented and "spread out" to multiple demographics with different priorities, and I just don't think Sony has what it takes to meet all their expectations adequately.
Ideally they could meet the expectations of all their different customer bases, but it's just not realistic. Even a Fortune 500 company has only so much resources. And of course, they have to consider that almighty return as well.
What I think Sony has been doing - maybe smartly - is prioritizing the younger gamers at the expense of their original customers. PushSquare readership is not the younger segment of the market they are catering to, hence all the recent bad feelings in the online discourse. Do I blame them? No. Am I disappointed in this strategy? Oh definitely.
What can I say? Age happens and things move on. Gaming is like that too. It's a really fun hobby but as odd as it sounds it's a natural evolution for us to be left behind somewhat. I think modern gaming is gonna progress to a point that is entirely unrecognizable to us in the near to mid-term future.
Three points of consolation: 1.) Retro gaming will always be there and is more accessible than ever right now with emulation. 2.) I don't think the older market segment will ever be completely abandoned, as they are high-spend consumers with oodles of disposable income, and 3.) There are always alternative hobbies to consider, like golf or restoring a Buick 😆
Re: Dragon Age: The Veilguard (PS5) - The Best BioWare Game Since Mass Effect 3
A lot of independent reviewers I trust are throwing up some big red flags for this game.
Sticking points seem to be the extremely simplified combat, the Disney-esque art design, and juvenile writing/dialogue. Sounds way far off the mark for me.
One thing is for sure, this game is going to be divisive down the road. I'll have to wait and see where the reviews actually land in a few weeks, especially considering some accusations floating about Bioware / EA engaged in access journalism and declined to provide review code to outlets that gave middling feedback to the preview event.
Then again, Mortismal Gaming loved it and he is a CRPG freak. I usually line up with his tastes pretty close. I guess it's just wait and see at this point.
I am legitimately confused at this point haha. I guess I will have to do the unthinkable and just formulate my own opinion.
Re: Here Are 10 Great PS5 Horror Games to Play This Halloween
@Colour
I wouldn't bother haha. I mention this in nearly every PushSquare 'Top 10 Horror Games' article. Visage, Darkwood, and Signalis get snubbed every time for more mainstream (read: less scary) stuff. I mean, I know it's all opinions at the end of the day, but at this point I suspect there are not any huge horror fans among PushSquare's staff.
You get the standard AAAs and a couple flavor of the week indies which benefit from recency bias in these lists, but don't go expecting deep dives or to see any deep cuts like Darkwood on here.
Re: Xbox Fans Really Want a Port of PS5, PC Hit Helldivers 2
Why not, if they have the resources? More the merrier for a live service title like this.
That said, I never bought into the widespread idea exclusives are bad, an idea that seemed to get some steam around 2020 and usually used as some way to malign Sony. Exclusives built the industry, built Sony into a market leader. How do you attract users to your box, your ecosystem, if you don't have unique experiences and every console does the same thing?
I don't think the people that argued it ever thought about it too hard or are very aware of the history of the video game industry.
Re: Reminder: You Must Accept PS Stars Terms of Service to Keep Earning Points
@MrPeanutbutterz
Sure! Here in the states, you get 10 points per dollar spent. You need 1250 points for a $5 store voucher. Meaning, you have to spend $125 dollars to get $5 back. 5/125 is 0.008, or in percentage terms, 0.8%.
They obfuscate the low return by not using round numbers (in this case, 1250 points to redeem a $5 voucher.) This is a tactic seen commonly in premium currency sales (not using round numbers, like 1000). But some straightforward math always tells the tale.
Re: Reminder: You Must Accept PS Stars Terms of Service to Keep Earning Points
Welp. We've reached the critical mass of greed, where returning less than 1% of your purchases in PSN funny money is just too high an ask of this multimillion and record-profiting company. Literally less than 1 cent back... One. Cent. (Not even an actual cent because it is store credit, but I digress...)
Sony is so greedy they snatched the penny back. And it's actually become hilarious how much of a meme they've become for this stuff recently.
We've reached Mr. Krabs levels of insane greed.
Re: PS5, PS4 Fans Are Worried Cash Rewards Have Been Removed from PS Stars
Well apparently returning 1 cent for each dollar spent was just a bridge too far for old Sony.
Edit: My bad, after running the numbers it is less than 1% back. Comes to 0.008 of a return on spend. So by any metric or comparable reward program it's among the worst I've ever heard of.
And that was too much for them? Fortune 500 company here, folks. 😆
Re: Ubisoft Disbands Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Team After Poor Sales, Claims Report
I was aware it was a good game and I'm in to Metroidvanias big time but I didn't buy. I just don't have the time for all these releases.
Brass tacks, I worked 76 hours last week. Trying to keep the lights on and meeting financial goals has become harder for most of us in recent years and the most valuable resource - time - is in precious short supply. Just too many games.
I had just enough time to plat Silent Hill 2 this month and honestly I'm surprised I was able to even do that. Cost me some much needed sleep but soooo worth it.
Had a whole lineup of horror games I wanted to get to for spooky month but nope, absolutely not happening. Just threw the games on the 750+ game backlog like throwing bodies in a mass grave.
Re: Black Myth: Wukong Physical Version Now Official, PS5 Disc Included
@babybilly
I dunno, they just released a Doom compilation Collector's Edition that came with a steel book case but all the games are digital codes (no actual disc included). As crazy as it sounds, it happens.
Further back, several PS3 games did this as well. Marvel vs Capcom 2 and DuckTales come to mind. They sold empty cases with code vouchers inside at retail. One wonders what a person does with a game case that doesn't come with a game...
Re: Black Myth: Wukong Physical Version Now Official, PS5 Disc Included
Definitely will give it a preorder. Gotta support physical.
Waited over a year after release for Baldur's Gate 3, Alan Wake 2, and Psychonauts 2 because the lack of physical editions this gen, and was waiting for this as well. You love to see it, even if the new normal is to expect delays. I guess that's what backlogs are for.
Re: Horizon's Sylens Will Be Recast Following the Passing of Lance Reddick
Lance Reddick is still the GOAT. Great actor and phenomenal voice work as well. In my alternate timeline he is still around.
Re: Silent Hill 2 Dev Bloober Team Done with Making 'Sh*tty' Games
@Khwarezm89
Nah, The Medium has around a 70% aggregate review score, plenty of people liked it well enough. It probably had the most actual gameplay of any of their games, which were all straight up walking simulators up to that point.
Re: Silent Hill 2 Dev Bloober Team Done with Making 'Sh*tty' Games
@Oram77
It was alright. Just alright. I liked it well enough. Some cool perspective tricks. Sort of like an off-brand Amnesia game, and I don't mean that necessarily as a bad thing.
The part where the ghost baby repeatedly runs into the wall in the looping corridor had me laughing out loud. They took that part out for the Layers of Fear remake unfortunately :/
Re: Silent Hill 2 Dev Bloober Team Done with Making 'Sh*tty' Games
@PegasusActual93
Awesome example.
Another company I'd add to the list: SquareSoft. They were releasing straight garbage for years, dud after dud. Uninspired clones of better games.
Then, under threat of the studio being shuttered, they released a little game called Final Fantasy. The title was actually meant to denote it might very well have been their final game. The rest is history.
You just never know. Maybe it's time for Bloober's hot streak.
Re: Silent Hill 2 Dev Bloober Team Done with Making 'Sh*tty' Games
I dunno, I think sometimes it takes a small studio time to find its specialty. I mean, I collect From Software games. You should see the utter crap they put out the first ten years of their existence.
From Adventures of Cookies and Cream to Elden Ring. Wow
Re: Silent Hill 2 Dev Bloober Team Done with Making 'Sh*tty' Games
I don't think any of their games were terrible. But (with the exception of Observer) they were all aggressively average.
Layers of Fear was their first game and while rough, it was decent. Problem was, they could never manage much better than "decent". Until Silent Hill 2.
Re: Poll: What Review Score Would You Give Silent Hill 2?
Oh, and the voice actor for James (Luke Roberts) deserves a best performance award or something for this. Angela's voice actor knocks it out of the park too. I actually thought Mary's voice work was a slight step down though, but the original voice actor (Monica Horgan) was legendary so that was a tough hill to climb.
I normally don't even notice voice acting in a game, it's just there. But this was really good stuff.
Re: Poll: What Review Score Would You Give Silent Hill 2?
@somnambulance
It's been a great year for third party indies, and I'm really happy about horror games getting a proper resurgence with games like RE4 and Dead Space remakes.
I won't spoil anything but they added new endings to SH2 for the remake and one of them basically supersedes any of the other endings in my own personal head cannon based on how well it was done. Obviously Bloober are massive fans of Silent Hill and it shows. They kept what needed to be kept, and made meaningful changes on top of it in a really masterful way.
Re: Poll: What Review Score Would You Give Silent Hill 2?
@somnambulance
Yeah it definitely gave me RE2 remake vibes, which is a big compliment. I played the original SH 1 and 2 back in the day and loved em, but I like the remake even better.
I'll have to think about it a bit more, but I think this is my favorite horror game of all time now. And I'm a huge horror game buff, I try to play everything I have time for.
Bloober really pulled it off and I am shocked how good they did.
Re: Poll: What Review Score Would You Give Silent Hill 2?
I'd land somewhere between a 9 and a 10.
My only small gripes are it is overall too easy (highly recommend setting combat to hard, even for new players), some of the areas - Toluca Prison and The Labyrinth - are so dark on standard settings on an OLED I can barely see what's going on, and the red effect on the screen when you get injured looks really cheap and is very distracting.
I ended the game with a pharmacy full of healing items and a ton of bullets on normal difficulty, even though I wasn't really conserving anything. I've started a second playthrough on hard and it feels more balanced.
Very small complaints. Overall amazing game.
Re: PLAY, the Last Bastion of PlayStation Print Media, Has Reached Its Final Issue
Man, does anyone remember PSM magazine? That was so cool. There's just nothing like print media.
Re: David Hayter, the Voice of Snake in Metal Gear Solid, Teases Return to the Role
@Oram77
Sutherland definitely lent a different angle to the voice. Sort of a reading-his-lines-over-the-phone, half asleep quality that really established Venom Snake as his own thing.
Re: Tencent, Guillemot Family Reportedly Considering Ubisoft Buyout
Appoint Hermen Hulst as the new CEO of Ubisoft. I mean it would hurt to see him leave Playstation but Ubisoft needs his business genius more right now. It's just the right thing to do.
We'll just have to find some way to go on without him.
Re: Silent Hill 2 (PS5) - The Horror Great Remains So in This Excellent Remake
Well done, Bloober.
Re: Epic Games Boss Says Firm Now 'Financially Sound', Following the Firing of Over 800 Staff
@NEStalgia
Oh absolutely, it all goes back to our Puritan and English common law roots in our legal system, which still influences a lot of what we do and how we do it. At least on the surface. Swearing on the bible for court testimony comes off as almost laughable and quaint in the modern setting, a relic of a relic of a bygone time that somehow survived. I provide some court testimony now and then for work, it always comes off as a bit of a bad joke.
For the lobbying, the law(s) prohibiting it would have to be airtight and prevent alternate backdoor channels of "donations". Sort of how applying trade sanctions creates two dozen other problems / secondary abuses and it becomes this game of whack-a-mole. The law would be have to be written well and foresee these issues in advance. Now I don't know about you, but I don't have that kind of faith in our elected representatives to pull this off. But in theory, it could be done. In theory.
If the problem is cultural, we are all screwed. Once something becomes baked in to how we think and act as a society, nothing short of a megaton bomb can change it. Let's hope it isn't that and we are being overly pessimistic here. I have faith that there are a lot of people out there who still believe in equity in their business dealings and wouldn't cheat even when presented an opportunity to do so. I don't think a lot of these commenters, if placed in this CEO's position, would go through with these layoffs. Now maybe that's because they are naive to the business realities, but regardless I think that most here would take a 5% pay cut to their multimillion dollar salaries to make it happen. I truly believe most people are good. Its just by design the good people, who outnumber the bad, are not given these positions of authority. Of course we have all heard the studies that CEOs and executives test well above average for psychopathy, narcissism, and other personality disorders. It's a feature, not a bug.
To bring the scope in a bit, look at scalpers. They exist in significant numbers, sure, but on the whole the general audience feels the act is unethical, even if only because it negatively affects them. I believe some people over time develop this idea they can or even need to cheat to get ahead, that to believe anything else is to be a rube. And this is generally a result of them being treated unfairly or cheated in the past themselves. They feel being a cynic means they are more aware of the reality when ironically they completely lack self-awareness. Being cynical is very "in" right now, unfortunately, a product of an overall lack of faith in any formal institution - religious, social, or governmental. And granted, those institutions haven't given them much good reason to have any trust.
I guess my point is there will always be "cheaters", but most people aren't and can freely recognize bad conduct. We just need to stop giving the outlier bad faith actors positions of power. Or at least I need to believe this to maintain my sanity.
Re: Assassin's Creed Shadows Reportedly Has a Co-Op Game Mode in Development
@Ainu20
Trust me, I remember a better time where Ubisoft put out good stuff - the first couple Assassin's Creed games, some original IP like Child of Light, and the awesome Rayman Origins and Legends come to mind. They have talent. Further back into the PS1 and PS2 era they were a truly impressive and creative company.
I don't want anyone to lose their jobs, but my logic here is if the company goes under, that talent will be snapped up quickly by other devs or publishers. It's an institutionally rotten company for sure, but there's always some good with the bad.
If there was a path forward for them to be better, I can't help but think they would have already pursued that. This has been a long time in the making. Maybe if they sell and get new management, scale down, and change up their business model? I really don't know. Here's to hoping.
Re: First Review Scores for PS5's Metaphor: ReFantazio, Silent Hill 2 Are Glowing
I was pretty hard on Bloober and was a big detractor of the decision to allow them to do the remake. If this turns out good, I will never have been more happy to eat my words. I don't put much stock in Famitsu by itself, but other preview footage and impressions have been really positive as well. I'm excited and will give it a go.
If it's good, let them have Silent Hill 3 and 4 and maybe eventually a new entry.
Re: Crickets as Suicide Squad Endures Another Muted Launch
Wasn't WB considering divesting itself of its video game business a couple years back? After seeing the microtransaction hellscape they turned Mortal Kombat into, I wouldn't shed any tears.
Re: Assassin's Creed Shadows Reportedly Has a Co-Op Game Mode in Development
Call it Schadenfreude, but I am so ready for this company to die. Ubisoft, EA, Activision, and TakeTwo are the Axis of Evil of video game publishers as far as I'm concerned.
Ignore the discussion about DEI and historical accuracy that is dominating the news cycle, there are so many other totally legitimate reasons this company is where it is. A culture of sexual harassment, predatory microtransactions, live service push, uninspired releases. This didn't happen overnight. They check all the boxes.
Re: Epic Games Boss Says Firm Now 'Financially Sound', Following the Firing of Over 800 Staff
@NEStalgia
Yeah the Supreme Court is definitely apolitical and known for its sound legal decisions, as evidenced by the Jim Crow rulings.
I always found it kinda funny how we Americans ascribe an almost divine infallibility to the decisions of the Supreme Court, like it's the Pope making papal decrees. Until recently that is, with US approval ratings of the Supreme Court nosediving to finally join nearly every other public institution in the doldrums of public opinion.
Corps will do whatever they can get away with doing legally. They internally weigh violating laws and regulations through the lense of 'will this action net more profit than the potential fines / lawsuits?' It's an actual managerial accounting task. They literally do risk-benefit assessments to determine whether or not they follow the law, as the only penalty is monetary, something they tend to have quite a bit of. And they get to do this while having all the rights and protections of a person. No accountability anywhere you look in this system.
Meanwhile, the FTC and SEC (the supposed check on corporate abuses) are about as toothless as my 90 year-old grandmother and have been for decades. The corporations know it. In this environment, decisions like these mass layoffs are not only expected outcomes, they are inevitable.
Banning corporate political donations (lobbying) would cure about 60% of this country's ills in one swoop. It gets talked about now and then, but not with any earnestness and usually only as a bad-faith political platform for some up-and-comer to campaign on. But I guess I'm not telling anyone anything they don't already know.