Vertere

@Art_Vandelay Over rationalise and twist the facts. I’m saying the first party output can pretty easily be compared side by side, by generation within a 30 second search. You said the PS4 line up was legendary and PS5 generation pales in comparison to PS4. I’m pointing out without being anecdotal what’s actually been released. Sentiment at that time wasn’t great either some PS4 years, with consumers and inside PlayStation.
"Our first-party lineup is a little sparse this year so I think this places an even greater emphasis on getting good third-party support." Andrew House - Head of SIE 2015.

But sure let’s go with feels like.

Wonder what it will be like when GTA6 comes out.

@Neither_scene I have a nice PC, I still went and purchased a switch to play Nintendo games. Hardware wasn’t a factor, I had no choice.

@gaston It’s not ridiculously quick but it’s still a lot of running and turning very quickly. Going up and down ladders etc. I didn’t even last 5 minutes in that VR kayak game.

@Globo Xbox was doing dynamic pricing back in 2022. At the time it was marketed as “Just for You” deals or discounts. The UK legal action has absolutely nothing to with this. Ainu20 is correct with their explanation. Similar suits have been filed against Apple, Value etc in different jurisdictions. The only reason the lawsuit was bought against Sony rather than Xbox is that Sony has the predominant market share in the UK.

@Gremio108 dynamic pricing is usually associated with airline tickets or concert tickets. Products that have a physically limited supply or availability and is affected by demand. I.e if you want to see a popular concert and it’s selling quickly the algorithm on the platform selling the tickets will raise the price, conversely if a show isn’t selling well they lower the price to attract people. Supermarkets do it and is fairly common in lots of industries. What they are calling dynamic pricing on the PSN isn’t exactly that. If you have ever a bought a game on sale that’s dynamic pricing. The major difference is digital games have no physical component. There is no supply constraint with digital games. Due to this aspect I honestly wouldn’t worry about it, it’s not like we all rush to buy GTA6 and price increases to $500 because there isn’t enough digital copies. That isn’t going to happen. Think of it more as targeted sales, so if you account has say Ratchet and Clank and they notice you don’t have Astro Bot they may lower the price on your store. Or FIFA 26 isn’t selling as well as usual in your region so pricing adjustments are made. The story is a bit of a nothing burger, you’re never going to see a game on the store higher than launch price this is really about targeted sales.

@gaston You must have a stomach of iron! I couldn’t imagine Marathon in VR. I’d be nauseous in under 2 minutes.

@Art_Vandelay That’s not quite fair. You mentioned PS4 output was legendary. Whilst that may be the case it’s actually fairly comparable to PS5, especially when you consider development cycles and budgets as you mentioned. There are lists of first party releases by year and generation online so I won’t list them all here.
Take this year for example. In its sixth year the PS4 had Death Stranding, Days Gone, and Concrete Genie. PS5 is set to get Wolverine, Saros, Marvel Tokon, and Marathon.
I’m not going to defend Sony’s live service push. It does appear to have been a knee jerk reaction to a period of crazy acquisitions, primarily driven by Microsoft. Shuhei Yoshida spoke about this in one of his post exit interviews. He mentioned his own apprehension about live service games but also mentioned Sony increased PlayStation’s divisional budget to push into that space. So it wasn’t a case of taking funds away from the existing development pipeline. Additional funds were allocated specifically for that purpose.
I do agree with you on opportunity cost though. Imagine what those resources could have been used for, not to mention studios spending time on misguided live service initiatives. Hindsight is twenty twenty as they say.
My point is that when you step back and look at it alongside broader market trends it isn’t quite as pessimistic as the internet would have us believe. Most of the top selling and most played games have been live service titles for years now. When you look at what Sony has actually released this generation the output hasn’t really paled in comparison with the last. Perhaps with exception of the 3rd year being frankly dreadful on PS5.
I don’t think Sony has turned its back on its loyal customers. It’s simply been caught up in the wider industry push towards live service games. Hate culture isn’t the product of a perceived slow first party release schedule. It’s just another lightning rod for it.

@glennthefrog Honestly it should be standard for any first party live service game. Destiny could desperately use a boost right now. This type of policy is really needed going forward with only multiplayer games going multiplatform and the steam console and next Xbox presumably not requiring a subscription.

@Neonix This is actually a good point. Sony owns the studio so not waiving the PSN subscription seems a bit self defeating. Especially as it’s in their interest to shift units. Ideally they add it to the higher tier subscriptions and in a year give it away free on the base plan. In the meantime ditch the psn requirement.

@Blaze215 That’s so disingenuous. Yeah the game dropped an all time low. Do you know why? In fact there was almost no one on. It had its first scheduled maintenance today and you couldn’t log in. It happens with live service games. It will happen again next week. You don’t want the game to fail but are happy to completely misuse steam concurrent numbers to represent what exactly? If you’re going to quote concurrents as a metric at least do it in good faith. The game had before maintenance ten times the numbers of concurrents as SF6, yeah it’s a live a service game, should we get rid of it. For some greater good? Don’t worry about fighting game fans. FF14 has a mere 6.5k players and a peak 1/3 of Marathon today, not looking good square should probably close it, let’s not concern ourselves with MMORPG fans. I could go on. It’s exhausting reading these type comments about steam numbers. You may not enjoy live service games and that’s fine but believe it or not there are a lot of people who do, from sports fans to mmorpgs and yes even the odd person who enjoys an extraction shooters.

The game is good, excellent even. Of all the upcoming live service games on Sony’s slate, Marathon is the one that most deserves strong support from Sony. It is a very specific type of game aimed at a very specific audience. In some ways it reminds me of GT7. If it is handled correctly, it has the potential to build a loyal, long term player base. That will only happen, though, if the studio is not pushed to broaden its appeal and turn it into something more like Arc Raiders.
Bungie has not mandated or forced outlets to hold reviews either. Publications are free to publish whenever they like. Bungie has simply suggested a timeline because of how the launch is structured. As a live service game, the content rollout is staggered across several weeks.
There is also an ARG running at the moment, that is kind of exciting if you’re following it, that is expected to last until mid March. Once the community solves it, it will presumably unlock the endgame. Because of that, many outlets seem to be waiting before finalising their reviews. Personally, I would rather read a complete review than one where a reviewer has played only 60 percent of a large RPG and called it a day.