Vovander

Am I the only one hearing Kaziya?

@thefourfoldroot1
I was referring to their spelling of “yakuza” specifically - someone might lose a finger over that)

From the PS blog:

“ Lost Judgment once again puts players in the sneakers of lawyer turned street-fighting detective Takayuki Yagami. Joined by his partner, ex-yazuka 😂🤣Masaharu Kaito, the crime-fighting duo is called on to investigate a seemingly perfect crime whose lead suspect has an airtight alibi”

Will probably try Spellforce 3. Otherwise meh month for me.

Positively intrigued. Still surprised they are doing back-to-back entries in the same subseries - I guess it’s the first time since CoD 1/2?

Where did you get PSPlus subscriber numbers? In Supplemental Information, they disclosed them only for FY22.

Will probably play when it is available on EA Access one year later.

No mention of PSVR2 in the slides.
The relevant stream - Others - is almost 3x to Q4’22, but it includes revenues from other peripherals and sales on other platforms (PC, I guess).
This probably corroborates earlier reports about PSVR2 sales below expectations, otherwise Sony would likely brag about it.

I finished GoWR only recently, and wanted more, so started NG+ in GoW2018. It’s nice to breeze through some previously difficult encounters, but I am not sure I’ll see it to the end. Difficulty in optional activities (doing muspelheim trials now) indeed seems to be ramped by lenghtening health bars/increasing enemy counts/stricter time limits.
GoWR is too long, too recent, relies too much on “cinematic” storytelling, and has too many traumatising boss encounters for me to play again.
Re: ng+ modes in general, no big deal for me personally, but l would prefer them to be implemented more widely, instead of bloating games. Rather than having a 100+hrs game with same-y optional activities, I would prefer a 50hrs game, with hand-crafted content. NG+ is then for those hungry for more.

I am about 1/3 into the game. Did not have any complaints at first, but when a new companion joined the team, they started to shout hints almost immediately. Also, it seems to be limited to puzzles in story and side missions. If there is an open-world puzzle (eg Nornir chest), I don’t remember when was the last time I was given a clue.

Big if true. EA puts their own releases on EA Access 1 year after the release day, good if Sony matches that. Hoping for TLoU Part 1 in September.

Trials should be available day 1 for all 1st party releases, IMO.

@stvevan One is a (almost) certainty, another one a possibility. MS does not necessarily have to withdraw COD - having it as part of GP will be sufficient draw for many.

Disappointing( It seems that CMA has made up their mind and just looking for supporting arguments.
“More expensive console and games” - happens regardless, as demonstrated by Sony in recent years.
“An important field of cloud gaming” - Sony started offering streaming capability on PSNow years before MS, could have been market leaders by now if they wanted.
“Access to content” - again speculative. Also ignores multiple (time-limited) Sony exclusives.

The way people here ignore tangible, imminent, highly probable benefits this acquisition (entire ABK catalogue on gamepass + day1 releases there) but drum up potential negative consequences at some indeterminate point in the future kinda reminds me of another important debate in the UK society;)

@Member_the_game Exactly! Happened to me, actually. My PSN from PS3 days was registered in an EU country. When I moved to another place with a different currency, there was no way to change my address and wallet currency, so I had to set up a new profile for PS5.

Posted this in the previous article: 112m MAU is just 1m higher than Q3’21 figure of 111m. Given 30m PS5s sold, I hoped their total customer base would increase, but it looks like Sony’s gamer base might have peaked. Would be interesting to revisit this prediction in 2024)

Gratz to Sony, very well done! Agree with some comments above: how can one reasonably say their competitive position is threatened by MS+ABK.

Some interesting other info: the number of PS+ subscribers increased by about 0.7mln to 46+, and the revenue from subscription services is more or less flat. This might indicate that they did not manage to move many people from “old” PS+ (now Essentials) to higher tiers.
The number of monthly players seems to be at all-time high - 112m. 1m higher than Q3’21, and much higher than Q1-Q2’22, which were slightly over 100m. Again, good news that Sony broke the trend of declining user numbers. But to me it seems that majority of all those PS5’s are people upgrading from PS4, not new gamers.
Some alternative takes, maybe?

Oh EA, why do you miss an opportunity to release it on May the 4th?)

Fine, fine. I hope events do not unfold in a way that’ll give me an opportunity to revisit this argument.

@Colour I agree with you that maybe they are due some benefit of the doubt. But maybe they should somehow dissociate themselves from the things they supposedly don’t support? They seem to try hard to conceal their Russian origins. In the “About Us” section, Mundfish is described as a studio HQ’ed in Cyprus with professionals from over 10 countries (RU of course is not mentioned). But a largely symbolic gesture of unambiguously condemning the war is somehow above them.

@dark_knightmare2 It’s not only because of them being from Russia - I gave the whole package of reasons.

@WCB nice try mate.

This game is developed by Russians, the studio has ties to the government (via funding, employees and publisher in RU), exploits Soviet aesthtetics, the main character is a member of RU’s security forces. The release day is also 3 days apart from the 1st anniversary of the full-scale war. The only anti-war message they posted was toothless “we condemn violence”. I hope this is at least considered in the review, so people can make an informed buying decision.

I checked the previous game from these developers - turns out it was Final Fantasy XV. 81 critics, 7.7 users. I don’t know how people could reasonably expect 9 or so game after that. For Hogwarts Legacy fan club - you might want to check MC scores for their oeuvre so far:)

“Do you watch wrestling?” 😂🤣

@themightyant good question! Judging by their share price, investors are starting to ask it too.
To me, their business model in the past couple of years looked like “buy all you can reach, milk IPs”.

Glad for their success, but was somewhat disappointed by the game itself. It’s fun, but does not move the series forward at all. Hope that happens it AC8.

@Tiael status of acquisition of these studios given as Pending in the latest statements of Embracer, and they are excluded from 23-24 forecasts - probably that’s why they are missing.

@Quintumply thanks! That’s a shame. I think this really limits the appeal to newcomers…

How is the tutorial here? I tried ‘20 and ‘21 and was disappointed that they don’t bother to properly introduce a newcomer to F1. All they have is text manuals (or at least I could not found anything else). ‘12 (my previous game) had an excellent intro, styled as a series of tasks to get f1 license. It explained how to do turns properly (finding apex, braking accelerating), drs, kers, other important concepts on track, not via text.

Siding with sceptics here. True, there are many players who have not experienced it yet - but PS4 remaster is at their disposal. I would understand it if there was no backwards compatibility, as in PS3/4, but not at the current generation. GoW PS5 remaster when, anyone?

A very enjoyable review, especially the first paragraph. Well done!

Picked DMC after 3rd part, and played everyone since. Was quite disappointed with this one: felt very similar to DMC4, with minimum of impactful new ideas. DmC (by Ninja Theory) was much more bold and refreshing, even if not all ideas worked.

After watching, inspired to play AC Unity again!)

Don’t quite understand complaints about the campaign length here, after almost everyone moaned about DL2’s 500 hours. 8hrs is within the duration range (4-8hrs) for a standard modern shooter campaign (See recent CoDs, BFs, Battlefront 2, Titanfall 2).

This happened before. Injustice 2 was removed in November, although it did not have an expiration date. Ironically, it is still shown on a promo picture on All PSNow Games page.

Got an email from currys today, offering 15% discount for HFW - code ALOY15 at checkout, if anyone’s interested.

MK11 is a PS4 version, but it is Ultimate edition - nice!
Also, i can still play my installed TLOU2, although it left the service today - is it always like that with PSNow/PSPlus games? I thought it’s like free weekends on steam - even if you have the game installed, once the free period is over, you can’t launch it.