electrolite77

@Titntin

Ah I see. I’m with you now.

Thanks and same to you!

@Titntin

What was I defending?

Not quite sure why she’s so smug. She argued that the acquisitions would lessen competition, yet MS are now putting their games on everything. Nobody needs to buy anything MS-related to buy COD or any other ActiBlizz game. Yes MS have carried on living down to reputation by laying people off, but almost everyone in the industry has (apart from Nintendo). Everyone has increased prices. Xbox was already set on their current path of poking their fanbase in the eyes every few months. Think she’s trying to retrospectively cover how bad it all worked out for her and the FTC.

It’s pretty poor. Sony has such a great retro legacy and so little enthusiasm for it. I won’t be renewing my PS Plus after it expires in July.

Well that’s pretty simple.

1. Difference in Userbase size

2. Almost total lack of presence in some important territories.

Thats it. Not Series S, not GP, that’s the two issues. Very good to see them trying to find out what the issues are. It’s a mature approach and crucial for every video game consumer as the market needs competition, which means a strong Xbox.

Good news here is this is more than enough to keep them in the Consoles business as part of their wider ecosystem.

Yes, good news. Competition is good, in fact the industry could really do with that gap closing. Sony (or MS, or anyone else) without competition would be hideous for consumers.

I’m just going to echo what others have said but remastering games that can already played on the PS5 is just lazy, especially when there are so many Sony franchises from PS3 and earlier lying dormant.

The comparisons with Nintendo don’t really work. Hardly anybody played Wii U games and they don’t physically work on Switch so porting them made sense. But they’ve always been part of the wider schedule. Even this year which has been very remake heavy for them still has 4 or 5 new games.

Doubling back to neglected franchises, Sony could learn from Nintendo here too. Some say Resistance, Killzone, Sly Raccoon etc are being ignored because they didn’t sell enough. Look how Nintendo plugged away at Fire Emblem. Pikmin was never a big seller but got a sequel after 10+ years. Metroid Prime is back and even stuff like Another Code, Advance Wars and F-Zero got some acknowledgment this gen.

If Sony want to fill out their schedule there are better ways to do it than live service disasters and slightly shinier versions of games we can already play.

Would like one of those Controllers, they’re very nice indeed. Ominous they haven’t disclosed prices though.

Where was Nishido-san when he said this? The year 2002? Because recently PCs have been getting easier to game on and Consoles have been turning into PCs.

Looks a really good month to me

@NeonMullet

Agreed. I never buy new games digitally.

FAO anyone who wants Xbox to leave the Console market and let Sony have it all to themselves.

Here’s your competition-free lfuture.

@x3King84

I agree. Worst Console generation by some distance. Complacency and arrogance is rife in two of the three main players. We normally only have it in one. It’s a disaster for consumers

@nedbvai

The PS3 was wildly overpriced though, so that’s not a great comparison. Sony spent the next three years stripping components out and trying to force the price down. Value is totally subjective, some people will see this as attractive, others won’t. But that isn’t the same as being able to afford it. I could preorder 10 if I wanted but I’m not going to because it isn’t worth it to me.

@nedbvai

You’re wrong though. Theres a difference between not being able to afford something and not seeing value in it.

@x3King84

I’m definitely starting to lean towards PC+Nintendo being the way forward

@B0udoir

The price of the Neo Geo wasn’t bad, it was the price of the games. They had one in an Arcade near me and I used to drool over it but I was a teenager then and I’d never have been able to afford a game for it.

@nedbvai

You think people aren’t going to buy this because they can’t afford it? Seriously?

@WanderWhere

You’re really overthinking the number at the end of the review. Read the review, research what the game is, decide if you want to play it or not. The number at the end is , like any review, someone’s opinion and TBH borderline irrelevant.

Also age has nothing to do with it. I’m 47 and think this looks great.

So looking forward to play this. Sony have always been brilliant at platformers. Now bring back Jak and Daxter, Sly Raccoon and Ape Escape please.

“ Should it lessen the emphasis on live service – and how will it account for spiralling budgets and escalating development cycles if it does? ”

Yes they should. They could try generating revenue the way they used to, by putting out AA, lower budget games that don’t have to have cutting edge graphics and £100m+ budgets. They could maybe try doing what Nintendo do and padding out their schedule with a healthy diet of remakes and remasters which cost less to make. They’re certainly sitting on enough dormant franchises.

This is mad. A gaming disaster to sit with the Virtual Boy, the Sega Saturn launch, the Xbox One launch, ET on the 2600 and the like

I’m still leaning to a combination of prioritising the versions likely to sell in Asian markets and technical issues (given it doesn’t run great on PS5 anyway)

I just can’t believe anyone looked at the current market and thought another GAAS was what was required, then published a generic looking one that isn’t even F2P

You know a Rewards system is bad when it’s less generous than Nintendo’s. You really have to try to be less generous than Nintendo. When it comes to anything.

A lot of it makes sense, there is a big shift taking place. The Console market isn’t particularly growing and is only a small segment of the whole market. Meanwhile game development costs continue to go up and more and more revenue is sucked up by the successful GAAS franchises-Fortnite, GTA Online, COD etc. True Console exclusives are getting harder to justify in terms of cost unless you’re Nintendo and are working on less powerful hardware, meaning games cost less to make.

What he doesn’t say is Xbox is much more exposed to the headwinds of change than Sony or Nintendo. Not just because their share of the Console market has stagnated but because their Console business is much less important to MS as a whole than it is Sony or Nintendo. Making their Console business a 50m(ish) box segment of a wider platform makes total sense to them.

Unsettling to see first party games taken off the service. Will put me off renewing.

@NEStalgia

Nintendo just got behind with everything in the early 2010s. The late Wii era was barren, they bodged the 3DS launch and then had to throw resources at it to get the Mario/Mario Kart life raft sailing, then had very little for the Wii U’s first year. I remember them publicly expressing surprise at the time HD development took because of course they wouldn’t ask anyone who’d been doing it while they were pushing out Wii mini game compilations. They got there in the end though.

Totally agree on your points about Sony. They leave a phenomenal number of franchises behind rather than build them up. The PS2 was king of platformers-Ratchet, Jak, Sly Raccoon, Ape Escape all first party-but they’ve let most of them slide-very welcome to see Astro Bot on the way though. They dipped their toe in promising waters with PlayStation All Stars and Little Big Planet Karting but gave up any attempts at franchise building like that very quickly. They need to learn from Nintendo there.

@NEStalgia

Yeah it’s funny how it happened for Nintendo. In the 80s they were almost reluctant to let third parties get involved, opting to do so but under very strict conditions. If you look at what they did on NES and SNES it was similar to how Sony behave now. The basis of the library was third party stuff and Nintendos three or four huge titles a year were the cherry on the icing of the cake. It’s why so many people think of Konami, Capcom, Square, Sunsoft etc when they think of those systems.

They absolutely had to up their game on the N64 (helped by Rare) and then Gamecube. It’s actually been a long road for them when you look at the N64’s droughts*, then the Cube’s struggles. The 3DS and Wii U launches were a disaster as they basically didn’t have the resources and Wii U never recovered.

They finally cracked it on Switch, the first year was masterful and they’ve kept up a tremendous pace of releases. Lots of new stuff and slick reuse of their huge catalogue. Ironic, given how much third party stuff is on that system, more than they’ve ever had.

Their management of the brands should be a lesson to others. They don’t let that many IP disappear altogether (sobs in Wave Race). Even obscure ones like F-Zero, Pikmin, Earthbound get their occasional bones thrown in. They’ve kept the quality high especially for their key franchises. Sony don’t have the same legacy but they have much more than most and their refusal to properly utilise this continues to baffle me.

Not that much of a surprise in that outside of Nintendo, exclusives aren’t really the big sellers. They’re important as differentiators and mean the world to fanboys but they only really exist as a way to make sure people buy the big third-party games on PlayStation.

Personally though, Sonys release schedule does mean that they (along with Xbox) have pushed me towards probably going PC+Nintendo next-gen.

P.S. I also can’t believe they are ignoring so many franchises. Why we aren’t getting a steady stream of PS3 remakes/remasters/collections to fill the calendar out is a mystery. Technically difficult yadda yadda, they’re just ignoring them.

Who on Earth thought it would be?!

The only way that’s possible is for either Sony or MS to directly pay Take Two the amount that they think they would lose in sales by being on the service. In other words, an absolutely phenomenal amount of money. Never going to happen.

Now, years down the line when the revenue stream is GTA 6 Online yes, it’ll be on these services as with GTA V, RDR2 and others. But that will be a while away. The sub services are great overall and they work well for some games/publishers/business models but not for a behemoth like GTA6.

Are those average prices adjusted for inflation?

Either way that’s still a very impressive performance.

Great stuff. A new game, not by Nintendo, that I will actually buy. Happy days.

If only they had a load of dormant, high quality, popular franchises they could remaster to fill gaps in the schedule.

The future is bright!

Yeah quite happy with that. Decent selection IMO.

Just glad it’s finally over. Good news from a competition POV, hopefully Xbox becoming more of a threat and the change of personnel at the top lights a fire under Sony.

You can see why, to someone who just thinks in dollar signs, GAAS is so tempting. Get it right and it’s a goldmine. But so few get it right, the vast majority fail.

For Sony especially it seems like wasted resource. That could have been spent building up their single player library, resurrecting forgotten franchises, or even Remastering all those great first-party games stuck on PS3.

My expectations were low but it was a decent show even if there wasn’t a lot for me personally. But across all formats it’s been a good year and there are a lot of very promising games to come.

Anyone after something a bit different and chilled should give Unpacking a go. It’s a really nice game.

@naruball

It is true. It’s the basic law of the market. Competition benefits consumers.

It’s a really good fun game but that’s a very high price

Back where we were before the court case. MS are that desperate to get their hands on Blizzard and especially King they’d probably have given Sony 15 if they’d have asked and we could have all moved on months ago.

@naruball

In the big picture yes competition is good. The nature of the industry at the minute is that exclusives are a thing. I’d rather they weren’t and everyone competed on other fronts but that’s how it is.

Without competition you finish up with all games on one platform and one company having all the power about when games are released and how much they cost, which would be an utter disaster.

@CreepingShadow

I’m totally confident you won’t be doing what you say in your last sentence. This is the nature of business, any market leader anywhere should be under attack and should feel like they are. It wards off complacency and arrogance.

Sony are in a well deserved position as market leader with a huge amount of well deserved trust in the brand. MS have realised this and are taking a different angle (zigging where the competition is zagging, so to speak), it’s now up to Sony to respond. That doesn’t necessarily mean through acquisitions but focussing on what they do so well. Up the first party output, don’t leave established franchises going mouldy on a shelf, leverage existing relationships with third parties. Competition is good and I’m hopeful Sony will respond in a way that’s good for us as gamers and consumers.

@CreepingShadow

Sony were doing the exclusive games thing back in the 90s (Tomb Raider 2) before MS moved into the Console business. They were the big boy financially and used that muscle to leverage their way into a dominant market position. They outspent the competition on marketing, they had their own manufacturing plants to keep costs down, they could afford to eat losses on hardware and undercut the competitions licensing fees, they had their own established chain of retail outlets. That’s how it works. Nintendo were the industry big boys, then Sony came along as a bigger boy, now MS are the million-pound gorilla.

This looks awesome, and at a reasonable price (to my untrained eyes) too

@cuttlefishjones

As opposed to being part of the renowned church of innovation and originality that is (checks notes) Activision?

@get2sammyb

I agree it shouldn’t, but that’s where we are. Pretty much the only consistent thing that’s happened throughout the life of the Games industry is platform holders getting complacent and arrogant. Anything that helps preclude that (and I’m not alone in sensing some of that from Sony recently) is welcome. The vast majority of what they’re trying to buy here won’t really impact the Console sector anyway-they want WOW, Overwatch and Candy Crush most of all. Hopefully what leverage they will gain in the Sector will pull Xbox closer to my ideal scenario where the 3 platform holders have 33.3% each.

@CutchuSlow

There’s a lot of people being very paranoid about this who simply aren’t reading the market properly. This got through only because Xbox is in third place and only then with a huge amount of concessions. Any subsequent big deals would be even more difficult to get past regulators.

The line about spending Sony out of the business was one email from one guy in 2019, and within context of stopping Sony/Amazon and the like from dominating the market. But now it’s getting all twisted out of shape.

@SoapMonki

Why? Nintendo had the opportunity to buy Rare and declined. After that it was either MS or (ironically) Activision who bought them. Thing is, a lot of people had left Rare from their 1998 peak and Nintendo had probably seen the decline in Rares output coming.