gaston

there is also a decent discount on the artful escape if somebody is up for some psychedelic light but not too amped to pay full price for something that is light on gameplay.

All, I can say to this. There You have it: the condensed ps5 showcase.

@Godot25 if You have a chance, You should try that. The best way to play these games.

@WaveBoy not excited about the quest3 platform. There are certainly some good games on quest, but the majority is from a graphical perspective underwhelming, the levels are typically very small, I suppose due to memory constraints, and the games which make it over to psvr2 typically look significantly enough better on psvr2 (provided the developers made the little extra effort) that in my book the psvr2 version would be the more desirable option.

Anyway, not sure why everybody thinks that quest3 is rocking and psvr2 is dead. Just because there are more quests than psvr2 out there ? As far as I understood the demographics are rather different, and most quests are used for e.g. gorilla tag. Where good games on psvr2 sell apparently not too bad in comparison to the assumed huge install base of quest.

At the moment when looking at all VR titles I have seen on all platforms, I am mostly looking forward to behemoth, which will most likely look better on psvr2. Then, I am very curious about what flat2vr studios will release.

From a business perspective it is presumably difficult to ignore the quest platform, on the other hand adding VR modes to existing flat games is most likely much easier on psvr2 than on quest, given the extra power of the ps5 + dynamic foveated rendering.

@JP80 There are very few VR games elsewhere which are better than gt7, re8, re4, no man's sky on psvr2. But better is obviously subjective.

@Godot25 yes You can play quest games on quest and psvr2 with a more or less a similar fidelity, but You cannot play gt7, re4, re village on quest (and neither on pc). Also is pc compatibility really so relevant how many people have a gaming pc which is good enough for VR and a ps5? Are there really that many people that this would make a big difference ?

In a certain sense it is surprising, the technology for VR ps5+psvr2 is fantastic. Much more powerful PCs are needed to achieve the same fidelity. The flagship titles gt7, re4, re village, No Man's Sky, call of the mountain show what is possible, and are fantastic experiences You cannot have on the flat screen.

PSVR2 is expansive there are few titles available for which one would buy a psvr2, so I cannot imagine that Sony expected to sell Millions of headsets without doing much in particular if consumers are told by some analysts every week that psvr2 is dead since its beginning.

Adapting games like gt7, re4 and re village for VR certainly costs some money. But does it cost more money than it gains ?

Anyway it would be a shame and drive me off the platform.

I don't think it is so simple i.e. that the path to a successful game is to reduce length and simplify graphics. I would say it remains to be complex task to plan a game for a certain budget, to limit the ambitions to what is possible within the limits imposed by the budget, use the available tools, techniques to their maximum.

@trev666 and both great graphics and length also add value to the game i.e. just because length and graphics alone do not make a great game they are still part of the sum which makes a great game. Also in addition to graphics and length, there is also sound, haptics, animation which get more complex and costly but also add value.

When counting psvr1 titles through backward compatibility, Astro bot rescue mission might still be a very, very strong contender for the best 3D platformer on PS5, which also is more 3D than 3D on a flat screen.

Sure a VR version of a game which is fully designed for VR is better than a game that is not designed for VR and adapted later for VR. But there are many games for example in Dreams which were not designed for VR but are awesome in VR. Resident Evil 4 also was not designed for VR neither the remake, but the VR mode of Re 4 remake is the best way to play. There are countless VR mods on PC (also for platformer) which are very much enjoyed by PCVR community. From a perfectionists point of view I can understand the argument not to offer a VR mode if it is not "perfect", but the argument feels just like an excuse. I don't see anything in Astro's playroom that would not work in VR. I would be very surprised if is different for the new game.

It is a shame that sony does not "want" to produce more software for their excellent VR platform apparently.

I have to say I like big block buster games with beautiful rich worlds to explore with deep stories, and I also like shorter games which focus on a fun gameplay. I hope neither disappears.

Otherwise probably a mix of horizon forbidden west (got the physical complete edition during the days of play which still triggers a small download) and call of the mountain. Surprised how well call of the mountain stacks up against forbidden west in terms of visuals. At least the more linear parts of forbidden west should work absolutely on ps5+psvr2. But I guess we will never get such things outside of pcvr mods ....

@IssyVeedz the über-awsome psvr1 version ? Anyway still waiting for the psvr2 port ....

@MrGawain There are quite a few "Indie" games which exceed their budget and are then either released in an unfinished state or the studio shuts down before the release. There are just many more indie developer with a small budget that the problems are less visible. Most of the indie games do not achieve the mass appeal as big budget titles. To some extend this is due to smaller marketing budget or because they do not exploit a popular franchise. But often it is also because they do not have the production quality of big budget AAA titles.

I don't know about nintendo. Are Nintendo games really much cheaper to make and take less time? (botw? totk?).

There are multiple problems, in my opinion:

• games or often criticised for being too short (e.g. miles morales was criticised as being just a DLC mostly because of its length). So, games have to exceed a certain minimal length.
• with increasing hardware power, more and more detail is expected in games (also richer sound and haptics). Even with the better tools which exists nowadays, I suppose, every extra detail takes extra time.
• with increasing power game systems get more and more complicated and it seems difficult, thus time consuming, to tune all the parameters.

@__jamiie Fully agree. It would be great to see more psvr1 games being ported. There are so many great games limited to the psvr1 audience, which is a shame. Many of them, besides the low resolution of psvr1, are better than most of the current VR games.

Its is also hard to understand why not more companies add VR modes like capcom. All VR modes I tried, really transformed the game. Such modes could even be sold as a DLC, I would bet. I doubt that one would make a lot of money with such modes, but such modes should be relatively "cheap" to make and it should be possible to regain the investment. I really do not understand why there are no (so few) people in game studios who think the same. But maybe most people who make games do not like or play games ?

@Cloud39472 There are zillion of the lego reimaginations of all kinds of franchises, which apparently sell. Such games seem to be often purchased for kids.So maybe You are just not part of the core audience of such a game ?

@__jamiie I don't really care whether games are third, second or third party as long they are interesting. But I agree with the sentiment that there is no visible engagement. It would be sufficient to know for example that the new game from IoI will have a VR mode. Even if that will release in 2 years. Things take time and they are better released in a ready state. So, if nothing is ready right now, at least give some signs that something is still coming, that there is a plan. There are many small games which are really good. Often small games are even more creative. But, at the same time it would be really good to know that some big block buster titles are still coming and will have full VR support (a la re4, village)

I cannot even rate the SOP. And I agree with the sentiment that the SOP did not speak to its fans. It felt very uninspiring.

It is always difficult to judge whether oneself is so over saturated with great games that it is difficult to be blown away once again or whether the presentations lack the necessary sparkle. I cannot say that any of the games looked bad. Presumably many of them are much higher quality in terms of visuals and maybe also game mechanics, but everything looked so similar, there was nothing that made me want to play any of the games.

I was very curious about concord, the cinematics kept my attention but the gameplay looked very generic and aimless. All the other games looked like games we already have seen a million times without any interesting evolution. Even the astro bot title did not bring anything new to the table in the trailer, to me it looked like a DLC for Astro's playroom.

Somehow it feels that the entire industry is just chasing the money and forgot to sell dreams.

Then concerning VR: it is hard to believe that sony developed this VR tech which is in my understanding partially in the PS5 itself, and the headset, which is available for a steep but compared to pcvr affordable price, without having any long term plan. The first year was fantastic with call of the mountain, gt7, re village, re4. And now all that is announced are some cross-platform titles limited by the capabilities of a mobile cpu/gpu, which we knew about for a year. It is so hard to believe that there is absolutely nothing else. Why put all that money into the technology ? Also it cannot be that difficult to add a little VR camera into astro bot, can it ? The game does not look so much better than rescue mission on psvr1, or does it ? Dreams has shown that platforms actually can work really well in VR in third person and that was on a ps4. Now with all that extra tech what is holding back a little investment into a similar mode for some flat titles? Sure VR will never sell as well as flat, but I am pretty sure that a small investment in a VR mode can be recovered. I am pretty sure such a mode could even be sold as a dlc. Why does nobody want to do that ? There are certainly many fans who are waiting for that.

All in all very puzzling to me but maybe I fell out of the core audience?

@__jamiie I only spend 599 EUR on the bundle. I cannot say that I had been disappointed up to now. At the moment I am waiting for something I fancy.

Do You think re4 and re8 are psvr2 exclusive because capcom thought psvr2 will rock ? Similarly why is re7 a psvr1 exclusive ? Maybe sony gave capcom a large enough sum of money. Would that not count as support in Your eyes ?

I wonder whether it will look remotely close to the trailer on ps5 or whether one needs a cluster of 4090s ....

@__jamiie "And the way Sony have abandoned the PSVR2 so far has definitely given me buyer's remorse." Did sony ? So far psvr2 got as big VR exclusives gt7, cotm, re4, re8. Is that so bad for the first year? Is there any platform that is served better (given the still very small VR market) ? Maybe, there won't be anything interesting for psvr2 this year, but at the moment nothing is really known.

@Max_the_German Or maybe both that would still be 10.5/10.

"At the same time the hardware is still being stressed for most cross platform games else why are we seeing so many 30fps 4K modes or 60fps with cut down settings?"
Settings are lowered until it runs sufficiently well. Few studios take the time to really optimise the game for a platform. First party typically does, so typically they look so much better on the the same hardware. But the more the focus is on multiplatform the less also first part will optimise for the their platform and ultimately much more power is needed to get the same result.

" You had asked what was the point of developing something like a PS5… well it gives a LOT of benefits over a PS4. Especially in areas like load times, resolution, frame rates and pushing many of the sliders up increasing the fidelity and immersion possible. It’s far more like a PC upgrade in that regard, and worthwhile."
I wanted to say what is the point of trying to implement cool ideas like this I/O chip which directly decompresses into vmem, why implement something like tempest, why think about new controller features, if in the end most of these features are not used. Why not take the pieces from the shelf (i.e. mostly what xbox does) and save development cost ?

"if you make a game for only one platform you reduce the amount of money that game can make. "
on the other hand if you focus just on one platform You can eventually make something more special which is not possible to that degree on other platforms, something much more desirable compared to something more in line with what everybody else does. For example apple supports fewer devices and delivers in the end a more seamless experience.

"Earlier exclusive games were lower in budget (Returnal) or remakes (Demons Souls) or likely loss-leaders (Rachet) barely expected to make a profit. It’s a tough position to be in."
Not sure how true this really is. The games will also sell throughout the life of the platform. You typically start with lower budget titles because they are also faster to develop, which is key for a new platform.

But now we kind of reached a point where the differences from platform to platform become incremental (not necessarily by numbers but by perception). The majority of time is spent on creating assets, acting, composing and the hardware is not so relevant anymore. In that sense going multiplatform makes sense because the differences due to a different platforms are for most people imperceptible. But this will also slow down progress, because it takes much more time to push a new feature to all platforms.

"Plus to REALLY make use of the hardware developers have to wait for, or develop, new tools, new engines and new mindsets to really push them. This all takes time."
True. But do You want progress or not ?

I don't think there will be a showcase any time soon. I don't mind to be wrong, though. A state of play, is more likely. There might be a showcase for the ps6.

@themightyant resolution is scalable and you can chose a lower lod, reduce details for shadows, reflections, yes. But physics are likely scaled down until the game runs on all platforms sufficiently well to avoid possible disadvantages. Levels will be designed to fit into the memory of the lowest tier device. In the worst case games are designed to run okay with multiple input schemes e.g. mouse+keyboard, controller, touchscreen, controller + streaming latency, and are also playable on tiny screens like a phone.

Since there are so many devices to support, the optimisation stops once it runs sufficiently well. The power of modern console are less exploited than in the past when there were fewer devices to optimise for. So, in that sense multiplatform use platforms less efficiently and in a limited way, because the lowest tier device will limit the overall game design. Therefore exclusives are nice because they could use a platform to its fullest potential.

@themightyant absolutely true. And many games nowadays feel like mobile games .

But why develop something like a ps5 if non of its technology is really used ?

@themightyant concerning exclusivity: exclusives also mean that a title only needs to be optimised for a single platform, thus it better exploits the available features and might perform better. Though, nowadays hardware is so powerful that titles are presumably not so much limited by the lack of optimisations but more by the enormous amount of time it takes to create content ...

the burger looks like its rather eating yourself then You eating the burger ...

I was looking forward to playing stride fates but given how unsatisfactory the port seems to have turned out I gave it a pass and "played" "stray gods" instead. The "role playing musical" is not much of a game, but there is some game there and maybe it is sufficient to increase engagement with the characters? Anyway sometimes it is fantastic, sometimes I did not like it much, mostly because I did not like some of the interpretations of some of the singers of their roles, I think. I really liked the artwork and the orchestration, though. It is a short "game" but the length feels correct for what is on offer and the asked price, in particular since it is on sale right now, feels justified.

If there was a VR mode I'd happily bring democracy to virtual worlds.

I suppose if they go multiplatform they may not get the sony money. But who knows maybe they do better that way.

@TrickyDicky99 which is maybe not great but also not bad given that many people (20M) just got their ps5.

@NEStalgia Certainly price and friction holds VR back but then also the lack of very recognisable, popular games e.g. ex-fifa, cod.

The VR enthusiasts were all hoping that the majority of games would get a VR mode. But apparently the industry thinks otherwise for some reason. If one looks at the numbers of e.g. re4 it seems that one could make back the investment in a VR mode but presumably not much more. So from a financial stand point it presumably is not interesting to add VR modes, which might be the problem. As a future investment and maybe just from the perspective of an enthusiast (which hopefully still exist in the gaming industry) it would make sense at least for titles which sell well and do not seem to throw in many obstacles for a VR adaptation e.g. car games with cockpit views). Also why not a VR mode for helldivers 2, and yes why not a third person VR cam for stellar blade ?

must be driven by the VR modes for Resident Evil 4 remake and Village I don't see any other explanation

one way to make a platform appear more dead than it is by ignoring everything that is appearing on that platform - even bigger games like madison. But, in the end it is a subjective choice also not all flat games are reported here I guess.

"Stride: Fates", "Retropolis 2: Never Say Goodbye", "The Murder of Sherlock Holmes" seem to be missing (May), Arken Age (tba).
It is difficult to judge the quality, but stride fates is already out on another platform and seems to be quite good.
You also seem to have missed the already out version "madison vr".

@NEStalgia Personally I would say, what harms VR the most is not the display technology of any of the headsets, it is more that the majority of games on offer are quite a bit behind flat indie games In terms of art and audio design and also on the technical level. Anyway, I rather play a game with slightly low res visuals like the psvr2 versions of re4, re village and call of the mountain than playing a super highres, super sharp version of what the bat. There are outliers like red matter, which has a very good art design, looks apparently really good on all headsets and has very high resolution. It really hides its simple (less detailed) graphics mostly really well.

@TrickyDicky99 is ps5 dead because there are more remasters than anything else ? Anyway vr is a niche less than 5% of ps5 owners have a psvr2 (not much different from psvr1), so it is not surprising that in terms of quantity there are also only 5% of games with VR modes or build for VR, and re4 just got its vr mode in december. Though, I agree that at the moment there is nothing big announced and the future is very unclear. But outside of some GAASs there is also little known about the future games on ps5.

I finished vampire the masquerade justice. Not the most detailed and most beautiful game on psvr2 that pushes the hardware, but it looks fine, the levels feel bigger than they are, and there is enough variety. The voice acting and audio design is quite good. All in all I really enjoyed it. Initially I wasn't too sure whether I would like "role playing" as a vampire, but it worked out. Then I am still in my second cyberpunk 2077 play-through. This time including phantom liberty (I encountered more bugs in the phantom liberty bit than during the entire 1st and 2nd play-through of the base game [crashes, crawling frame rate, annoying audio clips not stopping]). For me the best bits are the main story and the world they created. I really wish one could explore the world in VR (one day hopefully). On the negative side, the combat always feels a bit unsatisfactory, and driving in cockpit mode is often impossible, because it is impossible to see where one is driving. Anyway I would not play it a 2nd time if I would not like it overall.

@NEStalgia the quest3 only has better lenses and color cameras nothing else is better. The screen is only an lcd (no hdr and less bright, but does not suffer from mura). haptics are inferior, no eye tracking, smaller field of view, no display port. for quest different sacrifices were made, and presumably it is still subsidized, where psvr2 is likely not (psvr1 was not).

@TrickyDicky99 But then there are these absolutely fantastic games or better said VR modes only available to psvr2 (gt7, resident 4 remake, resident evil village, no man's sky. and now, I suppose, can also add Madison to that list). For some just gt7 or nms alone could be reason enough to get psvr2. Psvr2 is certainly expensive, has its short comings, but You won't get anywhere close elsewhere in terms of experience for the price of ps5+psvr2.

Obviously if everybody things it is failure and does not buy it, it will not sell.

@ROTTIEMAN16 I was talking about connecting a quest to a ps5. A quest pro has eye tracking. So, it could also support dynamic foveated rendering unlike other quest models. So, with a quest pro one would only loose the haptics of psvr2, HDR, field of view, and binocular overlap.

@NEStalgia Isn't it the director of cotm who left firesprite ? So, I suppose a large fraction of the team is still there. I suppose nobody knows whether firesprite is working on some kind of VR support for something (in addition to other projects) or is now doing a mobile mp game.

@NEStalgia A quest pro might give You a similar graphical fidelity but a quest with out eye tracking will not allow for dynamic foveated rendering. So You will end up with significantly downgraded visuals. You may have a "sharper" image without mura, but You will loose detail, resolution and have duller colors. You will also loose a large fraction of the haptic feedback which adds significantly to the overall experience. On top You will get the compression artifacts. So, not sure whether people would be more happy with e.g. a q3 on ps5.

VR support for returnal would be awesome. ... but, also very unlikely ...

@aj21009 kudos to resogun ! One of the best games on ps4!

@Flaming_Kaiser I also played Syndicate and I only really liked the linear opening. I don't recall whether there were other quests I enjoyed. I did not like the level design very much (too many too wide streets, everything felt too similar). The opening on the other hand was very good, and I think that is why I continued.

Not sure whether it is bad or good do discontinue an IP. On one hand I liked the ideas in watch dogs and also enjoyed the games. On the other hand it is also good to start something new. The game mechanics of watchdogs will reappear e.g. cyberpunk had similar mechanics.

Personally I liked the first one best despite its not particularly consistent main character (the "good" guy who mass murders everybody often without any good reason other than achieving personal goals) and the rather poor story. But, it had a great atmosphere and the "hacking" game mechanics had been new at that time, I think. The 2nd which most people liked best, I liked the least. For me it was only a loosely connection of tiny individual story bits. It improved in some areas upon its predecessor, but lacked in atmosphere and, I think, one had too many hacking capabilities from the start. It lacked a sense of progression, I think. Legion, on the other hand, I enjoyed. London was fantastic, it had some very good quests and to me it had more of a consistent story. Not sure I liked the final story arc very much, though. It also had some very good characters, in my opinion. And I also liked the possibility to swap between characters and pick the one which felt best suited for a quest. I think one of the problems was that not all of the characters were equally good in terms of dialogues and how they played and it is also possible that depending on which characters one recruited one liked or disliked the game.