gaston

@thefourfoldroot1 though, there are few things village does better (and worse), but I guess village would not count for this year ... . Anyway, village and re4 are both incredible in vr. The flat screen versions absolutely pale in comparison.

Nothing to expect. It is a product show not a place to promote games. If there will be a ps5pro by the end of this year, it is likely too early to present it already at the beginning of the year. I could imagine a short trailer containing the ps lineup (ps5 slim, portal, ear buds, and released games) to promote the brand, but nothing more.

I only played mass effect after the legendary edition was released, and I really liked it. Although in particular the first and second felt in terms of gameplay (excluding the branching dialog system) a bit dated. Anyway great that this edition was created, but a shame that they did not add a VR mode at the same time. Journey to Foundation showed that mass effect would work very well in VR, and a mass effect VR mode presumably would have been better than Journey to Foundation in every way. But somehow developers have not understood yet how great games can be in VR, and that the extra amount of work is not necessarily huge (e.g. Re4).

@HonestHick But would it then not be better to also have the other stick closer to the triggers and move the buttons down ? Maybe there are games in which You have the left thumb on the stick and the other fingers on the buttons. But I typically have both thumbs on the sticks and only occasionally move them away. I do not see why an asymmetric placement would be more natural. I can understand that one can get used to one scheme and that then the other scheme feels off.

@Th3solution it is certainly possible to design games that really need the current gen hardware power (in particular memory and the ssd). Though we haven't seen many of such games. I really liked cp2077 but it also did not do anything new (or did it ?), so I suppose it was mostly badly optimized. And besides some graphical bling there are not really (m)any new gen only games which exceed last gen games. Having said all that most games offer an 60fps mode on new gen hardware which was not the case on last gen hardware. But, if developers start to focus more on mobile, and make games mobile compatible, there may not be much of an evolution (e.g. what can be seen in the VR space, where few games reach the heights of early PCVR and even early psvr1 games).

@TrickyDicky99 tanked is maybe too strong a word, but all the steps they had taken rather had a negative impact than a positive one it seems. And the steps have not been small. But it is possible that the impact will only be visible during the next generation.

@Jamesblob Makes sense. I wonder how many people consider the controller differences relevant for a decision.

Concerning pro-consumer moves: playstations subscription is considered a weaker proposition and also its backward compatibility (not sure whether this is actually true). So MS got a few things right, it seems. Also the possibility to buy games which are on their subscription service for a discounted price is always mentioned as a plus.

I have no idea of the xbox UI, I just hear that a lot of people complain about the ps5 ui in particular. Personally, I like the look of the PS5 UI. In the end all that matters for me is to get into the games without too much hassle.

@HonestHick Why is offset better for 3D gaming ? I would rather have guess the opposite since for 3D gaming You rather use the sticks with both hands rather than the digital cross. For me it makes more sense to have movement and camera control at the same reach. But I suppose in the end it is just a matter of getting used to one or the other scheme and once one got used to one scheme it is difficult to switch.

@Th3solution on the other hand the switch has proven that graphics is not everything and the series s + subscription is a hard to beat value proposition. But maybe FF16, BG3, SP2 are sufficient to convince people to buy into playstation's offerings or people go PC instead of other consoles.

@Nei might be right. I had the impression that FF16 did not play a big role in the media. Also spider man a big commercial hit, I suppose, also was a bit downplayed in the media, I had the impression.

@TrickyDicky99 That would explain why the competition does not grow, but not necessarily why it tanks.

It is good to see that playstation is doing great despite all the negativity accompanying the ps5 since its launch (too weak, no games, too expensive, too ugly, too big, too loud, ...).

But I do not understand why this is the case. Never was the difference to the competing platform smaller than this generation. Playstation has the advantage of better haptics etc. in the controller and the VR accessory (but do consumers care ?). On other hand the competition has this super duper subscription service everybody wants. In terms of games the "biggest hitters" this generation (up to now) have been multiplatform games, it seems, and according to the media the competition has more potential to deliver interesting exclusives.

So why does the general public chose playstation over the competition? Did the movie adaptions help to interest people in playstation ? Or are the recent playstation exclusives appreciated more than what the media tries to convey? Or do people actually care about ps5's exclusive features (haptics, VR) ? Or do people consider the ps5 plastic sculpture to be a beautiful piece of art ? Or did people realise that human hands are kind of symmetric and think that an asymmetric thumbstick placement is a too wild idea ?

After finishing journey to foundation this week (not the best, not the worst game, still very good voice acting and a not too bad story) I picked up mass effect 3 (legendary edition which I got via ps+). I played 1 and 2 in quick succession and liked 1 much better than 2 (unlike most people, I think). But, I also really like 3 so far. Anyway the gameplay of journey to foundation is so similar, and I always was thinking how awesome mass effect would be in VR (e.g. with fracked's cover mechanic). I really hope that one day there is a VR port, remaster or remake of the mass effect trilogy.

I do not quite understand how people argue here. It does not seem to me that anybody here has much clue.

In my humble opinion, It will take a couple of years until one can see whether the Bungie acquisition was good or bad. And likely one will never know, since it is mostly the Bungie "expertise" SIE was after, and Bungie's impact may not be visible.

At the moment the only visible impact is that a GaaS running for 7 years(?) released an expansion which was not appreciated as much as the previous ones, and that Bungie influenced SIE's decision to delay, or put Naughty Dog's multiplayer on ice. Nobody knows whether that was/is a good or bad decision. People just assume that Naughty Dog's multiplayer would have been the best thing since sliced bred and Bungie just sabotaged that. Whether that is true or not nobody knows.

Then concerning Sony's missteps(?) in direction of GaaS: A very large fraction of players doesn't play anything other than COD, Fortnite, (ex-)FIFA, minecraft, roblox. I don't like any of these titles, and from my perspective any investment (marketing, financing development) is a waste of money. For Sony it is probably very beneficial. Am I interested in GaaS ? No. But, if this fills Sony's wallet to support more risky games, I am all in for that. So far, concerning Sony's recent GaaS attempts, GT7 seems quite successful (though, I don't really know, but I have my SP fun with it), and destruction all star presumably wasn't. Not sure whether there was any other attempt (?). Compared to those, I could imagine, that Bungie still does much better. I personally have no idea what makes up a successful GaaS game, and whether Bungie actually has some "unique" expertise in this field. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. But, I would be surprised if anybody in here would have any clue.

Personally, I think GaaS are double-edged swords. On one hand people seem to get enjoyment out of a long running franchise with continuous evolution. On the other hand they exploit people's weakness and create some kind of addiction, and do not necessarily bring real enjoyment to people. But, I have not engaged into any, so I just imagine what it could be like.

Concerning IP acquisition: I don't think playstation is where playstation is by buying IPs. They managed to get interesting titles to playstation, and acquired expertise to create amazing new IPs, or acquired studios which had been in the process of developing new IPs. In that regard I don't think MS strategy to buy up every IP they can get hold of is a good strategy. It gives the illusion of amazing content, but is not necessarily a good investment in the future. But, maybe it is and everything we will play in the future will be cod, minecraft, doom and candy crush and never anything else.

Concerning playstation in general, at the moment there are few positive life signs from playstation studio's, so it is hard to say whether there is an amazing future ahead for playstation studio's or whether everything goes downhill from here on. Maybe we get some in December or we have to wait for the next year .

Weird times. On one hand one allows for market consolidation (recent huge acquisitions). On the other hand one tries to go against monopolistic behaviour.

• [+] loading speed. The loading times on ps4 often annoyed me. Not anymore on ps5 (that alone made the purchase worthwhile for me)
• [+] extra immersion: haptics, adaptive triggers in the controller, 3D audio
• [+] VR support without external camera, without breakout box, VR controller with thumbsticks, and headset haptics (I suppose not really part of the ps5 discussion, but ps5 was designed with VR in mind)
• [+] graphical fidelity: most games on ps5 run good enough, at good enough frame rate and resolution, the differences wrt. PC are typically not very significant. Though, already on ps4 many games already looked and played very good.
• [+] disk expansion: initially criticized for not being as simple as an expansion card, but turned out to be quite good solution (cost-wise). Default disk size on the other hand is never large enough, but was the same on ps4 and is mitigated by the expansion slot. Having said that, I am still ok with the stock disk size.
• [+] so far worked very reliable, very few crashes, no problem with updates. But, same was true for ps4.
• [0] ui: default theme much more pleasing on the eyes, other than that a few things are better, a few things are more convoluted.
• [-] design, size. very recognizable, but I cannot say I am a fan of a piece of plastic which tries to be a piece of art. But I guess the radiator for cooling has to go somewhere.

Presumably this is caused by people only playing psvr2 games and there are only very few physical releases /s

@Art_Vandelay I fully agree.

@Smiffy01 given that some people suffer motion sickness, that it does not allow for couch co-op, and is slightly more difficult to pass a headset around when playing with a group of friends, and that is more hassle than just picking up a controller, it certainly will never reach the same market share as console flat-screen gaming. At the moment there is also the still too steep entrance fee. But, if standalone hardware becomes good enough, VR might appeal to a much bigger audience than it currently does. And for many people who tried VR, flat games lost all appeal. Anyway it is still possible that the games industry will abandon VR and maybe even stop producing home console games and fully focus on mobile games only.

@Axelay71 This year GT7, call of the mountain. Also the VR modes of Re village and Re4 are likely fully paid by playstation. People always consider call of the mountain a glorified tech demo. But it is just a very accessible title and it is not horizon zero dawn, but a fun climbing game with arcade shooting. It is more tomb raider than horizon.

The market share of Vr does not allow for all of playstation's studios to develop vr games. Though, the amount of work to add a VR mode cannot be that much (e.g. hitman 3). Therefor I am still puzzled why there are not more examples like re village, hitman 3. In particular for old titles which have been remade it seems like a missed opportunity to not add a vr mode. The latter would make these old titles more interesting. I would say. But likely it all boils down, that at the moment it is difficult to make money with psvr2 titles, so they have to be developed on a very tight budget.

@Zeke68 Were did You see that ? Nobody is talking about that. If that was true everybody would just be talking about that. And I haven't heard a single person before.

@Art_Vandelay I have nothing against if you spend all Your money on supporting VR developpers. Can only make VR games better in the future

@dschons I am a bit afraid that the next astro bot will be a mobile game ...

@Art_Vandelay "The only downside to PSVR2 is that it totally ruined flat-screen gaming for me" fully support this. Flat-screen gaming now feels really ... flat. When I play a flat game I always think how fantastic this would be in VR ...

weird what is currently going on with playstation. PS5 sells apparently really well and ps is very confident that it will continue to do so despite few first party titles having released or being announced. It is also not clear how psvr2 is doing, At least some developers seem to be pretty happy with the software sales. So, it is apparently doing okay. It seems psvr2 is chucking along slowly on mostly quest ports and a few psvr2 exclusives or hybrids sprinkled in.
Maybe people here are just too impatient where normal people are just happy to have spiderman 2, and gt7+re8 in vr. Who knows ?

@Zeke68 I am pretty sure he never said "all PS5 games will support both regular TV and PSVR2"

@nessisonett "But it’s a nascent business for us" does not sound like dead, more like that it will be ramping up slowly. And at the moment it is still the slow phase ....

@LifeGirl people seem to also pay for racing wheels and other expensive accessories, because it gives them extra value or the games would not be enjoyable for them without. I personally lost interest in playing pretty much every flat game, because they look flat. If I play a flat game I always think how amazing it would be in VR. So, a ps5 without psvr2 would be a pretty pointless investment for me, because it would just collect dust. Perspectives are different. If it does not add any value for You it is good that it is just that an accessory, but I agree an expensive one.

I don't really get all this negativity about psvr2 and all the hype about quest (Or in general all the negativity about playstation besides amazing games exclusive to the platform recently (e.g. ff16, soon sp2)).

Would it be great to have nexus on psvr2? yes, absolutely! Will nexus be a great game, a quest system seller? Maybe, maybe not. Will it be the open world game everybody is waiting for? More likely not, than yes (more likely it is something more similar in scope of Star wars: tales from ..., but who knows).

People seem to assume that a quest3 is more powerful than psvr2 + ps5, that MR experiences will put VR to shame, because it is more exciting to play some exciting wave shooters in your humble apartment rather than playing a game in some imagined VR world. And that all the quest2 games also playable on quest3 suddenly will look like AAA games thanks to the 2.6 times gpu power and the resolution increase of a quest3. On the other side people seem to completely push aside the games which are on psvr2 (GT7, re8, NMS, and soon Re4: yest but we already played this on the flat screen, however we are really excited to replay old quest games on quest3 and btw. Re4 on quest is amazing; Retribution, Synapse, paper beast, red matter 1+2, moss 1+2, hubris, star wars: tales from ..., cross fire, paradise hotel, switchback, soon journey to foundation, fog lands, vertigo 2 ...: yes, but mostly also playable on quest and who cares about the enhancements on psvr2 (haptics, better lighting, shadows, colors, sound; when you can have a clearer image only with less details and less haptics and worse sound)). People seem to completely ignore the games which are announced for psvr2, because there is the narrative psvr2 has no games.

Also people seem to completely overrate the possibilities of having a clearer image on quest3 thanks to the lenses and the possibilities of MR, over better haptics, colors and more detailed graphics due to the processing power of a ps5, and somehow assume that meta will bring all the AAA games to quest and those will look as good or better than on psvr2 thanks to a GPU which has slightly higher processing power than a ps4, where sony does nothing (ignoring re4, and all the other games which are already announced to come soon). Sony seems to invest according to the market share of psvr2 not much beyond that i.e. grows the market slowly, which is frustrating for the VR enthusiasts, but likely makes sense from the business perspective

@thefourfoldroot1 Hmm, if I look at the very corners I can see what looks like artifacts from either the prescription or psvr2 lenses. But just in the very corners. Everything else looks very clear to me. Anyway nothing that bothers me during a game (maybe if I would look at a spread sheet full of numbers. But the risk of the latter is low ). Anyway perception and the situation may be different.

@Jaz007 Very possible. People seem to mostly care about numbers in spec sheets.

@thefourfoldroot1 Maybe my vision is not good enough, but I do no experience any disturbing blurr at the edges with my prescription lenses. Though the sweetspot is small and I have to readjust the headset from time to time, because it is moving. Maybe those addons would solve that problem.

@Jaz007 It seems that some people are immune to haptics, sound and visual fidelity and only care about resolution, but yes I would say that haptics are heavily overlooked. Sound and haptics add so much to the immersion. But it is not visible in the specs and transported via screenshots ...

@Triumph741 concerning the oled enough people reiterate the point that oled colors, and blacks are quite nice. It is not as black and white as You depict the situation. Some people prefer higher resolution and clarity, some people better colors, better blacks.

For most games it does not matter whether there is a cable or not. For intensive motion gaming it does. But, then if You want to have the fidelity of a non mobile hardware, You get the extra latency and compression artifacts from streaming. There is no solution which is the absolute best in all situations. It is a personal preference.

Yes sure a PC is more versatile, it gets most of the software from both quest and psvr2 (not all though), but typically the software is not very much optimised for You particular hardware which means that You need a much higher spec PC and sometimes it just works reasonably well with one particular configuration. Anyway the PC hardware is hardly anytime fully exploited. Then there is also the ease of use, which is much better on a gaming focused device. But also here it mostly depends on how much You are willing to spend and how much time You want to invest.

If there was a VR mode, I probably would.

It is always surprising to me why there seem to be so few VR enthusiasts among the developers, and not more developers try to add a VR mode. Commercially, it presumably would hardly be worthwhile, but I could imagine that there are enough psvr2 owners who would only jump in if there was a VR mode and might even be willing to spend a little extra for the additional level of immersion. It should be possible to get the investment back. Though, I have no idea how much a VR adaptation would cost. Maybe it is much more expensive than I think. But in particular for a car game that already has a cockpit view and runs at 60 fps it cannot be that hard, can it ?

@BeerIsAwesome Some of the files may no be available on the dark net

@Triumph741 It is good that there is choice,

• q3+pc is still more expensive and does not have hdr, eye tracking and the haptics of psvr2.
• PSVR2 has worse lenses and mura, but hdr and better colors
• PSVR2 has a cable but no compression artifacts and lower latency.
• PSVR2+PS5 can not keep up with a 4090 but compensates some of this by foveated rendering (if used) and likely better optimisations on a closed system with a single spec compared to generic pcvr, q3 standalone is still heavily power limited.
• pcvr often requires some tinkering i.e. is not as simple to use as quest and psvr2
  But in the end it comes down to the software. The switch demonstrates that specs are not all that relevant. At the moment it is pretty open which catalogue will be better. It presumably also boils down to personal preferences (cinematic VR titles vs room scale motion gaming). There are good titles exclusive to pcvr and quest, but also very good exclusive titles for psvr2. The future of all the platforms is pretty uncertain, unfortunately. There are not that many exciting titles announced. Meta seems to focus heavily on AR, if that is Your thing. According to the leak from a psvr2 developer's meeting, PS tries to push developers in direction of titles which can also be played on the flat screen, which opens the doors for higher budget titles without necessarily sacrificing VR mechanics.

Let's hope they ship a finished product which exploits the features of psvr2 rather than a half baked unfinished one (of which there have been enough already during the last two months.)

Surprisingly for once some good news !

@aj21009 I really liked resogun a lot, but I would not put it over returnal.

what about celebrating this with vr mode for returnal ? that would be something !

@BeerIsAwesome Certainly for the staff it is awful if the studio gets close, even if they do not loose their jobs. It still means being moved out of the comfort zone, I suppose. From a business perspective, it presumably makes a lot of sense to occasionally reshuffle things, to keep things fresh.

@SuntannedDuck2 concerning the studio reshuffling, maybe in order to keep the output interesting one has to constantly bubble up and burst studios once their creative life time is reached ?

concerning Jim Ryan, maybe his biggest achievements are on logistic, and marketing side and on nothing else who knows. Certainly playstation is doing good business-wise. Whether playstation is also doing good on the creative side we may see some years in the future, I guess.

@colonelkilgore It is hard to believe that bungie would have so much power over playstation to put a very good game by every other persons standard on ice. So, what ever Bungie did not like about it must have been quite convincing. Anyway nobody wants another redfall, or how all these mp games are all called .

@Tielo I also would rather see a VR mode for TLOU than a multi player, but a lot of people have been crying for the tlou 2 factions multi player for a long time. There is definitely a market.

@BeerIsAwesome I understood that they mostly worked as a support studio, and less as a development studio at the end. In that sense it made sense to put the part which was still developing games into one group (asobi) and the rest into xdev. At least that is my understand what happened. If I am not mistaken Fumito Ueda left before the reorganisation.

Yes, it is the "gamers" which are to blame for the closure. They played too much cod and fifa, and not enough of the more interesting stuff.

Also looking forward to this one. I hope, it delivers.

@StylesT most games can be played seated. No man's sky for example works very well seated. For most games You need a chair etc. which allows You do move Your arms a but more freely, though.

@ArcadeHeroes "Big Push for Games as a service": Playstation is late to the game I would say. Everybody was already quite successful in this domain but playsation. This narrative "thanks to jim ryan playstation will give up on single player narrative games in favour of GaaS" is presumably everything but correct.

"Closure of Japan Studio": Wasn't the studio reorganized and rebranded as asobi studio ? Were there great, novel or interesting games in development that got cancelled ?

"Increased the price of ps5": true. But show me a price that did not increase during the last two years. In the console space ps started, but didn't pretty much every other manufacturer followed suite ?

It is hard to tell what is Jim Ryan's doing what was demanded by share holders, what are requests from Sony. He likely has his hands in the items You are listing, but I am pretty sure that some of the actions had been inevitable. And then ps5 sells really well. So it was seemingly well marketed, which on the long run means many games for ps5, because why would a developer want to miss out on a big chunk of the market ?

@WolfyTn or maybe rather "... watch what ima do next year ” ...
It is still very possible that the most beloved ceo of gaming companies will steer the ship to success maybe by buying even more publishers? So, far one cannot say that it was very successful. But, yes maybe next year ...