gaston

@HonestHick I agree it makes sense for ms to also succeed in the console space. But MS claims the console space is not their real interest they are after mobile, but their actions show the opposite they are very much after improving their position in the console space. MS has not shown very big moves in the mobile space besides cloud streaming.

It is hard to say whether sony is far behind in game streaming or whether they just did not update their ps3 streaming infrastructure in the last 10years (or how old it is). Anyway the biggest challenge is latency which can only be overcome by having data centers close to the player (unless one uses predictive input technology and convincingly fools the player that she/he is actually controlling the game). So, I think many data centers are needed all over the world. Given that the gaming hardware is very special it is presumably difficult to find a good use case for the kit outside of the typical gaming hours, so I suppose it will be units dedicated to gaming. MS already has data centers all over the world, they still have to equip those with the dedicated gaming units. Sony is not in the cloud service business so they rely on partners for the basic infrastructure. Given that there are only AWS, MS and to lesser extent google which have data centers all over the world (maybe also cloudfront / cloudflare?) there is not much choice for Sony to partner up. Likely it will be more expensive for Sony.

@HonestHick I agree that MS clearly has an interest in getting their feet into the mobile market. Otherwise they won't get "the billion" subscribers for GP MS was talking about. But, if they truly would only see cloud providers (amazon, google) and mobile stores (apple, google) as the competition MS would not ride so heavily on the console war train as they do (they rally with console warriors rather than distancing them from such crowds for example, and besides fan boys it is only MS who talks about a console war). They also do not seem to develop mobile versions of forza, gears and other inhouse titles etc or do they ? Also, why not continue to publish bethesda games on PS and rake in some extra cash if PS is not the real competitor and wll be left in distance soon ? Anyway I agree MS thinks big and they want to dominate the mobile market, but first they want to extinguish the competition in the home console sector.

It is possible that the general public loses interest in immersive games (cinematic games on big screens and VR) and if that becomes the only place to make money. I personally would not be very interested in games dumped down to be playable on tiny screens with touch controls. So, I would not really care if Sony misses to steer heavily in that direction and drowns. I would not play those games anyways.

@HonestHick the point is MS has the money to buy pretty much the entire gaming market, sony does not. While sony ciurrently dominates on the platform side, sony does not dominate in terms of software sales. Sony still depends very much on third parties to provide software.

@HonestHick Bethesda games had a huge history on playstation. Nevertheless MS seems not to care about Bethesda fans on ps and the possible money they could have made to recoup the cost for the acquisition. So, no matter what MS claims now, there is absolutely no reason for MS not doing exactly the same thing after the ABK deal goes through.
It is presumably correct that MS also wants to get access to the mobile market. They also may see the 150-950 million GP subscriptions they are missing But, the actions do not show that that is the only goal. If that was the case the just would clearly say all future titles will of course come to ps, because we do not want to alienate the fans of ABK titles.

Exclusive deals and acquiring studios are not automatically harming competition, but if one company buys one publisher after the other (including publishers which have the size of its competitors) and this company has an order of magnitude more money than any competitor than this shifts the market in a way which isl likely not good for consumers. Apple would have the money for such a deal but not Sony or Nintendo. In that sense it is an anti competitive move because non of the competitors would have the possibility to pull of something similar. If this goes through what will MS acquire next? EA? ubisoft ? Will companies like SE, Sega, FromSoftware be more open for being acquired by MS because they see themselves cornered by a giant? This will likely only stop until there is only MS and tencent left. But, I guess that is capitalism ...

@HonestHick concerning non COD games, there is no reason to believe that any of the games not explicitly mentioned in contracts with the few individual companies will not be MS platform exclusives. So, unless MS is forced to earn some money with their xbox division before they out-bought every competitor from the market, they will make every future game a platform exclusive. There is no reason for them to do otherwise, unless they are really forced to earn money with the xbox division soon.

@HonestHick I think I already mentioned it, but if MS was saying the truth and really would be just after K and take A and B as a bonus to bolster their game pass portfolio. They could just leave AB (similar to Bungie on the PS side) as a kind of independent multi platform developer which only has to provide the games day one to GP if MS desires that. But they did not do that. Instead MS tries to please regulators by doing these deals with some companies (nobody knows what is actually written in the contracts). They also could have proclaim that everybody who wants a deal to get AB games on their platform will get it, but instead they just offer such deals to a limited number of companies in a now-or-never fashion. In my opinion they clearly know about the huge leverage they get with AB on the console market and they also show that they will use it by offering some (not all) companies deals.

... a VR mode would also be cool.

With all these remasters/remakes it would also be the perfect time to add VR modes. Since it would just be an add-on it could also be something very minimal (third person, pad controls, limited to people with good VR legs). But I guess developers are too afraid of negative feedback from VR purists or people who would feel excluded. And likely >650k people are just not enough to care about.

@HonestHick If MS would really just be interested in King, they could have upfront proposed the run Activision and Blizzard like Sony runs Bungi i.e. as more or less separate companies which do what they want. But MS did not. Instead they just proposed some petty deals with small streaming companies to please the regulators. It is not clear what kind of deal MS proposed to Sony but it likely wasn't a particularly attractive deal or a deal with possible loop holes. Anyway, clearly MS is interested in using Activision and Blizzard for the xbox brand against the competition. In particular since Activision makes most of its money on PS it clearly is a move against PS.

Concerning MS investments in their studios and whether ABK needs such investments: it seems that MS invested in ninja theory indeed. On the other hand MS did not grow their other studios into something truly amazing e.g. rare, or their AAAA studio that mostly moved the perfect dark project to crystal dynamics it seems. So, it is absolutely not clear which way the remnants of ABK will go: downhill or uphill? I would guess rather downhill. At least in the past 20 years MS has not demonstrated that they grow their acquired studios. I also don't think that lack of resources has been the main problem at ABK. Isn't the main problem the workplace atmosphere? Does an improvement here really requires MS? Wouldn't it not be better to get some help from some outsiders i.e. consultants ? Another problem could be the lack of innovations. But will MS inject new ideas ??

@JAMes-BroWWWn buying a company and paying for "exclusivity" are very different things.

If You bought a company the company will not deliver the games for free, the game development costs still need to be payed (salaries, outsourcing of work, resources needed for the development e.g. office space, marketing), You get the IPs, company secrets, unfinished products. But also the obligation to fulfill existing contracts, eventual debts and the risk concerning the success of future products.

Exclusivity deals on the other hand may have very different reasons. First of all it likely means that a developer gets money before the product is released. So, that reduces the risk of the developer or gives the developer the money to actually make the game (this is presumably mostly true for independent developers, [maybe stray or kena]). It may also give the developer access to some of the resources of the platform holder (e.g. Sony) like motion capture facilities, contacts to help attracting actors, musicians, or writers, knowledge to help with the optimisation of the game engine, or maybe just the marketing power. The interest for the platform holder could be that they want to see a game being realised (I guess mostly in the case of indies), but in most cases it is just about having enough incoming content to stir interest of consumers for their eco system without the risk obligations that comes with owning that studio (e.g. if the Sony does not like the next proposal they simply do not have to sign a similar contract again, if Sony would own the studio thei either have to close the studio or make sure that the next game is also successful)..

@Green-Bandit there is a difference in using your money to fund or create something new, or to use it to take away from the competition. With the abk deal money only flows to investors not necessarily to abk. So, the funding situation for the abk studios does not automatically improve. But the abk portfolio is locked behind the xbox brand. Of course, the initial benefit for the xbox gamers would be the day one inclusion into gp of abk titles. But it is not clear whether the future titles will receive the same amount of funding. So, it could well be that the game quality goes down. If the money would be used instead to invest into e.g. perfect dark or fable, there would be a benefit for the consumer. Or even if the money would be used to fund titles of external studios e.g. the next cod title. But, in a buyout only investors benefit eventually, not consumers. None of the 69 billion dollars will be used to create games, unless the investors take the money and invest it in other gaming companies. To see the 69 billion dollar buyout as something positive for the xbox brand is short sighted. It will only harm the competition but not necessarily improve anything on the xbox side of things.

@Pat84 It is likely light, or too uniform coloured walls, ceiling, floor.

The trailer looks amazing, I hope they improved on the mayor issues people had with the psvr version.

I never played the psvr version, I just heard that the combat was not a very strong point of the game. And in particular the boss fights felt repetitive and unsatisfactory. I hope in particular that the sword combat is improved in the psvr2 version.

"fair approximation" is a bit of a stretch, I would dare to say. Arashi is composed of small gated areas, if I am not mistaken But I guess it may give a glimpse towards what ghost of tsushima could look like in VR.

The RPG I always wanted would be this in VR.

But I have to admit that I already liked the PS5 version of cyberpunk 2077 in flat. So, I guess I also would or will enjoy this expansion. But it would be so much better in VR. Such a shame that developers do not see it in the same way .

@BAMozzy I understand that it is a full fledged computer but like most other apple products people will use them in tandem. In that sense it is likely more an add-on then something which replaces any of the current devices (iphone, watch, ipad, macbook). For example it is possible to replace a macbook by an ipad. People tried that. But most people I know reverted back to a proper macbook.

@SuntannedDuck2 "I find it funny gaming is 'bigger' yet I'm more underwhelmed every year so where is this creativity"
Good question. There are presumably many reasons, I can see the following:

Concerning wow factor due to graphical fidelity:

• the gap between successive generations gets less noticeable each generation. Yes, PS5 is more powerful, but often the step up in graphical fidelity or game complexity. in particular wrt. ps4 pro is less obvious.
• the game engines presumably already got so complex that it is more and more work to streamline them for new hardware, or develop a new engine optimised for a new generation which just reaches the quality of an existing engine.
  [Maybe the unreal engine5 games will wow us, once they come. But I have my doubts. ]

Concerning creativity:

• to develop games which compete with the top games, enormous teams are needed, which are more and more difficult to manage and maybe even to find good people for.
• the cost of single games is so high, development times get longer and longer, studios seem to try to minimise the risk by banking on established IPs and concepts.
• there are so many games, a lot of things have been tried already, it is just more difficult to improve upon the existing catalogue of games and come up with something new than it was back then when there was only pong. I think it is also easy to miss a very unquie, new idea since there are just so many new games.
• people are not really interested in new ideas. The top-sellers are fifa, cod, gta, mario cart every year (for VR, beat saber and job simulator). There are certainly better,, more unique games than those (I have to say I personally think that beat saber is/was a really good idea albeit being a kind of obvious one, and I enjoyed the story of gta and it is presumably a fun sandbox)

@BAMozzy Provided it is used as a computer replacement. But wasn't one use case that a laptop is opened and it immediately functions more or less just as a set of screens?
Yes, of course You can presumably do all Your computing on such a device, you also can do that on an ipad or eventually even iphone. But in reality people often have a macbook, an ipad and an iphone and use all devices in parallel. In that sense it is likely like psvr2 only an addon and not a replacement.

Anyway this apple device is exciting because it excels in many areas whereat psvr2 (ignoring the different focus) only does with caveats (hdr but mura, 2kx2k per eye but pentille, and the outstanding items which are absolutely unique at the psvr2 price point, the eye tracking and haptics are ignored.). Interesting to see what FOV the apple device will have.

Anyway, I would be really curious to try it. I have my doubts about the usefulness. In particular at this price. I can see it being used to show architecture before it is being built, it might be useful to look at 3D data (like the air flow simulation they showed). But I have a hard time to believe that somebody wants to go through emails or look at giant excel sheets in a headset. On the other hand I spend quite a bit of time in dreams manipulating 3D objects etc. So maybe a headset with 16 times !! the number of pixels of psvr1 is actual useful when working with 3D objects, or even to work with large excel, music sheets or enormous UML diagrams . Anyway I am very curious.
It may also help to make stupid looking headsets with cables cool, and maybe the VR haters will reconsider their attitude. But presumably people will still bash psvr2 because sony cheaped out and did not gift every ps5 owner a 4000EUR headset, but just offers an overpriced piece of outdated tech (although it is not).

@TrickyDicky99 I had the impression that PS showed their device at this years CES.

The input latency problem is easy to overcome, just add auto-play trained on Your trophies and it will feal like You are playing the game. You hardly will notice that Your button presses have nothing to do with what happens on the screen and You will feel amazing how You suddenly manage to beat all the boss fights in a breeze.

@NeonPizza In the end content is king and no matter the specs the platform with the most compelling software lineup will lead (e.g. switch). And sony still has to build up confidence that content is actually coming. So far it looks like the PSVR1 era a handful of big hitters as the icing on the cake, but the meat is provided by a few small studios.

Concerning alyx, I am wondering how disappointed people actually would get if they get hands on alyx on psvr2 (if it comes to psvr2), I have the impression that it is completely over-hyped.

MS demonstrates over and over that it will abuse its market dominance. Just now there are the complaints of cloud provider that they cannot compete with MS azure because they cannot offer MS services at the same prize due to MS licensing costs. Then MS kind of threatened the UK government in the hope to get the deal pushed through. I am pretty sure a company which would not have a good leverage on the market would even try to do something like that.
How is it possible that countries think it is a good idea to allow MS to do the biggest merger in history and allow MS to grab a huge chunk of the gaming market in one bite? How is that driving innovation If there is one huge player and then a couple of smaller ones? That is really beyond me. But in the end everything is possible with enough money and only a few giga companies will survive.

@NeonPizza Yes, but if in the future micro oleds get cheap and bright enough, a new revision of psvr2 can be made and the software already supports all the features eye tracking, hdr, haptics.

@NeonPizza I think psvr2 provides a solid base which can easily improved upon in the future:

• decent resolution
• hdr
• eyetracking
• haptics in the headset and the controller
  A future revision once e.g. pancake lenses are cheap enough and oled displays are bright enough would improve the visual fidelity of the games without any significant change to the game code

q3 costs about the same and has nothing of the above. It will have a clearer picture but not the blacks and no hdr. If in the future they release a headset with eye tracking, hdr and advanced haptics the software is not ready for any of those features.

In that sense I think sonys option is more future proof than a q3 which only improves the clarity of the picture (and the gpu/cpu bump)

@Art_Vandelay Yes, I also can only think of the fear to try something new, the fear to not be good enough (e.g. in physical games like beat saber) and the fear to miss out on something. There is of course also the reduced accessibility: the problem of nausea; you have to be more agile in most games; the eventual discomfort wearing that thing.

On the conspiracy side, there could also be negativity spread (or bought) by the competition or major players who are currently not represented in this domain or are unwilling to invest. Just recently there was this negative comment by Tim Sweeny concerning fortnite being too fast paced for VR (ignoring that there are games like hellsweeper, sairento, windlands, population one, etc.). Also CDPR comes into mind. And then there is MS completely abandoning the market after advertising the xbox one x as the best place to play VR games. Clearly they have no interest in VR being successful, since it is not part of their business plan.

I cannot say that I had problems manipulating items, or that I was overwhelmed by the number of items to scan. Though, I have to admit that in two puzzles I only found part of the clues and solved the missing bits by trial and error. In one case I solved the puzzle without any problems the first time, but somehow did not remember and find all the clues the second time.

Great game or in my book great "point and click" adventure (besides the small sections with "action" elements). But, somehow I did not care much about the story. Anyway I would highly recommend it to people who like this genre.

@SgtTruth The environments of horizon (or e.g. village) are much more complex than those in red matter 2. Today's hardware is still not powerful to not having to make any comprises (either less complex scenes or lower frame rate, resolution and visual effects).

village, gt7, call of the mountain, red matter2 are all awesome in my book, and e.g. resi4, synapse, journey to foundation, behemoth look quite promising. I am also looking forward to hubris besides the moderate reviews. Then there are saints' and sinners, firewall, crossfire, bullet storm, ghost of tabor, song in the smoke, green hell, moss, before your eyes. beat saber.I would say there is quite a variety of good games already released and announced.

psvr2 is selling ok up to now. The beloved jim ryan reiterated that there is a long plan for psvr2 (what ever that means), so at the current point in time I would call psvr2 anything but dead in the water ( btw. why are all the gaming media so negative in regards of vr and playstation's vr in particular? One gets the impression the gaming media would prefer if vr was failing).

But, yes it is surprising that EA is not even thinking about a psvr2 port of F1 and that there is no last of us vr, far cry vr or something alike on the horizon. I still hope that the small number of high profile titles is partially caused by delays due to covid on the sides of the developers and the delays of the dev kit distribution (and maybe also because there is this highly praised trillion dollar underdog which removed many developers from the free market which might have produced some vr modes for their games).

I would certainly be interested in pc compatibility of psvr2, but it is not going to happen. Already the limited availability of virtual link ports on PCs would limit the number of people who could profit from pc compatibility to very few.

Who would have thought that psvr2 will fail because of the high profile title power wash simulator likely not coming to the platform.

I am pretty sure quest3 with limited memory and storage and the performance at the level of on xbox one (or OG ps4) will stomp psvr2 into the ground because it will have a higher resolution and we know resolution is the most important aspect of every game.

@Grumblevolcano personally I am not very interested in multiplayer, live service games. I just find it weird that games are already considered to be bland and boring just because they are live service games, without knowing anything about them. There are few examples in which the live service model worked out. In that sense it is more probable that a new live service game will fail then the opposite. But, still to judge a project one should at least wait until there is some information about it.

Not sure whether a single player game with a tacked on multiplayer has a better chance to create a long-term engagement than a game build up from the ground for this model. Also whether a game is based of a known IP or not is no guarantee for success, I would say.

I really enjoyed days gone, Not because of the story or the characters, but because of the atmosphere. I cannot say I would be interested in a sequel, since I do not see any interesting development this story could have. But, who knows maybe there was a really interesting idea.

Anyway just because there was a plan to release the sequel by now does not mean that the plan would have worked out (in particular given that it took quite a few iterations until days gone was enjoyable, if I understood that correctly, I only played the ps5 version). So, this is just a stupid comment of somebody, who failed to convince the higher ups about the greatness of "his" idea or who failed to follow directions and does not understand that this was not appreciated.

I presumably missed that sony revealed everything about these live service games that is there to be revealed. I rather had the impression that nothing has been revealed at all, other than that shooting will be involved. I don't think it is clear what game mechanics will be there, how the game-loop will play out.

So, while I agree nothing about these games look inspiring, I also do not see anything to criticize since nothing of substance was revealed. We only know that guns are likely to be used in both games. But does this make these games automatically bad and bland ?

All I read here is: "live service games are generally bad, nobody wants them, they all fail and are all the same". Despite that in the end all that people play are gta online, warzone and wow. Are those games the unreachable pinnacle of gaming? Is there no point in trying to compete because everything else will be just bland and boring?

So, what about waiting until more is revealed about these games before arguing them into the ground ? Maybe there will be indeed interesting, fresh ideas, maybe not and they all will be just bad copies of existing games. I don't think that anybody here knows.

@Hoodie718 certainly a possibility that there are only few people left who are willing to deal with sony direct.

600k in 6 weeks does not sound bad a all. However, the graph does not look very promising since the sale-rate is below psvr1 at the 6 week point. On the other hand it is maybe not so surprising, since no "big" games have been released since the launch (the last major release is presumably S&S retribution)

Anyway let's see what Sony will announce in their Showcase. if only a few quest ports will be shown, it won't take off. But maybe there are a few very desirable titles? Who knows.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner Did the 40M ps5 owners jump on the street to buy a ps5 day one ? No, they waited until they had the cash, or there were actually the games they wanted. This number slowly build up over 24-30 months. Now there is the new unfortunately expensive headset released 2-3 month ago with roughly 3 high profile games and then a lot of good indie to AA games. Clearly not every owner of a PS5 would immediately jump out to buy a new expensive accessory but only those who either are already triggered enough by the game selection or those who have faith in the future releases.

If the EU green-lights the deal, MS could make their threat true and go ahead with the acquisition, move out of the UK market. The revenue loss is presumably insignificant wrt. the merger not going through. As a consequence the UK economy would collapse because everything depends on azure and windows. So, better ignore that a monopoly gets even bigger and allow this humble trillion dollar underdog to buy up the industry. It could save the UK economy rather than shatter it.

the comments concerning "no love for small games" reminded me of a comment by one of the housemarque employees. I forget the exact wording, but it was about that it is difficult to stand out from the crowd with small games like what they were doing before returnal. Fortunately they managed with returnal to transfer their ideas to something more visible.

I am trying to get the remaining trophies in call of the mountain. Still an awesome game, and the vr game closest to tomb raider to date.

At the same time I really hope that there will be at some point such a VR game without all the invisible walls, and in which all the hand-holding is optional.

@Shrek_Realista The rumor is that Sony sold 270k headsets within the first month. So, that is the only number out there.

I don't think that everybody who bought a headset would buy hogwarts but given that there are very few games of such a caliber, I could imagine that quite a few of these early adopters would buy it anyway, even though they are only very very remotely interested. Ha, ha me included ...

I would assume that studios are not shutdown because a game flopped, but because of the next project not looking convincing, or because there are too many problems within the team(s) or between the studio and higher up management.

Shame. But I guess in the end their ideas did not work out.

If they want to sell another 270k copies, they should consider a psvr2 version.

I really loved resogun, and returnal (despite being really bad at playing returnal). I liked nex machina to a lesser extend. Anyway I am very interested in what they are doing next.
Though, I am still hoping that a vr mode is added to returnal, before they move on.

@maybemaybemaybe Yes, that was very good news. I don't know whether red matter 1 and 2 are linked in any way (presumably not in a meaningful way). But it is still a shame if new people directly start with red matter 2 or skip it entirely because they haven't played the first one.

@Futureshark I also only played maybe the first hour of re7 before I chickened out. But, recently I finished it. And one has to say, that it is one of the best psvr games despite it shortcomings (ds4 only). Same with Re8 on psvr2 (I haven't finished it yet, so I only have a very limited idea of the game. But one section was so awesome that I immediately replayed it a few times). One should not finish games one does not enjoym but re7 (and re8) are really good vr games. There are few of similar production value.

I think MS would just drop an additional 2.9 billion as tip. It's peanuts.

Arca's path is an odd choice. Maybe I did not give this title the attention it deserved.

Also missing:

• here they lie
• resident evil 7
• fracked + some skiing challenges
• red matter
• the room vr
• sprint vector
• vader immortal (in particular the dojo of the first one)

Though from this list I presumably only would replay here they lie, since the resolution was quite poor on ps4. But I guess it would require quite some work to increase the resolution of all the textures.

But I have to admit that I would be even more interested in VR versions of some ps4/ps5 games, since I rarely replay games.

@Arnna I played the ps5 version and I did not encounter any serious issues. I really liked the atmosphere of the game and would consider it to be good (and would rebuy if there was a VR version) But it does not do anything special game-play wise, and if I remember correctly the AI was not particularly smart.

I wonder whether the decima engine will get or has vr support. Since call of the mountain used unreal. I suppose it does not have vr support yet.

@stua12t If people claim that they save money by subscribing to GP, then they apparently spend less on games, thus developers get less money and consequently have less money to develop games. The quality has to go down. Unless, the subscription model is so much more attractive compared to full price game purchases that the player base grows in the GP model but not in the conventional model. But, there is no indication that that is the case. It is possible that GP is profitable, because there are mostly lower quality titles on the service than what people would typically purchase or because developers sold their games for a bargain price to MS. But it is hard to believe that GP is profitable and that many high, quality exclusive AAA games appear on the service soon. Somebody has to pay for the development. So, if people pay less then there are either fewer games or lower quality games. Or people do not pay less but just think that they pay less. Or only the people who play a lot of games pay less but the typical people actually pay more.