glennthefrog

If they do a physical double pack I'll take the plunge. Otherwise I'm going to wait and see if they do remakes of these after the Sky games (they absolutely should).

@Ralizah The proportions are just...it's like the Pinky and the Brain episode when Brain was riding in a human-size robot with his normal tiny mouse head sticking out of the shoulders.

@dasd2 I would say no, not really. Even if you set aside themes and the culture war lens it's not a good plot and not very well told. It's mysterious and interesting at points but very much read into it what you will.

A lot like Returnal. Good game, not so great story that is weird.

That top image can't be real.

It was really good but the praise also left me with the distinct impression many people had never played a JRPG before.

It was a 9.5/10 that got boosted to legendary status it doesn't necessarily deserve imo. Still really like it though as an RPG fan, probably the best this generation.

'That game I'm being paid to work on is very unimpressive" - No actor ever

I'm interested to see more, actual gameplay ideally, but this is just fluff.

I guess they could do it to make one last big push with a new console, but otherwise it's totally pointless.

I assumed Microsoft was ready to get out of the hardware business asap and that even the rumored next-gen Xbox was just inertia from R&D that began years ago. I'll be surprised if they invest a lot in consoles again.

@johncalmc That's not the worst idea, I would love a Persona set in 80s Japan.

@CielloArc Huge missed opportunity if that isn't the title screen track.

It's very very middle of the road in every way. It is not aggressively bad as haters claim but it also really doesn't have any great highs either.

It's as 6/10 as it gets. Worth it for genre fans but most people will get bored and drop off.

@Czar_Khastik I was just checking how it looked with PSSR 2.0, I swear!

@Matthewnh As of last year more than 90% work without patches. Games that are coasters aside from the license check are the slim minority even now.

This shouldn't be legal. All discs should have to at least offer a playable 1.0 build.

This is just trash, all the downsides of physical (ecological damage) and digital (you don't really own it) with none of the upsides of either.

This is sort of like when your favorite club publicly supports their embattled manager.

It seems positive, but I still worry it needed to be said at all.

Market crash incoming. Consumer discretionary spending does not have infinite elasticity. Belts will be tightened, next-gen gaming will be sacrificed.

There goes beating Switch 2 on the sales charts anytime soon.

@8thDoctor The weird thing is Marathon was surely plotted out way before anyone knew Arc Raiders would set a new bar for extraction shooter success. There wasn't much to suggest that genre could support a top 5 or top 10 game in 2026 copies sold even just a couple of years ago.

Bungie's game design is at odds with financial realities, which is the core problem of Marathon. It's like how Shenmue had to sell 4 copies for every Dreamcast. Shenmue was a great game but an unwise financial choice from the start. I think Marathon may be remembered similarly. Very well regarded, and well executed for what they're trying to achieve, but in retrospect never had a real chance to turn the profit the budget demanded.

The PS5 number is lower than I expected. I guess Sony makes money on a copy sold either way, but it's surprising to see that Bungie aren't making more of an inroads with the PlayStation audience now that they're in the family.

@TrollOfWar Yeah, that's not sustainable. I understand if it's their vision to be a hardcore experience but it also has to be accessible enough to make back the development cost.

The problem with Marathon is it fits like a glove for a certain type of player but for the majority of people I've played with / spoken about it just thought it was too sweaty and had no interest in continuing.

For the players who embrace it I can see how it would be refreshing, and justify their excitement. The issue is Sony/Bungie really positioned this as a mainstream AAA banger, that's what it needs to do to justify it's existence. I just don't know if they game style has the ability to accomplish that.

TLDR: Marathon resonates with its audience, but the audience is niche and they overshot production costs big time. It will be hard to achieve a profit if it stays that way.

Really depends on the new name. I don't think a change is necessary but if it's an agreeable enough name it's fine. If it's unwieldy nonsense it will be a bad move.

Synergy with the larger Sony behemoth is meaningless to me, I don't use or care about anything else they do as a company. Maybe others care about singular branding.

Looks good to me.

@DennisReynolds Cyberpunk was okay-ish on PS4 Pro at launch and a disaster on Standard PS4, just for one example. Standard PS5s are the majority, and that's what I have, so I'll wait for those impressions.

I have no idea what you mean about Asian players either. I've lived in Korea and they have people who bitch about frame rates and whatnot as much as anywhere else. Maybe not the same in other Asian markets, I can't say.

@scottXedgar It's been interesting to see publications circle the wagons on certain titles/topics. I think many bloggers see more common ground with developers as fellow industry professionals than their customers/readers.

It's a tough situation because that divide is obviously driving all the job losses in game development and games media.

It looks like an extremely niche game. Dedicated fan base where the game perfectly clicks, but it's not a mainstream aesthetic at all. The purposefully ugly look is always overestimated by the minority who enjoy it.

I'll have to see how it plays before deciding to pick it up. It could be all flash and no substance or an ugly-but-good gem.

This is an easy 'wait for 5-6 patches plus potential GOTY edition'. I'd be shocked if it wasn't a buggy mess on console at launch since they've done their best to hide that version up til now.

Don't be an unpaid (actually, you paid) bug tester.

Seems like you guys are on a hair trigger on this topic. I don't think many people are that fussed that PS5 is missing out on ports of mid-budget titles that are 2-3 years old (or a mediocre remake of a 15 years old DS game).

It would be another thing if we missed out on FF17, Dragon Quest 12 or something substantial the way Xbox and Nintendo players have in the past. But the games cited in this article are extremely inconsequential and most of them produced well before Sony claimed to have shifted strategy.

Microsoft offered them a money hat and they took it. I can understand it, BD is a niche franchise so the payout is probably enough to make a port worth it financially. I'd imagine their policy of multiplats with no deals moving forward only applies to heavy hitters, not smaller games that struggle to sell. For smaller titles the money hat is the safe choice with little downside.

Another factor that probably played a role is the PS5 (really home consoles generally) floundering in Japan.

It'll hit PS5 eventually most likely, and if not to be honest it's not a big loss. I thought BD was a bit of a bore and JRPGs are my favorite genre.

@psmr Society consistently overestimates the competency of the C-suite.

Stuff like this is a mix of face saving and/or institutional inertia. They aren't willing to commit to Xbox but don't want to be seen as canceling Xbox. Many people will lose their positions, not just the peons but executives, if Xbox is mothballed in a way that looks embarrassing. So we get this half-in half-out situation that is doomed.

@Vertere Good idea. It would probably be hard to easily communicate that to casual customers (since it's one game only) but it should be there regardless for knowledgeable customers who might be on the fence.

Same with Helldivers to be honest. GaaS that cost $40 offering free online would be a nice precedent.

@jeff19023 The real problem isn't that no one wants GaaS, it's that only a handful of GaaS can be viable at the level Sony is pursuing at any one time and bigger fish have already occupied those slots.

People like Fortnite and Arc Raiders but they don't have time to play competitors because those two already monopolize their time and they may have already invested into cosmetics that further anchor them to those games.

@Max_the_German They need to sell 7 million, assuming development costs were around $250m.

I personally don't think this was ever going to be a Concorde-level disaster. It's made by Bungie for one thing, a developer with a large fan base. They will at least buy and try it and that will help them to recoup some degree of the costs.

I think the actual concern is this will be like Anthem, selling a few million but ultimately being a financial loss because it doesn't take off as a successful shop (since that's really the point of GaaS). We'll see though, opinion is very polarized. Concorde and Highguard had no fans, at least Marathon has some.

It's a strange situation, because for comparison Slay the Spire 2 (released on same day) has 5x the peak player count yet barely has more reviews than Marathon on Steam (roughly 9k for Marathon vs 10k for Spire 2).

So an unusually high number of users are leaving reviews compared to another title released same day with significantly more users. It could simply be Marathon players are extra dedicated, or just extra motivated to combat the 'Concorde 3' meme. It is strange though, enough that I'll wait to trust the user score for the moment. Positive review bombing also exists.

I'm in the underwhelmed camp as well. I enjoyed GOT but don't have a lot of interest in this one based on what we've seen. I'd be slightly more hyped if Jin's story was continuing on the Japanese mainland, but the gameplay looks like more of the same either way so it wouldn't make it a day one purchase.

I also might be biased because I can't remember the last Sony sequel that was as good as the original, unless you count Astro Bot as a sequel to Astro's Playroom. Spidey 2, GOWR and TLOU2 all fell flat for me, not terrible but 8/10, whereas their predecessors were all 9.5 or 10s imo.

@Flaming_Kaiser That would be a typical Atlus move. They love making their fans pay for the same thing in several versions over a couple years. Generally after insisting there will be no DLC or Royal/Reload edition at the game's launch.

I half expect them to first sell the P3 Reload with Answer DLC all on one disc in 2026, then wait a year and release P3 Reload Platinum with all the above and FemMC.

I'll buy it when it hits between $20-30 just like the original. If it's a code in a box I'll wait til it's $10 or not bother.

I hope this one is a truly definitive version with all the Golden content included.

P3 Reload was great but it sucks that fans still have to choose between a version with The Answer (and therefore the true ending) or the Female MC.

First one had a few rough edges and some jank but there was the core of a great game. With a bit more time (and budget) to polish I'm hoping they can smooth all that out and give us something really special with the sequel.

To be fair a lot of companies did try their hand at copying Mario Party, they all just bombed spectacularly.

-Sonic Shuffle
-Disney Party
-Shrek Super Party
-Muppets Party Cruise
-Pac-Man Party
-Alien League

Those are just ones I remembered from back in the day. I recall there were many many others though. The key is quality, those games lacked it for the most part. Hopefully this LEGO game is top notch, MP could use some competition.

I'd say it was a good show.

It was similar to what we used to get during the big E3 blowouts, not quite at that level but maybe that on a down year. Compared to previous State of Plays this was a S-tier banger though.

Potentially three seasons to adapt TLoU2 was just an awful idea. It wasn't a universal fan favorite story direction to start with, everyone can at least agree it was quite polarizing. That's not the sort of project you stretch out over what will probably be 3-5 years of development hoping viewers hold interest.

I at least am happy it's becoming okay again to say the plot is lacking without being censored or shouted down. It's had the same polarizing effect in two different mediums now. Obviously it's not beyond reproach.

I regretted buying the first one, and I got it for $15. The reviews and impressions of this one sound like they've magnified every flaw of the original.

It's a shame because Ninja Theory is a really good dev, or have been in the past. Enslaved was an underrated gem.

There are so many problems this one has to overcome to succeed, I just don't see it happening.

-Wrong genre (has to compete with Marathon and Arc Raiders)

-GaaS reputation is mud among PlayStation devotees

-Premise and art style are already looking anachronistic. 'Eat the rich' premise was all the rage when it was green lit but it's cooled off now. The only way they could make it seem less lame is by leaning far into the radical direction, grabbing the Luigi sympathizer audience, but there is no chance a corporation allows that level of transgressive edge in a product this mainstream.

@Oram77 'Best shape' for Bethesda is 6-12 months after launch when fans finish debugging it. Unfortunately console players never get those improvements.

They can save the port costs on this one. It's boring to the core.