glennthefrog

The perfect outfit for a nice afternoon of golf.

@Oram77 Can you voice chat on PS without PS+? I honestly don't know because I've always been signed up. I just assumed you needed to pay for online to access any online features but the shop.

@HonestHick Xbox seems to be leaning much harder into the multiplat route than Sony though, at least if the increasing speed of their ports are any indication. But sure you'll get a bunch of great Playstation games on PC as well eventually.

As you said, Nintendo is the real indispensable part of the combo.

Switch 2 has a solid 2025 lined up but that's it. The machine will sell out this year thanks to early adopters no matter what, so it doesn't really matter. Next year is when they're going to need to start pumping out software that draws in the mainstream consumer.

It will probably outsell the PS5 over its lifetime, and have a better lineup of 1st party exclusives in the end due to reduced development costs as was the case with Switch 1. I'm not sure it matters much to Sony, they consider themselves in a different market segment, but fanboys will squabble over that. But as always the best combo is both, a Switch + Playstation gives you access to essentially everything especially now that Xbox is multiplat.

Joel was heavily implied to be correct in the original game, where the hospital looked super dingy and iirc audio logs suggested the operation was something of a hail mary and not a sure thing.

In TLOU2 and to a lesser extent the HBO show it's heavily implied Joel is wrong because the hospital is depicted as clean in TLOU2 and there is far less ambiguity in the show over whether the operation will succeed. Druckmann himself, as others noted, has since said it would have worked for sure. Clearly that is the preferred reading at this time.

Personally I think the player was originally intended to believe the Fireflies were quacks but after TLOU2 it has been retconned to the Fireflies were competent because that was what the writers wanted to explore in a sequel.

@thechetearly If it's finished, I doubt it. If anything I'd expect any Shadows comparisons to be very favorable to Yotei based on how most people view Tsushima vs Shadows. Something like: 'if you liked AC Shadows, this is an even better Japanese adventure'.

They were also released too far apart for one to cannibalize sales of the other. Generally the superior game tends to leave the other behind in those cases anyway, and Yotei is very likely to be the superior game. So if it fails to find an audience it will almost surely be for reasons unrelated to Shadows.

To be fair, maybe one of these is the type of game that could find mainstream success (Sea of Thieves) and even that is a totally new IP to PlayStation owners. The rest are very niche. Then add to that they're being released years late, I can't imagine Microsoft expected much more.

@Totheteeth Never mind. You haven't even played it and just seem here for the drama.

@Totheteeth To be honest I'm equally puzzled by the 10s. On what basis is that justified? Is this game better than Elden Ring (I'd say no)? Is it a GOTY contender (also, I'd say no)? 10 is sheer fangirling, just like the 1s are pure haters.

Culture war has sent people to polar opposite conclusions about this one, and I think they're rating with a favorite team in mind.

IMO it's not a 10 and it's not a 1, it's roughly a 6 or 7 depending on how tired you've become of the Ubi formula. Graphics are great, but gameplay too often feels repetitive or like busy work. Again, the Ubi formula. Side quests are improved from previous AC but still well short of industry leaders (or even exceptional last-gen titles like Witcher 3).

The 8s and 9s feel high to me personally. Do you all really not consider many games to be superior to Shadows? I sure do. It's not bad but also not terribly exceptional.

@Th3solution It's not the 'human psyche' it's access media and bot campaigns.

Entertainment media is shameless in their HBO boosting, there was no chance a major show from that network was getting anything but praise from those outlets. That's how they earn their early access and preferential scoops in the future. Then add in astroturfed social media bots designed to nurture 'organic' enthusiasm (everyone does it in Hollywood). Not saying no one genuinely enjoyed it, some did, but any dissenters were drowned out by design.

Once the critics move on and the bot campaigns are no longer being paid to continue you can see the actual viewer opinion with less of a rose-colored filter. It was mixed. The show had some highs, but it was also rushed in places.

@themightyant At this point would a hostile investor takeover really be the worst outcome though? The Guilemot family has strangled multiple golden geese, there is little reason to believe their management will turn things around.

New management and ownership is most likely to improve the quality of Ubisoft's output and their overall resource management. If current management stays in charge the company will continue to circle the drain.

I'd be shocked if they didn't just roll all those ideas into a Legacy 2. That's the most logical decision anyway. Definitive Edition will capture any potential double-dippers, a DLC on top is unlikely to make as much impact as a sequel in 3-4 years.

@Wiceheid In a corporate environment, especially one as mismanaged as Ubi has been, the left hand oftentimes doesn't know what the right hand is doing. It only takes a few key out-of-touch individuals in the C-suite to decide that subscription services are the future so someone playing it there is the same as a $70 sale anyway (even though it very obviously isn't in the here and now).

Putting a game they need to sell at full price to save the company's future on the subscription service is exactly the sort of thing modern Ubi does. It's not easy to squander a success story as big as theirs.

@Dalamar Yeah, I mean the main plot. The characters have kept me interested the last few games, they're as likeable as ever, but it's understandably been tough for them to keep the epic tension up game after game after game.

@DadJKP Expectations will continue to be subverted until morale improves.

@Jey887 Re-using assets and locations since everything shares the same world and locations anyway can work wonders. Falcom has mastered the art of AA.

Writing a story interesting enough to keep stringing it along is probably the hardest part at this point, and you can tell as the plot has gotten shakier over the last few games.

Ubi's a public company. In a few months the official sales numbers will be released for the launch window. There are positive signs but also deceptive corpo-speak (players instead of sales) and other complicating factors (Ubisoft+) that make it impossible to know the full picture at the moment.

@AverageGamer What a shame. Rare Replay would print money on the Switch 2, especially if they worked with Nintendo to include DKC, Diddy Kong Racing, DK64 and Starfox Adventures to make it truly definitive.

That's an entire audience of old Nintendo-era Rare fans, many of whom never jumped to Xbox, that would surely pay full price for that.

I'd definitely buy Master Chief Collection or a Gears of War trilogy day one.

I'm not terribly interested in the other games being discussed, which I suppose is part of the reason I never bought an Xbox, but I'm glad they'll be available for those that were wishing for them.

Amongst Xbox exclusives that haven't been rumored, I'd very much like a Lost Odyssey port. It's one of the very few major JRPGs I've never had the opportunity to play.

@wiiware That's likely a significant part of the reason we haven't gotten any remasters yet.

There's going to be internal pushback if someone suggests releasing the originals unaltered. Yet if they are altered there will controversy. Easier to just leave it alone.

I don't expect hard-hitting investigative journalism or anything, but you don't have a single example of the misinformation that is alleged.

All the talk I've seen is centered around either the non-binary/gay/lesbian romance options in feudal Japan or being able to romance the historical lady which is allegedly offensive to the Japanese for various reasons. I haven't seen a single person, pot stirrer or not, claim you're railroaded into any of it. They're upset it's there at all.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner If Ubi goes under you might get it 75% off sooner than later. Or perhaps get it for free on PS Plus ala Veilguard.

SR was really bad and it makes sense not to want to retain the 'talent' that produced it.

It was a bad game at every level, not visually appealing, had major performance issues on many PCs, cringe writing and plot, and gameplay that simply wasn't fun to engage with.

It failed because it deserved to fail. The talent that made SR 1-4 are largely gone now. Why keep around the Volition branding when it can't produce decent products anymore?

All I really need is a way to play the original version on modern hardware. HD2D or anything else is a bonus.

I think we're just going to get merch though.

@wildcat_kickz To be fair, Marvel, SW and Disney have very much not been listening to their audience the last few years. That's a big part of why they're in such a sorry financial state these days and why their audiences have vanished.

The whole angle of 'it's art so all that matter is what the artist wants to create' leaves me cold to be honest. It's totally detached from the reality of the situation. This is not an indie project, it's a production costing probably upwards of half a billion dollars. You're not making art for yourself at that point, you're making a mass market product that had better resonate with a lot of people or everyone gets fired.

There's a place for artsy navel gazing in gaming that's not made for profit and therefore criticism can simply be dismissed as not getting it. There's also a place for giant half a billion dollar AAAA tentpole titles. I just don't think there is much room for overlap there, and the efforts to push divisive ideology or artistic decisions while laughing off consumer criticism has been biting the entire industry in the ass in for over a year now and counting.

I hope the 'who gives a ****' crew keeps that same energy when their game doesn't sell and they start getting laid off. Same goes for the cheerleaders here in the comments. You'd better care what customers think or your business won't be around long. The entertainment industry is learning that lesson these days.

Heavy-handed critique of Christianity incoming.

Druckmann isn't taking a look at the dark side of Zionism. No one has the balls to critique Islam in media, for safety reasons, so that leaves one choice unless he looks East.

I hope I'm wrong and it's a fake space religion, but that would clash pretty heavily with the real-world branding we see everywhere else in the trailer.

@themightyant Let's all just be glad this is Konami and not Nintendo, otherwise they'd be selling for 60 apiece...

Of course there's a market for AA. The problem is the corporations would rather chase all the money (GaaS) as opposed to a tidy profit. it's a problem with the economy across numerous industries at this point and it causes incredible volatility. You either hit it big or go broke and get acquired by your competitor, no in-between.

Aside from Horizon 2 (which came packaged with my console, so not my choice) I haven't bought a single 1st party AAA release from Sony this generation. Is Stellar Blade AAA or considered a Sony game? If so, that one counts too. I have borrowed a few like GOW2, Spidey 2 and Veilguard but ultimately opted not to purchase. Looking at my shelf right now I don't have many 3rd party AAA either. No Ubi, no Activision. Mostly JRPGs and more Switch games overall than PS5.

Personally I've found western AAA offerings to either be awful (Concorde, Veilguard) or inferior to their predecessors (GOW2, Spidey 2) this generation. I'd love to see a wider variety of AA games offering different gameplay styles. It's the primary reason I've favored Switch over PS5 this generation.

This is roughly what I'd rate it as well. Not a disaster, but a big deviation from the formula and not always for the best (leaders hopping Civs is very dumb).

I expect it will be a far different, and better, game in a year as they update.

Let's see what they say about sales a few months after release. It will be really interesting to see how this one does at retail. A mediocre, but massive, development studio's fate hangs in the balance.

The first 3/4 of the SOP was really underwhelming. The last ten minutes lifted it a bit between the new Housemarque game and a couple others.

Overall I'd give it a D+, not totally awful but also not really exciting. It felt like they did it more out of obligation than having a lot of cool stuff to show.

@Keyblade-Dan This is the problem exactly.

It's the same issue Halo has, and the same issue Witcher 4 and Elder Scrolls 6 will have. Turnover is so incredibly high that almost none of the visionary designers who made those franchises beloved still work at the development studio. The branding remains but the studio is a Ship of Theseus.

@KundaliniRising333 Yeah, I'm also shocked this is being given so much spotlight compared to the original. The first was a good game but also very niche, the hype surrounding this one is failing to get across how narrow the audience for this will probably actually be.

I expect a lot of disappointed players who went in blind, not because the game is bad, but because the game is not designed to be particularly approachable to casual players. (Nor should it be, to be fair, RPG with heavy sim elements is a valid genre)

@Sacrosanctus I agree, they're putting a lot of their eggs in that basket.

Personally I think GTA6 is as likely as any game to get delayed. I wouldn't be surprised if it misses the holidays but hits before the end of the fiscal year (March 2026).

I'm interested to see how it performs at retail. Outlaws and Veilguard had positive previews and reviews but underperformed badly. Ubi absolutely needs this one to hit big, good scores and poor sales won't cut it.

Honestly I could see it going either way. AC seems to have momentum of its own thanks to brand loyalty, but the rollout for this game has also been a train wreck of bad PR which may have poisoned the well.

It would be better for Sony if they did. Betting the whole holiday season on Ghost of Yotei is risky. It's going to be great but it's a lower-tier of popularity than Horizon (sold twice as much) and Insomniac Marvel games (which sell even better).

They're going up against Switch 2 in the latter half of the year. They can say it's not competition, but people only have so much money to spend.

If it's that early there's a decent chance it doesn't ever see the light of day. Depends on how much confidence EA has that they can turn things around after Veilguard. They don't have much sunk cost to protect them.

@Fartingale There is not one single misogynistic comment in this entire comment section. I have no idea what you're on about.

@themightyant It absolutely was their primary focus, I never said sole focus btw, judging by 12 GaaS titles in development at once and pulling so many of their their single-player studios onto multiplayer projects that eventually got canned.

We wouldn't even be having this chat if Sony's strategy wasn't a massive failure, which it was. I get that GaaS is a money-maker for the few winners, but it has been an anchor around Sony's neck so far. That's why we're seeing the drastic change in direction and all these cancellations.

We'll just have to disagree on this if you don't think Sony stretched themselves way too thin chasing the big score without any coherent strategy.

Green lighting two different Horizon multiplayer games is some 90s-era Sega-level mismanagement. Just pick one and get behind it, don't spend the efforts of two different teams on two different visions of the same core idea.

And that's on top of Horizon 3, which I'm sure is well into development.

@themightyant I'm not arguing against GaaS entirely, but I am arguing against developing 12 GaaS titles at once, which was Sony's 'throw it at the wall' strategy.

GaaS can be part of a diverse software strategy, it shouldn't be the primary focus as Sony has recently discovered.

You point to sales charts, I'll point to Concorde, the biggest financial loss in video game (maybe even entertainment, we don't have the exact figure) history. We can both play that card.

@get2sammyb Customers don't want gacha and GaaS as the priority, it's really that simple. Sony went way overboard with it and the backlash is totally reasonable in that context.

Very few posters are saying they want only single-player games, at least not from what I've seen in these comments. Many have pointed out that GaaS Twisted Metal or Warhawk would make sense but GoW and Horizon don't. Others are asking for smaller projects with more diverse styles of gameplay.

The average customer doesn't care about inflating corporate profits. Sony chased the golden goose and didn't catch it, there is no reason we should feel bad for them. This is the most appropriate time to discuss why they failed (we never wanted this much GaaS) and put forth alternatives for how things can improve.

End of an error.

@Majin_Deicide That's an excellent distinction to make.

Pricing also makes a big difference. Nintendo charging $50 for lightly retouched 3DS games from 5 years ago (that were a cheaper price back then) like Luigi's Mansion 2 and DKC Returns is just insulting.

@themightyant Opportunity cost was only half my point though.

The first half of my comment was that it's simply ridiculous to expect us to buy 2+ copies of their games just to maaaaybe get Bloodborne 2 or (insert dream sequel here) at some point in the future.

But sure, some remakes and remasters are farmed out to outside studios to do it on the cheap. Those tend to be riddled with problems in my experience.

I'm not buying an old game a second time just because a studio might maybe someday make a new game I want. That is ridiculous.

Devs play this game all the time. Whenever Sega gets asked about Saturn or DC ports they say 'just buy our Mega Drive games and we'll consider it' knowing full well they have no intention of doing so. We're on our Nth round of MD remasters and counting

It reminds me of the old Penny Arcade cartoon making fun of the lame excuses Silicon Knights would give for never making Eternal Darkness 2. 'We could make ED2, but we gotta break through this thick layer of Too Human first...' It's nonsense.