But there are always...just nomal people. Not fighters. Who value their job and salary in a very prominent company and are not ready to put it at risk because of some overwork. I don't know how it is in the UK now, but a really well-paid job can be very hard to find in many countries here in continental Europe. I know a lot of people who work overtime with no pay and zero complains, becuase they are not ready for what comes with fighting. When your paycheck is some 25% above the average, with a compensation package and occasional unpaid overwork...you really think twice before fighting the giving hand, even ocassionally abusing giving hand.
Sure, we can only speculate, but I've been under NDAs as a corporate employee, and sometimes you have to read them very carefully, what is meant by "Disclosure". I mean, it can easily be that THE FACT of bringing corporate information which is marked as a trade sectet to Discord AS A PLATFORM is considered disclodure. One of my positions prohibited posting of such information on any publically accessable platform, even with strictest privacy settings. The very fact of uploading any information marked as trade secret to, say, Facebook was considered an NDA breach. Teasing of products was also frowned upon.
The Pro is quite expensive in comparison to the base PS5, much more expensive than the PS4 Pro was. Undoubtfully, the userbase is narrower and 3rd-party devs don't allocate enough resources to cater to us.
We're in the age of very rough economy, most developers and especially publishers are understaffed and/or are very cost sensitive. They don't have the luxury of polishing the game for every platform configuration out there.
UE5 is notorious for being tricky to optimize. The games are relatively easy to put together, but optimization takes a lot of effort, for what I know.
There's also PSSR, which is an AI feature and is constantly evolvong. So, you have limited time and resources, you have the UE5 and the tricky PSSR.
It's also as good as guaranteed that PS5 was added as a target platform rather late in development. I remeber Tim Sweeney from Epic mentioning that you have to start optimization early in development.
Lastly, I clearly remember that original Outer Worlds were not even improved for the PS4 Pro, at least at release when I played the game. It seems that Obsidian does not have much expertise for the Sony hardware.
Frankly, I was very angry when I could barely finish Shivering Isles because of a bug in the very end of the very last story quest. There's just too many bugs, even for a Bethesda game.
I don't like to admit it, but digital distribution has already won, physical games as a mass product live their last generation, I think. They might remain a thing as a collector's stuff for the PS6/New Xbox Series/Switch 3, much like Blu-Ray movie releaes or CD/vinil music albums, but it will be the dusk of them.
Publishers obviously want to cut down the ability to resell used games.
It's easier to sell remasters.
It's easier to combat piracy.
It's way easier to produce hardware without disk drives of without developing and manufacturing your own game card format, you get a lot of benefit when we talk millions of units.
Like it or not, a modern game like in 80% of cases is incomplete without an ability to download patches, additional content, characters and to access online modes. You can own a disk/game card for your peace of mind or for collectiong purposes, but once the servers go down it will be a pain to play.
Buying (actually, renting, but still) digital is just more convenient for an avarage user. No going to a store, no hassle with preorders because of logistics difficulties, no damaged carts/disks. You hit one button from your sofa - and the game is downloading. Or it even pre-loads automatically, you get your copy ready at 00:01 on the release day.
I dare say, for an average Max Musterman/Maria Musterfrau the matter of longevity is highly exaggerated. Yeah, people DO replay games, but normally, for a digital release you can play a game from 2-3 generations before. It's highly unlikely that an average person would want more longevity from their games. After 15-20 years from the initial release, only vey dedicted fans continue to play any game, the general crowd just moves on of will settle for a remaster.
Several observations that are hard to stomach, but it's the objective economic reality:
For most parts of the world, we lived in a favourable economic cycle in roughly 2000 - 2022, with only one serious (and short) schock of 2008-2009. I'm not the guy who likes to bring doom and gloom, but since the pandemic we have entered an unfavourable economic cycle, where less people will be able to afford less good and services beyond the bare minimum. It will also end, no market economy condition is forever, but here we are now.
I used to work for a marketing team of a huge corporation, and there is such natural - albeit unpleasant - thing as market priority. Home, European and the US markets are almost universally prioritized simply on the ground of potential revenue. When things are going good, a corporation may try dipping into developing markets and even try regional pricing (as, say, MS did with Argentine or Turkeye). But when things go haywire, normally they just apply global pricing in a local currency equivalent and wait for as many sales as they can get.
Eventually the market will figure something out. Sony (Nintendo/MS - no difference in this case) also need sales, and they can't just raise prices indefinitely. We are now in the period of market adjustment, but eventually the solution will be found. It's not 1982, it's quite unlikely that the whole gaming market just collapses.
IDK, I'm interested in this specific game (loved the first game, played the original version on the PS4, replayed it as the Spacer's Choice Edition on the PS5), and since I'm interested, I don't feel like EUR 80 (in my region) is someting outrageous. Inflation has been rampant recently, there's no way around increased prices. MS is saying that in our faces: you want more value, you buy an Xbox/PC and a gamepass. And there are also sales, of course. FOMO guys like me always pay more - that's life.
Man that's snail pace, really. I've completed the main Oblivion quest, Knights of the Nine, and I'm about half-way through Shivering Isles now. By the time the patch lands next week I will be playing for about 35 hours hours, which is more that I usually invest in any game. It seems I'll finish Shivering Isles and the only remaining Arena quest well before I'll see the performance patch for the PS5. Not that I didn't enjoy the vanilla version - hence the 35 hours - but it's really buggy and crash-prone, literarilly more buggy and unstable that ANY PS5 game I played since launch. I know the thing with Elder Scrolls mainline releases, but man, it's a 2006 game, already patched enough at the original release.
I dunno, I tried the game at launch, but it was graphically so astonishingly weak (hence the simultaneous PS4 release, I suppose), that I couldn't last more than 2 hours. The funny thing is that it was marked as PS5 Pro enhanced in the PS Store in my region (Austria).
I also didn't find any stellar gameplay elements to like it despite the graphics. I partially can appreciate how British it is, but I'm not culturally British myself, so the charm wears thin quite quickly.
Well, it seems to be a de-facto consensus by main intenrnational players these days that we sacrifice part of economic effectiveness for political control.
I mean, the super-globalized economic model allows for production of the cheapest goods and services - under the condition that there are no political hurdles for functioning of the global market. To be fair, it's easier said than done, because humankind does not exactly have a good historical record of abandoning political tensions in the name of economic prosperity. There was certain hope in the 2000s- 2010s that Frencis Fukuyama might have been right and we had wintessed the end of classic history of black-based conflicts - but alas. We are back to - well, not exactly square one, but, say sqaure seven instead of square ten.
For exactly this reason electronics and games - super-globalized goods by the very nature of their production - have started going up in price. And will continue, because their production model for 20+ years was based on virtually hurdle-free global manufacturing scheme.
@KundaliniRising333, naturally, I can't say for everyone's experience, but for me playing for several hours on the PS5 Pro doesn't seem to cause any notable performace difference. There are bugs for sure (like the infamous issue in Kvatch early in the game), but it's nowhere near "unfinished".
Well, people obviously want to let off steam of just do some fanboy stuff, but actually they are not comparing apples to apples.
Nintendo kept a lower price tag for the Switch games when both Sony and Microsoft did a price hike. Now Nintendo is introducing a new-gen platform and is reconsidering pricing. It's painfully clear that costs went up for everyone. For Pete's sake, the PS5 Pro is 780 EUR in my region and the PS5 Slim Digital has JUST got a price hike, and so did the PS Plus. I have zero doubts that with the next generation PS/Xbox game prices will go up, it's only a matter of the PS5 being actually rather late in it's life cycle that Sony can redistribute game development costs to something else. So did Nintendo with the Switch. Developers that can't do that because they are not platform holders actually sell newer games for 80 EUR here in Europe.
It's that the global economy is cracking to pieces. A lot of s..tuff has happened in the last five years, starting with the pandemic. If you have the global market laid out to you, you can optimize costs and offer the best pries. You can plan forward. You have very steady prices for components and you understand you exchange rates. Even the 2008 Lehman Shock was a relatively short-term global economy crisis.
Now it's all gone haywire, components' prices are skyrocketing, the whole global economy is thrown from one shock to another (the pandemic - wars and conflicts - trade wars), so, alas, it's natural that electronics go up in price. I mean, ALL electronics. I've bought my Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra in 2020 for 1, 150 EUR, and the S25 Ultra this year for 1, 449. The PS5 Pro debuted for roughly double the price of the PS4 Pro for a reason. The same for the Switch 2. Under current global political and economic conditions there simply can't be the prices of the past.
Question: how easy can the game be made? I've been playing videogames since 1991, but I sick so hard at, well, harder games.
E.g., Soulslikes are out of what I'm capable of. I couldn't conquer Returnal either, although I MASSIVELY enjoyed its style and setting. Yet, I finished Stellar Blade on a minimal possible difficulty. I play most games on Easy difficulty, because I like to relax playing games and not to challenge myself to death. I get the fun of a challenge, but it's not for me, I'm too easy to get discouraged by it.
I don't ming grinding, but I really hate it when a boss can fully wipe your party after, like, half-an-our battle. So if I set the game to Draco difficulty anf turn on the auto-battle option, am I going to get a relaxing - albeit grindy - experience? By "relaxing" I mean "you know where to go and how in principle to beat a boss, but you might want to grind a couple of levels.
I liked the originals more. Kratos felt like a wounded hurricane of vengeance, who was wrecking chaos around him and just could not stop until nothing was left. Pure anger, pure hatred, untamed power to destroy. This kept me glued to the screen with my jaw dropped. Newer GoW games are just...different. Yes, it certainly feels that Kratos has gotten older and tamed his inner beast to an extent, and this EXACTLY what makes the games less appealing to me.
Must be me getting older, but I have this funny feeling that this remake, while technically extremely impressive, has lost certain charm of the GC/PS2 original. For me, it's like new Star Wars: a technical marvel, no doubt, but...spiritless? Doesn't feel like the GC version at all (the first one I played before replaying it dozens of times on different platforms) - looks too gritty and horror-ish, while the original felt more like a horror-themed action, even the color palette is different. While it's clearly going to be a great remake technically, and, perhaps, it SHOULD feel like a different game, for me it just feels like a different game too much.
It's a moderately good Warhammer 40K game, not, like, stellar, but pretty solid, a more or less Diablo-like ARPG. Expect the same camera view and the slay-and-loot cycle. It's not strictly necessary to be famililiar with the W4K universe, aesthetic and the lore, but you might not understand a lot of stuff going on if you are not.
Of course, it's up to creators of the game, but I personally struggle to see why Soulslike games can't have an easy mode for those who just want to enjoy the gorgeous worlds. I get the idea that they are designed to be challenging, but a warning before beginnig of the game seems enough. If a person decides they don't want to experiece the difficulty according to the initial vision of the game creators, let them at least experience the game world!
I might be mistaken (gave up game collecting years ago, I now buy games to play them), but isn't it a disposable outer box? There's sort of a steelbook inside, I presume? While I get it that collectors might have several copies of a game including sealed and unopened ones, I doubt anyone at the shipping company even thought that people might want to keep the outer box.
Comments 21
Re: 'Morale in the Studio Is at Rock Bottom': Rockstar Whistleblower Alleges Union Busting as GTA 6 Is Delayed
@saytheunions4ever
What you are saying is totally true.
But there are always...just nomal people. Not fighters. Who value their job and salary in a very prominent company and are not ready to put it at risk because of some overwork. I don't know how it is in the UK now, but a really well-paid job can be very hard to find in many countries here in continental Europe. I know a lot of people who work overtime with no pay and zero complains, becuase they are not ready for what comes with fighting. When your paycheck is some 25% above the average, with a compensation package and occasional unpaid overwork...you really think twice before fighting the giving hand, even ocassionally abusing giving hand.
Re: 'Morale in the Studio Is at Rock Bottom': Rockstar Whistleblower Alleges Union Busting as GTA 6 Is Delayed
Sure, we can only speculate, but I've been under NDAs as a corporate employee, and sometimes you have to read them very carefully, what is meant by "Disclosure". I mean, it can easily be that THE FACT of bringing corporate information which is marked as a trade sectet to Discord AS A PLATFORM is considered disclodure. One of my positions prohibited posting of such information on any publically accessable platform, even with strictest privacy settings. The very fact of uploading any information marked as trade secret to, say, Facebook was considered an NDA breach. Teasing of products was also frowned upon.
Re: PS5 Pro Is Definitely Not the Best Place to Play The Outer Worlds 2 at Launch
Well, there's a mixture of factors, as I think:
Lastly, I clearly remember that original Outer Worlds were not even improved for the PS4 Pro, at least at release when I played the game. It seems that Obsidian does not have much expertise for the Sony hardware.
Re: Oblivion Remastered Patch 1.2 Detailed, Adds New Difficulty Options, Improves Performance, More
Frankly, I was very angry when I could barely finish Shivering Isles because of a bug in the very end of the very last story quest. There's just too many bugs, even for a Bethesda game.
Re: Sony Still Does Physical Gaming Properly, Death Stranding 2 Fully Playable from Disc
I don't like to admit it, but digital distribution has already won, physical games as a mass product live their last generation, I think. They might remain a thing as a collector's stuff for the PS6/New Xbox Series/Switch 3, much like Blu-Ray movie releaes or CD/vinil music albums, but it will be the dusk of them.
Re: Brazilian Gamers Infuriated by Sudden PS5 Price Hikes
Several observations that are hard to stomach, but it's the objective economic reality:
Re: Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army (PS5) - A Fantastic Return to Peak PS2 Atlus Vibes
Man, I can't thank Atlus enough for remastering an ARPG spin-off! I never could find my way with turn-based JRPGs, so this one is a true blessing.
Re: 'Good Luck with That' - The Outer Worlds 2 $80 Price Has Gone Down Horribly with PS5 Players
IDK, I'm interested in this specific game (loved the first game, played the original version on the PS4, replayed it as the Spacer's Choice Edition on the PS5), and since I'm interested, I don't feel like EUR 80 (in my region) is someting outrageous. Inflation has been rampant recently, there's no way around increased prices. MS is saying that in our faces: you want more value, you buy an Xbox/PC and a gamepass. And there are also sales, of course. FOMO guys like me always pay more - that's life.
Re: Oblivion Remastered Patch 1.1 Revealed, PS5 Performance to Be Addressed Later
Man that's snail pace, really. I've completed the main Oblivion quest, Knights of the Nine, and I'm about half-way through Shivering Isles now. By the time the patch lands next week I will be playing for about 35 hours hours, which is more that I usually invest in any game. It seems I'll finish Shivering Isles and the only remaining Arena quest well before I'll see the performance patch for the PS5. Not that I didn't enjoy the vanilla version - hence the 35 hours - but it's really buggy and crash-prone, literarilly more buggy and unstable that ANY PS5 game I played since launch. I know the thing with Elder Scrolls mainline releases, but man, it's a 2006 game, already patched enough at the original release.
Re: Atomfall PS5, PS4 DLC Crosses Shores to Wicked Isle, Out 3rd June
I dunno, I tried the game at launch, but it was graphically so astonishingly weak (hence the simultaneous PS4 release, I suppose), that I couldn't last more than 2 hours. The funny thing is that it was marked as PS5 Pro enhanced in the PS Store in my region (Austria).
I also didn't find any stellar gameplay elements to like it despite the graphics. I partially can appreciate how British it is, but I'm not culturally British myself, so the charm wears thin quite quickly.
Re: Even More PS5 Price Increases Being Considered by Sony
Well, it seems to be a de-facto consensus by main intenrnational players these days that we sacrifice part of economic effectiveness for political control.
I mean, the super-globalized economic model allows for production of the cheapest goods and services - under the condition that there are no political hurdles for functioning of the global market. To be fair, it's easier said than done, because humankind does not exactly have a good historical record of abandoning political tensions in the name of economic prosperity. There was certain hope in the 2000s- 2010s that Frencis Fukuyama might have been right and we had wintessed the end of classic history of black-based conflicts - but alas. We are back to - well, not exactly square one, but, say sqaure seven instead of square ten.
For exactly this reason electronics and games - super-globalized goods by the very nature of their production - have started going up in price. And will continue, because their production model for 20+ years was based on virtually hurdle-free global manufacturing scheme.
Re: Poll: Which Bethesda RPG Needs an Oblivion-Style Remaster Next?
@KundaliniRising333, naturally, I can't say for everyone's experience, but for me playing for several hours on the PS5 Pro doesn't seem to cause any notable performace difference. There are bugs for sure (like the infamous issue in Kvatch early in the game), but it's nowhere near "unfinished".
Re: Ghost of Yotei's PS5 Price Provokes Fresh Switch 2 Fury
Well, people obviously want to let off steam of just do some fanboy stuff, but actually they are not comparing apples to apples.
Nintendo kept a lower price tag for the Switch games when both Sony and Microsoft did a price hike. Now Nintendo is introducing a new-gen platform and is reconsidering pricing. It's painfully clear that costs went up for everyone. For Pete's sake, the PS5 Pro is 780 EUR in my region and the PS5 Slim Digital has JUST got a price hike, and so did the PS Plus. I have zero doubts that with the next generation PS/Xbox game prices will go up, it's only a matter of the PS5 being actually rather late in it's life cycle that Sony can redistribute game development costs to something else. So did Nintendo with the Switch. Developers that can't do that because they are not platform holders actually sell newer games for 80 EUR here in Europe.
Re: PS5 Price Increases Announced by Sony, Immediately Affects UK, Europe, and More
It's not as simple as just tariffs.
It's that the global economy is cracking to pieces. A lot of s..tuff has happened in the last five years, starting with the pandemic. If you have the global market laid out to you, you can optimize costs and offer the best pries. You can plan forward. You have very steady prices for components and you understand you exchange rates. Even the 2008 Lehman Shock was a relatively short-term global economy crisis.
Now it's all gone haywire, components' prices are skyrocketing, the whole global economy is thrown from one shock to another (the pandemic - wars and conflicts - trade wars), so, alas, it's natural that electronics go up in price. I mean, ALL electronics. I've bought my Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra in 2020 for 1, 150 EUR, and the S25 Ultra this year for 1, 449. The PS5 Pro debuted for roughly double the price of the PS4 Pro for a reason. The same for the Switch 2. Under current global political and economic conditions there simply can't be the prices of the past.
Re: Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake (PS5) - A Timeless RPG, and a Gorgeous Nostalgia Trip
Thanks a lot for clarification, guys, it really was important! @ShogunRok, @LowDefAI , @KillerIsD34D
Re: Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake (PS5) - A Timeless RPG, and a Gorgeous Nostalgia Trip
Question: how easy can the game be made? I've been playing videogames since 1991, but I sick so hard at, well, harder games.
E.g., Soulslikes are out of what I'm capable of. I couldn't conquer Returnal either, although I MASSIVELY enjoyed its style and setting. Yet, I finished Stellar Blade on a minimal possible difficulty. I play most games on Easy difficulty, because I like to relax playing games and not to challenge myself to death. I get the fun of a challenge, but it's not for me, I'm too easy to get discouraged by it.
I don't ming grinding, but I really hate it when a boss can fully wipe your party after, like, half-an-our battle. So if I set the game to Draco difficulty anf turn on the auto-battle option, am I going to get a relaxing - albeit grindy - experience? By "relaxing" I mean "you know where to go and how in principle to beat a boss, but you might want to grind a couple of levels.
Re: God of War Creator Says Kratos Has Lost His Way
I liked the originals more. Kratos felt like a wounded hurricane of vengeance, who was wrecking chaos around him and just could not stop until nothing was left. Pure anger, pure hatred, untamed power to destroy. This kept me glued to the screen with my jaw dropped. Newer GoW games are just...different. Yes, it certainly feels that Kratos has gotten older and tamed his inner beast to an extent, and this EXACTLY what makes the games less appealing to me.
Re: Hands On: Resident Evil 4 PS5 Makes a Masterpiece Even Better
Must be me getting older, but I have this funny feeling that this remake, while technically extremely impressive, has lost certain charm of the GC/PS2 original. For me, it's like new Star Wars: a technical marvel, no doubt, but...spiritless? Doesn't feel like the GC version at all (the first one I played before replaying it dozens of times on different platforms) - looks too gritty and horror-ish, while the original felt more like a horror-themed action, even the color palette is different. While it's clearly going to be a great remake technically, and, perhaps, it SHOULD feel like a different game, for me it just feels like a different game too much.
Re: Glory to the Emperor! Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor - Martyr to Get Native PS5 Release
It's a moderately good Warhammer 40K game, not, like, stellar, but pretty solid, a more or less Diablo-like ARPG. Expect the same camera view and the slay-and-loot cycle. It's not strictly necessary to be famililiar with the W4K universe, aesthetic and the lore, but you might not understand a lot of stuff going on if you are not.
Re: Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Won't Have Difficulty Options, Producer Says It's 'Not an Easy Game'
It's very sad.
Of course, it's up to creators of the game, but I personally struggle to see why Soulslike games can't have an easy mode for those who just want to enjoy the gorgeous worlds. I get the idea that they are designed to be challenging, but a warning before beginnig of the game seems enough. If a person decides they don't want to experiece the difficulty according to the initial vision of the game creators, let them at least experience the game world!
Re: The Last of Us PS5's Pricey Firefly Edition Shipping in Shocking Condition
I might be mistaken (gave up game collecting years ago, I now buy games to play them), but isn't it a disposable outer box? There's sort of a steelbook inside, I presume? While I get it that collectors might have several copies of a game including sealed and unopened ones, I doubt anyone at the shipping company even thought that people might want to keep the outer box.