johncalmc

I don't really wanna be voiced by James Woods thanks

I'm personally of the opinion that the smaller games might not make a splash, but they're important in that together they contribute to the overall vibe of the ecosystem. In the past, PlayStation produced games like Vib Ribbon, PaRappa, Tokyo Jungle, Gravity Rush - weirder, smaller titles that might not have sold like Horizon but gave the PlayStation brand a cool, quirky identity.

That wackier side of the PlayStation brand has all but disappeared, and instead what we're left with is lots of polished third person games. And I like those games. But without the weirder stuff it does feel like the PlayStation brand is a lot more clinical, and kinda soulless, and that we're all the poorer for it.

Not everything has to sell 10 million copies. Sometimes, just being a part of the portfolio, a part of the greater whole can be an important contribution. Plus, you never know when something will be a surprise hit.

Still, we can't really be surprised that the company that thought Concord was going to be a banger can't see the value in smaller titles that actually have things like art design and cool characters and personality and charm etc.

One day, kids are gonna listen to me talk about this in the same way that I listened to my dad talking about when England won the World Cup.

This actually sounds terrible but I'm sure they'll get away with it. From Software have a lot of good will.

@ShogunRok I do get it. My partner is a Yakuza super fan. Like ridiculous. She's got the Majima Construction hat and everything. And she's very much in that old school Yakuza mentality too. She isn't as much of a fan of the modern turn based, sillier Yakuza stuff, but still plays it and likes it. She was bawling during Infinite Wealth. I just know she'd rather be drinking whiskey in a seedy Tokyo bar with Date discussing how to stop whichever Yakuza supervillain is on the loose than she would fighting giant baby men in Hawaii with Ichiban.

I love Yakuza too, but I don't have that thing where I'm as wistful for the past with it. I do prefer the Kiryu games and I prefer the tone and the stories of those, but I'm also fine with it getting a bit out there. Either way, I'll be playing this day one, and I'm sure I'll find something to love here.

I did Platinum Infinite Wealth on both PS4 and PS5 though so maybe I'm not the best person to speak to about this :')

@ShogunRok I'm a little bit of this but since I love Majima and I love pirates it hasn't upset me or anything. I'm into the groundedness of it too, but in Yakuza 2 Kiryu beat up two tigers and there was magical golden castle that came out of another castle so the series has always kinda had the silly thing going on.

I've always just kinda had a thing where in my head I separate the silly from the grounded, and the grounded is the real story of what happened, and the silly is just embellishment for fun and games. Granted, that's a little less obvious of a line here since the whole game appears to be about being a pirate Majima, but I'm sure I'll manage.

I haven't played this yet, but on paper I am super not into the idea of changing civs mid-game.

I quite liked Days Gone and I'm super into buying all the games I already bought on PS4 again for PS5 for £10 so I can get all of the trophies again. So I'll probably end up getting this.

I hardly ever actually play any of these games, but I was probably going to buy that Lost Records game because it looks like the kinda thing I'm into so I might just play it through PS Plus.

Xbox releasing more PlayStation games than PlayStation is funny, and I get why plenty of people are saying it, but it's certainly not any kind of gotcha, and it's certainly not any kind of victory. The staunchest of Xbox fanboys might try to have you believe otherwise, but secretly they're weeping into their cornflakes because everybody knows what time it is; this is a massive capitulation on the part of Xbox.

And so yes, Sammy has nailed it here. As amusing as the idea of Xbox releasing more PlayStation 5 games than Sony is, it's really just a third party publisher with lots of studios releasing lots of games, no different to any other. The real story is that Xbox has basically given up trying to "win" and is instead settling for making publishing money, while PlayStation is winning the console war by default and will make free money from Xbox games that their once fiercest competitor paid for.

There's no chance I'm going to play this game and I think it probably has little chance of success, but I'll be interested to see it in action when it's properly revealed. A delay seems wise. Learn from Concord. See if there's anything that needs to be changed to avoid the same pitfalls.

@__Seraph This is also a very valid argument. People are much more likely to go online to say their piece if they're annoyed than if they're merely content or ambivalent. And so the discourse is certainly skewed because of that. I too am a hardcore PlayStation gamer and while I think State of Play varies in quality and is rarely better than pretty good, I certainly don't think many of them are anywhere near bad enough to warrant the reaction they get.

I don't really know how to feel about this. The arguments presented here are fine. They are. Sony's changed. State of Play is not supposed to be E3. Etc.

The problem is that none of this changes the fact that these State of Plays simply aren't delivering what a lot of the most hardcore fans - i.e. the people who tune into these things - actually want. That's evident from the reactions to them. So who's in the wrong? The company for not catering to what their fans want or the fans for not treating what the company is presenting as was intended?

I really get it from both sides, but ultimately, I gotta side with the fans. The onus is on Sony to deliver what their audience wants - the onus isn't on the audience to accept whatever Sony provides.

Personally, I quite like the drip feed of information. But I get why people don't. A lot of people still want the banger after banger presentations of yesteryear and if Sony isn't doing that - whatever the reason - nobody can be surprised when reactions are as they are.

It should be noted, too, that perhaps Sony's hand has been forced somewhat by the live service debacle. Perhaps they simply don't have anything to show because they've spent years pumping money into that dead dog initiative. But either way the result is the same.

They either pivot to bigger presentations - presumably less frequently - that are more stacked with first party titles to please their fanbase, or they do it their own way and keep annoying them.

I'm on Premium but I never play any of the Classics, or the Extra games, or even the monthly games you get with the basic one so I'm not sure why I'm paying for it.

Every death in Returnal was valuable. They taught me that I am terrible at video games.

Honestly, this is so petty. We can't let Xbox even have an Ape Escape mode in a Metal Gear game that nobody on Xbox will probably buy anyway? Come on.

Doubly annoying because I'd much rather have Bomberman than Ape Escape.

It was whatever. Same problem these things nearly always have - people want to see big PlayStation games being announced. Seeing a bunch of things we already knew about and a couple of announcements just doesn't seem to float people's boats, particularly when it's been so long since one of those classic banger after banger showcases. The hype just goes up every time they don't deliver making it even harder for the next one to deliver.

Still, another almost Returnal sounds good to me, and I was expecting nothing so it exceeded my expectations.

I haven't played the first one yet even though I've owned it for years. If the second one is coming then maybe I'll get around to it at some point.

I have less than no interest in this.

This is incredible stuff. I'm glad they're only guaranteeing one of these things will be commercially available because I'd go bankrupt if they made too many of them.

I'm sure they'll both be very excited.

It didn't really impact me to be honest because I don't play multiplayer games. If anything, adding the five days extra of PS Plus will impact me more because presumably that will change my renew date by five days which is annoying.

I'm not really into this unless it's a remake of the first game(s). Generally, I'm not into prequels unless they're exceptional and turn the series on its head a little like Yakuza 0 or Metal Gear Solid 3. But I'm also willing to give it a go and will be happy to be pleasantly surprised.

I always play Infinity Nikki first thing in the morning. Do my dailies. Ease myself into things. Now I can't. So I gotta play the last thing I was playing on disc. Silent Hill 2. Silent Hill 2 at 7am. I suppose I could always turn my Switch on. Silent Hill 2 before breakfast then.

I will always remember where I was when I saw this news.

I'm not doing them in a couple of days because I have an actual job and stuff, but I do tend to play through games very quickly. Not that I'm good at them, I just don't really have any other hobbies and stuff and my partner is a gamer too so it's not like I have to turn Cyberpunk off to watch Love Island with her or something. I average 50+ games a year and finish all of them and a lot of those are big boys.

Dragon Age "failed" because EA had unreasonably high expectations for a game that shipped a decade after its last entry that had been through substantial development turmoil precisely because of an attempt to make it live service. Stop expecting everything to sell twenty million. Stop wanting everything to be a forever game. Stop obliterating teams because upper management made terrible decisions.

Pretty sour we're not getting macho Abby. I wanted to see her snapping fools necks.

I don't really like racing games and I like open world racing games even less but I do like the look of the arcadey-ness of it. If it's cheap I might give it a go but I'm not rushing out to buy it day one.

Looks like Phil Spencer is doing another interview for some reason

A million and a half for Dragon Age sounds alright to me.

I know Inquisition sold over ten million but that was like ten years ago. I think the appetite for a follow up to that game has perhaps subsided over the years somewhat. I mean, I played it and I couldn't remember anything about it when I played Veilguard. People kept turning up in "remember me?" cameos and I was like errrrr.

Still, I thought Veilguard was great. It's a shame that inevitably the sales on this one being perceived as soft will lead to cheers from culture war morons on the internet. Another game caught up in tedious online drama for no reason.

I know a lot of people are hatin' on this game for nefarious reasons but I have quite a different one for why I'm just not going to touch it. I just can't with Assassin's Creed anymore. I actually really really liked Valhalla and played it for ages but then they went and spoiled it all by saying something stupid like, "hey what if we throw all that future storyline rubbish in at the end?"

I just can't. I have too many games to play and even if this one looks cool the thought of watching them scramble to somehow tie this to the greater lore with more dreadful future bits puts me off totally.

Obviously, we haven't seen it. Maybe they could have done something super interesting.

But on paper, and with nothing more than "Bluepoint were making a live service God of War game" to go on, it sounds like one of the single stupidest things I've heard in years. Bluepoint - a studio famed for superb remakes - being bought by Sony in an era of quality remakes of beloved franchises... obviously you'd expect them to be remaking a classic and not live service slop.

That alone is bad. But then just the central idea of a God of War live service game. It just doesn't sound appealing to me in any way. I like God of War a lot. But I like being in there, having a story for twenty hours, getting out. What would a live service God of War even be? It just sounds like such a terrible idea.

I probably wouldn't have announced it four years ago then.

Sweet. I'll sign up to anything if it gets me a cool new outfit to wear in a video game. And if it's our lord and saviour Kiryu's outfit? I'd sign my own death warrant.

Well, this was the Sony live service pish I was most interested in so it would be nice if it has survived. I don't know if I'll play it but if I can make my own person and dress them up in cool clothes and fight things without having to really talk to anyone then I'll probably give it a go.

Oh. Well. A few more to go and then maybe we can get back to normality and hopefully have a few new games before PS6. What a colossal waste of time and money this whole thing has been.

Unreasonably excited for this.

It's not like we have nothing to play. There's loads of great third and second party games.

But given how many fantastic studios Sony has, to see them wasted on live service slop is a disgrace. Really shocking stuff. I guess this is what happens when you're winning by default and have no competition to worry about.

I'm like that Vince McMahon meme where he's getting progressively more hyped with each word in the title of this game.

This is catastrophic levels of mismanagement. Imagine buying Bluepoint - a studio known for best-in-class remakes and remasters and ports - during an era full of great remakes and remasters that sell well, and getting them to make a live service game. It's like putting a baseball cap on a statue of Horatio Nelson. Farcical.

Sony working with outside studios like Arrowhead for this live service stuff doesn't bother me. Sony wasting internal studios on this pish is a catastrophic error in judgement.

I don't think it'll compete with either of the big boys and it doesn't need to. Switch does enough different to the PS5 to be a perfect complement to it and vice versa.

I imagine this is not going to be as wild as the trailers look. Infinite Wealth had a really kinda grounded - relatively - story compared to all of the side shenanigans. Which is true of every Yakuza, of course. So I'm imagining that this is going to have all the standard Yakuza drama - probably a crying Majima - and also swashbuckling nonsense. I'm into that.

Pre-ordered the Japanese special edition with the Majima Pop Up Pirate for my girlfriend. Pre-ordered the digital deluxe so we can both play it. Never been more in on a game.

I don't do the thing where you have to play certain games or whatever. But I have redeemed quite a bit of credit from them. I bought Phantom Liberty for Cyberpunk 2077 and Alan Wake II using credit earned from Stars.

There's simply not enough room in the tiny little Hobbit houses in the UK for a vast video game collection.

I think that this might the rare occasion where offering an early release for pre-ordering might have been a bad idea. The super-fans (aka the ones who hate the games the most) were the ones who pre-ordered the game to get the first two episodes early, and then by the time the game actually released in complete form they'd all been on Twitter for a week moaning about how bad the first two episodes were and how they'd ruined Life is Strange (again).

Not exactly glowing reviews and negative online chatter probably hurt it.

Imran Khan - and other criers on Twitter - should probably remind themselves that most people who buy video games are casual gamers who see ads on TV, catch a review, hear from a friend etc. They're not the people who spend their time whinging on Twitter about everything.

Horizon sold, so it makes sense Sony would make a Horizon movie. Twitter is not real life.

Top pun in the header. We should have a header of the year awards and nominate this.