Sony should be proud of the PS5 itself - key design aspects including the SSD and dualsense made it a clear step up from the PS4. However, there has been a whole series of blunders on their part, which gamers have paid the price for:
The misfire of the PSVR2: the tech was a good evolution but there was a complete failure to support it with software or proper marketing.
The PS5 Pro. Mark Cerny claimed we wouldnt need to make the choice between performance and fidelity and that's a promise not kept. The gains I see are marginal, developers have struggled with it and its development was arguably pointless.
Worst of all is the strategy around software. Sony had a winning formula for PS4 that it failed to double down on. Frustratingly we have a great machine but insufficient great 1st party games to play on it. Beguiled by Fortnite and its ilk they went down the wrong path.
Luckily every mistake they made was duplicated tenfold by Microsoft whose incomprehensible dual machine and subsidised subscription (and also no games) approach has been a disaster for them.
A great month for this who reasoned that strong AA games Still Wakes… and Pacific Drive would eventually make their way onto the service. Thank goodness you’re here (which I bought on Switch) and Talos Principle II would also be good Standing on their own in any month. The value proposition for PS Plus extra which is to give players access to a whole spectrum of gaming without sucking the air out of the AAA market is pitched right.
It's a much better experience than the remote play app. Most people dont have an 8-inch phone, and the controls are perfectly placed. Ideal as a home second screen (remote play works better than cloud streaming i find) and good enough to travel with if you have a decent internet connection. The connection to the app store will take it to another level.
isn't this because when Sony sells the game off its platform, it books the entire sale as gross revenue, whereas a boxed game sold in a store, it only gets the publisher cut or the licensee's cut of 3rd party?
Clearly, it's advantageous to be the storefront in either cases: retailers generally get about 25% of the retail price, and there are also logistics costs related to warehousing and transport of physical games that don't exist for digital.
But just looking at gross revenue alone is a bit of a distorted picture if someone is imagining that it relates to units sold.
not a great month, but needs to be taken in context: i've got a backlog of PS plus games from June onwards ive not had time for, including AAAs like Diablo IV and Life of Pi and replaying Spider-Man but on PS5. Also just gone and picked up Hollow Knight, reminding me of how good the back catalogue is.
i've justified Premium on the basis of streaming for convenience, particularly on my Portal, but now remote play is so good, i rarely use it. Also, Sony need to get Portal streaming out of beta and expand to the full PS Plus catalogue. Subscribers should look across a full 12 month period to work out whether they are getting VFM.
The cost of an Atari VCS in 1977 was $199, which is equivalent to $990 now. So console prices have fallen in real terms, for a massive increase in value as measured by use in entertainment hours. What happened is that manufacturers subsidised console hardware to be competititve, suppressing cost. but now there is massive demand for GPUs and small wavelength chips needed to maintain innovation in graphics (which is what gamers want). Sony is to blame for none of this apart from staying in the game.
Sword of the Sea is a great day one to have access to in Extra. A fun, short game. These are the types of titles it makes sense to select for inclusion for launch, not 70-hour behemoths. I also downloaded PS5 Spider-man having played the PS4 original aeons ago and enjoying the visual upgrade.
I went back to Jedi Survivor after a few hours on the opening level, knowing it would leave. It's actually brilliant and i've even put DS2 to one side to try and finish it before it leaves.
Microsoft thought it could become no.1 in the video games industry through brute economic force and game pass was its battering ram. Subsidising its own games now, it would have absolutely hiked prices to recoup that revenue had it been successful. Its entire strategy lies in ruins and it is its developers, rather than the architects of this folly, who pay the price.
People continuously moan on a month by month basis when there is nothing added they like. But they should be evaluating the subscription based on the entire catalogue they have to play. There is a brilliant back catalogue in there and the expanded catalogue of the Extra and Premium tiers means that games i wouldnt necessarily like to buy and play at length i can sample at some stage or other. It would be nice if the window from day one release to arrival could be shortened from around 2 years to something less. And sometimes it feels like the service is a dumping ground for 3rd party multiplayer games that should never have been commissioned in the first place. I think Extra represents the best value, but like many i subscribe to premium for a bit extra for convenience. One aspect of that is Game Trials which only include a few games (and seem to be expanding with shovelware titles) when we were promised they would be available for all major releases.
Xbox is repositioning itself as a brand rather than an ecosystem and that's been going on for a while. The store thing is interesting - if physical sales plummet then the monopolies that Sony and Microsoft exert over their stores might come under competition scrutiny, so this gets in there in advance.
We should consider xbox is strategically less important to Microsoft than it was even a decade ago. Xbox was always their candidate for the fabled 'set top box' that was going to control the home and be their gateway to consumer desires. it never materialised and consumers control their homes from their mobiles and the cloud.
There is simply no need or benefit for them to put an xbox in every home. But they still have a powerful brand that maintains a consumer connection for them.
Sony's in a different positon. It needs to sell the console and maintain the ecosystem for the PlayStation brand to retain its position.
it's ironic that Sony has focussed so much on the hardware wars and forgetting to make games for their own system, and now Microsoft and swooping in to fill the void....
I got a Pro in March for 10% discount, having eventually sourced the disk player at RRP (which Sony then dropped by £20 the next month). I’ve been pretty underwhelmed by the upgraded games so far. I’m remember seeing the videos in the Mark Cerny promo and Hogwarts Legacy particularly looking great with RT. Cerny made one central promise in that, which was that Pro owners wouldn’t need to compromise in choosing fidelity or performance. With Pro they could have both. That simply isn’t the case with games like Hogwarts which was showcased. The fidelity modes run very choppy. Same with Spider-man 2. TLOU part 2, I do feel I can see a quality boost with Performance but it’s a rare example. The prospect of new compression techniques being enabled, and that newer games will be better able to use its power leads me to fully reserve judgement, but the Pro feels like a future investment than a ticket to improved gaming now. Death Stranding 2 and GTA 6 are the big test. I don’t regret it in the way I do with PSVR2 which was a blatant stitch up. I contrast it with my feelings on the Portal which has completely surpassed by expectations (although led to spending far too much time playing Balatro in bed).
I downloaded the trial of Balatro some time back but couldnt get my head around it. Tried again yesterdat and it clicked. And its perfect for remote play on Portal.
i jumped at the opportunity of an Argos 10% promotion and paid £630 for my PS5 Pro back in March. There are still opportunities to get it £40 under RRP and the disk drive price has dropped (although still difficult to get). Its an investment as the software doesnt justify it yet: Cerny's claim that you dont have to choose between fidelity or performance is not borne out by me playing supposedly 'enhanced' games like Hogwarts, Space Marine II and Spider-Man 2. There are still clear compromises.
@tameshiyaku Value is a subjective judgement. I'm more than satisfied with mine. I think the Snapdragon comment refers to using a Steamdeck or similar for PC games. That's not going to access the Premium game library or connect with Remote Play. PS Premium isnt a hostage scenario: with the portal its an integrated gaming experience of software, delivery channel and console hardware, and it works pretty well. Also, a native handheld is progressively a brick - as it can run fewer and fewer new releases that demand more compute. A streaming thin client avoids that obsolescene by the server providing that. As networking improves, so does game streaming.
Whereas Breath of the Wild was an instant system seller for Switch because it took the game world to another level (although i actually bought the Wii-U version first) I look at the Mario Kart game and i can't really see the graphical upgrade over Switch Mario Kart - which looks great. The open world game will be on a different scale, but honestly, i'm not getting the urge to adopt this instantly. interesting to see if they pursue a dual release strategy for Switch 1 and 2 in the next couple of years. But also, Portal has kind of changed my gaming habits....
If you can't even give it away, that's God's way of telling you to shutter up. It sounds like this was the last throw of the dice after the PC launch.
A generic live-service game with a F2P business model. How could it possiby fail?
All of this is the fallout of low interest rates, a tech bubble and a scramble into gaming that is now unwinding. Too many projects being greenlit without a clear idea of who their customer is.
So not great, but we've had a great run since the beginning of the year and i have a PS Plus backlog to add to my add to my other backlog. There are some hidden gems in last month's Extra - Somerville is great.
Prince of Persia is actually really good - i bought it on launch for Switch, so if you havent played it, youve got one of Ubisoft's best titles for the last few years, and not a radio tower in sight.
It's the most interesting thing Sony has on the slate amongst the sequels and spin-offs. Yes, it's a sequel, but the original was so...original, creative and challenging that i'm very interested to see how its themes are developed.
There's a lot of "i couldnt get into the first game" comments, which is fair enough. But my reflection on that is that people sit down in front of a game and demand to be entertained on a minute-by-minute basis. The media must bend to their gratification. That's its function. Boredom is not an acceptable scenario.
How can you make a game about trudging across America and boredom NOT be a mechanic? Falling over a rock and losing all your stuff for the last 30 minutes IS the game.
The original game was a satire on our childlike desire to be gratified by things and distractions - bread and circuses - and both the loss of grasp of what is real and the isolation from other living things we are imposing on ourselves in the process. Those bored by the satire probaby didnt get the irony.
@Feffster 1st party games do tend to stay on longer - demon’s souls, Ghost of Tsushima etc have been on for years.3rd party is a mixed bag - some are on for as little as six months. But in some cases like GTA V they get rotated back in. Prioritise your extra backlog over monthly essential as once you’ve redeemed a monthly game it’s yours for as long as you subscribe.on average you should get at least a year to play something on the extra tier.
When the history of video games is written, there will be a chapter on Ubisoft and the Perils of Formulae. Theyve been churning out the same reskinned stuff for well over a decade; Look! Now it' Star Wars! See! Now it's Avatar! The graphics get (marginally) better and the stories interminably longer (except for Mirage), but the game minute by minute is deja vu. Their obsession with open world dynamics over gameplay - i bought Crew Motorfest and there was just so much stuff getting in the way of actuall racing.
A media site which gets 'exhausted' (in typical Gen Z fashion) by the opinions of its readers is not long for this world. If you find it all so tedious, then go and get a job elsewhere.
it's not a demo, it's a trial. The full game, limited to an hour's place time. The benefit of these is you get a chance to play it properly and come to a decision of whether or not you want to buy it.
Arguably, Should do this with all games, but they and other platform don't and they did originally specify trials were meant to be three hours.
But it is is useful - as a premium subscriber ive made several buy and not-buy decisions based on game trials.
Looking at the longer term trend Ubisoft's problems are much greater: it's stock has fallen by 82% in the last 5 years, where EA's is largely where it was. Ubisoft has a high debt-to-equity ratio. It's not uncommon to see a sharp sell-off in stocks that report a bad quarter/ issue a profits warning based on the underperformance of specific properties forecast to do better. But EA is still seen to have a strong brand portfolio, hence its /E ratio of 30. Longer term problems arise if the power of those brands, or its market position changes.
Listen to Aristotle: he said a story should have a beginning, a middle and an end. Not a beginning, a middle and a series of player skins you can purchase with in-game credits.
Gamepass never made economic sense: it would cannibalise sales of 1st party titles so Microsoft would lose money. Which it was prepared to do as a throw of the dice to make up ground after the PS4 generation. It has failed to deliver that objective and has devalued the worth of those 1st party AAA games in the eyes of consumers.
PS Plus makes more sense, as a service of committed gamers on PS with time and inclination to play 'smaller games', with some tentpole AAA titles available after their peak sales cycle has ended. It really all falls into place when you have (as I do, PSVR2 and Portal).
I prefer the portal screen for platform games and puzzle games. The kind of stuff that Netflix or Apple Arcade supports, but with the benefit of a proper controller.
If you accept that you're going to have to wait a year or more for a few AAA titles, and this service augments what you spend of full price, its an alternative to buying 2nd tier titles outright.
It works for me as a proposition. The time I've sunk into the service and the access to a wider set of games has been worth it.
@carlos82 Sony have been quite circumspect in relation to game streaming, i guess to ensure to calbrate cloud capacity and protect the user experience. MS can leverage their Azure capacity whereas for Sony the infrastructure it is additional overhead.
YAY! This is massive (for me anyway). A Portal was the top item on my Christmas list already, even for Remote Play - which works better than it has ever done on on my phone and tablet. But i have long harboured a hope that the Portal could support streaming but that Sony had not enabled that at first due to their cautious move into game streaming. Streaming is probably the best feature of PS Plus Premium to me - i use it to jump into games on the service in a whim. But adding it to Portal makes it truly a portable device to take travelling.
The basis of economics is scarcity, and one of the challenges of digital is that it eliminates scarcity - copies can be made instantaneously and at no cost.
'Early Access' is a way to re-introduce scarcity in artificial form, especially if its marketed as a 'limited edition'.
There is no intrinsic value to anything - only what people are prepared to pay for a thing - and if people will pay then these techniques will proliferate, and costs will continue to increase.
@Rich33 It reminds me of DF screenshots where i am squinting to see the differences between PS5 and Xbox One - and failing. You simply cannot tell what the improvement looks like from what they showed and the quick-cut way it was done. I will probably get one, but why day one? there will be barely any games out that support that ("and many more...") is a vague promise, and besides, am i going to spend the run up to Christmas replaying a handful of games just so i can do it in 60fps fidelity mode?
patience is a virtue. I waited for them to do this, as even 2nd hand copies never trade for less than about £40. It's in the Extra tier so it can be time-limited and rotated in and out of the service - as they're doing with Horizon Forbidden West. If it's in the essential tier, everyone with PS Plus effectively has it for as long as they subscribe. In the extra tier, it will be rotated out after a couple of years. It doesn't matter - play the game, enjoy it, move on.
Jusant was on game pass ultimate day one. A pleasant mountaineering game but no real hook. If you give your games away on subscription services from day one, don’t be surprised if people don’t buy them.
um, because Sony pursued a live service product strategy that consumers didnt actually want under previous leadership at the cost of investing in new IP and are left scrambling to fill in an empty release schedule. Also, they've seen Nintendo get away with and people (like myself) happily pay full price to replay games we bought 15 years ago. I predict HZD will tank.
@Vaako007 exactly. if it was just £100 more than a base PS5, who woud buy the base model? They'd be left with a wall of white bricks like the X box Series S
"I feel like we’re breaking into unprecedented pricing territory here — this feels as big as when Apple announced the iPhone X at £999"
This is the point - how did that work out for them? Apple realised that phones had gone from being utility devices to high end electronics. People would be prepared to pay considerably more for a premium model for a bump in spec. it's instructive of how technology has become central to consumption and consumer identity.
From a price perspectives there are two considerations - value and affordability. Value is about whether you are getting more for your money. People are talking about the headline price, but what should be focussed on is the DIFFERENTIAL between the base, four-year old model, at £500 and the new model at around £300 more expensive when a player is added.
It should be remembered the PRO has expanded memory that would cost around £80 to purchase as an upgrade, although most users would probably spend around £100 to use the expansion slot for 2 TB.
So really, it's £200 more like-for-like for the performance improvement. Only the consumer can assess whether that's value.
On affordability, like high-end smartphones, that is addressed through effective hire-purchase and credit agreements to spread the cost. There will be options for that. And as many people won't need 2 PS5 some of the increase can be offset by trade-ins which i can see being competitive.
I also think the UK RRP offers some flexibiility for retailers to reduce their gross margin (around 25%) to shave £30 or so off the RRP. And Sony have given themselves some wriggle room to discount they didnt' dare do with the head-to-heas with now-vanquished Xbox.
The base PS5 is an awesome machine and great value. I'd be happy to sit it out for a while to see if the pricing is too bullish. But i'll be keeping an eye out for early deals at Black Friday.
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Re: PS5 Is the Second Fastest Selling PlayStation Ever in the US, Despite Price Hikes and Production Issues
Sony should be proud of the PS5 itself - key design aspects including the SSD and dualsense made it a clear step up from the PS4. However, there has been a whole series of blunders on their part, which gamers have paid the price for:
The misfire of the PSVR2: the tech was a good evolution but there was a complete failure to support it with software or proper marketing.
The PS5 Pro. Mark Cerny claimed we wouldnt need to make the choice between performance and fidelity and that's a promise not kept. The gains I see are marginal, developers have struggled with it and its development was arguably pointless.
Worst of all is the strategy around software. Sony had a winning formula for PS4 that it failed to double down on. Frustratingly we have a great machine but insufficient great 1st party games to play on it. Beguiled by Fortnite and its ilk they went down the wrong path.
Luckily every mistake they made was duplicated tenfold by Microsoft whose incomprehensible dual machine and subsidised subscription (and also no games) approach has been a disaster for them.
Re: 9 PS Plus Extra, Premium Games for November 2025 Announced
A great month for this who reasoned that strong AA games Still Wakes… and Pacific Drive would eventually make their way onto the service. Thank goodness you’re here (which I bought on Switch) and Talos Principle II would also be good
Standing on their own in any month. The value proposition for PS Plus extra which is to give players access to a whole spectrum of gaming without sucking the air out of the AAA market is pitched right.
Re: Poll: Is PS Portal the Biggest Surprise Hit of the PS5 Generation?
It's a much better experience than the remote play app. Most people dont have an 8-inch phone, and the controls are perfectly placed. Ideal as a home second screen (remote play works better than cloud streaming i find) and good enough to travel with if you have a decent internet connection. The connection to the app store will take it to another level.
Re: PS Plus Extra, Premium Games for October 2025 on PS5, PS4 Leaked
@EfYI Ive played a few hours of As Dusk Falls on Gamepass and it's got a great story. looking forward to seeing it through to the end.
Re: PS6 Release Date Touted for 2027, Cheaper But Less Powerful Than Next Xbox
pointless speculation inviting pointless speculation. For da clickz.
Re: Everyone's Talking About How Little Physical PS5 Games Contribute to Sony's Bottom Line
isn't this because when Sony sells the game off its platform, it books the entire sale as gross revenue, whereas a boxed game sold in a store, it only gets the publisher cut or the licensee's cut of 3rd party?
Clearly, it's advantageous to be the storefront in either cases: retailers generally get about 25% of the retail price, and there are also logistics costs related to warehousing and transport of physical games that don't exist for digital.
But just looking at gross revenue alone is a bit of a distorted picture if someone is imagining that it relates to units sold.
Re: 8 PS Plus Extra, Premium Games for September 2025 Announced
not a great month, but needs to be taken in context: i've got a backlog of PS plus games from June onwards ive not had time for, including AAAs like Diablo IV and Life of Pi and replaying Spider-Man but on PS5. Also just gone and picked up Hollow Knight, reminding me of how good the back catalogue is.
i've justified Premium on the basis of streaming for convenience, particularly on my Portal, but now remote play is so good, i rarely use it. Also, Sony need to get Portal streaming out of beta and expand to the full PS Plus catalogue. Subscribers should look across a full 12 month period to work out whether they are getting VFM.
Re: PS5's High Price Becoming a Serious Headache for Publishers
The cost of an Atari VCS in 1977 was $199, which is equivalent to $990 now. So console prices have fallen in real terms, for a massive increase in value as measured by use in entertainment hours.
What happened is that manufacturers subsidised console hardware to be competititve, suppressing cost.
but now there is massive demand for GPUs and small wavelength chips needed to maintain innovation in graphics (which is what gamers want).
Sony is to blame for none of this apart from staying in the game.
Re: August 2025's PS Plus Extra, Premium Games Available to Download Now
Sword of the Sea is a great day one to have access to in Extra. A fun, short game. These are the types of titles it makes sense to select for inclusion for launch, not 70-hour behemoths. I also downloaded PS5 Spider-man having played the PS4 original aeons ago and enjoying the visual upgrade.
Re: PS5 Stunner Neo Berlin 2087 Walks the Uncanny Valley with New Gameplay Trailer
"did you know that black holes have such strong gravitational pull that nothing, not even light can escape from them".
Yeah, i did GCSE physics so i did know that. And technically, its not strictly true if you consider Hawking radiation...
Re: These 13 PS5, PS4 Games Leave PS Plus Extra in August
I went back to Jedi Survivor after a few hours on the opening level, knowing it would leave. It's actually brilliant and i've even put DS2 to one side to try and finish it before it leaves.
Re: 'I Much Prefer PS Plus' Lifecycle Management Strategy': Devs Chime in on Xbox Game Pass Impact
Microsoft thought it could become no.1 in the video games industry through brute economic force and game pass was its battering ram. Subsidising its own games now, it would have absolutely hiked prices to recoup that revenue had it been successful. Its entire strategy lies in ruins and it is its developers, rather than the architects of this folly, who pay the price.
Re: PS6 to 'Push the Boundaries' of Graphics, Doubles Down on Machine Learning
That next The Last of Us remaster in native 8K with updated textures is going to be an amazing.
Re: Poll: 15 Years of PS Plus - What Do You Think of Sony's Subscription Service?
People continuously moan on a month by month basis when there is nothing added they like. But they should be evaluating the subscription based on the entire catalogue they have to play. There is a brilliant back catalogue in there and the expanded catalogue of the Extra and Premium tiers means that games i wouldnt necessarily like to buy and play at length i can sample at some stage or other. It would be nice if the window from day one release to arrival could be shortened from around 2 years to something less. And sometimes it feels like the service is a dumping ground for 3rd party multiplayer games that should never have been commissioned in the first place. I think Extra represents the best value, but like many i subscribe to premium for a bit extra for convenience. One aspect of that is Game Trials which only include a few games (and seem to be expanding with shovelware titles) when we were promised they would be available for all major releases.
Re: Poll: How Do You Feel About The Last of Us Part 2, 5 Years Later?
Amused by all those disappointed to discover the End of the World was 'depressing'.
Re: The Next Xbox Is a PC, So What Does That Mean for PS6?
Xbox is repositioning itself as a brand rather than an ecosystem and that's been going on for a while. The store thing is interesting - if physical sales plummet then the monopolies that Sony and Microsoft exert over their stores might come under competition scrutiny, so this gets in there in advance.
We should consider xbox is strategically less important to Microsoft than it was even a decade ago. Xbox was always their candidate for the fabled 'set top box' that was going to control the home and be their gateway to consumer desires. it never materialised and consumers control their homes from their mobiles and the cloud.
There is simply no need or benefit for them to put an xbox in every home. But they still have a powerful brand that maintains a consumer connection for them.
Sony's in a different positon. It needs to sell the console and maintain the ecosystem for the PlayStation brand to retain its position.
Re: The Order 1886 Could Have Been a Big Trilogy of PlayStation Games
Really odd it was never put on PS Plus. There's still time i guess....
Re: Apr 2025 USA Sales: PS5 Ports Award Microsoft's Forza Horizon 5, Indiana Jones Huge Boosts
@GeeForce an ad impression is an ad impression whatever the context....
Re: Apr 2025 USA Sales: PS5 Ports Award Microsoft's Forza Horizon 5, Indiana Jones Huge Boosts
@MrPeanutbutterz actually, it was an ironic comment intended in jest, but the essence of satire is an element of truth...
Re: Apr 2025 USA Sales: PS5 Ports Award Microsoft's Forza Horizon 5, Indiana Jones Huge Boosts
it's ironic that Sony has focussed so much on the hardware wars and forgetting to make games for their own system, and now Microsoft and swooping in to fill the void....
Re: Talking Point: What Do You Think of the PS5 Pro, Six Months Later?
I got a Pro in March for 10% discount, having eventually sourced the disk player at RRP (which Sony then dropped by £20 the next month). I’ve been pretty underwhelmed by the upgraded games so far. I’m remember seeing the videos in the Mark Cerny promo and Hogwarts Legacy particularly looking great with RT. Cerny made one central promise in that, which was that Pro owners wouldn’t need to compromise in choosing fidelity or performance. With Pro they could have both. That simply isn’t the case with games like Hogwarts which was showcased. The fidelity modes run very choppy. Same with Spider-man 2. TLOU part 2, I do feel I can see a quality boost with Performance but it’s a rare example. The prospect of new compression techniques being enabled, and that newer games will be better able to use its power leads me to fully reserve judgement, but the Pro feels like a future investment than a ticket to improved gaming now. Death Stranding 2 and GTA 6 are the big test. I don’t regret it in the way I do with PSVR2 which was a blatant stitch up. I contrast it with my feelings on the Portal which has completely surpassed by expectations (although led to spending far too much time playing Balatro in bed).
Re: May 2025's PS Plus Essential Games Available to Download Now
I downloaded the trial of Balatro some time back but couldnt get my head around it. Tried again yesterdat and it clicked. And its perfect for remote play on Portal.
Re: Opinion: If You're on the Fence, Consider Buying a PS5 Now Before the Prices Inevitably Rise
i jumped at the opportunity of an Argos 10% promotion and paid £630 for my PS5 Pro back in March. There are still opportunities to get it £40 under RRP and the disk drive price has dropped (although still difficult to get). Its an investment as the software doesnt justify it yet: Cerny's claim that you dont have to choose between fidelity or performance is not borne out by me playing supposedly 'enhanced' games like Hogwarts, Space Marine II and Spider-Man 2. There are still clear compromises.
Re: PS Portal System Update Out Today, with Big Improvements to PS Plus Cloud Streaming
@tameshiyaku Value is a subjective judgement. I'm more than satisfied with mine. I think the Snapdragon comment refers to using a Steamdeck or similar for PC games. That's not going to access the Premium game library or connect with Remote Play. PS Premium isnt a hostage scenario: with the portal its an integrated gaming experience of software, delivery channel and console hardware, and it works pretty well. Also, a native handheld is progressively a brick - as it can run fewer and fewer new releases that demand more compute. A streaming thin client avoids that obsolescene by the server providing that. As networking improves, so does game streaming.
Re: Reaction: Switch 2 Looks Solid But the Many PS5, PS4 Ports Won't Spook Sony Yet
Whereas Breath of the Wild was an instant system seller for Switch because it took the game world to another level (although i actually bought the Wii-U version first) I look at the Mario Kart game and i can't really see the graphical upgrade over Switch Mario Kart - which looks great. The open world game will be on a different scale, but honestly, i'm not getting the urge to adopt this instantly. interesting to see if they pursue a dual release strategy for Switch 1 and 2 in the next couple of years. But also, Portal has kind of changed my gaming habits....
Re: Another PS5 Live Service Title Does a Concord, Game and Dev to Close Two Weeks After PS5 Launch
If you can't even give it away, that's God's way of telling you to shutter up. It sounds like this was the last throw of the dice after the PC launch.
A generic live-service game with a F2P business model. How could it possiby fail?
All of this is the fallout of low interest rates, a tech bubble and a scramble into gaming that is now unwinding. Too many projects being greenlit without a clear idea of who their customer is.
Re: 12 PS Plus Extra, Premium Games for March 2025 Announced
So not great, but we've had a great run since the beginning of the year and i have a PS Plus backlog to add to my add to my other backlog. There are some hidden gems in last month's Extra - Somerville is great.
Prince of Persia is actually really good - i bought it on launch for Switch, so if you havent played it, youve got one of Ubisoft's best titles for the last few years, and not a radio tower in sight.
Re: Death Stranding 2 PS5 Release Date Set for 26th June
It's the most interesting thing Sony has on the slate amongst the sequels and spin-offs. Yes, it's a sequel, but the original was so...original, creative and challenging that i'm very interested to see how its themes are developed.
There's a lot of "i couldnt get into the first game" comments, which is fair enough. But my reflection on that is that people sit down in front of a game and demand to be entertained on a minute-by-minute basis. The media must bend to their gratification. That's its function. Boredom is not an acceptable scenario.
How can you make a game about trudging across America and boredom NOT be a mechanic? Falling over a rock and losing all your stuff for the last 30 minutes IS the game.
The original game was a satire on our childlike desire to be gratified by things and distractions - bread and circuses - and both the loss of grasp of what is real and the isolation from other living things we are imposing on ourselves in the process. Those bored by the satire probaby didnt get the irony.
Re: 10 PS5, PS4 Games Removed from PS Plus Extra, Premium Next Month
@Feffster 1st party games do tend to stay on longer - demon’s souls, Ghost of Tsushima etc have been on for years.3rd party is a mixed bag - some are on for as little as six months. But in some cases like GTA V they get rotated back in. Prioritise your extra backlog over monthly essential as once you’ve redeemed a monthly game it’s yours for as long as you subscribe.on average you should get at least a year to play something on the extra tier.
Re: Ubisoft Revenue, Net Bookings Decline 31%
When the history of video games is written, there will be a chapter on Ubisoft and the Perils of Formulae. Theyve been churning out the same reskinned stuff for well over a decade; Look! Now it' Star Wars! See! Now it's Avatar! The graphics get (marginally) better and the stories interminably longer (except for Mirage), but the game minute by minute is deja vu. Their obsession with open world dynamics over gameplay - i bought Crew Motorfest and there was just so much stuff getting in the way of actuall racing.
Re: Reaction: The PS5 Discourse Around State of Plays Is Becoming Draining
A media site which gets 'exhausted' (in typical Gen Z fashion) by the opinions of its readers is not long for this world. If you find it all so tedious, then go and get a job elsewhere.
Re: PS Plus Premium Subscribers Offered Free LEGO Horizon Demo
it's not a demo, it's a trial. The full game, limited to an hour's place time. The benefit of these is you get a chance to play it properly and come to a decision of whether or not you want to buy it.
Arguably, Should do this with all games, but they and other platform don't and they did originally specify trials were meant to be three hours.
But it is is useful - as a premium subscriber ive made several buy and not-buy decisions based on game trials.
Re: Former Rockstar Animator Doubtful GTA 6 Will Run at 60fps on PS5
They'll be milking it on PS6 and PS7 with 'remasters' and 'definitive editions' and we might see 60 frames a second around 2034....
Re: EA Stock Price Plummets After Dragon Age: The Veilguard, FC 25 Disappointments
Looking at the longer term trend Ubisoft's problems are much greater: it's stock has fallen by 82% in the last 5 years, where EA's is largely where it was. Ubisoft has a high debt-to-equity ratio. It's not uncommon to see a sharp sell-off in stocks that report a bad quarter/ issue a profits warning based on the underperformance of specific properties forecast to do better. But EA is still seen to have a strong brand portfolio, hence its /E ratio of 30. Longer term problems arise if the power of those brands, or its market position changes.
Re: Vintage Retro Sports Games Preserved on PS5, PS4 from 30th January
I reviewed these when they came out originally and they bombed then...
Re: Reaction: Sony's Live Service Push Has Been a Disaster of Utterly Insane Proportions
Listen to Aristotle: he said a story should have a beginning, a middle and an end. Not a beginning, a middle and a series of player skins you can purchase with in-game credits.
Re: 11 New Games Are Coming to PS Plus Extra, Premium Next Week
Yes! I didnt expect GOWR quite yet. I bought and completed it, traded my copy. But then wanted to go back and play the Valhalla add-on.
Re: Video Game Industry 'Doesn't Want a Game Pass', Says Market Analyst
Gamepass never made economic sense: it would cannibalise sales of 1st party titles so Microsoft would lose money. Which it was prepared to do as a throw of the dice to make up ground after the PS4 generation. It has failed to deliver that objective and has devalued the worth of those 1st party AAA games in the eyes of consumers.
PS Plus makes more sense, as a service of committed gamers on PS with time and inclination to play 'smaller games', with some tentpole AAA titles available after their peak sales cycle has ended. It really all falls into place when you have (as I do, PSVR2 and Portal).
I prefer the portal screen for platform games and puzzle games. The kind of stuff that Netflix or Apple Arcade supports, but with the benefit of a proper controller.
If you accept that you're going to have to wait a year or more for a few AAA titles, and this service augments what you spend of full price, its an alternative to buying 2nd tier titles outright.
It works for me as a proposition. The time I've sunk into the service and the access to a wider set of games has been worth it.
Re: PS Portal Will Allow Cloud Streaming in New Beta Update
@carlos82 Sony have been quite circumspect in relation to game streaming, i guess to ensure to calbrate cloud capacity and protect the user experience. MS can leverage their Azure capacity whereas for Sony the infrastructure it is additional overhead.
Re: PS Portal Will Allow Cloud Streaming in New Beta Update
YAY! This is massive (for me anyway). A Portal was the top item on my Christmas list already, even for Remote Play - which works better than it has ever done on on my phone and tablet.
But i have long harboured a hope that the Portal could support streaming but that Sony had not enabled that at first due to their cautious move into game streaming.
Streaming is probably the best feature of PS Plus Premium to me - i use it to jump into games on the service in a whim. But adding it to Portal makes it truly a portable device to take travelling.
Re: Opinion: The Price of Playing PS5 Games Day One Is Getting Higher and Higher
The basis of economics is scarcity, and one of the challenges of digital is that it eliminates scarcity - copies can be made instantaneously and at no cost.
'Early Access' is a way to re-introduce scarcity in artificial form, especially if its marketed as a 'limited edition'.
There is no intrinsic value to anything - only what people are prepared to pay for a thing - and if people will pay then these techniques will proliferate, and costs will continue to increase.
Re: PS5 Pro Flexes Its Muscle in Montage Trailer
@Rich33 It reminds me of DF screenshots where i am squinting to see the differences between PS5 and Xbox One - and failing. You simply cannot tell what the improvement looks like from what they showed and the quick-cut way it was done. I will probably get one, but why day one? there will be barely any games out that support that ("and many more...") is a vague promise, and besides, am i going to spend the run up to Christmas replaying a handful of games just so i can do it in 60fps fidelity mode?
Re: The Last of Us: Part 1 Is Coming to PS Plus Extra, Premium
patience is a virtue. I waited for them to do this, as even 2nd hand copies never trade for less than about £40.
It's in the Extra tier so it can be time-limited and rotated in and out of the service - as they're doing with Horizon Forbidden West. If it's in the essential tier, everyone with PS Plus effectively has it for as long as they subscribe.
In the extra tier, it will be rotated out after a couple of years. It doesn't matter - play the game, enjoy it, move on.
Re: Don't Nod 'Disappointed' by Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, Jusant Sales
Jusant was on game pass ultimate day one. A pleasant mountaineering game but no real hook. If you give your games away on subscription services from day one, don’t be surprised if people don’t buy them.
Re: Reaction: Why There Are So Many Unnecessary PS5 Remasters for Games That Don't Need Them
@Shinnok789 I'ms surprised angry guy is not posting "Where's the DAYS GONE REMASTER SONY!?"
Re: Reaction: Why There Are So Many Unnecessary PS5 Remasters for Games That Don't Need Them
um, because Sony pursued a live service product strategy that consumers didnt actually want under previous leadership at the cost of investing in new IP and are left scrambling to fill in an empty release schedule. Also, they've seen Nintendo get away with and people (like myself) happily pay full price to replay games we bought 15 years ago. I predict HZD will tank.
Re: PS5's Commanding Console Position Is Seemingly Insurmountable
How can i company that owns 30 studios manage to release about one game a year?
Re: Prospective PS5 Pro Buyers Cause Disc Drives to Sell Out
@Shepherd_Tallon exactly. If 80% of users said they’d buy it, they would have got their marketing wrong for a Pro product.
Re: Talking Point: Is PS5 Pro Way Too Expensive?
@Vaako007 exactly. if it was just £100 more than a base PS5, who woud buy the base model? They'd be left with a wall of white bricks like the X box Series S
Re: Talking Point: Is PS5 Pro Way Too Expensive?
"I feel like we’re breaking into unprecedented pricing territory here — this feels as big as when Apple announced the iPhone X at £999"
This is the point - how did that work out for them? Apple realised that phones had gone from being utility devices to high end electronics. People would be prepared to pay considerably more for a premium model for a bump in spec. it's instructive of how technology has become central to consumption and consumer identity.
From a price perspectives there are two considerations - value and affordability. Value is about whether you are getting more for your money. People are talking about the headline price, but what should be focussed on is the DIFFERENTIAL between the base, four-year old model, at £500 and the new model at around £300 more expensive when a player is added.
It should be remembered the PRO has expanded memory that would cost around £80 to purchase as an upgrade, although most users would probably spend around £100 to use the expansion slot for 2 TB.
So really, it's £200 more like-for-like for the performance improvement. Only the consumer can assess whether that's value.
On affordability, like high-end smartphones, that is addressed through effective hire-purchase and credit agreements to spread the cost. There will be options for that. And as many people won't need 2 PS5 some of the increase can be offset by trade-ins which i can see being competitive.
I also think the UK RRP offers some flexibiility for retailers to reduce their gross margin (around 25%) to shave £30 or so off the RRP. And Sony have given themselves some wriggle room to discount they didnt' dare do with the head-to-heas with now-vanquished Xbox.
The base PS5 is an awesome machine and great value. I'd be happy to sit it out for a while to see if the pricing is too bullish. But i'll be keeping an eye out for early deals at Black Friday.