@LogicStrikesAgain exactly. A regular PS5 is nearly £500. What were people expecting? Sony designing a machine that was 50 quid extra? What’s the point of doing that? If you don’t value the bump, don’t buy it. But stop bitching about the economics. If you have 2 models you need clear price point differentiation. Unfortunately demand for processors and shipping costs means was are not go to see console price deflation like we have in previous generations.
The dollar/sterling parity is disappointing with the dollar currently at 1.30 to the pound. I think some UK retailers will offer some discount on the RRP by Black Friday. Its £800 if you are buying a SECOND PS5. I for one would be interested in trading in my machine and buying a 2nd hand Blu-ray. That in practical terms reduces the cost to £500 for an upgrade. Sony are being down the line about what this is about - not having to compromise by selecting graphic fidelity over performance. That compromise isn’t so bad, but now there is a premium option to avoid having to make it. I spent over £2k on a high end OLED television because I watch it a lot and I want a great picture. People spend £600 on a vacuum. It’s the same principle. These are not ‘toys’ but high end consumer electronics. And if you want to theoretically save a few bucks, hook your PC up to your TV, faff around with Windows and wait with your fingers crossed hoping Sony will convert its exclusives to your format, go ahead. I’d rather plug-and-play.
Sony’s ‘E.T. moment’. Except game flops don’t get the dignity of a burial in the desert anymore. The company needs to wake up. It had a winning, but expensive formula, which has chosen to deviate from for greed. It needs to rein in costs and make its single-player games shorter and more focussed. This should have been put into PS Plus day one rather than Sony continue to milk that service revenue stream with obscure dross and old filler.
@TheStormGL Games consoles are by definition luxury products. And it doesnt just play games. it's a full media streaming device and disc player.
Prices have risen by about 23% since the PS5 launched and if its price had tracked inflation it would be about £550 now.
Conventionally consoles go down in price as their original production costs, like chip dies, are amortised, but inflation in this case has offset that. it needs to be remembered that developed economies have not seen inflation like this for 40 years - this is why their central banks fought so hard to bring it down: it makes everyone poorer.
There is also less competition, to be frank. Microsoft have done just about everything wrong you might expect this generation and Sony simply doesn't need to pursue aggressive pricing to maintain market share.
it can use episodic spot pricing to gain consumers who are highly price sensitive. The cut will come - a few weeks before Christmas to activate those looking for a bargain. But cutting it now, and losing all the revenue from those who start buying seasonal gifts early is just bad business.
I bought it near lunch, couldnt get started with it. I swear there was a bug in the hellpod strategem selection menu. I reinstalled and got it working and I love it. Got to around level 10 in a weekend's play. It has great atmosphere and suits tactical play. i have no time for FPS and being shot in the head every 10 seconds - this is more my thing and the update looks great. Sony should fast-track this on PS Plus by the end of the year.
After two decades of Microsoft making ill-thought out studio purchases and then going on to destroy value in them, looks like Sony incomprehensibly decided to follow their playbook.
Sony executed a brilliant strategy with PS4, and then seems to have thrown most if it in the bin to pursue something 'better' - and cheaper. Never leave a good party to go to a better one.
As said, the price drop is not a sign of confidence in the peripheral but a move to offload inventory from retailers out of peak season. there will be no 1st party support to speak of going forward, so if you choose to buy now, you should plan to be happy with the games that are there, and the scraps from the PCVR table that may come with the adaptor compatibility. With Metaquest 3 around the same price, and Meta apparently committed to supporting their platform and consumers with software, i can't see any reason why anyone would buy a PSVR2 now - and i speak as a day one buyer.
of course Sony was right not to do it, from the perspective of being a profitable business. Microsoft was also right, on the basis it is a distant second to Sony and needed something to try and close that. it can also easily subsidise that.
Day One releases on subscription cannibalise retail sales. That's what happened with Disney+. Their cinema release business cratered due to what they did in the pandemic. It also modifies consumer behaviour if there is a short delay. However it was also a strategy to build share in a short period and chalenge Netfix (who dont have another channel to cannibalise).
With this hike, maybe Game Pass will wash its face. The attach rate for most consoles is only 2-3 titles per year. The problem is that the audience willing to pay the premium rate will be heavy consumers, and would spend more on new titles than the annual premium sub.
It's the attach rate that matters, and time spent per user. Undoubtedly there was pent-up demand caused by pandemic-related supply chain issues, which inflated last year's figures. But the deeper question is whether non-console platforms are eating into the share of gaming as they've long been predicted to do throught titles like Fortnite. A dedicated games console was once an essential piece of youth furniture since 1985, but that may stop being the case. However, big first party titles have been the driver of console sales and there Sony is doing a worse job than it did in the PS4 era. The push into live-service games, many of which have now been scrapped, was a serious mis-step that will take years to correct.
Pay More, Get Less. That seems to have been the PS+ offer for a while now. I think there's a good number of people like me with stacked subs flattering the numbers, but these will start to fall off the cliff in a year or so.
Like so many ubisoft games the third edition felt like a cut-and-paste of large parts of the first two with different models. London felt flat and lifeless and boring to traverse.
What pricetag can you put on a reskinned version of Far Cry, which is what i assume it is? Whatever Ubisoft's pricing aspirations for Frontiers of Pandora at launch, it ain't selling for £114 now...
Thescreenshots are a gag, right? they are so dark you can't see what's going on. I played the demo back last year and instantly thought it was DOA. I'm not sure why the reviewer felt the need to disavow his own score. 6/10 is the kiss of death and he must know it.
we are now in the crazy situation where the machine development cycle is shorter than the game development cycle. Except for Nintendo. I'm playing Tears of the Kingdom on a device using a 10-year old mobile phone cast-off chip and it looks wonderful and plays beautifully. Something ain't right.
Looks like Meta have won the war with the Metaquest. Those of us who made a day one purchase and then found there was hardly any software in the pipeline will feel shafted. But then, it was the same with the handhelds too, wasn't it?
The story of Sony and VR ends here basically, because none of us are going to be suckered for a third time.
It's not that disgruntled PS Plus subcribers to the higher tiers want Sony to follow the day-one first party business model: they just want PS Plus to have some decent games. TLOU Part 1 on PS5 (itself a remake of ab 11-year old game) has been out 18 months and is still not part of the catalogue, GoWR,14 months still not in the catalogue.
When Sony rebranded created the PS Plus collection for new PS5 owners it seemed generous. When it rebranded PS Now, it was liberal with putting lots of early hits in the extra catalogue around a year after they came out. In fairness, most of them ae still there. But it turned out to be bait-and-switch.
But the third-party fare is either low-selling AA, live service games that are DOA and shovelware to make up the numbers, month-in, month-out. Occasionally there is a half decent AAA game that underperformed in sales. Those of us who were foolish enough to stack our memberships have to ride out the remainder of it. But the reveals are reliablty depressing, tbh.
Of course, the truth is the cupboard is bare: Sony dont have another AAA title until a year from now. My PSVR 2 is a hunk of plastic in its box. There are STILL almost zero VR games in PS Plus even though a small selection would probably tip the balance in value.
Sony has to sweat its games from two years ago and not put them in PS Plus because, despite having all these studios, and being in the 4th year of this console's cycle it doesnt have enough product in the pipeline.
@PegasusActual93 @PegasusActual93 Not really sure what George Orwell would be spinning about. is your idea of 'dystopia' the thought of the army trying to appeal to youth? That's been a mission of armies since the dawn of warfare.
My instant reaction is yes - sign me up. In Glasgow we had a lot of high-rise concrete buildings from the 1960s no one wanted to live in anymore, and watching their demolition became a form of leisure activity. If you've ever delighted in the slow motion collapse of a chimney stack, i think this is for you.
More of a whimper. In fairness RE2 is very good, if anyone has been remiss not enough to buy it. I had the silly notion they might have gone TLOU Part 1 PS5 remake because Pt.2 is out this month. The PS Plus of old would have.
it ain't what you do, its the way that you do it. The artistic debate is interesting, and a matter of taste, but I think what they did with the character, the mythological world and the gameplay in the new games was spectacular. I just finished Ragnarok and it blew me away right until the end.
hilarious. i went and upgraded my PS4 copy of GTA V for £8.99 after last week's trailer. If i hadnt i'd probably be pacified. But I did. The obscurity of this lineup is remarkable. My new TV supports xbox game pass ultimate and im switching my sub to that - there are recognisable, new games on there. Sony isnt even bothering to add its first party games on PS plus any more and the days of AAA properties like Need for Speed and Call for Duty seem long gone. It's a shovelware graveyard.
A brand in itself is a promise. But if the promise is not kept in the product or service experience, not amount of money spent in marketing or brand-building will succeed. Consumers can't be duped - but they can see value where it exists. Microsoft has probably matched or exceeded Sony in marketing spend to build the Xbox brand, but its offer is too narrow.
My view is that what Sony happened on, or indeed planned from PS2 (the vaunted 'emotion engine') was to invest in a new format of single-player interactive narrative entertainment: immersive, emotional involving, moderately challenging, with span over several dozen hours, and bringing to it the production values associated with movies studios and high-end TV production. There have always been single player video games, but Sony determined to create something that would stand apart from video game entertainment and feel more like longform television. And indeed, now we start to see the crossover into that.
Last of Us, God of War (the new gen), Ghost of Tsushima, Spider-Man. And even some more experimental outliers like Death Stranding and Last Guardian. They can all be traced back to this product philosophy, and Sony has been able to productionise it to maintain a flow over the hardware lifecycle.
This appeals to a broader, older, moneyed demographic than just sports, driving and FPS (which the platform still supports). They have global appeal. They're the secret sauce.
And not only does this clearly differentate the PlayStation offer from the Xbox one, the brand promise is kept almost every time by consistently excellent quality. Even when something lands as just 'good' rather than awesome (Days Gone?) the commitment to maintaining the brand value takes it out.
It's funny people keep deluding themselves that Sony is going to put The Last of Part II on (a game over three years old on its previous platform) when it continues to shovel obscure Japanese crud and single A games onto PS Plus. I really thought there would be a decent pre-Christmas surprise, like the previous NFS game or last year's CoD. They're raking in over £300m in monthly subs fees globally. it's certainly not going on the games. if i could refund all my subs out to 2025 I would, and spend it on a few titles i really want. There is no value here.
It’s amazing. I’ve played it in fits and starts on give-me-no-mercy and savoured every fight. On every level exceptional and better gameplay than the original by encouraging and requiring you to use the full range of skills.
i continue to buy physical for more expensive games when i can, and trade them for credit when done. Why pay to play something once and then not recoup 60% of that? Switch games are the best - ive bought some at launch discount prices and actually earned more in credit for them when i traded them.
@Nintendo4Sonic Well, that's what having a tiered subscription is all about. It's a concept known as 'choice'. You want to stay on the basic tier - fine. Someone else [like me] wants the convenience of instant streaming - also fine. We each choose the tier we want. Im not sure what your beef is.
I think it's great. I played the Last of Us part 1 and Hogwarts Legacy trials in full and a few other PS Plus games. A few stutters at 2140p but no playability issues. The ability to just jump into something different for a short play session feels like the experience Ps Plus was created for.
I'm glad the £550 i spent on a device that i never use helped Sony with their innovation. They have badly let their early adopters down with this who trusted the marketing like myself.There are virtually no new games, a lack of first-party support and the quality of their 1st and 1.5 party games has been mediocre, with the possible exception of Horizon COTM. Theyve killed the possibility of PSVR3 with this.
And do Sony subject all their PR/marketers to 'word salad' tests before offering themselves positions?
the CMA was looking ahead for the next decade. It is arguable whether they have overstated the importance of cloud gaming as no one really knows how it will be taken up.
But if you look at the rise of digital downloads, that's in a completely different place to where it was a decade ago. Should cloud gaming take off it will be an entirely different business model. There will be no big upfront investment by suppliers in hardware platforms and by consumers in proprietary devices.
The model will move away from products to services and channel owners /aggregators will get the power.
Sony gets people to invest in its machines because it has a limited number of high quality properties tied to a proprietary plartform. but in a model where one company owns a disproportionate number of top properties decoupled from any technology platform it could distort the market. Thats how the traditional view of media ownership competition operates.
@BamBamBaklava89 It's not a cut of revenue - its a fee per install, regardless of whether it was sold or not. If a user installs a purchase onto multiple device - a PS5 and a PS4 for example, Unity will charge them twice. Demos are now meant not to be charged (a clarification/backtrack) but not if they containt the whole game and can be unlocked. Free-to-play games become uneconomic for small developers who could end up owing fortunes. Malicious downloads could be used to bankrupt someone. The list of issues goes on and on, but the main issue is that Unity has taken this step in such a way to pull the rug out from under lots of smaller developers who relied on a completely different charging model. It could argue it has the legal right to do it, but to them it feels like a breach of trust.
Nothing that is PS5 exclusive and barely anything less than two years old. Bad and getting worse. We don't expect day one releases, but something resembling a major title would be nice.
The answer to this seems pretty simple, if unpalatable to Sony: they should restructure PS Plus so that the basic tier is cheaper for online play (and perhaps Cloud storage) only - no monthly titles - similar to Apple's Icloud. In fairness, even after you have bought your console there are a range of network-based services that Sony have to provide and fund. The risk is many people downgrade to this and Sony loses a big chunk of cash (that's the unpalatable bit).
The middle Extra tier would largely stay the same, including the price increase. The value proposition is actually pretty good - if you have the time to devote to going through the catalogue and are prepared to wait for 1st party AAA titles to come to it.
Expectations of an equivalent of Xbox Game Pass are unrealistic. Microsoft are offering this at huge lost revenue opportunity for themselves simply because they have to to stay in the game and subsidised by their other profitable divisions. It's a bribe. Sony and Nintendo's shareholders expect them to make money from their core business.
Lastly, it's clear Premium needs to be beefed up. But it's existence is going to make sense once Sony transitions to a full cloud gaming provider - when the technology and consumer are truly ready for this (Stadia showed they are not). In the meantime it needs spiced by a larger dedicated back catalogue (rather than dripfeed) maybe early release titles or perhaps a super-premium game added per month to the library. with a bit of imagination Sony could make it more attractive.
The question is, does Sony care enough? As Apple has lead the way from balancing its devices revenue with services, and PS Plus is Sony's main services platform for gaming, really it should. However, this week's announcement seems careless.
I just topped up my 2 years with another of premium using a discounted shopto PSN card. I use extra a lot more since I expanded my SSD. There are some hidden gems in there. I’m right into the original Everspace right now after seeing the sequel.I also trade in my full price titles for credit when they appear in the catalogue. If you buy too many games when they first come out you won’t give yourself time to get the value from it.
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Re: PS5 Pro Announced, Costs $700 and Out in November
@LogicStrikesAgain exactly. A regular PS5 is nearly £500. What were people expecting? Sony designing a machine that was 50 quid extra? What’s the point of doing that? If you don’t value the bump, don’t buy it. But stop bitching about the economics. If you have 2 models you need clear price point differentiation. Unfortunately demand for processors and shipping costs means was are not go to see console price deflation like we have in previous generations.
Re: PS5 Pro Announced, Costs $700 and Out in November
The dollar/sterling parity is disappointing with the dollar currently at 1.30 to the pound. I think some UK retailers will offer some discount on the RRP by Black Friday. Its £800 if you are buying a SECOND PS5. I for one would be interested in trading in my machine and buying a 2nd hand Blu-ray. That in practical terms reduces the cost to £500 for an upgrade.
Sony are being down the line about what this is about - not having to compromise by selecting graphic fidelity over performance. That compromise isn’t so bad, but now there is a premium option to avoid having to make it. I spent over £2k on a high end OLED television because I watch it a lot and I want a great picture. People spend £600 on a vacuum. It’s the same principle. These are not ‘toys’ but high end consumer electronics. And if you want to theoretically save a few bucks, hook your PC up to your TV, faff around with Windows and wait with your fingers crossed hoping Sony will convert its exclusives to your format, go ahead. I’d rather plug-and-play.
Re: Reaction: PlayStation Needs to Take a Long, Hard Look at Itself
When their mission changed from 'For the Players' to 'For the Shareholders' it all started to unravel.
Re: PS5, PC Shooter Concord Dead on Arrival, Is Being Taken Offline This Week as Dev 'Explores Options'
It’s the Liz Truss of video games. Which is a bit unfair on Liz actually as she lasted a few weeks.
Re: Concord PS5, PC Sales Estimates Are Somehow Even Worse Than We Thought
Sony’s ‘E.T. moment’. Except game flops don’t get the dignity of a burial in the desert anymore. The company needs to wake up. It had a winning, but expensive formula, which has chosen to deviate from for greed. It needs to rein in costs and make its single-player games shorter and more focussed. This should have been put into PS Plus day one rather than Sony continue to milk that service revenue stream with obscure dross and old filler.
Re: Unsurprisingly, the Borderlands Movie Has Completely Bombed
A production budget of $100m for a film of a niche brand like this is insane.
Re: Reaction: PS5 Needs a Price Cut
@TheStormGL Games consoles are by definition luxury products. And it doesnt just play games. it's a full media streaming device and disc player.
Prices have risen by about 23% since the PS5 launched and if its price had tracked inflation it would be about £550 now.
Conventionally consoles go down in price as their original production costs, like chip dies, are amortised, but inflation in this case has offset that. it needs to be remembered that developed economies have not seen inflation like this for 40 years - this is why their central banks fought so hard to bring it down: it makes everyone poorer.
There is also less competition, to be frank. Microsoft have done just about everything wrong you might expect this generation and Sony simply doesn't need to pursue aggressive pricing to maintain market share.
it can use episodic spot pricing to gain consumers who are highly price sensitive. The cut will come - a few weeks before Christmas to activate those looking for a bargain. But cutting it now, and losing all the revenue from those who start buying seasonal gifts early is just bad business.
Re: Movie Review: Borderlands - As Bland As the Brand It's Based On
File entire enterprise under 'Stuff we did under lockdown we now regret'.
Re: Poll: Are You Playing Helldivers 2: Escalation of Freedom?
I bought it near lunch, couldnt get started with it. I swear there was a bug in the hellpod strategem selection menu. I reinstalled and got it working and I love it. Got to around level 10 in a weekend's play. It has great atmosphere and suits tactical play. i have no time for FPS and being shot in the head every 10 seconds - this is more my thing and the update looks great. Sony should fast-track this on PS Plus by the end of the year.
Re: Reaction: Sony's Billion Dollar Bungie Buyout Is Looking More and More Like a Blunder
After two decades of Microsoft making ill-thought out studio purchases and then going on to destroy value in them, looks like Sony incomprehensibly decided to follow their playbook.
Re: Reaction: Sony's Billion Dollar Bungie Buyout Is Looking More and More Like a Blunder
Sony executed a brilliant strategy with PS4, and then seems to have thrown most if it in the bin to pursue something 'better' - and cheaper. Never leave a good party to go to a better one.
Re: Talking Point: Is It Finally the Right Time to Buy PSVR2?
As said, the price drop is not a sign of confidence in the peripheral but a move to offload inventory from retailers out of peak season. there will be no 1st party support to speak of going forward, so if you choose to buy now, you should plan to be happy with the games that are there, and the scraps from the PCVR table that may come with the adaptor compatibility. With Metaquest 3 around the same price, and Meta apparently committed to supporting their platform and consumers with software, i can't see any reason why anyone would buy a PSVR2 now - and i speak as a day one buyer.
Re: PS Plus Subscribers Can Play Concord PS5 Beta This Weekend
Yet another full-service flop, DOA....
Re: Talking Point: Was Sony Right to Resist Adding PS5 Exclusives to PS Plus Day One?
of course Sony was right not to do it, from the perspective of being a profitable business. Microsoft was also right, on the basis it is a distant second to Sony and needed something to try and close that. it can also easily subsidise that.
Day One releases on subscription cannibalise retail sales. That's what happened with Disney+. Their cinema release business cratered due to what they did in the pandemic. It also modifies consumer behaviour if there is a short delay. However it was also a strategy to build share in a short period and chalenge Netfix (who dont have another channel to cannibalise).
With this hike, maybe Game Pass will wash its face. The attach rate for most consoles is only 2-3 titles per year. The problem is that the audience willing to pay the premium rate will be heavy consumers, and would spend more on new titles than the annual premium sub.
Re: Reaction: Why You Shouldn't Worry Too Much About PS5's Year-on-Year Decline
It's the attach rate that matters, and time spent per user. Undoubtedly there was pent-up demand caused by pandemic-related supply chain issues, which inflated last year's figures. But the deeper question is whether non-console platforms are eating into the share of gaming as they've long been predicted to do throught titles like Fortnite. A dedicated games console was once an essential piece of youth furniture since 1985, but that may stop being the case. However, big first party titles have been the driver of console sales and there Sony is doing a worse job than it did in the PS4 era. The push into live-service games, many of which have now been scrapped, was a serious mis-step that will take years to correct.
Re: Next Week's Huge PS Plus Purge Now Extended to 35 PS5, PS4 Games
Pay More, Get Less. That seems to have been the PS+ offer for a while now. I think there's a good number of people like me with stacked subs flattering the numbers, but these will start to fall off the cliff in a year or so.
Re: Rumour: Watch Dogs Is Dead, and Legion Reportedly Killed It
Like so many ubisoft games the third edition felt like a cut-and-paste of large parts of the first two with different models. London felt flat and lifeless and boring to traverse.
Re: $130 Version of Star Wars Outlaws Under Fire as Ubisoft Prices Increase
What pricetag can you put on a reskinned version of Far Cry, which is what i assume it is? Whatever Ubisoft's pricing aspirations for Frontiers of Pandora at launch, it ain't selling for £114 now...
Re: Alone in the Dark (PS5) - An Admirable Effort with One Too Many Flaws
Thescreenshots are a gag, right? they are so dark you can't see what's going on. I played the demo back last year and instantly thought it was DOA. I'm not sure why the reviewer felt the need to disavow his own score. 6/10 is the kiss of death and he must know it.
Re: Rumour: PS5 Pro Is Up to Three Times Faster Than PS5 as Specs Surface
we are now in the crazy situation where the machine development cycle is shorter than the game development cycle. Except for Nintendo. I'm playing Tears of the Kingdom on a device using a 10-year old mobile phone cast-off chip and it looks wonderful and plays beautifully. Something ain't right.
Re: Sony Allegedly Pausing PSVR2 Production Due to Surplus of Unsold Stock
Looks like Meta have won the war with the Metaquest. Those of us who made a day one purchase and then found there was hardly any software in the pipeline will feel shafted. But then, it was the same with the handhelds too, wasn't it?
The story of Sony and VR ends here basically, because none of us are going to be suckered for a third time.
Re: Sony May Have Made the Right Call Not Copying Xbox Game Pass with PS Plus
It's not that disgruntled PS Plus subcribers to the higher tiers want Sony to follow the day-one first party business model: they just want PS Plus to have some decent games. TLOU Part 1 on PS5 (itself a remake of ab 11-year old game) has been out 18 months and is still not part of the catalogue, GoWR,14 months still not in the catalogue.
When Sony rebranded created the PS Plus collection for new PS5 owners it seemed generous. When it rebranded PS Now, it was liberal with putting lots of early hits in the extra catalogue around a year after they came out. In fairness, most of them ae still there. But it turned out to be bait-and-switch.
But the third-party fare is either low-selling AA, live service games that are DOA and shovelware to make up the numbers, month-in, month-out. Occasionally there is a half decent AAA game that underperformed in sales. Those of us who were foolish enough to stack our memberships have to ride out the remainder of it. But the reveals are reliablty depressing, tbh.
Of course, the truth is the cupboard is bare: Sony dont have another AAA title until a year from now. My PSVR 2 is a hunk of plastic in its box. There are STILL almost zero VR games in PS Plus even though a small selection would probably tip the balance in value.
Sony has to sweat its games from two years ago and not put them in PS Plus because, despite having all these studios, and being in the 4th year of this console's cycle it doesnt have enough product in the pipeline.
Re: Disney Secures $1.5 Billion Stake in Epic Games, Plans 'Entertainment Universe' in Fortnite
So basically Fortnite with skins from Disney franchises you can buy. Groundbreaking...
Re: British Army's Fortnite Recruitment Campaign Retreats in the Face of Gamer Backlash
@PegasusActual93 @PegasusActual93 Not really sure what George Orwell would be spinning about. is your idea of 'dystopia' the thought of the army trying to appeal to youth? That's been a mission of armies since the dawn of warfare.
Re: Physics-Based Destruction Game ABRISS Crushes 7th March Release on PS5
My instant reaction is yes - sign me up. In Glasgow we had a lot of high-rise concrete buildings from the 1960s no one wanted to live in anymore, and watching their demolition became a form of leisure activity. If you've ever delighted in the slow motion collapse of a chimney stack, i think this is for you.
Re: Yes, You Can Play PS5 Games Inside Sony's Electric Car
@Kienda yeah Viz top top top: . Sellotape an iPhone to your dashboard and tell your neighbors you have a Sony concept car.
Re: 14 Games on the Way to PS Plus Extra, Premium Next Week
More of a whimper. In fairness RE2 is very good, if anyone has been remiss not enough to buy it. I had the silly notion they might have gone TLOU Part 1 PS5 remake because Pt.2 is out this month. The PS Plus of old would have.
Re: Five Nights at Freddy's: Help Wanted 2
Is anyone actually going to review this game? 1st party PSVR2 titles are like hen's teeth and it's been out nearly a month now.
Re: God of War Creator Says Kratos Has Lost His Way
it ain't what you do, its the way that you do it. The artistic debate is interesting, and a matter of taste, but I think what they did with the character, the mythological world and the gameplay in the new games was spectacular. I just finished Ragnarok and it blew me away right until the end.
Re: 19 Amazing Games Join PS Plus Extra, Premium Next Week
@Ooccoo_Jr you'll find if you download it you are then asked to purchase it in-app. which i did...four days before Sony then added it to PS Plus.
Re: 19 Amazing Games Join PS Plus Extra, Premium Next Week
hilarious. i went and upgraded my PS4 copy of GTA V for £8.99 after last week's trailer. If i hadnt i'd probably be pacified. But I did. The obscurity of this lineup is remarkable. My new TV supports xbox game pass ultimate and im switching my sub to that - there are recognisable, new games on there. Sony isnt even bothering to add its first party games on PS plus any more and the days of AAA properties like Need for Speed and Call for Duty seem long gone. It's a shovelware graveyard.
Re: Kratos Voice Actor Underfire for Roasting New Call of Duty Campaign
It was a joke at an awards ceremony. Some people need to grow up and get a sense of humour.
Re: Reaction: PS5's Success Is Not Luck, Because Sony's Spent Years Putting in the Hard Yards
A brand in itself is a promise. But if the promise is not kept in the product or service experience, not amount of money spent in marketing or brand-building will succeed. Consumers can't be duped - but they can see value where it exists. Microsoft has probably matched or exceeded Sony in marketing spend to build the Xbox brand, but its offer is too narrow.
My view is that what Sony happened on, or indeed planned from PS2 (the vaunted 'emotion engine') was to invest in a new format of single-player interactive narrative entertainment: immersive, emotional involving, moderately challenging, with span over several dozen hours, and bringing to it the production values associated with movies studios and high-end TV production. There have always been single player video games, but Sony determined to create something that would stand apart from video game entertainment and feel more like longform television. And indeed, now we start to see the crossover into that.
Last of Us, God of War (the new gen), Ghost of Tsushima, Spider-Man. And even some more experimental outliers like Death Stranding and Last Guardian. They can all be traced back to this product philosophy, and Sony has been able to productionise it to maintain a flow over the hardware lifecycle.
This appeals to a broader, older, moneyed demographic than just sports, driving and FPS (which the platform still supports). They have global appeal. They're the secret sauce.
And not only does this clearly differentate the PlayStation offer from the Xbox one, the brand promise is kept almost every time by consistently excellent quality. Even when something lands as just 'good' rather than awesome (Days Gone?) the commitment to maintaining the brand value takes it out.
Re: One of PSVR2's Biggest Developers, nDreams, Has Been Bought Up for $110 Million
You say acclaimed PSVR2 games, yet your link to the Ghostbusters review shows you haven't even bothered to review it yet.
Re: 14 PS Plus Extra, Premium Games Coming Next Week
It's funny people keep deluding themselves that Sony is going to put The Last of Part II on (a game over three years old on its previous platform) when it continues to shovel obscure Japanese crud and single A games onto PS Plus. I really thought there would be a decent pre-Christmas surprise, like the previous NFS game or last year's CoD. They're raking in over £300m in monthly subs fees globally. it's certainly not going on the games. if i could refund all my subs out to 2025 I would, and spend it on a few titles i really want. There is no value here.
Re: PS Plus Gets Heavy Discounts for Black Friday
nothing about extending then?
Re: Poll: Is God of War Ragnarok Still One of Sony's Best Games, One Year Later?
It’s amazing. I’ve played it in fits and starts on give-me-no-mercy and savoured every fight. On every level exceptional and better gameplay than the original by encouraging and requiring you to use the full range of skills.
Re: Physical Games Represented Just 4% of Sales for PlayStation Last Quarter
i continue to buy physical for more expensive games when i can, and trade them for credit when done. Why pay to play something once and then not recoup 60% of that? Switch games are the best - ive bought some at launch discount prices and actually earned more in credit for them when i traded them.
Re: EA Sports WRC (PS5) - Don't Swerve This Intense, Well-Rounded Rally Racer
is it just me or does it look like a PS3 game?
Re: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's First PS5, PS4 Campaign Review Is a Massacre
So they’ve ruined the franchise…that has to be a record - even for Microsoft.
Re: Poll: Are You Happy with Your PS Plus Essential Games for November 2023?
No, next question
Re: All PS Plus Members Handed a Movie Discount on Sony Pictures Core
@Throb if you cant get in, the issue is related to email address verification on the Sony website. you need to request an email verification resend and respond to it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PlayStationPlus/comments/176izv2/sony_pictures_core_not_working/
Re: PS5 Cloud Streaming Is Now Available for PS Plus Premium Members in North America
@Nintendo4Sonic Well, that's what having a tiered subscription is all about. It's a concept known as 'choice'. You want to stay on the basic tier - fine. Someone else [like me] wants the convenience of instant streaming - also fine. We each choose the tier we want. Im not sure what your beef is.
Re: PS5 Cloud Streaming Is Now Available for PS Plus Premium Members in North America
I think it's great. I played the Last of Us part 1 and Hogwarts Legacy trials in full and a few other PS Plus games. A few stutters at 2140p but no playability issues. The ability to just jump into something different for a short play session feels like the experience Ps Plus was created for.
Re: PSVR2 Is 'Important' to Sony, But 'PS5 Is the Core'
"a category that can help us with innovation"
I'm glad the £550 i spent on a device that i never use helped Sony with their innovation. They have badly let their early adopters down with this who trusted the marketing like myself.There are virtually no new games, a lack of first-party support and the quality of their 1st and 1.5 party games has been mediocre, with the possible exception of Horizon COTM.
Theyve killed the possibility of PSVR3 with this.
And do Sony subject all their PR/marketers to 'word salad' tests before offering themselves positions?
Re: PS5 Cloud Streaming Is Now Available for PS Plus Premium Members in Europe
the CMA was looking ahead for the next decade. It is arguable whether they have overstated the importance of cloud gaming as no one really knows how it will be taken up.
But if you look at the rise of digital downloads, that's in a completely different place to where it was a decade ago. Should cloud gaming take off it will be an entirely different business model. There will be no big upfront investment by suppliers in hardware platforms and by consumers in proprietary devices.
The model will move away from products to services and channel owners /aggregators will get the power.
Sony gets people to invest in its machines because it has a limited number of high quality properties tied to a proprietary plartform. but in a model where one company owns a disproportionate number of top properties decoupled from any technology platform it could distort the market. Thats how the traditional view of media ownership competition operates.
Re: Developers Rally Together as Unity Attempts to Clarify Controversial Install Fee Policy
@BamBamBaklava89 It's not a cut of revenue - its a fee per install, regardless of whether it was sold or not. If a user installs a purchase onto multiple device - a PS5 and a PS4 for example, Unity will charge them twice. Demos are now meant not to be charged (a clarification/backtrack) but not if they containt the whole game and can be unlocked. Free-to-play games become uneconomic for small developers who could end up owing fortunes. Malicious downloads could be used to bankrupt someone.
The list of issues goes on and on, but the main issue is that Unity has taken this step in such a way to pull the rug out from under lots of smaller developers who relied on a completely different charging model. It could argue it has the legal right to do it, but to them it feels like a breach of trust.
Re: 20 PS Plus Extra, Premium Games Coming Next Week
Nothing that is PS5 exclusive and barely anything less than two years old. Bad and getting worse. We don't expect day one releases, but something resembling a major title would be nice.
Re: PS5, PS4 Owners Are Understandably Irate with PS Plus Price Hike
The answer to this seems pretty simple, if unpalatable to Sony: they should restructure PS Plus so that the basic tier is cheaper for online play (and perhaps Cloud storage) only - no monthly titles - similar to Apple's Icloud. In fairness, even after you have bought your console there are a range of network-based services that Sony have to provide and fund. The risk is many people downgrade to this and Sony loses a big chunk of cash (that's the unpalatable bit).
The middle Extra tier would largely stay the same, including the price increase. The value proposition is actually pretty good - if you have the time to devote to going through the catalogue and are prepared to wait for 1st party AAA titles to come to it.
Expectations of an equivalent of Xbox Game Pass are unrealistic. Microsoft are offering this at huge lost revenue opportunity for themselves simply because they have to to stay in the game and subsidised by their other profitable divisions. It's a bribe. Sony and Nintendo's shareholders expect them to make money from their core business.
Lastly, it's clear Premium needs to be beefed up. But it's existence is going to make sense once Sony transitions to a full cloud gaming provider - when the technology and consumer are truly ready for this (Stadia showed they are not). In the meantime it needs spiced by a larger dedicated back catalogue (rather than dripfeed) maybe early release titles or perhaps a super-premium game added per month to the library. with a bit of imagination Sony could make it more attractive.
The question is, does Sony care enough? As Apple has lead the way from balancing its devices revenue with services, and PS Plus is Sony's main services platform for gaming, really it should. However, this week's announcement seems careless.
Re: PS Plus Essential, Extra, Premium Price Increases Announced by Sony
I just topped up my 2 years with another of premium using a discounted shopto PSN card. I use extra a lot more since I expanded my SSD. There are some hidden gems in there. I’m right into the original Everspace right now after seeing the sequel.I also trade in my full price titles for credit when they appear in the catalogue. If you buy too many games when they first come out you won’t give yourself time to get the value from it.