"excited to hop straight into multiplayer with their buddies" in what's already guaranteed to be one of Gen 10's most massive single player sandboxes, barely even familiar with the world and map? Really not beating the allegations that drive PlayStation's upper management and their ilk.🙄😏

Then again, I kinda look forward to GTA 6 Online myself - if based on the off chance that they new shark card cash cow leaves GTA 5 without further updates and thus easier to make hybrid at long last. Emphasis on "off chance", but still.

@StrickenBiged after the collection's hybrid port almost ten years due, you mean? And I'd take one of Andromeda as well.

A home console was of no use for me at half that price. Conversely, I ultimately paid this much for Deck, albeit over the course of three years (and in all irony, the advent of Asobi RP allowed the latter machine to take up Vita's torch in regards to PS5 itself).

Neat stuff, might well poke around Mycopunk and Mafia via Asobi. The return of Tales of Arise is a highlight as well; I've already got it on NS2, but PS+ is where I first tried it, drawn in enough to unzip my wallet Deckwards soon after - so the game's previous Catalogue license essentially earned Bamco my money twice.😆

World Brothers 2 is hybrid and Hunt descriptions sound too PvPvE for my taste, but I'll see if I can poke at F1 25 via Asobi RP... although it's going to face competition from the already streamed NFS Unbound and MotorStorm Apocalypse therein.

Again, plenty of stuff already hybrid, but Sniper Elite Resistance still isn't, and that's already something to consider even though I'm not holding my breath for gyro.

One rumoured figure much lower than another rumoured figure? Absolute journalism.✋😶🤚

@BlackGecko14 Xenoblade is all about scale and used to cram this scale within 20 Gb until Gen 10. The frixel bubble is really ripe for bursting.

@SMJ kinda like PSP Go was scoffed at for its digital-only nature, but the releases adapted for it ended up ensuring at least partial backward compatibility on Vita despite its medium shift.

I'm certainly interested but cramming yet another urban driving open-worlder into the phone storage besides the already amassed 30 Gb of NTE is a different story unless Genshin finally resurfaces in next week's Direct and has me yeet its own 63 Gb in the meantime (seriously, this frixel buffoonery makes even 512 Gb insufficient, and 1 Tb phones all seem to have abandoned orthodox jack ports by now). Then again, the interview confirms crossplay which might well let me dip a toe or two on Deck courtesy of Asobi RP - the latter has already got my back in late August when I returned to the city (letting me squeeze in NTE's daily stuff before the turnover hour which the mobile version would have never processed its shoulder-patting 17 Gb patch in time for😆), so we'll see what we shall see. Ultimately, though, I'd rather play both on the hybrids, the latter's own storage challenges be damned.

Entire genres have grown out of games supposed to "give Nintendo a headache", just as others have from various "headaches inducers" targeting other successful IPs according to tabloids and tribalists. The latter two crowds' very narrative can seem to be heavily rooted in not even humouring the concept of enjoying multiple genre representatives.

Animal Crossing itself has seen its share of spiritual followers as well, from Enchanted Folk and Disney Dreamlight Valley to the Cozy Grove series. And while rat race adepts discuss market share impact, I say the more the merrier.

Capping the Premium streaming would strip Portal back to a Vita-priced but functionally inferior accessory for streaming strictly installed games from one's own machine, so as long as Sony fancies pushing more of those, I don't expect radical changes.

Yeah, this marked my unexpected first foray into the PS5 stash, too. Lacking the hardware itself, I don't tend to invest in a "wider library" anyway, but as far as PS+ goes, Asobi app actually does show my respective IGC lineup - in fact, I've had little luck launching the Catalogue stuff like FFXVI and Pacific Drive while account-tied "essential" items like NFS Unbound, Robocop Rogue City and (eventually) TES Online decided to cooperate and streamed with nary a hiccup at least on home wi-fi. Account and license sync is still randomly wonky overall, but I guess "playtest" was written in plain English about it all. If Sony doesn't snipe it down later (which they apparently have yet to do about other PSN-tapping Deck options like Chiaki - and as someone pointed out, we are indeed talking a device with some 5 million sales whose PlayStation-streaming owners still need to pay for PS+ Premium regardless), I might even grab the future paid piece for dev support, although I certainly hope that wouldn't lock me into the touted and actually stream-debilitating frixel perks. Who needs 4K on a 800p screen in the first place?

Disks stopped making sense years ago, in no small part due to the proverbial frixel bloat and the proportional data reading speeds it necessitated exceeding what the optical media (and at some point even hard drives with moving parts) could realistically keep up with. Doesn't mean physical media no longer make sense in general - and I can corroborate it even as someone who barely uses them myself.

@Drago201

Game industry big wigs seem to sincerely believe this stuff, perhaps because their own living conditions tend to involve 10x the internet services available for the bulk of the global gaming market. Even session suspension on home/handheld/hybrid machines alike, an almost natural QoL feature of the hobby in this day and age, remains at odds with server dependence and streaming (especially when the latter is done via the company's assortment of connected hardware rather than just remote-playing one's own PlayBox at home). I sporadically dip my PS+ Premium toes into the tech myself, which bypasses a fair lot of PS4 storage space juggling when it cooperates (and I suspect that would be even more topical with PS5 game sizes), but the experience never feels like something I'd ever be tempted to adopt over traditional access full-time, even at consistently higher speeds.

@AgentMantis "it's a franchise with niche appeal that arrives at a time when people are asking where the big games are"

Shows these people's scope, Fire Emblem games being typically bigger in terms of content and themes than most Mario outings while the likes of BotW and even EoW take long enough these days to happen once or twice per generation. But if "Marielda or GTFO" folks really spend $450+ to play 3-5 games in 5-8 years, it's their choice.😏

DL2 still lacks a hybrid port (only a "cloud version" was ever announced, and I neither remember nor care if it ever materialized), which already drove me to poke around when the game was in the Catalogue, and I might just revisit this wall-plugged version again for now. Big Walk and Signalis are on the hybrids but otherwise sum up with DL2 (the latter's detractors in the fandom notwithstanding) to form a generally juicy IGC month.

Remember, online services ending can result in Trophies becoming unobtainable, so if you want a Platinum in any of the above games, double-check the requirements quickly.

Expiring servers, including some prior to one's own purchase of the game, played a big part in ending my honeymoon with and the bulk of my care for PlayStation trophies in general.😏

And there's no need to excuse the "timing" of a regular article that is among the most useful stuff to come from this site. Delisting highlights matter big time for digital buyers like myself, and all the bigger when the announcements themselves seem to be getting oddly scarce in the age when you'd be excused for assuming every school break lemonade stand to have its own SMM (and yet things like Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games can go poof with nary a warning).

With all respect, it sounds like a world, story and mechanics of FF6-9 caliber can't fit into one FF7R-style game - which Xenoblade series alone would heartily laugh in response to. Fewer frixels, more game.

Neat, although I'd rather have the long announced first game on Switch - it remains pending until the publisher either cements the release date or hires an SMM to notify the public about port cancellations. Whichever they can afford first. And if I had a dollar for every open world called "soulless"...

"Build a Rocket Boy is in hot water" still warrants the news tag?

@RoomWithaMoose some people still need to look back at the decades of gaming and get the memo that "clone" is pretty much the singular form of "genre".

I'm not keen on such revisions of established works - it does no favours to the audience's media literacy and the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff within the same character in particular, - but P4G still exists and just got ported last gen, so not much to miss out on in the end.

Courtesy of Deck, I prioritize "PC" over PS4 as it is, but exclusives or region-locked AND server-tied stuff (as well as sideloads that inexplicably refused to work on Deck) remain and, barring eventual hybrid ports, will remain on PS4. Where applicable, Switch and Switch 2 uber alles anyway.

PS6? The lack of physical media wouldn't deter a digital buyer like myself, but the home console format is expected to - just as it did with PS5. If pigs take to the sky in flocks and PS6 really turns out to be a portable, getting it will be a matter of time for me, but I certainly won't have a grand to cough up for it on the spot.

CrossCode is the main highlight here, but I have it on Switch. The other two don't have hybrid ports, so their PS4 presence definitely boosts this month's pragmatic value.

Seeing is believing in this kind of scenario. But IF a new Sony portable ever materializes, that'll be pretty much the only gaming hardware I'll be motivated to save up for since NS2 (and obviously besides the latter's Gen 11 followup, but that's an even more distant prospect).

@CKFilms I'm honestly still wrapping my head about the notion of splitscreen couch multiplayer requiring multiple user profiles to begin with. How does that even work? And to what end, just getting scoreboards/trophies apiece?🤔

Not owning or planning to own a PS5 is a bigger obstacle in my case; the only eyebrow raiser about the game itself is the [borderline] lack of party members which the franchise has mostly designed for sequels/spinoffs, but I needn't be advised to "ignore the haters" in its regard - that's what I do in general and that's what has rewarded me with some of my favourites over the years, including FFXIII & Co and prospectively FFXV. Chances are XVI will eventually prove worthwhile for me as well. Dogs bark, the caravan moves on.

Wait, mixed reactions not even about the story but about the IDEA of "a story in an open world racer"? And what else do these people excel at besides getting bored?

Big as Laufey's franchise may be on the VG front, does a Marvel character like Wolverine even need much pushing in 2026 AD?

Already got KCD on Switch and the most of the rest is literally unplayable on my end (unless Sony expanded Portal's "stream any game in your library" perk to PS4's Remote Play app while I wasn't looking - I mean, that would actually make the latter make sense unlike the compelling default offer of streaming a game from a home console in one room to a home console in another🤔😅), but I might poke my nose into Gitaroo Man, and the lineup is objectively juicy overall. That said, I might find myself using the Catalogue to dip a toe into Fallout 76 this month instead - it necessitates an installation, and on top of currently going through a partial Fallout mood, now I can grant free up more storage by kicking Lies of P with a clear conscience.

No hybrid ports either? No purchase, then. Not taking any popular "stick it to the Man" fandom stances here, Microsoft's stuff just tends to be walled off on PC, and unlike with eShop, I'm not keen on jeopardizing my Steam account with region toggles.

@RBMango it's like vocally mourning the Zelda franchise courtesy of Echoes of Wisdom - or even worse because Laufey's gig actually promises to expand the previous games' lore and chronology, so perhaps more comparable to yelling at clouds about no Cloud in Dirge of Cerberus.

But then again, we've all seen an even closer factual example - the healthy and wholesome fandom reaction to Witcher 4 fully focusing on Ciri.

@DartLOD fans are some of the last entities in the Solar System to talk about thin skins.

Both PS4 offerings are also on Switch (and of course, Darktide isn't), but they may serve some demo purpose depending on the filesize.

Objectively, it's Sony's biz and call. Subjectively? As someone not prompted to expect the life/work schedule for proper use of a home console until retirement, I have no personal incentive to agree with this decision, and as someone completely fine with the idea of Zeldas and Xenoblades being multiplat, I have no hypocrisy to account for in my bias. Gamers my age buy the hardware they can actually play games on rather than the platform for a few specific games. I only ever bought a PS4 courtesy of Vita, which the successor ditched for a gameless device steaming in no less than the hotspot-wrenching 720p (although, in all fairness, my MSP just introduced 5G in Minsk, which means I have whole 4-5 months to cough up the money for and enjoy a PS5/Portal combo before the signal quality inevitably deteriorates to 3G levels like its precursor😏). Steam Deck, for all of its hijinks, has been a much more viable option - no coincidence that my first Steam splurge after getting the machine included Horizon Zero Dawn and Days Gone.

On the other hand, Sony games' presence on Steam went on to become a region lock gamble over the last three years regardless. More frixel-bent users voice concerns about the predictably superficial optimization of PS5 titles (Deck is a linuxoid PC, so "optimization" largely remains an expletive in its vocabulary), although I'm personally more immediately in the market for older classics like Gravity Rush 2, Uncharted trilogy and the memetic Bloodborne. Indeed, even the recent PC port of Spider-Man 2 barely turned my head because Sony region-locked both of its predecessors anyway. So the TL;DR is, I'd naturally prefer the PC ports to continue but their portable usability - the very horse I have in this race - has been progressively elusive in practice anyway. If anything, the recent streak of Lego Horizon, Freedom Wars, Patapon and Everybody's Golf compels to hope for more precedents on the hybrid front instead.😄

On PS4 and in the absence of better options, I just might. On PS5, it would be literally unplayable for me.

At another $30 the game becomes fully portable.

Great, even company officials unironically tease info based on "reliable sources" now.😅

@get2sammyb no one is sure and few bother wondering; the bottom line is, Sony chose to "update" the long abandoned figure at the most awkward time and in the most awkward way available, refusing to elaborate on who in the last decade's market was supposed to be buying (and, on the other side of the counter, to be accordingly stocking) a clean unit for a long out-of-stock physical library over a serviced and chipped second-hand with blackjack and hard drives. The machine's own lasting appeal was never the point of debate or contention in last year's raised brows and dropped memes - the commercial viability of the hat-pulled 5 million consoles was. Unless Sony is content with acknowledging that they effectively sold five million consoles for the jailbreaker black market to have a field day with - but perhaps there's picking one's poison in matters of corporate pride as well.😅

In the end, the original 155 million figure continues to live rent-free in the public's heads and Switch officially ran out of things to prove last quarter when it surpasses that figure on a similarly insane library and a modicum of the previous record holder's media perks (some point to a much larger market as well, but it didn't factor in as much for other go-to machines like 3DS and PS4). It's estimatedly the folks most annoyed at Sony in context that would like to see the embel- sorry, updated figure yield for good measure, but the hybrid gamechanger's "assault on gaming history" is already behind us. Not that I rule out the possibility myself - Nintendo likes talking about "third pillars" in uncertain market weathers, and in the current economic messes the topicality of a comparatively cheaper console with an abyss of offered pastimes may still outweigh the production concerns. Ironically, the latter are what got the Gen 9 queen covered by the new price hike as well - but simultaneously attest to the company's belief in it because wouldn't it be an extra incentive to just let the curtains fall and move the remaining stock with the previous pricetags otherwise?

As for PS2, its own legacy is beyond debate either way, some of it already welcomed on Switch among other modern platforms as well. The whole ridicule is more about Sony wanting and failing a PR stunt around the brand's anniversary.

@nomither6 Switch is a hybrid console, but "console" remains the keyword here anyway, the enforced dichotomy between home and portable ones being as dumb today as it was decades ago. Ironically, it's Deck that doesn't fully belong alongside even the likes of DS and Vita, and I can but corroborate that as a Deck owner myself.

@rjejr I have yet to try fishing but I've probably played more NFS-flavoured racers than kart ones by now (unless 1200 hours of Disney Speedstorm have been enough to tip the scales😅), and Hethereau streets seem to favour grip over drift indeed. I'll see what I can do once I start investing in faster cars; I thought I'd be getting an alternate variant of mine in a side quest now, but the latter ultimately didn't go there (coming to a much more wholesome close instead, and the car frankly seemed slower in practice anyway). As for on-foot exploration, it's certainly the way for combing through the city but I like driving overall and default to it when over hoofing/teleporting when I have a specific destination in another part of town. Too bad the pixel-spending grind spots insist on fast travel, so I have to pin and track a marker in their vicinity instead (same with activated phone booths).

I only care so much for home decor as well, but the game still encourages dropping by for the various anomaly furniture with practical effects on the gameplay. Upgrading this furniture can involve outside task prerequisites but still necessitates visiting the apartment in person afterwards, too.

@DestructionAllstars we're all addicts here, my fellow piece of fanship, but going out of one's way to publicly call a fiction work "a loaf of slop" and other such epithets has always been among the more acute symptoms, and there's undeniable irony in accusing others of "word vomit" in the wake of it. And I certainly don't have a modicum of other gamers' burnout with modern open-worlder recipes (having largely grown up on much more restrictive exploration or even screen scrolling options can do that to you😏), but against your kind, I'd be motivated to "defend" even Big Rigs.

As already commented elsewhere, I have a limited number of physiological destinations to suggest for unregulated GenAI in art and fiction, but filling in select gaps to avoid extra crunch and pledging to phase it out afterwards at least sounds like a salvageable case. Much sadder is that even the related buzz will likely not make it the last such incident, even if subsequent ones are kept to the projects without global releases.

@rjejr invited characters certainly act like roommates rather than guests.😄 You can place beds in purchased apartments but they only seem to be there for animations like plopping down and napping until the next left stick movement, so you're somehow better off just dropping by phone booths around the city for party recovery. Racing has been solid in my experience (which, to be fair, generally includes beating two NFS titles on Nintendo DS😆), but there's only so much you can squeeze out of the starter car - even doing the last Sunday race under 200 seconds looks like it will require "something sporty, like a tuna"© instead.

I've already said it elsewhere but games like Xenoblade are more outspoken about Japanese game industry's potential in this regard. The only possible deadweight here is feeling obliged to match the exact production scale (be it that of British/American money printer franchise or that of a Chinese freemium) and profit goals bitten by Square Enix. Japanese games can feel like the borderline last resort of "AA gaming" or whatchamacallit with their ability to create more from less, and there will always be a market for that. I'm not unpredictably hooked on NTE myself, even as impatient as to have reluctantly revisited the Android gamepad topic until the hopefully eventual hybrid port, but I'm not perplexed by freemiums' "predatory nature" because I simply don't invest in them (no price for a server-crutched content piece can realistically compete with full-fledged retail games you can haul from eShop or Steam with the same kind of money), and no amount of fond memories in such freemiums can remove me from the market for EoS-immune "one and done" adventures. Fun as post-release content can be, I lack a habit of diving into a video game on the condition of such content's guarantee. Base game backlogs safely exceed my lifetime anyway.😆

@AgentMantis describing the likes of Genshin or NTE as "shallow combat" or "lack of content" is one way to compete for the Most First-World Bullcrap award. Personal resonance is a historically harsh master, but projecting it on the work itself is rarely fruitful and even more rarely dignified.

I'm comparatively lukewarm towards football (unless it's something peculiar like Behold the Kickmen or RPG-flavoured like Captain Tsubasa, with NGC Mario Strikers scratching the itch for more traditional gameplay these days) and Wuchang is literally unplayable for me, but I might take Nine Sols for a spin even despite having its hybrid port wishlisted, so there's that.

@ozkrmz what, PSN? Always has been.

@Fizza and unobstructedly does it on Switch among other platforms.

@JB_Whiting (this was one comment before the system decided to debate its size😄)

As far as Zelda goes... the questionably chosen medium doesn't make it a movie aimed at an older audience per se, but it's not like the "well-established professionals" haven't been known for flinging your own list of accusations towards the latter kind of movies either. Dogs and caravans are a universal and timeless image.

There's only one anatomical orifice for critical reception, whether scathing or awestruck. As for Zelda, I don't consider its fantasy world a manageable environment for live action and don't have enough interest in seeing it to generate any expectations whatsoever. At least Bloodborne has reportedly had better luck; for all I know, I might even end up seeing its adaptation instead someday.

@1UP-HUSKY my backlog priorities haven't had me rewatch the first Mario movie in a year or so, but I still remember what transpired therein. It wasn't TLK or even Sing tier but a worthwhile chronicle in its own right, and I expect the same from SMGM. Remembering stuff is a product of resonance in kids and adults alike; by the time I came across an opinion about The Road to El Dorado having "not a single memorable song", I could quote any of them if woken up at 4 a.m. As for box offices, they're a dice roll this decade, and I don't consider them ultimately indicative either, but if the earned money is channeled into expanding (or, as is fashionable to say online, "milking") the respective franchise and fictionverse further, cheers - regardless of my own affinity. I've never cared much for Minions that Illumination cooks by similar recipes, but those movies' existence is no skin off my back either. And the same would have applied to the studio's take on Mario if it had rubbed me against the fur - to paraphrase a Frozen character, my childhood is not fragile.

@JB_Whiting I, for one, definitely "you do realise that these "so called critics" are working on this very site" and stick to the belief that both NL and PS reviewers can take their reviews and shove them; in case this crosses the boundaries of civility, I will certainly not contest a ban, but if you ever see me say that "game critics matter", then the mods also better immediately ban my account as hacked.😆 I have my own shameful baggage in this accursed field, and even getting a degree in actual critique (aka honest fiction studies where "creative analysis" isn't a fancy hijacked name for verbosely expressed admiration/boredom) failed to promptly put a lid on it way back when; I can't even guarantee no relapse in this regard, but I don't look forward to one and I lack incentive to bridle my general sociopathy towards the yellow-papered buffoonery in question. There are unarguably more deplorable "well-established professions" out there, but it says something when TV Tropes manages to be tangibly closer to serious critique than all the "professionals" involved - and it's a site with reported roots in imageboards! Like I said above, somehow processing the previous Mario movie wasn't rocket science for me either, and I'm neither too much of a kid in my cynical 39 nor too obsessed with the franchise I have played through maybe a half dozen early entries from.

In the end, being underwhelmed by stuff like SMG is nothing to bash either - unlike pseudocritical fanbloid behaviour directed at underwhelming entertainment experiences, especially the one you're expected to profit in any way from. For all of my own obscene fanhead past, I do make attempts to follow the golden rule - "I have the right to dislike what a fiction work does as long as the fiction work has the right to do what I dislike".

Horizon is definitely one of the highlights but long installed on my Deck even after a fair few hours poured into the purchased PS4 original; "remastered" certainly sounds rich in this context. I also have Warriors Abyss on Switch; Monster Train, while wishlisted on eShop, might make for an advance toe dip in this batch but somehow never made it to PS4 despite showing up on XBO. Still, that leaves Motorfest and Wild Arms 4 to actually consider trying, and those two represent two of my fave genres, so hey.

@Areus the game has its own achievement system anyway, I'll wait for it to carry over to the overdue and now even more topical hybrid port.

So... three modes and all of them revolving around the very same frixels PS5 Pro is still expected to qualify as a "pro" experience on the basis of? Did the update at least introduce gyro, previously exclusive to NS2?🤔