nhSnork

These aren't third party bailouts on the storefront itself, Sony is responsible for server data maintenance as long as they don't announce otherwise in advance, so there's little to assume here but temporary database errors. But one can see how it may fan (no pun intended) some more flames of paranoia, given the general atmosphere.😅

@Fyz306903 it is, but it seems like American English (and what of its influence flows over the Atlantic) inexplicably took to using a shorter variant... with remarkable nonchalance about the word omission choice effectively flipping the polarity of the entire message. Guess they're used to it by now.

Fine by me, although I will only have any chance for a stake in the matter if the mobile entries belong to touchscreen-friendly genres. Which, seeing as most of Sony's prized APs are action-heavy games, isn't quite a given. Although even a mere turn-based crossover along the lines of Tales of Crestoria and Star Ocean Anamnesis could work, highlighting many legacy characters and concepts in the process.

@nessisonett well, I want portability from PlayStation, but I don't see that impacting Sony's modern endeavours either. Somehow their world and biz doesn't revolve around me, alas.😭😄

A neat list, if merely a sliver of the full list in context - after all, a lot of nominally physical editions might as well be digital-only, too (unless you pay through the nose on eBay, but countries like mine don't even get that "luxury" most of the time). But like I was bitching earlier today, there appears to be a risk of losing these games' purchase options even earlier than it was expected - particularly third party titles whose publishers are opting to take them down months ahead, with zero publicity and with little rhyme or reason. First party might be safer until August... you measure the emphasis on "might".

@TheFrenchiestFry for the same ol' reason that PCs are homechained and even laptops are a quite a compromise to lug around? Fans still don't get the memo that we salarymen and downtown downtimers from the Adultland are quite a crowd and have the income to make us a market.😄 No superior version of a game will be superior if it's not the one you can actually sit down and play.

@Spyroescape because all RPGs benefit from portability in particular, among other similar genres that balance a main campaign with a lot of side activities, exploration, grinding, farming, idle backtracking and whatnot. Despite their size and scale, they may ironically be more of a "pick'n'play" environment than even bite-sized stage puzzles commonly associated with the phrase.

Like the article itself just admitted, an audience is not limited to a fandom. And you'll be surprised, but normal people outside the fan asylums don't quite buy games and consoles to seek "respect" or "loyalty" - they buy games and consoles to entertain themselves. If Sony actually loses to XBox this gen, it won't be a battle of reputations, it'll be on the perennial battlefield of sufficiently marketed offer and sufficiently financed demand.

Sony lost me as a customer for their 9th gen, for instance, but I've never needed any vitriol to justify it - I'm simply not in a position to make satisfactory use of their 9th gen products. Granted, the same applies to XBox - frankly, the only Microsoft-related thing I care for is them hopefully sticking to their Bethesda policy statement verbatim so that GamePass doesn't block the possibility of porting older stuff like Dishonored to Switch. And that's the end of the story, completely unrelated to either company's "reputation" in my eyes. They are businesses, I'm a consumer. They don't exist to pamper me over their own interests, I don't exist to worship them (many a rabid fanhead believe even sane adherence to the age-old take-it-or-leave-it to be "blind worship", but those are rabid fanheads for you), and while I never mind ending up "pampered" here and there, I never take it for granted... or for a marital contract of any sort between us. I just act and adjust accordingly to whether I have enough personal motivation to invest in their offers or not.

As for "response to GamePass"... I'd have to see it to form an opinion. Pseudoglobal services like PS Now don't enthuse me by default, neither do pure streaming services if they don't involve physical buttons and don't stick to the video resolutions my phone hotspot can stomach. And the rotation aspect of the likes of GamePass isn't a big selling point for me either - paying for limited access to games could come to dictate your own backlog schedules, something I could supposedly deal with but am in no hurry to HAVE to deal with. PS+ and Nintendo's CGC are more up my alley in that regard.

@Ruby Carbuncle "closing down soon" is one thing to address, but it seems like some games have been getting SILENTLY delisted far in advance. Dungeon Travelers 2, for instance, has been on my wishlist for ages, so I marked it as one of the top priority "July at latest if no May sale happens" purchases in the farewell Vita spree... and now I hear that it got quietly taken down this very week, not even far into April? Alongside Utawarerumono, Conception 2, Lost Dimension... If PS Store embraces this trend on top of the rest, I might just run out of stuff to buy by the time I have the designated summer budget for it.🙄

Not gonna lie, the aforesaid DT2 example in itself miffs me to the point that an eyepatch-wearing part of me already kneejerked back with an unapologetic of investing said summer budget into a spare used Vita to CFW instead, spending the rest on first party (the rest I could still honestly go for legal ownership of if the affected titles were to reincarnate on Switch later). But even the latter footnote naturally applies on the assumption that Sony won't start getting funny ideas about its first-party Vita stuff before July either.😳

Seriously, all the Super Mario 3D All-Stars mourners out there, what do you even KNOW about FOMO...😆

What a week in Sony announcements. 😆 I fully understand the contexts and footnotes at play here but won't even bother excusing my biased fanbutt from wishing for stuff like Gravity Rush dilogy on Switch that much more seriously now. 😜 I mean, League influence or not, we're talking older first-party titles on a platform that doesn't compete with PlayStation versus a brand new first-party title on the one platform that supposedly does!

Also bears mentioning, per the same Sony newsletter, that crossbuy titles (ironically, the only ones on sale most of the year including now) aren't going away either - buying them via PS4 storefronts will still add the other eligible versions to the respective libraries. But I assume the 120 titles narrowed down already exclude these.

@get2sammyb oh, they sure seem to have plans for it, or they would have probably let its team slip through their fingers like the rest of the studio.😏

@Agramonte I only had a chance to try Folklore briefly two years ago, but I was impressed. Too bad it's yet another first party classic that got stuck on its native console and will soon drop out of official distribution for the visible future to boot.

@Dekutheevilclown which once again brings us back to have a lot more questions for Sony than for the studio itself, but also leaves you wistfully wondering how many more interesting things we could have seen if someone had worked out a proper pipeline for the output.

TESO with even higher resolution textures, though? That sound you just heard was your SSD's remaining free space.😅

Days Gone is definitely a highlight - moreso if it controls well on Vita (although its shooting and driving elements are among Remote Play's biggest gambles in this regard). Fanheads can kerfuffle all they want, but the difference should be obvious - this is a limited time addition window whereas PS+ collection has PS5 users covered no matter when they get a console (which is a rather fitting commodity in the context of PS5 stock situation).

And it's not like this collection didn't include some games that had already appeared on standard PS+ rosters before, potentially limiting the gain of some generation upgraders - was there a kerfuffle about it, too? No, on second thought, forget I asked.

Yeah, now we're talking no FWPs here. Third parties on the game production side are expected to know about store closure deadlines for MANY months ahead - indeed, all the moreso if you're nonchalantly continuing to sell them devkits in the meantime. Ball legitimately dropped, and dropped hard. /)_-)

@jack22 as someone regularly using his NDS and PSP to this day, I fail to imagine Vita going anywhere anytime soon either.

Cue armchair managers with lectures on how SJS was dysfunctional, unprofitable, lame etc. World of their own - but sadly enough, of the current Sony's, too. It's one thing to try optimizing output and resources, and another to be losing versatile veteran talents by the week in the process.

@IonMagus and weird, considering the console itself wasn't even discontinued until 2019.

All the richer to have never transcended the regional license limits all this time. The era of official portable PS1 games has come and gone [for now], and we in Europe still haven't got Medal of Honor or Xenogears or the first Parasite Eve... And while we're at it, has Metal Gear Solid remained unusable on Vita without a PS3 at hand? I appreciate what we got, but all these weird moments have survived the whole thing. ¯(ツ)/¯

Now we're talking. And unlike the oh so credible "insider reports", this one at least makes sure to spell out that the previous purchases remain intact. Although I still wonder how Vita's download list will work past August - will a firmware update bring a separate app for it, or will the PS Store one just log you in as usual but show errors on attempts to access game pages?

The deadline is, indeed, trollishly puny for the libraries of this site, but excluding all the multiplat stuff available or to come (hopefully Koei Tecmo will comment on the odds of Nosurge dilogy's western Switch localisation ASAP), I suppose it could be worse. Sorry, CrisTales & Co - unless a juggernaut of FFXIII collection's caliber draws near and targets June/July on Switch, the bulk of my vacation bonuses' gaming expense tab might just get splurged away on as many top wishlist exclusives as possible (which may still be not many, since I'm not holding my breath for any blowout discounts). And Nintendo was accused of "FOMO exploitation" with a total of four games?😅

@Haruki_NLI as long as these sites run around with unsubstantiated claims and refuse to name their sources (if any hypothetical legits among the latter worry about their careers, here's a lifehack - don't deal with tabloids), it will always be attention whoring for clicks and nothing more. Regardless of how many official bits may align with their content afterwards. That's how it works among civilized people, at least.

As for PS1, anything I won't have managed to obtain before the deadline will have to stay under the Jolly Roger on my PSP (some games like Medal of Honor are better suited for Vita controls but aren't available in my region anyway) - at least until it gets ported to another portable with a functional digital shop (need I even hint?) or until a vague utopian future where Sony grows itself a new portable console once again. You decide which is more of a pipe dream.

All these disclaimers about the lack of digital sales data start sounding like they assume few to no people buying things on eShop as well.😅

At least such store interface goofups ironically make for more "humourable" sources than what the likes of Bloomberg and gleeful "gaming journalists" rely on nowadays. Not that there isn't room for doubt, especially when some people's console interface PS+ ads also start showing off October 2016 items for the reportedly umpteenth time.😅

Anyway, if true, it might come in handy for my friend whose place my PS4 remains a mutually agreed tenant of since day one. IIRC he has tried it before but his relatively old PC wasn't quite up to scratch. Pass on my side, though - I've had the Switch port since its release window and just recently equipped it with the two big expansions the PS+ offering will most certainly exclude.

Damn, turns out Paper Beast is VR only as well. What does that leave for me to actually play on PS4, Rez Infinite?😅

On the upside, I only just noticed a "remote play support" tag on some games like Subnautica. The Witness, on the other hand, doesn't have one. Did they perchance start to tag the titles with adequate control schemes on Vita whose icon is specifically used for the notion here? Not to mention that it's probably the only Vita trace you have on the new browser PSS now.😅 Credit where it's due...

I wouldn't pick it on PS4 over the serviceable access I already have on my laptop (especially since shooters evoke the least enthusiasm when it comes to guessing Vita RP controls), but I'm certainly in the market for a possible Switch version. What I've played of the game so far is pretty neat, and I'm thankful it doesn't force the voice controls (responses and commands work through buttons as well).

No, it would require me to have a usable PS5 first. A PS2 emulator on PS4, maybe... provided the compatibility with Remote Play, of course.

@Tharsman right, I forgot they shut down the entirety of the servers. But Wii and DSi were the same generation, not two - and used the same third party servers Nintendo decided to eliminate the dependence on. Considering how long it took them, I fail to see a precedent for Wii U and 3DS eShops to go down anytime before 2025 at worst.

Props to PS for at least reaching out to Sony for a commentary, but that's all there is to do about it and nothing to discuss until an official statement rather than the umpteenth "source familiar with the situation" the likes of which are steadily turning the already fragile reputation of gaming newsblogs into a parody of itself. I needn't even highlight all the gaps in the current narrative, from the short deadline (a couple months is a plugjerk even for a few games like last year's Danganronpa, let alone for three platform libraries) to the lack of any details on redownloads - the latter are normally a given in Delistingville, but Vita users, similarly to 3DS ones, can't redownload games without opening the Store app first. Are we supposed to believe that Source-senpai is familiar with the whole shutdown but not with such topical parts of it? The news could raise a lot of eyebrows and drive many towards CFWs (although ironically, I still couldn't do that without a spare Vita - jollyrogering my primary one would render the PS4 literally unplayable for me in return😅), but it has to be news first. Apparently NL aren't the only ones who seem to have forgotten they have a RUMOUR tag?

@Tharsman Nintendo has had a glorious three generations of digital stores, and only one of them has been shutdown in specific circumstances - keeping the users' access to already purchased titles nonetheless and outliving the respective platforms by almost a decade overall.

@JapaneseSonic many emulators - and official tech like PSP's PS1 functionality - are capable of adjusting the window size to combat resolution discrepancy. The only people who would have an issue with that are those who believe in video games expiring like dairy overtime to begin with, but they never made the bulk of the market even before the NES/SNES/PS1 generations grew up to come back into gaming with a steady income (then again, they also came back with a taste for portability, and Sony still nonchalantly believes that portability is only required for Candy Crush these days).

Well, probably not the VR titles for lack of hardware.😅 I already own some that are left, others are on my Switch wishlist... that leaves Paper Beast, I suppose? Depending, yet again, on how well it controls.

Most of my handful on the old site were Vita and PSP items...😅 But it's a welcome fix in general.

Vita' share is mostly crossbuy or just cross-platform indies again, although I may be unfair after switching to PSPrices and using content filters - for all I know, there may be delicious stuff on sale that I just already own. In any case, credit where due for Dragon Quest Heroes II - no certainty this time (especially as its discounted price still requires me to add almost $15 extra above it due to relying strictly on prepaid cards), but a relatively tempting item overall after the Switch dilogy has been stuck in Japan for almost four years. Maybe I'll keep it in mind even for summer if I make good on an earlier urge to invest some of this year's vacation bonuses into Vita stuff, discounts at the time or not. Time will tell.

@Playstation ten years, lessee... No Heroes Allowed, two White Knight Chronicles games, two Knacks (no matter how fashionable it is in our fan tarpit to crap on them), Patapon 3, Tokyo Jungle, Rain, Soul Sacrifice, Puppeteer, Freedom Wars, Oreshika, The Tomorrow Children, The Last Guardian, Gravity Rush 2... who's delusional here, again? Sure, they have mostly done remasters of their older games lately, but that's a much shorter lately that peculiarly coincides with the same years where Sony gave up on a lot of things under monetary or marketing excuses.

It's not like their earlier classics haven't been called "a mess" in the fandom. @Floki has a point - first we use "niche" and "gimmick" as negative terms, then we make a Pikachu face about corporate business starting to shun them. If there's any "Americanization" here, it's not even about moving HQs or censoring stuff - Sony is just losing grip on the Japanese industry's art of making money on niches and gimmicks. Sure, their whole VR shebang (ironically a gimmick in itself) arguably prevents them from losing it entirely, as do the efforts of folks like Pixelopus and Media Molecule. But wrapping up the Japan Studio era with "restructurings" that have been looking more and more like disbandings is still a step back, not forward.

I mean, no matter my degree of interest in FFVIIR, getting a JRPG is always one heck of a month on PS+. Tenfold moreso since PS3 and Vita exclusion.

"Ernest Hemingway once made a bet..."

@Col_McCafferty implying that "interesting characters and stunning and vibrant worlds and thrilling stories" weren't abundant enough with Japan Studio... or aren't equally abundant with Nintendo. None of these aspects has ever clashed with pursuing fancier gameplay ideas. The likes of Uncharted and GOW are solid on their own (heck, Uncharted followed in Tomb Raider's footsteps, it should hardly lack fun gameplay in itself), but photorealistic narratives can never cover the entirety of interactive fiction's potential any more than the once foolishly overfocused CG tech could ever cover the entirety of the animation medium's among Hollywood movies. It's gameplay designs that have boosted some of the most impressive narratives and lores out there, as the likes of Bioshock and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 are my witnesses.

@Amppari yeah, right, like these people haven't been saying the same about the first game (and about stuff like BotW of all games as well). If some of the most thrilling gameplay, most interesting settings and most endearing protagonists in PlayStation history are "mediocre", then perhaps it adds more context to why Sony's first-party gems are all outlived by a kart racer in the charts?😅

@NomNom holy cow, am I a doofus - how have I missed Freedom Wars being another Japan Studio game until now? Rests my case about the diversity of their output. Despite the neat premise, I've slept on the game after figuring that God Eater and Toukiden acquisitions should satiate my monster hunting urges for a long while, but consider it significantly bumped among my Vita wishlist priorities (which, to be fair, have decreased in number again anyway, after Atelier Sophie and Firis migrating to Switch as well).

First time? Record Keeper manages to cover the entire franchise and then some. This sounds similar, except with the gameplay possibly more reminiscent of Dissidia Opera Omnia or Tales of Crestoria.

Neither open but empty jabs from commenters like @amppari nor veiled condescension from PS folks like @getsammyb (the latter even evolving into a whole soapbox now!) overrides the studio's output being the long-term pinnacle of PlayStation originality and imaginative gaming ideas. There's a reason I rank Gravity Rush 2 above all the other PS4 native diamonds like Horizon, but it's probably not untrue that these folks have always seemed to feel more at home on the portables - the space where bloated resolutions and ray tracings weren't around to wow but ambitious tech like touchscreens and gyroscopes had a chance to play first fiddle. Yet even their original home endeavours from Ape Escape to Folklore to Tokyo Jungle to Knack are all remarkably memorable experiences despite any rough edges, alleged or verifiable. This is truly an end of an era, and the motives aren't even the main derivative concern (Sony's entitled to business decisions whether we like them or not, although few sane people will readily believe narratives about them "trying their best, but it just wasn't relevant" after what happened to Vita). And no, neither is "Japanese third parties will show less support without a Japanese first party studio present" (no, really, who the fan even came up with that one?🤔).

The main concern is whether Sony has the capacity and, more importantly, even the will to pursue the projects of the late unit's level and legacy or whether Ryan & Co will just send these things Vita's way. Let's serve due credit at once - projects like Concrete Genie can make one hopeful for the former, but it'll take more where it came from to dispel the concerns of single field overspecialization - wherein, again, Sony already has a sour defeatist track record on another front. And timed exclusives like Fall Guys don't count. Indeed, forget the even lower odds of another Gravity Rush or LocoRoco entry ever happening - is there anybody left home to pitch, budget and produce something like Gravity Rush or LocoRoco? Or does Sony expect Astro to one-man-army the whole "cute quirky action for all ages" department while leaving animesque open-worlders to the mercy of Squeenix and Bamco?

Only time will tell. And again, far be it from me to argue that Sony's entitled to run their biz the way they see fit - but as a "sell hardware at a loss and make up for it with a superb array of game experiences", you'd think they would have more motivation to maintain their most seasoned pedigree than this. The new controller's Nintenlicious niceties kinda fed that hope, too. Now there's little but a pensive mood in the air, and a wish to be proven wrong in the future.

Granted, it's all an academic matter to me this gen, Sony's whole focus being on a console I can't use by definition.😅

Despite lukewarm interest in FFVIIR (except for some salty fan buzz that may suggest the future chapters becoming something of an alternate history scenario - that, bundled with the Paradigm Shift-flavoured battle system, could actually make the title worth my time), the JRPG nerd in me couldn't name anything else March's main highlight even at a gunpoint. Especially since I've put a finger into the demo (required for a free theme or two back then), and it seemed to control decently. The rest like Maquette and particularly the shooting-heavy Remnant will remain Wildcards until downloaded and launched. Farpoint is apparently VR, so unplayable by default for me.

While Guilty Gear XX was generally the game to sell me the genre at last, I remember I-No in particular as one of my earlier introductions to the sheer versatility of voicework talent (I mean, I'd been exposed to that since childhood, but I had neither the internet nor the ability to competently scan foreign language end titles when I was 8), finding out that she was voiced by the same person as Kasumi Tendo. Kikuko Inoue is a legend and I'm glad she's back on the job here again.

The redesign itself feels more like "in-universe restyling", though, akin to Bayonetta. I tend to associate the former term with more radical changes (like the Soviet "Prostokvashino" series whose team never really buried the hatchet on a certain main character's appearance).😅

Even PS comment sections now devolve into fanbrained Direct complaints? 😏 Not finding anything to one's liking sucks but hardly means much beyond personal tough luck when other viewers watched the same 50 minutes and were left up to their necks in new wishlist items. Legend of Mana, Skyward Sword, World's End Club, Famicom Detective Club, Ninja Gaiden Sigma trilogy, a crazy TRPG from Octopath Traveller creators, Outer Wilds, a new Mario Golf with a story campaign and a fun multiplayer mode... and even a fighter reveal that has finally given me a serious itch for getting Smash Fighter Pass, adding one of the best Xenoblade characters this side of Melia. Most of this scheduled no later than summer, too. Guys, if all you got instead was NMH3 release date, it's your luck that has a logical purpose to burn in hell, not the Direct.

As for SOP, it'll happen when it happens. Granted, I have little stake in the matter since by now Sony is not too likely to announce anything I'll be physically able to access.

Not sure what or vote since packaging is usually used for the format I barely buy anything in. Seeing as Sony has had a digital store for ages and seems rather fascinated by the prospects of cloud gaming, they might already be going greener than we realize.😄

As in, a game taking place in a village as opposed to a game taking place in a house?

Hey, glass half full - if anything, it should reinforce the steady sales down the road. See how Switch remains in high demand four years into its life? PS5 may be much less unique and versatile on the hardware side, but it still boasts an exclusive lineup of games from two libraries (or three in a glorious few countries with PS Now support). There should be more to it than the launch hype.

@JapaneseSonic right, missed that sentence, especially with Aniplex of all publishers. But while PC stands a fair chance, I'm with the article on holding little breath for XBox territory. Anything console and not on Switch is pretty much bound to sell best on PS, it seems.

Might prove a bit of a killer app for PS5, considering the franchise's recent popularity.

I'm not sure if an optional sub available on a full-fledged console was ever in completion with a standalone sub you need separate dedicated hardware for.

That's a perk of browser/app Store over the eShops for you. How else do you think I amassed over seventy PS3 titles?😅

Take a country where Remote Play was always the most viable, and distribute a game strictly on a console where Remote Play is devoid of native controls unless you duct-tape a controller. It's a mystery indeed.

Might check out Control, ironically - a stream like on Switch, but guaranteed to be a manageable resolution and much less risk of an "insufficient connection" hurdle in-game as long as I can get past the recurrent ones on Vita's own side first.

What I'm definitely checking out is Concrete Genie.

I don't, and it's not like I don't want it. It's just unusable for me.

Of course it's a good thing, seeing as the PSS overhaul technically made it impossible to buy the games in question elsewhere. If a Vita game doesn't show up on the console Store now, it may be as good as unreleased.🙄

@Juanalf that sounds like the memetic "Switch Pro". PS4 level is one thing due to its broad definition (Switch is capable of running quite a few games also on PS4, and not just indies at that), but the likes of Horizon seem to be a task for a Gen 10 portable console at earliest.

What my wishful thinking paints at times instead is a sort of "PlayStation Legacy" console - a souped-up version of Vita with additional buttons, full support for - and consequently more digital releases for -Vita/PSP/PS1, added first party ports from PS2, PS3 and even PS4 (I'm sure the proportionally higher but realistic specs would be enough to handle Gravity Rush 2, for one), maybe even a TV out or a dock to approach s portion of Switch's trademark appeal... alas, it's a pipe dream for the next couple years at least. Sony is still in the mood to put all their eggs into the home console basket, and despite all their region importance comments, it can feel like they'd rather lose Japan than go portable again right now. And since they won't be losing Japan per se (like I said before, I fully expect PS5 to alternate between trickles and occasional RPG-themed spikes over there just like PS4 did), there's not much incentive to discuss.

Guess some of those politicians happened to be among the parents failing to find a unit for Christmas only to see half the stock on parade north of $1000 elsewhere.

I'm all for OG 2 and 3 if they hit Switch, but no fret as long as PS Store still has them available for Vita.

Even NSMBU made a comeback - perhaps more people are getting on board to bridge some of the binge gap between 3D All-Stars and the upcoming 3D World? Like I said before, only Galaxy 2 and NSMB Wii seem to be holding Mario back from the "all the flagships officially portable" achievement.

@Cornaboyzzz yes, estimatedly anyone without the hardware to run it. Which should be a dwarfing number even after compatible PCs factoring in.