themightyant

Love the art and animation, but a game like this was never going to be for me. That’s fine.

@Divergent95 THIS! Starfield is a good game, it's just not a great one. If it came from any other developer I think it would be better regarded... but, somewhat understandably, people were expecting something on the level of Skyrim, Morrowind or Fallout 3 and it falls short of that. Plenty to enjoy though and many will.

I have ZERO interest in this, but I love the artstyle and animation.

@Fiendish-Beaver They just move the goal posts as they always do. I try not to engage, but sometimes when people are spouting utter nonsense as fact you have to call it out.

Ray traced balls, all I ever wanted...

@Stepan Yes. It's about demographics. The PS5 is expensive in Japan, so if you have the money for a PS5 you are more likely to also have the money for a PS5 Pro, hence the large percentage uptake of that model.

@sanderson72 PS4 would continue to sell a little, at a trickle, but it's unlikely to change the total massively. Maybe a couple of million, three at a push.

The key difference with the PS2 is Sony kept selling, and marketing, PS2 as their lead console in many countries even after the PS3 had released in North America, Europe etc.

E.g. PS3 didn't release in Brazil, the largest South American PlayStation fanbase by far, until August 2010, almost four years after PS3's release. It effectively extended PS2 life cycle to almost two generations worldwide.

@Fiendish-Beaver No. No data on total PS5 Pro sales have been released. But we do know it's doing well in certain territories.

e.g. 13% of all PS5 consoles sold in the US during 2025, according to Circana (formerly NPD) who have sales data. That's in line with PS4 Pro which is surprising considering the added cost. Most assumed it would be worse.

In Japan 25% of all PS5s sold since PS5 Pro released (Nov 2024) have been the Pro model. See here and here.

There are other stats out there but they aren't official / don't come from as reputable sources. But they all point to a hit.

But you have to buy it twice...

Good! I am not a fan of making games exclusive that would have come out on other platforms anyway. Let more gamers enjoy games.

Of course if games never would have been made, or would have been very different without funding, then it's fine imo. Better to have the game as an exclusive than not have it at all.

Chuds will be chuds and will just move the goal posts. They're not happy just rubbishing a game in their culture war they have to try and prove any game they don't like failed. Sad cases.

@stocko An interesting fact is that the PS4 sold faster than the PS2. It reached 100 million in 5 years 7 months versus 5 years 9 months for PS2. The only reason PS2 sold so many more is because Sony kept selling it well after the PS3 came out, especially marketing it in emerging markets LATAM etc. whereas since PS3 they have moved on quickly to the new console worldwide.

PS5 is about in line with PS2 give or take a month. One big game like GTA6 could escalate it ahead of PS2 or even PS4 launch aligned.

@Max_the_German I can see how you might think be disappointed. But I think there's a lot of factors going on over the last 5 years and when you weigh them all up PS5 has done great. e.g.

• Forget Xbox they were comparatively small competition. Instead PS5 also had far more competition from Switch at the crucial start of it's life than PS4 did with Wii U. Although Switch launched during PS4 era, PS4 was slowing down by that point and Switch was in it's peak sales in 2020 and 2021 with 21.03m and 28.83m in sales. This was during PS5 era.
• PS5 was more expensive than PS4, even accounting for inflation.
• Semi-conductor shortages significantly limited sales in the first 2 years, otherwise it would be ahead of PS4.
• Cost of living crisis meant fewer people were making purchases.

Ultimately PS4 AND PS5 have both been great successes in terms of unit sales.

P.S. Eh? Trump's favourite word?

@Pat_trick I think there's a few things going on here. But I wonder when the last time you actually played a game on the PS4, because side by side it is night and day. Firstly frame rates almost always 60fps vs an often shaky 30fps. Then load times, sometimes they simply don't even exist on PS5 when they do on PS4, sometimes even taking minutes. The other big one is textures and resolution which is noticeably higher. All in all it's still a big leap, it may just not be all in graphics.

That said PS4 is still a powerful enough to play most of these games 720p -1080p @30fps with lower pre-sets on everything. It's like a vaseline smeared version of the PS5. Fine for some, would you want to play that version.

The other trouble is we have reached diminishing returns for graphics, even Digital Foundry have to zoom in and slow things down or pause them to highlight things like draw distances, different lighting models or ray tracing. Devs are more limited by time, budget and skill than they are by hardware.

A few other stats from the report.

• PS5 is staying in line with PS4 just 2.2 million units behind, which was almost all during the supply issues at start of gen.
• Physical sales were up 11.1% YoY to a new 2 year high
• Digital sales were up 6.45%
• Physical digital ratio was 76% Digital : 24% Physical
• 19.6% of sales were Sony first party (incl. games they part funded like Death Stranding 2) a 3 year high.

@PuppetMaster PS5 will outsell PS1 this year. They are still around 2.2 million behind PS4 (94.4m v 92.2m). GTAVI etc. could change that but PS4 also had large games late in gen.

Either way it's a roaring success it doesn't need to beat PS4.

@somnambulance I sorta feel the same way but it’s more because I am bored of Rockstsrs mission structure etc. it doesn’t feel like much has evolved in terms of gameplay.

But at the same time I am absolutely fascinated by the game world, and seeing what is possible in game development with an almost unlimited budget. Little else is made on this scope, games are held back more by time, budget and developer skill than hardware, that makes it unmissable to me. I’ll be there day 1. But the actual game… I’m maybe only a 7/10 excited.

This doesn’t rule out a massive download. That the game won’t be fully playable on the disc, or even playable at all without an unlock.

Of course data miners will be able to rip parts of the game but it makes it harder.

While I am pro-physical media, and pro-preservation I have some sympathy for Rockstar here. There is no doubt leaks will happen if they are easy, there doesn’t appear to be an easy solution to suit all parties.

Additionally how large do people think the install size of this will be based on the fidelity shown and size of the world? It might be many discs already. Not an easy problem to solve.

Still 9 months away, plenty of time for a small delay, 2026 now more likely, but I’d still put money on 2027.

@Dan12836666 Nobody knows, they are optimising now. But they have mentioned PS5 Pro features.

One thing I would say is up till now most Asian devs don't seem to care about performance as much as in the West, choppier framerates are often the norm even in games that cost hundreds of millions see Genshin Impact, Wuthering Waves etc. But they might surprise us.

@ShogunRok 100%. Could be the next big thing... or could be the next Mindseye. I hope I slightly exaggerate on the later but that in itself makes it exciting.

From what I understand it isn't a massive team (around 100 devs) so that has to be factored in. They don't necessarily need to do Fortnite / COD / Apex numbers to survive, they initially just need a steady core of users and try and build from there.

KCD1 is coming to Game Pass on Feb 13th so I imagine it will either be then or just before.

Honestly surprised they supported it this long. I expect some new update would have meant a lot of work that just wasn't worth it. Fair play imo.

Almost impossible to turn around a reputation this tarnished. There are exceptions but almost all had some momentum (No Man’s Sky), or some brand loyalty (CyberPunk / CDPR, Final Fantasy XIV, etc.) I can’t think of a single example of a game that has done it successfully without that since the internet had a voice.

@StrickenBiged agreed. The bigger problem for me with secrets is they often blocked being able to go back through the levels meaning if you didn’t neurotically keep checking the map you would have to replay the levels again and again. Tedious and really ruined the flow of the game. Poor game design.

I hope so. While PS Stars wasn't great it was better than nothing and all the other major stores have some sort of benefit system.

@SuperSilverback I didn't hate ALL the dragon bits, I quite liked the idea of flying around a massive battle and inserting yourself at several different points where most needed (even if it feels a bit more Master Chief than Doom Guy). But I hated the mech, felt like a destruction tech demo with mobile controls.

For a second I thought Marty was still wearing the clothing labels on his jeans, but it's an access card. lol

@SuperSilverback Yeah. It's a bit of a mixed bag. Some great moments, but not as good as the last 2. But I like that they tried something different.

One of the best games I've played by the end, but boy does it start slowly and is tough to love initially. Especially the original version when you couldn't speed up or skip text, that was a chore.

Personally I think the LCD is about as good as I’ve seen on any handheld console, so OLED isn’t as big a selling point as it was on the original Switch or Steam Deck for example.

The biggest change I’d want is a better way to handle the PS5 trackpad, which a lot of games use for map etc. Currently the equivalent of single tapping trackpad in a dual sense is tapping a small area of the screen three times in quick succession. Which I sometimes have to do more than once. One solution to this would be programmable back buttons.

Other than that I’ve been pretty impressed with mine both for local streaming from PS5 or cloud streaming. It’s easy to forget for a while you are streaming at all, not playing locally, until the occasional but inevitable chunky stream.

Looks great. Really don’t understand the “it looks the same” comments this looks nothing like Wuxia

That looks SICK! Loving the time rewind mechanic and im-sim / RPG like features, if done well this could rock. Definitely one to keep an eye on.

Another strong month. Ultros has been on my wishlist for a while. And I wanted to try Ace Combat, but not enough to buy it!

@Oram77 @DennisReynolds If it's not free, as long as there's a reasonable upgrade i'm OK with that too.

One of Sony's most successful live services, all the free updates will keep players playing and some will spend in the store.

@Americansamurai1 Mine was past warranty and I disassembled it (pretty easy), cleaned the fan and swapped the thermal paste on the CPU and it was back to like new, comparatively quiet even in games like God of War that sounded like a jet engine. Reports online seem to suggest the thermal compound they used wasn't good enough for 7+ years and would deteriorate after 3-5 for a lot of people.

@Ravix I agree with what he said, but the way he said it was very easy to be misinterpreted, ESPECIALLY on a site like Twitter where it breaks up individual thoughts into soundbites so most people WON'T read the whole thread.

This whole post, and most of the replies he received, are mostly a misunderstanding. But I also don't blame people for misunderstanding, they are just reacting to what they see in front of them without a fuller context.

@Rich33 I think you care about performance far more than others, and that is absolutely fine, but I strongly suspect most gamers don't.

E.g. Look at GTAV which ran like ass, sub 30fps on X360 and PS3 (Digital Foundry) and still sold more than any other game except Minecraft (which also runs poorly on most console versions).

For more evidence look at the number of Switch sales, or players on Roblox (more than PlayStation and Xbox combined) or even the number playing next-gen games on PS4 at sub-30fps.

The point is we all like different things and most simply don't care about performance so mandating this isn't the right approach just to appease an elite few. Instead you have to vote with your wallet. NEVER pre-order, wait for performance reviews, if more did this and only bought when patched, then the problem would disappear soon enough. But by buying in an unknown state YOU are directly enabling the behaviour you dislike.

I also like good performance, it's why I bought a PS5 Pro, though it isn't a deal breaker. I also want more polished games at launch, I hear you, but my solution is to simply wait for patches and cheaper prices. Problem solved.

@Anke Honestly I think these charts are awful for video game discourse, they are mostly used by negative people to show that a game has failed, according to this one metric.

Occasionally they are used to show something is a mega smash hit, but we already know that as companies will be crowing about it.

@Mostik I remember this post, but unless I am misreading it it's not quite what you said, it's NOT about playing a game you own the disc of without the disc, instead it's being able to use the digital download with a disc version and vice versa. (EDIT as @1up-Husky already said, my bad)

Previously on PS5 if you insert a disc it installs a version of the game. If I then sold the disc and bought the digital version (or got it through PS+) I would have to delete the physical install and reinstall it again.

The same was true the other way. If I downloaded the game on PS+ Extra, then it left the service and I bought the disc copy, I would have to delete the digital game and reinstall the physical one. The two versions previously weren't compatible.

The post you mentioned combines these so you wouldn't have to re-download the game in these cases, but you would still need a disc in the drive.

@Gaia093 FYI Metacritic already has a weighting system in place for critic reviews, they don't all count equally. The problem is this is not clear who is favoured and who isn't but it's likely that sites like IGN with a long history count more than say a small new RPG focussed review site, both for good and for bad.

We already do this on an individual level Swen. There are some outlets and especially specific reviewers we vibe with, and others we disagree with strongly.

But most importantly this is subjective, we all like different things, we definitely don't need another homogenised groupthink review system.

P.S. Loved Chris Tapsell's pushback!

UPDATE: I've now read his whole thread, and the WHOLE thread makes more sense to me, but this one post taken on it's own looks worse when isolated. I recommend reading the whole thing tbh.

@Max_the_German Thanks for clarifying, I was a bit confused. Totally agree on systemic games and im-sims - sadly a dying breed - even as genre boundaries start to blur and more games have a systemic approach.

Titling this "One of PS5's Most Promising Adventure Games" probably would have been a good idea to add a trailer so people can judge for themselves how promising it is.

Great to hear it sold half a million, as coverage of it basically dried up I assumed it might have undersold. Well done Guard Crush & Dotemu.

Looks like an AI Geralt.

Also why aren't the volume controls on the YouTube player. Very annoying.

@Mostik Really? Never heard of this. Maybe I missed it but Google is coming up with nothing.

I'd love to see it, but I don't see how that could work. You could just buy a game, sell it or lend it, and still have access. I don't believe there is any way of identifying each individual disc to prevent this.

@Rich33 Equating games to very different industries isn't helpful imo.

EDIT: Fun fact. Food labels are averages, you DON'T typically get the specific number of macronutrients on the label in your individual food item, it will be a little more or a little less, because they don't have full control of each individual portion. It's a guide, much life fps.

In movies / TV the producer is absolutely in full control of the experience and can release a movie that is 4k @ 24fps throughout.

Games are very different. We are working in real time and as most are systemic in some way there is always likely to be a combination of systems that sends the frame rate tumbling. Perhaps more enemies on screen than usual setting off a mass chain of events.

Mandating that is HAS to hit a certain performance target (e.g. 60fps) without dips would mean developers would be less likely to explore systems interacting with each other (which lead to fun emergent gameplay) and/or they would have to downgrade all the visuals to give themselves enough headroom to always hit 60fps even when the action gets crazy. I don't think most gamers want that, even if you might.

Perhaps a happy middle ground would be introduce a third graphical preset and have the new one ensure it always hits the target framerate regardless of the action, but at even more of a cost to visuals than current performance modes. Though I don't think many would choose it, you'd be leaving too much performance on the table 99% of the time, better to have the occasional stutter imo.

@Max_the_German I agree about Triangle Problems generally, but what makes TOTK a triangle problem game? I don't see it, you never have to sacrifice a third option. (It's great anyway)