Honestly I thought they had ALREADY closed the door on that. They certainly didn’t advertise it much.

Hardly surprising, writing has felt like it’s been on the wall for a while. What does surprise me is that the whole team and studio is being retained.

That only makes the closure of Bluepoint even more bizarre. One day we will hopefully find out exactly what happened there because it still doesn’t make sense. I know we’ve heard that Bluepoint kept pitching ideas and Sony kept turning them down (frankly some sounded bad like a Third shadow of the colossus remaster / remake) but there has to be more to the story. Feels like something fundamental broke down in their working relationship.

Yes., she has had a very impressive career and a portfolio, most producers would kill for.

• The Sims Online (2002) Producer
• Assassin's Creed (2007) Executive producer
• Assassin's Creed II (2009) Executive producer
• Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines (2009) Executive producer
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist (2013) Executive producer
• Watch Dogs (2014) Managing director
• Assassin's Creed Unity (2014) Managing director
• Far Cry 4 (2014) Managing director
• The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot (2015) Executive producer
• Star Wars: Battlefront II (2017) SVP Group General Manager

I almost never play 30fps, it’s not a deal breaker, but is a little disappointing. Wasn’t expecting 60fps but hoped they might be able to squeeze in a 40fps mode, especially on PS5 Pro.

More widely I typically play at 60fps on PS5 Pro but it depends game to game, I have chosen 40fps on some games if I deem the upgrades worth it - it’s a nice balance, and a huge step up from 30fps in terms of fluidity.

While I can understand people being annoyed at Sony for a multitude of reasons this gen the argument that I frequently see that their games have been lacking or weak this gen is over exaggerated. Not just this list but also excellent games like Returnal, Saros, Demon’s Souls and third party partnerships with games like Death Strsnding 2, Phantom Blade 0 and more. There’s no shortage of games to play on PS5.

@Gunnerzaurus You are missing my point. There is a huge difference between say using Gen AI for QA / debugging; or cleaning up performance capture data, and using it to generate art assets. Yet in all these cases, if the developer is using the tag correctly, it would just say Gen AI was used regardless of HOW it was used.

We AREN'T currently properly informed with the tag HOW it is used, so how can we make informed decisions, conscientious or not. That's why I said it's not fit for purpose.

Hell of a month!

Death Stranding 2, Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D, Hell Let Loose, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza, Atomfall, Soul Reaver 2, Freedom Wars... Cricket (I love giving these a go) for me.

Probably the best month in years imo.

Seems like a very sensible way to use a tool at their disposal.

Whether they admit it or not most studios are using AI in some form, often Gen AI for code, animation, bug fixing or optimisation making the "Uses Gen AI" tag a bit pointless imo - currently it's just a red rag for those that can't accept the winds of change.

We either need to be much clearer about how it is specifically used, which will get harder and more and more tools use it by default, or drop the tag altogether. It's currently not fit for purpose.

Wasn't this the one that had a whole transmedia plan of games, comics, books, and more? The sheer hubris to be discussing those plans in advance of even releasing even one very mid-looking game.

While I never like to see studios and games fail, this always seemed like a pretty safe bet with that huge level of misjudgement.

Though I prefer 60fps I typically don't have a problem playing on 30fps, as long as it's consistent and has good per object motion blur. But I was hoping for a 40fps version on Pro. Will have to wait and see how I feel they handle 30fps next week.

@TrollOfWar @Reeneman On review that's probably fair!

I haven't played it yet. But it's a real shame mods disable trophies (though I understand why) as that means I won't consider using these initially.

@UltimateOtaku91 @LiamCroft the rumour online it is will allow certain android apps like Netflix to be installed. Which frankly makes a LOT more sense than playing games locally, it doesn’t seem to have the processing power for that without a complete chip redesign.

Though I am worried by the wording of “Future Proof” as I was hoping portal would work with PS6 too.

@Weebleman @Oram77 I played through it recently on PS5 Pro (v 1.077) and PSSR implementation was already fixed, no noticeable shimmer or texture instability, but it had introduced another issue of crushed black levels, which was an issue, as it was a very dark game.

@TheFakulty PSSR (1) was removed in version 1.06 but PSSR (2) added again in 1.077.

@Reeneman Game was developed by Bloober Team, not Konami.

@GirlVersusGame Justice, yes I am a fan, they were one, and I've heard of Travis Scott - not sure I could recognise one of his tracks though - everyone else, nope!

EDIT: Ah the Justice track DVNO, was thinking you were talking about a band, my bad.

Looks down list of musical artists, recognises only one or two, feels old. lol

The £2,500 jacket is there for shock value and to promote articles like this - you fell for it - meanwhile many items are reasonably priced like the £25 baseball caps.

I like the Miami Dolphins have been rebranded the Vice City Manatees with similar aqua colour and that the basketball team seems to be called the Vice City Narcos. lol

Several posters seem to be missing the point that this is impossible. It would literally be harder to do this than make a PS6.

Went to the lengths of adding a double sided poster... but didn't make it the map on at least one side. Madness.

Hmmm... I wonder what the internal storage will be used for.

Also I hope my existing PS Portal won't be made obsolete by whatever this is "future proofed" for.

Frankly there's more questions than answers here.

Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D was on my wishlist, will take that! But will probably have to wait until 2027.

@arto @WhoderMan Several studies have been done about this environmental impact in the past and comparing physical to digital to streaming.

Before I go any further it’s important to point out that all the studies are flawed, they all had to make a lot of assumptions and simplifications - and they each made this clear in their methodology. None were conclusive so I wouldn’t take ChatGPT’s conclusions as Gospel as it will be based on flawed data.

Still it is interesting isn’t it? And with that massive caveat in place the studies suggested the environmental impact largely depends on some key factors like the size of the game, and how long you play, especially for streaming.

At extreme ends of the spectrum game streaming could be the best for the environment if you were just trialling a massive game file for a short amount of time - it has its place - but became significantly worse the longer you played. (Good for AAA demos) Streaming was also the worst for the environment in cases where you were streaming tiny games for a longer time. It’s why I refuse to use Antstream Arcade which is streaming retro game files that are often measured in kilobytes, or perhaps megabytes and using hundreds or thousands of times that data throughput every minute.

For physical and digital media you are right the game size affects how effecient this is, and there is a tipping point somewhere in the middle, however studies varied wildly about where this was and with so many assumptions and simplifications taken it’s hard to say with any certainty what is right.

If you want to read more Eurogamer did a massive deep dive into these studies a few years ago as part of Earth week. You can find them on google. Just take all the results with a massive pinch of salt. The only conclusion I got was that there was no final conclusion.

@wildcat_kickz I always try and read the books first, even when i'm late to a series, though I do sometimes just watch the pilot or part of it, so I can get the actors faces in my head, not the ones in my head-canon - Though I haven't done this with the Expanse as i've been inhaling it too quickly, it's absorbing. Might try and watch an episode this weekend though. Enjoy!

Looking forward to seeing this, even if it feels too soon. Kinda amazing they had a documentary team on site during it, hopefully they don't pull any punches.

@GirlVersusGame Very cool. Thanks for sharing.

Why not piggyback the wave of what many think will be the single biggest media release of all time

What is this weird new phase of developers changing the appearance of characters based on feedback before a game is released. So strange.

Aside: Finally got around to starting the Expanse books a couple of weeks ago - i'm always behind on everything - and am racing through them. Really good stuff. Hoping this can fit in nicely.

@Oram77 That's brutal

_{But fair}

@spottedleaf It's always subjective. I just re-played FF6 this year and it MORE than held up for me. In fact all the things I loved about it, it's relative short length, the economy of language and more are the opposite of what they have done with FF7 remake which is very good, but also bloated and too long.

What amazed me about FF6 is each character only ever says a line or two at a time and yet the whole, very large, ensemble cast has distinct personalities. You are in the third area of the game in the same time most modern JRPGs would still have you in some lengthy verbose intro sequence. You just get on with it.

There's a real rhythm and pace to it that modern RPGs think 50-100 hours+ is better, it often isn't. It's one of the things I loved about Expedition 33, it took that same spirit and didn't get bogged down with hours of grind. Less is often more. But we all like different things.

It’s the best game in the series for me, but it needs to be done right NOT like FF7. Just make it HD-2D or similar.

@Ellie-Moo that ones is more because Inkkownj will love it and put 100+ hours into it… yet Mattel in the mood to start really long games.

@Ellie-Moo Cyperpunk is #2 on my "own, most want to play, but struggle to start 100+ hour games list" after Elden Ring.

I'll get to it eventually, and by then it will also be on PS5 Pro. I'm usually in no rush. (I say as I booked the day off to play Ocarina!)

@Vovander 100% I play a LOT of games much later, and/or go back to older games to replay, and having quality visual and frame rate upgrades for your new hardware is amazing.

For all the complaints about Ubisoft, and there are many that are valid, they are good at updating their older games for years to come. Love to see that!

It almost certainly will have a significant price advantage over the competition (Helix) purely down to the MASSIVE die size on that console/pc.

As much as I want a disc drive, it if isn't there it isn't there, it will be time to move on.

Once it hits the 100 million sales milestone

In truth, it probably already has, or near enough. The current figures are only up to September. PS4 sold 6 million units in the equivalent 3 months launch aligned (Oct - Dec Year 6/7) and most of those would be before Christmas in October and November.

Considering PS5 only sold 0.2 less than PS4 last quarter when launch aligned, and there was no GTA6 that quarter, it's likely PS5 & Pro have already sold the 2.1 million needed to hit 100 million, or will do in the next week. Sony will likely wait for a good moment to announce that however.

The drop off slowed and it was only 0.2 million units less than PS4 for the equivalent quarter when launch aligned. But it has now fallen to a total of 5.1 million behind PS4. A year ago that was only 2 million behind.

Will be interesting to see what GTA6 does despite such high prices. The equivalent next quarter PS4 sold 6 million units, what will PS5 sell.

@Oram77 I missed this whole side-story. But I think I can guess...

@somnambulance Anyone that thinks Hulst or Nishino shouldn't have a job hasn't been paying attention to these financial reports, where revenue has been up YoY for 7 straight years, and operating income trending up for the same period, with a brief massive spike during covid - it fell after as expected (edit). There is a disconnect between how some gamers think Sony are doing and how they are actually doing. Of course we want different things.

@JohntheRaptor Digital is certainly more convenient for many people, but "better" is subjective. Personally i'd rather keep more consumer rights with a disk

A few random stats for you.

• Physical sales were up 210% on last quarter and 21.7% YoY.
• DLC + MTX (Add-ons) made up 55.68% of all revenue from games.
• Record revenue & operating income for Q2, up 8.56% and 82.81% YoY respectively
• PS+ (Network Services) accounted for 18.06% of all revenue.

Physical sales were up 210% on last quarter and up 21.7% YoY.

No problem, just get it right at launch. One of my most anticipated titles. Will likely play Day 1.

@Balaam_ Of course it's legal. Businesses offer different prices to different customers all the time whether that is introductory offers, or grandfathered customer discounts and everything in-between. Or whether you can barter down the price of a subscription, car, mortgage, or whether you can't.

That doesn't mean you have to like it. I don't.

Frankly this doesn't really affect me much, as I only buy when the price is right for me, and if it doesn't hit that price I just won't buy.

That said, on sheer principle, I hope it's firmly rejected.

I love this, not that I would likely use it often, but sometimes perhaps. Sadly there’s too many people with fragile egos that want to compare themselves and their achievements to everyone else rather than letting us each find our own level, which is always moving day to day.

I often prefer to play games on slightly higher difficulties but there are days I just don’t want to be knocking my head against a wall, or want swift progress, and could do with a small assist.

Likely the same games that are always on sale. I feel my wishlist has barely moved in ages, other than new games getting added.

This isn't really news, or shouldn't be, Starfield only released 3 years ago.

@Boxmonkey SoM was a very mixed bag, great art design, top-tier soundtrack, but very dated gameplay. The platforming was floaty and the combat was basic and one dimensional, it got tired fast. There was even an option to skip combat and, frankly, that probably would have made it a better game for a lot of players.

I'm glad I played it for the good parts - the soundtrack alone is a winner - but the actual gameplay was pretty woeful. Played more like a PS2 game, in a bad way.

Very happy to hear that. I haven't played it yet, but I did buy it day 1 just to support the studio.

@get2sammyb I suspect they cost less than we'd think, it's a fire sale and Microsoft Xbox would rather get some money coming in than have to pay 200+ developers a decent severance package which is their due by French law.

While Ubisoft doesn't seem the best fit i'd rather see Arkane have a chance with them, or one of the others, than not at all.