@Futureshark That is precisely why I wait to play most games. It's not even just performance patches, whole features are often added after launch. And if a game has DLC I would rather play it all together than come back 6-12+ months later.

The bonus is cheaper games. Though I do sometimes buy at launch price just to support a studio or IP even if I don't play it immediately. (e.g. Saros, Control & Castlevania this year)

The downside is you are not part of the zeitgeist, can't talk about the game while it's still in vogue, and risk spoilers. Still for me it's USUALLY a price worth paying.

Thanks for the mention @ShogunRok, you didn't need to do that. Just seemed like an interesting idea that might be fun. I realise it's different for a reviewer, but what did you buy?

Just Control Resonant and Castlevania Belmont's Curse for me so far. Though I haven't played either yet I specifically wanted to support the studio and IP respectively. I usually play older games on my backlog that have been fully upgraded and patched rather than play Day 1. I will also be buying Ocarina of Time remake and GTA6 at launch so i'm probably good till 2027.

Games added to my wishlist from this period include: Blood of Dawnwalker, Phantom Blade 0 (wait for disc), Onimusha, Wolverine, FF Resonance, Ace Combat 8, COD: MW4 (wait for Game Pass), Order Sinking Star, & Trails 2nd in that order.

@Max_the_German The only reasonable saving there is 480GB of storage, which isn't all that realistic as they need around 158GB+ for the system so it would more be like 354GB usable on a standard 512GB drive which isn't really practical for most players.

Dropping 2/3 USB ports, cover clips & m.2 slot is pennies on the dollar. Might perhaps save around $10 on a system. That's not going to create a "budget PS5". Moreover the less storage a device has the more it will need those expansion ports (both m.2 and USB).

They have already shrunk the die size from 7nm to 6nm in the slim, reduced the heatsink size several times in successive models and made other significant cost cuts to production, yet the reality remains that producing the hardware, especially parts like the APU and VRAM, is getting much more expensive. That's outside their control.

@rjejr Genshin has already dropped PS4, it was announced over a year ago and ended this year. The main holdouts are games like Fortnite, GTA V and EA Sports that all still have PS4 versions.

It's actually a really good time to sell tech. A Digital Camera I bought in 2019 for £450 is now £1000+ brand new and I could easily sell for £600 cash. My Steam Deck could be sold for more than I bought it. Obviously much older tech doesn't sell as well but it is crazy.

Pets are almost as expensive as kids!

@Carnage THIS!

And as the only comment on the article suggests, even those enjoying the game had issues back then:

Survival mode sounds cool.

I really hope the update includes a solid attempt to stabilise frame rate. Generally it's OK, but even after 1.09 I still get random split second pauses and massive FPS drops just travelling around (strangely hordes, alpha effects, etc. don't seem to be an issue - just general bike travel on the open road).

It's not unplayable - and I'm actually really enjoying the game and think I will even more with survival mode - but a decent attempt at stabilising those FPS wobbles and freezes would be very welcome 👍

If you have to say "it's not unplayable" then it's in pretty bad shape!

I don't quite understand this reframing some try to do as if the game didn't release in a terrible state and was fairly punished in reviews.

@EfYI No one is saying 'woke', 'progressives' or 'PC' or anything else is a new concept, it isn't. What we are strongly pushing back on is the idea that it was because of reviewers political views that they gave Days Gone an average score (72 on Opencritic), this is misguided.

Days Gone reviewed lower than it should have is because the game was buggy as hell at launch. Most reviews stated they had issues, everything from texture pop-in, audio dropouts, audio-sync issues, cutscene glitches and more. Some even lost progress. It isn't the same game you played later. Push Square gave it 7/10.

The remaster, where these issues were fixed, scored far more fairly at 81 on Opencritic. 8/10 feels about right for me. It's a good game with a few exceptional moments (horde), but also too many other things holding it back. Reviews also mentioned structural bloat, repetitive open-world missions, an overly fragile bike, auto-fail stealth missions, and a predictable, uninspiring story. That is all fair criticism.

If you liked it more than that, good for you, but suggesting it is due to reviewers political opinions is just looking for an excuse to validate your own preferences. It's OK to like a game more, or less, than an average review score. It doesn't have to be something deeper.

FWIW I agree with you on the horde system, it's fantastic. The problem was it was mostly only relevant in small doses in the game, mostly towards the endgame. That was when the game was at it's very best. But to get there you had to slog through a lot of pretty average open world content to see it.

Personally I was looking forward to a sequel. With the groundwork laid I thought they could build on that to make much better game with fewer weak areas. It's a shame that never happened.

Mic drop. We might need a pinned comment feature.

@DKeld You can just turn off automatic updates if it's bothering you that much. But I agree it's a low-key annoyance.

Good for them, seems to be resonating with a lot of players.

I'll get to it eventually! No rush.

That is a shame, it looked great. I like Yakuza, but I preferred the tone of this in the little we saw, there was more than enough room for both.

@rjejr I can understand that, and I think many people will be happy with what they have and stick with PS5, hence why I think cross-gen will go so long next-gen. Hell many people have been happy sticking with PS4 this gen just playing their forever games and many cross-gen releases. This will be even more extreme next-gen with sky high hardware prices.

But for me personally, I just want to play the best version of a game, on a console for convenience, and as I have a little disposable income I will likely replace my PS5 Pro with a PS6 day 1. Selling the PS5 Pro will likely fund around half the PS6 anyway slightly lessening the financial outlay, and buying Day 1 means I will maximise the amount of time I get to enjoy it.

My backlog is so big and there are many PS4 games for example I have played on PS5 at 60fps and higher resolutions rather than 30fps or uneven frame rates. I look forward to doing the same next gen, but don't blame anyone that doesn't want to upgrade.

What is clear is neither Sony of Xbox WANT to sell their consoles at those high prices, it genuinely could affect their console business model long term. They would rather sell 50-100+ million consoles at a small loss and keep people engaged and in their ecosystem. But hardware prices are outside their control right now, they only have a small amount of flexibility. It's going to be interesting to see what happens.

There is a little sense in that. PS5 already has so many Live services, including 3 by HoYoverse - Genshin, HSR and ZZZ - whereas the Switch 2 has none.

@AdamNovice @asdfghjklz I don't think there was a trophy for it

@Boxmonkey It's not JUST the newer generation, many of my friends with kids do this with COD, FIFA or GTA, it's less about playing the games and more about getting together with your mates for an hour or so every night after you are exhausted and have put the kids to bed.

@EfYI you are seriously rewriting history there. It had little to do with any culture war - other than a couple of outlier reviews that simply don’t affect an aggregated metascore in any meaningful way. The problem was at launch Days Gone was unfinished and buggy, especially the version reviewers played, understandably it got marked down for that.

Moreover the story wasn’t that good and Deacon was also a bit of a tit. Even his girlfriend said it in the most honest cutscene in the game. There was also too much mundane, repetitive open world stuff and it didn’t get really unique until the hordes in the last 10 hours. Still a good game but there were valid reasons it got marked down.

@get2sammyb I totally agree in THIS case as it is far too soon historically.

But at some point historical footage is fair game right? E.g. COD has used things like footage from Tiananmen Square (COD: BOCW) and other tragedies before in their games and not had much push back, as well as others as @nomither6 said. At some point they effectively become part of our collective shared history.

It is an interesting discussion. Obviously each incident has it's own sensitivities and timelines, it isn't one size fits all. But it is interesting and I don't think I have the answers as when is too soon. But this one strongly feels it is too soon to me. @Oram77

What a bad trade off. But we all like different things. Battlefront does nothing for me.

@rjejr I sort of agree, we are certainly at the point of diminishing returns. But at the same time there is still quite a leap each generation. I was recently back at my dads house - AKA my console graveyard - and playing my PS4 Pro. On the one hand it still looks good enough, but it also runs like ass, often sub 30fps, with MUCH lower fidelity and texture quality. Not to mention loading times over a minute long. It really made me realise what a step up PS5 / Pro is. It's hard to go back.

I am sure PS6 will be similar, even if the PS5 is already very balanced with no glaring issues like the load times of PS4.

@A-steak-with-ketchup Why would I take anyone seriously? Thankfully many of us have been discussing games for many years here and you learn who you can, and can't, take at face value. Who's rational, who's a fanboy, who isn't, etc.

For all the entertainment @Czar_Khastik has given me over the years their eponymous brand of sarcastic posts means I can't really take anything they say seriously. It's akin to the boy who cried wolf. Not that it should bother them in the slightest, keep it up I say!

@PuppetMaster Thanks for confirmation!

@Czar_Khastik That description almost sold me.

Then I remembered who was posting, can't take anything you say seriously.

@rjejr Yes longer than 3 years of cross-gen. If PS6 costs anything like we expect it will still sell it's first 10+ million units quickly - there are enough enthusiasts or those with money to burn - but then it will noticeably slow. Meanwhile games are becoming more expensive to make. It's much harder to make your money back on a smaller hardware base.

But lets be clear, that doesn't mean EVERY game. For first-party there will be SOME next-gen exclusives just as there were this gen despite cross-gen going 2-3+ years. Sony might have to make a loss leader to push the new console. But i'd expect them to be smaller titles like Demon's Souls Remake and Returnal for the first few years, not your next $300+ million Naughty Dog, SSM, or Guerilla game.

Similarly with third party, i'd expect a longer cross-gen period, but with some studios risking next-gen only titles.

Of course there are always likely to be a handful of exceptions, someone will break the mould, probably some Chinese dev aiming to do Wukong numbers.

You are right. But it isn't just one game, they had Starfield and other exclusives before that and the exclusives plan didn't work. What has changed that is so drastically different? It's not like all their studios are outputting must buy titles that might swing that.

I agree they need to stick with a strategy, but I think that strategy was multi-platform.

Everything they’re doing seems to be getting Twitter likes from the most passionate part of their fan base, but other than that, in terms of actual results, I’m not seeing anything right now. And I’m looking really hard.

SO MUCH THIS!!!

We have a group of Xbox die hards all back slapping and singing from the same hymn sheet that Asha is the new Messiah and turning it all around. (Aside: I seem to recall the same about Phil, before he stayed long enough to become the villian...). But when you actually look at ANY hard data, they aren't shifting in any noticeable way yet, in fact it is getting worse.

As a cross platform gamer and Xbox owner I'd love to see them turn it around... but I am just not seeing any evidence of that yet, other than brand loyalty and perception. These aren't insignificant, they will help over time, but it's a LOOOOOONG road back. I'm not sure Satya and Co. have the stomach for that long uphill battle.

It's a fair question, so here's a fair answer.

Circana, formerly NPD Group and other titles, has been doing this for 60 years across MANY fields not just games, they are exceptionally successful and used across industries. Primarily it started with data from point of sale (i.e. retailers), and for PHYSICAL sales (for gaming that is consoles, physical discs, accessories) and it still does this. Hence for things like console hardware sales it will be highly accurate. That doesn't mean it will be 100% bang on, there will always be a margin of error but, for things like hardware that they have a high amount of hard data from, it will be close enough to be taken as fact.

For things like DIGITAL software - where Microsoft for example have recently stopped sharing their sales data with Circana (previously they did) - it will be less accurate but still likely within an industry standard of 10% most of the time. i.e. it will be accurate enough to draw broad conclusions from most of the time. e.g. If a game sold 1 million or 1.1 million it doesn't really change the discussion.

That said there will be outliers where they are less accurate, and the more they have to model data for digital sales based on many other factors not just hard sales data there is a chance that it sometimes falls outside that 10%. This is where we should be more sceptical.

TLDR: Each of these data analytics firms have strengths and weaknesses. But for physical hardware sales in the USA because Circana primarily base this off actual point of sale sales they are seen as the industry leader for that and very accurate.

@MasterChiefWiggum Haha! Yes. I remember the noise my PS4 Pro made when I played God of War, thought I had moved to the runaway at Heathrow.

I think there's less than 10 games that only have 30fps only modes. Maybe as few as 5. 60fps is almost a choice in 99% of PS5 games.

@rjejr cross-gen will be even longer next gen.

@HonestHick in terms of hardware alone I completely agree. The SSD on its own plugged a MASSIVE weakness in the PS4 (very long loading times) and now the current consoles (XSX too) are very balanced machines. There isn’t a huge glaring omission like there was previously. Perhaps you could argue ML/AI power but that’s about it.

First party Software is a little different, I preferred the PS4 output to PS5, so far anyway, but that ignores the other 95% of third party games. We live in an era where I can’t even remotely keep up with all the games released I want to play, and yet somehow some people still say there’s a lack of things to play. I just dont get it.

@ShadowRJ Fully agree, sadly.

@ShadowRJ I was actually saying this the other day re:EA... there's always hope. Maybe in a decade or more they will start making games I want to play again. At the moment it's Jedi 3 and that's about it. Though if I were a betting man i'd bet not.

FUC..... oh wait we're past that long phase.

Keep it up Konami. more than anything I hope you invest into Castlevania some more. There's room enough for both a 2D Metroidvania and a 3D action game series like Lords of Shadow. I want both! I might have said MGS, but I don't think it's Metal Gear without Kojima.

Great lineup. 3 very solid titles.

I'm not much of a fan of these.

But more generally it reminds me once again how silly it was of them not to make these compatible with BOTH PS5 and PS5 Pro. With the black vents / fins in the middle of the Pro the base PS5 covers are virtually a match in size, but the clips are in all the wrong places.

It felt like left hand wasn't talking to right hand, but it means they are missing out on potential sales.

I haven't gotten around to Cyberpunk or Edgrunners yet... but I think the Wuthering Waves collaboration event may have MAJORLY ruined the story beats especially who died

FYI most PS5 versions of games are usually smaller, or around the same size as the PS4 versions despite them featuring higher quality assets. The compression is working, but don’t expect miracles.

Aww man! Austin is such a massive Mass Effect fan he would knock it out the park. Very talented, and exceedingly likeable dude. I appreciate him putting this out there.

@psmr To be honest I love the fact that Eurogamer reviewers tend to prefer niche games more than flashy AAAs. But it was still an honest, well thought out review, they just didn't like something as much as you might.

Personally - and perhaps it's that i've been playing games for so many decades - but I find many AAA games a bit stale or repetitive nowadays and I often tend to align more with Eurogamer's reviews than I do the ones here that seem to rate spectacle and big budget action over refreshing new gameplay ideas. But not always.

That's why it's important to always read several reviews and find reviewers you agree with and give their views more weight. If you don't like their reviews, just ignore them, but there's nothing wrong with different reviewers having different opinions to the general consensus.

@psmr I thought the Eurogamer review was excellent. Did you read it all? It clearly pointed out there were some exceptional aspects to the game but it was let down, for the reviewer, by some aspects which other reviews mention but weren't as bothered by.

While it read a bit more like a 4 star review than a 3 star review to me, everybody likes different things and we haven't played it. Would it be better if all people liked the same things and parroted each other? I think not.

@Areus I agree. Dead Space deserves better too. Maybe in X years we will see a resurgence like with Konami right now.

Mass Effect is too good an IP, with too much potential to just drop forever.

Probably also doesn't help that the Mahershala Ali Blade movie was cancelled. Blade isn't that well known right now, will make it harder to find a buyer.

Not satisfied with just killing off Bioware and Mass Effect, they now want to scrub all mention of it. Four letter word people.

Hit and miss. But it's impossible to please everyone and it's still a lovely line up.

Velocity & Velocity 2x are absolute bangers. Enjoy!

Almost played Castlevania: Belmonts Curse but then realised I had many unplayed metroidvanias I had already bought. So I’ve been playing Blasphemous and MiO: Memories in Orbit, very different games but both have wonderful art and brilliant soundscapes. Also got lost in both of them and had to trek around the map looking for what to do. I like games that don’t hold you hand… but sometimes you just need a prod in the right direction else it’s frustrating. Combat in Blasphemous is brilliant and in MiO it gets better once you unlock a few abilities. Some Bosses are tough difficulty spikes.

Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy is a good game, but I feel it’s lacking some of the weight of the last game. I didn’t vibe with Sophia’s journey as I did with Amecia and Hugo’s. Combat also got repetitive fast. Still I enjoyed the ride, Asobo studio really know how to make a stunning game on a budget.

Yes. I’ll probably take off the Thursday (launch day) and Friday. But I’m self employed so it slightly depends on if work is mental, but if it isn’t I’ll just work late Monday-Wednesday, there’s flexibility as long as the work gets done without cutting corners.

Arkane are one of my favourite studios. Would be very sad to see them go. Hopefully they manage to survive somehow. And as Blade is reportedly nearly done hopefully that sees the light of day too.

Must have missed the fallout on this one. First one looks better imo (based on one picture). But it's not something worth complaining about.

Purchased but still haven't gotten around to this. Keep meaning to but I know I will likely need a 200+ hour shaped hole in my life, I get sucked into these worlds too much !

@get2SammyB Might be one of your best subheaders.

Also Andy Robinson spot on that if leadership starts debunking rumours on social media then it only adds more credence to rumours when they don't.

@Yahooligan Can't speak for anyone else but I've had a pair of Sony WH-1000XM3's for over 7 years and not had a problem. In truth I don't use them THAT much, mostly just for gaming, but they are like new. No hinge issues. Perhaps it's a problem on a different model.

Quality over quantity my dude. Less is often more.

Make your minds up!