@Perturbator I don't care if it's serious or not, I'd much rather play a sequel to Tokyo Jungle than Concord, the Fortnite wannabe with a Guardians Of The Facsimile frock over it.
So... the Games as a Service model is now so efficient at tracking it's own demise that poor early access numbers mean it'll be DoA?
I think that's a bit clickbaity sensationalist premature doomslinging from Push, but also I hope it's true because GaaS uniformly and with very few exceptions sucks, so if they keep failing maybe they'll stop being made and become a closed chapter in the history of gaming.
I personally think both Xbox and PlayStation are wrong to make exclusives not exclusive at all, I know that's something PCMR gamers disagree with but I'm not them, so...
Nintendo have the right idea in terms of keeping them on their system to help sell more of them and fund future game investment, although them going nuts with their legal team I don't agree with I see why they do it.
There really aren't enough exclusives this generation for Xbox and PlayStation so the few they have making their way off-console is harming sales, it's as simple as that. I'm sure it's a decision made to short-term appease the shareholders with a bit of profit but long-term I think it's going to cause sustainability issues. Great exclusives shift systems, it's an old business model that was used for so long because it works, so if they're looking to generate more profit in the long-term, making more of those should be the priority. Ideally across a range of genres, some small and medium sized games as well as just generic open world big expensive ones like they used to.
PS Plus subscribers getting truly the best experience this month, what with a poor selection of already cheap to buy free games, Stars still down and service outages. Good job Sony. Next thing is they'll tell us they got hacked again 😁
I travel a lot and don't always have Internet connections that are any good, so when GT7 pulls a GT Sport and makes the single player work offline like both should have at launch, let me know.
Not to disparage the games themselves which are decent, but in the context of PS Plus membership it's another month where Sony limp to the barn having done the bare minimum.
Sadly it's a poor quality emulation with smeary visuals, music cues not loading bugs and a few other issues. Shame too because it's such a beloved franchise, but original hardware or any free GPL type emulator can do a better job for a more playable experience.
Rockstar really do get scummier as the years go by, more profit and greed driven.
It's funny to me that so many of the online grinds are bank heists when Rockstar themselves are dipping their fingers so deeply into players bank accounts for the "privilege" of doing so, without doing anything like fixing server problems or minimising griefers.
Online is the reason that there hasn't been a new GTA in 11 years, but to be honest GTA V ranks below several other ones anyway, personally, so I don't consider it a huge loss. The three protagonists are childish and somewhat unlikeable. The mature writing of Red Dead Redemption II is a lot better, the single player campaign is more satisfying and they'll be hard pressed to ever make a better protagonist than Arthur Morgan. The online for that died because Rockstar couldn't monetise it to the same insane extent they have with GTA V.
The sad thing is I just know, it's basically a dead cert that they will release RDR2 again for current gen consoles, finally with 60FPS, and charge as much as they think they can get away with. This is really sad because as anyone with a jailbroken PS4 or PS5 knows, it's a one line code patch to unlock the frame rate, and even a PS4 Pro without the benefit of the speed enhanced PS4 modes of the PS5 can run it at 50-60FPS pretty consistently.
Yes, of course Miyazaki is right and that's part of why the games he is involved with tend to be so good, and so challenging. If they all handed a win to you, or hand held you through every little step, it'd be awful because plenty of games already do that to be more inclusive/cater better to casuals or time poor people who might have forgotten the controls between plays as they're so busy.
The other thing I like about From games is often most if not all of the cutscenes are skippable, so upon repeated plays you're not having to hear the same lines over and over. I wish more games were like that, and I also wish they were more sparse with their lore because From at pretty decent at that too - like the gameplay, if you want to piece all the elements together and make sense of it, you have to work for it.
Basically From games tend to respect the intelligence and skill of the player, so people who love those games really love them, and people who don't gel with them tend to bounce off hard. Better than than being a game everyone thinks is average and kinda bland, I feel.
Oh and for the record, if you have a jailbroken PS4 or PS5 you can introduce an easy mode to the game with cheats, as you can patch game memory addresses not dissimilar to the Action Replay method from generations past. I tried Bloodborne this way (and with the 60FPS patch too, thanks Lance) and yep although it is amusing and almost hysterical to be able to cheese your way through early stuff like the Father Gascoigne fight (you can be a damage sponge while dishing out crazy hits with a maxed out character) it gets old because the challenge dies even though your hunter now doesn't.
See, stuff like them no-showing big gaming events year on year adds more to Sony being perceived as aloof/uncaring.
I suppose even if they did turn up, it's not like they have anything worth showing beyond the amazing looking new Astro title though. Concord's sub-Marvel humour and Fortnite-esque gameplay ain't gonna cut it.
Wow, so refreshing to hear a developer shine light on other people, other studios, rather than glory hog. More than that, he seems very down to Earth and motivated to make exciting, unique things that as a gamer, he hasn't seen before and by extension, neither have we. Very different and much healthier approach than Druckmann, for example.
Honestly, this game would have looked great even in a busy release year but in 2024 when it's the opposite, it stands out even more as something to be excited by. Nicolas talks like Sony developers of old, so I'm hoping in the vein of Astro's Playroom it'll play like an older style Sony title too, all innovation and wonder and polish.
I've played this before, years ago, and I don't have as much to complain about in terms of the controls as others, nor the voice acting being weak. Disagree. Michael Gambon is on the voice cast, for one.
It does, however, start a lot stronger than it finishes. You can tell it was rushed at the end because it gets progressively weaker. A few of the puzzles are a bit obtuse as well.
Having said all that, there's a lot of fun moments (the banter between the protagonist and the AI especially) and the premise is a good excuse for fairly decent level variety.
Yeah this is a common problem - because PC and Xbox controllers don't typically support advanced stuff like gyros and more nuanced kinds of haptics all those fancy features are left unused on the Switch and PS5. It's a shame, but that's cross-platform development for you.
Yeah the 8K on the side of the box always made me laugh, they shouldn't have put that there in the first place, to be honest.
As a long time DF fan, I had a feeling we'd struggle to see any games running 1440p60 upscaled or upsampled to 4K, and due to lack of optimisation it's actually the case we sometimes see 720p30 or 1080p30 upscaled to 4K which is why a lot of games look soft and blurry or have artifacts. They're basically PC architecture now, developers should have way less trouble than the Cell of the PS3 with all it's SPUs to micromanage, yet it seems in some ways quality is taking a step backwards in more ways than one.
Long story short, PS5 ever doing anything in 8K is a bit of a joke, which is why it being on the box was amusing to me.
"PS5 Players Are Buying Fewer New Games, But Spending More Than Ever Overall"
No, because they're spending more that's why they're buying fewer new games, in addition to the cost of living crisis making just getting by more expensive.
This is compounded by the overly long crossgen period making new games less likely to be PS5 exclusive and there being fewer good new games in general. This generation more than any other is plagued by bland sequels, poor reboots and lazy ports of previous gen games.
Its all very 🥱
Also, live service games also are a disgusting tumour that needs to be lanced because it's conditioning a whole generation of younger gamers who didn't come up with single player experiences that worked on day one without patches to think that's what gaming is. And if they're fooled, then that is what it will become, making it a fiendish long-term plan to turn not just online into a monthly subscription but the games themselves too.
Everything is a monthly subscription now, ever notice that? I think streaming services like Netflix are partially to blame for conditioning people to think about entertainment in the same way they think about paying their bills. That sucks.
@Robinsad Yeah I get that but I mean if you passed the keys to your account on to someone you love and it was still active, most big companies wouldn't bother to ask questions for a long time until someone realised that they could make more profit by culling the accounts under some pretense. They'd probably use ToS violation (impersonating someone else). Big companies always do this - they won't change their status quo until there's money on the line.
@Gigawatt-Kapow Same, I'm a musician, but honestly look where streaming has gotten us - a monopoly on "creativity" where only those with the means to support themselves or be supported by their parents/other benefactors results in a bunch of middle class kids with no problems writing bland dreck, and the only "gigs" being Ticketmaster drivel where you're paying £200+ for a crap seat. There is a tide change coming, and bands able to make physical media again and support themselves - those who believe in their music. Because otherwise in 20 years there won't be anything to see, so as The Who said, "a change it has to come".
Honestly though, until something becomes a huge problem big companies don't tend to change their business model, so questions will only start being asked about why a really old account is active when that's happened regularly for years and they realise the accounts of the deceased are affecting their profits going forward so decide to stop it. Something like that.
To be honest, by the time most people have passed their game library will feature tons of very old games that will have been publicly available by preservationists for years. People moan about piracy but it often leads to preservation when often the companies that published games don't give a f**k so it has plenty of positives. I mean for what is still an active console, the PS4, due to jailbreaking you can already grab and use PKG versions of games you own for backup/archival purposes, including their patches/updates/DLC. So I think whether or not you're a physical media collector, you are still entitled to a working copy of the full game and can acquire one very easily.
@Gigawatt-Kapow "The same happened with music and movies. It is only a matter of time."
Not quite right. Music on physical media is seeing a huge resurgence and has been going that way slowly for years.
And it needs to because streaming is killing music, especially for smaller/younger artists. Physical media sales need to help fund careers as they did a few decades ago. Otherwise soon there won't be any good new music because it'll be even harder to sustain making it than it was pre-millenium.
Basically everyone needs to buy more games and music on physical media.
"PlayStation is no longer speaking to the fans that built its brand with these broadcasts"
Yeah it's all very insular these days.
Sony aren't the only ones with this problem - the discontinuation of E3 and other events that video game publishers and hardware makers use to frequent may be saving them money in the short term, but what they don't yet see is in the long term it's also hurting the buzz around their brands, and in time sales.
The last few State of Plays have been like commercial after commercial with very little personality. The sort of commercials people buy TiVo boxes to skip, in my opinion. I don't see anything exciting, I see increasingly homogeneous games that are inferior to what has gone before, just a few generations ago. It's all very safe and risk averse, which is the complete opposite of how PS1 and PS2 era Sony were when they still had something to prove, and extended to the PS3 era.
Tim Rogers (formerly of Kotaku) has spoken and written a lot about this over the years, most notably in his Boku No Natsuyasumi review. I recommend it because he's worked for SCE and has stories.
The point is, if you fail to innovate, you stagnate. If you play it too safe, it'll work in the short term but eventually people will get bored. It's the hubris of boardroom thinking, sadly, that slow growth will continue forever, but it doesn't always.
That's where Sony are now. As a gamer it's boring to me. I fire up my PS5, I'm bored quickly. I fire up my PS3, I play happily for hours, spoilt for choice. That console was peak Sony (it represents all their best and worst traits) and I love it. I mean, the damn PS3 had a full matching Bluetooth keyboard and a digital TV tuner box, that's how ambitious and multimedia-centric Sony were back then. What does the PS5 have? Oh, the world's blandest Blu-ray player and a crappy white peanut remote that needs multiple taps to do anything if it hasn't been used in 30 seconds.
Mere scraps, only offered out to distract from the lack of new stuff they have this year and although great games totally possible to play on PS2 and PS3 as they were for years now instead of waiting nearly four years to get the PS2 emulated versions that should have been present from day one. They're only doing a back catalogue raid to distract people, and it appears to have worked in some cases.
Graphics are more than good enough, really it should be about getting games working right on release so they don't require giant patches over and over, more variety of games (so more games, shorter ones, made by auteurs with vision not by committee and trying to please everyone leading to bland samey titles), no requirement for always on Internet for single player titles.
Gameplay is the thing that survives as the graphics date with age, especially if the graphics have a unique art style, that's why Super Mario World still places high in best ever games lists over 3 decades after it's release and Wind Waker although a little misunderstood at the time looks gorgeous and unique now.
My main issue is that mainstream gaming seems to have peaked around the 2000-2010 mark and has mostly been too focused on visual spectacle and units sold since, rather than making something unique and special that people play for years to come. I love regularly going back to PS2/PS3 era gaming when stuff just worked, gameplay came in many flavours and there were great titles coming out regularly. Looks a lot different in 2024 when all people seem to be doing is saying "roll on 2025" because between Microsoft thoroughly and repeatedly s**ting the bed and Sony having very little going on, only Nintendo seem to be doing well, with the Switch sequel on the horizon and some of the last big games coming out for the current one fairly regularly.
Maybe they should set their sights on sorting out their woeful 2024 release schedule, and not using reissues of played out SadDad third person titles to do it? 😂 Tongue firmly in cheek for that statement although there is truth in it.
There's little to no incentive for PS4 owners to upgrade when so many blockbuster titles are cross platform, money is tight due to the cost of living crisis etc. Why upgrade when the successor is actually more expensive new than it was at launch, hasn't really had as many tentpole releases as it should partly due to the pandemic. Every time I get a used PS5 I end up playing it for a few weeks, then I end up letting it gather dust for months, then I sell it.
It's been a pretty disappointing generation, to be honest. The fact that people online everywhere are pinning so much hope on GTA VI almost says it all, even though it's at least a year away and will undoubtedly have many of the same sins as GTA V did, namely the exploitative grindy costly buggy clusterf**k we call GTA Online.
Apart from the odd decent big release, mainstream gaming is stagnating. It's telling when the most trick GPU on the market, the 4090, uses a bunch of upscaling and resampling techniques to botch 4K at decent framerates. It's also telling that consoles and PCs are so much more powerful than a decade ago, and other than Switch are all x86 based yet a lot of games are released so unoptimised that it's baffling. Back in the 360/PS3 era developers had to juggle x86, PowerPC and CELL, all pretty damn different, yet the ports towards end of gen especially had that much more parity.
@IntrepidWombat Yeah you have to shop around to get a "low mileage" Us/Japan launch PS3 but it is possible. I got one with less than 50 days uptime which is low, and it had an easy life which I know because I opened it to clean and change the thermal paste and it was super clean inside, very little dust. Basically it was always used to play karaoke games which are very low stress on the RSX especially.
Custom firmware is a godsend because it allows you to raise the base speed of the fan from boot in both PS3 and PS2 modes - stock is 20% which is very bad if you launch PS2 games from a cold boot as it fixes the fan speed rather than working on a temperature based curve so the RSX can roast in the 80°c range, something custom firmware allows you to get around by setting something more sensible like 40% for PS2 mode. Mine rarely gets above 67°c for PS3 games, and rarely above 60°c for PS2emu mode.
I agree the other way is to get a gaming PC rig and offload the upscaling to a decent graphics card, the improvement in PS3 emulation on PC is impressive but comes at a price, obviously. ISOs running from an SSD on either PC or PS3 can drastically drop load times so that's a good move too.
@IntrepidWombat For some titles they did do cross generation Classics - Bully springs to mind as you can get it as a PS2 Classic on PS3, or the same on PS4/PS5 via backwards compatibility (a PS5 is playing the PS4 version of the PS2 game emu basically). It doesn't really play any better than the original PS2 game running on a hardware compatible PS3 with the PS2 custom chips inside. And also PS3 and PS4 versions are seperate purchases, pretty sure.
None of the PlayStation versions are as good as the Xbox 360 version which is the expanded Scholarship Edition and runs at a stable 30FPS with better visuals due to the excellent Xbox backwards compatibility, or better still a hacked version of the PC port of the same which can be forced to 60FPS pretty easily with very few issues.
Sadly looks like it'd be still be more cost effective to get a good working order CECHA00 PS3 and use GSM to do upscaling. Sure, you don't get rewinds and save states but to be fair it'd probably work out cheaper in the long run assuming the PS3 doesn't nuke itself and die of GPU failure.
As the hardware PS2emu binary on PS3 doesn't encrypt it's memory cards (the software emu used for PS2 classics does, although it's easily defeated) you can backup and/or tinker with your saves easily if that's your thing.
To me still a better deal than dropping a fair amount of money annually on PS Plus Premium, as I paid £180 for my CECHA00 PS3 and that's just under what two years of Premium costs if bought in 12 month increments, plus you can play almost the entire PS2 library as compatibility is about 99%, and obviously any and all PS3 titles that never got ported to PS4/PS5, which is loads. No cloud streaming lag either.
Basically the best solution still dates back to 2006. I've been playing Burnout 3 among others that you can't get from PS Store (music rights on all the 2000s era songs are probably the issue) with it upscaled to 1080i for HDTVs. The original PS2 with Component and therefore the version of it built into the original PS3s (Component or HDMI) can be forced into 1080i mode, among others, which can look really sharp and clean when combined with running a game's native progressive mode if it has one (for whatever reason 480p upscaled to 1080i via GSM homebrew looks a lot sharper than the PS3 using it's own inbuilt PS2 scaling to do 1080i/p).
Well if devs are about an unenthusiastic as I am and are literally echoing things I've thought and said, the "PS5 Pro" upgrade version of games is going to be just like the PS4 Pro, i.e. games that run slightly better without actually offering significant improvements. At least the PS4 Pro could brag 4K over 1080p but that's not relevant this time around.
Honestly, this is the most disappointing generation I've ever experienced and I've been gaming since the Master System/NES days. Every generation up until this one felt like a step up, an acceleration. This one feels like coasting slowly to a stop. Xbox is dying, Sony has nothing up it's sleeve. The damage from the pandemic is clearly a lot bigger than we were led to believe, and it might well be a decade (basically another 5 years minimum from now) until it looks anything like it did in 2019.
Push🔲 you've done one article with the PS5 OG under a red bulb, this one is under a green bulb. Can the next misc stock console shot feature a blue one please, to complete the RGB theme? 🟥🟩🟦
Been so busy writing songs and not gaming that I didn't notice. PS5 recently unplugged due to lack of use anyway so it's not vampiring little watts of power.
It's funny to think the PS5 Pro will launch to the same problem as the niche PSVR2 - not a big enough library, baby. Can you blame people for sticking with their cheaper PS4s, really, with an overly long cross gen period and few games justifying the upgrade.
This is the nothing generation of consoles, eh. The hardware is amazing on Series X and PS5 yet both have few things unique to them that are worth playing. In the meantime Nintendo clean up making fun games on an underpowered 2017 machine with hardware from 2015, less powerful than most people's smartphones.
"PS Portal Proving More Popular Than Sony Expected"
Not sure why - for what it costs it's a sub-par experience because Sony didn't bother to optimise Remote Play as a service so it carries all the same input lag/frame pacing issues the service does, just now on a device that you have to buy seperately when you can get the same kind of experience on a device you probably already own, like a smartphone or laptop. Glad I tried and didn't buy.
I know that goes against the common experience and love for it, but you've gotta go with what you feel based on experience, and it could have been a lot more than a boring Android tablet with DualSense halves glued onto it. It's no PS Vita.
I love how the rumour mill has turned a vague 20 minute podcast crammed with management speak into "confirmed: Halo coming to PlayStation". I mean if it is that's a long time away Presumably they'll drip feed out some games, then release their final console (next gen) and then pull a SEGA and go from hardware to just software.
Nah I'm kidding, that's just an example of the wild, baseless speculation people are resorting to because there's very little interesting real gaming news in 2024. This console generation is pretty dull, as compared to the two before it at this point in their life cycles.
@liathach From what you've said I'd actually agree and point out both Xbox and PS5 are suffering from a lack of good first party games, and their online subscription services are a bit disappointing as a result. I would point out that there is arguably more value on Xbox if you like previous gen games, due to sales on them, some being free on GP and a better selection whereas Sony has done very little in terms of additions to the PS2/PS3 Classics roster over the last few years. If they want to sweat their back catalogue for value that would be a good place to start - the way I see it, they're behind both Microsoft and Nintendo there.
I'm one of the rare gamers for whom neither PS Plus nor Game Pass have enough value to bother subscribing to, as I don't play online and the idea of renting games is something that belongs in the past (when I was a kid). I have the Nintendo one though as it's the cheapest and allows me and gf to easily game together, plus she loves all the N64 emulation, so much so I bought her a CRKD Deck in GameCube purple so no more stick drift as she only plays portable.
Personally I mostly prefer to wait until games are on sale around the £10 to £20 mark and just buy outright, with the exception of Lies Of P recently I paid RRP for because it's just that good and I didn't want to wait.
I would guess Game Pass numbers have stalled partly because they discontinued the 1 month or 3 month trial at £1 per month. I had it when it was cheap because it took mere seconds to make a new account, set the home Xbox and game stream, but when it was full price I realised I wasn't using it enough to pay as much as I do for YouTube. There's too many monthly subscriptions anyway, video and game services vying for your attention alongside bills that go out monthly, so it's worth weighing up what's worth it and what's not otherwise you're just wasting money you could use to fully own games and save the rest.
@Grumblevolcano More than that, the power that is there isn't really being used. There aren't really any games that push the console fully to it's limits, and those that look like they do because they drop frames are usually just poorly optimised. You see the odd game getting there like Avatar, but overall there's no wow factor on most games.
That's a dumb statement that would have been better left unsaid, to be honest. Neither PS5 nor Series X are anywhere near their potential being tapped, partly due to the pandemic and partly due to overly long crossgen support.
If this is going to continue then we need a decade long generation to make up for it, because as a PS5/Series X owner I'm noticing more and more that I'm still playing mostly last gen games; the few current gen only titles I do have aren't a particularly massive leap forward in terms of visuals or gameplay.
It's really underwhelming, like we're still stuck in the first year of release, not that this is the fourth year. The release schedule for big Sony first and second party games is pretty bare this year, which seems disappointing after a year where the last quarter brought some great mostly third party releases, a revised Slim model, the foolish Portal, and the woefully undersupported to the point of "why did they bother" PSVR2. All this hardware is starting to look like a profit-geneating smokescreen to help distract from what an underwhelming generation it is.
Maybe that's why people aren't buying it, from the point of view of the layperson there's "nothing to play"
I'm wondering how they judge this metric. My guess would be if a PlayStation 4/5 is switched on within a certain amount of days it counts as an "active user" even if they're doing something like me recently which is taking it out of rest mode a few minutes a week to browse the store sales. Same goes for anyone just using them for streaming even if their actual gaming time is less than an hour a week. What I'm saying is it's fine, but not very detailed, not that I expect Sony to be busting out the pie charts breaking down the console use so everyone can get freaked out about how much data on all of us they're REALLY collecting 😂
@Northern_munkey It's funny, because you said you "don't use the thing enough to know all its workings" and then wrongly said "incidentaly you can switch between ps5 games on the fly a lot quicker" again which I've told you isn't true.
It takes longer to back out of a loaded game to the PS5 home screen, choose another, wait for that to load, choose a save, load that then go into another game (usually better part of a minute) than using Quick Resume on Series X which with two button presses on the Elite controller and 5-10 seconds you're where you left off. It's a fact not a "whatever mate", I have both PS5/Series X so believe me I know. If you don't know that's fine, but stating something wrong as fact when someone's told you different is foolish.
"Still needs the games my friends 👍" Yep they both do - the PS5 is looking a little light on exclusives this year, sadly.
@Northern_munkey Let me debunk an inaccuracy there.
"My nephew has the xbox series x thingy (the black tower) and its a good machine but it's lacking that something..games..oh and the speedy loading"
No it's not missing the speedy loading on Series X|S. With Quick Resume you can move between about 5-8 suspended games in 10 seconds or less, no opening the game from scratch, no loading a save - it's literally where you left it. And if you have an Elite Series 2 you can do it with 2 button presses on the controller itself. Mine can currently move between The Witcher 3: Complete Edition, Red Dead Redemption II, GTA V, Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition and a few others pretty seamlessly. I wish the PS5 could do that.
TL;DR - the console UI, crossplatform games experience, controller and several other features are better to me on Series X not PS5.
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True, PS5 has the better exclusives - it would be more even if big tentpole releases like Starfield and Redfall hadn't completely bombed for Microsoft - but it's a slender thing because there still aren't enough "next gen only" killer app system sellers that are "only on PlayStation" as their marketing goes.
I don't think Sony have the better platform in terms of how the console looks and performs. My PS5 Slim crashes in Rest Mode when I have Red Dead Redemption II running and it's a bit more susceptible to doing that in general with PS4 games. It was a launch bug that's supposedly fixed but it's still there. The Settings menu and UI navigation in general is unintuitive and I still dislike that they flipped how the PS button on the controller works. I can back up/restore PS4 saves but I can't do PS5 saves without doing a full console storage backup or subscribing to PS Plus, a service I don't want. Sony railroading people into PS Plus this way is a joke. Still no themes and folders on the home screen, minor gripe but relevant. Biggest compliments are that the design, weird/stupid shape that it is allows you to remove/clean the fan easily plus the M.2 SSD can be moved between consoles, no lockout.
A lot of previous gen crossplatform titles run better on Series X. Take underrated banger Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition - it runs at a smooth, sharp looking 60FPS compared to the lower resolution 30FPS PS4 version on PS5. Red Dead Redemption II is a lot sharper presentation wise with the One X version on Series X. Older titles can have FPS Boost/Auto HDR without needing a recompile of the game which is the limiting factor for PS4 games on PS5. Backwards compatibility on Series X reaches all the way to the OG Xbox. If you pay a small amount to enable Dev Mode you can emulate Wii, GameCube, PS2 etc, using that Series X power; weird position where an Xbox runs more PS2 games than a PS5.
Series X has a better UI (with themes and folder-like grouping, yep). If you have an Elite Series 2 controller you not only have something more comfortable with better battery life than Sony's ripoff the Edge (also a member of U2), but if you set up a paddle as a SHIFT key you can assign shortcuts to the controller. On mine if I press SHIFT&A it opens RDR2, SHIFT&Y opens YouTube etc. Quick Resume allows you to move between about 5-8 different games, so with the Elite controller you're switching between multiple games with only two button presses: 10 seconds later you're back where you left off, it's pretty seamless. Cloud saving is free and works as far back as the Xbox 360 as per my testing - I have saves from literally 2013 that still work whereas Sony allow you free storage for video/image captures of games without PS Plus but not game saves...
I probably sound like an Xbox fanboy, but I'm not. The launch CECHA PS3 is my favourite console of all time which still gets used semi-regularly, however when it comes to crossplatform current and older gen games, I own enough across the Xbox & PS that the experience is basically always better on the former. Yes the PS5 is getting exclusives the Series X doesn't plus will play PS4 generation exclusives, but for me that's pretty much the only value.
@Stickleman Well said! Everyone just needs to be what few are these days - patient. Wasting time and effort with guesswork doesn't mean any of it is right. I very much doubt Xbox will give up its entire gaming library to third parties - people are acting as if one day you'll see Halo on a PlayStation, I'm sorry but no that's just silly 😂
I agree with something Tim Rogers said although it's a bit less true this generation, which is when it comes to cross platform console games that the Xbox version is preferable, partly because you can play them with the Elite Series 2 controller, which beats the DualSense, a clunky feeling toy with crap battery life compared to that.
For me there's no bias here as I own a Switch, Series X and PS5. I'm not overly thrilled with any of them right now as it's been a weak time in gaming, although there were some bangers released at the end of 2023 like Robocop.
@Ainu20 Exactly, there's truth in it just what kind of truth, we don't know yet. There's a lot of jumping to conclusions and speculating going on and as is often the case a lot of it will end up being wrong, as it was for the Activision acquisition.
@EvilSilentFrame This is an astute comment, agree with all of it. Competition doesn't just drive innovation (something sorely needed in tech in general right now as it's stagnant) but it helps keep the consumer from getting ripped off.
I love that the response from certain gamers, here and elsewhere, is to treat rumours and slivers of information as gospel, fact, foregone conclusion when there's very little evidence to base anything on.
Microsoft buying more PS5 devkits could just as easily mean they're stocking Activision up with more of them to make confirmed cross platform titles like CoD easier to develop.
This jumping the gun is exactly the sort of thing that also happens when some gaming related company patents an idea, a lazy gaming news site makes an article out of it and people go "omg are they serious?! Rlly who needs that". Gamers are truly fickle sometimes.
Comments 654
Re: There's Already Concern Over Concord's Player Count as Open Beta Begins
@Perturbator I don't care if it's serious or not, I'd much rather play a sequel to Tokyo Jungle than Concord, the Fortnite wannabe with a Guardians Of The Facsimile frock over it.
Re: There's Already Concern Over Concord's Player Count as Open Beta Begins
So... the Games as a Service model is now so efficient at tracking it's own demise that poor early access numbers mean it'll be DoA?
I think that's a bit clickbaity sensationalist premature doomslinging from Push, but also I hope it's true because GaaS uniformly and with very few exceptions sucks, so if they keep failing maybe they'll stop being made and become a closed chapter in the history of gaming.
Re: Talking Point: Was Sony Right to Resist Adding PS5 Exclusives to PS Plus Day One?
I personally think both Xbox and PlayStation are wrong to make exclusives not exclusive at all, I know that's something PCMR gamers disagree with but I'm not them, so...
Nintendo have the right idea in terms of keeping them on their system to help sell more of them and fund future game investment, although them going nuts with their legal team I don't agree with I see why they do it.
There really aren't enough exclusives this generation for Xbox and PlayStation so the few they have making their way off-console is harming sales, it's as simple as that. I'm sure it's a decision made to short-term appease the shareholders with a bit of profit but long-term I think it's going to cause sustainability issues. Great exclusives shift systems, it's an old business model that was used for so long because it works, so if they're looking to generate more profit in the long-term, making more of those should be the priority. Ideally across a range of genres, some small and medium sized games as well as just generic open world big expensive ones like they used to.
Re: PSN Online Services Restored Across the Board
PS Plus subscribers getting truly the best experience this month, what with a poor selection of already cheap to buy free games, Stars still down and service outages. Good job Sony. Next thing is they'll tell us they got hacked again 😁
Re: Next Gran Turismo 7 PS5, PS4 Update Could Be a Big One
I travel a lot and don't always have Internet connections that are any good, so when GT7 pulls a GT Sport and makes the single player work offline like both should have at launch, let me know.
Re: PS Plus Essential Games for July 2024 Announced
Not to disparage the games themselves which are decent, but in the context of PS Plus membership it's another month where Sony limp to the barn having done the bare minimum.
Re: Sly Cooper PS2 Is PS Plus Premium's Biggest Classic Hit So Far
Sadly it's a poor quality emulation with smeary visuals, music cues not loading bugs and a few other issues. Shame too because it's such a beloved franchise, but original hardware or any free GPL type emulator can do a better job for a more playable experience.
Re: GTA 6 Fans Nervous As GTA Online Locks Crucial Quality of Life Feature Behind GTA+ Sub on PS5, PS4
Rockstar really do get scummier as the years go by, more profit and greed driven.
It's funny to me that so many of the online grinds are bank heists when Rockstar themselves are dipping their fingers so deeply into players bank accounts for the "privilege" of doing so, without doing anything like fixing server problems or minimising griefers.
Online is the reason that there hasn't been a new GTA in 11 years, but to be honest GTA V ranks below several other ones anyway, personally, so I don't consider it a huge loss. The three protagonists are childish and somewhat unlikeable. The mature writing of Red Dead Redemption II is a lot better, the single player campaign is more satisfying and they'll be hard pressed to ever make a better protagonist than Arthur Morgan. The online for that died because Rockstar couldn't monetise it to the same insane extent they have with GTA V.
The sad thing is I just know, it's basically a dead cert that they will release RDR2 again for current gen consoles, finally with 60FPS, and charge as much as they think they can get away with. This is really sad because as anyone with a jailbroken PS4 or PS5 knows, it's a one line code patch to unlock the frame rate, and even a PS4 Pro without the benefit of the speed enhanced PS4 modes of the PS5 can run it at 50-60FPS pretty consistently.
Re: FromSoftware Boss Puts Elden Ring Difficulty Discourse to Bed, Once and For All
Yes, of course Miyazaki is right and that's part of why the games he is involved with tend to be so good, and so challenging. If they all handed a win to you, or hand held you through every little step, it'd be awful because plenty of games already do that to be more inclusive/cater better to casuals or time poor people who might have forgotten the controls between plays as they're so busy.
The other thing I like about From games is often most if not all of the cutscenes are skippable, so upon repeated plays you're not having to hear the same lines over and over. I wish more games were like that, and I also wish they were more sparse with their lore because From at pretty decent at that too - like the gameplay, if you want to piece all the elements together and make sense of it, you have to work for it.
Basically From games tend to respect the intelligence and skill of the player, so people who love those games really love them, and people who don't gel with them tend to bounce off hard. Better than than being a game everyone thinks is average and kinda bland, I feel.
Oh and for the record, if you have a jailbroken PS4 or PS5 you can introduce an easy mode to the game with cheats, as you can patch game memory addresses not dissimilar to the Action Replay method from generations past. I tried Bloodborne this way (and with the 60FPS patch too, thanks Lance) and yep although it is amusing and almost hysterical to be able to cheese your way through early stuff like the Father Gascoigne fight (you can be a damage sponge while dishing out crazy hits with a maxed out character) it gets old because the challenge dies even though your hunter now doesn't.
Re: Sony Is Allegedly Pulling PSVR2 Funding, Report Claims
It's official; they've Vita'd it. Except not quite, as Vita had good backwards compatibility (PS1/PSP) rather than, y'know, none. Double own goal.
Re: Sony Skips Gamescom Presence for a Fifth Year in a Row
See, stuff like them no-showing big gaming events year on year adds more to Sony being perceived as aloof/uncaring.
I suppose even if they did turn up, it's not like they have anything worth showing beyond the amazing looking new Astro title though. Concord's sub-Marvel humour and Fortnite-esque gameplay ain't gonna cut it.
Re: Interview: The Making of Astro Bot, the PS5's Next Great Exclusive
Wow, so refreshing to hear a developer shine light on other people, other studios, rather than glory hog. More than that, he seems very down to Earth and motivated to make exciting, unique things that as a gamer, he hasn't seen before and by extension, neither have we. Very different and much healthier approach than Druckmann, for example.
Honestly, this game would have looked great even in a busy release year but in 2024 when it's the opposite, it stands out even more as something to be excited by. Nicolas talks like Sony developers of old, so I'm hoping in the vein of Astro's Playroom it'll play like an older style Sony title too, all innovation and wonder and polish.
Re: One of PS2's Most Overlooked First-Party Games Is Coming to PS5, PS4
I've played this before, years ago, and I don't have as much to complain about in terms of the controls as others, nor the voice acting being weak. Disagree. Michael Gambon is on the voice cast, for one.
It does, however, start a lot stronger than it finishes. You can tell it was rushed at the end because it gets progressively weaker. A few of the puzzles are a bit obtuse as well.
Having said all that, there's a lot of fun moments (the banter between the protagonist and the AI especially) and the premise is a good excuse for fairly decent level variety.
Re: Valorant Won't Have Gyro Controls on PS5 Because Xbox Doesn't Support It
Yeah this is a common problem - because PC and Xbox controllers don't typically support advanced stuff like gyros and more nuanced kinds of haptics all those fancy features are left unused on the Switch and PS5. It's a shame, but that's cross-platform development for you.
Re: PS5 Packaging No Longer Mentions 8K, Some Fans Accuse Sony of False Advertising
Yeah the 8K on the side of the box always made me laugh, they shouldn't have put that there in the first place, to be honest.
As a long time DF fan, I had a feeling we'd struggle to see any games running 1440p60 upscaled or upsampled to 4K, and due to lack of optimisation it's actually the case we sometimes see 720p30 or 1080p30 upscaled to 4K which is why a lot of games look soft and blurry or have artifacts. They're basically PC architecture now, developers should have way less trouble than the Cell of the PS3 with all it's SPUs to micromanage, yet it seems in some ways quality is taking a step backwards in more ways than one.
Long story short, PS5 ever doing anything in 8K is a bit of a joke, which is why it being on the box was amusing to me.
Re: PS5 Players Are Buying Fewer New Games, But Spending More Than Ever Overall
"PS5 Players Are Buying Fewer New Games, But Spending More Than Ever Overall"
No, because they're spending more that's why they're buying fewer new games, in addition to the cost of living crisis making just getting by more expensive.
This is compounded by the overly long crossgen period making new games less likely to be PS5 exclusive and there being fewer good new games in general. This generation more than any other is plagued by bland sequels, poor reboots and lazy ports of previous gen games.
Its all very 🥱
Also, live service games also are a disgusting tumour that needs to be lanced because it's conditioning a whole generation of younger gamers who didn't come up with single player experiences that worked on day one without patches to think that's what gaming is. And if they're fooled, then that is what it will become, making it a fiendish long-term plan to turn not just online into a monthly subscription but the games themselves too.
Everything is a monthly subscription now, ever notice that? I think streaming services like Netflix are partially to blame for conditioning people to think about entertainment in the same way they think about paying their bills. That sucks.
Re: Random: What Happens to Your Digital PSN Library When You Die?
@Robinsad Yeah I get that but I mean if you passed the keys to your account on to someone you love and it was still active, most big companies wouldn't bother to ask questions for a long time until someone realised that they could make more profit by culling the accounts under some pretense. They'd probably use ToS violation (impersonating someone else). Big companies always do this - they won't change their status quo until there's money on the line.
Re: Random: What Happens to Your Digital PSN Library When You Die?
@Gigawatt-Kapow Same, I'm a musician, but honestly look where streaming has gotten us - a monopoly on "creativity" where only those with the means to support themselves or be supported by their parents/other benefactors results in a bunch of middle class kids with no problems writing bland dreck, and the only "gigs" being Ticketmaster drivel where you're paying £200+ for a crap seat. There is a tide change coming, and bands able to make physical media again and support themselves - those who believe in their music. Because otherwise in 20 years there won't be anything to see, so as The Who said, "a change it has to come".
Re: Random: What Happens to Your Digital PSN Library When You Die?
Honestly though, until something becomes a huge problem big companies don't tend to change their business model, so questions will only start being asked about why a really old account is active when that's happened regularly for years and they realise the accounts of the deceased are affecting their profits going forward so decide to stop it. Something like that.
To be honest, by the time most people have passed their game library will feature tons of very old games that will have been publicly available by preservationists for years. People moan about piracy but it often leads to preservation when often the companies that published games don't give a f**k so it has plenty of positives. I mean for what is still an active console, the PS4, due to jailbreaking you can already grab and use PKG versions of games you own for backup/archival purposes, including their patches/updates/DLC. So I think whether or not you're a physical media collector, you are still entitled to a working copy of the full game and can acquire one very easily.
Re: Random: What Happens to Your Digital PSN Library When You Die?
@Gigawatt-Kapow "The same happened with music and movies. It is only a matter of time."
Not quite right. Music on physical media is seeing a huge resurgence and has been going that way slowly for years.
And it needs to because streaming is killing music, especially for smaller/younger artists. Physical media sales need to help fund careers as they did a few decades ago. Otherwise soon there won't be any good new music because it'll be even harder to sustain making it than it was pre-millenium.
Basically everyone needs to buy more games and music on physical media.
Re: Random: What Happens to Your Digital PSN Library When You Die?
@Steel76 "Even if Steam lose the license for a game, if I bought it, I can still download it from them.
Though sadly you can't do this with digital games on console."
Not true - plenty of games can be redownloaded from PSN when the license expires, and that's true of others too.
Re: Reaction: PS5 Livestreams Are No Longer Speaking to the Fans Who Built the Brand
"PlayStation is no longer speaking to the fans that built its brand with these broadcasts"
Yeah it's all very insular these days.
Sony aren't the only ones with this problem - the discontinuation of E3 and other events that video game publishers and hardware makers use to frequent may be saving them money in the short term, but what they don't yet see is in the long term it's also hurting the buzz around their brands, and in time sales.
The last few State of Plays have been like commercial after commercial with very little personality. The sort of commercials people buy TiVo boxes to skip, in my opinion. I don't see anything exciting, I see increasingly homogeneous games that are inferior to what has gone before, just a few generations ago. It's all very safe and risk averse, which is the complete opposite of how PS1 and PS2 era Sony were when they still had something to prove, and extended to the PS3 era.
Tim Rogers (formerly of Kotaku) has spoken and written a lot about this over the years, most notably in his Boku No Natsuyasumi review. I recommend it because he's worked for SCE and has stories.
The point is, if you fail to innovate, you stagnate. If you play it too safe, it'll work in the short term but eventually people will get bored. It's the hubris of boardroom thinking, sadly, that slow growth will continue forever, but it doesn't always.
That's where Sony are now. As a gamer it's boring to me. I fire up my PS5, I'm bored quickly. I fire up my PS3, I play happily for hours, spoilt for choice. That console was peak Sony (it represents all their best and worst traits) and I love it. I mean, the damn PS3 had a full matching Bluetooth keyboard and a digital TV tuner box, that's how ambitious and multimedia-centric Sony were back then. What does the PS5 have? Oh, the world's blandest Blu-ray player and a crappy white peanut remote that needs multiple taps to do anything if it hasn't been used in 30 seconds.
Re: Sly Cooper, Tomb Raider, Star Wars Revealed as Surprise PS2 Games on PS Plus Premium
Mere scraps, only offered out to distract from the lack of new stuff they have this year and although great games totally possible to play on PS2 and PS3 as they were for years now instead of waiting nearly four years to get the PS2 emulated versions that should have been present from day one. They're only doing a back catalogue raid to distract people, and it appears to have worked in some cases.
Re: Key Sony Exec Gives Eye-Opening Quotes on the Future of PlayStation and Gaming
Graphics are more than good enough, really it should be about getting games working right on release so they don't require giant patches over and over, more variety of games (so more games, shorter ones, made by auteurs with vision not by committee and trying to please everyone leading to bland samey titles), no requirement for always on Internet for single player titles.
Gameplay is the thing that survives as the graphics date with age, especially if the graphics have a unique art style, that's why Super Mario World still places high in best ever games lists over 3 decades after it's release and Wind Waker although a little misunderstood at the time looks gorgeous and unique now.
My main issue is that mainstream gaming seems to have peaked around the 2000-2010 mark and has mostly been too focused on visual spectacle and units sold since, rather than making something unique and special that people play for years to come. I love regularly going back to PS2/PS3 era gaming when stuff just worked, gameplay came in many flavours and there were great titles coming out regularly. Looks a lot different in 2024 when all people seem to be doing is saying "roll on 2025" because between Microsoft thoroughly and repeatedly s**ting the bed and Sony having very little going on, only Nintendo seem to be doing well, with the Switch sequel on the horizon and some of the last big games coming out for the current one fairly regularly.
Re: Sony Sets Sights on Ruling the Anime World
Maybe they should set their sights on sorting out their woeful 2024 release schedule, and not using reissues of played out SadDad third person titles to do it? 😂 Tongue firmly in cheek for that statement although there is truth in it.
Re: A Lot of PS4 Owners Have Yet to Upgrade to PS5
There's little to no incentive for PS4 owners to upgrade when so many blockbuster titles are cross platform, money is tight due to the cost of living crisis etc. Why upgrade when the successor is actually more expensive new than it was at launch, hasn't really had as many tentpole releases as it should partly due to the pandemic. Every time I get a used PS5 I end up playing it for a few weeks, then I end up letting it gather dust for months, then I sell it.
It's been a pretty disappointing generation, to be honest. The fact that people online everywhere are pinning so much hope on GTA VI almost says it all, even though it's at least a year away and will undoubtedly have many of the same sins as GTA V did, namely the exploitative grindy costly buggy clusterf**k we call GTA Online.
Apart from the odd decent big release, mainstream gaming is stagnating. It's telling when the most trick GPU on the market, the 4090, uses a bunch of upscaling and resampling techniques to botch 4K at decent framerates. It's also telling that consoles and PCs are so much more powerful than a decade ago, and other than Switch are all x86 based yet a lot of games are released so unoptimised that it's baffling. Back in the 360/PS3 era developers had to juggle x86, PowerPC and CELL, all pretty damn different, yet the ports towards end of gen especially had that much more parity.
Re: New PS2 Emulator Appears to Be Imminent on PS5, PS4
@IntrepidWombat Yeah you have to shop around to get a "low mileage" Us/Japan launch PS3 but it is possible. I got one with less than 50 days uptime which is low, and it had an easy life which I know because I opened it to clean and change the thermal paste and it was super clean inside, very little dust. Basically it was always used to play karaoke games which are very low stress on the RSX especially.
Custom firmware is a godsend because it allows you to raise the base speed of the fan from boot in both PS3 and PS2 modes - stock is 20% which is very bad if you launch PS2 games from a cold boot as it fixes the fan speed rather than working on a temperature based curve so the RSX can roast in the 80°c range, something custom firmware allows you to get around by setting something more sensible like 40% for PS2 mode. Mine rarely gets above 67°c for PS3 games, and rarely above 60°c for PS2emu mode.
I agree the other way is to get a gaming PC rig and offload the upscaling to a decent graphics card, the improvement in PS3 emulation on PC is impressive but comes at a price, obviously. ISOs running from an SSD on either PC or PS3 can drastically drop load times so that's a good move too.
Re: New PS2 Emulator Appears to Be Imminent on PS5, PS4
@IntrepidWombat For some titles they did do cross generation Classics - Bully springs to mind as you can get it as a PS2 Classic on PS3, or the same on PS4/PS5 via backwards compatibility (a PS5 is playing the PS4 version of the PS2 game emu basically). It doesn't really play any better than the original PS2 game running on a hardware compatible PS3 with the PS2 custom chips inside. And also PS3 and PS4 versions are seperate purchases, pretty sure.
None of the PlayStation versions are as good as the Xbox 360 version which is the expanded Scholarship Edition and runs at a stable 30FPS with better visuals due to the excellent Xbox backwards compatibility, or better still a hacked version of the PC port of the same which can be forced to 60FPS pretty easily with very few issues.
Re: New PS2 Emulator Appears to Be Imminent on PS5, PS4
Sadly looks like it'd be still be more cost effective to get a good working order CECHA00 PS3 and use GSM to do upscaling. Sure, you don't get rewinds and save states but to be fair it'd probably work out cheaper in the long run assuming the PS3 doesn't nuke itself and die of GPU failure.
As the hardware PS2emu binary on PS3 doesn't encrypt it's memory cards (the software emu used for PS2 classics does, although it's easily defeated) you can backup and/or tinker with your saves easily if that's your thing.
To me still a better deal than dropping a fair amount of money annually on PS Plus Premium, as I paid £180 for my CECHA00 PS3 and that's just under what two years of Premium costs if bought in 12 month increments, plus you can play almost the entire PS2 library as compatibility is about 99%, and obviously any and all PS3 titles that never got ported to PS4/PS5, which is loads. No cloud streaming lag either.
Basically the best solution still dates back to 2006. I've been playing Burnout 3 among others that you can't get from PS Store (music rights on all the 2000s era songs are probably the issue) with it upscaled to 1080i for HDTVs. The original PS2 with Component and therefore the version of it built into the original PS3s (Component or HDMI) can be forced into 1080i mode, among others, which can look really sharp and clean when combined with running a game's native progressive mode if it has one (for whatever reason 480p upscaled to 1080i via GSM homebrew looks a lot sharper than the PS3 using it's own inbuilt PS2 scaling to do 1080i/p).
Re: Devs Allegedly Pondering the Point of Sony's PS5 Pro Upgrade
Well if devs are about an unenthusiastic as I am and are literally echoing things I've thought and said, the "PS5 Pro" upgrade version of games is going to be just like the PS4 Pro, i.e. games that run slightly better without actually offering significant improvements. At least the PS4 Pro could brag 4K over 1080p but that's not relevant this time around.
Honestly, this is the most disappointing generation I've ever experienced and I've been gaming since the Master System/NES days. Every generation up until this one felt like a step up, an acceleration. This one feels like coasting slowly to a stop. Xbox is dying, Sony has nothing up it's sleeve. The damage from the pandemic is clearly a lot bigger than we were led to believe, and it might well be a decade (basically another 5 years minimum from now) until it looks anything like it did in 2019.
Re: Rumour: PS5 Pro Is Up to Three Times Faster Than PS5 as Specs Surface
Three times faster, sure. Will it have at least three times more games than the regular PS5 though? Then it'll be a good investment.
Re: Updated PS5 Explore Page Adds New Features, Backgrounds
Push🔲 you've done one article with the PS5 OG under a red bulb, this one is under a green bulb. Can the next misc stock console shot feature a blue one please, to complete the RGB theme? 🟥🟩🟦
Re: PSN Is Currently Down, Seemingly a Widespread Issue
@BusyOlf Pretty sure it's just a red bulb. 💡
Re: PSN Is Currently Down, Seemingly a Widespread Issue
Been so busy writing songs and not gaming that I didn't notice. PS5 recently unplugged due to lack of use anyway so it's not vampiring little watts of power.
Re: Sony Reportedly Undertaking Internal Investigation Following Leaked PS5 Pro Specs
It's funny to think the PS5 Pro will launch to the same problem as the niche PSVR2 - not a big enough library, baby. Can you blame people for sticking with their cheaper PS4s, really, with an overly long cross gen period and few games justifying the upgrade.
This is the nothing generation of consoles, eh. The hardware is amazing on Series X and PS5 yet both have few things unique to them that are worth playing. In the meantime Nintendo clean up making fun games on an underpowered 2017 machine with hardware from 2015, less powerful than most people's smartphones.
Re: PS Portal Proving More Popular Than Sony Expected
"PS Portal Proving More Popular Than Sony Expected"
Not sure why - for what it costs it's a sub-par experience because Sony didn't bother to optimise Remote Play as a service so it carries all the same input lag/frame pacing issues the service does, just now on a device that you have to buy seperately when you can get the same kind of experience on a device you probably already own, like a smartphone or laptop. Glad I tried and didn't buy.
I know that goes against the common experience and love for it, but you've gotta go with what you feel based on experience, and it could have been a lot more than a boring Android tablet with DualSense halves glued onto it. It's no PS Vita.
Re: Xbox Games Hi-Fi Rush, Sea of Thieves, Pentiment, Grounded All Confirmed for PS5, PS4
I love how the rumour mill has turned a vague 20 minute podcast crammed with management speak into "confirmed: Halo coming to PlayStation". I mean if it is that's a long time away
Presumably they'll drip feed out some games, then release their final console (next gen) and then pull a SEGA and go from hardware to just software.
Nah I'm kidding, that's just an example of the wild, baseless speculation people are resorting to because there's very little interesting real gaming news in 2024. This console generation is pretty dull, as compared to the two before it at this point in their life cycles.
Re: Sony May Have Made the Right Call Not Copying Xbox Game Pass with PS Plus
@liathach From what you've said I'd actually agree and point out both Xbox and PS5 are suffering from a lack of good first party games, and their online subscription services are a bit disappointing as a result. I would point out that there is arguably more value on Xbox if you like previous gen games, due to sales on them, some being free on GP and a better selection whereas Sony has done very little in terms of additions to the PS2/PS3 Classics roster over the last few years. If they want to sweat their back catalogue for value that would be a good place to start - the way I see it, they're behind both Microsoft and Nintendo there.
Re: Sony May Have Made the Right Call Not Copying Xbox Game Pass with PS Plus
@UltimateOtaku91 "no one wants to play console games at 720p on a mobile phone with touch screen controls and lag"
Similar thinking behind why the PS Portal sold well initially, but by the end of this year will be basically forgotten about. Flash in the pan.
Re: Sony May Have Made the Right Call Not Copying Xbox Game Pass with PS Plus
I'm one of the rare gamers for whom neither PS Plus nor Game Pass have enough value to bother subscribing to, as I don't play online and the idea of renting games is something that belongs in the past (when I was a kid). I have the Nintendo one though as it's the cheapest and allows me and gf to easily game together, plus she loves all the N64 emulation, so much so I bought her a CRKD Deck in GameCube purple so no more stick drift as she only plays portable.
Personally I mostly prefer to wait until games are on sale around the £10 to £20 mark and just buy outright, with the exception of Lies Of P recently I paid RRP for because it's just that good and I didn't want to wait.
I would guess Game Pass numbers have stalled partly because they discontinued the 1 month or 3 month trial at £1 per month. I had it when it was cheap because it took mere seconds to make a new account, set the home Xbox and game stream, but when it was full price I realised I wasn't using it enough to pay as much as I do for YouTube. There's too many monthly subscriptions anyway, video and game services vying for your attention alongside bills that go out monthly, so it's worth weighing up what's worth it and what's not otherwise you're just wasting money you could use to fully own games and save the rest.
Re: PS5 Is Entering the 'Latter Stages of Its Life Cycle', Says Sony
@Grumblevolcano More than that, the power that is there isn't really being used. There aren't really any games that push the console fully to it's limits, and those that look like they do because they drop frames are usually just poorly optimised. You see the odd game getting there like Avatar, but overall there's no wow factor on most games.
Re: PS5 Is Entering the 'Latter Stages of Its Life Cycle', Says Sony
That's a dumb statement that would have been better left unsaid, to be honest. Neither PS5 nor Series X are anywhere near their potential being tapped, partly due to the pandemic and partly due to overly long crossgen support.
If this is going to continue then we need a decade long generation to make up for it, because as a PS5/Series X owner I'm noticing more and more that I'm still playing mostly last gen games; the few current gen only titles I do have aren't a particularly massive leap forward in terms of visuals or gameplay.
It's really underwhelming, like we're still stuck in the first year of release, not that this is the fourth year. The release schedule for big Sony first and second party games is pretty bare this year, which seems disappointing after a year where the last quarter brought some great mostly third party releases, a revised Slim model, the foolish Portal, and the woefully undersupported to the point of "why did they bother" PSVR2. All this hardware is starting to look like a profit-geneating smokescreen to help distract from what an underwhelming generation it is.
Maybe that's why people aren't buying it, from the point of view of the layperson there's "nothing to play"
Re: PS5, PS4 Pull in an Incredible 123 Million Monthly Active Users
I'm wondering how they judge this metric. My guess would be if a PlayStation 4/5 is switched on within a certain amount of days it counts as an "active user" even if they're doing something like me recently which is taking it out of rest mode a few minutes a week to browse the store sales. Same goes for anyone just using them for streaming even if their actual gaming time is less than an hour a week. What I'm saying is it's fine, but not very detailed, not that I expect Sony to be busting out the pie charts breaking down the console use so everyone can get freaked out about how much data on all of us they're REALLY collecting 😂
Re: PS5 Outsold Xbox Series X|S Nearly Two to One, According to Take-Two Sales Data
@Northern_munkey It's funny, because you said you "don't use the thing enough to know all its workings" and then wrongly said "incidentaly you can switch between ps5 games on the fly a lot quicker" again which I've told you isn't true.
It takes longer to back out of a loaded game to the PS5 home screen, choose another, wait for that to load, choose a save, load that then go into another game (usually better part of a minute) than using Quick Resume on Series X which with two button presses on the Elite controller and 5-10 seconds you're where you left off. It's a fact not a "whatever mate", I have both PS5/Series X so believe me I know. If you don't know that's fine, but stating something wrong as fact when someone's told you different is foolish.
"Still needs the games my friends 👍" Yep they both do - the PS5 is looking a little light on exclusives this year, sadly.
Re: PS5 Outsold Xbox Series X|S Nearly Two to One, According to Take-Two Sales Data
@Northern_munkey Let me debunk an inaccuracy there.
"My nephew has the xbox series x thingy (the black tower) and its a good machine but it's lacking that something..games..oh and the speedy loading"
No it's not missing the speedy loading on Series X|S. With Quick Resume you can move between about 5-8 suspended games in 10 seconds or less, no opening the game from scratch, no loading a save - it's literally where you left it. And if you have an Elite Series 2 you can do it with 2 button presses on the controller itself. Mine can currently move between The Witcher 3: Complete Edition, Red Dead Redemption II, GTA V, Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition and a few others pretty seamlessly. I wish the PS5 could do that.
Re: PS5 Outsold Xbox Series X|S Nearly Two to One, According to Take-Two Sales Data
TL;DR - the console UI, crossplatform games experience, controller and several other features are better to me on Series X not PS5.
.
.
True, PS5 has the better exclusives - it would be more even if big tentpole releases like Starfield and Redfall hadn't completely bombed for Microsoft - but it's a slender thing because there still aren't enough "next gen only" killer app system sellers that are "only on PlayStation" as their marketing goes.
I don't think Sony have the better platform in terms of how the console looks and performs. My PS5 Slim crashes in Rest Mode when I have Red Dead Redemption II running and it's a bit more susceptible to doing that in general with PS4 games. It was a launch bug that's supposedly fixed but it's still there. The Settings menu and UI navigation in general is unintuitive and I still dislike that they flipped how the PS button on the controller works. I can back up/restore PS4 saves but I can't do PS5 saves without doing a full console storage backup or subscribing to PS Plus, a service I don't want. Sony railroading people into PS Plus this way is a joke. Still no themes and folders on the home screen, minor gripe but relevant. Biggest compliments are that the design, weird/stupid shape that it is allows you to remove/clean the fan easily plus the M.2 SSD can be moved between consoles, no lockout.
A lot of previous gen crossplatform titles run better on Series X. Take underrated banger Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition - it runs at a smooth, sharp looking 60FPS compared to the lower resolution 30FPS PS4 version on PS5. Red Dead Redemption II is a lot sharper presentation wise with the One X version on Series X. Older titles can have FPS Boost/Auto HDR without needing a recompile of the game which is the limiting factor for PS4 games on PS5. Backwards compatibility on Series X reaches all the way to the OG Xbox. If you pay a small amount to enable Dev Mode you can emulate Wii, GameCube, PS2 etc, using that Series X power; weird position where an Xbox runs more PS2 games than a PS5.
Series X has a better UI (with themes and folder-like grouping, yep). If you have an Elite Series 2 controller you not only have something more comfortable with better battery life than Sony's ripoff the Edge (also a member of U2), but if you set up a paddle as a SHIFT key you can assign shortcuts to the controller. On mine if I press SHIFT&A it opens RDR2, SHIFT&Y opens YouTube etc. Quick Resume allows you to move between about 5-8 different games, so with the Elite controller you're switching between multiple games with only two button presses: 10 seconds later you're back where you left off, it's pretty seamless. Cloud saving is free and works as far back as the Xbox 360 as per my testing - I have saves from literally 2013 that still work whereas Sony allow you free storage for video/image captures of games without PS Plus but not game saves...
I probably sound like an Xbox fanboy, but I'm not. The launch CECHA PS3 is my favourite console of all time which still gets used semi-regularly, however when it comes to crossplatform current and older gen games, I own enough across the Xbox & PS that the experience is basically always better on the former. Yes the PS5 is getting exclusives the Series X doesn't plus will play PS4 generation exclusives, but for me that's pretty much the only value.
Re: Microsoft Has Apparently Been Stocking Up on PS5 Devkits as Xbox Pivots
@Stickleman Well said! Everyone just needs to be what few are these days - patient. Wasting time and effort with guesswork doesn't mean any of it is right. I very much doubt Xbox will give up its entire gaming library to third parties - people are acting as if one day you'll see Halo on a PlayStation, I'm sorry but no that's just silly 😂
I agree with something Tim Rogers said although it's a bit less true this generation, which is when it comes to cross platform console games that the Xbox version is preferable, partly because you can play them with the Elite Series 2 controller, which beats the DualSense, a clunky feeling toy with crap battery life compared to that.
For me there's no bias here as I own a Switch, Series X and PS5. I'm not overly thrilled with any of them right now as it's been a weak time in gaming, although there were some bangers released at the end of 2023 like Robocop.
Re: Microsoft Has Apparently Been Stocking Up on PS5 Devkits as Xbox Pivots
@Ainu20 Exactly, there's truth in it just what kind of truth, we don't know yet. There's a lot of jumping to conclusions and speculating going on and as is often the case a lot of it will end up being wrong, as it was for the Activision acquisition.
Re: Microsoft Has Apparently Been Stocking Up on PS5 Devkits as Xbox Pivots
@EvilSilentFrame This is an astute comment, agree with all of it. Competition doesn't just drive innovation (something sorely needed in tech in general right now as it's stagnant) but it helps keep the consumer from getting ripped off.
Re: Microsoft Has Apparently Been Stocking Up on PS5 Devkits as Xbox Pivots
I love that the response from certain gamers, here and elsewhere, is to treat rumours and slivers of information as gospel, fact, foregone conclusion when there's very little evidence to base anything on.
Microsoft buying more PS5 devkits could just as easily mean they're stocking Activision up with more of them to make confirmed cross platform titles like CoD easier to develop.
This jumping the gun is exactly the sort of thing that also happens when some gaming related company patents an idea, a lazy gaming news site makes an article out of it and people go "omg are they serious?! Rlly who needs that". Gamers are truly fickle sometimes.