zekepliskin

Good points, all. Do you find the DualSense has this weird kinda click point when it's going back to centre though? It feels like it's not smooth from inside to outside if that makes sense. I have had a bunch of them and even the new out of box ones have that feel. The haptics are amazing and the ergonomics too, just not very durable and unlike the mighty DualShock 3s which even on original old battery cells can last 10+ hours, them and the DS4s die quickly.

Your PS5 is noisy, interesting. Have you cleaned the fan recently? You need to fully remove it but be careful it's super easy to strip the screws as they're quite soft on the heads. Then with the fan removed you can blast the inside where it goes into the console to clear out the heatsink a bit. You'd wanna remove the side fins and swab the with Q tips as well because they collect a lot of dust there especially if it's vertical. Good practice to do this every 6 months or so depending on how heavily you game. Keeping it in a horizontal and in a well ventilated media centre is good too as it takes longer for dust to get into it.

@DonaldMcRonald Could just be you haven't owned as many PlayStations as I have and we view durability differently. The PS2 Phat is an absolute tank inside and out for most models though, makes the others all look flimsy to be honest.

@DonaldMcRonald If that's your experience sure, great, but I just lent over and gently squeezed the plates together and both them and the console creaked and flexed so yeah. My PS3 Phat basically doesn't do that at all at any point other than the card reader door which is known to be flimsy anyway.

@SlipperyFish I like to think of it as, I enjoy how quiet it is compared to a PS4, it does a good job upscaling and mode promoting everything to 4K HDR with sometimes FPS boosts to certain games that got recompiled such as inFAMOUS: Second Son and the controller is alright (as I expected, not enough games are doing clever stuff with the rumble same problem as the Switch - beyond Returnal there really aren't that many I feel do anything other than generic rumble that is probably easy to implement cross-platform for the devs) and the UI is also a step up from the PS4 though a step down from the PS3. The Witcher 3 got a hell of a performance and visuals boost, finally, because the 30FPS PS4 version had crazy input lag and was awful, now it's all good looking smooth 60FPS, no input lag, finally cross-platform saves work between Switch, Xbox and PS (I own all 3 versions) without issues but that's part of my problem... this is still an 8 year old game that was released 2 years into the last generation. Same with Bloodborne although minus the improved FPS and it still has awful frame pacing like a lot of From games.

@DonaldMcRonald Not talking about the panels bud, I'm talking about what's sandwiched between them which is why I'm saying take them off and lightly flex the black console part, creaks like crazy, pretty much the same build "quality" as a PS3 Super Slim lol.

@SlipperyFish Well said! Newer is essentially the same, but worse in some respects, arguably better in others. Those little metal feet to put it vertically are an even further step backwards than the original circular swivel stand which worked for both, how they managed to take a stupid design and introduce an even more dumb element to it. Same as how you can sort YouTube comments supposedly by amount of likes, highest to lowest and yet it's still all out of order. Multi-billion dollar companies, people.

It's funny how well this will sell, even though really it's not that Slim, looks cheaper than the original (which was already made with cheap, creaky plastic, try taking the panels off and see what I mean) and I am almost certain uses a similar but not quite identical revision of the PCB (SSD slot moving is a giveaway obviously) and obviously it's still on a 6nm die so there's no shrink there.

PS5 Slim is still bigger across certain parts of dimensions than the PS3 Phat, and way uglier (I think the PS3 Phat is beautiful to look at in a lot of ways, and doesn't need a stand for either horizontal nor vertical orientation).

I have a CUH-12xx series which runs quiet and mostly gets used for PS4 games, so personally I don't see a need to upgrade. I'm wondering why the Japanese do, is it smaller must be better in a kind of bonsai tree fashion or women's feet way or something?

I have a Switch, I rarely play it handheld, only docked (easier to capture video from it that way too). I've dabbled with remote play of various kinds over the last 10 years and although it's improved, I still find it lacking (or should that be I still find it lagging?). Video quality issues, stutters that aren't present on the original games, input latency, and this sometimes is on home LAN with no other traffic. I always quickly hit the point of "why bother" and wait until I'm home so I can have a game experience that's immersive and only blighted by any tech issues present in the game itself, which are far more minor.

For people saying it's because the main TV is tied up, it's really no issue to get a HDMI splitter and have a second TV maybe say a 1080p one as you can get Sony Bravias of about 32-40 inches for dirt cheap on Marketplace, we're talking £30 and under if you really look. Some of those older TVs have even lower latency on the panel in Game mode than modern 4K TVs do also on their Game mode - this is true of my modern Sony versus my old KDL-37EX503, it feels more fluid and you can see/hear the 4KTV is behind by several frames. This is all less cost than the £199 for the Portal.

Those who are raving about how much they love their new Portal, in some cases, are just loving it because it's new and novel, and the fascination will fade. In those cases I look forward to picking one up for £50 barely used in box, in around 2-5 years just to dabble with, assuming Sony don't stop the thing working around the time it's looking to launch the PS6. For that money it's a fun toy, for £199 there's so many better things I could spend that on, and in a way I did - my fully working Japanese PS3 CECHA00 cost £200 including shipping and came with a ton of stuff.

Snore Of Duty: Modern Borefare, See?

I say this for the humour, not having played a lot of CoD beyond the awesome Zombies mode of the original 2010 Black Ops. I don't plan to play this either lol.

@LiamOliver The way I see it, the PS3 is still the best console overall that Sony ever made, so much so I got a Japanese CECHA00 one with full PS2 compatibility (well 99% at least) to get better looking PS2 emulation and yeah, it's a pretty impressive difference via HDMI, a lot cleaner than my actual phat PS2. I want to try and capture some of that but the problem is the PS3 has HDCP on it so it's finding a splitter card.

Beyond the PS2 stuff yep the PS3 has an amazing library, lot of underrated gems like Shadow of the Damned or Lollipop Chainsaw, plus remaster/ports of stuff like the original two God of War games which run really well.

Never really got on with the PS4 whether Phat, Slim or Pro despite a couple of great games I love like inFAMOUS: Second Son however I find the PS5 better for PS4 gaming in a similar way to how the PS3 is better for PS2 gaming - better quality visuals as some PS4 games got frame rate bumps, the PS5 itself runs more quietly and obviously getting stuff in need of a remaster like Bloodborne running in 4K HDR upscaled is a plus. Bluepoint did such a great job with Demon's Souls on PS5 (plus the HD versions of GoW I mentioned earlier and MGS 2+3 that I'd love them to do Bloodborne as well, they'd knock it out of the park).

"Whenever any tech company anywhere patents (often wacky) ideas, the news spreads near-instantaneously, even though we rarely see these concepts become a reality"

Fixed that for you, Robert. Pretty standard news site trend and has been for years.

@Kevw2006 Maybe I should have said "Folders are essential to many people if you have a big games library, trust me"_ but I don't see the point of endlessly discussing the minutiae in lieu of better things to do... all the best

@LiamOliver You're welcome - in fact the PS3 has an option for grouping stuff automatically by platform which is automatically done every time you add a new game, too. This doesn't work so well when using ISO backups of PS2 games but you can use WebMAN (if you have it) with stuff grouped by platform as well. With or without CFW, the PS3 is just that much more logical to use.

@Kevw2006 "I can assure you that folders absolutely are not essential. "

Classic gamer "stating opinion/own bias as fact for all". Don't do that.

No, you can only assure me that in your specific use case they're not. Not everyone wants to use the search function to browse a specific game. Plenty of people like to have them sorted by platform or genre, with good reasons for doing so, for example completing a game in a specific genre and wanting to see what else they have that they own haven't played yet that's similar. Your solution isn't everyone's solution.

@LiamOliver Folders are essential if you have a big games library, trust me. It's not unreasonable to want to stick things in catagories. Since this feature has existed since the PS3 with Albums which you can name and put whatever you want in them - folders by another name - why Sony haven't learnt to just put the feature in and keep it baffles me and many other people. It's pretty basic UI design stuff.

If you own say less than 10 games I can see why you wouldn't care, but at this point across PS1-PS5 including PSP and Vita, I own dozens and dozens of them and I'm not alone there.

PS5's Share button is about as useful to me as the Bixby button on Samsung phones - it sits on the left only getting used by accident, with me wishing it could be remapped to something more useful (like opening a dedicated app or game of the user's choice).

@Mauzuri Agreed. Not saying the PS3 UI was perfect - it's not - but the XMB iteration was pleasing, the lack of background music wise (PS4 and PS5 I always switched off the dull ambient swirling), and it's still a better Blu-ray player in terms of features, for whatever that's worth in this age of streaming.

So as is often the case, Sony has been taken to majority share by either a FIFA or CoD title, those two most generic and stale game franchises lol. Yay I guess. I still think Returnal is the best thing on the system other than the Spider-Man titles, to be honest.

@NinjaNicky Such a po-faced, literal and humourless response... I miss the old days of the internet where people knew how to read and write humour. 🤷🏻‍♂️ All the best. ✌🏻

Seen this days ago. Pretty obvious change and yep like others mine was doing it before the firmware update.

Still haven't fixed the crappy UI though. Or put an option in the cluttered disorganised menus "never Follow a game I buy automatically" because I hate the tiles, I just want to get to the power/download menus without one extra press thanks, Cerny/Sony.

@NinjaNicky No one did, but not to be rude your phrasing was pretty poor 😂. "people like me that can't always get access to the TV" - you're using the word the in that sentence as the definite article, as in it's not "a TV" suggesting more than one or "the TVs" which is flat out stating it. If it wasn't worth a quick stop for a joke then I don't know what is. 😇

Not overly difficult to "lay down with a TV" I find; assuming you have a regular rectangular sofa you can place a TV at either the left or right end facing inwards and then lay across the sofa lengthwise, essentially reclined comfortably. That's what I do with my retro TV for 1080p consoles like the PS3 and Switch, works well especially when the main TV is used for something else.

Doesn't matter how many they've sold - it's still yet to reach it's potential and in fact is slower on that front than the PS3 and PS4, which were really cooking after the first 2 years (and in my opinion basically were within year 1). Perhaps they should concentrate more on games, rather than niche accessories.

@NinjaNicky You can afford a Switch, Steam Deck and PS5 but not like a decent used 1080p TV for 50 bucks? Interesting budgetary choices...

The best way to enjoy all the non-core PS5 stuff (basically everything that isn't the console, regular DualSense controllers and games) like PSVR2, Edge, Portal is to wait for people to buy them, realise what a mistake they've made in a few years, then get them cheap and probably in the case of PSVR2 all the games cheap too.

Honestly, everything outside the basics over the years that isn't console and regular controller bombs sooner or later. Anyone still play PS Move games that aren't VR? Very few I'll bet. All this current wave of Sony junk is their Nintendo Labo. Here today, gone tomorrow, not important.

I remember when the PS3 came out it was bigger than the original Xbox and the whole XBOX HEUG meme, but now when you have the PS5 next to the original PS3 it's way bigger and takes up a lot of space in a media centre. I think it's worth it for how much quieter it runs compared to the PS4 but yeah, it's a weird design that doesn't sit horizontally flat without the stand or being propped up, and reminds me of the art style from Detroit: Become Human, but not in a good way.

I have a feeling Sony cheaped out on the redesign because then they could probably use either a similar or the same PCB fabrication from the original models, and that it's been done to facilitate different face plates plus sell the disc drive as an upgradeable accessory for those who got lumped with the Digital model and realise that used disc games are cheaper than the store basically all of the time.

With modern PlayStation, just remember everything is driven by the acquisition of easy money, and the "Slim" is a perfect example of that.

With AI being used to make essays, do voice overs etc, eventually we'll be living in a world where one human instructs an AI to communicate with another human's AI because neither can be bothered to communicate properly, I'm sure. It's a worse vision of the future than WALL-E to be honest.

Art is one of the most vital parts of the human experience and yet it gets treated with such entitled disdain like it doesn't matter, in the first world at least. At this rate all the artists will just give up if people think AI generated art - which just amalgamates the work of non-consenting real artists remember - is good enough.

It's funny that the word feed is used with AI because at this rate it won't just eat all the art and communication out of people, it'll steal the souls of those who let it too. Good riddance to those kinds of people, I guess.

@nomither6 I love and agree with your impassioned defense of the PS3. It's the pinnacle of PlayStation and they'll never do it again. Even now, it's a better more fully featured media centre than the pale imitation of such on the PS4 and PS5. The PS3 feels like it had care and attention poured into every part, whereas the other two are a bit more, well, it plays games, what more do you want?

Sony used to be so committed to preserving games they had a console that would play them on modern devices as part of the package.

They called it the launch PS3. It was an amazing console able to play PS2 and PS1 games as part of the purchase price. There was even a hidden PSP emulator you could get at with homebrew.

Now if you want to do that sort of thing it's been stuck behind a paywall - either you rebuy old titles (some of which are PS2 Classics which don't run right on newer hardware due to poor porting) or pay monthly for the streaming of them. A lot of cult classics still aren't available this way, though.

So long story short, Shawn is right but sadly I don't see any change coming, especially when Konami and Rockstar and Sony et Al can make easy money from these piss poor ports.

Me personally, I'm keeping my personally refurbed Japanese PS3 until it doesn't work any more, because I love that I can play all my old games as they were, not minus licensed music or badly ported, for no extra charge other than my time to strip and clean it and repaste the processors.

8/10 is way too high for lazy ports. Doesn't matter how good the games are.

I have a Japanese PS3 that launched in 2006, and I can already play the PS1, PS2 and PS3 versions where applicable, and this machine has been able to do that for the PS1 and PS2 versions since launch. 17 years ago. And yes the PS3 will upscale to HD resolutions too, basically doing the same as Master-bate Collection for very little since the original games can be picked up on disc used for a mere couple of quid or bucks.

So Konami phoning it in this way is a complete joke.

Considering what a lazy slipshod pointless set of ports this is (and even the term port is to be used loosely due to MGS1 being a PS1 emulator in a wrapper), in a year where we've already had several similarly lazy phoned in efforts like Red Dead Redemption, I'm sure Kojima is glad that his name isn't attached to it. This sort of crap would never pass his own quality standards because he respects his fans a lot more and wouldn't do this to them.

"Don't Worry, You Can Still Upgrade the PS5 Slim's SSD"

Misnomer because you can't technically upgrade the original PS5 SSD - it's SMD soldered to the board. More accurate to say the Slim still has the NVMe port for adding more SSD based storage.

@LifeGirl My opinion differs on this because I feel Ellie was a great, nuanced character in TLoU 1, and due to mediocre writing lost a lot of that in TLoU 2.

2023 is fast becoming the year of lazy, phone it in ports eh? Better to just boot a lot of these "remasters" up on original hardware or emulation and play them that way. With a GPU overclock Lollipop Chainsaw runs at a solid 30FPS on my PS3s anyway. Underrated game and surprisingly difficult in places.

Ryan was not a patch on Ken, Kaz or Shaun in terms of being engaging and communicating clearly. He's never struck me as a gamer, just a businessman who doesn't mind the market he's found himself in. There's passion for profit over passion for product.

I wouldn't say he's a caretaker president because he pushed the brand forward, just maybe not in the most friendly and engaging ways. So here's hoping whomever replaces him brings back some of that more personal feel.

I'm platform agnostic, so it's fun to see PlayStation only people throwing shade on Starfield mostly because they don't have it. 🤣

Has anyone moaned about how old the game engine is or did I miss it? By almost all accounts, a successful launch in an acceptable playable state unlike Redfall, and fun if you like Todd Howard's style of game. Which I do.

To be fair the limited edition Starfield console is almost as pretty as the Halo Infinite one. The controller too. I like the design.

Still rather play PS2-3 games though 😁

I'll pick whatever gives a solid 60FPS, ray tracing really isn't the be-all, end-all at this point so if it has it and is steady then great, if not I'd happily sacrifice it for performance.

Anyone who remembers the PS3 Slim in about 2010 knows there were a run of black/red/blue controllers, semi limited edition style. So this is just a rehash of that. Very green of Sony to recycle this 13 year old idea, although in metaphor only as green isn't one of the colours featured.

Really, more of these remasters that are just lazy ports with minimal improvements to anything? It's like all major publishers are just putting the original games which are running inside an emulator with 3x-5x or whatever interpolated scaling inside an executable wrapper for whatever platform they're ported to. Theyre barely even ports let alone remasters.

Rockstar got away with this for Red Dead Redemption, Konami are doing it for Metal Gear Solid, it's becoming increasingly common and it's sad to see people wasting their money on these shovelware when they could emulate the original games with upscaling for free and have it look and play just about the same.

For all it's flaws, the PS4 and PS5 just don't have that premium feel like the PS3. Always found the PS4 UI to be bland and uninspired but at least it's functional after years of improvements. The PS5 is... well it has particle effects but that's not impressive, so does the PS3. Functionally nearly 3 years after release it's a bit lacking, and bit is me being polite. Those game thumbnails are still too small if you have anything under a 40 inch TV, plus game copying between internal and external storage feels very dated. It's pretty powerful, are you telling me the entire system needs to be single task only and you can't do anything else?

@belmont Can't you just stick it in a folder to get rid of it? I have one called SonyJunk for all the build in crud I have no interest in using (basically everything that isn't a game or YouTube).

Getting serious WALL-E vibes here. That's no bad thing because it's a great movie. This could be too because it's such a unique story. Depends how much exposition there is I suppose - Stray worked well because it was woven in nicely with the story.

Let's see...

Bloodborne [PS4 Slim]
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe [Switch]
Bully [PS2 on PS3]
Burnout 3 [PS2 on PS3]
OutRun 2 SP: Special Tours [PS2 on PS3]
Ridge Racer 7 [PS3]
Red Dead Redemption [Switch]

Pretty weak stuff, Spider-Man 2 aside. I grew up in the 90s and never expected to keep seeing Sonic and MK sequels nearly 30 years later. I'll be sticking to visiting and revisiting some PS2/PS3 classics on my BC PS3 I think. Might even open and clean/repaste my PS4 Slim so I can play original Spider-Man and Bloodborne in peace as it's getting loud.

@Impossibilium You could buy the most recent copy of the game and then obtain a copy of the PS3 as an ISO and call it fair use? I ended up doing just that with Sleeping Dogs - I own the PS4 "Definitive Edition" but then grabbed it on PS3 with all the DLC and prefer playing it there as with an overclocked GPU softmod it'll be stable at 30FPS more than the PS4 is and it's quieter on either of my two PS3s than my PS4 Slim

Jordan is a legend in the game industry - I'd say among his many notable achievements working with Ubisoft to make The Sands Of Time is my favourite.

Those interested in that sort of thing should subscribe to Noclip on YouTube. Their documentary work won't net you trophies but it will teach you a lot of interesting stuff about how developers work and how much effort and pride they put into the finished product. The Dishonored one is particularly great, especially when they talk to the level designer about how the clockwork mansion was conceptualised and realised. Danny O'Dwyer is also working tirelessly to preserve video game history by archiving old video game and promo footage so that's worth a donation.

The best emulators that Sony made for the PS2 were the launch PS3s, especially the CECHA/B which had the entire PS2 custom chip set inside with some extra options for scale and smoothing on top as they passed from the EE+GS to the RSX.

Launch PS3s allow you to run OPL as well, meaning game streaming from USB or network. Plus you can use GSM which allows you to force a very sharp and crisp looking 1080i scaling which is better than the hardware upres that Sony used to go from 480i to 1080p. If your TV can deinterlace well and has some zoom control you can get a stunning wide-screen image with colours that pop, lower blur and an all round cleaner image that even my PS2 with Component cables can't manage.

I reckon it'd be cheaper to buy a good condition launch PS3, add an SSD etc than it would to pay for the top tier PS Plus for a couple of years, then you could have basically 99% of the PS2 library through a HDMI driven device.

Even the software driven PS2 Classics emulator for the PS3 beat what came out on the PS4, and with CFW can be repurposed with different games too. Main drawback is 720p limit (no 1080i/p here) and a lot of 60FPS games run at 30FPS or at least move between the two, I assume it's some kind of buffering issue due to how hard the PS2 is to emulate. Point is the PS3 still wins versus the PS4/5 here.

EDIT: I also recently tried the macOS fork of PCSX2 which uses Metal API (should run on Intel and Apple Silicon basically) and on a Mac with dedicated GPU (if it's Intel) performance can be decent with very little config. So Sony, when your PS2 games run better on a Mac than your own official hardware, isn't it time to admit there's a problem? It's the best selling console of all time and it deserves better than this. We've gone from the Ken Kutaragi years of building PS2 hardware and software emulation into the next gen to modern day Jim Ryan where it's being neglected even though the
PS5 is orders of magnitude more powerful than the PS3 and making a great emulator, although a significant investment at first, would be possible.

Control is one of the best games I've ever played, and one of the few where it made me enjoy having a current gen system (Series X in 60fps mode). So fair play to them, something to break up the endless dull "remasters" and bland Ubisoft style open worlds where it's endless pointless busy work.

Not that I've played it for dozens of hours yet, but the Switch version runs great, looks miles better than the PS3 blurriness and hasn't bugged out on ways the original didn't yet. As I consider this just about acceptable I'm happy to have it.

Getting the same game experience on the PS4 though? First of all why is there no dedicated PS5 version, second of all from what the review said there's more wrong with it than the original PS3 version. Maybe that's the spaghetti (western) code rearing it's head, that made it hard to port in the first place, but that's still no excuse.

Thankfully it's not the AI mess that The Diminutive Edition was lol.

No I wouldn't buy it for PS4, I'd play the blurrier but still fun PS3 version.

However having said that, I did have the Switch version bought for me as a birthday present because I've wanted it on there as long as I can remember, and am still mystified they didn't combine the release of RDR2 with RDR1 on Switch, PS4 and Xbox One. Weird. Because if the minimal effort shown here was all it took it could have been done years ago, 2018 if you like.

Sony might well be clearly in the lead, however from my point of view neither they nor Microsoft have had a particularly strong start to this generation.

I agree with John Linnemann from Digital Foundry who recently said it feels this generation is only just starting. Even then, there aren't many PS5/XSX exclusives as they keep getting ported to the previous gen systems and/or PC, which gives people less incentive to upgrade from PS4. Feels like the generation doesn't have it's own identity yet, really, especially in light of the above-average amount of barebones "remasters" we're getting which are often just lazy ports.

Perhaps it's rose-tinted glasses but for launch and first couple of years of PS3/PS4 I remember things being a bit more exciting. Obviously the PS3 was initially unpopular due to price point and Sony's arrogance about it, but it still had a strong launch lineup and forward thinking multimedia capabilities that were ahead of it's time.

Whereas with the gen PS5 so far my memories are how good Returnal is but it's now on PC too so meh, Astro's Playroom was kinda genius but has no replay value, how many times I've had a DualSense fail on me and had to send it back and I'm not rough on controllers at all, how the UI is an even less intuitive version of the PS4 (Sony suck at menus), that it's nice to play some PS4 titles like inFAMOUS: Second Son at 60FPS... and that's about it. Hardly a glowing review.

Between all the MTX, lazy ports and pandemic caused delays I'm sure, gaming in general feels pretty stagnant and uninteresting to me. Whenever I dip into the PS2/PS3 libraries I'm reminded how much more vibrant the mid-2000s were, and how maybe that was peak gaming and it's all been slowly downhill since about a decade ago.

Either that or I'm just old and jaded having been a gamer since the Master System/C64. Possibly both.