@riceNpea You're not saying most tablets are 720p are you? Because that's plain wrong. SAMSUNG Galaxy Tab S9 for example, 1600p in around a 12" form factor.
@dschons I'll be honest, I always notice micro-stutter, whether it's caused by poor frame pacing a la Bloodborne or streaming issues. It's part of why I started watching DF in the first place - to be able to tell the difference and name stuff like that. It's a shame Remote Play still hasn't fixed that - I concede it is improved, but when you have a 200 dollar object that only has one job it needs to nail it. The Portal doesn't nail it, they really did nothing new or different or improved with Remote Play to make this device special, it's just another way to access a service other more versatile devices have been able to do for years.
As someone who tried PS4 Remote Play with a PS Vita literally back around 2015, let me tell you it was not a pleasant experience. I had fiber optic broadband with a decentish upload speed and low ping time, yet on the rare times it would connect the delay was half a second to a second, so most of my short time with it was turning the camera around going "nope, totally unplayable" for stuff like GTA V. Maybe Sony waiting for a little less latency was the better move, but that doesn't mean I'd buy a Portal until they're £50 in a couple of years when the novelty has long since worn off (similar to how PSVR1 complete sets can basically be had for like £30-40 on Marketplace and still not many buyers).
Although I would maintain that it's been a weak first couple of years as compared to PS3 and PS4, Xbox Series consoles are definitely much more towards wasted potential than the PS5, which still has tent pole gems like Returnal, Ragnarok and Spider-Man 2 propping up the library, and the near-flawless PS4 title support is a huge boon too, especially those that got free or very cheap PS5 upgrades to visuals and/or performance.
@bluesylvanite Yes I know all this, but I think all digital storefronts are too expensive regardless. I'd like 20%-30% lower gross price for digital games, to account for the lack of physical media (no cost involved to ship etc as I mentioned) and the fact it's not transferable unless you sell your PSN or other account.
Although this will take years to go to verdict and settlement, and Sony won't barely feel it (plus the quoted figure is a maximum and I'm sure they will appeal it downwards, as defendants do), it's about time something like this happened.
Years ago, believe it or not, digital storefronts were promised as ways for the customer, us gamers basically, to have saved costs from not having to make, ship, distribute etc physical media passed onto us. That was a big selling point only 15-20 years ago. It's amazing how quickly that all went away when big businesses realised people would pay full price for a non-physical copy anyway.
Not only that, but the base price of PlayStation games has gone up, too. PS Plus has more tiers now and so has also increased in price. It's getting a bit weird and kinda disgusting to see "Deluxe" packages of popular games with season passes going for £109.99 and upwards, when all that amounts to are a couple of new maps and outfits every few months. Wow. Maximum effort from the developers there for the extra investment.
Yes, Sony are very much excessively and greedily cashcowing their customers, so anything that brings them closer to back in line or fairness - well, as close as the US legal system can manage, anyway - is fantastic. I only ever buy games on big sales and I don't game online or care to, so it doesn't affect me as much, but for those who live and die PlayStation, and get ripped off for it in the same way football supports buy horribly overpriced and usually pretty poor quality strips (I've had a few) of their club I suppose, it's a pretty big potential saving in years to come.
In a lot of ways PC gaming hasn't changed since I got out of it over a decade ago - forever fiddling with drivers and game settings to try and make things run smoothly. Can't be bothered, to be honest. Yes my eyes can tell the difference between 1080p SDR and 4K HDR but it's not the quantum leap going from 576i PAL to 1080p HD was 15 years previous, so consoles (a lot of which are rendering their games around the 1080p-1440p mark and upscaling to 4K anyway) are just fine.
I'll second anyone saying DualSense controllers aren't well made - they really aren't. Even from new the sticks feel cheap and have a weird phantom click when going back to centre from the edges, and they tend to have resistive trigger and drift issues even if you're not rough with them. Meanwhile I have a bunch of 20+ year old GameCube ones and they're fine.
I'll try posting this here, see if anyone has a sense of humour unlike Eurogamer.
The thing is, the PS4 one is already so eye-poppingly gorgeous I don't see what more they can do with it that would be worth the money? I mean, as much as I think the story is deeply flawed and will age horribly when we look back at the "woke entitlement era" what with all the shoehorned in LGBTQIA+ diversity, very much going to be a product of it's time, you can't argue that it isn't gorgeous and it's a very accessible game for a lot of people, probably because it's fairly simple if you're not disabled and if you are, credit to the Dog, they really made it approachable for players who have mobility issues in one or both hands as well as the "becoming more standard" good stuff like compensation for colour blind players stuff.
It won't change the story, it won't change the visuals much, the controls are already good... it's not going to be a huge leap like PS3 to PS5 versions of Part 1 though. And for the record I still prefer the 2013 original on the PS3 because it's downright impressive seeing how much performance the Dog was able to wring out of the at that point aging PS3 hardware. So much so that it killed a lot of the old ones due to how thoroughly well optimised it was to the SPUs of the CellBE. It's humbling and adds an extra element playing such a good game with the gratitude that it hasn't slayed your console yet.
Still, for only ten bucks... lotta people will try it so it's a good price point.
No sale on Returnal since last year which is a shame because Housemarque knocked it out of the park with that one I think anyone who likes a tough but mostly fair challenge in their third person shooters should play it. Makes a nice change to have a non-sexualised female lead for a change too - Selene is a total badass considering she's just a regular-sized woman rather than some amazon like beefcake.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Comments 654
Re: Rediscovered Patent Suggests PS Portal Was In the Works Since at Least 2015
@riceNpea You're not saying most tablets are 720p are you? Because that's plain wrong. SAMSUNG Galaxy Tab S9 for example, 1600p in around a 12" form factor.
Re: Rediscovered Patent Suggests PS Portal Was In the Works Since at Least 2015
@dschons I'll be honest, I always notice micro-stutter, whether it's caused by poor frame pacing a la Bloodborne or streaming issues. It's part of why I started watching DF in the first place - to be able to tell the difference and name stuff like that. It's a shame Remote Play still hasn't fixed that - I concede it is improved, but when you have a 200 dollar object that only has one job it needs to nail it. The Portal doesn't nail it, they really did nothing new or different or improved with Remote Play to make this device special, it's just another way to access a service other more versatile devices have been able to do for years.
Re: Rediscovered Patent Suggests PS Portal Was In the Works Since at Least 2015
As someone who tried PS4 Remote Play with a PS Vita literally back around 2015, let me tell you it was not a pleasant experience. I had fiber optic broadband with a decentish upload speed and low ping time, yet on the rare times it would connect the delay was half a second to a second, so most of my short time with it was turning the camera around going "nope, totally unplayable" for stuff like GTA V. Maybe Sony waiting for a little less latency was the better move, but that doesn't mean I'd buy a Portal until they're £50 in a couple of years when the novelty has long since worn off (similar to how PSVR1 complete sets can basically be had for like £30-40 on Marketplace and still not many buyers).
Re: It's Utter Domination for PS5 in Europe as Xbox Continues to Lose Significant Ground
Although I would maintain that it's been a weak first couple of years as compared to PS3 and PS4, Xbox Series consoles are definitely much more towards wasted potential than the PS5, which still has tent pole gems like Returnal, Ragnarok and Spider-Man 2 propping up the library, and the near-flawless PS4 title support is a huge boon too, especially those that got free or very cheap PS5 upgrades to visuals and/or performance.
Re: Court Rules £5 Billion Lawsuit Against Sony Can Go Ahead, Following Years of 'Excessive' PS Store Prices
@bluesylvanite Yes I know all this, but I think all digital storefronts are too expensive regardless. I'd like 20%-30% lower gross price for digital games, to account for the lack of physical media (no cost involved to ship etc as I mentioned) and the fact it's not transferable unless you sell your PSN or other account.
Re: Court Rules £5 Billion Lawsuit Against Sony Can Go Ahead, Following Years of 'Excessive' PS Store Prices
Although this will take years to go to verdict and settlement, and Sony won't barely feel it (plus the quoted figure is a maximum and I'm sure they will appeal it downwards, as defendants do), it's about time something like this happened.
Years ago, believe it or not, digital storefronts were promised as ways for the customer, us gamers basically, to have saved costs from not having to make, ship, distribute etc physical media passed onto us. That was a big selling point only 15-20 years ago. It's amazing how quickly that all went away when big businesses realised people would pay full price for a non-physical copy anyway.
Not only that, but the base price of PlayStation games has gone up, too. PS Plus has more tiers now and so has also increased in price. It's getting a bit weird and kinda disgusting to see "Deluxe" packages of popular games with season passes going for £109.99 and upwards, when all that amounts to are a couple of new maps and outfits every few months. Wow. Maximum effort from the developers there for the extra investment.
Yes, Sony are very much excessively and greedily cashcowing their customers, so anything that brings them closer to back in line or fairness - well, as close as the US legal system can manage, anyway - is fantastic. I only ever buy games on big sales and I don't game online or care to, so it doesn't affect me as much, but for those who live and die PlayStation, and get ripped off for it in the same way football supports buy horribly overpriced and usually pretty poor quality strips (I've had a few) of their club I suppose, it's a pretty big potential saving in years to come.
Re: Steam Store Update Adds Specific DualSense, DualShock Controller Support
In a lot of ways PC gaming hasn't changed since I got out of it over a decade ago - forever fiddling with drivers and game settings to try and make things run smoothly. Can't be bothered, to be honest. Yes my eyes can tell the difference between 1080p SDR and 4K HDR but it's not the quantum leap going from 576i PAL to 1080p HD was 15 years previous, so consoles (a lot of which are rendering their games around the 1080p-1440p mark and upscaling to 4K anyway) are just fine.
I'll second anyone saying DualSense controllers aren't well made - they really aren't. Even from new the sticks feel cheap and have a weird phantom click when going back to centre from the edges, and they tend to have resistive trigger and drift issues even if you're not rough with them. Meanwhile I have a bunch of 20+ year old GameCube ones and they're fine.
Re: The Last of Us 2 PS5 Remaster Announced, Has a Brand New Survival Mode, $10 Upgrade Path
I'll try posting this here, see if anyone has a sense of humour unlike Eurogamer.
The thing is, the PS4 one is already so eye-poppingly gorgeous I don't see what more they can do with it that would be worth the money? I mean, as much as I think the story is deeply flawed and will age horribly when we look back at the "woke entitlement era" what with all the shoehorned in LGBTQIA+ diversity, very much going to be a product of it's time, you can't argue that it isn't gorgeous and it's a very accessible game for a lot of people, probably because it's fairly simple if you're not disabled and if you are, credit to the Dog, they really made it approachable for players who have mobility issues in one or both hands as well as the "becoming more standard" good stuff like compensation for colour blind players stuff.
It won't change the story, it won't change the visuals much, the controls are already good... it's not going to be a huge leap like PS3 to PS5 versions of Part 1 though. And for the record I still prefer the 2013 original on the PS3 because it's downright impressive seeing how much performance the Dog was able to wring out of the at that point aging PS3 hardware. So much so that it killed a lot of the old ones due to how thoroughly well optimised it was to the SPUs of the CellBE. It's humbling and adds an extra element playing such a good game with the gratitude that it hasn't slayed your console yet.
Still, for only ten bucks... lotta people will try it so it's a good price point.
Re: PS Store Plummets the Price of Over 1,000 PS5, PS4 Games
No sale on Returnal since last year which is a shame because Housemarque knocked it out of the park with that one I think anyone who likes a tough but mostly fair challenge in their third person shooters should play it. Makes a nice change to have a non-sexualised female lead for a change too - Selene is a total badass considering she's just a regular-sized woman rather than some amazon like beefcake.
Re: Japan Sales Charts: PS5 Rockets to the Top as 'Slim' Model Arrives
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.
Re: Japan Sales Charts: PS5 Rockets to the Top as 'Slim' Model Arrives
@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.
Re: Japan Sales Charts: PS5 Rockets to the Top as 'Slim' Model Arrives
@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.
Re: Japan Sales Charts: PS5 Rockets to the Top as 'Slim' Model Arrives
@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.
Re: Japan Sales Charts: PS5 Rockets to the Top as 'Slim' Model Arrives
@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.
Re: Japan Sales Charts: PS5 Rockets to the Top as 'Slim' Model Arrives
@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.
Re: Japan Sales Charts: PS5 Rockets to the Top as 'Slim' Model Arrives
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?
Re: Poll: Did You Buy a PS Portal?
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.
Re: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Has Some of the Worst PS5, PS4 Review Scores of the Year
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.
Re: PS5's Twitter Integration Now Offline
@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).
Re: Sony's PlayStation Replay Patent Could Be a Genuine Game Changer
"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.
Re: PS5's Twitter Integration Now Offline
@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
Re: PS5's Twitter Integration Now Offline
@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.
Re: PS5's Twitter Integration Now Offline
@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.
Re: PS5's Twitter Integration Now Offline
@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.
Re: PS5's Twitter Integration Now Offline
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).
Re: PS5's Twitter Integration Now Offline
@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.
Re: Sony Takes Control of UK as PS5 Climbs to 51% Market Share
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.
Re: People Are Beginning to Play Around with PS5's Remote Play Handheld
@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. ✌🏻
Re: Secret PS5 Firmware Feature Makes a Change to Reflect PS5 Slim
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.
Re: People Are Beginning to Play Around with PS5's Remote Play Handheld
@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.
Re: PS5's Install Base Closes on 50 Million As Sony Gets Increasingly Aggressive
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.
Re: People Are Beginning to Play Around with PS5's Remote Play Handheld
@NinjaNicky You can afford a Switch, Steam Deck and PS5 but not like a decent used 1080p TV for 50 bucks? Interesting budgetary choices...
Re: People Are Beginning to Play Around with PS5's Remote Play Handheld
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.
Re: It's Clear to See Why Sony Isn't Calling the New PS5 Model 'Slim'
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.
Re: The Finals Opted for AI Voices Because 'It Gets Us Far Enough in Terms of Quality'
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.
Re: Former PlayStation Boss Shawn Layden Says It's 'Criminal' Industry Isn't Properly Preserving Games
@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?
Re: Former PlayStation Boss Shawn Layden Says It's 'Criminal' Industry Isn't Properly Preserving Games
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.
Re: Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection (PS5) - Three Classics in One Messy Bundle
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.
Re: Hideo Kojima Missing from Metal Gear Solid Collection's Credits on PS5, PS4
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.
Re: Don't Worry, You Can Still Upgrade the PS5 Slim's SSD
"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.
Re: Lollipop Chainsaw's PS5 Revisit Now a Remaster Rather Than Remake
@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.
Re: Lollipop Chainsaw's PS5 Revisit Now a Remaster Rather Than Remake
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.
Re: Reaction: PlayStation Boss Jim Ryan May Have Been Disliked, But Leaves Big Boots to Fill
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.
Re: If It Wasn't Obvious, The Elder Scrolls 6 Will Skip PlayStation
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 😁
Re: Marvel's Spider-Man 2 Has Ray Tracing at 60fps on PS5
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.
Re: PS5 Deep Earth Collection Dazzles with New DualSense, Cover Plate Colours
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.
Re: The Original Tomb Raider Trilogy Returns in Remaster Collection on PS5, PS4
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.
Re: Stealth PS4 Firmware Update 11.00 Is Adding New Features
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?
Re: Stealth PS4 Firmware Update 11.00 Is Adding New Features
@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).
Re: Indie Hit Stray to Be Adapted into an Animated Movie
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.