Sony Consoles and Updates

[Maf]

Astrobot first - fucking wow. I think this game is about to put this development team on the fucking map. I already thought Rescue Mission was a 10/10 game and the pack in game that came with the PS5 was decent. But Rescue Mission always had the crutch of, well, the VR is doing a lot of the heavy lifting and the game is quite simple. The PS5 thing was a bit gimmicky because it was so centred around the PS5 pad’s (kinda rubbish) gimmicks. 
 

Now it looks like they’re let loose and they are fucking going for it wow what a trailer. They don’t have to centre their creativity around hardware they can just make a game and already this is going to be the best Playstation platformer ever. That game looks fucking wild. I can’t wait. I knew this would be something to get excited for, but even then they blew way past anything I was thinking. Just wow. God damn.

 

The rest of the show? Eh. Solid. But eh. A terrible start with that Concord shit that never seemed like it would end. I don’t know hero shooters, maybe the game will be good. But the story trailer was painful, the aesthetics is really ugly, the promise of narrative cutscenes every week for the multiplayer game does 0 for me. Then frankly that brilliant looking Marvel Hero Shooter came along and in 30 seconds wiped the floor with Concord. I’m not saying it because it’s Marvel, it just looks like a much better game to me
 

Path of Exile looks really good. There were a couple of Souls games in there that looked good. That Infinity Nikki is really unique and has a nice Mario Galaxy-esq soundtrack. But honestly I probably wouldn’t play it. Just a bit too much of a girl’s game for me. 
 

Remaking a choose your own adventure game like Until Dawn seems like a fundamentally flawed idea. I guess if you’ve never played it before (despite being free for a very long time on the PS Collection list). But if you’ve played the game before, well, the choices look exactly the same. Just going to change the camera angles and perspectives. I don’t know if that’s enough o make it interesting a second time. 
 

Taking Astrobot out of it, I’d give the show a thumbs up, but also not especially excited about what’s there. Then add Astrobot back in and it’s like oh shit Sony has the GotY this year, ok. 

[Maryokutai]

Can't recall the last time I saw such a desperate cutscene than that Concord intro. 'But what if GotG with horrible dialogue and zero charm?' And then it turns into Overwatch for some reason. I can imagine quite a few people enjoying this when it comes out, but it's so devoid of originality.

 

I think the bigger games have their own topics so I post my thought on there if I feel like it. I will say though that I find it funny how random Korean dress-up RPGs now look better than Halo.

[DANGERMAN]

1 hour ago, Maryokutai said:

Can't recall the last time I saw such a desperate cutscene than that Concord intro. 'But what if GotG with horrible dialogue and zero charm?' 

Isn't that Guardians of the Galaxy 2?

 

 

Anyway I agree with this 

9 hours ago, one-armed dwarf said:

Watched the sony thing. I'm quite fatigued by the kinds of games that get shown on these, they do look really similar and I don't think this is entirely old man shouts at clouds type talk.

 

But Astrobot looked cool. Not my kinda genre but the quality is clearly evident. The first interesting PS5 game, at long last

When Dynasty Warriors is one of the more interesting looking games in your line up, just because it doesn't look like everything else, it shows we're in a bit of a rut. That said I hope they're all good, and I hope at least one of them appeals to me as they get closer to release 

[one-armed dwarf]

The Concord thing makes me sad, it kinda shows how slow things move in games that we're still getting these 'GOTG at home' type hero shooters well after the boat has sailed on GOTG-'homages'. That game could possibly end up being good but it's just another one of a thing we've seen far too much of, both in games and just generally speaking, it's very tired. 

 

The thing is when they showed the gameplay I thought it looked pretty fun and tricky with the powers and stuff. But I'm just so done with characters that talk like that, I can't put up with it anymore. The irony in being so irreverent and quirky they end up feeling like the antithesis of what they're supposed to represent. Instead of being edgy and subversive it feels very standard and predictable. 

 

We need a return to the mid oughts edgy protagonist, with nu metal soundtracks. It's time, we have to go back. I'm sorry about the things I said about you, DmC Dante, you weren't so bad

 

Interestingly, God of War Ragnarok on PC requires the PSN link up, despite being a single player game. Apparently the PSN overlay doesn't work on steam deck, so Ragnarok probably won't work on steam deck either. Sony's decisions with this PSN link stuff feel so user hostile and will only lose goodwill over time but what can you do, they just don't seem to get it 🤷‍♂️

[HandsomeDead]

I think it is the nature of long development cycles making jumping on trends really bad for games.  I don't know when Concord was initially conceptualised.  It seems like probably more than 5 years ago going by it's style.

 

But just as a game I'd be up for trying it since I loved the first year of Overwatch but then that felt pretty fresh, and you can't repeat that by sticking so close to the formula.

[mfnick]

Probably the most boring SOP yet. Especially that opening game, what utter generic wank that looks like. 
 

Where Wind Meet could be my type of game but not enough shown so don’t know (edit - just read it’s open world so fuck that game). Alien VR could be great, but again nothing shown. 
 

Unfortunately I seem to have dropped off 3D platformers over recent years even though I love the idea of them. So Astro isn’t really doing much for me either but can see why that’s be exciting. 
 

Rest of it was bad or just fucking boring. 

[Maryokutai]

As of right now the gameplay trailer for Concord sits at 320k views on youtube and Astro Bot at 700k. I wonder if this has turned some heads at Sony HQ. They probably have big hopes for Concord and starting off a showcase like that by spending ten minutes on a single game is certainly a show of confidence the audience didn't really align with. But on the other hand we know that 'we' are just a tiny fraction of the overall gaming population and it's become almost impossible to tell whether one of these multiplayer games becomes a hit or turns up dead on arrival.

 

Considering they both launch relatively close to another, it will be interesting to see how that turns out. I realise that they're nothing alike and the target audience might barely overlap (especially as Concord also launches on PC) but in the grand scheme of things it's safe to assume there will be lots of eyes on the commercial performance of either game.

[Maf]

I can’t remember what the other numbers are like for PS games. But I feel like they hit over a million in 24 hours

 

So I think both of those numbers are concerning tbh. Concord is extremely low, but I have no idea if people will be in to it or not. I will say when Marvel Rivals was announced, I looked at it and thought that looks good but outside of my wheelhouse, really. Then Twitter lit up about it as well so I felt more confident that no, that game does look good it’s not just me

 

in respect to Concord I haven’t seen a single thing about it. Not a headline, not a YT video, not a tweet. That might not mean a whole lot. But combined with the low view count is probably concerning

Astro Bot just deserves more. It’s just pure goodness. 
 

A quick Google and Concord isn’t F2P? Feels like a mistake 

[Snaggletooth]

Astrobot looks bloody great, That's a day one for me, need to start showing these companies that smaller titles are worth developing or were just going to end up with more shit like concord.

 

Silent Hill 2 has redeemed itself somewhat from the last title, still a little sceptical, but its going in the right direction.

 

other than that other than that More generic Samurai, action games,

 

The Anime styled one looked charming an whimsical, but appeared to be some weird dress up and photo shooting game, if it is just that then not really sure its aimed at me.

 

Amazes me that Sony has such a deep library of games associated with it be it their own of through third party publishers.

 

 

[one-armed dwarf]

Sony have announced that you will be able to play HL Alyx on PSVR2, August 7

 

https://x.com/PlayStation/status/1797629397777948847

 

Kinda

[Maf]

Why kinda? 
 

Hmm. I don’t keep up with VR so maybe this isn’t true anymore, but I remember DF saying the VR headset is the best one in terms of comfort, screens, HDR, etc

 

But losing basically all the cool features is a pretty big drawback. Some of them like haptics I understand but then the cheaper PC headsets seem like the better deal at that point.

 

Althouh it would be cool being able to use it on PS5 and play those games as well

 

I dunno. Very much a wait and see. 
 

That adapter price is expensive as well 😮‍💨 £50

[one-armed dwarf]

Kinda as in you can only play it on PC. It's probably never going to release on PS5 tbh

 

I was reading that the lens on vr2 aren't very good, or are much worse than quest 3. So it might not be an ideal vr headset unless you really wanted the ps games as well

[spatular]

Yeah I think it’s more the quest 3 lenses are really good for the sweet spot so you don’t have to have the headset in the perfect position for it to look good.

 

the psvr2 should be pretty good in some ways, has advantage of being able to output direct to the headset, no compression like the quest. Shame about the eye tracking and stuff not working on pc.

[DANGERMAN]

Quote

PSVR2 sales are through the roof (relatively speaking), having jumped some 2,350% since Sony announced some fairly drastic discounts, with further savings to be had at select retailers. Who would have imagined carving some $200 off the asking price, going from $550 to $350, would cause such a spike?

Possibly helped too by it now being usable on pc, so more games 

 

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2024/07/psvr2-sales-explode-after-sonys-deep-price-cut-up-more-than-2000percent

[DANGERMAN]

PS5 has sold over 60 million units, but has slowed so far this year. Given we're almost certainly getting a Pro version in a few months that might give it a kick up the arse 

 

Quote

Sony has shared in its first fiscal year 2024 financials report that 2.4 million PS5 consoles were sold during Q1, meaning the current-gen system has now sold 61.7 million units overall. This is a decrease of 900,000 purchases when stacked against the same period last year, though Sony did make gains in other sectors like an increase in operating income and improved game software and network services sales.

 

The millions of yen Sony has generated is at its highest in an entire year across network services, which it states is due to PS Plus. Sales of PS5, PS4 titles dropped by almost two million compared to Q1 in fiscal year 2023, down to 53.6 million. Of those, six million purchases were for a first-party game published by Sony. While some comparisons are down, the ratio of physical to digital purchases on PlayStation is at its highest for a year. 80 per cent of all games sold across PS5, PS4 were for a digital copy, sourced from the PS Store.

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2024/08/ps5-sales-reach-60-million-milestone-now-at-61-7-million-consoles-sold

 

Basically, no 1st party games means fewer console sales 

[Maf]

I’m starting to doubt the release of a PS5 Pro this year. It’s cutting it very close to start the advertising, there’s been no retailer leaks, and there’s no big game to go along with it. If it exists I’m starting to think next year 

[Nag]

I hope it doesn't exist at all... there's no real reason for it this time round.

[one-armed dwarf]

Based on the last two Final Fantasies (the only PS5 games I've played recently) I definitely disagree with that tbh, neither of the visual/perf settings didn't make me feel slightly squeamish with those games.

 

At this rate tho I will skip the Pro cause the games that are on PS5 that will be exclusive are of limited enough interest to me. Maybe Death Stranding 2 could tempt me but we'll see

[Maf]

5 minutes ago, Nag said:

I hope it doesn't exist at all... there's no real reason for it this time round.

Xbot propaganda I see you 

[Nag]

33 minutes ago, one-armed dwarf said:

Based on the last two Final Fantasies (the only PS5 games I've played recently) I definitely disagree with that tbh, neither of the visual/perf settings didn't make me feel slightly squeamish with those games.

 

That's on them... you shouldn't need a new console to make this generations games run well.

 

31 minutes ago, Maf said:

Xbot propaganda I see you 

 

If Microsoft try the same stunt (which by all accounts they aren't) I'd have the same opinion on that too.

 

I bought updated consoles last gen simply because of the 4k TV thing... they don't have that excuse this time. By all means release PS6 and Series whatever but fuck off with your mid-gen "upgrades"