Sony Consoles and Updates

[Maf]

Apparently there are going to be price drops this Christmas on PS5 Slim and more importantly PSVR2 by 200EUR

 

https://www.eurogamer.net/sony-reportedly-discounting-playstation-5-slim-by-at-least-75-in-europe-ahead-of-christmas

 

Quote

That's not the end of the PlayStation discounts, however; Bilbil-kun also reports a massive €200 price reduction of for PSVR2, bringing it down to €399.99 from the usual €599.99. Additionally, the PSVR2 Horizon Call of the Mountain Pack, which includes the VR headset and a Horizon Call of the Mountain code, will fall from €649.99 to €399.99. There's no word of UK pricing for any of this yet, but it shouldn't be long before all is revealed.

 

The Horizon PSVR2 bundle is currently £570 on PS Direct Store. So I wonder how much the price cut will be in GBP. Maybe makes it competitive with that new Meta Quest 3S which is £275

[DANGERMAN]

I wish they'd found a way to get the old PSVR games running on the new one. I know you can just plug in your old one (actually you can't "just plug it in" you need to "just plug it in to an adapter I'm not sure they offer anymore"), but less hassle and a larger library you already own would be a selling point 

[one-armed dwarf]

There's some issues with Pro's upscaling it sounds like. A number of games, BLOPS 6 and Star Wars anyway, have this weird 'glitter' or shimmering effect on them. You have to make the video full screen here but it sort of looks like glitter. Probably a bug they could fix but the fact it's impacting multiple different games is weird

 

https://streamable.com/j5ixgr

 

DF also doing a review on Jedi Survivor

 

 

late edit, silent hill 2 now, which has constant flickering

 

 

[Nag]

Supposedly Silent Hill 2 is nigh on unplayable on Pro too.

[one-armed dwarf]

Hearing complaints about the fan noise as well is the perfect antidote to any FOMO.

 

Hopefully they figure it out though.

 

Given how we were giving out about how anal DF are it's weird to me these common complaints don't get brought up by them in their launch review, you know? You think the average user would be less discerning than them

[Nag]

That's kind've what annoys me with their reviews, they'll give a game 4.5 stars and say it's amazing then do a tech breakdown and say it runs like shit and looks garbage. 

[one-armed dwarf]

DF rarely review games though, eurogamer do that and DF just do the technical analysis stuff.

 

Also IMO, I think I said this before but I think a game can run like shit and look garbage and still be an amazing 4.5/5 game.

[shinymcshine]

Such a price drop on PSVR2 might well have the opposite affect - where people might, not unreasonably, avoid it as they assume it's drastic reduction is because they aren't going to support it for much longer ......!?

[Nag]

1 hour ago, one-armed dwarf said:

DF rarely review games though, eurogamer do that and DF just do the technical analysis stuff.

 

Tbh I see it as the same site...🤷‍♂️

[Maf]

From what I’ve seen from DF these games have some post processing effect which doesn’t play nice with PSSR. Alan Wake 2 has problems as well

 

Looks like there’s some learning to do from 3rd parties or they weren’t supported enough by Sony 

[Maryokutai]

Do you have a choice about which version you play on PS5 Pro? Does it default to the one that is supposed to be enhanced or can you manually go back the base version instead until it's patched? Because if the former is true, yikes. If stuff like this is happening right now that's not going to put any kind of trust into the consumer base moving forward. The whole point was that you'd get the best version, but instead you now have to check DF videos to find out whether a game's Pro build is broken or not. Not a good look to say the least.

 

Though I suppose going forward Pro compatibility will be part of the development pipeline from day 1 and not something they have to retroactively account for, so that'll likely mean the situation gets better over time.

[Maf]

As far as I know if you play a game on the Pro it patches automatically and in the options the toggle for performance/quality is replaced 

 

Definitely glad I didn’t get one now because all the games I’d want improved on a Pro either didn’t get a patch or have problems

 

But this is the literal first wave of Pro games and 3rd parties will get better at it

 

All the first party stuff came out really great. Although as said before it was the first party stuff that didn’t really need a Pro patch so again glad I didn’t get one 

[Maryokutai]

Yeah, this seems like a colossal waste of money right now unless your heart pumps Rebirth blood through your veins.

 

Probably a good pickup at the end of the generation or something, depending on wether PS6 is all-digital or not. But then again there are no Pro versions of games on discs, so you'll always have that issue in terms of preservation.

[one-armed dwarf]

Potentially more industry consolidation, this time with Sony looking to acquire the media company that owns Elden Ring.

 

https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/sony-talks-buy-media-powerhouse-behind-elden-ring-sources-say-2024-11-19/

 

Another thing I saw is it would give Sony a monopoly on anime distribution and production, which might be moreso the goal than getting FROM. They'd have the whole thing near buttoned up and vertically integrated in a way that should catch the attention of regulators, you would think given the scrutiny afforded the ABK merger a few years ago. But then you have the question of whether anime is seen as its own industry or just a section within media as a whole

[Maryokutai]

I'd also imagine anime is the target considering this comes from Sony Corporation and not Sony Interactive. Which in turn would mean that if it goes through, it wouldn't necessarily turn From's games into exclusives. Kadakowa also owns Aquire though, who recently made the Mario & Luigi game for Nintendo. Not sure how partnerships like that would be moving forward. In any case, I'm not really tuned into the anime world but I really don't want yet another of these to go through.

[DANGERMAN]

Yeah, I'd argue anime is an industry, but it's not one I know a ton about as to who owns what. As a general rule though I'm against large mergers for exactly the sorts of reasons we've seen with Disney and Microsoft 

[spatular]

I think Sony already owns anime, outside Japan anyway as I think they own both big streaming sites then shut one down… although it could have been a different massive corporation, don’t 100% remember

[DisturbedSwan]

2 hours ago, DANGERMAN said:

Yeah, I'd argue anime is an industry, but it's not one I know a ton about as to who owns what. As a general rule though I'm against large mergers for exactly the sorts of reasons we've seen with Disney and Microsoft 

This.

 

I was too blinded by ‘woo X-Men in the MCU’ with the Disney merger at the time, but can see clear as day it was not a good idea and has made the movie industry worse. 

[Nag]

PlayStation 6 specs leak?

 

To be honest the specs don't mean a hell of a lot to me but slow news day innit... I'm more interested in the maybe release date of a next gen console and whether these rumours of handheld systems (both Sony and Microsoft) turn out to be true.

[one-armed dwarf]

RDNA 4 is the next generation of AMD graphics cards apparently, and PS6 is using some sort of iteration on that. So I guess maybe they're saying you could extrapolate things based on how those PC cards perform when they release

 

AMD are still far behind on ray tracing so it doesn't get me too hyped about things

 

A sony handheld would interest me though, they have really great designs for PSP and Vita so it's something that I'd like to see them do again, presumably tho it would be more like a portable PS4 than a new PSP