PS.. is it 5? I think we're on 5 now. PS5

The haptic feedback is kind of underwhelming? Having really noticed the adaptive triggers either.

I felt that at first - compared to the kick of the PS4 controller it's quite a subtle thing, and I felt like all it was doing was buzzing gently in my hands. I'm a lot more used to it now, and it really has come into its own with games like Returnal and Demon's Souls

yeah, depends on the game.

Having should read haven't there. Playing GOWR BTW (sorry Josh!).

ha, np. my backlog is epic.

The haptic feedback is kind of underwhelming?

Returnal and Astro's Playroom are the best haptics games imo

I just bought Returnal from the sale but I played a little bit of Astro's Playroom and the haptics were still easy for me to overlook.

Yeah I didn't love the haptics in Astro for some reason

Clearly they are considering bringing in Team Cherry to help with the final push:

By Jason Schreier May 26, 2023

Sony Group Corp. has slowed down development on an upcoming multiplayer game in its long-running The Last of Us video game series as the creators reassess its quality and long-term viability, according to four people familiar with the project.

The team working on the game was scaled back after a recent evaluation, said the people, who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. A small group remains on the project while the company reevaluates the direction. While the game has not been canceled, many of its developers have been moved to other projects.

Following requests for comment from Bloomberg News, Naughty Dog, the Sony subsidiary working on the project, put out a statement on Twitter saying that “we’ve realized what’s best for the game is to give it more time.”

The Last of Us franchise began as a video game in 2013, and the various releases have sold more than 37 million units as of December, according to Sony. It has since grown into a larger cultural phenomenon thanks to HBO's TV adaptation, which became one of this year’s biggest hits. The show, which tells emotional stories about humans surviving in a post-apocalyptic world, posted strong viewership numbers.

Naughty Dog has been developing the multiplayer title for at least four years. It started as a complementary mode to The Last of Us: Part II, the single-player game released in 2020, but the creators grew ambitious and decided to make it into its own game, Naughty Dog said.

Sony has invested heavily in “games as a service,” or video games designed to be monetized beyond their initial sales through ongoing purchases. As part of that push it asked another of its video-game studios, Seattle-based Bungie, to evaluate the games across its portfolio. Bungie raised questions about the The Last of Us multiplayer project’s ability to keep players engaged for a long period of time, which led to the reassessment.

Single and multiplayer games generally require different skillsets to develop. Although Naughty Dog has found some success with multiplayer modes in some of its titles, the company is primarily known for developing single-player hits. Still, fans were excited for the project and raised questions after it was not present at a PlayStation video game showcase this week.

In the statement, Naughty Dog said it will continue to work on this multiplayer project as well as other games “including a brand new single-player experience.”

that’s weird.. i know someone on Another Message Board who has been working on that and like 6 months ago said it was basically ready.. he was very excited about it

This part sticks out:

Sony has invested heavily in “games as a service,” or video games designed to be monetized beyond their initial sales through ongoing purchases. As part of that push it asked another of its video-game studios, Seattle-based Bungie, to evaluate the games across its portfolio. Bungie raised questions about the The Last of Us multiplayer project’s ability to keep players engaged for a long period of time, which led to the reassessment.

So basically it's not that the game isn't close to ready or even any good, it's that Bungie more or less said it's not in a place to be exploited as a live service property. Which is kind of troubling.

Live service property means an ongoing monetary outlay from the studio, meaning you either need to figure out how to get waves of people to purchase a game or add-ons at full price, include monetization strategies inside the game, or both.

More like The More of Us, really

Slightly tempted to grab a year of PS Plus Extra for $75 but I barely have time to play the games I already have...

Whoops, that deal ended a few days ago. Them's the breaks!

Saw that Xbox is not longer making new games for the Xbox One. When do you think PS might start producing more PS5 exclusives? Because right now there are still, like, maybe only two or three. Demon's Souls, Forbidden West DLC ... that's about it. Lots of stuff loosely rumored or vaguely announced, but pretty light in terms of details. I wonder how much covid/supply chain/delays/console availability forced them to change strategies?

https://www.gamesradar.com/ps5-exclusives/

Many of those are available on PC, no?

some PS5-only, some exclusive to PS5 as far as consoles go but available on PC, some next-gen exclusive to the newest consoles

the first/second-party Sony stuff has trickled on to PC but most of their upcoming lineup isn't going to be on PS4, to my knowledge, like Death Stranding 2 and the new Spider-Man. might trickle on to PC a year later at earliest

Yeah, by exclusive I meant "only available on PS5." Spider-Man 2 as far as I can tell is the only big PS5 exclusive (that is, exclusive to the PS5) on the calendar. It comes out in October. Death Stranding 2 has no release date just yet, but rumors are 2024 at the absolute earliest, though just as likely 2025. Like I said, lots of rumors of studios being up to stuff, but no specifics, or even titles, in most cases. Like, there's a Wolverine game coming, but who knows when. Santa Monica, Naughty Dog, Bend, Sucker Punch, etc., they're all up to new stuff and/or sequels, but it's all conjecture, any details have been locked down. I dunno, just seems kind of barren, especially three years into the cycle of a system. Don't get me wrong, I've got plenty of stuff to play, but I like having things to look forward to, too.

PS4 came out, what, 2013? By 2014 there was Last of Us Remastered, 2015 there was Bloodborne, 2016 there was Uncharted 4 ... but of course, PS4 was not backward compatible, so I suppose games released simultaneously for the PS4 and PS3 were not a thing. I don't know anything about game development, but doesn't developing games that will run on both the PS4 and PS5 in some ways serve as a limitation, or at least a distraction? Knowing that whatever you make also has to run, at least in some form, on a slower, less capable machine? I suppose we'll see with Spider-Man 2 what a proper PS5 exclusive can really do. For sure Demon's Souls looked and played great. Ratchet and Clank as well.

Last I knew maybe Persona 6 will start life as PS5 exclusive but I don't really fret about this stuff

Silent Hill reboot, too, I think?

i can’t remember the last time i played a video game but i will play the hell out of Death Stranding 2 and i will totally buy a PS5 to do it

I keep meaning to play the Directors Cut of Death Stranding

it looks totally wacky!

i still think sometimes about the otherworldly menace of the smugglers

i heavily doubt it will pan out this way but god i would love a “are we the nazis?” moment when reedus realises the smugglers are the good guys

having the hardware mostly compatible means they can do some market segmentation

many ps5 games are already trying to split the difference between a performance and graphical quality tier on the same platform

it’s a new landscape, really. no one’s totally botched it outside of cd projekt red, but a number of people were more than happy to run ps4 titles with the quality levels tweaked on ps5 when the ps5 versions were initially lacking

For sure, and a couple of the reverse cases - PS4 releases tweaked for PS5 - are great. I'm thinking of stuff like Last of Us 2, which doesn't have a native PS5 version but which runs really well on PS5. I do like having the option, when it's available, of performance at 60fps vs fidelity (which almost always means ray tracing) at 30fps.

Speaking of hardware, hats off to PS customer service. I had a controller start to drift (it's always manic games that fucks them up, in this case Hotline Miami), and since it was still covered under warranty I sent it in. Service center is pretty close, in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, but even so the turnaround was nuts: sent it in June 13th, already got a likely new or at the least refurbished controller back today.

it is crazy that getting a part replaced or repaired under warranty in a relatively short amount of time should feel like a miracle but here we are

https://www.polygon.com/deals/2023/6/23/23771177/ps5-pc-ssd-price-drops-samsung-corsair-wd-black

However, I seem to be focusing more on my Deck instead, and I'll be saving the PS5 for exclusives, many of which I'm not going to bother with (Spiderman 2)... so maybe a 1TB SSD will be enough?

yea, I love seeing the price drops. might splurge over the summer

Gotta say, as much as I like having games on the SSD ready to play, I'm also glad I got a PS5 with a disc drive, since it's such a great way to get games cheap. For example, bought the PS4 version of Cyperpunk 2077 for less than $10, got the free upgrade to the PS5 version, got the huge update today, ready to go! Heard good things about Subnautica, got it for less than $10, got the free PS5 upgrade, ready to go! And so on.

Subnautica was straight up free on PS4 during the pandemic, but in any event, it's great, one of the few first-person games I can stomach playing (although it scared the living hell out of me in some parts).

Yeah, I knew it was free, but somehow missed it, alas. People love it, though, so I was happy to pay $10 or whatever.

I assume (hope?) the PS version of Subnautica is in a decent state these days. I absolutely adore it, count it among my favorites, but it was a broken mess on that system a few years ago. Had to start over twice due to corrupted saves.

Testament to the quality of the game that I fought through it and loved it anyway. It’s a special, thrilling thing once it opens up and you get out into the deep. Nothing quite like it.

In fact if there is anything like it, someone let me know. The semi-sequel was a toothless letdown.

Both my Dualsenses have stick drift problems. I only bought the second one as spare when my original one started going funny a year ago and I had to return it. So that's three controllers going drifty in just under a year. One of which I barely used and kept in a drawer most of the time

I've read a couple of things about Phantom Liberty (which I may never get to) working really well on PS5 because it was developed with the current gen in mind, as a current gen exclusive. I saw the same thing about the "Horizon Forbidden West" DLC. I get that it was kind of a prolonged transition, PS4 to PS5, due to a number of factors, but those two (anecdotal) examples underscore the compromises being made developing games for - and anchoring yourself to - last gen in parallel with developing for current gen. Looking forward to stuff like Spider-man 2 and Alan Wake 2, as both supposedly take advantage of current gen's/the PS5's power without considering how things might work on last gen/PS4.

A dick move by Microsoft that's also holding back current gen (Xbox and crossplatform, anyway) is their Series S. Apparently a real pain in the ass for some devs.

Switch is reportedly a PIA, too, right? Not that there are a lot of people developing with Switch in mind specifically, lol.

Yeah, but all Switch ports I've seen were clearly alternate downgraded versions like they used to do for handheld system ports (see recent MK1 debacle) to the point where a chunk of them are just streaming

A dick move by Microsoft that's also holding back current gen (Xbox and crossplatform, anyway) is their Series S. Apparently a real pain in the ass for some devs.

Yeah the Series S compatibility held up the XB port of BG3.

Honestly already ready for a PS6 with the compromises this Gen. Graphics are beautiful! But it's annoying to have to choose a compromise of +graphics -framerate or vice versa. Recent PC hardware shows you can have your cake and eat it too, but obviously a few years of it being affordable.

the whole "holding back" discourse is so broke-brained. if anything, forced ps4 compatibility is what's making the performance toggles so common. remove that and we'll be back to games barely hitting 30fps as gpu load is driven to breaking point.
where were all the whiners in the ps2 and ps3 days? series s is "holding back multiplatform" but ps3 wasn't?

> it's annoying to have to choose a compromise of +graphics -framerate or vice versa

this is never going away, there's no magical hardware that will remove that trade off, it's 100% a game development choice.

H.P. it is frustrating isn't it? I spent not an inconsiderable amount of money on my PS5 and while some games (Demon's Souls Remake springs to mind) do look beautiful, the step up in quality is kind of marginal, and I haven't found a game that doesn't suffer frame drops when taken above Performance mode

Glad to finally have someone smarter than us all here!

I am starting to wonder if this might be the beginning of the end for the console wars and console gaming in general. Why get a Switch, (or the next model for example), when you could spend just a little more and get a Steamdeck? Indeed, what is a PS5 other than a more accessible Sony-built PC in flashy casing?

Demon’s souls remake was a real feat. FFXVI is also beautiful. That Matrix demo shows what can be done. Cyberpunk. Spider-Man. Rachet and Clank. Horizon. There is a handful of games that are really pushing the next gen (some of them cross-gen proving it doesn’t necessarily hold things back if there’s enough money and work behind it). Game graphics are not monolithic, some games do better than others. But it is undeniable graphics will be better when energy can be solely given to a singular generation* (note series s remarks given above), rather than having to split work into multiple releases of differing quality.

otm Latin. If I could do it all again I would not have bought my PS5 and put the money into a higher end graphics card to have that space-age feel on the desk, and then the steam deck for the other 99% of games which don’t touch that level of graphical work

Console gaming will always be there for its accessibility. The multiplicity of choices inherent to PC gaming does not lend itself to those getting into gaming for the first time.9

where were all the whiners in the ps2 and ps3 days? series s is "holding back multiplatform" but ps3 wasn't?

Armored Core is also very nice graphics-wise, even if it does work better in performance mode

I'm no video game historian or tech guru, but it's always felt to me that the PS5 release was a bundle of bad timing. First, the PS4 was still cranking along just fine; the traditional time might have been right for a new system, but there was nothing pressing. But then the machine drops right as the pandemic peaks, and you've got an early predictable scramble to get one, followed by shortages due both do sustained demand and supply disruptions, plus people stuck at home playing games. I'm pretty sure there were games that had reportedly been intended as PS5 exclusives (God of War Ragnarok was for sure one) or with PS5 firmly in mind that were compromised (not necessarily in a terrible way) to work on PS4. And then the last couple of years have seen a bunch of other peripheral corrections. Games that were going to charge for upgrades to PS5, say, that went free to upgrade. Games that for whatever reason work best when you're running the PS4 version on PS5. Sometimes seemingly arbitrary price hikes.

Me, I'll never have a computer rig to play games. Something like a Steam deck seems intriguing, but I barely played my Switch in portable mode (bar a couple of games) and would only consider a Steam if its performance docked was equivalent to my console or a good computer. Which, if I understand correctly, it is not.

I do like my PS5, maybe not dramatically more than I liked my PS4, but its improvements, however incremental, are still noticeable. And now we're finally starting to see more PS5 (and equivalent) exclusives dropping. Spider-man 2, Phantom Liberty DLC, Remnant 2, Lords of the Fallen, Alan Wake 2, Burning Shores DLC, etc. Feels like the relationship between the system and its developers has maybe, if belatedly, stabilized.

All the frame-rate issues, that almost exclusively seems to be an issue with ray tracing, which I consider a subtle improvement on graphics that often necessitates a not so subtle hit on performance. But last gen games like Spider-man and Last of Us 2, say, or RDR2, or even the two Resident Evil remakes I just played, I can't imagine games looking better than that, or at least not significantly, even before the PS5 upgrades (as available), so I wish the focus would stay on performance and not on photorealistic water reflections or whatever.