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

Oh, duh, Demon's Souls is another a PS5 must-have, imo.

Demon’s souls is stunning. Resident evil 2/3make also have a big bump on the next gen, very pretty and great games. Small commitment too

Gran Turismo 7

Yeah thinking hard about that one.

re PS4 games being improved when playing on a pi55.. does this essentially mean using the PS4 DISC version? I am guessing those could be picked up for pretty cheap..

no, physical discs vs PSN store purchases have no bearing on that, grab whatever's cheapest.
most native PS4 games are improved on PS5, sometimes dramatically, sometimes only by slightly faster load times due to SSD vs HDD transfer speeds (if you were already using an ssd with your ps4 you may not gain anything).

then there's oddities like the elden ring that have distinct PS4 and native PS5 versions available for purchase, but playing the PS4 disc/download on the PS5 gives better performance than the PS5 disc/download.

Thanks! Didn’t realise you could choose the version to download.

I've only played the original Arkham Asylum on PS3, looks like this is the perfect time to catch up: https://www.polygon.com/deals/24042887/batman-arkham-knight-city-asylum-collection-deal-rocksteady

$6 for one of these games is a bargain, $6 for all of these games is a no-brainer.

Has anyone played "Detroit: Become Human"? I've heard lots of good things, for different reasons (graphics, story, never gameplay, as such), and it's currently $10, which is as low as it's ever been.

I've played it and enjoyed it, and would recommend for that price--it's a bit short to pay full price. It's more like an interactive story than something like, I dunno, The Last of Us. If you've played anything from the Life is Strange series, expect that.

same dev as heavy rain and fahrenheit: indigo prophecy

Also from a developer problematic beyond the typical litany of gaming problematics.

huh. well, I've never played any of those other games, but $10 is cheap.

wau:

In January 2018, three French news outlets—Le Monde,[14] Mediapart,[47] and Canard PC[48]—published the results of a joint investigation into the company's business practices. Le Monde called Quantic Dream "a toxic corporate culture, management with inappropriate words and attitudes, under-considered employees, overwhelming workloads and questionable contractual practices".[14] First among the issues raised by the newspapers, Cage and de Fondaumière were said to have participated in or encouraged a sexist and racist culture, with controversial images exchanged by email and posted around the office including photos of studio collaborators and employees digitally edited to appear as Nazis or porn stars.[49] Canard PC stated that the entire IT department had quit in March 2017 because of these "bad jokes".[48][50] Second, studio management was accused of employing an arduous "crunch time" schedule in which 15-35 additional hours of work per week were expected for a year before a game's launch.[48] Third, the human resources department was accused of colluding to terminate fixed-term contract staff before their deal expired, violating French labour laws, and arranging settlements to remove employees who did not fit in with the studio culture.[48] In particular, the reports outlined how de Fondaumière conspired with the company to use French labor laws to contest his dismissal in 2016 and obtain a €60,000 compensation fee that was not subject to social security collection via URSSAF.[51]

Cage and de Fondaumière denied the reports.[26] In February 2018, the studio called the charges a smear campaign in an official statement.[52] They levied lawsuits against Le Monde and Mediapart in April 2018, while Canard PC received two "threatening letters".[53] Several employees who had left or been terminated filed suit against Quantic Dream.[49] That July, Quantic Dream lost a court case against one of the employees who left due to the hostile workplace culture.[49] The employee sought to reclassify their resignation as a wrongful termination under the French employment law of prise d'acte.[54] This case was later overturned; the Court of Appeal of Paris explained that none of the specific photos depicting this particular employee were degrading and therefore did not qualify for wrongful termination under prise d'acte.[55] In a separate case brought by another former employee, the Parisian employment tribunal found for the employee, stating that the studio had allowed the "homophobic, misogynistic, racist, or even deeply vulgar" dissemination of the photos to continue in the workplace,[50] and further ordered Quantic Dream to pay €5,000 in addition to a €2,000 fee in December 2019 after finding that the company "[remained] passive in the face of this practice more than questionable, which can not be justified by the 'humorous' spirit of which the company avails itself, the employer has committed a breach of the obligation of security".[56][57] Other cases remain pending.[54]

The trials against news outlets Le Monde and Mediapart were held in May 2021.[51][58] The verdict was given on 9 September 2021. In a personal libel suit brought by Cage and de Fondaumière, accusations against Le Monde were recognised by the court, as Le Monde refused to disclose the identity of the anonymous sources it had used and thus had failed to meet the burden of proof.[59][60][61][62][63] The court ruled in favor of Mediapart in the personal suit, dismissing charges related to three of seven passages in their report about Quantic Dream, while stating that the other four were made in "good faith" as they had "a sufficient factual basis" as to not qualify for libel.[62][63] Separate cases filed against Le Monde and Mediapart on behalf of Quantic Dream as a company also found in favor of the defendants, clearing them of the libel charges.[61]

sadlol but those are the typical game dev sins; other things that I can think of was putting Elliot Page's character into a shower scene after saying they wouldn't, and D:BH being a rather poor allegory for the Civil Rights movement (which I've heard 2nd hand, admittedly).

So if I buy the game for $10, who is getting my money in 2024?

all these employees just viciously trying to smear this innocent company, shocking stuff

I'm not a guy that plays New Game+, since when I'm done a game I'm generally done a game and need a break, and coming back to NG+ after a break means losing all my muscle memory and whatnot (hence my Elden Ring DLC concerns). However, I just saw the news that NG+ on the new Like a Dragon is reportedly going to cost *extra*. Oof. Not sure I like where games could be going with this.

So I guess Sony just announced no new existing franchise titles before March 2025. I think y'all teased me when I mentioned the lack of first party titles and whatnot for the PS5, but, well, it's indeed turning out to be a pretty chill console, as far as Sony releases go. March 2025 will be about five years into the PS5's lifespan, and there are still just a handful. That's cool, though, imo, since it lets us (me) catch up!

what do you mean by “new existing franchise titles”?

I guess that means "big name sequels," in the family of "Spider-Man" or "God of War," et al from the big in-house studios, like Naughty Dog, Santa Monica, Bluepoint, Sucker Punch, etc.

https://www.gematsu.com/2024/02/sony-interactive-entertainment-will-not-release-any-new-major-existing-franchise-titles-before-march-31-2025

And given those studios have barely even hinted at anything specific in the pipes, that means likely nothing new from them in the next year, either.

That article is only talking about Sony Entertainment i.e. “first party” games

Oh I didn’t realise Naughty Dog was owned by Sony.. okay

Well, as you say it’s only big sequels that we won’t get from them which is like.. fine tbh no?

And there will be plenty of other stuff from other devs i.e. Death Stranding 2 off the top of my head

gotta wonder how sustainable the current AAA model is, each studio making one game per console gen. working 6+ plus years on a game seems like such a big gamble - what if you start making a game in a current hot genre and 7 years later no one cares for that kind of game.

xxpost That's what I said, lack of first party titles. There will always be third party stuff coming along, but as far as specifics go, for example, this means something like "Wolverine," announced by Insomniac back in Sept. 2021, won't be out until at least fall of 2025. Again, most of their in-house studios have been surprisingly quiet. There's a suspicion that Sony wanted to pivot to more live-service stuff, but the possible change of heart (as seen by them apparently pulling the plug on their Last of Us multiplayer) has maybe imposed a reset.

The average lifespan of a system is 7 years, right? A relatively quiet year 4 and 5 seems curious, at least as far as first party goes. Esp. taken in tandem with rumors of Microsoft's big pivot away from exclusives.

Wasn't Death Stranding published by Sony? I think its sequel counts as an existing exclusive in-house franchise title, too.

It's getting to the point that I've seen some people already discussing what potential games could anchor a PS6 (!).

Regardless, I don't think Death Stranding 2 was due anytime before Nov. 2025. I saw someone put together this grab-bag of tea-leaf reading and news:

Bend:

• ⁠Bend was pitching Days Gone 2, and several other projects, but Sony haven't accepted. • ⁠Bend pitched Uncharted 1 Remake, which they started, but deemed too much work, so they pitched Last of Us 1 Remake. • ⁠They were working from 2019-2021 on those pitches and Remakes, when ND took over Part 1, because they also were short of work. • ⁠Bend new IP pitch was accepted in 2021, and allegedly, they are still working on it, and their target is 2026.

ND:

• ⁠ND made the decision to cut the multiplayer from Part II, to release it before the PS5 arrives in 2020. It was all hands on deck situation, just to release the game. • ⁠The Lost Legacy core team was moved to create a new IP, and they started preproduction. • ⁠The Last of Us Part II team started to work on Factions, but they had to delay it, after Bungie's assessment of the project wasn't good. • ⁠In the meantime The Last of Us team worked on Part 1's remake, and Part 2's remaster. • ⁠Early 2023 the gaas TLOU game was cancelled. • ⁠Now it's full production on the new IP, since early 2023, which by ND standards should target mid-2026, while Neil Druckmann started preproduction on The Last of Us Part III

SP:

• ⁠They took 6 years to create Ghost of Tsushima, and 1 more year to create the Iki Island DLC. • ⁠In 2021 they started working on the sequel, with a 6 year turnaround, expected in 2027.

SM:

• ⁠God of War was released in 2018 by Barlog. • ⁠Ragnarök was started immediately, and headed by Eric Williamson, they were targeting Late 2021, but Chris Judge's injury halted production, and the game was released in Late 2022, while they were also working on Valhalla DLC, and released it in 2023. • ⁠Cory Barlog started pre-production on his new IP, which switched to full production around Late 2023, and expected to be completed in 3-4 years, around 2026-2027.

Guerilla:

• ⁠Horizon 2017, Horizon 2 2022, Horizon 3 2027 (and also a Horizon MH clone in 2025-2026)

Insomniac:

• ⁠This completely leaked, 2025 Venom, 2026 Wolverine, 2028 Spider-man 3

Kojima:

• ⁠Death Stranding 2 is expected around 2025 November.

To clear up:

2024: -

2025: Death Stranding 2; Venom

2026: Naughty Dog New IP, Bend New IP, Wolverine

2027: Cory's/SMS New IP, Ghost of Tsushima 2, Horizon 3

2028: Spider-man 3”

Seems like the PS5’s life cycle will end on a huge high

I hope they can put the good writers on Spider-Man 3, 2 was a complete mess

Weighting first-party (or arguably, second-party) titles higher than other games is kind of a weird regression and side effect of the market becoming vertically consolidated. They always existed, but exclusives were the thing for years.

imo Sony slapping a GREATEST HITS label on anything that sold a lot that they felt was worthy of marketing at a discount was probably their key move

Tea leaf readers think that PS5 sales have doubled up on XB, so Sony probably isn't feeling the urgency to shipping big first-party titles right now: https://kotaku.com/ps5-outselling-xbox-50-million-data-sony-microsoft-1851243811

and Microsoft (meaning "the myriad of studios we were somehow allowed to buy") will be releasing a number of titles on PS5, according to the scuttlebutt

It's a discussion I've seen re: Xbox lately: if Xbox indeed stops offering exclusives, then why should someone buy an Xbox? The same goes for Sony, and would go for Nintendo, too (and even more so, as keeping a tight grip on title exclusivity is more or less the sole reason Nintendo exists).

I think first party exclusives allows Sony to keep quality levels pretty high. Those aforementioned in-house studios, they make some pretty good stuff! I think the issue is that as games get bigger and more expensive and more ambitious, they take longer and longer to produce. If your company *is* built largely on a foundation of exclusives, and those exclusives take years to come to fruition, that's got to be a real financial strain.

For example, I heard a podcast note that the first six GTA titles arrived in the span of about 10 years. GTA V took five. But GTA6, assuming it comes out next year, will have been about a 12 year wait. Granted, a guaranteed blockbuster like GTA6 will lift all (non-Nintendo) ships, but I think Sony would prefer a more regular stream of revenue in between huge tentpoles. That's probably why they are so focused on games as a service or subscriptions, they want the steady income that the specific titles maybe aren't bringing in.

Someone in the industry can correct me, but:

Hardware is a volatile, supply chain-limited market and nobody wants to develop anything particularly custom these days. The PS3 was the last console that had really proprietary things going on, and Sony took a huge loss until they made it easier to develop for. And some of the games that were written direct to the proprietary nature of the console (looking at you, Metal Gear Solid 4) have never been released on other platforms

It was a lot easier to negotiate exclusives when hardware was so different because companies could weigh a sweetheart deal versus the effort of porting a game to a different platform. There are still headaches, but it's almost purely a contract play now.

I don't think Xbox is going to stop having exclusives. It's just a complete mess that Microsoft was allowed to grab so many game companies.

Look Josh all those side missions where you have to, like, collect the shopkeeper's 8 lost dildoes all over the city - they take time to craft and hone

What I took away from that March '25 date was: Spider-Man 2.5/Venom/Miles 2 will be out in April '25

Yeah who knows? You'd think if that were true they'd at least be hinting at it, given that that's just a hair over a year away.

In the meantime, so much other intriguing stuff. I don't play online, but if I did, Helldivers 2 looks like a hilarious blast (literally). And Remedy confirmed/announced that they are ramping up Control 2 and remakes of Max Payne, so maybe they are on track for 2025, too. (Btw, it is insane to even type "2025," it looks like a typo.) And leaks reportedly confirmed Sea of Thieves, Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment are on their way to PS5. Maybe there won't be any major Sony stuff, but there is plenty of goodness out there.

BREAKING: PlayStation is laying off around 900 people across the world, the latest cut in a brutal 2024 for the video game industry

— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) February 27, 2024

Lotta leaks about a proposed/planned PS5 Pro, which seems pretty silly. Apparently the specs look good, but so what? They still seem to be releasing games with an eye on PS4, and the PS5 exclusives are not only few and far between, but rarely even hit the benchmarks originally promised, like consistent 60fps or ray tracing. Me, personally, I don't care about ray tracing, and I can rarely tell the difference between frame rates, or at least it's not any more significantly more noticeable than the graphics differences between PS4 and PS5 games. The only incentive I can even conceive of to warrant an upgrade would be exclusives (plural) - games >>>> performance - and that seems highly unlikely in the short term (at least). So who is a Pro for, exactly, especially considering that Sony has been porting its exclusives over the PC?

a pro is for the hardcore fans who want the latest flashy console. the sort of people who have a subscription to Digital Foundry.
the ps4 pro seems to have sold roughly 20 million from a quick google, so the market is there.

I'm sure there is a market, just as there is for VR and that handheld thing Sony released. But both of those novelties answer the question "why," as they offer an exclusive function. But a PS5 Pro, I'm not sure it answers a "why" just yet, not least because the PS5 proper imo didn't quite justify itself, either (much as I like its slight tweaks over its predecessor).

there's not much of a market for the Sony VR by the sounds of it, there are reports that they've ceased production as the supply chain is choked with unsold stock. also they recently closed two studios who were working on VR games. next stop Vitaville!

Yeah, lol, sounds like no one really gives a shit. But in this case I meant a literal market. If someone wants VR, you need a VR set. If someone wants portable, you need a portable device. But from my perspective I'm not seeing what someone would want out of a PS5 Pro, given the PS5 itself ultimately didn't seem to fill a need. I suppose we'll see, or maybe not. I personally can barely discern stuff like ray tracing even when it's pointed out, and even the nerds at Digital Foundry could barely tell the difference between the upgrade PS4 version of Last of Us 2 and the native PS5 version. Maybe we'll have to wait for the PS6 edition Last of Us 2 Remastered-Remaster 2.

This is what pretty much every console upgrade will be from now on, imo, even the PS6. Most games do not require the advanced specs of even the base PS5. It's like an iPhone upgrade at this point.

I think that's probably right. A lot of current chatter is wondering whether the PS6 specs will enable 60fps for GTAVI (for those that care), but given the PS5 underdelivered on those sorts of promises I can't imagine full faith in similar promises going forward. (Hell, given Rockstars's track record, GTAVI will probably be locked at 30fps, lol.)

There is still the occasional game where playing the PS4 version on PS5 reportedly works *better* than the native PS5 version; that's supposedly the case with Elden Ring, right? Other than that the biggest difference I see between PS4 and PS5 games is loading times and, I dunno, the amount of foliage or whatever. For that matter, some of the best looking games on the PS5 are essentially from the PS4 era, like TLOU2 (four years old) or Horizon Forbidden West (two years old). I'm not sure how much the latest Spidermans or God of War improve on their PS4 predecessors, either, not least because there was nothing wrong with the PS4 versions.

Anyway, I'd prefer Sony spends its money on games rather than systems. I'd hate for them to set in motion some sort of fait accompli, where an underselling system convinces them to shift focus from consoles to PCs.

Games definitely don't have to be visually state of the art or whatever but I find it pleasant to play newer games on newer hardware and I think that's one of the motivating factors for a reasonable subset of game developers and players

Given that they don't sell PCs, I don't see that happening. The Playstation division is profitable, but it exists largely to help sell their home entertainment hardware. I think they'd offload or dissolve the Playstation unit before they'd shift to PC game development as their primary focus.

I dunno, it all seems kind of precarious right now. Isn't Xbox/Microsoft kind of a shambles? And there have been so many game industry layoffs. The focus (and failure?) of games as a live service smells of cash flow desperation. Or maybe just greed, who knows.

every industry that creates entertainment is in shambles! the movie studios are going nuts cutting back their schedules and wondering why they aren’t making a ton of money. probably because people can’t attend movies that aren’t released or not even filmed!

video games had some weird times with the pandemic both driving more gaming and diminishing the supply chain and no one’s figured out a balance

There are enough games. I don't understand the problem. Everybody has a huge backlog of unplayed amazing games. Everybody could just stop releasing games for like 2 years, give everyone a chance to catch up, work on really good stuff. Same for movies and books. Enough! I'm looking at the Forgotten Novels thread and it's like, there's no way to enjoy everything that already exists anyway. Don't stop forever, just stop for like... a little bit. Breathe. It's fine!

Most people just play Fortnite anyway

Yes!