Topic: Official PlayStation Thread

@TheFrenchiestFry @NEStalgia Honestly this change of tone from Sony, if it continues it makes Nintendo seem even more tone deaf. Like both Sony and Microsoft received gigantic backlash for the store shutdown and Gold price hike respectively but both backtracked their decisions. Meanwhile Nintendo's in their own bubble having delisted 3D All Stars, FE1 localization and shut down the servers for SMB35.

But yeah, I hope this is the start of more positive things happening on the Playstation front.

@NEStalgia You still miss out on fewer new games if you go PS5 than Series X meanwhile of course Series X has the larger older game library because of the backwards compatibility program on XB1. Eventually it'll be more even on the new games front but this is about the present and near future, not the far future.

I was really hoping that Nintendo would sell the mario games individually or at lest keep the collection on eshop, its really stupid. Hope i can eventually get a ps5, i have been toying with idea of getting a series S, as they seem to have regular stock where i am, but i already have a steam account so maybe i should just stick with that and my ps4 and switch for now, but i really love the idea of game pass and huge backwards compatibilit that xbox has to offer.

@TheFrenchiestFry Yeah, the second half of last gen, it was kind of a no-brainer to focus on XB first, but I was hoping with the new gen launch it would switch to "I can't decide which one I like more!" Instead so far I've kind of doubled down on XB all the way, which wasn't the result I wanted. I wanted an even match. And in the absence of that I wanted Sony to get a kick in the pants to get them into a competitive gearing. Hopefully, maybe, this indicates that's happening.

We can go back to the good old 80's with Nintendo being the evil one that we can't not buy.

@Grumblevolcano Yeah, it's really true about Nintendo. For a while it was looking like Sony & Nintendo vs. the World. Maybe, just maybe if Sony starts playing friendly again, it's just Nintendo vs. the world. Although at least to Nintendo's credit, those end dates were announced when the products launched so there was never a surprise or misleading expectation. It's not the worst of the crimes big N has been committing.

I see the point, somewhat, on the near future, but honestly, with both consoles sitting in front of me, I'm just not seeing that much more on the "new" first party front on one than the other. Some of that is probably bias that a lot of Sony's current direction just doesn't interest me much. Personally, R&C, Stray, Kena, Maybe HzD2......from the known near future stuff that's all that I'm somewhat-to-very interested in. Those first 3 I am very much looking forward to, I could have lived without the PS5 and those 3 games, but I'm greedy and wanted it all.

I'm more interested in what they announce after this wave of known games which, for me, is kind of a mixed bag. I expect/hope they'll surprise in the future though....same as MS, really.

I love the turn of events. I love to see both companies doing well. I love yo see bad decisions reverse. In the 360 era, live would have been doubled. Likewise in 2019 those shops would have closed. But with Godzilla and King Kong actually fighting, we are getting fantastic consumer support. I think this gen will be one for the history books

@Robronoa well you can always tow dip with Gamepass, and yes I know the PC version isn’t perfect. However, If you like the content; you can get an S. I mean that to say that it has massive selection of MS games on it. (There is a small amount not there but it’s still big.) All of the newer ones. And you can turn it on and off as need be. And if they game isn’t on PC it might be on cloud to try. Like older 360 games etc

@mousieone Thanks! That’s a great idea I will do that! 😁

At the very least, PS+ doesn't disappoint... LOL

Man, Horizon Forbidden West is looking absolutely incredible. I'm really stoked for this game! I loved the first game and the second one looks to be fundamentally the same but improved upon in numerous ways. Can't wait to play this, I'm glad that it's coming to PS4 as well. I'm disappointed though that they didn't give us a release date.

So as I was watching the gameplay video, I was thinking just how incredible PlayStation exclusives are. But the thing is that they weren't this great a decade ago. Back then the consensus was that Nintendo had the best exclusives. However, now I think things have changed and PlayStation offers much better exclusives than Nintendo. I think that's mostly because of the difference in ambition. Like I remember when people would praise Nintendo games for their attention to details, but when you watch e.g. Horizon Forbidden West, the attention to detail is simply impeccable. That's something that Nintendo's games will never achieve because that's not how they make games. A lot of times, Nintendo makes compromises to their titles and uses wording such as "intentional choice of art style" as an excuse. Take Breath of the Wild as an example, they went for an art style that's a mix between cartoonish and realistic models (sort of like a mix between Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess). I personally don't believe for a second that they went this direction because it looks appealing, but instead because it's easier to develop games with a simpler art style rather than going for realistic graphics. It's the same excuse the developer for the Pokémon Diamond/Pearl remakes uses, i.e. that it's a chibi style because of an intentional choice. But the games look absolutely awful and the reason is because they didn't want to put in more effort into making better looking remakes. When a developer doesn't craft its games with love and ambition, this will become reflective in the overall quality of the game. And that's where Nintendo falters compared to PlayStation in my opinion.

It's weird that I'm criticising BotW because it is one of my favourite games of all time. But it has so many glaring flaws: the world is too empty, there's barely any story and the story that is there is optional and disjointed depending on the order you view the cutscenes, there's a lack of creative dungeons and so on. It sort of feels like when you buy Nintendo games, you get the bare minimum of what they otherwise could've offered if somebody else made the games instead. Imagine if Guerrilla Games had made BotW instead, it would've been so much more ambitious and richer in details.

I'm curious if others feel the same way that I do about PlayStation versus Nintendo exclusives. Because if there's one thing that has definitely changed over the past decade, it's how much more Sony invests in their exclusives compared to Nintendo.

@LtSarge Don't tell a person on my Xbox friends list that Sony has better exclusives than Nintendo. They just randomly became a Nintendo fanboy this week, saying they will be leaving Xbox when the Switch Pro comes out.

Anyways, on to the topic at hand... The game looks absolutely gorgeous, even on my 1080p laptop screen. Probably even better looking than Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, which would obviously make it the best looking game of all time. Not surprising, but a huge jump up from the original. It is indeed more of the same, but the gameplay additions do make things interesting (the "gliding" and the combos). The fight scene against the rebels, along with the one against the giant robot, were both awesome.

I'm glad it's coming to PS4, but now a part of me almost wishes I didn't sell my PS5 so I could play the game in it's full glory. The original is why I upgraded my PS4 to the PS4 Pro.

@LtSarge Personally, I think Playstation (or at least the Devs) grew up whilst Nintendo have stuck with what they do. You talk about Nintendo once being the 'best' at doing exclusives, but until the PS3 gen, a lot of Sony's exclusive games were similar - Crash Bandicoot, Sly, Spyro etc. With PS3, these devs 'grew up', made Uncharted, Killzone, Resistance, Infamous etc.

As for Horizon: Forbidden West, it certainly looked stunning and I really can't wait to play it. If I am being critical though, Aloy should be called Medusa as her hair seems to have a life of its own, defy laws of physics and at times, quite distracting. Its forever clipping through the weapons on her back and seems to move against the wind, against gravity at times too. I know its a small thing and easy to focus on the action and stunning environment, but its something that was a bit distracting to me in the video and certainly distracted me in Zero Dawn at times as well so hoped that had been improved.

H:FW is the biggest reason why I had to get a PS5. The first was one of my favourite games of the previous generation - even with Aloy's hair clipping through her weapons and outfits.

@KilloWertz I do wonder how the game is going to look and run on base PS4. I'm not a stickler for graphics and performance in all honesty, I just want the bare minimum so that I can focus on the game itself. If it runs decent enough then I'll be happy with that. I mean, I gave The Last of Us Part II a try for a couple of hours on my base PS4 and it ran incredibly well. So as long as it's the same thing with Forbidden West then that's good enough for me.

@BAMozzy That's a very good point, I didn't think about that. PlayStation developers did in fact "grow up" and decided to make other kinds of games that are more appropriate to the current climate of gaming, i.e. more mature titles. On the other hand, Nintendo still produces the same games we would expect from them since pretty much the 90s: 2D platformers with some 3D games like Mario and Zelda here and there. There's been no evolution for Nintendo, it's generally the same thing over and over. In retrospect, you can clearly see how PlayStation devs made platformers at first, then more mature titles like Uncharted and inFAMOUS during the PS3 era and now during the PS4 era they've focused on more narrative-adventure type of games. That actually explains things very well for me as to why I love PlayStation exclusives more than Nintendo ones, simply because I want to see things improve and evolve and not stay the same. Granted Nintendo has started doing that to a few of their franchises such as Zelda and Fire Emblem, but the majority are still the same. Smash is still Smash, Mario Kart is still Mario Kart and so on. I want them to experiment with different ideas and try different things, which is ironic considering that's what they used to be known for doing during the Wii/DS era.

@LtSarge Every 3D game today can literally thank Super Mario 64 for. Uncharted for example is still a 3D platformer with different movement speeds from 'sneaking' to sprinting. The emphasis has shifted more to the narrative and set pieces, and of course you have more combat too. SM64 (and others like it) were more about collecting - but we still see collectibles in a lot of narrative driven games that often require some platforming to find. Looking back, the N64 was at the forefront of technology and therefore pushed gaming forward.

3D during this era changed the gaming landscape - starting off with getting movement 'right' (not perfected as camera can still be a bit off), leading to Zelda: Ocarina of Time which added more narrative and combat. N64 also had Turok, Jet Force Gemini and other 3D games in first and 3rd person that put more emphasis on story and less on 'collecting - although they still had some platforming and collecting.

Speech was also not very 'easy' to do - certainly not an entire cast list with lines and lines of Dialogue. At most, you got a sentence (Help Me, Turok) but that really helped with Story telling and immersion. Yes you can read every speech bubble etc, but the improvements to Audio helped devs create their characters, tell their stories.

I think Nintendo were quite smart in some ways. They had a choice to keep producing cutting edge hardware and try to keep up with Sony and 'newcomers' MS, or try and be something 'different'. I talked about how Sony devs 'grew up' and made the games that I wanted to play more - but I was an Adult when N64 and PS1 launched. For many, they 'grew up' on that era of video games and 'some' may of outgrown the games Nintendo continue to make. However, there are always new generations of gamers and as a parent, I wouldn't necessarily buy a 'young' child a PS5 or Series S/X. My son, who is now nearly 20, inherited my N64 and I bought a Wii primarily for his (and my daughters who are not gamers) to play. I didn't want my 4-5yr old child playing CoD, Halo, Gears, Resident Evil, Uncharted etc so I let him play SM64, Mario Kart etc - He actually beat SM64 before his 4th birthday. I am quite happy for Nintendo to keep doing what they do. They offer a way in to gaming for those who may not quite ready or old enough to play the more Adult games I enjoy.

Personally, I prefer more Adult games but then I am nearly 50yrs old. I am not going to be buying R&C on day 1 - really preferred Resistance - because I feel I outgrew the game. I quite enjoyed their reboot but not enough to buy the latest at its most expensive price. Back when SM64 launched, it was more the groundbreaking 3D environment and unique movement that appealed more than 'Mario' himself. It wasn't like we had a lot of alternatives geared more towards adults but by the end of the N64 era, we had the Gamecube, PS2 and Xbox. I didn't bother with the Gamecube because the others had a lot more adult orientated games. Apart from the Wii (which I bought more for the kids), I haven't owned a Nintendo since - but some of my Grandkids have a Switch.

@BAMozzy The thing is though that Nintendo should still offer the same experiences we've grown to love but also offer new and more ambitious experiences. The problem now is that their focus is in the wrong place. They're pumping out too many old games while focusing too little in producing new ones. Not to mention that a lot of their games aren't really ambitious and appeal mostly to a casual audience. In other words, the product mix is simply not as appealing as Sony's or even Microsoft's. Variety would go a long way into fixing this. Imagine if Nintendo made an actual mature and ambitious title such as Horizon Forbidden West or Ghost of Tsushima. Getting to experience something like that along with games such as Zelda and Mario would definitely make their overall first-party output more appealing. I mean, that's what Sony is doing now, isn't it? Last year they released Sackboy: A Big Adventure, i.e. a 3D platformer, and Ghost of Tsushima, i.e. an ambitious open world game. This year they're releasing a new Ratchet & Clank, i.e. a 3D platformer with shooting elements, and Horizon Forbidden West, again another ambitious open world game. Their product mix is definitely on spot, delivering a good variety of games for both the casual and hardcore audiences. The argument that "Nintendo doesn't do mature and ambitious games" simply doesn't hold at all. What's stopping them from adopting an approach like that? That it'll ruin their image? I mean, look at Disney and how they acquired Star Wars as well as Marvel, both exhibiting violent and mature content, albeit within certain limits. It's definitely not out of the realms of possibility for Nintendo to be doing something like this. I consider e.g. Metroid to be an IP with a more mature tone. The games I've played have showcased a hint of horror due to isolation on hostile planets. If you've played Metroid Zero Mission or Metroid Fusion, then you'll know what I'm talking about. Imagine then if Nintendo could make a Metroid game with horror elements. It doesn't have to be Metroid Prime 4, it could be a spinoff for all I care. Just throw things at the wall and see what sticks.

Picked up God of War III Remastered, MediEvil, the Pedestrian, & Unravel Two in the current sales. Just over $40 for the bunch.

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2021/06/playstation_studios_b...

Still no need to buy a PS5 for another year! It's absolutely crazy though how much Sony is gunning for game releases on both PS4 and PS5 considering what Jim Ryan said about believing in generations. Not to mention that PS4 didn't have many first-party cross-gen titles with PS3 and now we're getting half a dozen (Sackboy, Miles Morales, Horizon, Gran Turismo, God of War and possibly more).

I also like how people were saying that PS5's SSD would give rise to more freedom in level design and therefore games that simply weren't possible on previous hardware. Yet now that Sony is releasing more cross-gen titles, people are saying that games made for both PS4 and PS5 won't be held back. You can't make a game for PS5 with completely different level design compared to the PS4 version. How do these people not realise that? Cross-gen titles are absolutely held back from showing the true potential of PS5. I'm not saying though that these won't be good games, I'm just saying that the games won't be realising the potential of the PS5's hardware. Whether or not that's a good thing is up to the people themselves. I personally don't mind, I just want more of a reason to not buy a PS5 and keep playing on my PS4.

And these games were probably designed with PS4 in mind and going to look 'stunning' (like H:FW does) on PS5. Sony could of kept them for PS5 only and Fanboys would be saying the visuals are all 'next-gen' and why it couldn't run on a PS4 or, knowing the stock shortages and the 'large' install base who will be angry at Sony for no stock to upgrade to play these releases whilst not getting any PS4 releases either...

It makes so much sense and when games are taking 4+yrs to make, they would of started development with current hardware in mind. Insomniac may have had some mocked up demo using R&C assets exploring what the hardware could do and expanded on it - the vast majority of it must be created from all their assets after making the movie and PS4 reboot. They are not usually long games either... LOL

There is no way Demon Souls remastered couldn't run on a PS4 - certainly not on game design as that was 'designed' for an older generation. Astrobot thing wouldn't work because its programmed specifically to utilise the DS5 - its a tech demo for the DS5 - its not a game that wouldn't run on PS4 but serves no purpose there. I don't think there is anything in SackBoy either - unless there is something I missed - that wouldn't 'run' on a PS4.

I think they could make R&C 'run' on a PS4 with ease! BUT it wouldn't be fun being stuck in a world warp for 30s instead of 2s. Everything else looked a LOT like prettier R&C (Pro) Game-play - as you may expect. It makes total sense not to release that game on PS4 as jumping between worlds quickly is the feature here and doesn't quite work from a story perspective either but its not ground-breaking game-play wise - at least not yet!

Again it makes perfect sense R&C isn't releasing on PS4 but we have seen how good GTS looks and no reason GT7 couldn't be 'scaled' down for PS4 and this as well as God of War may have much faster, smoother, higher res game-play with better textures and lighting and much quicker transitions between worlds, faster fast travel, faster loading on quieter consoles. GoW may not even have a 60fps mode on Pro.

Sony could artificially keep them from PS4 (ie just release them for PS5) to appease people and 'bribe' them to buy a PS5 - which they probably may of done had stock of PS5 been reasonably available globally, or give them a bit more time to get a PS4 and Pro version ready to release.

@LtSarge Makes me wonder if we're suddenly going to get a bunch of XB1 announcements for already announced Series X|S games on June 13th.

PS is absolutely doing the right thing they should have done all along releasing everything cross-gen. I'm bitter, though, that their posturing and deception caused MS to backtrack their own cross-gen plans that they'd been hinting at for years and openly stating for a year to "keep up" with a thing that wasn't actually real to begin with. Despite having all the new consoles, I want to see anyone who doesn't have one treated right. MS intended to do that from the start, then backed out at the 11th hour due to Sony's fake chest beating (and the combined effect of Halo's reception), The irony is that the result may end up giving MS more high profile "true next gen" games sooner than PS5 since MS seemed to reverse their dev plans on 8th gen support all at once, while Sony's still locking themselves to the big PS4 install base.

@NEStalgia I think it's a difficult situation. If you can create a game that runs fine on PS4/XB1 without sacrificing the PS5/Series X version, that's good. However cut content because of PS4/XB1 hardware limitations (e.g. no flyable mounts in Horizon Zero Dawn because of PS4 hardware limitations), Halo Infinite and especially Cyberpunk 2077 fueled valid reasons to not do crossgen versions.

I haven't played many XB1 games that released after 2017 as they run really badly on my base XB1 (still using the one I got in 2015). Crashes, freezes, major frame drops, console sounds like a jet engine, etc. such that it essentially makes Smash and Mario Maker 2 online seem extremely smooth.

So from what I can tell, the situation with crossgen releases is:

• PS4/XB1 - Runs terrible
• PS4 Pro/XB1X - Runs fine
• PS5/Series X - Runs fantastic

Which is why I don't get the decision to discontinue the PS4 Pro, Microsoft of course discontinued the XB1X because of Series S but there's a massive difference between PS4 Slim and PS5. Wouldn't it have made more sense to discontinue the PS4 Slim and give the PS4 Pro a permanent price drop? Only having PS4 Slim made it seem like the plan was to discontinue the PS4 completely by some time in 2021 but with 2022 1st party PS4 games this clearly isn't the case.

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see in 9 days to what extent Microsoft's original plan has changed if at all.

@Grumblevolcano With some irony, I presume the reason for discontinuing PS4 Pro was so that it didn't cannibalize PS5 sales interest, especially knowing that PS5 was was just PS4 Pro Plus for at least a year or more into its life. A $350 Pro might look a lot more appealing than a $500 5 if they both run the same games and the only thing you really get from a 5 is it rendering "every strand of moss independently, plus a new character lighting rig." So if they keep selling the really obsolete base PS4, it forces people who want anything better than obviously-budget-results to buy a PS5. A strategy that ended up backfiring with their supply shortages, and they went from "unprecedented upgrade pace" to "more units than PS4 at the same time....but not a whole lot more."

It's all sad though because it's a problem of Sony's own making from trying to overplay their hand. They had industry dominance, could have walked in given dates and goals for PS4 long term support, transition strategy for PS5, and leaned into the "future" by echoing MS's cross-gen ideas (especially considering Jack Tretton talked about that direction even before Spencer had the big chair.) But no, they had to try to overplay the hand, score cheap points against MS, and basically trash talk their own strategy by creating a short-term image that they were doing what MS wasn't. It created a media win for preorder time, followed by disastrous supply shortages and no stop-gap to sell in between (Pro), and then a media loss as the generation really gets going and people see the real strategy.

I'm not expecting MS to revise the plan. They had their cross-gen plan going for years, and it's kind of the identity of XB at this point. Sony made all that noise about clean generational divides and rallied the base, combined with Infinite looking rough in contrast, and MS did an Xbox 180. At this stage of development, I'm sure they made a clean break with X1 dev kits and have spent a full year focused only on Series and the newer PC specs. Plus they don't have a massive install base on the prior gen to try to satisfy for a return like Sony does with PS4, so it's easier for them to just walk away from it. They weren't going to originally, but a year after making the call to do so, I don't think there's any incentive to change back. Plus none of us expect any of those titles to release in the next year anyway, which reduces incentive further. At least for the tentpole titles. There's the rumored/teased surprises for year 1 for E3, maybe those are the cross-gen titles that were alluded to originally but never announced.

Sony OTOH played coy and tried to spin the web in all directions to capture every marketing angle. The end of PS4's presumed life had gone out with a wimper. No news or big games were announced, they openly said at their last E3 they were moving on and focusing on PS5 (thus no PS4 game news), and while several big games landed at the end (TLoU2, GoT) they were games announced years ago, with no new games announced. Yet we find out they didn't actually shift focus to PS5, they were developing big PS4 games they never announced until they could announce it with PS5. But it also puts PS5 in a weird position. Sony only has so many studios, and pretty much all of their biggest studios are putting out the titles they worked on most of the PS4 generation out within the first year of PS5 as PS4/PS5 cross-gen titles or full swan song PS4 titles. That means of an average 7 year generation, Year 0-2 are going to be cross-gen releases from all the major studios. That means assuming typical 4-5 year dev cycles, most of these studios won't be releasing again until year 5-7 of PS5, and many of those titles have a high likelihood of holding back for a PS5/PS6 cross-gen release. PS5 may not actually get many SIE PS5 games overall. Insomniac can handle multiple big projects, they'll release a Spiderman after Ratchet. Bend's been MIA, they'll release for PS5. Maybe something else. Santa Monica only does GoW, and GoW2 will launch in year 2 of PS5. That nearly guarantees GoW3 won't be until PS6 cross-gen unless they really just revise on GoW2 assets and crank out a samey safe GoW3 and put it out in 3 years. San Diego makes Xbox games now. Guerilla will be releasing a true PS4 game that's minimally cross-gen in year 2 of PS5. Japan Studio is dead, deceased, it is no more, it has gone to meet it's maker, it's an ex-studio. ND released at tail end of PS4, but they have 2 teams with a new IP coming, they might release. It all feels vaguely Switch-like where the studio release schedules just aren't going to line up with the hardware lifespan.

MS OTOH is wrapping up 3rd party commitments out of the queue and has most of their big studios prepped to release in a few years....so just while Sony's kind of reloading the 1st party engine, MS will be ready to start releasing tentpoles in fairly rapid fire. What looked like they were behind might end up looking ahead in a year or two. Either way the 9th gen is a total trainwreck with all 3 companies having hardware cycles completely unaligned with their development cycles. Both MS and Sony should have just kept PS4/X1X going for a few more years, released these big games (Sony + Halo, really), and then done a clean break to a new gen, or doubled down on "the end of generations" and really baked that message into the new console marketing and run full speed with that new philosophy where new hardware means running the same games better, not new tech.

MS has been better at that message (out of necessity with no new gen games) than Sony that tried to play it both ways and ends up looking either deceitful or clueless depending on the angle.

Man I've been browsing through old E3s the past few days and I just now saw a clip of Kevin Butler. Who remembers that guy?

Sony would win major points from me if we saw more stuff like this again from them. Same thing with Nintendo now that Reggie and Iwata are gone. It feels like we've entered an era (once again) where there's only corporate talk and no emotions or connection with the companies that we love.