The prices on eBay for sure LOL. It may have made it more desirable but not being able to walk into a shop or log on to buy the PS5 in those early years would have hurt sales never mind production issues on the SONY side. For sure you expect hardware issues over the launch period and a few months after that… but not 3 years of not being able to meet demand.
I know from my kid who couldn’t get a PS5 for the 1st two years and who was getting well cheesed off by endless Twitter or Eurogamer alerts for new stock he would lose out.
That’s what fanboys do. Xbox would like to use sale data in the 360 era but where sales of the XBox One weren’t great didn’t look to post official monthly or yearly hardware sales or shipments.
What I really like to know is how much net Profit Xbox is making.
Not revenue but actual net profit the Xbox side is making that’s how one will know if the new way is working.
I mean gaming as a whole was booming during that time period because people were stuck at home with nothing to do. While they couldn’t meet demand, demand was at an all time high because of COVID.
I agree to a part but I don’t think it was just because of COVID as hype was really starting for both systems and I felt a lot of gamers were looking to move on from the old PS4 and One and more so those Jaguar cores
If not for COVID I feel both SONY and Xbox could have sold million more systems
Interesting article. Not sure I fully agree with all the writer’s points, if anything I feel like first party exclusives matter less than they ever did before, given Sony’s current position. PS5 owners don’t have much reason to feel doooomed.
Almost more interesting than the article itself is the comments. I expected to see full blown rebellion at the suggestion that anything is less than perfect in Sony world. But there’s a surprising amount of agreement that PS5 is not in a good place.
They’re more nuts and insane than Xbox fans were a decade ago when Microsoft starting porting games to PC. I for one will never understand the issue in regards to porting games to PC. It is what it is, I guess.
Let’s face it Xbox fans also went nuts when it was announced Xbox games would be coming to the PS5 never mind the OTT reaction from closing down Tango Works which is why I no longer follow Klobrille.
I do agree with you on the PC side mind. I also never understand the issue with games going over to PC as SEGA did it and even SONY in the PS1 and it wasn’t like Xbox didn’t bring some of its better titles over to the PC, even remember Xbox talk of how Shadowrun was marking the future of Xbox console and PC tiles sharing release dates and features way back in 2007
Some of these so-called fans don’t even know their brand’s (which they claim to love) own history
I think you are a bit unfair here, the last few years the accessibility options (which are essentially in some cases cheat codes) are becoming the norm on top of the already standard for decades easier difficulties…you can even earn achievements with no problem with those enabled too.
Also I can’t think of any already established IP going the “git gud” way and cutting down the easy difficulties for example, if you mean design or gameplay wise we have seen the influences in other AAA games for sure (like the SW Jedi games for example) but almost always there are ways to mitigate the challenge.
Overall the games that don’t offer (even multiple nowadays) ways to make them easier I think is a miniscule percentage.
It’s got better, but for a while there was a big rise in “Souls like” combat being touted in so many games - even now 90% of a PlayStation show is combat that looks identical.
Accessibility has got better, but for a while it took a big step back thanks to this new combat system that was suddenly everywhere (and still hasn’t fucked off lol) - for example we get random difficulty spikes in games that have easy modes that’s often down to the stupid combat.
Immortals of Aveum was one - it had a battle halfway though you had to win to progress, but even in easy mode you had to react to certain attacks in certain ways that are just too fast and complex for anyone with a motor or reaction issue (for example my autistic brain doesn’t communicate fast enough or deftly enough to complete difficult sequences).
Honestly, it’s easier to name the games in recent years that haven’t had Souls combat than have - the only plus side being that yes, accessibility is finally catching up again, but it’s still too often the exception rather than the norm (Control and SteelRising in particular did it well) - I can honestly look at 50 to 75% of action / RPG games coming out and find either difficulty spikes / no levels or lacking accessibility options enough that I’m put off buying it (thank god for Game Pass so I can try it).
Easy difficulty is only valuable if it’s actually easy throughout - if they chuck in stupid reaction time scenarios, quick response combat where you need to hit the right reaction or have silly spikes in difficulty, it’s not accessible and if anything can be more frustrating as like with Aveum I spent 30 odd hours on it just to hit a point I can’t get past despite having breezed through the rest of it till then.
I could use a trainer (part of the reason I’ve upgraded my PC is so I can introduce my own accessibility using one where I need to!) but the title isn’t Play Anywhere so I’d have to restart on PC - and while I’ve got that option now, it’s really not fair on console only gamers who’ve got accessibility requirements.
The other thing many games have taken from Souls is to not allow saving anywhere but set checkpoints / locations - I always hated it on GTA and the few other games that did it, but it became more widespread after Souls became popular. For anyone with limited time to game or who’s likely to have issues so have to replay from a save quite a bit, it’s such a pain in the arse - even Banishers, one of my favourite recent games did it (they at least did do the difficulty levels correctly).
Overall if you dislike Souls it’s a not a brilliant time to be playing AAA games - the combat system is bloody everywhere (and makes the games all so similar and repetitive) and the genre has influenced so many others making it impossible to avoid unlike almost every other genre where you can just choose not to play them…
Playing through the Halo games makes me sad about Bungie. What are the chances that Marathon and Gummy Bears actually pan out and the studio doesn’t get shuttered?
Bungie is in such a weird place. I’m a big fan of Destiny 2 but no game is popular forever, and they seem to have just hitched their entire fate to it with no plan for a successor and no capability of working on other things at the same time. I guess we’ll see what comes of Marathon but if all it is is a competitive GAAS shooter I’m not optimistic. It just blows my mind that they decided never to do a Destiny 3.
I watched the 3 minute trailer for Yotei and while it looks great, it’s becoming very obvious that in terms of graphics and visuals, games have hit their ceiling. Outside of Ray Tracing elements, I don’t really see what else developers in general can do anymore visually.
Wasn’t happy that they kinda give away the story premise and setup in the trailer for Yotei. It’s like, why go into that level of detail and whatnot? I don’t get it. And October 2nd. Was hoping for July.
Yotei will be the first new game I play on my PlayStation 5 since Astro Bot and probably the first game I play on my PlayStation 5 Pro. Sony really has no games. If it wasn’t for them paying for timed/full exclusivity, I would have only had 7 games through 2025 as of now including Yotei.
Sony really has next to nothing for me. Jeez. SMH.
