Sony hate thread

[The Last Stand]

As of now, Sony has three exclusives for their PS5. Demon's Souls, Astro's Playroom and Spider Man 2. Enjoy it while you can before Spider-Man 2 gets ported to PC.

 

[TVB]

The crash is finally upon us brethren!

It seems pretty likely. Unless something ever improves on the game industry, we could see a repeat of 1983. I've been predicting this since five years ago in 2018, and it's gonna get worse from here

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

It seems pretty likely. Unless something ever improves on the game industry, we could see a repeat of 1983. I've been predicting this since five years ago in 2018, and it's gonna get worse from here

I've been hoping for it for a while, it just seems more likely than ever.

The majority of gamers see it as a fad and a new form of entertainment. When the new fad comes along, we all know it will kill gaming.
I've moved to a new job and met a lot of people on the shopfloor. Most are young males who are your typical normies. When I ask them about hobbies, almost all say they have a console (usually ps5) and play cod/fifa, but they haven't played it in weeks/months. We know they will never jump to PC and now spend their time on tiktok and scrolling porn on twitter.

Could tiktok and gaming-fatigue be the double-whammy that crashes the industry? Even a return to 2005 levels of popularity would be a crash, as millions of people turn away from subs and buying games (which is what we are seeing).

Maybe we need a gaming crash thread but with Sony and MS chasing the normie crowd, they stand to lose so much money in their departments that the company kills them out right.

 

[Pissmaster]

The subject of a total industry crash always makes me think about what exactly happened with rhythm games, because it's such a tidy little example of what happens when only a few major players control the market. Rhythm games as we know them arguably started with 1997's Parappa the Rapper, and stayed a mostly niche Japanese thing for a while. Very few of them came to the West, but enough did to establish the genre as something small, but with a very dedicated fanbase who'd pay a small fortune to import games and controllers to play on their modded systems.

Then came along Guitar Hero in 2005, blowing the lid off the whole genre, and bringing everyone and their grandpa into it. GH bolstered the hell out of the whole genre, and suddenly everyone had these affordable instrument controllers, and then the thing got progressively oversaturated. I think 2007's generally considered the best year for such games, with the release of the very good and multiplatform Guitar Hero 3, as well as Rock Band and its thousands upon thousands of DLC songs that are still going today. In 2009, they put out several major releases all at once, and then 2010 saw their swan songs, and everything was canceled. Guitar Hero 7 and DJ Hero 3D were in the works, but canned. Apart from 2010, Guitar Hero and Rock Band would see exactly one new game each, both of which were flops. The older ones also don't have any backwards compatibility support on newer systems at all.

So what came of rhythm games after the boom and bust of Guitar Hero? Well, a number of fleeting mobile games tried to ride the coattails, but mostly, the whole genre went right back to being a fairly niche weeb thing. Most of those niche Japanese rhythm games just kept going - there are well over 20 versions of Taiko no Tatsujin, and beatmania IIDX is about to launch the 32nd game in the series. They never slowed down, nor did they stop, just because Bobby Kotick declared the genre dead. It's possible that major players in the AAA industry are finally going to declare gaming dead once and for all, as an excuse to scale way back and play it safe with trashy sports games and other microtransaction bait, but we just won't see the likes of Starfield or Far Cry continue on. And of course, that'll never stop Nintendo from continually churning out games and platforms, as well as countless indie studios and bedroom programmers.

I think that kind of "crash" would be really good for the world. You can't look at something as ghastly as Starfield and honestly tell me that's the result of a healthy industry. Remember, Super Mario Bros. is a 40kb game from 1985 that's still enjoyed to this day, because it does everything it needs to do extraordinarily well. It is a miraculous game that anyone can pick up and play. Starfield is a 100+GB shitshow that needs a monstrous computer and a SSD, because it's so poorly made. All of the money and manpower in the world doesn't make up for a lack of talent.

 

[11 Herbs and Spices]

DJ Hero 3D

I knew no one that had tried it but I assume you might be the person to ask: how awful was the DS Guitar Hero?

 

[TVB]

Maybe we need a gaming crash thread but with Sony and MS chasing the normie crowd, they stand to lose so much money in their departments that the company kills them out right.

I'd say it would be for the best, seeing as how identity left-wing politics had also chased away a lot of long-time gamers, and this is the same with most things in modern media these days. This is why big corporations are hellbent on obeying BlackRock for politics gold when, in reality, they are not politicians and they know nothing about actual political issues.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Scrolling endlessly on tiktok is giving them more dopamine, quicker, cheaper than gaming can.

Maybe they'll design games with a TikTok audience in mind.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

as an excuse to scale way back and play it safe with trashy sports games and other microtransaction bait

Your post is most excellent. I somewhat disagree with this bit. I think the MTX crowd is the tiktok crowd. They want new content constantly to chase the dopamine hit. When that audience goes, I optimistically believe that full fledged, one-and-done games will become the norm. Or, we will see a NMS approach of releasing an alpha-pre-beta, work in progress that is constantly updated.

I'd say it would be for the best, seeing as how identity left-wing politics had also chased away a lot of long-time gamers, and this is the same with most things in modern media these days. This is why big corporations are hellbent on obeying BlackRock for politics gold when, in reality, they are not politicians and they know nothing about actual political issues.

Politics in gaming works well when it's a vehicle for a story, not the message of or the story itself.

Yeah, elves are racist nationalists, it gives them flavour amongst a story of multiple-races and their lore, but it isn't the whole point of the game. Skyrim does this very well.

Maybe they'll design games with a TikTok audience in mind.

They've tried before with Angry birds, Candy crush and the spate of endless runners. None of them could hold the attention of a crowd with no attention span. Whoda thunk it?

 

[Epoch]

Maybe they'll design games with a TikTok audience in mind.

A lot of zoomers seem to play Destiny 2 to an unhealthy degree, and that game is essentially just a casino. Back when I used to play it (forgive me father for I have sinned) the LFG groups were constant zoomer slang and its all just 'W' and 'L' and 'skill issue' and every other zoomer word.

 

[11 Herbs and Spices]

A lot of zoomers seem to play Destiny 2 to an unhealthy degree, and that game is essentially just a casino. Back when I used to play it (forgive me father for I have sinned) the LFG groups were constant zoomer slang and its all just 'W' and 'L' and 'skill issue' and every other zoomer word.

It's sort of funny how my experiences were the opposite. I was always the youngest in any of the groups playing. I usually did Strike playlists or Crucible with a revolving door of a group but usually ended up with two cat moms for strikes, a mixed bag of geriatrics divorced dads and cat moms for Crucible.

 

[Epoch]

It's sort of funny how my experiences were the opposite. I was always the youngest in any of the groups playing. I usually did Strike playlists or Crucible with a revolving door of a group but usually ended up with two cat moms for strikes, a mixed bag of geriatrics divorced dads and cat moms for Crucible.

It seems to entirely be zoomers and 30+ year old millennials who played Halo back in the day with no in-between

 

[11 Herbs and Spices]

It seems to entirely be zoomers and 30+ year old millennials who played Halo back in the day with no in-between

Prior to PC and cross platform, the demographics for the PS4 was the one that had the geezers. Similar to you, I cannot recall how or why I put so many hours to bigger number game but I am glad I stopped sometime during season of the Drifter. Do they still do PlayStation timed exclusives at all?

 

[Waifu Denier]

Politics in gaming works well when it's a vehicle for a story, not the message of or the story itself.

I wouldnt even say that you can't have a both good game and politics being the main theme of the story. Look at classical literature, are you really going to say that Dostoyevsky or Orwell didn't wear their politics on their sleeves? But the difference was that those were good works and stories while being heavily political or embracing a certain polemic, rather than hoping that just because they appeal to a certain viewpoint and crowd that they can compensate for mediocre story, character, etc, as we see too often in modern media.

 

[Epoch]

Similar to you, I cannot recall how or why I put so many hours to bigger number game but I am glad I stopped sometime during season of the Drifter. Do they still do PlayStation timed exclusives at all?

You got out before it went to complete shit. I joined in when Shadowkeep launched and it went f2p, then only dipped at the end of Witch Queen when I could put up with the FOMO skinner box bullshit no longer. They stopped doing Playstation exclusive stuff at the end of Forsaken, but after the Sony buyout they released some Playstation crossover armour sets in eververse that cost 20 bucks each instead of just 15 bucks each.

I don't know what the PS4 players are like because all the LFG groups I ended up in was Xbox and PC players, I think I got a couple Playstation players a few times, but seemingly it was Playstation players that were the worst at the game. When they added crossplay any time I got a PS player in a strike or something they were the braindead retards standing still and dying, or running into pits or not reviving, where the xbox players were actually decent at the game, but PC players were still the best skill-wise. I got a lot of zoomers on Xbox but I think there were more on PC, millenials were also split evenly across Xbox and pc but I think there were more on Xbox.

 

[BananaSplit²]

Digital sales has been a major cope for the horrifically bad software sales for PS5, they havent increased that much and they're especially low for RPGs

That and the "Japan doesn't matter for Japanese games" which I remember Marissa Moira particularly insisting on it like some kind of gotcha.
Even when Japan makes up 1/4 or 1/3 of the global game sales in general, that's still a huge proportion generated by one single country. No third-party publisher wants to forego a territory like this.

So what came of rhythm games after the boom and bust of Guitar Hero? Well, a number of fleeting mobile games tried to ride the coattails, but mostly, the whole genre went right back to being a fairly niche weeb thing. Most of those niche Japanese rhythm games just kept going - there are well over 20 versions of Taiko no Tatsujin, and beatmania IIDX is about to launch the 32nd game in the series. They never slowed down, nor did they stop, just because Bobby Kotick declared the genre dead. It's possible that major players in the AAA industry are finally going to declare gaming dead once and for all, as an excuse to scale way back and play it safe with trashy sports games and other microtransaction bait, but we just won't see the likes of Starfield or Far Cry continue on. And of course, that'll never stop Nintendo from continually churning out games and platforms, as well as countless indie studios and bedroom programmers.

I think that kind of "crash" would be really good for the world. You can't look at something as ghastly as Starfield and honestly tell me that's the result of a healthy industry. Remember, Super Mario Bros. is a 40kb game from 1985 that's still enjoyed to this day, because it does everything it needs to do extraordinarily well. It is a miraculous game that anyone can pick up and play. Starfield is a 100+GB shitshow that needs a monstrous computer and a SSD, because it's so poorly made. All of the money and manpower in the world doesn't make up for a lack of talent.

It's the western entertainment media that has been suffering as whole, be videogames, comics, animation and traditional board games.
There is a reason why they're a reflection of societies, and the ambient climate has been pretty rough in both American and European countries for the past decade, with this sorry state of things we're seeing now as a result. And you're right about the shortage of talent when meritocracy is dead in many sectors.

I used to follow plenty of western stuff before between american/european comics, western games (Valve, Ubisoft, Stronghold, Killing Floor 1, Morrowind, Stalker, Dawn of War, Serious Sam, etc.) Magic the Gathering cards, Games Workshop, etc. But at some point, things progressively took a dire turn between brand mismanagement and, soon after, political virtue-signaling slowly creeping its way after social media became a thing. The last western AAA vidya I've gotten were Alien Isolation, Total War Warhammer I & II and the Witcher 3 (all of them being 2016 titles), and funnily enough all the studios they originated from have fallen from grace later on.

My focus on japanese entertainment media didn't happen overnight, it has progressively grown over the years as there were less and less western stuff to look forward to (besides a handful of niche). Calling me a weeb isn't fully wrong, considering my current tastes, but I firmly believe it's better to focus on things you can enjoy than dwelling in misery and demoralization and eventually losing your sanity in the process. I don't doubt there are plenty of other people out there who had their interests migrating that way like I did.

Earth Defense Force, Atelier, Disgaea and other NIS franchises, Vanillaware, From Software, Ys, Legend of Heroes, Fire Emblem, Xenoblade, Yakuza/RGG, Densha de Go, etc. There are plenty of japanese games to look forward these days.

It's also funny to see Sony and Microsoft constantly telling how game development has become super expensive (between 4K high graphic fidelity, big hollywood voice actors, face capture, etc.) while Nintendo outsells them anyway, even though its games have the quarter (probably even less) of a budget the AAA games do.

 

[Pissmaster]

I think the MTX crowd is the tiktok crowd. They want new content constantly to chase the dopamine hit. When that audience goes, I optimistically believe that full fledged, one-and-done games will become the norm. Or, we will see a NMS approach of releasing an alpha-pre-beta, work in progress that is constantly updated.

I can't really comment on the MTX crowd, since I'm not a part of it at all, but wouldn't they be the type that would pick one franchise and stick with it forever, considering the sunk cost they pump into it? Like I'd imagine they get started on the MTX flow because they really like some particular anime girls or soccer players or whatever, and then that just becomes their thing.

 

[ZMOT]

a NMS approach of releasing an alpha-pre-beta, work in progress that is constantly updated.

the difference (and one reason what makes people say it redeemed itself) is that it has none of that. no MTX, no DLC, free updates since 2016. nothing any other AAA studio could or even want to do.

the purpose of liveservice games is basically constant income, like a subscription. same reason why every studio is getting a stiffy over streaming, same idea. but it doesn't work if you don't have a scheme in play to generate that income constantly (which rigatoni meant when he was talking about paying for reloads and calling devs idiots for not developing with a business plan).

I can't really comment on the MTX crowd, since I'm not a part of it at all, but wouldn't they be the type that would pick one franchise and stick with it forever, considering the sunk cost they pump into it? Like I'd imagine they get started on the MTX flow because they really like some particular anime girls or soccer players or whatever, and then that just becomes their thing.

that's not limited to MTX, that has been known for almost 2 decades now when every MMO tried to be the next WoW with it's own sub. streaming now runs into the same issue where it gets more and more fragmented and every studio expects normalfags to shell out money for 3+ streaming services at the same time (not to mention in the current economy). and to stay on topic, it's another reason why sony trying to shit out 12 or something GaaS games at once was utterly retarded.
and to make it worse, time often isn't considered either. wagies simply don't have the time or energy to grind 3+ games at the same time to keep up or "get their money's worth" (meanwhile you got neets and retarded streamers having a bitchfit there's not enough content to keep you busy 24/7 - see genshin, which makes bank with chores you can scratch off in 15 minutes).

besides sunken cost the new spin which is even more of a double-edged sword is FOMO. for the most time WoW didn't remove content (at least till cata, and then not for a while again) - sure you vastly outleveled it, but you could still do the quests etc. to see what it was about. now the OMG SPECIAL TEMPORARY EVENT YOU HAVE TO JOIN TO SEE it afterwards easily turns into "I missed it? eh might as well not bother", which only gets worse the more you miss. same reason I'll never play destiny again even if I wanted to.
can even speak from experience where I didn't start a game because I missed the pre-launch marketing stuff (which of course was exclusive). the launcher was some retarded microsoft edge-dependent piece of shit as well that didn't work for me without jumping through hoops, but I might've been more inclined to deal with it otherwise. even mihoyo figured that out by now giving you access to past stuff in star rail, because people who want to join genshin now look at a 3 year old game with somewhat important story content that's simply not available anymore.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

I can't really comment on the MTX crowd, since I'm not a part of it at all, but wouldn't they be the type that would pick one franchise and stick with it forever, considering the sunk cost they pump into it? Like I'd imagine they get started on the MTX flow because they really like some particular anime girls or soccer players or whatever, and then that just becomes their thing.

I'm not part of it either but from what I understand/have over-heard, people use MTX to max out the dopamine hit of a franchise, but it burns them out in return.

COD used to be massive.
Then it was COD and Apex
Then it was COD and Apex and Fortnite
etc

Each franchise gives MTX to get the normal fags to open their wallets. As @ZMOT says, FOMO is massive, which is why Fortnite and Apex do timed events. Like Zmot also points out, it burns people out and they move on.
Eventually the normies will be burnt out of spending shit loads of money on gaming when they can get their hit for free on tiktok (until tiktok premium happens)

the difference (and one reason what makes people say it redeemed itself) is that it has none of that. no MTX, no DLC, free updates since 2016. nothing any other AAA studio could or even want to do.

I agree. It will go back to people who are passionate about gaming, making games for people who are passionate about gaming. The corporate rot will fuck off and die.

the purpose of liveservice games is basically constant income, like a subscription. same reason why every studio is getting a stiffy over streaming, same idea. but it doesn't work if you don't have a scheme in play to generate that income constantly (which rigatoni meant when he was talking about paying for reloads and calling devs idiots for not developing with a business plan).

The only plan AAA devs have nowadays is "make graph go up". The quarter that graph doesn't go up (which I think will be holiday this year or early 2024) 90% of the industry will bail onto a more cost-effective market.

Sony (to get back OT) have fucked themselves. After sticking with a winning formula - make good, single player games, for 3 decades and 4 generations, they're chasing the crowd that will cause the crash. They bounced back from the PS3 disaster by offering better games, the propelled them in the PS4 gen by again, having better games.
Now they have no games and the games are do are on PC. What value proposition to they offer? They should have invested in VR instead of a handheld that isn't a handheld. More exclusives vs PC ports and more content vs mobile, GAAS gatcha shit.

 

[Waifu Denier]

the purpose of liveservice games is basically constant income, like a subscription

Even a subscription isn't enough for companies nowadays, look at how actual sub-based games have become a minority in the sea of F2P. Or if they do offer a subscription, it is just another facet to the greater microtransaction ecosystem. When we look at MMOs, many used to be just the subscription fee, maybe a cosmetic shop, but that was it. Now, you have Battle Passes as basically subscriptions for many games, full on shops for everything you can imagine in game, because why get a constant stream of income when you can get constant additional streams from whales as well.

 

[anustart76]

The only plan AAA devs have nowadays is "make graph go up". The quarter that graph doesn't go up (which I think will be holiday this year or early 2024) 90% of the industry will bail onto a more cost-effective market.

That's why they've been investing so heavily in mobile games for China. They'll pay out the ass for mobile MTX over there.