Topic: The PlayStation Fan Thread

@BruceCM

Wanna be on TV?

But seriously, how many of those games have you actually played?

EDIT: Forgot to mention 160 more games that I have in my "hidden" folder. Mostly crap from humble bundle I didn't want and outdated versions of games.

@TheFrenchiestFry Well, if you're playing fighters with a gamepad, no wonder you have such screwed up ideas of good controllers....

@BruceCM, yeah when I built the last gaming PC, PCIe was still the new replacement for AGP, SSDs didn't really exist (not at human prices anyway), PC games were still sold on DVDs for those of us not into digital (the writing was on the wall though, and I knew my dialup wasn't going to carry the digital future of PC gaming, so consoles wasn't even a choice, it was mandatory.) patches were, like 750mb max, and that was rare and punishing and worth boycotting the game over, the upgrade from Vista to 7 wasn't painless.) And of course PC games were played at a desk with a keyboard & mouse....adding a controller to a PC was kind of an unusual gimmick more than anything.

I've of course built & bought PCs since then, but not for gaming. That's all productivity.

But for all that's changed, most of it has stayed the same.

@Ralizah I should also mention the overhwelming majority of my PC gaming time was with CRT 4:3 monitors. I got my first LCD, as a side machine and played quite a few games on it, but it was backup to the CRT. My first 1080p widescreen LCD I got along with my PS3 a few years before the last gaming PC. So it was maybe 2 years PC gaming on an LCD, and 10-12 on CRT. Yeah, different world Better world if you ask me... CRT was divine. Most of the games with decent settings visually were 30fps or below most of the time. But it was worth it for pretty.

Some of that may be fleshed out now as yousay. Then again we have Spiderman "remaster" that apparently in performance mode looks......basically just like PS4 Spiderman but with some things better, some things worse, but at 60fps. And then we have the graphics mode that adds raytracing at 30fps..... Sounds like PC there. Though I'm still curious if that's endemic of all PS5 or just that game, and how Series X fares in that regard.

Funny thing is that in 2018 I had 0 digital XBox games and a stack of physical PS4 games. And 3 steam games (do my old DVDs still count? )

I debated here and went with X1X instead of a new PC. In that time span I just accumulated all those games mostly on sales. Some are old 360/OG games. And each game of Rare Replay with its own icon I'm counting separately, but still. So that was a 2.5 year accumulation of a back catalog, mostly. At good prices. Still, the idea of switching to PC because "cheaper" then means splitting the library, paying more up front, and getting less convenience.....

And of course the killer atop that - no game sharing. Hard to beat 2 for 1 even at $10 more. But I know I'm exploiting the "loophole" (whether or not it's really a "loophole") on that.

A surprising number, since a fair amount are games I'd played on other platforms but got in sales to have convenient access to replay .... Or are £5-£20 (at full price) games that don't take too long to go through! I'm counting pre-purchases that I obviously can't play yet, too! Then, there are some I got in bundles that were effectively cheaper than just getting the games I definitely wanted
Oh, I remember Vista & XP, @NEStalgia but only on basic laptops, not for gaming

@BruceCM You haven't really been a PC gamer if you weren't doing it in '95 and '98. Back then Windows was still, technically DOS in its core. Imagine the fun with drivers and games back then! Upgrading nVidia drivers was a time where you hold your breath while the screen blacks out and hope it comes back. 30-40% of the time, it didn't. Then you had to spend 2-3 hours registry digging to flush out the partially installed driver and get back to VGA 640x480 8-bit color and start again. They didn't merge NTKernel into the OS until 2000, and then XP which radically improved the driver system, but video drivers were still a total mess. They didn't REALLY fix that until Vista...but then that was still a mess of brokenness. 7 was the first time they actually put it all together properly. I built my last gaming PC when 7 came out. Then basically played 3 hours of games on it and switched to consoles It was a hybrid productivity/gaming PC so most of the hardware was geared toward work (and was waaaay expensive compared to what you'd buy for gaming.)

But yeah, that morass of Windows is why I avoided and laughed at XBox for years. The best sales pitch for XBox I ever got was being a PS3 owner. that thing was so bad I ran screaming to the XBox I rejected for years. If you love 15-20fps games, PS3 had you covered!

@NEStalgia I'm not sure what you mean: Steam has a robust family game sharing feature. It's super simple for me to share my library with other people in my family.

Of course, nothing beats GOG's DRM-free downloads. It's the most secure you can get with digital purchases, because those games aren't even tied to an account. If you get banned on Steam or Xbox Live, you can say bye-bye to your thousand games, but my GOG library is backed up and ready to play, regardless of what happens in the future.

@Ralizah
"Can two users share a library and both play at the same time?

No, a shared library may only be accessed by one user at a time. "

That's what I mean. Consoles you can both play at the same time as currently implemented unless they break it. You can even both play together in the same online or coop game at the same time. With Steam it's one or the other, not both. IMO it defeats a large part of the point if you're taking "turns" using it like it's Luigi's turn in SMW.

I'm glad it's a lot better these days, @NEStalgia .... Anyway, you stick to consoles (& complaining about those)

@NEStalgia Ah, OK. Yeah, I've taken significant advantage of that with my family as well when it comes to Switch. I'm the only person willing to play on home consoles in my family, though, so it makes no difference to me.

@Ralizah Haha, yeah I was stunned when Switch added that. Oddly Switch is the only console I haven't really made use of that, since swapping consoles by literally plugging the opposite box in the opposite cable is easier than trying to do that on a handheld when it goes portable since then I don't want the online check if I'm not there to physically swap. So that's the only console I haven't really done it with (but it gnaws at me that I don't because double dipping gets old....)

We're back to PS4 news, Ghost of Tsushima Legends comes out next week.

Decided to take another crack at ordering a pair of Move controllers. They're apparently a used pair, "like new", for about $150, which is expensive, but they'll really open up my options for PSVR games if I'm able to get them (really want to play Iron Man, Everybody's Golf, & Blood & Truth, which all require, or enhanced by, Move controllers). The Amazon seller I ordered them from has over a 95% positive rating with about 10,000 reviews, so they don't look shady.

I really wish that instead of spending resources on bolt on half baked coop modes, they'd make the whole games coop or release coop whole games. I'm never sure the point of big addons that add a handful of missions. Same for watch dogs. Sharing the sandbox but not the missions just feels taped on.

@NEStalgia You mean Ghost of Tsushima? You feels pointless to me as well. I don't think anyone was asking for this. But hey, it may be good, I don't think I'll ever play it though.

So I dunno why I didn't realize this until now, but PS5 game prices in the UK are apparently £70!!!! That's genuinely insane.

That's not equivalent to the dollar price at all. $70 is about £55.

For most of this gen, brand new games were around £45 in the UK. A jump up to £70 is just completely ridiculous, and if that remains permanent, I just won't be buying ANY first party Sony stuff brand new. Even the small handful of Sony franchises I really love, I'm just not paying that kinda money for a game. I'll wait for pretty much everything to drop in price.

Compare that to the Xbox situation, where you can essentially play any new first party game by just paying for a month of gamepass, they're gonna really lose the pricing war big time.

@Dezzy They are €80 (£73) in the rest of Europe. Keep in mind that US prices exclude taxes, but even if you include them, they are cheaper (€80 is about $94, even with taxes it's not that much I'd imagine).

Either two things will happen. This won't affect sales much, and companies like Ubisoft will follow. Their games are still €60 for example. It depends on the studio. Some opt for €70. But consistent €60 pricing is gone it seems. Not that I mind it, I always disliked the arbitrary 60. But I'm also in favour of budget titles. It's what Nintendo did right with the Wii U. But on Switch everything is 60. The new Sackboy game should've been €40 as well, but that one is €70 all of a sudden. I paid (less than) €60 for The Last of Us Part 2, you can't convince me Sackboy is worth more than that. Even at 60 I'd say it's overpriced.

I think it will take a while for the industry to readjust, but I think we'll either land on €70 or €80 as a standard soon. I expect GamePass will see a price hike eventually as well. It just isn't sustainable. MS even suggested they are losing money on it. You can't have publishers asking €80 for a game, whilst also including MTX and season passes and complain game development is getting too expensive, yet sell their games for essentially €10 on a sub.

All of this was kinda inevitable I guess. Breath of the Wild was €70 on the Switch eShop when it came out in 2017. I've seen more games on the PS4 store for €70 in recent years. Physical just stayed at €60, and now they're pushing for €80. I'm hopeful that physical will still be cheaper. And I don't mind paying a bit more for a game like God of War. I understand inflation. But don't try to sell me Sackboy for €70 lol!

Hmm, most of this gen games were £60 on launch, for standard editions .... It varies a bit & obviously they go in sales of various kinds quite soon but they'll probably do the same with next gen, too

@Octane

My prediction is that far more people start buying and selling used games, and Sony end up making pretty much the same amount as they used to, because all of that extra cost ends up getting absorbed into the used market.

5 people buying a game at £70, and then 2 of them reselling to 2 more people on ebay
is equivalent to
7 people buying a game at £50.
(from Sony's perspective anyway)

It makes the value proposition of the digital-only console even more absurd. There's no good reason to buy the digital version of PS5 at all. It's actively stupid.

@Dezzy Xbox prices will probably rise to coincide with the end of XB1. So stuff like Forza Motorsport, Fable, Avowed, etc. will probably be £70 but the crossgen titles being a maximum of £60. Game Pass would likely be a price increase at the same time too.

@Dezzy Yeah, that's likely. The fortunate thing is that prices also drop over time. Which is true for pretty much anything except Nintendo. So if you wait 3-4 months, you can probably find it discounted for £10-20.

When all of those games are brand new, I'm just gonna pay for 1 month of gamepass and finish them within the month. Unless gamepass triples its price, that's gonna remain a good value approach in my opinion. It's essentially just a digital rental.

Then you buy them permanently a year later when they're on sale, if you want to play them again.

The only games that don't work with this approach are permanent online service type games that you play repeatedly. Luckily I don't play any of those!