Topic: The PlayStation Fan Thread

@Ralizah what stuff is coming out in switch that Nintendo didn't highlight? I still can't love bravely, and rise is the only other appealing thing in the highlighted lineup. Smt has no mention on either platform so I'm assuming delay.

Then again ps feels more bleak than switch right now. Ratchet, stray, kena....... And basically nothing else. Horizon is ok. I pretty much buy ps's for Japan studio, ratchet, and sackboy. So..... The next 7 years feel barren already unless they pull some miracles out of Ryan's sphincter that don't involve the same 5 or 6 blockbuster ips. I swear they're in a race to become xb360. Tfw the meme of "ps has diversity and xb has only racers and shooters" reverses...

So we're getting psvr2 after all. Ff7r gets a free ps5 upgrade, thanks sqeenix, i already bought and didn't play yet so that's a highlight. Kena is cheap but probably short so it's a wash. But the monkeys paw version comes with that catch that Sony just killed pretty much every Sony IP I actually give the slightest fluff about and several of my favorite IPs of all time are essentially confirmed dead and buried.

Got to admit. I've been a multiplat player and favored ps over xb for a long time, but Jim Ryan is making me into a Phil Spencer fanboy in just a few months....

Kena looks great, though, @NEStalgia ....? I'll see for more about that & be getting it on Steam, eventually, though!

@NEStalgia Gnosia, which comes out in a few days, wasn't mentioned at all. A delay for SMT Nocturne is unlikely, given how long it has been out already in Japan, so I'm guessing we'll hear about it soon now that Strikers is out. SMT V wasn't mentioned, but that's no surprise: they'll want to focus on Nocturne HD for a while before bringing that back into the public's mind, I imagine. Crash 4 wasn't mentioned. That skateboarding game everyone seems to love wasn't mentioned. Rune Factory 5 wasn't mentioned. Disgaea 6 wasn't mentioned. MH Stories 2 wasn't mentioned.

Thankfully, a bunch of announcements happened within days of the Direct that made me way less antsy. It's not stuff being delayed. It's just that Nintendo chose to highlight third party stuff that predominantly looked pretty mediocre to me. The plate is going to be full on Switch all year long.

Not sure why you're dunking on Sony when Microsoft's position looks 10x worse, though. PS5 and XSeX will get all of the same third party games, but at least Sony has a number of biggish timed and permanent exclusives coming out soon, like FFXVI, Ratchet and Clank, Horizon, Ghostwire Tokyo, Kena, etc. That's still going to make for a WAY better first year (let's be honest: first three or four years) than the PS4 had.

Series X has... what? The Medium thoroughly underwhelmed everyone. Somehow I doubt a year-long delay is going to make that new Halo game look any more interesting than it already was. There are a lot of vague promises for games in the future that may or may not be good, but otherwise, Microsoft's new generation is looking very, very skippable again.

You might say "lol exclusives," but, to date, PS5 has been competitive or even better when it comes to third-party performance, despite the difference in raw power between the platforms.

Which isn't to say I'm terribly interested in that platform atm (less as time goes on, actually: nearly all their third party jp exclusives have gone multiplat; Japan Studio is pretty much gone, and my favorite first-party property along with it; they're tripling down on the Western market; etc.), but, other than GamePass, I don't see an argument for XSeX not being a worse buy in almost every way.

I finally got round to finishing Uncharted Lost Legacy. I'd got distracted around the 2/3rds mark on my first attempt, so decided to just redo it from the start this time.

Really solid game overall. Not quite as good as 2, 3 and 4. It didn't feel as epic given that it was shorter and had fewer different environments. Also while I love Chloe, Nadine is just a boring character, and I would've preferred they'd just used Sam as the 2nd character for the whole thing.

I also didn't really feel like the open-world section really added anything. It wasn't any more enjoyable than the normal wide-linear approach of the series.

The entire final chapter of the game was brilliant though. Starting around the part where you take over the base that's full of enemies with a helicopter patrolling the sky, then all the train section until the end. Those are some of the best scripted action scenes in the whole series.

@NEStalgia
There are some upcoming Switch games outside the Direct on playasia. You need to check the preorder list.
And for PS5, i giggled when i saw the upcoming PS5 games such as Panda Hero, 3D Billiard, 3D Mini Golf, Summer Sports Games, Winter Sports Games, Bibi & Tina, etc because they were basically mediocre PS4 games that got enhanced version on PS5. 😆
Oh, Oceanhorn 2 will be on PS5 too.

@Ralizah exclusive count doesn't matter to me, it's exclusives that interest me that matter. Ratchet, yes. Kena yes (but that's not actually a Sony game) Stray, yes other than that? Nothing, of what's known, really. Not the stuff i buy ps for. I honestly couldn't care less about their cinematic games. I buy and play them (eventually), i don't dislike them, but they also don't excite me, really at all. I kind of keep them as backlog filler. Gow, hzd, I'll get back to them. Someday. Prolly. Not system sellers to me. Honestly Halo looks more generally fun. I'm not really an fps fan in particular but that does look fun. It could disappoint though. Spiderman disappointed. I like at and all, bit it's oddly sparse and repetitive for an insomniac game. It plays like a watered down infamous. I loved infamous. Spiderman is like as mass marketed diseyfied infamous without that ability unlocks. Sony has lots of "exclusives" but most of them i largely ignore until they get deep discounts and then backlog them. That wasn't true prior to the second half of last generation. They make emo games for depressed teens now. . They even took the comic hero gow and made it an emo game. I admit, I'm mostly motivated to play only because of Chris Judge's performance.

MS exclusives are years away, but they mostly all interest me (big wrpgs mostly.) Sony..... They killed most of the studios that made interesting things, so i have don't have much hope of them announcing things that appeal to me. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I've mostly written off SIE along with Activision and WB at this point. At least until a management change.

But for third parties, xb is, to me, a much more pc like experience. I never question which platform I'm buying mass effect or assassin's creed on. It's automatically xb. Ps is the exclusives box. The whole bc situation cements that. Kena being exclusive means i still need the ps, bit that it's not an sie game still leaves me little hope for sie and it's priorities.

If i played pc still I'd of course not need the xb. And I'd still not buy 3rd parties on ps. But that's the point. It's a cheap pc. I didn't buy the xb for any exclusives at all, i bought it to play everything else. But it's an awkward, uncomfortable perk that most of ms announced and speculated exclusives are things that appeal directly to me for once and very few of Sony's do. Then again, ms let jade empire, mech warrior, and crimson skies slip away before, and i was all crushed about that as Japan studios.

As for Nintendo, do we have dates for any of those games? From nintendos presentation we had bravely (meh) and rise and little else. From your list there's the 2 smts, rune factory, and mh stories which all interest me greatly.

Overall i guess i mostly liked ps because it was the more adult alternative to Nintendo with bigger, more sophisticated Japanese games. If it isn't that, it's just an xbox with a worse ecosystem, more restrictive hardware, worse bc, but a handful of exclusives I want.

@Dezzy We'll see. Sixty frames per second does appeal to me though. But if Xenoblade Chronicles can make proper backgrounds that are able to create a proper sense of scale, on a console significantly less powerful than the PS5...

In terms of upcoming lineup I'd still put Switch > PS5 > Series X|S

Series X|S made the same mistake as the Wii U, the July Xbox showcase was very reminiscent of the January 2013 Direct where the vast majority of games announced are very far into the future. So really all Xbox has is new Game Pass additions and some XB1 games that are still being supported with new content (e.g. MCC, Gears 5).

PS5 looked a very strong lineup in the near future from the June PS5 event but with games already delayed out of their vague "2021" release windows like GT7 and God of War sequel, perhaps not having release windows for some of the announcements would've worked better. Last week's State of Play was really rough but even with this, the PS5 upcoming lineup that's near still looks more interesting than Xbox's.

Switch is an odd one, 1st party support feels like the drought period before a new console comes out but 3rd party support may end up the strongest year of its lifespan so far. The Direct wouldn't make you think that about 3rd party support though.

@Grumblevolcano

xbox be like bambambam w/guns n'stuff

PlayStation has exquisite second party lineups.

Nintendo... do whatever they want.

@TheJGG Those "BamBam" I think are only Halo and Gears. Those are not enough to sell the consoles. Most people just own Xbox for the Xbox Live and the other online stuff.

This generation they will have a success rate almost like with the Xbox One ... which is not a good thing.

PS5 is killing it with Miles Morales, Demon Souls and will continue killing it with God of War Ragnarok and their other IPs.

@Zuljaras I really think PlayStation has some quality studios but are really holding back on them, maybe due to COVID or sheer... absent mindedness.

What do you mean by "upcoming"? If we're talking about things that have release dates, then Switch is not so great right now. We have nothing really in terms of big first party exclusives. Xbox at least has Halo Infinite.

@Dezzy It's the case for both release dates and release windows. For release dates Switch has a lot, PS5 has some and Xbox has very little meanwhile for release windows Switch has even more, PS5 has a decent amount and Xbox only has 3 extra games (Flight Sim console, Psychonauts 2, Halo Infinite).

@Grumblevolcano

What are the Switch games we have release windows for, but not release dates?

@Dezzy Project Triangle Strategy (2022), Splatoon 3 (2022), Monster Hunter Stories 2 (Summer 2021), Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl (late 2021), Legends Arceus (early 2022), Nocturne (Spring 2021), SMTV (2021), etc.

Sure there's some you can make predictions that are very likely to be correct about like Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl is very likely launching either November 12th or November 19th but that's also the case of Halo Infinite (it's very likely launching on November 15th or November 16th for Halo 20th anniversary).

@Grumblevolcano In terms of the immediate lineup none of the 3 companies have a great near-term. MS has zip. Nintendo has zilch. What does PS have in first half 21? Indie Kena and Indie Stray, which is closer to holiday 21. Ratchet is big. GOW? Corey flipped off the official 2021 date indirectly-directly already with his "WHEN. IT'S. DONE." THing. Good on him, I agree, and we all knew that anyway. Corp is the one without a clue. (I don't care very much about GoW, but it's a big title.) What else? Most of the "launch window" games are now "TBA" And few of them excite me.

Nintendo has a half dozen games on the horizon, Splatoon 3, botw2, mp4, bayo3, Breath of the Pokemon, other stuff so little mentioned I forget it. Guaranteed we'll be playing on new hardware by the time we see those games. But it's not any time soon.

MS's games inevitably are all in the distant future (also?), but in terms of long term roadmaps, both MS and Nintendo have things (in the distant future) that strongly appeal to me. Sony...so far we know little, we know they've killed the studios that make the stuff I liked from them, though they kinda confirmed a big Astrobot (and confirmed Asobi is stuck like Santa Monica forever making one series forever and ever. Worse, they confirmed localization will be moved to Playstation Studios from the former Japan Studio), and we know Ryan's on a rampage for sequelitis to mostly games I don't care about.

How is MS's showcase that different from "Year of Dreams" PS4, 2014? Where half the games they showcased came out in the past 2 years..... If anything, that means XS may follow a similar trajectory as PS4. Not a bad fate.

If Sony pulls out unique content over the next 5 years rather than rehashes of sequels of the watered down, mass-market-friendly tentpole 100m+ franchises, I'll be over the moon. But right now all we have to go by is that we don't know of any such content, current or future, we know they're killing the studios that don't make the cinematic overbudget blockbusters, and we know the current leadership favors the hollywood model and safe sequels. What's to be excited about? If it doesn't pan out like that I'll be thrilled, but where we stand now "unique content" seems to mean "moneyhatting otherwise multiplattform games to claim them as our Precious.'

This is all ignoring multiplat on all 3 of them. That's if we just look at the exclusives (because it's a Sony thread and all anyone cares about is exclusives. ) Platforms aside, I'm just looking at them as publishers, Nintendo, SIE, XBGS. I see a Nintendo roadmap for big games I want that probably won't be (or won't be best on) the current hardware by the time they're out. I see an XBGS roadmap loaded with WRPGs I'm interested in but in the future only. I see a Sony roadmap that doesn't extend very far, as studios close, and they more and more focus on games that aren't too interesting to me. We don't know their future roadmap, but we know what the management seems to want to do, and that's not giving me much hope.

@Grumblevolcano Also, to be clear, we're talking 1st party efforts, not 3rd party "exclusives." I.E. Yeah, Sony's going to pay Squeenix to time-limited allocate games to them. But I'm talking about what Sony itself produces, unless the game was mostly funded by the first party (SFV for example, and probably MH Rise.) Nocturne is on PS as well IIRC. But SMTV isn't.

Yeah some of those "purchased exclusivity" deals makes one grudgingly have to play things on PS they otherwise may have chosen not to, but it's not really about that, it's about what games Sony, Nintendo, and MS are respectively making that appeal to me. Right now, Sony's list has become very very small (Astrobot, Ratchet, Sackboy.........they're all kid friendly but that's a coincidence...they just happen to have killed most of the non-kid friendly first party games that I used to like from them.)

Yup. Switch > PS5 > XSeX for me, too. Even factoring PS4 releases like NieR Replicant into the equation. PS5 is off to a fantastic start (most of the games aren't really to my taste, but imagine if the PS4 had strong exclusives like this coming right out of the gate), but Switch is in that period where it's consistently getting exciting software.

Microsoft... I guess they're getting an Obsidian RPG at some point in the future. And are missing out on stuff like Kena, Nocturne, and Persona 5 Strikers in the meanwhile.

Switch's 2021 lineup highlights the importance of strong third-party support. Imagine this year without most of the third-party releases and exclusives! It certainly does feel like they're stockpiling the big guns. Maybe they want to make an explosive entrance with the Switch Pro? It almost seems certain that they'll launch the new Zelda alongside a hardware revision.

Oh right, I didn't know you were including something like a vague 2022 as a "window". I guess it technically is a window.

Although I bet BotW2 comes out before Splatoon 3.

I bet some other big Xbox games come out before then too. Starfield maybe?

@Ralizah That's the thing, if most of the exclusives aren't to your tastes, that doesn't really make that platform particularly exciting to you (I'm not talking objective mass market friendly appeal for commercial success, I'm talking about what appeals to me in a platform.)

GoW? Meh. HzD? Meh. Miles - I like it. I do. Overpriced. Undersized. I do like it. Ratchet, Sackboy, big wins. Kena, Stray are indies, I go in with appropriate expectations. But wins, yes. MS doesn't have exclusives out the gate, certainly. But as I have a preference for their ecosystem, BC support, controller, etc, that means 100% of stuff that is multiplat I get there. It's materially 6:1 but I much prefer it being there (or would prefer on PC if I were still rocking a gaming rig. The XB is my PC stand-in, and TBH, PS4 &5 fail dismally in that role.)

So it's not like "I have nothing to play and regret buying a PS5" necessarily. But when I see the direction of what SIE itself is supporting, and add in the fact that given how they're now directly flipping off and shutting down JP development, I now expect 100% of JP games to go Nintendo that can, and Xb if Sony doesn't moneyhat first. Nintendo...they're in this weird time loop and I'm really really really hoping for new hardware. The old switch just feels long in the tooth and I can't stand the jaggies on the screen anymore. Just bump it enough for smoother handheld play without dropping to 300p, and enough to run AA & upscale better on the dock, and I probably won't actually need a PS as most of the "PS" games I used to buy are almost certainly going to Nintendo. I'll still own the console for Ratchet and Astrobot.... PS6 time, however I'll have to reevaluate how much this ecosystem is giving me.

I've literally spent my early months of PS5 playing DX Mankind Divided and Gravity Rush. The former being multiplat and the latter being what Sony has murdered and vowed to deprive us of. Plus Miles which was "ok". And Sackboy which was excellent (but brief as platformers inherently are.)