Topic: The PlayStation Fan Thread

@Octane You know Sony has to be thrilled with the way it keeps topping itself in terms of how well its games are performing. They're pretty much at Nintendo levels of acclaim for their first-party output now.

@Ralizah I hope it's for the better, and I hope they realise that, despite popular belief, people do care about good (single player) games

@Zuljaras Yeah I never used my E much, but I do recall it being way cooler than the older models. Those were loud but never a contest against Phat.

@redd214 @Octane That's surreal. I really didn't know Spidey was that popular! My preorder pin arrived today! That's exciting and way sooner than expected. Sounds like that will be a serious collector's piece giving those numbers.

@Octane Yeah while the whole industry, especially Ubi, is doubling down on online-everything!

@Octane I mean, they've been riding huge success on the back of primarily single-player, story-driven experiences this generation. It's Western third parties who seem to struggle with the concept of single player games still being extremely popular.

@Octane Yeah, even Nintendo's kind of moving away from that (last big single player game was Xenoblade 2). Next thing you know, Metroid Prime 4 ends up like Halo 5

@NEStalgia eh Ubisoft is really about 50/50 when you think about it. Seems they have about just as many single player offline games (Recent Assassin's Creeds, Mario Rabbids, Far Cry etc) as online only ones (Tom Clancy games, For Honor, The Crew). But in fairness can't fault them and other for going that route from a pure business perspective. The tail on a game like R6 Siege is a lot longer than an assassin's creed.

Outside of maybe Nintendo and Sony I've bought more of their games last 5 or so years than any other pub. They really do make some solid games imo.

EDIT: did some digging and majority of their releases since 2013 have been single player (with optional mp) games. Only about a quarter or so are online only/require a connection from what I can see. I'm sure the revenue split is probably flipped though.

@Grumblevolcano Nintendo always had to have a mixture of both single-player and multiplayer games so I wouldn't say they're moving away from single-player just yet. It's just the ebb and flow of having one being predominately single-player for a year then multiplayer for the next, then a mix for the next.

Although Nintendo has almost always erred to having multiplayer since the beginning of time. Even their bigger single-player games had two-player modes like Odyssey, which has roots in two-player modes in Mario 1, 3, World, etc.

Sony at the moment is really just focusing on single-player (I can't think of a single multiplayer-focused game they've put out on the PS4) while Microsoft is mostly all-in on multiplayer with only very few single-player games (Super Lucky's Tale is literally the only one I could think of).

@EvilLucario I feel Nintendo's edging more towards online multiplayer with Switch, possibly because of their decision to get rid of free online.

@redd214 Recent releases, yes, but if you look at their pending lineup, BG&E2, Skull and Bones, Division 2, more For Honor. Starlink, Trials, and AC:Odyssey I believe are the only offline games they showed.

Well. We don't talk about Just Dance. We never talk about Just Dance....

@Grumblevolcano "Next thing you know, Metroid Prime 4 ends up like Halo 5 "
Hold still, imma get my baseball bat.

Mario Odyssey, Pokemon Lets Go are mostly offline too. (Pokemon is always either all offline or online depending on how you play.) But yeah, the front end of Switch might as well have been an EA lineup, all online games. It was troubling but also probably designed to sell NSO that never materialized all that time.

@Ralizah I'm not sure Western third parties struggle with the idea of popular single player. If they do I don't understand at all where they get that notion. But they seem to understand. Even Ubi's flagship is AC. 90% of their games are online but their #1 is offline. Activision and EA wandered down a hole, made a lot of money and everyone is copying them. Microsoft has spoken of online everything, yet, ironically their games seem more tailored for couch coop. I'm not sure Western publishers don't believe in single player as much as they believe in cost cutting by moving away from expensive to produce single player games and into cheap to iterate online content and want to sell that as "what people want". Like streaming. EA boasts of how cheap FIFA is to make and that they spend very little on it yearly. Can't do that if you're making Spiderman.

@NEStalgia Well, Spider-Man IS popular, so it was going to sell regardless. Didn't expect it to be this big though. In all fairness, I've seen more trailers and posters for this game than any other game this year.

@NEStalgia @redd214 Ubi isn't all that bad. It's just that I find most of their games bland, they're all the same cookie cutter products these days. And when they do something cool and unique, Skull & Bones, it's a primarily online experience. I'm not a fan of always-online DRM either, it only punishes the regular players, hackers find a way to crack the game anyway. And we're left with a game that's tied to an online verification program (and one that's going to end too at some point I presume).

@Grumblevolcano I hope that's not the case. There's definitely a focus on MP with games like ARMS, Splatoon 2, and even Mario Tennis. I don't think they will go all out like some companies, but I do expect they will shoehorn an online mode into a lot of their upcoming games. Co-op in Luigi's Mansion 3 like how they do it in the 3DS remaster, maybe a Metroid Prime multiplayer mode akin to Hunters, etc. As long as it doesn't take away from quality of the main game it doesn't bother me.

@EvilLucario GT Sport is MP focused I think, at least, that's how I see most racing games.

@NEStalgia by recent releases yeah the last 5 years there have been many many more single player offline (w/optional mp) releases from them than online. The upcoming we know about yeah its 50/50 like I originally said. So to say they're doubling down on online is just incorrect from where I sit. And don't hate on just dance man, we buy one every year, great family game!!

@Octane can't say I've ever felt "punished" by an online only game before. Sure there are hackers here and there but it's not a pervasive problem, at least in the games I play and how I play them. Now a game goes offline in 5, 10 years ok you have a point but for me I don't see myself wanting to jump back into the crew 1 or Division years down the road when they're sequels and other games to play. Not something I really stress about personally but I appreciate your opinion.

@EvilLucario Nah, Microsoft is more like Nintendo in that regard. The whole Gears and Halo series are pretty much the best couch coop games I can think of that don't say Nintendo on the tin. Similar with the Forza series, actually (the new one is always online but that can be turned off to play like old ones.) IIRC Crackdown 3 should be coop (not sure if it's always online or not still, it probably is.) Ryse, Quantum Break, ReCore, Sunset Overdrive, Lucky, Ori (you can see its roots all over Spidey, also by Insomniac) are pure single player. One can say MS has recently been in a multiplayer phase but really....recently they have released little at all so it's a difficult test Actually MS is almost as single player focused as Sony when I think about it, and even I go for the stereotype. Online is just Forza (which is online/offline by preference), Gears, Halo, Sea of Thieves, and presumably Crackdown. And Gears and Halo are also single player/couch-coop.

Sony is the only one that's pure solo story driven. Spidey, GoW, SotC, Bloodborne, Nioh, Tsushima, R&C, Knack, the dozen zombie games, Uncharted, Infamous, etc. etc. But the rift isn't as big as it seems at a glance. GT, SFV, and Dissidia NT are their online games.

@Grumblevolcano Possibility, but I still don't see single-player going away any time soon for Nintendo. They're having Fire Emblem and Bayonetta coming soon, and even some of their multiplayer-centric games like maybe Daemon X Machina will have single-player. Plus, pretty much half of their biggest IPs are single-player (Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon [hybrid between single-player and multiplayer] from Mario Kart and Smash).

@NEStalgia Never mind then, I forgot about those games.

I also forgot about Gran Turismo Sport. Yeah, that predominantly multiplayer.

@NEStalgia Dissidia NT and SFV aren't Sony games though, the first one just happens to be an exclusive, and the latter is also on PC. They didn't publish them.

@Octane Yeah, obviously a famous, old character IP is going to be popular but I didn't know it was that popular. I remember the Spiderman movie mania back 10 years or so ago but even that didn't seem as big.

I actually like most Ubi games. I'm just dismayed at their current trend at online everything on an EA-like scale.

@redd214 Well, more specifically, 100% of their "big" games other than AC:O are 100% online. They have some smaller projects that are not, but all the big stuff is. Then again they're crowdsourcing assets for one of them so I'm going to hold my nose through that release either way.

"And don't hate on just dance man, we buy one every year, great family game!!"

Your gamer card. Hand it over.

@Octane well, most of Microsofts games are also on PC since it's also their platform, so "console exclusive" counts. Well, NT and SFV are and aren't Sony games. They paid for a good chunk of them and pretty much own them. The NT cabinets feature a weird split Sony controller. So Sony was heavily involved with that long before it even came to the console:

PS now games can now be downloaded and played from the hard drive!!!! On ps2 and 4 games now but this is great news!

https://blog.us.playstation.com/2018/09/20/playstation-now-ad...

@NEStalgia hey man, gotta get the wife involved sometimes to justify my gaming spending lol!

@NEStalgia They surely weren't having an Xbox controller on a Japanese arcade cabinet