playstation – Trekking with Dennis

The Last Of Us (TV Series): first impressions

Spoiler Warning: There are minor spoilers ahead for The Last Of Us, both the TV series and the video game.

The Last Of Us is finally here! One of the television shows that I’ve been most keen to see over the past couple of years made its debut last week, and with two episodes under its belt, I think it’s a good time to share my first impressions of the show.

First of all, the narrative of The Last Of Us is just perfect for an adaptation like this. Video games have been notoriously difficult to successfully bring to the screen – but in my view, that’s because most previous attempts have been feature films, not television shows. A modern, serialised TV show is a far better option for almost all video game stories for one simple reason: length.

The Last Of Us was released on the PlayStation 3 back in 2013, and its main storyline took players anywhere from 16-20 hours, on average, to complete. There’s no way to condense a story like that into a film; even the longest works of cinema clock in around the three-hour mark. By choosing the small screen instead, Sony and developers Naughty Dog have played a masterstroke.

So before the show had even got started, it felt like there was a strong chance for success. If I’d have heard that The Last Of Us was going to be adapted as a film, I’d have been far less interested – because its complex, dark, and deeply emotional story needs more time to play out. And based on the first two episodes, it seems as though we’re in for a solid adaptation that doesn’t rush past or skip over key story points.

Pre-release still frame of Tess and Joel with a victim of the cordyceps infection.

I was worried that I’d find Pedro Pascal miscast as Joel, if I’m being honest. Although Pascal was solid in Game of Thrones, and I’ve enjoyed his performances in other titles, like last year’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent – which you should really check out, by the way, as it’s a solid action-comedy – I wasn’t convinced that he was the right fit for this part. Pascal underwhelms me in The Mandalorian, his other big made-for-streaming series, but that’s more to do with the writing rather than the performance; The Mandalorian doesn’t give Pascal a chance to show his emotional range (nor any range at all, come to that) which is where he shines in The Last Of Us.

So I’m glad to have been proven wrong about that! The central pairing of Joel and Ellie is both the driving force of the plot of The Last Of Us and also its emotional core, and I think we’ve seen the beginnings of that in the show’s first couple of episodes. Again, this is something that builds up slowly, and the initial part of the story – the part that we’ve seen so far – put Ellie with other characters at first. But there’s a hint of good things to come in the pairing of Pedro Pascal and fellow Game of Thrones alum Bella Ramsey.

Pedro Pascal at the premiere of *The Last Of Us*.
*Image Credit: IMDB*

It’s not a stretch to say that The Last Of Us is one of the best video games I’ve ever played. Mechanically the game is solid, and its stealth-action gameplay is decent – but that was hardly innovative in 2013. What made the game special was its narrative; the game’s story was one I’d long felt was worthy of an adaptation like this. Bringing it to a new audience, as well as providing fans of the game with an adaptation worthy of such a remarkable story, was the challenge that befell HBO – and so far, it seems that they’ve risen to meet it.

Bringing the post-apocalyptic world of The Last Of Us to screen successfully required a huge financial investment – not only to secure big-name stars like Pedro Pascal, but to create intricate sets that reflect twenty years’ worth of decay, and to craft animation work that provides a sense of scale. HBO backed up the show’s creators with a decent budget, and as a result The Last Of Us recreates the game’s hauntingly beautiful world – with a few changes along the way!

The post-apocalyptic world of *The Last Of Us* is stunning.

I don’t know whether there will be a reason for the decision to change the time period in which the story is set other than perhaps an attempt to play on some kind of hidden early 2000s nostalgia… but maybe there will be more to it than that, we’ll have to see. In the original game, the infection broke out circa 2013 (the year the game was released) with the main story taking place in 2033-34. Perhaps the creators of the show hoped to use a kind of “look at what life could be like right now in an alternate timeline” thing, but if that’s all there is to it I don’t think it adds anything.

In a way, the show might be more relatable, not less, if it were set in the 2030s or 2040s, amidst the decaying remnants of today’s culture, rather than reflecting the way things were twenty years ago. There were what I interpreted as subtle digs at the George W Bush administration and the general post-9/11 culture of the United States in some of The Last Of Us’ scenes and dialogue, but this is something that, to be honest, has been explored in far more depth – and far better – in numerous other works, and again I don’t think it added anything of substance. However, I’m content to wait and see if the time period and other setting changes are going to be paid off later.

In the show, the outbreak occurred in 2003.

One thing that the show absolutely nails is its post-apocalyptic look. The faces of the characters are grimy and dirty from years of living in difficult conditions, the sets all show attention to detail with moss and mould, and every last element has been carefully crafted to simulate a world that is, for the most part, abandoned. CGI and animation work combine with practical effects and some very gruesome makeup to really sell the effect.

Two episodes in and I’ve already noticed multiple locations that look incredibly similar to the video game upon which the show was based. The flooded hotel in particular felt eerily familiar, and doubtless it would to anyone who played through The Last Of Us. There must be a temptation with an adaptation like this to shake things up and put the characters into different-looking spaces, but so far I’ve been struck by just how similar the locations have all felt.

The series has made some changes, though, and one of the biggest ones that’s become apparent so far is the relationship between Tommy and Joel. In the video game, Joel was estranged from Tommy by the time of the main story, with Tommy having left to join the Fireflies – an anti-government group whose objective is to both end the military government and find a cure for the cordyceps infection. In the show, however, a big part of Joel’s motivation is to reunite with Tommy, who seems to be a resident of the Boston quarantine zone along with Joel and Tess. It remains to be seen how this change will impact the story, and whether there’s a deeper reason for it.

Another notable change came toward the end of the second episode, with the events that unfolded at the State Capitol also being quite different when compared to the video game – though this one was less impactful as it took the main characters to more or less the same place.

I’m not any kind of “purist” opposed to changes like this, and if they serve the story well and create an engaging narrative, it should be fine. But I do think it’s noteworthy in any kind of adaptation – be that of a book, film, or video game – when narrative beats and characterisations are altered. The Last Of Us worked so well because it’s such a strong character-driven story… and I guess all I can say is that I hope that making changes to that story and its characters won’t have any ill effects or unintended consequences!

There are advantages to changing things up, though. While fans of the game should be confident that they’re familiar with the broad strokes of the plot, smaller changes and additions keep The Last Of Us fresh even for folks who may have played through its story multiple times. That’s a net positive, in my view, and never being quite sure what will happen next is almost always a good thing for a television show like this as it seeks to keep the tension and excitement levels high!

The addition of a sequence set at the very beginning of the outbreak, following a scientist and military officers in Indonesia, was interesting, and the show seems to be making a bit more of an attempt than the game did to explain the origin of its cordyceps infection. Even if that sequence is all we’re going to see, I still think it was a good idea to include it. Changing the disease’s origin from “South America” to Indonesia is certainly an interesting choice, though, and again I wonder if this is something that will be paid off down the line.

The Last Of Us has a beautiful and understated piece of music as its main theme. The Americana-inspired tune is pitch-perfect for the series, and the short, modern title sequence is in line with a lot of other shows in the serialised space; shows from Star Trek: Picard to Game of Thrones have all used CGI sequences like this. I don’t think that The Last Of Us’ theme will become quite so recognisable and iconic as some others, but it’s a great piece in its own right.

So let’s wrap things up! The Last Of Us is off to a great start. There are a couple of open questions; elements unique to the series or that have been changed from the source material, and I’m curious to see how that will play out as the story progresses. But overall, the show feels like a great adaptation. It’s easily one of the best video game adaptations that have been created so far, and certainly gives the Halo series on Paramount+ a run for its money!

For someone who isn’t a big horror fan, there were jumpscares and tense moments in The Last Of Us that were definitely pushing me out of my comfort zone as a viewer, but they were relatively few and far between in a complex, nuanced story that has plenty of other things to focus on. At no point did I feel I needed to switch off or skip ahead to get past a difficult or frightening sequence, and I think that’s to the show’s credit.

Above all, The Last Of Us is one of the most incredible and emotional stories that I’ve ever played through in a video game. Bringing that story to a wider audience and making it more accessible is a fantastic thing, and I hope that this series will succeed, bring in huge numbers of viewers, and introduce this wonderful story to a whole new group of folks – while still finding ways to keep it exciting and engaging for people who’ve already experienced it. Based on the first couple of episodes, there are plenty of reasons to think it’s up to the task!

The Last Of Us is broadcast on HBO and streams on HBO Max in the United States and is broadcast on Sky Atlantic in the United Kingdom. The Last Of Us is the copyright of Naughty Dog, Sony Interactive Entertainment, and HBO. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

The PlayStation price hike

Thu 01.09.22Thu 01.09.22Dennis

There’s a phrase that seems to be appearing more and more often these days – at least in the increasingly left-wing social media circles in which I find myself after hours of doomscrolling. The “cost of living crisis” that we’re all feeling biting us in the backside is being reframed as a “cost of greed crisis,” as massive corporations continue to profiteer off the misery of ordinary people. It’s incredibly galling to see a company pleading poverty in public statements, then turning around to its shareholders and boasting of record-setting profits, but it’s something that we see more and more often these days. Corporations will claim they’re “suffering” through this crisis just like the rest of us – but they still seem to find the money to pay massive shareholder dividends and furnish their executives with eye-watering bonuses.

It’s through this lens that I view Sony’s PlayStation price hike. If you’ve missed the news, Sony is jacking up the price of PlayStation 5 consoles around the world from a recommended retail price of £449 to £470 here in the UK, and from €499 to €549 in the European Union. Similar price hikes are taking place in Australia, Canada, China, Japan, and Latin America – although the USA seems to have escaped, at least for now.

PlayStation 5 consoles are about to get a lot more expensive.

This is unprecedented for a games console. As time goes by, consoles have always seen price reductions, not price increases, and as each generation of home consoles wears on there’s an expectation that manufacturers will lower the price, enabling more and more people to pick up the latest machines. Sony is bucking this trend in the worst way possible and at the worst time possible, throwing into chaos plans many folks will have had to pick up a PlayStation 5 in the run-up to the holidays.

At a time when many of us are suffering as a result of inflation, excessive bills, and other financial pressures, it’s incumbent upon corporations like Sony to try to minimise the damage. Sony doesn’t need to jack up the price of PlayStation 5 consoles now; doing so is pure greed and a desire to make already-excessive profits look positively gluttonous. It’s a reminder, if one were needed, that no corporation is ever a friend. Corporations’ loyalties lie with those who are already wealthy: the 1% who own massive stock portfolios and for whom there will never be a choice between going cold or going hungry. Sony has nailed its colours to the mast with this decision – but it’s hardly the only corporation to be using the current cost of living and inflation crises as a paper-thin excuse for profiteering.

Sony is jacking up the price of PlayStation 5s all over the world.

Sony has already demonstrated how anti-consumer it can be with the piss-poor launch of the PlayStation 5, one of the worst console launches ever. By failing to produce enough machines, Sony played right into the hands of touts and scalpers, ensuring that many players – and many children – were left disappointed and unable to acquire a console. Those who did either had to be exceptionally lucky to find a shop that had a console in stock or pay ridiculously-inflated rates to a scalper. Sony took no action whatsoever to prevent this, and for months after the console launched it wasn’t uncommon to see units on auction sites and private social media sales where prices were more than double the RRP.

In addition, most new PlayStation 5 games have seen a huge increase in price since the beginning of this new console generation. Games that used to cost $60/£55 now regularly go for $70/£65 – and that’s often just for the “base” or “core” version. Complete games, including pre-order bonuses, special editions, and the like can easily be in excess of £100. So players are being hit and hit again by Sony – and by other greedy companies in the gaming realm.

Different special editions are available for upcoming PlayStation title *The Last Of Us Part I*.

At the end of July, shortly before this PlayStation price hike was announced, Sony made another announcement. The corporation told investors and shareholders that it was predicting profits for the 2022-23 financial year of $8.4 billion. Let’s repeat that: Sony expects to make $8.4 billion of pure profit over the next few months – and they have the sheer fucking audacity to turn around a couple of weeks later and tell players that it’s getting too expensive to make PlayStation 5 consoles so the price has to go up. Two words for you, Sony: fuck off.

Earlier in the year, Sony also announced record-setting profits in both its film and music divisions, with Sony Pictures making a profit of $394 million in just the first quarter of the year and the corporation’s music division surpassing that, posting a quarterly profit of $471 million. This reminds us of something important, too: Sony is a massive corporation whose reach extends far beyond gaming.

A summary of Sony’s increased profits in the first quarter of this year.
*Image Credit: Sony Group Corporation*.

Even if we accept Sony’s claim at face-value – that manufacturing PlayStation 5 consoles and buying the required components has become more expensive – then Sony, as a massive corporation, can easily offset any increased costs with the record-breaking profits it’s been making in other fields. Music and cinema are just two examples shown above, but Sony also has many other profitable business divisions and subsidiaries, and by taking a tiny fraction of those record profits, Sony could have avoided passing the price increase on to the rest of us at a time when inflation and the cost of living catastrophe is really hurting a lot of people.

This is pure greed, there’s no two ways about it. Sony has demonstrated, in truly callous and uncaring fashion, just how little respect or care it has for practically everyone. And if you’re an American thinking that this isn’t coming your way: I wouldn’t bet on it. Sooner or later Sony – and perhaps other corporations in the gaming space, too – will increase your prices just like they have in the rest of the world.

We could talk at length about where inflation has come from, what’s causing all of these problems (and spoiler alert, it isn’t all Putin’s fault), and maybe one day we should. But for now, I think it’s enough to say that this price hike from Sony is about greed. Sony is a greedy, money-grubbing corporation that has chosen to screw over its own fans and players at a time when it’s already making more money than it’s ever made before. Sony will soon be paying out some of that money – your money – to shareholders in the form of dividends and to executives in the form of massive bonuses, all while the rest of us are barely keeping our heads above water with a huge storm heading our way this winter.

For some folks, a PlayStation 5 was something that, despite shortages, they were still hoping to pick up in the months ahead. For some parents, a PlayStation 5 seemed like a great Christmas gift. Sony is doing everything it can to hurt those people, forcing them to pay more unnecessarily at a time when people simply can’t afford it.

Profiteering is absolutely disgusting and Sony should be ashamed of itself.

PlayStation and PlayStation 5 are the copyright of Sony/Sony Interactive Entertainment. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence (except to corporate profiteers).

“My cash-grab is NOT a cash-grab!” exclaims man who’s definitely working on a cash-grab

Wed 13.07.22Dennis

Since I covered the announcement of The Last Of Us Remastered… Remastered last year, I’ve left the project alone. I’m flat-out not interested in a game that’s been remastered or reworked for the second time in just nine short years, especially when the PlayStation 4 version is perfectly playable. I don’t seek out projects that I don’t like with the intention of crapping all over them; there’s more than enough negativity in gaming communities online that I don’t want to add to it.

But a widely-reported remark from a developer/animator (whose name I won’t share to avoid piling on) really pushed me over the edge. The Last Of Us Remastered… Remastered (or whatever it’s going to be called) is a cash-grab. It’s the second remake of a game that was released in 2013 at the tail end of the PlayStation 3’s life, and it’s being resurrected for the second time entirely as a cheap cash-grab by Sony.

After sharing my initial thoughts back when the announcement was made, I was content to ignore this new remaster. I have no plans to buy it – especially not with a ridiculous £70 price tag (or close to £100 for the deluxe version) – so that was that. Comment made, time to move on. But for one of the senior developers to have the audacity to speak about the game in such a brazen and dishonest way… I just couldn’t let it lie.

The Last Of Us is a good game. It was a great way to close out the PlayStation 3 era for Sony, and it was the game that convinced me to buy my first ever PlayStation console. I consider it one of the best games of the 2010s, and even though its sequel struggled under the weight of a clumsy narrative that tried to be too smart for its own good, the original game hasn’t been sullied by that controversy and remains one of the best examples of narrative, linear, single-player adventures.

*The Last Of Us* is undeniably a great narrative experience.

But this second attempt to “update” The Last Of Us for a new console generation is motivated purely by profit. Sony is cheaping out; recycling a game that they already have rather than investing in something new. By reusing things like recorded dialogue and motion-capture performances, and by not having to pay a team of writers to come up with a new story, the project can cut costs compared to making a new game from scratch.

There are remasters and remakes that are absolutely worth your time. Resident Evil 2, for example, was remade a couple of years ago from the ground up, and updating a title from 1998 to bring it into the modern-day with a new engine, new voice acting, and so on was absolutely worth doing. It introduced the title to a crowd of new fans who didn’t play it the first time around – and for whom going back to a clunky PlayStation 1 title would be offputting.

The remake of *Resident Evil 2* feels much more worthwhile.

The Last Of Us doesn’t have that excuse. Not only is the PlayStation 3 version still perfectly playable in its own right, the PlayStation 4 remaster is an iterative improvement, bringing sharper graphics and ensuring that the game can be played on both PlayStation 4 and new PlayStation 5 consoles. As I said when the project was announced last year, I can’t imagine it would be worthwhile to resurrect the game for a second time – not so soon after the first two versions were released.

New video game generations have offered diminishing returns over the years. There was a huge difference between games from 1980 to 1990, and from 1990 to 2000. But even by the turn of the millennium, things were slowing down. The difference in graphical fidelity between a game from 2000 and one from 2010 was less noticeable than it had been in previous decades, and the difference between a game from ten years ago compared to a brand-new game released today can be so small that it’s difficult to spot.

Is this image from the PlayStation 3, 4, or 5?

Grand Theft Auto V is the same game fundamentally as it was when it was released in 2013 – the same year as The Last Of Us – and it’s still going strong. There have been tweaks as the game was brought to new consoles, but those changes have been criticised for being incredibly minor. Skyrim, The Witcher 3, and many other games from the past decade likewise hold up incredibly well and are still a ton of fun to play.

The only reason for a project like The Last Of Us Remastered… Remastered to exist is to be a cash-grab. That’s why it was dreamt up and that’s all it will ever be. It might be a good cash-grab – and with a game as good as The Last Of Us at its core it should be, provided the new team doesn’t screw it up – but it’s still a cash-grab. And I don’t want to claim that the people working on it aren’t working hard – I’m sure that they are. I’m sure a lot of energy and passion has gone into this cash-grab from the developers. As someone who worked in the games industry, I know how passionate developers can be, and even when a game isn’t great, good developers will still give it their all. That’s commendable.

But that doesn’t excuse trying to present a project like this as something it’s not. The Last Of Us Remastered… Remastered may end up being decent with pretty graphics and neat animation work that talented developers put a lot of time, effort, and passion into making. But that doesn’t make it any less of a cash-grab. I genuinely hope that it will be good – because I don’t want the reputation of The Last Of Us tainted by being associated with a sub-par remaster. But this isn’t a fundamentally new or even different experience; anyone who’s played the original game won’t need to play this version.

And that’s what makes it a cash-grab. It’s an attempt by Sony to, well, grab as much cash as possible for as little investment as possible. Without spending the big bucks that would be needed to create The Last Of Us Part 3, or any other brand-new game, Sony hopes to grind out a remaster that will save them some money but still rake in the cash from fans of the original game. And that strategy will probably succeed, if past experience is anything to go by.

For just $100, you can own the “Digital Deluxe Edition!”

Buy The Last Of Us Remastered… Remastered if you want. Or don’t. If you haven’t played the game yet, it might even be worth waiting for the new remaster to get the most up-to-date and visually polished experience. It’s definitely a game worth playing… but I’m not convinced that this version will be, at least not for me – nor for most folks who’ve already played it.

But whether it’s good, bad, or mediocre, and regardless of how hard individual developers have worked on it, The Last Of Us Remastered… Remastered is a cash-grab. Trying to pretend otherwise is either pure and selfish dishonesty or abject self-delusion.

The Last Of Us Part 1 will be released for PlayStation 5 on the 2nd of September 2022, and for PC at an unspecified later date. The Last Of Us is the copyright of Naughty Dog and Sony Interactive Entertainment. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Gran Turismo 7: hiding microtransactions is just plain wrong!

Fri 01.04.22Mon 04.04.22Dennis

The video games industry is home to a growing number of incredibly shady and dodgy business practices. Microtransactions themselves qualify – especially things like in-game currencies, randomised loot boxes, and any microtransactions in games aimed at kids. But of all the corporate fuckery seen this side of the Star Wars: Battlefront II disaster, Sony and Polyphony Digital have to take the crown with Gran Turismo 7.

In case you haven’t followed the story, a quick recap. Gran Turismo 7 is the most recent game in Sony and Polyphony Digital’s long-running racing series. It was released on the 4th of March 2022, and in the weeks prior to launch, copies of the game were sent to many outlets for review. This is pretty standard – just like film critics get to see films ahead of time, video game journalists and commentators are often able to play games ahead of their launch. That’s how publications – and even some YouTubers nowadays – are able to get their reviews out before or just after a game launches.

But reviewers didn’t realise that the version of Gran Turismo 7 that they’d been playing was deceptive. And yes, “deceptive” is the right word – because there’s absolutely no way that this was anything other than intentional from Sony and Polyphony Digital. If you believe this was all an innocent mistake then I’ve got a bridge to sell you! Sony and Polyphony Digital essentially created a different version of the game for reviewers to play – a version of the game that hid the extent of Gran Turismo 7′s egregious microtransactions.

By doing this, Sony and Polyphony Digital hoped to score rave reviews for the game – a racing sim which, by all accounts, has thoroughly enjoyable gameplay. They fully intended to conceal just how heavily-monetised Gran Turismo 7 actually is, lest the microtransactions drag down the game’s review scores during its crucial release window. And do you know what? Their shady plot worked.

Logo for Sony’s PlayStation 5 console – home of *Gran Turismo 7*.

Gran Turismo 7 raked in rave reviews, including from a number of publications and websites that I read and would generally trust. It didn’t really occur to me that they’d all had the wool pulled over their eyes by a dishonest corporation and its equally despicable subsidiary. But that’s the reality of the situation: Sony and Polyphony Digital lied to reviewers, showed them a willfully dishonest misrepresentation of Gran Turismo 7, and hoped that they could get away with it.

Within hours of the game’s release on PlayStation 5 earlier this month, the microtransactions were switched on. An update a few days later then “rebalanced” the microtransactions to make them even worse – providing far fewer in-game rewards, making vehicles more expensive, and generally turning the game into a monetised mess that would give other microtransaction-riddled titles a run for their money. And all of this came in a game that Sony has the audacity to ask players to pay a minimum of £65 ($70) for.

When the Battlefront II debacle exploded in late 2017, it felt like a turning point. Electronic Arts had pushed too hard and too far, and the result was a backlash that seemed, for a time anyway, to genuinely frighten some of the biggest corporations in the industry. Governments began looking at lootboxes and microtransactions in a serious way for the first time, and legislation was passed in some jurisdictions that has meant some games have had to be adjusted or even pulled from sale entirely.

There was a chance, back then, for the campaign against microtransactions and these kinds of awful, anti-consumer business practices to really have an impact, and for players to fight back and demonstrate to corporations that there are limits to how far we can be pushed around. Sadly, though, with other news stories taking up airtime, the issue fell away almost as quickly as it burst onto the scene. In the months and years since, corporations like Sony have slowly ramped up their microtransactions and other in-game monetisation plans, leading us right back to a very familiar situation.

What Sony and Polyphony Digital did with *Gran Turismo 7* is worse than what Electronic Arts did with *Battlefront II*. Yes, really.

It should go without saying that what Sony and Polyphony Digital did is wrong. Categorically and unequivocally wrong. They lied, misrepresented their game, and arguably mis-sold a product in such an egregious and disingenuous way that it could very well fall under the legal definition of “false advertising.” Sony has never been a consumer-friendly company, make no mistake about that, but even by their standards, this is a new low.

There’s also egg on the face of a lot of reviewers, commentators, and publications – many of whom should know better than to take a company like Sony at its word. Pre-release review copies of Gran Turismo 7 still contained things like in-game currencies and the in-game microtransaction marketplace, and some reviews even made note of these things, with some particularly pro-Sony publications optimistically suggesting that the microtransactions wouldn’t be all that bad or would be “totally optional.”

Great reviews from critics, but players are making their voices heard.
*Source: Metacritic, 31.03.2022*

Too many publications, websites, and even social media channels and YouTubers now work hand-in-glove with corporations like Sony. Their refusal to think too critically about the obvious microtransactions and willingness to give Gran Turismo 7 excellent reviews in spite of that is testament to that. There’s a twofold fear that many professional journalists and the outlets that employ them have – on the one hand, they fear that being late with their reviews will lead to fewer clicks and thus less money, and on the other they fear that being too critical of a company’s latest title will cost them in the long run, whether that be in terms of access to review copies in future, or just in terms of what can be a profitable business relationship.

So while I’m happy to place the blame for this on Sony and Polyphony Digital, because they are the ones who lied and misrepresented Gran Turismo 7, there are quite a few reviewers and gaming publications that need to take a long look in the mirror. They are not completely innocent parties to this either, and clearly something has got to change in terms of the working relationship between the games industry, the people who cover it, and the players themselves.

More promotional art for *Gran Turismo 7*.

To deliberately conceal the extent of Gran Turismo 7′s microtransactions is disgusting behaviour from Sony and Polyphony Digital – but it’s more than that. It’s an admission from the corporation that they understand how unpopular and unwarranted microtransactions are in a game of this nature. At a minimum of £65 ($70) for the price of admission, many players would quite rightly expect to be able to play the full game and unlock all of the vehicles on offer.

I can’t help make a comparison to last year’s Forza Horizon 5, a game I got via Game Pass and thoroughly enjoyed. Simply by playing Forza Horizon 5 and completing races and missions, I unlocked new vehicles and in-game currency to buy other vehicles. After around 45 hours, I’d unlocked almost 100 different vehicles from trucks and four-wheel-drive cars all the way to supercars and hypercars. In Gran Turismo 7, you’d be lucky to have acquired enough in-game currency for one single vehicle after that length of play time – and the obvious reason for that is to essentially force players to pay for microtransactions.

*Forza Horizon 5*– last year’s big racing title – didn’t have this problem.

For me, this is beyond the pale. Sony and Polyphony Digital owe their players an apology. Moreover, they need to strip as much of the microtransaction marketplace from Gran Turismo 7 as possible – just as Electronic Arts did when the Battlefront II debacle threatened to overwhelm them. The only way to make this right in the long-term is to abandon this microtransaction model. If the game was free-to-play, it would be a different conversation – though hiding aspects of the monetisation or the prices would still be wrong. But in a game asking £65 ($70) up front from players, there was no justification for any microtransactions to begin with, let alone ones as egregious and interfering as those present in Gran Turismo 7.

Lying to reviewers and commentators will have consequences. Many publications have been burned by this, with angry players turning up to leave comments on reviews pointing out that there are particularly aggressive microtransactions in the game that they should’ve been warned about. Hopefully that will mean some of these journalists will think more carefully about how they review games like Gran Turismo 7 in future – but the reality is that it will probably just mean that players will have an even harder time knowing which reviews can be trusted.

Box art for some of the editions of *Gran Turismo 7*.

There was no need for Gran Turismo 7 to spend its first few weeks embroiled in controversy. This was an own goal from Sony and Polyphony Digital; a PR calamity that did not need to happen. Microtransactions shouldn’t have been present in the game to begin with, but if they were the corporation needed to be honest and up-front about that – doing whatever possible to provide a justification for their existence. Lying and covering up the microtransactions is something I regard as a tacit admission that Sony and Polyphony Digital understand that they shouldn’t have put them in the game to begin with.

This is the worst example of microtransaction misbehaviour in several years, probably since Battlefront II. I hope that lessons are learned from it. It would be great to see some collaboration between reviewers and publications in future – refusing to review a title or award it a score until the full extent of its microtransactions are known would be one way to shut this down and prevent another corporation from trying to get away with this despicable misbehaviour.

Sony Interactive Entertainment is the publisher of *Gran Turismo 7*.

So that’s where we’re at. If you bought Gran Turismo 7, you have my sympathies. We’ve all bought games over the years that were disappointing for one reason or another, but it can be particularly frustrating to look at a game that had so much potential to be great, but which was ruined by some corporate-mandated nonsense that really just spoilt things.

That’s really how I see Gran Turismo 7 – it’s a game that had potential, a title with seemingly excellent racing gameplay, but one that has been soiled by the truly awful way that Sony and Polyphony Digital chose to treat players. Don’t despair, though, because there are plenty of other racing games out there!

Gran Turismo 7 is out now for PlayStation 5. Gran Turismo 7 is the copyright of Sony Interactive Entertainment and Polyphony Digital. Some images used above courtesy of IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

New consoles one year later – was it worth it?

Wed 10.11.21Thu 11.11.21Dennis

It’s been a whole year since the launch of the Xbox Series S/X and the PlayStation 5. The consoles debuted a week apart in early November 2020, and I thought I’d mark the occasion by taking a look back on what has to be considered a pretty rough year for both machines.

At time of writing, both the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 are out of stock in the UK – and this has been the case for twelve months. Occasional deliveries of consoles to retailers are either sent out to folks who pre-ordered or are snapped up within minutes of going on sale – often by bots. Availability of the less-powerful Xbox Series S has been spotty, but generally better than its more powerful cousin, which is good news for gamers on a budget. However, availability overall has been poor.

These aren’t the first machines to launch without the supplies to meet worldwide demand, and it’s likely that they won’t be the last. But as I argued last year, this particular console launch feels far worse and more egregious than practically any other. It’s certainly true that other consoles in the past had supply issues. Getting a Nintendo Wii in the UK in 2006 and into 2007 was difficult, for example. But this feels far worse than that, and when compared to the launches of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2013 it’s pretty damn bad.

As we keep hearing on the news, issues with “supply chains” abound across the world, and this was true a year ago as Microsoft and Sony prepared to launch their new consoles. Many components involved in the manufacture of the machines – from silicon to microprocessors – were feeling the pinch due to a number of factors. The pandemic had hit manufacturers in China and Taiwan hard earlier in 2020, but there were also additional pressures from a growing cryptocurrency mining craze that ate up vast numbers of graphics cards and other components. As a result of all of these factors and more, both the Xbox Series S/X and the PlayStation 5 launched with far less availability than necessary.

Two PlayStation 5 editions – with and without a disc drive.

Ever since the transition from 2D to 3D, it’s taken game developers a while to truly get to grips with new hardware and release games that can fully take advantage of the computing power on offer. As a result, for at least a couple of years following the launch of a new console many games are in transition – looking slightly better, perhaps, than the prior generation, but still nowhere near as good as they could. With the diminishing returns on offer considering that Xbox One and PlayStation 4 titles could already look decent, many games released for the two new systems over the past year haven’t really felt new or innovative.

This generation, like the one before it really, will almost certainly go down as an iterative step rather than a transformational one. When consoles from the previous generation could knock out visually-stunning titles like Red Dead Redemption II, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, and Ghost of Tsushima, it really feels like there’s limited room for improvement! Put the average player in a room with the best-looking games of the last generation and some of the first titles from this generation and they’d struggle to tell the difference.

Last generation’s *Red Dead Redemption II* is a stunningly beautiful game with an expansive open world.

There’s a case to be made that Microsoft and Sony should’ve waited. Rather than letting down their audiences by having totally inadequate supplies, if they’d delayed their releases by a year and used that time to build up stock in anticipation of a bigger launch in 2021, we could be talking about the new consoles releasing this month. It’s still possible that they’d both sell out just like last year – but it’s also possible that the extra manufacturing time, without the pressure of fulfilling pre-orders from increasingly irate customers over the past twelve months, would have led to a better launch window for both consoles.

So I guess that’s where I come down on the issue. The consoles were launched callously by both companies without adequate levels of stock to meet the demand that they knew existed. The predictable outcome has been that scalpers and touts have been re-selling consoles all year long for close to double the recommended retail price, lining their own pockets in the process. It seems as though Sony and Microsoft don’t care about this in the slightest, and they’ve been content to leave the problem of bots and reselling to retailers. Some retailers have tried to put in place mechanisms to prevent bots from buying up every available machine, but as we’ve seen all year long these reactions have been more miss than hit.

A handful of Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 consoles being offered for sale via a popular auction website. Prices are easily approaching twice the recommended retail price for both machines.

In terms of games, both Microsoft and Sony – as well as practically all third-party developers – have pursued a year-long policy of making titles available on last-gen consoles as well as the two new machines. Only a handful of titles have been true exclusives, with PlayStation games like Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart and Returnal carrying their flag. Microsoft fans have to be content with basically no exclusives right now, with games like Forza Horizon 5 and the upcoming Halo Infinite also launching on PC and Xbox One.

Might there be some buyers’ remorse among PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X players? I would think so – especially if they paid over the odds for their console to an eBay scalper. Neither machine feels like particularly good value even at their recommended retail price, let alone at the prices folks have actually had to pay to get their hands on them! The handful of exclusive games are backed up by “enhanced” versions of last-gen titles, but in many cases I’ve genuinely struggled to tell the difference between different consoles’ versions of the same title. The improvements on offer over the past year have come in terms of things like frame rate – jumping to 60fps from 30fps for certain titles – and then in comparatively minor areas like controller battery life. These things are hard sells.

There have been some changes over the past year, though. Microsoft’s aggressive pursuit of the Game Pass model represents great value for players on a budget, opening up an entire library of titles for a relatively low monthly fee. Sony still hasn’t caught up and doesn’t have a functional Game Pass competitor yet. Both companies have also made big moves into supporting PC gaming – with games that were once PlayStation exclusives making their way to a new platform. In lieu of having enough PlayStation 5 consoles to sell, perhaps that’s something of a consolation prize for Sony!

Overall, I can’t even be generous enough to call the past year a “mixed bag.” There are far more negatives than positives as I see it, and unless both companies can get to grips with the supply and demand issue, this Christmas will be the second in a row where folks are either going to have to pay silly money for a new console or go without. That isn’t a good look, and the longer these problems drag on the worse it will get for the reputations of both Sony and Microsoft.

Last year I felt that it was wrong to launch the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X given the low levels of stock and the myriad other issues that a pandemic-riddled world was facing. The past twelve months have done nothing to change my mind or convince me I was wrong about that. Inadequate manufacturing capacity has kept both consoles out of too many players’ hands, and those who did succeed at getting a pre-order – or more likely who paid close to double the price to a scalper – have found a perishingly small number of exclusive games on a machine that doesn’t feel like much of an improvement over the last generation. The Xbox Series S/X and the PlayStation 5 have potential – but over the past twelve months, neither have come close to reaching it.

Xbox and all other related properties mentioned above is the copyright of Microsoft. PlayStation and all other related properties mentioned above is the copyright of Sony. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only is not intended to cause any offence.

Cyberpunk 2077 returns to the PlayStation Store!

Sat 26.06.21Sun 13.11.22Dennis

More than six months after a cataclysmic, bug-riddled launch saw Cyberpunk 2077 quite deservingly removed from sale by Sony, the game is finally back on the PlayStation Store. But is this the triumph it appears to be?

It’s been a while since we last took a look at the disastrous Cyberpunk 2077, and this seems like a good opportunity to consider the game’s progress – and how far it still has to go. On the surface, Cyberpunk 2077′s return to the PlayStation Store seems like a win for beleaguered developer CD Projekt Red. They’ll want to spin it as testament to the work put into the game since launch, and that it must be representative of a significant improvement for the game… even though its PlayStation Store listing comes with a major caveat that warns players of “performance issues” and that buying the game for PlayStation 4 is “not recommended!”

*Cyberpunk 2077* is finally back on the PlayStation Store.

Let’s not forget, before we go any further, that Sony doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to gatekeeping on the PlayStation Store. Some truly awful games have been released there and allowed to remain on sale even after being shown to be buggy, unplayable messes. That’s one reason why the decision to pull Cyberpunk 2077 was so shocking! Sony allowing the game back means it’s finally at the same level as PlayStation classics like Life of Black Tiger and Sword of Fortress the Onomuzim.

The general consensus, even from Cyberpunk 2077′s remaining supporters, is that the game still has a long way to go. There are still a lot of glitches and issues to correct, but most significantly there are underlying gameplay problems, more of which become apparent with every bug fixed. Cyberpunk 2077 was rushed out the door to meet an arbitrary deadline, and the result of that isn’t just the bugs and glitches. Many aspects of the underlying gameplay just aren’t all that good.

Many elements of *Cyberpunk 2077* – including driving – have been heavily criticised.

Non-player characters don’t react naturally to situations that transpire around them. There are many video clips you can find on YouTube of half a dozen characters performing an identical animation when the player takes out a gun or fires a shot. Night City’s police don’t exist dynamically in the world in the same way they do in games like Grand Theft Auto V – or Grand Theft Auto III, come to that. Instead, they spawn in when the player commits a crime – often within a metre or two of the player.

If the version of Cyberpunk 2077 that launched in December felt like an early alpha version, six months later what we have at best is the equivalent of a closed beta. It’s ready for play-testing by a large professional QA team who would report all of these bugs and glitches to the developers so they could be fixed before launch. In a game of this size, this phase of development could easily take six months or more. Being as generous as we can, Cyberpunk 2077 is still in dire need of months of development time to get to a state that’s anywhere close to acceptable.

*Cyberpunk 2077* launched in an appalling state… and despite some improvements, is still nowhere close to acceptable.

And that’s before we get into new problems. CD Projekt Red and the development team are still reeling from a major hack that exposed the private data of many individuals who work for the company. That will undoubtedly have damaged morale. But to my great surprise, in recent interviews CD Projekt Red has already begun discussing its next game – which is assumed to be The Witcher 4.

They quite literally and demonstrably have not finished working on Cyberpunk 2077 and they’re already talking about moving on to new projects? Ouch. I think we can kiss goodbye to any Cyberpunk 2077 expansion packs or DLC! CD Projekt Red has also announced sales figures for the first quarter of 2021, and as you might expect given the state of the game, those numbers are catastrophically bad – Cyberpunk 2077 sold somewhere in the region of 800,000 copies. That’s less than 6% of the 13.7 million copies of the game that were sold in December 2020.

As you might expect, sales tanked following the game’s disastrous launch.

Then there are refunds to take into consideration. Many players chose to get refunds directly from Xbox, Steam, and other outlets where they’d purchased the game. This is a big part of the reason why Sony took the game down – there were so many refunds being requested, and Sony was concerned about their ability to handle all of them. CD Projekt Red directly refunded only around 30,000 players – but that doesn’t account for the vast majority who got their refunds from the shop they purchased the game from. The total number of refunds as of June – according to unofficial reports – may be in excess of two million.

Even if that number is inflated, a huge number of refunds have been paid out, and that’s had a massive impact on CD Projekt Red’s bottom line. The company has seen more than 50% wiped off the value of its share price in the last six months, and a recent investor presentation saw further falls as investors were disappointed at the lack of clarity about the company’s future – and Cyberpunk 2077 in particular.

CD Projekt Red’s stock price from June 2020 to June 2021.
*Image Credit: Google Finance*

I’ve spoken at length about how Cyberpunk 2077 has become the latest in a long line of “release now, fix later” failures, but the point needs to be re-emphasised: this is not how you make a video game. Players have a right to expect basic functionality and playability at the bare minimum, and even as Cyberpunk 2077 returns to the PlayStation Store, those basic expectations are still not being met. The game remains in a poor state, unworthy of being called a finished product.

As the old joke goes: if you can’t be a success in life, maybe you can still serve as a bad example. And that’s what Cyberpunk 2077 is right now: a warning to any other publisher that thinks they can get away with releasing a broken, bug-riddled, unplayable mess and promise to fix it later.

*Cyberpunk 2077* will be studied in the years ahead.

I had been hopeful that Cyberpunk 2077′s updates over the last few months would kick off a No Man’s Sky-style revival, with the game crawling its way slowly toward commercial success and critical acclaim. That’s still possible – though if CD Projekt Red are already considering their next game, I’m not encouraged by that. But as things stand, the updates and patches released so far haven’t succeeded at getting the game to anywhere near its promised condition.

Some of the bugs are gone. But each bug removed seems to uncover something else about Cyberpunk 2077 that’s disappointing – in a way, the game’s reputation for being unplayable due to bugs concealed what may come to be seen as its true failing: Cyberpunk 2077 is just not that fun to play. There may be a decent story, but in terms of gameplay, what’s there is a roleplaying-shooter that’s mediocre at best, with gameplay systems that other titles did better years earlier.

The reputation of CD Projekt Red has been badly damaged by the *Cyberpunk 2077* fiasco and will take a long time to recover.

Considering the financial impact on CD Projekt Red, in a way I could quite understand the desire to move on. Cutting your losses and racing ahead to a new project makes business sense in some circumstances, and may even be helpful in the medium-to-long term for team morale. I wouldn’t be shocked to hear in the next few months that there won’t be any more Cyberpunk 2077 updates; that this is as good as the game will ever get.

BioWare did this twice in recent years – with Mass Effect: Andromeda and with Anthem. So before you dismiss the notion out of hand, keep in mind that it’s happened before. Games companies are notorious for cutting their losses and abandoning underperforming projects. And if we’ve learned one thing from the Cyberpunk 2077 clusterfuck it’s that CD Projekt Red, despite their earlier glowing reputation with players, behave just like every other major games company on the planet.

If you’re still playing Cyberpunk 2077 – or holding out hope for its future success – I’m with you. I don’t want this game to be forever bad; it had so much potential and I’d like nothing more than to see it succeed. I’m just not holding my breath any more. There have been too many underwhelming updates and too many strange noises coming from CD Projekt Red.

Cyberpunk 2077 is out now for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X. Cyberpunk 2077 is the copyright of CD Projekt Red. Some promotional artwork courtesy of IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

No, Sony is NOT going to “delete all of your PlayStation 3 games”

Tue 23.03.21Sun 13.11.22Dennis

Fans of Sony’s PlayStation 3, PSP, and Vita consoles have been disappointed to learn in recent days that the PlayStation Store (Sony’s digital shop) will no longer be available on those machines later this year. It makes sense – the PlayStation 3 is fifteen years old this year, and an entire console generation has come and gone since it was last relevant. But we’ll look at that in a moment. What surprised me is the frankly hysterical reaction from some PlayStation super-fans who seem to think – and in the cases of some content creators have told their large audiences – that Sony is about to “delete all of their digital games!”

This is absolutely not true.

Sony shutting down the PlayStation Store on these older consoles doesn’t mean that players will lose games that they have downloaded. They won’t be deleted from the system, nor will they suddenly become impossible to boot up. All it means is that buying any additional titles won’t be possible; PlayStation 3, PSP, and Vita players looking to add to their collections will have to do so with physical discs and cartridges in future.

That’s all.

Sony’s PlayStation 3 console arrived on the scene in 2006.

Sony has been generous to support all three machines digitally for as long as they have. Maintaining a digital shop on three different, out-of-date systems is not free, and even just patching security issues and exploits takes time and costs money. Considering that the number of people using these older systems’ shops must be absolutely minuscule by now, it was probably veering close to loss-making territory just to keep them in working order.

Sony has been badly hurt in the past by exploits in the PlayStation Store. In 2011, a hack exposed millions of users’ information, including credit card and bank numbers, as well as other personal information. This hack was hugely damaging to Sony’s brand, and left the PlayStation Network offline for almost a month. For obvious reasons, Sony can’t afford a repeat of this, so shutting down the shops that hardly anyone is using on two old machines and one failure makes perfect sense.

The PlayStation Store handles users’ private information and financial information, so any exploits hackers find could potentially see a repeat of the 2011 attack. Even if Sony kept PlayStation 4 and 5 players’ data wholly separate, a hack could still expose the data of anyone who’d ever bought anything on PlayStation 3, PSP, or Vita – and that’s an unacceptable risk.

The 2011 PlayStation hack made headlines around the world.
*Picture Credit: Channel 4 News via YouTube*.

As technology improves, older, simpler systems become much more susceptible to this kind of cyber attack. Newer software is more sophisticated, and hackers are thus able to more easily break into older systems. This is why Microsoft has ended support for older versions of Windows, for example, because maintaining them and keeping them secure is increasingly a full-time job – and if practically nobody is using those systems, why bother?

That’s not to say that there won’t be consequences for this shutdown, though. Sony has not been great when it comes to backwards compatibility, either on PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5, and there will be some older PlayStation 3 games that were either digital-only or only saw limited disc releases that will be much more difficult to access as a result of this decision. Indie titles like Fat Princess or the HD version of Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 are currently only available on PlayStation 3 digitally, and will no longer be available to purchase after the shop closes.

Likewise, a number of PSP and Vita titles that were digital-only will no longer be available.

The PlayStation Vita was Sony’s second attempt at making a handheld console.

However, as we have seen with older consoles like the SNES, Dreamcast, and PlayStation 2, emulation will still offer players a way to access most of these titles. Game preservation used to be a fairly niche activity, existing in a legal grey area, but nowadays a lot of people take it very seriously. There are still games that are entirely out of print, but you can find many copies of older games – even completely obscure titles released on unsuccessful hardware. There are functioning emulators already for PSP and PlayStation 3, and Vita emulation is being worked on. Give it a few years and most, if not all, of the digital-only titles on these systems will be preserved and available to play.

At the end of the day, this decision from Sony is going to disappoint a small number of gamers who still regularly use these older systems. But the vast majority of folks have already moved on; PlayStation 3 is now two generations out-of-date, PSP is older too, and hardly anyone bought a Vita. Sony is making a sensible business decision, and considering how long it’s been since any of these machines were relevant, it’s hardly one that can be said to be unexpected.

If you need to get any PlayStation 3, PSP, or Vita games digitally, you better get on with it!

Given that there has been this misinformation flying around about “games being deleted,” I wanted to add my two cents to the conversation and clarify that nobody is going to delete your games. If you buy a game and download it before the shops close – and at time of writing they are still open and accepting new purchases – you will literally notice nothing. All of those games will still be there on your console for as long as the machine itself lasts, and if you find yourself in possession of a rare, obscure title that you feel needs to be preserved for posterity and for the enjoyment of future generations, then I daresay you can figure out how to do so!

It’s always worth taking a deep breath when you hear news like this. Rationally think through what’s being said and try to figure out what’s really going on. “All PlayStation 3 Games Are Being Deleted!!!1!” may bring in a lot of clicks on social media, but it’s patently false. Promoters of such clickbait should be ashamed. And now you know the real story – buying new titles on those old machines will be impossible, but no one is going to delete your games.

The PlayStation brand – including PlayStation 3, PSP, and others mentioned above – is the copyright of Sony Interactive Entertainment. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Another surprising twist in the Cyberpunk 2077 saga

Fri 18.12.20Mon 21.11.22Dennis

Having said all I wanted to about Cyberpunk 2077 both before and after its release, I was content to sit back, wait for the patches and updates to be rolled out, and not discuss the game again until I’d played it for myself – something I still hope to do some time next year. But out of nowhere came a truly shocking piece of news and I just had to add my two cents to the conversation. If you somehow missed it, here’s the lowdown: Sony has removed Cyberpunk 2077 from sale on the PlayStation Store and is offering a refund to every single PlayStation player who picked up the game.

People throw around words very easily these days, so forgive me for emphasising this point: this action is unprecedented. Sure, some games do get removed from sale from time to time, sometimes for rights or licensing reasons, sometimes for copyright, sometimes because they were literally cobbled together from pre-bought assets and barely function. And of course Nintendo has its “forced scarcity” business model that we’re seeing with Super Mario 3D All-Stars, which will be pulled from sale in March.

*Cyberpunk 2077* is being removed from the PlayStation Store.

But in all the years I’ve been involved with the games industry, I have never seen such a major release as Cyberpunk 2077 being removed from sale. Never. Nintendo and their anti-consumer practices aside, the only games that tend to get pulled from shelves are the non-functional pre-bought asset “games” that have been put together by amateurs. A major release on this scale has, as far as I know, never been unceremoniously de-listed in this way. It is wholly without precedent.

On the one hand, I actually sympathise with CD Projekt Red (the developers behind Cyberpunk 2077). There is a process involved in getting a game onto the PlayStation Store in the first place – as indeed there is for any digital shop. Part of the process requires approval from Sony, who will have been given pre-release access to the game to test for themselves. So from CD Projekt Red’s perspective, they may feel that Sony acted unfairly, and that if they didn’t want to sell the game they could have denied it access to their platform weeks ago.

*Cyberpunk 2077* was developed by CD Projekt Red.

However, as with everything to do with major corporations, it’s more complicated than that! In a competitive market, with Sony up against Microsoft both with the Xbox One/Xbox Series X and PC gaming, they could hardly be the only place Cyberpunk 2077 wasn’t available. In short, if there was going to be a prohibition of the game’s sale due to bugs and glitches, if Xbox didn’t follow suit it would hugely disadvantage Sony in the short-term. Secondly, I have no doubt that CD Projekt Red wooed Sony with promises of day-one updates and patches to some of the major issues that they surely uncovered during their own tests.

But most importantly there’s a legal component to what’s happened. CD Projekt Red initially offered refunds to anyone disappointed with Cyberpunk 2077 on their platform of choice. Sony, by some accounts, had difficulty processing those refunds when players requested them. In order to avoid legal action from players who had been promised a refund, or from players who may claim the game was not as advertised, Sony have stepped in and used the proverbial “nuclear option” as a last resort.

*Cyberpunk 2077* launched in a broken state.

When I first saw this news break I thought the individual writing about it must have got confused or been exaggerating for clicks. It simply did not seem possible that a major game from a huge company would be pulled from sale entirely on the PlayStation. After all, Cyberpunk 2077 has hardly been abandoned; patches, hot-fixes, and updates have already been rolled out and more are already scheduled. Even if the game is buggy at launch, improvements are on the horizon. I was stunned to learn it was true, and it’s even been covered by mainstream news outlets here in the UK.

It’s hardly the first time a major game has arrived with bugs and glitches. Fallout 76 a couple of years ago was truly awful on that front (in addition to being just an awful game all around) yet it remained on sale. As did the likes of Skyrim, Aliens: Colonial Marines, and Assassin’s Creed Unity. Despite having incredibly buggy launches, none were pulled from sale in the way Cyberpunk 2077 has been. And this must surely irk CD Projekt Red.

The notoriously buggy *Assassin’s Creed Unity* is still for sale on the PlayStation Store.

Despite what I said a moment ago about feeling a pang of sympathy, let’s not overdo it. This is entirely CD Projekt Red’s own fault. Despite having been willing to delay the game twice, they ultimately decided to force a release before the title was ready – if indeed it ever can be ready on current-gen consoles given its obvious PC and next-gen focus. There are two reasons I can see why they chose not to delay the game into 2021 – a desire to get the game out in time for the Christmas season (also known as the E.T. problem) and perhaps because the board game upon which Cyberpunk 2077 is based is called Cyberpunk 2020, and there was a clear desire to release the game in this calendar year.

When I wrote about Cyberpunk 2077′s first delay all the way back in January, I said that “the response from the [gaming] community when any game is delayed is almost always overwhelmingly positive.” That is a universal truth. There are a handful of troublemakers and brain-dead idiots who get upset and say stupid things – such as making death threats – when a title is delayed, but everyone else understands. We would rather play a good game in six months than a broken one now.

We’ve been talking about this game for a while!

In the case of Cyberpunk 2077, the hype bubble got out of control. Partly what’s happened is a result of CD Projekt Red trading on past success and their good reputation; they hadn’t released a new game since 2015, and it’s easy to seem like a good, pro-consumer company when you aren’t in the trenches. Perhaps the insane hype that grew around the game is why the company chose not to shift their focus entirely to next-gen hardware and higher-end PCs. That would be a difficult pill for many players to swallow, but had such a decision been made a year or more ago, by the time the game finally made it to its launch date practically all of that would have abated.

So the question now is: what happens next? CD Projekt Red have completely botched this launch. Many players found the game so bad it was unplayable, and by now the plot and even the side-missions have all been spoiled for a lot of people. The excitement of playing the game for the first time has gone, and for players who had a disappointing experience, even if it’s patched and fixed over the next few months, they can never get that back.

*Cyberpunk 2077* will not be available on PlayStation 4 for the foreseeable future.

Given that the PC version is generally more stable, I can’t imagine the big PC gaming shops like Steam and Epic Games will be willing to follow suit and refund everyone who bought it. Microsoft might, though, and it’s possible in the coming days (or even hours) we’ll see Xbox make a similar announcement.

I’m still shocked. Even though I could tell the hype bubble around Cyberpunk 2077 was completely out of control, and I expected at least some players to find the game underwhelming, I had no idea what was coming. CD Projekt Red have gone from one of the best-loved games companies to one of the most criticised in a matter of days, and it’s not unfair to say that the hype bubble has completely burst. Cyberpunk 2077 is not the amazing, barrier-breaking, genre-redefining interactive experience that fans hoped for. As I predicted, it’s just a game. A bug-riddled game that’s so “unplayable” for many that Sony had to step in, refund everyone who bought it, and pull it from sale. Absolutely extraordinary.

Cyberpunk 2077 is out now for PC and Xbox One. The Xbox One version is compatible with the Xbox Series X. Cyberpunk 2077 is the copyright of CD Projekt Red. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

The real price of next-gen consoles

Tue 17.11.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

Were you lucky enough to secure a pre-order of the Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5? If so, congratulations! You’re one of the few who managed that feat. Both consoles sold out as soon as pre-orders were available, meaning a lot of people hoping to pick up one of the new machines this year were left disappointed.

A lot of factors came together to make this happen, and we’ll look at them in turn. First is the confusing way in which both Sony and Microsoft made their consoles available. Pre-orders for the PlayStation 5 “accidentally” went live hours ahead of schedule, meaning a lot of people who had planned to pre-order at the promised time missed out. There is no one place where consoles may be pre-ordered either, with retailers from big outlets like Amazon and supermarkets down to smaller specialist games or electronics shops all offering to take customers’ money. As many found out later, problems with stock availability and allocation meant that a lot of pre-orders were either cancelled, rejected, or could not be fulfilled on launch day.

Then there are the “bots.” Automated computer programmes bought up a significant percentage of the available supply of new consoles, leaving many machines in the hands of touts and scalpers. These consoles are currently being re-sold for well over the asking price to disappointed gamers who missed out.

Finally there’s the question of how many machines were manufactured. When coronavirus hit China hard earlier this year, production of next-gen consoles was majorly disrupted. Some factories were closed for weeks, others cut back their output, and the consequence for both Sony and Microsoft was that far fewer next-gen consoles were available in time for launch than they expected. I noted this a few months ago when I asked the question: is now really the right time to launch these machines?

There was always going to be high demand for these machines, and both Sony and Microsoft knew that they’d sell out on launch day. In fact that’s usually part of the plan; selling out makes a machine look exciting and cool, and fear of missing out drives sales. No company wants to see images of huge numbers of unsold machines sitting on shelves in the period after launch.

But even in that environment, the reduced manufacturing capability has had a huge impact, make no mistake. The plan had been for millions more consoles to be available; Sony told us this directly when they announced a few months ago that they would have several million fewer consoles ready to go on launch day than they initially planned. When their business model was already based around artificial scarcity, the loss of several million units has made an already difficult pre-order process practically impossible when combined with the other factors listed above.

So on to the title of this article: how much does an Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5 really cost if you want to get one before the end of the year? I went to a popular auction website and compiled a short selection of listings. Take a look:

A selection of auction listings for Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 consoles in the UK on the 17th of November 2020.

As you can see, prices are approaching double the recommended retail price here in the UK, with scalpers and touts even selling pre-ordered consoles that they don’t actually have in their possession yet. Anecdotally I’ve heard from friends in the United States of PlayStation 5 consoles being sold for upwards of $1200 – well over double the asking price.

In a way, this is “pure capitalism.” This is what happens when companies don’t have enough stock for consumers; the law of supply and demand kicks in. If someone is willing to pay £900 for a PlayStation 5, then there will be a market for that. The true price of these machines right now, in November 2020, is not the recommended retail price of £450. It’s £700, £800, or £900. And with no indication of the availability of either console improving before Christmas, those prices may yet rise further.

Companies are totally fine with this. It doesn’t matter in the slightest to Microsoft or Sony whether a genuine player buys a console or a bot picks up that console for a scalper or tout to re-sell later. They still make just as much money no matter who the buyer is, so they have absolutely no incentive to find ways to stamp out this behaviour. Likewise, retailers from game stores to supermarkets to giants like Amazon don’t care – and it’s through online retailers that the vast majority of pre-orders have been taken.

The market – that amorphous entity that economists love to talk about – determines the price and value of products. If people are willing to pay £900 for a PlayStation 5 then that’s its true value. But is it worth it? Could any video game console possibly be worth £900?

It will come as no surprise to you to learn that my answer is a resounding “no.” Not only are these machines not worth such a ridiculous amount of money, they’re probably not even worth their official price right now.

This new console generation is, at best, a minor improvement over the current one in most of the ways that matter. Add to that the fact that practically every game currently available for the PlayStation 5, and every single game currently available for the Xbox Series X, are also available on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, most players would find it hard to tell the difference between playing on a current-gen or next-gen machine. There are iterative changes, such as faster loading times, better controller battery life, and so on. But there’s nothing significant in terms of graphics or gameplay that make either console a “must-buy” in 2020. Any such improvements won’t be seen for a year or more; perhaps by 2022 you could make the case that games are getting better thanks to these machines. But not yet.

There was a lot of hype and buildup to the launch of these new consoles, as is to be expected. And a lot of players were sucked in by the hype and decided that they needed a new Xbox or PlayStation on launch day no matter what. If they paid over the odds for their machine from a scalper or tout, I bet a lot of them regret that investment today.

With the new consoles offering small improvements at best, there’s no need to get one right now. Don’t reward the scalpers and touts with their scripts and bots who bought up as many consoles as they could. Jump off the hype train and be patient, and enjoy the exact same games on current-gen hardware. Chances are you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference anyway.

The Xbox brand – including the Xbox Series X and Series S – is the copyright of Microsoft. The PlayStation brand – including the PlayStation 5 – is the copyright of Sony. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Is it the right time for new video game consoles?

Mon 21.09.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

A lot of things in the world are a mess right now, upended by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. In addition to the tragic loss of life we’ve seen lockdowns, job losses, and economic chaos on a level unseen for a long time. And tech companies – including Sony and Microsoft – have suffered as a result of major disruption to supply chains and manufacturing facilities. Yet despite all that, both companies are pressing ahead with their new video game consoles, scheduled for release in November. But is that the right decision? Or might it have been better to wait a year or two?

One of the things that struck me most when looking at all the gameplay and footage released by both companies is how absolutely minuscule the so-called “upgrades” are, at least in terms of the way games will look on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Both companies use graphics as one of their major selling points, yet when you stack up a current-gen and next-gen version of the same title side by side, it’s hard to really see a difference.

Perhaps some consumers who have an incredibly fancy (and incredibly expensive) television – or superhuman eyesight – will notice a big change. But I didn’t, and from what I can tell by reading and listening to the reaction from players, a lot of other folks can’t either. There is more to a good game than graphics, but when it’s a key selling point I think it’s not unfair to say that players expect something more than either new console is able to offer.

The trouble is that even on the oldest version of current-gen systems – those consoles released in 2013 – games look pretty good. Players have been enjoying the visual style of titles like The Witcher 3 for years, and even some launch titles from 2013, like Ryse: Son of Rome, look fantastic. Any upgrade was always going to be minor, and things like slightly more realistic controller rumble or faster loading times are difficult things to market to the average player. The result? It’s hard to escape the feeling that the two new consoles already feel like a minor upgrade at best… and a waste of time and money at worst.

That’s before we account for the fact that disruption across all areas of the industry has massively complicated matters.

The Xbox Series X is going to be released without its key launch title – Halo Infinite. This game should have been one of the console’s selling points – despite its simultaneous launch on Xbox One. Without it, the Xbox Series X will be released with some cross-platform games and not a lot else.

However, things are even worse for Sony. The company recently announced that they were producing several million fewer PlayStation 5 consoles than expected. As a result there has been pre-order chaos. Initial plans to hold a “lottery” to determine who could pre-order a machine didn’t pan out, and the console sold out within minutes of being made available. Reportedly, some shops have either cancelled pre-orders outright, or informed irate gamers that they may not receive their console on launch day despite thinking they’d secured a pre-order.

We’ve seen consoles launch without sufficient stock numerous times. Here in the UK, getting a Nintendo Wii was nigh-on impossible in 2006 and throughout most of 2007, such was the lack of stock. Even with that in mind, though, this feels worse. Reducing the number of units available worldwide is clearly indicative of a company struggling with production, yet rather than delay or take steps to rectify the situation, Sony has been quite happy to make the PlayStation 5 impossible to get hold of – something which will only be to the benefit of shady resellers who’ll happily sell the console for double its asking price in the run-up to Christmas.

All of this comes at a time when many people are in financial difficulty or face an uncertain financial future. As the pandemic drags on and the idea of “getting back to normal” seems further away than ever, companies are closing left and right, and as temporary schemes like the furloughing of employees come to an end, many people will be out of work. A £450/$500 outlay in that environment is an impossible ask, and feels decidedly anti-consumer. This is made worse by price rises of games themselves, many of which look set to retail for £65/$70 when the new generation arrives.

As we approach what could be a bleak and lonely Christmas for many people, players and parents are looking at these companies and asking themselves how they could possibly have the audacity and lack of awareness to go ahead with something like this. The minor upgrade that most people perceive is incredibly overpriced at £450, and even the Xbox Series S with its lower price will still be out of reach of many in 2020.

I look at these consoles, and the footage the companies selling them have released, and I’m asking myself who would be interested? At least Microsoft can say that their policy of releasing games on Xbox One for the next couple of years – bizarre though that is in many ways – means that players can stick with their current systems and don’t need to shell out a ton of money for this minor upgrade. But Sony still plans on having exclusive games, and are in effect gating off those titles behind a very expensive paywall, one which will prove insurmountable for many players in 2020.

“Big companies do something anti-consumer” is not a surprising headline, either in the games industry or beyond. And as someone who worked for a large games company in the past, I understand that there are many factors at play, including research, development, and manufacturing contracts that were almost certainly too far along to be undone at the time the pandemic hit. Even so, I’m struggling to see how releasing these machines now is a good idea. A one year delay would allow both companies to resolve manufacturing issues, produce far more stock, and allow more development time for launch titles in order to overcome pandemic-created problems. We might even see marginally better graphics as a result. And a delay of a single year wouldn’t mean the internal components of either machine would feel out of date – they would still be cutting-edge devices even if they weren’t launched until November 2021.

Regardless of what some of us may think, the console launches are going ahead. Manufacturing is well underway, and with mere weeks to go until launch day it would be very difficult – if not outright impossible – to slam the brakes on at this late stage. Despite my misgivings both machines will still sell, and will be picked up by enthusiasts with enough disposable income. The beginning of a new console generation always leaves behind those who can’t afford to make the switch; this time around there’s just more people in that position. Hopefully things really will get back to normal soon so everyone can enjoy the next generation of consoles… and the minor changes they have to offer.

The Xbox brand – including the Xbox Series X – is the copyright of Microsoft. The PlayStation brand – including the PlayStation 5 – is the copyright of Sony. Both the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 will be released in November 2020. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

How long can Sony and Microsoft get away with hiding their prices?

Tue 01.09.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

For me, the beginning of September has always marked the start of the slow march to the holiday season. It’s the end of the summer holidays, kids return to school, the weather slowly cools, leaves begin to fall, and sunset gets earlier – all signalling that autumn has begun. It’s around this time of year when thoughts turn to the holidays, and to budgeting for big expenses at that time of year. With that in mind, now that we’re into September, it’s a surprise to me that we don’t know how much the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are going to cost.

It’s pretty obvious that both companies are playing a high-stakes game of “chicken” – neither wants to announce first so they’re both holding fast, waiting for the other to make the first move. Looking back at past console launches, the cheaper system has been by far the best-seller. The Xbox 360 undercut the PlayStation 3 and enjoyed great success in that console generation, and the PlayStation 4 came in $100 cheaper than the Xbox One, and while in that case price arguably wasn’t the only factor in the Xbox One’s troubled launch, the fact that the cheaper console sold significantly better is clearly impacting Microsoft and Sony’s decision-making at this critical time.

The upcoming Xbox Series X. Price? Unknown.

But in past cycles, prices were announced much earlier. By the middle of June 2013 we knew the prices for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One – more than five months ahead of their launches. Microsoft promise the Xbox Series X is coming in November, and it’s assumed that the PlayStation 5 will follow suit. But November is literally in just a couple of months now, and there’s still no price information.

If it were good news, I think it’s fair to assume we’d know by now. If either company were planning to launch a system for less than say £350, they’d have made that abundantly clear and would be using it as a selling point. The fact that they’re keeping their pricing plans secret is in part because of how they’re in competition with each other, but it’s also at least in part because it’s bad news – both consoles are going to launch with a hefty price tag, which is not a good look in 2020 with the economy flailing.

Microsoft has perhaps the most riding on pricing. As I’ve said before, undercutting the PlayStation 5 is perhaps their last good strategy for the already-beleaguered Xbox Series X, which has seen incomprehensibly bad business decisions already hamper its launch. If the Xbox Series X could find a way to be a hundred dollars (or more) cheaper than the PlayStation 5, suddenly it seems a better proposition and Microsoft is back in the game.

The soon-to-be-released PlayStation 5. How much will it cost? Nobody outside Sony knows.

Sony seems better-placed than Microsoft right now, with a good lineup of exclusive games that are being built from the ground up for the PlayStation 5 instead of being limited by current-gen hardware. But an excessively high price could see them repeat the problems faced by the PlayStation 3 two generations ago, and even if they don’t end up charging $600-650 as some have suggested, if Xbox is able to undercut them they could still suffer. So while Microsoft has arguably the most to gain from a positive reaction to pricing, Sony certainly has the most to lose from a negative reaction.

At this late stage, though, both companies are going to suffer criticism and negative feedback for as long as they keep their prices covered up. With two months to go until launch, players and parents need to know how much to budget; keeping this information private is incredibly anti-consumer. Both Sony and Microsoft know their prices by now, having worked out how best to break even and turn a profit. They’re staying quiet on purpose, and people are starting to talk about that.

These are undoubtedly going to be pricey machines.

Sooner rather than later, both sides are going to have to rip off the metaphorical bandage. If the prices are high, reaction will be negative, especially from players whose jobs are under threat in a seriously disrupted economy. But going into the launch with that negativity around their necks will be harmful to Sony and Microsoft, and the more time they have after making price announcements means more time for their marketing and PR departments to spin it in a positive way – or at least blunt the edge. In short, if it’s bad news, giving players more time to get used to it rather than going into the launch window with potential buyers still reeling from the shock announcement will be beneficial.

A delay helps no one, and in the end will backfire on both companies and hurt them as they go into their most important sales window in seven years. In the absence of news, people will make their own assumptions – and the assumption right now is that if they had something good to say on pricing, they’d have said it ages ago and built their marketing around it! The conclusion gamers are drawing is that both consoles are going to be expensive – perhaps the most expensive machines ever, even topping the $600 mark. That’s putting people off right now, as in the current economic climate it’s increasingly hard for many people to justify such a large expense on a “luxury item” like a games console.

We need to see both companies make immediate announcements on price and stop messing around. The corporate game of “chicken” has gone on too long, and its anti-consumer nature is already causing both companies and their brands harm. They can’t keep this up any longer – players have a right to know how much they’re going to be expected to fork over for the new consoles.

At this stage I don’t know when we could expect an announcement. It may be imminent from one or both companies… or it may not be something we’ll get for weeks or even until next month. That would be a mistake for the reasons I’ve already given, and at a time like this, consumers need clarity. Both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are going to be expensive pieces of kit. We get it. But please just tell us how expensive so we can either start saving up or get the disappointment out of the way.

Both companies have been looking at this situation selfishly. Microsoft sees a pathway to a better-than-expected launch, and Sony fears losing the dominance they’ve enjoyed for years. But both companies’ selfishness has crossed a line into being something decidedly anti-consumer, and it needs to stop. At this point, I’d even wager that the company willing to make an announcement will get at least some positive reaction simply by demonstrating they’re not covering up their price. Either of them could even stage an event based around how their competitor is keeping their price a secret – something that could give them at least a temporary boost.

Either way, this has gone on too long. It’s past time that players around the world got to learn how much they’ll have to play for next-gen gaming in a couple of months’ time. We shouldn’t be in this position of having to ask and ask and ask – this information should have been available ages ago. From this point on, every day that Microsoft and Sony continue this cover-up is going to hurt them – and hopefully when they see that, they’ll finally come clean.

The Xbox Series X is the property of Microsoft, and the PlayStation 5 is the property of Sony. Both consoles are due for launch before the end of 2020. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

At least the PlayStation 5 will have exclusive games…

Fri 12.06.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

Xbox undoubtedly lost the current console generation. Sales estimates put the PlayStation 4 at more than double the sales of the Xbox One, which is a bit of a surprise coming on the back of the Xbox 360’s dominance in the previous cycle. Aside from an incredibly rocky launch, where the Xbox One’s online-only model, inability to share or trade-in games, and forcing the console to be bundled with the Kinect were all criticised, Xbox One’s biggest problem through the whole generation has been a lack of exclusive games.

Just off the top of my head I can name a number of PlayStation 4 exclusives, many of which were well-received are considered among the best titles of the generation: there’s God of War, Uncharted 4, Spider-Man, and Horizon Zero Dawn, as well as remasters of titles like The Last of Us and Uncharted 1-3. What does Xbox have in response? The Halo series, but with the recent release of those titles on PC, only Halo 5 remains a true exclusive. Other Xbox One titles, like the Forza series, Sunset Overdrive, and Sea of Thieves were also released for PC. That doesn’t have to be a problem, but not having any exclusive titles robs a console of one of its major selling points. The fact that Xbox’s lineup of titles have been generally thought of as average rather than great definitely didn’t help, and Xbox One has been an underwhelming console ever since it launched in 2013.

The PlayStation 5 family of devices, which were shown off yesterday.

I didn’t see anything in yesterday’s PlayStation 5 reveal presentation that blew me away. As I wrote previously when looking at Microsoft’s Xbox Series X gameplay trailer, the biggest selling-point for new consoles since at least the era of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 has been graphics. And none of the titles on show either for Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5 look significantly better than what’s currently on offer. As a result, in order to stand out in a difficult market, the consoles are going to really have to push their exclusive titles, and this is where PlayStation 5 has the upper hand.

The issues Xbox has had this generation are not going away. In fact, they’re compounded by the strange decision to make all Xbox Series X titles also available on the Xbox One for at least the next couple of years. This means that any new Xbox title is constrained by the system specifications of 2013’s Xbox One and will need to remain compatible with that device. So far it seems like PlayStation has avoided this pitfall, but even so I wasn’t exactly on the edge of my seat thinking how amazing PlayStation 5’s graphics were.

Games in 2020 look great. PC games can run in 4K resolution with high frame rates, and even the oldest versions of the current crop of consoles manage to output decent-looking titles. The Nintendo Switch, despite its small form factor, can run games like The Witcher 3, and even titles like Animal Crossing: New Horizons look great on that system. PlayStation and Xbox have long billed themselves as the “hardcore gamer” brands, and they’ve both put a big focus on graphics and how games look. While it seems that the reaction to the PlayStation 5 announcement is generally positive, I’m disappointed that neither brand is really doing anything different.

The new PlayStation 5 controller – the DualSense.

The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X – which has a truly awful name – feel like minor iterations of what we already have. There will be some quality-of-life improvements for sure: better battery life in the control pad, faster loading times as a result of using SSDs instead of hard drives, a better rumble/vibration feature in the control pad, etc. But beyond these small things, there are no new genres being pioneered as there had been in the past. There are no new ways to play – both systems have control pads scarcely any different to current generation controllers. The graphics on display look great, but graphics already looked great and I didn’t see anything in the PlayStation 5 or Xbox presentations that wouldn’t feel right at home in the current generation. In short, is there really much point to a new generation of consoles in 2020?

If the new consoles can’t do anything fundamentally different or transform players’ experiences in new ways, there’s definitely an argument to be made that it would be better to continue with the current consoles, even though they’re into their seventh year of life. Nintendo at least offers innovation – the Wii introduced motion controls, and the Switch is a hybrid between a handheld system and a home console. Xbox and PlayStation are really just offering more of the same.

In this environment, what will matter is exclusive titles. Whichever brand is perceived as having the best exclusives and the most exclusives will benefit, because when the graphics look samey, when the consoles look samey, and when it’s hard to really upsell a small difference in loading times or longer batter life, exclusive titles are what players will be focusing on. While PlayStation 4 won the argument this time around, any time a new console generation kicks off it’s a case of the slate being wiped clean. It should be up for grabs, and both companies should be going for it. But they aren’t.

*Horizon Forbidden West* will be a sequel to 2017’s *Horizon Zero Dawn*.

PlayStation 4 will pass the baton of varied and great exclusive titles to PlayStation 5, as they demonstrated last night. Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Project Athia, Returnal, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, Destruction All-Stars, and Horizon Forbidden West, as well as a remaster of Demon’s Souls makes for an impressive-looking lineup. None of the titles blew me away in terms of their graphics, but they all look like they have the potential to be great games. And this matters! Exclusive titles are going to be a huge selling point this generation, and if Xbox Series X doesn’t offer many, and only has multiplatform titles like Assassin’s Creed or FIFA, it’s hard to justify picking up that console instead of a PlayStation 5, which offers those same titles plus a bunch of exciting exclusives.

PlayStation is playing essentially the same hand that it has since 2013. Why mix it up too much if it works, right? Xbox looks set to stumble into the same trap it did this generation too.

All that’s left now is for both companies to sort out their price structures – and to make sure that the coronavirus pandemic won’t disrupt their launches. If I were advising Microsoft, I’d suggest the best chance they have right now is to try and undercut the PlayStation 5 in a big way. If Xbox Series X could manage to be £100 or more cheaper, it suddenly seems like a better option, even if its exclusive lineup is lacklustre. But we’ll have to wait and see.

All brands and properties mentioned above belong to their respective owners. The Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 are scheduled to release by the end of this year (2020). This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

My thoughts on the “console war”

Mon 13.04.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

Barring a major shift in circumstances, which we may yet see if the coronavirus pandemic isn’t sorted out in the next few months, Xbox and PlayStation plan to launch new consoles before Christmas. They will replace this generation’s Xbox One and PlayStation 4, which were released in 2013, and will join the Nintendo Switch to form the “big three” gaming platforms heading into 2021 and beyond.

When I’m in a gaming mood I’m primarily a PC player. I find PC to be a more versatile platform, and the abundance of digital shops on PC means that sales and discounts are aplenty, which I absolutely feel makes PC an appealing choice even if the up-front costs can be higher than a console. But that’s a whole different article!

When Google Stadia launched towards the end of last year, I felt it had the potential to be disruptive to the gaming market in all kinds of good ways. To understand why, we need to step back in time.

The Xbox Series X was unveiled late last year.

For a brief moment just after the millennium, there were four companies in the home console market, and they were, broadly speaking, all trying to appeal to the same core audience of gamers. There was Sega, with the Dreamcast, Sony, with its PlayStation brand, Nintendo, and Microsoft, which launched its first Xbox console in 2001. This moment wasn’t to last, of course, as the Dreamcast would prove a failure forcing Sega out of the market altogether. Nintendo’s GameCube was also not a resounding success, and the lessons the company learned led to the creation of the Wii in 2006, and from that point on, Nintendo has been fishing in a different pond to the other two console brands.

So since the mid-2000s, when Nintendo decided to go in a completely different direction with the Wii, Xbox and PlayStation have been the two main brands in direct competition. Nintendo’s current offering, the Switch, is a very different platform from anything Microsoft and Sony have, being half-handheld and half-console, and has a very different hardware setup. As a result, many gamers (myself included) will have a primary platform for playing most games and a Nintendo for playing their titles. I’m currently in the early stages of building my island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons so stay tuned for my thoughts on that at some point!

The two main competitors, PlayStation and Xbox, have taken very different routes since 2013, and the console market is in danger, I feel, of becoming a monopoly. It needs something major to shake things up – hence my excitement at Stadia potentially doing so. Microsoft’s Xbox brand has been focused on being a “multimedia” brand instead of purely gaming, and its output reflects that. Microsoft has also seen a steady growth in the PC gaming market and has chosen to release some previously exclusive titles on PC as well – the most significant being Halo: The Master Chief Collection, which is as close as Xbox has to a signature franchise. Only Halo 5 remains a console exclusive right now, and I have to say it feels like only a matter of time before that, too, is ported to PC. Microsoft have been working hard to turn the Xbox One into a multimedia centre – something people could have in their living rooms to watch television, use streaming services, and even do things like make video calls.

As a result of Xbox’s foray into the PC space and using their platform to promote things like video streaming as much as gaming, PlayStation has been the dominant force in this console generation. They’ve offered many more exclusive titles, and the PlayStation 4 has outsold the Xbox One by at least two-to-one, perhaps even more. While Xbox as a brand is still healthy and commercially viable, it doesn’t leave the overall state of the market feeling especially great, as competition between the two companies is necessary to keep quality high and for developers to keep pushing the boundaries.

The DualSense controller is all we’ve seen of the PlayStation 5 so far.

Google Stadia is clearly not going to be the disruptive force I hoped for, at least not any time soon. Its minuscule userbase and tiny library of games has seen to that, though I hope Google will continue development as the core technology is interesting at least. And as far as I know, no one else is planning to get in on the home console market right now. There have been past attempts, like the Ouya and other android-based consoles, but none have been particularly successful. It took a company with the clout and financial resources of Microsoft in 2001 to break into the market for the first time as a newcomer, and if Google is unable to successfully enter the gaming space I can see that failure being offputting for anyone considering investing significant money into a new home console.

So we’re left with a two-plus-one situation in the home console space. PlayStation versus Xbox, with Nintendo off to one side largely doing its own thing. Both the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 will be comparable in terms of their internal hardware, especially as both seem to be using AMD’s Zen chips and incorporating ray-tracing graphics, so the choice between systems will be more about marketing than technology. Xbox has already signalled that their multimedia and PC plans will continue into the new generation, and it was even suggested at one stage late last year that every Xbox Series X game will also be available on Xbox One for the first year or two of the new console’s life. This combination will, I feel, give the PlayStation 5 a distinct advantage.

So where do I stand? I’ll be honest, I don’t really have a dog in this fight any more. As someone who plays primarily on PC it’s less important to me. Later in the generation, when prices start to come down, I can perhaps see myself picking up a console, but it would only be if there was some must-play exclusive that didn’t make it to PC. And of the two, PlayStation seems most likely to offer something along those lines so it’s not impossible I’d pick up a PlayStation 5 in the next few years. It certainly won’t be at or near launch, though.

However, I’ve never really been a big PlayStation gamer. In the generations after the first PlayStation launched I owned a Nintendo 64, a Dreamcast, an Xbox, and then an Xbox 360. It wasn’t until much later when I picked up a second-hand PlayStation 3. By then I was less into gaming and I’ve only played a handful of PlayStation 3 and 4 titles over the last few years. This is purely subjective, but as someone who likes to play some games with a controller instead of keyboard and mouse, I find Xbox controllers more comfortable to use. The original Xbox controller from 2001 – known as the “duke” – is actually one of my favourites, despite the justifiable criticism it received at the time for its large size!

The Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 will join the Nintendo Switch in the home console market.

Looking in from the outside as someone who has no plans to purchase either of the new consoles imminently, what I hope is that both are successful for their parent companies and that both are going to be great platforms for gaming. I’d like to see a bigger stride this console generation than the last, particularly where graphics are concerned, but it seems unlikely. Many PlayStation 4 and Xbox One titles don’t look much different from games released in the latter part of the previous generation, and gameplay and graphics in general have not advanced nearly as far over the last few years as they had in previous generations. Earlier console generations brought huge advancements over their predecessors. The Nintendo 64, for example, was an incredibly powerful machine compared to the Super Nintendo, which was itself streets ahead of the earlier NES. I remember in the late 1990s and early 2000s when there was talk of genuine photorealism by 2010, 2015, or 2020. While some projects can come close to that, we aren’t there in a general sense. And to make a long story short, the fact that the next generation of consoles will be a progression or iteration on what is already available in terms of graphics and gameplay makes them less exciting to me personally.

What we will see are smaller quality-of-life improvements. Things like longer battery life in wireless peripherals like controllers, as well as a move from hard discs to solid-state drives will give console gamers something to appreciate. There might also be things like faster download speeds, quicker installation from optical discs – which are still going to be present – and support for 4K resolution and video playback. With most new televisions being 4K that makes a lot of sense.

Overall, the biggest issue that is currently facing Xbox and PlayStation is the pandemic. Both in terms of disruption to their manufacturing and logistics and the wider economic impact on consumer spending, the launches scheduled for later this year may yet be delayed, and if they aren’t, sales may not initially be as strong as they were in 2013 or 2005/06. The consoles themselves will be of some interest, but what I’m most interested to see is how new games plan to take advantage of some of the new hardware capabilities. Pushing the boundaries and creating games that are bigger, better, and more visually impressive than ever is something I’ll always be interested to see, even though I don’t really mind which brand or company “wins”.

All brands mentioned above are the copyright of their respective parent companies. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.