The social aspect of going to watch a movie in a dark room on a screen while everyone around me loudly “whispers” to each other and checks their phones. Not to mention the screen that is lower quality than my television at home.
It’s a double-edged sword. But f2p has become so dominant that certain types of games almost NEED to be f2p to be relevant. See Concord for a recent example.
it’s rockstar syndrome, same as always. People who become famous for being good at something start to think of themselves as invincible. Combine that with minors specifically treating the rockstar like they are a god that could do no wrong, and any pedophilic tendencies are gonna worm their way out.
With online celebrities specifically, I think the unique circumstance is that people can go from unknown to world-famous in a relatively short span of time, and they haven’t learned how to conduct themselves in that context in a way that they might if they achieved that fame more slowly. For a recently famous person like that, direct DM access to fans is a dangerous thing.
I got back into emulation recently with one of those handheld emulators (like Retroid, but a different brand). It’s mind blowing to me to play old Gameboy or GBA games on there because it feels just like playing on the genuine article, except the screen is like 3x better and backlit and all that. Plus all the games are just right there at your fingertips!
I don’t find myself using it as much as I should. I think retro games just don’t interest me as much as modern ones. I think they are cool and worth playing, I just find it hard to let go of the conveniences of modern gaming.
i mean they’ve been doing refurbished consoles for multiple generations now, no? The only new thing is that they’re selling them directly from Sony’s site, rather than going through GameStop like they used to back in the day.
I think they definitely have a strategy that is timed around the age of the base PS5 release. 4 years old = PS5 Pro and beginning of refurbished console sales, to grab the consumers that weren’t enticed by the base PS5.
Strange to see a game like Nex Machina on the top 10, but I appreciate Eurogamer providing unique and surprising picks. Funny to see Outer Wilds and Tetris Effect in the top 5 - makes me think Eurogamer might be staffed with more than a few old Giant Bomb fans.
soooo…all 13 games they showed in the release trailer. Coincidentally, also about 90% of all “next gen” exclusive titles. I guess it’s not surprising that games compatible with the PS4 are not getting PS5 Pro upgrades, but it also kind of highlights how Sony has barely taken advantage of the base PS5 as-is.
I guess my thinking was that people will sell their base PS5 after they buy the Pro, and basic supply-and-demand says that more PS5’s on the used market equals lower prices. It might not come down a lot, but I think it will come down.
That announcement stream was so weird. 4 minutes of Mark Cerny talking about the features of the PS5 like it didn’t come out 4 years ago, 3 minutes of explaining the PS5 Pro “Big 3” features of GPU upgrade, advanced ray tracing, and PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, and 2 minutes of trailers that looked too (heh) similar to current PS5 gameplay. It’s like they know that it’s impossible to make a new console look good in trailers anymore, so they just rushed to get it over with because everyone has already decided whether or not they want to pay even more for an upgraded PS5.
At least the price for the base PS5 should come down on the used market?
the pandemic really muffed it all up. The truth is that those product launches were lined up well before the pandemic truly began in March 2020, and it would have cost both companies an exorbitant sum to delay the launches at all. And really, they had no reason to believe that a pandemic would hurt their sales numbers, because the gaming market had never gone through an event like this before. And ultimately, the pandemic actuallly ended helping their sales because everyone was at home with nothing to do. The gaming market reached its highest revenue peak ever due to the pandemic.
I agree that it has made this whole generation feel weird as a consumer. But I think a lot of that feeling would be there with or without the pandemic, and the pandemic just exacerbated some things. Xbox is firmly in second place to the point that the PS5 is dominant, and it would have been dominant without the pandemic there. There are so few current-gen games, and even fewer PS5 exclusives, but this isn’t because of the pandemic. We live in the age of crossplay and cross-platform, mostly caused by Sony and Xbox both moving to x86 architecture last gen, and sticking with it this gen. That common architecture makes it way easier to port games to other platforms, so it takes quite a lot of money to convince a dev to go exclusive these days. Why dev for PS5 only when you could also scoop up some money from PC gamers, Switch gamers, hell even PS4 gamers! The pandemic certainly hampered some dev ability to pump out first party games, but the bigger cause is probably the ballooning size of AAA game budgets. These games have become so massive and complex that it has become very difficult to pump one out faster than once every 4 years. The only thing I would pin mostly on the pandemic is the rise of PC gaming. PC gaming is at an all-time high because many took their pandemic stimulus as an excuse to finally switch to PC, and that has further fragmented the market in ways that definitely change the “vibe” as a consumer.
TL;DR: the pandemic was a factor, but I think most of the “weirdness” of this gen has come from other market forces.