It’s so that the relevance of a game can be extended over time. Instead of offering New Game + from day one, developers can add it in a future update that will then give gamers an excuse to dust off the title. This leads to fresh news coverage, increased traffic and discourse, and prevents a game from fading away in a few weeks.
It’s a bit of that GaaS/episodic factor that attempts to prolong the relevance of a multi-year development and generate more buzz and profit.
Have a feeling that people's concept of the time value of money takes a very long time to catch up. As has been stated by Sony, their goal with this accessory is less of a source of direct profit and more of a way to increase engagement for a growing generation of gamers that don't have the desire or luxury to sit in front of their TVs all the time. This accessory has the potential to indirectly increase profits by making PS5 gaming more convenient and accessible to the players. <...
I have a Steam Deck, but ordered a Portal. I wanted a non-compromising, non jerry-rigged option to play my PS5 stuff away from the TV. Can't stand tiny handheld controllers (I think the Switch JoyCons are the worst controller Nintendo has every released for honest reasons). Playing my PS5 on the go with full control over the dashboard (and not a Remote Play hack) AND full-size controllers is my cup of team.
I’m confused. You wanted Sony to produce a standalone handheld system that could play PS5 titles locally? That’s impractical. The Steamdeck is around $500 and less than 2 TF of performance. Sony has no interest in going down the ugly road of the XBox Series S, and I’m sure most developers would agree.
Don’t understand the backlash over the Portal.
You are not going to get a Vita 2 from Sony. They’ve been there and done that, and it makes little sense to split limited development resources making cut down games for a separate platform. It made sense back in the PSP days when developer budgets and game expectations were reasonable, but not today when the public expects first party titles to be big budget affairs. Times and lofty expectations have increased too much, and t...
To sweeten the GamePass pot. In business there are short term and long term goals. You can’t do everything at once. The vision of GamePass is to eventually be on every platform possible, otherwise the business model does not make sense.
So we should be expecting yearly die shrinks now? I'm sure the chip advances will come in time, but Sony is at least addressing the enormity of the console into something a bit more palatable, have addressed the issue of having to build two distinct SKUs, and have reset the hardware for when new chips can be produced.
You are missing the forest for the trees. Despite the fact that the XBox is in last place, it’s still selling a heck of a lot of consoles and there’s money to be made. And the console is a flagship advertisement for GamePass no matter what. Kind of like how the Surface lineup of computers don’t compete anywhere near to Apple in sales, but still bring in revenue and keep the hardware brand awareness alive. MS will eventually go platform agnostic with GamePass, but they might continue to desig...
This is accurate. Microsoft wants to establish a steady revenue stream from their game division by being a multi platform publisher. Remember, the acquisitions were more about that sweet Candy Crush revenue stream than an attempt to beat Sony at their game. MS has little interest to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in high-risk story driven titles. They want to de-risk their overall portfolio by relying less on selling that one blockbuster game every year, but by locking you into a subs...
This is exactly it. MS would love nothing more than to offer Gamepass on PlayStation as long as the revenue sharing still remained profitable. But Gamepass is NOT cheap to run and maintain with high profile titles, so they would need a ton of subscriptions to make it worth their while.
It’s also possible, if the subscription model fails, that XBox Studios just becomes another third party publisher releasing titles on PlayStation and Switch from their acquired library.
MS has invested in publishers with the goal of producing a steady and perpetual revenue stream. They won’t care about selling consoles or winning the “console war” - they have already admitted to that. From a business sense, the games/subscription revenue is the prize. I would not be surprised in the slightest if in 2027, MS shelves their hardware ambitions and manages to put Gamepass on PlayStation. That’s a win-win for everyone in the end. One less doppelgänger console (the Switch exis...
I would imagine that Sony would like to make the Portal compatible and might eventually. In today's gaming climate, it's better to under-promise and over-deliver later than risk aiming high and getting burned at the stake.
A culture of intolerant and unreasonable expectations may eventually lead to an implosion of the industry. That would be bad for gaming.
Everyone's mileage will vary. At this late stage in game technology, there is very little graphical flare that can impress me anymore. Some scaled back fencing, grass, or reflections, when the overall visual product is still a tremendous human achievement, is not worth the stress. If ray tracing is a make-or-break feature for you, so be it. For my tastes and for the cost of performance it entails, I likely wouldn't even notice it missing 10 minutes into playing.
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This kind of reaction is tiring. For people saying, "they shouldn't show footage until closer to release".... because some nips and tucks and to be made? Because a puddle reflection might change? Are we really that pretentious? It's a ridiculously complicated development cycle... it's art... it's science. These are not things that move in a perfect linear line from start to finish. There are changes, updates, tweaks, and optimizations. And yes, sometimes that ...
The point of the Portal is that, hopefully, it'll just work. It is being billed as a seamless experience... you turn it on, and your PS5 responds immediately... no need to log into the Remote Play servers or muck around with a secondary app to get it to work. The jury is still out, but I've preordered one as I have played my systems remotely on many occasions and find it to be a useful feature.... plus the full Dual Sense controller is the main draw, as I can't stand tiny contro...
The Vita is/was a clunky way to play PS4 games via Remote Play, especially with the cramped controls and lack of buttons. I did it a few times, even playing over the internet 1000 miles away. Still, it worked and although not ideal, it gives me hope for this doing the trick. I would imagine the streaming/decompression tech on the Portal "should" be leagues better as it is dedicated to this function, whereas the PS Vita's functionality was just a bonus feature.
I’m expecting reviewers who are inundated with devices all day long to miss the point of this device. It’s about convenience and getting the feel of playing on a PS5. If the tech works well, it’s a nice complement to a PS5 owner’s gaming options while using already owned software.
The "profit" number is a murky combination of the PC Xbox store full of mobile apps. Selling Candy Crush style games is their saving grace. The trick will be in convincing gamers to spend money on their lavishly expensive Xbox console games, else there's no point in continuing the effort.
But they continue to buy Nintendo and Sony?