Nostradamus, are we?
Should Sony have priced the Pro so that they had to subsidize its cost? The Pro is a niche product that is intended to meet the demands of a small population of hardcore gamers that wanted a PS5 experience with fewer compromises. And they are likely to be less price sensitive than the masses. It wasn’t a mass market product. Just because the majority don’t like/want/can’t afford, doesn’t mean that the market segment Sony was going for didn’t have their demand met. Choice is great.
There's a comprehensive emulation of nearly every arcade Gradius and Salamander released with a plethora of customization and training modes, never before seen versions (Gradius 3 AM Show version), a couple of Japan-only titles (i.e. Salamander 2), and a brand-new Salamander III game built from the ground up by the masters of retro emulation, M2.... this is a GREAT value for fans.
Can only tell if the CRT filter is actually any better?
Yeah - so ridiculous...
I play on PS5, but as a gamer from the janky old school days of PS1 and earlier, we are really splitting hairs now with same-gen console comparisons. I sometimes miss the old days of completely different ports on rival systems (think PS1/N64/Saturn era, or the 8 and 16-bit gens), where games on competing platforms were actually very different interpretations often made by different devs. Those were the days when you often wanted to play the different console versions to get interesting flavo...
Guarantee you that most people who bought the game did not put anything close to 300 hours into it - that's only the hardcore gamer crowd. The average gamer is lucky to have played 10% of that.
Unfortunately, they are worth $80 to others.
More plastic junk.
Thank you for sharing. Opinions are infinite.
This game almost directly emulates Colin McRae Rally 1 and 2. Those are beloved games from the past that have been iterated to a state beyond what made the originals what they were. Looks like something of a spiritual sequel to original two games. That's the unique hook.
Why do "realistic graphics and real cars" make a game play any better than something without those attributes?
As jaded as gamers are with things, I'm always shocked at the lack of backlash for this kind of stuff. It's an obvious cash grab for extremely minimal effort, and almost always priced higher than standard editions.
But as I always argue, the market ultimately dictates the direction of the corporations. They make this junk because people lap it up. Just don't be upset when products/games/etc are eliminated when they don't make money.
You are one of few.
That’s fair. It’s called the open market. If $80 is too much for you, you don’t have to buy. But if the demand curve supports $80, the MSRP of new titles will be $80. If $80 is a bust and the market doesn’t support it, you’ll see a redaction of this strategy. If not…. Buckle up buckaroos.
It’s less about saving money and more about trimming the fat so that they can invest that money into something that can make more.
Businesses are not charities. History is filled with corporate empires that fail to stay lean, optimize, adapt, and die. And then armchair quarterbacks talk about, “they should have done this, should have done that, they failed to change with the times, etc”. MS, like it or not, is a machine. It is a machine that is keenly aware that if you get complacent, the next competitor is hungry to knock you off the hill. Like it or not, businesses have to constantly scan their portfolios and make hard...
Consumerism drives business behavior. It's not so much "blaming" as it is observing behavior. The point I'm making is that the direction that games have gone are driven by the spending. Consumers are spending on DLC and they are driving the expectation of more glitz and padded out (lengthier) games. If they continue to pay, they will continue to drive that direction until a threshold is reached that forces a change in behavior.
I think the reality that we don't want to convince ourselves of is that without the rise of "horse armor" and DLC, game budgets would have essentially stagnated (smaller teams/smaller games), or game prices would have risen much more dramatically than they have. There was an incessant drive for bigger worlds, infinite detail, and hundreds of hours of "gameplay" over the last two decades, that while perhaps a natural evolution of things, needed a suitable funding strea...
Gotcha. My educated guess is that Sony won't price the next mainstream product for more than what the PS5 Pro is currently at.