The Friday letters page is adamant it doesn’t want the PlayStation 6 anytime soon, as one reader is dubious about Avowed being a hit.
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Grey Friday
So it looks like all the optimism over this being a good Black Friday have come to nothing already. I don’t think Sony has started their sale yet but £40 off an Xbox? That is so bad I’m not sure why they even bothered. I also don’t understand why it’s so little, unless they just haven’t got many to sell anymore, and they don’t think it’s worth? After all, I can’t imagine Microsoft is churning them out as quickly as they used to, not given what we know about the demand.
Nintendo’s Switch deals are barely any better but at least they have made a small effort, which is more than they usually do. The Amazon sales are terrible though. Just Star Wars Outlaws, as everyone already predicted, and, as usual, EA Sports FC 25.
I would recommend one game on sale though and that is Metaphor: ReFantazio, which is currently 30% off at most places. It doesn’t strike me as a game likely to sell well in the UK, so I’m not surprised to see it cheap so quickly but it really is a fantastic game and probably my favourite of the year. So, if more people get to play it because of Black Friday at least something good will have come of it.
Gandalf
The opposite of hype
I hate to prejudge anything but that Avowed game does not look impressive. Maybe it’ll turn out well, but I cannot see it being popular at all. I don’t know what the opposite of hype is but this game has definitely got it. When I saw the preview I didn’t understand what it was at first and then I vaguely remembered the Skyrim clone-looking reveal teaser.
And they want £70 for this? I think the only reason they moved its release date to February is because they know it would’ve been half price during Black Friday before you could blink. From what I can see this should have been a double-A game for at least £20 cheaper, and then people might have taken a look at it and been interested. But for the same price as Call Of Duty or EA Sports FC? It’s not happening.
The problem is this puts companies off from making new IPs that aren’t sequels but what chance did this have being so generic and unexciting?
Focus
Dead month
That Reader’s Feature recently, about how few new games are being released this month, was dead right. Now that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is out there’s nothing out for the whole year now, beyond Indiana Jones. There’s basically been no big name games out for the whole of November, just a handful of mid-level ones, none of which I can imagine selling all that well.
You can blame the pandemic all you want but that was four years ago now and this situation has been getting worse over the last two years, not better.
I really don’t think the people in charge of the games industry know what they’re doing or realise that their policies are slowly killing interesting in video games from normal people. For years now there’s been talk of a new industry crash but at this rate it’ll be because of a lack of new games and a tragic lack of interest.
Even new games that do come out, like Dragon Age and Star Wars Outlaws aren’t doing much because they’re so overfamiliar and predictable. I really hope Switch 2 and GTA 6 will save us from all this.
Aglour
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Cartridge simulator
Shameful what’s going on with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 and the prices are completely outrageous. The worst thing is that £100+ for deluxe editions is becoming increasingly common. I would love to hear from someone in the Inbox who has paid that much for a game because I have never met anyone in real-life who thought it was anything other than madness.
I’m just imagining the people that have paid that much and still haven’t played the game and know that at any point it could just break down and not work at all, because it needs a permeant internet connection. Like the other reader said, this is the worst advert possible for online-only and streaming games. All of a sudden I’m getting misty-eyed for the days of cartridges.
Yuon
Final decision
So just a quick email to say a massive thank you to Magnumstache and Matc7884, regarding the purchase of a Steam Deck and its relative competition. They both provided me with fantastic detail around the merits of all platforms and in the Lenova provided me with a new possibility I wasn’t even aware off.
Personally, I crave the monotheism of console gaming and am not used to this much choice. I’m leaning Steam Deck at the moment as the almost safe choice but am going to do a bit more digging at the weekend, before making a final pressure filled decision.
Chris in Belfast
Maybe tomorrow
RE: PlayStation 6 release date. I believe it will be… next week.
Let’s face it, that makes as much sense as anything else they’ve done lately.
In all seriousness, as a brand spanking new PS5 pro, I was happy with the promised upgrades it would deliver but it seems to be failing to deliver in many cases and in some cases it’s a worse experience now, after patches. Go figure.
I’m sure, it will improve as PSSR evolves (DLSS didn’t start well either and took several iterations to get it great) but then, why am I paying to be a guinea pig for something not ready? Especially if PlayStation 6 may be coming out in 2026.
So, I get sub-PlayStation 5 experiences for £700 and am a testing ground for your PlayStation 6 experiment?!
Anyway, regarding the handheld aspect of it, there’s no way a PlayStation 6 that substantially upgrades the performance over a PlayStation 5 or Pro can also deliver a handheld experience à la Switch.
Battery would need to be huge, device would also have to be gigantic to avoid melting, and costs would be astronomical to provide an upgraded CPU/GPU and a separate device with a screen as part of it all.
It would have to be a separate device or something akin to the portal again
Kiran
Short list
I can’t begin to tell you how uninterested I am in a PlayStation 6 at the moment and I would not even begin to consider buying one before at least 2028. By my reckoning here have only ever been six Sony first party games, made by actual Sony developers, that are PlayStation 5-only and that is a pathetic total to be looking at four years into a console’s life.
So that’s Concord, Astro Bot, Demon’s Souls, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Returnal, and Spider-Man 2. Concord doesn’t even count any more anyway, since it’s an ex-game, so that really only makes five. Five games for Sony to prove the power and innovation of the PlayStation 5, the majority of which came out in its first two years. Absolutely pathetic.
Danson
GC: There’s also Horizon Call Of The Mountain, Destruction AllStars, Until Dawn, and The Last of Us Part 1, plus a bunch of remasters, but yeah…
Past its peak
I personally feel that the speculation for the PlayStation 6 is way too early, as each generation’s length seems to be increasingly longer between each console. The PlayStation 5 was released in November 2020 and four years surely is not long enough for the rumour mill to start up!
Obviously, Sony are well into developing their next product but nowhere near any such announcement or releasing any information about it. Like how Nintendo do their business and keeping their cards close to their chest, until the last moment when sales have reached their zenith and start gradually slowing down! Then a possible hype machine can effectively start lasting for a year and a bit.
PlayStation 5 must be still selling okay, as four years just seems to have flown by and I don’t personally want a new console but a further evolution of the current technology and getting the most out of it, culminating in The Elder Scrolls 6! Though that may be an Xbox exclusive only!
With such graphical prowess within games like Alan Wake 2, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and Elden Ring. etc. I still feel that like the SNES, Xbox 360, and Switch they definitely could make increasingly more dynamic games as the mid to latter part of a console’s life has historically some growth spurt and some amazing new design work is explored in a game’s creation.
But ultimately, it’s good business and if the time is right then so be it, but I won’t, as usual, be looking seriously into the specs anytime soon, as I feel my fun on the current generation is still going on an all-time high and definitely showing no sign of slowing down. But I definitely can’t blame us gamers for getting enthusiastic about our favourite hobby, no siree.
Alucard
GC: Like it or not PlayStation 5 sales have been slowing down all year, the zenith was last year.
Inbox also-rans
RE: Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake. Do you have any plans to review this? I didn’t realise it was already out. The trailer looked great but a NES era role-playing game would probably need a lot of modernisation in order for me to get into it.
Michael
GC: To be honest, we forgot too. Our review should be ready either today or Monday.
Pointless even trying to say what I think of potential PlayStation 6 leaks now. I’d be swearing so badly it wouldn’t get past the GC editor.
P.Ella
PS: It’s almost every day now I read something going on in the gaming industry and just sit here thinking what the hell? Today has been no different.
GC: We know what you mean.
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MORE: Games Inbox: When will the PlayStation 6 be announced?