The Wednesday letters page worries about last gen games holding back the current gen, as one reader laments the death of Roger Corman.
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Behind the scenes
So PlayStation has gone from no CEO to two, but what is that actually going to mean? Both these people have been at PlayStation for years already, but we’ve never heard a peep out of them about anything. I only recognise the Guerrilla Games guy because of the weird promotional pictures he does, where he’s trying to look all cool in front of the camera, but I don’t remember he doing or saying anything of importance.
Maybe they’re both really good at their jobs, I have no way of knowing one way or the other, but I really hope they’re not just going to be backroom pencil pushers. We need Sony to have a frontman again, someone to inject personality and excitement into the brand – not just rely on PlayStation Blogs and disembodied voices in a State of Play.
On paper PlayStation is still doing well but I can tell you as a fan I have just about had enough of them, with their lack of announcement and games, and I know several friends that feel the same way. Explain to us what is going on and keep us updated. Don’t just rely on the brand to sell, tell us why we should be excited about PlayStation, because I’m really beginning to wonder.
Trepsils
Infinite updates
Bethesda are so lucky that Fallout has been such a big hit at Amazon because these updates for Fallout 4 have been an absolute disaster and show how they haven’t learnt anything over the many years they’ve been doing all this.
So, we had a next gen update that was years in the making and it broke everything, including a massive fan mod that was just weeks away from release. Also, it didn’t really improve anything much and was basically a complete waste of time.
The most popular fan mods then became ways to get rid of the update, so Bethesda released a second update, that made everything even worse… so now we’re waiting for a third update to fix the first two! You couldn’t make this stuff up. Can’t wait for the fourth update that is needed to fix the third one.
Cauli
Bad currency
I hope Assassin’s Creed Shadows is good, because I didn’t really like Mirage, but this info about microtransactions is already worrying me. What is it for? Surely it’s not multiplayer because they know how that goes and I thought they had a dedicated multiplayer game coming out.
And it can’t be for single-player cosmetics, because why would you need in-game currency for that? Unless Ubisoft is just going to let you buy as many skill points and levels as you want? I wouldn’t put it past them, but surely not.
My thought is that it might be for Assassin’s Creed Infinity, since I think that was meant to have a lot of paid-for DLC content, but that still doesn’t answer why you need in-game currency. I have a bad feel about this.
Animal
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The King of Cult
There’s plenty of depressing gaming news at the moment but having just found out the great Roger Corman has died aged 98 I think it takes the title. This isn’t a movie site I know, but as any aficionado of quality cinema and classic B movies I’m sure you can appreciate his ability to use a budget to churn out such a volume of material. From quality matte paintings, decent special effects, all the way to sets that are barely holding together. All of it done in the service of glorious entertainment.
Galaxy of Terror with a young Robert Englund shall be rewatched tonight in honour. Maybe Piranha afterwards.
Wonk
GC: That’s sad, we didn’t know. Our favourite of his is Battle Beyond The Stars, which is not only a fun sci-fi version of Seven Samurai (and a hundred times better than Zack Snyder’s latest) but was James Cameron’s first big break – and where he met Bill Paxton.
Review archive
This is a bit early, but I’m going to throw out an Xbox Showcase prediction: the original Psychonauts game remade. I have nothing to base this on except hope, rather than expectation [for this sentence read Inbox Magic] and I would love to play it again with a slightly easier final level. That was pure hell.
On the subject of the original game, I purchased it on the back of the GameCentral/Digitiser review (thanks!) and it didn’t disappoint. Do you know if there is any way to find any of the old reviews or is it simply a case of googling a specific review to find it?
NatorDom
GC: Of pre-internet reviews? We’re not aware of any way to read them.
Real characters
I’ve really struggled to write in this year. Either it’s been too depressing or others have already made the points I wanted to make and I didn’t want to add to the disaster reports coming from Microsoft and Sony.
But today, with the announcement of the new heads of PlayStation, I’ve realised something we’ve really missed in gaming in the last few years is personalities.
Thinking back to the PlayStation 3/Xbox 360/Wii years, you had Reggie Fils-Aime, Shuhei Yoshida, Ken Kutaragi, Larry Hyrb (Major Nelson), and Satoru Iwata (RIP). These people helped drive the games business forward. They stuck their heads above the parapet and promoted the product with drive, vision, humour, and, sometimes, humility.
There are still some of them around. Miyamato-san always plays the crowd, as does Hideo Kojima, but they are few and far between. Even Jim Ryan, though he may have been criticised for pushing Sony towards live service games, used to give GameCentral some great interviews that were very enlightening at the time.
Contrast that with now. Here’s hoping the new PlayStation guys don’t act a pair of sourpusses, like Phil Spencer has become. I’m not entirely certain Phil was ever more than a cardboard cutout for Microsoft, and I realise he’s been put in a right pickle now, but that’s what he created and has to own. Even Doug Bowser, the CEO of Nintendo and the most fantastic namesake ever, never sticks his head up. The things Nintendo could do with that, I’d have milked it for every drop.
Going from that, the loss of a marquee gaming events, like E3, has disconnected gamers from the manufacturers, publishers, and studios. The hype is gone, replaced by vanilla events like Directs, etc. And, much as I want my gaming news, there is nothing like having a big event with microphone dropping/ megaton announcements, hands-on articles, and the sheer enthusiasm that those events generated. Knowing all the big news for Xmas was at that event in June was a fantastic way to build hype for the end of year, rather than the absurd drip, drip of leaks we get now.
To conclude, the heads of the gaming divisions need to start coming out and being part of the crowd, showing their passion for their products, entertaining us and making us enthusiastic all over again. Long live the hype!
ZiPPi
GC: We agree entirely. The pandemic was the perfect excuse for companies to drain all the personality and showmanship out of the industry, all in the name of cost-cutting and risk avoidance.
X-tremely surprising
I know the XCOM director said he was done with turn-based games, and I guess I can’t blame him, but The Sims clones?! That’s literally the last thing I’d be interested from him, or anyone else.
I don’t know what I was expecting but I guess I thought maybe some sort of third person shooter with similar R&D and base buildings to XCOM. Doesn’t that sound good to anyone else? Better than a Sims game I’m sure.
Worchester
Last gen loyalty
The console sales figures were interesting last week, especially when paired with the most popular games news that also came out recently. You can see, looking at the numbers, the mammoth problems facing Sony and Microsoft, and, with the Swich 2 on the way, Nintendo will be in the same boat.
Taking Sony. I believe the PlayStation 5 has around 50 million plus sales at the moment? Despite complaints Sony has delivered a decent number of exclusives over the last four years, both by first and third parties (Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Rise Of The Rōnin, Stellar Blade, and Helldivers 2 this year alone) and that has driven solid sales so far…
However, the remaining 50-60 million PlayStation 4 owners are going to be difficult to reach. This isn’t really because Sony aren’t making games, and more likely down to live service titles like Fortnite still featuring content parity with the old generation, so casual gamers aren’t upgrading.
Sony fans who care about exclusive titles and single-player games probably already have the PlayStation 5, and the current sales are the market size for those type of games. The relief on the horizon here is GTA 6, which won’t have a last gen version. If the new GTA Online is current gen only too, a lot of holdouts on PlayStation 4 could then be persuaded to come across. If Sony and Microsoft really want to sell more consoles, they need to persuade the publishers of live service games to end support for last gen.
Nintendo will likely run into this same problem with the Switch 2, while live service titles are supported on the old machine. Nintendo exclusives generally have a much higher attach rate than Sony or Microsoft which will help mitigate the issue but I do think Nintendo need some big first party online names out of the gate to build momentum.
A lot more people than you think will stick to Fortnite, Minecraft, and Mario Kart 8 as long as Switch online servers remain active, enough to top out Switch 2 sales at a similar rate to Sony and PlayStation’s migration from 4 to 5.
Marc
GC: The latest results on Tuesday gave a total of 59.3 million for the PlayStation 5, which is almost exactly where the PlayStation 4 was at the same point in its life. You make a good point about last gen compatibility lessening the need to upgrade though.
Inbox also-rans
Wow, so many CEOs! Two at PlayStation, three at Xbox. I wonder what the collective noun would be? An incompetence of CEOs perhaps?
John
GC: Heh. We think you have it right.
Just a quick note, Braid Anniversary Edition that’s just been released on Switch has also just appeared on Netflix for free, for anyone that subscribes to it.
TheTruthSoul (PSN ID)
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