Geek Binge: Last year, developer Insomniac Games revealed a teaser trailer for their new game Overstrike, and it got me all hot and bothered. It had a slightly cartoonish art style, some Ratchet & Clank type weapons, four player co-op, and best of all, a sense of humor. It was a perfect amalgamation of what Insomniac did best: make fun, original games with sharp writing, memorable characters, unique worlds, and personality. The Spyro games were great platformers, and the R&C trilogy still stands as a shining achievement of the PS2 era. Overstrike seemed to be a logical step forward for Insomniac, and it quickly became one of my most anticipated games on the horizon. But then on Thursday, Insomniac showed off the first gameplay footage of their new game entitled Fuse. And we only have one question; just what exactly happened to the game that was Overstrike?
Marvel's Spider-Man villain DLC potentially spotted via the debug menu that surfaced from the New Game+ title update released recently.
Ahmed from eXputer writes "Video game leaks have become a major cause of concern for Triple-A studios, as they're becoming increasingly malicious and dangerous."
In a leaked Sony Interactive Entertainment presentation, the company declares that including first-party games on PS Plus has had a “big” effect on “traditional sales.” As an example, the company mentioned that Horizon Forbidden West‘s sales “flat-lined” immediately after being added to PS Plus.
Also really interesting to see through to one of the sites they link to (Resetera) that the 2 cross gen titles in Miles Morales and Ghosts of Tsushima sold over 40% each of their first year in year 2, almost double what even the best performing games like GOW 2018 and Spider-Man did. Kinda seeing the cold hard numbers makes it really clear why they did cross gen games and remastered some of the later PS4 games to PS5 Directors Cuts.
"“In year 1, Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West were very comparable,” the presentation reads. “HFW was included into PS Plus at the start of Year 2. HFW saw an enormous influx of PS Plus players, but at the cost of flat-lining the game activations from retail sales.”"
So, the data shows there were fewer traditional sales, but it doesn't show us anything about how many people joined PS+? It does say there was an influx of HFW players, but it doesn't state how many of these players owned PS+ to begin with.
To conclude that it negatively sales is correct, but it doesn't mean less money is made. We cannot draw that conclusion until we know how many more people joined PS+ because of HFW.
MS's bet is that although it lowers traditional sales, it makes the services more appealing and millions of new people will subscribe if they see that good games are added to the service. And in the end, the subscription profit (not revenue) will outpace that of the traditional sales.
However even after 6 years they still haven't reached that point lmao
Best to wait till it releases, and see for ourselves... But yeah, it does look different than before. Before it looked unique, and different. The trailer released was just... 'meh'. Explosions, explosions, explosions. Where's the wit? The charm? Gameplay we haven't seen a million times?
But still, I'll give them a benefit of a doubt and just wait before jumping on any kind of wagon.
Ahh... Haha, I really do like that first announcement trailer.