There is no better feeling than the rush you get after beating a hard boss fight, and there are plenty on PlayStation. The PlayStation ecosystem has been in our lives for 26 years, so it’s no surprise that many epic fights have been had.
PlayStation Plus is getting a price rise in Australia and other global regions, with subscribers set to pay a few dollars more on each tier.
Sadly the price increases are expanding to Australia and likely other regions beyond.
Seems like it's best to stack now if you're in the position to do so
I try to stack every time they offer a psn sale that discounts the deluxe tier by 30 percent I find that's the best way to get past the multi year increases but yeah it's sucked feel like everything has increased so much lately across all subs I've cancelled gamepass and a few other streaming services going back to just psn, NSO and Netflix
Same here. I let my subscription lapse since it ran out last summer. If we do the math, is a console really cheaper than a PC? It sucks that I can no longer play Helldivers 2, but it is not worth spending so much on the subscription fee for a function that should be free.
PS plus essential is $80
PS5 is $500
The generation is expected to last 7-8 years, which means you would have spent at least $1060 just to access basic features along with the initial purchase. Not to mention some games being more expensive. There are also the additional controllers you may need to buy once your original ones start to drift. I have 3 DualSense controllers, and all of them drifted. I was able to fix 2 of the 3 by modding them with Hall effect sticks.
I love my Playstation, and I do not regret buying it at launch since I got to enjoy some great games like Ratchet and Clank, Horizon Forbidden West, Spiderman 2, Demon Souls, Astro Bot, and God of War Ragnarok.
The issue I have is that the Playstation that we know today is different from the Playstation we had in the PS4 era. Things are also getting progressively more expensive as time goes on.
Once the PC hardware situation improves, I will be looking to build my own one part at a time instead of getting a Pro console.
@ Divine
The PC situation won't get better. If you want to game, you will need to choose who you want to get screwed by.
Terrible idea to Stack now in my opinion. The raise is not that much for 12 months, so you might as well wait for the 30% sales at the end of year, because you will be saving more money. That's when I'm going to stack like a mofo. I'll buy like 5 years then
You gotta love the attitude people had before: "Price hike! NO, THIS IS TERRIBLE, I HATE—wait ... South America? lol ok."
It starts hitting closer to home and now we're worried. It was always a concern and people should have always treated it that way.
Funny enough, Sony is likely losing subscribers with every price hike, and all they're doing is offering the beefed up service to fewer people. Doubtful this offsets the lost subs.
Haven't had Plus in years, and I don't miss it. And frankly, with the way things are going, I just don't see myself getting into the next generation either. Increased reliance on AI, stagnant gaming experiences despite better tech, untenable budgets, increased cost to consumers, tendency to push GaaS, very long development cycles, weak/non-existent digital rights protections, poor global economy, tariff madness.
It's probably a better use of my time to double down on my other hobbies. Can't speak for others, but it wouldn't be surprising if the market crashes because enough people come to the same conclusion.
PlayStation has spent $4 billion over the past four years, acquiring nine studios, with the priciest acquisition being Bungie.
"Sony had a budget of $11.5 billion for future acquisitions in May of 2024. So, it remains to be seen how the company will use its budget to acquire more studios in the coming years."
I feel like they should expand their current studios strategically. Every studio working on multiple projects at different stages of development. But i suppose they already do this to an extent. But it would be cool for a studio to have output similar to Insomniac
Sony need to restructure their teams so we have an AAA team and an AA team which will give us games like Astro Bot
They already do this.
The issue is creativity in a full game…
Just because somebody sets up a structure does not mean fully fledged AAA games just exist.
It sucks this generation… but we are talking about a level they had set that everyone expects… can not be Microsoft and push out average games, stick a AAA price on it and buy content creators to sell their games.
Sony can not do it or the get massacred by the “gaming media”.
@Xx_Pistol_xX
Why? Seriously, Team Asobi is comprised of mostly the same people still located in Japan and they've already made a hit that is almost universally well received and probably their biggest international seller since Ape Escape. I can't really think of any Japan Studio games with greater comercial success than Ape Escape, Patapon, and Parrapa The Rapper. I loved a lot of their games I can't think of anything they made that I own that was mediocre or bad in design or execution, but nothing landed quite as well as Astro Bot did.
So, I'm not mad anymore. I hope the restructuring of Japan Studio into Team Asobi means we get more instant classic platforming loveletters to gaming like Astro Bot and more well-received creative titles long into their future.
Bungie, Firewalk and Haven…I’d rather have seen them snap up some Crystal Dynamics, Eidos-Montréal, Square Enix Montréal with their vast catalogue of IPs. Would have been way better and a lot cheaper.
Deus Ex, Thief, Legacy of Kain, Tomb Raider etc
What a waste
I honestly don't think any of those are system sellers. You see how Tomb Raider worked out for Xbox when the had the timed exclusivity. And I would personally want money put into another Uncharted over Tomb Raider. But that's just my opinon.
Tomb Raider, if done right, could fill the hole Uncharted has left behind while they worked out their next move for the franchise.
Tomb Raider was always more puzzle like and platforming while Uncharted was a full on story focused action adventure game.
Tomb Raider has a lot of history with PlayStation and with the install base I think it would have sold quite well on PS5 if done right.
They just need to go back to Classic Lara or reboot it again into something more Classic like over this “unifying the timeline” bulls**t they’ve got going on which is really just trying to make Survivor Lara a bigger thing.
CDPR would have been perfect because they don't have one western RPG developer. But then again that would have been really expensive acquiring them
I believe there is a legal hurdle too. Something about the Polish government wanting to protect CDPR.
No more large publisher acquisitions, please.
If Sega was an American company, I think I could get behind Sony acquiring them specifically because (a) the current US government administration would very likely impose no guardrails on Microsoft acquiring them, despite their current size, and (b) the odds of games staying multiplatform are much higher with PlayStation than Nintendo.
That's not the case however, so none of this, please
Monolith, Eidos, Ninja Theory, Crystal Dynamics just to name a few, were a total steal. How I wish some were still kicking.
I'm really not sure that simply pumping out more games from more studios is the way to go.
Just focus on quality, a polished product at launch, and solid support post launch.
Yesterday I spent several hours on LoU Part II No Return mode, which just got a content update. A quality game with great support.
After months of reports of VRR issues on PlayStation consoles, Digital Foundry confirms that there is an issue impacting both PS5 and PS5 Pro.
Like… a dropped frame every 8 seconds? Hope it’s fixed - but it’s not a huge issue.
What TV you got? I have a Sony one and I've never noticed anything wrong with VRR. But maybe I don't know what to look for? But if that's the case, then the problem is not really a problem at all. I don't notice anything wrong when I play using VRR
@lukasmain
I guess I should have stated that I don't have a PS5 Pro so whether or not this problem exists or persists for everyone I can't say, but a stutter every 8 seconds would be a concern for me, depending how perceivable it is to me. In this case, after watching the video, it doesn't seem all that bad, but I'd still want it to be fixed. I have experienced stutter like that and worse on both PC and console games and it is annoying to the point that I will try to solve it before I continue to play(mainly PC, since you can't really do much about it on console, so I tend more to just living with it on console, even if it's an annoyance sometimes). I am super susceptible to this sort of thing, though, more than the average gamer.
If you're not noticing it, better of not go looking for it. It doesn't appear to be that bad in the games tested in the video, which is likely why you haven't noticed, or maybe it's not happening for you.
What a bunch if nonsense. DF scraping the bottom of the barrel to find anything to downplay the PS5 🤣🤣🤣
They've proved a problem exists and now Sony can take action and improve the system it's a good thing to call out issues with systems no matter how much you love them consoles are never perfect.
Imagine if we beeve got a system update to the ps5 mine used to crash quite a lot at launch when playing miles morales i wouldn't be happy if that system was final but now almost no crashing
And it was the same story on PS4 at launch playing battlefield 4 I saw that crash during the campaign consistently
True, Sony obviously released the Pro early and PSSR is still in its infancy. They launched knowing better tools are coming, DF calling it out is ultimately good clearly they game and test Pro out a lot, as they should, it’s the best place to play.
Yup I also call BS. Now that DF are owned by IGN the new agenda is bash PlayStation cause thats all they got. So called Western journalism is the worst of worst. Making it seem like its a majority issue.
I can definitely tell there's been times where PlayStation wasn't treated equally to Xbox throughout the later half of the Xbox one especially after they were invited to tour Xbox in Redmond and reveal the series s first along with first tear down of the series X but I've come to realise that they simply hold PlayStation and their exclusive games to a higher standard.
Look at gears of war 5 vs god of war and how the videos call out problems.
However I feel like those were isolated incidents and don't reflect the teams view today they are more unbiased these days I feel at least
There's also been times where they called out Xbox and their new strategy as not making sense to
Looks like an Xbox advertisement.
I haven’t noticed it in real life so it probably is a you notice it when you are testing for it thing. I’ll do some testing of my own but like I said I don’t think it’s a human eye thing as I should have noticed it by now.
Me niether. Although I do have a Sony tv, maybe there is a difference? It looks perfect always on my tv using VRR.
Samsung here with HDMI 2.1 and never noticed either, Spidey2 and GT7 with vrr run great right around 100fps for me.
DF out here acting like Series consoles and base PS5 aren’t struggling to run newer games. A stutter? Please, 60fps for the win.
To be fair they are saying the Pro is having the same problem too ... Since Balance mode and Quality mode both are pretty much the same graphics settings between the two ps5 consoles
I can't say I've noticed it and I've been using vrr since the update.
That's not at all to dismiss the problem it seems fixable given it's not prevalent in every game on the system.
I could never beat the final boss on Dark Cloud as a kid. Still bugs me to this day that does
Flamelurker demon souls. Thats the one I remember being the most annoying. There were quite a few in dark souls dlc and bloodborne dlc. Fumeknight gave me a tough time as well. Orphan of kos wasn't too bad though.
Kaz Hirai
https://venturebeat.com/wp-...
3/4! Not bad
Anyone else have issues with the boss in Heavenly Sword?