The Thursday letters page likes Capcom’s Kunitsu-Gami: Path Of The Goddess, as one reader worries Ghost Of Tsushima is a live service game.
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Howdy Partner
That Xbox Partner Direct was pretty good I thought. Most of the games looked interesting and they were nice and varied too. I do agree that Capcom’s weird Japanese game [Kunitsu-Gami: Path Of The Goddess – GC] looked the most interesting, but then they are Capcom. Although I do appreciate them doing something so unusual and out there.
The Alters looked good too, as did Tales Of Kenzera: Zau. And while it was only pre-rendered I’m interested in Sleight Of Hand and The Sinking City 2. The only problem I could see, from Microsoft’s point of view, is that none of these are games people are going to excited about. For a casual gamer I’m not sure there’s anything to really latch onto.
That’s not a problem for me, or probably a lot of people reading this, but Xbox still hasn’t addressed the problem that the console doesn’t have any prominent exclusives or games only associated with it. Even with the open goal Sony has given them they haven’t solved that problem. I think it’s pretty obvious that that does matter, and that it may already be too late to turn things around.
Grackle
Casual demands
My biggest takeaway from the Xbox Partner Preview is that I’m still baffled as to why Game Pass isn’t a bigger deal than it is. I have it and now apparently I don’t have to buy half the games mentioned including most of the best ones and a brand new game from Capcom.
PS Plus is apparently the same and it seems to be that more casual gamers just don’t want to play that many games. They see it as a waste of money or intimidating or something. I’m not really sure how you get round that problem, even with having Call Of Duty on there.
A yearly Game Pass Ultimate sub is more than a copy of the game so why would someone that only wants to play that and EA Sports FC (which isn’t on Game Pass) want it? I’m afraid that to the average Joe, access to dozens of top-rated indie games just isn’t a factor in the equation.
84Colbat
2029 gaming
Those UK sales figures are just one big yikes for everything Xbox. The Switch is still outselling it, even though Xbox Series X/S is in what should be its peak year? Starfield made no impact whatsoever? The UK is meant to be Xbox’s second biggest market and it’s getting outsold by that much? No wonder they hit the panic button.
I don’t want to start any console wars thing here; I don’t own an Xbox but I don’t want them to fail. I do believe that competition is good and Xbox just isn’t providing any. Except, even as well as PlayStation 5 is doing they’re talking about multiformat and not having enough growth just the same as Xbox.
Whatever both companies need in terms of profits they’re clearly not getting it from the current status quo, so I guess things have got to change. Like everyone else I have grave doubts as to whether the changes are being thought through properly, even though they’ve had years to prepare. I really wonder what gaming is going to look like in another five years.
Purple Ranger
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Forgotten sequel
I’d completely forgotten about Ghost Of Tsushima until the news about the PC version. It being four years old now and we haven’t heard anything about a sequel sure is strange. But then we haven’t heard about what Bluepoint is working on, or Housemarque. Is that because they’re making live service games? Is Ghost Of Tsushima 2 going to be some awful GAAS that never ends?
The problem with Sony’s silence is that we not only have no idea what they’re doing but all the rumours suggest they’ve changed their mind so many times now it could be literally anything. There’s a good chance even they don’t really have a plan anymore.
It sure is a shame that the simple logic of a game doing well and getting a sequel no longer applies. I would’ve been perfectly happy if the sequel still looked like a PlayStation 4 game, if that’s what it took for it to happen.
Gannet
Filtered out
I was thinking to myself the other day, that I fancied a role-playing game with a character creator. I looked on the PlayStation Store on my PlayStation 4 and tried to find something that maybe piqued my interest. Typically, though the process was needlessly arcane, you could go into all games and then select a filter: price, release date, genre, and so on. And while Sony’s categorisations were sometimes baffling, it was still helpful.
However, when I tried last Friday, I think, if you go to All Games there is no longer an option to select any kind of filter! Unless I’m doing something wrong, Sony seems to have removed it. Only from the All Games category. For New, Indies, etc. you can still select a filter. I’ve already looked online, and others seem just as confused I am. That’s very odd, isn’t it?
Sony’s user interface is very poor at the best of times for their now last gen console, why make it less accommodating? Is it a ploy to smoke out the last holdouts, as it were? Force us to buy a PlayStation 5? Because… that sounds crazy.
DMR
Proper hit
Ignoring the Xbox sales controversy, what was also interesting about those UK sales stats was the top 10 selling games of the year. I’m not sure what exactly I expected but I thought Spider-Man 2 would be higher than that. I know it was only released at the end of the year, but it didn’t even beat FIFA 23 and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor wasn’t far behind it, which I thought got far less hype.
I’d love to know what the Nintendo sales actually were, is there any way to estimate what they sold with digital included? What sort of chart position did Zelda actually get? Although, to be honest, seeing any Nintendo game in the top 10 is great, as far as I’m concerned. When I was growing up Nintendo was completely uncool, and I love the fact that they’re now so successful.
You could look at the top 10 and be upset it’s all licensed games and sequels, and that two of the games weren’t even out that year, but I actually think it’s not a bad list. I admit I had no idea Harry Potter was still that successful, but at least it was a new use of the licence and apparently quite good.
I’d also be curious to know where, if anywhere Baldur’s Gate 3 would come if we knew its sales numbers. You can see it sold a lot on Steam but there’s really no other information on how it did and it’s hard to tell whether it was a cult hit or a proper one.
Sineer
GC: If you assume digital sales were roughly equal to physical Zelda was probably the third or fourth best-selling game of the year, above or below Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. But there’s no way to know for sure.
Second impressions
Really enjoy reading your gaming pages daily, have done since you were on Teletext!
I’m just wondering when the Helldivers 2 review will be up?
I’ve heard really good things almost across the board, but your preview seemed a bit down on it.
Lee
GC: That’s not what we intended; we were generally quite impressed by it. It’s always difficult to know when to review a live service game, when all you could do is a review in progress at launch, but we think we’ll wait until the mech update goes live.
Instant access
Similar to one of the recent Reader’s Features I have found myself burying myself in retro games over the last few weeks, as the news surrounding the modern games industry seem to get worse and worse. The way I’ve found myself doing it though is ironically very modern: via Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack.
I read that it has more subscribers than Game Pass and while it is cheaper I’m not surprised because you’ve basically get (mostly) all the classic games Nintendo has ever made on everything up to the N64. All in a very simple to use app that you can access in seconds and has all the mod-cons in terms of save states and everything.
There’s also special, usually easier, versions of the older games in some instances and little bonuses like F-Zero 99, which is actually really good. There are some gaps in the games available, and I really wish everything would just come out at once, rather than artificially keeping some back, but that’s Nintendo for you.
They’ve said that the Switch 2 will have the same account system, implying backwards compatibility, but I hope that incudes the retro games as well. The worst thing would be if they started the Switch 2 Virtual Console, or whatever they call it, from scratch and make it a completely different set of games.
They’ve done that twice now and it needs to stop. I want access to every Nintendo game ever at my fingertips, and I’m prepared to pay for it.
Onibee
Inbox also-rans
Having watched some Helldivers 2 I wonder why they just didn’t call it Lost Planet 4? With a story and some colour it would fit perfectly. Lost Planet 2 is Helldivers but from a long time ago.
Bobwallett
Regarding my PowerSlave: Exhumed purchase problem. I tried a suggestion from someone in the comments section from BigAngry Dad. I wasn’t up for doing a full hard reset (I’d have about 1TB of games to re-download) so I tried a soft reset and now I have the option to purchase PowerSlave: Exhumed, phew.
So just sending out a big thanks.
Chaosphere616
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