Julius

Yeah, absolutely agree. They've absolutely killed it this gen. And not even just the first or third party exclusives this time around, too, but the timed exclusive deals, for example Final Fantasy VII Remake and Dragon Quest XI with Square Enix, I feel were a strong statement, and those games and the hours I sunk in are just as tied to my enjoyment of games on the PS4 this gen. COVID for sure has had a positive impact, definitely a case of a rising tide raising all ships. Whether on my PS4, Switch, or any other console really, I look back at this year and genuinely wonder how much worse off I might have been this year if not for gaming. Excessive gaming for long stretches is something I'm increasingly wary of, and I imagine I'll start to cut down my gaming once some sort of normalcy comes back to the world, but for 2020, with how it's played out, it's been a great way to escape, and also a great way to connect to others. Whether in a party, vicariously through a bean in Fall Guys, or just discussing games here on N-Europe, it's definitely been a light at the end of the tunnel for me almost every day since March. Compounded only by consistent news all summer (though I'll admit, I did miss E3 in the end!), the buildup to a new generation, and the excitement of it all. Whether it's a PS5, Series X, Series S, RTX graphics card, new VR headset, or even if people are just getting around to picking up a Switch or PS4/XBO (sorry Vita! ), it's been a rough year in some way or another for everyone. That we have something to look forward to as we look to the end of the year as great as new hardware and software is awesome, and I definitely hope it continues to offer what we probably all need as the chaos unfurls around us (and, you know, eventually goes away...please!)

Yeah, think it largely depends on what the audience is like for TGA's this year I guess, I'm expecting a bit of a bump in voter turnout considering just how strong a year it's been for games. Animal Crossing I feel is a great shout as a dark horse, think that one really depends on who turns up to vote more than any of the others mentioned. I'd be happy for it to win, because while I dropped off after 50 hours or so, I still got a few weeks out of it, and had a really good time with it; it was a very welcome and much needed distraction early on in quarantine, that's for sure. I at least expect to see it win some awards, though I'm not sure if it will end up with GOTY at the TGA's at least. I think the other games you mention could end up as nominees, for sure, but I don't think any of them that'll take GOTY home. I think it'll end up being The Last of Us Part II that wins, or rather, I'd be surprised if it didn't. While I personally feel that the original is tighter all around, and I'll gladly take a linear story over some of the messier pacing we ended up with in Part II, the ambition is there for it on the visual, storytelling, and musical fronts as a strong case for GOTY at TGA's. That this game can run as smooth as it does on a base PS4 really is something, and I really hope it's accessibility features are highlighted on the night for all to see. Plus, Naughty Dog is as GOTY bait a studio you can get, all things considered. Personally of the opinion that it being divisive is down to a bit of a vocal minority - not that I'd disagree with some of the points they raise, but while there are some who genuinely have fair points to make, there are others who hated this game from before it was even released (character gender, sexuality, leaked plot, etc.) who are annoyingly loud about it, which definitely makes it difficult to gauge. Ended up loving Final Fantasy VII Remake after I had some time to digest it, killer soundtrack and a great next step for Final Fantasy in a lot of ways, but I think it genuinely has a tougher job than the rest, considering its being held up more to the original game than it is it's peers this year in the eyes of most gamers. Probably not fair, but that's just how it's going to be. Guess we'll have to wait and see, in any case! It not being delayed into early next year makes me a little bit concerned that the next gen upgrade is much, much later on in the year than I had previously expected. For me, I'll be playing it Day 1 with whatever patches are available, but if this game is worthy of a second playthrough for me, I'll probably save it for that next gen upgrade!

That's crazy. Just goes to show how effectively they kept us all on the hook in the lead up to last month's event (is it just me, or does that feel like it was ages ago?), and ready to jump on pre-orders as soon as they went up. Could they have communicated more effectively until now, in terms of what we were in for? Yeah, for sure. I think they bottled some of the messaging relating to last month's event (release dates for games, pre-order date and time for the console), and though I think a few of us here thought their backwards compatibility strategy was clear enough, it really shouldn't have been a question. If you're being competitive, as Xbox and PlayStation clearly are, why would you give so much as an inch to your competitor, even if it's only in the minds of a few? PlayStation have done a great job, no doubt, so crazy stats like these aren't too out there, though I am curious to see what the deal is going to be with stock, and especially in how many they're able to produce and sell by their end of the financial year. The demand is there, but will the supply be? We still haven't heard about that second wave of pre-orders yet, and we're just under a two and a half weeks from launch in the US.

It's strange, because my first instinct is that it might be an issue getting it to perform well on the base models of current gen (PS4/XBO). Also worth noting that this puts it out of contention for GOTY at The Game Awards, and we've already seen how that has played out in other cases. Can't be a decision they've made lightly, keeping that in mind. Off the top of my head in terms of AAA releases, it pretty much guarantees that GOTY will be a PlayStation exclusive title this year (The Last of Us Part II, Ghost of Tsushima, or [timed] Final Fantasy VII Remake, and depending on when the cut-off is, potentially Demon's Souls too?). Might be that I'm forgetting something, but if not, that's pretty crazy.

Well, can't say that was totally unexpected, because it still feels like we've seen so little of it, but that's a real shame, for both us, as the audience, and the developers (especially so). Guess that means there's no question in my mind about which order to play games in on the PS5 at least! means I can be pretty much focused on CP2077 when it releases which is nice!

glances over at TV unit Yeahhhh that could be a squeeze even taking the PS4 out of the equation, it's going to be a bit tighter than I'd like next to the PS3 Slim and Switch! Might need to shuffle things around a bit and start using my lower shelf...

Unboxing videos and first impressions of the console, Astro's Playroom, and the DualSense are going up: Must be nice

Inverse camera controls will be made available in the next update, coming on November 17th.

Makes me wonder if they expected it to bomb somewhat anyways, and were planning on dropping it on PS+ a few months out. Probably doesn't make much sense at launch wanting all eyes to be on Miles and Demon's Souls, too, and we all expected it to be on PS+ (or F2P when we first saw it) at some point too, but still, a smart move for them. I'm sure the game will do much better because of this.

FPS boost not much of a surprise, but save transfers for GoW 2018 and GoW III is a welcome surprise. Cool cool cool.

@drahkon calling me out not once, but twice?

Personally, I feel I've got pretty good at managing my PS4's 1TB of internal storage (~800GB after OS), deleting games after beating them on a regular basis, so even though we're looking at 200GB or thereabouts of less available space with the PS5, I think I'll be able to manage for the foreseeable future so long as I continue with that. I wouldn't be surprised if game sizes balloon once we get closer to mid-gen a few years from now, but at the same time, we'll probably be due a PS5 Pro at that point, so expandable storage isn't really something on my radar at the moment!

Digital Foundry breaking down the new Game Informer coverage: Just finished replaying Spider-Man and going to dive into the DLC next for the first time. My excitement is definitely going up for this

PS5 is being sent out to press. Impressions next week I guess? Also, really cool that Brandon has one. Curious if this means there are going to be some accessibility features packed in that we haven't seen/heard about yet, because I have to imagine there are things they can potentially do with the adaptive triggers, haptic feedback, and 3D Audio?

Well, I'm sure this is going to go down well...

This is one of the most stupid things I've ever read about the Switch to be honest. Options are always a good thing in my opinion, unless one is actively making another option worse. Even if it is the case that only 20% play it in both handheld and docked (I play almost exclusively docked at this point) and more people play it handheld only, that doesn't mean they don't want the option to play both ways. But I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it's the other way around and more people mostly/exclusively play it docked, which is having the option is so important. I hate it when analysts come at things like this with such binary thinking, thinking there's a wrong and a right. It might be mostly right in Japan, for instance, because of the historically good performances of handhelds over there, but that still doesn't mean that every Japanese owner of a Switch would be just as hope with only a Lite. I'll probably look it up later because I imagine it's in the most recent quarterly report, but I have to imagine that the Switch is outpacing the Switch Lite, and all of those broken records we've seen since launch aren't for nothing. That was a frustrating read. EDIT: Ah yes, another analyst thinking he's smarter than Nintendo. So which one is it? Get rid of playing on the TV entirely, or just replace the dock with a dongle which we know Nintendo would struggle to make work. Oh, and here, take a look at the search results for "Pachter consoles" on Google. Guy's been predicting that consoles would die out for the last decade, and here we are with the PS4 having flown by 100 million units sold quite a while back. I'm sorry, but Pachter's an idiot. How the heck is he still finding work covering the games industry?

Yeah, the run of sequels I think is what I take issue with most, mainly because, at least in my opinion, they just weren't of the same ilk as the films they were following. Toy Story 4 had its moments, but I'd much prefer them hanging up Woody's hat and seeing different places and toys in that world instead (also wasn't a fan of the different look for Bo Peep, basically becoming a Rey lookalike). Finding Dory was pretty average I feel. Cars 3 was better than Cars 2, but that's not saying all that much. And Incredibles 2 was pretty forgettable when compared with the first film too I don't know, it just really reminds me of what Disney Animation were doing in the late 90's/early 00's with their home video sequels to big properties like Aladdin, Lion King, Tarzan, etc. I did quite enjoy Inside Out when I saw it initially, and I also enjoyed Onward when I saw that a couple of months back, though I second your shout on Coco being especially good. Probably my favourite Pixar film since Toy Story 3? It stood out to me because my grandmother years ago and didn't properly grieve at the time, so yeah, that film meant a lot for me in that it finally helped me let go of it all a bit more. I remember I stopped myself from crying "to be strong" for my family, but yeah, this film had it all rushing back. Always very special when a film can do that! Hope you like it! I had a good time with it, though being the older brother, yeah...watching it on my little brother's birthday was always going to mean someone was cutting onions somewhere

Rumours going around earlier that Disney is going to be relocating Lucasfilm and it's divisions out of the Digital Arts Center in San Francisco's Presidio (ILM, ILMxLAB, Lucasfilm Animation, Consumer Products, Digital Media, Franchise Management) over to Burbank, along with Skywalker Sound (still located at Skywalker Ranch). Only surprising thing about this is that it's taken them this long to (seemingly) make the move. They've been paying George rent all these years and it's a six hour trip or thereabouts on Google Maps from there to the Disney lot in Burbank, but still, it does feel like the end of an era just thinking that Skywalker Ranch isn't going to be the home to any future Star Wars projects. Guess we'll have to wait and see, but now that we're just a week away from it being the 8th anniversary of the Disney purchase, I've got to ask: what does everyone think of how Disney has handled the franchise so far?

Yeah that's my bad, I already knew it was Disney Animation too! And agreed, was pleasantly surprised just how much I enjoyed Moana when that came out. While I'm looking forward to Soul, Pixar has steadily descended from this mythical, almost untouchable studio from my childhood to a bit of a lesser one over the last half a decade or so (there's no question in my mind now that I would probably consider Ghibli the most consistent animation studio overall when it comes to just how much I enjoy their films, whereas before it was definitely Pixar). On the other hand, Disney Animation proper has only been in the rise in that time, and I feel like that's got a lot to do with Lasseter moving over in the mid-2000's and helping them adjust to 3D. Still, would really love to see Disney take another swing at 2D animation one of these days! I swear swipe-to-text is going to be responsible for a war at some point

Unfortunately it is. It looks like it's set to be delisted on 31st March 2021, the same date as 3D All-Stars and (currently) Mario 35

Hnnnnng. That black one. That looks really nice! I was thinking earlier about spraying it myself, because just really not sure how long it will be until PlayStation come out with their own. I don't mind it in white...but black would be my preference. I would order one (says it ships on/around the 12th, with free worldwide delivery, so would probably make it here for the 19th or shortly after), but at the same time, I can't see anything on the site about its material composition, which is a bit concerning. It'll still have the airflow, but depending on the material differences, there's always the potential that it could cause some overheating. And then there's the fact that my controllers and console won't match (though I guess a dbrand skin could fix that). Hmm. Think it'd probably be best to wait on some impressions first.

Same here Only reason I'm getting one is the PS5 is going to be my Blu-ray player, and my DualShock 4's R2 and L2 triggers have a terrible habit of mysteriously snagging on things, which fast forwards/rewinds

Not at the end of the Nintendo UK trailer like it is for the US trailer, either That sucks.

Yeah, it looks really nice! Think I'll be in for the digital version, I've been meaning to play another Fire Emblem since I played Awakening a couple of years ago, and it's such a low price that I don't mind keeping it in the back of my mind until I next need to scratch that strategy itch. The CE looks awesome, but really don't want to get in the way of someone else who would appreciate it much more than me getting their hands on it instead! I guess this limited run thing is here to say, which is...a little bit concerning, what with the Zelda 35th Anniversary next year (even more so considering they could put out two separate collections just for the 3D games). Heck, honestly wouldn't be all that surprised at this point if a Prime Trilogy on Switch would only be available for a limited time too.

Just seen that the game will be $5.99 on the US eShop, so expecting £4.99/£5.99 here in the UK? Seeing Nintendo be open to releasing things like this by themselves directly to the eShop I feel does revitalise a little bit of hope for an eventual Mother 3 port (I just want to play it for the soundtrack!), it does feel like a strange choice, so for me at least, I have to think they're testing the waters for something a little bigger down the road?