Sheikah

You want a good console design? We have a console for those kinds of people, it's called the Xbox 360.

It really has to be, doesn't it. Looking back it was pretty hideous, especially comparing it to the DS Lite. The design of home consoles don't really matter as much since you put them out the way and hardly ever look at them, so I'm inclined to agree with you.

This isn't a problem on PC though? Sony must make a packet from their cut of online and physical sales, just like Steam do, so they could easily subsidise it. I always thought Sony's servers being rubbish during the PS3 era wasn't so much lack of funding but more lack of experience/catching up with Microsoft.

Yeah, at the beginning it was purely a games subscription as online multiplayer was free, so it had to be good to get people to sign up. I always think it's a shame that XBL Gold cost money, as the other big 2 eventually fell in line and realised it was money left on the table if they didn't do the same.

This really does look to be shaping up nicely. I'll be getting 3 years of this because of the Now technicality. Do we know how much it will cost to upgrade from Plus Essential? Just wondering as Plus Essential (or regular Plus as it is now) is often discounted, so may work out cheaper to just continue to buy that and upgrade as needed.

But if Sony are securing (or even commissioning) exclusives that aren't those types of games then what does it matter whether they have the "PlayStation Studios" brand or not? Destruction AllStars is also published by Sony so Sony have involvement there. It looks like the kind of game that Sony would have been on board from the beginning, perhaps even requesting it. My point is, what does it matter? Feels like you're cherry picking to make a fairly irrelevant point. Whether developed by a "PlayStation Studio" or not, Sony are the ones choosing which games to have as exclusives on their platform.

Poor show!

All those games you mentioned apart from God of War are PS4 games (some with PS5 versions), not PS5. So on PS5 they don't have an abundance of them, and I wouldn't count count Spiderman as that's completely different to say Uncharted or TLOU. There's also a big distinction between open world games (e.g. Horizon) and Uncharted. I don't think anyone playing both of those would come away feeling they'd played even remotely similar games. Also not sure what the relevance is of pointing out whether games are PlayStation Studios or not. Sony are still striking deals to get those exclusives to increase the diversity of games on their console. I don't think it makes sense to exclude them seeing as they're companies getting Sony money just like the first party studios. Also bear in mind "PlayStation studios" is a relatively new branding so it doesn't reveal the true picture of how much Sony is involved in each of those games.

But would you not also say Gran Turismo is AAA? Certainly has the big budget. And it's nothing like a narrative third person game. And what about Deathloop? That was a PS5 exclusive, which was an FPS with a time loop mechanic. We've also had Ghostwire Tokyo (first person) and Destruction All Stars (where you're in a vehicle). If you count those on top of Returnal, Ratchet and Clank and Demon's Souls, you'll see that on PS5 at least the "narrative driven third person" game type is very much in the minority. If anything, they need more of them!

I think that's unfair - they had games like Returnal (roguelike) and Ratchel and Clank which won BAFTAs this year, that were not your typical third person narrative-driven games like God of War or TLOU2. If all it needs to be considered "the same" is for it to be third person then that doesn't really make any sense, since the majority of games are third person. Heck, virtually everything Nintendo put out is third person. And let's be honest, Spider-man looks and plays completely differently to God of War. Not the same type of game at all.

Really? Halo Infinite a GOTY contender? It's been mired in controversy and they still haven't delivered on co-op mode.

There's a good opinion piece on Eurogamer that summarises just how small a problem this is for EA:

You see, this is how they can release first party games onto Game Pass on day 1. By not having any!

Did you ever play them? I think they'd be your bag, especially the second game. The battle system is a lot of fun - turn based but using a timing mechanic to do moves.

Yessss! Yes!!!!! This is the series that I've always wanted to be brought back in some way. The first 2 games especially (and very much the second game) were some of my favourite games on the PS2.