Sheikah

But as shown in that screenshot above, most of the best selling games on the PS4 are (or were) exclusives, so this "third party only" gamer is surely very rare. I would also wager that if you're primarily interested in third parties, you're more of a casual gamer, and your choice is probably dictated more or less by what console your mates have. Which given the current situation is probably a PS4. I think it's more likely they will look at the PS5 which is getting all the exclusives and buy it instead, unless money is an issue. Don't see why you're not convinced, it has let them stay on top the whole generation. If you have two boxes that play the same multiplatform games with similar levels of graphical fidelity then exclusives are the main thing that would sway you one way or another. Again if you look at the top selling games on the system, the top selling COD game is the 24th best seller, and the top selling FIFA game is 18th. So I disagree with that point. Also, do you think FIFA is even pushing each system to its limit? The "primarily third party gamer" you describe probably doesn't know, or care, about the extra power the Series X has. In fact I imagine they'd be buying a Series S if anything.

Indeed, there are countries in Europe where Xbox isn't even considered. UK is quite the anomaly in that regard - Xbox does reasonably well over here (but still outsold by PS4).

Again, don't see why it needs "propping" up by Sony when it has third party games too. Can you explain what you mean? Especially when it seems that Sony is acquiring exclusive deals with many of these third party developers too.

I don't think they have anything to worry about. The vast majority of the most played games on the PS4 are PS4 exclusives (or were at one point). Sony have a reputation for having the games and nothing so far shows that that's going to be different in the coming generation. To reword the question, why buy an Xbox when you can buy a PS5 and get all the multiplatform games plus the exclusive games you can't get on Xbox? The best argument right now for Xbox is simply value.

They do have a trick up their sleeve actually.

Well the US will pay 2.9 to 7.25% on top, so they're still getting a much better deal.

I don't think you really know how much money it is costing Sony to make overall or how much they are able to slice off the asking price. This post reads like a lot of conjecture. Sony will want to compete though, surely, and they must know that going above £500 when their competitor is £449 is bad business. One thing we do know is that Sony make a lot of money from digital purchases and the digital edition PS5s will help them make even more money digitally, so they might be willing to give a bigger discount on those. Bear in mind as well that a lot of people buying a digital PS5 will probably buy at least one game from the store to play on it.

If Microsoft can reach 450 with a more powerful console then it doesn't seem fantasy at all that Sony could reach 400 with a digital only version which will be tied into PSN purchases for life. Microsoft are also giving the US a much better deal for the Xbox Series X (499 USD is 384 GBP) so there's definitely wriggle room there.

If Sony can reach £350 (or even £399) with the digital version then they should be in a very good spot.

Why would I hurt my eyes with it? It's white text on a dark background so much easier on the eyes. Might be you're viewing the image on a bright screen yourself, since I usually lower the brightness on mine. Sepia tone also kicks in at night.

I don't think Nintendo need to do anything with the Switch price. The Switch is quite a good secondary console - it's not like where if you have a PlayStation you're less likely to have an Xbox and vice versa, due to the overlap between them and the cost of annual subscriptions. It also continues to sell well and will have some Mario titles released this year. Add to this, although the Series S is coming in cheap it's not as though there'll be a lot of (or any) exclusive killer software to play on it.

It's more the poor contrast of the blue text on the grey backround that was bothering me. I'm using a laptop right now but I mostly use Tapatalk, which has a great dark mode. For example:

I think the bigger question here is WTF is going on with you forum theme lol.

You might be right, but 150 more for the cheapest PS5 model than the Series S seems perhaps too much. I'm hoping they manage 350 for it.

Yep, the specs are exactly the same apart from the disc drive. I really don't believe there's been any confusion in the messaging there - the digital version is just called the "PS5 digital", and they're exactly the same size (aside from the bulge): Contrast this to the Series S, which is a lot smaller than the Series X and clearly looks to be on a different power level:

Crazy isn't it. Makes you wonder how much money they must have lost on Game Pass so far with that promotion. Those 12-month Live Gold cards have also been sold at some crazy cheap prices over the last few years, too.

They definitely don't need to go as low as that - the discless PS5 is still a full-fat PS5, whereas the Series S is clearly a lower spec model. I don't imagine the PS5 discless model will be sold for less than 350. Maybe 330 at an absolute push. Not unless Sony are wishing to suffer a big loss, anyhow.

Indeed it could. My only thought though is who is it targeting. It would seem to be people who like graphics, but not so much that they would want a console that would display nicely on a 4K TV (because either they don't have one, or aren't planning to get one in the next 7 years). Microsoft have also said that their titles will be compatible with the Xbox One for the next few years, so it may be less of a reason to upgrade for casual gamers. We will see - I expect this to sell very well regardless at that price.

I was thinking this too, about how much they must be losing on each of these consoles. Also, they basically have raised the price of Game Pass now because they have discontinued the 12-month Xbox Live Gold cards. It used it be that you could buy a year's worth of Live Gold then convert it into Game Pass with a 1 dollar/pound promotion - which is almost certainly what a lot of people were doing. I think you can still do that, but only if you have a redeemable 12 month card lying around. But once they're gone, they're gone. I'm excited to see how Sony react now. Competition is a good thing!

This is a crazy good price. I think this really shows how high a price the One X was by comparison (£450! Almost double).

That's just a possible outcome. You don't know whether FOMO will result in more sales than this game would normally see over a number of years - and more Switch console sales right now, before they release a Pro console. You don't know if they will sell these games separately - if they do then they will be making more money now from people not wanting to miss out, then money after too. And you don't know if they're just trying to make more money in the short term to reach financial targets that have been impacted by COVID. People come down too hard on one opinion. "They won't be released separately". I mean, we don't know for sure about that, do we? Nintendo are not fools and Nintendo know how to make money. They're also not deaf - I'm sure they know they've received a negative response to the limited availability. It's not good either way. Either they sell them separately afterwards and they've played on FOMO, or they make the games completely unavailable to people who want them.

I know that (and you mean one new game), but compared to what the rest of their industry has been doing with some of their trilogies recently, for the price they're doing it at, it is disappointing. It doesn't even need to be a particularly adventurous remaster - there are just some very obvious omissions like 60 FPS that would make such a difference that aren't there. I know you say you like the game to stay true to how it originally was, but Mario Sunshine was supposed to be 60 FPS. And when you see it in action on Dolphin, there's just no two ways about it - it looks so much better. To quote you from other topics...you might call these 3 games "serviceable". I'm sorry you don't like my attitude. I didn't appreciate that the Mario Bros. games were the NES versions on the VC store. Not going to lie, I wasn't the most legitimate virtual console user so a lot of these technicalities pass me by. I guess my counterpoint to this would be that NES versions were still available on Virtual Console, so you weren't completely left out cold if you couldn't get the retail disc of All Stars. I also read that All Stars was reprinted, so at least there was that. And I'd also argue that even though from a historical point of view the original Mario Bros. games are important, this 3D trilogy has much more oomph and appeal to modern gamers. Heck, Super Mario World was where it was at anyway. Yet here, with 3D All Stars, there is potentially no other way to play these games once they're gone next March. Even though I know that Nintendo have done funny things before, this particularly high profile release, in a highly digital world now, does hit rather hard.

Also, I don't see this as being a particularly rude line or questioning to Dcubed. I know he loves his remasters, and I know he loves Nintendo games. In fact I appreciate his level of knowledge about remasters - it was from him I learned how crappy that Tales of Symphonia port was. I'm interested to know where he stands on what is a pretty low budget remaster, which his last post clarifies. Although honestly, Dcubed, I don't believe you would be quite so lenient on the lack of effort (even just no 60 FPS) if this was someone else doing it. With regards to my underlying thoughts, I make no secret that I think there is a tilt and defensiveness about Nintendo products about these parts - to the point that certain people on here will be quick to criticise other companies for their practices and remasters but not others. In fact, in some threads, if I see a certain person has replied, I can more or less predict how the reply will read. I do think for sure that if this was a different company doing this level of effort with a remaster pack, with the limited digital availability to boot, that certain people would have a lot more to say. Let's just leave it at that.

For traditional microtransactions, sure, it's whales. But not seasonal battle passes - a lot of people buy them. There are many people who are not drawn to microtransactions because they don't have any real value, and people can see through them. This however is a 3-pack of games that people appreciate. Maybe people would have bought them down the line, or don't have a Switch yet. The fact that this 3 pack of games will only be available for 6 months will mean that if people have any interest in them whatsoever they will need to act - perhaps even purchasing a Switch to do so. I find it interesting that you discounted every single possibility I gave with very little reasoning. For instance, how can you say that it isn't a clever tactic to instill a sense of FOMO now, capitalise on sales, then sell them separately afterwards? Then they haven't lied but they'll have made more money. Heck, as I mentioned, they've sold Mario All Stars individual games before on the Wii Virtual store. Why not the same for 3D All Stars? Nintendo are a business out to make money. Ultimately all these decisions come back to making money. There's no good consumer-friendly reason that this should be sold digitally for a limited amount of time - none at all.

The ongoing narrative amongst some members on this forum is that Nintendo games are a special kind of quality that stand above other games. As we have seen here with timed/limited availability and the number of copies they ship for some series, they induce scarcity through careful management. If this was purely a case where quality dictating price we would see Witcher 3 still at £50 five years after launch. I see you didn't address the first part of my post. Where is your criticism of this lazy remaster? Not even 60 FPS for Sunshine, which was supposed to be that in the first place. Very little work on Mario 64, or any of it for that matter. No GameCube controller support for Sunshine, despite Nintendo releasing an official GameCube controller. Full £50 price. I'm surprised because I know how vocal you can be about lazy remasters and crappy practices (see the Jimquisition thread). I remember you giving the Tales of Symphonia remaster a right earful. Not going to lie, if I had to pick a company which I thought you would give a pass, this would be the one. As for the bit you bolded - nope, those other games don't compare. You can't tell me that this 3 pack of Mario games are comparable in terms of impact/desirability/significance. Not only that, according to Wikipedia (and also what I remember), the individual games from Super Mario All Stars were available separately on the Wii Virtual Console store, thus making the limited digital availability in this case even more shitty. Also - just to point out here that the Mario All Stars games being sold separately on Wii kind of proves that they can and do pretty much whatever they like with regards to selling their games.