Dcubed

That’s really sad. Penny’s Big Breakaway is a very good game that deserves to have done better… … but this is the video game industry, where quality rarely matches up to actual sales

I think I blew myself up more times in that one Felicity match than you did all night

So bizzare that Winback of all games ended up being a launch title for the Switch NSO service. Also, this is an Omega Force game? Really!? The variety of games that OF put out prior to hitting it big with Dynasty Warriors 2 (not the first one… which, believe it or not, is actually a traditional 1v1 3D fighting game!) is pretty remarkable. I guess they mirror From Software in that regard; having an eclectic past before finally finding a single winning formula and milking it to absolute death.

Damn, that‘s nutso. Awful news, they’ve been a huge bright spot in a darkened industry over the last few years Current most popular speculative theory doing the rounds is that this happened because the CEO wants to push Annapurna Interactive into becoming a AAA publisher; and the staff want to stay indie. Given that AI was mostly made up of former Sony Santa Monica staff who left because they wanted to focus on the same kinds of high-brow indie titles they published back in the late PS3 era (Journey, The Unfinished Swan etc), rather than AAA games? It would make a lot of sense that they’ve just done the same thing again here. If so, good on ‘em; and hopefully they manage to start up as a new independent publisher soon.

https://x.com/devolverdigital/status/1833896469159666015 Well... crud. PC it is then I guess.

100% scam. At best it'll be a standard emulation box, at worst it'll never come out.

Sorry @Ike, you know the rules. Only I'm allowed to take fail the Mushroom Gorge shortcut!

There's that "Microsoft Gaming" term again... Ominous clouds surrounding the Xbox brand and the team as a whole I reckon...

https://www.gematsu.com/2024/09/level-5-announces-tgs-2024-lineup Layton will be playable at TGS, so we should be getting our first gameplay footage pretty soon

Oh @Ike https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/The-Hokkaido-Serial-Murder-Case-The-Okhotsk-Disappearance-Memories-in-Ice-Tearful-Figurine--2616423.html The remake of Yuji Hori's The Hokkaido Serial Murder Case! (The sequel to The Portopia Serial Murder Case) is out on Switch and Steam right now. Bizzarely, it actually isn't coming from Square Enix, but rather from G-Mode! That one's a shocker to me because I would've figured that S-E would own the rights to it, but I guess Yuji Hori's company Armor Project has retained full ownership instead! That also means that, unlike the disastrously awful S-E made/published remake of Portopia (which was ruined by an awful "AI" language parser, because of course it was), this might actually be well worth your time!

Worth noting that the original N64 version of Bangai-O is a very different game to its Dreamcast counterpart; as Treasure elected to heavily redesign the game when porting it to SEGA's final console. It's a great game on Dreamcast, but I've always wanted to get my hands on the N64 version as well... unfortunately it just so happens to have had a very small print run originally; meaning that it's that dreaded combo of genuine rarity + good game + high demand = Get A Second Job!

Considering that the PS5 Pro's CPU is exactly the same as the base model? It's basically nothing more than a mild GPU upgrade that's gonna get bottlenecked by its old CPU anyway! So it's a similar situation either way. At least if you have a PC you can just upgrade it. If you already own a base model PS5? You have to shell out for the entire thing all over again at near enough double the price (and then you have to spend even more to get a functioning disc drive that plays your existing physical games!). And if you're really in the market for a high-end balls to the wall graphical showpiece experience? I doubt you'll be all that impressed with what the PS5 Pro is offering, as it's basically a Radeon RX 6800 (Or the broad equivilent of the RTX 3700 in NVidia money; though likely with an inferior AI upscaling solution compared to what DLSS offers). It's just not that big an upgrade over the base PS5, and that same £700 could buy you a far more impressive PC GPU if you're really looking to chase the graphics dragon, so I really have to question just who this console is supposed to be targetting here?

Finally had a chance to read the official blogpost. Seems like the console specs match the leak perfectly. Very disappointing. A mere 45% extra GPU performance, no CPU upgrade, and no additional RAM for around 180% of the price of a 4 year old console? (Actually +194% of the Digital Edition’s original UK RRP). How is that worth the money!? Starting to wonder why they even bothered. You’re far better off just buying/upgrading a PC at these silly prices.

Even accounting for 20% VAT, the EU price is still €40 more expensive than the US price for no good reason. No, we’re just getting fleeced (or rather, even more fleeced than the US are; because let’s face it, everyone’s getting ripped off here). Totally agreed. You might as well pay the same price for the PS5 Pro as you would for a high-end PC GPU and get better performance for your money if you’re paying this much for the console. To put things into perspective, the PS5 Pro is actually more expensive than the bloody NeoGeo AVS’ original RRP ($649.99); a literal arcade machine in your home. Making it the most expensive console of all time by a mile. But you know what’s even worse? The Japanese price. You think we’ve got it bad!? Holy shit! Doing a quick conversion at today’s JPY to USD exchange rate? The PS5 Pro is retailing there for a ridiculous $843.46!!! There is just no justifiable reason for this utter flogging of the Japanese audience. This thing is gonna sell negative hardware numbers there!!

So… err… do I win my bet? I mean, I wasn’t wrong when I said it’d be $699.99!

I'd say it comes down to three reasons. Firstly, the traditional console market is shrinking. Simply put, Sony are selling less PS5s than PS4s, and they need to ensure that their revenue line keeps going up to satisfy their investors. So they simply raise the price to make up for the shortfall in hardware sales. Secondly, their main competitor is falling apart, so they can more easily get away with continued price hikes as Xbox becomes less competitive in general and Playstation increasingly becomes the only game in town. Finally, worldwide consumer inflation has simply conditioned people to accept higher prices for consumer goods in general. People are getting used to paying inflated prices for other tech goods, so the idea of a more expensive console becomes more acceptable as a response. As far as the PS5 Pro goes? I think that Sony know that they will be primarily targetting enthusiasts who would otherwise be looking to buy PCs and GPUs at enormously inflated prices with this console; so I think it'll be priced accordingly. I'm betting on $699.99/€699.99 myself (as an added bonus, it also avoids the dreaded "meme price" of $599.99 too).

Really interested to see where the price is gonna land with this thing… Crazy that we’re getting a PS5 Pro before a Switch 2 (crazy on Nintendo’s end for being late, not Sony’s for being early), but there ya go!

RGD has released an updated video on Project Indy with a few new tidbits of information! Notably it mentions the use of a downclocked version of the Wii U's Latte GPU, which could switch between different MHz speeds depending on whether or not it was being used as a handheld or console, some more detailed tech specs (including some parts that actually did get repurposed in the current Switch we have today), as well as the notion that the New3DS' Super Stable 3D feature was originally developed for the Indy, before being retrofitted into the New3DS instead! As an added bonus, there's also a little mention of some details behind the cancelled portable Gamecube here too, as well as what may have been a Wii U Pro of sorts!

Some early pre-alpha footage of gameplay has leaked from an internal SEGA meeting! https://streamable.com/dn9z33 Looks like the core gameplay revolves around racing other players from checkpoint to checkpoint... Hmm...

Some early pre-alpha footage of unfinished cutscenes and gameplay has leaked from an internal SEGA meeting! https://streamable.com/rbnmqm https://streamable.com/c0bm0g https://streamable.com/lv8wq3 Looks sick! Lizardcube don't miss

I will get round to playing Bakeru at some point, but right now, my priority is the Ace Attorney Investigations collection. Have waited a literal decade and a half to play AAI2, and that’s getting prioritised over anything else.

Yeah, I’d try not to play too many in a row; because the metroidvania CVs do all play fairly similarly; despite each having unique gimmicks to call their own. They were more or less annualised during the GBA/DS eras, and it’s easy to get burnt out on them if played in quick succession. That’s one of the main reasons why OOE shook up the game structure quite significantly. Likewise, I’d suggest having a break before going back to play the unlockable modes; like Julius Mode. You’ll enjoy them more if you leave the game for a bit to become a bit more fresh again before tackling them

If it does come out on PC, I’d expect that it will require a Dual Sense controller to play; since it makes heavy use of its unique functionality (including gyro controls, the mic and the speaker). Might actually be a good Trojan Horse to get PC players to buy DS controllers come to think of it! I’d defo buy a DS controller just for Astro Bot if we do get a PC version

That’s nice to see. Hopefully they ramp up their PS1/2/P re-releases over the next few months to tie into the festivities as well.

Oh wow! Krazy Ken is back! Looking forward to some new quotable nonsense from him