Will

There will be a few things that play into the pricing differences. Probably the biggest one will be Microsoft will work prices out with USD as a starting point whereas Sony will do it based on JPY. I don’t know what the various currencies are doing compared to each other at the moment but somebody could probably look into that and come out with a pretty decent guess as to what that likely ends up as. Secondly they will have internal exchange rates set at the start of the year based on a rough idea of what they think each currency will do over the course of the FY, and all internal accounting will be done using that rate. Similarly someone could take a look at what the rates were around the start of the year to make an educated guess on what those look like and how they might impact it. They won’t actually move around cash until it’s advantageous for them to do so, so fluctuating rates day to day don’t make much of a difference. Thirdly, they will be taking into account what the competition is doing. If you’re rates are all beautifully worked out but it means you have a massive price disadvantage in one country then it really is no good. Based on this alone I’d guess they will probably have similar pricing splits across regions to what Microsoft has done. My personal thoughts on the pricing are still $399/$299, but I could easily see those both being $100 more. I think they will go with one of three ways of announcing it. If they have similar pricing to Xbox they will announce the pricing at the start of the event and the show will be to demonstrate that it’s the same money but you actually have some games to play on a PS5. If they have lower pricing they will show all the games, say how amazing it is as a console then mic drop the price right at the end of the show as the killer moment. If they have higher pricing they won’t announce any price, show how awesome the games are and then let people build hype for the console and drop the price as close to launch as possible. More than likely I’ll be completely wrong on that, but gotta put down a guess at least!

I’d love to see the documents they put together when deciding this stuff. Just think about it, someone had to have the idea, then put together documentation for it, then present it to the execs, who then agreed, and then nobody said anything about it to stop them. In 20 years time there will be a Microsoft giga-leak with this document in it and I can’t wait to read it.

F1 2020 Predictions Game Round 9 Results Lots of stopping and starting, but it finished in the end. Maximum points for this race were: Pole - Hamilton (10) Fastest Lap - Hamilton (10) 1st - Hamilton (25 + 5) 2nd - Bottas (18 + 5) 3rd - Albon (15 + 5) 4th - Ricciardo (12 + 5) 5th - Perez (10 + 5) The results for this round: @BowserBasher - 88 @Will - 73 And the overall standings (previous total in brackets): @will' - 449 (376) @BowserBasher - 328 (240) @Mandalore - 241 (241) @bob - 155 (155) @Nicktendo - 126 (126) @Goron_3 - 75 (75) Russian Grand Prix Predictions: Pole - Bottas FL - Hamilton 1st - Hamilton 2nd - Bottas 3rd - Stroll 4th - Perez 5th - Verstappen

Not too sure what to think on this week’s race. It threw up a few bits of decent action but it was quite processional outside of the restarts. Total madness after the first safety car, not really sure what any of those guys at the back were thinking and it really was quite amateur of them. Thought Bottas might finally have something over Lewis but seems not.

Listening in another piecemeal way, hopefully finish off tonight on my run. One thing I always mean to ask (and couldn't find any answer by searching) is that you always talk about the Discord - is this a server we can join?

I do wonder if Bugsnax is going to be one of those things that is so bad it’s great. Personally I think it’s one of the worst things I’ve ever seen, but it’s still more compelling than anything on the new Xbox.

I’m sure I’ve seen that before. Even aside from the racism side they’re complete and utter idiots. When the police are bundling you in the back of their van, shouting out “you black bastard” is really not going to do you any favors.

How exciting, I feel like a new chapter has begun.

I think they’re either people who don’t actually know anything, but take a bit of an educated guess on things that seem plausible such as this Imran Khan. Or else people read far too much into things posted by people with some legitimacy but no real information to share, such as this Drew Wilson. After that it’s just partners on certain things who suck at keeping up their contractual obligations not to leak things. Personally I don’t pay much attention to the first two, but partner leaks can be fairly interesting sometimes.

Yeah I think the way it all ended up coming out was quite exciting and the info got better and better. While watching that News Briefing I kept thinking about the fact there are no games I’m excited about so even though it’s a great deal there doesn’t seem much point in getting one.

It really sucks that you (and many others) are having to deal with so much. For a lot of people this year is, at best, one to forget, and at worst the very worst year ever. Hopefully things will start getting better soon, and remember everyone here can support each other as much as possible.

I guess at least it’s going into a savings pot though, and pensions are one of the best ways to do it. Glad it went well! Good chemistry with the hiring manager will generally get you most of the way to the job - hoping things work out with it!

Over here they’re starting the roll out of tracing tokens, which work in addition to the app for those without phones. I imagine once they’re sure the system works they will make the token mandatory for everyone. It’s a little big brother-ish but if it means we can ease some of the other restrictions currently in place I’ll gladly carry one around. I do wonder who is making the rules up there. Is it just that you can’t go to other people’s houses but everything else is basically OK? Seems like a waste of time.

Well I would have gone lowercase but now I feel I have to capitalize. Let’s go with a big boy W!

Sorry! Given that @Will hasn’t visited in 14 years and only made one post before that can I just have his username?

I’m still not buying this concept that Sony can’t afford to take a similar loss to Microsoft on the console. At this point they basically have two options, ignore the pricing of MS and position it as a much better offering (maybe difficult given it’s generally accepted the X is a better machine) or they do compete on price and position it as a better overall offer for consumers as they actually have some next-gen games and the entire audience is playing the same content. If I was at Sony I’d be positioning the pricing somewhere in the middle of what Microsoft is doing and then massively push on the fact that the S is not next-gen. Pricing I’d say $400 and $300 will allow them to do that.

That sounds very promising @nightwolf, it’s always a good sign when things like that develop as you’re pre-approved by somebody in the organization. Good luck tomorrow!

I think your concerns are right, but most people won't consider this as credit and certainly won't do any sort of solid financial analysis. The reality is people will be in Game, thinking about a console to buy, and some sales assistant is going to come over to them, tell them it's 20/30 quid a month interest free and they'll just go for it. Places like Brighthouse (I have no idea if this still exists but it was big when I still lived in the UK) have been using this type of tactic for years and people love being able to get this easy credit to buy their toys. As many people have mentioned you can get a much better deal, so long as you have the money to cover the outlay, which many people don't. It's also a very small number of people who will look into these tricks to get things for the lower price. Most of them are just going to hear how the combo is better than individual, realize they can have the next-gen right now for basically nothing and jump on it. I still think it's a fantastic deal, but I think the key thing it shows is how worried Microsoft are about Sony's lead on the content side and potentially falling so far behind in the early phase of the generation that they are beaten before the fight even begins. They have no choice but to offer these crazy deals as they really don't have anything else going for them. I had precisely zero interest in an Xbox before these prices were announced. If the subscription deals extend internationally I'll probably just get one as it's such a small outlay. I do think Sony are going to surprise a few people and actually compete with these prices, in the current climate there is no way they can compete if it's $1,000 for a console with some games and accessories vs. $50 a month at the point of sale.

When did Sony announce their pricing? How do you judge the worse experience on PS5?

What do you mean by prop up? I’m not really sure what argument you’re making but by this logic haven’t we already seen this generation that the Sony studios make for a dominant console?

https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/xbox-all-access Now this too. Sony really need to pull something special out to compete with this.

I definitely agree on the Microsoft side. Everything that’s been revealed over the past couple of days is amazing. What you’re getting for the money is a really amazing deal on both machines and I’m finding myself tempted by them both. Then I think about what I’d play on them and there isn’t a single game I can get excited about, certainly not this year at least.

1) What games are people playing on their Switch at the moment? I haven’t touched my switch in quite a while, I’m not even sure where it is to be honest. 2) What's the next game release you're looking forward to? Super Mario 3D All Stars! 3) How many people are actually picking up Super Mario 3D All-Stars on day one? Yep, already have my order in. 4) Which game are you looking forward to playing first? I think I’ll play through them in order, but I’m most looking forward to Sunshine at the moment. Not really sure why as it’s my least favourite of the three, I just really want to play it for some reason.

If Aladdin is the best of the live action Disney remakes I just removed all of the others from my list of films to see.

A lot of that stuff is covered by membership of the developer program, not by the 30%. The 30% is a distribution charge for the store. Yeah I completely agree with this. It is a bit harder for (most) games as you won’t have that existing user base outside of the AppStore, but for Epic it really wouldn’t have been an issue to do this whatsoever if they actually wanted to benefit the consumer. I don’t agree with this at all. Why do you think kids on consoles will be more likely to buy from a crappy web store when PC players rejected it? I’m a console gamer because it’s simple and I don’t need to worry about anything, and I imagine most people are the same. I can’t see many console gamers suddenly deciding to figure out different stores for every game they buy. It would also be very easy for the console makers to just stop putting web browsers in their consoles. Which would pretty much stop it dead before it got started. I don’t see any scenario where this would result in random stores being viable on consoles. It’s different because that’s not what Epic is arguing, to them: iPhones = The Town AppStore = The Shop Apple = The Town Council All three of these ‘entities’ are colluding to keep other stores out of the town, and this is unfair to those living in the town. Epic want to open another store in the town and that the town council is squashing free trade by not allowing it to happen. Now, we can argue over the merits of that or whether we agree with Epic’s representation of it, but this is the basis of their argument, not opening a shop within a shop and not paying for it. When the App Store opened things were much simpler. Developers made two payments to apple, their developer costs and their distribution costs. The developer costs were $100 and this covered all your tools and support and your distribution costs were 30% of whatever price you decided to put your one time payment for a complete piece of software at. Now that 30% covers a lot more ongoing transactions for both paid and free applications. The question is over whether Apple have a right to 30% of your revenue long after they have done anything to help you get it. Other apps don’t make any money, or get it through ads so essentially get their distribution for free. Should a highly successful game using iAP have to cover the distribution costs of an app that doesn’t? Personally I don’t think you can change it, because whatever else you put in place is going to be so complex and have so many edge-cases you’d never get something that was overall ‘fairer’ to people. But I can totally see why for an individual case you might not be totally happy with the system as it stands. It’s absolutely the developers who benefit from a reduction. Really the App Store is so hit driven a change in this number is not going to make or break a game. It really only makes a difference at scale where if your games are making $1m a day then that % swing, even if just a small amount, brings in a huge amount of extra money. There is maybe an argument that iAP should be treated more like subscriptions in terms of the % taken by 1st parties. After a certain level (time/money/something else) that cut could drop from 30%. Apple and Google (and other platform holders) are making serious money out of the 30% cut, so there is an argument to be made that it’s overpriced. If so much of that is going to profit rather than invested into the service being given then it’s inevitable people will start to argue for their larger share. For Apple at least this was a conscious direction change. It used to be that without Apple featuring your game was pretty much doomed, and it was only that highly curated section of content that gained any traction. The last change to the App Store was to try and move away from that to highlighting in a smaller way more often and allowing things to shine on merit rather than good lobbying by publishers. Google have always had a data driven approach to what is surfaced to consumers. It’s an interesting one for sure, personally I’ve given up on using the stores to find out what’s new/good, and rely on recommendations or things I happen to see are coming through other sources.