It’s an option available to devs, but I can’t speak to “usually”.

I don’t know the exact contract between these two companies, but often times a publisher like Sony will own the title/world/story and the developer will own the code. Sony is within their legal rights to make a remake of Demon’s Souls (also a Sony exclusive from back in the day), but it seems to have upset FromSoft, and when FromSoft is putting out bangers like Elden Ring, you don’t want them to find a reason to not put their games on your console. Other than Demon’s Souls and Bloodborne, every other modern FromSoft game has a different publisher, whether it’s Bandai-Namco or Activision.

I’d say unless games get smaller, like they used to be. I don’t see AI solving problems like that.

There was a time where it did. A few other games did too. They changed the stick into a carrot, and now a PSN account just unlocks a few extras. But like I said, that hurt my trust as a consumer.

Which they can’t do without pissing off FromSoft, and they don’t want to upset FromSoft any more than they already have.

Companies make bad bets all the time, which is why Sony bought Firewalk and Haven. Even Japanese companies like Capcom can see that they make more money on PC than consoles.

We’ll see this again when Marvel Tokon comes out.

The 7th gen was exactly where this started to break down, in large part because these machines are all so, so similar these days, rather than having a completely different set of capabilities. I think consoles as we knew them years ago are just reaching the point where they’ve outlived their usefulness. Sony can try to fight it by holding onto exclusives, but I think it’s actually only going to hurt them.

During the PS2 era, there were lots of reasons that a game might end up exclusive to one platform even if there was no deal involved. Now the only exclusives are the ones Sony makes themselves, so there’s maybe one or two of those per year, and that doesn’t guarantee that those one or two are going to be your cup of tea, let alone justify buying a dedicated machine for $500 just to play those few games. As opposed to a PC that plays every video game that isn’t made by Sony or Nintendo. It gets harder and harder for that $500 to make sense, and the PC ports Sony had been doing was any attempt at all to recoup the money that they spent on blockbuster games that weren’t growing their console install base.

Yeah, if they already made me wait past GOTY podcast spoiler season, I’m far less willing to pay full price for it anymore.

Virtually nobody is still not nobody. Being able to continue to play it is important not just as a failed piece of art that we can all learn from but also as something that gives it value in the first place. We had the ability to spend money in Highguard, but the value I might get out of that spend depends on the game’s continued existence. If that existence is guaranteed in some way, then I no longer have that barrier. Every live service game has this conundrum, which might explain why they either immediately die or become the next big thing, with very little in between.

They’d still have to patch out their anti-cheat. And I’m guessing neither of those things are going to happen.

Every live service shuts down because not enough people were playing, eventually. Even ones I loved. I’ve got multiplayer games from 25 years ago that I can still play, but I can’t still play the ones from 10 years ago.

I don’t think the Xbox or PlayStation brand will end anytime soon, but trying to keep doing things the way they’ve been done makes about as much sense as a cable company fighting against the rise of streaming television. PC is the largest single platform and is still growing, and even despite the complete obliteration of Sony’s closest competitor, PlayStation 5 hasn’t grown compared to 4; their growth has only come from selling at higher prices to the same number of users and from microtransactions from games that they don’t make themselves which are available on many platforms. Which doesn’t mean that they don’t still have their customers like yourself, but if I already decided to play my games on PC, how on earth are they going to convince me to start buying third party games on PlayStation, where their money is actually made? At the very least, they can offer me the ability to buy their big blockbusters (which often cost more to make than they’re seeing back in returns these days) on PC to recoup some of what they spent.

I don’t think keeping the single player games exclusive makes much sense either. Sony’s bread is buttered by taking the same 30% Valve makes on each game sale. If they’re only converting you for single player games, you’re buying…what…5 games on the platform, lifetime? And they’re all Sony published? Realistically, on PC, you’re probably already playing everything else on PC with no subscription fee that they would want to get a cut from. I think Sony has reached everyone they’re going to reach, and you’re just leaving money on the table by not bringing those games to PC, even if they come late.

A friend and I just started playing it co-op, and what’s really going to affect our enjoyment of the lore is that only one person can be involved in an NPC conversation.

They’ve been practically waiting for a way to kill the PC industry and take the profits from it.

I have nothing but anecdotes to base this on, but charging for PS+ in an era where Steam offers a similar service for free has seemingly been one of the biggest drivers of converting people into PC gamers. Back when Xbox first charged for Live, it at least offered a far better experience than what you’d find elsewhere, but only a few years later, that was no longer the case.

I can afford it, and I’ll bet I’m far from alone, but I’d essentially be buying a dedicated computer that can only play a handful of games, and it would play them worse than my PC could if they’d only make the game available there. There’s no shortage of stuff to play, so it ends up just being a bad value even when you’ve got the money.

From my time hands on with it, it will be. Maybe a mechanic or two needs an adjustment post launch, but the core is excellent.

I emulated the game a few years ago, because the alternative was dealing with the lousy DRM on the Steam version, and it’s weird (in a good way) to now play this game and see the battle transition animation run at higher frame rates. You can also use the analog stick. 3x speed is nice, but I can already do that on emulators. I know my brother got very into the modding tools for the Steam version of the game, so I wouldn’t be surprised if those tools work on the GOG version already or in the near future.