Games Inbox: Worrying about PS5 Pro in 2023

The Tuesday letters page questions whether VR gaming is really a good idea or not, as another reader admits to loving the Wii U.

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Apportioning blame
I think that games have become so bloated, big and bulky because than can. It used to be that game developers only have a limited resource to work with and therefore had to make the game work within those constraints. Now they can code with less skill to optimise the games. This is why there seems to be so many more performance issues.

Just need to look at Cyberpunk 2077 and The Last Of Us. Then the developers tell us to buy more RAM, bigger GPUs, and faster processors. I wonder who is driving who, the hardware developers or the software developers? Or are they both in on it together?

Just make games that work for the largest demographic of users, that’s my opinion. I get sick of having updates or bug fixes that ruin my entertainment, or being dictated to, about my gameplay.

How I choose to play should be up to me. If I choose to update it should be up to me and not someone telling me you must update. It’s maddening, in my opinion.
Mike

GC: Developers are coding with ‘less skill’? C’mon, show some respect. It’s not the developers that chose when to launch a game or decide it doesn’t need any more testing, it’s the publishers.

Living in the future
Amazing news about Vampire Survivors getting Best Game and Game Design at the BAFTAs, especially with God Of War Ragnarök being the obvious favourite. The other good thing is that I found out about other winners like Rollerdome on BBC’s Ten O’ Clock news.

It seemed such a high profile red carpet affair that you’d expect from such events from the world of film or TV. But gaming has definitely got to that point, especially with the high stats involved. Increased amount of gamers between 16 and 69, the amount of revenue the industry is worth now and the amount of jobs it has created.

Of course, gaming has always been on the increase and maybe the generation in charge now comes from the gaming generation, where the previous generations just did not get it.

It’s still good to be surprised and to see what mankind comes up with next and gaming is definitely one of the most mind-blowing industries, with the ingenuity and creative abilities of developers. Ultimately, I think a lot of the future is currently here right now. Congratulations to all of the nominees and the winners at the BAFTA Games Show 2023.
Alucard

Hook, line and sinker
For some reason some people, mostly PlayStation stans, seem to think Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard is a great move for Sony and a potentially disastrous mistake for Xbox. Their reasoning being that Microsoft has no plan to recoup the money spent. Something disastrously inaccurate. Let’s have a look. For starters, Microsoft has stated their plan publicly several times: Game Pass and widespread distribution.

Activision Blizzard is being bought at a discount, as its value decreased following the accusations of workplace mistreatment. Its value will only rise post-merger. That’s one. There is the value of Activision Blizzard properties. As an example: Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sold more copies in a month than Elden Ring sold the entire year. That generates this thing called income and a lot of it. All of which will now go to Xbox. Xbox plans to distribute these games to platforms and services that don’t currently have any of them. Allowing them to reach more buyers than ever before and reap the profit that comes with them.

They gain access to several extremely popular IP and not only get money from PlayStation via placing the games on their platform they also get the additional income from putting their games on Nintendo, PC, GeForce Now, and several other platforms. Then there is the force multiplier that is Game Pass. Their goal is to reach one billion subs. They are currently at 30 million. They have recently done away with the $1 subscription, so each subscription will now be $10-15 per sub.

Let’s do some quick maths. 30 million x $10 a month = $3.6 billion a year. 30 million x $15 a month = $5.4 billion a year. That’s only at 30 million subs and before they opened it to multiple new territories and without Activision Blizzard games being added to the catalogue. So how do you keep them subbed for so long, while reducing the cost of maintaining Game Pass?

I’d say adding a ton of very popular first party content that generates billions, while you no longer have to pay a premium for it is a great start. By keeping Activision Blizzard games on PlayStation as well, it would appear that Microsoft has a great plan for not only recouping that $69 billion but also using Sony to help pay for part of it. All this while also getting the world to take a look at PlayStation’s high end console monopoly in Japan, that Sony ironically created. Microsoft couldn’t have struck a better deal if they had a genie.
Anon

GC: We hope you’re not a monopoly investigator.

Too generous
Kevin Bishop misunderstands the £1 Game Pass Ultimate offer. I happened to have three years of Gold membership stacked on my Xbox One at a really cheap rate. On the dashboard was an offer for £1 to convert your membership to a Game Pass Ultimate subscription.

I took up the offer and I couldn’t believe it when it upgraded my Gold sub from 2021 right up until May of 2024. That single £1 coin upgraded my gold sub into Game Pass Ultimate for 36 months, not just one single month. Therefore, there was never any need to cancel every month and sign up again. I can only imagine that quite a lot of people used that offer and even according to some people when they cancelled, they were emailed by Microsoft to upgrade again for £1.

At the time of writing, according to a GC contributor, you can essentially still do that, but just pay £10.99 instead of £1. I can’t test this out myself because I need to let my Ultimate sub lapse in 2024. When this point comes around it’s likely that Microsoft will get rid of this deal as it’s still an exceptionally generous offer.
Chaosphere616

Flashforward
Loved you since the Digi days, you’re the only reviews I completely trust. Speaking of which, do you think you will have the time to review Lunark? As a massive fan of Flashback, I really like the look of this spiritual successor, but would really value your expert opinion.

Thanks again for all of the excellent content.
Beastiebat (PSN ID)
Currently playing: Shadow Of The Colossus, Super Cyborg (a very good Contra homage that was very cheap to buy and worth every penny), and Box Boy.

GC: Thank you. Lunark wasn’t on our radar, but we’ll see what we can do.

The reality of VR
PlayStation should learn from the past mistakes made by Xbox. Sony is pushing forward with its VR tech, now in its second generation. The question is whether it’s making a massive mistake? The first stumbling block is the price, with the new VR kit costing more than the console itself (currently £529.99). I think for most customers, just having spare cash to spend on the console is hard work enough in this current climate.

The following question would be, do console gamers really want VR? I would argue the case they don’t. I believe the reason for this is the type of games that are developed for VR. There is the issue of motion sickness from traditional movement using a gamepad within a VR environment. To circumvent this, the player movement within VR games is generally restricted to a point and click movement technique. This gives the games a far different feel from the traditional movement, whereby the 3D stick of a gamepad can be used to move a character within a 3D environment.

This can often give the first person shooter VR games a feel of the old school games of the past like Operation Wolf or Virtual Cop, with the character just standing stationary pointing at approaching enemies. I believe most console gamers are happy to leave this style in the past and prefer to move, sneak, run, and shoot at the same time. Just like in many of the great first person shooters out now such as Call Of Duty, Battlefield, Overwatch, to just name a few.

I will say, there obviously will be a selection of gamers that do like the VR style of games but would they not be better off sticking to dedicate equipment like Oculus? Just like mobile gamers stick to mobiles. You don’t see mobile games ported to consoles, so why are VR games? Lastly this brings me to my initial question: why don’t Sony learn from Microsoft’s mistakes of the past? Microsoft has yet to release any VR equipment for its newest Xbox console. Perhaps the company has learnt its lesson with add-on devices.

I bring your attention to the Microsoft Xbox Kinect. It also had two generations of equipment but was never brought back for a third. The sales were terrible and the games suffered from the same sort of problem as VR. Movement was difficult, meaning specific games had to be made to work with the equipment, just like VR. Console gamers didn’t want those types of games and developers continued to make traditional games that didn’t need the Kinect and just worked with a gamepad. With Microsoft buying up all the developers it can and avoid the pitfalls of VR. I think the next 10 years of the Xbox vs. PlayStation war could look very different to the last decade.
Anon

GC: That’s a poor comparison with mobile games. PlayStation VR2 is far more advanced than Meta Quest 2, as games like Gran Turismo 7 and Resident Evil Village prove. Also, at the time, the original Kinect was the fastest-selling consumer electronics device ever.

Inbox also-rans
RE: Resident Evil 4. I have been playing it all weekend and I am surprised how much I am enjoying it. The guns are great, the graphics are great and it is familiar but they have put real effort into making it feel new (if that makes sense). Everyone praised the Resident Evil 2 remake but it just didn’t click with me, so I was a bit wary of this game but it is probably going to be my game of the year. Although I still find Ashley really annoying!
Simon

The Resident Evil 4 remake is looking spectacular and one thing that it should have via future DLC is a sandbox mode, so people can enjoy collecting and upgrading the weapons in storage chests, purchase upgrades, such as cases as well as find quest items when they have completed the story. Now wouldn’t that be a really spectacular addition?
gaz be rotten (gamertag)

This week’s Hot Topic
The subject for this weekend’s Inbox was suggested by reader Gamgee, who asks what is your favourite non-violent video game?

Games where you don’t have to hurt or kill anyone are more common than they used to be but they’re still fairly rare, so which is your favourite? Any kind of violence counts, whether it’s cartoonish or gory, but what is your favourite game where everybody lives?

Is that what attracted you to the game or were you unconvinced it would be fun until you tried it? How much does the violence in a game influence what you play and what other kind of non-violent games would you like to see become more prominent?

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The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.

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