PlayStation 5 - Next gen is expensive

[Quest]

I'll buy a PS5 before a Series X. I play local multiplayer every week, and would like to be able to use my DS4s for that purpose even if that meant sacrificing haptics or whatever. If there were exceptions that meant you needed the new controllers for certain games, I'd accept that, but I imagine most will just use the same core DS4 functions.

 

You can say that it shouldn't be expected because it's normal practice to not support legacy controllers, but MS are doing it now and expectations shift. 

[Sixkiller]

18 minutes ago, Harsin said:

Sony paying to snaffle up timed exclusives (like Spider-Man In Avengers 

 

I think this situation may be a little more nuanced than people are making out.  The rights to Spider-Man are extremely complicated with Sony owning the movie property.  Rather than Sony paying to have Spider-Man exclusivity in this Avengers game, it seems much more likely that it will be tied up in the same deal that led to Sony having Spider-Man as an exclusive franchise (presumably for a good number of years) for Insomniac to develop. 

 

That, in turn, could be caught up in the overall negotiations for Sony to allow Marvel access to the character in the MCU, or maybe it's just its own deal for gaming.  Either way, Sony has the Spider-Man franchise and so allowing Ubisoft access to the character, subject to it remaining on the Sony ecosystem, is something that benefits both companies and those who play on PS.  It doesn't damage those on other systems, as if Sony own the rights to Spidey, he was never in a million years appearing on the other platforms.  He's not a core part of the game, clearly, it's just a bonus for one platform.

 

This kind of thing has happened many times before and I find it utterly bizarre that it's causing such a stir now.  Companies invest in these properties so people really shouldn't be shocked when they try to leverage those investments.  If Sony/Ubisoft were charging more for access to Spider-man, selling him as paid DLC, that would appear unfair.  As it is they're just offering platform specific bonus content, something that's been around for years.

[Alex W.]

31 minutes ago, Harsin said:

Sony paying to snaffle up timed exclusives (like Spider-Man In Avengers or what MS did with Tomb Raider or Sony and Destiny 1/2 for the entirety of this generation), just to deny it someone on another platform for a while, is a shitty practice that needs to go away.

 

I'm assuming you mean that, as if you mean Sony having exclusives like Last of Us 2 or Ghost of Tsushima that would be a completely WTF opinion.

 

EDIT: Ah sarcasm detector is broken.

This is still a topic that was worth bringing up. Sadly I think the 20 (or whatever) “console launch exclusives” (ie timed exclusives) from the Xbox event suggest this dumb strategy is being fully revived for the next generation.

 

I’m not going to buy a console because it has Spider-Man DLC or it gets The Medium 6 months earlier, I’m just going to quietly resent everybody involved.

[footle]

For some reason I don’t really have a problem with console launch exclusives (deathloop, the medium). In a number of cases the additional cash probably helps the game get made or marketed, 

and besides, I’ll buy all the consoles anyway. (Tomb raider was weird, but would have been thrown into a do or die battle and lost with Uncharted 4, so it’s one of those cases where you can see why the publisher may do it).

 

Meaningful exclusive content, and particularly exclusive multiplayer content, in games that are nominally multiplatform sits more badly with me.
Destiny’s exclusive maps and strikes, in particular; the content has been built, it’s just if you’re not playing it on Console X you’re getting a worse deal for your £50-70.

this topic is clearly going to be a lot of fun over the next couple of months.

 

[bear]

56 minutes ago, Doctor Shark said:

The Xbox Series X being able to use Xbox One controllers is a nice quality of life feature, especially for those of us who have custom controllers.

 

The PlayStation 5 not doing this is normal practice and not, therefore, something to whine about.

 

The end. 

Who is whining about it? 

[Stanley]

I mean if we want to take the discussion to its logical conclusion, which it will probably devolve into anyway, all consoles by their very nature are ‘anti consumer’ with their walled in content and exclusivity rights etc. So I suppose in that sense MS are the least anti consumer; they’d be quite happy to allow Xcloud and Game Pass to run on Switch and PlayStation, it’s only Sony and Nintendo preventing it. 

[Stanley]

1 minute ago, bear said:

Who is whining about it? 

YouTubers and the “media” mainly. 

[RubberJohnny]

20 minutes ago, Sixkiller said:

I think this situation may be a little more nuanced than people are making out.  The rights to Spider-Man are extremely complicated with Sony owning the movie property.  Rather than Sony paying to have Spider-Man exclusivity in this Avengers game, it seems much more likely that it will be tied up in the same deal that led to Sony having Spider-Man as an exclusive franchise (presumably for a good number of years) for Insomniac to develop. 

 

That, in turn, could be caught up in the overall negotiations for Sony to allow Marvel access to the character in the MCU, or maybe it's just its own deal for gaming.  Either way, Sony has the Spider-Man franchise and so allowing Ubisoft access to the character, subject to it remaining on the Sony ecosystem, is something that benefits both companies and those who play on PS.  It doesn't damage those on other systems, as if Sony own the rights to Spidey, he was never in a million years appearing on the other platforms.

 

I don't think any of this is true, Spiderman is in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 on Switch and that's multiplatform, and came out last year, several years after Spider-Man and the MCU deal.

[HarryBizzle]

7 hours ago, gooner4life said:

 

Why is this a thing now? it's always been the case that you buy the controllers for the console you're playing on.

Because their main competition are doing it and the reasons for not doing it are cynical at best. 
 

I didn’t see people saying when cross play started about how we’d never been able to do it before, so why be upset when platforms refuse to support it?

 

 

There’s a lot of posts on the last page going on about how anyone who has bothered to post about this must be a fanboy. They don’t match up with the discussions had at all and do more to drag this place into platform wars that don’t matter to the majority on here. 

[Sixkiller]

20 minutes ago, RubberJohnny said:

 

I don't think any of this is true, Spiderman is in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 on Switch and that's multiplatform, and came out last year, several years after Spider-Man and the MCU deal.

 

There are reasons why that may be different - it's the third part of an ongoing series for which licensing may already have been granted for 3 games, for example.  Equally, the Sony/Insomniac exclusivity contract may be as specific as to cover the appearance in a particular game type - Ultimate Alliance 3 not being any kind of direct competitor to Spider-Man on PS4.  You could definitely see someone (a lawyer) arguing that the gameplay of the Avengers game is more in-line with Insomniac's game.

 

I'm only speculating that the Sony/MCU thing may have played into it.  Whether it did or did not, Sony and Marvel are two large corporations intertwined in a web of contracts over this character.  It should really come as no surprise (nor be seen as 'anti consumer') that they decide to scratch each others backs once again over a property that they essentially co-own in many different ways.

[Quest]

45 minutes ago, Peb Kacharach said:

A DS4 and DS5 will cost about the same at PS5 launch. If you’re not keeping hold of your PS4, flog the controllers to mitigate the cost if extra DS5. It’s not some huge hardship.

 

I never said it was. Still don't want to do it.

[Stanley]

7 minutes ago, HarryBizzle said:

Because their main competition are doing it and the reasons for not doing it are cynical at best. 

Well that’s the free market for you, and capitalism, cynical by nature. 
 

You could equally argue that MS are holding back progress in a cynical attempt to push their Game Pass platform, whereas Sony are bringing in a brand new generation with new features and advances. 
 

In the end if this becomes a massively important feature and more people buy Xbox than PlayStation then I’m sure Sony will change their tune, but I doubt that will happen. 

[HarryBizzle]

12 minutes ago, Stanley said:

Well that’s the free market for you, and capitalism, cynical by nature. 
 

You could equally argue that MS are holding back progress in a cynical attempt to push their Game Pass platform, whereas Sony are bringing in a brand new generation with new features and advances. 
 

In the end if this becomes a massively important feature and more people buy Xbox than PlayStation then I’m sure Sony will change their tune, but I doubt that will happen. 

 

I don’t get the point of this post at all. I know the free market is cynical by nature, it doesn’t mean I should just shrug my shoulders when a company in an industry I’m interested in does something that I feel is anti-consumer.

 

You could make that argument about Microsoft, but I personally don’t see it myself. I certainly hope you mean something other than fancy rumble when you’re talking about new features and advances.

 

Anyway, I’ve made my point and I think we’re just going to go around in circles here.

 

 

11 minutes ago, Peb Kacharach said:

Microsoft are doing all this pro-consumer stuff because they took a very anti-consumer approach which backfired, and then underdelivered on first party titles, which has left them lagging behind.

 

 

What do you think Sony’s approach at the end of the last generation was all about?

 

You look like you’re getting increasingly hot and bothered by any criticism of Sony - resorting to weird drive by posting, in this and other threads, to achieve I don’t know what.

[Bojangle]

It's also a very, very easy PR move. Something as simple as your Bone controllers working on the X Series (I mean of course they do there's nothing new in them) now paints them further as the good pro consumer guys whilst Sony are anti consumer. Every move they've been making has been setting up this narrative so the media and the fans push Sony into that corner where they either do nothing and are automatically the bad guys, or they respond.

This is by no means saying the stuff that Microsoft have been doing is bad or cynical or whatever, I love the moves they're making, but they've been extremely smart in doing them. It's taking what Sony did last gen with the "This is how you give a friend your game lol" video and going completely all in with it across the entire Xbox brand.

[RubberJohnny]

It's hard to expect a decent discussion of this stuff in here, given it opened with grindmouse and Stanley's defensive windmilling and strawmanning about how these complaints mean exclusives are bad or some shit.

[HarryBizzle]

4 minutes ago, Peb Kacharach said:

Not hot and bothered at all!
Only if it’s weird to criticise MS.

 

Ok, mate, charging into the xCloud thread to bring up how Crackdown 3’s cloud features never really materialised, out of the blue, seems totally normal, then.

[Stanley]

10 minutes ago, RubberJohnny said:

It's hard to expect a decent discussion of this stuff in here, given it opened with grindmouse and Stanley's defensive windmilling and strawmanning about how these complaints mean exclusives are bad or some shit.

Oh fuck off, defensive windmilling like labelling MS the least anti consumer? Obviously you missed the sarcasm too 

[Stanley]

41 minutes ago, HarryBizzle said:

 

I don’t get the point of this post at all. I know the free market is cynical by nature, it doesn’t mean I should just shrug my shoulders when a company in an industry I’m interested in does something that I feel is anti-consumer.

 

You could make that argument about Microsoft, but I personally don’t see it myself. I certainly hope you mean something other than fancy rumble when you’re talking about new features and advances.

Well this is the issue and the crux of the argument; they haven’t done anything, clearly the Dual Sense is part of their roadmap for their new console, which is how it’s always been for every console manufacturer since year dot. Now MS are changing things up and Sony aren’t quick enough to react, so they’re ‘anti consumer’ but it’s not the same as taking something away that was there before, like free multiplayer - now that’s “anti consumer”. 
 

Are Sony anti consumer because you need a PS5 to play their first party games on, or because they’re not on PS Now day one? 
 

Also I hope the pad is more than just “fancy rumble” yeah, but even small advances like that, and we still don’t know just how effective it will be, are beneficial, to me anyway. 

[HarryBizzle]

I think you’re conflating what is essentially their USP (their games*) with what appears to be an arbitrary limitation which I think is poorly justified.
 

It’s not about catch up or doing something they haven’t done before - the hardware connects and works. It just doesn’t work with PS5 games because they don’t want it to.

 

*While it would be better for the consumer to have them on all platforms, I don’t expect them to run themselves out of the hardware business for it and don’t see it as anti-consumer. 

[cultofweaver]

9 hours ago, gooner4life said:

 

Why is this a thing now? it's always been the case that you buy the controllers for the console you're playing on.

 

PS1 Dual Shocks worked on PS2. Super useful when we played big round robin's of Pro Evo and needed multiple controllers. If I remember correctly the pressure sensitive face buttons didn't work but that was it.

 

 

[Stanley]

But it’s an arbitrary limitation that’s always been in place, we’ve never been been able to use older pads on new consoles except on rare occasions. It’s not like they’ve taken away the headphone jack, or stopped bundling it with the console. 
 

I mean it’s as though we’re just writing off the Dual Sense pad before we even try it just because MS have decided not to add any real new features. Hopefully it’s an integral part of the system and in every sense better than the DS4, no pun intended. 

[RubberJohnny]

Can't help but note Stanley and Grindmouse keep bringing in references to first party games, and that's probably where they feel strongest arguing from, but does have the small problem of not actually being related to the conversation at all.

 

Microsoft seem to have twigged that Sony isn't the most consumer friendly org, from PSN outages, losing all your details to having no refunds policy for the first few years, it feels like they've had to be dragged kicking and screaming to every standard.

 

The measures they're pushing from crossplay to accessibility to reusing controllers cost them little, and are hugely popular, so it's weird to see the fans of other platforms being mad defensive over just saying "yeah I'd like to see them do that too".

[Stanley]

1 minute ago, RubberJohnny said:

Can't help but note Stanley and Grindmouse keep bringing in references to first party games, and that's probably where they feel strongest arguing from, but does have the small problem of not actually being related to the conversation at all.

 

Microsoft seem to have twigged that Sony isn't the most consumer friendly org, from PSN outages, losing all your details to having no refunds policy for the first few years, it feels like they've had to be dragged kicking and screaming to every standard.

 

The measures they're pushing from crossplay to accessibility to reusing controllers cost them little, and are hugely popular, so it's weird to see the fans of other platforms kicking and screaming and being mad defensive over just saying "yeah I'd like to see them do that too".

I think you have some sort of a weird obsession with me because you keep naming me yet you’re ignoring anything I’m saying. I’m not a fan of other platforms kicking and screaming, you’re just argumentative, and you’re calling me out because you want me to answer back. 

[FiveFootNinja]

Just the fact that we're even having a discussion about "reusing controllers" becoming a "hugely popular" aspect of the lead up to this new console generation shows just how turgid it all actually is. 

 

Personally I don't care, both my Xbox and DS4 controllers are ropey on battery life, rattle, have slightly dodgy right triggers and have barely survived 7 years of battering and occasional rage quitting. Good riddance to them both.  

[cultofweaver]

Just checked. With a USB adapter you could also use a PS2 pad on the PS3 without issue.

 

PS4 works with PS3 so the functions are there but the PS4 firmware locks out the controller.

 

So the real defence of this is "Why are you complaining? Sony have only let you use old controllers on 50% of their consoles until they arbitrarily locked the feature to sell accessories."

 

 

[Broker]

I think what bothers people is the endless obsession with painting Microsoft as some virtuous and kind entity that is being pro consumer rather than acknowledging what they actually are, which is a company who aren’t doing very well in their marketplace. Xbox one controllers work with Series X because that makes it cheaper to buy series X, which it needs to be if they want people to buy one. Gamepass makes all their games free because that makes their offerings cheaper. They’re supporting cross play because they want their servers to be less obviously empty. We know Microsoft would be just as bad about these things if they were in a dominant position because when they designed a console from what they thought was a dominant position they were. These moves are about as pro consumer as the fact you could buy a Dreamcast so cheap the month before they stopped selling them. 
 

There’s a very real facet of this that can be good for consumers. And Microsoft are absolutely unique, as they can cut into their Xbox profits deeply as it’s not their primary revenue source. Having a company competing in an open marketplace who don’t need to profit allows them to push their competitors to lower prices, which is a great tactic for improving prices across the board. The danger is that everything is devalued, which is a real danger with Gamepass. Or that you’re trapped on outdated technology like a CPU that was designed when Limp Bizkit were still popular. 
 

These things could shake out well or badly for us as consumers, but whatever happens won’t be because either giant corporation were our friends. PS4 marketing had some friends, because they weren’t sure they would win. Rubber faced Cerny and that guy he handed a game to we’re a lot more visible last time. Because pretending to be your mate is another marketing strategy, and smiling Phil does that for Microsoft now. Their PR has been incredible for the last few years, and they’ve successfully convinced a large number of people that they’re some sort of Robin Hood figure, boldly saving the games industry, and numerous people seem to have fallen for that completely and now parrot the pro consumer line constantly, as though it’s anything other than a marketing slogan that they’re particularly fond of from a company who aren’t doing very well. 
 

I thought that having to pay money for online services was fucking bullshit when Microsoft invented that. It wasn’t standard practice. I wasn’t used to paying for it. It seemed cynical to me. But I was told quite frequently by the Microsoft faithful that it was a necessary price to pay for progress. Nobody took it seriously, but I genuinely think that ensuring that every lone individual playing on your console has a microphone that they don’t need a headset for is more important to them that letting the three local multiplayer games that come out a year have access to easier second controllers.
 

Is that forward thinking or anti consumer? I’m not zealously invested in either advertising campaign so I’m not sure. But there’s a lot of certainty about the long term value of a lot of unproven things from people who like Microsoft, which I think can be irritating if you don’t think those things sound valuable, and a lot of scepticism of the long term value of what Sony are doing, which can be irritating if you think it might have value. 

[Clipper]

paying for online play was shit when MS did it and shit when Sony and Nintendo followed suit (eventually). The fact that they are possibly dropping it now is just a reminder of how much of kick in the nuts it was when they did it first time round and invented all of it.

[Marlew]

Hands up who owns a PS4

[Darwock]

52 minutes ago, cultofweaver said:

Just checked. With a USB adapter you could also use a PS2 pad on the PS3 without issue.

 

PS4 works with PS3 so the functions are there but the PS4 firmware locks out the controller.

 

So the real defence of this is "Why are you complaining? Sony have only let you use old controllers on 50% of their consoles until they arbitrarily locked the feature to sell accessories."

 

 

no you couldn’t - I tried three different USB adapters for my Guitar Freaks controller and they all introduced latency. Maybe if you bought some super-powered plug into the mains adapter for $100...? (I paid quite a lot for my final one in desperation, still didn’t work).

 

in that case if you had only wanted to use a DS2 (and not a bespoke controller like me) then it would have been cheaper to just buy a DS3.

[SeanR]

/Reads thread

/check title

/re-reads thread

 

”genuine concerns”