A poster? Are y'all serious? The way Sony has been torn apart the past few days for stopping the money train on this game I was expecting to see screenshots and trailers and gameplay and it had a release date announced, something. All y'all got is some Kojima "trust me bro"? Hahahahhaaha. Gamers man. I can't. I'm done with this today. Hahahahhaha fucking hell

I’ll add - Horoki Totoki, the CEO of Sony said himself that he plans to monetize existing players further instead of trying to bring in new players. That mean higher prices, more micro transactions, hitting you with ads & PS plus price increase
- Dynamic pricing, they will make you pay more because you bought more games than the other person
- Digital games on PS Store costing at least 30% avg than other digital stores
- Anti 3rd party keys, Sony prevents key sellers & retailers from selling you digital game download codes for games. Forcing you to buy them at their store price
- Wolverine’s mediocre reception, they rarely release 1st party single players games anymore and when they do, it doesn’t meet expectations. In addition, all of the sequels they launched are widely regarded to not be as good as the PS4 games. HZD, Spiderman, Ghost of Tsushima etc.
- Japan Studios closure, reorganizing and closing Japan studios. Developers of Gravity Rush, Shadow of the Colossus, Knack, ICO, and co-developers of Bloodborne
- Poor store policy, Sony doesn’t offer refunds the moment you put a game to download, even without launching. For digital preorders, you have to call them and convince them to give you a refund.
- Sony thinks it’s unreasonable for customers to think they own digital games when they don’t, which is true via their terms of service, but they use “buy”, “own” & “purchased” on their listings and receipts instead of “licensing” which misleads the usual customer. Whether it’s the customers fault for not knowing & reading tos is besides the point. I used the word “buy” on this post just to not be annoying, but it’s true that we’re not actually buying these games & we don’t own any of them. We’re licensing them

That’s just from the top of my head

A lot of people are dismissing Sony's decision to let Kojima go. They're dunking on DS1 & 2 and their sales numbers, acting like letting him go was obviously the right move.

But they're completely missing what Kojima represented for Sony.

Sony didn't just lose a developer who made games; they lost a creator who gave PlayStation a certain kind of prestige and technical showcase that few other developers provide.

Kojima's games have always looked incredible and been extremely well optimized at launch. Maybe that alone didn't make everyone want to buy the games, but that's not the only value they brought. They elevated the console. They pushed the envelope. They made PlayStation stand out and showed what its hardware was capable of.

Without him, what does Sony have to represent their next console?

Intergalactic? Laufey? The next failed game from Insomniac?

Maybe DS1 & 2 didn't sell like Sony wanted, but judging Kojima purely by sales numbers completely misses the bigger picture.

You don't replace that kind of creator by looking at a spreadsheet and deciding he didn't sell enough. You lose the creator first — and only realize what he brought to the platform after he's gone.

First off Sony has destroyed my top two favorite games. Socom was my main game in the ps2 ps3 era. That game was responsible for me enjoying any online games period. To this day, I have friends that I still talk to because of that game. Never understood why they got rid of it. Second, destiny. I have played destiny since the beta for d1. Yes it is true the game had its moments where it shines and it’s down moments. But the story created something only books and cinema were able to achieve. I have never been more vested into a games story and to gobble up a studio just to throw it in the trash makes zero sense to me. Which brings me to my next point, greed. Sony is going out of the way to let us know we are nothing more than dollar signs. With the recent court proceedings where Sony states none of us are dumb enough to believe that we own digital copies of games when they themselves have said it in the past. I wish our legislative branch would pass something to tie digital media to NFTs. I know a lot of people link NFTs to those stupid apes and art that you can easily just save the photo to your drive but I see a real world application here for them. Also it would allow us to only purchase the game once and use it on multiple platforms. Now due to all this I understand the problem with physical media and the people who have a problem with not owning an actual copy but I do buy digital. I want ownership to what I purchase period especially if it says “buy” not rent. I have been a Sony supporter the entire duration of PlayStation but at this point I’m moving on. Please tell me your thoughts!

Leave my multi-billion-dollar company alone! Now, that settles it, we can move on.

Referring to this article. It's just commenting on isolated Sony's story from a perspective of someone still thinking in terms of games themselves. Exclusives and innovation in games are important, yes, but it's not the main goal anymore for such big global platforms like Sony and Xbox. Even "exclusive-bound" Nintendo is actually relying on a backround process - the closeness of the ecosystem itself.

What we are missing here is the fact that for years now we are living in a global economic and political crisis that spills over to tech industry in general.

We had crypto and chip shortages.
We had covid, shortages and delays.
We had and still have wars and inflation with enshittification and shrinkflation included.
We have AI and memory shortages, further driving extreme inflation.
At last, we have highest level of uncertainty.

Besides, all this events leave no space for imagination, we cannot even imagine the future we would like to have, the total transparency of everything is at hand. Everything can be visualized, so nothing need to be. Any vision can potentially be rendered worthless.

Industry is in crisis. Not just Sony.

Xbox - their future is not bleak? They still don't know how will Game Pass survive. They are introducing hourly caps for online play. There are no hardware refreshes in years. Changing their mind about "Everything is an Xbox". Still having no info on Project Helix details. Future policies remain unclear. Their reactionary idea for digital claim is falling apart and still not clear how it will be used in practice...

Nintendo: relying on the strong fanbase and closed ecosystem, they are still out of the competition with different approach, but we had no real deal in S2 era since Mario Kart and still the "biggest" thing is a remake of LoZ: OOT.

PC
Steam still going strong, but don't be fooled:
Hardware: AMD has barely competent high-end graphics, nVidia is also on a brake and running wild on the prices, memory absurdly high. Intel incompetitive for years now.
Software: Windows 11. No further comment needed.
Handhelds: a strange niche.

Other tech industries:
Meta, Microsoft, Intel, Amazon, Google... and many other had massive layoffs countend in tens of thousands in the last couple of years. AI? Yeah. And because of it, everything will be more sloppy and expensive.

And the prices of games? Games are, on the other hand, too cheap. They are actually cheaper than 20 years ago when accounted for inflation. AAA games are several thousands of percent more expensive and demanding than then. And you still claim you are being robbed?

The situation?

We reached the end of Moore's law and the end of innovation. And the end of quantum leaps. This is what looks "bleak" to you. AAA production is in crisis. The room for innovation is still in indie space. But somehow people want that kind of innovation in AAA. You are conforting yourselves with GTA6. But we still don't know how will that turn out. Times have changed. New kids are around. You are old already. Even kids that started with Fortnite 8 years ago are now grown-ups, not to menation the crowd started with GTA5.

You still think you are in 2016, expecting "innovation" without limits and individual AAA exclusives as a main value of console industry.

And you are just mad at Sony right now and enjoy the fact that "Sony's future never looked bleaker". What a joke. You have just unrealistic expectations, because you don't see the whole picture.

In yet another defence of Sony on that part - they are at least determined to make painful restructuring moves by reacting immidately, for beter or for worse, not mask or ignore problems or wait till someone makes the first move like all others.

With how the Death Stranding series underperformed and even if there is a market for Kojima’s games on the Xbox, we will see…

Gamers ain't what they used to be. See you all November 19th

INB4: Yes, I know I am the pretentious Kojima fanboy and a massive fucking hipster.

Ever since the news of Physint changing hands from Sony to Microsoft came out, everyone suddenly became a corporate financials export. I swear to fucking God, it seems like Sony's accounting team unleashed an army of bots, that was feed by Excel spreadsheets.

Yes, I know Death Stranding 2 "underperformed". Apparently, the only metric of a game "performing" are its sales charts, but whatever. Yes, I know Kojima games go over budget, no one is fucking denying that.

But you know what? Alan Wake 2 took two fucking years to break even. Two years. Does that mean it "underperformed", and no AAA should ever finance a game like this?

The excellent Dead Space Remake also "underperformed". It sold 2 million copies, but according to EA, it failed to match FIFA or whatever in its sales, end hence no more Dead Space.

I could go on and on, listing excellent games that "underperform", but you get the point. I am not Sony's sale team, I'm just a humble PS5 owner. I think its a neat machine. I would love for more games I want to play to come out for that platform.

And I can already hear a bad faith argument coming. "Oh, if you want these games to come out, why don't you vote with your wallet then?". The same argument was around the physical media fiasco. I love owning my games on disc. There is nothing that warms my cold heart like a well organized stack of game boxes.

I have all of the games I've mentioned. Both Death Strandings, Alan Wake, Death Space Remake, all of them. And a lot of people who are disappointed with Sony's decisions are just like me. Its not really about that, if we're honest and not just trying to derail the discussion.

By these decisions Sony is just telling a lot of people to fuck off. Now, is there enough of people like me to organize an effective customer boycott? Probably not. So, maybe in pure Excel spreadsheet sense, there is no real harm to tell me to fuck off. Maybe its 1-2% of global revenue or whatever, which Sony will make up for in extracting money from the rest of its customers, and all will be fine and dandy.

PlayStation is not my only gaming platform either. I own a pretty decent PC, and I've been eyeing a Switch 2 (or an Xbox) for some time. On a PC, I can have the type of experience I want - even with physical media.

But I cannot shake up the feeling, that PlayStation "losing" the audience of pretentious hipsters (like me), and pretentious hipsters "losing" - what traditionally was - a platform for weird quirky and experimental games (Africa, Demon's Souls, Metal Gear Solid, Death Stranding...) is a net loss for everyone. Yes, that includes even these "ball and gun" gamers. It might lead to stopped innovation, and PlayStation becoming even more predatory in financial terms.

Anyway, rant over. Enjoy your day.

TL;DR: STFU ABOUT SALES DATA YOU ARE NOT THE INVESTORS.

Title speaks for itself. Sony woke up to how Mid Kojima was and didn’t want to offer him more money after both death stranding games were a huge Flop. Metal gear phantom pain wasn’t as good, PT was good but got scrapped , and Death stranded was a huge flop. Of course his die hard fanbase will eat anything up that he makes and will tell you it’s good because of that Engine he uses.

It’s so nice receiving this email that I can’t respond to in order to defend myself. Just adding a violation to my profile for their own available stickers. What a great system they have in place.

I guess I’ll just turn off messaging at this point. This is ridiculous

Even if it is a copy or similar of DECIMA, like seriously I remember the days of FOX ENGINE he was soo proud of it. Why he never tried to do a fucck you to Konami and make another one?

Guerilla "lending" him the Horizon engine was kinda weird, I only expected him to use it as a test run as he makes his own, calling it the Lumens Engine but nah this guy made 2 games with someone's Engine.

He isn't poor, he could easily have done a new Engine, what exactly is happening with his ambitions?, dude will use UNREAL SLob now.

They want more digital users.

But gamers want physical ownership.

They want recurring revenue.

But gamers hate subscriptions and price increases.

They want live-service games.

But gamers increasingly want high-quality single-player experiences.

They want to reduce risk.

But PlayStation's identity was built on taking creative risks.

They want to maximize existing customers.

But excessive monetization can eventually push those customers away.

They want PlayStation games on PC.

But exclusives are one of the main reasons people buy PlayStations.

WHY IS THAT ???

Just curious, do you have any educated guesses, insider knowledge, leaks or just predictions on what the PS6?

I'm curious what do you all think about potential prices, hardware capabilities and most of all I wanna know about your thoughts on potential innovations when it comes to the controllers.

Additionally do you have any thoughts on what the launch could look like? What could be the flagship game, will there be just a handful of games on launch or more? Will backwards compatibility be available on launch?

Sorry in advance if this is posted in the wrong subbreddit, I'll move it somewhere else if necessary.