Cliff Notes – Games Inbox: Is there going to be a PS5 State of Play this summer
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Concerns Over Sony’s Game Strategy: Readers express worry about Sony’s shift towards live service games, questioning the future of single-player titles and the overall quantity of new releases.
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Marvel Games’ Potential Risks: There is apprehension regarding the upcoming Marvel games, with fears that poor performance could jeopardise studios and jobs, as seen with Firaxis after the failure of Midnight Suns.
- Decline of Physical Games: A reader laments the diminishing role of physical copies in gaming, highlighting the lack of benefits to digital formats and the increasing control of publishers over consumers.
Games Inbox: Is there going to be a PS5 State of Play this summer?
At least Ghost Of Yōtei is out this year (Sony Interactive Entertainment)
The Thursday letters page worries what will happen if the new Marvel games are flops, as one reader laments the slow death of physical games.
Summer schedule
I really hope that Sony is planning to make more first party games but I have a feeling there’s no going back to how things were. It’s been too long and too much has changed, including Sony still selling tons of PlayStation 5s even without any proper exclusives and Xbox going multiformat.
I think it’s reasonable to hope they will do more though. We can’t stop them making any more live service games but they do seem to at least be slowing down a bit. The problem is that slowing up doesn’t mean they’ll speed up with single-player games instead. They could just end up making less overall, like they have over the last few years.
We’ve got Ghost Of Yōtei this year, which I’m not super excited about (I’d had enough of the last one by halfway through) but I am very interested in seeing Returnal follow-up Saros next year, so hopefully things are slowly turning around.
I want to be optimistic, but the problem is there’s no sign of Sony having a not-E3 State of Play showcase this summer. The past two years they’ve had it at the end of May and I think we’ve probably gone past the point they were going to announce it if it was happening. I hope I’m wrong, or maybe it’s later in June for some reason, but it doesn’t look good.
RaeBonn
Your story is another castle
I see the Super Mario Bros. Movie sequel has had its name leaked as Super Mario World. I’m not sure your average Joe is going to get that reference, but would they actually bother doing an adaptation of the game’s story? Does the game even have a story? I’ve beaten it twice and I honestly can’t remember.
Looking at Wikipedia, apparently it was all in the manual and basically Bowser kidnapped Peach and some dinosaur eggs. There’s so little to work with I really have no idea what direction any of these films could do to justify themselves as anything other than a cash-in. The Paper Mario games are the only ones with an actual plot, but even then that’s not what’s good about them.
Austin
Risky business
I’ve got a bad feeling about these upcoming Marvel games. I imagine Wolverine will be fine, but that Iron Man game will be almost two decades too late by the time it comes out. And I can’t believe many people are interested in a Captain America and Black Panther team-up set in World War 2.
Normally I’d just shrug my shoulders and write it off as an incoming flop but nowadays that means the whole studio could go down and how many hundreds of people are working on these two games?
I’m not exaggerating either. Consider what happened to Firaxis after the (excellent) Midnight Suns flopped. All the lead developers left, the studio was fractured (I don’t think it was a coincidence that Civilization 7 was a rare dud), and now we’ll never get an XCOM 3.
I don’t know these developers behind Iron Man and the other one as well, but I do know that lots of jobs are now in danger, just because EA was late jumping on a bandwagon.
Cerates
Reliable reputation
Glad to hear GC got Power Stone back and I like the sound of all the effort Capcom put into the collection and the reasonable price. I’ve never really been into fighting games, so it’s not really of interest to me. But it Does make me think better of Capcom, for when something else I am interested in comes up.
I wish this was something other publishers thought of, especially as Capcom is doing so well, financially speaking, at the moment. But unfortunately EA and Activision, and even Ubisoft to a degree, just rely on their big franchises and don’t really put out much else anyway.
Sony is another example of doing this well, because their reputation for first party games really wasn’t that great until the PlayStation 4. They just built it up and became someone to rely on. Them throwing that all away now is so strange.
Griefer
Money issue
I’ve been thinking for a while now about this, but Sony could take Xbox out the console market with just one sentence. You can put Game Pass on PlayStation. There wouldn’t be any need for an Xbox and we know Phil wants it on there.
Why Sony won’t do that I’ll never know. It’s a win/win for Sony. You never know, Sony might allow them sooner or later and Xbox can go the way of Sega, just with a hell of a lot more money and just to make games.
David
GC: They won’t do it because they make more money selling games on their store. Although they may change their mind in time, because they’ve begun to make more selling microtransactions than actual games.
And another thing
You know, I have been witnessing quite a bit of clamour over the last few days. More or less a lot of complaining and quite a stir of negativity. I’ve seen GTA 6 fall surprisingly prey to this. Either people have issues with the inevitably violent content, the sex or the aged fable of controversy. My take is my bond and I say that I gladly welcome the gratuitous violence, the sex, and the glory glitz of Leonida.
Because I’ve waited over 12 years for an evolution and no echoes of bemusement will deter me from my course of securing the collector’s edition as soon as possible. If that includes a statue or early access I will be immensely satisfied.
My second point is the Nintendo Switch 2. I’ve already mentioned that I secured the Mario Kart World bundle from Amazon and I acknowledge the bricking controversy. But modding isn’t my cup of tea, so Nintendo has nothing to worry about. I’d rather emulate PlayStation 2 games anyway.
Thirdly, the PlayStation 6. It matters not the price, storage, exclusives or specs. I’m buying this system, as I did the PlayStation 5. Day one. If it arrives in 2027, the merrier it is for me. I will very much take great stride in playing Horizon Zero Dawn 3 and many other titles.
Shahzaib Sadiq
Mum’s the word
I was wondering when we might get some concrete thoughts about the Switch 2 launch games?
Is there an embargo about when Switch 2 games are able to be reviewed? Or perhaps there is an embargo on when you can talk about an embargo, nothing from Nintendo would surprise me.
Mark
GC: There’s always an embargo on when we can talk about an embargo, but especially when it involves Nintendo.
Facing defeat
I know the war was lost long ago (shops stopping second-hand games was the end, as far as I see it) but it is so tragic to see how small a part of gaming physical copies are now. I don’t know anyone, amongst my friends or family, that buys physical copies anymore and what would be the point anyway, when they’re not even stored on the disc?.
Perhaps it was inevitable, since even if the initial game is on the disc it gets distorted and expanded by updates the second you put it in a console but it’s the fact that there’s literally no benefit to digital. People talk about convenience but what convenience? Not having to change discs is just silly and lazy.
And it takes time to buy a physical copy? I could drive to the shops and back quicker that it takes me to download a modern game. Not that I’m in the habit of paying out £60 on a whim, that I suddenly decide I have to have a new game right then and there.
Gaming got infinitely more expensive as soon as it became more difficult to sell on your games, especially with eBay’s new payment rules. But apparently nobody cares. Maybe everyone else is a millionaire all of a sudden, and I didn’t get the memo, but the death of physical is just handing more control to publishers and taking more cash out of the wallets of ordinary people.
Rufus
Inbox also-rans
Just watched the Borderlands movie on Amazon. It’s no Fallout or The Last Of Us but it’s not that bad. I particularly liked Jack Black as the annoying android Claptrap. They should make a Brütal Legend movie – it would have a great soundtrack. Think I will check out the Like A Dragon movie next.
Johnny Alpha SD
Currently playing: Doom Eternal and Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6
Thanks for the heads-up on Very, I managed to get my bundle with a camera so I’m very excited now. I went back and checked and it’s still live though, which seems weird given no one else has any stock at all.
Boysie
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