Is this fan render an accurate prediction for the PS5 Slim? (Picture: Concept Creator/LetsGoDigital)
The Thursday letters page thinks the Microsoft rewards scheme is no longer the bargain it was, as one reader spitballs about Starfield 2.
Prettier and cheaper
It’s certainly easy to think that Sony is getting carried away with all its hardware options at the moment, what with the Project Q and all the rumours about the Playstation 5 Pro and other models. But what I think people seem to forget is that no matter how well the PlayStation 5 console is selling millions of people haven’t bought one yet.
I’m one of those people and I’m glad there’s going to be a PS5 Slim, or whatever it’ll be called. I really don’t like the current design of the PlayStation 5 and I hope that the new one will be redesigned to be smaller and less… ugly.
What I’m also hoping is that it will be permanently cheaper, like the £75 discount that’s going on in the summer sales. I’d say I’m taking a risk by not buying the current model right now but to be honest I haven’t got the money at the moment and was banking on getting it near Christmas (possibly during Black Friday).
So I hope that I can finally pick up a next gen console that’s both better looking and cheaper than what came out at launch.
Drang
Only option
I don’t think the Switch 2 is going to be at Gamescom. Maybe Nintendo will be meeting developers about it, maybe even showing it off to them, but I don’t expect we’ll see any sign of it in public and it sure isn’t going to be something people can see and play there. I think, I mean I know it’s Nintendo but in this instance I feel pretty confident about predicting I’m right.
For me the only timeline that makes sense is announcing it next summer and releasing it at Christmas. If they announce it this summer or autumn they ruin sales of the original this year. If they announce it early next year, they upset everyone that got a Switch for Christmas.
This seems pretty basic marketing logic to me and in this instance, I think Nintendo will prove surprisingly predictable.
Focus
GC: This makes sense to us as well.
Spinning, that’s a good trick
An unexpected move by EA to make last gen versions of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. I wonder what happened to make them suddenly think that was a good idea, all this time after launch? I guess they just thought it was easy money?
Although it does underline what was obvious at launch: Survivor doesn’t take advantage of the new consoles in any meaningful way and could – and now will – easily have been on the old ones as well. From that perspective I don’t know why it wasn’t cross-gen from the start.
It’s frustrating that so many games are failing to take advantage of the new consoles. What are the chances now that the final Jedi game will? It’d be pretty weird if the third one was suddenly something on a completely different scale and complexity than the first two. Also, it’d be a bit unfair on last gen owners if it was only the last one they couldn’t play.
I know the start of it wasn’t anyone’s fault but this whole generation seems to be stuck in quicksand, its wheel’s spinning as nothing ever moves forward.
Austin
Making it fit
So, with Sony announcing the ability to use an 8TB SSD it got me thinking about game sizes and how huge they are now.
In my PC I have a 1TB NVME SSD and a 2TB hard drive, unsurprisingly all my games go on the SSD and the hard drive is purely for files and photos, etc.
I’ve never really had a problem with this, some games are permanently on my PC (my racing sims mainly) others kind of come and go depending on what I’m playing.
Anyway, I’ve got family staying later this week and I know the kids love playing arcade racers with my wheel and super ultrawide monitor. I’ve got enough Microsoft Points to get a few months of Game Pass for free, so I’ve signed up in order to download Forza Horizon 5 – 110GB! Forza Horizon 4 is about 80GB so that’s a fair chunk bigger.
Anyway, I always wanted to try Microsoft Flight Simulator, so now’s my chance… I have 100Mbps internet and boy it still took an age to download… 130GB! Just wow!
So that’s about 240GB for two games – on quarter of my available space.
I had a to clear a few old games off my system and I’m still sitting at around 800GB usage.
Anyway, both games are pretty great in their own way, but I was a bit disappointed that my house doesn’t actually look like my house on Flight Simulator. I guess my expectations of what being able to fly literally anywhere in the world would look like were a bit too high, eh?
Sorry, that was all a bit rambly, to say that games these days are really huge!
The Dude Abides
Planning for the future
RE: Tango’s predictions for possible spin-offs Microsoft could try to squeeze out of Starfield. The city builder one got me thinking: what if you could build a city in there, on a barren world, and then import it into the same planet in Starfield or the eventual Starfield 2.
Admittedly, this is pie in the sky, not least since you could probably build a real extraterrestrial city before Starfield 2 gets made if Elder Scrolls 6 is any indication, but I’m just spitballin’ here.
FoximusPrime81 (gamertag/NN ID)
GC: That sounds a good idea, but we think his point was a Starfield 2 is probably 15 years or so away, given Bethesda’s current plan seems to be The Elder Scrolls 6 next and then Fallout 5. So either they get someone else to make it or it’s going to be a very long wait.
Inflation at work
Let’s talk about the Microsoft rewards scheme and how it’s slowly being nerfed into a bloody waste of time and effort.
So back when I started collecting points a fiver credit cost something like 5,500 points. Now, for context, on an average day you may be able to amass around 300 points, now that’s a lot of collecting for a fiver off of a 70 quid game right? However, it crept up to 5,800 a while ago and now I’ve just seen its 5,850… per fiver!
Yes, you can redeem them monthly for 5,500 (used to be 5,300) but I’m sure in the small print it says they have to be used within three month, hence I just redeem them as needed. Recently the monthly bonus you could get, each month, was literally slashed in half from 2,000 points to 1,000. The bonus consisted of you doing so many daily tasks, such as browsing on Bing or checking out highlighted games or features, that the 2,000 points per month always felt like you were actually making progress in your savings.
At the moment, after months and months of saving, I have around 20 quid, which I’m planning to use on Mortal Kombat 1, which will get me it for around 45-50 quid off the Microsoft store. A lot of faffing around for something I could get for 50 quid elsewhere and save the points for something else. Game Pass Ultimate for 10,500 per month!
My point is, we all like something for nothing, but is spending months to get 10, 15, 20 quid off of a purchase, when you can get that discount off another site anyway, really worth the trouble? I’m increasingly thinking not.
big boy bent
Don’t do it
I 100% agree with the person that said no one wants a reimagining of Battlefield. We just want it to be a decent game again, like it used to be. It’s not a complicated franchise and yet EA seem to be getting it wrong again and again. Just make a sequel to 4 that is basically the same thing but with better graphics and modern features. That’s it.
Don’t turn it into a battle royale, don’t go chasing Call Of Duty again in terms of either gameplay or microtransactions, just make a good game that we can enjoy like it used to be. I bet this thought never even crosses their mind.
Ransom
Preferred but not essential
Although not a deal breaker I love the silky smoothness of 60fps, so will take a look at the PS5 Pro if it delivers on that. Rather than a kick in the teeth and betray of fans who bought the original model, as the weekend feature thought, I’m happy to see more powerful hardware released mid-gen to play games at higher quality and frame rate settings if I so choose.
I picked up a Switch for Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom and went with the £75 cheaper Mario bundle over the OLED Model, as I knew I wouldn’t be using handheld mode much, if at all. It’s nice to have options. If the Switch Pro had existed though I would of bought that for the frames, as I value that experience.
Thankfully it didn’t last long but Tears Of The Kingdom got dragged into the current unsavoury criticism of a game being 30fps and that now being unrealistically unacceptable to a certain element of current gen console gamers who have enjoyed 60fps on pretty much every game bar a couple during the extended cross-gen period. Games made for PlayStation 4 running on PlayStation 5 tend to hit 60fps very nicely, as you would expect.
One of the most face-palming grievances I heard for 30fps Zelda were Nintendo knew the specs for the Switch, so should of built the game around hitting 60 fps. Which is terrible as it’s asking for a less ambitious game over frame rate. The other was they didn’t expect Zelda to run at 30fps on Switch but were weirdly angry at Nintendo for not releasing hardware that could run it at 60fps, i.e. the Switch Pro.
So, with that in mind I think there will be lots of current PlayStation 5 owners interested in the Pro. As for it and Sony’s other numerous hardware ventures having any correlation with their current, almost radio silence on single-player first party output I don’t hold much significance between the two and see them as pretty separate areas of the business as a whole. I think we’d all like a showcase though, just to find out what Bluepoint and Housemarque are up to.
Simundo
Maybe it’s considered a hot take, but I’ve never liked Telltale Games’ stuff. I think people have moved on by now and they won’t last long in their second incarnation.
Robert Cop
This week’s Hot Topic
The subject for this weekend’s Inbox was suggested by reader Gain2, who asks what is your favourite game that does not have a sequel?
Even if they’re not that that successful, most games get sequels at some point, but which is your favourite that never did? Why do you think it never got a follow-up and does it at least have a spiritual sequel or something similar?
Do you feel it’s too late for a sequel now and if not, how would you like it to look and play? If it’s a game with its first sequel coming up soon, how do you hope it will have evolved from the original?
The Thursday letters page thinks the Microsoft rewards scheme is no longer the bargain it was, as one reader spitballs about Starfield 2.
