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Post by Ex on Aug 18, 2023 13:19:43 GMT -5
Well it seems like the 9th gen is finally getting inertia. I'm seeing less cross-gen releases lately, and more 9th gen exclusive stuff. The PS5 is selling very strongly, and Xbox is whatever it is now. Also, it's been all but confirmed the Switch 2 is coming out next year.
So going forward, how many of you plan to get a PS5/Switch 2/Xbox Series boogalooga? Beyond that, do you see yourself getting a PS6/Switch 3/Xbox whatever? Or do you see yourself ever reaching a point where what you already have is enough? What do you think of the medium's current design tropes and trends? Do you think game design in general is improving or devolving? Do you ever find yourself disenchanted with the state of the medium, or are you all-in and loving it? Do you look forward to embracing an all digital future, or do you think that's still a few generations off?
I'll be back later with my own takes and blurbs.
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Post by Sarge on Aug 18, 2023 16:04:32 GMT -5
So the answer for me is "yes", but likely with some caveats.
I will own a PS5 eventually. Not even necessarily for PS5 games, although that's certainly a draw for multiplatform games. But I also want it for the myriad PS4 games I have, especially since I passed on the PS4 Pro. Series X is also at least somewhat appealing, although I recognize that is probably even less a draw given those games are on PC as well. But if you want physical ownership of anything, you'll need the console. Even if much of the content still ends up downloading...
Switch 2 is an absolute no-brainer. Until Nintendo just completely craps the bed, I will always be on board with their systems, even if I don't always buy them day one. I will probably still get systems after, too, but the world is quickly devolving towards all-digital, and I don't like it. And that may be where it makes more sense to just move to PC and be done with it. Except Nintendo.
I would love to play the curmudgeon, but I feel there's still enough great AAA games coming out that are worth playing, even if it does feel like we've reached some amount of homogenization. There's formulas that are tried-and-true, and it makes sense to not get too crazy in the AAA space. It's the indie scene where you see the most innovation, and while there's also mounds of iffy stuff, there are also enough great indie games that appeal to my gaming tastes, especially in the old-school space.
All digital is soon. I think it happens... after the PS6/Series X2. Although I wouldn't at all be surprised to see Microsoft move to it sooner than Sony - you can see what they're doing with Game Pass and they're very quickly transitioning to a sort of service gaming model. Wouldn't surprise me if they only keep a console alive just to sell Game Pass. Or try an old technique that Valve attempted in the past, push a Steam Machines-like model and have other manufacturers put out "consoles" to play on.
While I don't care for all-digital, if it were like GOG, it wouldn't bother me as much. And I also feel like I may hit a breaking point where it's just not worth me trying to hang on to this stuff. We'll see how I feel about it a few years down the road.
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Post by bonesnapdeez on Aug 19, 2023 20:43:53 GMT -5
I will continue to mostly play retro games. 2nd/3rd/4th gen is my sweet spot.
Game libraries are so standardized across hardware now that I feel little need to own multiple modern consoles. I go for Nintendo as I appreciate the prices, robust first-party library, availability, and overall aesthetics. I will get the Switch successor.
I think the biggest change I'll make going forward is that I'll no longer go in for a "gaming PC." Most of my PC gaming now consists of visual novels and indie stuff, and within a few short years I think a stock computer will be largely sufficient.
As far as new releases go, I'm moving towards digital download gaming as well, if only because I seem to prefer digital-only releases (again, VNs and indie games) over AAA.
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Post by toei on Aug 29, 2023 13:11:37 GMT -5
There are still games coming out that I know I would like. Street Fighter 6, upcoming Like a Dragon games, some From Software titles, whatever DQ comes out next. But I can't see myself playing long-ass games anymore. Even 30 hours makes me wince. So I don't know if I'll be playing them. If wish I was 22-23, I wouldn't have to think about this.
Then again, I've found that I have little patience for going through the motions anymore. I had started playing Chaos Break on the PSX; it's a short, perfectly serviceable RE-style game. I was enjoying it. But I've been there before. You're running around a facility looking for keycards and killing monsters, finding logs that suggest dangerous experiments went bad. You know the drill. If you're in the mood for a PSX survival horror and you've played the big hitters, give it a shot. It's not bad. But I can't seem to care about finishing it. I felt the same with Linkle Liver Story, or Community Pom last year (a cutesy 2D PSX ARPG) - I've done all this before. I used to be able to play RPG after RPG and not get bored. But now if it doesn't stand out in a big way, I feel that I'm wasting my time. I also realized how much I don't want to play as a kid in some fantasy setting anymore, especially not a little girl. All the games that appeal to me now star adults and take place in the real world, or something like it. Mizzurna Falls, Deadly Premonition, Yakuza 3 & on, Shenmue 3, etc. The only RPGs I'm really interested in right now are Samurai Shodown RPG (samurai setting, adult cast, fighting game elements) and Valkyria Chronicles (action-based semi real-time SRPG - the exact system I used to fantasize about watching those Shining Force attack animations).
There are still maybe 10-20 games I'd really like to play. Some of them get into that 30 hours range, others are around 10. I wish they were all 10-15 hours. When I've played all of them, I vaguely imagine myself playing a rare few, carefully chosen games every year, as an occasional hobby. Maybe now and then I'll get into a old-school action groove and knock out a few short ones in a row, like I did this year. Things often don't turn out like I plan, so who knows.
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Post by Ex on Aug 29, 2023 15:31:24 GMT -5
Just to quickly touch on some thoughts: Sarge>it does feel like we've reached some amount of homogenization Agreed. Agreed on mainstream and indie to this point. Both markets have loads of formulaic filler and unambitious genre bait. But that's not necessarily bad depending on a given consumer's tastes. >All digital is soon 10th gen may be where it happens in full force. I'd say we're halfway there at least now. bonesnapdeez>Game libraries are so standardized across hardware now that I feel little need to own multiple modern consoles. I go for Nintendo Cross platform is the order of the day, barring Nintendo's first party titles. So makes sense to own a Nintendo console if you are a fan of their output. However, while Nintendo does get a lot of ports of games we also see on PC/PS4/XB? those ports are often watered down technically. And there's a lot of upper tech 8th gen PC/PS4/Xb? that never made it to Switch at all. Now maybe this won't be the case with the Switch 2, we have to see how its technical prowess turns out. >as I appreciate the prices I disagree on prices. Nintendo is very proud of their games and the Switch tax is real. Sony's games are cheaper and rapidly diminish in price over time (not just first party, I'm talking about PS4 games in general here). I'm saying this as someone who has bought hundreds of PS4 and Switch games, both physical and digital. Unless you meant hardware prices. Sure Nintendo's hardware tends to be less expensive than Sony or Microsoft's... but you quickly lose those savings on paying more for the software. >within a few short years I think a stock computer will be largely sufficient For indie and VN games absolutely. Don't know about powerhouse AAA stuff, but you don't tend to play those sort of games anyway from what I've observed. toei>Street Fighter 6 This is a damned good fighting game, from what I've played of it. >Even 30 hours makes me wince This is one of my pain points as well. I would be perfectly fine with no games being longer than 30 hours. Including RPGs. That said, I have beaten some 100+ hour monsters in recent years, and I don't regret them. But it's a process of chipping away incrementally, that's what works for me. I don't know how people beat 100+ hour long games in 2 or 3 weeks. It's like all you did for all your free time was play that game during that period - I don't think that's healthy. >I've done all this before The formulas are real. But I'll tell you man, after 44 years on this planet consuming media, it's easy to feel "I've done all this before" for any medium in my experience. Hard to find legitimately creative takes these days in design and writing in general. >I don't want to play as a kid in some fantasy setting anymore That's one of my biggest beefs with JRPGs in general. Why am I almost always a highschool age kid. Oh it's because most Japaneses developers believe that's their only demographic. Fucking morons. >things often don't turn out like I plan, so who knows If I understand your situation correctly, you have a PS3 and PS4, but don't have them hooked up. I do think there are some games (some of which you mentioned in your post) on those platforms that you would LOVE. But not until you hook the hardware up and try, obviously. I get it's not a priority for you, but I sure would love to see your take on some of these 7th and 8th gen games. Dark Souls and Valkyria Chronicles especially. And Sleeping Dogs even though you keep ignoring me on that one. I really think you'd enjoy it if you gave it a fair chance. - I'll come back later with my personal blurb on this subject.
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Post by toei on Aug 29, 2023 16:36:02 GMT -5
Yeah I doubt I'm gonna play Sleeping Dogs. I had a friend who was interested in the game before it came out, he showed me trailers and stuff at the time. It never caught my interest. You know what though, I still want to try to finish a GTA before too long. If I do, and I like it (I know you don't), maybe I'll think of Sleeping Dogs. I would be interested in the triads theme, after all.
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Post by Ex on Aug 29, 2023 20:15:54 GMT -5
I can't speak for GTA 4 or 5 (yet), but Sleeping Dogs beats the dogshit out every prior GTA I played to those.
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Post by Xeogred on Aug 29, 2023 20:54:57 GMT -5
I don't see a ton changing for me. I've had a healthy balance of retro and modern gaming for years now I believe. But some things certainly eb and flow.
As the guy who could still play 100 more NES Mega Man's, I find myself increasingly disinterested in playing sequels to a lot of modern stuff. Even to games I greatly enjoyed. This is typically stuff of the Western/AAA flavor though. The Amazing Spider-Man was a nice breezy 10-20 hour open world game and a nice take on a superhero I liked most growing up alongside Batman. I don't care to play Miles Morales or the sequel. God of War 2018 I finally got to this year or last, I can't remember without looking at my notepad list. It was awesome. But I don't know if I care to play Ragnarok. I skipped over like a dozen (almost literally) Assassin's Creed games and randomly played Odyssey, it was pretty cool. I don't think I'll ever bother playing the other new ones. This is happening more and more. It's almost freeing to hear myself say it in my head... nah, maybe I just don't need to play this or that. I'm getting more critical about it with open world games too. To get me interested in open world, I need a new IP and something fresh. Kojima might get me because I'm a sucker for him, with Death Stranding 2. But even as someone who really enjoyed the first, I don't have an ounce of excitement in me at the thought of them making a direct sequel. Why? Is all I can ask. I'll make exceptions to FromSoftware, Xenoblade, Zelda, etc, because typically they either change up the formula in between (FromSoftware), or the releases are very well paced and spread out with Xenoblade and Zelda games being like five years apart. Growing up that kind of sucked as a kid, since time is different in your youth. But now I kind of enjoy when an IP really takes it time with years in between releases. Annual releases for ANYTHING to me can kick rocks. That's an instant sure way to make me completely lose interest. It could be Zelda even, anything I love dearly, if a new one came out every year, I'm going elsewhere.
Funny how that doesn't totally apply to retro games though. I loved how I had a Dragon Quest journey going on for the last few years and with only DQ7 left for the most part now, I'm getting amped up again to focus on something else next like all the SMT's I have on my 3DS. Then there's some other big franchises I want to tackle. So I hate when publishers toss 10 games at me, one per year, but when I can go back and play a huge cool franchise at my own leisure, that's been pretty cool. But Dragon Quest always sounded great and I probably just struck gold with it once it clicked. I can't expect to play another ~10 excellent games from another series all too often, hah.
I will always have my complaints and nitpicks with gaming, the political landscape of it and trends or whatever. But I'd call that passion. I can't see it ever being dethroned as my #1 hobby. I think it's always in my DNA to just always like new tech to some extent. So yes I will continue to buy new hardware along the way...
But again, I'm cutting things out more and more and it feels good. I have been free from Xbox since the 360 and feel like I've missed absolutely nothing. 9th gen looks lame as heck so far and utterly forgettable. 90% of the excuse in my head to get a PS5 someday, is to just have a more modern machine that can play PS4 games and another library as its bonus point. Sony and the biggest publishers chasing "living game" trends and whatever might be a plus to me, in that I'm never touching that stuff. Just like MMO's... I play games that have a beginning, middle, and end. If the AAA publishers focus more on living games, I won't lose sleep over it either. Realistically we are drowning in games thesedays, so it's not like I'd ever be without options. I could focus on more stuff I want to play and more retro gaming. Most importantly, my wallet would thank me too if I didn't have to keep up with new games as much. I only buy a few at launch already as is. 2017 was one of the craziest years in modern gaming that I can recall where I maybe bought like a dozen new games or more. But that's pretty rare.
Maybe 10th gen will get me more excited again. But I like my less is more approach right now. Doing just fine with a modern PC, Switch, and PS4.
Games could stop coming out for probably a full DECADE and I'd easily be able to keep myself busy with what I own, plan to play, and love to replay.
I can regrettably say I'm probably one foot in the waters of a pure digital landscape. The PS4 generation fueled a lot of resentment with me here. Every single game was a mandatory install, hardware manufactures go bonkers cheap only giving you measly 500GB-1TB drives within that fill up with ~10 installed games, so you have to constantly micromanage the memory once you get to another game. The stupid flimsy go green cases suck and long gone are the days of manuals. Discs are DOA basically because everything needs a day one patch. They did it, they made me almost hate physical games in some roundabout way. Why should I care about these coasters? But I don't enjoy watching this unfold. I'm just trying to be realistic. If the HDD's still weren't so stupidly small on the 9th gen consoles, I hate to say I would highly consider a digital only version perhaps. But then I also can't fully trust Nintendo, Xbox, and Sony to carry over the 9th gen digital libraries into the future. While with Steam/GOG, I can play games that came out in 2023 and games from the 90's. That's some insurance with digital on PC at least and why it's never really stung to lose discs on PC to me. But I don't share that kind of respect with the console makers.
Think that's a wrap for now.
EDIT: One thing is for sure, normal controllers just work. Don't fix what isn't broken. If for some reason we ever evolve to see normal controllers not be the standard... I guess I have a cut off then. No way in heck am I wasting my time playing games on a phone or tablet, gimmicks like the Wiimotes, sticking stupid things on my head. Nasty. That's a chore to me.
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Post by Ex on Aug 30, 2023 9:27:17 GMT -5
>as the guy who could still play 100 more NES Mega Man's It helps that those games are only 2-3 hours long. That makes beating them more appealing, and replaying them not as daunting. Also their control scheme and physics are practically identical throughout, making jumping into subsequent entries a non-issue. >I skipped over like a dozen (almost literally) Assassin's Creed games It may have been literally: gamefaqs.gamespot.com/games/franchise/1058-assassins-creed >Why? Is all I can ask. I'd say because it's an established IP and he's risk averse to pumping millions into a new IP at this time. >Annual releases for ANYTHING to me can kick rocks. I can only tell you that the older you get, the faster time seems to move. For me five years feels more like two. I'll see sequels come out, and be like damn I still haven't played the first game, and it just came out! Only to realize it's been four years since the original game came out. >Realistically we are drowning in games these days 100% >Games could stop coming out for probably a full DECADE and I'd easily be able to keep myself busy with what I own, plan to play Now you're thinking in parallel with my mindset, except the only way to not have games come out for a full decade, is to artificially make that happen for yourself. I'll discuss that more later. >I can regrettably say I'm probably one foot in the waters of a pure digital landscape. Well it's not like that's much of a choice going forward. >If the HDD's still weren't so stupidly small on the 9th gen console I agree they are stupidly small, but as I understand it, you can replace their internal hard drives with far larger aftermarket ones. IIRC with the PS5 you have to buy certain types of SSD to take advantage of its loading speeds. I'm a little fuzzy on this but I vaguely remember reading about that stuff when the PS5 originally debuted. I don't care enough right now to do the research. >playing games on a phone or tablet, gimmicks like the Wiimotes, sticking stupid things on my head. I never minded the Wii Remotes, actually enjoy them depending on the game, though they could have been more ergonomically designed if Nintendo hadn't been so focused on making them similar to TV remotes for non-gamers to grok. That said, to this day I do not enjoy gaming on a smartphone or tablet. I do not like lacking tactile buttons for precision, and the more you touch the screen, the greasier and oil-ier it gets. Especially if you're playing an action game. You end up smearing your fingers around in little puddles of finger grease, it's just gross and dumb. I have used Bluetooth controllers with phones of course, but at that point, I'd rather just be playing a dedicated portable with better games than smartphones have.
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Post by Sarge on Aug 30, 2023 14:35:30 GMT -5
>>Games could stop coming out for probably a full DECADE and I'd easily be able to keep myself busy with what I own, plan to play
>Now you're thinking in parallel with my mindset, except the only way to not have games come out for a full decade, is to artificially make that happen for yourself.
Decade? Try lifetime, haha.
And yeah, there's another M.2 slot on the PS5, and SSD prices are waaaaay down now, so you can upgrade the storage pretty cheaply at this point. Looks like a compatible 2TB drive is like $135-140 at this point. Not too bad at all, honestly, and a fair sight cheaper than when the PS5 launched.
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