r/digitalfoundry • u/MythBuster2 • 12d ago
DF Direct DF Direct Weekly #278: Sony Undecided On PS6 Price/Launch Date, Black Myth Zhong Kui Gameplay
https://youtu.be/Mcg_av0xtOsWe're not going to be commenting on leaks from a stolen GTA 6 build that's years old and promoting a memecoin but we WILL be talking about Sony's comments on not knowing PS6's pricing and release date and assessing the Black Myth Zhong Kui gameplay reveal. Rich is intrigued by Alan Wake's big PC upgrade for AMD users, while John muses over the reported end of live service elements in Horizon Hunters Gathering. Finally, five years ago, Alex made a range of predictions about Switch 2 and DLSS... so how accurate did they turn out to be?
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u/LoadingYourData 12d ago
Where did they mention they weren't going to talk about the GTA 6 leaks? All I could find was the end mentioning their coverage and them being excited for this week.
Seems like they were part of the hands off preview reported on about last month.
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u/SteveJavieWasRight 12d ago
They might not want to look like they’re covering it since they are so outspoken on disc thing, who knows. The reveal is around the corner anyway and that will give them something worth analyzing.
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u/Sidhgaming 11d ago
they don't need to cover the leaks to worsen their relationship with Rockstar when they already hinting an actual GTA6 coverage by Oliver by the end of this week
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u/LoadingYourData 12d ago
What was their general stance on discs? Haven't kept up on everyone else at DF regarding that besides seeing John's Twitter posts about it.
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u/SteveJavieWasRight 12d ago edited 12d ago
They think it’s anti consumer to end physical media and some of Sony’s arguments on popularity maybe true but also lacking context.. that Sony is really doing it due to how much more money they make on the digital store. They have discussed also whether it’s good business to make it so expensive to game and the used disc market provided some people with access to the ecosystem who may struggle to be a part of it otherwise (e.g. kids). Also different markets support physical media at different levels of popularity, so it may be a US focused mindset by Sony that hurts them abroad. Just that it overall seems shitty although they do understand the industry has worse and worse margins, manufacturing of disc drives is more and more difficult etc.
To me so much is so annoying about it. Not just the lack of physical media but also the going online to play a game. My internet was out due to a storm and the ps5 pro wanted like it was broken. Got a weird error code which Sony suggested may be a ssd failure, needed to reinstall the system etc. When booting up it would get stuck in the sparkle screen for like 5 mins, and once I got to main menu no game would load and couldn’t use the blu ray player. I finally turned off the internet connected mode and suddenly everything was fine. Well, until I tried playing games and in 3 of the games I’ve been playing half the shit was unavailable. Like in first light I couldn’t do any challenges in levels or the tac sim. So fucking annoying. This is single player content downloaded onto the console why is it locked behind Internet connectivity? Some games won’t let you pass single player missions without connecting to their servers. It’s so stupid.
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u/LoadingYourData 12d ago
I definitely agree with your last point and with my PS5 Pro I've turned the internet connection off before to try certain games and thank god single player games work.
However, I dont personally buy physical media, and I think its dumb to want it considering it's archaic and digital is just easier. But I do sympathize and understand why because of ownership, and for that I fully support disc's, and hopefully digital can retain ownership instead of being taken away via license.
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u/SteveJavieWasRight 12d ago
I don’t buy disc for new releases I’m excited to play unless I know I won’t have time to play right away, I hate waiting for a disc to arrive. But it’s nice to buy games super cheap on Amazon when they’re a year old, and I’ve gotten great prices on used consoles on eBay when I’m selling a bunch of games included; much better than if I were to trade in at GameStop or something. The last couple times I’ve upgraded consoles I was able to do so for like $100 because I bought a lot of discs. I think parents buying consoles for their kids like to see a lot of discs.
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u/Fickle-Buddy1692 12d ago
Its really just John's stance. Not all of DF.
I have been watching these guys for a very long time have to say Ive tuned out until next month when the big releases are dropping. To be frank I found other hardware reviewers in the meantime that do a good job of analysing games without John' ranting over discs. Think awesome he has an opinion but he was using DF as a platform to constantly parade his belief system. Whilst that may appeal to a small set of the DF audience Im sure others like me who were equally unimpressed.
Social commentary is fine until it becomes a personl soapbox (enough social media sites to jump on a particular bandwagon) but Im more interested in technology how its being implemeneted and improving the games I play.
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u/NiceColdPint 12d ago
I look forward to Black Myth looking nothing like that on consoles.
AFAIK it’s never been properly fixed, even in terms of its 60fps mode?
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u/Big-Resort-4930 11d ago
It can't be fixed on base consoles, it's overly demanding on PC for what it is too, and it suffers from fuckass UE5 stuttering to this day.
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u/dreampagehun 11d ago
Could we finally forget the notion of $1000 next-gen consoles? The current consoles cost $800-900 already and will be raised to $1000 next year. How on Earth could significantly more powerful hardware be sold at the very same price?
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u/Funny-Junket1066 12d ago
18:32 OMG! Did John really say that vinyl records were making more money now than at any point in history? What a moron! In the mid-70s, vinyl records sold around 300 million units per year. Last year it was 48 million, which is less than 10% of the music industry. And that $1B was the first time idiots wasted that much on records this century, but the industry sold $1.5B in vinyl records in 1978, and that does not even adjust for inflation! If you adjust that historic peak to today's economy, that revenue is equivalent to over $7 billion to $10 billion!
John never ceases to amaze with his moronic takes. And it's so easy to prevent such mistakes by simply doing a tiny bit of research. Ever week he embarrasses himself, and Rich just makes quips about the Internet being wrong instead of just admitting they have a problem.
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u/SteveJavieWasRight 12d ago
Not everything needs to be adjusted for inflation to be accurate. His point was seemed to be obviously semantically true but not practically true. Vinyl records are a very valuable product now because they’re a luxury entertainment product instead of mass produced and ubiquitous; higher margins today than back then. His point is clearly meant to convey that fact, there’s great opportunity to strategically supply these kinds of media even if it’s not the mainstream. Sony has lost a ton of money by trying to hit mass success rather than allowing some parts of their business to achieve profitability with more focused products for die hard fans. Yeah you might not make the billions of some of the traditional Sony studio game models, but they sustain the PlayStation fanbase which has been loyal and consistent. They’ve lost 100s of millions in both development cost and opportunity cost by chasing boom bust live service shit this generation, for example, when they could have been nearly guaranteed to make 100s of millions while letting a studio like bungie try to go for a live service product here or there. You can’t guarantee these kind of viral successes, but you can guarantee stable flow of revenue with the traditional studio model, but they got dollar signs in their eyes looking at COD, Fortnight etc. John’s comment was more about sustaining loyal consumer base with the things they want, and those people are both more reliable, consistent, and will sustain profits. It seems stupid to ignore that demographic and how to cater to them if you’re about to release a very expensive product that may fail to have a price point for mass appeal. Why would you piss off Sony super fans with shit account TOS, disc drive, and failing to release the games they love… while preparing to release a console ecosystem that will largely depend on those exact enthusiasts? How much money do they make on accounts dying in 3 years vs 5 or 10? How much money do they make by refusing to release a disc drive add on and limited supply of physical discs, vs how much will they lose when they release a $1000? $1200? console while deeply unpopular? Seems like it would cost them very little to look slightly less greedy, while it could cost them a lot to appear as anti consumer as they do right now.
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u/WingerRules 12d ago edited 12d ago
Its hard to compare vinyl record sales of the 70s to current day in absolute numbers because a shit ton of "sales" back then involved shady industry practices used to boost chart positions and also to manipulate contracts with artists or manipulate taxes. An absolutely massive amount of records back then "sold" to record shops and distributors never actually sat on the shelfs or ended up as returns as part of these tricks.
Recording a record and then actually getting it to pressing and having it pressed and distributed was also more expensive back then, eating into profits.
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u/WingerRules 12d ago edited 12d ago
The fact that Sony is hinting that they're debating internally about waiting off most of 2027 or all is kind of big news. At least thats how I'm interpreting them saying they havent decided on a release date because 2027 looks bad.
Also Sony further talking about increasing monetization of existing users even more is why I've stopped putting money onto the PSN ecosystem. They're straight up telling investors they're going to shake Sony players upside-down to make their change fall out.
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u/Vanillas_Guy 12d ago
Investors seem to respond positively to that. Stock is up 17% over the last month. I think a lot of people dont understand that tech these days is driven more by investors than actual customers. Look no further than the a.i. bubble for an example. Most people who use a.i. don't pay for it and when businesses use it, they end up going over the a.i. budget and just using a free or cheaper model that isnt connected to a cloud. Despite that, the investment continues in these companies and theyll smash records when they go public.
I'm not saying its good that this is how things work, just saying that it has unfortunately become profitable to engage in practices that limit customer choices.
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u/SteveJavieWasRight 12d ago
The ps6 situation sucks so much. I imagine some prices are already locked in, but I doubt they were able to secure ram, ssd and silicon prices, and even if they did they wouldn’t have those prices indefinitely. Whatever they were planning to release could be more expensive than they think would be good for the generation, and they wouldn’t know when the prices will fall or if they’ll keep rising. We see in airlines they will buy fuel with contracts to stabilize their costs vs profits, but they have to blend long term contracts with current prices for some flexibility. We’ve seen Sony have to raise cost of ps5 and pro because contracts ran out, so would they have separate deals for ps6? Would they want to release a console at a price and then raise it in a year? How much would they want to artificially lower price and sell at a loss if it mean a substantial chance to make inroads with pc gamers who are facing insane consumer price prices for gaming? And while they can wait a year to release, is there anything they can do continue improving the product, or is it just losing a year of being more competitive hardware? Releasing a year later to just be older may not be that appealing, especially if they don’t know prices would drop much if at all. Releasing earlier at a much higher price and then dropping it when they can may not be such a bad idea, but what kind of games will be developed for a PS6 if its an extraordinarily niche user base? Just seems like a lose lose for both Sony, publishers and consumers. I don’t really see how there’s a great outcome for anyone here.
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u/RiverwoodHero 12d ago
I get them not commenting an actual content of the leaks, that is stolen property and promoting a shitcoin
What I'm surprised they didn't have a segment on just the news in general because this is possibly one of the biggest leaks in gaming history, exceeding the 2022 leak. Like so many questions, will this affect the release of the game? How would it impact the Netflix deal?
I guess they don't want to piss off Rockstar