Eruanno

I think one of the things that made Playstation so successful in the past two generations has actually been retail. We, the "internet gamers" know about the new game releases because we keep up with them, but I would argue a lot of people who only play Call of Duty, GTA, sports games etc. still go to physical stores and see "oooh, a PS5 and some games, I want that!"

Xbox meanwhile has been backing off from this strongly with their focus on digital/Game Pass and I think a lot of that stems from not having visibility to the general public. The Xbox corner at most stores is tiny these days because there frankly isn't that much to sell. Here's a console, here's a Game Pass prepaid card, here are a handful of games. Meanwhile, the Playstation/Nintendo shelves are STACKED because they have games to sell.

Sony may save some money in the short run on disc printing/shipping/taking larger margins on digital sales, but I think in the long run they are going to hurt themselves a LOT in ways that are difficult to calculate because they will sharply lose popularity. I don't think a digital-only Playstation 6 for $1000+ with games that cost an average of 20-30% more per copy that don't get visibility to the public eye will be a good run for them.

It's such a dumb thing to kill physical media. Sony should have at the very least have offered a solution. Like "unfortunately, we're going to be winding down physical media but we're working on a solution to make sure your existing library remains compatible" or just... something. The rumor that Xbox is working on a way to "convert" your discs to digital ownership could have been a way to follow it up.

The way the current announcement is worded is just "discs are out, buy digital or suck it, bye" which just feels so... offensive to their existing audience (and partners) in a really unpleasant way.

@Kingsbane For now. Eventually, they will stop letting you download your stuff. Sony's exact quote is:
"That means new content purchases will no longer be possible once the PlayStation Store closes on these devices. To ease the transition, players will still be able to download previously purchased content after the closing date for the foreseeable future."
When is that? A year? Two years? Five years?

So on the one hand, they are saying "digital is the future, buy digital!" but on the other hand they are saying "your ownership of anything digital is limited and we will eventually remove access to it" by shuttering the PS3/PSP store.

How long until they shutter the store for PS4 games? How long for PS5 games? What about PS6 games, will they eventually just disappear from existence when they shutter the PS6 store since there is no way to install them from a disc format? Are those PS6 exclusives just dead when the PS6 store shuts down since they aren't doing PC ports anymore?
And what about games we already own, will the PS6 just not be compatible with physical PS4/PS5 games? Is there a conversion program to claim digital copies, or is it just "haha, screw you, buy your games again"? Because that certainly sounds like a poop sandwich for your customers who bought physical copies that are now incompatible with future hardware.

I'm going to make a completely wild guesstimation that GTA VI will in fact have a 30 and a 60 FPS mode on all consoles except maybe Series S.

Honestly, Rockstar is probably commandeering more engineering to this one game than any other studio can dream of. They will optimize the everloving crap out of this game, if nothing else but to prepare it for a future PC version. Can you imagine everyone losing their minds because a Ryzen 3600/3700 (rough console equivalent PC CPUs) can barely run the game at 30 FPS?

@MattGPT True. I keep forgetting that US prices live in this weird wonderland where something costs, say, $70 but then it's another $5 or something that just "doesn't count" because they don't include VAT in pricing.

This is 100% to stave off any second hand copies from appearing in the market. You want to play GTA 6? Great, you’re buying it from Rockstar. Selling your copy? Nope. This also gives them a retail presence while maintaining release control.
Sigh. Boo.
Oh, and since it's $80 it's going to be at least €90-100 in Europe because the conversion rates for games are always complete ass.

@AmazingCass Right, but I'm not wondering why would anyone preorder ever. I get that there are preorder bonuses or preloads and stuff. What I'm wondering is why the heck would anyone preorder a game in June that doesn't come out in November? There's nothing to gain by preordering something months and months in advance.

Why would I preorder a game months and months ahead of launch when it's bound to have a gazillion copies (and digital options) with no issue?
I mean, it's cute for marketing but super pointless as a consumer.

With the current prices on digital games, any console without some alternate way to purchase games is out. Where I live, digital console games cost over €80 on launch day and that's just not happening. The only way I can still buy games without breaking the bank is by shopping for disc copies which typically retail for €10-20 less.

Oh for ***** sake, AMD. I want to like you, but you're so good at shooting yourselves in the foot recently for no reason.

@matmartin Well, good news! FSR 4 is coming to 7000-series GPUs in July.

I remain in the camp that the Steam Machine is a very cool idea but it is ever so slightly lacking in specs. If it had been a newer GPU with FSR 4 support and ~12-16 GB VRAM I think it would have been an excellent deal. 8 GB VRAM in 2026 is just not feasible for a device promising 4K output (even upscaled). Hell, I have a 12 GB GPU today, and it's juuuuust enough for some games.

As it stands now, and with the RAM/SSD prices it's just kind of a cool idea on paper but doesn't seem quite what I want in reality.
I still really like the form factor and all the ideas around it. I hope Valve continues developing it in the future and that the prices can drop to reasonable levels.

I'm imagining some Capcom developer opening up the first Digital Foundry article and going "wait, that's not the resolution we meant, woops" and sneaking it into the next update.

This is by far my favorite Assassin's Creed game through the years, so this definitely has me intrigued. The PC settings don't actually seem that unreasonable (unless you're cranking it to the supermax) - I hope the consoles can follow along on that same note.

I'm so thankful that I finally splurged on a new PC build back in June 2025. The 7600X/32 GB RAM/2 TB SSD/5070 build I went for back then cost me around €1500 then and the exact same build is now well north of €2000.

As much as I grumble about Nvidia, this kind of stuff is actually genuinely cool. Super Resolution upgrades being "upgradeable" through a variety of generations of their GPUs (at varying performance costs) is genuinely an awesome feature.
I really wish that Sony would have implemented something like this with the PS5 Pro/PSSR, letting games simply use a newer version without game intervention.

I feel like I really dodged a bullet with the RAM-a-geddon. I built a new PC (many years overdue!) back in the summer and the 32 GB DDR5 kit I picked up was around €95. That same exact kit now costs €450! >

I'm pretty curious if there are any resolution differences between the modes with unlocked frame rates. We know from before the game was running at roughly ~1080p-1440p in RT Pro 60 for example, does enabling unlocked frame rate move the needle more towards 1080p more often in favor of higher FPS?
Also curious what the graphics settings/resolution differences are for the Balanced modes.