Games Inbox: How much will the PlayStation 6 be?-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

It’s probably not going to be cheap (YouTube)

The Tuesday letters page pits Indiana Jones against Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, as a reader is disappointed there’s going to be a Last Of Us Part 3.

To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

PLEASE NOTE: We are currently preparing our content for over the Christmas period and will need a number of Reader’s Features, so if you’ve been meaning to write one but never quite got round to it we could do with as many as possible before Monday, December 23.

Rising expenses
A lot of valid points recently, including the Reader’s Feature, regarding the fact that there’s really nowhere for the next generation of consoles to go, if publishers don’t want everything, from the games to the consoles, costing even more money. There’s a point at which things become just too expensive and I feel the £700 PS5 Pro crosses that line. I realise it’s only aimed at super fans but the fact that it even exists, and its improvements are so minor, I feel is a sign that publishers should stop and take stock of what they’re doing.

That may actually be what they’re doing too, with this talk of portables. But, like everyone else, I can’t imagine a future where Xbox or Sony decide to make their next console less powerful than the current one in order to fit it into a handheld device. That’s so against their entire mindset I just cannot see it ever happening.

The problem is not only is it virtually impossible to make a PlayStation 5 handheld but the closer they get the more expensive it’s going to be. Do you want to spend £700 or anything even close to that on a handheld? Even the most expensive Steam Deck model is less than £600, and they’ve only sold a few million worldwide of those.

And if the PlayStation 6 is a normal console, that goes under your TV, how much is that going to be? Given current prices it’s going to be at least £600 and I think that’s too much even for fairly committed gamers. Sony and Microsoft have backed themselves against a wall and I really don’t know where they go from here.
Danson

Franchise battle
It’s not a great measurement for a game that’s probably going to be played more on consoles but Indiana Jones And The Great Circle currently has an all-time peak on Steam of 12,138 people. That’s not bad, compared to some recent flops, but it’s miles behind something like Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, which has a total of 186,199.

I think that’s been one of the most popular single-player games on PC this year, so it shows how high it can get but its 24 hour peak is only 8,861, so it was clearly a bit of a flash in the pan, as I imagine most single-player games are.

It does give an indication of which IP are more popular with modern gamers though, and I bet they spent 10 times more making a game based on Indiana Jones than they did Warhammer. Probably not the best decision in hindsight but at least they can say that the game reviewed better than Space Marine 2 – although not by that much.
Zeiss

Running the shop
RE: Colm. It’s true Valve haven’t really pushed the Steam Deck hard in terms of marketing, etc., but what they successfully did was kickstart an entire market that didn’t really exist previously.

Handheld PC gaming is now a market in itself and everyone is clamouring to try get in on the act, and even Microsoft and Sony are trying to resurrect handheld gaming.

For Valve, it’s not even important that their console would be huge seller, if they can convince others to follow suit and produce similar machines that are successful, they’d be ecstatic, at it’s more people to buy from Steam store.
Kiran

GC: That’s a very good point.

Email your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Physics is hard
Just finished Sniper Elite 5. Didn’t like it at the start but due to being too late to refund it, I learned to like and even enjoy it.

I would say however that the x-ray and death animations need a lot of work. The way enemies go flying when shot needs an overhaul. If the bullet flight and drop, etc. are realistic why can’t the body physics be the same?

I’d also like to know why I always seem to shoot out the teeth of almost every enemy. It’s probably my aiming prowess so that issue is on me.

I’ve played every game so far since 2, even playing the VR game, so I do enjoy them but I need it to change just ever so slightly. Helmets shouldn’t fly off when penetrated. Bodies should slump when there’s a head shot and vehicles shouldn’t just come to a sudden stop when hitting mines.

I’m aware it’s not an AAA game series, so I can forgive some of the issue but maybe they can tweak it a bit for the next numbered game in the series.
Bobwallett

No charge
It was mentioned in the Inbox a couple of months ago, but Shogun Showdown is another (currently PC only) indie game that’s building an excellent reputation and hasn’t been reviewed by many yet. It’s also free just now if you have Amazon Prime, so maybe that gives it less of a business case to include it in your 2024 wrap-up reviews, as a lot of us wouldn’t necessarily need to decide whether or not to pick it up.

I haven’t played it yet, but my understanding is it’s a 2D turn-based strategy with roguelite and deck building elements. It’s now sitting on my Steam Deck and even if you’re not going to get a chance to review it, I just wanted to flag that it’s up for grabs for anyone that has a Prime sub.
Panda

Cost cutting
Good on these Call Of Duty voice actors quitting the game, if Activision is holding them to ransom over cloning their voice in AI, and just using that, I wouldn’t have anything to do with them either. I’m still shocked that the moment we get something close to AI the only thing anyone seems to want to do with it is replace artists. You know… those famously underpaid workers that getting rid of will probably not save any money at all and yet will make your product drastically worse?

What recent movie have you been to where the worst thing wasn’t the script and yet now they want to make them even worse by having an AI write them? And they want to have all the art in video games done by AI, so it always looks the same? And now voiceovers too? So they never sound quite human and always slightly off.

The guest stars and cameos in Zombies mode used to be one of the big appeals, where they’d say that Michael Hasselhoff was in it or whoever, but now they’re all just AI? What’s the point, you’re destroying one of your major selling points just to save a few pounds. Not to mention ending up with an inferior product.
Focus

Predictable outcome
I know everyone said before it came out that it was weird Konami was making so many Silent Hill games, given none of them had ever been that big before, but it’s still sad to see that Silent Hill 2 doesn’t seem to have done that great.

I don’t know anyone amongst my casual gaming friends that has heard of it, and it doesn’t seem to have done much in terms of sales or streaming coverage or any of the other measurements we could use. I remember GC saying the original wasn’t that big a hit so I’m not sure why Konami expected that to change with the remake, but it’s a shame because it’s a really great game.
Landon

Same old, same old
Why am I not surprised to find that talk of The Last Of Us Part 3 has gone from probably never happening to a matter of if and not when. It seems only a few months ago Naughty Dog was saying that they’d only do a third game if they had a good idea for it and now the implication is they do have an idea, and they’ll get round to it soon. Or, rather, Sony saw how popular the TV show was and made Naughty Dog do it.

I do feel Naughty Dog has been the biggest victim of the increasing time it takes to make video games. They’ve only worked on two different franchises since the PlayStation 2 era, both of them with very similar gameplay, and now they’re being dragged back to one of them again, one that didn’t need one sequel let alone two.

Most people at that company will have known nothing but Uncharted and The Last Of Us and that seems such a waste. I hope they are working on a new IP and it’s something completely different, but even if it does involve dragons, or whatever, why do I get the feeling you’ll still be creeping around throwing bricks to distract them?
Gunther

Inbox also-rans
To be honest, I’m surprised anyone still makes VR games any more considering how few people own the headsets. How are these companies ever going to make their money back on that new Batman game or this Behemoth game?
Lempton

I can’t help but laugh at how these GTA 6 stories about fans are getting crazier with every passing week. I don’t think some of these people are going to make it to next autumn. The next trailer is going to make them worse, not better!
Bircher

Email your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.

You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader’s Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot.

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