Games Inbox: In defence of the PS5 Pro, Xbox layoff total, and Mr Moskeeto in Astro Bot-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

PS5 Pro – has it been treated unfairly? (Sony)

The Friday letters page is disappointed by Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown’s reviews, as one reader questions the importance of frame rates.

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

Passing the buck
A lot of shock about the PS5 Pro price but I’m personally not surprised. Sony must have been paying attention to the prices that base PlayStation 5s were going for on eBay, sold by scalpers upon release. I ended up spending £700 for one.

Either that or I’d have been waiting another six months and I ain’t the most patient of mothers. It’s still cheaper than a top of the range PC. Still won’t have to mess around with getting your controller to work on this that or t’other. I’m talking myself into getting myself one as I type. Blame the scalpers when they made Sony realise such a price point was possible.
geohero (PSN ID)

Losing a Nintendo
What strikes me most about Xbox passing 2,500 layoffs is how many staff they had to begin with. Nintendo’s annual report lists the reporting company as having 2,814 employees, so Microsoft has only got a couple hundred more to go before they can say they’ve cut a Nintendo. The entire group is listed as 7,724 employees, so they’ve already cut a third of an entire Nintendo.

Given Nintendo seem to outperform Microsoft in sales it leaves you wondering how many people Xbox has left and if it’s still quite a lot (acquisitions aside) how they got to so many to begin with.
Tim

Invisible improvement
I don’t get why people are still going on about frame rate on the PS5 Pro if the only real way you can see how smooth the gameplay is, is by slowing the game down. Why does it matter on frame rate if I’m not going to play a whole game in super slow motion? Half the people that wrote in was saying they could only see a difference when it’s was super slow and zoomed in when they weres playing any of the games and showing them side-by-side I couldn’t tell which was which, until I read at the top which was the PS5 Pro.

For me people saying they want high frame rate is beyond me, because if they were running at 30fps or 240fps I wouldn’t know which was which, maybe in my old age I’m going blind but 30fps is still perfect.
David

GC: Frame rates above 30fps are not something you can easily see; the primary difference is how smooth the controls feel – which obviously you can’t show in a video.

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

Limited entertainment
I’d like to thank GameCentral for its review of a much-anticipated game of mine, that is Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown. I had some money saved up in order to buy it and an Xbox Series X.

However, even before I had clicked on your article, I already read a few reviews of it (sorry, I couldn’t wait) and many comments about it.

A lot of people were complaining about connecting to the servers but to be honest, I expected server issues, especially at launch.

Many people trying to get online at the same time is nearly always an issue for new games.

Also, I read that the AI racers cheat by being far too fast even when underclassed and that you can’t even buy property to furnish it and store your cars, which is something that could be done right at the start of the game.

My main gripe, which is an absolute deal breaker for me and many others, is that the game needs an online connection even in single-player.

Always online means I’ll now never buy this game.

Especially after what they did to The Crew, a game I enjoyed.

Because it means no matter how much time or money via DLC you put into it, after nine or so years when they switch the servers off, you’ve lost your progress. And money.

There is nothing to show for it.

I don’t understand why developers do this. All it does is annoy gamers and in my case they’ve lost that £50 plus whatever DLC I would have bought.

I know they will patch in the ability to buy properties, add more cars and clothes for your character, and even a new island (Ibiza) months later but Test Drive Unlimited 2 had these right from the off and that game is 13 years old!

I loved Test Drive Unlimited 2, I really did.

Yes, it had its technical issues, the character models were ugly and the characters themselves were cheeseball corny, but I and many others were able to look past all that and enjoy that game for what it was; a lifestyle game, not a racing game.

And I still listen to itss licensed soundtrack to this day.

Until things change drastically, I’ll go back to Forza Horizon 4 (and 5).

As regards the money I have saved up, it will go towards a Swiitch TwU. In blue.
LeighDappa

GC: The embargo was actually last Wednesday, so we would’ve had the review ready much earlier, but it just did not work at all until a couple of days ago – at least not on console.

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown – a right royal letdown (Nacon)

It’s how much?!
I was working and so I missed the PS5 Pro reveal. A friend filled me in on the price and I was in disbelief! I then spent the next couple of hours thinking what a rip-off, only to then read your article and realise that the £700 was the price for the digital version.

Wow! So, another £100 for the disc drive add-on and £25 for the stand. But it’s quite poetic isn’t it: £825 for everything, which is the actual capacity of the SSD, if I remember correctly? They’ve gone full circle. How, err… clever.
NatorDom

Halo product
I do agree with the consensus building around PS5 Pro generally, I mean I certainly wouldn’t think about buying it. I have to say though, the way a lot of gamers are losing their rags over it is kind of ridiculous for an upgraded console they don’t even need. You’d think Sony had gone around their houses and spat on their dinners. So will play devil’s advocate for a bit.

Firstly, the price. Given how much high-end PC graphics cards go for I’m not surprised and prices in that market have been going up and up for years. It’s also worth remembering that manufacturing costs aren’t going down this generation, due to demand for chips and complexity of the new hardware designs. So, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo will have to pay the going rate and can’t get better deals like they could previously.

As for the machine itself, it’s a niche device like PS4 Pro, which everyone needs to remember only made up around 10% of the PlayStation 4 base. That’s less than 15 million units and comparable to the PS Vita or Wii U. If the PS5 Pro hits a similar ratio then that’s less than 10 million units on current sales; Steam Deck numbers. Maybe we should be calling this a ‘halo product’, the kind of awful phrase marketers use to describe something designed to showcase a company as being the top in its field more than sell lots of units. The PS5 Pro will certainly be the most powerful console on the market for years to come, after all.

Sony seem like they’re trying to set up PlayStation as a kind of Apple of gaming. Apple successfully dragged first home computers and then smartphones out of the hands of the geeks and into the mainstream through their hardware recognition. Sony has been trying to expand PlayStation as a hardware brand with mixed results for a while. We’ve had the flop PlayStation VR2, the surprisingly successful PlayStation Portal, those high-end headphones, and now this.

Maybe even the divisive design of the machine itself is part of this. To that end the PlayStation 5 Pro is more like an iPhone 15 Pro or an iPad Pro and we shouldn’t think of it like a console in the traditional sense. Why does anyone get the Pro iPhone over the standard one when they use them to do the same things? Those reasons feel like they apply here. It’s something that people who are happy to spend money on being at the bleeding edge will buy, while everyone else just gets the standard model.
Marc

Typo intended
Can’t help but feel that had Sony unleashed a souped-up Bloodborne in tandem with the PayStation 5 Pro reveal, it would’ve taken the sting out of that ludicrous pricing tier. Just a smidgen.
Galvanized Gamer

GC: Maybe next generation.

GTA 6 machine
As someone who plays in performance mode, I was into the sales pitch of the PS5 Pro at the start of the reveal. A no compromise quality mode, 60 fps with enhanced ray-tracing box on this gen’s games. At £700 with a 2TB SSD that’s a bargain.

The trouble is I don’t believe it will do that. If it ran every game released this gen, including GTA 6, at that level it would be a steal at £700. But after the PS4 Pro, and knowing what’s achievable with a similar powered GPU and CPU, I don’t think it will, even accounting for custom PlayStation hardware and optimisation for it. It doesn’t help the reveal proceeded to mainly show early PlayStation 5 games that already look great on PlayStation 5 at 60 fps and a PS5 Pro enhanced version of a PlayStation 5 remaster of a PlayStation 4 game. It was unconvincing.

Much of the PlayStation 4 games catalogue is not even PlayStation 5 enhanced on the base machine and still runs at 30fps on that, never mind the PS4 Pro. I’m expecting the PS5 Pro to be the same for this gen’s games. I think the initial batch of ‘PS5 Pro Enhanced’ labelled games is around 50.

I would have to spend a lot more on PC to get what the PS5 Pro is advertising but at least I know it would mean those settings on every game. I also don’t have to wait for a game to be patched or put on a Pro list either. Even if my PC couldn’t play it at those settings, I know the settings are baked into the PC version and when I get the hardware I can play at the higher settings without waiting on a patch or remaster or whatever.

So, beyond what questions the PS5 Pro asks about Sony’s priorities and the direction of the high-end triple-A console market in general I’m not convinced it’ll be worth it for its USP of quality, 60 fps, enhanced ray-tracing gaming. But who knows, maybe Sony have a super impressive State of Play waiting in the wings to show it off.

So, who’s this thing for? I think PlayStation fans who really love and are invested in the ecosystem and want the best way to game in that. No problem with that, I think they will get a lot out of the Pro. But as has been pointed out that’s a very niche product. I think most are hoping Sony just start talking about new first party games soon.
Simundo

GC: Yeah, there’s no way that it’ll playing everything, least of all GTA 6, at 60fps. We thought at first Cerny was going to say that performance and quality modes were unnecessary on PS5 Pro, but he stopped well short of that.

Inbox also-rans
Xbox chief Phil Spencer sent out an email to employees this morning with the subject line ‘Changes to Microsoft Gaming.’ Brutal and cold and another 650 lose their jobs, what a mess.
TWO MACKS

I assume it’s Mr Moskeeto pestering Astro Bot in the bath. What a great game. Which reminds me, I must go back and finish Mr Moskeeto.
Ed

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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.

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