Games Inbox: Could the Activision acquisition destroy PlayStation?

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Real problem
While Sony is starting to sound a little hysterical about the whole Activision Blizzard thing, I agree that I don’t think either company is honest or sensible. Obviously PlayStation can thrive without Call Of Duty, but I think the rest of GC’s article hints at what Sony’s real concern is: that they can’t thrive when Microsoft owns so many high-quality developers with hundreds of employees each.

Whatever you think of them, Bethesda, Activision, and Blizzard are major league developers that have multiple giant studios working for them. I think the number of boots on the ground (bums in cubicles?) would immediately outnumber Sony and I really believe them when they say they can’t afford to spend as much on games as Microsoft.

That’s what they’re really concerned about and in that sense their attempts to block the takeover make perfect sense. They’re not doing it to upset Xbox fanboys, they’re doing it because it’s a real expansion crisis for them. The lack of Call Of Duty won’t destroy them, but the deal as a whole could.
Grackle

Need to feel bloated
Yes, with this latest news I think it’s pretty obvious that Need For Speed ​​is dead and Criterion probably is too. That or they’re turned into one of those lifeless assistant studios that Activision has so many of. It’s a shame for Criterion, but there are a lot of developers in Guildford (my parents still live there) and it looks like a lot of them will be picked up by this new studio.

The question of what I need to do to make arcade racers more popular, I just don’t know. The obvious one, which I think EA will go for when they make a new game, is just copy Forza Horizon, but I don’t really see the point. These games already do everything they want and I bet they are super expensive to make.

Personally, I’d rather go the other way and reduce everything to just selecting races from a menu and jumping straight into them, like the early Burnout games. I don’t see that happening though, not for a big budget release. It now has to be bloat, bloat, bloat to justify the cost of the game itself and what it costs to make it. That approach really limits what kind of games are being made right now.
Treshina

Generation name
I think we can all agree that the most important thing for the next generation Xbox is to give it a decent name. Xbox Series X and S are so clunky and unmemorable it’s ridiculous. They also leave no clear route for what should be called next. Will that be the Y and Z? And when that’s over, what then? Circle around to A?

They should have just called this generation the Xbox 5 and who cares if they skipped a track? Though I suppose you might as well say who cares Xbox consoles have such stupid names? I mean, look at them in a row: Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S. Who makes this stuff up?!
caster

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Early assessment
As for people getting Resident Evil 4 early, I’d love to get a game in the mail early (fingers crossed for the new Zelda), but I wouldn’t post spoilers. As annoying as spoilers are, I think the most annoying thing about early release games is rating embargoes.

I imagine you and other game journalists have prepared the review for Resident Evil 4 and are ready to publish, but can’t because of the embargo. So we have a ridiculous situation where I can get the (often biased) opinion of a random YouTuber, but not respected reviewers because games shipped too early and it happens over and over again.
match7884
PS: RE4 stands for ‘Release Early’. I’m sorry, I’ll get my coat.

GC: Publishers sometimes change an embargo at the last minute if there’s a major leak, though we’ve never known it would make a difference for more than a few days. Capcom not for Resident Evil 4.

Lost shop
RE: Email from Bobwallet. I think the only way you can access/view the PlayStation 3 games on your PSN account is through the PlayStation 3 console in the PlayStation 3 Store or the menu to re-download games you’ve purchased to PlayStation 3.

I think the option to watch PlayStation 3 games you own on PlayStation App, PlayStation 4 console and the
The PlayStation website was taken down a while ago. There was a workaround to access the PlayStation 3 store via a PC a while back, but I don’t know if you can still use that option and I’ve never tried it.

I used to buy/view my PlayStation 3 games from the PS Store website, but that option is not available now. A few games I bought on PlayStation 3 gave me a free PlayStation 4 copy (cross-buy), but not many did. I think Hotline Miami is one that did.
Andrew J .
PS. For 600 Nintendo Points and £1.99 you can get three classic Game Boy posters of Super Mario Land 2, Zelda: Link’s Awakening and Metroid 2 from the UK Nintendo Store.
PPS: Thanks for the great article on the Wii U and 3DS stores.

Early lead
I can’t imagine EA being overly concerned about the possibility of a rival FIFA game being released, they’ve probably worked unopposed for years to get people to recognize EA Sports FC as the new name.

It would have been different if they lost the license 20 years ago. For starters, they would have shared shelf space with PES, Virtua Soccer, This Is Football, and a dozen other realistic soccer games. Plus, someone would probably have bought the license in a heartbeat and either rushed out a feature-lite version for next year and a full version the following year, or more likely rebranded an existing rival.

Today, however, none of that works. EA’s offerings are pretty much the only choice out there and it can take five years to make a big budget game from scratch. I wouldn’t expect a new FIFA to come long before the next generation of consoles, and by then we’ll all be used to EA Sports FC, nonsense name and all.
TGN professor

Invisible place
Great review of WWE 2K23 by the way. I’m a fan of the spectacle of wrestling, but not so much the games, but I’d take the plunge this time after your review.

The real question for us wrestling fans, of course, is: Did they add John Cena’s new bald spot that he recently sported?
highway 77

The Last of Us Part 2.5
It’s easy to see why, given how little they’ve talked about it, but I think some people are underestimating how important The Last Of Us multiplayer game will be to the future of the series. Naughty Dog keeps saying there will be a lot of story elements in it and while they haven’t said what they are, I think there’s a good chance it’s Ellie and/or Abby.

It all depends on the time frame it’s set in but this could be set up for The Last Of Us Part 3 sort of a stopgap because they know they won’t get around to that for a while but enough to keep people interested and guess where it will all lead.

While the story could end with part 2, I think the obvious thing to do for the third, and I assume the last, game is Ellie investing herself in finding a cure and making sure that it happens. She may not get personal redemption, but she can still do some good going back to the first game.

Maybe Naughty Dog will think that sounds like too much of a happy ending, but for me I think it could be quite satisfying.
Olliephant

Inbox is also running
I agree, Far Cry 5 seems to be over five years old. I think they pump these things out so fast you lose track of time. Waiting a few years for Far Cry 7 seems like a good idea.
Burnside

Glad Shuhei Yoshida is getting a BAFTA award. I wish we saw him more these days. I feel like he was sidelined when Jim Ryan took over and had to make the best of it. I think he would be a much better figurehead for PlayStation.
Frank Castle

Hot topic this week
The topic for this weekend’s Inbox was suggested by reader Korey, who asks what’s the longest you haven’t played video games on a regular basis?

Maybe you’re a lapsed gamer and lost interest for a while, but if that’s the case, what pushed you away and what attracted you back? Or maybe it was just a money issue or something related to work that kept you from playing?

Do you consider gaming an important part of your life or is it just something you pay attention to when a certain game grabs you? When you became interested in games later in life, what did you eventually notice?

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The fine print
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