We Talk Over: The PlayStation 5 September Event (The Price One!)

Alex nailing it!

I wonder what the launch games will be...

The $399 for the discless version makes sense because they will make more money on the back end because the won’t have to share their game profits with retailers.

@pocketmon: They posted the first-party launch games on PS blog

Action starts at 15:30

Haven't played through a FF game since X.

That XVI footage looks to change that streak.

Why did they half-use the avengers theme for Hogwarts Legacy? That was super lame. Game looks good though.

@pocketmon: https://blog.playstation.com/2020/09/16/playstation-5-launches-in-november-starting-at-399-for-ps5-digital-edition-and-499-for-ps5-with-ultra-hd-blu-ray-disc-drive/

- Astro’s Playroom (Japan Studio) – pre-installed on PS5

- Demon’s Souls (Bluepoint Games / Japan Studio)

- Destruction All Stars (Lucid Games / XDEV)

- Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales (Insomniac Games)

- Sackboy A Big Adventure (Sumo Digital / XDEV) –

Have to say... utterly dreadful behaviour from Sony to just quietly announce that Spider-Man: MM and Horizon: Forbidden West are now PS4 games too. Just so happens to get out there hours before pre-orders and they didn't have the guts to own that on their showcase? Consumers should have this info well in advance - especially when many of them already have the means to play these games without spending hundreds of dollars/pounds/euros/etc. When I get a next-gen console, it's most definitely going to be a Series X now.

EDIT: And Sackboy too.

ANOTHER EDIT: The words of Jim Ryan (SIE President and CEO) in May 2020 when asked about Microsoft's cross-generational approach to Xbox One/Series X:

He had his opportunity to spell out that they had cross-generational games (a good thing for people in this trying time, in my opinion!) and decided instead to stick the knife into Microsoft knowing full well that most of their first-party PS5 launch games would be cross-generational. I mean, he's the boss; he would have known they were launching these games on PS4 even then!

Not just that people are living in a financial crisis and already feel a peer pressure to have the newest things and then you surreptitiously tell some of them: 'PSST! You don't actually need a PS5 to play most of our first-party launch games - pass it along, will ya? But don't shout it from the rooftops, okay?'

Dishonesty and insensitivity are my biggest turn offs - hence why I can't get off on why I'm so angered by this behaviour.

$100 mark up for a Blu ray player...makes sense?

A bit of clarification: Brad said Nvidia 3080s are "going for $800-$900 if you can even find one for that price". Not sure where he got that from for a couple of reasons. 1. The 3080's are not currently for sale, in fact they go on sale tomorrow. 2. They are not going for $800-$900, yes there are third party cards (Asus, Zotac, etc) which are higher priced. But this is always the case as they all have a range of quality... For example, every single one of them has a SKU which is priced only a few dollars ($720) more than the $699 founders card. 3 If he was referring to ebay, ebay is currently full of people who are selling pre-orders... except there is no such thing as a 3080 pre-order, Nvidia has explicitly forbid them. In other words, those sellers are selling a hope that they can even get a pre-order.

So yea, don't think that they are already on sale and are being price gouged or are impossible to get... they aren't even on sale yet.

@spiritof: More then likely whats actually happening is that hardware cost's 500$ and what your actually getting is a $100 discount for buying the digital version since your basically telling sony they are gonna get 30% of everything you buy over the course of the life of that console.

They got it all wrong. The $100 price difference between the disc and the discless version shouldn’t make you feel bad about buying the disc version; it should make you feel better about buying the discless version.I mean you wouldn’t feel better if they were $499 and $459.

On the one hand, it seems like if you have PS4 and a Gaming PC you are good unless you really want to play Astro's Playroom. On the other hand, this is still 5 more games than Microsoft has in their launch lineup. But with Microsoft you have Gamepass so when the games do eventually show up you'll get them all. But, again, with a Xbox One and/or PC it looks like I'm even better on that front. Basically, what I'm concluding from today is that I don't need to purchase any new consoles until next holiday. Which is great for my wallet but not great for Sony and Microsoft.

Sharp price. Final Fantasy XVI looks like it shares similar combat as FFXV, but put in a more traditional high fantasy world. I will say that anytime they write a story about CRYSTALS, i fail to be interested. Fuck ing crystals, characters with interesting stories and grand political intrigue is what makes for a good FF story to me.

Still unclear to me what Deathloop is like. Are you hopping through multiple levels to take out certain characters in each respective world while another player hunts you down? Does that mean that this is more of a multiplayer game instead of a multiple hour-long campaign? Are you selecting a bunch of maps in a lobby beforehand? What happens when you die?

The giantbomb crew reacting to press events is essential living.

Hearing that some of the folks that worked on DMC5's combat are working on FFXVI makes me pretty damn excited for it. Give me more of that perfection, please.

I mean, that's about what a 4k blu ray costs though right?

seems like the amount of DE's available is next to none compared to the disc version. like the ps3 and 360 sku bs all over again. yes there is a cheaper sku but it's really hard to find. more of a pr number, and they don't want to take a bath selling too many of them.

$100 mark up for being able to play these often $70 games when they (usually) quickly get discounted not long after release? sounds good to me. And my blu-ray collection is not shrinking any time soon anyway.

If the combat of FF16 is closer to the wonderful FF7R than the woeful FF15, I'm pretty excited. 15 was such a let down, the game took too long to come out and just felt like a whole lot of nothing. Hopefully this game is released within the next few years and actually lands flat on its feet.

I too will be getting a disc version just to have an additional Blu-ray player.

FOUR HUNDRED AND NINETY NINE DOLLARY DOOS????

TOBIAS!!!!

@poutine: Wait, that's Alex? I thought Jeff Bezos had joined the crew

The discless version is a non-starter with games at £70. Gonna need to be able to rent or buy and resell.

So much for Jeff’s belief that Microsoft were going to undercut Sony on price.

@curufinwe: why? the Series S is $300

@curufinwe: Their preorders haven't gone live yet, theres still time! ;)

Vinny, I think you should compare stream settings with Brad. The black levels and colors in the Breaking Brad video after this look more accurate to me.

The amount of Disc versions available compared to Digital is 9:1 right now for pre-orders. The true price is $499 for most people and Xbox will have a more readily available system at $299.

I'll be playing all of these on PC except for that quicktime game involving a spider. PS5 may end up in my house one day though.

The real question is: will the PS5 play SACDs?

That's all that really matters in this day and age.

Now I kind of feel sad for XBox people, because I was literally ready to buy the black box first... right until this presentation. Sony did it again.

The way they diffused some of the information seems like they're trying to put the brakes on actual pre-orders, no? I mean not that there aren't lots of people who see it and lots of others(Here included), that disseminate the information from it but Geoff Keighley's social media is Hobby Grade.

Speculation, it's just that with Sony playing it so cagey for so long on price, feels like Sony are using the pricematch to make up for any delays that 2020 has had to offer making an impact on delivery. Not saying they can't meet demand(Because again - speculation), but Geoff Keighley being the one to announce this instead of the archived Sony video means enthusiasts as opposed to more widespread consumers.

Jan and Alex, their arms raised high

I’m excited to see what happens sitting on the sidelines not purchasing anything. Weird times.

Hey, this afternoon I got my invitation to preorder from Sony this Friday! Did everyone who entered earlier get this invitation, too? I've been using my PS3 as a Bluray player this entire time (the remote control is much better than using a controller on PS4 to watch movies) and plan to get the disc-ful PS5 to hopefully play the best versions of any disc I put into the thing, and I believe they're planning a remote right away this time, unlike the PS4.

The XBox Series X seems like it's giving people the option to spruce up last generation's games, but the PS5 seems like it's planning to make new games with a different, more powerful system than before. I'm surprised an enthusiast site doesn't seem very enthusiastic about a system that's putting effort into making games that can't reach back across generations. It may be like the PS3, where the system was trickier, but encouraged putting effort into using the system to make the best possible games, but the system that makes it easier to put out whatever (and you can get it for free with Gamepass!) convinces everyone not to work too hard.

I will be getting the one with the disc drive, I just value having physical media too much. And does everyone else think that Demon's Souls looks freaking incredible?!?!

The Wipeout Omega Collection came out four years after the PS4 launched, so it wasn't anywhere close to a launch title. I believe the Vita is the only PlayStation to launch with a Wipeout game.

I'm glad Sony matched the price of the Xbox Series X at $500. I'm sure Sony wanted to go $600, but Microsoft undercut them good enough to force their hand. That is the beauty of competition. I'm already going to pre-order the Disc version. For people claiming the extra $100 for the disc version is too much, need to understand that UHD players cost around $100 so it fits. Also I have a couple of games that need a disc to play so I don't have much choice. And if the PS Plus addition of their best PS4 games available at launch is true, then that is a good start for their eventual battle pass program.

Overall, another fine showing.

I still laugh and disappointed at the rush job video presented by this Showcase from Sony. Some of the games did not have specific dates. Some had year and months, others just year. Once the presentation ended, Geoff Keighley was doing the actual specifics for announcements of games. I just laughed how Sony waited all this time and this is the shot they took. There was the whole Demon Soul's "human error." The unspecified Final Fantasy next numbered version with "We have no other plans than PS5 right now."

Playstation did warn us pre-orders would go live later today in the States, but retailers made their own plans. Most of the retailer in the States already sold out their pre-orders. The longest one for time I heard was around 22 minutes. I know some people say never buy consoles at launch and I agree with them. There is not much to get me to buy a PS5 at launch. Sony offering a digital price of $399 is adequate if that person has good internet. Otherwise, I would choose $499 only because of the option for the bluray drive. Even then, I stream most of my movies over the internet.

It will be interesting to see the data come out post launch of the new consoles. I want to hear about where the split between digital consoles and physical. $100 bucks for the bluray drive is a lot, but going digital does not mean cheaper costs in games. As of this post, most of PlayStation's first party games have increased game prices. The next generation games will vary from region, but in the States there is a $10 increase. Going from 59.99 to 69.99 for next generation would be nice if and I am borrowing this from the GB Discord, "I knew that increase would lead to better working conditions and no crunch for video game developers."

I think it will be interesting to see how this next generation comes out. For me, I do not see any compelling reason to spend $499 on either next generation console at launch. Microsoft seems to bring most games to PC, and Sony is bringing games I can wait on playing later in this next generation.

That was an oddly poor presentation but at least they finally announced the price. Can't say that games on either system right now are really drawing me in but I do like Game Pass a whole lot. I'll probably get the PS5 as an exclusives machine and continue primarily gaming on the Xbox unless some terrible reports start coming in that first year about performance etc.

ps 5 pro or rtx 3080 ...

well considering my ps 4, ps 4 pro and switch have been collecting dust for over a year and a half now maybe its time to move on from consoles when all I do is play PC anyways despite buying in every generation. I know I will ford at some point but maybe I can wait it out for some real good games to come out, but even then ...

Either way, enjoyed this presentation it was surprisingly decent considering how lackluster most of the showings were, they just did a good job showing it off and getting to the point and showing off games. No jokes or parodies or any of that nonsense just games.

@spiritof: Of course it does. The digital only version will make them a lot more money due to not being able to buy used games.

I think people concerned about the '$100 disc drive' should look at it more as the discless version is highly discounted. Sony likely would love for both prices to be a lot higher, but they pretty much had to get that discless one as low as they could go.

I know it's mental gymnastics, but you're not paying more than you should for the disc version, the other one just got lower because it had to. Kinda.

It was a good showing and I'm glad Sony went aggressive on the price. There's still no games that interest me all that much in the launch window of either console, but I'll get a Series X just to get the most out of my Game Pass subscription.

Normally I don't care all that much for the slimmer redesigns of consoles, but with the way the PS5 looks and it's size I might wait for a refreshed SKU before picking one up.

@maffrew:

To add on to these thoughts, People with discdrive-less systems will end up buying way more of their games through the playstation store compared to the discdrive folk that could use the 2nd hand market through ebay or gamestop or use rental services like gamefly. And naturally playstation avoids any retail cuts when a player buys the game straight from their store.

Therefore, it makes total sense for playstation to nudge the userbase towards the discdrive-less version by pricing it very aggressively. The amount of digital games that will be purchased through the embedded ps store by these people will be more than worth it in the long run.

0% of physical discs are sold directly to customers by playstation , while the PS store probably sells the vast majority of digital game transactions for their platform. And they're actually able to tie each game down to one account instead of letting gamediscs bounce around people without seeing any money from that.

Well that was fast I woke up at 5am Eastern and tried to preorder only to find out Wallmart, Target, Best Buy, and Amazon are already sold out.

I'm so confused about the people getting annoyed at the fact that some of these games are PS5 + PS4. Do they want it to be PS5 only? For what reason?

@zero_: PS5-only games would be designed with SSD and faster CPU as a baseline. Not just higher resolution or faster loading compared to PS4, but level designs and things like more complex AI that can’t be done on PS4.