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Returnal Is A “Mega-Hit” In Sony’s Eyes

Topher

Gold Member
According to their website Sony call Destruction All Stars is a “global phenomenon” 😂.

So yeah I’ll take all this with a grain of salt.

What else would Sony say about their own game that they financed and published.
Jodie Whittaker Ok GIF by Doctor Who


It should be.

People want a gameplay game, not stupid cinematic shit.

Sales of Naughty Dog games suggest the cinematic style of their games are in high demand. Not sure why you are posting as if you speak for other "gamers" regardless.
 
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Because that's part of the description of the game. It doesn't actually relate to sales.









For those that still struggle with this.

What they mean by the "global phenomenon" is the sport that's being done in Destruction AllStars. Not that the PS5 game itself is a global phenomenon.

Hopefully that helps Bernd Lauert Bernd Lauert and MOTM MOTM .

I was a little confused the first time I saw it but seeing the description on several different places helped it make sense for me.
 
Sales Number ?
because looking at the sales of the game here in Italy ... certainly not here

Italy =\= ROTW

Also I guess it depends on Sonys sales expectations for the game. If they are actually calling it a megahit I don't think they would have done they if they weren't satisfied with it. Also the developers does comment on poor sales when it happens.


"Despite critical success and numerous awards, our games just haven’t sold in significant numbers," Kuittinen said. "While some of them have reached a massive audience due to free game offerings across various digital sales channels, this unfortunately doesn’t help pay for development, which gets costly for high production quality."
 
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GymWolf

Member
It should be.

People want a gameplay game, not stupid cinematic shit.

Returnal makes players feel like they are getting a challenge. Its hard game, and fun at the same time. Very rewarding.

This is the ps2 sony game. Not the boring ps4 sony game.

I hope they ditch the useless cinematic, and focus more on gameplay, like returnal, last of us 2 (less cinematic).

Gamers are bored from too much talking, no action game. They want to get lost in the game's world. Having fun, while playing the game.
What specific games are you talking about exactly?
 
It should be.

People want a gameplay game, not stupid cinematic shit.

Returnal makes players feel like they are getting a challenge. Its hard game, and fun at the same time. Very rewarding.

This is the ps2 sony game. Not the boring ps4 sony game.

I hope they ditch the useless cinematic, and focus more on gameplay, like returnal, last of us 2 (less cinematic).

Gamers are bored from too much talking, no action game. They want to get lost in the game's world. Having fun, while playing the game.

Numbers still prove there's a market for cinematic games in general. But Sony also has other types of games if that isn't your thing.
 

lh032

I cry about Xbox and hate PlayStation.
tbh, megahit can mean alot of things.
Either the game hit sales target
Or ,they able to recoup the cost and earn some big profits (perhaps only small fraction of production cost involved?)

Either way its good, I love this game, although the stupid decision of not including a quit save.
 
tbh, megahit can mean alot of things.
Either the game hit sales target
Or ,they able to recoup the cost and earn some big profits (perhaps only small fraction of production cost involved?)

Either way its good, I love this game, although the stupid decision of not including a quit save.
Megahit means it vastly exceeded sales expectations. We obviously don't know what Sony expected, but Returnal sales have been lukewarm at best.
 

lh032

I cry about Xbox and hate PlayStation.
Megahit means it vastly exceeded sales expectations. We obviously don't know what Sony expected, but Returnal sales have been lukewarm at best.
we dont know the actual sales target, for a new IP, i doubt Sony has high expectation of a sales target.
I mean this game was launched when PS5 is still in short supply, not to mention its a new IP, im not surprise if the game sales target is around 500k lol

EDIT: oh yea, dont forget its 70 dollars
 
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Shifty1897

Member
It makes me wonder if Sony is measuring success in ROI rather than raw profit dollars these days, especially since they announced how happy they were with Horizon PC release's ROI.
I'd be very happy if this was the case.
 
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JeloSWE

Member
Is anyone else holding off on playing this in the hope that a Save and Quit feature turns up?
Nope finished it. If I need to quit the game I do it after dying, other wise I just use the sleep function. I can understand missing save function is a bit frustrating IF you really need to close the game and I wouldn't be against a single save that is not possible to upload to the cloud so not to save scum but I never really missed it personally as I always sat through each run and more.
 

kingfey

Banned
What specific games are you talking about exactly?
Last of us 2 specifically. Gameplay is fantastic, horror inducing, creepy atmosphere.

But once cinematic starts, the entire atmosphere gets thrown to the garbage bin. All the tension I had with Abby on the snow, on the creepy house, the busses is gone, once ellie and her friend is chilling out nicely.

I have no problem with switching out between 2 characters. But when put 2 much cinematic between them, the game losses its atmosphere.

If you aren't a movie lover, you will get bored from it, to the point of quiting the game and not thinking back about it.
 

Jaysen

Banned
Loved the game enough to platinum it,, but for it to be a big hit, Sony had to have had extremely low expectations for it, because there aren’t many games on PS5 that tanked in physical sales as quickly as Returnal did. Also, either the people who bought it don’t know the daily leaderboard mission exists, or they Do and just hate the mode, but the total number of players on the leaderboards is indicative of a game that isnt a “hit”.
 
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Loved the game, but for it to be a big hit, Sony had to have had extremely low expectations for it, because there aren’t many games on PS5 that tanked in physical sales as quickly as Returnal did.

Makes you wonder on what the budget of the game was if they broke even with low sales.

Still for a low budget title it's impressive what they did with it.
 

Marty-McFly

Banned
According to their website Sony call Destruction All Stars is a “global phenomenon” 😂.

So yeah I’ll take all this with a grain of salt.

What else would Sony say about their own game that they financed and published.
It's odd that numbers weren't given.

It usually means the opposite.
 

kingfey

Banned
Numbers still prove there's a market for cinematic games in general. But Sony also has other types of games if that isn't your thing.
That isn't my real concern. The real concern is those people, who will have the mindset of high quality.

We are seeing some of these people here, looking down on other games. Because, they expect everything to be masterpiece like Sony games.

One of the prime example is the Psychonauts 2. As we know, main appeal of that game is the gameplay and story, not the graphic, yet people compare it to ratchet and Clank, calling it a ps2 games.

What do you think of other games, which look like psychonauts 2 graphically. Do you think those games have a chance, with these people?

My main hope is, Sony to do hybrid. Do their story games, and make more like returnal, so that we can have some balance at least. Let other games get some breathing for the community to enjoy it, without certain people harassing it.
 
Huh? Some marketing speak on a website is enough to make people believe this?

The game didn’t sell well. It’s been seen in all the usual charts. It dropped off the face of the Earth. It went on sale faster than any other Sony first party PS5 exclusive and it’s still a game many are waiting to purchase due to lack of mid run save that Rogue Likes have had since the 1980s.

It is a great game but it didn’t really light up the sales charts or really make a big impression. Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart sold extremely well so I don’t want to hear the usual excuses of “not many PS5s out there”. There are likely more than 10 million PS5 owners out there now.
 
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kingfey

Banned
You got any evidence for that claim, Neo?
Let me see.

Based on returnal being 3 hour for savings, and not having savings, is telling me that people enjoy it.

The game had many issues, yet people enjoy it very much.

For me specifically, I liked the last of us 2 gameplay, and didn't stomach the cinematic of that game, since it was running the game's atmosphere for me.
 
That isn't my real concern. The real concern is those people, who will have the mindset of high quality.

We are seeing some of these people here, looking down on other games. Because, they expect everything to be masterpiece like Sony games.

One of the prime example is the Psychonauts 2. As we know, main appeal of that game is the gameplay and story, not the graphic, yet people compare it to ratchet and Clank, calling it a ps2 games.

What do you think of other games, which look like psychonauts 2 graphically. Do you think those games have a chance, with these people?

My main hope is, Sony to do hybrid. Do their story games, and make more like returnal, so that we can have some balance at least. Let other games get some breathing for the community to enjoy it, without certain people harassing it.

Ratchet does look like a high budget AAA game compared to Psychonauts 2 plus it's a next gen exclusive.

But the game overall is excellent and not only in the visuals department. As for Psychonauts 2 they have yet to prove anything yet. We have to wait and see if it's on par with Ratchet or better than it.

Also you can't fault Insomniac for being really good at what they do. It's normal that people will hold them to a high standard.
 
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kingfey

Banned
Ratchet does look like a high budget AAA game compared to Psychonauts 2 plus it's a next gen exclusive.

But the game overall is excellent and not only in the visuals department. As for Psychonauts 2 they have yet to prove anything yet. We have to wait and see if it's on par with Ratchet or better than it.

Also you can't fault Insomniac for being really good at what they do. It's normal that people will hold them to a high standard.
No one is faulting Insomniac for it.

Its the people that are having these comparison.

psychonauts 1 had a rich story to their gameplay. About kids being tormented for their powers, and being different. You see this through out the game.

Another different is ratchet being next gen, with Sony backing. While psychonauts 2 was started as a crowd funding, and old gen.

Comparing them is useless. Its like comparing poor people, to rich people. Its useless.

Small devs, with limited funding won't reach ratchet level, which had wo sony backing them, and that game being utilized heavily on next gen console.


This is were my concern is coming from.

It leads to small devs being looked down, since their game can't reach high quality status with their limited funding.
 

rolandss

Member
Haven't played this yet, but definitely want to at some point. Can you still not save in it? I never understood that decision nor any of the arguments people use to defend it. Obviously you should not be able to abuse saving and loading, I'm talking about save and quit only.
This is the only thing holding me back. i don’t have the time to play a game that’s gonna wipe an hours progress on me when I get snapped back to the reality of my life.
 

kingfey

Banned
the moment someone mentions cinematic, i stop reading. its a very cheap way to discredit a game. i guarantee that guy hasnt even played a single game he talks shit about it.
Act1 last of us 2.

Joe and his brother gets to the settlement. Joe visits a house. Plays a guitar. Talks to ellie. Leaves ellie. Ellie wakes up. Sees a guy coming to her house. Turned out she kissed the guys ex girlfriend in the party. So both of them get out of the house. They come to a bar. Ellie meets an old guy. He apologizes to her, and gives her a sandwich. She gives the sandwich to the guy. Ellie sees a girl. She talks to her. Turns out this girl was the one ellie kissed. They talk around. Sees a bunch of kids. Play a snowball fight, until they are done having fun. Then they head out to a stable to see a horse. They try to exist the settlement.

P2: Abby.

Abby suddenly awakens from a nightmare. She sees a guy next to a window. Talks to him. He tells her he saw something. And tries to show her. They head out to that area. Sees the settlement. The guy brings some topic about someone that they have been looking for. He says he might be there. They try to come up with a plan to get in to the settlement. The guy brings up a girl name. He tells Abby that the girl is pregnant, and that they can't keep doing what they were doing. The need a place to settle down.

Abby furiously tries to take a detour. That is when your actual game starts.

Now tell me, how long does these scene takes to happen.

My memory is little bit hazy, since I was getting sleepy from the boredom of not touching my controller that much.

This is my complain about cinematic. All it does is nothing but waste time. Either get to the point, or stop using these shit long scenes to show about stuff we don't care.

When Abby was alone, that is when the game started for me. The bullet was scarce. I had to be careful. The house was really creepy. I was afraid of getting scare jump, when I was in the attic. The game was all about thinking.
 
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dcmk7

Banned
It’s going to feel good seeing the meltdown of the Returnal haters when it starts earning game of the year awards left and right.
It's amusing watching the usual suspects struggling to cope that Returnal wasn't the bomba they had predicted.

The game led to the studio being purchased and superlatives from Sony about sales.. just what more evidence do the doubters need exactly? It's a little sad.
 
Only Sony knows for sure, but we have sales charts that let us approximate how well a game sold.

True but it's still difficult to determine if it was a sales flop in their eyes. If their goal would be to sell over 100k copies then that could be seen as a success. While it pales in comparison to games that sell over 10 million copies it still can be profitable for Sony.
 
Act1 last of us 2.

Joe and his brother gets to the settlement. Joe visits a house. Plays a guitar. Talks to ellie. Leaves ellie. Ellie wakes up. Sees a guy coming to her house. Turned out she kissed the guys ex girlfriend in the party. So both of them get out of the house. They come to a bar. Ellie meets an old guy. He apologizes to her, and gives her a sandwich. She gives the sandwich to the guy. Ellie sees a girl. She talks to her. Turns out this girl was the one ellie kissed. They talk around. Sees a bunch of kids. Play a snowball fight, until they are done having fun. Then they head out to a stable to see a horse. They try to exist the settlement.

P2: Abby.

Abby suddenly awakens from a nightmare. She sees a guy next to a window. Talks to him. He tells her he saw something. And tries to show her. They head out to that area. Sees the settlement. The guy brings some topic about someone that they have been looking for. He says he might be there. They try to come up with a plan to get in to the settlement. The guy brings up a girl name. He tells Abby that the girl is pregnant, and that they can't keep doing what they were doing. The need a place to settle down.

Abby furiously tries to take a detour. That is when your actual game starts.

Now tell me, how long does these scene takes to happen.

My memory is little bit hazy, since I was getting sleepy from the boredom of not touching my controller that much.

This is my complain about cinematic. All it does is nothing but waste time. Either get to the point, or stop using these shit long scenes to show about stuff we don't care.

When Abby was alone, that is when the game started for me. The bullet was scarce. I had to be careful. The house was really creepy. I was afraid of getting scare jump, when I was in the attic. The game was all about thinking.

So why did you go and spoil the game for me?

Use spoilers next time.
 

kingfey

Banned
It's amusing watching the usual suspects struggling to cope that Returnal wasn't the bomba they had predicted.

The game led to the studio being purchased and superlatives from Sony about sales.. just what more evidence do the doubters need exactly? It's a little sad.
Not really. The game didn't let them get bought.

They were getting bought by several big guys. Sony bought them to secure them.


The game had nothing to do about it. Its was all about securing the studio from other big guys.
 
Not really. The game didn't let them get bought.

They were getting bought by several big guys. Sony bought them to secure them.


The game had nothing to do about it. Its was all about securing the studio from other big guys.

Not just that game but their history of games that they made was what made Sony interested in them. If Sony really didn't like them as a studio they wouldn't have bought them. You don't buy trash just to keep it away from other people.
 

kingfey

Banned
Not just that game but their history of games that they made was what made Sony interested in them. If Sony really didn't like them as a studio they wouldn't have bought them. You don't buy trash just to keep it away from other people.
The fact that Sony felt threatened of them getting bought says something, about how Sony felt about them.

They might have some other relationships, aside of gaming that we have no idea of.
 
It’s impressive to me that it’s low budget. It doesn’t look low budget at all.

Well it's the only way to break even with low sales. If they needed something like 3 million copies to break even then I can see why they wouldn't be happy.

If anything it could be an indication of how efficient the developer is. I've seen some high budget titles that take forever to make look like crap compared to Returnal.
 
The fact that Sony felt threatened of them getting bought says something, about how Sony felt about them.

They might have some other relationships, aside of gaming that we have no idea of.

I don't think Sony feels like they are crap developers though. They probably felt similar about them as they did with Insomniac. Heck the others would t have tried to bought them if they thought they were terrible.
 
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Italy =\= ROTW

Also I guess it depends on Sonys sales expectations for the game. If they are actually calling it a megahit I don't think they would have done they if they weren't satisfied with it. Also the developers does comment on poor sales when it happens.

Not sure what were they expecting since Resogun was on PS Plus day 1 if I remember correctly. I know it was the first game I played on PS4.
 
True but it's still difficult to determine if it was a sales flop in their eyes. If their goal would be to sell over 100k copies then that could be seen as a success. While it pales in comparison to games that sell over 10 million copies it still can be profitable for Sony.

Not a flop. They purchased company after release.

My only issue with it is, well it established that $70 games sell well.

I am not in US and here the game prices are even worse.
 
What's wrong with that if the games are worth 70$?

If anything it will make the developers work harder to justify the price.

I would be surprised if developers weren't already working hard enough to be close to breaking point.

All 70$ does is make me wait a couple of months more. They get same amount from me.
 
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