So I guess I should give my opinion on the shenanigans Sony is doing with ending physical media production in 2028, wiping hundreds of purchased movies from users, and ending the PS3/Vita store. First I’ll say the timing of all of it is hilarious, like they already planned to do these things in advance and decided to do all of them at once to sorta “rip off the band aid” of outrage. I guess we’ll see if any further bad news materializes (I expect further price increases…) in the near future, but the tiny glimmer of hope I have is this is all of it. They got all the horribleness out at once, so we can at least lick our wounds for a bit before more awfulness occurs.

ANYWAY! The PS3/Vita digital stores ending is a bit sad, but expected. They tried five years ago and enough people were outraged that they backtracked on that decision. While a victory at the time for consumers, Sony sorta made clear what their intentions were, so it was only a matter of time before they followed through. It’s clear they decided to do this alongside even worse news so that folks wouldn’t spend energy fighting against this. They were right, as all of the attention and outrage is focused on their decision to end physical media production in 2028.

Their decision to end physical media production is something that seemed inevitable, but it was always at some vague point in the future. Once Microsoft and Sony started experimenting with digital only systems even as far back as the PSP Go and the Xbox All Digital Edition, and expanded their online stores and digital content… it became clear what the end goal was.

I’m a physical collector and adore my games, but I always saw the writing on the wall. I hoped they’d at least wait until the end of the PS6 generation before going all in on digital, but this is just happening sooner than I expected. Damn. I’ve had plenty of time to think about how I’m going to navigate this new era that I viewed as inevitable, so I’m not as shocked as some folks on the internet have been. They’ve telegraphed this for years and were just waiting for the moment they could pull it off.

I’ll be nearing 40 years old when this happens in 2028, and after a bit of self reflection I realized I’m not that obsessed about new game releases anymore. I look forward to a title here and there, but the urge to get new games isn’t nearly what it was when I was younger. I have a decent collection now that makes me happy and I will happily add older games to it. I have no desire to grow my collection beyond the PS5 generation though, so this feels a bit short sighted by Sony in my opinion if they want old folks disposable income… and I ain’t gifting PSN codes to younger ones. Long story short: I won’t be spending nearly as much money in the future on new games. I’ll continue to curate my old stuff, but I have no desire to anchor my finances to the whims of Sony or Microsoft. Especially with how expensive components are these days! The raw components alone for the PS6 are expected to be a grand… Steam Machine is crazy expensive, but that is just a clue of how expensive next generation systems are going to be now. It’s not an exception, it’s just a preview of what will be the new normal.



I was thinking about how they’ll do the PS6 and “Project Helix” with the current economic realities and I do have a prediction on this. We’ll see if I’m right:

Basically the phone contract model is going to be used for videogame consoles. I am pretty certain this will become the norm, Xbox already has the ‘buy now pay later’ option, it’s just a matter of time before Sony does this as well and when the next generation hardware comes along they’ll really push this as the primary option… I do have an additional prediction that may or may not happen, but this may be the end of console ‘generations’ entirely. Think Android and iOS, the hardware will get updated every couple years and have the ‘baseline’ of PS5 and XSX initially to initially keep the playerbase. With the systems being basically gaming PC’s optimizations will be similar to PC gaming with scaling between systems, and having the latest and greatest isn’t 100%  necessary for most. Like with phones folks will just upgrade depending on where they are with their contract and if they feel like it. 

The question I’d have is what Nintendo is going to do in this current landscape. Like, they’re selling a ton now… but I’m curious what their plans will be in a couple years. They might have their hands forced into releasing a budget screenless Switch 2 as they’ve kind of built themselves up as the family friendly budget option. Historically an extremely lucrative market, but looking ahead I’m not so confident that’ll continue to be the case. Families aren’t going to like the idea of financing a console for their kids and they really need to stay under the $499 mark regardless of inflation and component costs.




IN OTHER NEWS

I drew a nuther cat comic. Swear this is the last one. Maybe.

-K

So after literally 12 years since I first tried Woolly World back in the day, I finally beat it.

In my defense, I took a long break from console playing after my Wii U and never played much of Woolly World at the time. For nearly ten years I basically just played PC games, up until I randomly inherited a Nintendo Switch Lite from my brother… After dabbling with a few games what really hooked me was Yoshi’s Crafted World, and I absolutely adored it. I think that game is really underrated, and while I understand some folks complain about the music, I understand what they were going for. Maybe it didn’t perfectly land, but I still enjoyed the game. It certainly leaned hard into that craft paper aesthetic with a classic Yoshi “nick jr.” theme to it. I played that game when I was sick and man it just made me happy.

When I dove into my retro gaming hobby I loaded up on a lot of old favorites from the Wii U. One of the games I picked up was Woolly World, as while I tried the game back in the day I never actually played it much. Finally getting a chance to play it through properly, I totally get why that game is beloved. I quite enjoyed Crafted World and in many ways I’d argue it’s just as good as Woolly World, but I can’t deny that the music and general feel of Woolly World is superior. As suggested in the title, the Good Feel developer just makes feel good games. It’s hard to not crack a smile and relax when you’re playing something they created. Granted I tried Peach’s Showtime and was a bit disappointed by that, but largely I think they mastered this style of game. Now that I finished Woolly World I plan to go back and beat Kirby’s Epic Yarn and Wario Land Shake It! Both games I’ve tried, but never fully played through. My craving for feel good games yearns for more though, and those titles are next on my list to play. Of course Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is coming up, and I’m certainly looking forward to that game! Fingers crossed it’s as good as it looks. At the very least it’s yet another fascinating art direction from Good Feel, and I’m eagerly awaiting playing that game on my Switch 2. 

It’s a bit funny, but while folks might fanboy over big developers like Insomniac, Bethesda, or Naughty Dog… I’m out here just looking for a good feel good game from Good Feel. 🙂

-K

So I’m back on the Pokerman train. I’m going through all the old titles I missed and I’m currently playing through Black 2 properly, but just finished up Ultra Moon. I was pleasantly surprised by Team Skull. Ever since Team Rocket in the OG games, every single team since then has been the same “evil organization bent on taking over the world” or worse “group of misguided individuals who are actually good folks inside” like the later games. Scarlet and Violet was the absolute worst with this, I genuinely despised Team Star and believe they deserved to be bullied. Fuck em. Also I hate how your rivals are likable now, don’t do that. I want to hate them. Make them assholes and let me rename them. The ‘team’ in the Black/White series are pretty typical of most Pokemon games in the “hurrdurr we wanna take over the world!” aspect, but at least your rival is a jerkoff that you can name. In my game I named him Goober and whenever he shows up acting like a Goober I genuinely enjoy it. Back to Ultra Moon though, your rival is actually more like recent games in that they’re “likable” and rooting for ya and shit. I don’t like that. What I DO like though is Team Skull. I genuinely believe they’re one of the best evil teams in the series. They have no redeemable qualities… they’re just a bunch of punks. They don’t really have any grand scheme and whenever you encounter them in battle their background music is goofy as hell and the dialogue leans hard into the cringe hip hop stereotypes. I love it. I actually would get excited every time I saw one pop up in the game. I don’t care about the ultra beasts. I don’t care about the kahunas or island trial nonsense. Just give me more goofy interactions with team skull.

Coincidentally we had a preview of Generation 10 recently, and I dunno if many folks have noticed… but it looks an awful lot like Alola.

This part especially reminds me of a pier/dock sorta town in Ultra Moon. I think Seafolk Village? Couldn’t find a good example, but there’s similar straw huts in the game. Basically they both have a very tropical “traditional hawaii” base in visual design.

If they actually do return to this region, I just have one major request: PLEASE bring back Team Skull. I love their goofy asses.

That said… while I respected they tried something different in the Moon/Sun games with trials and stuff… I wasn’t a huge fan of it. Just go back to normal gyms. Theme them if you want to Alola, but I just wasn’t a fan of the trials that ended on fights with a roided up pokerman that’d call for help constantly. Interesting concept, wasn’t something I enjoyed in a traditional pokemon game. If it wasn’t for Team Skull I’m not sure I’d have even finished the game…

-K