Jared Shapiro

@weirded_beardo There are too many other options available, which is why I'd be surprised if the rumor was true

Maybe I don’t follow or pay attention to too many PCMR dudes, but I don’t see anyone crying over PS games not going to PC🤷🏻‍♂️

And Nintendo keeps their budgets in check. Most of their games are far simpler than the massive AAA cinematic experiences PlayStation likes to build. I think Sony is realizing they passed that point where their games are sustainable in the current market, I would be genuinely surprised if the rumor about pulling games from PC is true. If anything, I could see them trying to pull from Steam and setup their own store.

@GetFitWithJared @PeterP_1985 Xbox and Nintendo don't need any goal as they automatically have several games ready every year. As for Xbox. Always a new COD yearly. 40 developers, while some of them work on 2-4 games at the same time.

Its a bait headline, and I'm not the biggest fan of modern day PC Gamer. But, jokes aside, they do have a point. I have said previously that people make a huge deal about PlayStation exclusives on PC, but they make up such a miniscule portion of games released. Even if you only look at AAA games, their footprint is very small.

@tyminski_marek @elvenmaidinn Does this mean we may see Play Anywhere on the Xbox, sorry XBOX, version...?

Lords of the Fallen II – Important Publishing Update! Independent developer CI Games today announced that it has signed a separation agreement with Epic Games Publishing. As a result, CI Games has regained full open distribution rights for the PC version of Lords of the Fallen II, moving away from the previous PC-exclusive publishing arrangement signed in June 2024. Lords of the Fallen II remains scheduled to launch later this year on PC via Epic Games Store and other PC storefronts, as well as on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. CI Games will self-publish the title across all platforms, while PLAION continues as the global physical distribution partner. CI Games will continue to utilise Epic’s technologies, including Unreal Engine 5 and Epic Online Services (EOS), powering cross-platform play, matchmaking, friends list, and seamless shared-progression co-op. Like many in the industry, CI Games faced challenging market conditions in 2023 and 2024, and Epic Games provided significant funding and strategic support that helped ensure Lords of the Fallen II could fully realise its ambitions. This partnership enabled CI Games to meaningfully expand upon community feedback from the original Lords of the Fallen, while substantially advancing the sequel across gameplay, technical performance, world design, and online functionality. “Epic was there for CI Games exactly when we needed them most. Their support and belief in the project made a real difference, and for that we are truly grateful,” said Marek Tymiński, CEO of CI Games. “Epic has been an outstanding supporter of Lords of the Fallen II. With Unreal Engine, EOS and the rest of Epic’s world-class technologies, we’re going to ship a performant game in a massive world that players can explore together across PC and console,” added Tymiński. With the new agreement now in place, Lords of the Fallen II will launch with open PC distribution on day one, including the Epic Games Store.

@zacbowden Hopefully the consumer line launch will be better but other than the switch to ARM there hasn't been enough event worthy changes

I have to say, I am really not a fan of the way Microsoft conducts Surface PC launches these days. Online blog post, focusing on business customers only, is absolutely NOT the way to go about generating hype for your hardware lineup. We know consumer variants are around the corner, we know they will be (a bit) cheaper, and we know they'll have Snapdragon X2 options. Why not just announce it all at the same time, at an event that actually generates a bit of hype? This is bewildering.

@vgfytschool Sure 95 million consoles and I bet 20 million were double dips for the Pro

PlayStation is NOT fine without PC...lol Let them launch these live services without PC and let's see how it plays out. I mean, Nintendo launches its own live services without anyone. We wanna see what these 95M consoles are about.😅

@AlexaBliss_WWE I have a 1 year old. I haven't slept in a year. 😂

Anyone else not able to sleep these days?

Sure. Keep in mind the dev costs are likely over 300 million, marketing is typically just as high and they have to pay up to 26% to Marvel on every copy sold. 13 million is also on the high end for sales based on recent PlayStation exclusive performance and is such a small amount of sales for nearly 100 million consoles in the wild that people supposedly bought for exclusives

@GetFitWithJared @EndymionYT If 15% of ps5 user base buys Wolverine, means it will sell 13+ million copies lol. There will be nothing painful about that 🤣

This response from the PC community tells you everything about Sony’s first party exclusives this generation. When every game is a humiliation ritual for the player, nobody cares enough that they’re going exclusive again & it shows. Sony needs to desperately fix their first party exclusives reputation man. SAROS flopped, Wolverine will do better obviously but will that also humiliate the player? I guess we’ll see won’t we? It’s just getting tiring with PlayStation. Not surprised by this reaction at all tbh

@METAPCs Wired is always preferred

Wired or wireless? And don't say 'it depends.'

@xMBGx Nobody making games that cost a quarter of all billion dollars and up should intentionally limit their customer pool in the current gaming climate

Sony is going back to true exclusivity with their tentpole games. Do you think Xbox should do the same?

@vgfytschool I don't know why people are more concerned with keeping Halo on one box when we've got a pretty sweet deal with Game Pass and Play Anywhere that the other plastic box doesn't come close to. Even their remote play is laughable

Thanks for posting the story... Market reality is something NO ONE participant evade.

@ChandranTheMan SummerSlam is in Minneapolis. Anyone that thought Brock would surprise retire at Mania and not his home turf isn't playing attention

The crowd went nuts for it. The people in attendance loved it, and the social media numbers have been huge so far. But because Brock Lesnar “retired,” some people on Twitter suddenly don’t like it. People forget this is professional wrestling. Nobody is ever truly retired until they’re dead. #WWERaw

@JayViperTV And hey, removing future sales from a major platform we half ass put our games on for a few years will also boost the sales of those multimillion dollar franchises somehow. Prices will definitely not be affected nor will the output of those pricey games dip

No, guys, you don't get it. Raising prices on PS5s wasn't because Marathon flopped and now raising prices on PS Plus isn't, either, ok! It's the conditions, man. Totally the conditions! Concord's $600M failure, Saros only moving 300K units, and Marathon resulting in Bungie being devalued by 3/4 of a BILLION dollars totally had nothing to do with it! It's the world's fault. Sure, these price hikes come IMMEDIATELY on the tail of Marathon's embarrassing flop, but Sony totally sees a future in it which is why they pulled so many people off of Destiny 2! To add PvE into the game, which wasn't their original plan... because Marathon is such a great game and IT'S TOTALLY FINE! --- I don't know how the Marabots do this.

@Jenbox360 Same. My Mass Effect playthrough may have to be paused

I am so hyped for this game you have no idea

If the business doesn't support exclusives, why go back to it? If you look at the output of Xbox Game Studios vs PlayStation Studios, the one that's multiplat is CLEARLY doing more. If that means PlayStation players get to sample the fruit that is Halo, that's fine. My Xbox still offers cross-entitlements with my PC and Game Pass, I don't need a PS5 for 1 or 2 games every year. Hell, I haven't even pulled the trigger on a Switch because Nintendo doesn't give me enough to necessitate dropping another $500 on a handheld I'll barely use between Zelda games

Asha Sharma starts her premiership by reassuring fans asking for Xbox exclusives with "hear you". Xbox then launches the Voices program. Exclusivity is the top request. Would be pretty silly if those requests then fall on deaf ears.

@ManaByte @nyc_prophet There have been shades of that early PS3 era for a little while. Hopefully XBOX embraces out and we get another 360

If you look at how Sony is handling the PlayStation 5 right now, the sudden hardware price hikes, the expensive mid-gen refresh, the increased cost of digital games and accessories, and a general vibe that they aren’t really listening to player feedback; it can feel jarring. But for anyone who was plugged into the industry twenty years ago, none of this is new. You’re just witnessing the return of "Arrogant Sony." To understand how a company gets this way, you have to look at the transition from the PS2 to the PS3. Coming off the PlayStation 2 era, Sony didn't just win the console war; they utterly dominated the entire landscape. The PS2 became the best-selling console of all time, completely flattening the original Xbox and the Nintendo GameCube. When you reach that level of absolute, undisputed market dominance, corporate hubris inevitably sets in. Sony started believing that the "PlayStation" brand name alone was bulletproof, and that gamers would blindly pay anything just for the privilege of owning their next machine. That arrogance famously peaked at E3 2006, when they dropped the infamous "$599 US Dollars" price tag for the PS3. Executives literally told the public that people would work second jobs to afford one, and that the console was "probably too cheap." The gaming media back then rarely checked them on this behavior. The access journalism of the mid-2000s was heavily driven by perks, and no perk was bigger than securing an invite to Sony’s lavish, over-the-top annual E3 party. It was the gaming industry equivalent of the Vanity Fair Oscar Party; the absolute peak of Hollywood-level excess, exclusivity, and clout. If an outlet ran too many critical editorials or hit pieces questioning Sony's corporate attitude, they risked getting blacklisted from the event. So, the media largely smiled, played along, and let the hubris grow completely unchecked until the public voted with their wallets and forced Sony into a desperate, years-long game of catch-up against the Xbox 360. Cut to today, and history is repeating itself because Sony finds themselves back in that exact same unchallenged position. Right now, Sony essentially views Xbox as zero competition. Microsoft's strategy shift toward putting their first-party games on competing platforms has signaled to Sony that they've won the traditional high-end console space. At the same time, Sony has never factored Nintendo into their direct market equations, viewing them as a completely separate "family or casual" ecosystem rather than a threat to their core demographic. With no perceived rivals left in their lane, Sony’s corporate focus underwent a massive structural shift around 2020, moving its operational heartbeat out of Japan to align the brand as a thoroughly Western company run out of California. They wanted to focus on massive, blockbuster Western cinematic games, and in doing so, they completely took their eye off their home turf. They began ignoring the Japanese market, culminating in symbolic but deeply telling moves like globally swapping the standard functionality of the X and O controller buttons. Since 1994, Japanese players had used O for confirm and X for cancel; it was a deeply ingrained muscle memory and cultural standard. Forcing the Western layout on Japan was a blatant declaration that regional preferences no longer mattered to the new regime. But while Sony was looking away and treating Nintendo like non-competition, Nintendo quietly and completely stole the entire Japanese market from under them. The Switch became an absolute juggernaut in Japan, completely reshaping gaming habits there while PlayStation hardware sales and cultural footprint shrank to historic lows. When a company believes it has no true peers left to fight in its specific bracket, the internal guardrails come down. The price hikes, the lack of communication, and the corporate indifference we’re seeing with the PS5 right now aren't a mistake; it's the exact same script from 2006, being played out by a company that once again thinks it's completely untouchable.

The "if you want to play the games, buy the hardware" line doesn't work when the hardware starts at $500, refuses to go down during the generation and then they release one big game per year. As the budgets on those games balloon they're going to need to sell more copies to pay for them, and we've seen that the current PS5 audience isn't buying single player games. The rumor is Yotei sold 3.3 million copies, that's out of a pool of 90 million potential customers. That's pretty sad overall performance if you want to keep the game limited to the PlayStation audience

@GetFitWithJared @lastchalice Sony knows single player games is what they've been known for in the past 2 gens. And they're passing on the million copies sold on PC because it gives people less reason to buy their hardware. If you want to play their games, buy their hardware. Simple.

Xbox exclusive games. People try to box you into a camp so that you’re on one side of the “console war”, but it’s not always that simple. I have been an Xbox fan since the beginning. My favorite consoles are the original Xbox and Xbox 360. I do not want the brand to fail. I see it two ways: 1. Bring back exclusive games to your hardware. This will bring a ton of energy to your core fan base and start the very slow process of giving people a reason to buy the box again in mass. You will lose hundreds of millions of dollars doing this, especially when so many people on your platform will not pay for your exclusive games, but instead use Game Pass. It will take many years to see the full payoff of this choice. 2. Keep sending your games to as many different competing platforms as possible. Maximize sales potential and expand your reach. This is better for your bottom line, but will continue the process of sending your hardware line into obscurity as few people (myself included) will see the point in owning an Xbox. Less opportunity to make 30% revenue rips off of publishers on your own ecosystem, but greater sales volume. The Xbox brand has already been tarnished deeply over the last couple of years, so going with option one will be a harder climb than ever. Where I’m different than most on this discussion is that I am satisfied with whichever decision they make. I just want to play the games. Bring back exclusives, commit to them long term and give people a reason to buy the hardware. I will buy the next Xbox. Or keep sending your games everywhere and I’ll buy them on PlayStation or Steam. There’s a lot to lose in either direction. It’s not the easy decision many make it out to be.

@johnnyjl96 @ManaByte Believe it or not, the idea that I may have to miss out on one game a year doesn't bother me. You realize there are dozens of AAA single player games coming out every year right? And I don't have to buy a single $500 box to play those

@GetFitWithJared @ManaByte Hiding in replies while PlayStation brings full single player exclusives back. You are in pain 😃

People didn’t listen to Sony back in February when they said they’ll offset component costs by raising prices of PS+.

@EliteClubS0B With SummerSlam in Minneapolis? There was no way he was done before that

What are your thoughts on Brock Lesnar returning after seemingly retiring at WrestleMania? Are you a fan of it or nah? 🤔 #WWERaw