What new games have you played this year?

[Steven]

I thought these things are supposed to get cheaper over time, not become more expensive.

Pretty sure Sony thought so too and developed the console thinking they could sell for much less a few years down the line. Seems like there's no longer a market for high-end hardware if it never gets cheaper to reach the masses eventually.

Switch is still at its launch price, too. It's probably going to become cheaper once Switch 2 launches, but I'm sure Nintendo would love to continue to sell it at its current launch price and will do everything possible to do so.

It's going to be interesting to see where the industry is heading towards now that almost every publisher's switch to subscription based models also didn't pan out as well as they had hoped.

This makes me quite happy, but I'm sure they'll find some way to make it happen. Eventually all of the consoles will be either digital-only, subscription-only, streaming-only, or, worst of all, subscription+streaming-only, which I am sure is the ultimate goal.

I'm still not convinced of the controller's durability, either.

A friend had stick drift happening on the PS5 controller. I was appaled to learn that a luxury article was that badly engineered.

Yeah, my right stick is debating over whether it wants to or not. Judging by my experience with the Switch, it's only a matter of time before it actually happens, but it's already enough for me to not be able to play Sonic Superstars properly, as the selection wheel thing doesn't work properly now. Fortunately, that is the only game that has a problem with it and I have an extra controller.

I wouldn't really mind that much if this was a 2000 yen controller, but this thing costs 10,000 yen now. Sony wants basically $100 fucking USD for just a controller! The execs at Sony must be doing some sort of illegal drugs, but they're somehow getting away with both the drugs and the prices. I got mine for 5000 yen on Amazon a few years ago, fortunately.

[Lander]

A friend had stick drift happening on the PS5 controller. I was appaled to learn that a luxury article was that badly engineered.

PS sticks have been a mess since about halfway into the PS4 generation. The launch controllers were fine, but at some point they figured out that they could employ aggressive software filtering to make up for extra-noisy potentiometers, and quality took a dive.

I think they stuck with that for the DualSense, based on a vaguely-remembered reaction to plugging mine into the PC and seeing its raw axes.