Sacred Symbols, Episode 146: Recharted

I suppose...

Dan Morgan

I'm sure it's more complicated than that!

Colin Moriarty

I don't know anything about that.

Colin Moriarty

Colin I’d be fine with the price increase if it was actually going to the devs, I don’t want to pay £20 more for a game just so a CEO can have a bigger bonus

Dan Morgan

Epic is also big into video productions and movies , industrial light and magic and epic have a special relationship in its live action shows way in advance than other companies

Hose A Contra Razz

I would like to point out that a £70 game is about the equivalent of $96.84 USD but that's with VAT (value-added tax) already added into the cost of the product. A quick google search shows that in London (I'm not sure how or if this varies from area to area) the VAT rate is 20%. That means that after taxes are taken from the cost of a game the price is £56 or just under $77.50. Which is more than $70 but is a marginal difference in what Sony is actually charging. I'm editing to add that I just did the math the other way around (if the tax is calculated before consideration of the intended or desired shelf price is decided) and if that's the case then the closest that they could get without going under an equivalent take-home of $70 would be £64 (rounded to the nearest whole pound). Anything less and the taxes would actually make it so that they're selling it for less than an equivalent of $70. Assuming they wanted to go for a nicer number than £64 they could have sold it for £65 and that would have been more fair (assuming they calculate the tax in that order), but they ended up going with £70 because it's nice and round, and also they're a corporation so they figured if they could get away with it might as well. Not trying to be combative at all, just thought I'd add some more context.

Jahmeir Watson

Oh dear.

Colin Moriarty

Yes. That's a lot.

Colin Moriarty

Please!

Colin Moriarty

Time for another podcast, perhaps.

Colin Moriarty

Yes.

Colin Moriarty

We're investigating.

Colin Moriarty

I don't think so... because I really don't think people were buying games yet en masse. I think they just fucked up, because they don't listen to anyone.

Colin Moriarty

That's big!

Colin Moriarty

I disagree. They are the only first party that can do it right.

Colin Moriarty

They've changed from a communication and marketing standpoint, and it makes them more boring... even as the games remain of the highest caliber!

Colin Moriarty

Thank you. <3

Colin Moriarty

The worst!

Colin Moriarty

I also think it's bullshit, and it can be done.

Colin Moriarty

Write in!

Colin Moriarty

It's the ultimate reversal.

Colin Moriarty

We all want it!

Colin Moriarty

=)

Colin Moriarty

Me too. =)

Colin Moriarty

Write in next week with a correction!

Colin Moriarty

=\

Colin Moriarty

Well, we ebb and we flow. =)

Colin Moriarty

I hope they rediscover that magic.

Colin Moriarty

Thank you! <3

Colin Moriarty

Days Gone 2 wasn't greenlit by Layden; everything else that happened at Bend and the second San Diego studio is actually on Hulst and Ryan.

Colin Moriarty

I don't think that's gonna happen.

Colin Moriarty

I don't know. We'll see.

Colin Moriarty

It sucks! They need to figure this out.

Colin Moriarty

I think it's their paramount problem, yes.

Colin Moriarty

Dustin. =)

Colin Moriarty

Sony owns about 2% of Epic; we discuss this on the show.

Colin Moriarty

The sequel will be Ghost of Two-Shima. Calling it now

Henry Morgan

Just a quick note on the $10 price jump. I don’t mind a small price jump but Here In the uk we have a £20 pound price jump in games equivalent to nearly $30 Sony is completely scamming us over here and it needs to be addressed.

Jako

Dustin is right. Sonic needs to be done and put out of his misery. For evidence, look no further than Rule 34 or CrowBCat's video on the Sonic 25th Anniversary celebration

Paul Andrew

I'm halfway through the episode and cant wait to post this again on the thread for next episode: Sacred symbols a circle jerk podcast where I (colin) entertain every idea I agree with and never challenge my own. Sitting with me as always is Chris HaloneedsHookshot Raygun and Dustin my no1 fan. My cohost who agree with me and never challenge my ideas. Oh btw if none of us know what's going on we ramble our uneducated no reaserch opinions and try sports references. Looking at you Chris-hit a homerun every game-Raygun you big armed mafk. "This isnt negative" this is a critique of a pod that could be better if someone disagreed or had an actual critical thought BEYOND "yeahno" "that's wild." If Colin asks what you think might as well slap 15secs(->)X4 because you've already heard what they'll say 1000 times. Let's end this on a positive note: It's great each host comes from a different gaming paradigm.

Lonely Shepherd

Death Loop’s only a six month exclusive, just a heads up. It’s in their marketing.

BlindRiot

With Sony reversing course on closing down PS3 and Vita digital stores, can developers still release new games for Vita? Or is the certification process still going to be closed in June?

David Y

What's up my dudes.... conspiracy theory on the PS Store closings: you know how sometimes you tell a girl you have a micro-penis so that when she actually meets Mr. Vienna-sausage she's like... oh... that's not as bad as I thought it would be... I think that's what Sony is doing with the PS Stores. They are closing them without having anything in place or telling us anything and having all these bad optics and stories about how we're losing all these games so that when they actually do finally release these games in some separate "Classic PS3" hardware or ps5 firmware update that they release in the future, we will all just be happy they gave us anything that we won't care that they are missing 65% of the games released for the console. It's a solid strat to soften the blow of bad news to a significant other, your boss, or millions of dedicated fans across the globe.....

During the PSN outage, I managed to pull my grades to A’s. First time and only time I was able to do that during my college years.

Samuel Zamora

Given that Sony’s CEO seems to be new to the industry, I’ve gotta disagree that they’re the folks best equipped to show Castlevania, Silent Hill and Metal Gear the respect that they deserve.

BlindRiot

This doesn't sound like the Sony that took a huge risk and got into the console space, because they really wanted to know what Nintendo's blood tastes like. This doesn't sound like the Sony that body slammed the Sega and their overpriced Saturn during a boring press conference. This definitely doesn't sound like the Sony that marketed the PSP as a nut you can play with outside.

FluffyNeko

Also, as always this was an incredible episode. Love the banter and discussion between you guys, as always. As a high school teacher teaching during a pandemic, I appreciate listening to lighthearted and informative discussion on a weekly basis that helps me unwind and just think about video games for a little bit. Keep it up.

yosh_wah

Hey boys, My PSNow subscription just renewed because I forgot to turn off the automatic renewal. Here's to hoping Sony will do something that makes PSNow an exciting and worthwhile experience. They have until April 17, 2022 to make the experience worthwhile. Damn auto-renew subscriptions.

yosh_wah

Halo 4 is my favourite after the first game 😂 Didn't enjoy Halo 5 that much though.

Liam Mcnulty

Yep, our price increase is pretty staggering. £20 - £25 price jump.

Liam Mcnulty

Disagree with your take on Halo being more popular than Horizon & God of War. Halo has been very disappointing since Halo 4 and especially Halo 5: Guardians. There was virtually no excitement leading up to both of those games. The series is essentially milked to death by Microsoft because, to your point, “Halo, Gears, Forza. Halo, Gears, Forza.” I see both Horizon 2 & God of War: Ragnarok selling way more than Halo Infinite. Even at $70.

Brandon Soto

Returnal is £70 here Colin, not £60. For reference, RE 8 is £50 and most games last-gen were £40 / £45. We got hit with a much bigger price hike from Sony than you Yanks.

Your Boi Nicky V

I'd just like to add my PC is only a bit weaker than a PS5 and has run PS3 games successfully via emulation, so I think they're feeding us bullshit. Yeah I'm sure PS3 BC would be hard but they actually have the proper documentation for it. Same goes for PS2, and not the half-baked PS2 offering they gave us on PS4 then gave up on. I don't disagree with the facts showing that not many games are compatible, but it's still early years. Not to mention call of duty is playable on PC, so there is a very low reason to prioritize making them playable via emulation. Imagine what paid engineers with documentation could do.

David P

Hey Colin, regarding the price jump for PS5 games, I think some complaints are justified, depending on the region. In the UK, games last gen were around £50 and they've jumped to £70, which is a big difference. We now pay more for games than you do in the USA, before it worked out we were paying similar prices. I only buy digital games anyway, so I get PSN wallet codes from shopto.net, which are always discounted, so it works out to about £62 for a game. But I get why people are annoyed.

Liam Mcnulty

Sony: “Alright listen. To play the baseball game we made, you can either subscribe to GamePass & play it Day 1, or you can give us $70. The choice is yours.”

Brandon Soto

Time willll tell

Dav9834

Huge jump and hard to swallow.

james o halloran

Keep going off about Resistance Chris! Would be so sick to have that series back. Will it into existence!!!

Mark Burn

I think its more that the new games come at no extra cost to the plan Amazon adds films and so does Disney where you can still pay a fee on top of the subscription, theres a feeling that they are essentially free even though they definitley arent

Craig Mcguire

Drives me nuts when people say that games are free on game pass. They are not you are paying a monthly subscription. My Netflix shows aren't free they are part of a subscription plan that cost me money.

Wayde

Looooooool that TLOU Remake cover art!

Phillip Guglielmo

This is what I do. I got a 5tb usb drive for ps4 games since it doesn't really change the performance running them on the ssd.

Shawn Hayden

I found that whole part confusing. Halo has been pretty dead since bungie left.

Shawn Hayden

That was an epic finals run Iverson was all time during that post season!

JT

From a UK perspective, game prices rising from £50 to £70 is a pretty big deal.

TROTMAC96

While I agree Halo in a bigger name it doesn't matter if it isn't executed properly. And Halo hasn't been the same in a long time

Wayde

The John Garvin David Jaffe interview is great. Glad you're getting Jaffe on the show.

Jake Z

I'm pretty sure the Yuffie dlc is only for the PS5 version so you'll have no choice but to deal with that double trophy list😂😂

Sumojoe118

The price hike in Europe is higher with conversion first party games are now the equivalent of 95 us dollars. Jumping 24 dollars from last gen.

james o halloran

Hey Jack, yeah no way were you paying 75 euro for games on the PS4 generation.I payed 55 for last of us 2 and 60 for ghost of thisima. 60 quid max in Smyth's or Argos. The only place it ever went to 70 was in GameStop and you would be crazy to give them your money. A quick search on Smyths will show even resident evil 8 coming next month is 60. The only games at 80 is Sony first party. Don't know why you feel the need to justify the price hike?

james o halloran

Best of luck finding Intergrade on PS4 😂

Brent Lindquist

Damn this was absolutely scathing towards Sony. Hope they wake up and start making better moves before the industry moves on without them. Nothing is safe.

Matthew Two T's

Everything Colin said about this leadership is how I feel. I really miss the old crew! It was so fun back then. Especially because I was a late Ps3 adopter, and got Ps4 at launch. Man it feels like a completely different PlayStation right now. Hope they pull it together.

D'Ante Almo

Episode Yuffie is only available on PS5. Will Colin’s OCD for trophies stop him from playing this?

Christopher Peterson

Great episode, Colin. You three got the stuff!

Will Hahn

Didn’t all the Sony bend shit happen while Layden was still in charge? Seems like everyone is putting this on Ryan.

Bogey Zero

I don't think most people are outraged at the jump from $60 to $70 but pricing returnal which let's all face it isn't worth that much is more expensive than God of War and TLOU2 also comparisons to game pass don't help sony either.

Dean Robertson

Come on Colin. We talked about this before. It's Dikembe Mutumbo. He recorded 3,289 blocks in his illustrious career! He was also part of the Iverson era Sixers when they went to the NBA Finals. I'm a huge NBA fan, so I got your back on this one.

Anthony J Sanchez

Sony needs to get Horizon out by August. This fall is going to be so packed due to Covid delays that they can’t afford to lump it in with the fall gluttony

John

I feel like Kojima is a done deal for Xbox on his next project. Would seem strange for Phil to make such a blatant show of it, if it wasnt locked in.

Phil Walker

on the subject of the 80 euro ps5 games. i can speak on how here in Ireland the price of games has gone up every generation ps4 games were 50 and they went up 60 then 65 around 2011. Then in the ps4 generation they were 75 euro in gamestop.

Jack Doheny

Just a comment on Dustin's comments regarding expandable storage. For PS5 games it won't matter much unless you have slow internet, but if you have a large library of ps4 games it just makes sense to get a drive and use it just for those games. Buying a 2TB M.2 SSD for the expansion slot is going to cost hundreds of dollars, but a 2TB external hard drive would be about 60 bucks and faster loading than the base PS4. Better save your PS5 storage for things that need PS5 speed

Jordan Avery

I don't think anyone (even Xbox fans) doubts that the PS5 will out sell the Xbox Series. A company's console can do well commercially while that company is following the wrong trends.

It’s fucking insane that I’m having to play through the Ratchet Series on my PS3 right now to get caught up on PS5’s biggest game this season. Whereas on Xbox it doesn’t matter what generation the game I’m playing is from because I just consider those to be my games— it’s like Jim Ryan’s comment “we believe in generations” was just directed at removing their older catalogues rather than building a new one.

Oliver Johnson

Chris is right. Sonys only problem right now is communication. Most of the facts that colin listed are also true of microsoft, they just market better, which outside of the xbox one launch has always been the case.

Shawn Hayden

Despite all the hooplah playstation 5 just set the US record for unit and dollar sales in a consoles first 5 months. Again everyone is saying Sony needs to get out more PS5's but Xbox is still sold out as well yet PS5 is the console setting records. And before anyone else points it out yes i know alot of them are being bought by scalpers, but still shows the high demand nonetheless.

Michael Buffill

To whomever is in charge of the thumbnails... Gold. Absolute gold. The outtakes at the end of some episodes are great too.

Andrew Morgan

I just wanted to mention here last week colin mentioned one of the reasons days gone might not be getting a sequel is because it’s in a non Sony owned engine which is true Unreal is Epic’s but Sony owns a part of epic. I remember this news story from an older episode of sacred symbols where colin mentioned Sony no longer would have to pay for unreal since they are partial owners

Rube Rupak