Community Chronicle: 10/01/15

So, how has the first full week of the year treated you all? In the games industry there’s already been a fair old bit of drama and excitement, for those paying attention to virtual reality tech and CES.

But before we move on to that, head over to the second page of this article to see the absolute final results from our 2015 trophy leaderboard, in which we’ve been tracking the percentage gain from one year to the next, instead of the absolutes of trophies earnt. Who’s come out on top in 2015?

The big news coming out of this week was to do with the Oculus Rift, as they finally put the system up for pre-order and revealed the final price for this first generation of their virtual reality tech. And it caught a lot of people by surprise, as it comes to $599/£499…

Kjkg got right to the point, as he wrote, “Wooft, that is a hell of a lot more expensive than I’d anticipated. If the other two come in roughly at the same price, VR could be killed off before it has even started.”

Meanwhile, TSBonyman worried what this could mean for the PlayStation VR. He speculated, “I’m wondering now if Sony will see that and not worry so much about the PSVR launch price. I’m still expecting PSVR to be cheaper, just not as much as i previously thought. Maybe only £100/$100/€100 less than the Oculus Rift.”

Avenger responded to all of this by saying, “Seeing the reactions on here and on Twitter I feel like I must be missing something. Did anyone expect anything other than a hefty £400-500 price tag? VR kits in general are pretty sophisticated, and I can’t imagine them going out to a large majority of gamers so they have to price it decently to avoid incurring unreasonable losses. I’d have been surprised if it was in the £299-349 range for sure.”

Adding to that on our follow up blog post, Starman said, “If you’re targeting people who’ve spend a grand or so on their PC to run it then you may as well use top quality expensive components and make it a premium product.”

And JR. added similar thoughts, while emphasising the importance of Sony’s staying power:

I don’t think it matters how much it is as long as it works well and receives the right amount of support.

That’s the main issue I have with VR, especially with the PSVR. Sony have a history of abandoning ideas when they don’t sell well. If Sony guaranteed five years of AAA games and support for PSVR, I’d pre-order one tomorrow. The reality is, PSVR could very well be dead in the water within 12 months and it isn’t worth the risk.

For me, it’s not about the money, it’s whether or not I’ll be throwing my money away or investing in something worthwhile.

It will definitely be very interesting to see how all of this pans out in the coming months.

It might be 2016, but some things never change. Though all networks have their hiccups, the PlayStation Network is infamous for its lack of stability. It’s an awful lot better and more consistent than it once was, but there was a major service outage for much of Monday, which restricted and hampered gamers.

Avenger wrote, “First Monday of the year, well done Sony,” but TonyCawley’s thoughts were more conciliatory. He said, “I’ve not seen this message for a while! It used to be every week there was a problem, I can’t remember the last time PSN was down.”

However, others like Crazy_Del and Kevling simply wanted to play their single player games, and found that they couldn’t. “Still down here. My son can’t even play Disney Infinity 3 – what’s that all about?” asked Kevling.

Thankfully there’s a simple solution to this, which you should all file away for future use. If PSN goes down and your single player games won’t load, simply go to the console’s network settings and uncheck the box ‘Connect to the Internet’. The problems stem from the games trying to connect to servers before letting you carry on.

Forrest_01 has had enough of that, though:

Have to say that I am a bit tired of singleplayer games having a bit of a head fit if the network is down, purely because they have online leaderboards (or some other completely unnecessary online interaction). I appreciate that some people are into the stat tracking thing & whatnot, but to me if that alone stops a game loading that I should be able to play by myself, it needs to die a death. Quickly.

If a game has zero interaction with other players (as in if I am not physically connecting to other people), then I personally see no reason why it cannot work if the network is down & more games should take this into account. Just because there is a network there, doesn’t mean you have to use it!

I can’t help but agree, and that where it’s not necessary, developers should build their games with the presumption of being offline first and foremost. Any added online functionality should be able to seamlessly run in the background.

TSBonyman found playing through Until Dawn to be rather entertaining, even as he generally took a break from gaming. Wonkey-willy also enjoyed his time trying to keep a bunch of dumb teens alive in the mountains, but only managed to save three.

Youles has got very close to the GTA V platinum on PS4, and played through Minecraft: Story Mode’s penultimate episode with his son, who’s absolutely loving it. Sticking with Telltale games, and R1MJAW added the first episode of Tales from the Borderlands to his regular grind towards the Rayman Legends platinum – just one arduous trophy stands in his way – and has moved on to the co-op action of Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel with Forrest and Pixel.

Lyts1985 bagged the Fallout 4 platinum over Christmas, and loved it despite the similarities to the previous games. He’s then moved from one post-apocalypse to another with Mad Max, though can’t see himself sitting down for the same marathon sessions as in Fallout.

The Lone Steven went back to the PS3 and played through Spec Ops: The Line, which he enjoyed an awful lot more than Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor,

JR. has been terribly busy. He raced to 100% completion and the platinum trophy in Just Cause 3 – his 80th! – completed King’s Quest’s first chapter, “finally” got the platinum for Ratchet & Clank 3 on the PS Vita, and even found time to get bored of Star Wars Battlefront and step into the Commonwealth in Fallout 4.

DividSmythe grabbed the platinum trophy for GTA San Andreas on PS3, claiming the record for the game. Crazy_Del also got in on the act with a record for Just Cause 3, while bigchrissyc staked their claim for Final Fantasy VII on PS4.

Final Fantasy VII’s platinum was also grabbed by kjkg this past week, while Steelhead got in the retro spirit by playing the physical version of Shovel Knight with a poorly two year old asleep on his lap.

A inferior race is back this week with the last update to the 2015 trophy leaderboard. Head over to page 2 to see what it was all about and who the winner was!

Aside from that, I leave you on this page with the usual submission form.