Aaron Greenberg: Temper your expectations

Lol nah they all know everything, likely the usual Xbox influencers as well.

I expect lots of games, lots of indies, some more late PS5 ports, some strategic talks about their multiplat strategy, and everything upcoming with release dates released the same day everywhere, and lots of "Day 1 on Gamepass".

Hope we get some kickass reveals. For me, that has been lacking in these shows. I'm not the RE fan others are though.
 
Lol nah they all know everything, likely the usual Xbox influencers as well.

I expect lots of games, lots of indies, some more late PS5 ports, some strategic talks about their multiplat strategy, and everything upcoming with release dates released the same day everywhere, and lots of "Day 1 on Gamepass".
And 20 post show interviews the entire week PRing why 1st party games or exclusives are now all of a sudden bad.

The threads here with the parroted marching orders™ and shill articles to follow are going to be insufferable. 🤣

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Makes sense not to expect too much from MS, even in coming years. The glut of games they've had come out recently were in development since late last gen. Most of their first parties will be out of the draw for a few years going forward.

If a show has 2-3+ games that I want to play, I'd generally consider it a success. I think somehow people have gotten the idea that EVERY game, especially the headliner needs to be a game targeted towards them or the show is bad.
No, that's not it. I remember countless E3 press conferences and other events where only a handful of games really did it for me. The problem is that that number has plummeted in recent presentations. And before, most of the games that didn't appeal to me at least were semi-interesting to look at. Now, the majority make me feel like my eyes are being robbed of precious energy just looking at them. It's just wall to wall clutterware. Like, the majority of games that show up at SGF every year are absolutely irrelevant.

Persona 4 checks a BIG box for me and others, especially those of us who got into Persona with P5/P5R. That's like 50% towards a successful show in my book.
Can I ask: Why? Especially to people who have already played or watched Persona 4 Golden, which really is what put the series forward into the mainstream. We know the characters inside and out; we know the plot. Why does a Remake of that game do so much for anyone?
 
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Even if you said Persona 6 instead, I wouldn't really agree. But this is crazy.

We're in really dire straits if a P4 Remake is the key to a winning presentation.
Hey I like what I like lol.

I only judge these things by whether their contents are in line with my gaming preferences.
 
No, that's not it. I remember countless E3 press conferences and other events where only a handful of games really did it for me. The problem is that that number has plummeted in recent presentations. And before, most of the games that didn't appeal to me at least were semi-interesting to look at. Now, the majority make me feel like my eyes are being robbed of precious energy just looking at them. It's just wall to wall clutterware. Like, the majority of games that show up at SGF every year are absolutely irrelevant.


That's because there are so many events. It's why we need e3 back. Yesterday's showcase was 2 hours of trash games that no one wants. Normally these games wouldn't even be shown at an event like e3 because it doesn't make sense to financially showcase them.

Every one of these shows comes with some level of expectation of why would you put this on if there wasn't any value to it, but that's no longer what shows generally represent. It's just about filling up time slots at this point. Need 2 hours worth of trailers? Well what if the industry doesn't have two hours worth of trailers.

An e3 this year would have included RE9's reveal, whatever Nintendo has planned for H2, Marvel Tokon, Ghost of Yotei deep dive, that Witcher 4 tech demo e.t.c. all condensed into one show without the fluff.


Can I ask: Why? Especially to people who have already played or watched Persona 4 Golden, which really is what put the series forward into the mainstream. We know the characters inside and out; we know the plot. Why does a Remake of that game do so much for anyone?

A lot of people play P4G, but way more got started with P5 and have not fully experienced P3 and P4 let alone the older games. These are basically new games for what amounts to being the majority of Persona fans now. I've played probably 20 hours of P4 but as soon as I heard they were remaking 3, I stopped so I could play the remake instead. Also, a lot of people who have played P4 want to replay it with modern amenities and polish. It's a big deal and it's the biggest announcement we're going to get until P6.
 
Telling Xbox fans to temper expectations at this point is like telling soccer fans there may not be a ton of scoring. We are way ahead of you.
 
There will likely be updates for Fable, Gears EDay, Perfect Dark (with one of those coming out holiday). We know of Outer Worlds 2 stuff. Maybe an ES6 trailer. That's likely it
 
Well, a new Plague Tale Game is a pretty good announcement, but it got leaked just now lol.
 
Hope we get some kickass reveals. For me, that has been lacking in these shows. I'm not the RE fan others are though.
Yeah everything has been a big fat meh so far for me. And everything somewhat cool is 2026 or has no date.

Right now I'm more excited to play Stellar Blade on PC and Hell is Us and get my hands on Switch 2 early in the week than anything shown in a show so far.
 
If the last several years have taught me anything, you should always temper your expectations with anything and everything. Especially with entertainment. When you do that the disappointment doesn't hit as hard, and the excitement (if any) hits harder, lol.
 
That's because there are so many events. It's why we need e3 back. Yesterday's showcase was 2 hours of trash games that no one wants. Normally these games wouldn't even be shown at an event like e3 because it doesn't make sense to financially showcase them.

Every one of these shows comes with some level of expectation of why would you put this on if there wasn't any value to it, but that's no longer what shows generally represent. It's just about filling up time slots at this point. Need 2 hours worth of trailers? Well what if the industry doesn't have two hours worth of trailers.

An e3 this year would have included RE9's reveal, whatever Nintendo has planned for H2, Marvel Tokon, Ghost of Yotei deep dive, that Witcher 4 tech demo e.t.c. all condensed into one show without the fluff.
There's definitely fewer events than previous gens, no doubt. There were some years you had pre-irrelevance Tokyo Game Show, Jump Festa, PSX, 3-4 Nintendo Directs AND E3. If you don't count minor game participation in other events like SXSW. Maybe a Ubisoft livestream in July, but those are patchy.

Now, it's really just relegated to SGF, TGA, 3-4 of State of Plays and Nintendo Directs, including those for singular games. E3 had press conferences from Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, Sony, and even sometimes Bethesda and Square Enix. SGF has a meaningless State of Play with very little first party presence, the SGF showcase and the Xbox showcase (which does include Bethesda).

There was a long while that these conferences were way too long and full of stuff that you weren't going to play. But it wasn't outright shovelware. A good/great conference last gen was Sony E3 2013, 2015, 2016 and the 18. This gen they would be earth shattering. E3 2014 would've been great by today's standards.

A lot of people play P4G, but way more got started with P5 and have not fully experienced P3 and P4 let alone the older games. These are basically new games for what amounts to being the majority of Persona fans now. I've played probably 20 hours of P4 but as soon as I heard they were remaking 3, I stopped so I could play the remake instead. Also, a lot of people who have played P4 want to replay it with modern amenities and polish. It's a big deal and it's the biggest announcement we're going to get until P6.
I'm skeptical about how the numbers break down with that. P4G sold like 1.5 million on the Vita. I know for a fact that a lot of its popularity outside of that had to do with YT walkthroughs/let's plays. P5 and P5 Royal (the latter of which got a HUGE number of double dips) topped out a 5 million between PS3, PS4 and PS5 by 2021. I believe most of the multiplatform sales after that are double dips.

Between the actual sales of Golden across the Vita, PS4/5, Xbox, Switch and PC, the let's plays, the myriad of spinoff games and the anime, I really don't see the massive audience that will get super excited by a remake. It makes more sense to get excited for the P3 remake, and while I'm sure it's done as well as it needs to do, it didn't do THAT amazingly. 1 million in a week and then sales pretty much dropped off afaik.

Am I saying a P4 remake shouldn't happen? Not necessarily, but it's coming at the expense of Persona 6. You will wait longer than you would've otherwise, and I am convinced that it will be a different game than it otherwise would've been. Whatever it is will have to be worth it for a 10-11 year gap between it and P5. If it isn't... well that's not good for the franchise. Not good enough for yet another drop of milk from the Persona 4 cow.
 
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For a change I really appreciate Greenberg here.

We're finally catched up with COVID delays effing up the entire AAA pipeline and yeat another possible GTA VI delay is not a very strong signal for a solid release dates.

I expect a more or less interesting show, slightly more interesting than SoP and SGF. Nothing more.
 
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There's definitely fewer events than previous gens, no doubt. There were some years you had pre-irrelevance Tokyo Game Show, Jump Festa, PSX, 3-4 Nintendo Directs AND E3. If you don't count minor game participation in other events like SXSW. Maybe a Ubisoft livestream in July, but those are patchy.

Now, it's really just relegated to SGF, TGA, 3-4 of State of Plays and Nintendo Directs, including those for singular games. E3 had press conferences from Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, Sony, and even sometimes Bethesda and Square Enix. SGF has a meaningless State of Play with very little first party presence, the SGF showcase and the Xbox showcase (which does include Bethesda).

There was a long while that these conferences were way too long and full of stuff that you weren't going to play. But it wasn't outright shovelware. A good/great conference last gen was Sony E3 2013, 2015, 2016 and the 18. This gen they would be earth shattering. E3 2014 would've been great by today's standards.

The events you're talking about were larger events. Now we can more streaming events. Even Nintendo Direct was a very different type of show in the past. There are 5 Nintendo Directs schedule from January through July this year... We used to get 1-2 a year... You'd get one PlayStation Experience a year or maybe one or two showcases, instead of 4-6 State of Plays... Then you have Xbox showcases and Xbox Developer Directs...

A lot of these events you'd simply get deeper dives into announced games on top of a few announcements.

Now nearly every company has their own streaming event and many have multiple per year. That's why we're left with shovelware, because there is no way to keep the quality of content at these shows up so high. And the format of e3 was never just this 2 hour event filled with trailers. You'd have press conferences interspersed.


I'm skeptical about how the numbers break down with that. P4G sold like 1.5 million on the Vita. I know for a fact that a lot of its popularity outside of that had to do with YT walkthroughs/let's plays. P5 and P5 Royal (the latter of which got a HUGE number of double dips) topped out a 5 million between PS3, PS4 and PS5 by 2021. I believe most of the multiplatform sales after that are double dips.

Between the actual sales of Golden across the Vita, PS4/5, Xbox, Switch and PC, the let's plays, the myriad of spinoff games and the anime, I really don't see the massive audience that will get super excited by a remake. It makes more sense to get excited for the P3 remake, and while I'm sure it's done as well as it needs to do, it didn't do THAT amazingly. 1 million in a week and then sales pretty much dropped off afaik.

Am I saying a P4 remake shouldn't happen? Not necessarily, but it's coming at the expense of Persona 6. You will wait longer than you would've otherwise, and I am convinced that it will be a different game than it otherwise would've been. Whatever it is will have to be worth it for a 10-11 year gap between it and P5. If it isn't... well that's not good for the franchise. Not good enough for yet another drop of milk from the Persona 4 cow.

Persona 4 sold 4.2 million units across P4 and P4G.

Persona 5 sold 8.7 million units across P5, P5R, P5RR

You're looking at more than double the sales. So yes, potentially being able to double the original games sales is a big deal. It's sales are a big deal for Persona 6 and Atlus' budget ultimately. It's not coming at the expense of anything.

If you can remake the game for low costs and sell anywhere from 2-4 million units at say 50 dollars per unit on average... you're looking at generating 100-200 million dollars... That's massive for Atlus.

Persona 3 Reload sold 1 million copies within its first week being the fastest selling Persona game... and that was at 70 dollars... 70 million dollars in a week. These remakes are very likely to generate more revenue than the original games ever did.
 
I wonder how they couldn't make a good show with all the content they have. Worst case scenario they will show games they already showed, people usually don't really bother.
 
The events you're talking about were larger events. Now we can more streaming events. Even Nintendo Direct was a very different type of show in the past. There are 5 Nintendo Directs schedule from January through July this year... We used to get 1-2 a year... You'd get one PlayStation Experience a year or maybe one or two showcases, instead of 4-6 State of Plays... Then you have Xbox showcases and Xbox Developer Directs...

A lot of these events you'd simply get deeper dives into announced games on top of a few announcements.

Now nearly every company has their own streaming event and many have multiple per year. That's why we're left with shovelware, because there is no way to keep the quality of content at these shows up so high. And the format of e3 was never just this 2 hour event filled with trailers. You'd have press conferences interspersed.
You can categorize it how you like (I'm still sticking to my definitions, but yours are valid). But totalling everything the end of the year, for the past few years, I've come up with fewer games I'm interested in than before, and WAY more shovelware than there ever was.

Persona 4 sold 4.2 million units across P4 and P4G.

Persona 5 sold 8.7 million units across P5, P5R, P5RR
But not necessarily double the people, that's the point. For Persona 3, the comparison would be even harsher. Did that scale accordingly with Reload? No.

You're looking at more than double the sales. So yes, potentially being able to double the original games sales is a big deal. It's sales are a big deal for Persona 6 and Atlus' budget ultimately. It's not coming at the expense of anything.
Ugh. This again. "We just need the money!" Well maybe don't take 10 years between installments paying salaries. You do realise that actual game sales are down 16% this gen, right?

If you can remake the game for low costs and sell anywhere from 2-4 million units at say 50 dollars per unit on average... you're looking at generating 100-200 million dollars... That's massive for Atlus.
Yeah, not happening. Zero chance P4R sells 4 million at a 50 dollar average revenue take. They'll be down to 56 dollars on launch day, DIGITALLY.

Persona 3 Reload sold 1 million copies within its first week being the fastest selling Persona game... and that was at 70 dollars... 70 million dollars in a week.
No, that's 56 million dollars in a week. Assuming all of those sales were digital.

These remakes are very likely to generate more revenue than the original games ever did.
At what cost? Thats the question.

Like I said, I'm not saying it shouldn't exist, but it does have an impact constant remakes/remasters are not 1000% upside even for the publisher as proponents like to believe, let alone the players. And I am saying that I will have very high expectations for Persona 6 having taken this long for the sake of milking past glories, and I doubt I'm alone.
 
You can categorize it how you like (I'm still sticking to my definitions, but yours are valid). But totalling everything the end of the year, for the past few years, I've come up with fewer games I'm interested in than before, and WAY more shovelware than there ever was.

Games take longer to develop, so I agree we're going to get fewer games. Also probably more games than ever get canceled now too once market conditions show its not worth making the a game anymore, someone beat you to the punch. The only reason we're seeing so much shovelware is because of Geoff Keighley. These games would never make it to shows in the past.

But not necessarily double the people, that's the point. For Persona 3, the comparison would be even harsher. Did that scale accordingly with Reload? No.

Hard to tell how many people double dipped on any of the individual titles, but it is double that sales. That being said it doesn't need to be double for it to be worth it, but it could certainly come close. Like I said P3 did a million in a week. Doubling the original P3 sales isn't farfetched for lifetime sales. The original Persona 3 only did 2.3 million units across iterations. That you did almost half of that in a week... yeah, it'll likely match it at least.

Ugh. This again. "We just need the money!" Well maybe don't take 10 years between installments paying salaries. You do realise that actual game sales are down 16% this gen, right?

This isn't the only game they're making though. They just came out with Metaphor Refantazio which did very well and diversified their portfolio beyond just Persona. I bet SMT will do a lot better now too.

Yeah, not happening. Zero chance P4R sells 4 million at a 50 dollar average revenue take. They'll be down to 56 dollars on launch day, DIGITALLY.

I mean you have to factor in a lot of things like it will probably be on GamePass.. But I expect the Ps5 sales to be considerably higher than P3.

No, that's 56 million dollars in a week. Assuming all of those sales were digital.

I doubt most people are buying the game via cdkeys and other sites. On Steam and PSN, the game was full price at launch.

At what cost? Thats the question.

Like I said, I'm not saying it shouldn't exist, but it does have an impact constant remakes/remasters are not 1000% upside even for the publisher as proponents like to believe, let alone the players. And I am saying that I will have very high expectations for Persona 6 having taken this long for the sake of milking past glories, and I doubt I'm alone.

More than half the fanbase hasn't played P4... it's a game that is guaranteed to be good. It's hard to pass up remaking that when you know the audience will buy it and in some cases re-buy it. Persona 6 is likely to be a bigger game with a bigger budget because of these remakes. It's a win win.
 
Well I guess we finally figured out who was behind the MrFunSocks account

Edit: For clarity it was something about a house burning and how it was somehow related to the PS5 model revision.

That was a fantastic thread. I need to find that one at some point and bookmark those house fire analogies of his. Too hilarious
 
If a show has 2-3+ games that I want to play, I'd generally consider it a success. I think somehow people have gotten the idea that EVERY game, especially the headliner needs to be a game targeted towards them or the show is bad.

Persona 4 checks a BIG box for me and others, especially those of us who got into Persona with P5/P5R. That's like 50% towards a successful show in my book.
Agreed 2-3 games and I'm good.
 


There is no way Phil will be on stage missing a tooth, right?... and why even? .... unless it just happened.

He's not missing a tooth lol. His teeth just aren't straight and the lighting makes the tooth that is back farther look darker.

That being said he does look "odd". Everybody kept saying he looked like a cancer patient is one of the threads from like last year and while that was definitely an exaggeration he does look really skinny. Hopefully it's for good reasons but he also does look very tired. I give the man shit but I hope he's doing okay.
 
Xbox usually put on a good show. Even a bad showing from them will probably be significantly better than the Summer Games Fest trainwreck.
 
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