The Monday letters page realises that the next gen Xbox will be able to play PS5 games, as one reader hopes Bluepoint Games isn’t working on God Of War.

Games Inbox is a collection of our readers’ letters, comments, and opinions. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Nintendo logic
So, Sony has had a successful State of Play, their best in years I’d say, and Xbox’s was good too (I’ll be honest, I can’t remember anything about it, but I remember the buzz was decent). That means that Nintendo is the next one to have a showcase, but we still don’t have a date for it.

I’ve seen some rumours that it’ll be March, but I feel that’s just the obvious guess anyway. But my question is what will they be talking about? All we know about from them at the moment is Fire Emblem and Splatoon Raiders and while I don’t think many people here would consider them a particularly big deal you just don’t know with Nintendo.

But surely they must be preparing to announce at least one new triple-A game (or whatever you’d call them with Nintendo). It’s probably not Animal Crossing or Zelda, because the timings don’t work out, so to me the two obvious options are Super Mario or Smash Bros.

You might say Mario is the most obvious, but Nintendo has been so weird about it so far I don’t think there’s any guarantee they’ll suddenly become predictable. My bet would be on Smash Bros., with some new characters and other minor new content. Not the most thrilling choice, in my opinion, but the logical choice. I would expect it to be the big game for Christmas.
Ishi

Perfect prelude
There was a lot of good stuff at the State of Play but it didn’t shake my opinion that Resident Evil Requiem is the most exciting game at the moment and the one I’m most looking forward to. The new footage looked great and so has everything else before it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game not make a single mistake before release and always look like a must have.

If it turns out to be a dud after all this I will actually be really impressed that Capcom has been able to hide it so well. I don’t expect that will be the case though and while I’ll still wait for the reviews I’m predicting this will be one of the best game of this year and probably the whole generation. Don’t let me down now!
Purple Ranger

Stuck in Sparta
I tend to agree with the Reader’s Feature about God Of War. Sons Of Sparta looks bad and a remake trilogy does sound like a big wasted effort, given those earlier games were nothing like the new ones in terms of gameplay or story. It’d be tragic if Santa Monica Studio were wasting their time on it, but it’d be just as bad if it were Bluepoint Games, doing it – which is something I’ve heard fans talking about.

It’s not that remaking the game itself is a terrible idea, it’s just that by doing that you’re locking out talented developers for five years or more. Developers that could be busy moving the franchise forward or just generally not redoing something that already exists and you can play as remasters. I just don’t see any good outcome, because if they get a no-name dev, like with Sons Of Sparta, then that drastically decreases the odds that it will be any good.
Focus

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Two Keanus
I didn’t think much of the state of play. The hair on the back of my neck when the John Wick trailer started playing. It would have been obvious to anyone that has watched at least one of the films it was a John Wick game.

But that’s tempered by the fact that I’m an old gamer that remembers when movie tie-in was just another way of saying a game was a poor quality, rushed cash-in. Remember The Matrix game?

GoldenEye 007 was the first game I remember that was based on a film that turned out to actually be good.
TomTom

For the love of the game
Interesting comparison of Sony and Valve’s attitude in the Reader’s Feature at the weekend. I would not have thought of the comparison myself, but it does work. I think the problem for both companies is that ordinary games – basically anything but a mega hit – have become too small for them to bother with.

This seems a mistake to me though, as in Sony’s case they lose out on a key incentive in buying their console. But for both companies it’s a waste of talent and knowledge that has taken years to build up and is no longer being used properly. As long as a profit is made why not make them anyway, for the kudos alone?

That worked for Astro Bot, which wasn’t a big hit but made people think better of Sony for a while. Soras will probably be similar, but I feel we need a lot more of that, multiple times a year.
Tenna

Only on PlayStation
Perhaps I’m just being slow here, but I realised that if the next gen Xbox is just a PC in console’s clothing, as it were, then that means that all PlayStation 5 games will, eventually, be on Xbox. I guess it doesn’t really mean much, since Microsoft doesn’t get a cut of the sales or anything, but we may finally have our all-in-one single format (except for Nintendo, but that was never going to happen).

For years that seemed like something to really wish for but now that it’s actually close to happening it feels like nobody will actually care. In the end, the PC has been the single format all along (especially for those using emulators) and Microsoft putting the Xbox logo on a different machine isn’t going to change that.

I think we’ll soon begin to realise that, in terms of consoles, single format domination is a bad thing. People are upset about Sony not releasing more first party games but now that the Xbox has slipped into irrelevance they have no incentive to change.

Why spend all that money when you’ve already proved it doesn’t matter to whether your game Is a success or not? Sony won by doing nothing so there’s no incentive to do more next time.
Tom Meadows

Last gen
I’ve been watching Nioh 3 a bit on Twitch and wondered whether or not it should have been a dual console release. I can’t see any reason it couldn’t work on the PlayStation 4. Surely they could lower the resolution or whatever it was that stopped a version on PlayStation 4. It seems like Sony left money on the table with this decision. To me at least it still looks the same as Nioh 1 and 2.

Pretty sure there’s still millions of PlayStation 4 users out there.
Bobwallett

GC: It’s not Sony’s game.

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Positive recap
I’m still thinking about Thursday’s State Of Play, because it was more than a few steps ahead of the usual disappointments that we are usually served by Sony. It absolutely began with a bang. Death Stranding 2 on PC; Ghost Of Yōtei: Legends in March; Kena 2; the reveal of a John Wick game, with Keanu Reeves returning in the role of the Baba Yaga. Silent Hill Townfall was revealed and it’s first person; that was quite the surprise. It’s also set in an island inspired by Scotland, so that’s a nice change of pace to see locations from Japan to the UK being used. It’s a very fresh take on the series.

Metal Gear Solid 4 is free from PlayStation 3 jail. I’ve wanted for this for many years and to see it finally happen is just unbelievable. Saros continues to look stunning and I can’t wait for it, personally. Pragmata looks charming and I actually have played the demo; very enjoyable and a fun hacking romp – Diana is a charmer as well. Project Windless is quite interesting. A chicken with a bone to pick and dual swords. Yep, I’m sold.

The anime titles and Marathon were my low points. I’m not particularly interested in either title. Control: Resonant and 007 First Light continue to impress. Crimson Moon sounds like a lot of fun and I look forward to seeing more. The final reveal was the remake of the God Of War trilogy, which was a win for me personally. It’s obviously years away, and it did just begin development, but spoken as a massive fan of the franchise I’m absolutely pumped for this.

However, it was disappointing to see no Phantom Blade 0 at the event. At least pre-orders could have been revealed. Since it does have a release date, after all. We didn’t see Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3 or Kingdom Hearts 4. That was a let down on Square Enix’s part. Maybe we’ll see those at the Tokyo Game Show.

Wolverine will be shared in the spring, so I wasn’t expecting that. All in all, it was a fantastic event and the games look very stellar. There’s much to be excited for and I can’t wait to see more. I’ll also say that I would have liked to see more from Judas and Tides Of Annihilation and Lego Batman, but I can wait longer. To a wonderful 2026 and the release of Resident Evil Requiem in two weeks!
Shahzaib Sadiq

Inbox also-rans
I’ve got a lot of sympathy for the Highguard dev complaining about ‘gamer culture’. It’s not my type of game, so I wouldn’t be interested in it whatever happened. But I never saw any explanation for why everyone turned on it except that they were hoping for something else to be revealed at The Game Awards – which is hardly the developer’s fault.
Kakem

Am I the only one that thought the latest trailer for Marathon made it look like Splatoon? Not necessarily a bad thing but why do they have blue blood?
Gonk

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The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.

You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader’s Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot.

You can also leave your comments below and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter.

MORE: Games Inbox: Was the latest PS5 State of Play a good one?

MORE: Games Inbox: Would PS5 exclusives on Switch 2 be a mistake?

MORE: Games Inbox: What will the new The Witcher 3 DLC be about?

The Friday letters page is relatively enthusiastic about Horizon Hunters Gathering, as one reader thinks Nintendo should ditch GameChat on Switch 2.

Games Inbox is a collection of our readers’ letters, comments, and opinions. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Poor Partner
So that Partner Showcase from Nintendo was awful, as we all thought. Although it was actually quite a bit worse than I was expecting, to be honest. There was no real surprises for anything big, Elden Ring and The Duskbloods weren’t there, and the mic drop at the end was Bethesda.

I don’t want to get into fanboy territory but if there is one developer whose success I have never understood it’s Bethesda. OK, Skyrim was innovative back when it came out but stuff like The Witcher 3 did the same idea much better. More importantly, Bethesda has never made anything that good again.

Fallout 4 is significantly worse than 3 and I, along with most people, didn’t even bother with Starfield – which you’ll notice was not one of the three games they revealed. But what really gets me is how bad Bethesda is technically. Everyone’s been saying it about them for years and yet they never change.

And so what do we see in that new trailer? What looks like a terrible port of a game that should have no problem working on the Switch 2. If that’s what you’re showing off I hate to think what the rest of the game looks like.
Torrence
PS: The only saving grace was two different dinosaur games!

Welcome bomb
What a nice surprise the Nintendo Direct pulled today.

A Bomberman Collection? Heck, yes! Takes me back to when I was 10 years old playing Super Bomberman 2 single and multiplayer and destroying the CPUs.

Also, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth in June, for Xbox and Switch 2? I will take that!
ShaunOMacY2J (gamertag)

Small screen gaming
Yikes, that Partner Showcase was weak sauce. I know we were told not to get ourselves hyped up but I really question what the point of it was. It’s not like the proper Nintendo Directs don’t have third party games, so why exactly did we need this bunch of third rate games and lazy-looking ports?

Fallout 4 looks like it runs terrible on Switch 2 and it’s going to be nearly 11 years old by the time it makes it, so I really find it impossible to get excited about it.

But what else was there to tempt anyone? Resident Evil Requiem looks like a pretty good port but there’s no way I’d buy it on Switch 2 instead of PlayStation 5. Third party games on a Nintendo format need to offer something special or be really well suited to portable play, but that didn’t seem to be the case for most of the games they showed.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth on a handheld screen would be such a waste given how over-the-top and detailed the graphics are. Another Nintendo Direct and yet more disappointment.
Goldwing

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Evil deal
While most of what I was interested in from yesterday’s Direct was already known about, the release of the Pragmata demo was at least a welcome surprise.

Short but sweet as a demo, but it’s sold me on the game. Hopefully I get better at the hacking and combat at the same time, it’s a bit like rubbing your stomach and patting your head. But it already feels like it’ll be a good game.

Capcom are really going through a golden period. The new Resi looks good too, the triple pack of 7, 8 and 9 on Switch is just £82 at Argos, which is tempting, even for Game-Key cards.

I do wish Elden Ring had been in the Direct though.
Euclidian Boxes

GC: That is a very good price for the Resi trilogy.

Forgotten birthday
We are getting very close to that Zelda 40th anniversary and Nintendo still hasn’t said a thing, except for some concerts. Are they really going to ignore such a big number, even as they make a fuss about Pokémon turning 30?

You’d think they’ have a game lined up to go along with it, probably a remaster or remake, but I don’t see how they’ve got time to release it now. Even if they shadow-dropped it. Considering how multiple leakers knew about the Partner Showcase, and were accurate about it, I don’t see how we get a surprise Nintendo Direct in the next two weeks.

I’d love if it did happen but at the moment I’m not even confident Nintendo will mention anything to do with Zelda this year. Since when did Link become the unloved loser who can’t get anyone to go to his birthday party?
Paulie

Wasted time
As achingly trend chasing as it all looked, I surprisingly found myself quite fluffed by the Horizon Hunters Gathering reveal, it looked very polished and fun.

But live service games’ moment-to-moment gameplay often is very good, it’s that they are designed to drag on forever that’s the problem; for the well documented reason of being forever games and all the monetisation models around them, I genuinely feel I need to boycott live service games.

Jan-Bart Van Beek’s assurance at the start of the video, that Guerrilla bloody love making single-player games, and will continue to make them, didn’t convince me one bit. If it’s a hit they’ll divert more time and resources to it.

At the start of the gen, and the talk of Sony having 500 or so live service games in development, I convinced myself that it was additional to single-player. But we learnt that wasn’t the case and nearly all of their traditionally single-player studios were significantly tied up with the live service push. With the $3.6 billion purchase of Bungie as well, Sony committed massive resources to it all.

So no live service games for me, or Nintendo Directs from now on. Time better spent elsewhere.
Simundo

Honest addition
Interesting to see Valve admit that the RAM problems have caused them to change their Steam Machine plans, at least a little bit. I think that’s the first time a company has actually admitted it, because usually they just say it won’t even when they turnaround and do a price raise straight after.

Maybe Valve would be a good addition to the console world if they’re actually going to… tell the truth and engaged with people? They’re not saying much at the moment, because the thing hasn’t been properly unveiled yet, but I’m hoping they can bring some straight talking to the industry… as well as Half-Life 3.
Gantz

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Always in motion is the future
The steady stream of news about the Switch 2’s fortunes is kinda interesting, it seems like it’s destined to get locked in a debate over whether it is a success or not for a while to come. I think both things can be true, it’s the fastest-selling console ever and taking Japan by storm, but also underperforming in the West and third party games sales are floundering. 18 million consoles sold is great but if everyone is just replaying Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom at 60fps, as Ubisoft weep into their Star Wars Outlaws sales, that isn’t the gaming saviour we were hoping for.

I did suspect performance in the UK might not be in line with the blockbuster figures elsewhere, the Black Friday deals (admittedly modest) ended up running right up until the end of January and the console wasn’t ever sold out over that time.

In Japan, it’s worth remembering that the machine is essentially being subsidised due to the currency problems with the yen. They have a much cheaper, locked Japanese language version that’s unavailable in other territories. Suggesting in the West, at least, Nintendo really need to bring that price down significantly somehow. Maybe ditch GameChat? I recently saw figures it was being used by less than 4% of console owners.

The latest Partner Direct lent into Japanese developed titles and franchises (outside the Bethesda reveals) in a strategy that seems to double down on the console’s trajectory so far. If Western publishers can’t turn a profit on it and so ditch support, it won’t be good for anyone at a time when we need games to be as widely available as possible. If the market fractures everything will be even worse.
Marc

GC: GameChat Is unlikely to have cost very much in either R&D or manufacturing. That’s probably why it exists. Nintendo actually did better, proportionally, in the UK than most other countries, over Christmas. Whereas it did unexpectedly poorly in France, which is usually it’s biggest market in Europe. Everything is very much in flux at the moment.

Inbox also-rans
So if the PlayStation 5 is selling roughly the same as the PlayStation 4 that means it’s going to come out at about 117 million sales, right? So somewhere around the fifth best-selling console of all time, above the Wii and PS1. That seems a pretty good achievement to me.
PhantomZ

So glad to see that Rave Racer is getting a proper console. I was always sore it never got a proper home version, as it was my favourite in the arcades. Can’t wait to play it again.
Johno

Email your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.

You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader’s Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot.

You can also leave your comments below and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter.

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