Both God of War Ragnarok and Until Dawn are coming to Steam finally, but they will annoyingly require a PlayStation Network Account despite being single-player games.
This means players in various regions where the PSN is not supported will not be able to purchase and play either of them, just like the issue with Helldivers 2 and Ghost of Tsushima DIRECTOR'S CUT.
Sony haven't said specifically if either of them will have that fancy new PlayStation Overlay like Tsushima has, as their Steam pages only mention the PSN account requirement, which may be good news for Steam Deck / Linux players since the new PlayStation Overlay is not supported in Proton yet. For comparison, the Tsushima store page does clearly note it uses the PlayStation Overlay.
Valve didn't reply to my previous email asking about Proton and the PlayStation Overlay, so we'll just have to wait and see if Sony add it to these games and if Proton will ever support it.
God of War Ragnarök arrives on September 19th.
Ragnarök will come with NVIDIA RTX Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) 3.7, AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 3.1 and Intel XeSS (Xe Super Sampling) 1.2. It will also support NVIDIA Reflex, proper ultra-wide resolutions, various controls customization, unlocked framerates and it will also include the God of War Ragnarök: Valhalla DLC in the purchase for no extra cost.
Until Dawn has no specific release date yet but it will be this year.
This one should be interesting, as the developers say it's actually being re-built in Unreal Engine 5:
Until Dawn has been rebuilt with the latest tools and techniques. New and improved animations build on the success of the original character performances. Characters, environments and VFX have been upgraded – all for a truly enhanced cinematic horror experience.
We use a broader cinematic tonal colour palette and new perspectives to make the story more nuanced and emotional. We’ve been brave enough to shine a light into the dark, unseen corners of Blackwood Mountain and added a third-person camera, which means you can now look behind the curtain of the original game, exploring enhanced and new locations with new interactions and collectables.
Incorporating a third-person camera and adding contextual character movement animations, the game now allows the player to really feel the experience of that fateful night.
Until Dawn’s sound has undergone a massive overhaul too, featuring a new score from legendary horror composer Mark Korven.
We’ve endeavoured to keep the fantastic narrative integratory of the original, but we have seized the opportunity to expand upon unexplored emotional parts of the story.
Both of their trailers are age-gated on YouTube, so no including them here.
Just sell them and if people want to connect to PSN optionally... fine. Let them do it.
But this? They are sabotaging themselves for absolutely no reason. Ridiculous.
I have friends that still can't buy the game due to the regional limitations. But everyone gave themselves a pat on the back after a single tweet and forgot about that immediately.
But hey, it's not like that was the main argument everyone was making, right?
With their network working on the Deck - make sure it works, and make sure it keeps working - they get the virtuous cycle marketing boost that's hugely more significant than just the ~5 million units sold. The two biggest questions the games media have with every high profile PC release are "is it coming to Steam?" and "will it work on the Steam Deck?" Boosting non-Microsoft gaming should be an easy mood for Sony, and people gushing over how talented Sony's devs are is no bad thing.
Without it working on the Deck the coverage is only about how terrible PSN is, and how much everyone hates it, as demonstrated by EA, Ubisoft, Rockstar and Epic. Except actually slightly worse, because they're years late behind a half-dozen others, and the things people are already aware of with PSN are the bad download speeds, the pretty rubbish store interface, and the massive data breach that took the network down for months and meant Sony had to fork out to millions of people.
"Not actually worse than EA & Ubisoft" is an achievable goal for Sony, but it would be pretty sad if that were all they could muster. There are some pretty straightforward things Sony can do to better achieve their objectives.
Internet requirement for single-player is bullshit. Cut that out. Cut that right out.
PSN linking can be optional. When the player links their Steam account to their PSN account - boom! - populate their achievements list on each with achievements earned in the other. Steam has adequate means to uniquely identify a Steam user in the meantime for cross-platform play.
Eat the cost of double-dipping DLC. I haven't yet worked out whether it makes sense to eat the cost of all double-dipping, but single-digit percentages buy DLC at all - you don't want those purchases locking people out of your platform, so if people buy DLC on Steam they also get the DLC on PlayStation, and vice versa. For the base game, something like "buy the game on Steam, with a linked account, get it half price on PlayStation" might end up making sense. Possibly the other way, too. Should they ever get round to having a PSN PC store, having "buy on PSN anywhere, have it apply to PSN anywhere" should be a no-brainer. Also ensure that cross-platform saves work both ways. If you do persuade someone to switch from PC to PlayStation, they've already got an account, they've already got a library, with their saves, and they've already got some bragging rights on their profile - those are the kinds of thing that can keep them active on your platform.
Doing these things might not be enough for Sony to succeed, but it would definitely be better for them than not doing those things. I hope they choose wisely.
Last edited by CatKiller on 31 May 2024 at 9:37 am UTC
I leave it as an exercise for the reader to guess what I think of the announced requirement for an extra account.
Last edited by emphy on 31 May 2024 at 12:20 pm UTC
I have purchased every PC release on day 1 but stopped with HD2. Sony are now banned from my shopping cart and this boycott will continue until this PSN requirement is dropped.
Getting sick and tired of the endless accounts and subscription service model. I just want to buy and play a game on my own terms. Why must this be so god dam difficult. Ohh yes, Greed and control.
Last edited by finaldest on 31 May 2024 at 12:51 pm UTC
See more from me