Michael Corvin

That's how it works. And yeah, the prices are atrocious. I haven't played a single PS+ freebie all year. Mine expires in March so I guess I'm letting it lapse.

uteotw

I have Premium now and am letting it lapse for sure. I'll go down to the lowest level and be fine. I enjoyed trying games out and re-playing classics, but no way it's worth the the price anymore.

OldBoy

How can Amazon discount a PS gift card? I don’t think I’ve seen that before. I got a $70 gc for $63. That’s not bad.

Decker

They're probably price matching Target.

Mike86

Is more storage truly necessary or is that mainly if you want to keep more content on your PS5? Might consider an SSD after a while but for now just looking at getting the console and wasn’t quite sure.

Michael Corvin

Same as always. If you only play a couple games at a time and delete them when you're done you're good. If you like having a bunch of games at the ready, or have an ISP download cap you'll probably want to upgrade.

Side note, SSDs have been a pretty pricey upgrade until recently. Prices have dropped ridiculously low in the last few months so it might be beneficial to grab one in case prices go back up.

Noonan

I'm enjoying the Portal quite a bit. I was worried the display may seem poor compared to the OLED Switch and my phone but it's actually very nice. Good colors and plenty bright. Hardware is fantastic although the shape makes it a bit tough to travel with without a case.

I have a pretty basic Wifi 6 setup at home and have had no issues with connectivity except for when I was trying to download a game to the PS5 while also using the Portal. That caused some slowdown. My PS5 is wireless also, which is probably why. I assume if it were in the room with the modem and connected directly, it would be a bit better.

Overall I'm very happy with the purchase. With the Portal, I'll end up playing more PS games that I wouldn't have gotten to if I had to use the home theater to play through them.

Mike86

Okay so grabbed a PS5 last night. Got the bundle with Spider-Man 2. I had some cash from my birthday and used a couple of Target gift cards plus my RedCard and got it for like $338.

Also picked up Assassin’s Creed: Mirage Deluxe Edition as my wife is a fan of the franchise. I’ll probably also grab Spider-Man: Miles Morales Ultimate Edition since it includes the first Spider-Man game and I want to play that before the new one.

After getting home last night I had to clean up my entertainment center before anything. I didn’t realize to stand it vertically a stand is recommended and of course sold separately. I put it inside my cabinet with plenty of space around it and leave the door open in case it gets too hot.

Played a bit of Astro’s Playroom last night and for what’s largely a tech demo it’s a pretty fun platformer with a lot of cool PlayStation throwbacks/references.

fujishig

If you have a costco membership, buy it there.

Decker

In theory, you should be able to play the Portal from some place away from home if you had a solid Wi-Fi connection (and no sign-in screen to connect, as the Portal doesn’t allow for that sort of web-based acceptance screen to be displayed). I wanted to try it out so I took it to work. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to connect to my PS5 at all. Don’t know why that was for me — I see people on the internet connecting from local coffee houses, but for me it didn’t work at all away from home.

Noonan

Could it have been your work network not allowing it? It should work from any wifi point, provided the signal is strong enough.

Decker

I hadn’t thought about that. Maybe. I’ve had a few sites blocked by the system. I just got a long wait to connect to my PS5, then a ‘Something went wrong’ message on the PSP. My Wi-Fi signal is pretty strong in my office so I don’t think it was a problem with signal strength, though I don’t know how strong it has to be.
I’d try somewhere else, but most public Wi-Fi spots have the Agree to our TOS message required to log in.

Dan

The product page explicitly says home Wi-Fi in a couple spots:
and

but then the FAQ says it should work externally as long as the connection is decent:

could be high latency between networks or port blocking issues on one or both networks. That can be a bit of a rabbit hole in terms of figuring out the right solution.

fujishig

You might need to port forward or allow UPNP (not recommended) to poke a hole through your home network to get to your PS5 as well, though.

I just quick googled it but read through something like this thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PS5/comment...irewall_ports/

Best bet to make sure it's not your home network or anything is try connecting via the phone app and see if that works (you should be able to do this from even from other public wifi if you think your work is blocking it, which it really should)

Decker

I’m not going to mess around with it too much — I’m usually too busy at work to play video games as it is (thankfully). I will try it at my In-laws tomorrow (if I can remember to bring it).
There are so few public Wi-Fi sites that don’t have that pop-up screen to sign in. It’s really dumb that the PSP (and there has to be a better abbreviation that that one, maybe P5P?) doesn’t allow for people to accept a sign-in page. They need to fix that with an update.

fujishig

This black friday another black eye against Sony is the change in policy to not have digital codes sold from retailers. Ugh. Buy SF VI digitally on PSN for 40 or get it from Walmart for XSX for 30.

Decker

I can't even recall the last time I bought a digital game for a Playstation system from another retailer. It has to be a few generation's ago.

Dan

There’s a lawsuit in the UK against Sony that’s based on that. It’ll never end up in the plaintiffs’ favor, though. But what they’re trying to argue is that Sony, as the market leader, removed the option to buy digital games from third parties, thus using their position to keep digital prices higher than reasonable. I don’t think there’s enough substance to that argument though.

K&AJones

I can only hope...... Gears of War Franchise Narrative Director Joins Sony Santa Monica (gamingbolt.com)

Gears of War Franchise Narrative Director Joins Sony Santa Monica .....Bonnie Jean Mah is now Narrative Director at the God of War Ragnarok studio and is "beyond thrilled to be working with this team."

Adam Tyner

It's been a while for individual games, although restricting PS+ subscriptions is new.

DJariya

So did anyone renew their PS+ subscriptions with the BF discount?

Essential - 12 months $63.99

Extra - 12 months $101.24

Premium - 12months $111.99

Last year I subscribed to Extra for $79.99 if I recall correctly with the BF discount. So it's a little over $20 more than last year. You do save a little money with the discounts after the exorbitant price increase. I just wanted to see where everyone here is at. Or are these prices too expensive?

lwhy?

It won't let me renew with the discount. It's only offering me a year of Essential for $79.99. I'll eventually pay it since I need it to play online with my friend.

DJariya

That's weird. I just put "Extra" in my shopping cart and it has the discount.

lwhy?

Has your membership expired already? Maybe they fixed it, but it wouldn't let me renew my membership that doesn't expire until January.

lwhy?

I just checked on my phone and I'm still only getting offered the $79.99 for essential.