Author: Game Infliction

SSD prices are trending upward for 2024, but there are still some excellent deals to be found if you’re vigilant. Today, MSI is offering its PS5-compatible MSI Spatium M482 2TB PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 Solid State Drive (SSD) for only $99.99 wtih free shipping. This is the best price currently for a 2TB SSD that fulfills all of the mandatory and recommended requirements for the PS5 console. You’ll need to supply a heatsink, but you can easily get a PS5 heatsink for under $10.

MSI Spatium 2TB M.2 SSD (PS5-Compatible) for $99.99

The PS5 is an outstanding gaming console, but the 1TB SSD is a real bottleneck. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, for example, can exceed 200GB alone. NBA 2K23 weighs in at 150GB and even older games like God of War: Ragnarok and Horizon Forbidden West require 90GB of space. Future games like Grand Theft Auto VI will undoubtedly demand even more space. The advantage of a PS5 console over the Xbox Series X is that the SSD slot is not proprietary; you can install most third-party PCIe Gen4 x4 SSDs as long as they are fast enough. Slower drives will still work, but they may bottleneck the original SSD so they aren’t recommended if you want a seamless experience.

The MSI Spatium M482 meets all the requirements for your PS5 upgrade. This is a PCIe Gen4 x4 SSD with an M.2 2280 form factor and transfer speeds of up to 7,300MB/s read and 6,400MB/s write which is well above the 5,500MB/s minimum threshold. It also makes an excellent boot drive for your gaming PC, especially with its 2TB storage capacity. For 2024, we’ve rarely come across a PS5-compatible 2TB SSD priced under $100, so you should jump on this deal. We may see deals of this caliber during Black Friday, but that’s still a few months away, and there’s no guarantee that SSD prices won’t rise again.

Willing to pay more for another brand? Check out all of the best PS5 SSD deals today.

For the last week, there’s been a lot of online discussion on Sony’s newly-launched multiplayer shooter, Concord. But it’s not because everyone’s playing it – it’s because seemingly no one is.

Plenty of games don’t sell well at launch, but observers have latched onto Concord’s dramatic failure due to its high-profile nature as a Sony first-party game, and its shockingly low Steam concurrent player numbers at launch. Upon its August 23 debut, Concord only had 697 Steam concurrent players, and it hasn’t risen any higher since. At the time I’m writing this, 130 entire people are playing Sony’s brand new, first-party game on Steam. That’s real, real low, even for a game with middling critical reviews (we gave it a 7/10, which at IGN means it’s “good”).

So, what happened? Why did a big Sony first-party game get sent out to die immediately? Is it actually selling badly, or are we just reading the numbers wrong? As usual when questions of this nature crop up, I asked a bunch of professional industry analysts to explain it to me.

Is Concord actually selling that badly?

Unfortunately for Sony…yeah.

While historically low numbers like the ones being experienced by Concord have a tendency to be used to drive narratives that don’t always paint a full picture, that’s not what’s happening here. Liam Deane, principal analyst at Omdia, said, “The Steam numbers are so bad that even without the exact data on the PS5 side we can be pretty certain that the game is doing very badly.”

Other analysts were able to share a bit of insight on the PlayStation side with me. Per Circana analyst Mat Piscatella citing Circana’s Player Engagement Tracker, on Monday August 26, “Concord ranked 147th in US PS5 daily active players across all titles, with fewer than 0.2% of Monday’s active PS5 players playing the game.” And analyst Simon Carless, who authors the GameDiscover.co newsletter, estimated that Concord’s total sales are sitting around 10,000 units on Steam, and around 15,000 on PlayStation (he responded to my email Wednesday, August 28, 2024).

Many of the analysts I spoke to lamented the reality. As they pointed out, Concord has been in development for years now, a substantial financial and time investment for Sony. And incredibly talented people worked on it: it’s well-produced, and as Midia Research analyst Rhys Elliott specifically notes, it’s fun to play. But, Elliott continued, “sadly, making a fun, high-quality shooter is not enough in the oversaturated live-service space these days.”

Why Isn’t Concord Selling?

Usually, when I reach out to analysts for comment on a piece like this, they largely have similar assessments of the big picture but can offer differing perspectives on certain details. In the case of Concord, everyone I spoke to agreed on the reasons it had failed. Concord suffered from poor marketing, a high price point, and most critically, a lack of differentiation in an oversaturated genre.

Start with the marketing. According to Piscatella, Sony dropped the ball on this front, badly damaging its ability to build momentum ahead of release. He said it suffered from “low awareness and purchase intent among video game players” and indicated that Circana’s PlayerPulse was showing that as of July, only a very small percentage of players were even aware Concord existed to begin with. Retail promotion was limited, “with just a handful of web placements across GameStop, Best Buy, Target, Walmart and the PlayStation Store.” Joost van Dreunen, NYU Stern professor and author of the SuperJoost newsletter, agreed, saying that “while there has been trailers and some gameplay reveals for Concord, pre-launch promotion for the game appears to have been relatively limited.”

At $40, Concord also suffered from what was considered to be an overly high price point given that its main competitors are free-to-play. As Carless pointed out, high-skill multiplayer shooters can struggle to gain traction, because players will only “shift” their preferred game if all their friends also agree to do so. Even then, players may be reluctant due to sunk cost fallacy around the various cosmetics and other perks they’ve picked up on their preferred game over time. This is also a problem, he says, for content creators, who won’t know in advance if their audiences will be interested in a new game they’re considering switching to.

For free-to-play games, players can at least jump in, try something out, and see if it sticks without a high commitment cost. But with Concord, the $40 price makes players unlikely to give it a shot in the first place, and van Dreunen adds that this is even less likely near the end of a console cycle when players are more reluctant than usual to take a chance on new games.

“A tight-knit group of players might be willing to take a chance on a new game for free, but paying $40 is a big ask in today’s macroeconomic climate,” Elliott observed. “Launching Concord as a premium game limited its audience numbers and user acquisition. The more people who play a game, the more appealing it is. Network effects are crucial for building a healthy, engaged ecosystem.

“Concord should have launched free-to-play – or at least as part of the PlayStation Plus subscription – to have a fighting chance in its overcrowded genre. It is not too late for this to happen, of course, but the damage might have already been done. First impressions matter.”

Every analyst I spoke to also hammered home what may be Concord’s biggest problem: lack of differentiation. Piers Harding-Rolls of Ampere Analysis noted that when Concord started development, Sony was banking on the then-hot trend of multiplayer shooters such as Overwatch. But in the years since, other studios made the same bet, many to great success.

“Since then, we’ve had a few more big budget hero shooters come to market – Apex Legends, Valorant and Overwatch 2 – each with their unique gameplay attributes,” said Harding-Rolls. “All three of these games are played by millions of gamers every month and dominate this category. Concord’s gunplay compares most closely to Overwatch 2 and overall the hero shooter market is already well served with a collection of very strong free-to-play titles.”

It also doesn’t help that Concord released on August 23, 2024, just three days after Black Myth: Wukong. Though the two games are significantly different, it’s hard to deny that the launch of the former overshadowed the latter in terms of marketing, hype, and sales. For what it’s worth, Concord’s release date was announced five months after Black Myth: Wukong’s. For one reason or another, Sony did not opt to nudge the game out of its wake.

What does this mean for Sony and live service games?

I asked all the analysts I spoke to if this means live service is over, especially for Sony. Hardly, they all say – but this should serve as a reality check.

“Live service games have a high failure rate,” Deane said. “There are many reasons for that but the main one is because they rely on network effects. Sometimes a single-player game can have a slow launch but eventually find its way to success. But the clock is now ticking on Concord in a big way because unless the player counts pick up soon there’ll be nobody to play against. So even if you personally would like to give it a try, there’ll be nothing to play. But while the risks are big, so are the rewards. It’s no secret that many of the highest-earning games in the market today are live service games. According to our data, only about 16% of the total revenue of the games market now comes from traditional full-game sales. Publishers are going to keep chasing that 84%.”

As for Sony itself, Deane expects it will continue chasing live service. Helldivers 2, after all, was a huge hit earlier this year. “Though clearly they won’t want any more Concord-level disasters, if half of their forthcoming slate of live service games over the next few years succeed, that won’t be a bad result.”

Elliott agreed. “It only takes one big live-service win to generate billions upon billions in revenue and unlock new audiences – two things PlayStation very much wants right now, as the console business is facing growth challenges and reaching saturation. That said, I also expect some resources to be redirected to strategies that are working better for the company: PC launches and cross-media/transmedia, for example.”

Nevertheless, analysts suggested that Concord is a perfect example of the dangers of AAA companies chasing trends, especially with how long game development cycles have become. Elliott pointed out a growing list of failures in the space, even from major companies: BioWare’s Anthem, Crystal Dynamics’ Marvel’s Avengers, PlatinumGames’ Babylon’s fall. Some developers, he notes, have even canceled projects in advance, such as Sega with Hyenas or PlayStation’s The Last of Us Online.

“Pivoting to live services is high-risk, high-reward venture, and the risk is heightening to levels that might not be worth it for many AAA console/PC publishers that aren’t already active in the space,” he said.

Concord’s failure has attracted attention due to the contrast between its status as a Sony first-party title in a popular genre with high production value, and the overwhelming cricket sounds that accompanied its launch. But the story of its failure is mundane. Sony, for whatever reason, chose not to market the game heavily enough to ensure players were aware of it. It chose to sell it at a premium price point despite all its serious competition going free-to-play. Had these factors been different, Concord might have stood a chance despite its relative lack of standout characteristics in an oversaturated genre. But even then, Concord was always fighting a difficult battle – a battle that will only get more fierce the more multiplayer shooters go to market in future years.

As Mat Piscatella summed up, “Sometimes everything that can go wrong does go wrong. Although it’s quite rare to see everything go this wrong.”

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Gearbox Software attended PAX West 2024 to reveal a collection of concept art and new details for its recently announced looter-shooter sequel, Borderlands 4.

Each shot highlights new foreign locations for players to explore while also not revealing too much about how the fourth Borderlands game will shake up the formula. If there’s one thing to take away from the concept art drop it’s that Gearbox wants to give players a variety of areas to loot and shoot through. One image shows a smokey, candle-lit room decorated with glowing blue lighting, while another shows a small neon town surrounded by snowy mountains. You can see some of what Borderlands 4 has in store in the gallery below.

“The Borderlands universe is super interesting and there is so much to get to play with,” art director Adam May said when describing the concept images at PAX West. “It is a post-apocalyptic world but in the distant future, so it’s like high-tech but lo-fi. It creates all kinds of interesting opportunities with what we can do with tech, our weapons, our characters, and world in general.”

The Gearbox team teased even more at PAX West. For starters, the Borderlands 4 teaser that was revealed at gamescom Opening Night Live earlier this month is now confirmed to take place seconds following the conclusion of Borderlands 3’s story. With new parts of its universe to explore, the team has taken the opportunity to incorporate technology in ways that haven’t been touched on in the past.

“I can’t say much, but this has a lot to do with it here,” May said. “A lot of the things we haven’t had much of a chance to play with too much in the past is some of that high technology stuff.”

He continued, teasing that the Gearbox team got to play with more tech and color than ever before, calling Borderlands 4 “the most diverse and beautiful game we’ve ever made.” A Borderlands 4 release date has not been revealed, but it is expected to launch for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X | S sometime in 2025. Gearbox still has more work to do before revealing more, so in the meantime, be sure to catch up on some of the more popular fan theories that have spawned from that first teaser trailer.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He started writing in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets such as The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.

Be sure to give him a follow on Twitter @MikeCripe.

Few premises are more immediately appealing than Squirrel with a Gun’s. A sandbox game where you control a gun-toting rodent and wreak havoc on the local population? Yes, please! And that premise certainly delivers to some extent, with quite a few laugh-out-loud funny moments right out the gate and a lot of enjoyment to be found in the goofy adventure’s opening hours. But this wacky Sciuridae simulator isn’t sitting on a stockpile of comedic acorns, instead stuffing its cheeks with silly gags all in one go, before finding its stores empty as the winter season fast approaches. Compounding that short-lived mirth are fairly serious performance issues, including regular crashes that made me repeat long stretches, which really took the wind out of my furry wings. Squirrel with a Gun still offers a couple hours of amusing sandbox goofiness, and I eagerly await a more fleshed out sequel in the same vein as Goat Simulator 3, but this first shot misses the target once the joke has run its course.

Like Untitled Goose Game and Octodad: Dadliest Catch before it, Squirrel with a Gun is a zany sandbox game where you play a troublemaking animal who becomes a real problem for the humans around them. After obtaining a pistol from a clumsy government spook, you’re let loose on a suburban community to rob people at gunpoint, wantonly destroy personal property, and exercise your Second Amendment right to blast fools in the face like the bloodthirsty little varmint you are. It’s a good time! But that dopey bit is exactly as shallow as it sounds, and though it only took me four hours to roll credits, it took even less time for the laughs to peter out.

Fighting as a squirrel packing heat proves pretty hollow. You’ll use pistols, rifles, and even grenade launchers to send Agent Smith-looking sons of a gun to their doom – and they mostly stand around and let you do so while putting up very little resistance. They’re the only enemies to be found here, and they all go down in a couple of shots. One highlight is when you stun enemies and are then able to kill them off with a special finishing move, like peppering an enemy with lead from an uzi or swatting their grasping hands away while you perform gunjitsu like a furry John Wick. Unfortunately, there’s only one of these animations for each weapon, so like a lot of things in this adventure, the novelty runs out fairly quickly. There isn’t much to combat beyond these basics, and each weapon feels like just another indistinctive piece in the arsenal in a matter of seconds.

There are two boss fights to shake things up, however, where you take on giant military vehicles, like a tank. These encounters are quick sequences where you shoot at glowing spots and whittle down a health bar, which doesn’t provide much of a challenge, but they are at least a nice change of pace and have a few gags that made me smile. If more stuff like this made it into the story, it might have gone a long way to extend my enjoyment, but like everything else in this brief adventure, these antics are fleeting.

The puzzle-platforming, on the other hand, is much more satisfying. Firing your weapons as a means of double-jumping or otherwise propelling yourself into the air to overcome platforming challenges is far more interesting than any of the combat in Squirrel with a Gun. The submachine gun is a great way to keep yourself airborne for extended periods of time while crossing gaps, but nothing beats the rocket launcher in terms of pure height – it sends you sailing into the air to land (mostly) safely on faraway platforms. None of the platforming is particularly tricky, but making your fluffy avatar sail from place to place doesn’t get old nearly as quickly as the rest of the gameplay.

Unfortunately, Squirrel with a Gun’s good times are prone to interruption by technical issues that proved quite problematic, even during its brief runtime. I found myself staring at a frozen screen more than five times in as many hours, losing a good chunk of progress in the process, and was forced to repeat entire sections. By the end, I got into the fear-driven habit of rushing over to the static save points that can be found in each area – and a good thing too, because crashes seemed to happen more frequently in the back half of the adventure. And that’s not the only issue I ran into, either: One cutscene triggered and forgot to add the squirrel where he’s supposed to go, which broke everything and forced me to reset, and there were several times where my tiny buddy passed through geometry when moving at high speeds and sent me tumbling to the ground, which forced me to repeat certain platforming sections. Thankfully, Squirrel with a Gun already embraces a certain kind of chaotic energy, so the occasional goofy glitch isn’t the end of the world. But it did make some of the otherwise entertaining sections lose some of their luster once I had to replay them a third time in the wake of a crash.