A pretty reasonable review based on your opinion. Also glad to see you've made the DLC and/or upgrade choice that is best for you.

I do remember full console hardware upgrades for the first time, and those early adopters who had to trade in their base console plus extra for the mid gen upgrade though. The hardware was the same if not similar tech, mostly just beefed up. Wouldn't be the first time hardware upgrades were optional later on to be able to play some games. I also remember articles suggesting that SNY hadn't decided on whether all the software upgrades would be free or not for Pro as well. Some upgrades have been just for the feels and didn't really impact performance, like premium controllers, but why nobody is upset those weren't added initially for no extra cost, or weren't free upgrades later, can't help but make you wonder with that mindset.

I also remember that for this gen, MS made it quite clear they wanted an all in one ecosystem where as much as possible was tied together, upgraded, old XB and new. SNY made it clear they still believed in generations, though not 100% like their prior launch consoles because they knowingly made the PS5 BC with PS4.

The fact that MS is handing out more freebies makes sense because they set that expectation for their brand this gen, and also, everyone paying attention knows they have to be more generous because of the weaker position they've put themselves in.

SNY made it clear their focus is still more so generations, though not entirely, which everyone can see that balancing act going on. We also know SNY obviously has the upper hand right now, which always leads to companies asking for more to some degree and looking like the bad guy. So far they've been quite reasonable, and if they ever get too out of line, their core fanbase will surely let them know socially and financially.

Completely agree, if only people can see and understand it. 

As you said, If they weren't sitting at Number 1 they wouldn't dare charge $10 for PS5 upgrades. The customers need to be treated like customers and not like consumers. Unfortunately this logic skips past a lot of people and just accept it. Well done to you and other Youtubers for putting your foot down on this one.

That is the exact same thing as the "new" consoles: they are simply stronger hardware.  There isn't really a particular "feature" that requires the new consoles outside of massively improved loading speeds (with the PS5 taking a much stronger lead).  Console innovations have mostly disappeared since the Xbox360/PS3 era, so all we're doing now is steadily increasing power to meet the expectations of customers and the needs of the developers.  Also, there really was never a parity policy, per se, just that it would be unwise if you had two pieces of hardware labeled "PS4" that played different games.  Had the PS4 Pro actually been named a PS5, for example, we'd be right where we are now (albeit with less power advancements), and the PS5 would simply be a PS6 lol

You may not know this part, but I'll tell you a secret: unskippable ads are set by the YouTube user.  Even if I became monetized (and I used to be), I always had my ads set to skippable.  The channels that set the ads to unskippable are the ones you should be unsubbing from because they're trying to improve/increase their cut of the ad monetizations.  That greed just so happens to be on the YouTube channel's side, not YouTube themselves lol

YouTube does the normalization, so yes, I would have to cut my entire videos' volume well below the normalization line.  The issue now is it's too late without making at least some sort of announcement first (imagine you just watched today's video, and next week you're cranking your volume up) lol

Having said that, I did cut the volume of the gunshots in today's video from 20 down to 16 (editing suite reference numbers).

Well, yes: Sony has been quite reasonable because they don't want to "lose" to Microsoft, but their strong market lead is starting to lead to that greed, and I do NOT see the core fanbase understanding this.  They instead defend it to "support" Sony like they're a charity, and I've decided to make a later discussion video on this particular topic, haha!

Yea, normally my videos aren't "political" (as in, I don't play the sides or try to gain the favor of one over the other), but when it comes to going against corporate greed and just taking advantage of us consumers, I'm wholly against that.  We work hard for our money, it's not something we should simply "hand out" to businesses: they're not charities, they need to earn it.

There was a parity policy the reason why doesn't change that fact, so it still answers the reason why in regards to the of course you don't statement.
There are differences between playing the PS5 upgrade and PS4 version via PS5 BC, but worth is subjective and while our opinions on subjective matters are important, and have value we should also remember that they differ from objective reason and we shouldn't conflate the two.

The answer is simple and correct there is no perceived value for you in paying the extra money for the PS5 version but that all there is.

The last part was just me continuing on with a generalisation on the matter of  subjectivity and wasn't meant to be critical of your's or anyone else's opinion .

I don't understand why reviewers pay attention to price, I get why you want to point out what you perceive as "bad practices" but that should be in a different segment, not something you talk in your technical analysis of the game. Especially that non-Nintendo games don't hold their value (for very good reasons) and drop in price faster than I drop hot potatoes. I would feel duped if I bought most of my third or first party PS4/5 games.

This game will literally be given for "free" at one point, whether through PSN sub or play at home initiative or at the very least, it will be sold for 9.99 dollars (and less) with everything included if you bother to keep an eye on sales. Even if you're not keen on sales, for the majority of its lifespan, this game will be sold for a third of its price now that BC has become the norm. 

with that said, I will watch your review when I play the game to avoid the spoilers, it's one of the few games piqued my interest in the PS4 for sure, especially the good things that I hear about the combat. However, I am playing Infamous SS and I am very disappointed by it so far. Spider man on the PS2 had better traversal mechanics than this PS4 sucker punch game does, just a big no no for superhero game... a good example of why so many games of this caliber drop in value the way they do, they're just not fun

I... I'm confused as well on what you're getting at, now

If you're talking parity between the COMPETITOR, so Xbox vs PS, then yes: there were parity clauses based on which one had the marketing rights for the game.  But parity implies equality, so it was really just an allowed upper limit.  This started to disappear as the midgen upgrades continued, though, and some games that had marketing rights on PS4P still had better showings on the X1X.

I think most people figure "PS5, next numbered system, must be a totally different machine than PS4", but it's really not.  Sure, its components and architecture are different, but the only exception here is the SSD setup.  Example: every time I upgrade my PC and swap out all of its hardware, mostly everything still works the same and games can often run better and have more settings turned up which proves that the upgrade process itself is not all that painful for devs to have worked out in their graphics engines.  As graphics engines start making use of newer and newer hardware, I then have to upgrade my hardware to match or exceed it.  This is the identical concept of going from one console to another, yet PC gaming doesn't require me to pay anything extra for my game to run at higher framerates or better graphic settings, or higher resolutions and installed ultra high res textures.

To bring that back to the topic, GoT's only real PS5 "upgrade" that's worth anything is adding lip sync for Japanese VO, but for a game that takes place entirely IN Japan and already has Japanese VO, this is really something that should have already been there to begin with (or later patched in).  Thus, this just leaves the graphics upgrades which, per above, really aren't that hard to manage as I'm absolutely sure the graphics engine can simply be cranked up to higher resolutions, texture filtering can be turned up, and they can simply swap out the texture files for higher resolution ones that they already have (many don't realize that the textures you see in the game are often NOT the same quality they created the texture at to begin with; virtually ALL devs have the "original" assets of much higher quality, which in most cases is uncompressed textures).  I also have no doubt that, as a first party studio with PS, that Sony has provided dev tools for Dualsense features that likely contain toolsets making that also rather easy.  Adding 3D audio?  The game already runs in surround sound, I have no doubt that Sony also has provided dev tools for converting or creating a 3D audio preset based on current surround sound channels.

"But... they did something, so they should be able to charge for it!"  Well, if you're talking whether that's worth it or not based on a person's perceived value as opposed to how much work it really was, then in THAT case, someone has to look at the picture as a whole. Do Dualsense features really improve the value of the game?  Does 3D audio for people with Sony headsets really improve the value of the game itself?  I would say no simply because those features are things you paid to have when you bought a PS5, and are thus improving the value of the PS5, not the game.

Reviews aren't a technical analysis, they're a summation of a the reviewer's experience with something.  The more detailed the analysis, the better it provides a picture of the reviewer's experience to the reader/viewer.  The reason many reviewers don't talk about value is because they receive their review copies for free and never feel the sting.  The reason I talk about content/value is because I also have the intention of my reviews assisting people in how they spend their money which is almost entirely the sole reason people seek out reviews in the first place.  It's an odd disconnect between reviewers and consumers in gaming I've purposely connected.  Elsewhere in the real world, people EXPECT reviewers to pay attention to price.

Having said that, I'll use a real-world example: cars.  When has someone ever bought a car without thinking about value?  The fact that a car may go on sale/have incentives, or become cheaper, or be later bought used for even less is irrelevant to the point in time in which the reviewer is reviewing it.  To ignore a vehicle's price point is to ignore, as aforementioned, the sole purpose the viewer is even seeking out a review in the first place.  What do I get for my money?  Is this car's performance justified by its price?  Does the price justify enough features of this vehicle to suit my family needs?  What options can I get and how much do they cost?  Gaming is not as complex, but game prices themselves vary wildly once you bring indie games into the picture and also start thinking about genres.  And thus, much like a car review, if my review comes out in a timely fashion (you'll notice there's a pattern in which I talk more about value on newly released game reviews than I do with backlog reviews; in fact, many backlog reviews, I mention sale prices or other things that may have convinced me to buy it!), it will reference the cost at the moment in time.  A person can then decide based on my summation of my experiences and how I felt my money was spent whether to wait for it to be cheaper.  Some people have FOMO, some people don't.  So for the people that don't, I talk about price-to-performance.  They can make the decision themselves to wait or get it right away at MSRP.

And I don't really spoil games in my reviews, I'm unsure of why so many people have said that to me lol... I mean, yes, I DO show the obvious thing you already know is coming: Jin eventually kills Khotun.  Other than that, my reviews are about 99% spoiler free OR contain non-descript teasers of later parts that only people who played it know what that is.  This is also inadvertently proof I've completed the game, too, and am demonstrating integrity in presenting my experience.  Believe you me: there are reviews out there of people who have NOT played or completed a game.

I also have a review of InfamousSS from my first season 5 years ago, so you can also decide if you want to use that as a reference point above on whether your experiences and how I present mine line up.  I'm all for people being skeptical of my reviews, as they should be.  It's healthy to gather all of the information you can about a game before buying it, and that's quite literally what I'm here for.  Sometimes my reviews line up great with the greater consensus, sometimes they don't.  Sometimes when they don't, I show things people didn't realize or care about until I showed it, and other times I almost sound like I'm unintentionally regurgitating the general experience.  You may not always agree with me, but I took the time to spell all this out so that you know if there IS one thing you can count on, I understand what being a reviewer genuinely means.

I think I partially agree with this. That's why I've always found the rage for next gen games being 70 USD pointless

Just wait 3-4 months and you can buy everything for half of the price. I'm waiting some years before buying a PS5 so I can get any 2020-2022 game for less than half of the price they cost now (and only if they don't go on PS Plus first)

For Nintendo 1st parties however I scrutinize the price as much as possible because I know they won't go on sale often. For instance: Pikmin 3 deluxe, I've send almost 80 USD to get a physical copy, it's a great game but I've played for about 15 hours and there wasn't much more to do afterwards. In other hand for less something like 20 USD I can get 5 indies on Steam and have just as much fun as I had with Pikmin 3 (and I will be supporting small dev teams which is something I personally like)

No there was an official parity policy in regard to the games on PS4 and PS4 pro having to be the same beyond frame rate and resolution , now of course the reason why
is obvious the policy was to stop the base being split and the Pro turning into a defacto PS5, and MS had a similar policy in regard to the Xbox one and X, so the Pro and X were marketed as an alternative for those gamers who want to play their PS4 and Xbox one games with higher performance.

The real difference between older and newer gens of consoles is the older gens were more customized hardware, which made it more difficult to transition from one gen to another. All generational hardware has always increased performance and innovations, for SNY and MS at least.

A PS4 Pro would not be next gen because it's very similar hardware to the PS4, just beefed up. Both even use the exact same controller. The PS5 is different hardware all around, though based on the same x86 core architecture. It's certainly not PS3 different, but it is different enough to clearly be defined as next gen.

MS could've called XB1X, 'XBSX', said it was next gen, and just made a FC policy so all XB1S games worked on 'XBSX' with enhancements. It would've put them in a similar position to when they transitioned from OGXB to XB360, which gave them a considerable lead over PS3 and led to a much more competitive gen. Yet instead, even though they would've clearly had the performance spec crown this time, they followed SNY's mid gen upgrade stance. You can't help but ask, why?

The core base has been around long enough to see and/or know/remember what happened with PS3 and XB1. Both SNY and MS got extremely arrogant and screwed those console gens up bigtime due to greed. Nowhere near enough time has passed for those core individuals to forget this.

Now for casuals who don't pay attention, it's to their detriment if they don't feel the products and/or extra's are worth the price, but that's their problem because it's not like the info isn't out there and easily available. Corporations aren't babysitters and teens/adults aren't babies, or at least that we're led to believe.

Part of the point of being on top is the extra's you get out of it, unless of course you start demanding too much, in which case your people/customers will replace you. Nobody goes to the trouble of becoming a multi billion dollar corporation, who climbs to the top, to just give the best away for the same as the competitions lesser offerings. That's more so how people act in small family units, or communities, but not how people act in a civilization on a grand scale. 

SNY and MS core fans are well aware of the need for greed and are keeping an eye on it. If it get's too out of hand, they'll take to social media and will be heard. Assuming of course their cries aren't considered 'disinformation' and blocked or taken down. If it comes to that we're all screwed, so let's assume not.

I don't agree on your reasons for including the price as a factor in your review. Maybe if now was 20 years ago and playing video games was still an expensive hobby. However, steam, digital stores, services like PSN plus and the freemium model made gaming one of the cheapest entertainment mediums out there, you can play a 20+ hours game for the price of a movies ticket. In most cases, the game you think is expensive right now will be dirt cheap in few months, for the majority of its lifespan, i.e. for eternity really.

The car comparison doesn't apply, I mean... you know when games will become cheap (in an unlimited quantities), but it's not nowhere as easy to predict if the car you want will become available as used and at what point will that happen and if it will ever be discounted, and in limited quantities. A very different beast to compare and I am not in the mood to craft finer arguments against it. 

As for your review of infamous: SS, it was excellent take, thanks. I''ll add that the traversal system is trash, the dude is just not fun to control at all, I don't know when I will jump against a wall and latch to it and when I won't, it's ridiculous poor design. I am just surprised by the score though..... 7.5? It's not reflective if your criticism at all. I expected a 4 or 5 based on how many flaws you listed in less than 5 minutes, I certainly can't give it anything but a solid 4 or a light 5. Machina is right, video games scores are broken. 

Feedback: the name of your channel is hindering you, I can't pronounce it, it has random numbers and letters and I will not remember it the next time I wonder what you think of game X and I won't even be able to look you up on youtube just because of it. It's just terrible, not to mention, it doesn't tell me much about the content of your channel Your voice/tone is that of a radio-host, while your critical take of ISS was great, I think your voice could be your greatest asset and you should invest more in your voice (an expensive microphone?). Thinking of all the popular review channels, most if not all of them had great narrators, which you are but you need to emphasise your talent more. Cheers.