Interesting, I for one actually got bored and quite the demo before finishing.  I probably will complete it tonight but outside of the graphics nothing was sticking with me.  I guess FF just isn't a game I care a lot about a I have not played the series for a very long time.

Did you play the Remake? I played it like 3 times, so maybe I'm kind of eager for the next chapter and story, so my hype is helping :D 

Don't know for Shikamaru but I have friends that are waiting for it to be on Xbox (completionists wanting to do get all achievements/content) and simply do not want to do that again if the game comes on Xbox. Maybe that's the case here. I know that if the game comes out on Xbox, I will replay it again and go for all achievements, while I do not care at all on Play Station.

Various reasons:

• My PS4 Pro is no longer hooked up to my gaming monitor and is in storage, because I no longer had the shelf space nor the free HDMI ports after buying Xbox Series X
• PS4 Pro on a demanding game like FF7R sounds like a jet engine due to Sony's poor cooling system design last gen
• I want the current gen experience when I play it, I watched a full youtube playthrough of the game on PS4 Pro when it released and it looked pretty rough in spots, and load times are about 5x faster on an SSD
• I don't really want to reward Sony for hatting it

Honestly, since I'm building a new PC soon, I'll probably just grab it in a Steam sale once it drops to $20 (for now it's lowest Steam Sale price has been $35), where I will be able to max out the graphics settings and download some mods, including Cloud's and Tifa's outfits from FF7 Advent Children:

I played FF7R on PC and there's a few notes you should be aware of. It's a pretty lackluster PC port. The available graphics settings are minimal, so there's really not much to crank up in terms of visual fidelity unfortunately. The framerate has locked options of 30, 60, or 120.

And most importantly, there's a TERRIBLE micro-stutter like every minute of gameplay. Apparently this was caused by bad DX12 optimization, which SE defaults the game to DX12 and never bothered fixing it to this day. Their last update was May 2023 where they added DualSense support lol. The workaround is dropping it to DX11 by going to the games properties in your Steam library and under the General tab, adding -dx11 to the Launch Options.

Honestly, FF7R was a game that was clearly focused on having console prioritization. Console is where you'll get the best experience for this game. Hopefully FF7 Rebirth will be more optimized on PC. Which, the console exclusivity this time around is only 3 months. 

Yeah, I also saw somebody made a mod to fix those DX12 stuttering issues that also adds in customizable graphics settings:

https://www.nexusmods.com/finalfantasy7remake/mods/98

Modders doing Square's work for them, lmao.

Oh nice! I'm surprised this isn't the most downloaded mod! 

Wow, there's actually several available mods that directly address the stuttering

Modders are always available to save the day! Lmao, there's some thirst trap mods in there! 

Looks like 343 may actually have almost half of what Klobrille thinks....

Jeez, those two rounds of 343 layoffs in October 2022 and January 2023 sure were harsh, they had over 500 leading up to Infinite's launch as I recall (including contract workers), crazy that they still haven't built back up to at least 300 devs after more than a year since the layoffs. At least we know they are working on Halo campaign again and have been staffing up a new campaign team for the upcoming UE5 Halo game since a few months ago. 

Each individual dot on the graphic above represents one person laid off at some point in the last 13 months. In addition to PC Gamer's own reporting, Gamesindustry.biz, Wrapped.games, and the public Games Industry Layoffs tracker hosted on Obsidian Publishing were essential resources in compiling the big picture.

Our own estimated total for 2023's layoffs was 11,250 people (the Obsidian tracker posits at least 10,500), while in 2024 we had already reached nearly 6,000 layoffs (5,900 on the public list) by the end of January. More layoffs have been reported in the early days of February, including an unknown number at Visual Concepts Austin, which Take-Two acquired in 2021.

As many observers have pointed out, the industry is already halfway to 2023's total layoffs just one month into 2024. 2023 was higher than 2022's estimated 8,500 total layoffs, and the wider tech downturn that these games layoffs spun off from was already underway by the end of that year.

The impact of 16,000 games industry layoffs, in one chart | PC Gamer

This is so fucking depressing.