Comments 350

Re: Rumour: Dramatic PS5 Price Increases Incoming, Potential Announcement Tomorrow

LowDefAl

@UltimateOtaku91 25m behind per Sony as of December. PS4 was 9years old for the quoted ps4 figure so ps5 has under 4 years to match it like-for-like.

I’m not going to say it will be easy but I’m not sure it will suddenly stop sales. If anything it’s easier than ever to pay things off over time and Sony haven’t exactly struggled to sell units. Plus they keep giving discounts in Europe every 4-6 months so it may just change the times people buy them.

Re: Yakuza Dev Partners with Xbox for Stranger Than Heaven, Confirms Deep Dive for May

LowDefAl

Microsoft being partnered for this game is not that interesting, it was very predictable. They’ve been very chummy since Microsoft stated the throwing money at them for Yakuza ports and Game Pass. Microsoft correctly identified having the studio onboard would be beneficial to them.

Or are we going to forget Microsoft bought a 3 month exclusivity for Like A Dragon?

Not that I’m criticising, we know Sony do it too. It’s just that this presumed marketing deal isn’t a surprise unless you’ve been living in a cave. And between Xbox and pc Microsoft have every reason to go for it.

Re: 'This Is Unsustainable Madness': Modern Video Game Budgets Are Out of Control

LowDefAl

@AgentMantis 60fps and 4k are design choices and don’t cost money to implement. No console developer is really doing 4k native. Dynamic resolution is a part of basically any engine since the ps4 days and most console games have offered 30/60 options all gen. It’s free. Ray Tracing is cheaper than 4 different light bakes. AC shadows would have taken 2 years and 2tb of data to fully bake all lighting and not use RTGI.

https://www.dsogaming.com/news/assassins-creed-shadows-would-require-2tb-of-data-and-2-years-for-baked-lighting/

Games properly designed for RT are actually cheaper and quicker to make and at this point the technology is well understood and integrated into many engines. Next gen should see a big increase in its usage and will be necessary to reduce costs.

Re: Sony and Honda Have Abandoned Their PS5-Integrated Electric Car Afeela

LowDefAl

@Amnesiac Exactly there is a combination of issues. The orange one effectively destroying the non-Tesla EV market in the US after bribing the pro oil lobby to fund his campaign in exchange for his anti environment policies (not that he needed it as he would have done so anyway) coupled with a slower than ideal take up globally and all the other various world issues affecting sales is bad enough.

Apparently the car is looking outdated compared to the competition is another factor alongside Honda’s epic fail with their F1 engine and they are going to be changing focus.

Re: PS5 Players Seemingly Skip Marathon as Sales Estimates Look Very Weak

LowDefAl

I don’t have any personal stake in wether this game succeeds or doesn’t (if you actively want a game to fail you need to see a psychiatrist or just get off the internet for a while and go outside) but I’m not sure I would put much faith in analysts or “my uncle who works for bungie” type evidence.

That said, it’s hardly encouraging and it didn’t exactly shoot up sonys own charts

Re: PlayStation's Disastrous First-Party Leadership Culminates in Yet Another Studio Closure

LowDefAl

@Mes_Urson Sometimes games just get stuck in a place where they don’t work out. For all the ones you hear about there are many, many more that you haven’t.

This isn’t new and has been the case since the 80s. You just get more leaks and announcements these days. It was actually Mark Cerny’s “method” that popularised quick prototyping to see if a game is actually a fun concept Before you enter full
Production to mitigate that risk. The first Horizon is a good example of this being of benefit - they made a bunch of basic prototypes while developing Killzone Shadow Fall before green lighting the full game

Sometimes it’s cheaper to cut your loses than fix the issue.

Re: 'We're Spending Significantly More than We're Making': Fortnite Publisher Epic Games Lays Off Over 1,000 Staff

LowDefAl

@INeedGoodGraphics You are right, but given that ps5 is doing similar numbers to ps4 despite costing twice the price at this point it’s not like it’s stopping people from buying them.

Nintendo are also picking up the slack from Microsoft.

Obviously they would sell more at a lower price but the market hasn’t really declined in the way some people would suggest. As long as you have a console someone wants of course.

Re: 'We Should Have Clearly Disclosed Our Use of AI': Crimson Desert Dev 'Sincerely Apologises' for Erroneously Including AI Art in PS5 Game

LowDefAl

@dskatter I'm aware of the potential. I'm also aware that many games have basically no difference. I also know that many games have their performance improved through patches even before it's removed and that developers may do further optimisations at the same time rather than just because they turned it off. I'm also aware some cracks "fix" the performance caused in other areas separately by applying community optimisations. Modders do that all the time even with non-denuvo games.

It's not a binary situation. Some games are bad if they have it or not. A lot of games run fine. Lets not pretend that Denuvo is killing performance in every game its in and that it isn't often bad optimisation.

And if it's that big an issue, wait for the Denuvo to be removed a few months later and buy it cheaper. Everyone wins.

Re: 'We Should Have Clearly Disclosed Our Use of AI': Crimson Desert Dev 'Sincerely Apologises' for Erroneously Including AI Art in PS5 Game

LowDefAl

@Oxy It was never a size issue, and I doubt it’s because of spoilers when we know enough now to know the game was clearly struggling to make its release date. Otherwise they would have had a release build on console ready more than two weeks before launch instead of giving the one privileged outlet a non final build to look at.

Re: 'We Should Have Clearly Disclosed Our Use of AI': Crimson Desert Dev 'Sincerely Apologises' for Erroneously Including AI Art in PS5 Game

LowDefAl

@Spedfrom For the record I don’t believe the game was actually finished at that point. Because why would you go to all that effort instead of just giving them the release build. Really the game needed another month but I’m not sure they recognised this early enough.

I suspect this is also why disc copies require an update to play.

Which is all a separate issue, but this is their first time doing a single player game so I would argue a lack of experience.

Re: PS5 Spin-Off God of War: Sons of Sparta Has Been a Big Hit for Sony

LowDefAl

@datamonkey It’s not a question of who was in charge but changes in the industry in that time. People need to stop pretending that 2005 should dictate 2026. I’m not saying Hulst is perfect, far from it but Shuhei Yoshida and Hulst were operating in very different environments.

I’m all for Sony spreading their efforts into all sizes and shapes of games but the comparisons overlook wider changes to who is playing, what they are playing and how they are playing it.

Re: It Sounds Like PS6 Will Support a Form of FSR Frame Generation

LowDefAl

@Fluberuper You’ll find mixed opinions. I used OG frame gen for Indy because I was using Path tracing. I had no issues but I’m not sure it’s good for faster games. I also probably didn’t need to use it, I was just playing with it.

It’s still mildly controversial I think but it’s hard to argue with the option. The 4x is probably not a great idea however

Re: 'Onwards to More Graphics Breakthroughs': PS6 Architect Mark Cerny Shares a Staged Exchange with AMD Bigwig

LowDefAl

@rjejr

Square released FF7, FF8 and FF9 in 3 consecutive years, and now it's taking them at least 6 years to re-release just FF7. At what point is it enough?

The problem with your comparison is that VII was in development for 3 years first and that those 3 games were made using 2 separate teams. And FF7R is three separate 30-50hr games so “just ff7” is rather misleading.

Taking this into account along with the substantial changes in gaming technology and scope between then And now I’m not sure this comparison holds water.

(9, 10 and 11 were in development simultaneously too but again I’m not sure it’s relevant for this comparison)

Re: 'We've Always Wanted to Do It': Todd Howard Says He Knew Starfield PS5 Would Be a 'Matter of Time'

LowDefAl

@cainhurst94

At the time, Sony had sewn up timed exclusivity on titles like Deathloop and Ghostwire Tokyo, but behind-the-scenes it was trying to lock down Starfield as well.

That motivated the Redmond firm to take action, and it bought the entire publisher, eventually tying auteur Todd Howard’s new title down as a console exclusive.

Is there any evidence for this alleged motivation? The owner was wanting to sell Zenimax for some time, EA were involved at one point. I think the wider catalog was of more interest than simply Starfield, otherwise they could have just bought Bethesda instead of paying much more for the parent company.

Re: 'This Looks Like an AI Generated Dating Profile Picture': Nvidia's Attempt to P*ss on PS5 Pro's Parade with DLSS 5 Backfires

LowDefAl

@TrollOfWar short term, no because AMD are so far behind on stuff like this coupled with the amount of people on older cards. Long term, who knows. It depends on how the tech is used.

Grace is an extreme example, AC Shadows is more subtle and Oblivion is in the middle. It’s hard to say right now which of those styles will gain more traction