OrtadragoonX

@UltimateOtaku91

Let’s just absolve the developers of any responsibility huh?

The PS5 and Series X are huge upgrades over the PS4 and Xbone.

But developers are not even attempting to optimize. Don’t blame the consoles for developers not doing their jobs.

Jedi is actually the perfect example of what I’m talking about. The PC version essentially runs all out on two threads. With RT turned off the other cores (most CPUs are 8 core double threaded these days) are literally at idle. You turn on RT and the other cores hover at around 20% utilization. I doubt the console versions are optimized any better.

So the game isn’t even leveraging the hardware correctly. Of course it’s going to run like trash on the Series X and PS5.

In a properly coded game every single core and thread should be putting in heavy work. Like 80% utilization across all 8 cores.

On the consoles you are dealing with reduced CPU power compared to PC CPUs. The way you work around this is by multi threading each core and making sure they are being utilized.

@TheMightyImp2

The Pro’s success came with what you do with it storage side, not what it offered out of the box.

It supported SATA III SSDs. Which significantly cut down load times in games with horrible opening load times like RDR II and TLOU Part II.

Other than that the only thing it really fixed was that it made Cyberpunk’s PS4 version actually playable.

Or why waste that effort and time?

I had the OG Xbox and I rocked a 360 for years. Microsoft hasn’t interested me for the most part since 2010. They shafted us 360 gamers by focusing so much on Kinect back then.

@SgtTruth

Have you ever considered that a bunch of us can’t afford multiple consoles?

I have a PS5 and a Switch. And I’ve had my Switch since 2019.

I wouldn’t mind having a Series X but I’ve got a kid on the way. I can’t blow 500 bucks on a console that only has like two games I actually want to play on it as semi-exclusives (Starfield and the eventual release of Elder Scrolls VI).

@Max_the_German

It needed another six months for the consoles.

The PC version honestly needed another year in the oven.

@Wowzer

Wait till you get to the first large body of water that has Ray traced reflections combined with the constant Ray traced global i illumination.

It hits 15fps in those situations.

@Sakai

That’s why I use Digital Foundry.

@Soulless666

Yay unpaid QA testers!

I stopped buying most games on day 1 in 2014. I was one of the millions who got BURNED by Assassin’s Creed Unity. I was so pissed that I drove 30 miles back to the store I bought it from to return it. They tried to say “trade credit” and I did not accept that. I told them to pull out their on site PS4 for testing controllers and to install and play the game and how broken it was at release.

They did so and fully agreed with me. Gave me back every cent of my money. I was taught a hard lesson that day. Never pre-order or buy day one unless it’s from a competent developer that I trust. Hype ain’t enough.

That’s when I started running an active back log of games. So I would never be tempted to buy something at launch just because I was excited.

@tameshiyaku

The console versions, while not good, play well enough. It needs more time in the oven but by 2023 standards it’s acceptable.

The PC version is literally a dumpster fire on the level of The Last of Us Part 1 on the PC.

The game is a poorly optimized disaster on PC. People with 600 dollar CPUs and 2000 dollar RTX 4090s have issues getting the game above 60 fps. There’s no excuse for it. And ray tracing is bugged on the PC. Turning it off does literally nothing for the framerate. That’s insane because Ray Tracing eats up a significant part of the performance budget. But because the game is so poorly optimized and only uses two CPU threads most of the time it has no effect.

They should have delayed the PC version for another six months. PC players should get a technically sound game just like us console players. They are getting treated like second class gamers with these releases.

@Marquez

There is a minimum standard of performance that should be adhered to. And games like Jedi Survivor and the Last of Us Part 1 on PC do not meet that standard.

If the game is in that sort of broken condition at release even with a day one patch stop selling it, fix it, and then rerelease it. And give some free perks to the early buyers who paid 60 dollars to essentially be unpaid beta testers.

@cassiel

They need to just optimize the game.

I shouldn’t have to rely on my X90K’s VRR to help clean up a mess that shouldn’t exist in the first place.

I’ll be getting it when it hits the bargain bin. There’s no excuse for how this game runs.

Boy Digital Foundry ripped the PC version a new butthole in their review. Literally said “it’s a shame this game is even being sold on PC; it’s a disaster of a port, possibly the worst we’ve seen so far in 2023.”

And considering how terrible the game runs on PC I fully agree with them. It’s unacceptable.

The PS5 version has plenty of performance problems too. But at least it’s not the dumpster fire that is the PC version.

@Flaming_Kaiser

Not in terms of sales they aren’t. Microsoft is a distant third behind Sony and Nintendo.

They do have more studios than Sony or Nintendo. But with all the mismanagement going on at Team Green they haven’t been able to get games out reliably (with the notable exceptions of Turn 10 and The Coalition who operate more like Sony’s studios; insanely competent teams dedicated to their crafts)

@MasterVGuides

Microsoft has two consistent developers. Turn 10 and The Coalition. Turn 10 has never made a bad Forza game and while Gears of War is probably the most intellectually stagnant franchise on the planet this side of EA’s sports titles, they are all technically sound and play well.

The Coalition is sort of like Microsoft’s Guerrilla and Insomniac; they are the technical whiz kids of Microsoft’s consoles and their games always push Xboxes to their limits. But their writing team is weak. Every Gears game they’ve done since Epic turned the franchise over to Microsoft is full of cringe worthy dialogue and weak plots. Sort of like the Horizon series in a way. But God those games (Horizon and Gears of War) look and play great.

They also leverage the UE engine better than any other developer in the business. The reason UE4 got so good on all consoles and PC is mainly due to The Coalition coming up with solutions for the engine’s initial less than stellar performance routines that Epic later implemented into UE4. So even PlayStation fans have benefitted from their early problem solving work on UE4 with games like FFVII Remake and the Callisto Protocol.

But that’s literally it. Every other internal pre-buyout Microsoft studio is incompetent and barely functional. With 343 being the worst of the lot. We still need to see how the new Bethesda studios adjust now that they are under Microsoft’s banner. But considering the reports about Redfall’s performance I don’t have the highest hopes for them.

I believe that Turn 10 and The Coalition succeed in spite of Microsoft. Not because of them. They are just uniquely competent studios.

Boy as a species we can’t solve clean water (nearly 700 million people don’t have access to potable water) but we can make 1200 dollar paperweights.

Started on NES as a child; it was my mom’s. Then SNES and Genesis (one of the perks of separated parents trying to one up each other). After that N64 and PS1. Then Dreamcast, GameCube, PS2, Xbox in that order. Went solely Xbox 360 and PC for a few years. Got sick of RROD (went through five of them) and traded my last 360 for a Slim PS3. Then solely PS4 (got out of PC gaming at that time; my rig needed replacing since I built it specifically to play FEAR back in 2006 and caught up on PC games like Doom 3 and Half Life 2 and nursed my RTS addiction at that time) for a long time. Got a Switch Mariko in 2019. Then a PS5 at launch using my PS4 as trade in credit.

I’ve mostly been a PlayStation fan since the PS1 era but I was multiplatform for most of my life. I went solely PS4 for the eighth generation because of time constraints (working a much more hourly based job with little free time) rather than budget restraints. I decided to focus on one platform at that time. Today I feel like my PS5 and Switch complement each other very well. So I’ll stick with this set up for now.

As a kid I had a bunch of successive Game Boys and had a DS with my PC and 360. But I wasn’t playing it enough to justify ownership so I gave it to a cousin of mine around 2007.

I wanted to get back into PC gaming but two things happened. One the insane cost of building a good rig today. Second, I have a kid on the way. Not spending any frivolous money on something I don’t have to have until he’s older.

Revenue is the priority. I’m sure Sony’s shareholders would love to see both volume and revenue increases together but if they can only have one thing they’ll take revenue any day of the week.

@Amppari

That’s very true.

Titanfall 2 was objectively the best FPS of the previous generation, with only Doom and Doom Eternal matching its campaign but fell on their faces in multiplayer. In terms of a complete package T2 was the best console aimed FPS in a generation.

And it sold like booty. And in 2016 Battlefield One blew that year’s COD away in terms of quality but it failed to even achieve half its sales. After that Battlefield slid into a complete laughing stock with V and then the disaster known as 2042.

COD is its own platform now. You can easily make a better FPS game. But you won’t compete with it financially speaking.

@SgtTruth

The arrogance on display in this post is something else.

@Tharsman

Only games I can multitask on is Gran Turismo 7 and Advance Wars. I listened to all of Metallica’s new album while playing some races the other day. And I can multitask in Advance Wars fighting the CPU since it’s a turn based game.

Otherwise I got to devote all my attention to it.

Considering I’ll have a kid in November I’m gonna have to change up my current lifestyle completely. I’ll be relying on my Switch (lunch break at work sessions since I pack my own lunch everyday) a lot more to get gaming fixes once my little mini-me is here.

Which is why I’m trying to play everything big I want to play this year now. Go ahead and get it done. I’ve honestly been considering selling my PS5. I just don’t see how I’ll be able to justify owning it with the lack of time I’ll have. I’m definitely canceling PS Plus once he gets here. I already struggle to find time for the games on there (currently playing Kena) but after November I won’t be able to justify the expense with the lack of time.

@Casco

MKII Shao Khan had me contemplating self deletion at six years old.

@SplooshDmg

Healthcare in the US is basically this.

“Oh I’ve broken my arm. Let me go to the hospital.”

“Alright broken arm is fixed. Let me see the bill and make sure my insurance covered it correctly.”

“Due to some stupid clause in tiny writing you couldn’t have seen we have determined that we are going to pay 10% of what your broken arm cost to fix. Total bill is 50 grand so we will pay 10,000. The other 40,000 is your responsibility. Thanks and don’t call us again.”

If you don’t have insurance it’s worse.

“Oh you need this life saving antibiotic to avoid a worsening of the infection in your spleen? Well guess what buddy you might as well just beg on the street. Cause we don’t give a **** about you, your wife, your children, or the cocker spaniel that depends on your being able to work a hard physical job that doesn’t provide insurance.”

@Green-Bandit

I love the US. Proud patriotic American here.

But I do have some issues with how we do things. Mainly our education system sucks.

I very much admire the Germans in that regard. And considering our personal intertwined history (the largest ethnic group in the US are Americans of German descent) I would love to see us adopt a version of their primary and secondary education systems. I think it would improve things dramatically.

I would also like to see an American take on single payer universal health care. I think we can do it.

But there are some things the Europeans do that I don’t want for the US. I don’t want their firearms laws for example.

@GodofCapcom

I think our primary age education system here is our weakest thing about us as a country.

If I was in charge I would hire the Germans to come over and rebuild our primary education system to be based on theirs.

@GodofCapcom

Hey bro our 13 Super Carriers won’t pay for themselves.

I think the most cheating AI ever programmed was the downright Evil behavior of NBA Jam.

If you got ten points ahead of the AI the game would change the hit percentage parameters for the AI’s shots. They would hit every 3 pointer (even half court shots), you couldn’t block 2 point shots against them, and they always had successful layups. By comparison you would automatically miss 50% of all attempted shots as the player during the AI’s “boost mode.”

Once the AI narrowed the gap it would go back to normal settings. There’s a YouTube video by the guy who programmed the game and he explains it perfectly. The publishers wanted every AI game to end with either a tie or a two point victory or loss for the player. So that’s what he did to give them their desired results.

@wiiware

I always hated fighting Guile and Zangief. That extended range SPD was lethal. You thought you had a safe distance but nope. You get pile drived with a 30% health loss.

@wiiware

SF2 AI was so cheat happy back in the gap. Charge characters didn’t have to charge for their specials, Zangief had extended range for his SPD, Ryu and Ken both had extra I-frames on their recovery for their DPs, Chun-Li on Super Turbo could do her Super without charging, and that’s just the tip of that nightmare iceberg.

@nomither6

I seem to remember you could cheese M. Bison on Super Turbo with timed jump heavy kicks in the corner.

And I seem to remember being able to cheese Shao Khan on MK3 Ultimate with perfectly spaced sweeps. The hard part was getting the first sweep. Had to survive hell just to get to the cheese strategy.

Hmm he was more composed than I was when I tried to fight Shao Khan on MK2 at the hardest difficulty.

I’m pretty sure I punched a wall after losing twenty times in a row.

I gave it an 8. It was a solid little romp. I really liked the world design; the map was far more interesting than the Forbidden West and also more manageable to navigate.

The story was meh. Same writing problems as Forbidden West. Hope that GG really invests in some new writers for the third game.

@Green-Bandit

Because we love monopolies in general.

It’s the American way.

We all need to put these tech giants in their place. They are all way too powerful.

@nomither6

Sony had nothing to do with the CMA’s decision.

Microsoft left their right flank wide open in terms of game streaming. They already have basically a monopoly there through Azure.

That’s what made the CMA scuttle the thing. Not Sony in the existing marketplace.

Frankly neither Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo should be allowed to buy any publisher valued at more than 5 billion US dollars. That should be a law.

25 gigs? Good lord that crap is broken with patches like that.

“Alright guys we are ready to deploy the next patch. 25 gigs of it.”

“Why is so large?”

“We rebuilt the game from scratch. It was so fubar we had to just rebuild it.”

@rjejr

Elon Musk is a unique individual who owns the vast majority of stocks in his companies. He can do that without repercussions.

As for Disney, that’s a political fight. Not a business fight.

@FenIsMightier

Exactly. Tencent, Amazon, Apple, and Google have the money for Activision.

@KIERONOO

Sega would be complicated because of Japanese protectionist policies.

You can become majority shareholder as a foreign entity, but it’s difficult to outright buy a Japanese company.

Kind of like the complex relationship Ford and Mazda had back in the 80s and 90s. Ford owned a controlling share (I think as high as 80% at one point) but had they tried to buy Mazda outright everyone was pretty sure the Japanese government would have intervened.

I have no idea how SNK got purchased by that Saudi prince. The Japanese government must have determined that it wasn’t a critical business to the overall Japanese economy and allowed it for that reason.

@stua12t

I dunno man. Every time I see the math behind Gamepass I always think of how the Soviets did math.

@rjejr

Companies don’t do things out of spite.

The one example I can think of who tried to do that was Commodore under Jack Tramiel. And in the end his financial backers fired him from his own company because of behavior like that.

Companies do whatever makes them money.

@BaldBelper78

Sony doesn’t have the capital to buy Activision-Blizzard.

The only major third party publisher they could possibly afford is Square-Enix. Maybe Capcom. But even that is doubtful.

@ChrisDeku

I agree.

I think GG used Burning Shores as a way to test ideas for Horizon 3. A reduction in map icons making the map more friendly to explore at your own pace. Removal of most of the hand holding.

She’s certainly earned it. Good luck to her in her new role.

@KundaliniRising333

It’s ripped from the disc but the data is still there on the disc. Plus there is an authentication so that the game will run. Otherwise everyone would just loan game discs to their friends, the game would install on each console, and everyone could play it at the same time.

@KundaliniRising333

Nah, on most games you’re essentially ripping the disc’s content to the SSD/HDD. It’s how PC games did it back in the day.

This is necessary because even the fastest spinning disc drives are just too slow now for the amount of data that has to be loaded during gameplay.

Remember how bad load times got on late era PS4 and Xbone games.

Imagine how much worse it would have been had they loaded the data directly from the disc during gameplay versus having it stored on the HDD. Even a pokey 5400rpm hard drive is orders of magnitude faster than a Blu Ray drive.

The only game I can think of where the disc has nothing on it and is used solely for authentication is Modern Warfare II and a few other newer COD games. I was appalled by Activision’s decision to even offer a disc version. It should have been download only. They used 150 megabytes of data on the disc. Such a damn waste of plastic.

Blu-Rays are dirt cheap to mass manufacture. Like cents on the dollar.

EA could have easily included a second disc. A data disc and play disc, like many late era PS4 games.

They were just insanely cheap. Which considering how EA operates is not surprising.

Edit: don’t blame respawn for this. They are the developer. The publisher of a game has the responsibility to order discs. This is entirely on EA.

@tallythwack

That’s a result of content ratings boards. Especially the ESRB in the US.

Showing uncovered female breasts earns you an instant M rating for “nudity.” Society accepts men walking around shirtless and this it isn’t considered nudity.

It’s pretty dumb.

@GrimReaper

Alright you’re clearly a troll. Have a good day friend.

@GrimReaper

Does a game have to be drastically revamped from what came before to be good?

I like the Horizon games because they are dumb fun with an interesting visual design language.

It is very much a Ubisoft clone with all the negatives that come with that style of game design. But it has an interesting world and pretty cool visual design to set it apart.

Sometimes that is all a game needs to be decent and fun to play.

I wouldn’t give the Horizon series tens out of tens or anything. They are pretty formulaic open world games built in the Ubisoft mold.

But they are fun to play.

Plus even in the golden era we had some true janky junk flying around.

@Bamila

The mass effect solution doesn’t really work with certain games.

This game has a series of set character traits that weaves into the story.

The writer’s decided a long time ago that Aloy would be a lesbian. They hinted at it several times in both games.

@Sil_Am

“Si vis pacem, para bellum.”

“If you seek peace, prepare for war.” The old motto of DWM. One I happen to strongly agree with.

Deterrence is the key to peace. We can’t change human nature. But deterrence is the best option we have to minimize the chances of war breaking out.