@HotGoomba___Rebrand No. Everyone at CDPR and every person who has played it for reviews have gone out of their way to say its not even close. It may share vague similarites, but thats it.
Down side, it shows how poor quality the oarsmen audio in AC Valhalla is. They sound like something playing on the tv in the background on an episode of The Wonder Years. While you can clearly tell they're positioned below you, they sound jarringly bad.
@GamingFiend Teraflops are and have been a bad measure of graphical performance for a long time. AMD released a card that was 22tf a few years ago. It ended up being a terrible gpu, but was a great crypto-miner. Also, not great for AI purposes either. Basically, it was an expensive brick.
Also, AI upscaling is standard now. The 3080 is to the XSX what the 2080 Super was to the One X. And despite the massive raw horsepower jump in performance, the improvement in ai upscaling wins the day. EVERYONE in gaming is spending a fortune on it, including MS. Both MS and Sony had no interest in AMDs, so developed their own. Or in MS's case, bought a company to further and faster develop an existing version.
I own it on pc. So am I mistaken when pointing out this game will be well over a year old at the release of next gen consoles? Or did Epics timed exclusivity deal extend to console in this case? Ahh, nope, just blocked Steam.
In either case, more than a year between initial release and next gen release is plenty of justification for not giving away an upgraded version. It wasn't built with these consoles in mind. Its still one of the leading examples of modern graphical fidelity. It won't simply be a port or as simple as adjusting sliders. Both consoles are beyond simply being built upon pc architecture and support a third processing unit unique to each console. On top of that, it was built using the existing Nvidia ray tracing tech. AMD has yet to release their first graphics cards capable of performing ray tracing. We don't know the degrees of difference between how this hardware will perform. They do. And that may necessitate additional programming.
I will say the marketing screwed Control at initial release. Even reviewers were initially like, 'Uhh, wtf is this and where did it come from?' So when it became a massive success over time, the publisher has been trying to find a way to continued profitability. Unlike most games, Control didn't move a lot of copies at full retail price. People like myself bought it a month in for $20 when it was thought to be a massive flop. It was the second and third wave of reviews, which coincided w/ a big sale on EGS, that led to an impulse purchase in my case. This isn't Rockstar re-releasing the exact same game on 3 different generations after well over a billion in revenue.
@Haruki_NLI Long term, Game Pass is unsustainable. Long and short of it, for just first party MS studios, it'll take 5-6 years for the studio to earn what Sony exclusives are in a week. That's assuming EVERY subscriber is on the $15 pass and not the $5 or free/$1 month trial. That also assumes MS takes nothing in this deal. Once you add in third party games, MS would have to pay billions from their own pockets.
Under these assumptions, Game Pass as a whole could make up to $150mil a month. The real number is closer to half that. Still, that $150mil is roughly half of what Sony exclusives are making in a week. It would take decades for them to earn what Sony exclusives are over the games life, before remasters.
That would make signing a timed exclusive w/ Sony for pennies and peanuts a no-brainer. Then, after a year or so, putting their games on GP would likely allow for more stable income than random sales.
People want to cry about crunch and low wages for those in the industry, yet then support Game Pass. As if Game Pass isn't going to lead to more crunch, lower wages and even more microtransactions in an attempt to maintain profits.
This is an adjustment we're all forced to endure every generation. The controller isn a couple mm larger in some places, but most of the change is in the contours. These changes are made in part due to changes and additions in technology, but primarily focus on improving comfort and accessibility.
The whinging is premature and completely ridiculous. Remove the periphereals and it literally amounts to people crying about having to accustom themselves to new tech. Literally the same frustration we all face in this scenario, including developers. It completely ignores the fact that it was these very type of changes that allowed them the accessibilty to game in the first place. These companies have heavily focused on accessibility in recent years and assuming these changes were made in spite of that is moronic.
@EVIL-C There's a couple causes for that figure. First, due to the way file size and format works, you never get a true 1tb, 500gb, w/e. On a typical hdd, you get 931gb in actuality. Then, to lessen the wear on ssds, they hold back a certain % of the drive. This is called overprovisioning. The extra space is then cycled in and out over various sections of the drive to prevent burning out the memory cells.
There's also things like RamDisk which allows you to use a set amount of your ssd as ram.
Its certainly using overprovisioning as modern drives tend to come out of the box w/ about 15% of the drive set aside for it. In some cases you can't lower, but you can increase it.
Shorter games are not necessarily a bad thing. That said, that shouldn't be the goal. If your game comes in at 15hrs and you'd have to add pointless fetch quests to inflate it, leave it as a 15hr game. If you're game is 15hrs and the team is still churning out great ideas and has the time to implement them, do it.
We hear this same bs every new generation. Gaming is still growing at an insane rate. Games might still be $60, but console exclusives are making $60mil before a game is even released. AAA games are frequently still profitable even if the game flops, unlike other sources of media. Games are consistently breaking the companies earnings records, even when they completely lack dlc.
Its also past time to stop pretending games are 'only' $60. When you lock content behind a pay wall which is ready before the game ever ships, you're not getting the whole game for that $60. Some games story isn't even complete without post-release dlc.
What's more, game engines aren't being built from the ground up every generation as they were in the past. They're getting a larger cut of profits due to digital sales. They have specialist contractors who come in, work for a few weeks or months and then they're off the payroll. Where in the past they had to keep them on staff full time, even if they weren't actively working on a specific project.
The reason pricing has stagnated is bc its still ludicrously profitable at its current price point. Developers aren't going under bc they need to charge more. They're going under bc they keep expanding and spread themselves too thin. Or they get bought up and their new owners force them to do the opposite of what made them successful in the first place. Though some times a studio is simply bought up to gain access to the companies IPs and then gutted.
The goal is obviously to make ever more money. It hasn't been necessity that has led to the various profit schemes. It's been the desire for management and investors to make larger and larger profits, regardless of its impact on the actual developers, product or customers.
@ChipBoundary if you believe that, you're delusional. Forbes released an article discussing the negative parts mentioned in both the glowing reviews and the critical ones. Including those who don't qualify for Metacritic.
A constant is displeasure with the shift in character. The levity Ellie brought is gone. The main character of the first, gone. Plot holes and leaps in logic abound. There's no self-realization or rationalization for the events. Some claiming a complete lack of character growth.
While some are upset by cannonization of dlc most didn't play, these are legitimate issues. (Thats another conversation) What's worse, the last 12-20 hours are not open for public reviews yet and that's the section most are critical of. Personally, I'd like to know how a person can review a game famed for its storytelling, criticize its story heavily, then give it 96+.
That's like JP Power saying 'Well, the wheel fell off. It burns oil faster than gas. And while driving in town, the vibration was so hard to deal with I wanted to walk back to the dealership. Yet I'm glad I didn't. So we give this car a perfect score!' And these are the primary complaints from the leaks, though they trend more towards hyperbole and attacks on intentionally unlikeable characters. So when reviewers negatives views line up with people criticizing the leaks, well, there's an issue there.
@Rob_230 One good doesn't change the rest. As someone who works in a field where we crunch for 2/3 of the year, every year, by the very nature of the beast well... I couldn't care less about crunch.
The things they've been saying, the attacks and abuse of the legal system bc of their mistakes... that's where my issue is. Their response should've been, 'We're saddened by the leaks. Our job is to create unique, engaging stories and telling them through an interactive medium. While spoilers can negatively impact a players experience, we believe this is a story that must be experienced to understand. We may not always like the stories we experience. Some may not like our story and we can respect that. It's not always a pleasant story, but it's a story we all stand behind fully.'
That's a better reaction than 'F#$% you! Racist! Sexist! Bigot! Ya, if you don't like our game, that's what you are!' They sound like spoiled children. It makes it appear that they don't stand behind their work bc they're lashing out. Like their game can't stand up to the criticism. That's an issue.
@oldschool1987 You buy up the dead, obscure, and forgotten IPs, work out the legistics of re-licensing games now owned by direct competitors, AND force developers like Activision to fully support their games being forward compatible when the developer has stated they won't be.
MS claims states console is 'capable' of full backwards compatibility.
Activision dev states that their 'service' titles will not be forward compatible.
Sony states that the 'vast majority' of titles will be playable on ps5.
MS lied by ommission and the language they used suggests they knew some developers would not support it. Sony was left either taking the same route or being upfront. MS can claim 'It's not our fault...' and hope fan outrage sways the developers position. Downside, that can burn bridges. It's a gamble they have to take though bc they have never not finished last in the console 'wars.'
COD, like every other annually released reskin, should likely just go f2p after the next release anyway. I'm sure someone will get some value out of it. I'm just hoping we don't get a double dip of the same genre again.
@Grimwood It's practical for all developers. People talk like ssd's haven't been standard in pc's for the last few years. You buy a crappy laptop today, it has an ssd and thats been true since at least 2018. Phones and handhelds have been using similar memory for more than a decade now. A 1tb ssd will cost you what a 1tb hdd cost a year or so after the current gen release.
This isn't the adoption rate of 2k, 4k or 8k. You're not referring to 63.72% of gamers on Steam playing at 1080p. It's something that has become the standard, period. There are two groups which have yet to make the switch; those who are screaming at the clouds bc they can't figure out where their files are and those who are gaming on machines who are already incapable of playing modern games.
Consoles are the last holdover for mechanical memory. The few in the pc market who have yet to upgrade can at least be comforted that doing so will be the cheapest, biggest performance upgrade they could buy. Which is exactly what every pc-based content has been saying for ages.
@Athrum Those roles would qualify them as employees or affiliates. Someone else might cut their checks, but it's Sony's money and they define the terms of employment.
Far more likely, it's a relative or friend who gained access through an employee. Whether the employee knew it or not.
@Nickolaidas Not hard to find other articles, including from Japan itself, discussing how due to the regimes inaction they're facing a potential collapse of their medical system. More interesting though is that cities, towns, etc instead placed these restrictions on themselves bc their president is more worried about preserving the Tokyo Summer Olympics. But I'm sure you just didn't see those articles rather than just cherry picking ones that support your position. They've done roughly 3.5% of the tests any other neighboring country has.
Simply search 'japans reaction to the coronavirus' in any search engine you want. Bloomberg, The Japan Times, et al.
I think we can all understand the financial implications of spending billions to host the Olympics and what having them outright canceled could mean.
But hey, nice try. Maybe YOU should actually take a moment and get informed.
@Nickolaidas Well, you're either a kid or in one of the states not locked down, clearly.
Some people have these things called jobs. When the government bans travel, its hard to do go to your job. You may be able to do some things from home, but few if any developers are going to have the appropriate dev kit sitting at home. So while you can address some known issues, its hard to address something like the clip plane. For the ps4 pro, its just a matter of extending that plane so that assets are fully rendered further out. Assuming the hardware isn't the issue, in which case they have to get more inventive. Either way, you actually need a dev kit on hand to make and test these adjustments.
This is a jrpg. As in JAPAN. As in a country very close to China, where the virus started. Japan acted early, so while we've been effected since the end of February/beginning of March, they've been locked down longer.
FF15 was and is mediocre at best. It was just the first FF since 10 to be reviewed as better than complete sh*t by the majority of fans. Just bc a game has more to do doesn't mean it has more worth doing.
I game primarily on pc. This type of thing isn't uncommon. Hell, I've bought ps4 games that were unplayable w/o the day 1 patch and I was sol bc my isp had an outage. When I bought my previous gpu, it came w/ a free preorder of Gears 4 as a cross-promotional freebie. A MSI 1080 Gaming Z. Due to the developers mistake, the game was capped at 15fps. That took them several weeks to fix and that was totally on the developer, who had no excuse.
@Nickolaidas FF7R has some hiccups, thats true. Dreamcast though? No.
FF15 was able to receive a day 1 patch. FF15 had years and years of development. FF15 wasn't pulled from another developer near what they considered completion and rebuilt nearly from the ground up in 2yrs. FF15 also had and still has janky textures it tries to hide behind its warping mechanic. One was released more than a month into a global pandemic, the other faced no major outside issues.
Things aren't equal here.
People have gotten upset w/ Naughty Dog deciding to hold off on releasing TLoU2. After seeing people willing to attack FF7R, why in the world would they? There are no game-breaking bugs, there are no major framerate issues, yet people like you are willing to lampoon it w/o a moment of thought for whats actually going on right now. Any release these days, even with day 1 patches, that the worst thing about is some bad textures is a huge win. Had they had that extra month or so, I have no doubt that would have been resolved.
Under normal circumstances, I'd agree the textures in some areas is an issue and be willing to knock points off. A company can deal w/ a few people working from home, but the logistics the first few weeks of EVERYONE working from home has been a nightmare. After that, you still have to allow your workers time to deal w/ shortened hours for basic necessities. So even once production picks up, it still won't reach 'normal' levels. This is experienced I saw first hand.
And lets not forget that FF15 lost over 80% of its playerbase once they reached chapter 15 in the first year. That section was mechanically a disaster. After numerous fixes and the ability to skip it, its easy to forget. While it works from a story perspective, they square pegged the f out of that round hole mechanically.
@Cybrshrk A small group of idiots doesn't mean something else is better. A lot of people don't realize you can replace the hdd's in them. Others think it voids the warranty, despite everything saying otherwise. Some people also don't realize the ps4 pro has sata 3.0 and can be upgraded to an ssd.
Why people find it an issue to just use one of the dozen phone chargers they have lying around, I'll never know. Or spend the couple of bucks to get a 10'-12' cord, but will dump $60 into an extra controller.
@Ralizah That won't help. We'll see between 50 and 100% of the game files as dl only. Pretty standard for games near or over 100gb. As well as a day 1 patch which can be in the 5-15gb range.
@ash2ash2000 I say this with as much kindness as possible: Get a job. Four dollars a month. That's all it would've taken you. For $9 a month, you'd have been able to to get a ps4 and banked hundreds of games across the vita, ps3 and ps4. Almost all of the vita games are playable on either the ps3 or ps4.
For less than a Netflix subscription, you'd have endless hours of entertainment. It's not about being rich or elitest. I'd be willing to bet you have no less than one addiction you could simply slightly cut back on and been able to afford that. It doesn't matter if you're a single parent of 10 or a college student. It's time you learn to adult to the simplest degree.
@nathanSF Its also worth pointing out, other than the unique modifications made, they're using the exact same hardware. MS just added a larger OC, which uses more power and generates significantly more heat. The larger the OC, the more power it consumes, the more heat it generates. Meaning it is also more likely their cooling is over-stressed and can lead to critical hardware failure, at worst. At best, the console will sound like a mini jet turbine as we've seen before.
As well as the heat issue, you get diminishing returns the higher you OC the hardware. Teraflops isn't measured throughput. It's theoretical max throughput. It assumes every processor is functioning at max capacity, which never happens. When you OC the cpu or gpu, you only eek out a tiny bit more performance out of the most burdoned processors. The rest continue to function at the same or a similar rate.
There's no way around it; teraflops are a piss-poor measurement.
The problem w/ teraflops is it's an arbitrary multiplicative number. In theory, it implies power, but reality is very different. A literal, apple for apple comparison is this: A V6 has 6 cylinders to produce power and 4 tires to apply it, so 6x4=24. So a V8 would be 8x4=32. So by applying that logic to cars, a V8 is always more powerful and thus faster than a V6. The reality is, we typically use 6 cylinder race cars over even 16 cylinder motors. Primarily bc it offers comparable power with greater efficiency.
I think we're going to see something similar play out here. Sony actively removed numerous bottlenecks that MS didn't. It seems MS was so focused on graphical power, they didn't account for everything else like what might prevent them from letting them ponies run. The ps5 not loading redundant assets, loading assets directly in from storage, etc removes many of those bottlenecks and means it will need less power to reach the same result. And they went w/ a faster, and custom, storage system, suggesting they believe that it might actually be the read speed of the drive which may bottleneck the console. Or that they expect developers to really take advantage of the ability to directly load assets into the gpu from storage.
Either way, some thought was put into one console where the other they asked a 14yo boy to pick what they think is best. Whichs fits the phallic design as well.
The removal of redundant assets is long overdue. Thats likely to save more space than the extra 10% compression. But a 1tb ssd is still small, considering I have a 2tb ssd in my ps4 pro and yet only a fraction of the games I've played in recent months. (Stating its 812mb, while true, ignores that thats whats typically sold as a 1tb drive after the OS partition.)
@RayNick The speed referenced was boot speed and install speed. A ssd writes fast enough to install as it downloads, cutting the necessary time in half.
Just before finding this article I read an article about why this is unnecessary. The source was a MIT professor who has been a key member of the team developing and expanding the internet since the 70s. I'm going to trust the guy whose life has been dedicated to building the internet over a politician which struggles to turn a computer on.
@WallyWest A DEVELOPER said one of their titles won't support backwards compatibility. It was in regards to a service title, which is expected tbh. The rest will likely follow suit. Sony is just covering their rears here.
The best gpu on the market can't maintain 60fps@4k in the more graphic heavy titles. You literally have to run dual $2,000 cards to get close to 120fps@4k. A modified $300 gpu will outperform expectation, especially given the modifications, but you're still going to see titles running at 30-60fps.
If MS claimed otherwise, they're lying through their teeth. I'd expect they might've used more vague language which could imply these things, but hopefully they're smarter than actually making easily disproven claims. I'd expect something like 'Our next console will be capable of full backwards compatibility day 1.' Which implies it can play all prior games w/o addressing that service titles will likely prevent next gen consoles access to the servers.
@R1spam Very rarely can development issues be overcome with bruteforce. Typically, adding more bodies actually complicates things bc you end up w/ more 'completed' assets bundles. Any of which may cause conflicts when combined w/ other assets.
Think of it this way: it would be faster to have an individual employee for each condiment at a fast food joint. Other than wage costs, why don't they? Because for each person you add, you increase the potential for human error. Even during peak periods, they'll ramp up the number of stations, but still have a limited number of people at those stations.
Others getting to enjoy the game isn't the issue. MS said, before this gen started, they are looking to get out of hardware. That's one reason why in the first reveal for the xboxone they tried to sell it as an all in one entertainment box and ignored the gaming aspect. Since then, they have completely given up exclusivity, making buying their next gen console pointless.
Like many people, I have a gaming pc. If I can play all your games on that, I have no reason to touch your hardware. Thats why when MS went through w/ dropping exclusivity I just gave my 360 away.
Not having to buy more hardware is great. The question becomes; if these companies don't have to make sure their exclusives are great to sell their console, will they continue to make sure the games they develop are still generation defining? Looking at MS and Sega, their response so far has been a huge no.
My pc takes 12s or less from cold boot to fully loaded using a Samsung 850 Pro. The ssd they'll be using will be at least as fast and loading significantly less than mine does. This isn't even a realistic fake. They'll certainly have their boot screen and warning, but it shouldn't take that long to load. I have to load Win10, EGS, Steam, Battle dot net, Origin, AV, etc and it does so in half the time as a ps5 supposedly takes to get to the login screen? As someone else said, this is likely a modded ps3 using a virtually blank hdd. Ffs its slower than my ps4 using a 2tb hybrid drive.
@Callmegil They opened the doors to the public bc it was dying to begin with. And in no small part due to gaming journalists leaking things they weren't supposed to.
When CDPR first revealed Cyberpunk, they put on a private display for the journalists. They were asked to turn over all recording devices before hand. One decided his phone wasn't a recording device, then recorded the private reveal. He later claimed he didn't believe phones were recording devices, despite using it for precisely that reason.
Lets be very clear, those aee the reasons companies are backing out of E3. The public being allowed in was to make up for companies the companies pulling out.
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Re: Cyberpunk 2077 Map Size Estimate Suggests It's Twice as Big as GTA 5
@HotGoomba___Rebrand No. Everyone at CDPR and every person who has played it for reviews have gone out of their way to say its not even close. It may share vague similarites, but thats it.
Re: Hands On: Does PS5's 3D Audio Live Up to the Hype?
Down side, it shows how poor quality the oarsmen audio in AC Valhalla is. They sound like something playing on the tv in the background on an episode of The Wonder Years. While you can clearly tell they're positioned below you, they sound jarringly bad.
Re: Watch Dogs: Legion Runs at 4K, 30FPS with Raytracing on PS5
@GamingFiend Teraflops are and have been a bad measure of graphical performance for a long time. AMD released a card that was 22tf a few years ago. It ended up being a terrible gpu, but was a great crypto-miner. Also, not great for AI purposes either. Basically, it was an expensive brick.
Also, AI upscaling is standard now. The 3080 is to the XSX what the 2080 Super was to the One X. And despite the massive raw horsepower jump in performance, the improvement in ai upscaling wins the day. EVERYONE in gaming is spending a fortune on it, including MS. Both MS and Sony had no interest in AMDs, so developed their own. Or in MS's case, bought a company to further and faster develop an existing version.
Re: 505 Games Attempts to Explain Control's PS5 Upgrade Scandal
I own it on pc. So am I mistaken when pointing out this game will be well over a year old at the release of next gen consoles? Or did Epics timed exclusivity deal extend to console in this case? Ahh, nope, just blocked Steam.
In either case, more than a year between initial release and next gen release is plenty of justification for not giving away an upgraded version. It wasn't built with these consoles in mind. Its still one of the leading examples of modern graphical fidelity. It won't simply be a port or as simple as adjusting sliders. Both consoles are beyond simply being built upon pc architecture and support a third processing unit unique to each console. On top of that, it was built using the existing Nvidia ray tracing tech. AMD has yet to release their first graphics cards capable of performing ray tracing. We don't know the degrees of difference between how this hardware will perform. They do. And that may necessitate additional programming.
I will say the marketing screwed Control at initial release. Even reviewers were initially like, 'Uhh, wtf is this and where did it come from?' So when it became a massive success over time, the publisher has been trying to find a way to continued profitability. Unlike most games, Control didn't move a lot of copies at full retail price. People like myself bought it a month in for $20 when it was thought to be a massive flop. It was the second and third wave of reviews, which coincided w/ a big sale on EGS, that led to an impulse purchase in my case. This isn't Rockstar re-releasing the exact same game on 3 different generations after well over a billion in revenue.
Re: PS5 Moneyhat Speculation Rumbles On
@Haruki_NLI Long term, Game Pass is unsustainable. Long and short of it, for just first party MS studios, it'll take 5-6 years for the studio to earn what Sony exclusives are in a week. That's assuming EVERY subscriber is on the $15 pass and not the $5 or free/$1 month trial. That also assumes MS takes nothing in this deal. Once you add in third party games, MS would have to pay billions from their own pockets.
Under these assumptions, Game Pass as a whole could make up to $150mil a month. The real number is closer to half that. Still, that $150mil is roughly half of what Sony exclusives are making in a week. It would take decades for them to earn what Sony exclusives are over the games life, before remasters.
That would make signing a timed exclusive w/ Sony for pennies and peanuts a no-brainer. Then, after a year or so, putting their games on GP would likely allow for more stable income than random sales.
People want to cry about crunch and low wages for those in the industry, yet then support Game Pass. As if Game Pass isn't going to lead to more crunch, lower wages and even more microtransactions in an attempt to maintain profits.
Re: Disabled Gamers Raise Concerns Over Decision to Scrap PS4 Pads on PS5
This is an adjustment we're all forced to endure every generation. The controller isn a couple mm larger in some places, but most of the change is in the contours. These changes are made in part due to changes and additions in technology, but primarily focus on improving comfort and accessibility.
The whinging is premature and completely ridiculous. Remove the periphereals and it literally amounts to people crying about having to accustom themselves to new tech. Literally the same frustration we all face in this scenario, including developers. It completely ignores the fact that it was these very type of changes that allowed them the accessibilty to game in the first place. These companies have heavily focused on accessibility in recent years and assuming these changes were made in spite of that is moronic.
Re: PS5 SSD: Why It's Better Than HDD
@EVIL-C There's a couple causes for that figure. First, due to the way file size and format works, you never get a true 1tb, 500gb, w/e. On a typical hdd, you get 931gb in actuality. Then, to lessen the wear on ssds, they hold back a certain % of the drive. This is called overprovisioning. The extra space is then cycled in and out over various sections of the drive to prevent burning out the memory cells.
There's also things like RamDisk which allows you to use a set amount of your ssd as ram.
Its certainly using overprovisioning as modern drives tend to come out of the box w/ about 15% of the drive set aside for it. In some cases you can't lower, but you can increase it.
Re: Ex-PlayStation Boss Wants to See 15 Hour AAA Titles Return
Shorter games are not necessarily a bad thing. That said, that shouldn't be the goal. If your game comes in at 15hrs and you'd have to add pointless fetch quests to inflate it, leave it as a 15hr game. If you're game is 15hrs and the team is still churning out great ideas and has the time to implement them, do it.
We hear this same bs every new generation. Gaming is still growing at an insane rate. Games might still be $60, but console exclusives are making $60mil before a game is even released. AAA games are frequently still profitable even if the game flops, unlike other sources of media. Games are consistently breaking the companies earnings records, even when they completely lack dlc.
Its also past time to stop pretending games are 'only' $60. When you lock content behind a pay wall which is ready before the game ever ships, you're not getting the whole game for that $60. Some games story isn't even complete without post-release dlc.
What's more, game engines aren't being built from the ground up every generation as they were in the past. They're getting a larger cut of profits due to digital sales. They have specialist contractors who come in, work for a few weeks or months and then they're off the payroll. Where in the past they had to keep them on staff full time, even if they weren't actively working on a specific project.
The reason pricing has stagnated is bc its still ludicrously profitable at its current price point. Developers aren't going under bc they need to charge more. They're going under bc they keep expanding and spread themselves too thin. Or they get bought up and their new owners force them to do the opposite of what made them successful in the first place. Though some times a studio is simply bought up to gain access to the companies IPs and then gutted.
The goal is obviously to make ever more money. It hasn't been necessity that has led to the various profit schemes. It's been the desire for management and investors to make larger and larger profits, regardless of its impact on the actual developers, product or customers.
Re: Blind Gamer Reacts to The Last of Us 2's Unprecedented Accessibility Options
@ChipBoundary if you believe that, you're delusional. Forbes released an article discussing the negative parts mentioned in both the glowing reviews and the critical ones. Including those who don't qualify for Metacritic.
A constant is displeasure with the shift in character. The levity Ellie brought is gone. The main character of the first, gone. Plot holes and leaps in logic abound. There's no self-realization or rationalization for the events. Some claiming a complete lack of character growth.
While some are upset by cannonization of dlc most didn't play, these are legitimate issues. (Thats another conversation) What's worse, the last 12-20 hours are not open for public reviews yet and that's the section most are critical of. Personally, I'd like to know how a person can review a game famed for its storytelling, criticize its story heavily, then give it 96+.
That's like JP Power saying 'Well, the wheel fell off. It burns oil faster than gas. And while driving in town, the vibration was so hard to deal with I wanted to walk back to the dealership. Yet I'm glad I didn't. So we give this car a perfect score!' And these are the primary complaints from the leaks, though they trend more towards hyperbole and attacks on intentionally unlikeable characters. So when reviewers negatives views line up with people criticizing the leaks, well, there's an issue there.
Re: Blind Gamer Reacts to The Last of Us 2's Unprecedented Accessibility Options
@Rob_230 One good doesn't change the rest. As someone who works in a field where we crunch for 2/3 of the year, every year, by the very nature of the beast well... I couldn't care less about crunch.
The things they've been saying, the attacks and abuse of the legal system bc of their mistakes... that's where my issue is. Their response should've been, 'We're saddened by the leaks. Our job is to create unique, engaging stories and telling them through an interactive medium. While spoilers can negatively impact a players experience, we believe this is a story that must be experienced to understand. We may not always like the stories we experience. Some may not like our story and we can respect that. It's not always a pleasant story, but it's a story we all stand behind fully.'
That's a better reaction than 'F#$% you! Racist! Sexist! Bigot! Ya, if you don't like our game, that's what you are!' They sound like spoiled children. It makes it appear that they don't stand behind their work bc they're lashing out. Like their game can't stand up to the criticism. That's an issue.
Re: PS5 Fans Are Panicking Over Backwards Compatibility
@oldschool1987 You buy up the dead, obscure, and forgotten IPs, work out the legistics of re-licensing games now owned by direct competitors, AND force developers like Activision to fully support their games being forward compatible when the developer has stated they won't be.
MS claims states console is 'capable' of full backwards compatibility.
Activision dev states that their 'service' titles will not be forward compatible.
Sony states that the 'vast majority' of titles will be playable on ps5.
MS lied by ommission and the language they used suggests they knew some developers would not support it. Sony was left either taking the same route or being upfront. MS can claim 'It's not our fault...' and hope fan outrage sways the developers position. Downside, that can burn bridges. It's a gamble they have to take though bc they have never not finished last in the console 'wars.'
Re: PS Plus June 2020 PS4 Game Announced
COD, like every other annually released reskin, should likely just go f2p after the next release anyway. I'm sure someone will get some value out of it. I'm just hoping we don't get a double dip of the same genre again.
Re: Sony Reiterates Sheer Speed of PS5, Processing Is '100 Times Faster Than PS4'
@Grimwood It's practical for all developers. People talk like ssd's haven't been standard in pc's for the last few years. You buy a crappy laptop today, it has an ssd and thats been true since at least 2018. Phones and handhelds have been using similar memory for more than a decade now. A 1tb ssd will cost you what a 1tb hdd cost a year or so after the current gen release.
This isn't the adoption rate of 2k, 4k or 8k. You're not referring to 63.72% of gamers on Steam playing at 1080p. It's something that has become the standard, period. There are two groups which have yet to make the switch; those who are screaming at the clouds bc they can't figure out where their files are and those who are gaming on machines who are already incapable of playing modern games.
Consoles are the last holdover for mechanical memory. The few in the pc market who have yet to upgrade can at least be comforted that doing so will be the cheapest, biggest performance upgrade they could buy. Which is exactly what every pc-based content has been saying for ages.
Re: The Last of Us 2 Leakers 'Not Affiliated with SIE or Naughty Dog', Sony Confirms
@Athrum Those roles would qualify them as employees or affiliates. Someone else might cut their checks, but it's Sony's money and they define the terms of employment.
Far more likely, it's a relative or friend who gained access through an employee. Whether the employee knew it or not.
Re: Poll: What Review Score Would You Give Final Fantasy VII Remake?
@Nickolaidas Not hard to find other articles, including from Japan itself, discussing how due to the regimes inaction they're facing a potential collapse of their medical system. More interesting though is that cities, towns, etc instead placed these restrictions on themselves bc their president is more worried about preserving the Tokyo Summer Olympics. But I'm sure you just didn't see those articles rather than just cherry picking ones that support your position. They've done roughly 3.5% of the tests any other neighboring country has.
Simply search 'japans reaction to the coronavirus' in any search engine you want. Bloomberg, The Japan Times, et al.
I think we can all understand the financial implications of spending billions to host the Olympics and what having them outright canceled could mean.
But hey, nice try. Maybe YOU should actually take a moment and get informed.
Re: Poll: What Review Score Would You Give Final Fantasy VII Remake?
@Nickolaidas Well, you're either a kid or in one of the states not locked down, clearly.
Some people have these things called jobs. When the government bans travel, its hard to do go to your job. You may be able to do some things from home, but few if any developers are going to have the appropriate dev kit sitting at home. So while you can address some known issues, its hard to address something like the clip plane. For the ps4 pro, its just a matter of extending that plane so that assets are fully rendered further out. Assuming the hardware isn't the issue, in which case they have to get more inventive. Either way, you actually need a dev kit on hand to make and test these adjustments.
This is a jrpg. As in JAPAN. As in a country very close to China, where the virus started. Japan acted early, so while we've been effected since the end of February/beginning of March, they've been locked down longer.
FF15 was and is mediocre at best. It was just the first FF since 10 to be reviewed as better than complete sh*t by the majority of fans. Just bc a game has more to do doesn't mean it has more worth doing.
I game primarily on pc. This type of thing isn't uncommon. Hell, I've bought ps4 games that were unplayable w/o the day 1 patch and I was sol bc my isp had an outage. When I bought my previous gpu, it came w/ a free preorder of Gears 4 as a cross-promotional freebie. A MSI 1080 Gaming Z. Due to the developers mistake, the game was capped at 15fps. That took them several weeks to fix and that was totally on the developer, who had no excuse.
Re: Poll: What Review Score Would You Give Final Fantasy VII Remake?
@Nickolaidas FF7R has some hiccups, thats true. Dreamcast though? No.
FF15 was able to receive a day 1 patch. FF15 had years and years of development. FF15 wasn't pulled from another developer near what they considered completion and rebuilt nearly from the ground up in 2yrs. FF15 also had and still has janky textures it tries to hide behind its warping mechanic. One was released more than a month into a global pandemic, the other faced no major outside issues.
Things aren't equal here.
People have gotten upset w/ Naughty Dog deciding to hold off on releasing TLoU2. After seeing people willing to attack FF7R, why in the world would they? There are no game-breaking bugs, there are no major framerate issues, yet people like you are willing to lampoon it w/o a moment of thought for whats actually going on right now. Any release these days, even with day 1 patches, that the worst thing about is some bad textures is a huge win. Had they had that extra month or so, I have no doubt that would have been resolved.
Under normal circumstances, I'd agree the textures in some areas is an issue and be willing to knock points off. A company can deal w/ a few people working from home, but the logistics the first few weeks of EVERYONE working from home has been a nightmare. After that, you still have to allow your workers time to deal w/ shortened hours for basic necessities. So even once production picks up, it still won't reach 'normal' levels. This is experienced I saw first hand.
And lets not forget that FF15 lost over 80% of its playerbase once they reached chapter 15 in the first year. That section was mechanically a disaster. After numerous fixes and the ability to skip it, its easy to forget. While it works from a story perspective, they square pegged the f out of that round hole mechanically.
Re: Did You Know There's An Easy Way to Turn Off Your PS4 Controller?
@Cybrshrk A small group of idiots doesn't mean something else is better. A lot of people don't realize you can replace the hdd's in them. Others think it voids the warranty, despite everything saying otherwise. Some people also don't realize the ps4 pro has sata 3.0 and can be upgraded to an ssd.
Why people find it an issue to just use one of the dozen phone chargers they have lying around, I'll never know. Or spend the couple of bucks to get a 10'-12' cord, but will dump $60 into an extra controller.
Re: PSN Download Speeds Slowed in USA and Europe to Preserve Internet Bandwidth
@Ralizah That won't help. We'll see between 50 and 100% of the game files as dl only. Pretty standard for games near or over 100gb. As well as a day 1 patch which can be in the 5-15gb range.
Re: PS3 Says Goodbye to Messages from Other PlayStation Consoles This June
@ash2ash2000 I say this with as much kindness as possible: Get a job. Four dollars a month. That's all it would've taken you. For $9 a month, you'd have been able to to get a ps4 and banked hundreds of games across the vita, ps3 and ps4. Almost all of the vita games are playable on either the ps3 or ps4.
For less than a Netflix subscription, you'd have endless hours of entertainment. It's not about being rich or elitest. I'd be willing to bet you have no less than one addiction you could simply slightly cut back on and been able to afford that. It doesn't matter if you're a single parent of 10 or a college student. It's time you learn to adult to the simplest degree.
Re: Poll: Does PS5's Teraflop Disadvantage Matter to You?
@nathanSF Its also worth pointing out, other than the unique modifications made, they're using the exact same hardware. MS just added a larger OC, which uses more power and generates significantly more heat. The larger the OC, the more power it consumes, the more heat it generates. Meaning it is also more likely their cooling is over-stressed and can lead to critical hardware failure, at worst. At best, the console will sound like a mini jet turbine as we've seen before.
As well as the heat issue, you get diminishing returns the higher you OC the hardware. Teraflops isn't measured throughput. It's theoretical max throughput. It assumes every processor is functioning at max capacity, which never happens. When you OC the cpu or gpu, you only eek out a tiny bit more performance out of the most burdoned processors. The rest continue to function at the same or a similar rate.
There's no way around it; teraflops are a piss-poor measurement.
Re: Poll: Does PS5's Teraflop Disadvantage Matter to You?
The problem w/ teraflops is it's an arbitrary multiplicative number. In theory, it implies power, but reality is very different. A literal, apple for apple comparison is this: A V6 has 6 cylinders to produce power and 4 tires to apply it, so 6x4=24. So a V8 would be 8x4=32. So by applying that logic to cars, a V8 is always more powerful and thus faster than a V6. The reality is, we typically use 6 cylinder race cars over even 16 cylinder motors. Primarily bc it offers comparable power with greater efficiency.
I think we're going to see something similar play out here. Sony actively removed numerous bottlenecks that MS didn't. It seems MS was so focused on graphical power, they didn't account for everything else like what might prevent them from letting them ponies run. The ps5 not loading redundant assets, loading assets directly in from storage, etc removes many of those bottlenecks and means it will need less power to reach the same result. And they went w/ a faster, and custom, storage system, suggesting they believe that it might actually be the read speed of the drive which may bottleneck the console. Or that they expect developers to really take advantage of the ability to directly load assets into the gpu from storage.
Either way, some thought was put into one console where the other they asked a 14yo boy to pick what they think is best. Whichs fits the phallic design as well.
Re: PS5 SSD Could Reduce Game Sizes and Save Storage Space
The removal of redundant assets is long overdue. Thats likely to save more space than the extra 10% compression. But a 1tb ssd is still small, considering I have a 2tb ssd in my ps4 pro and yet only a fraction of the games I've played in recent months. (Stating its 812mb, while true, ignores that thats whats typically sold as a 1tb drive after the OS partition.)
Re: PS5 SSD Could Reduce Game Sizes and Save Storage Space
@RayNick The speed referenced was boot speed and install speed. A ssd writes fast enough to install as it downloads, cutting the necessary time in half.
Re: PS5 SSD Could Reduce Game Sizes and Save Storage Space
@Ryall Many games today are nothing more than a redirect to a downloader. Defeating the point of the physical media in the first place.
Re: Could PSN Be Restricted to Save Internet Bandwidth?
Just before finding this article I read an article about why this is unnecessary. The source was a MIT professor who has been a key member of the team developing and expanding the internet since the 70s. I'm going to trust the guy whose life has been dedicated to building the internet over a politician which struggles to turn a computer on.
Re: Fans Show Displeasure at Disappointing Road to PS5 Reveal
@WallyWest A DEVELOPER said one of their titles won't support backwards compatibility. It was in regards to a service title, which is expected tbh. The rest will likely follow suit. Sony is just covering their rears here.
The best gpu on the market can't maintain 60fps@4k in the more graphic heavy titles. You literally have to run dual $2,000 cards to get close to 120fps@4k. A modified $300 gpu will outperform expectation, especially given the modifications, but you're still going to see titles running at 30-60fps.
If MS claimed otherwise, they're lying through their teeth. I'd expect they might've used more vague language which could imply these things, but hopefully they're smarter than actually making easily disproven claims. I'd expect something like 'Our next console will be capable of full backwards compatibility day 1.' Which implies it can play all prior games w/o addressing that service titles will likely prevent next gen consoles access to the servers.
Re: The Last of Us Director Talks Up Animation as Naughty Dog's Crunch Culture Comes Underfire
@R1spam Very rarely can development issues be overcome with bruteforce. Typically, adding more bodies actually complicates things bc you end up w/ more 'completed' assets bundles. Any of which may cause conflicts when combined w/ other assets.
Think of it this way: it would be faster to have an individual employee for each condiment at a fast food joint. Other than wage costs, why don't they? Because for each person you add, you increase the potential for human error. Even during peak periods, they'll ramp up the number of stations, but still have a limited number of people at those stations.
Re: Ex-Guerrilla Producer Rips Butthurt PlayStation Fans Over Horizon PC Port
Others getting to enjoy the game isn't the issue. MS said, before this gen started, they are looking to get out of hardware. That's one reason why in the first reveal for the xboxone they tried to sell it as an all in one entertainment box and ignored the gaming aspect. Since then, they have completely given up exclusivity, making buying their next gen console pointless.
Like many people, I have a gaming pc. If I can play all your games on that, I have no reason to touch your hardware. Thats why when MS went through w/ dropping exclusivity I just gave my 360 away.
Not having to buy more hardware is great. The question becomes; if these companies don't have to make sure their exclusives are great to sell their console, will they continue to make sure the games they develop are still generation defining? Looking at MS and Sega, their response so far has been a huge no.
Re: PS5 Startup Sequence Is Likely Fake, But Still Lovely
My pc takes 12s or less from cold boot to fully loaded using a Samsung 850 Pro. The ssd they'll be using will be at least as fast and loading significantly less than mine does. This isn't even a realistic fake. They'll certainly have their boot screen and warning, but it shouldn't take that long to load. I have to load Win10, EGS, Steam, Battle dot net, Origin, AV, etc and it does so in half the time as a ps5 supposedly takes to get to the login screen? As someone else said, this is likely a modded ps3 using a virtually blank hdd. Ffs its slower than my ps4 using a 2tb hybrid drive.
Re: E3 Organiser Reacts to Sony's Absence with Empty Words
@Callmegil They opened the doors to the public bc it was dying to begin with. And in no small part due to gaming journalists leaking things they weren't supposed to.
When CDPR first revealed Cyberpunk, they put on a private display for the journalists. They were asked to turn over all recording devices before hand. One decided his phone wasn't a recording device, then recorded the private reveal. He later claimed he didn't believe phones were recording devices, despite using it for precisely that reason.
Lets be very clear, those aee the reasons companies are backing out of E3. The public being allowed in was to make up for companies the companies pulling out.