PlayStation Meeting 2013 (PS4 unveiling - conference replay in first post) - Page 27

Already sucks they're $60

Think about everything you are asking for.

Let's simplify everything and say your typical 30fps, 720p game this gen (and yes most games run at 720p) requires X of "power." You want 60fps and 1080p, each of those is basically double what you get now, so that's 4*X. Just to display today's graphics at 1080p and 60fps. Throw in better textures, physics, and anti-aliasing and it's 5*X or 6*X.

Which sounds about right considering the PC situation, but keep in mind all these demands limits the type of *new* things that can come from new hardware. I still think developers should make the game they want to make without mandates.

Regarding 4K, it's not "future-proof" if the hardware can't display a game at that res, I thought that was a lesson we learned this generation. Sony isn't going to put in hardware that could run, say, Gran Turismo 6 at 4K because it would be massively expensive and few people will benefit from it.

I don't think I'm asking for much, when you're going to release a console in 2013-2014 and expect it to last for another 4-7 years till around 2020 (damn I feel old lol), it better be a pretty damn good upgrade (e.g at least x10 times better or more).

Also, not everything is limited by consoles this generation, there are some pretty damn lazy ass developers out there that don't optimize games as they should, so making a more "programming/coding friendly" console should be one of Sony's top priorities.

At least prices drop quickly and sales occur often. I usually get a game for half price within 2 months of release. It is the main reason I won't buy digital releases on consoles. (why pay $40 for NSMB2 at release when I can get it for $30 if I watch for sales or preorder offers from Newegg?

It's almost a given that Sony would definitely want the the PS4 to be 4K video capable especially when it looks like they'll be some competition from the Red Players.
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?88303-4K-Delivery-get-ready
As for gaming, it wouldn't surprise me if Sony will want a few games to be 4K just to have one extra incentive for potential early adopters of 4K TVs such Grand Tourismo and that's if the PS4 will be at the very least 4 times as powerful and it's very true that if they want to use extra effects, it would have to probably be 5 times as powerful. Still, they could try to do 1,600p which would still look good on a 2160p TV. I guess it'll all come down to how cheap it'll be to manufacture the system. If it'll be cheap enough, It's certain that Sony will want to do it but if it wont be cheap enough, they'll probably be thinking about all the money they lost on the first PS3's and wont want that to happen again.
http://gizmodo.com/5094334/ps3-tech-demo-runs-gran-turismo-5-in-2160p-or-240-fps
At the same time, if they do it, we'd probably only see a few games just for show off and marketing purposes while the rest of the games will be in 1080p.

Speaking of Gran Tourismo, I wonder if the PS4 would be able to have 2 options for the game and that's if it doesn't take much more time and money to implement. Basically choose a high resolution 1600 - 2160 24p - 30p version to be used as sort of a tech demo for 4K TVs or choose 1080 60p. You basically choose the option in game.

That's only been the past couple of console gens. Prices have actually come down. Prices were much higher in the NES era (up to $80). And don't forget about the Neo Geo!
It's not laziness. It's budget constraints. Games are expensive to make. Developers have to cut costs wherever they can while cramming as much eye candy as they can into a game. That level of optimization takes a back seat since most consumers don't know or care about framerates. That won't change anytime soon, this generation or next.

It IS laziness in a lot of cases man, look at Bethesda and Skyrim, considering the insane amount of money they make, you really want to tell me the game's frame rate issues are caused by budget constraints?

You might suggest it's a PS3 hardware related issue, but what about PC users who also faced frame rate issues with large save files and the problems were conveniently fixed by unofficial patches done by regular people from around the world?

Or what about the countless of multi platform games that run much better on one console than the other because of lazy porting? Releasing a game on both consoles is to get more money, "budget constraints" is a very lazy and insulting excuse to the people who are paying full price for crippled games.

I don't think it's asking for too much either. A typical console generation is 8-10x more powerful....5 years later. Moores law hasn't slowed down. Even 20x more powerful isn't unrealistic after 7 years if they really want to aim high. It's easy to forget how huge the gap between consoles is, especially since its been so long since we've seen it.

Now I personally don't think they're aiming that high but.....60fps in every game, while looking better than current gen is hardly unattainable. It's a choice to make if they want to, even at the lowest projections of how powerful the next gen is. It's such an easy win - take virtually any 30fps game, make it 60fps, and it automatically looks AND plays better.

whoa there youngin', I remember a time buying NES/SNES cartridges for $70-80m in 1980/90 dollars. Through inflation, gaming is actually the cheapest it's ever been, while paradoxically budgets have ballooned to huge costs and man hour sinks. It's actually why the industry is in a very precarious situation ATM; there's not a lot of expansion into their core demographics left, which really doesn't allow them to sell games for less while raising budgets needed to fund the pretty graphics and huge scopes of blockbusters.

Don't confuse poor implementation for budgetary constraints. Bethesda has pourn hundreds of thousands of man hours into its games to create very detailed, open worlds. They're masters of content, and do that content very well.

Engine coding? No so much. Even their "New" engine is really just a retool of a bought 3rd party Gamebryo engine, which forces them to rely on brute force to make it look nice and work well. Building a engine from scratch doesn't seem to be a priority, and would probably be detrimental to what they do do well.

It's not laziness, it's that making games is really hard. A bunch of modders swooping in at the end and fixing a few bugs is nothing compared to, you know, making the game from nothing,

Regarding multiplatform, it's, again, really hard. People want a 100% identical experience even though PS3 and 360 are vastly different hardware. The truth is that human beings are making these games and writing and testing this code. Not perfect robots.

My point wasn't that it is too much to ask, it's that if a console is say, 8X more powerful, basically over half of that is needed just to run the same game as last gen in a higher resolution and 60fps. It's what happened this gen, a huge chunk of processing power just went to rendering the game at HD resolution. The thing is, People don't just want last gen games in high res, they want new games that do more things. Something has to give.

Yup. With endless money and time, we'd see stable, beautiful, finely tuned games. But unfortunately, development studios exist in the real world. A small handful of very successful studios like Blizzard can afford to take their time because they do, in fact, have nearly endless time and money. And even then, their games are far from perfect. And that's not out of laziness nor from a lack of resources or talent. That's simply what it means to create something.
Amateur modders have the advantage of not working in a large studio. People who do this professionally can't just go into a game and "fix" things. There are committees, approvals, QA, financial accountability, etc., etc. This is the reason crowd sourcing is so valuable to companies. Amateurs can work outside of the constraints of the bureaucracy of business. Paradoxically, it's more often the exact opposite of laziness that leads to unresolved problems!
"Porting" is not the same thing as "multi-platform development." I'm not sure which you're referring to. If you mean actual "porting," then that's often done by a contract studio outside of the main studio. For example, Valve contracted an EA studio in the UK to do its PS3 port of the Orange Box. If you mean "multi-platform development," then that's often done simultaneously within the same studio. In either case, there are hundreds of factors that affect the final results, almost all of them directly related to either time or money. "Laziness" is not a factor.

People don't want 100% identical experience on 2 different consoles, they just don't want their version to be a pile of crap compared to the other e.g Bayonetta, cutting companies some slack for putting out such stuff will only make things worse because why would they fix something if people didn't complain enough about it? It's a must to harshly criticize such stuff or else they won't learn their lesson, if they don't have the time or budget to work properly on 2 different game consoles or they're flat out lazy, then they shouldn't do it, just put out one good game for one console.

I like Bethesda and give them credit where it's due but at the same time I'll criticize them when they **** up as well, it's one thing to have a quest glitched but it's a whole different story when the game becomes almost unplayable at times like the PS3 version, I don't even bother to see if they fixed it by now with another patch since I got myself the PC version.

You guys can be as forgiving as you want when it comes to developers not delivering highly polished games even for ones with large budgets because it's a very difficult task to create such games these days, but I for one have high standards and will be vocal about it because IMO that's what drives things to improve (people asking for better products).

I'm not defending crappy work. I'm just saying that laziness is rarely the reason for it.

I think you're taking a somewhat simplistic take on what goes on with game development. As others have said there's really a number of factors affecting a game in development and being "lazy" really isn't one. I'm not sure what trying to fit everything into nice little descriptive categories does other than reaffirm uninformed opinions. There's nothing wrong with being ignorant of how these things work; just try to look at the bigger picture instead of becoming upset at what you perceive as a slight against your console of choice.

Also, no offense but it's easy to bug fix when you have a little know-how. Some developers even encourage such behavior within the community. Bethesda for example. Don't mistake that though for modders being some white knights who ride in and clean up the mess the developers heaped upon us. Rarely does the community have lasting effects on a franchise (Counterstrike being the most memorable example for me).

Speak for yourself. I own both a PS3 and 360 and don't care either way.
Edited by pcweber111 - 12/30/12 at 10:45pm

I'm not going to repeat myself explaining what I expect from game developers, as for

Not everybody has both consoles, I game on PC and PS3, I have 0 console fanboy-ism towards any company but I just don't have a good reason to get an Xbox 360 as well. If a gamer only has one of those consoles and a game gets released on both that he's a huge fan of, it's only natural that he'd be upset if the version that was released for his console turned out to be much inferior (e.g Skyrim when the lag fest kicks in with large save files on PS3).

My issue with Bethesda is how modders come in and in just 24-48 hours can fix more bugs than ever get fixed in official patches, and even better, they rarely break something else in the process.

As for the PS3 version of Skyrim, no excuses, that save bloat has been a known issue since Fallout 3, it was in New Vegas (solely due to the engine) and they knew full well it was in Skyrim. Games should never be allowed to ship in such a broken shape.

Fun Fact, the outsourced port of Oblivion didn't have this issue...

Thank you!

I'm a huge RPG fan and really enjoy TES games, but that won't stop me from criticizing the game's flaws that could have been prevented whether it was done by Bethesda or anyone else, in PS3's case it's a game breaking flaw for people who play such games for many, many hours (I had around 200 hours on Oblivion and that's nothing compared to some other people out there!).

I have a file on my PS3 that was a downloaded maxed file while still in the sewer. It has over 100 days logged while never sleeping to level up (never checked the hour count) I use it for runs where I don't want to grind. Never had save game bloat related slowdown on it.

I wish Bethesda would have given more PS3 versions to this company..

Well, last gen went from 480p (.31 megapixels) to 720p (.92 MP). It was a 3x jump in raw pixels that needed to be rendered. From 720p (.92) to 1080p (2.07) is only 2.25x, a considerably smaller jump to begin with. Then you take into account last gen barely had any AA, while at the tail end of this gen they've developed some really good post process AA that uses comparatively much less resources than MSAA. So overall its a much smaller gap to bridge than last time, and theyve had a much longer gap to do it.

Assuming they were following Moore's law almost exactly (double every 18 months) - the system we'd get in 2013 should basically be powerful enough to put out in 1080p the same games it would have been able to put out in 720p, if it came out in 2011.

So, something already did give....those extra 2-3 years between the cycles did. 1080p simply shouldnt be an issue anymore, even at 60fps....as long as we get the systems we deserve. And the jury is still out on that.
Edited by bd2003 - 12/31/12 at 4:31am

I'm not excusing Skyrim, the PS3 version shouldn't have been released. The Oblivion port was released a full year after the other versions.

But I'll just say this, modders don't have a schedule, they don't have a budget, they don't have drop-dead dates for when a game must be wrapped up. On top of that, gamers don't see the bugs that were fixed before release.


My guess is that most games will launch at 1080p but gamers will demand better looking games and more features and it will be sacrificed. It will be the first to go.

It's all about what customers want. If gamers demand 1080p, they'll get it. If gamers want other stuff to look better, it will be cut.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq4_1XKHHGk

It's a well known rumor, but IMO if Sony was stupid enough and actually implemented this retarded technology, the smartest thing would be for Microsoft to not use it and I hope they'll win the next-gen console war.

If they even Consider adding this protection, they better release a demo for every single game, reviews aren't enough to know about a game, if I don't like it then I wanna sell your crap.

Yeah that's absurd. They should just give devs a % of second hand game sales instead of f*****g everyone over with this.

That's already basically what they're doing with online passes.

I don't see this happening, at least not in the way people fear. Gamestop is too important to game sales. The patent exists merely because every company is in the business of filing patents as safeguards against other companies and as a potential source of revenue (as an aside, the number of technology patents has skyrocketed over the past 5-10 years for this reason).

A patent is far from a sign of what a company will actually do. And in this case, it would cause them more harm than good. And they know it.

PS3/360 had the same rumor before they launched, and the Durango (nextbox) had a similar rumor last year. No way any console maker or publisher has the guts to implement such a restrictive system to their software or machines. The smarter thing is to have everyone buy a digital copy, then the platform holder and/or publisher holds all the keys and there is never a used copy. Since the industry is already going digital for no added cost, this patent is just CYA for Sony in case they ever have need of such a thing.

Some info on how much money Sony and Microsoft loss with the 360 and PS3.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/8bn-the-total-losses-made-by-xbox-360-and-ps3/0108917

It is even worse than I thought. Don't count on either taking a loss on next gen hardware, they can't afford it. (Microsoft could, but even they are slipping)

Looks like the next gen war only ended up being the fanbois cold war.

Now add on the ridiculous number of man hours and $$$$ to developer budgets...

Yeah and these no class action suits everybody is making you sign renders all the bitching null.

I don't think those would hold up in court. EULAs are more about "stacking the odds" rather than "rigging the system."