PlayStation 4 - Page 8

This way works great for single player campaign style games. This way does not work very well at all for FPS where multiplayer is the focus. If you wait that long, everybody else knows the maps like the back of their hand and you are essentially a bullet sponge that helps twink opposing players K/D ratio. Plus, you're just probably not going to have a lot of fun with it until you REALLY cut your teeth on it the hard way.

Nothing like jumping into a game where pretty much everybody is on the same page tactical wise.

Eh..

As long as your not obsessed with kdr or stat tracking, its not really an issue. I put down BF3 at level 14 and was able to get back into it fine in 3 weeks.

That is unless a game is horribly unbalanced and just screws over noobs with bs via a poor upgrade and unlock system. But why waste your time on those games when theres so many better options out there?

You're right. But the value proposition for competitive multiplayer FPS games is completely different. Those games are expensive in all kinds of ways. There's more DLC you pretty much have to buy into. Pre-orders often grant early access (and therefore a potential competitive advantage). Day 1 purchases are important for the same reason. And once the online population dies out, the game is almost worthless. Not to mention the evil Online Passes, or the huge amount of money these games generate for Microsoft through XBL subs--which in turn gets passed to publishers in the form of timed exclusives for DLC.

There's a reason the big publishers all want a big successful online multiplayer FPS. They make ****-tons of cash. And it's not just because they're popular. They have very focused and lucrative economies.
Edited by confidenceman - 2/27/13 at 9:19am

I know how you feel. I'm a huge Tiger Woods fan and I use to buy it every year. Now I buy it every other year because it cost almost $120 to get the game and all the DLC courses.

From AVS's frontpage:

Are you sure that's TB and not GB?

Considering that 4K is currently only for a rare breed of consumer anyway, I don't think bandwidth would be much of an issue at this point. It's a niche feature for a niche audience. It probably costs Sony next to nothing to add support for it, and it adds a bullet point for the tech-heads.

HD caught on thanks in large part to HD and digital broadcast. But we're a long ways off from being able to support 4K broadcast (in the US, at least). There will have to be some major infrastructural changes before (or if) that happens. It's only relevant or possible in Japan and parts of Europe.
Edited by confidenceman - 3/1/13 at 9:29am

Interesting bit about the upcoming PS4 version of Watch Dogs - it will be a PC port.

Could lead platform development for next-gen console games now be the PC?

Yes, but not in the way that you mean. The whole point of the PC-based hardware architecture was to keep development costs low, facilitate multiplatform development, and improve functionality for non-gaming applications. So, in that sense, "PC" is the lead platform, but it really only affects the development cycle, not consumer releases. Because that doesn't mean PC versions will necessarily be the lead releases, best releases, or even released at all. It really just affects development.

That said, more and more of the so-called "core" is switching to PC these days, so more publishers are targetting PC now than over the past 5-10 years. That trend is likely to continue. I've said this before, but I think this next generation is going to see the closest thing to "parity" we've ever seen across all high-end platforms (PS4, PC, and 720).

AC IV also coming to next gen consoles October 29th.

Well, if that's true, then the PS4 must be out on or before that date. That would be cool with me.

So far we only know AC-IV is coming to the PS3, 360, and WiiU on Oct. 29: http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/02/28/assassins-creed-iv-black-flag-confirmed-box-art-revealed
Where have you seen it confirmed for the PS4 on that date?

On Joystiq, they say the announcement text is "also coming to next-gen consoles." That could easily mean it's coming out for those consoles at a later date.

It also bolsters Sonys position (among others) in the coming war with traditional content providers as new digital content providers.

ISP's are mainly Cable Companies in US and they see the writing on the wall (and the effects digital distribution has had on the music and movie industries). Data caps are not to help network preformance, but a plausible deniability argument for them. They really want to kill digital, al la cart systems that threaten their tradition business models.

There's honestly not going to be much of a distinction anymore, as they're all X86. There is no real lead platform anymore, just optimization.

PS4 will be using PSGL and LibGCM API's again most likely since DX is fused to MS operating systems, so some code will need to be changed from MS/PC ports. But it's a hell of a lot less, and a hell of a lot easier. As long as Sony keeps their API's optimized, there's really going to be no difference on a lead platform.

Still, lets hope Dev's don;t get lazy and just dump their code into all three environments and call it a day.

We can only hope.

I want the developers to get the absolute best out of the next gen consoles and I don't see making PCs the lead development platform will help reaching such goal. I honestly highly doubt such thing will happen, except for a few genres that PCs are known to excel at (such as MMOs and RTS), consoles dominate with the rest of genres and specially exclusives.

Short "greatest hits" of all the E3 PS4 vids:

Why not? You develop for the most powerful platform and go from there. From everything we've read anyway these are essentially pcs in disguise anyway so I'm not sure what the issue would be.

PC development right now doesn't take full advantage of the available hardware (e.g mid range stuff like the 660ti or 7850, top range 7970 or gtx 680..etc and the different CPUs of course) because the options out there are way too much for developers to focus on and fully unlock, so obviously they won't be able to get the best out of every rig combination.

Consoles are different, they'll be using the exact same hardware for the next 4-7 years, if developers focus on it, they will pretty much fully unlock what it can do as time progresses and will only make the development more efficient for their future titles on the same console, just like what happened in the previous generations and I'm sure will happen with upcoming as well, most blockbuster games main audience are on the consoles, not PC.

Will the PS4 use the navigation controllers ? It appears they use the regular move, but unsure about the navigation controller...

Some will, some won't. But because it will now be possible, you can bet it will definitely happen. It's not laziness, but simply a matter of economics (minimize costs and maximize profits).

It will be easier than ever to just do a lowest-common denominator version that works for all three platforms with minimal optimization for individual platforms. We'll certainly get a few stellar first-party exclusives, but we'll also see a lot of near-parity multiplatform games that don't really push the hardware.

And that's not a bad thing IMO. It means keeping costs low, development times fast, keeping more studios in business, and getting more games out in the wild. It just means that most games won't be pushing the hardware. But I'm fine with that... as long as it means releasing more games, more developers staying in business, keeping costs in check, and achieving greater parity across platforms.
Edited by confidenceman - 3/2/13 at 9:56pm

I read as a rumor that the PS4 does not support CD and SACD. Why would Sony not support it?

SACD, maybe, but there's no way they won't support CD lol.

https://mobile.twitter.com/ReijiAsakura/statuses/304699622717267968

No CD support on the PS4 of any kind.

The last sentence basically says that.