tatsumi

The main reason why I don’t play Ori is because of the attitude of the Ori creators.

Maybe it’s actually the same guy who said other stuff he had to apologize for later?

He might not be wrong, but his attitude is just wrong.

Edit: yeah it seems it was also Mahler who showed a crappy attitude in the past and made me highly dislike the studio.

Since I got lucky and got a XSX just yesterday and reading today there is an insider program for halo infinite, I immediately signed up.

It would be sad to see the franchise get another blow, so I hope they get a lot of feedback from tests and can make it a success.

@swedetrap it’s not the same though.
It is much easier to see 12 > 11, which is the biggest difference as that tells the generations apart. And then from 12 you choose whichever fits best in your budget (or hands) between Mini/standard/Pro/Pro Max.

But Xbox One X and Xbox Series X. There is no natural indication which one sits above the other (I mean you could even interpret that Xbox One X is a device belonging to the Xbox Series with the letter X). And people often just read the beginning and the end of the name and like to miss out the middle (unless it’s a number that is harder to overlook).

There is enough evidence that the naming sucks, with a lot of people having accidentally ordered the Xbox One X instead of Series X. Same issue did not happen between Series S and Series X (easy to tell X > S), and did not happen between PS4 and PS5. It may have been a very rare case between PS5 and PS5 DE (as images of both consoles look very similar).

Can’t argue with facts that some other comments already posted.

One can only wonder how the naming convention will continue with the next upgrade. If they stick to simply Series X from now on they could do it like apple with their MacBooks, just look up the year. I really hope they switched to “Series” because they might have a better naming convention going forward.

Jesus, reading through comments just shows how limited some people’s imagination is.

Sony’s AAA titles are one of the most sold titles in the industry. Putting them into something like game pass day one would simply mean losing a lot of money. But there can be other things they can put into PS+ or PS Now, such as titles like Dreams or Concrete Genie on day one.

Calling Jim a corporate mouthpiece just because you can’t grasp what he means. Having an answer to game pass does not mean that he lied about it not being unsustainable. All they seem to do is trying to find some solution in between all that.

@BrilliantBill from what I read so far, the campaign is actually very good.

It’s just the GAAS part of the game that is disappointing to the people.
I don’t care about that part so I’m fine with having bought the game.

I only played a few hours, all I need is the resolution to stay at 4K, then I’m happy. So I’ll be continuing once I get my PS5.

I did a quick test on my PC with a normal SSD (Crucial MX500).
And it loaded a new campaign in 18 seconds.

So I’m not sure if 7 seconds is truly supposed to be impressive if it is indeed using velocity architecture, or if my expectations are just too high. Or maybe that is without velocity architecture, then it would be a good result.

So far I have been more impressed by the loading times of was we could see from the PS5 (which in some situations is 0 Loading).

I will wait until I see third party game load time comparisons between PS5, PC and XSX, before I form a final opinion.

@JetmanUK cross-gen should still have better textures and a bit more objects or particles as well as better lightning.
Otherwise it would be just BC with frame rates capped to 60/120 and dynamic resolution.

Jesus, finally they are getting on with it.
Even though I won’t get an XSX, I still want to know how optimized next gen games run.

I think both consoles are breaking preorder records. That’s great for all gamers.
More consoles sold mean bigger market for developers.

Happy to hear Xbox is doing so well this time around. Kick PlayStation’s butt a bit more to keep each other competitive over the next years.

@Darthroseman not sure where you got that from. Valhalla runs 60fps on both. A developer apparently stated the performance of both consoles is basically identical.

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2020/09/looks_like_assassins_creed_valhalla_will_be_60fps_4k_on_ps5

I can easily switch between 30fps and 60fps. It takes a few minutes to readjust but that’s it.

Easy to get 60fps, but at what cost. We shall see. I often prefer playing certain games at 30fps but have more impressive graphics. Other games I prefer 60fps. Having a choice would be good.

As a dev, I can say that a delay has nothing to do with trying to avoid crunch.

I’ve been working 70-80hours per week for over 2 years. Only now I am in a company where I can have a 40-50hour week instead.
The difference? Private vs public company.
My current company has no shareholders to report to. So we can take our time for development.

While this is all good, I am not really impressed by the load times.
The SSD in the XSX should be faster than in my PC, yet my PC has mostly better load times in those tested games.
I wonder if there is some additional bottleneck on BC on XSX compared to how PC deals with it.

Let's see how cross-gen games like AC Valhalla will compare as well as pure next-gen games like The Medium.

@Dpullam it’s the same style. They showed actual gameplay during TGS.

You even play Ethan again

@mousieone While that is true, I could also see reduced "bundles" making a release.
A person might not sign up for Ubisoft for $7 and let's say EA Play for $7, but the same person could sign up for $10 for both.
Something like that.

But yeah, Microsoft will basically force others to rethink their pricing to stay competitive.

Currently I still don't see any real competition to xCloud and Game Pass.

Good thing I was holding of buying a bunch of the Bethesda and id games.

Around release of the PS5 I will be throwing enough money out of the windows as it is already. Game Pass on PC can at least provide a bit of cushion with my spendings

I am holding off buying Yakuza 7 with 50% discount currently on Japanese PSN until I have seen what Microsoft announces.

If Yakuza 7 ends up coming to Game Pass, I can save myself 100%.

But more than anything, I am hoping for xCloud news for Japan.

Yeah, people keep forgetting that we are talking about Japanese companies here.

Xbox buying any of that will lead to many angry Japanese people, as most of them own only Nintendo or PS (no PC or Xbox).

Plus, Japanese companies don’t like being bought by foreign companies.

@SuperKMx it’s a very small indie dev (4 people). Maybe they should stick to PS5 for time being and release the XSX later if they need extra time to optimize for the XSS. But then also they will run into split resources due to bug fixing in that case. Then the XSX version would even more so be delayed.

You can’t have the same expectations on a team of 4 people as you got with a AAA team.

I don’t know much about Jim Ryan, but I personally also think that the XSS will feel outdated in maybe 3-4 years.
Games that have 1080/1440p + 60fps performance modes on XSX will not run and look great on XSS running maybe even sub-1080p just to hit those frames or go back to being 1080/1440p + 30fps.

Besides that, most consumers play a console on a larger TV. And the 4K market share is only growing, not being stagnant.
People throw in the pandemic now, but that is just temporary and not all people are hit as hard. Hell, I even got a bigger bonus because this year our business went better than ever before.

@Beerculies because they were outdated too quickly, they released a mid-term update in form of PS4 Pro and Xbox One X to get with the times of 4K TVs.

But they also couldn’t just cut off the weaker consoles, because then all the talk about supporting both types of consoles would have become a lie.

So it appears FFXVI is being developed by parts of the FFXIV team.
The Heavensward devs + Hiroshi Takai (assistant director of ARR and Stormblood) + Yoshida.
This is already giving a lot of hope for a good game.

@BAMozzy
I am not 100% sure if the "PS4 power gap" will be as significant as you are stating.

One more thing to keep in mind is while the Xbox has more CUs, keep in mind that Cerny said one more reason they went with a lower CU count is because it appears harder to fully utilize a high number of CUs.
If you simply don't have enough work that can be done parallel, the higher CU count doesn't mean much to you and you would rather have a higher frequency to get the same work done faster.
I have no doubt that AAA studios will find ways to use more of the power of the XSX. But I also think that developing for a lower CU count can be easier when its about trying to make most of the power.

Although I am not a game developer, on everyday basis I am dealing with parallel processes and have to program for that. I would say lets wait and see how well people can make use of the full power of the XSX. But people shouldn't be surprised when we might see some games running better on PS5 vs. XSX and vice versa. It all totally depends on the type of game, the engine and the developer skills.

This all then comes down to games that manage to use 100% of the power may see the XSX running with 10-20% more FPS.
Which could mean a reduction of resolution for PS5 to hit 60fps. Or lowering the settings on PS5 slightly (especially stuff like ray tracing). But I expect most games to look identical.

The games gives off a big FFXIV vibe, which is one of the best in the series IMO. And Yoshida being the producer I can’t see this becoming a failure.
They seem to use the same formula that worked on FF14 so great. Plus back to the roots of medieval FF (pre FF6 era).

It may not look as good as Project Athia (since it’s not the same engine), but I’m sure the story will be amazing.

@InterceptorAlpha The whole FFXIV community cares.
This time the project is headed by people who have been highly successful with FFXIV. As long as there is no Nomura, I believe it can be a success.

@Jslade on the positive side its the reason we will get free story updates, right?
So for those of us playing purely for the story, this should be great.

I will just chase loot as long as it’s fun and once it’s boring, I’ll just jump on other games and come back for the story.

I won't be buying anything from Activision. But I am happy to see them graphics looking good.

@Ralizah Actually not entirely true.
The 100 most-played PS4 titles were tested to run on PS5 boost mode (instead of PS4 and PS4 Pro legacy modes). That means they run with the power of the PS5 instead of being locked to the same as the PS4/PS4 Pro performance.
This basically means those games may get additional framerate and resolution bumps (e.g. when dynamic resolution is used, you would see the PS5 bc run at a higher resolution. If you previously saw frame rate drops on PS4 Pro, you shouldn't have them on PS5 running on bc). Sony is testing which PS4 games have no issue running with additional power via BC.
All other games will simply run in a PS4 or PS4 Pro mode on the PS5.

Just a reminder, Microsoft has to watch out what exactly they are siding with.
The Xbox store (as well as PS store etc) also all take 30% and as far as I know you can’t just put in your own solution regarding payment and subscriptions.
So I think in that regard Microsoft shouldn’t open its mouth, as they are not better than Apple.
So if people say Apples rules are draconian with their 30%, then please also go to all the other parties that take 30% and criticize them as well (Xbox, PSN, Steam).

One solution I see is that Apple allows third party app stores to be installed as an option. But that will come with a bunch of other issues Apple will have to deal with first, which they want to avoid. (Rise in malware, cracked iOS games)

As a developer (and ex-iOS developer) myself, I was always fine with 30%. And I also implemented ways to avoid paying anything to Apple (just like Netflix does) at the cost of UX.
And I can understand that a large company that is capable of implementing its own systems may see it ridiculous that they have to pay Apple 30% for something they are forced to use but don’t want to.

Honestly, I think Apple should allow devs to implement their own payment processing systems to avoid paying Apple 15/30%. But where does that then leave other stores (Xbox, PSN, etc)?
I am all for Apple allowing xCloud, as that is just ridiculous. And the above issue is also understandable.
But for the 30% revenue split problem I fail to see a quick and easy solution without bringing the same problem to other platforms as well. People don’t think enough about the consequences possible solutions can bring.

@Z3u5000 why on earth would you start bashing on PlayStation in this article?

Be happy for what is shown. Games are allowed to look better than GoT, no need to do childish comments that only stoke console war.
Also, I put you on ignore because I’m a bit allergic against people who can’t be neutral. So don’t expect another reply from me.

Back to topic: To me the above looks very close to a Souls game from gameplay.
They only said “all major platforms”. With the shown graphics wonder if they will even try getting it running on current gen. I kind of doubt it. But let’s see.

They have to scrap it at some point anyway since they will keep adding and updating the game over the next years.
Otherwise it will never each its full potential. Might as well just scrap it now.

That’s the whole reason I’m even on purexbox recently. I have zero interest in buying an Xbox, but since Game Pass i am very interested in following news regarding it. So many Xbox news are actually of interest for me as a PC player now.

Phil is definitely right in that regard.

@Z3u5000
True. I would like to see what mesh shaders can bring to games in the long run.
I’m very much looking forward to digital foundry’s take.
I’m just a software engineer who studied computer graphics at university, so all i can do is “imagine what is possible”.

@Jaxx420 yeah, if the devs really have great ideas and really want to, this next console generation will be a very special one, breaking completely new grounds in what games can do BESIDES simply better resolution and framerates. Both can give devs more power to realize their creativity.

@Z3u5000
Sorry but you are kind of comparing apples and oranges.
First, Ratchet and Clank is like a Pixar movie. So they might simply prefer 30fps and are ramping up visual fidelity instead of pushing it down. And it has ray tracing (gears 5 wasn’t running with ray tracing), which has a huge impact on performance. Anybody can code a 60fps game, but is the dev willing to reduce visual fidelity for it?
So the dev might have gone and said “let’s target 30fps, what can we do graphically then?”
Nothing more than that. Some devs will ALWAYS target 30fps. If ratchet and clank was on XSX, you would still see it being 30fps but have maybe a resolution bump or render more objects in ray tracing.

And furthermore, the PS5s advantage over the XSX is that it can load only what the user sees at the current moment, plus what he might see in the next second.
This combined with primitive shaders is a powerful tool that helps the PS5 to focus all its power into only what the user currently sees.
That means where the XSX will have to load more assets into RAM for things that are not visible to the user, reducing the amount of unique assets that could be shown to the user.
So the PS5 should be capable of displaying a higher amount and more variety of assets in the same view as the XSX. And before you throw velocity architecture into my face. Velocity architecture is just about textures, whereas Kraken has broader use cases.

The advantage of the XSX is that instead of the above it can render at higher resolution and also allow for more visual quality because the extra CUs allow for more parallel calculations.
The tough part is to make use of all CUs though.
So it’s all pros and cons. That’s why at the end of the day the difference between the two consoles will be insignificant to your average consumer. You may prefer one over the other. Each has strengths in different areas.

Neither the SSD nor the 12tflops should be overblown. But there can be a rare instance of a game that simply wouldn’t run on any system that has a slower SSD Pipeline than the PS5. Or at least not run in a way that is fun to play.
All I’m explaining are the pros and cons of each system. But people just hate it when their beloved console is not the best at everything I guess.

@Tharsman That's exactly true. Games matter more than a console. And Sony appears to ramp up production of Anime-style games. So it will be a tough one for Xbox. Maybe Microsoft can play the Yakuza 7 card right to get more sales at the start. But then again, Japan loves Marvel, so Spider-Man is a big name advantage in the Japanese market. You go to USJ (Universal Studios Japan) and can see that the Spider-Man attraction is one of the favourites there.

Anyway, I was worried the other day about PS5/XSX releasing later than the rest of the world once again. But with XSX releasing November in Japan, Sony will have no choice but to do the same for Japan. So that's good news for me.

@Z3u5000 That is overblown though.
Of course I fully expect that there will be quite some third party games where the XSX may run 4K, whereas the PS5 might do dynamic 4K with the lower border being 10-20% less render resolution just to hit those stable 60fps.
At the end of the day, nobody will notice a difference except when doing side-by-side comparison.

I was actually sitting the other day on configuring Yakuza Kiwami 2 on my PC to hit those 4K60fps. And I switched the render resolution between 80% (basically 1728p) and 100% and it was very very tough finding a difference for me.

People overblow that stuff a bit too much. If you are really crazy about 4K native for third party games or getting those 120fps more often (because the PS5 version may run only up to 100-115fps), then yeah, you probably better get a XSX. But at the end it all comes down to the developer skills.
I always say PS5 might get higher fidelity (more objects, more variety of objects and models, less LOD issues) through the superior SSD pipeline, but XSX might get higher quality of ray tracing (or being able to calculate more rays?) and a slight higher resolution. Whatever you prefer. But the difference between both at the end of the day will be insignificant, unless the dev sucks in optimizing for one of the systems (like that indie dev with his dolphin game running on Unity).

@skaarj217 I am talking about Japan.
All games except for very few (e.g. Fall Guys, some indies) from the Japanese PSN use Circle to confirm and Cross to cancel. This also applies to the PS4. Japanese are trained to see Cross as "No, Cancel" and Circle as "Yes, Confirm". Swapping that suddenly in Japan will just make it look super weird for them. Its like you train every human to see a Red traffic light as "Don't walk" and Green as "Walk". But then you suddenly swap it.

I am already used to using A = Confirm and B = Cancel when holding an XBox Controller and O = Confirm and X = Cancel when holding a PS4 controller. But with HZD on PC, holding an Xbox controller with B = Confirm and A = Cancel, just fried my synapses. They literally just ported over the japanese PS4 controls and changed the images to Xbox controllers.

@sixrings it’s not racist. Japanese are just a special kind of people who were isolated for too long. They only trust a foreign product when it is by far better than a Japanese product. For instance Apple is loved by Japanese.
People also like LG TVs, but you won’t find any Samsung TV here, people don’t buy their TVs.
Convenience and trust are far more important than “specs”. A company name is more important than the quality of its products, if the company has a good reputation.

@Z3u5000 I actually double checked that before I wrote.
It seems this is just a myth. Apple got permission and Xerox was even compensated.

@Z3u5000 bill gates worked at Apple and stole some ideas and solutions(I think the UI tech?). Maybe we wouldn’t even have Microsoft if it wasn’t for Apple.

Btw, I’m not saying it as “Microsoft vs Apple”. It’s just interesting how it all is connected.
They both would not be what they are today if they didn’t have each other.

I see the above again as a good thing. Apple needs once again a kick in the butt so us iOS users can enjoy nice things again.

@Menchi that would explain why they didn’t care about swapping the confirm/cancel keys for people in japan.

On PS4 O is confirm, X is cancel/exit (opposite of rest of the world).
So what happened now is that in HZD B is confirm and A is cancel.
All other games I’ve played so far that also exist on PS4 set the XBox Controller mapping correct to Xbox standards, but not HZD.

Btw, Nintendo is also world wide A = confirm, B = cancel.

It’s just that Japanese use the O (maru) and X (batsu) a lot in everyday life.

@armondo36 doesn’t mean you have to go full drama. They could simply have said “one of the most famous”. It’s just cringey, but who cares. Maybe that guy is just a HALO fanboy. Which would be good for the development.

There is a thought that Sony does this because it can’t compete with Game Pass. So to prevent third party titles to be practically “free” on XSX, they try to get timed exclusivity.

Guess us Apple users have to annoy Apple enough until something changes.

I’m not so sure about “most famous FPS in the world”. Have we forgotten Doom and Destiny?

Anyway, let’s hope for the best that they now manage to tackle the issues that have been noted on their demo.
Cant wait to see the results.

No iOS, no Japan. Well, I guess no Game Pass Ultimate for us living in Japan. (Even if it was Japan, no iOS, and Japan has over 50% iOS users vs. android)

This will make it much harder for Microsoft to set a foot into the Japanese market. Maybe even impossible.

Microsoft could have killed it by making Japanese play Yakuza on iOS.

@S1ayeR74 The only game I often use the trackpad is FF14. Other than that it is mostly Sony First Party Studios who actually make use of the trackpad. For the rest its just an additional button.

@ the topic, Its sometimes not that simple. But I wish they would have done some kind of support like Nintendo Switch. Where some games require the joy cons but others don't.

I can still understand why PS4 controllers won't work with PS5 games. See Ratchet and Clank:

"“It also lets you know how the weapon is behaving,” Smith said. “One of the examples is the Enforcer, it’s a double-barrelled shotgun. It uses the adaptive triggers to give you tension as you’re moving your finger down halfway, you can fire one barrel.

“You pull it all the way down, you can fire both barrels. But all along the way, you can feel the difference between the tension tightening up.”"
https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/06/ratchet-clank-rift-apart-ps5-dualsense-features/

This would simply not work on a PS4 controller. You basically can't play Ratchet and Clank on a PS4 controller. So Sony could have gone down the road saying "as a dev you can support PS4 controllers if you want", but then some games having support and others not will lead to customer confusion and probably to a lot of unnecessary complains. So maybe Sony just thought F it and took the easy road.

Take it how you will. But Sony is trying to innovate and sometimes it simply means leaving things behind. Just like Nintendo does. Sony is not consumer-friendly, they are dev-friendly. They listen to what devs want to be able to realize their visions and they build it. Most of their events are around developers being able to build their visions on PS.
Xbox is consumer-first. Most of their events are around value for the consumer.
That's the difference between the two.

@BrilliantBill for seriously hitting 4K60fps, +1k is pretty much the GPU only.

I got a 2080ti, my whole gaming rig is almost 2k. And I still have plenty games I can’t hit 4k60fps unless I got DLSS or reduce graphical fidelity.

The XSX and PS5 are both better investments this year. So instead of PC + PS5, it’s cheaper to go XSX + PS5. Unless you want to use the PC for other means as well.

I didn’t like Yakuza Kiwami that much, but Kiwami 2 so far is quite fun.
I actually live in Kansai, so the game being located in Kansai/Osaka Namba is perfect during the pandemic. It makes me miss walking around in Namba!

Currently I kind of wish I didn’t have a gaming PC. Just to have a useless reason to order it.

@DavLFC
Yeah, this is actually kind of splitting the gaming community.
On one hand I understand that Microsoft is playing on its strengths and trying to advertise Xbox as a service rather than a console.
And they push harder on showing game pass than the actual capabilities of their console.

From a business perspective I think they have to go down that road. Someday we won’t have console gaming as we know. You will literally just start an app like Netflix and play some games.

It’s kind of sad seeing the beginnings of it. I would have loved them to invest as much strength and focus into the actual console as Sony does and convince me to buy an Xbox.
But on the other hand I understand their vision and since I got a strong gaming PC and great internet, I’m saving money. And as a software engineer, I am of course a bit excited about what Microsoft does.

I am myself quite split on this as probably can be seen. The gamer in me vs. the software engineer in me.

@carlos82 it is a complete rebuild. They only keep the story and combat/flight mechanics intact. And of course parts of the world since that belongs to the story. They said they are splitting up the world map to help avoid bugs and which also will help with loading times and performance.
That’s what was said in the blog post few months back.
But it will all take 1-2 years until it’s all done and Anthem 2.0 releases, so don’t hold your breath.