PlayStation Meeting Feb. 20: See the future

[Firewind]

Re: PlayStation Meeting Feb. 20: See the future

^ Attitudes like this are why so many IT techs hate end users. You'd rather just stamp your feet and pout instead of understanding that life is all about trade-offs.

You don't have to take my word for it, though. Just wait until Microsoft announces their plans; they're going to have some cock-eyed excuse about not being able to run emulation, too (or maybe they'll just charge you for each game you want to emulate - wouldn't THAT be fun?).

Nintendo's already paying the price for their decision, sad to say.


Icemage

FYI, It's also why I don't work in IT anymore. The number of idiotic things that the end user does and also demands while screaming at you to fix things because it's not exactly how they want it is pretty depressing and makes you hate the end user.

These are also the same people that piss and moan about not being able to go on Facebook after you blocked all access because some dipshit allowed some app that infected the network and you had to spend an entire day fixing up that mess. Or the moron that kept a default password, which resulted in a hacking, which meant I would be stuck for a full week fixing the damage done, and getting screamed up in the process by various people for data being stolen.

Yeah working in IT destroys all faith in humanity.

[Malacite]

Re: PlayStation Meeting Feb. 20: See the future

The customer is never wrong to expect consistency or better in service, though.

Case in point - It has been clarified by Sony that your PSN purchases may be honored in relation to the Gaikai service. They didn't say it as a promise, but a possibility. By Mal's standard that might be satisfactory, but in the view of others that's a major downgrade.

If Sony were a doctor they'd now be treating a broken arm with a band-aid and then they'd try to tell the patient the band-aid better and cheaper than the cast the patient needed and was expecting.

Like I said, I'm willing to cede ground on the PS3 thing because, well quite frankly that's Sony's own stupid fault for using such wildly different architecture (yay for an American developer finally getting them away from their usual fare of proprietary nonsense). As for the Gaikai thing, again, if it's free I will tolerate it but it's by no means ideal. I'm still very much angry as you guys are about being screwed out of digital purchases (whereas a friend of mine is all up in arms because I got mad at Sony for this lol... saying it's silly of me to expect BC at all; nevermind Sony is the company that first set the standard for that feature).

And honestly, as IM pointed out, PS1 and PS2 games can be emulated by laptops without much difficulty (well, PS1 games anyway) and the PS4 has a PC architecture so... what the shit?

[Malacite]

Re: PlayStation Meeting Feb. 20: See the future

Here's the video I was talking about before BBQ - very good and not too long (20-ish min?)


Susan Crawford on Why U.S. Internet Access is Slow, Costly and Unfair | Moyers & Company | BillMoyers.com

[Malacite]

Re: PlayStation Meeting Feb. 20: See the future

Update:

Official PS4 specs released by Sony:

http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/rele.../130221a_e.pdf

[Icemage]

Re: PlayStation Meeting Feb. 20: See the future

GameTrailers analysis of the Deep Down trailer from Capcom:

Episode 5: Going Deeper | Full Episodes | GameTrailers

As I suspected: not pre-rendered.


Icemage

[Etra]

Re: PlayStation Meeting Feb. 20: See the future

Kinda surprised PS4 isn't strictly HDMI Out. Don't really know anyone that would need to use AV cables and be interested in the PS4. /shrug Not like it's costly to add in, I guess.

Don't mind me. Rambling.

[Firewind]

Re: PlayStation Meeting Feb. 20: See the future

AV Out is so you can rig it up to projectors and some PC monitors without issue.

[Malacite]

Re: PlayStation Meeting Feb. 20: See the future

GameTrailers analysis of the Deep Down trailer from Capcom:

Episode 5: Going Deeper | Full Episodes | GameTrailers

As I suspected: not pre-rendered.


Icemage

So my suspicion that it was in-game was right ^^

I figured as much by the 3 menu-like icons in the lower left. I love how everyone at GT post-show was saying how it was so obviously pre-rendered and everyone who thought it wasn't in the audience was an idiot.

Who's the idiot now GT?

[Icemage]

Re: PlayStation Meeting Feb. 20: See the future

So my suspicion that it was in-game was right ^^

I figured as much by the 3 menu-like icons in the lower left. I love how everyone at GT post-show was saying how it was so obviously pre-rendered and everyone who thought it wasn't in the audience was an idiot.

Who's the idiot now GT?

The icons are just lame place-holders. The real key is the flaws in the CGI. Anyone can just slap a HUD onto a full motion video and make it look like a gameplay interface.


Icemage

[Malacite]

Re: PlayStation Meeting Feb. 20: See the future

Yeah I'm sure you're right.

Still.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: PlayStation Meeting Feb. 20: See the future

Deep Down can still be a bullshot despite all that, though. This is just what it could look like before a dozen other gameplay systems and effects are layered into it, production budgets notwithstanding. I'm not terribly convinced this is what the final product would look like, even the current Killzone demo and Knack seem to be a more realistic representation of what we'd really get

[Icemage]

Re: PlayStation Meeting Feb. 20: See the future

Deep Down can still be a bullshot despite all that, though. This is just what it could look like before a dozen other gameplay systems and effects are layered into it, production budgets notwithstanding. I'm not terribly convinced this is what the final product would look like, even the current Killzone demo and Knack seem to be a more realistic representation of what we'd really get

Killzone was real-time gameplay, and was reportedly running on a mere 1.5GB of memory (as was pretty much everything else I'm guessing). The decision to move up to 8GB of memory was, from the rumors, so recent and unsubstantiated even within Sony that even the first party studios like Guerilla had to hedge their bets and build for the worst probable spec to make sure their launch games would run on the final hardware (i.e. assume that PS4 would launch with 2GB GDDR5 with 512MB reserved to the OS).

There's nothing stopping Deep Down from looking like that video. It's already in-engine, and while it's not running AI scripts or much of anything else in the background, it's also running on an alpha dev kit that is, as mentioned above, likely to be significantly weaker than what will ship to consumers.

Granted, the final game might look a little different due to changes in lighting or optimization, but there's nothing implausible about the video. There are only a few moving objects on-screen at any time, there's limited world geometry. The particle effect engine is impressive, but the game doesn't need to be thinking about much else during that firebreathing scene, if it's a gameplay cutscene. You could run that on a good modern gaming PC, and no one would bat an eyelash.

It's certainly no less plausible than Nintendo's Zelda HD demonstration last year for Wii U. I don't expect the next Zelda game to look like that, but that's more due to me not expecting Nintendo to go in that specific direction artistically, rather than being skeptical of the Wii U hardware. It's not super-strong, but it can certainly handle what was on display.


Icemage

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: PlayStation Meeting Feb. 20: See the future

It's certainly no less plausible than Nintendo's Zelda HD demonstration last year for Wii U. I don't expect the next Zelda game to look like that, but that's more due to me not expecting Nintendo to go in that specific direction artistically, rather than being skeptical of the Wii U hardware. It's not super-strong, but it can certainly handle what was on display.

That looked like something Retro Studios could have pieced together, but yeah, with all the experimentation with visual style that Nintendo seems to enjoy doing I don't expect that. Especially when Aonuma starts talking up an open-world Zelda and the game just ahead of it is Wind Waker Reborn, which actually was open-world on the high seas and cel-shaded.

I think part of Killzone playing it safe this time is also that they got some real shit over what Killzone's last tech-demo for PS3 and what it didn't end up looking like.

Now that we're starting to get a solid idea of what the fall line-up for consoles is looking like, though, Sony and MS are going to have a legitimate struggle against current-gen consoles and PC.

Let's break it down real quick

Assassins Creed IV is coming to pretty much everything - PS4, PS3, 360, Next Xbox, Wii U, PC.
Watch Dogs - same deal.
New CoD is coming and it will likely follow the same release pattern
Battlefield 4 will follow suit, maybe not Wii U - but we'll see.
Madden 14 has to launch in August by necessity to everything, FIFA 14's not far off
GTAV moved to a fall release for PS3 and 360 - almost as if to be a reminder "We're still here, dammit."
Destiny is also coming to PS3 and 360 this fall.

Its probably also time for Dragon Age III Inquisition and Fallout 4 to be getting a proper reveal and release windows, its entirely possible they're just as much current-gen and scaled to next gen as all these other games will be. Anything Mass Effect at this point would just be a tease at best.

Sony has The Last of Us this summer and Beyond Two Souls late this year. We don't really Know of Knack and Killzone are launch, but they could be.
We know Nintendo has Wind Waker Reborn, but not one's fool enough to assume that's all the have for the fall. I'd expect Yarn Yoshi, a 3D Mario and another pillar franchise in there.
MS - God only knows, but there is word of a new IP in the works for the next Xbox, but they need one.

I don't see this E3 as a bunch of earth-shattering announcements because the last few haven't been. I see this E3 and its launch lineups as a series of safe bets. If any new IPs for PS4 and Next Xbox are really coming, they're mostly far off and nowhere near this fall.

I think the effect will be much like the Wii U's launch - mostly third games you could get anywhere else or already had.

There's also the question of whether the online networks are new tiers of services that end up internally segregating Sony and MS's online communities or if MS, Sony and third parties do the right thing and let these games be cross-compatible with current gen releases. That's going to make PC gamers and next-gen consoles investors groan a little, but the reality is most people aren't going to jump on PS4 and next Xbox when CoD, BF, AC and Madden/FIFA have so much to gain from current gen.

The current generation is going to be difficult to phase out.

[Icemage]

Re: PlayStation Meeting Feb. 20: See the future

I don't think I'm as cynical as you are for a new generation launch.

New console generations generally see new IPs galore, as they're the best time to construct new worlds with new possibilities. We'll probably get more sequels this time than ever before, but I fully expect EA and Ubisoft to push new IPs. Sony is always pushing new IP, new console generation or not. Even Microsoft can be counted on to be working on new IP (rumor has it they've got several new IPs in the pipeline, though it's anyone's guess how many of them are Kinect-related BS).

Activision has Destiny as a new IP (technically Bungie's, but still). EA still hasn't announced what Respawn is up to, but I guarantee it's new IP.

Even Nintendo creates new IP from time to time, even though they have a reputation for endlessly "reinventing" their core franchises.

We'll likely see most of these within the next couple of years (holiday 2014). I'm not worried about it, and I don't think anyone else should be either. The game industry types are creatives, and with the focus moving away from publishers, I think even if the accounting suits insist on nothing-but-sequels, the actual people making the games will break away and do their own thing because now they can.


Icemage

[Malacite]

Re: PlayStation Meeting Feb. 20: See the future

Yeah I'm with Marcus Beer on this one, that this is going to be one of the most exciting E3's in a while - it's always a spectacle when it's new-console season.

Unless it's Nintendo - they've 1 good E3 conference and like, 5+ mediocre/shitty ones.