NEStalgia

@OldGamer999 Yeah, I don't know what the right fix is for it. It feels like the best way to game is to always stay a generation behind on games but on current hardware. If they're making the games for the next generation hardware all the time the only way to play is to buy the hardware and then only play the previous generations games on it. And then you get them all cheaper too. Even on PC. The only way to really get current Gen games to run like it's meant to run is too have the $1k+ GPUs. Otherwise, better to play older games great than new games poorly. And to be fair on PC people tend to do that more anyway, there's not much fomo , people just play good games forever.

I think the other problem we've hit is like Hollywood, everything has already been done before. There's not as much room to innovate, what works and doesn't in the market has already been worked out. And new stuff costs too much to make. So like Hollywood, and music, if everything good already exists, just keep selling that in New packages. We don't need a new Frank Sinatra or Louis Armstrong. We already have their recordings forever and ever. I think when a media industry matures, it hits a point where it's hard for the new to hold a candle to the huge collection of the very best collected in all history. That's also a business problem gaming is facing.

@OldGamer999 Because they DGAF, that's why.

Yeah, it's a mixture of two, or three things. First they're focusing SO much on adding so much DETAIL at the expense of extreme processing cost. More particles, more detailed meshes, larger higher res textures, more shaders, more complicated shaders, longer draw distance, higher LOD, more detailed shadowing, more objects on screen, etc. etc. etc. They're building the world they WANT to build, rather than the world that works on the hardware it's running on. A focus on cramming as many visual details as possible over performance or resolution.

Second, optimization doesn't make them any money, so why waste money on it? Build it, it runs, slap lowest quality settings to make it functional, market doesn't care, won't affect pre-order sales, so who cares? As always, stills are what sells the game, so as long as it renders one frame a day for stills, good enough.

And then the third reason is, on PC they have DLSS, on PS5 Pro, and thus PS6 they'll have PSSR. We can safely assume Switch 2 will get DLSS in some flavor. And it's safe to assume NeXtBox has whatever it gets that's similar. Further with the time of development, I susupect these studios are no longer making games for PS5's or XSX's, and frankly they're not even making games for NV40xx anymore. They're making games for the hardware of NEXT decade with the intention of getting initial sales today from FOMO, then selling the "remaster" that runs the way it should have 5-10 years from now. Current games are for playing tomorrow's games today (jankily.) now.

To be honest, I'm not even sure it's about mulitplatform taking away from optimization. We have platform exclusives on both platforms that are optimized very poorly. While we also have PC focused games that don't even work great on top end PC hardware. I don't think "multiplatform" is depriving optimization. I think "cost-benefit" on any platform is depriving optimization. They know the sales come from the launch preorders and most of that market doesn't care, so, it's an unnecessary expense.

Business took over gaming, and figured out you can make more money selling shoddy products with lots of marketing. And the creatives just can't help themselves by throwing in the kitchen sink because they can. Bad combination.

@TheSimulator PC Mag's favorable preview is quoted in the article. Just a critique on the combat in there.

I don't think we can pull the "Xbox gamers accepting everything" schtick when this is also a PS5 game with hype there too, and realistically, Machine Games doesn't make console games at all, they make PC games that get console ports.

I keep getting shocked by how well this game is being received. Everything in the run up has seemed like a pending disaster in motion, so it's really amazing that it seems like it's doing everything right.

Though lack of choice in a Bioware RPG doesn't sound right, but FFXVI turned out alright despite not being a real FF entry, is still a good game if you don't try to think of it as one.

That's a cool concept, but seems unnecessarily complicated, probably failure prone, and I'm not sure who it's really for. Though LOL that even this has Hall Effect and the big 3 just can't figure that out.

I trust obsidian. I can't think of a single obsidian game that ever failed on its promise, ever, nor Black Isle before it. They've had jank when they run out of budget, but they still make a worthwhile game even then (kotr2). The key team are the legends of CRPGs. I'd be stunned if they missed.

@GuyinPA75 😆. It's true though.

Although I don't think he's doing AI for subscriptions. He's pushing local AI. I think he's a reactionary. See sees the trend and doesn't want to be behind that trend, then sacrifices everything to go all in on that trend. Then when the trend inevitably falters, he jumps on the new one that's out there. I think it's not about any particular direction, is just about buying relevance to maintain dominance.

Which is awful leadership. It's great smoke and mirrors to string investors along too stupid and cash drunk to realize he's undermining the company. But leaves a hollowed out house of cards.

This will definitely not result in bans at all probably.

@TheSimulator That's why handhelds can be plugged into a big screen......

The rate of tech at this point means gains are small and even small gains are a massive price. If we're taking 10-15 years (2 generations) I really can't see much demand for a gaming set top box when dozens of other devices will do the same thing or more. We're almost there already. The covered set top box still has a market but it's a small market that will continue to shrink as they keep charging more until a point where it's just not a sufficiently profitable market to pursue.

I half do and half don't agree on exclusives though. On in hand, yeah that creates an environment where there's not a specific selling point for their product. Otoh looking at even Sonys own numbers, it's VERY clear that exclusives are not what is selling their consoles. Their exclusive sell to the same smallish corner of their own install base over and over, but don't account for MOST of their install base. Which is why they're looking at distributing on other platforms as well. Reality is the console market, at large doesn't care at all about halo OR uncharted. They care only about Roblox, gta, NBA, fortnite, and other social hangouts. Which is a key reason consoles are on a short fuse. The majority of the people buying consoles aren't really buying it for any of the reasons enthusiasts would say consoles matter, and the companies eventually go where the business really is. Especially with software sales tanking and half the studios vanishing.

@TheSimulator I think consoles will be obsolete unless they invent as something new other than as budget gaming PCs in a VCR shell. Largely because single purpose devices in general are largely obsolete and consoles are kind of a relic. Going forward we have PC, laptops, phones and tablets that are more capable than an xss, handhelds that dock and really ARE consoles. streaming devices, and hardware isn't advancing at a rapid clip in gaming hardware. A "set top box" to play video games, as it is, already seems like an anachronism, in 10-15 years? It'll seem quaint as a cable box.

@TheGiraffe aww that sucks. You had a really weird issue there. It's definitely not normal. It seems like for whatever reason the upscaling wasn't enabled or activating or something, or games weren't able to change resolution in start like they're supposed to in full screen. Most people don't experience that....

Fwiw Xbox is just Windows underneath, so it's literally doing the exact same thing you were trying to do so on your PC. We know it's possible!

@TheGiraffe Yeah the problems you're having, you definitely shouldn't be having, there's a "something" that's not set up right somewhere, and it should be system level, not in game, if it's affecting multiple games.

If I'm understanding right, you have the game set at 1080p res, and in Windows settings, the display is set as 3840 x 2160 , right?

That's the normal default way most are using it. Game lower, display higher, dlss (or default driver scaling if dlss isn't supported) scaling. Do you have just the tv connected or is there a second display connected? (I.e. could it be an issue with cycling multiple different display resolutions?)

I mean if you're a Bethesda fan we've gotta get your rig running, Bethesda without mods is like a bridge without suspension cables 😂

One other thing that comes to mind is if you DO set the display to 1080p, do games look properly scaled? (I'm getting confused between AMD and Nvidia but remembered that for AMD, you actually DO want to set the res to a lower res than the display for RSR to scale, it knows the real resolution and scales only if you set it below real res. BUT games should be switching res on startup if in full screen mode.

@TheGiraffe ohh, so not really game issues but display issues. That makes s little more sense. Still it's strange you're having issues. If the PC knows it's a 4k display, and the game is set to 1080p, is dlss enabled? Or if the game doesn't support it, you may want, oh what's if called, the Nvidia version of rsr that scales things not supported by dlss, it's in the Nvidia control panel. But what you're doing is normal, it's what most people are doing. Even on 4090 you're best off at 1400p and dlss to fill the 4k.

I'm curious about troubleshooting it because what you're doing is really just the most normal scenario that normally "just works". I'm wondering if the TV is sending changing resolutions during HDR change or something and it's messing it up

@TheGiraffe that's so weird
Like defective hardware weird. Any specific games? That just doesn't match my experience at all. Using mostly steam but some Xbox store/game pass, everything's worked as easy as Switch. (Old games may be an exception. GoG is the best place to buy old games, they test/patch them, steam doesn't.)

There's a few of us ally users here and I haven't heard of anyone else having issues like that. I think you're the first dissatisfied owner I've heard of!

@IOI you too? That on earth problems did you have with Ally? I've used it every day and not one oddity. Obviously it's not a starfield save dd2 box but that's to be expected.

Headlines about Satya's huge package are not what I wanted to wake up to.

@LX_FENIX He's made endless (empty) promises on AI. That's literally the only thing driving their stock value, and he's seen as the messiah that makes it all (imaginarily) happen.

@gollumb82 "What do those people do with all that money? What do they need so much of it for? "

How cheap do you think it is to buy your very own politicians and law packages? Inflation means politician ownership and upkeep costs more than ever!

@OldGamer999 @TheGiraffe I won't listen to either of you dissing vr! It's the most exciting thing to happen to gaming since 3d! Seriously it's spoiled me so much that 2d games feels so archaic to me. I'm even playing octopath in VR. It's like being in a pop up book

@TheGiraffe I know PC isn't fit everyone, but out of curiosity, what games have you had endless troubleshooting and bugs with on a modern nv40 rig? Are you, like, only playing Jedi Survivor and tlou or something? 😂

I was a core pcmr back years ago and left to console due to the nightmare of troubleshooting. But due to Xbox being uncertain and Sony being Sony, I've gone back and have been plenty surprised. Between a z1 Ally, z1ex Legion, and an nv40 big rig, everything has been shockingly flawless. Only little kitty big city and the Xbox windows store drm in general have given me trouble. The only jank has been using vr injection in non vr games which is a hack and a half that involves some troubleshooting and a racing rig peripheral soup with vr which can get messy but that mostly seems to be vr related with window focus issues because of 3 layers of vr software for wireless.

So hearing about constant troubleshooting seems off to me for a current rig like that. Maybe hardware problem level off... Just curious what you're seeing.

@IOI Fbox.

Though I still prefer Ex-Box.

Sheesh 🙄

This is like Pepsi offering 2 liters of coke with every 12oz can of Pepsi. I sort of get their intentions and plans, and it even makes sense, but then they react in ways that seems like they don't actually understand the model they're deploying and what it's numbers look like. They can't seem to figure out if they care about their consoles or just want to offer a prefab budget PC, and then they can't figure out why their subscriptions shrink.

Xbox has announced more games on PS5 than Sony has in as much time. How is that "slowing down"?

So Xbox's decisions really do come from outer space?!

Who are the ad wizards that came up with that?

It doesn't look like it goes with the console. I don't understand why it involves the console at all. I don't understand why you can use a remote to dispense a bottle that you need to walk up and retrieve.

The one advantage is it does make the Xbox drinking game where you take a shot every time they say "Game Pass" during an showcase event much more convenient and on-brand.

To the people thinking liquid damage, though, it just dispenses bottles if the picture is right, it doesn't dispense liquid directly, so there's not much risk there. There's also no point though. Seems like a novelty gag gift thing.

@themightyant No, always-on Kinekt is still worse.

@Utena-mobile True but if you search YouTube for Honda Civics you'll only find videos of people tuning their suspensions, clutch mods, and shiny new spoilers, but most people just buy them and hit the gas.

True point though, if you don't know that you don't need to know that, the Internet will make it seem like you do. And of course the ability to do so is major feature. But yeah most of the time you just download and play same as console. Then again the first thing I do on console is so into settings and check the options 😂

@Utena-mobile Why do you have to mess around with settings? You rarely have to. Most games auto detect decent or ideal swings analogous to what devs would choose for consoles. Messing with settings is for fine tuning further to your liking. Old games aside. And uncommon hardware like Ally aside. But even there usually its fine out of the box.

@Banjo- 😂. I still say if totk was made for VR controls it would actually be a great game. As it is it's like trying to play Flight Simulator with a racing rig.

@HarmanSmith If it's Atlus, it ain't just double dipping you'll be doing!

I guess "Adorably All-White" didn't make it through the focus group for some reason?

@Balaam_ Gotta' go fast!

I'm buying mostly for PC now, but that PC time is split between handheld and big rig. Switch is for exclusives, but I'm not even sold on the latest Zelda, as the performance seems horrid, and the hard leaning into "building/crafting" things to, I suppose appeal to current kid-trends isn't doing it for me.

(Edit: Also, everyone here is insane, you all know that, right? )

@LogicStrikesAgain True. Where it gets muckier is when the behavior if the parties makes pretty clear there's some shades of truth to the claims, but we will never know what exactly those shades are.

@acmiguens That's ok, nobody anywhere else knew the Saturn existed either. That was the problem.

@Wisegamer @Fiendish-Beaver @Titntin With the whole Wukong thing, I sense there's definitely some "thing" that happened there. It's clearly and obviously not a traditional Sony exclusivity full publishing deal, but everything we've seen and heard does point to there being some kind of unconventional arrangement that happened. We'll probably never know what, but I don't sense that it was just a "quality standards" delay. As was mentioned Sony marketed it heavily in China. Seems reasonable that a deal was made regionally for China, but either both parties, quietly, or the dev just for time/cost reasons decided to just treat it that way worldwide or something like that. MS's comments on it were...pointed, which could just be them trying to deflect blame and stir controversy, but they don't usually use that language, it stuck out, meanwhile Sony's silence is interesting, because Sony's usual policy seems to be to get out in front of media narratives and deny them. That they didn't in this case is a departure from their normal behavior. I doubt we'll ever know what happened but it does seem like some kind of thing happened. All parties have, in their own way, managed to not actually deny the claim and/or validate it.

@acmiguens ROFL. You joke, but it really isn't that different in size!

@Titntin Yep, the virtual sick bucket is part of the vision! To be fair it's not so much a train as much as it is a tricycle at the speed it's moving 😂

Yeah I can understand you'd see those details more readily, but even so, I suspect if you could do VR and went inside the worlds, even ones you worked on, you'd actually see them in a whole different way. There's something about actually standing in a place that makes the mind process it differently than seeing a picture of it. My jaw is dropping at seeing locals I thought I knew well and could imagine what they really look like if you could go there but when I see it I'm vr, I feel like I've never actually seen it before. Although part of that is being able to see the places off to the sides you normally can't see, and I still find it mind blowing when you see how much is there that you never actually even get to see in flat play because now you get to look around all the corners, so that part isn't new for you 😁

Heck I'm even trying to tolerate the humor of high on life because in VR it's almost salvageable 😆

@themightyant Yeah, honestly I think even the "boss rush" categorization isn't right. Yeah it does highlight those but there's a whole lot of exploration too. And a ridiculous amount of upgrade trees.

@JoyfulFire Not really a souls like. More like Jedi fallen order, it takes the campfire system from souls but it's more of a wide linear character action game other than that. It's probably best described as God of war without all the boring parts, with ffxvi combat but harder, and the souls campfire.

@Titntin just have to say that I'm playing in VR 😂 I'm just picturing this game, a headset, and you... Freaking awesome though. The one thing vr injection has taught me is that most of the cost of modern development is completely wasted until VR takes over mainstream. In 2d it's just impossible to really see or understand the detail put into modern games. When you go inside the game you realize just how much of a real world has been built in a way you can never really perceive on a flat screen. I think if they want to keep making multi hundred million dollar games, they NEED to start forcing VR into the norm. It's just burning money otherwise.

This games really addicting though. It didn't do anything new, at all, it's a retread of familiar ground, but somehow how puts it together in a way that just feels great

@Bigmanfan it's tough. It's not Souls tough though.

Didn't know Sonic was on gp. Might have to bite, but, isn't that the one that's just a remake of generations (which is just a remake of a dozen other sonic games?)

@jesse_dylan There was a rumor of a lost Odyssey or blue dragon remake. It was supposedly going to be at the summer showcase but wasn't, but Phil also said that's not all the games. It's very possible one of those remakes is happening.

@Ralizah lol. Ok ok, you can go all ST and going One Punch or MA glass cannon . Technically the stats are so broken it's amazing they still keep them . Also sucks you can't use both MA and ST archetypes on any character realistically in metaphor since ST or MA aspected characters need to stay in their lane.

I always go the MA route but I'm starting to wonder if it would have been better to try phys. Too late now!

@jesse_dylan @Ralizah 15 of those hours was just steamrolling mooks with the cat mobile in mementos though

It's SMT. You just plunk all the points in MA. Duh, everybody knows that!

@AndroidBango Doesn't that apply to virtually every combo-driven hack and slash though? Soulsborne is B-B-X, B-B-B-B-B-X for like 6 games and people still can't seem to get enough of it. Let alone DMC/Bayo/FFXVI/Nioh/Wukong etc.

@carlos82 @OldGamer999 @Coletrain Yeah, didn't they say during the ABK trials that in the UK they only had the capacity for like 10,000 people or something like that? Maybe it was 100,000 but it was still extremely low. I don't think it's set up to work that well over there. And it's definitely behind GFNow.

My only fear with this game is that it feels even longer than P5R that too 7 months to get through, and the unavoidable SMT difficulty spikes if you build your characters wrong. But loving it all the same!

@PureXbox just tagging to bring @Zebs0666 comment #8 to the fore. Sounds like a serious copyright thing you guys may have to look at.

@BacklogBrad There's a free demo that's basically the entire first chapter if you're curious. I spent like 17 hours on the demo. Dome people do it in 10. But it's a chunky demo for sure.

This was a really good game that got the very short end of the stick mostly because it was forever attached to the disastrous X1 launch, and the meme that there's nothing good about X1 unfortunately got welded to this game along with it, as it's signature launch title.

It also has the problem that it's seen as a game with nothing but QTE, which isn't right. It's a combo action game, the prompts are just there as a convenient legend, but the appearance is that it's all QTE driven. If it had no prompts visible on screen it would be seen like any other combo action game.

@InvaderFromSpace The mess with Hitman isn't their fault, it was a publishing mess. When Hitman originally debuted, ioi was actually a studio inside Square-Enix, and it was a Square-Enix game. When the game "underperformed" (like everything) Square was actually going to close ioi down, and the ioi management somehow negotiated to buy back their ownership in part because Masuda really liked Hitman.

So then for Hitman 2 they got WB to publish it. But then WB did a lot of nasty things (as WB does), and they weren't pleased with how it was published. So then for 3 they finally decided to become their own publisher, and that's where they are now. So the original versions of those games were from two different publishers, and that's why the newest versions published by ioi directly aren't compatible with those delisted versions. It's a mess, but it's Square-Enix and WB's mess, not really ioi's. If Square had their way, ioi would have been shut down and Hitman 2 wouldn't have been made, while WB was abusing their publishing.

So yeah, it really sucks for consumers, but it's because the first two publishers basically pulled the game, and ioi had to rerelease everything themselves separately.

@jesse_dylan I searched and found no Bond memes for Sarah. How could the internet fail this badly? She actually would be a good protag in a Bond game though!

For Phil we at least have Yakuza Phil:

@Moby I think a lot will be Hitman-esque, and I think that's sort of why it's the right studio for it because the Hitman template is a lot of Bond already. But I think it will feel different because the almost main component of Hitman is the disguise stealing, and the gameplay patterns to get the right disguises, while Bond would have to focus on more traditional stealth which in a way makes it less interesting, but it has to be more traditional by nature. But Bond also traditionally doesn't do a lot of shooting/assasination, it's more sneaking/infiltration and outright running from being detected and using gadgets/gimmicks as an advantage. So the fundamentals I think will be very different.

@jesse_dylan Not Sarah Bond? Captain Obvious is disappointed in you.

@shoeses I agree but considering this is ioi, I think like Hitman they're trying to plan ahead to make a cohesive series by planning it from the start. Since they've proven they have done that extremely well before I'm willing to trust them in applying that same experience again.

I just hope they don't need to repeat having spreadsheets to figure out what you're buying.

Got to say I'm surprised and impressed, I didn't expect that for this game. Not a game for me at all, but they're out doing first party here from the middle of a warzone.

@Medic_alert Yep, Xbox had all the advantages at the beginning of the generation. And then they did..... Whatever they did....

@Medic_alert @GuyinPA75 Technically launch Xbox x had a larger drive than the PS5 for the same price. 1tb vs 8xxgb. PS5 always felt like 13.62oz cup of coffee at that size.

@Grumblevolcano Maybe, or they're pricing it for promo sales since it's better marketing than their other marketing.

Nothing says Christmas quite like generically enhanced armed soldiers!

@Darylb88 Lol yeah. Though this is worse. Sie has one competent CEO of platforms and one incompetent CEO of software. Microsoft has a 2 tier incompetent CEO of software, an impotent CEO of platforms and a competent but impotent CEO over those ceos