11–20 of 84 posts
The thing I loved about the PS5, above all else, is that basically every game has a “performance mode” aka 60fps. I appreciate there are lots of people out there who don’t care about 30fps, but the ps5 generation gave us the choice. Furthermore, almost all the games I played on PS5 were PS4 games that now ran butter smooth.
I really wish developers on consoles would just accept what kind of performance consoles really offer. There isn't a single reason a game should be 30fps these days if that game tests your motor skills in any way. If you can't hit a locked 60fps target, you need to reassess your visuals. Hearing that 2/3 PS users are switching to 60fps, away from a default of 30fps is really interesting. You can have the best screens…
Framerate aside, a good percentage of modern TVs have abysmal latency. I recently played the original Super Monkey Ball 2 on a gamecube hooked up to a CRT and was shook; that sort of precision would never fly on modern hardware.
Game mode helps, but only somewhat, it does not generally solve the issue.
For this reason, as far as tight gameplay goes, my money's on devices like the Switch.
Say what you will, but this is why Cloud Gaming will make sense eventually. Upgrade cycles have to make you want new games - you can't advertise the same experiences with a "now in 4K/8K" label on it. On top of that, console gamers already pay for online service access and many subscribe to PlayStation+/Xbox Game Pass. They're effectively getting the worst of both worlds - paying SaaS prices for an experience they do…
All the Stadia users who I spoke with were generally happy with the service while it lasted. Their main concern - latency - turned out to be a non-issue. To me there's a great niche for it to be explored: cheat prevention in e-sports. Of course aimhacks will always be a thing, but the top players were always indistinguishable from cheaters in this regard.
Say what you will, but this is why Cloud Gaming will make sense eventually. Upgrade cycles have to make you want new games - you can't advertise the same experiences with a "now in 4K/8K" label on it. On top of that, console gamers already pay for online service access and many subscribe to PlayStation+/Xbox Game Pass. They're effectively getting the worst of both worlds - paying SaaS prices for an experience they do…
Ultimately my issue was the lack of ownership, and much like with video streaming services, the seemingly random licensing agreements. Due to the lag, GTA V was one of the only games that I could play decently well. I had it years ago for PS4, but never finished it, so figured I'd jump back in. One week into playing, sorry, the game is gone, it might come back later. I find this unacceptable. For long games, or games I love and want to come back to again and again, I'm not willing to put up with that nonsense. I cancelled the service the same day that happened.
I've mostly been playing the Switch over the last 2 years due to Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, but have about a dozen games. All of them were bought with physical media. I can trust the physical media will stick around, because I control it. When Nintendo shuts down an old eShop, people's favorite games could die with the hardware they happen to have it installed on. Those 2 Zelda games ended up ranking #1 and #2 as my favorite games of all time. I figure I will be able to buy a Switch in some form for a long time, but who knows how long they'll keep the servers up to download a new copy for a new (or new to me) console. If I was playing Zelda on a streaming service and had the rug pulled out from under me 200 hours in... nothing about that is good. The possibility of that would make me not want to start playing in the first place.
I don't like the trend away from physical media. As the article suggests, using game size, due to ever increasing realism, doesn't seem like it's going to be a great pitch for why it needs to go away. When we can fit 1TB on a microSD card, it seems like physical media can and should still exist, maybe just not on optical media. I also typically like playing single player games, so there is no practical reason to connect to the internet. With portable systems, like the Switch, internet requirements become a problem.
or maybe innovation in gameplay has stopped. hence why the same franchises rule. something to appreciate about Nintendo, they don't focus on graphics but gameplay through level design, game mechanics etc. well written stories such as the last of us are good too.
The thing I loved about the PS5, above all else, is that basically every game has a “performance mode” aka 60fps. I appreciate there are lots of people out there who don’t care about 30fps, but the ps5 generation gave us the choice. Furthermore, almost all the games I played on PS5 were PS4 games that now ran butter smooth.
The idea of a graphics vs performance mode feels like they needed to push the PS5 too hard to make the graphics good enough to justify a new console, but realistically, the hardware can't handle it.
The sales pitch of the PS5 Pro is that the choice no longer has to be made, which is how it should always be with a console, imo. If people want to tweak and tune to make their personal tradeoffs between graphics and speed, that always seemed like what the PC was for.
I was looking at getting a PS5 slim, but heart the Pro rumors, so I waited. After seeing the graphics vs performance toggle, I don't want the slim, but looking at the comparisons, I don't see enough of a difference in graphics where I want to pay more for the Pro... so I think I'm likely going to skip it all together, at least for now. Things might change when GTA6 comes out. That could make the choice more clear.
Sony claimed that their user base compromised on "graphics" for the smoother experience of the "Performance" mode, so I don't see how they missed the ball when they decided to launch a Pro model that helps tackle this user need. Even if it was an excuse and they would release it anyway.
The whole "Improved graphics" thing isn't just about "how nice a game looks compared to the previous generation", and I think people understand that. It's a common marketing expression for improving the game's visual experience, not only resolution and textures but also the number of things happening on the screen, smoothness (FPS), drawing distance, etc - which they addressed in their presentation video.
Now maybe we're reaching the point where marketing videos cannot display accurate improvements due to the limits of streaming, because a game experience in 30FPS vs 60FPS or 120FPS is vastly different. Even in a desktop environment, you can see it.
The thing is that we were used to having a new hardware look revision as well, with a different design or on a smaller form factor, consuming less power, which didn't happen this time around but that's ok I guess.
But the thing of "you should stop launching improved products because the games looked fine" is a bit silly. I think Sony serves their clients well, just like Nintendo does, they cater to different people.
The reality is that games are taking longer to develop, as they are more complex - let's not forget that Zelda BOTW was a Wii U game, and the Zelda TOK was released at the end of the Switch lifecycle.
Anyway, good for them to release the pro model. I won't be buying it because it's not a product for me.
https://youtu.be/0ol0kTteyo0?feature=shared
Even if you forgo the realistic textures and models, it still can produce some amazing results. Here is a clip of Quake using raytracing :
https://youtu.be/DYziPapZWDw?feature=shared
My point is, lighting is a force multiplier that we don't yet have in most mainstream games. But now with many modern graphics card providing support for it and technologies like Unreal's Lumen making it easier experiment with on the developer side, I am expecting this will be the primary area we will see games distinguish themselves in the "good graphics" category.
The innovation that needs to happen is along the lines of leveraging lots of physics and entities in real time. I'm talking about zombie games with thousands of zombies on-screen, or RPGs with towns that have a realistic amount of NPCs, all of which can be interacted with at some capacity. The problem here is that this currently isn't leveraging GPU as much as CPU resources, but it doesn't have to be that way, especially with the new AI pipelines.
That said, consoles are now glorified gaming PCs. The advantage back in the day was that it provided a platform for developers that was already optimized and designed for games, but software tools have matured enough that this can be achieved in any hardware with engines like Unreal.
We are well into diminishing returns territory with high resolution textures and 3D models, but most games are still using comparatively crude lighting technique. Raytraced lighting, when combined with the above high-fidelity game objects can produce startlingly realistic games today. Here is an example for a recent game called Bodycam: https://youtu.be/0ol0kTteyo0?feature=shared Even if you forgo the realistic textu…
Maybe some people care more, I can accept that. But there is no chance I'm going to buy a PS5 Pro for it, and I don't think many fans will.
Graphics card companies have done a lot to make me less and less interested in better graphics anyway. What I really want are better games.