Developers Question PlayStation 5 Pro's Validity - Base Model's Full Potential Not Unlocked

[TumbleGeorge]

As an indirect NVDA and AMD shareholder, I'm all for that

Probable has some direct shareholders here?
Who are happy and profiting from forcing users to buy expensive hardware to lug around crappy code? Maybe game ports are done poorly on purpose rather than out of incompetence? And maybe the reasons are less than anything. After all, the idea is one, we, as the end customers, to be robbed as much as possible..

 

[kapone32]

This type of attitude captures in a nutshell what's wrong in the videogame industry.

Let's just throw more hardware at the problem instead of actually writing optimized code that will run on that console sitting under peoples' television sets. This attitude is not sustainable. That's why people are getting pink slips.

We have people here at TPU (and elsewhere) actively defending incompetence.

Hey, I have a great idea, why don't we require new hardware for every single AAA game launch? That's right, a new $500 console a couple times a year for the Dragon's Dogmas, Jedi Survivors, Hogwarts, Immortals of Aveum, whatever. And for the PC kiddies, let's require a new $1500 graphics card. Again, twice a year when a new AAA game comes out.

As an indirect NVDA and AMD shareholder, I'm all for that.

Over the course of a typical console generation lifespan, seven years, that would be the original device plus maybe fifteen upgrades (two per year). Forgetting inflation, let's just say $500 x 16. That would be $8000 in hardware expenses alone. Yes, sounds like a plan, throw more hardware at it. Sure, whatever you say. And some people have both PlayStation and Xbox. Well, that's $16,000. Meanwhile, those stupid Switch gamers only shelled out $300 for theirs. Lame, huh?

And the PC gamers will dig deep into their wallets. $1500 x 16 is $24K. Just to stay up to date to play Dragon's Dogma 2? Really? Oh, but wait, there's also the CPU to change in PCs. Let's say $400 x 16 = another $6400. So over $30K of hardware to throw at based on this attitude.

That isn't just asinine, that's borderline insane.

What people need to do is to stop buying shitty games. For Cyberpunk 2077, gamers finally sent a message and CD Projekt RED went back and made an attempt at cleaning up their garbage. But since then people have been pretty complacent. Look at Redfall. It's still available for purchase but quite often, there are ZERO viewers on Twitch. That's pathetic.

And CDPR still reneged on a bunch of promises that they originally made. No multiplayer, tons of things that were supposed to function in the game that don't. It's playable. It's pretty. It even runs well on an RTX 4090 with DLSS 3 Frame Generation turned on.

Like I said, Switch is CRUSHING PS5 and Xbox. With a laughably underpowered SoC when it launched as many derided.

A perfect example of someone completely disconnected from reality.

There are few examples that you are talking about like Doom, Doom Eternal and Shadow of Mordor. F me even Batman Games run sweet. I guess since a lot of Humble Choice has Games that are already released I have no issues with the Games I play. I want to get Dragon's Dogma 2 but it is too much money and Outpost Infinity Siege is $32.50 (less than half) for the base version and $46.79 CAD for the deluxe version.

Probable has some direct shareholders here?
Who are happy and profiting from forcing users to buy expensive hardware to lug around crappy code? Maybe game ports are done poorly on purpose rather than out of incompetence? And maybe the reasons are less than anything. After all, the idea is one, we, as the end customers, to be robbed as much as possible..

It is also the narrative. How much did people (media) talk about the 3090 after the 4090 launched? Let's keep in mind that the 2080Ti was the most unicorn product of the narrative until the 3090. Now I see 5090 and it is getting traction.

 

[cvaldes]

I want to get Dragon's Dogma 2 but it is too much money and Outpost Infinity Siege is $32.50 (less than half) for the base version and $46.79 CAD for the deluxe version.

Patience is a virtue. PC games always go on sale at some point at least here in the USA. Hell, even first party Nintendo titles (like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom) have seen discounts. I know nothing about the videogame market in Canada though.

Tech media rarely talks about old products because readers what to hear about the new, new thing. Also, there's a 4090 review unit sitting on their desktop.

The Ampere generation was an oddity anyhow from an availability standpoint due to scalpers, the cryptomining craze, and pandemic induced supply chain issues. Be careful trying to deduce anything from events that happened in 2021 through the first half of 2022, at least when discussing pricing and availability of consumer products.

 

[phints]

Sony to devs: git gud

Meanwhile I'm remembering how much sharper and smoother playing FF7 Remake at 1440p 120fps was on Steam compared to PS5.

 

[cvaldes]

Sony to devs: git gud

Meanwhile I'm remembering how much sharper and smoother playing FF7 Remake at 1440p 120fps was on Steam compared to PS5.

And how much more expensive is your PC rig compared to the PS5?

What's absolutely appalling is when games run horribly on the latest and greatest PC hardware.

And how much should someone really need to spend to get a decent gameplay experience? $300? $500? $2500? And if game publishers write games that only run well on 4090s, 4080s, and 3090s, what sort of unit sales should they expect? Hundreds of copies? Maybe in the single thousands? Sort of hard to justify that $100 million budget perhaps.

But again, that's why people are getting laid off left and right. Revenue lower than anticipated. Maybe they can spend less, make a game with saner expectations, and have a chance at turning a profit? Or is that too old fashioned?

I know, I know, that's way too old fashioned.

 

[Guwapo77]

This type of attitude captures in a nutshell what's wrong in the videogame industry.

Let's just throw more hardware at the problem instead of actually writing optimized code that will run on that console sitting under peoples' television sets. This attitude is not sustainable. That's why people are getting pink slips.

We have people here at TPU (and elsewhere) actively defending incompetence.

Hey, I have a great idea, why don't we require new hardware for every single AAA game launch? That's right, a new $500 console a couple times a year for the Dragon's Dogmas, Jedi Survivors, Hogwarts, Immortals of Aveum, whatever. And for the PC kiddies, let's require a new $1500 graphics card. Again, twice a year when a new AAA game comes out.

As an indirect NVDA and AMD shareholder, I'm all for that.

Over the course of a typical console generation lifespan, seven years, that would be the original device plus maybe fifteen upgrades (two per year). Forgetting inflation, let's just say $500 x 16. That would be $8000 in hardware expenses alone. Yes, sounds like a plan, throw more hardware at it. Sure, whatever you say. And some people have both PlayStation and Xbox. Well, that's $16,000. Meanwhile, those stupid Switch gamers only shelled out $300 for theirs. Lame, huh?

And the PC gamers will dig deep into their wallets. $1500 x 16 is $24K. Just to stay up to date to play Dragon's Dogma 2? Really? Oh, but wait, there's also the CPU to change in PCs. Let's say $400 x 16 = another $6400. So over $30K of hardware to throw at based on this attitude.

That isn't just asinine, that's borderline insane.

What people need to do is to stop buying shitty games. For Cyberpunk 2077, gamers finally sent a message and CD Projekt RED went back and made an attempt at cleaning up their garbage. But since then people have been pretty complacent. Look at Redfall. It's still available for purchase but quite often, there are ZERO viewers on Twitch. That's pathetic.

And CDPR still reneged on a bunch of promises that they originally made. No multiplayer, tons of things that were supposed to function in the game that don't. It's playable. It's pretty. It even runs well on an RTX 4090 with DLSS 3 Frame Generation turned on.

Like I said, Switch is CRUSHING PS5 and Xbox. With a laughably underpowered SoC when it launched as many derided.

A perfect example of someone completely disconnected from reality.

You're arguing videogame library equals sales and that isn't even what this article is about. The guy said the PS5 isn't tapped on power yet we are getting a Pro version. Dude is talking about Apples and you bring up zucchinis.

The problem is the Xbox series S.

All games made for Xbox must also run on this.

So where is the incentive to make high fidelity or high performing games? The Xbox ecosystem is held back by this "MS shooting themselves in the foot" lowest common denominator, that didn't even sell well.

A few of us argued this point when the S was announced and they called us crazy, but you hit the nail on the head when it came to Xbox.

The claim that there is still untapped potential is very bizarre. We're mid generation, console hardware isn't what it used to be, there are no novel pieces of hardware like the Cell or Emotion Engine, what more can you squeeze out of a Zen 2 CPU and RDNA2 GPU ?

Exactly! They are not trying to figure out some way to redirect power from the core processor to the SPEs. This is a Zen chip using Sony API...if it isn't figured out by now, I don't know what to say for the Devs.

 

[Craptacular]

Our household is very late to the Switch party, and my wife has always been a Zelda fan. She was watching a YouTube video of Skyward Sword, and she thought the game looked beautiful. Pretty telling that the graphics of that game was sufficient for her eyeballs. While great graphics will certainly help, the storyline and gameplay matters even more, IMO.

What does she think of the remake of Link's awakening? The fact that the game has only sold low single digit millions is a crime.

 

[cvaldes]

Lol, more people pointing at the hardware and blaming it for poor content.

That's right, with that kind of attitude, you'll be running the Xbox division in no time! Phil Spencer, watch out! There's a visionary here!

 

[watzupken]

I guess the question is why did they not fully utilize the hardware if there are still untapped potential? I may be wrong, but the gaming industry is no longer driven by people who genuinely wants to make games fun and entertaining, but driven by profit, which drives this mad rush to push it into the market even if the game is half baked. Its like, times up, let's push it into the market and fix it later. But once they push it into the market, they just fix the necessary, and quickly move on to the next game. It is like most technology person in your company who is just doing his job, but no passion for it. In some industry, you may be able to get away with it, but in an entertainment industry, the lack of passion is very apparent where you get boring games that focuses on graphics, and poorly optimized to make the most of the resources available.

I do feel that while the CPU in the current consoles are not top of the class by today's standards, but a lean OS (compared to Windows) and no fragmentation in specs, should help alleviate unnecessary load to the CPU. Therefore, it does not have to be as fast in my opinion. Of course it is better to have a faster CPU, but that is not how console works, i.e. try to update its hardware frequently. On the contrary, I feel having slower hardware improvement is a better approach because as you can tell, the more abundant the resources, the lesser the care to optimize the software. Just look at the RTX 4090 which was so fast at launch, that you can throw any games running at 4K at it, and it can easily handle. However 6 months down the road, you may not even be able to achieve 4K @ 60 FPS in a number of 2023 game titles.

 

[cvaldes]

Yet another myopic analysis by someone who has completely ignored Nintendo. Bravo.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

What does she think of the remake of Link's awakening? The fact that the game has only sold low single digit millions is a crime.

I'm not sure she likes the look, actually, since it's a bit more cartoonish, if that makes sense. As for me, I first played that game when it launched on the GameBoy, so I'll always have fond memories of the original monochrome experience. I played through it several times, and there are some fun hacks you can use, like not giving back the "dog" until you absolutely can't progress, and the same with the flying chicken. Makes some harder areas a lot easier.

 

[thestryker6]

Like I said, Switch is CRUSHING PS5 and Xbox. With a laughably underpowered SoC when it launched as many derided.

In console sales? Absolutely, but in gaming revenue they're nowhere near Sony and were behind Microsoft before the ABK acquisition.

The claim that there is still untapped potential is very bizarre. We're mid generation, console hardware isn't what it used to be, there are no novel pieces of hardware like the Cell or Emotion Engine, what more can you squeeze out of a Zen 2 CPU and RDNA2 GPU ?

Honestly this sounds more like developers who don't want to develop for more than one hardware target to me.

The problem is the Xbox series S.

All games made for Xbox must also run on this.

So where is the incentive to make high fidelity or high performing games? The Xbox ecosystem is held back by this "MS shooting themselves in the foot" lowest common denominator, that didn't even sell well.

From the indie developers who have gotten into the details it sounds like the only problem with the Series S is the memory capacity. I think having two levels of hardware isn't particularly a problem, just look at any game on PC, but if developers are struggling with memory capacity when they don't have to use higher res textures it's trouble.

 

[konga]

We have people here at TPU (and elsewhere) actively defending incompetence.

Where have I ever defended it? Of course it's terrible that the game is badly optimized, and of course Capcom desperately needs to fix the issues. I never said otherwise, and you just wrote an entire rant arguing against a position I don't hold.

My argument is this: What developers want is more memory, more CPU, better ray-tracing capabilities. Developers are getting the last one, they are not getting the other two. This is why developers are looking at the PS5 Pro with suspicion. You can argue about optimization all you want, and I largely agree, but that doesn't change what developers want.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

What developers want is more memory, more CPU, better ray-tracing capabilities

Maybe I would got financial compensation because their wishes harm my savings.

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

I'm not sure she likes the look, actually, since it's a bit more cartoonish, if that makes sense. As for me, I first played that game when it launched on the GameBoy, so I'll always have fond memories of the original monochrome experience. I played through it several times, and there are some fun hacks you can use, like not giving back the "dog" until you absolutely can't progress, and the same with the flying chicken. Makes some harder areas a lot easier.

We have multiple gaming PCs, PS5, switch, and switch OLED. PC gaming is for "the kids" really and we don't bother with it often. We are on the switch mostly and Awakening sold my SO on it and she fell in love with it. She can't stand BOW or TOK but she will keep playing Awakening for days on end.

As to developers fully using hardware. With a console developers have more direct access to the hardware and only one configuration to worry about. Windows is absolute shit for gaming and varying hardware configurations is another configuration. PC gaming is joke for that reason. With a console though they can take time to really get to know the hardware and extract every last bit of performance out of it. Or, at least they used to do that. Now with these mid life upgrades it's a monkey wrench. But back in the golden era of gaming of the SNES, GENSIS, and much less variety on the PC you saw developers actually do this. Thus the quality of games improved massively over the life time of the system. Atari, C64 (now that was a gem!) all had this as well. Hell the NeoGeo is still around and getting games. People still make indie games for the Genisis for this reason and the Dreamcast.

One of the reasons Nintendo does so well is they know how to fully use their hardware and so they get away with it. They also have a bunch of companies that focus on Nintendo only and as a result Nintendo goes out of their way to help them do the same thing.

There's a constant upgrade cycle trap where nobody ever manages to fully tap into what things can do before the next thing is out and then everyone runs off to the next thing. The only company that is not stuck in this is Nintendo.

 

[Chomiq]

Devs are lazy now that FSR/DLSS and any other image reconstruction techniques are widely used. Once that fails to fix their lack of optimizations they scream for a refresh. Just look at Rise of the Ronin, that released this week, that thing does not go beyond 1080p internal res no matter which performance mode you pick.

Same with PC, freaking Jagged Alliance 3 looks like a game from 10 years ago but somehow managed to starve a 3080 Ti running UWQHD resolution at high refresh because devs f'd up shadow settings.

 

[Calmmo]

Well I think the problem is on both developers and the hw. Ps5 pro will solve potentially both causes of poor img quality many big releases suffer from, lack of gpu power to push enough unique pixels to upscale from and poor upscale.
The 2 recent FF games come to mind, each representing 1 of those aforementioned issues. It's an option for enthusiasts, I don't see anything wrong with having such.

 

[Totally]

And how much more expensive is your PC rig compared to the PS5?

What's absolutely appalling is when games run horribly on the latest and greatest PC hardware.

And how much should someone really need to spend to get a decent gameplay experience? $300? $500? $2500? And if game publishers write games that only run well on 4090s, 4080s, and 3090s, what sort of unit sales should they expect? Hundreds of copies? Maybe in the single thousands? Sort of hard to justify that $100 million budget perhaps.

But again, that's why people are getting laid off left and right. Revenue lower than anticipated. Maybe they can spend less, make a game with saner expectations, and have a chance at turning a profit? Or is that too old fashioned?

I know, I know, that's way too old fashioned.

Price of pc hardware doesn't matter. Consoles are the focus of game development and then ported to PC after. Software just isn't optimized at all, most damning of proof of this I saw was when some rooted their switch installed Linux onto it, and used an emulator to play their games that they ripped onto an SD card. The games ran better in just about every metric FPS? High. Stutter, lag, loading times? Nonexistent. Games ran faster emulated than natively on their intended hardware. Even ruled out the SD card by running it off the cartridge. Make that make sense.