Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2016 - 2017]

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I don't know if it's due to its API, but the PS4 often gets decent performance upgrades through patches (TW3, GTA5, COD AW, Unity, etc.)

Even if he says "mostly solid 60fps" the game is locked 60fps on what they actually showed on this video for the patch 1.05 on PS4 (it could drop down to ~45fps before). The framerate on XB1 is a bit improved but still variable. Apparently after this patch the game runs much better on PS4 in the singleplayer mode.

Would be interesting to see the MP mode though.
 

I don't know if it's due to its API, but the PS4 often gets decent performance upgrades through patches (TW3, GTA5, COD AW, Unity, etc.)
Maybe DICE spent more time with optimization on XB1 during development, being the probable lead platform and lower common denominator.

PS4 seems to benefit a lot more from this patch than XB1 and actually performs slightly better judging by DF's video (rock solid 60fps on PS4 vs small dips on XB1).
 
Its been some time since we saw a face-off. Is DF planning to make a RESI 7 Face off?
Yeah perhaps I'm mistaken, we'ld have to see the data but weren't there far more face off's last Gen than this one?
Still no face-off of Infinite warfare or Resident Evil 7.

But John Linneman just did an article about the "worst PS4 game", a game nobody wanted Linneman to spend his precious time on.

It's just odd editorial choice, because they certainly won't get clicks about that shitty PS4 game. I asked John about the curious (and unique) fact that Infinite Warfare was still not reviewed by DF. He said he doesn't decide what games are reviewed by DF, meaning Mr Leadbetter does and then most probably did not allow the Infinite Warfare article.
 
You might be surprised. That game is getting an obscene amount of coverage, which means that content must be getting lots of clicks.


Yups, a marketing success.

I imagined that streamers will also stream it more and more.

With that much exposure, surely people will buy it. Not millions, but good amount
 
But John Linneman just did an article about the "worst PS4 game", a game nobody wanted Linneman to spend his precious time on.

I completely support DF highlighting what a car wreck Life Of Tiger is, I think Sony owes more to it's less engaged consumer base than Valve does to PC gamers and part of that is more rigorous listing criteria on it's store than "it boots right?". I 100% support outreach to indie devs but there has to be a line and no matter how you define that Life Of Tiger is far beyond that. I don't want indie to become synonymous with "shite" in the same way it has on Steam
 
The walled gardens of the consoles typically meant a minimum quality bar. I'm wondering if this is a regional choice based on more US centric attitudes? I know titles that are refused publishing in the EU due to bugs but which get NA store presence. Given Sony gets paid for allowing games and selling content, and materialistically gets nothing for refusing a title, I wonder if the present mindset of SCEA is to allow everything in similar fashion to the US Patent Office? Certainly in the short- and mid-term Sony won't be worse off for having more titles available, ranked by users, and wil be fiscally better off to some degree not to mention having PR of 'more games on our store than any other console'.

It's certainly something gamers need to stand against. However, how do you officiate a minimum quality bar? Who sets the criteria on fun or what consumers want? Perhaps the inability to deal with this objectively means logically they just have to open their doors to whoever pays for a devkit?
 
It's not an easy question given the wholly subjective nature of "good" but I think the Valve answer of "if you can upload it, you can sell it" is the opposite yet still unacceptable extreme from the old "not without a publisher" bar. I don't feel it is difficult to get 3 people to agree that LoT represents an unacceptably low bar for quality from the poor framerate, non-existent collision detection, 8 cardinal direction movement only, no transition animations and barely translated text. None of these or even a combination of some of these should represent a bar if the title can show merit in some other non-technical fashion be it plot, writing or characterisation.

If your game however has no positives beyond "it compiled and ran" someone should step in. Particularly as this was formerly a mobile game Sony should have been able to play the game beforehand and advise the developer that they would be highly unlikely to get a listing on PSN without substantial revisions. That this game is unable to run on any current Android device right now (and seemingly for several Android revisions back) should also have acted as a red flag.
 
I can point to some pretty shit (IMHO) mobile/indie games that involve geometric shapes for art and no meaningful content. If I were in charge of quality I'd reject these titles as not worth the buyers' money, but some people love them. Who's to say that the irony of the shitness of this tiger games isn't worth the asking price? Goat Simulator and Bread Simulator are real games, and have brought joy to some people.

I absolutely agree consoles should have a minimum quality standard so you always know if you buy a game on a specific platform it'll be worth your money, and I bitterly lament the drop in quality I perceive since the PS2 era thanks to game complexity, patching as an option, etc. However, I genuinely don't know how one would fairly, objectively filter the submissions. Cinema shows us that low budget rejects overlooked by the big studios can still be valuable and shouldn't be denied a showing.
 
Yeah it's not an easy thing to do, gating access to any medium has really uncomfortable precedents and parallels. Still Sony has a beta program for their O/S if they were to designate say 500 of these users per title as quality testers it should be possible to determine whether a title is good enough. I'm not even proposing a high bar but I'm pretty sure something like LoT would fail to garner even 5% of folks to say "good enough". Obviously Sony would have to incentivise participation (maybe a free month of PSN per title or something) but there should be a way to ensure niche titles like Gone Home (by which I mean PC launch GH it was well known by the time of porting) wouldn't get thrown out with the LoTs
 
I can point to some pretty shit (IMHO) mobile/indie games that involve geometric shapes for art and no meaningful content. If I were in charge of quality I'd reject these titles as not worth the buyers' money, but some people love them. Who's to say that the irony of the shitness of this tiger games isn't worth the asking price? Goat Simulator and Bread Simulator are real games, and have brought joy to some people.

I absolutely agree consoles should have a minimum quality standard so you always know if you buy a game on a specific platform it'll be worth your money, and I bitterly lament the drop in quality I perceive since the PS2 era thanks to game complexity, patching as an option, etc. However, I genuinely don't know how one would fairly, objectively filter the submissions. Cinema shows us that low budget rejects overlooked by the big studios can still be valuable and shouldn't be denied a showing.

Curation is a function that I believe that the traditional games media should embrace in order to stay relevant.
 
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