Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2024]

[Remij]

How do you convince Sony to invest more in the PC market? Or will it always be an after-thought to extract low-cost extra returns on the original game investment? Or is it a side-effect of the transition and, moving forwards, all games will be cross-compatible and reasonably PC tested during development?

I don't think people properly realize just how much Sony did actually invest in the PC market. Consider that we now know that they had essentially changed the course of almost ALL of their studios to pivot to GaaS games, which we can assume were all essentially either planned to, or at the very least rumored to launch on PC day and date with PS5. Obviously they've shifted their plans a bit and backed off of a huge number of them since then.. but when you realize just how hard Sony actually was trying to pivot their studios, it becomes clear. Almost all of them had these types of games in development. Hell, Naughty Dog even made an news article on their website about how they were integrating PC development into their studio culture and how it would ready them for future multiplatform development. We know that Sony Bend did the port of Days Gone internally, and a lot of these studios are capable of simultaneous multiplatform development.

I maintain that these single player game ports, which cost essentially nothing and are almost guaranteed to make them money over long periods of time, are being done to "get the catalog" onto PC to give them enough content to launch their own store and bring PS+ to PC, and then eventually go day and date and put more grunt behind the platform upfront.

 

[techuse]

I think they are laying the ground roots for a complete market shift as there is no viable path to a console beyond PS6. Until that time, I don’t expect any meaningful differences in the quality of their PC software.

 

[Charlietus]

I think they are laying the ground roots for a complete market shift as there is no viable path to a console beyond PS6. Until that time, I don’t expect any meaningful differences in the quality of their PC software.

Why would there be no viable path beyond PS6?

Let's take iphones as an example. You could say that the last 7 iphones are just minor upgrades one after the other. But people keep buying them nonetheless.

Even if a PS7 is a PS6 with racing stripes 7 years later, they are going to make it anyways. It's not like Sony could make the PS6 and just sell it forever.

Also, as much as the semiconductor situation is depressing right now, a new technology will arrive some day. And if it doesn't, humanity is done with technology lol.

 

[Below2D]

Why would there be no viable path beyond PS6?

Maybe he thinks streaming services will have taken over and a dedicated machine that just games isn’t the way forward when you’ll be able to stream from your TV or tablet?

I think PS6 is a bit too early for that that. I don’t see that happening before the PS7 when a much larger part of the world will have access to high speed internet.

 

[Dictator]

I think it is mainly the semi-conductor cost is what gets in the way of future consoles being as they have been in the past. The base price will be much higher and it may not be worth it anymore to subsidize as a result as it will only get the price down by so much - realistically. So instead, each console is sold with a profit margin even at launch. At which point, why bother making something custom?

 

[Karamazov]

But I was promised a Playstation 9 for 2078

(even though i would be 99)

 

[techuse]

Why would there be no viable path beyond PS6?

Let's take iphones as an example. You could say that the last 7 iphones are just minor upgrades one after the other. But people keep buying them nonetheless.

Even if a PS7 is a PS6 with racing stripes 7 years later, they are going to make it anyways. It's not like Sony could make the PS6 and just sell it forever.

Also, as much as the semiconductor situation is depressing right now, a new technology will arrive some day. And if it doesn't, humanity is done with technology lol.

Consoles don't have the same wide spread desirability of an Iphone, and endless waves of uninteresting games mired in old, cross gen technology won't help change that. PS5 sales have declined from PS4 due to an inability to cost reduce and a lack of compelling software. These issues will only worsen with PS6. Following that, the silicon technology will not exist to make a PS7 worthwhile to even produce. Humanity won't be done with technology, tech just wont be affordable enough to produce a low cost, mass market gaming box that offers sufficiently more powerful processing.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Reminder this is a DF technical thread, not Sony business thread.

 

[Charlietus]

Reminder this is a DF technical thread, not Sony business thread.

Maybe you could transfer the discussion to the next gen prediction thread?

 

[Deleted member 2197]

Reminder this is a DF technical thread, not Sony business thread.

Agreed, though it is most likely because Sony sales was a Q&A talking point of the DF Direct Weekly video. Do we need a separate DF Weekly video thread?

1:42:34 Supporter Q5: The PS5 Pro hasn’t sold out, so is this a sign of underperforming sales?

 

[Below2D]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1844342425000796341

Do they not know or simply don’t care?

 

[Charlietus]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1844342425000796341

Do they not know or simply don’t care?

I think that any unreal engine game with high end graphics and no loading screens-seamless traversal has some stuttering.

They do know, but maybe it's too hard to prevent it or it's hard to use the tools or functions to reduce them. Maybe both.

We have enough examples to say that it's not strictly incompetence. We would have many stutter free experiences otherwise. Even if it's possible to prevent it in some way, it probably should be made easier for developers to get rid of them.

The default settings in unreal should try to be as stutter free as possible, as a start. Maybe they are, who am I to say.

 

[techuse]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1844342425000796341

Do they not know or simply don’t care?

I think they just don’t find the effort worth it.

 

[Bludd]

 

[Charlietus]

Yep, not buying this game until it gets smoothed out with some patches.

I was hoping that the PS5 version didn't have traversal stutters since they weren't highlighted in the DF video and reading some reports online, but apparently that's not the case.

The animation stutters are even scarier than the game. Another source of stuttering for games? Please let's not.

 

[Potato Head]

@Dictator, I can’t imagine the amount of work it took testing and putting together that Silent Hill video. Great job!!

 

[Flappy Pannus]

Great video @Dictator, cripes if it wasn't a conflict of interest you guys should be getting paid for this level of QA.

btw here's the full presentation by Croteam on frame pacing that Alex showed a snippet of, I watched this a few years ago. Timestamped to just before this part:

The one timer that makes sense is the display timer on the monitor - was the frame actually displayed or not?

The fact is this is quite an oversight on the side of the API's - for the past like, maybe 20 years. When we used to work on older platforms, like the Amiga, older 8/16bit computers and consoles, we always had complete control when the frame actually happens. Now with GPU's that are deeply buffered and asynchronous to the CPU, most games are still just measuring the time of the CPU, which doesn't always correspond to when the frame was actually shown. Most of the API's, especially on the PC, there's no way to actually tell what's happening.

 

[Remij]

Alex's Silent Hill 2 video explains why I was feeling like my character was lagging and then jolting so much. I used the command line parameter he suggested in the video and limited my FPS to 30, and it's a largely acceptable experience. Not ideal however, and I hope to god they work on fixing these issues.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

Alex on ResetEra:

The animation hitches here also affect camera movement. Perhaps not so visible in the video because I put James' character model front and center, but you also see it for camera motion if I made the comparison showing that off instead.

Likewise, based upon my research this monday morning, the issue of camera/actor animation not being correct is perhaps found in many other Unreal Engine 4 and 5 games. Based on my preliminary findings, it is potentially also in Sackboy and The Wizard game, and perhaps an upcoming title.

 

[Globalisateur]

Alex on ResetEra:

Bring back custom engines ! people can complain about custom engines like TLOU Part 1, GoW Ragnarok or Spider-man on PC (but it runs worse than PS5 with this GPU so the port is bad!) but at least those games are less buggy and run with less problems / stutters (when you have a powerful CPU) than those UE5 games.

Spending $3000 dollars and still have you favorite games plagued with unavoidable stutters is awful.