DavidGraham
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Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2024]
- Thread starter Shifty Geezer
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long episode today
DF Direct Weekly #165: State of Play Reaction, Sony PC Strategy, COD Black Ops 6 on Game Pass
0:00:00 Introduction0:01:04 News 01: May 2024 State of Play: Astro Bot
0:11:00 Concord
0:19:51 Marvel Rivals, God of War Ragnarök PC, Dynasty Warriors: Origins
0:38:15 Silent Hill 2
0:51:35 Skydance’s Behemoth, Alien: Rogue Incursion
1:00:18 Monster Hunter Wilds, Path of Exile 2
1:10:22 Infinity Nikki, Ballad of Antara, Where Winds Meet, Until Dawn
1:19:23 News 02: Are PlayStation PC ports meant to sell PS5s?
1:36:03 News 03: Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will debut on Game Pass
1:47:30 Supporter Q1: What games will Sony advertise alongside the PS5 Pro?
1:55:26 Supporter Q2: Will Nvidia launch another hardware-reliant software feature with 5000 series GPUs?
2:02:35 Supporter Q3: If Hellblade 2 had arrived last year, where would it have ranked on your Graphics of the Year video?
2:07:00 Supporter Q4: What are the best settings for using the Quest 3 wirelessly with a PC?
2:12:20 Supporter Q5: What’s the best way to deal with VRR flicker on OLEDs?
2:15:32 Supporter Q6: How does DLSS affect CPU usage?
2:21:40 Supporter Q7: Could a PS4 handheld enhance the look of older games?
2:24:44 Supporter Q8: What are you ordering for dinner in London?
About the AstroBot segment they are 100% right about the whole thing. Sony diverse lineup is not there anymore, all their single player games are now from the same story driven 3rd person shooter template. I think AstroBot could be the most important game of the year for Playstation and the one that would keep players on the PS ecosystem at least for another year.
Concord will bomb hard as an soulless, uninspired and chatGPT directed production.
Concord will bomb hard as an soulless, uninspired and chatGPT directed production.
If concord has good game feel and level design, it will get picked up by streamers and if it's lucky, it will be a success.
If it's a bad game, it will be forgotten quickly.
It's likely gonna fail. Reason being it's not free. You'll have a limited uptake, trouble filling lobbies (although 5v5 will help), no interest in streaming, and it'll fizzle out. Only way that won't happen is if there's decent free public beta testing and the game is absolutely amaze-balls.
So many games of this ilk have crashed hard, and there's nothing here that doesn't look generic. Terms like "Lidl's Guardian of the Galaxies trailer" and "Fauxverwatch" are being used pretty aptly, and that's not a public reaction that smacks of early success. Even if the kids would like it, not being F2P means they won't play it.
I guess Sony could pay off many streamers to market it. That might work.
It will probably be a decent game but it’s an over saturated genre with rapidly declining popularity. If any title has a chance to succeed, it will be Marvel Rivals.
I hope we eventually get a DF Direct with all the staff in a studio together. Audi too.
If it slaps blizzard a bit I'll be happy. They deserve it. But it's not something that I'll play much.
Frenetic Pony
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Are you truly implying executives that demanding arbitrarily chosen dev teams produce highly specific styles and genres of games with no prior success and no internal motivation or inspiration of their own could lead to anything but unparalleled success???
I forgot about it until you mentioned it right now.
Helldivers 2 is far and away the most important game for PS this year. Nothing else will come close.
It's great for John to be all excited about Astrobot, but the truth is that John is in a minority in terms of game tastes, and there's a reason that games like these have fell out of favor in the AAA space over the years. I'm glad to see Sony give this a chance, but I dont expect it to be some major commercial success, unless it becomes one because of the sheer drought Playstation 1st party finds itself in this year.
Like, we can lament the loss of a broader range of games from PS absolutely, but like it or not, Playstation's 1st party reputation has never been higher after PS4's lineup of 3rd party cinematic action/adventure blockbusters. These are clearly just very appealing to the mainstream core gaming audience. And with such long development times and greater opportunity costs to consider with resource allocation, it makes sense why the more experimental/playful stuff has significantly gone away.
While I did find the State of Play underwhelming over all, I will say that I commend Sony for including an game like Infinite Nikki - that open world dress up game, in the presentation. It's not a game for me, but it is something different. And I appreciate them highlighting a project that isn't a Souls clone, a hero shooter, or a remake. Of course, they had those as well. I think a lot of the reason Astrobot is getting the acclaim that it is right now is because it's the most "normal" game shown that wasn't one of those three things. Not that Astrobot looks bad, or that I expect it to be bad, just that it was the thing they showed that wasn't chasing the aforementioned modern trends.
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Yea fair take.
Helldivers 2 is a good game for the PC division. People won't buy a PS5 to play Helldivers 2, they'll have more chance of upgrading their PC, yes, and that money won't be spent on Playstation store. NVidia and Steam are very happy about all those Playstation games going to PC.
But some will buy a PS5 and enter its ecosystem somehow for AstroBot.
Although perhaps somewhat true, that kinda undersells Astrobot. It has its fans for good reason - execution on all games has always been top notch and they are games well loved by their fans. Which was a weird thing to type, as you'd think every game is well loved by it's 'fans'. But some players just play a game and complain constantly about it - there's no love there!
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I don't mean to disparage Astrobot in any way. I know it's a good game, and they really leaned into the Playstation meta with the series which I think is cool. But I don't think that the reception the game had at this last SOP would be the same if they showed a new God of War, Horizon, or Uncharted. This will be, after all, the first non-vr retail release of an Astrobot game.
DavidGraham
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