Pubs will probably go for the path that provides the most budget friendly approach. If that approach leads to better looking PS4 then thats what we will get. Otherwise, there is nothing rational about, "We want more and we want it for free".
How should devs handle ports between consoles? *spawn
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Pubs will probably go for the path that provides the most budget friendly approach. If that approach leads to better looking PS4 then thats what we will get. Otherwise, there is nothing rational about, "We want more and we want it for free".
I'm curious how the developers integrate Kinect and EyeToy... do they target the lowest common denominator or really take advantage of the unique capabilities of Kinect? To make matters even more complicated if both platforms allow you to stream content to tablet/Vita how does that influence the amount of motion control integration?
I got to say with all hardware fragmentation: WiiU, Xbox1, 360, PS4, PS3, Vita, 3DS, Tablet, Ipad and PC the developers are really going to faced with tough choices and I can see where budgets get dominated by porting software to platform specific offerings in place of better visuals.
Its sort of ironic that the inspite of all the similarities between the PC, PS4 and Xbox1 we might still be impaired by motion controls and legacy/mobile platforms and requirements to support various features designed to distinguish platforms from one another....
I got to say with all hardware fragmentation: WiiU, Xbox1, 360, PS4, PS3, Vita, 3DS, Tablet, Ipad and PC the developers are really going to faced with tough choices and I can see where budgets get dominated by porting software to platform specific offerings in place of better visuals.
Its sort of ironic that the inspite of all the similarities between the PC, PS4 and Xbox1 we might still be impaired by motion controls and legacy/mobile platforms and requirements to support various features designed to distinguish platforms from one another....
upnorthsox
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Or they can go with the option they believe will create the most sales, that may also be the best looking PS4 (and PC) game they can make within their constraints and let XB1 be what it can handle from that.
Why not just go with the metric that core gamers can't really see, resolution? It's been said a billion times on this forum how "pc only increases resolution" as a reason for core gamers not to care about that platform for visual improvements. Plus how many times do people ask others to pixel count to figure out resolution because, well, they can't see the difference otherwise. Or how many countless people thought the GT4 was actually 1920x1080 when it wasn't? I'd just render at lower res and leave it at that as the vast majority will have no clue, that's basically been proven here on this very forum. As a bonus it's the easiest thing in the world to implement, just render at 1280x1080 or 1440x1080 and let the hardware scale it up to 1920x1080. Heck most of the post process stuff will be rendered at low res anyways.
And how do you suppose they predict that scenario? What tells them that leaving the XB1 to what it can handle will lead to the most sales? Tell me how owning a PS4 will make someone buy more games because they look better than ports on other platforms they don't own? Did the Wii encourage you to buy more games for the 360 or the PS3?
A streamlined development enviroment is what pubs want. Catering to a platform's strength may encourage more console sales for that platform it doesn't naturally mean a larger sales to userbase ratio for that platform especially in a reality where all pubs employ the same strategy.
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1) It's really condescending to assume developers to cut effects and sacrifice art-direction (as some imply here) on consoles when there are only 2 machines to test on. This isn't the PC where settings are actually hard-coded compromises in the name of being unable to profile specific hardware combinations. Most of the differences should be modest (framebuffer, AA method, materials & geometry, things like AO) and certainly not the drop from "Ultra" (see: bloat) -> Medium on a PC game as some might like to crow about.
2) Common platforms around engine/tech make optimizing system-specific strengths much easier (this isn't exactly another case of Cell to begin with, too), so the gap between first/third party devs "willing" to optimize for a platform is going to decrease.
3) Is "port" still going to be a word of relevance? lol
2) Common platforms around engine/tech make optimizing system-specific strengths much easier (this isn't exactly another case of Cell to begin with, too), so the gap between first/third party devs "willing" to optimize for a platform is going to decrease.
3) Is "port" still going to be a word of relevance? lol
WiiU, PS3, PS4, 360, Xbox1, PC not to mention Tablet and Ipad or mobile gaming (phone and dedicated); there are a lot more than machines in need of support. I'm not saying all of the different offerings will be supported actually that is part of my point, developers have tough choices. What do they support and what features/optimizations are showcased.
You won't (or shouldn't) do the same games on consoles with similar controllers as you would on tablets. Cross-gen console games will be compromised, but the question is how much that will actually manifest itself. If you have enough resources you can make assets and shaders etc for all platforms.
What happens when Google and Apple release dedicated controllers or outline a spec for controllers that use Bluetooth to the market? We saw huge interest in the Kickstarter Android platform earlier this year which shows where some of the the market is headed.
Today the development is mostly compromised by the need to support PS3 and 360 in a year or so perhaps it will be the tablet/Ipad that forces developers to make tougher choices. Regardless the variety of platforms will force companies to make decisions that in previous generations were not as pressing.
When the highest rated games on Google Play and iOS App Store are 2D games, then there's really little comparison between those theoretical consoles and the Xbox One/PS4.
In part that is due to the control issue, the graphics capabilities keeps increasing for some reason.
Why is Nvidia so interested in the mobile space if the purpose behind mobile chips needs to be primarily 2-D games and browser viewing optimization? Unreal is making mobile versions of it's engine for something... This sort of investment doesn't happen in a vacuum.
Exactly. Dynamic resolutions are already happening in next-gen cross platform titles in development.
For 1080p targets ... It will be even tougher to discern as the HUD layer will be rendered into its own display plane at true 1080p, the game graphics will be rendered at some dynamic resolution from 1280x1080 to 1920x1080 with scaling into true 1080p as needed, then the two will be composited into true 1080 output signal.
Likewise for 720p if the game effects are too taxing. The game graphics will render the horizontal resolution dynamically with the HUD being true 720p.
I don't see how a $99 Google TV/Apple TV box competes with a $149 Xbox 360/PS3. It's the very reason why Apple doesn't care about that market, it's not going to drive huge amounts of revenue.
But haven't HUDs almost always been superimposed at native resolution anyway this gen?
Sega just announced support for Ouya:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-06-05-sega-embracing-disruptive-ouya-with-sonic
Konami said yesterday that they were not releasing Winning 11 on PS4, XB1, Vita and 3DS but Vita is getting supported:
http://kotaku.com/why-is-the-psp-getting-pro-evolution-soccer-and-not-th-511207979
As I've been saying, publishers are going to have tough decisions to make but it would foolish to ignore the potential of tapping into the android/Ipad market or to assume that tablets and phones are going to stay casual only. With such a deep install base it demands attention and once Apple and Google release a spec/standard everything will change.
If I had to guess why it hasn't happened yet, its due to the incredible improvements we see with each iteration of the technology, once a spec/standard gets released things might slow down and gravitate to the standard. The graphics on these things have improved dramatically and now that Epic is making engines, Sega dipping their toes in with Sonic titles we won't stay casual forever. Not to mention that Square has re-releasing all their FF legacy hits - at some point we'll reach critical mass and EA and Activision will have to pay attention.
^ These are now smaller league studios who are no longer able to remain on the cutting edge of tech.
When was the last time that Sega or Konami even talked about tech?
They've either lacked the scale or (more predictably,) foresight to invest in new-gen immediately, and thus are waiting to coast until middleware and target audiences grow larger.
So that's a different issue over all. And if casual gaming's really exploding in terms of commercial opportunity, please do explain the ongoing train wreck in slow motion that's Zynga!
When was the last time that Sega or Konami even talked about tech?
They've either lacked the scale or (more predictably,) foresight to invest in new-gen immediately, and thus are waiting to coast until middleware and target audiences grow larger.So that's a different issue over all. And if casual gaming's really exploding in terms of commercial opportunity, please do explain the ongoing train wreck in slow motion that's Zynga!
Not Vita, PSP!
Company sounds like it's on the brink of collapse. Not good.
That said, if they release the PSP version also digitally, that means Vita owners could still play it, right?
Prophecy2k
Veteran
Dynamic resolution scaling, over allowing the framerate to drop, in gaming is the worst idea ever. It was horrible in Rage, and pretty much ever game that has done it this gen.
Intuitively, when playing a game with tense and packed action scenes, when lots starts happening around a player, the very last thing you want to do is turn the screen (and thus player's view into the gameworld) into fuzzy indiscipherable mulch. Good God!
The right way to do it is to let the framerate drop, as its effectively slow-down which lets the player have more time to think and strategise his next move, which is hard enough to do in a chaotic scene.
Resolution scaling never works, as i have yet to see a game that would require it.
For the most part also, the average gamer is far less sensitive to framerate issues than they are to drops in resolution. Also, dynamically dropping resolution in next-gen titles when these consoles will have snapshot and video-sharing functions built-in is just a recipe for disastrous anti-promotion of your game (taking it from a developer publisher point of view).
It's almost never the answer in my opinion.
Intuitively, when playing a game with tense and packed action scenes, when lots starts happening around a player, the very last thing you want to do is turn the screen (and thus player's view into the gameworld) into fuzzy indiscipherable mulch. Good God!
The right way to do it is to let the framerate drop, as its effectively slow-down which lets the player have more time to think and strategise his next move, which is hard enough to do in a chaotic scene.
Resolution scaling never works, as i have yet to see a game that would require it.
For the most part also, the average gamer is far less sensitive to framerate issues than they are to drops in resolution. Also, dynamically dropping resolution in next-gen titles when these consoles will have snapshot and video-sharing functions built-in is just a recipe for disastrous anti-promotion of your game (taking it from a developer publisher point of view).
It's almost never the answer in my opinion.
Respectfully disagree with you there. But maybe that's because I haven't played Rage. Then again, doesn't rage primarily suffer from the whole megatexturing thing just not being able to resolve with enough detail? That's not quite what we were talking about here.
If you had a choice between 5 frames per second in tight action scenes, or 1/6th resolution at 30 fps, which would you really prefer? In my opinion both are bad and the game should be designed around less extremes, but if you have to pick one, 30 fps is more important so you can see what's going on versus 5 fps at higher resolution. In action scenes, temporal resolution is most important, and looking at a slide-show of beautifully rendered frames isn't going to help dodge bullets or track enemies.
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