Duderino

Concessions like a smaller HDD and/or no disc would be the ideal scenario here. Unfortunately these rumors are describing something quite different. Sounds more like MS is considering a lower spec SKU at launch. Regardless of which route they go, sales in that first year or two are going to be bottlenecked more by manufacturing than price point. If they do launch with a cheaper, lesser spec sku, it’ll clearly be to mandate developers to support the weaker hardware out the gate.

This sounds like another curve ball for developers, especially those with rendering tech riding on the GPU bump.

Whatever your opinion of the law is, I think it's safe to say that Kotaku crossed a moral line here for many.

I really doubt Raytracing will be the end goal for most developers. 60 FPS might actually be the more feasible target this upcoming generation. ...that is if engine developers don’t prioritize raytracing exploration over foundational performance re-hauls. Faster i/o with SSD’s and better CPU’s will help address two of the bigger bottlenecks of this generation, but I suspect engine overhead will continue to be a limiting factor as asset counts increase.

Btw, the hitching that contributes to the performance issues on consoles is also present on PC. The game has performance stability issues across the board. Just gets even worse on weaker hardware.

1080p, even with Remedy's temporal upscaling, is still a large concession with the Pro. Same with 1440p on the X. Tittles that rely on similar upscaling techniques rarely go this low. It is not on par with other Pro/X games of the same calibur. Control is a obviously a very Alpha heavy game which tends to scale poorly to higher resolutions. The tradeoff does make sense, but it's not exactly a game targeting the specs and selling point of these quasi 4k systems. Remedy no question prioritized their vision for the game over resolution and performance on all current console hardware. Not unlike Anthem, that can have a very negative ripple effect on the less capable SKUs if not rained in.

I very much doubt Remedy were looking to the Pro/X as a way to divert attention away from the game's performance issues on the base systems. Those boxes did not exactly receive preferential treatment either going by their resolution targets and the less pronounced but still present frame drops. Not to mention no HDR as well. Control lacks optimization polish across the board. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they significantly under estimated the work it would take, especially in the later months when marketing and GM deadlines get locked in. No doubt they were hoping a day one patch could address it, but came short there too. Also, realistically speaking, the bigger distraction from performance optimizations was likely RTX support on PC.

Assuming they had the option to delay in the first place. There is also a presidense for reviewers turning a blind eye to performance issues on other systems when they play through a tittle on the optimal SKU. Definitely not a problem exclusive to this generation. Happens all the time with PC gaming too.

Control does not exactly run great on the PS4 Pro either. Between the Base and the Pro they clearly struggled to hit the target framerate for the two SKUs with the largest user base. I don't think this is a situation of a developer favoring the technically superior systems over the rest or hitting that target and calling it a day. Seems much more plausible that Remedy were crossing their fingers that performance would work itself out before launch and came up short. It happens.

So long as the political discussion is level headed and constructive I welcome it. Has to be the appropriate amount as well. For as much as politics impacts games, it is still only one, often small, aspect that defines what games are, what they can be, and how they are made. I will say that I don’t care to read game reviews that bloviate about a single aspect (graphics, story, etc), and politics/social issues is no exception.

Visually I can’t imagine we’ll see much of gap. Loading and asset streaming however is where I suspect one console will have a clear leg up. Possibly frame-rates too when streaming is the bottleneck. Who knows which system that will be; both Sony and Microsoft are looking to innovate in this department.

Live stage gameplay demos are becoming a lost art in a sea of trailers and fluff teasers. Good on Square Enix for delivering; this is the most competent they have looked in years.

Looking forward to FFVII. It may not have a traditional battle system, but it's still as close as we'll get to a classic Final Fantasy from Square Enix. Can't remember the last time Square Enix put out a FF game that lived up to the name for me. Enjoyed FFXV, warts and all, but by the series standards it was a bit of a mess.

I see Days Gone as a much more active game than RDR2 between the bike, combat, and its flavor of open world systems. Also, while both tittles take a while to ramp up, you definitely get to explore and accomplish more in Days Gone’s world in the first 6-8 hours compared to RDR2. There is just soo much exposition to sit through in Read Dead’s opening.

Is plagiarism, when your job is to give your critical opinion, not lazy?

Idk, maybe ask Fillip Miucin?

"Lazy" would have to be an armchair critic's preferred term.

I very much doubt the designs in Rage 2 were a product of laziness. For a topic about understanding it's a pretty inconsiderate way to describe the developers work.

Soo.... where does this leave Sloth in the Goonies? How lazy of a writer is Steven Spielberg...right? (No one at Avalanche is lazy. Find a better term.)

Well at least that’s one less column in EA’s next Early Acess chart.

At least in terms of viewership numbers on twitch and YouTube, the streamers speaking positively of the game are reaching a much larger audience than the negative review outlets, at least when it comes their video outreach. There’s also likely an Avengers: Endgame bump. Days Gone is featured before the the movie trailers begin. Off topic, but I really enjoyed the movie despite its 70’s Metacritic score.

What would a discernibly more advanced Xbox console even look like compared to what we we know about the PS5? To make a notable visual impact, the GPU hardware alone could get very spendy. Maybe the difference would be more performance related with the CPU and RAM speeds? MS could also have a similar ace up their sleves with the SSD, who knows.

I don’t doubt that Microsoft is positioning themselves to come out on top in a pure numbers game. They probably want DXR to be their big differentiator and the key selling point, at least for the premium console. Think MS and Sony will have a very different focus this time around.

The biggest news here IMHO is not Risen 7nm, Raytracing, or 8k. It's the SSD bandwidth claims.