Playstation 4

[deanb]

Seems we don't have this topic yet.

Anywho:
http://www.develop-online.net/news/38916/Sony-studios-begin-PlayStation-4-projects

PS4 games are supposedly in the works. I know there's already word from a few third parties on working on next-gen engines. 2014 seems quite late though. I'd be expecting to see some sign of a new console at next years E3 from both MS n Sony. The final line about R&D would definitely imply they're working on a next gen console though.

[Strangelove]

Ugh. I hope its 2014 or later. I think weve plateaued. Everything just gets shinier and rounder from here on out. Its not going to change gaming in any significant way.

 

Oh, I guess we can have 64 online players in our FPS like the PC...umm..yaaaaay. Ugh.

Edited October 20, 2011 by Strangelove

[MasterDex]

Ugh. I hope its 2014 or later. I think weve plateaued. Everything just gets shinier and rounder from here on out. Its not going to change gaming in any significant way.

 

Oh, I guess we can have 64 online players in our FPS like the PC...umm..yaaaaay. Ugh.

 

That notion seems highly prevalent amongst gamers (ie. that there's not much advantage beyond better graphics with next gen consoles). Better processing units and greater and faster amounts of memory will mean that we should finally be able to significantly advance certain aspects like AI, interactivity and overall complexity. The major hurdle right now, I believe, is that the industry and community at large still see better graphics as the sign of advancement and pursue better graphics as a result. Hopefully this generation, the industry can look past the graphics and make advances where they're truly needed.

[Strangelove]

Sorry if I am completely wrong, but it seems most game developers are comfortable with what they got when it comes to AI and the such. ive never heard a developer complain about this console's lack of power when it comes to AI. And as for interactivity? What do you mean by that? What else can we do that cant be done on this generations hardware? How can we even make things more complex that are actually beneficial and noticeable? How is this all going to improve videogames in a significant way? In a 300-400 dollar way?

 

Everything thats wrong with games i blame on the person making them, not the console's lack of power. Maybe Im wrong and they deserve more sympathy.

[Mal]

Eh, the way I see it, consoles will slowly turn into non-customizable PCs. The PS2 doubled as a DVD player and then the PS3 doubled as a bluray player and so much more. It almost seems natural. Just need people to start seeing consoles as not just gaming machines. Hell, with graphics plateauing it they will have to bump up the other areas like MasterDex said but along the way they will have to add something more.

 

And Strangelove, consoles are lacking in hardware for which they are suffering from now. Its really limiting them. Sure the devs do some pretty damn creative stuff to work with the hardware but they can only do so much. I hope for $300 to (lets face it) $500, we can see at least 1GB of RAM and 1GB of VRAM. Be great if its 2GB of RAM but yeah, not sure how the cost of that will be and I have to work with your 300-400 bucks price range. I would love to compare computer hardware with console hardware prices but that wouldn't be too accurate.

[Yantelope]

...consoles are lacking in hardware for which they are suffering from now. Its really limiting them. Sure the devs do some pretty damn creative stuff to work with the hardware but they can only do so much. I hope for $300 to (lets face it) $500, we can see at least 1GB of RAM and 1GB of VRAM. Be great if its 2GB of RAM but yeah, not sure how the cost of that will be and I have to work with your 300-400 bucks price range. I would love to compare computer hardware with console hardware prices but that wouldn't be too accurate.

 

Well, consoles usually don't have as much hardware as a full PC because the architecture is more specialized. MS was able to cram the GPU and CPU together for the slim Xbox and saved a ton of money that way. That being said, the price for 2GB of GDDR5 for XFX or Sapphire is the same as it would be for Sony so you can't cram a Radeon 6970 inside a PS3 without it costing just as much. The fact that most advanced graphics cards on the computer are pushing 150+ watts and cost $200+ are probably the biggest reasons why the new consoles aren't here yet.

 

Graphics cards have gone from this:

 

 

to this:

 

The cost and power of advanced graphics have gone way up and it's a problem facing new consoles.

 

Edit: I know sony won't pay $200 for a graphics card, I just mean that the components inside those graphics cards are expensive.

Edited October 20, 2011 by Yantelope

[Strangelove]

You guys keep saying it, but youre not explaining it. What limits? Besides graphics and loading times, what limits are there to game creation this generation?

Yeah, once consoles become a lot more powerful you could theoretically make a game 20 times the size of Morrowind, but no one is going to do that. The more advanced we become the more work it is and all the publishers can do is up the price of games by maybe ten bucks, if at all. There is no incentive for them to make things better outside of graphics and load times. People havent demanded it. If anything, weve regressed. Despite what people may think, making a full on remake of FF7 would probably lose a lot of money. A game of that size with detail of FF13 or higher would take forever and cost a shit ton and theyd still have to sell it for 60 bucks. A lot more work, but not any more money.

[Yantelope]

Limitations? Graphics memory is one of the biggest one. You're very limited in how many and what quality textures and shaders you can load into your frame buffer on current consoles. You're limited in the size of your world that you can load at one point. A lot of games get around this using streaming processes first pioneered by GTA III but there are still limitations on it. It's why you'll notice that tons of the same cars pop up at the same time in GTA because they can't load all the models of the cars into memory at once. You're limited on the number of middle ware programs and AI processes you can run because of memory or just performance impacts. You're limited on the types of effects you can use. There's a ton of ways your limited either by RAM, processing cycles or frame buffers.

[Strangelove]

So graphics? Yeah....that was kind of my point. I dont care if I see the same 10 cars over and over in GTA.

[Yantelope]

What genre's do you care for, maybe I can give you better examples.

 

You would see more different types of creatures in oblivion rather than the three or four types limited to that area you're in. You'd be able to have more diverse areas as opposed to areas gradually changing because only so much of the world can be loaded. You'd be able to enter and exit buildings without having to load. You could have way more NPCs and make towns actually seem like cities rather than 4 or 5 people in an empty market.

 

This also might help, in case you haven't seen it:

 

Edited October 20, 2011 by Yantelope

[madbassman39]

Not to mention the fact that AI will be tremendously improved, each with the ability to have their own set of animations, the ability to have boost performance, not just graphics but also frame-rate, physics will be improved, the number of characters on screen, the ability to have worlds as realized as skyrim is, but with multiple players on screen with no drop in graphics/performance.

 

The change will be pretty large between new games and current games. I am willing to bet the difference in performance (not graphics, but just ingame performance) will be equal or maybe even greater than what we saw from last gen to this gen.

[Yantelope]

I'm always skeptical because people have been talking about AI for so long. I think there's some fundamental programming challenges when it comes to AI that hardware doesn't necessarily solve. This generation did bring us some great middleware though like Euphoria which really helps add some of those small AI things that have been missing. Next Gen systems would be able to incorporate more middleware processes to make the worlds even more realistic.

 

[Johnny]

The cost and power of advanced graphics have gone way up and it's a problem facing new consoles.

 

What are you talking about? Hardware is getting cheaper, not more expensive.

 

Not to mention the fact that AI will be tremendously improved, each with the ability to have their own set of animations, the ability to have boost performance, not just graphics but also frame-rate, physics will be improved, the number of characters on screen, the ability to have worlds as realized as skyrim is, but with multiple players on screen with no drop in graphics/performance.

 

The change will be pretty large between new games and current games. I am willing to bet the difference in performance (not graphics, but just ingame performance) will be equal or maybe even greater than what we saw from last gen to this gen.

 

All of this. In particular, I really hope devs will shoot for the 60fps mark in the next generation. 30fps rarely feels comparatively smooth.

Slightly off-topic, but all of the people complaining that Rage's graphics aren't entirely flawless (what game's is?) seem to be overlooking that it's 60fps plus features fantasticanimations and AI. It's quite the achievement.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

While I can appreciate all the improvements and am personally excited by what will be possible (acorns growing into oak trees in Fable finally!) I think it will be a hard sell to the great unwashed. Most people don't care if their character's hair is intelligently moving to the character's movement and the in-game wind or if it is programmed/animated to look like it is moving in that way.

 

Imagine on stage at E3 the tech guy has to explain, "look at this NPC, instead of us telling him to walk along the street and sit at the café table he's decided to do it himself." All the public see is a character who looks the same as this gen do something that looks the same as this gen. They are not going to be ripping out their wallets and spunking $400 on gamestop's counter.

 

edit because of comments made while I was typing the rest up. The smoother framerate and improved general performance fall into the same caategory as I was describing about AI - that is to say it's not something that makes a great 'soundbite' Games might splutter along now when you play them but this is not the case when they're shown off at events so it is not something that will sell new hardware. I also don't really believe things like this bother most gamers. Remember most gamers pick up call of duty, FIFA, and Dance Central and that's them set all these technical problems games have and are picked over on the net are just not picked up on at all by most gamers.

Edited October 20, 2011 by TheFlyingGerbil

[Johnny]

I'm not sure I care how it's made to look good, gerbil. Everything is smoke and mirrors anyway. =)

 

Purely graphically, the most significant improvements will probably be in texture fidelity and anti-aliasing.

[Yantelope]

The cost and power of advanced graphics have gone way up and it's a problem facing new consoles.

 

What are you talking about? Hardware is getting cheaper, not more expensive.

 

What are you talking about?

 

Also, as shown in the video I posted earlier, graphical enhancements will be more than simple textures and AA. Bokeh depth of field, tessellation, Ambient occlusion, real-time local reflections, parallax occlusion mapping advanced AA hardware techniques and a lot of other hardware effects which are unavailable right now. Also, I don't know if consoles will ever do 60fps at 1080p with 4xAA on all games. Games are about tradeoffs and they could run games at 1080p 60fps 4xAA right now but they choose not to in favor of using the processing power on other things. I don't know why the next gen would necessarily change that.

Edited October 20, 2011 by Yantelope

[Johnny]

The cost and power of advanced graphics have gone way up and it's a problem facing new consoles.

 

What are you talking about? Hardware is getting cheaper, not more expensive.

 

What are you talking about?

 

Also, as shown in the video I posted earlier, graphical enhancements will be more than simple textures and AA. Bokeh depth of field, tessellation, Ambient occlusion, real-time local reflections, parallax occlusion mapping advanced AA hardware techniques and a lot of other hardware effects which are unavailable right now. Also, I don't know if consoles will ever do 60fps at 1080p with 4xAA on all games. Games are about tradeoffs and they could run games at 1080p 60fps 4xAA right now but they choose not to in favor of using the processing power on other things. I don't know why the next gen would necessarily change that.

 

... This is in no way relevant to anything I said. I didn't make any prediction that I think console games will go 60fps. I merely said I hoped it would go that way.

 

Bonus points for not responding to my remark on hardware pricing. You know, the one you quoted.

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

You guys keep saying it, but youre not explaining it. What limits? Besides graphics and loading times, what limits are there to game creation this generation?

One need only look at Atomontage Engine or other 100% voxel-based middleware solutions to see the huge potential for gameplay advancements, potential that can't be harnessed--not even close--on current hardware.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

What genre's do you care for, maybe I can give you better examples.

 

You would see more different types of creatures in oblivion rather than the three or four types limited to that area you're in. You'd be able to have more diverse areas as opposed to areas gradually changing because only so much of the world can be loaded. You'd be able to enter and exit buildings without having to load. You could have way more NPCs and make towns actually seem like cities rather than 4 or 5 people in an empty market.

 

This also might help, in case you haven't seen it:

 

 

Everything you described is being done in other games. Just not Oblivion.

[Yantelope]

Johnny, you made a stupid statement and then backed it up with all of nothing. Why don't you bother trying to make a point rather than just blindly disagreeing with me like you always do?

 

 

Everything you described is being done in other games. Just not Oblivion.

 

Yeah, but you've got to make concessions. You can do somethings in one game but not in another because you're dedicating resources to one thing or another. Better tech means being able to take what a bunch of different games to well and compile them into even bigger better games. It's kind of like what Mass Effect has done this generation that wasn't possible last generation.

 

Also, Ray tracing and voxels are probably not going to be helpful in the near future from what I've read.

Edited October 20, 2011 by Yantelope

[MasterDex]

As far as AI is concerned, there's the possibility of better pathfinding, basic learning algorithms and better interactivity. The original F.E.A.R is a good starting point to talk about AI. The AI in that is still better than many FPS AI that has come after it so if you think of the AI in that game and then multiply the possible actions the AI can perform by a reasonable amount, you should have a rough idea of the kind of advancements that could be possible.

 

I wouldn't say Ray tracing is going to be something big next gen but I feel confident in saying that voxels will.

[Johnny]

Johnny, you made a stupid statement and then backed it up with all of nothing. Why don't you bother trying to make a point rather than just blindly disagreeing with me like you always do?

 

Förbannade jävla rövhatt!

 

Nowhere in any of your posts did you point out what I said was wrong or why. Instead you just insult me. I don't think I've spoken to anyone more infuriating than you since the proud-to-be-racists in my high school class.

Fuck off and have a terrible life.

[VicariousShaner]

Johnny, you made a stupid statement and then backed it up with all of nothing. Why don't you bother trying to make a point rather than just blindly disagreeing with me like you always do?

 

Förbannade jävla rövhatt!

 

Nowhere in any of your posts did you point out what I said was wrong or why. Instead you just insult me. I don't think I've spoken to anyone more infuriating than you since the proud-to-be-racists in my high school class.

Fuck off and have a terrible life.

[Yantelope]

I make a detailed post and talk about how graphics cards are more expensive. I even posted pretty pictures in color. You then make a blanket statement. "Graphics cards are getting cheaper". You don't respond, You don't reason or anything. You just make a stupid blank comment. Then you go stupider and accuse me of not responding with details or reasoning completely missing the irony. Wake up, get over yourself calm down have a milkshake and relax. It's just graphics cards we're talking here.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

Playstation 4: Sony has already started pissing people off.