Price increases were bound to happen even without the ABK deal going through. But since it did, I really wonder what Microsoft is planning, because it seems like they potentially won't see that money back for decades. There's also a limit on how expensive a viable subscription service can be, so continued price increases can only work so far. I honestly think they're gonna have to find a way around releasing everything day-1, but somethings gotta give at some point.
What took you so long?
The current models use 6 standard 128GiB Nand flash packages (2 channels per package) for a total of 768GiB (~825GB).
The revision won't keep the 12 channel interface. The only reason they've had to use 12 channels in the first place was because they couldn't have achieved their minimum 5GB/s target with 8 channels at mass production scale at the time, because production rate for higher bandwidth flash was too low.
That's not a problem any...
@MTRNYC: I doubt even Sony knows whether the PS6 will come with an optical disc drive at this point in time. Depending how the physical market holds up over the next 3 years or so I could see them going either way. My point is that this PS5 redesign might be testing the waters and actually increase the chances for at least a physical add-on option to be there for PS6 even if mostly for backwards compatibility reasons.
@FinalFantasyFanatic: The difference goes in the other direction. The new SSD configuration will probably cost them around 60% compared to what it cost them on the launch models in late 2020/ early 2021 just based on Nand Flash price decreases alone. That's before you take into account that they had to use a fairly complicated 12 channel controller interface to reach the target bandwidth, because high performance Nand Flash wasn't available in the quantities they needed at the time. T...
Doesn't sound like hyperbole to me, but that's probably because Remake already was that good in my eyes. They've already proven to me that they get it, so naturally I have high expectations for Rebirth.
In regards to your second point. Let's be real the chances of a PS6 launching with an optical disc drive are fairly low. The optimistic view would be that Sony exploring an optional add-on now, could be a way to keep supporting it for a niche audience going forward without having to include it in every console.
Whether many publishers will see much value in continuing to support physical media is another matter. Not only is there very little R&D going on in that are...
The SSD storage is barely even larger and SSD prices are a third of what they were three years ago. If anything that's probably one of the areas on their bill of materials they're saving the most money on compared to the launch model.
Get away with what? This is simply a reissue with all the digital content (patches & DLC) on disc. How is this a bad thing now?
Don't let the door hit you on the way out Jim.
I disagree. It might not have hit the mainstream news cycle as much as the recent controversy, but we already were on a rodeo with Unity last year when they aquired ironsource with the specific goal to push monitization on developers as a central design focus early on in production.
Many developers weren't interested in prioritizing a maximization of profit at the cost of their creative goals. Apparently John Riccitiello (Unity CEO) couldn't grasp why so many devs w...
My decision tree looks something like this:
1. If game releases feature complete and doesn't rely on post-launch patches to fix critical issues -> buy disc version.
2. If game releases with critical issues and/or adds essential features through post-launch updates -> wait for potential release of "complete edition" containing patched build on disc.
3. If physical release is not available -> buy DRM-free version of the game on PC (mo...
Dude is trying to save his "good-guy Phil" image. If history is any indicator it'll work on significantly more people than it should.
Interesting that the Series X refresh will be on TSMC's N6 node even though it's scheduled to launch late 2024. I would've expected it to be on N4 by that time. Just for comparison, the PS5 has been on N6 since the launch of the CFI-1200 model last year. It's worth noting that N6 offers backwards compatible design rules for N7 (which was what current gen consoles launched on), so it might be that Microsoft just didn't want to invest into porting the SoC design to 5nm based...
Wow. What a trailer. They've shown so much. Looks like they're hitting it out of the park... again. February can't come soon enough.
I've jumped ship to Unreal late last year, despite many people telling me that Unity was much better suited for the scale and budget of my project. Best decision I've made.
The CEO of Unity is an idiot and the writing was on the wall that he's gonna do something incredibly stupid like this sooner or later. I feel for the developers that are too far along in their project too migrate to another engine.
With the scale of the current backlash I c...
@Petebloodyonion: I don't see how that's relevant considering the peak concurrent player-count was reached on release week for all of the games I've listed. That's generally what happens with single-player games.
When comparing Starfield's peak concurrent players to other big RPG titles that released more recently it's hard to get around the fact that Game Pass has almost certainly had a negative effect on steam sales.
CyberPunk 2077 - 1.05M
Elden Ring - 953k
Hogwarts Legacy - 879k
Baldur's Gate 3 - 875k
...
Starfield - 330k
Personally I would expect a new AAA IP from Bethesda to be more competative with tho...
VRR is of limited usefulness in FFXVI. It only eliminates the vsync judder between 48 and 60 fps. It obviously can't do anything about the inherent stutter of low frame rates and since the game doesn't have a software-based LFC implementation you still get the standard vsync judder spikes whenever the game drops below 48 fps.
Not to mention that even with LFC, the very nature of a fluctuating frame times between 16.7ms and 30ms will have some inherent "judder&...
Wasn't the same bug present in the original game? The huge day 1 patch turned me off from buying this immediately. I'll wait and see if Sony decides to launch another "complete edition" like they did with Horizon Forbidden West.