Sony Wants To Improve Game Quality, Hands Are Tied

[Guest]

Sony's UK CEO, Jim Ryan, gave an interview to Metro this weekend to discuss the quality of games being released in the industry today.

Sony Wants To Improve Game Quality, Hands Are Tied : Read more

 

[surphninja]

Could it be that game companies went through some growing pains developing for the newer consoles? Maybe they've learned their lessons.

 

[JamesSneed]

So why don't they steal a page from Apple(hurt to say that) and only approve games when they meet certain criteria just like is done in app stores? They could hold the keys if they wanted but of course they probably would have to get MS to do something similar on xbox.

 

[CaedenV]

Could it be that game companies went through some growing pains developing for the newer consoles? Maybe they've learned their lessons.

Sony's box is essentially a dedicated linux box, and MS's box is partly a PC and will soon essentially be a PC... these are not 'new unknown' platforms that should have huge growing pains. These are plain-jane x86 boxes with pretty 'normal' hardware (especially compared to previous generations of consoles).

The issue is that both companies released hardware that was too anemic to live up to expectations, and programmers are desperately trying to find shortcuts and cheats that work at lowering quality just enough that people will not complain, but sill offer a 900p/60fps/2xAA experience that will pass as OK for the next few years. The issue is that in a little over a year (my guess is summer 2016) we will have mobile tablets with better graphics capabilities than either console. If either company is serious about providing a console experience than we will see a half-cycle refresh with better GPUs that are much more easily capable of 1080p/60fps/4xAA/AF to run out the rest of the console generation.

Hopefully next gen they will not be so silly hoping that 'the cloud' will save them and we will see affordable 4K consoles come out in another 6-7 years.

 

[artk2219]

I believe it was called the Nintendo seal of quality, perhaps Sony needs one?

 

[StarBound]

I also distinctly remember a Nintendo Seal of Quality. I'm pretty sure if Sony starts adding those to its disc based games we might see 6-12 month delays but games will be working out of the box. But the demand for early access is a bit too strong at this time so we could see games being released and the final game only coming later ...if ever.

 

[dmb77]

I think our own customer base screwed ourselves on this generation. The console manufacturers were planning on omitting the disc media in favor of all OTA digital and that would have provided the room for a bit more horsepower given the cost envelope. A dedicated dualcore Pentium with HT along with a dedicated gpu would have increased the performance a lot with less heat than we currently have. But NO. We HAD to have the ability to resell games. As the kiddies say. Cry more.

 

[dmb77]

And before someone mentions " But it's 8 core now with GDDR 5 memory " , you have to consider that it doesn't matter if your highway is 8 lanes wide that can handle traffic moving at 140mph if all you have on it are two ragged 18 wheelers.

 

[mlga91]

Sadly, companies will keep releasing half baked games because they can, there is a lot of people that loves paying for those half baked games, if those people dont stop blindly pre.ordering those products, the companies will continue with that way of doing things.

 

[draphius]

Quote:
Could it be that game companies went through some growing pains developing for the newer consoles? Maybe they've learned their lessons.

Sony's box is essentially a dedicated linux box, and MS's box is partly a PC and will soon essentially be a PC... these are not 'new unknown' platforms that should have huge growing pains. These are plain-jane x86 boxes with pretty 'normal' hardware (especially compared to previous generations of consoles).

The issue is that both companies released hardware that was too anemic to live up to expectations, and programmers are desperately trying to find shortcuts and cheats that work at lowering quality just enough that people will not complain, but sill offer a 900p/60fps/2xAA experience that will pass as OK for the next few years. The issue is that in a little over a year (my guess is summer 2016) we will have mobile tablets with better graphics capabilities than either console. If either company is serious about providing a console experience than we will see a half-cycle refresh with better GPUs that are much more easily capable of 1080p/60fps/4xAA/AF to run out the rest of the console generation.

Hopefully next gen they will not be so silly hoping that 'the cloud' will save them and we will see affordable 4K consoles come out in another 6-7 years.

I think u may be in for a surprise. the next batch of consoles may be using the cloud practically entirely. theres a good chance that gpu farms will do all the heavy lifting and u will just have a small set top box that decodes the signal. we are really close to being able to pull off low latency streaming over the net allready and microsoft has been buying up companies that deal in online game streaming.they are also implementing some forms of streaming to get people used to it right now.

 

[clonazepam]

Their hands have been tied since the PS1. That system literally had 1000s of worthless titles.

 

[Guest]

Perhaps games have gotten too big and complex for their own good. Scale the project down if they can't release stable content.

Back in the day, games were 1 hour or so long, and no one complained as long as it was good. You don't need 30 hour long, massive environment types games, as long as they are enjoyable and fun for the player.

 

[blackbeard34]

I had to comment on this after reading what others posted and call 'Bull chips"

"The issue is that in a little over a year (my guess is summer 2016) we will have mobile tablets with better graphics capabilities than either console." - ahh no..no..how do you figure clide?

I don't really think so being the internet infrastructure is not their yet and have you really played anything on tablet or phone. I haven't seen any games on phone really worth anything. I dont' see any phone or tablet pushing out 4k graphics anytime soon. Sure you can stream it, but really whats point of streaming a game with way phone plans are overpriced. Yeah I don't think so. I know games are not all 'graphics' but some decent graphics would be nice.

"The console manufacturers were planning on omitting the disc media in favor of all OTA digital and that would have provided the room for a bit more horsepower given the cost envelope. A dedicated dualcore Pentium with HT along with a dedicated gpu would have increased the performance a lot with less heat than we currently have." - ahh - second no...

There is no performance increase by not having a bluray drive in a system and don't remember any article or statement by Microsoft or Sony stating they would not have a bluray drive so they could put more money in gpu or cpu or ram speeds. That's really putting to much faith in companies out to make buck any way possible.

The real problem is the game producers pushed out games 'untested' or not tested enough and hipped them like they were introducing next world series. Example, 'destiny' was completely over hyped, 'Watchdogs' - way over hyped. I was intent on buying 'Watchdogs' but after reading all the bad reviews I passed. My friend bought it before it was released and had a $60.00 joke.

You want a quality game look at Grand theft auto 5 and what Rockstar studios is doing. Games don't have to be completely flash or have the greatest graphics but they do tend to lend more to the tone and setting for the game. Crappy graphics and you can't get into a game and get bored and feel like your playing Nintendo. But on the same end of spectrum; you don't want a game that is buggy or isn't even playable when you shelled out $60.00 for what you thought was polished product.

 

[Christopher1]

Could it be that game companies went through some growing pains developing for the newer consoles? Maybe they've learned their lessons.

I seriously doubt that. The newer platforms are closer to PC's than ever before and therefore should not be that hard to program for.

 

[Christopher1]

Could it be that game companies went through some growing pains developing for the newer consoles? Maybe they've learned their lessons.

Sony's box is essentially a dedicated linux box, and MS's box is partly a PC and will soon essentially be a PC... these are not 'new unknown' platforms that should have huge growing pains. These are plain-jane x86 boxes with pretty 'normal' hardware (especially compared to previous generations of consoles).

The issue is that both companies released hardware that was too anemic to live up to expectations, and programmers are desperately trying to find shortcuts and cheats that work at lowering quality just enough that people will not complain, but sill offer a 900p/60fps/2xAA experience that will pass as OK for the next few years. The issue is that in a little over a year (my guess is summer 2016) we will have mobile tablets with better graphics capabilities than either console. If either company is serious about providing a console experience than we will see a half-cycle refresh with better GPUs that are much more easily capable of 1080p/60fps/4xAA/AF to run out the rest of the console generation.

Hopefully next gen they will not be so silly hoping that 'the cloud' will save them and we will see affordable 4K consoles come out in another 6-7 years.

Too anemic to live up to expectations? Um... no. The problem is that too many people want more and more and more and more crammed onscreen at the same time. More people, more explosions, etc.
There comes a point where mid-level hardware (which is what most consoles are when they come out) cannot handle that.

 

[cats_Paw]

Id say the problem is making games like they are bic macs.
Look at how well low budget indie games sell on steam.
You dont need fancy graphics, you dont need big budgets, you dont even need many workers.
But you have to give them the time and freedom to "create", not to copy from something that made a lot of money.

 

[koss64]

Could it be that game companies went through some growing pains developing for the newer consoles? Maybe they've learned their lessons.

Sony's box is essentially a dedicated linux box, and MS's box is partly a PC and will soon essentially be a PC... these are not 'new unknown' platforms that should have huge growing pains. These are plain-jane x86 boxes with pretty 'normal' hardware (especially compared to previous generations of consoles).

The issue is that both companies released hardware that was too anemic to live up to expectations, and programmers are desperately trying to find shortcuts and cheats that work at lowering quality just enough that people will not complain, but sill offer a 900p/60fps/2xAA experience that will pass as OK for the next few years. The issue is that in a little over a year (my guess is summer 2016) we will have mobile tablets with better graphics capabilities than either console. If either company is serious about providing a console experience than we will see a half-cycle refresh with better GPUs that are much more easily capable of 1080p/60fps/4xAA/AF to run out the rest of the console generation.

Hopefully next gen they will not be so silly hoping that 'the cloud' will save them and we will see affordable 4K consoles come out in another 6-7 years.

Tablets that have greater GPU output than a console?Next Year!?I highly doubt that and even if that were remotely possible they would not be as cheap as a console.

The main issue with poor game quality is the over reliance on the internet as a support tool due to pressures from the bean counters that want games to release by a certain day,no matter what. When this happens programmers are forced to go into a crunch that has them taking several shortcuts at the expense of quality with the old adage"oh we will just send a patch out". Until initiatives like the Nintendo seal of approval where games aren't released until they are done and polished become the culture we will continue to have massive day one patches that still give you an unfinished and dreadful product.

 

[MyDocuments]

I sometimes wonder what has happened to the software industry as a whole, there is poor quality throughout; household-appliances, games, ad-infinitum.

Whatever happened to getting things right first time? or even thorough testing? Where did all of this "fix-it after it's been shipped" come from, surely not the Agile process of iterative development? That would mean a total misunderstanding of the Agile process.

I know, I know, the old argument of ever-more complex systems, blah, blah... but surely that is mitigated by breaking the problem down into byte-sized (pun intended!) chunks and testing at different levels of integration and complexity.

As far as I understand the industry, multithreading is now old-hat, as are the associated semaphores, mutexes, shared-memory, event & callbacks, object-oriented design, design-patterns and other such mechanisms... really what has gone wrong here?!

I guess there are just too many people with their own team of marketeers or even self-marketing who are just in it to make a "quick buck" and have no concern about the craftsman like appeal of a job well-done, a product well-made and the associative quality-feel or even standing behind your product.

PS I sincerely enjoyed the side-swipe comment at Nintendo tucked-in there... and obviously it's not your thing, but really, when I load up a Nintendo game on a Nintendo console I don't see the quality issues found upon, say, switching on my TV, which insists that I have only switched it on so that it can enter power-saving a few tens of seconds later (despite already having received a signal from any attached device).
Nope, I find the Nintendo software, hardware and overall content to be first rate, even when it is just a re-spun Windwaker-HD or WiiFit-U and I think Nintendo should indeed be commended for their efforts and attention to the details.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

The game companies suck nowadays they release broken games and think "Oh in 1 year we'll push an update. Oh, and don't forget to buy our $50 DLC".

I think a large problem is that the teams making games nowadays are way too large, no control. Small teams are better.

 

[Guest]

That does not get away from the problem that the x86 based processor in a ps4 is not actually fast enough to write games for the same as a current pc.Not even a then current pc. Towards the end of its life the ps3 crashed like hell playing games such as fallout 3 but the ps4 is already at that point. Who said what makes no difference.
Almost all pc games are designed to provide an enjoyable experience at the intel i3 level as this is the most common cpu in pc's since before it was designed but the ps4 is lower than that.Developers are going to have problems here.
The boon of having an x86 platform for easily porting games got thrown out the window for short term expediency.
Sony are saying their hands are tied but some of the blame now and more so in the future will sitting right at Sony's front door.

You get what you pay for. Can't really expect the same level of performance and quality from a $400 game console that you could from a $1000 custom made PC.

Sony could have put this off for a couple of years with a more efficient cpu but for the sake of a few $ they didnt

It's not always about the money. Sometimes companies don't make proper decisions.

 

[dmb77]

I think our own customer base screwed ourselves on this generation. The console manufacturers were planning on omitting the disc media in favor of all OTA digital and that would have provided the room for a bit more horsepower given the cost envelope. A dedicated dualcore Pentium with HT along with a dedicated gpu would have increased the performance a lot with less heat than we currently have. But NO. We HAD to have the ability to resell games. As the kiddies say. Cry more.

Yeah, they went with bin fail a.m.d. chips to save money.
They could have had ~ 75% more cpu with that electricity but as it is they've hamstrung the machine's life span by about 3 years.
PS4's will be mostly door stops in 2 years or so,possibly even to the tablets as CaedenV suggested.
My best guess would be that they knew and frankly didnt care.Take the money and run; there will be no PS5..

Yeh, I'm guessing unless somebody comes out with an ultra efficient , low cost processor and gpu, we won't see another console from Sony and probably not M$ either. It doesn't help that memory prices always seem to spike at the worst times. I can see a scenario like Sony running with their phones and peripherals to take the place of their handheld niche , sending Vita to the archives. It's becoming much easier to get high fidelity/pixel density on a 5 in oled screen than through a console. Get a few solid controller addons with good vendor support for android and console gaming may be headed down the chute. VR headsets will probably be the final nail. Im ok with that.

 

[Ninjawithagun]

BULLSHIT! Your hands are NOT tied. The answer is simple. If Sony really wants to improve game quality as well as playability, then they need to give the PS4 a hardware tech refresh. The existing GPU is horrible and doesn't even support Full HD 1080P right now. Slap in a R9 270 or 280 in that system and you will easily quadruple the graphics processing power. Quality and playability of future games solved!