Comments 892

Re: Poll: Are You Playing The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered?

MattBoothDev

@GrimWillows I don't think so, as looking at the chapter select shows some chapters are missing some collectables and so on... It's appears as though my most recent play through on Grounded mode overwrote previous saves.

I... Might have to play the game and finish it off again 😂

Re: Sony Refunding Players Confused by The Last of Us 2 Remastered PS5 Upgrade Path

MattBoothDev

@Wigclyne it's a little more than that.

I agree it's a cash in. But they're going to be publishing it on PC later in the year, if past releases are anything to go by. That's the real reason this is being done, most likely. They do the work on PS5 first and then, as part of their build pipeline, get a PC release as well.

As far as grabs go, though, the TLOU P1 "remaster" was much worse. It was £60 with no upgrade path from the PS4 remaster (which was worth the money) and didn't actually do much remastering. At least this is £10 if you own it already and £40 (physical)/£45 (digital).

Re: Talking Point: What Do You Want from Sony and PlayStation in 2024?

MattBoothDev

@PALversusNTSC it's pretty poor business sense not to make sure you have enough money to ride any storm before paying out to shareholders.

This is a fairly new phenomenon. In the past, some companies didn't pay dividends at all if they were struggling or didn't make as much as they thought. Amazon don't pay dividends and yet still get investment.

Yet we see, all the time, companies paying dividends out right up until calling in the administrators.

Re: Talking Point: What Do You Want from Sony and PlayStation in 2024?

MattBoothDev

@Mikey856 Not every company is a PLC with shareholders to appease.

And the issue is most PLCs exist only to generate revenue for shareholders. If a business says "we're not paying dividends this year because we're going to reinvest in the business, everyone loses their *****.

But a responsible business should be keeping money in the bank and not paying out dividends whilst taking on loans to operate. A lot of these businesses do that. They loan all their operating capital from a bank and repay at the end of the year, pay dividends and then repeat for the following year.

So, back to it, they don't take the revenue from these games to invest in more AAA it just gets bled out of the business into dividends.

Re: Rocksteady Lifts Suicide Squad Alpha NDA in Apparent Bid to Counter Damning Previews

MattBoothDev

Zero interest in this game and Rocksteady being indignant about it makes them look ridiculous.

It's a live service always online game that doesn't need to be. It's more of the same ***** hocking MTX and cosmetics. Everything i dislike about these kinds of games.

It's DOA for me. It's a shame to see a once great studio stoop to this level of *****.

Any game that's a live service, games as a service and any of that cosmic purchases rubbish deserves failure.

Re: Talking Point: What Do You Want from Sony and PlayStation in 2024?

MattBoothDev

@Mikey856 nah, they don't provide revenue for more AAA. They provide more divideds for shareholders. As soon as the players stop playing they shutter the game.

Where's Epic Games' new AAA game since Fortnite? Where's Bungie's new AAA game after Destiny 2? Both have been ongoing for over 5 years. Given development time scales, which are 5 years or less, usually, we'd be seeing new AAA games from these studios by now.

All the efforts of both studios have been in making sure people are still playing those games and FOMOing on purchases.

Re: Publishing Exec Claims 'There Are Too Many Games'

MattBoothDev

The problem is all the games that were financed during the pandemic are chasing that live service trash model because those games were popular when everyone was at home with nothing better to spend their money on.

Now things have gotten back to normal, we want real games with substance and with their hands out of our pockets.

Re: PS5's UK Sales End 2023 Down by 19%, But Still the Leading Console

MattBoothDev

@Kienda I came here to point this out as well. The PS5 was properly priced at £379.99 for the "old" disc version.

It's massively overpriced at £479.99 for the new "disc edition" with the detachable disc drive and no stand.

I understand they were clearing the old stock to make way for the new slim model, but at £479.99 it's just too much. They set a good, competitive, price.

So, no surprise it sold massively less at the higher price.

Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? - Issue 510

MattBoothDev

I finished Cyberpunk 2077 this week, 100% on both the main game and expansion. There's a slight sense of loss at the moment 😅

I tried playing Company of Heroes 3 Console Edition but I found the controls really frustrating. I may try it with a mouse and keyboard. However, my other problem with the game is the over world map thing they've got going on and the serious lack of good storytelling, unlike the previous games.

So, I've been trying Anno 1800 console edition, which is my first foray into the Anno series at all, but I've actually been really enjoying it.

Re: Despite Circling Wolves, CD Projekt Red Not Interested in Being Acquired

MattBoothDev

Good. Honestly? Bloody good.

I'm a PlayStation gamer (used to be a PC player up until this console generation. GPU prices are still stupidly overpriced). I don't want to have to buy both consoles to play previously third party games.

My opinion of Microsoft has soured massively since the Activision acquisition and the release of Starfield. As much as Sony acquiring CDPR would be fine for me, it would mean a significant portion of the gaming market would be locked out, just like we were with Starfield and, honestly, that's just bull faeces. For everyone involved.

Re: The Last of Us 2 Remastered's No Return Mode 'Not Recommended for Weak Hearts', Warns Dev

MattBoothDev

@Icey664 As a complete mug who bought it for £60 on release, you are right to wait. It's not worthy of a full price release. The graphics were improved and the 3D audio was added and that's basically it. For a "Remake" they didn't remake anything. I was looking forward to the newer combat style from TLOU2. Naughty Dog said they didn't die that because the level designs didn't lend themselves to the style... Which begs the question why call it a remake if you're not going to do things like that?

It's good and worth the effort to play but you do right waiting for a cheaper price.

Re: The New Prince of Persia Will Run At a Blistering 120fps in 4K on PS5

MattBoothDev

@KoopaTheGamer they aren't rendering at 4k, though, just outputting. The Series S is hard limited to 1440p internal resolution. It will upscale the rendered image to 4k if you are using a 4k output device. With video content, there's no rendering, just outputting at 4k. The images are already 4k.

There are no native 4k rendered games on the Series S.

Edit:

Here's what the Xbox support page says, under the drop-down entitled "What's the difference between Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S?". I've added the relevant part in bold.

>Both consoles deliver next-generation capabilities powered by the Xbox Velocity Architecture, such as faster loading, the ability to seamlessly switch between multiple games with Quick Resume, richer and more dynamic worlds, and frame rates up to 120 FPS.
The primary difference between the two consoles is that the Xbox Series X displays games at native 4K, comes equipped with a UHD Blu-ray Disc player and 1 TB of custom SSD storage. Xbox Series S is designed for disc-free gaming at 1440p (with the ability to upmarket to 4K), with a customised SSD. And, of course, they're priced differently. Both consoles have the option to expand available customised storage via the Storage Expansion Card.>

https://support.xbox.com/en-GB/help/hardware-network/console/xbox-series-x-faq

Re: The New Prince of Persia Will Run At a Blistering 120fps in 4K on PS5

MattBoothDev

@KoopaTheGamer yep, exactly. It can only render at 1440p, max but can upscale the image to 4k if that's your output.

And yeah, the Series S has some really poor RAM choices. Both the Xboxes have a weird configuration, but the Series S is severely limited in bandwidth with the small bus size on the largest portion.

I've pulled this from Wikipedia:

Series X: 10 GB/320-bit & 6 GB/192-bit (16 GB total)
Series S: 8 GB/128-bit & 2 GB/32-bit (10 GB total)

It may be GDDR6 and around 230GB/s but it's still not enough. The smallest portion of the RAM setup is even worse, 2GB at 56GB/s, which is basically DDR3 1600MHz speeds.

Re: The Last of Us 2 Remastered's No Return Mode 'Not Recommended for Weak Hearts', Warns Dev

MattBoothDev

@sanderson72 I don't really agree. You have to look at this differently.

I suspect this has a lot to do with PC. Naughty Dog released Uncharted 4 on PC a few years back. They, first, give the UC4 and UC:LL games a lick of paint on PS5 and ported their engine from PS4 to PS5 and sold it to customers, basically getting paid to port their engine. Then, later that year, released on PC, with great success.

So, next comes the TLOU1 remake/remaster. This time porting an older game from PS4, released before Uncharted 4, to the new engine and, again, later, PC.

So now there's TLOU1 on PS5 and PC, why not TLOU2? This was the latest and most up to date engine version on the PS4, the release pipeline now has 2 successful PC ports under its cap.

The main thing they gain here is another PC release and they then have both TLOU games on the latest console.

Finally, if there's any notion that Naughty Dog have been wasting time with remasters, think about the fact that it's very, very likely that newer, junior, team members have been working on this port. They don't need to develop a full game from scratch, they have senior team members who've worked on the original games to refer to for help. These junior team members get experience with the engine and release pipeline, plus credits in the game under their belt.

Plus, these things sell and make money. It's makes perfect business sense and doesn't look like Naughty Dog are suffering.

I think the problem may be the problem you seem to have with Neil Druckmann colouring your opinions of the company.

Re: Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty Smashed 5 Million Sales in 2023

MattBoothDev

Phantom Liberty was absolutely amazing. I'm glad I held off and didn't suffer the shoddy release and I'm really glad CPR didn't give up and throw in the towel, stuck with it and refined their game.

Cyberpunk has very quickly become one of my favourite series. I've got the platinum trophy, which is something I rarely feel driven enough to do.

Re: Sony Hit with French Fine for Allegedly Manipulating PS4 Controller Market

MattBoothDev

Even way back in the PS1 era third party controllers sucked. I've never bought any since then and always had official controllers.

Also, how are some of your going through so many controllers? I've still got my original Dual Shock 4 controllers from 2014 and they work great. Same for my Dual Sense controllers. Got two when I got my PS5 and haven't experienced any drift or problems.