Greed is a sickness

Hey there, It's my first post in the forum but i just can't hold it in anymore. I have 2 points i want some guys who're into the industries opinions on. Remember, this is only my opinion.

1) All these companies had the option to make brand new titles for the Xbox1 and Ps4. Ghosts, Fifa14, NBA, MGS5, Assassins Creed 4 yeah? They could have made these games into masterpieces of beauty, enhances effects, colours, ultra high res custom models, amazing new physics e tc.. basically pushing the new systems hardware, and blowing us away FORCING us to be in awe of how powerful the new systems are, and showing us WHY we need one yeah?

But what did they do? Nothing like that. They got Greedy... Greed is a sickness. They thought "oooooh, if we just make the games on the PS3 and xbox, and then just smooth out the meshes after and increase the texture resolution a bit we can sell them then as "next gen" games AND current gen games"... It's true. They designed those games on the current platforms, and just spent a bit of time after adding better textures and mesh smoothing. That is pure filth. Nothing in any of those games takes advantage of ANY of the new features of the new machines, so why are we paying for them as next gen games?? im disgusted. We should be throwing this rubbish back in their faces, they should be penalized.

Want proof? Play Nba on ps3 and 4 together... the difference literally is some better textures and lighting.

Ghosts... some parts of ghost, especially outside of cutsceenes literally just look like Black Ops 2 on the PS3.. it's pathetic.

Fifa? lol. I saw it on a PS4 and im not kidding, i just thought the PS3 version was being played on a nice TV because it looked sharper. Doesn't that just show how greedy and how little respect they have for us?

2) The ram on the machines is 3x faster, and there's 16x more of it... SIXTEEN times more. The CPU's are approx 10x faster/better/more full of features/more powerful. so if we say "the new console is approx 10x more powerful than the last gen", why are the game we're seeing only approx 15-20% better looking? my opinion is, it's not the hardware (judging by the last of us and beyond 2 souls) it's the developers. They're just not good enough to take advantage of hardware that powerful. i mean, if they can make beyond 2 souls after 7 years of trying on a cpu like that with 512mb ram. And arer then handed a 10x more powerful cpu and SIXTEEN x more ram and still can only make the games look roughly the same as beyond 2 souls but with some better textures here and there... doesn't it tell us something. People are the limit, not the machines.

3) louis ck for president

Most of us are aware of this behavior OP. We can see the trash money-grabs as quickly as you can.

People should've learned a valuable lesson from last gen. Don't be an early adopter. Of anything. Not even the consoles.

Third party developers aren't lazy or greedy, they're supplying options for those who may want them. Getting you to buy the machine is the job of the platform holders. Your Killzones and your Forzas and the like. Those are the games that will take advantage of the hardware first because they are exclusive.

So ask yourself this question. And be honest here. If you were making a product, and fronting millions of your dollars to fund it, would you spend thousands, possibly millions of extra dollars on upping graphical fidelity for an untested platform that may or may not gain quick acceptance? If you answered yes, you are a liar. Or at the very least you are naive. When these games were being made, when people who budget money and time to make these games were deciding where to put their operating funds, would you put it towards the system that has sold 100 million units, or the one that may or may not sell 1 million if they can keep them produced and if they don't blow up and explode. That is business suicide.

It's all nice and idealistic to call "GREED" any time a game developer does... basically anything these days. It's very fashionable anyway. But it's not greed to want to remain profitable. It's good business sense. It's no more greedy than you (or your dad) cashing his paycheck at the end of the week.

Now if you want to call out Greed, call out things like Microtransactions that impede gameplay rather than enhance it. Call out paying $60 for a game that is basically a shell to sell you more bits and pieces. Call out EA selling Sim City for a premium price and not ensuring that it had the servers to meet the demands of it's own pre-orders and refusing refunds for selling a broken product. Those are examples of greed. But making a multiplatform game stick to the middle of the road so it can be ported to as many platforms as possible is just how it's done. It's not greedy or evil, just the way multiplatform titles are made.

Greed is when you put the goal of money above the outcome. Greed would be if they sacked all the developers and hired third world orphans to punch in the code regardless of how it might impact the product or the industry or the economy. But what you have itemized is just how the publisher model works and remains profitable and self sustaining.

I am guilty of greed. Usually on MMOs like Aika Online or Granado Espada where there's always tons of loot. I WANT THEM ALL!!!

Oh look at you being wrong

This is exactly right! The games that are cross platform and came out on the last generation such as Assassins or Ghosts will obviously not be over the top just for the plain fact of time and money. You also have to realize that the games that are out at launch are just minuscule for what is to come for this new generation, The Graphics and game play will only get better. Have faith in your game developers. There aren't a lot of game studios out there that are what i would call "greedy". Remember they are all gamers too and want to put out the best game possible.

I didn't buy it ! What more do you want from me !!! *bursts into tears*

Greed is what Hammerpoint Interactive did with their "War Z" ( Although now named "Infestation : Survivor Stories" )

Multiplatform is just good business sense provided they port them correctly.

Vote with your wallet dude, don't buy the games you don't want for it. I bought BF4 and AC IV only for PS4. I am set with those games and i also got Resogun and Contrast. I also have the option for NBA 2k14 upgrade. Buy the games you want and don't support the business practices of the others. It's as simple as that

Honestly one of the most intelligent and well written responses I have ever read. If more people understood the concept of business and how it works people would be able to see that everything either grows or diminishes until it is no longer relevant. If we as gamers want video games to remain relevant and want the industry to continue growing we need to try and understand what business is and how it is done. If anyone who sat around on the internet bitching about this or that and what's wrong with those got to follow a game developer around for a week that worked for Ubisoft or Activision they would suddenly see just how stressful there jobs are and how hard they actually have to work to make sure they are meeting everyone's expectations and standards. For the ignorant, it's never enough.

Greed is good

I too was rather disappointed. I remember seeing months ago one of the first gameplay of PS 4, the game was called Deep Down. I was blown away by the realism of not only the cutscenes but also what looked like gameplay. I was sold! on the 3 minutes or so trailer of it. Then they released PS 4 and watching some of the gameplay I honestly couldn't tell if it was PS3 or PS4. After 8 years they could have at least taken a leap further. It feels like PS3/Xbox was Arkham City and PS4/Xbox One is Arkham Origins.

To the guy saying it's all business, I understand that too and you're right. But do you remember when PS3/Xbox came out? It was a huge leap from PS2 and Xbox was a new console, even more experimental, there wasn't even a market for them, and most people were already loyal to Sony. I remember playing the first game I got, Gears of Wars and I was amazed at how much more superior it was to the previous console games. Even Just Cause, not a huge title, made an impression on me. And it just kept getting better. But this time they've set the bar so low, I know it's gonna get real good in a couple of years but it seems like they're still milking it.

The PS3 and Xbox 360 went from Standard Definition to High Definition outputs. Expecting to see another leap like that is unrealistic.

This new generation is going to have greater fidelity, but it's not going to be graphical fidelity so much as it will be an increase in the richness of the worlds they can create. There's simply not much more developers can do with graphics without reaching a point of diminishing returns.

What should be the focus though, is making the play space deeper and more interactive. For an example, I'll point to Dead Rising 3. At a glance, the new game doesn't look that much different from Dead Rising 2. But upon playing it, the differences stand out. This is a much richer world. More pieces of the world can be damaged or moved or blown apart. And the zombie hordes are no longer just copy/pastes of the same zombie types over and over. Go look at a screen capture from DR1. You'll see hundreds of zombies, but only about 20 different models repeated over and over. Now go look at a screen capture of Dead Rising 3 and you will never see the same zombie repeated. By procedurally generating the zombies using the new hardware they've made a world that can have thousands of on screen enemies all eager to nibble on your delicious brain at any given moment. And if you throw a bomb at them, it won't just blast the zombies and the pane of glass, you can drive through glass building and bust through fences. There are dozens more weapons and items at any given time and there are more ways to attack than ever before. Fidelity in gameplay, not just in graphics.

Now obviously not each game is going to make use of this. Assassin's Creed isn't going to write a whole special new ocean water interaction code for the 2-4 million people who may want their game on the new platforms or may not. But a year from now, two years from now, we can see this kind of stuff trickle down from first and second party developers to middle ware makers and eventually the third parties will make use of these techniques and options.

It's fine to expect a quality product for your money. But it's also important to keep your expectations in check and keep them realistic. There was no way the X1 and PS4 were going to be as big of a graphical leap as they were the last time when we went from SD to HD. It's not physically possible because that was coming out at a time of a major status change on the part of television manufacturers as well as better optical media all happening at once. This time, it'll be a bit better looking, but once we get to see the true benefits like more destructible environments or greater AI because of the high RAM count. But those things will require play time to experience rather than a screenshot to see.

To say that this is some sort of new thing is naive. New consoles haven't had any killer apps since Halo and Mario 64 at launch. Saying companies are greedy at launch is also naive. They have a limited amount of new consoles, they have over 100 million on 360 and PS3 alone. Making games for next gen that has around 4 million sold atm isn't greedy, it's business. Wii U also has only 4 million ish consoles. inFamous, Titanfall, The Order, etc are all coming, take it easy and give them time

Actually both GoW and Just Cause was played on my SD TV that's been in my house since 1997. I don't think I've even heard of high definition when the Xbox came out. Secondly, there's a Deep Down gameplay (25 minute one on youtube) that shows they can make it better. I'm not expecting it to be incredible graphics because even I understand that if they pushed the new consoles to the limit now, they won't be able to stretch it out for another 8 years because it will get old eventually just like everything does. But comparing Dark Souls/Dragon's Dogma to Deep Down you can clearly see a significant difference, I mean even the walls look good. And it's not all about graphics anyways like you said which I agree. Looking at Deep Down you can see that the character's movement is more human compared to more mechanical looking attacks from Dark Souls. Just standing still and the character breathing looks better than it used to.

I wouldn't expect Assassin's Creed to do that even if they had the resources, aside from the story, cultures, and detail to the information (kudos to the research team on that), it's one of the most dragged out rubbish gameplay that should have just ended with the second game. It's weird because I like Ubisoft games, I would expect something like this from the likes of EA rather than Ubisoft.

In my country, the price of the new consoles is close to a fresh graduate's month's pay and each game cost 10% of it. That combined with whatever subscription fee + the internet cost needed to sustain online play (most people use 1mb to 5mb broadband) makes it more or less unaffordable unless you're doing really well. So if I'm going to spend that much of cash on it, it's gonna have to be more than just more dots on the roads, etc. We'll have to wait and see how it has evolves in terms of interaction and detail of gameplay, but by what you've said about Dead Rising 3 it's a good start.

Not sure what you meant by saying this is new is naive. I never said they were greedy and I did agree to the business aspect.

so basically everyone thinks that what they've done is ok. you're saying "It's not about greed or money for the developer" then you contradict yourself saying they made the games for the xbox and ps3 because there's 8 million consoles vs 4 million consoles. pure mathematics. greed.

Wait...what? Now I'm confused. >_<

What do you think they do with the money they make? Greedy people keep it for themselves. And their business doesn't grow. You don't get to be a multibillion dollar company by being greedy. When the vast majority of the profits go back into the business -- to the employees to make more games, to the shareholders to reward their investment and encourage more investment -- that's kind of the opposite of greed.

Also, you contradicted yourself originally by saying that if publishers had blown us away with amazing graphics, we would be forced to see why we need to buy these new consoles. Well, doesn't that just mean more money for them? Wouldn't that be just as greedy, by your definition?

It usually takes a year or two before the machines begin to hit their stride and start showing us true reasons to go out and buy them. The people who buy at launch (like myself) are usually just impatient and are reckless with their money.