Exclusive Leak: Returnal PC footage - options / customization etc. Video

[Bryank75]

Sad.

I know buddy, I know.

 

[Deleted member 13]

I know buddy, I know.

 

[ethomaz]

This is due to Epic wanting to pay for exclusivity from their website. Remember the lawsuit of Valve over Epic?

But no game released only on EGS.
It is either Steam only or Steam + EGS.
It is just weird.

 

[Yurinka]

Let's be more clear.

My claim : Sony decided about 2-3yrs ago to port their games to PC.

According to Shawn Layden that decision was taken before that. It was taken during his era (ended in 2019), not in the Jimbo era.

A meeting was called and all the Sony developers were asked to start porting their engines over to make development for both PS and PC. These companies picked the PS4 classics and began the porting process. Once the games were finished, they picked an appropriate timeline to release these ports to the PC. So far, we've seen all the custom graphics engines take time to port (i.e. engines outside of UE, etc..). I claim that even the games with UE support still had to incorporate their tools to use the PC. I agree with you that those particular games were much easier to port. In conclusion, I do not believe for a second that Sony companies that finished their porting process is putting the game on the shelf to wait for 2yrs or more (which most of the hardcore Sony fans believe).

Your claim : You believe Sony is taking these games, porting them, and then putting them on the shelf to wait for sales to drop on the game for demand and then when a release date has been established will then release those ports on the PC. In other words, if they had Returnal already finished last year, they are waiting on Sony to announce a release date by which they can push the game out being selective to make sure that the release date is well over a year or more.

Yes, time ago they took this decision of making some PC ports of their games, so people working on internal game engies had to prepare these engines to ease future potential ports of games already released, being developed or to be made in the future using their engines by someone else. External teams like Nixxes, Iron Galaxy etc would be basically who would handle these complex ports, to keep their main PS Studios devs focused on making console only games.

Big companies like Sony have a 5 years roadmap with their planned releases. In this case, PC ports. Sony publicly shown a graph listing the amount of PC ports projects scheduled for this FY and for the FY that ends in 2026.

Internally there are always delays or projects canned, or replaced by other ones due to opportunities that appear. And these 5 years roadmap get updated periodically, usually every quarter or half a year.

Games made in multiplatform engines required way less effort to have a PC port ready, because since day one their games run on a PC and the multiplatform engines already have done most stuff done. And some PC specific stuff like widescreen/multiscreen support is sometimes even made by the coders to enjoy it themselves even if not going to be included in the (console only) game, and other PC specific stuff (like keyboard and mouse support) is sometimes implemented for internal testing while developing the game, even if the game is supposed to be a console only game while developing it.

So some of these games using multiplatform engines already have almost ready a PC port and require 'little' work to be turned into a commercial product. But they don't release the PC port, or don't release it at launch because the console 1st party consider it's better for their strategy to keep it only on consoles for X time or forever. This is the case of basically any 1st, 2nd and 3rd party exclusive game made using multiplatform engines.

In the case of Nintendo, their 1st and 2nd party exclusives keep locked to their platforms forever, on MS day one and in case of Sony most are kept exclusive forever on their consoles and a few get ported to pc years after their original release. In nall 3, some 3rd party exclusives are allowed to be released on PC at launch or after some time. Some other ones are allowed to be released on rival consoles after some time.

If a game is put on the shelf until that magical 2yr gap is over, why are the games still needed bug fixes and optimization? I would imagine that if the game was shelved that once released, it would be essentially bug-free and not need any patches - especially day 1 patches.

The releases we saw and what Hermen said don't point to a strict '2 years gap': he said that they were going to try with different distances between the original PS releases and the PC port. And we saw cases that go from 2 years (a distance that after the Days Gone case he said seems to be ok for them) to 10 years.

These games already running on PC but put in the fridge/shelf aren't 100% ready to be released: they were games made for console but mostly developed on a PC, and party tested on PC. But once it's decided that a port will be released and they get a dedicated budget and milestones for the port, then the start to optimize it for PC, to add any PC specific stuff they need to do, fix bugs or implement whatever is needed to support any new stuff that appeared since then, implement some extra stuff to make it more scalable, implement some stuff that maybe is needed to make the game compatible with certain tech that wasn't considered/used in the console version etc.

Lastly, I'm asking for receipts for your claim - not intuition. Since you are in the industry, I'm sure you can state "well company x is doing this from my contacts.."

You don't need to be an insider to know what engine they use for each game, you can see it in their wikipedia page or when booting a game or looking at its game credits. And you don't need to be an insider that games (specially in the case of the ones using multiplatform engines, including the exclusive ones) are developed or tested in a PC before (and even after) using a devkit or testkit. It's public knowledge, you can also see it on their making of videos, conferences, etc.

And you also don't need to be an insider that timed exclusivity deals exist, or that Kojima mentioned a PC version of Death Stranding around when they announced their deal with Sony. Or that Shawn Layden said Sony took the decision of making PC ports while he was in charge. It's also public knowledge, tehy said it publicly.

But yes, I have contacts in many companies and these people also have many contacts in these and other companies.

 

[Yurinka]

Returnal's graphics features has shown that it's more than just resolution (which is actually a big thing), higher performance, and better texture filtering or LOD.

Returnal is using RT reflections, lighting and shadows. Features that are not present on the PS5. Why would Sony's goal be to entice PC players to buy a PS5 when the ported versions for the PC have much better features than the PS5?

Pretty frequently there are things that are planned to be included but end canned because they take too much horsepower and with the time/budget given they can't optimize it enough to have it on a shippable state/performance.

So maybe they worked on it but found that didn't have enough time or horsepower to implement it on PS5 with the game running at the framerate and resolution they wanted. So canned it for the PS5 version. But they had it done for the development PCs they had, so kept it there just in case they ended reusing it on a potential future PC port, PS5 Pro/PS6 version etc.

To add stuff like resolution selection, texture filtering etc in PC and activating several effects and stuff like different sync options are a handful lines of code. The performance depends on the hardware you are running on it.

 

[John Elden Ring]

To be fair, im expecting Returnal PC and PSVR2 dates to be dropped on a blogpost by this point

 

[Deleted member 13]

But no game released only on EGS.
It is either Steam only or Steam + EGS.
It is just weird.

Nah, Kenya and that karate game was EGS only.

 

[ethomaz]

Nah, Kenya and that karate game was EGS only.

Both games are not published by Sony on Epic Store.
The developer self published it.

I’m talking about Sony games.

The Apple-Epic case it was showed they offered $200 million to have Sony first-party games exclusive in their store but the releases shows Sony declined it and choose Steam instead.

Steam received all Sony published games on PC until now.

 

[Deleted member 13]

According to Shawn Layden that decision was taken before that. It was taken during his era (ended in 2019), not in the Jimbo era.

Yea pre-2019 was when I found out.

So some of these games using multiplatform engines already have almost ready a PC port and require 'little' work to be turned into a commercial product.

Yup. That is a fact.

But they don't release the PC port, or don't release it at launch because the console 1st party consider it's better for their strategy to keep it only on consoles for X time or forever. This is the case of basically any 1st, 2nd and 3rd party exclusive game made using multiplatform engines.

Ok.. So you are saying what I also know. The PC is their primary development machine so porting it fully over takes little work.

In that example, I can see your point but everyone does this. Before there was no way the PC was going to get a port of a PS 1st party game. Now it's inevitable.

But yes, I have contacts in many companies and these people also have many contacts in these and other companies.

What I was looking for was "TLOU 1 Remake is already done on the PC and they are waiting until Feb 2023 to release it"

Since you are saying that ALL games have some form of PC code since it's the development machine, then this will always be the case. But it's not just sitting there a finished project is my point.

 

[Deleted member 13]

Both games are not published by Sony on Epic Store.
The developer self published it.

I’m talking about Sony games.

The Apple-Epic case it was showed they offered $200 million to have Sony first-party games exclusive in their store but the releases shows Sony declined it and choose Steam instead.

Steam received all Sony published games on PC until now.

Yea, I'm not sure why that's the case with Epic.

 

[Yurinka]

Ok.. So you are saying what I also know. The PC is their primary development machine so porting it fully over takes little work.

Yes. I mean, devs mostly make the game and test it on a PC. So in many cases even if it's a game to be released only on PC, sometimes they implement PC specific stuff to test them themselves. Even to the point that they implement some AMD specific stuff for the game and the game itself doesn't need the Nvidia equivalent thing, but they do it anyways because that coder or the artist next to him has an Nvidia on their PC and want to test what they are working on.

In that example, I can see your point but everyone does this. Before there was no way the PC was going to get a port of a PS 1st party game. Now it's inevitable.

Yes, isn't a Sony specific thing, it's something everyone does. Consoles now have a very PC-like hardware, game engines are mostly multiplatform and the efforts to run a console game on PC are minimal. Back in the PS1 days the PC and console hardware and engines were very different and the work in the devkit took way bigger part comparing to now that almost everything is made only using a random PC.

What I was looking for was "TLOU 1 Remake is already done on the PC and they are waiting until Feb 2023 to release it"

Since you are saying that ALL games have some form of PC code since it's the development machine, then this will always be the case. But it's not just sitting there a finished project is my point.

I didn't say it was the case for all games and I didn't say it was the case of the completed port.

I mentioned that the console exclusive games made using multiplatform engines have a PC running version that with 'little' work (compared to porting a game that uses a console only engine) could be turned into a commercial port.

And that part of that little work is in many cases already implemented even if they never plan to release it on PC, just for internal testing purposes. Example: during development games still aren't optimized so their performance is way worse, so let devs test it on their pc and implement a resolution selector for them that won't be in the final console version because the level designer won't test his level at 4K and 10fps on his potato pc specially when threee quarters of the game still aren't implemented: he's fine playing it at 720p but at 60fps when he's testing mechanics and level design even if textures, final models, animations or textures aren't there. Or the artists -or themselves, the coders- want to test how it looks something they just did in the game without having to wait for a build made using the devkit. And turns out that many of them have Nvidia instead of AMD.

And even if the game is only designed for console but the coder prefers to play using keyboard and PC or simply the studio decides to don't need to buy a gamepad for every dev, so to test what they do on their PCs without requiring pads they quickly implement keyboard and mouse controls as placeholders even if aren't polished because will be more than enough to test their stuff during a big chunk of the development.

 

[64bitmodels]

The only thing these releases achieve is the devaluing of the PS hardware. Most copies will be pirated and they'll make like 30M in sales if that, while paying a hefty sum to Steam.

Maaan, what??? Playstation is still beloved by everyone who doesn't give a toss about pc gaming (spoiler warning, every single casual on planet earth) and is still one of the most popular gaming brands. This ain't devaluing shit.
We're not severe pirates, either. I pay for nearly all of my games. Piracy is inconvenient and not as enticing as having the game on my Steam or Xbox account.