Sony Ponders Potential PS To PC Ports (arstechnica.com) 41
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Horizon: Zero Dawn probably won't be the last former PlayStation exclusive to make the jump to PC. In its 2020 corporate report published late last week, Sony says that it "will explore expanding our 1st party titles to the PC platform, in order to promote further growth in our profitability." The "explore" wording there is a little bit couched, suggesting that Sony still hasn't completely made up its mind on the specifics of further PC game publishing. And the report doesn't go into detail on which games, if any, Sony considers ripe for porting. And even if Sony does continue publishing on PC, we shouldn't necessarily expect major PlayStation titles to hit Steam on the same day as the coming PS5. In Horizon's case, Sony waited a full 1,256 days between the game's February, 2017 launch on PS4 and its PC launch earlier this month.
All that said, explicitly mentioning the potential for PC ports in its annual report is the latest sign that Sony continues to slowly loosen its tight, walled-garden approach to game hardware and software. [...] It all speaks to a company that's more aware that "competition from online PC games and players from other industries is expected to continue to intensify," as it says in its annual report. Even as Sony pushes hard for the exclusive "speed, haptics, and sound" improvements of the upcoming PlayStation 5 this year, it is hedging its bets somewhat with support for non-Sony hardware as well.
All that said, explicitly mentioning the potential for PC ports in its annual report is the latest sign that Sony continues to slowly loosen its tight, walled-garden approach to game hardware and software. [...] It all speaks to a company that's more aware that "competition from online PC games and players from other industries is expected to continue to intensify," as it says in its annual report. Even as Sony pushes hard for the exclusive "speed, haptics, and sound" improvements of the upcoming PlayStation 5 this year, it is hedging its bets somewhat with support for non-Sony hardware as well.
Even Sony recognizes... (Score:1)
...the power of the Glorious PC Gaming Master Race.
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PC and Playstation are sufficiently different markets I think. People buy a Playstation because you pay the asking price and every game runs as good as it's ever going to get, the same as every other player so you know you aren't being 0wned by someone with a 240Hz monitor and better GPU. It also just works, no researching what hardware to buy or dealing with Windows issues.
PCs are great for enthusiasts who enjoy that stuff or who want more. I don't imagine there are many people who pick between a PS5 OR a
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On the multiplayer side of things, you're probably right - a level playing field provides the control needed to ensure that the person you're playing against is winning because they're better, not because they spent $1,000 more than you on system specs.
However...
Single player games are a bit different; Horizon: Zero Dawn seems to be the go-to example being pointed to in the thread. Sony has been a bit better in the PS4 generation between having a balance of multiplayer games and single player experiences, s
Must be feeling the heat from XBox (Score:1)
With XBox you can buy a game once and play it on console or PC. Play it on the console for convenience or crank up the graphics on your gaming PC.
It seems obvious this is the way things should be, but Sony's belated hint a PC gaming shows just how far the competition is from Microsoft's technical capabilities.
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But this will only work for games bought via XBox store, not for game on Steam, right? Is there a way to "migrate" Steam games to XBox, like GOG is doing every now and then?
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Sony are likely pushing further. How about the very cheap, very high performance Sony play station video and sound card. You pay for the basic access video and sound but to access the high performance part you get for free, you need the right licensed software.
Now add in a boot to Linux and you have a full powered computer that can access a game console right from the Linux boot. Launch the game and it runs the play station OS in a virtual machine and access the high performance video and sound.
So probably
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You completely miss the point.
The PS5 and whatever the new XBox is are just mid-line AMD APUs in a fancy box with a locked down OS.
There is no Sony specific hardware shit in there. The PS3/XBox360 was the end of the line for that kind of stuff.
Porting is a minimal effort cash grab.
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The PS5 has a custom architecture that makes access to data on the SSD very low latency. Seemingly lower than current NVMe SSDs on PC, in fact.
Marketting propaganda / the price is interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
The PS5 has a custom architecture that makes access to data on the SSD very low latency. Seemingly lower than current NVMe SSDs on PC, in fact.
It's just an NVMe SSD. That's it. Only a few details are worth mentionning:
- it has an extremely wide access bus: it uses 12 channels in parallel (most of the current of-the-shelve SSDs tend to use 2 or 4) this makes its performance close to graphic cards than to older SSDs. (Though in the hi-end market 16-channels aren't unheard of, it's probably one of the first mass-produced consumer-oriented part with such spec. As production cost go low and production scale goes up, expect such parts to become more available outside of datacenters).
- it has a modern controller. the current trend in the market is to chage after IOPS. It probably beats the crap of what was available last year in that market range, and will get the shit beaten out of it by next year's successor in the same market. It's an actively researched and developped field, but given the (relative) cost of the controller compared to the rest of the SSD, it's a type of improvement that percollates extremely fast to general consumer parts (usually Intel is the spear-head in that domain, shortly followed by others like Samsung. It wouldn' surprise me if Intel parts with similar IOPS-per-channel hit the market by the time the PS5 hit the market).
- it's connected straight to the main processor's PCIe, without a multiplexer in the middle to reduce latency (which is a bog standard way to do stuff and probably the case on most high range gamer motherboard).
- the only relatively custom things is that the SoC has extra cores to perform decompression in hardware. It's a neat trick, but it's hardly new (specially the Zlib part: LZ-based decompression boards have been available in consumer PCs since the 80s from e.g.: Stac. And even backthen, it turned out that CPU quickly surpassed dedicated hardware in decompression speeds. Same nowadays: Zstd probably has already a decend enough performance on generic CPU and doesn't require hardware acceleration), and and basiclly allows them to claim the *decompressed stream* as bandwidth. The number the marketing department are throwing around would be the same as claiming that Ultra HD Bluray disks allow 15Gbps bandwidth thanks to the 4k H265 compression video (nope, data is still pulled out in the hundreds of Mbps range, what you're quoting is the pixel bandwidth). As a side note, one could the exact same number hacking by quoting the pixel rate when loading texture with hardware supported decompression in the graphic card.
So in short, there's nothing revolutionnary in the PS5.
What *IS INTERESTING*, though is the market segment:
By leveraging the economics of scale, Sony is successfully mass-marketing and bringing to the average customer's home a type of architecture that until then was mostly seen in data centers and HPC. And given that Sony usually sells their console at a loss in the beginning, it's made available at a damn fucking cheap price.
i.e.: it's not the tech that is interesting, it's the fact that you throw a couple of hundreds bucks and have it in the middle of your living room which is revolutionnary.
Which is a very common theme in the latest cycles of consoles: they are big pusher for mass-producing cheaply the latest (at the time of the consoles conception) tech, mostly on the APU/GPU front (PS4 and Xbox one where bit pusher for the AMD APUs).
The devs that wrote the game you are playing probably did it on behemoths machine costing a couple of thousands and sporting the latest and best hardware availabble then, partially built out of parts normally used in datacenters.
And you are playing them on a small device that you paid a couple of hundred bucks sitting under your TV. And any one can get the exact same completely standard device for that price.
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Maybe high-performance NVMe SSDs will be a standard requeriment for games in PCs in a short time. It'll interesting to see what happens anyway.
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OMG, a /. post by someone who actually
knows what they are talking about.
The selling point is elsewhere (Score:2)
The PS5 and whatever the new XBox is are just mid-line AMD APUs in a fancy box with a locked down OS.
As have been the PS4 and the previous x86-based XBox (As you mention), and as has also been the first XBox.
They were basically derivative of hardware that existed on the PC (*).
Sometimes with little bits of customisation thrown in (the peculiar northbridge used in XBox was normally paired with AMDs, not the Pentium3 found in there.) (The PS4 looks roughly like a contemporary midrange PC, but actually has a different hardware auto-discovery approach which required some effort from the first Linux-on-PS4 and
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The PS5 and whatever the new XBox is are just mid-line AMD APUs in a fancy box with a locked down OS.
Both are custom AMD APUs. As of today they are also unreleased products. While the CPU is on the Zen 2 architecture which are currently being sold, the RDNA 2 GPU side has not been released yet. The RDNA 2 graphics architecture is rumored to be released for PC in October.
There is no Sony specific hardware shit in there. The PS3/XBox360 was the end of the line for that kind of stuff.
Yes, there is. Sony has custom hardware. While they use parts of AMD architecture, they are unique to Sony. You cannot buy this APU today.
Flight Simulator + Multiplaftorm Superiority = Win (Score:1)
Even the flagship title, Halo Infinite, seems to be catching a lot of flak (and won't even be out until 2021!).
The idea behind the GamePass seems nice at first, but t just seems like it will water down all the games that come in through that ecosystem.
The flagship of XSX is Flight Simulator 2020, which is arguably the best and least watered down game since Grand Theft Auto 5, and it's free to game pass members. I'm liking the 3rd party selection and variety on Game Pass too.
It's clear from the spec sheets t
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While Flight Simulator does have some game aspects (challenges) I can't see it being much of a killer app. People into the simulation aspect will want it on PC for the keyboard. Seems like more a tech demo to show off the capabilities and how easy it is to do PC ports.
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The flagship of XSX is Flight Simulator 2020,
I fully admit that MS Flight Simulator looks super impressive but.. is it really a game? It's pretty much a pure sim as far as I know.
While interesting, the development of something like that is very different than a game. Though you do have to get control and physics right, there is zero work on story, or gameplay balance. It's also kind of a pure data collection exercise with not as much work for artists to do.
It's kind of a one-off deal compared to other ga
Oh is it going to be though the playstion store (Score:2)
Ya know the one storing my data in unprotected plain text, while making me install yet another dumbshit app that wants to launch when I reboot my computer
if so, here's a tiny bit of advice... I have not owned a PlayStation exclusive since I got rid of my PS2, I do not feel I am missing much from the ones I have played, so if you want to make a buck from me, put it on steam or kindly go fuck yourself with a cactus.
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Just like precisely zero of the other first party ports have been? No. Worse, some of them went to the Epic store.
Good idea, great mix (Score:2)
This is a smart move on Sony's part, as they have some exclusives that just beg for the even more advanced graphics that the PC can bring to the table.
I have not played PC games for a while, but the thought of playing something like Horizon Zero dawn on a PC is pretty compelling as it always had amazing scenery, even on a console.
I'm sure Sony intends this to be a way to show off to PC only gamers that there is value to be found in some of the console exclusives they have - and that will probably work. But
What kind of DRM? (Score:2)
Remember Sony's scandal with the virus they put on audio CDs? What sort of little bonus presents will they leave us with this time?
Re:What kind of DRM? (Score:4, Funny)
Denuvo. Why is that even a question?
The PS To PC 'port' I'd like to see... (Score:2)
... Is a 20Gbit/s USB 3.2 port connecting PC to PS5, so you can use the PC's camera, speakers, touchscreen, mouse and keyboard to play PS games as an auxillary controller. (Cum breakout-box that can connects other controllers like throttles, joysticks, etc)
Follow the money (Score:2)
Horizon Zero Dawn became a top seller on Steam even during it's pre-order phase. Okay it's not a real pre-order since people knew what the game was about beforehand, but if that's an indication then Sony is exploring expanding an untapped market and it stands to reason that a company dedicated to making money would bring PS exclusives to the PC over time.
Part of me does question if this is however just a marketing campaign for the PS5. Releasing PS4 exclusive titles on PC to drum up interest in the crowd wh
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Making something Whatever-exclusive likely doesn't make sales of that any greater. It might help sales of the Whatever device, sometimes, maybe, for a short while.
After that, anything "exclusive" is just a nonsense that's costing you money. It's like only ever selling your book in a certain bookshop.
I don't understand why anyone would limit their market like that, when almost nobody is going to buy a console JUST for a game, but almost everyone would buy the game JUST to play it on whatever they have.
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Making something Whatever-exclusive likely doesn't make sales of that any greater.
Of course not. The question is if the cost of sales outweighs the exclusivity payment. People don't voluntarily chose the tiny Epic platform over Steam (Valve generates more revenue in a single game on Steam in a single month than the Epic Store generates over a year), they chose Tim Sweeney's bribery Fortnite money and question if it is worth while revenue vs the cost of lost potential sales.
Epic pays a mint for exclusivity. Now if only they paid their own developers to actually create a functioning store
Sony Ponders Potential PS To PC Ports (Score:2)
Try pondering on Horizon Zero Dawn PC port reviews and pray that you can create next Dragon Dogma port instead of Horizon Zero Dawn nightmare.