General gaming news and discussion

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[firestar464]

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

AAA video games struggle to keep up with the skyrocketing costs of realistic graphics

By Skye Jacobs
Today 8:29 AM

Gaming studios face increasingly difficult decisions as they grapple with the escalating costs of creating cutting-edge visuals and the diminishing returns these visuals often provide. The challenge lies in striking a balance between visual spectacle, engaging gameplay, and sustainable development practices.

For decades, giants in the gaming industry like Sony and Microsoft banked on realistic visuals to captivate audiences. Other publishers like Naughty Dog (The Last of Us, Uncharted series), CD Projekt Red (The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077), Rockstar Games (Red Dead Redemption 2, Grand Theft Auto V), and Guerrilla Games (Horizon Zero Dawn, Horizon Forbidden West) have consistently prioritized visual excellence and this approach has led to critical acclaim and commercial success.

This strategy has transformed once-flat pixelated worlds into immersive experiences that rival cinematic productions. However, the cost of achieving such realism has skyrocketed, leading to a reevaluation of priorities within the gaming sector.

Marvel's Spider-Man 2, released in 2023, is one example. Leveraging the PlayStation 5's processing power, developers at Insomniac Games crafted a visually stunning New York City. Peter Parker's iconic suits were rendered with intricate textures, while skyscrapers reflected sunlight with remarkable accuracy.

This level of detail, however, came at a steep price. The game's development reportedly cost around $300 million, more than triple the budget of its predecessor from just five years earlier.

https://www.techspot.com/news/106125-aa ... costs.html

[wjfox]

GTA 6 fans mercilessly roast new open-world trailer

Published 12:38 7 Jan 2025 GMT

There’s a new open world game coming from developer Ultra Games HK that looks like it’s taking inspiration from Grand Theft Auto.

Paradise is billed as a “free-to-play life simulation game with limitless possibilities, realistic graphics, and advanced AI,” and the trailer is being mercilessly torn to pieces by GTA VI fans over on YouTube.

The trailer is pretty harmless. It shows a sprawling city with bustling streets filled with people and vehicles.

It appears to be a kind of Sims meets GTA open world, but as simple as this endeavour is, it will always attract fans of similar games who are happy to mock the attempt.

I’ll be honest, it seems to tick a lot of boxes but doesn’t really show much in the way of personality, and players were happy to point this out.

https://www.gamingbible.com/news/gta-6- ... 1-20250107

[Tadasuke]

I noticed that the two currently most popular MMORPGs : World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV have had their disk space requirements and their game sizes doubling exactly every 4 years since release (November 2004 and September 2010 respectively). Seems like exponential growth to me.

WoW's size in MB grew by 32x between November 2004 and November 2024. Interestingly, you can now buy 10 TB HDD for the price of 320 GB HDD 20 years ago. However, it is advised to use an SSD for both MMORPGs when traversing new zones. In particular, WoW's new dragonriding is so fast (9.3x faster than running) that HDDs cannot keep up with loading all the textures and models, especially in new zones.

[Tadasuke]

Gaming isn't as exciting nowadays, as things in the space are moving rather slowly in recent years (thanks to relative hardware stagnation and rising costs and difficulty of exponentially larger productions), and honestly I've expected more ppl to share my long-lasting values and ideas of establishing virtual reality (and gaming as the early iteration of that) as the place you go to as a compensation for being born in a pre-existing reality without any of your consent in a hugely disappointing world you might detest and in a not fun position you likely disapprove of (and no, it's not your fault, probably).

Improving AI is the most likely candidate to cause things to accelerate rapidly in the 2030s. Both in the production side and in the games themselves. Currently, there is AI supersampling, frame generation, denoising (both for film grain and sound) and ray reconstruction (which is something).

My opinion is that copying the real world (including laws of physics) into virtual ones makes no sense. It is a unique opportunity to create everything from scratch! Much much better in every way: more enjoyable, beautiful, interesting, awesome and remarkable. If games looked like live-action movies and operated as this reality, I probably wouldn't play any video games. Although I feel tired anyway, so I rarely play these days (hopefully will manage to change this).

[wjfox]

Gaming isn't as exciting nowadays

I don't agree at all. My gaming experiences are richer, more engrossing, and more fun than ever these days.

[wjfox]

I've been playing Space Marine 2 (PC).

It's awesome! Perfectly captures the atmosphere of Warhammer 40K.

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[zzz]

Glad to see the first person view incorporated.
It is still not P.T tho

[wjfox]

[wjfox]