The Hot Topic Returns

[Nag]

 

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As the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S turn three years old readers rate their performance so far and the generation as a whole.

 

The next gen consoles are both about to hit their third Christmas, so for this week’s Hot Topic we wanted to know what you think of them in terms of the hardware and the current software line-up.

 

Opinions were mixed, with many feeling that, even given the complications brought on by the pandemic, the generation has been slow to get going, with many criticising Sony for their lack of meaningful announcement over the last year.

 

[mmmark]

A bit of a none event really. All the same game types and experiences from last gen looking nicer and loading faster. I don’t think either consoles have fallen into what you’d call essential purchases yet.

 

Don't regret my XSX but I wouldn’t think bad of anyone still only owning last gen for all their gaming and media needs. 

[mfnick]

Wait, this gen has started? 

[shinymcshine]

The golden age for sheer quantity of AAA games still feels like the 360/PS3 gen.

 

Since then the flow dried up somewhat - whether it's the complexity of programming, manhours required, lack of faith in new IPs, or the tendancy to reach back for a remaster - I really don't know, but the new release/ forthcoming games lists just doesn't feel such an exciting place as it was 10+ yrs ago 

 

Don't get me wrong, there's still been some excellent things post that era, and indie games have  certainly stepped up (and Nintendo continued doing things their own way) - but when you think we've not had a new ES or GTA game since those days (online contents aside) it perhaps shows some degree of stagnation.

 

 

[one-armed dwarf]

This was definitely the first year that seemed like it had something decent to offer, current generation wise. Stuff like BG3 and Alan Wake II have at least finally justified some of this hardware for me. Otherwise I'd say that PS5 is Sony's worst system, or 2nd worst after PS3. Aside from that though I think the most disappointing thing to me personally is Sony just sort of PS Vita-ing their VR headset. It was easy to predict I suppose but they seem to be announcing fuck all for it. 

 

On another note I just feel there's a lack of diversity in Sony's offerings as far as their exclusives go. It's hard to explain but the way their games tell stories, their progression systems, their pacing, how much of them are third person 'movie-like' adventure games with similar narrative themes, set pieces and crafting systems or open world waypoint chasing. I usually play a lot of the new releases but I find myself skipping Sony games in particular, ones like Horizon and Spiderman and a few others. Got bored of Ratchet very quickly. Ragnarok was very boring and familiar. They need a few more Returnals, maybe (not my thing specifically but it's something very different to the above at least. Least Death Stranding 2 is next year)

 

I don't really have any thoughts on Xbox as I don't have one, and generally don't even bother with their exclusives on PC. They're definitely in a worse spot unfortunately. (edit wait no, I played Starfield. That was decent)

[HandsomeDead]

If your considering the AAA since that is why you may want to get one of these machines it has been weak.  MS are fumbling and not really getting the best out of all those acquisitions they've made yet.  I only played Starfield for 3 or 4 hours and all I got was it's Mass Effect for Mormons.  Yet Hi-fi Rush was shadow dropped so I dunno if it means they weren't that confident in it or it didn't mean much to them but it probably is the best thing they've produced in years.  I hope something was learned there.

 

Like mentioned Sony are tripling down on reducing the diversity of the kinda of games they make and while they do still have the odd meaningful game I worry about their future.

 

And with all the layoffs and struggles with running a AAA studio these days I just wonder if the AAA is going to be a smaller part of the gaming landscape going forward and few are going to have the capacity to really push these consoles.

[OCH]

Regardless of the pandemic hampering migrating player bases etc the cross-platform releases hurt this generations momentum significantly. Consoles typically hit their stride a couple of years in. Neither PS5 or X-Box have yet (imo). Given five years is roughly a traditional console lifecycle, that's pretty damning. 

[Nag]

I think you are literally the only person in the entire gaming community who writes Xbox like that @OCH... 

 

There's definitely a case for diminished returns with gaming nowadays, especially as it seems devs are more concerned with higher resolutions than anything else. There's also a case for cross gen games going on for far too long this time also, of course one console manufacturer was a little more upfront about this than the other.

 

I'm still glad I own both consoles even after saying this though, the extra horsepower and faster loading does make a difference and we've probably got what? Another 4 or 5 years for this gen to throw out some proper belters.

[DANGERMAN]

it's definitely a slow start to the generation, but it does feel like this has been a strong year, so maybe we're through that. I suppose the problem is that it's been more of the same, a bit like the step between PS1 to PS2 (Saturn to Dreamcast not so much), it took ages for the PS2 to get going because it was just stuff from the PS1 done better, which isn't the worst thing, but it is hard to get too excited

 

How much of that is because the last gen is still kind of around I don't know. Granted, the Xbox One is more or less done now, the PS4 will hang around longer, it'll still get the Japanese games the same way the PS3 did, plus some of the big series just because of the install base, but more games are skipping it. From there, who knows, maybe we'll see concepts that really couldn't have been done, either because of the slow harddrives or the slow CPU, but those games are still rare and about 50% of them are from Insomniac

 

The problem I guess is that, a couple of the games that have pushed things so far this generation, Forspoken and the other magic shooty game, have just made bad tech choices. New engines and all that, great, but when the reason it's struggling is because the engine just isn't very good yet it's hard to get excited about that technology

 

I don't know. I've played some good games recently, Spiderman 2 is still very fresh in my memory, but it does kind of feel like I'm already prioritising buying games on PC over consoles for performance, if only because then I can tweak it, or I know that I'll eventually be able to push past the consoles pretty easily.

 

That being said, this is going to be a long generation, and I'm glad of that, I'd rather not have to find £500 every few years if I don't want to. If games are going to be 30+ hours for a straight forward single player game then I'm going to be buying/playing less anyway, we can afford to have these consoles around because we're probably not burning through entire series lifespans the way we did on PS3/360 with Gears and Uncharted etc

[OCH]

1 hour ago, Nag said:

I think you are literally the only person in the entire gaming community who writes Xbox like that

Funny story, it actually auto-corrects to that. Based on other things that I write. Although considering recent stories I've read, wherein Microsoft sought to buy Nintendo and Sega. Maybe I should replace the word with an emoji of the Monopoly Man...

[Nag]

You need to stop searching X-rated stuff then.

[mfnick]

Typing X-X-X seems inefficient. 

[DANGERMAN]

It's got to be X-men right, knowing OCH? 

[OCH]

2 minutes ago, DANGERMAN said:

It's got to be X-men right, knowing OCH? 

Naturally. Being Mr. Arty Farty, I write a lot of fan fiction (not that kind, unfortunately @Nag). Mostly for my own amusement. But it has altered the dictionary of my PC.

[Maryokutai]

I agree with the overall sentiment here but I'll also have to say that it doesn't bother me too much. I've actually enjoyed using my Series X to go back to some older games that benefit from the higher specs. The first game I played on it was the original Mirror's Edge in 60fps, currently I'm going through its sequel and I've also started a replay of Control which ran just absolutely horribly on Xbox One. I've also been playing some indie stuff and a lot of mid-tier JRPGs on Switch anyway.

 

I also just noticed that the only AAA game I played in the last 12 months is Starfield? And only for about 20 hours. Between RE4 launching with that massive deadzone issue on Xbox and Jedi Survivor being unfinished and incomplete on disc, this particular part of the market has done its best to make me stay away.

[DisturbedSwan]

I guess I'm in the minority here really in thinking this generation has been pretty damn amazing so far. These three years have flown by in a blur really, there has been a consistent stream of releases that have always piqued my interest, there hasn't really been that drought like in previous generations. I think PS has done really well in firing on all cylinders pretty much from the off with fantastic exclusives* from the get-go, which have continued throughout the generation so far.

 

I only really play AAA games and I think quality-wise the games have never been better, pretty much every game I have played has been a worthwhile, well-crafted experience that I've enjoyed from the get go. Some aspects of modern gaming like every game needing to be humungous and take 70+ hours to finish has been a bit of a struggle for me at times as time is not something I have a lot of really (about 10 hours a week, if I don't fall asleep on a Friday night, 5 if I do lol) now, although the PS Portal has rectified that issue to a significant degree recently.

 

PS5 is probably my favourite PS ever and the best in my view, it just has an effortlessness about it that I love. I love the way it looks, how quick it is to get into a game with the SSD's this gen has afforded, pretty much everything. The DualSense is probably my favourite controller of all time as well which definitely helps, it's such a huge improvement from the DS4 in terms of comfort.

 

This is the first generation though that has felt like a PC-upgrade kind of path (particularly on the Xbox side as that uses the same UI etc. as the previous generation) as so many games have been cross-gen due to the Pandemic and a few other supply related factors. I guess you could say there have been a lack of proper full exclusives, but I wouldn't want to be playing something like Horizon FW on a PS4 in 2023, I feel like it would be a significantly worse experience than playing on current gen hardware.

 

This year for me has been one of the tentpole years in gaming really, I haven't really been able to engage with a huge amount of it due to my time-restraints but it seems almost every week there's been some big huge game I want to play that has released. I've not got round to Dead Space, RE4, SMB Wonder, Pikmin 4, LaD Gaiden, Spidey 2, AW2, AC Mirage, Street Fighter 6, MK1, EA Sports WRC and probably a whole host of others I'd love to have the time to play. 

 

As I've said before, these consoles are an investment in our future enjoyment and I feel like I've already got my money's worth out of the PS5 and then some. On the Xbox side of the equation, I had my XSX from July 2021 until recently and it just never really got used, I barely have time to play on one console nowadays, let alone three. There wasn't much to pique my interest there over the 2+ years I owned it, Forza Horizon 5 was by far and away the highlight and I will miss not being able to play the next game in that series, but beyond that it won't be missed. I only put 5 hours into Starfield which isn't enough to judge it, but it didn't leave a lasting impression during that time unfortunately, even as a huge BGS fan.

 

I dabbled again in VR with the PS VR 2, a huge improvement on the first headset but a lot of the same issues I had with it were down to the nature of VR overall, I just like to sit and relax when playing and VR feels too much like a workout for me, as silly as that may sound. I am glad I played something like Horizon CotM before I sold it as it was a fantastic experience though but I've no regrets in trying it and then flogging it a couple months on.

 

This will be a longer generation with the extended cross-gen period due to the Pandemic and I'm not disappointed at all by that, I think this year has been the first year that all the studios have hit their strides with the current gen tech and I look forward to it only getting better as the years go on and then into PS6/Xbox Three.

 

* - Console, cross-gen or PS5 only

[Sly Reflex]

I think it's been a bit shit with sometimes an explosion of amazing stuff. Although, and I feel this might be controversial, I don't feel the jump was needed.

 

I feel we're in an age now where gaming is very safe. We have teams of thousands of people and nothing risky ever gets done. It's just sort of bland. Nothing really stands out. That might be more on me than the games themselves. I can look at something like the last 2 Zelda's and appreciate them, but they're not for me. I think more interesting are the games that have been utter catastrophes, I feel like these are more and more regular now. I don't know if it's the penetration of social media or what, but I feel that a game only has to step a bit over the line on shitness and it gets dragged hard.

 

As nice as it is, graphical stuff is fine now. But for joe average and a lot of people, this is how they yardstick games being "good". Doesn't matter if the games are engaging or are fun to play. Just as long as they look better than last time or better than the competition this is what drives that arms race. To me that seems pretty detrimental. Just endlessly chasing that power. And also I think the power creep has just made devs lazy as fuck too in the fact that nothing is optimised. Where does the blame lay here? I'm not quite sure. I'll let you lot theorise about that.

 

But yeah, for me personally, it's a thumbs down overall. We find ourselves in a place where AAA games are nothing but greedy, morally and creatively bankrupt, full of empty promises that are full of bugs, issues and other fuckery. I sort of look forward to the day when it all goes bang and some of the big companies let off a load of people so they can get from under the boot of the mandated bloated corporate design philosophies and start doing what they got into the business of doing.

[Maryokutai]

I'm not sure if lazy is the correct term, it's more likely a lack of budget resources attributed to that specific part of QA. But it's a good point and one I always bring up when people ask for Pro upgrades of consoles. It's not a hardware problem if Immortals runs at the same native resolution as a Wii game, it's the result of UE5 being an unoptimised shitshow at the moment that nobody outside Epic HQ really has a firm grasp on. Throwing more power at the problem isn't the solution.

 

I think there's an aspect of this generation that is welcome, and that I highlighted in my post, in that it runs last-gen stuff better. The problem lies with consumer expectations as you say. There was nothing wrong with Ragnarok looking like it did on PS5 but for some reason that wasn't enough for people. If both the industry and the consumer base had accepted that game as the baseline and not something like the Matrix demo, the AAA space would most likely be, not in a good spot, but in a better one right now.

 

I hope whatever Nintendo releases next is successful again and shifts the momentum a bit, ideally even being the lead platform for development for a couple of studios, just to have a hardware base that doesn't involve a starting budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, strangling any kind of original idea in the process.

[one-armed dwarf]

Personally my issue with Ragnarok wasn't visuals, I don't think there were very many people who played that game and thought it looked shit. A bit last gen maybe but it's something where the animation and artistry elevates that a lot, it's why consoles can punch above their weight and a game like Ragnarok can still compare favorably to maxed out PC Cyberpunk or whatever

 

The issue is more in design and the risk averse nature of making a blockbuster game like that. Which in GoW's case is fine, it's always been this sort of blockbuster thing. It's absolutely the right approach there. But the issue emerges when blockbusters become kinda the main thing and they have to deliver something that's always aimed at as broad an audience as possible cause of affordability reasons. It really resembles the issues in franchise films we see a lot nowadays, which right now seem to be burning the candle at both ends and we're seeing a succession of flops with Indy 5 and The Marvels, and all the DC stuff. We're nowhere near close seeing a failure like that with current AAA I think, but it's a sign of what happens when you feed a very similar type of thing to audiences year after year. Even the enthusiasts will lose their appetite. It's why you need variety and a balanced market for different types of experiences (Chris Nolan had some good thoughts on that the other day, speaking about the importance of blockbusters but also that they shouldn't just smother the whole market out)

 

To that end, a pivot towards a target platform with more strict power requirements could be a benefit I suppose. You'd have to really condition audiences to get used to it though, some people find TOTK 'literally unplayable' cause it runs at 30 720p but with the art design in that game it's not a problem at all. On the other hand, a lot of PS5 stuff is very dense visually and actually does need to run at a higher resolution and framerate to preserve visibility. I think it's a very rough generation, technically and artistically speaking. I found FFXVI a rough experience but TOTK was perfect. Also both those Zelda games took substantial risks I'd say

[HandsomeDead]

Yeah, it seems to me laziness is rarely the reason it's more a scheduling, resources and scope thing.  And I've seen a lot of devs say they could be making more money if they just worked in general tech but they want to work on games.  It's so reliant on passionate people and burning them out.

 

Also I saw a tweet from a studio in one of these emerging countries pretty much begging for a combat designer because they're just isn't anyone with that experience and keeping up with games made in countries who have been producing games for a long time it's hard to meet that standard where the experience hasn't been built in the same way during a time when games were simpler and the stakes were lower.  And when support studios tend to be based in these countries without institutional experience something is gonna give.