Sales and quality... Insomniac started good this gen but his last games...
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Mark Cerny speaking on stage about the PS4
- Thread starter Roxas
- Start date
Sales and quality... Insomniac started good this gen but his last games...
Not during this , I believe Cerny-sama mentioned booing took place in an 8 hour presentation he gave to a dev in Japan.
electroshockwave
Member
Well when you think about it, all the IPs that Insomniac created over the years (Spyro, Ratchet and Resistance) were owned by somebody else. It's a bit of a precarious position to be in as an independent developer because if the relationship ends with the publisher they don't have anything to show for it. Sony could hand off Ratchet or Resistance to someone else and Insomniac couldn't do anything about it.
Almost certainly. Q-Games is in Kyoto and they've worked with both Nintendo and Sony.
ScepticMatt
Member
Does anyone know the video on demand link?
PeakPointMatrix
Member
Why was that?
Business
Member
Same here guys. Never heard of this until I clicked on this thread.
Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew
Banned
Weirdly, the video had a DVR option where you could rewind the presentation. It doesn't work anymore.
No, not in this presentation. Cerny was talking about visiting various developers and sometimes he would cop a "boo" when he'd present what Sony's plans were during the development of the PS4.
I think it would only have been a long term advantage if it was the 1000GB/s eDRAM he was talking about. MS's solution isn't this.
DeadRockstar
Member
Wasn't his bandwidth quote for the split memory solution well above what the Xbox One's esram capable of though? I don't think it's close to 1000GB/s.
So have Tose, and they've actually been around long enough to talk about thirty years of staff consistency.
Oh, my mistake. I took that section to be kind of the road less traveled having been taken up by the competition.
Who knows? One things for sure, Digital Foundry needs to staff up. It's going to be a busy generation.
Theonik
Member
He didn't say. And actually he didn't mention Japan. They were briefing developers on ideas they had for the PS4 and then gauged responses to improve the PS4's design.
So I guess the booing might have been helpful. We won't know unless he says.
Edit:
I think it only works for as long as the stream is live.
I think the Xbone can do 100GB/s for only 32GB thanks to the eSRAM. Normal access is 68GB/s where the PS4 is at a constant 176GB/s.
Ploid 3.0
Member
Insomniac wanted to stay independent so they wouldn't be bought out by sony. They wanted to own their IPs so they had to look for other partners if they wanted to make a IP to keep (FUSE), the second game Sunrise Overdrive is on Xbox One because Microsoft was interested enough to work with them. Ted liked the fast seamless patching that the cloud offered. That is their reasoning as stated in a live FAQ on twitch a week or so ago. They are still close with sony, they just want their own IPs now. No word on if they have any plans to develop a sony owned exclusive game in the future (ratchet, or resistance).
No, developers sometimes booed during secret 8hr console showcase sessions, probably at the early 2/4GB RAM plans for PS4.
SolidSnakex
Member
He mentioned how he was there when one of there partners (Gearbox) told them that if they didn't have 8gb of RAM then Sony was dead. But he was there when he was booed during the middle of a presentation. He said that reactions like that let them know that they're on the wrong path and need to start looking to do something else. Both the 8gb comment and whatever he's referring to that got him booed helped turn the system into something better.
zomgbbqftw
Banned
Believe, me Insomniac only started to worry about this situation because Sony have stronger internal developers than Insomniac and R&C and Resistance could easily be taken over by one of them. The situation would never have arisen if Insomniac didn't start pushing out annual turds and took a bit more care over their releases. Their last good game was ACiT in 2009 and before that ToD and R:FoM, all of them early to mid gen. Late gen they have done literally nothing of note which is why they changed their tack on ownership of IP after rejecting multiple opportunities of securing their future with Sony with a buyout (one that would not have been available more recently given Sony's money issues and IG's quality problems).
tl;dr - IG had to make this move, not because Sony were going to run away with their properties, but IG couldn't put decent quality games out worthy of SCEWWS.
Kung Fu Grip
Banned
Youtube?
Give it a couple of days.
RamzaIsCool
The Amiga Brotherhood
I think he got booed in Europe, probably at Dice or Crytek. I remember there were various statesments comming from those two studio's about the importance of 8GB of ram. And it was all around the same time, so I reckon there was some serious reservations there of what they were hearing.
Yup Cerny was pooping on MS there. Not only did he say the RAM setup wasn't worth it, but he actually took a superior setup and compared it to the PS4. That's like spitting in MS face two times.
You make less money, you have greater company security. It's a tough call I'm sure.
It only takes one 'Borderlands' style hit for an indie studio to be very wealthy.
EDIT: Sony own R&C, Resistance too.
MS didn't go with DDR3 + eSRAM for shits and giggles. For their system design 8GB of RAM was absolutely necessary and they couldn't risk relying on GDDR5 to provide that. Remember how surprised people were when Sony announced they were using 8GB instead of 4GB as was originally planned?
R&C is owned by Sony. They can have anyone make a new game in the series because of that.
My guess is Ted Price saw the tides turning with Microsoft's rise in market share and didn't want to be tied down to the struggling PS3 and Sony.
That's just my guess though. Pure speculation out of my own ass.
R&C belongs to Sony.
I don't think an arrangement would be possible. If it belonged to Insomniac, inevitably they'd be able to do want they'd want with it. Sony doesn't want a repeat of Crash Bandicoot and Spyro.
electroshockwave
Member
Yeah, Sony owns the IP for all the games they publish because they don't want a repeat of Crash & Spyro. (^coincidental phrasing)
RamzaIsCool
The Amiga Brotherhood
Ok so they cut corners on the RAM, because they needed the 8GB to achieve what they were going for. Which btw isn't gaming related, but that's another story. But any reason why they didn't opt for the eDRAM? It appears Cerny would have done that if he went that route.
Well, it's what Xbox devs are used to from the 360 generation. I'm not a game developer but from what I understand is you're able to fit one or two frames into the eSRAM and manipulate them over the high bandwidth as opposed to reaching out to slower "main" memory pool. PS3 makes it simple, all memory access is insanely fast. There's performance implications for general purpose applications like web browsers but for gaming applications it's as good as it gets.
Well, that's not true, they don't PixelJunk for example.
don't think anyone is going to make a R&C game until the movie comes out.
electroshockwave
Member
You're right. Was going to say almost all but I couldn't actually think of exceptions. All retail games they publish?
Ploid 3.0
Member
Ted wanted to keep things the way they were for Insomniac, independent. They won awards for being the best company to work for and they are proud of what they have. If they were to be bought they would have less freedom, and who knows what would happen to them (Liverpool R.I.P.).
http://www.insomniacgames.com/careers/lifestyle/best-company/
Only at first glance.
Back when xbones emphasis on entertainment was decided Microsoft knew they would need 8GB RAM to support the features they wanted.
At that time they couldn't be sure if GDDR5 would be a viable option for the amount of RAM they went for in the future. DDR3 was chosen as the safe bet.
eSRAM was the compromise to alleviate the bandwith deficiencies DDR3 has compared to GDDR5.
So if you look at Microsofts decision in that context they make perfect sense.
eDRAM can only be fabbed right now by IBM and Intel AFAIK, and only on certain process nodes. eSRAM allowed them to integrate it directly into the chip, and easily shrink it to whatever process is available.
ChorusLindarr
Banned
eDRAM wouldn't have meant a more expensive APU at all, nor would it have implied a weaker one. The point being that you cannot currently manufacture eDRAM on a 28nm process node, as nobody does it. The smallest node for eDRAM currently is 32nm which would have implied a daughter die like the 360 setup - perhaps with the GPU ROPS on the daughter die also.
EDRAM at 32MB would have meant a much smaller die area than eSRAM at 32nm. It would have allowed Sony to go up to 64 or possibily even 128MB of eDRAM on the daughter die. Would have been far superior performance wise than MS' current XB1 setup, provided they had double or more embedded memory and in the terabits per second internal bandwidth to the ROPs. Just would have been more expensive.
The thing with eDRAM is that it requires special manufacturing steps and thus cannot be fabbed at every major fab. This ends up making it more expensive in the long run as you'd be exempt from any kind of ability to shop around and get the best deal at the major foundries. MS chose eSRAM because they wanted a solution that would be integrated on die from the offset. A solution which though it makes your APU more expensive to start with, as it will invariably affect yields (i.e. on-die high transistor density eSRAM adds another level of complexity making your APU even more prone defects), it does allow you to cost reduce your embedded memory alongside your main APU as you transition from one manufacturing process node to the next.
The main problem with a hypothetical PS4 that used eDRAM and a big main pool of DDR3 is that it would have meant a more complex system with a greater potential for performance bottlenecks. There would be no real way to get around the slow main memory bandwidth, which could tank performance for any application that cannot find its data in the finite pools of caches and the embedded memory.
I think the GDDR5 solution Sony chose was a good, solid and wise choice. And I think it is a system that will pay off for them in the long term, moreso than any system Sony has designed to date.
Fox_Mulder
Rockefellers. Skull and Bones. Microsoft. Al Qaeda. A Cabal of Bankers. The melting point of steel. What do these things have in common? Wake up sheeple, the landfill wasn't even REAL!
It's my guess too. Right now I think he took the wrong choice.
BruceLeeRoy
Banned
Ah man I missed the stream.
Anywhere I can download his presentation?
Anywhere I can download his presentation?
I think Dust was the last retail game they published and don't own the IP.
How late could they have pivoted to GDDR5 though? Wouldn't they have known it was viable late enough to change their minds?
SolidSnakex
Member
That's a slightly different situation. Q-Games funds the games and publishes them in Japan while SCEA/SCEE does the publishing in those territories. So, Sony wouldn't want the IP in order to do that. They ask for the IP when it's a game they're fully funding for a third party.
If it's the wrong choice then he has the option of returning. That's the beauty of being independent.
It'll be uploaded to the EU PS YouTube channel.
zomgbbqftw
Banned
They went multi-plat waaaaaaaay too late in the day for that. Their first Xbox 360 game released in 2013 just 6 months before the start of the next generation. IG have also basically forfeited the EU/JPN markets where they used to do pretty well with R&C. Remember up until 2012 they only made PS3 titles, so if they wanted to ditch it then they would have had to jump much earlier. Not only that but so many of their titles sold very well on PS3, R&C ToD and ACiT sold very well, R:FoM sold well and even R2 did decent numbers. It was only after their games turned to shit that their sales went south. Fuse is their worst selling game ever I think, but I'll have to check the figures to confirm.