A Way Out Developer Speaks On The PS4 Hardware Power Controversy: ‘It Was Taken Out Of Context’

Some time ago, Josef Fares of Hazelight, the folks who brought us Brothers, and who are now working on A Way Out, made an observation that really shouldn't have been controversial- that the PS4 is not all that powerful anymore, and more resembles a five year old PC than cutting edge tech.

[Lynx0207]

What is it all about? I don't understand where is the controversy in his statement. I play PS4 because exclusives are amazing, but my PC, that I bought five years ago, is still a lot stronger than the console.

[ILostMyMind]

I am a PlayStation user since PlayStation exists and I agree with you.

[indysurfn]

Aubrey__ are you in the jail cell next to me? How is the scamming going bud? Same here, don't flip off the guard again okay?

You look like a hot female in your picture, remind me to not pick up the soap like you must have. I aint putting on no makeup!

[Aceman18]

It's just this website trying to start something that wasnt that big to beginning with. When i bought the OG PS4 and then the Pro I didn't buy it because they were all powerful. I bought them because of the games provided by Sony 1st party studios.

The games have always been the reason why I buy PlayStation and Nintendo consoles not the power. If i wanted a gaming system based purely on power I would have been a PC gamer from jump.

[TheKingKratos]

PC will always be the best place to play multiplat games
The sole reason why i upgraded from the base to the PRO to play Ps4 exclusives at their best not because Multiplat games i get to play on PC at it best if i want to
Playing multiplat games on the PRO with their higher graphics settings and super-sampling is just a bounce for me.

[spreadlove]

If you wanted power and console, then you would jump on the Xbox One X. It's the best bang for your buck by a massive gap.

[Aceman18]

@spread

Clearly you didn't read my post clearly enough, I dont buy consoles based solely on power its about the games on the console especially 1st party games.

[tulholdren]

I'm the same always been about the games never the power I have my pc for that. But those Sony exclusives are why I'll always have both ready to go.

[DLConspiracy]

@solidstatesnake

"and all of its games can be bought and played on a 6-800 dollar PC wich would also outperform the X"

That's simply not true. Numerous PC leaning sites who have talked about the Xbox one have stated numerous times that in order to match the power its a minimum $680 to $1000 just meet the power. To beat it would be even more money. Depending on the parts you use.

With that said. Ps4 has exclusives. That's why I own one. I only buy exclusives on it now. Everything else I buy is on PC and soon to be X.

[Hardiman]

Same here. Also while I do enjoy great graphics, they aren't the whole piece of the pie. While the PS4/Pro may not be the most powerful piece of tech out there games do look amazing running on the hardware! I'm playing Assassins Creed Origins running on my Pro on a Samsung 65 KS9000 and it looks phenomenal! Also I haven't seen any games look better than Horizon Zero Dawn, The Order 1886 or Uncharted 4 despite being on more powerful machines.

For me it's what games are available for the system and as it is Sony and Nintendo have me covered. I'm having a blast!!!

[andrewsquall]

@spreadlove Lol except its not out a year or 4 years like PS4 consoles. Its TOO LATE "to jump" on the Xbox this gen ESPECIALLY with nothing exclusive that is hugely promising and game changing for the console anytime soon.

[rainslacker]

Consoles are never as powerful as the best PC's, and usually are a few years behind PC. It's nothing new, and there was no controversy around it being the case with the PS4.

Not everything that gets everyone upset enough to make a single comment is a controversy. More often than not, it's just some knee-jerking thing where people end up not caring.

[Master of Unlocking]

So did I. But then again I can't see any games running either on high-end gamer PCs or the Xbox One X that quite rival games like Infamous second son, Uncharted 4, or Horizon zero dawn graphically. So when all is said and done Sony must have done something right when they designed the PS4, since this 4-year old system manages to impress still (and it's far from over, too, with the forthcoming God of war, Spider-man, Ni no kuni II...)

[NXFather]

Are if you were a basement bargainer you could get the x which does perform remarkably from what I have seen, of course not the highest end. Or if you were a pc hardware simpleton.

[tontontam0]

Let us put it in a nicer way so that these console fanboys won't be offended by the truth.

In other words
but not sure if his definition of cutting edge tech is this.
"When ps4 was "FIRST" released (2013) it was comparable to a ($1000 pc from 2012)."

[Sokol]

@spreadlove

Im sorry what massive gap? If you are referring to the Xbox one x somehow magically out playing ps4 pro on the visual department you must either not have the Ps4 pro or are simply uneducated with the games it offers which show very well what the system is capable...

[tontontam0]

What?? 19 disagrees

So who are these people?
If these are pc owners I somewhat agree that $1000 pc from 2012 is much stronger than a ps4.

If these people are console fanboys they are fucking out of their mind.

[bluefox755]

Frankly, none of them are that powerful. They all use what amounts to an obsolete laptop CPU. That being said, first party PS4 developers have done amazing things on that meager hardware. Games like HZD and UC4 look better than almost any game on any platform, including PC. Developer talent will trump hardware power every time. PS4 is proof of that.

[RevXM]

Yeah the Ps4 pushes some amazing visuals, but that is down to optimization and wizardry on the game developers part. I wasnt impressed by the specs when the Ps4 launched, but even if the specs were just mediocre and sort of weird (Sata 2, only 2 usb slots, no CD support etc) it is well streamlined with solid built in features and a dedicated background proccessing unit.

A high end pc today absolutely runs in circles around the ps4 in raw power capability and even back then you could build a more impressive system from off the shelf parts granted you wanted to invest some money.
PC ports have been superior most of the time with a few rare exceptions that boils down to developers making shitty or poorly optimized ports to the PC like Arkham city.

That wasnt really the case when PS3 and 360 launched when you could maybe throw something together with a higher spec gpu and more memory, those systems were pretty high end and the cpu's especially were impressive along witht he bandwith speed of the memory in each system.

Honestly I am ready for next gen now, but it probably is a little while longer until we hear or see anything about them. at least a another year, and at the very least a another year and a half until a next gen system launches. with a more likely late 2019 or early 2020 release.

In the meantime the games that sony pushes out for the current system looks mighty fine even though the system is quite dated in terms of raw performance.Driveclub and Uncharted 4, Horizon all look really good to me and TLOU part 2 trailer was in engine so its about what to expect from that game running gameplay in realtime, I regard the last trailer as a target render at this time. surely gameplay demos, a vertical slice will be shown in the nexts 6 months I am sure and we will see more accurately what we will get once AI, and physics, player inputs etc is thrown in to it. comparing Uncharted 4 reveal trailer, with early trailers and gameplay showings to the final game I do not doubdt they will get close if not hit that same fidelity in the final game. U4 reveal trailer only looks a tiny bit bettter and later trailers and gameplay showings are more accurate as to what it ended up looking like. :)
Cant wait to see some current gen clickers in action.

[bluefox755]

After the UC4 trailer debacle and the heat they took for it (despite the end product honestly being not that far off at all IMO), I expect them to be even closer to the mark this time. Which is pretty damn incredible. Technical wizards for sure. The hardware is definitely starting to show it's age, but man, it's amazing what they can squeeze out of it. Can you imagine if they were developing for PC?

[SirBradders]

Alot stronger but poorly optimised. Let's face it regardless of whether your playing a pro or X the games will look better on the exclusive front and Perform better per £.

That's not to say if you got the money then you really do have true 4k.

[GamingCentaur]

There’s no controversy. It’s GamingBolt.

[Tko1111]

What exclusives do you play that’s not on pc? Just want to know for discussion sake

[babadivad]

Exactly. PS4 and X1 were old technology when they launched.

[NXFather]

Did you buy a mid end pc 5 yrs ago? If so scale down to weak pc.
EDIT: Scale down for the PS4 being a weak pc from 5 years ago.

[Cmv38]

Im just now hearing about this. Of course the ps4 isn't considered a powerful console any more. The xbx has that title. But people are buying the ps4 to play games not pixels.... some one else suggested gamers do that.... just can't remember who.

[Indigon]

Looking at Horizon Zero Dawn I beg to differ.

[Razzer]

Sony first party is on another level.

[spreadlove]

Imagine if Horizon was done for the Xbox One X. It will look even more stunning.

[dRanzer]

Imagine it with i7 8700 and 1080TI SLI
With 8K display.stunning
BUT NO

[Blastoise]

Yeah it'd have like, slightly crisper grass textures or something. Can you imagine?

[Pancit_Canton]

That's what PS4 Pro are for.

[Razzer]

Well...that is about all Xbox owners can do. “Imagine”

[Aceman18]

That be hard since it seems M$ 1st party studios dont seem to have the freedom to create new IPs, or lack the willpower to create one.

[UCForce]

If only MS let 343 and Coalition do their own thing, it would be so much better for them to refresh their mind. Also, I will say this to you again. Stop being cultist.

[bluefox755]

X? If they were too branch out, why would they limit themselves to X? Imagine what they could do on PC.

[Cuzzo63]

Yea that would be a sight to behold. But unfortunatly, MS dont invest in anything of that caliber. Imagine if Xbox had anything other to offer than the usual 3. They would actually give Sony a run. But.... Easy pickings for PStation

[snoopgg]

Microsoft tried something like that. I think it was called scalebound. Let me ask you, how did that work out for them. Lol

[ecchiless]

@raz

Darn man, you just rekt the poor xbone fan.

[rainslacker]

Yeah, maybe MS should get on making something on that level.

[northpaws]

And that's what we (Sony supporters) have been saying, exclusives push consoles to their limit, give them a unique identity and are generally more hyped, look at the 5 nominees of the "Most Anticipated Games" for the games awards 2017, 3 of them are Sony exclusives, why xbox fan boys don't want more exclusives is just beyond me.

Even though I gave up on Xbox after Xbox 360, I would still love to see Xbox One X's new exclusives, true exclusives that push the hardware to its limit, games that can't be played anywhere else, when that happen, I will be one of the first to grab an Xbox One X.

Edit: I think the major difference on why Sony is more successful than MS in terms of exclusive is, Sony cares about the games but they understand the most important things are the relationship with their 1st party developers, how to keep them healthy by letting them create what they want, and we gamers can feel that, we are excited about Naughty Dogs' next game, not just simply the next Uncharted. But MS, they just keep the franchises and let the developers go, they just want to have Halo after Halo, don't care who make them, when a developer is simply just building on another developer's success, it is not as meaningful and can't have the same passion.

[GamesMaster1982]

Yep and that is about as close as you xbone fans will get to the quality of a PS4 exclusive is by using your imagination

[tontontam0]

"Imagine if Horizon was done for the Xbox One X. It will look even more stunning. "
You just pointed the exact reason why you should choose ps4 over the xbox one x.

Lol you are doing fanboyism wrong .
This comment is like shooting your self in the face.

[2cents]

You beg to differ, regarding the fact that the PS4 is not as powerful as new high end hardware based off of a game?

This is the exact thing that is being discussed. Disillusioned fans countering facts with opinions that have nothing to do with the statement. Instead push 'but my console is the best with the best games'.

It's not about how good a game is on a certain platform. The point here is about people not being able to differentiate their fan boy outlook from reality. Mixing conversational topics and reducing every conversation into a console war battle.

[Cmv38]

Looks like you just gave your......2 cents.

[UCForce]

@Wolly So do you.

[Razzer]

It is a fair point whether Xbox fans like it or not. The best looking games are still Sony exclusives. Yap about resolutions and power all you want, but what matters are the games that are actually made.

[bluefox755]

@Wooly Jesus, you have no room to talk bud.

[ninsigma]

Hmmmm seeing as this is the first I'm hearing about it, I'm willing to bet it wasn't that controversial.

[ShadowWolf712]

No, but seeing as the article preview makes sure to lay it out in detail, I'm willing to bet Gamingbolt REALLY wants it to be.

[rainslacker]

I don't even know what's controversial about it. Consoles aren't as powerful as some PC's. It's nothing new. It's usually equivalent to the average PC at the time of release, but tends to have more staying power due to being lower level, and being able to get more out of the hardware....as some developers show.

[cliveo32]

Its always been about games just look when ps2 was ageist the og xbox look how that turned out

[Jayszen]

Gamingbolt up to its usual tricks - talks about an issue to fan the fire and then pretends not to be involved. The PS4 is good enough for all the many exclusives its got!

[C-H-E-F]

The PS4 is almsot 5 years old, saying that it's a 5 year old PC is a true statement lOl. However, the PS4 exclusives look far better than anything on the market.

[Shineon]

Ps4 was never powerful to begin with alot of people on this site knew that.I remember when it first came out some us were calling it ps3.5 and calling xbox 1 the 360.5. Ps4 and X1 were playing 7th gen games at better resolution but the same framerate as the 7th gen consoles.You could do side by side digital foundary comparisons with 7th gen versions of the game which is really a shame that you could even do it.You guys shouldnt have gave in and bought the base modles aka beta models of the system.They themselves knew they cheaped out on the tech thats why they needed to remake the consoles.

[Mr_Writer85]

They didn't really need to, both sold very well.

Also consoles have to hit a sweet spot price wise. For the time the original PS3 had everything, BC, media functions, HD graphics, Blu Ray drive.

But it had 2 problems price and lack of games people wanted.

Thankfully by the time the slim was released it had a better games library and its price hit that sweet spot.

Gamers talk about resolution and graphics, but really deep down price and games are what matter.

It's why the PS4 wiped the floor with X1 and it's why the Switch is doing well, it's a good price and has games people want.

Cut the price and make more games and you will keep on selling consoles.

Once the hardcore have bought the X1X the sales won't be huge, same as Pro.

Both will sell enough, but neither will have massively impressive numbers.

Also see VR as an example, PSVR is weaker than either PC VR, but is cheaper and has sold more headsets.

[Hardiman]

That was exactly what I did. After going through three or four 360's the PS3 Slim hit nd by 09 there were lots of great Sony exclusives that I hadn't played and that's when I was won over! I didn't get a PS3 at launch because it was so expensive and like you said not a lot of games but by the first Slim it was a different story.

As time went on I realized I didn't have to own every console because there were certain ones that provided amazing games but the kicker was they were amazing games that I wanted to play! I like action/adventure, platformring, RPG's/JRPG's, story driven games and Sony and Nintendo have them in spades. Also neither of them are cutting edge tech.

[XStation4pio_Pro]

Well... the base PS4 and base Xbox One are both pretty weak when compared to their respective refreshes and pc The this point. A bit less so st launch but I’ve always held th suspicion that the mid cycle updates were corrections rather than refreshes. Neither base console was equipped to handle display tech like hdr and 4k, vr was already coming. even PCs were getting there at the time. At the very least they could have been more forward thinking back then as console lifespans are fairly long at this point. THat was short sighted. Even beyond supporting 4k, imagine what you could have done at 1080p with a pro or X if you weren’t even worried about higher resolutions. . The generational leap would have been way more impactful at launch and performance would have been absolutely noticeable over ps3 and 360.

[Hardiman]

HDR was ready in all PS4's they just did an update and it was available. My kids have my day one PS4 and it does HDR.

[bolimekurac]

i love the ps4 has more games narrative yet its about 2 big exclusives a year filled with tons of other niche stuff that never sells and most people dont care about

other then horizon, nioh, gt and uncharted its not like everyone is going bonkers with the other exclusives

[XStation4pio_Pro]

My whole point about exclusives in general. Major exclusives drop far far less than multiplatform games and I personally don’t care about all the niche in betweens (Xbox also has its own weird lesser known too). I’m literally not playing any PS4 exclusives as I finished the 2 I wanted this year so it’s mostly multiplatform for me on the regular. Not a message, just a fact. If I only put played exclusive games, my consoles would only become played about 3 months out of the year most likely. That’s why it’s annoying to me when people say there are no games on Xbox. Thankfully that’s not the case. The Xbox has less exclusives than Sony, sure but it has plenty to play and even tho I own a PS4 as well, I don’t only play exclusives. They are the minority and even beyond that, not all of them are good.

[bolimekurac]

for sure, sony has more exclusives and ms needs to work on that , no denying that even though ms has exclusives sony does have more but when it comes down to big exclusives they are pretty even and yes i have more games then i have time and we all know while systems need exclusives, 3rd party games are more abundant and sell much more over all

[rainslacker]

And major multiplats generally only drop during the holiday. I mean, the only multi-plat of note I can think of from all this year before the past couple months was Mass Effect.

[bluefox755]

See, gamers don't care what "sells", or at least they shouldn't. They care about great games. They realize that just because Persona 5 might not sell as much as CoD or Battlefield, it's still awesome that it's available to play. I can't figure out why so many gamers act like they're shareholders.

[Hardiman]

Agreed I have never said " hey this title has sold X amount of copies. Also I love the BIG exclusives and there are quite a few and I've never seen a game come close to matching some of Sony's big players but that's relative. As for the so called "niche" games they are some of my favs like Nioh, Nier, Persona 5, The Last Guardian, Gravity Rush 2. Tales of Berseria is one of my favorite games this gen and I assure you never once did how many copies it sold come to mind but it being avaiable is what I liked!

[Razzer]

Here is the original quote:

"You want the honest truth? This machine is not so strong as you think," Fares says, pointing to the PS4 running his game. "This is like a five-year-old PC. If consoles were as powerful as PCs are today, you would see all different games. Most of the work developers put out there is to make them work on consoles."

How was this “taken out of context”?

[rainslacker]

Personally, I can't see how we'd be seeing all different games. For the most part, despite power being available, games aren't really all that much different. They're prettier....that's about the only real discerning difference to the consumer this gen. being more powerful on consoles isn't going to suddenly cause developers to become extremely innovative and more towards new kinds of game play. Power isn't even necessary to bring "all different games", it just takes some creativity.

But devs are chasing better graphics, with only marginal improvements to game design, and generally, redundant game design principals.

In any case, most games are still made for 5 year old PC's anyways. The lowest common denominator is still very much real in the PC world, and nowadays, most games are designed around consoles.

I can't see how just having more powerful hardware is going to suddenly cause us to get newer experiences within our games. It wasn't shown when this gen started, and this gen was a pretty heavy jump in power from last.

[nitus10]

Have you been on Steam recently? Yes, they have cleaned it up but there is still a lot of sh*t which can "loosely" be called games.

Comparing the PS4 to a five-year-old PC is stupid since the PS4 and the XB1 have what is called a laptop CPU so you are better off comparing them to a laptop but not a desktop. Even that comparison is unfair since PC's have always had different performances depending on price.

Go into any store that sells PC's (exception a parts picker store) and you will find the majority will be laptops with the odd tablet and desktop with prices varying from thousands of dollars at the high end (eg. gaming laptops) to a few hundred dollars at the low end. You will most probably find that the so-called mid-range laptops are the best sellers and most of them will still not beat the price and performance of the base PS4 or the XB1.

Yes, I am well aware you can build your own PC as I have that basically makes the PS4 and XB1 look like four-function calculators but the majority of people don't have much technical know how to build their own and rely on the WOW factor when making a PC purchase.

The motto of PC building is "Build a top of the range PC today and within a few days or hours there will always be someone who has built a better one." 😎

[Ju]

It's like a 5 year old PC...Duh...it's...eh...5 years old...Gamingbolt.

[rainslacker]

lol. Funny how true that actually is.

Gamingbolt isn't known to really looking at things in the bigger picture....or actually showing they have a clue at all.