Digital Foundry : 2022 and now 2023 have been rough years for AAA game release quality, with many games releasing in an unfinished, broken state - particularly on PC. We recently reported on big improvements to The Last of Us Part 1 on PC, so we decided to go back, revisiting four of the most contentious releases we've reviewed recently. How long does it take to fix a PC game? Do they actually get fixed at all? Of course, the truth is that the situation is different on a game by game basis. Some games have only had minor tweaks, and of the four we tested, only one has addressed the foundational problems we highlighted in our initial review.
"Feardemic are today very thrilled & proud to announce the winners (yes, "Resident Evil 4 Remake" is on the list) of its Fear Fest Horror Game Awards 2023 event." - Feardemic.
The long-overdue update for FSR3 is finally here.
Nice (3.4x) boost in performance. 36fps to 122fps. Thank goodness it works on consoles too.
People love the whole native resolution thing. I don't agree, but it's what many people like to focus on.
Frankly, it is far better to put those extra resources towards other things. I don't care much about resolution.
There is a difference between the two. Hence why PlayStation needs a mid gen refresh vs Xbox.
Bu bu but we never got that announced for PS5? I hope Sony is not going to make that only available for PS5 Pro, that would hurt them! Of course Xbox Series consoles are confirmed to have the feature. Maybe it’s a marketing thing to only announce the Xbox first then talk about PS5 later. At least I hope that’s that is.
I guess I'll wait for forspoken to get patched on consoles before I play it. It's ready to go but I haven't had the time to play it.
@Babadook7
That’s not how frame generation works. Firstly it needs higher native fps to work with or it will introduce notable latency which can make the delay / lag of gameplay unbearable in some of not most genres. FSR 3 frame generation is ideally going to be used to get unlocked (70+ fps) and uncapped (~50~ fps) games to feel like 120fps and 60fps games while drastically reducing screen tearing, frame pacing, and other issues that come with unlocked fps and refresh rates. Games that are 30fps will have to have a much lower resolution mode unless CPU bottlenecked to make FSR 3 worthwhile.
@Minute Man & DarXyde
Because we’re still playing PS4 Pro and Xbox One X quality games just at higher settings, resolution, and fps.
Unreal Engine 5 will soon be the main development Engine and once that happens as well as developers actually releasing truly demanding current-gen games, resolutions will continue to drop to 1440p or lower as they already have begun to do.
FSR 2.0 does not upscaled well at resolutions below 1440p as it adds a layer of blur. Forspoken, A Plague Tale, The Matrix Demo, Remnant and Starfield all examples of sub 1440p titles.
A pro console will help gets the resolutions back up to native 1440p to upscaled back to 4K with significantly less blur, ease the load of FSR 3, by ensuring games are generating fps from higher fps instead of 30 or 40 locks, while introducing significant improvements to Raytracing (all of which are beneficial to standard games, but especially to PSVR2), while extending the life of the PS5 and bringing in more revenue and users for the company as current owner upgrade their base models for the Pro and sell them which means more revenue for Sony.
So why wouldn’t they? It’s a win for all parties, except developers who don’t take advantage of the features, but they’re more focused on the Series S being a problem not the PS5 and Series X @OptimusDK.
Who said they were, however, millions will which again is the point. The PS5 Pro is likely to not be sold at a loss, meaning millions in hardware revenue, and again those base PS5s are likely to end up in new homes, meaning those used PS5s are still going to be profitable when it comes to the new owners buying software.
“That’s not how frame generation works.“
Everything I said is reported in the linked article.
@Babadook7
I know where you got the numbers from in the article based on the image of Forspoken. I’m just explaining how it actually works, since I assume 99% of console only gamers are unaware of.
AMD has now stated FSR 3 is a combination of frame generation, anti-late tech, FSR 2.0, and fluid motion. So that image is comparing Forspoken at Native 4K with Raytracing with no FSR running at 36fps (on the left), vs FSR 3 at 122fps on the right.
However, FSR 3 Performance mode, means the image on the right is actually only 1080p Native upscaled using FSR 3 (specifically FSR 2), with frame-generation to boost frame rates up to that 122fps. So we’re comparing a Naive 4K image, vs. 1080p native image that’s being upscaled across both axis introducing some blurring and adding artifacts in motion like Shimmer. So it’s not a crystal clear comparison, because you can’t see the problems that FSR 3 will introduce in screenshots, it only happens during gameplay in motion, and it will make fine detail in the game world look like it’s constantly glitching which is going to be very noticeable, because games have a lot of fine details now, but to your point and others (including myself) I’d rather have higher framerates and lower image quality, than crystal clear image quality and being stuck at 30fps (you can check Digital Foundry’s recent video Immortal of Aveum for an example of what happens with low scaling FSR).
On the other side, if a game uses a higher quality setting of FSR3 to keep the upscaled Resolution closer to the Native resolution, but the game is only around 30fps - 40fps mark, then it’s going to introduce noticeable lag and latency through the gameplay experience, which was my other point.
Don’t get me wrong this is all still a HUGE win for AMD, all GPUs (RTX, RDNA, Intel Alchemist, and newer / some older ones), and consoles but I don’t want people being misinformed as if this is magically going to take games from 30fps to 120fps.
Unreal Engine 5 games are now launching as low as 720p Native on PS5 and Series X for 60fps and less than 480p on Series S (go watch that digital foundry video lol), and while these upscaling techs will definitely be a huge help for resolution and fps, it’s going to cause some major image quality inconsistencies if we’re upscaling from sub 1080p native resolutions.
But again that’s what the PS5 Pro is for.
@MinuteMan
Why would they isolate those sales when they consider every console from those generations to be part of the same family? Sony has released total PS4 consoles sold many times throughout the generation, MS stopped releasing numbers for the entire generation, so no one really knows how many Xbox One family of console were ever truly sold.
The concrete data we have is from Famitsu, where the PS4 Pro went on to sell around 1.6 million units in Japan lifetime sales, which is about 16% of the overall PS4 install base for a country where they prioritize smaller devices and the power narrative is at its lowest. So even if globally it's 10% - 15% of the PS4's overall install base that's still 10m - 20m PS4 Pro sold (really 12m - 18m). And if the console is sold at a $50 profit, that's a $500,000,000 - $1 Billion profit over it's expected 4 year life cycle, while extending the lifecycle of the console, pleasing fans who care about performance, and removing the ambiguity of which console has the best performance.
The Business component.
It also means large improvements to Ray Tracing, higher quality assets and graphics, and higher native resolutions and framerates for software features and services like FSR3 to scale from meaning significantly less graphical noise, better image clarity, and higher framerates with less lag and latency.
The Consumer component.
My issue is this part from you.
“@Babadook7
That’s not how frame generation works.”
Which is an incorrect claim. I did not state any error regarding FSR 3.0.
As for your long winded response that’s a bit off topic and also largely overblown as it does not line up with the impressions DF themselves gave of the visual difference in motion.
What about starfield??? Its the The least they can do considering they blocked dlss!!
Who blocked DLSS? It's he said she said. There are articles where AMD says Bethesda can add whatever upscaling technique they want. Just prioritize FSR. They should get something in return for partnering with Bethesda. What would be the point if both sides don't benefit from a deal?
Before you say "source" like the majority that are too lazy to look it up for themselves, the site starts with a w and ends with an h. Not doing the work for the misinformed.
Despite being a big FromSoftware fan, Armored Core 6 is failing to get me invested, which is something even flops like Forspoken and Redfall managed to do.
It looks incredible, how are you failing to get interested? Sounds like a personal issue of losing interest in the series, rather than an issue of this new installment.
Agreed, it's okay to not be as excited for something. We all have different tastes and taste may change over time.
For one, I used to love SpiderMan games on PS2,3 and 4 but am not as excited for SpiderMan2. It happens, still got the console pre-ordered since my partner is hyped. It doesn't necessarily mean its a bad game, it's just probably not for me but only playing the game will answer that. The author should probably just rent the game or wait for a sale and see.
Agreed, I’m a 4/10 on the excitement scale for Spidey 2. That said I’m a 0/10 for these two games. Then again, I’m currently hooked on a train simulator so who am I to judge.
