Some more context on the budget: Spider-Man 2 was not an anomaly. TLOU2 also cost hundreds of millions and that's possibly the case for a lot of Sony's big budget games. Even though these games were successes, these games did not need these budgets and it made them incredibly risky. What if they ran into development hell? What if the game doesn't sell well? We've already seen that happen with a few games like Immortals, Redfall and Forspoken - their studios either had massive layoffs or closed as a result. Studios are putting in so much money and seeing few visible gains from it. The budgets have become so huge a single flop would be devastating. As other anons have noticed, AAA does seem to be imploding at the moment, and this is an end result. There isn't anywhere else to go and now the industry is trying to course correct, even though they should have realized this last decade. https://archive.is/HRlJv - A $300 Million ‘Spider-Man 2’ Budget, Sony’s Future And AAA Unsustainability https://archive.is/Ndepg - "Not sustainable": Developers across the industry react to The Last of Us Part 2's $220 million budget

>In terms of gaming’s future, I envision games becoming more personalised due to advances in technology and AI, enabling customized experiences for each player, moreover, technological advancements will enhance emotional depth in games by allowing characters to be much more emotive and expressive, fostering more evocative storytelling. >That’s going to help a whole generation of creators be able to just create so much more emotion in the stories. The focus is going to shift from graphics or visuals to immersive narratives that resonate long after the controller is set down.

>>971550 >The focus is going to shift from graphics or visuals to immersive narratives that resonate long after the controller is set down. I thought the games were "already" doing that.

>>971567 Sounds like they just want to stay the course but at the same time lower the graphics and budget alongside it.

It's weird that Crysis cost $22M, and those $300M games don't really look much better. Shouldn't modern tech make it easier to create prettier games? Maybe it's like Hollywood, with budgets inflated by incompetent management.

I have to wonder if the budgets given for Sony's GAAAy games includes the translations. 21 languages with 11 additional voice tracks is a lot more than games used to get (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese text with English+Japanese VA was a lot back in the day) could explain where a few 10s of millions went (not much better, but better). If it's not, it's even worse since they're counting global sales but not the budget needed for those sales.

>>971570 I think a lot of it is diminishing marginal returns with the advance of technology (plus the loss of a lot of talent with regards to quality aesthetics and art direction) How much more can you really improve on that image you posted for example? But yeah, the budgets are probably comically inflated too, depending on the games. Either that, or they're doing other things. I imagine coding and programming a massive open world game just takes a ton of resources and so on. The more you add, the more bugs upon bugs upon bugs upon bugs are possible and have to be fixed.

>>971572 I doubt that's more than 10 million total in costs. Probably along the lines of 5 million, even.

>immersive narratives No, fuckoff

>>971570 Incompetence, bloat and money laundering Exactly like Hollywood anon

What I find funny about this is that normalfags don't even know what good visuals are, neither from a technical or artistic standpoint. They literally only care about marketing and social status.

>>971550 >The focus is going to shift from graphics or visuals to immersive narratives How does focusing on good gameplay fit into this?

>>971552 The big budget never goes to graphics or even to the games. It always goes to marketing teams/parasites. No matter what policies are enforced, as long as they don't get rid of their modern marketing teams, they will never reduce their expenses and their games will keep losing money. Modern marketing drives people away from products, and even then, marketing teams still get the biggest pay, usually going over double the game's budget. Corporate suits are retarded to keep those marketing teams afloat.

>>971570 Someone post the image of the bust of Mozart again…

>>971614 That's a bad comparison because the last pic is just upscaled. Starfield's 10k poly cube, on the other hand...

>PlayStation Production head predicts developers will stop focusing on graphics >implying they ever have since the PS4

>>971550 Everyone with a brain could see this coming. It should have been obvious before the Insomniac Leak. Anyone still thinking games wouldn't scale back after seeing that was an out and out retard. It's also why Nintendo is about to massively kick the door in on Microsoft and Sony in a way none of them are prepared for. The Switch 2 is going to have the level of power that it could do most things well enough with a cheaper price than the others. Tons of 3rd parties are already developing for it in an open secret. Sony hasn't had anyone to actually compete against in 20 years except Microsoft and they've been the reigning champions of slamming their dicks into the car door since the Xbone happened. The only reason Sony isn't already in as dire a situation as Microsoft despite how shitty their game policy and budgets have been for the last two gens is because they've enjoyed a competition-free zone. That ends when the Switch 2 happens, and Nintendo has something Sony doesn't: a large amount of IPs and 1st parties people actually like, not to mention people in Japan, you know, actually buying the system.

>PlayStation Production head predicts developers will stop focusing on graphics next gen Finally, PlayStation will focus on gameplay! >The focus is going to shift from graphics or visuals to immersive narratives ...oh. Movie games. Nevermind.

Movie games can win over the female and retard markets though.

>>971806 Not with how much they've been costing and now long they've been taking to make.

This is probably more pertinent to this thread, then. Anyone else not blown away with graphics these days? Me neither https://archive.ph/MEhNy >I really want to be blown away by today’s graphics. Honestly. I long for that feeling of genuine awe when I walk out into an in-game world for the first time. Or experience a mechanic so amazing it just takes my breath away. I’m not talking about booting up the first level and having a sort of ‘yeah, it looks great’ moment. No, I’m talking about having that rush of excitement – that feeling you get when you know you’ve just made a memory for a lifetime. >The same you had when you first landed on the beach on the The Silent Cartographer level in Halo. Or the Normandy beach landing in Medal of Honor: Frontline (which was arguably not as effective as the PC’s D-Day landing in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault). Psychologists call these ‘flashbulb memories‘, vivid recollections of a specific moment in time, usually associated with the emotional centre of the brain, the amygdala, firing and causing a deeper association. >I know over the past few years I have played some, technically, incredible looking games. It’s hard not to be impressed by the likes of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, with its striking, near photo-realistic visuals. And sure, walking out into Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City with Ray Tracing, and most recently – Path Tracing – enabled certainly looks spectacular. But did it create a memory of a lifetime for me? Not really. >In fact, and call me weird, but no matter how good today’s games look, I have never once managed to have the same wow factor as I did when I first booted up Perfect Dark: Zero on Xbox 360, or stepping out on to Halo’s vast planet after crash landing. I remember being so excited by visuals. In fact, I specifically remember the back of the Halo: Combat Evolved box proudly stating the game boasted ‘hyper-realistic’ graphics. I would spend hours going as close I could to the textures – being amazed that features like tree bark were so detailed. Who else remembers the first time they switched on the Master Chief’s torch and experienced bump mapping for the first time? Today, and I speak really here of AAA games – there is some really stunning art direction coming from the indie scene – nothing has the same effect. >What’s interesting is that, at least on a technical level, we should be seeing – in my view – similar sorts of jumps we saw between the last-last-gen consoles (I’m talking about the OG Xbox versus the Xbox 360), but instead it just ‘feels’ as though the gap between what makes a game last-gen and ‘next-gen’ has become closer. Take Crysis, for example. When I was younger I used to spend hours building a PC on a retail website, just so it could theoretically play Crysis. I could never have afforded it. It was because its visuals were so far and away from what I thought possible at the time I was so envious of those who got to play it. When I did play it, many, many years later, it was considered an old game. It still blew me away – with one of my favourite ever gaming memories walking up the first hill for the screen to then ‘black bar’ and present a stunning vista of the island. >Another one of my favourites actually takes me back to the PS1 days. Anyone remember Fear Effect? For those who haven’t played this, I absolutely recommend it. Many talk of classics like Syphon Filter and Metal Gear pushing the little grey box to its limits, but how a game like Fear Effect ran on a PS1 continues to baffle me. This is a game that, no joke, actually holds its own today, seamlessly blending in FMV with gameplay. I was, and am still, blown away with how they managed to do this. >Remember, these were days were there wasn’t 24GB of VRAM or DLSS to play with. It’s fascinating and makes you really appreciate it that little bit more when you see how the developers ‘solved for’ these constrained parameters. Look closely at Fear Effect and you’ll see ever-so-slight ‘black screens’ between scenes. It’s basically been stitched together very, very cleverly. A more recent example is The Order: 1886 – which arrived on the PS4. Panned at the time for its ‘linear’ gameplay, I implore anyone to look at that game today and not be impressed. This is a ‘last gen’ game boasting graphics that really look as good as today’s. What has happened? >Part of the reason I think that games lack that ‘wonder’ anymore is that they all use the same graphical tools and engines to get there. Whether that’s Unreal Engine 4 /5 or other accessible tools, it’s wonderful for accessibility and democratises stunning visuals, but perhaps raises the bar making it harder for a game to really stand out. Experiences like these – truly, visual-led experiences – are getting fewer and far between. With the news that Sony intends to Prioritize ‘Memorable, Immersive’ experiences over visuals, I fear there is also an industry-wide acknowledgement that perhaps people have become immune to ‘technically impressive’ graphics, which is such a shame. I wonder if this generation of players coming through will ever experience those awe inspiring moments many of us older generation experienced – I certainly hope so.

>>971997 graphics used to change by leaps and bounds now it's like small hops

>>971806 I keep forgetting dykes started to screech that they "luv gayms" but only fucking Super Mario and Animal Crossing.

>dykes >Mario Bad bait >Animal Crossing That's just regular women

>>972133 The trendy life sim that caters to actual dykes is Stardew Valley, with all its LGBTQ romance options. Early character designs for SV weren't as flamboyant either. Dykes read a lot of visual novels with dyke romances, too. I got curious and looked up a list from an actual dyke, this was the first hit and it is mostly movie-games. I think SV is first place for life sims. Undertale's in their top 10 too, Tumblr dykes basically made Toby Fox a somebody. ranker.com/list/best-lgbtq-video-games/brenna-zedan >The Best Queer Video Games with BidenBTQ+ Content >Brenna Zedan >The existence of LGBTQ+ video game characters has far too often been only heavily implied or hinted at via flirty dialogue and vague suggestion. Queer video game content is also often only the meager result of a game allowing the player to create a male or female character and not limiting NPC romantic preferences. But the best queer video games offer rounded characters who romance, live, fight, and investigate while also being lesbian, trans, gay, or actively bisexual because they were written that way. <1. Dragon Age: Inquisition <2. Dragon Age: Origins <3. Mass Effect 3 <4. Life Is Strange <5. The Last of Us: Left Behind <6. The Last of Us <7. Night in the Woods <8. Life Is Strange: Before the Storm <9. Mass Effect: Andromeda <10. Dream Daddy <11. Undertale <12. Life is Strange: True Colors <13. The Outer Worlds <14. Mass Effect <15. Fallout: New Vegas <16. Butterfly Soup <17. Saints Row Franchise, Starting With Saints Row 2 <18. Gone Home <19. Fallout 2 <20. Mass Effect 2 <21. Your Royal Gayness <22. Borderlands 2 <23. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic <24. Assassin's Creed Syndicate <25. Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! <26. Steven Universe: Save the Light <27. Life Is Strange: Remastered Collection <28. 2064: Read Only Memories <29. Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony <30. My Ex-Boyfriend the Space Tyrant <31. Fallout 4 <32. Overwatch <33. Blue Reflection: Second Light <34. Cyberpunk 2077 <35. Stardew Valley <36. Starfield

>BidenBTQ+ Weird word filter. Testing: LGBTQ, LGBTQ+, LGBTQ+ Content

I guess it just applies at random?

>>971611 >marketing >corporate suits are retarded I disagree with your specific points, but not your mindset here. I think this shit is way bigger than just vidya, What jobs do Americans have? We don't make anything, not enough to really matter. Some of the most (real-life) productive jobs are in the transportation industry, moving shit other people made to our stores. I feel like half the people I talk to are "administrators" or "customer service" or some other bullshit, parasitic, nonsense make-a-job. It's not just marketing, it's the legions of office niggers whose job is to make spreadsheets. It's the bloated HR dept whose main job is to shit out a flier for the weekly office pot-luck. The 3:5 "manager":employee ratio. And corpos aren't retarded, because circulating this bullshit money is the only thing keeping the bloated carcass that is the US (via the USD) afloat. It's not the vidya that's dying, it's the entire United States and the bluff is being called. Vidya is just one example.

>>971550 At this rate the PS6 era may achieve 1080p ,or less, upscaled to 4K at a consistent 60FPS like the PS5pro will promise. Around the PS7's release talk of 4K native 60 will reappear. Instead Sony will leak rumors of 8K30 for the PS7pro. They'll push back the tagline of 4K60 for a PS8 release. Which, if you've been paying attention; PS9pro will do 1440p upscaled to 4K at under 50 FPS. In the end the first Sony console to do 4K native with a consistent 60 FPS will be the PS11pro.

>>971997 Last time I was blown away by graphics was probably Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020

>>972164 The last time I was actually impressed by graphics was Unrecord, which does a similar trick MFS2020 does using actual photography.

>>972170 The last time I was actually impressed by graphics was Alien: Isolation, which could look good and aesthetically pleasing with high framerates even on relatively toaster-ish machines.

Anons on /v/ in like 2012 realized graphics whoring was eventually going to hit a wall, why did it take the industry hitting that wall for it to catch up? Think about it there were only ever two options >graphics become photorealistic and can physically have no further progression (arguably already happening with games like Ride 4 and Unrecord) >graphics plateau and further progression becomes implausible That infinite growth brainrot is especially dumb in this case

The last time I was actually impressed by graphics was PS5's UE5 tech demo that demonstrated Lumen and Nanite, then nothing for PS5 wound up looking that good.

>>972170 >The last time I was actually impressed by graphics was <a game that hasn't come out yet How don't you know well enough to not care about pre-release "in-game footage"?

>>972188 Because without the focus on graphics any indie studio could make the same game as them.

>>972170 It's ridiculous that every FPS doesn't use this obviously superior perspective, and I have to force it with ReShade.

>>972140 <15. Fallout: New Vegas <6. The Last of Us <17. Saints Row Franchise, Starting With Saints Row 2 <19. Fallout 2 <23. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic lmao

>>972214 I meant the footage impressed me. The dev proved it was real, but I understand what you mean. It's always better to be cautious. >>972241 I like how this makes Mirror's Edge look like some weird experimental piece. I don't usually use ReShade, but there are definitely times where it's needed. Ever play Far Cry 2? The game is beautiful once you play around with contrast and saturation settings so it doesn't look so fucking dull and washed out, I have no idea why they sabotaged their own graphics like that except maybe chasing that BROWN trend games had in the late 2000s. >>972236 Probably not the reason, but that isn't a bad point. If you've played FPS recently you'd notice what's coming out of the indie scene is generally miles better than most AAA FPS, it's like the entire FPS scene collectively realized the genre picked up a lot of bad habits and traits and went back to 90s design principals.

>>971550 Please for the love of God no more fucking movies.

>>972140 I dont get that list, is it mean to represent best vidya with faggots in it, or best representation with faggots in it? Also, dont talk shit about stardew velley in that respect, the game is as gay as you make it, since without (You), everyone in pelican town in heterosexual.

>>972140 >Fallout 2 and KotOR are the only pre-360 games they could name Absolutely pathetic.

>>972291 It's strange they didn't name Phantasmagoria 2. Curtis struggling with his bisexuality is a core aspect of his character.

>>972291 >the only pre-360 games they could name Anon, you missed something very important on that list. Absolutely NONE of the games listed are Japanese!

>>972296 Blue Reflect 2 was there at the very bottom, so it's one that was Japanese.

>>971997 This article has me in stitches, this guy's just fucking rambling. >Another one of my favourites actually takes me back to the PS1 days. Anyone remember Fear Effect? <Hey remember this game? Yeah that was good. t. journo supreme I wish I got paid for the random bullshit I posted. >>972142 I've never seen that before, I didn't even know it existed. How did you trip it?

>>972140 <<17. Saints Row Franchise, Starting With Saints Row 2 The only vaguely gay thing I recall in SR2 was when you play as a female boss she agrees with Johnny Gat about putting strippers in their HQ. Though on the minigame where you become a prostitute, Ho-ing, your clients are always the opposite gender of your character. So she probably meant male strippers. >>972291 >Eien no Filena >SaGa Frontier >Summon Night >Wild Arms Maximum SOUL taste right here. >>972465 It's really jarring to see BR2 on the same list as that western garbage. Also weren't the relationships in BR2 platonic at best? I'm pretty sure BR1 was the one that was actually gae. "Game Jurnos don't actually play games, more news at 7" I suppose.

>>972633 Ho-ing is the opposite of the last preset chosen in character creation. If you make a female character from scratch instead of picking a female preset the NPC will be female. BR2 has pic related and a few other things.