The Great Video Game Business and Financial (In)Stability Thread

Eurogamer's feature on the upcoming Control ray tracing patch mentions "feature parity" between the PS5 and XSX versions. The way it is presented suggests that it is a fact communicated to them by the developer.

I think it highlights something I've been noticing about the latest generation of AAA third party games: visual settings are exactly the same between the two lead platforms. There aren't any varying shadow techniques or level of detail settings or SSAO implementations, like we used to have in the last couple of console generations. My guess is that this is a contractually obligated provision imposed by one or both of the two major console companies.

The two lead consoles have similar, but different architectures. There should be techniques or settings or algorithms that work better on one platform or the other.

Anyway, it seems, to me, like there's kind of a loss of differentiating character between the two platforms if they look exactly alike. Also, I think it means that pretty much only first party games with internally developed and tweaked engines will be really demonstrating the capabilities of the current gen platforms.

This isn't really a new thing. First party games have always best showed off hardware capabilities. But, I feel like this may be a more salient and pronounced feature of this generation of games.

Google Stadia Shuts Down Internal Studios, Changing Business Focus

Google Stadia, the late 2019 streaming platform that promised to revolutionize gaming by letting users stream games without needing to own a powerful PC or console, is altering course, getting out of the game-making business and will now offer its platform directly to game publishers alongside offering Stadia Pro to the public.

The company is announcing the news today, though Kotaku began to hear rumblings from sources close to Stadia last week that Google’s service was heading for a major change. One games industry source told Kotaku that Google was canceling multiple projects, basically any games slated for release beyond a specific 2021 window, though they believed games close to release would still come out. Today brings some clarification.

Google will close its two game studios, located in Montreal and Los Angeles. That closure will impact around 150 developers, one source familiar with Stadia operations said. The company says it will try to find those developers new roles at Google.

Jade Raymond, the veteran producer who helped build Assassin’s Creed for Ubisoft and moved on to EA several years ago before leaving to run game creation at Stadia, is exiting the company, according to Google.

Google will continue to operate the Stadia gaming service and its $10 monthly Stadia Pro service. It’s unclear how many, if any, exclusive games will still come to the service, though the company has indicated that it can still sign new games. It nevertheless will look to many like a draw down of the plan to have Stadia run as a bona fide competitor to console platforms.

Nobody ever saw that coming.

This one seemed unusually short though.

I know they’re not shutting down Stadia (yet), but how old were their internal studios?

I have to admit, this is the first I have heard that Google was going to make games and not just have Stadia as a platform for other companies' games.

Moral of this and the previous Amazon story... you can't spend your way to creating a good game. This not only goes when looking at it from the lens of an Amazon or Google who basically has unlimited cash and tried to use it to build a team, but coming the other way with developers asking for more time/money. I honestly feel that one of the advantages that indie devs have is that they have a figurative gun to their head and the money will run out if they don't get the game out.. whether that's full release or early access, they have a real hard deadline. Studios with massive funding from publishers (internal or external) justify in their heads that their game is too big to fail and that the publisher will always bail them out, but the math honestly just doesn't bear that out. That of course usually gets spun as "mean publisher crushes humble dev studio", but the reality behind it is usually very different.

The other thing that comes out of this... has Jade Raymond entered the pantheon of John Romero, Peter Molyneux, Scott Miller, who have somehow convinced themselves and/or publishers that their name itself is good enough to make a successful game? They all played a part in a very important game, but honestly... what have they done lately? Good for them for convincing a publisher to throw money at them, and I'm sure all of them have enriched themselves greatly over the last few years. At a minimum I'm going to put her in the Cliffy B tier of overrated creative/management talent.

PaladinTom wrote:

This one seemed unusually short though.
I know they’re not shutting down Stadia (yet), but how old were their internal studios?

Depending on Google's cost benefit analysis, I'm not sure that the timescale is that short one.

Google have likely looked at sales of Stadia subscriptions and calculated that they can't offset the costs of producing compelling (i.e. subscription-selling) exclusive content. Ergo, keep the platform for now (provided it can meet its operating costs in the short term), and ditch the money pits.

Big software businesses like Google/Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon probably have dozens of internal projects like these competing for funding. When one fails or looks like failing, they kill it quickly and redirect the funding to something more promising.

As others here have said, unless someone else licenses the technology, then I can see the platform itself going too. Playstation and Game Pass exclusives are going to make the Stadia library look lacklustre very quickly.

Carlbear95 wrote:

The other thing that comes out of this... has Jade Raymond entered the pantheon of John Romero, Peter Molyneux, Scott Miller, who have somehow convinced themselves and/or publishers that their name itself is good enough to make a successful game? They all played a part in a very important game, but honestly... what have they done lately? Good for them for convincing a publisher to throw money at them, and I'm sure all of them have enriched themselves greatly over the last few years. At a minimum I'm going to put her in the Cliffy B tier of overrated creative/management talent.

I was wondering about this too, though I was more thinking "Man, what a wasted decade for Jade Raymond". I suppose it wasn't so wasted given these places likely paid her well, and a producer is... an interesting role that's hard to nail down where its creative contribution begins and ends. A good producer can cultivate a team and knows when to tell them to make cuts or where to focus their attention. Do we have enough of a portfolio to know how good she is at such a thing? I'unno.

John Romero, at least, has recently put out Empire of Sin, and if my brother is to be believed, it's actually a pretty snazzy game. Something like a Paradox game but with X-Com combat, is the way he puts it. So Romero may be returning to some degree of relevance, though certainly not the rockstar role he dominated in the early-to-mid nineties.

If anything ruined CliffyB, it was allowing him access to social media.

Coincidentally, SEGA just announced that their Yakuza spin-off Judgment is coming to PS5, Xbox Series, and.... Stadia. Word on the "street" is that Stadia purchased a temporary exclusivity, which is why it's a bit baffling to not see it on PC/Steam. The reaction has been... as you can predict. It's particularly startling to me because, thus far, SEGA's been cozy with Microsoft and tossing all their Yakuza games onto Game Pass (except Like a Dragon). So seeing this be exclusive to Stadia, which you know is running a PC version, is interesting. Is this perhaps one of the first signs that Stadia is trying to focus on building that library of other people's titles as (temporary) exclusives now that they're giving up on having their own games?

Stadia servers run a proprietary version of Linux, based on Debian.

Embracer has been on another spree by acquiring Gearbox ($1.3 bil!), Easybrain (mobile puzzle) and Aspyr Media (ports).

Supposedly Gearbox has wanted to be bought out for a while. I imagine Randy Pitchford wants more money for his Vegas parties or whatever.

Edit: Actually, Easybrain merged with Embracer and is the third largest stakeholder. Wow.

polq37 wrote:

I think it highlights something I've been noticing about the latest generation of AAA third party games: visual settings are exactly the same between the two lead platforms. There aren't any varying shadow techniques or level of detail settings or SSAO implementations, like we used to have in the last couple of console generations. My guess is that this is a contractually obligated provision imposed by one or both of the two major console companies.

Beating a drum that nobody else seems to care about, but here goes:

There's a new Digital Foundry video showing Control in ray tracing mode at unlocked framerates on the PS5 and XSX. It shows the XSX running about 15 % faster than the PS5 and often maintaining framerates in the mid 40s to the mid 50s.

Big deal, so what? All performance gains above 30 are meaningless until you hit 60 because of judder and screen tearing (because screens have been synced to ~60fps refresh schedules since the dawn of the TV era).

In this case however, the XSX can use Variable Refresh Rates on TVs that support the feature. Sony hasn't yet included VRR on the PS5. In theory, the XSX should be able to show the game in a stable, non-flickering or tearing way that is much more fluid than the base 30fps frame rate.

But they don't. Maybe it doesn't work in practice. Maybe there are contractual obligations limiting the differences in presentation between platforms. If it is the latter, it seems like a clear case where customers who have the hardware are losing out.

For third parties, It's more likely they would need a contractual obligation to add the extra hardware differentiation, rather than there being a contractual obligation to keep them similar. It's extra work to add that stuff, and comes down to what individual developers prioritize and are able to make time for. The hardware is pretty similar, so it's not as much work as it used to be to get visual parity between platforms. Anything beyond that is gravy, basically.

beanman101283 wrote:

For third parties, It's more likely they would need a contractual obligation to add the extra hardware differentiation, rather than there being a contractual obligation to keep them similar. It's extra work to add that stuff, and comes down to what individual developers prioritize and are able to make time for. The hardware is pretty similar, so it's not as much work as it used to be to get visual parity between platforms. Anything beyond that is gravy, basically.

This is in line with what we got from Cyberpunk, a game that was heavily marketed by Microsoft. The Series (X/S) version got a lot of extra treatment that the others didn't.

polq37 wrote:

Sony hasn't yet included VRR on the PS5.

They still haven't added it? :S That is kinda bad.

EvilDead wrote:

This is in line with what we got from Cyberpunk, a game that was heavily marketed by Microsoft. The Series (X/S) version got a lot of extra treatment that the others didn't.

And Sony pulled it from their store.

There are lot of buggy, janky games out there. Did Sony pull it because it was buggy and janky or because CDPR was playing games and released a version of CP that was ostensibly not XSX modified and still had different visuals from the PS4/PS5 version?

Beanman's point is excellent. Still, it's hard to see why Microsoft wouldn't throw some money at Remedy to get VRR working on Control. It would be a big marketing win for them and the TV industry would be thrilled (because they now have a feature to show off to encourage customers to upgrade their TVs). But, Remedy has been in bed with Sony following the collapse of their relationship with Microsoft in the disasterous early Xbox One era.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the versions of Cyberpunk on Series X/S and PS5 are the current-gen versions, not the next-gen, right? The next-gen upgrade/versions haven't released yet?

Everything I hear from people close to the industry is that money doesn’t change hands for things that granular. It’s exclusivity (timed or otherwise) or nothing, basically. The number of people that care about VRR A) likely already own the product and B) wouldn’t amount to enough sales to warrant a deal, even if they didn’t already own the product.

ccesarano wrote:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the versions of Cyberpunk on Series X/S and PS5 are the current-gen versions, not the next-gen, right? The next-gen upgrade/versions haven't released yet?

That's correct. We're still waiting for native PS5/Xbox Series versions.

polq37 wrote:
EvilDead wrote:

This is in line with what we got from Cyberpunk, a game that was heavily marketed by Microsoft. The Series (X/S) version got a lot of extra treatment that the others didn't.

And Sony pulled it from their store.

There are lot of buggy, janky games out there. Did Sony pull it because it was buggy and janky or because CDPR was playing games and released a version of CP that was ostensibly not XSX modified and still had different visuals from the PS4/PS5 version?

That's starting to cross into conspiracy thinking, I think. Microsoft was offering full refunds for CP2077 (maybe still are, I'm not sure). It's clear the experience of console players on both last gen platforms was cataclysmically subpar on both, compared to other games with some jank.

polq37 wrote:
EvilDead wrote:

This is in line with what we got from Cyberpunk, a game that was heavily marketed by Microsoft. The Series (X/S) version got a lot of extra treatment that the others didn't.

And Sony pulled it from their store.

There are lot of buggy, janky games out there. Did Sony pull it because it was buggy and janky or because CDPR was playing games and released a version of CP that was ostensibly not XSX modified and still had different visuals from the PS4/PS5 version?

They pulled it from the store because CDPR told people that if they wanted a refund they could contact the platform holders directly for the refund. Neither platform holder (as far as I know) were prepared or even notified that CDPR was going to say that. So, it was costing them money keeping it around in the state it was in, and therefore they pulled it from the store. CDPR wasn't exactly truthful about the of the console version to either company, there's nothing really more to it than that.

I'm really confused by this theory. So, is essentially being said is that Sony/Microsoft worked together to make CDPR contractually obligated to make a worse product for one console over the other because....why exactly? In this scenario the platform holders end up losing money, which I'm pretty sure they are not in the business of doing.

To jump back a bit and address a separate point:

polq37 wrote:

Beating a drum that nobody else seems to care about, but here goes:

There's a new Digital Foundry video showing Control in ray tracing mode at unlocked framerates on the PS5 and XSX. It shows the XSX running about 15 % faster than the PS5 and often maintaining framerates in the mid 40s to the mid 50s.

Big deal, so what? All performance gains above 30 are meaningless until you hit 60 because of judder and screen tearing (because screens have been synced to ~60fps refresh schedules since the dawn of the TV era).

In this case however, the XSX can use Variable Refresh Rates on TVs that support the feature. Sony hasn't yet included VRR on the PS5. In theory, the XSX should be able to show the game in a stable, non-flickering or tearing way that is much more fluid than the base 30fps frame rate.

But they don't. Maybe it doesn't work in practice. Maybe there are contractual obligations limiting the differences in presentation between platforms. If it is the latter, it seems like a clear case where customers who have the hardware are losing out.

Perhaps it's my own naivety in how games are being developed on console now, but I imagine the reality is as simple as the developer preferring a consistent performance of their game and therefore locking it to a specific behavior. Unlike PC players, whose hardware configurations are incredibly inconsistent across the board and therefore it makes sense to let them tweak settings until they get what they like, console systems are all roughly the same. If you're getting an inconsistent 40-50some FPS, then it might be better to just lock to a solid 30. Once you start talking about TVs that can or cannot support VRR, well...

Again, this is where console development is getting dumb, because now we can turn ray-tracing on or off, HDR on or off, performance or fidelity modes on or off, etc. So on one hand, why not let players toggle VRR on or off? Why bother locking to a consistent experience at all? Options options options!

On the other, even with the limited modes available, you can probably create a performance lock for each of those modes.

I'm also not 100% on VRR versus V-Sync, as they sound like they could both result in the same issues (in the case of V-Sync, input timing getting screwy for precision timing games and therefore the game being better with it off). If the same happens with VRR, then I can see why, especially in a game like Control, you'd want to avoid dealing with the potential input latency. But that's assuming VRR works similarly to V-Sync at all. I've no clue what the difference is, so, eh. Maybe someone else can fill in.

Regardless, it's more about what sort of consistency you can get in performance and keeping the user's choices as limited as possible for them so they don't have to think or worry about it too much.

polq37 wrote:

Did Sony pull it because it was buggy and janky or because CDPR was playing games and released a version of CP that was ostensibly not XSX modified and still had different visuals from the PS4/PS5 version?

They pulled it because their initial refusal to issue refunds (as CDPR publicly announced that they would) had become a PR boondoggle. Rather than processing a lot of purchases and refunds for a game that wasn't getting better any time soon, Sony pulled it from the store.

My guess is that this is a contractually obligated provision imposed by one or both of the two major console companies.

What contracts? How and when is this enforced?

Here's how console development works: you create a developer relationship with the platform holder which gives you access to development tools and the opportunity to purchase development kits. You develop your game using whatever tools are available to you, running your game against the development kit to see how it performs. When you're done, you submit the game to the platform holder for certification.

Certification ensures that the game complies with a checklist of requirements for the hardware: it doesn't brick your console; it doesn't allow the user access to anything it shouldn't; it handles controller disconnects, language switches, memory card extraction, sleep mode, and so forth in the appropriate way. That's all cert is.

Once you're certified, you can publish. If you're publishing physically, you pay the platform holder to print your discs or cartridges in whatever number you're willing to pay for. You give them the artwork for the game case, and they ship you the completed physical game copies to distribute. If you're publishing digitally, you upload your game to their servers in whatever format they require and with whatever art or ad copy or meta data is required to create the store page. You set your price, and they process sales of your game giving you a cut.

That's pretty much it. If you have a publisher, they'll handle some of those steps, but they're not materially different. If you're a big enough developer/publisher, the platform holder might offer you money for exclusivity or some kind of enhanced feature set (like the millions of dollars that Sony paid to Capcom for VR in Resident Evil 7, for example). But at no point is your game's performance checked against the competition. The platform holder does not ask for and doesn't have access to a build for a rival platform.

I suppose after launch differences might become evident, but if so, we'd notice more games getting pulled from the store. Also, I realize your allegations were about Sony and Microsoft, but I'm looking at Nintendo's terms and conditions for selling games on their platforms, and no such parity clause exists. I would be surprised if Nintendo's terms differed wildly from others.

More likely, games have a good degree of parity between platforms because the hardware in those platforms is more similar than they've ever been, and there are more middleware tools used to create software than ever before. Commercial engines like Unreal or Unity are designed to create versions that look and feel the same on as many platforms as possible, and proprietary engines (Frostbyte, RE Engine, etc.) are designed to do the same.

I'm just not sure such a contractual clause makes sense or is even plausible given the structure of the industry.

beanman101283 wrote:

That's starting to cross into conspiracy thinking, I think. Microsoft was offering full refunds for CP2077 (maybe still are, I'm not sure). It's clear the experience of console players on both last gen platforms was cataclysmically subpar on both, compared to other games with some jank.

Maybe. I don't think of myself as being conspiratorially minded. I reject most political conspiracies and I think Epstein most likely killed himself. But the stated reasons why businesses do things are often not the actual reasons why they do things. Outside of legally mandated filings related to stocks, I don't have a whole lot of confidence in business statements. Business language ranges from diplomatic to disingenuous. In this case, pulling the game from the store looked retaliatory.

Anyway, the broader point that I'm getting at is that it looks, to me, like Sony - which is the dominant player in the console market - is leaning on its relationships with the AAA game dev industry to insure that there are minimal apparent performance and visual differences in third party games. So, if you buy a copy of FIFA or Call of Duty on the XSX or PS5, the gameplay experience will be identical, regardless of what 'special sauce' the console makers included in their hardware.

This doesn't necessarily seem conspiratorial to me. This seems like a thing you would do if you dominate the market and are bringing out a new console that seems (on paper) to be just a little less powerful than your main competitor's console.

polq37 wrote:

Sony - which is the dominant player in the console market - is leaning on its relationships with the AAA game dev industry to insure that there are minimal apparent performance and visual differences in third party games.

Even if Sony is the “dominant player” in the console market, which may or may not be true, does their level of dominance over MS hold enough clout to justify Prima Donna like demandments? I don’t think the PS brand holds that much clout. It seems like there could be much more benign reasons for game parity between platforms.

polq37 wrote:

Anyway, the broader point that I'm getting at is that it looks, to me, like Sony - which is the dominant player in the console market - is leaning on its relationships with the AAA game dev industry to insure that there are minimal apparent performance and visual differences in third party games. So, if you buy a copy of FIFA or Call of Duty on the XSX or PS5, the gameplay experience will be identical, regardless of what 'special sauce' the console makers included in their hardware.

This doesn't necessarily seem conspiratorial to me.

It does to me. If Sony is tossing extra money to 3rd party developers, it's going to be for more exclusive content to offer something you can't get on other platforms. They're not going to waste money on negligible performance differences that will only be noticed by a tiny subset of enthusiasts.

The PS5 and the Xbox Series X are more similar than different which is the likely explanation to why there are very little differences between the two when it comes to 3rd party titles. As for VRR we are in the early stages of HDMI 2.1 so we need some patience as more manufactures adopt it since right now it’s basically LG and a handful of Samsung TV’s.

Not to mention widespread adoption from AV receivers and SoundBars as well.

The lead developer of Terraria is canceling Stadia support after google locked out his personal gmail account.

fenomas wrote:

The lead developer of Terraria is canceling Stadia support after google locked out his personal gmail account.

That is really going to upset 1s of people.

c'mon at least an order of magnitude more than that

("There are dozens of us!") -not one of the dozens

Mixolyde wrote:

That is really going to upset 1s of people.

I don't play Terraria or use Stadia, but I find it upsetting. If a developer whom Google should be helping to boost their platform can't get any support when his account is randomly locked, what hope do I have if/when it eventually happens to me?

Whatever the root cause, I can't blame any publisher or developer who chooses to not give Stadia another moment of their time.