It depends on the genre, for me. Playing a first person shooter with bad graphics, as opposed to average or mediocre graphics, would quickly give me a headache and I wouldn't enjoy. I'd enjoy any other game type with any level of graphical quality, though.
You don't play Goldeneye or Perfect Dark anymore?Originally Posted by Flambard D'Quinceteth
It's ironic for a company to profess wisdom about consoles that they've personally developed only three games for. It may be sad, but I think Square Enix has published more games developed by Activision on PS3/360 than they have developed themselves. Call of Duty alone...
I'm not too sure how qualified this worldwide director of technology, some European dude is to make these statements. The big pubs haven't left consoles, they've bought out smaller studios to work on mobile platforms. If anything, indies have been migrating to consoles via XBLA and PSN. And his "greener pastures" statements is probably unfounded. I've interviewed Cipher Prime, the minds behind some of the biggest critical darlings of hte indie scene, and they say the whole browser-based/iOS/Steam traditional indie channel is a very harsh, unforgiving environment to make video games in.
Maybe SE should stop worrying about the hardware so much, considering graphical quality is seriously not what has been lacking in their games lately.
Switching to PS4 won't make your game designers stop sucking, they'll just give you even flashier graphics to cover up the terrible job they're doing.
everything is wrapped in gray
i'm focusing on your image
can you hear me in the void?
Well, I think we can look at quite a few factors as to why they can't wait for the next generation of hardware.
It all comes down to technology, budget, allocation of resources, and efficiency. The problem with the PlayStation 3 is that it has been relatively difficult to develop for during the majority of its time span, and it's certainly something that Square Enix has struggled with especially during the development of Final Fantasy XIII; they were able to make a quick turn around with Final Fantasy XIII-2 because everything was already in place as far as the tech development, code and asset creation pipeline went.
No studio has a set standard way to develop for something, so a lot of processes have to be developed and put in place. This seems easier in the western industry because there are a lot of third party tools that can be integrated and help set up the studio's development rather quickly. This hasn't really been the case for Japan, it seems, most likely due to a language barrier (despite licensing UDK, they'd still need it translated and integrated with their current pipelines, which is a huge undertaking). So they've had to develop in-house tools to accommodate their projects (one of the biggest reasons for Final Fantasy XIII's long dev cycle); but with the next generation of hardware it seems they're ready for it.
The biggest problem that I see is that the expectations of Square Enix are extremely high when it comes to the visual side of things, they've been known as the studio that sets the bar in that area. Studios don't have unlimited budgets and unlimited amounts of resources to allocate to each area of development, so it may not be a case of bad game designers but rather having a lot of limitations of the designing aspect as a lot of their resource and budget went towards developing asset pipelines for a rather inefficient piece of hardware.
With newer hardware, and newer software technology (e.g. Luminous Engine) we can already see a much more efficient way of asset creation and more efficient pipelines for development, which perhaps will mean more allocation of resources and budget to focus on game design and iteration. That's most likely why they are over-excited to get on with the next generation of hardware, because they will be able to develop much more efficiently for it and be able to focus on making good games rather than spending all their budget (due to inefficiency) in trying to uphold the visual standard.
That's just my 2cents.
"... and so I close, realizing that perhaps the ending has not yet been written."
And that's all well and good, but not entirely what I was aiming at. The engine for FF13 might have been pretty expensive to develop, sure. But now that they have it, what is really stopping them from churning out good games? For FF13-2, they could reuse the engine and probably idk, half of the textures and other assets? The game ended up looking beautiful, but still they managed to botch what "many" think is the most important part of these games: A good and coherent storyline. One that actually makes sense and doesn't sound like someone who painted himself into a corner and had to jump out of a window to salvage the situation. One that doesn't leave 50 loose plot threads that require another god damn sequel to be properly tied up.
I can think of half a dozen ways to continue the FF13 storyline that didn't involve some terribly inconsistent time travel crap. Writing a different, not-unnecessarily-convoluted story isn't something that the PS4 will help you do.
As for the "HD towns would be too hard to do" thing they said in their defence of FF13, I'm not buying it. The game already included several towns, they were just not used as towns. Instead, they were used as "cardboard cutout" backdrops to the constant stream of action that they were jizzing over our faces. I can't see how the assets they used to make the Bodhum area couldn't have been rearranged to create an area where you could walk around freely and talk to people in town, maybe enter a few houses here and there and buy some gear and items.This sounds more like a game design issue, not a "too many assets to create" issue. They chose to not let us walk around freely in the town they had already created.
A "town" in an RPG doesn't necessarily refer to an actual collection of buildings, but more an area where you're not showered with action, an area where you can walk around at your own pace, and an area where you can talk to inhabitants of the world you're trying to save and hopefully learn more about the world you're living in, instead of sticking a feeding tube into your stomach to "flesh out" the world, such as the datalog was a prime example of.
Every time you bumped into something interesting in the world, the characters you played would say nothing at all, not even do a facial expression to show any sort of amazement or wonder. Then you'd get a "DATALOG UPDATED" message where the game has pre-digested what you just saw in the world, and condensed it to a dry piece of text in a menu. That doesn't exactly make me want to care about what I'm seeing. Having NPCs in the world tell you about these things with even as little as a non-voiced text bubble would be better. Again, design choice, not hardware limitation.
everything is wrapped in gray
i'm focusing on your image
can you hear me in the void?
I'm not talking hardware limitations, more so development limitations and inefficient pipeline integrations which can have a heavy influence in the way resources are allocated. That can be caused by hardware limitations, but it can also be caused by many other factors.
Though I completely agree it's unacceptable for them to be producing the crap that they are, I'm just trying to find reasoning within it. For instance, XIII-2 was probably the way it was simply because during that time they had to pull the majority of their resources and budget in to saving the bulltrout that is XIV (which is still ongoing). XIV would be soaking up everything they've got at the moment.
"... and so I close, realizing that perhaps the ending has not yet been written."
Maybe i'm just mad at them because I actually liked playing FF13-2 a lot but can no longer stand it because of what they did with it storywise at the end. I really enjoyed it most of the time.
everything is wrapped in gray
i'm focusing on your image
can you hear me in the void?
I agree with them, actually, but at the same time I'm not complaining. I love the fact that I haven't had to purchase another console to play new games yet.
I like Kung-Fu.
"Square Enix will not admit (self-)defeat nor will it accept any failure. All failures are passed off as incompletes 'meant to be that way' so that sequels can 'introduce' a new storyline and new character(s), some of which were hinted plot in the original. Square Enix does not admit to leaving plots dangling in the wind with no preconceived follow-thru. All sequels were always intended. *cough*"
Late on this thread, but screw Squenix. I am happy that the console generation has lasted as long as it has, especially after how much the majority of them cost when they came out of the gate.
While I don't dislike the newer FFs (mainly talking about both of the XIII games), I absolutely agree with the whole "cardboard backdrop" complaint seen in this thread.
I'm surprised that Squenix isn't relieved that this current generation has lasted as long as it did because they sure have been focusing on announcing games years in advance, announcing the announcements, and delaying/canceling projects.
But hey, we can buy PS1 games on the PSN network!
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