As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/

Video Game Industry Thread: Time for a new thread

1565758596062»

Posts

  • BonepartBonepart Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    cloudeagle wrote: »
    The PlayStation Network may be up and running again after April's massive security breach and the subsequent month-long outage, but the incident is leaving some longer-term reminders for Sony. For instance, the company is now dealing with a handful of lawsuits over the breach, including one filed this week alleging that Sony laid off network security staff just weeks before the breach, and ignored previous smaller-scale hackings that demonstrated security holes.

    The complaint accuses Sony of negligence, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, and violating the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act by not properly securing customer information. To help make its case, the suit cites a half dozen former Sony Computer Entertainment America and Sony Online Entertainment employees as confidential witnesses, many of whom were employed with their respective companies until March of this year.

    The confidential witnesses attest that Sony kept vastly different security standards for its own information and that of its customers, using out-of-date software, substandard encryption processes, and no firewalls when it came to customers' data. Additionally, the suit points out that Sony was warned in early April by hacking group Anonymous that it had become a target for cyber attacks, and notes that in late March "a substantial percentage" of Sony Online Entertainment's Network Operations Center, the group responsible for preparing for and responding to security breaches, had been dismissed in a round of layoffs. (SOE customer information was also compromised around the time of the PSN hack.) As for previous hacks, the suit notes widespread hacking of Modern Warfare 2 made the game "unplayable online" in January, and refers to unspecified reports in May 2009 that unauthorized copies of customers' credit cards were e-mailed to an outside account.

    The suit is being brought by a trio of Sony customers, two of whom were PSN members at the time of the massive security breach. The third plaintiff was a member of Sony Pictures' website and had his personal information made public when the site was hacked earlier this month by LulzSec. They are attempting to get class action status for the suit, so that it may cover all US users of PSN and Sony Pictures' site at the time they were hacked. The group is seeking monetary damages with interest, attorneys' fees, and appropriate credit monitoring services for all members of the class. Sony has already launched a program to provide affected PSN users with 12 months of complimentary credit monitoring.

    So you lay off your security people in late March and you are a target by early April?

    hhuummmmm. Sound like a pissed off employee(s) to anyone else?

    There should be a rule or something. DON'T PISS OFF THE PEOPLE THAT SECURE YOUR NETWORK.

    Bonepart on
    XBL Gamertag: Ipori
  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Warlock82 wrote: »
    Haha, poor Sony. I am genuinely curious to see how these lawsuits pan out. I mean, I imagine they have top-notch lawyers, but they are *totally* in the wrong here. I will be curious to see if they can bullshit their way out of some of these.

    It was back when the internet was young, but they settled out of the PS2 Hardware Lawsuits. I wonder if deliberately making such blatantly bad decisions convinces a few people over there, "You know, let's just send them a suitcase full of money and tell them to drop it."

    Synthesis on
  • Santa ClaustrophobiaSanta Claustrophobia Ho Ho Ho Disconnecting from Xbox LIVERegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Warlock82 wrote: »
    Haha, poor Sony. I am genuinely curious to see how these lawsuits pan out. I mean, I imagine they have top-notch lawyers, but they are *totally* in the wrong here. I will be curious to see if they can bullshit their way out of some of these.

    The only way it would be better* is if after getting the tipoff from Anonymous some executive looked at the person who brought it to their attention and said 'Well, you've covered your ass.' Then fired the security team.



    *For us, obviously.

    Santa Claustrophobia on
  • cloudeaglecloudeagle Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    cloudeagle wrote: »
    That's still kind of the thing, though. Even with 'only' five years, a console gets no significant hardware upgrades. Ever. Limiting the RAM like that is never going to work for long. That's simply a cost you have to eat if you want your system to last.

    SONY had no fucking excuse since they'd already force fed the BR stuff and were talking about 10 year life cycle from practically the beginning.

    Well, it depends on what you mean by "work." Keep up with stuff that's possible on computers? No. Keep on selling? Yep. Only we tech nerds are going to really notice that there's so much more possible. Meanwhile the rest of the market is still going to happily snork up the next Call of Duty and shoot mans without thinking twice. None of the big three have really suffered from their technical limitations, especially the underpowered yet strong-selling Wii.

    We're halfway through this 'gen' and games have already exhausted the current RAM supply. The key is, you don't succeed long term on short sighting your system unless you have a quick enough turn around. Nintendo is pushing their new console next year because they reached their limit on what the hardware could do.

    It doesn't matter if they can keep selling it and they did it on purpose. So they release a new console and hope they can pick up where they left off. Meanwhile, SONY and MS are going to try and ride out their hardware design in a market that has already caught up and soon will exceed what they're capable of.

    I could bring out a sports analogy, but I won't. Suffice it to say that Nintendo, for all the short sightedness the Wii had is doing what they should be doing. The other two are going to try and limp along to the finish line and hope nobody notices what's wrong.

    Well, that's just it: I don't think people will notice what's wrong. Hell, I don't even think the Wii U's extra power (above the 360 and PS3's level) will get noticed much by the market (beyond the fact that it's in HD, of course). And I think Nintendo knows this, which is why they've gone the extra step with that wacky tablet. The amount of easily apparent improvement (i.e., improvement that could be noticed by your mom) between generations, even with this generation, has leveled off significantly. A console can no longer sell on just a horsepower boost alone, especially with a market that's grown increasingly accustomed to low-power Facebook and smartphone games.

    cloudeagle on
    Switch: 3947-4890-9293
  • Santa ClaustrophobiaSanta Claustrophobia Ho Ho Ho Disconnecting from Xbox LIVERegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Bonepart wrote: »
    There should be a rule or something. DON'T PISS OFF THE PEOPLE THAT SECURE YOUR NETWORK.

    There's already a rule saying 'Don't piss off the people who serve your food.' The problem with IT departments? They're considered a drain on company resources. And in the games business, they're surpassed only by QA.

    It's just too easy to get on the bad side of the computer security folks. Mostly because the people who are really in charge are too stupid to know any better.

    Santa Claustrophobia on
  • urahonkyurahonky Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    If we can get console games looking like Crysis running on ultra settings on the PC then I'd be happy. I hope that's the next step...

    urahonky on
  • urahonkyurahonky Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Also I know plenty of people can't tell the difference between 480p and 1080p.

    urahonky on
  • BonepartBonepart Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    urahonky wrote: »
    Also I know plenty of people can't tell the difference between 480p and 1080p.

    Those people aren't using the right TV's. The difference is huge, if you have a TV that will display it properly.

    I can tell a big difference from my TV that is limited to 1080i to my Plasma that does 1080p, especially if there is any kind of text on the screen.

    Bonepart on
    XBL Gamertag: Ipori
  • Santa ClaustrophobiaSanta Claustrophobia Ho Ho Ho Disconnecting from Xbox LIVERegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    cloudeagle wrote: »
    cloudeagle wrote: »
    That's still kind of the thing, though. Even with 'only' five years, a console gets no significant hardware upgrades. Ever. Limiting the RAM like that is never going to work for long. That's simply a cost you have to eat if you want your system to last.

    SONY had no fucking excuse since they'd already force fed the BR stuff and were talking about 10 year life cycle from practically the beginning.

    Well, it depends on what you mean by "work." Keep up with stuff that's possible on computers? No. Keep on selling? Yep. Only we tech nerds are going to really notice that there's so much more possible. Meanwhile the rest of the market is still going to happily snork up the next Call of Duty and shoot mans without thinking twice. None of the big three have really suffered from their technical limitations, especially the underpowered yet strong-selling Wii.

    We're halfway through this 'gen' and games have already exhausted the current RAM supply. The key is, you don't succeed long term on short sighting your system unless you have a quick enough turn around. Nintendo is pushing their new console next year because they reached their limit on what the hardware could do.

    It doesn't matter if they can keep selling it and they did it on purpose. So they release a new console and hope they can pick up where they left off. Meanwhile, SONY and MS are going to try and ride out their hardware design in a market that has already caught up and soon will exceed what they're capable of.

    I could bring out a sports analogy, but I won't. Suffice it to say that Nintendo, for all the short sightedness the Wii had is doing what they should be doing. The other two are going to try and limp along to the finish line and hope nobody notices what's wrong.

    Well, that's just it: I don't think people will notice what's wrong. Hell, I don't even think the Wii U's extra power (above the 360 and PS3's level) will get noticed much by the market (beyond the fact that it's in HD, of course). And I think Nintendo knows this, which is why they've gone the extra step with that wacky tablet. The amount of easily apparent improvement (i.e., improvement that could be noticed by your mom) between generations, even with this generation, has leveled off significantly. A console can no longer sell on just a horsepower boost alone, especially with a market that's grown increasingly accustomed to low-power Facebook and smartphone games.

    Don't smartphones boost themselves in power from generation to generation? Maybe not at a giant level, but they drop new versions of that shit on the market like it was going out of style. And whether or not Facebook games are low-power, Facebook itself can become a system hog (whether or not it does now is immaterial). PCs get lost in this kind of debate simply because it's so easy to make those minor upgrades every so often.

    With a minimum five year life, consoles need to be better situated for the future. Cellphones are practically disposable. PCs have (mostly) always been modular. Restricting the console to cut initial costs is, of course, something they're going to do. But unlike everything else, the RAM is the most important thing it can have. And taking the cheap route there isn't healthy for long term sustainability. (Of the console, I mean.)

    All I'm saying is that they need to do a better job of giving the developers the room to make their games work. Not every developer goes batshit with the graphix, but that RAM limit will fuck them all faster than a spiraling dev budget. Why reach that point sooner rather than later?

    Santa Claustrophobia on
  • UncleSporkyUncleSporky Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Bonepart wrote: »
    There should be a rule or something. DON'T PISS OFF THE PEOPLE THAT SECURE YOUR NETWORK.

    There's already a rule saying 'Don't piss off the people who serve your food.' The problem with IT departments? They're considered a drain on company resources. And in the games business, they're surpassed only by QA.

    It's just too easy to get on the bad side of the computer security folks. Mostly because the people who are really in charge are too stupid to know any better.

    Working in IT, I hate this. It's really the IT people who have control of the most important things at any given company. We're honest people and we value our jobs, but we could probably cause more havok in the company than the custodians or the guys who load the trucks.

    UncleSporky on
    Switch Friend Code: SW - 5443 - 2358 - 9118 || 3DS Friend Code: 0989 - 1731 - 9504 || NNID: unclesporky
  • The Dude With HerpesThe Dude With Herpes Lehi, UTRegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Bonepart wrote: »
    urahonky wrote: »
    Also I know plenty of people can't tell the difference between 480p and 1080p.

    Those people aren't using the right TV's. The difference is huge, if you have a TV that will display it properly.

    I can tell a big difference from my TV that is limited to 1080i to my Plasma that does 1080p, especially if there is any kind of text on the screen.

    The difference is huge to us.

    My wife can't tell the difference. When we got our plasma I tried to show her the difference between dvd and blu-ray and she could kind of tell but her conclusion was that it wasn't that big of a deal to her. Much to my annoyance as I want to replace some of our DVD collection with blu-ray and when 1/2 of your power base at home doesn't care enough to change, justifying spending the money is pretty impossible.

    It blows my mind that she can't really see, or maybe she just doesn't care to see, the difference.

    She can tell the difference between quality of graphics from, say, a wii game to a 360 game, but that's just pretties on the screen and not the resolution. Even then, though, she has a different view of what is better in that regard. She thought the LoZ: TP looked just as good as, say, Halo Reach.

    When you don't spend an inordinate amount of your life caring about something like this, you can't always tell the difference. Similarly my wife can't tell the difference between a great pair of headphones and a shitty one, and she doesn't care if her car has 100 horsepower or 400.

    The Dude With Herpes on
    Steam: Galedrid - XBL: Galedrid - PSN: Galedrid
    Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
    Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand

  • MorninglordMorninglord I'm tired of being Batman, so today I'll be Owl.Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Absolutely. Our eyes are trained to see tiny details. Years and years of continuously upgraded games have hand fed us each change and given us years of comparison material to know the difference.

    It might be a useless skill, it might be something we all picked up without much effort because we are interested, but it IS a thing that you need to pay attention to to recognise. If you don't care that's not going to happen.

    Morninglord on
    (PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
  • cloudeaglecloudeagle Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    All I'm saying is that they need to do a better job of giving the developers the room to make their games work. Not every developer goes batshit with the graphix, but that RAM limit will fuck them all faster than a spiraling dev budget. Why reach that point sooner rather than later?

    I guess it all comes down to me being confused about this point. How is the ram limit really fucking things? Oh sure, it makes things a pain for developers who have to work around it. But it's really not affecting sales much at all, since nobody but us tech nerds really see the limitations. Especially since there's not really anything better to compare it to.

    cloudeagle on
    Switch: 3947-4890-9293
  • Santa ClaustrophobiaSanta Claustrophobia Ho Ho Ho Disconnecting from Xbox LIVERegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Bonepart wrote: »
    There should be a rule or something. DON'T PISS OFF THE PEOPLE THAT SECURE YOUR NETWORK.

    There's already a rule saying 'Don't piss off the people who serve your food.' The problem with IT departments? They're considered a drain on company resources. And in the games business, they're surpassed only by QA.

    It's just too easy to get on the bad side of the computer security folks. Mostly because the people who are really in charge are too stupid to know any better.

    Working in IT, I hate this. It's really the IT people who have control of the most important things at any given company. We're honest people and we value our jobs, but we could probably cause more havok in the company than the custodians or the guys who load the trucks.

    No shit. When I worked IT, the 'best' thing at one company was hearing the complaints once people found out we had the ability to read their e-mails.

    This happened after something like the third time in three months that the mail server crashed because nobody deleted old, unneeded e-mails. They'd keep whole strings of e-mail communications that had like a month's worth of replies in them. They'd keep 'sent folder' shit with giant attachment files as 'backup' (lets not get into the people who'd copy their C: drive to the network for 'backup'...) and then have multiple copies of that when it became part of a long string of responses.

    And all because we'd informed them that their activities were causing problems with our server stability... And whenever we'd ask for more money to improve the servers, they'd half-ass it. Right after we finish doing the upgrades for the executives first...

    Ten years after the bubble burst and people still don't get that IT workers simply don't give a shit about what you do so long as you don't break anything doing it. But, no.

    Santa Claustrophobia on
  • urahonkyurahonky Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Yeah I literally had TWO HD TVs right next to each other. One playing House via composite, and the other using HDMI and getting 1080p out of it... NOTHING they literally couldn't see the difference.

    I swear I thought she was fucking with me, but I think she really did want to see the difference!

    urahonky on
  • MorninglordMorninglord I'm tired of being Batman, so today I'll be Owl.Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    cloudeagle wrote: »
    All I'm saying is that they need to do a better job of giving the developers the room to make their games work. Not every developer goes batshit with the graphix, but that RAM limit will fuck them all faster than a spiraling dev budget. Why reach that point sooner rather than later?

    I guess it all comes down to me being confused about this point. How is the ram limit really fucking things? Oh sure, it makes things a pain for developers who have to work around it. But it's really not affecting sales much at all, since nobody but us tech nerds really see the limitations. Especially since there's not really anything better to compare it to.

    Bzzzt! Warning! Error! Infinite missing variable cascade!

    Morninglord on
    (PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
  • BonepartBonepart Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    It seems to me that the RAM issue really isn't that big of a deal. Sure, the RAM is the best upgrade you can do to boost performance, but the whole reason PC's have so much more is because they are so busy being PC's! It has changed a little bit, what with the consoles now running some kind of OS in the background, but in general they have so much less to run other than the games themselves.

    Bonepart on
    XBL Gamertag: Ipori
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Bonepart wrote: »
    It seems to me that the RAM issue really isn't that big of a deal. Sure, the RAM is the best upgrade you can do to boost performance, but the whole reason PC's have so much more is because they are so busy being PC's! It has changed a little bit, what with the consoles now running some kind of OS in the background, but in general they have so much less to run other than the games themselves.

    One of the reasons Valve never brought their character updates to the 360 version of TF2 is because they couldn't possibly fit them all into the 360's memory. (There was also the fact that MS was forcing them to charge for DLC, but their original plan was to just pack the character updates together.)

    Undead Scottsman on
  • DritzDritz CanadaRegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Hey don't go lumping me in with you "I can tell the difference between 720p and 1080p" folks. I suppose ultimately it depends on the size of the TV and how close you are to it. I do agree that not seeing the difference between 480p and HD is kinda strange. I can see not caring about it though. For instance I would never bother upgrading games/movies to newer versions just for HD.

    Dritz on
    There I was, 3DS: 2621-2671-9899 (Ekera), Wii U: LostCrescendo
  • UncleSporkyUncleSporky Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Bonepart wrote: »
    It seems to me that the RAM issue really isn't that big of a deal. Sure, the RAM is the best upgrade you can do to boost performance, but the whole reason PC's have so much more is because they are so busy being PC's! It has changed a little bit, what with the consoles now running some kind of OS in the background, but in general they have so much less to run other than the games themselves.

    Well it doesn't matter so much that PCs have more RAM because they're running the OS - the fact of the matter is that PC devs have gotten used to taking advantage of that roomy extra RAM and in some cases they just can't wrap their heads around less.

    UncleSporky on
    Switch Friend Code: SW - 5443 - 2358 - 9118 || 3DS Friend Code: 0989 - 1731 - 9504 || NNID: unclesporky
  • BonepartBonepart Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    urahonky wrote: »
    Yeah I literally had TWO HD TVs right next to each other. One playing House via composite, and the other using HDMI and getting 1080p out of it... NOTHING they literally couldn't see the difference.

    I swear I thought she was fucking with me, but I think she really did want to see the difference!

    It Boggles the mind. BOGGLES.

    Bonepart on
    XBL Gamertag: Ipori
  • cloudeaglecloudeagle Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    cloudeagle on
    Switch: 3947-4890-9293
  • Santa ClaustrophobiaSanta Claustrophobia Ho Ho Ho Disconnecting from Xbox LIVERegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Bonepart wrote: »
    urahonky wrote: »
    Yeah I literally had TWO HD TVs right next to each other. One playing House via composite, and the other using HDMI and getting 1080p out of it... NOTHING they literally couldn't see the difference.

    I swear I thought she was fucking with me, but I think she really did want to see the difference!

    It Boggles the mind. BOGGLES.

    And some people are having trouble with the 3DS.

    Some people are colour blind.

    Oddly, not everybody is actually the same.

    Santa Claustrophobia on
  • TOGSolidTOGSolid Drunk sailor Seattle, WashingtonRegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Bonepart wrote: »
    It seems to me that the RAM issue really isn't that big of a deal. Sure, the RAM is the best upgrade you can do to boost performance, but the whole reason PC's have so much more is because they are so busy being PC's! It has changed a little bit, what with the consoles now running some kind of OS in the background, but in general they have so much less to run other than the games themselves.


    Which is very true and simply means that they can get away with less ram, however the piddling amounts that these companies seem to love sticking in their machines is really hamstringing game development.

    The 360 has 512MB that is shared between the CPU and the GPU. The PS3 has what...256 for the video card and 256 as regular ole ram? If we need a new console generation it'd simply be to get systems with far more ram in them so that devs are no longer so limited by the hardware. Hell, it's almost no wonder shooter development is stuck in whack-a-mole mode. You'd prolly smoke a console trying to get it to do anything clever with AI.

    TOGSolid on
    wWuzwvJ.png
  • The WolfmanThe Wolfman Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    I definitely noticed the jump going from a pretty shitty 1080i component television to VGA/HDMI and full 720/1080p, but only mostly in the little things. Everything was simply a lot clearer. I could properly see the shadows and the opening constelation in Braid, and I could properly read all the small tiny text in Valkyria Chronicles. Beyond that general "Everything is crystal clear and defined"... I've got nothing. I have some PS3 games that display in 1080, and some that only do 720. I couldn't tell you which is which. I only know when I push the info button on the monitor, and the display tells me what it's in. And this is on a computer monitor a foot away from me.

    The Wolfman on
    "The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
  • MorninglordMorninglord I'm tired of being Batman, so today I'll be Owl.Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    I can tell the difference between 720p and 1080p on any of my games but I cannot do the same for a movie. At all.

    Morninglord on
    (PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
  • LilnoobsLilnoobs Alpha Queue Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    I can tell the difference between 720p and 1080p on any of my games but I cannot do the same for a movie. At all.

    On a movie, anything over 480p is a wash to me. On console games, I'll be lucky to notice a difference between 480p and 720p. Forget 720p to 1080p--there's just no difference.

    Lilnoobs on
  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    The difference between 480i and 1080p, or 480p and 1080p, on the same television, is pretty straightforward for me to see--particularly in the area of textures.

    Though between 720p and 1080p, on a TV I'm several feet from, it's a lot harder.

    Synthesis on
Sign In or Register to comment.