Eruanno

I think this is such a weird discussion in that we know so little about anything to make any of the inner workings to make educated comments. Sure, we know that there is a lot of Stuff On Screen at any one time that warrants the idea that a lot of CPU is required to keep track of said Stuff.

On the other hand, we don't actually know the inner workings of the newest RAGE engine to know how they handle things, and we have no idea how far along they are with optimization. One system that uses a lot of CPU time this week may have been beaten down to only use half as much CPU next week when the engineering crew have taken a crack at it. (And then of course, some things are already as fast as they can be and have hit their limit.)

Just look at something like 007 First Light which was barely hanging on to that 30 FPS line during their first showing and then by launch they were easily hitting 60. And yes, I'm aware it's not an open world game, has very different ambitions and so on and so forth and is not a perfect comparison, but I'm just saying that optimizing underlying systems can go a long way.

I'm also curious about the future PC version if the CPU is indeed a bottleneck for higher FPS. If a Ryzen 3700X (which has typically been the console-ish CPU to compare to for PC) is the baseline for 30 FPS it's going to be very interesting to see what is required to hit 60.

Also, on top of that, I'm very curious to see what the Series S runs like. While similar in CPU performance to the other consoles, it has markedly lower memory (which is much, much slower) along with much less GPU to play with.

Hot take, but I just feel very whelmed by this. Maybe I'm getting old and grumpy, I dunno.

To be clear, it's a very good looking game. Lots of stuff going on, pretty lighting, well animated characters. (Those reflections - which I assume are raytraced - look extremely blobby, though. Particularly on vehicles.) It just looks... like another GTA, but prettier.

I feel like we'll still be driving from one side of the city to the other, following a yellow line on a tiny mini-map while NPCs blabber on with sort-of-okay shooting controls and the game will be Very Upset if you dare deviate from the exact narrow corridor the game has set up for you during missions. "Oh, let me go left at this intersection MISSION FAILED YOU LEFT THE MISSION AREA!!!"

The open world might be having a lot more to offer, but we don't see a whole lot of that except short glimpses (like parachute jumping, dirt bike racing, random strangers, etc.) but... I feel like I kind of played that stuff in GTA 5. With worse graphics, sure, but I feel like I've... done a lot of those things?
Red Dead 2 added a lot of open world stuff like talking to random strangers, but it feels they didn't really add much to it and just transplanted the system to GTA 6. Maybe to a degree that we're not seeing here, but I can't comment on what we don't see, only what we do see.

I don't know, I'm not blown away. I feel like when you've spent ~8 years and god-knows-how-much-money on a game to be sold for €90 I expected to be feeling a bit more "oh my god, holy *****!" and less "yeah, cool I guess".

Imagine if they had announced they were implementing something similar to this on Playstation when announcing the brutal murder of discs. I think that would have gone down a lot better.

It's good to see that Remedy (finally) supports AMD, but they are definitely a distant third in the supported list with Nvidia being the prime star, PS5 Pro second and AMD coming in for the third spot.

They really could have used the AMD Ray Regeneration though because the in-game denoiser is kind of ass and runs very slow.
(Also a big boo for delaying the physical copy of Control Resonant.)

@wsjudd What's weird is that it feels different between games. I wonder if it's down to frame pacing and/or motion blur implementations for the 30 FPS cutscenes? In Ghost of Yotei, it didn't actually bother me that much and I didn't think about it that much. In Saros, it felt very stuttery, same as in AC Black Flag.

I kind of wish the consoles had the option for an unlocked cutscene FPS as well (at the sacrifice of resolution etc.)
30 is so choppy when flipping from even 40 or 60.

I think one of the things that made Playstation so successful in the past two generations has actually been retail. We, the "internet gamers" know about the new game releases because we keep up with them, but I would argue a lot of people who only play Call of Duty, GTA, sports games etc. still go to physical stores and see "oooh, a PS5 and some games, I want that!"

Xbox meanwhile has been backing off from this strongly with their focus on digital/Game Pass and I think a lot of that stems from not having visibility to the general public. The Xbox corner at most stores is tiny these days because there frankly isn't that much to sell. Here's a console, here's a Game Pass prepaid card, here are a handful of games. Meanwhile, the Playstation/Nintendo shelves are STACKED because they have games to sell.

Sony may save some money in the short run on disc printing/shipping/taking larger margins on digital sales, but I think in the long run they are going to hurt themselves a LOT in ways that are difficult to calculate because they will sharply lose popularity. I don't think a digital-only Playstation 6 for $1000+ with games that cost an average of 20-30% more per copy that don't get visibility to the public eye will be a good run for them.

It's such a dumb thing to kill physical media. Sony should have at the very least have offered a solution. Like "unfortunately, we're going to be winding down physical media but we're working on a solution to make sure your existing library remains compatible" or just... something. The rumor that Xbox is working on a way to "convert" your discs to digital ownership could have been a way to follow it up.

The way the current announcement is worded is just "discs are out, buy digital or suck it, bye" which just feels so... offensive to their existing audience (and partners) in a really unpleasant way.

@Kingsbane For now. Eventually, they will stop letting you download your stuff. Sony's exact quote is:
"That means new content purchases will no longer be possible once the PlayStation Store closes on these devices. To ease the transition, players will still be able to download previously purchased content after the closing date for the foreseeable future."
When is that? A year? Two years? Five years?

So on the one hand, they are saying "digital is the future, buy digital!" but on the other hand they are saying "your ownership of anything digital is limited and we will eventually remove access to it" by shuttering the PS3/PSP store.

How long until they shutter the store for PS4 games? How long for PS5 games? What about PS6 games, will they eventually just disappear from existence when they shutter the PS6 store since there is no way to install them from a disc format? Are those PS6 exclusives just dead when the PS6 store shuts down since they aren't doing PC ports anymore?
And what about games we already own, will the PS6 just not be compatible with physical PS4/PS5 games? Is there a conversion program to claim digital copies, or is it just "haha, screw you, buy your games again"? Because that certainly sounds like a poop sandwich for your customers who bought physical copies that are now incompatible with future hardware.

I'm going to make a completely wild guesstimation that GTA VI will in fact have a 30 and a 60 FPS mode on all consoles except maybe Series S.

Honestly, Rockstar is probably commandeering more engineering to this one game than any other studio can dream of. They will optimize the everloving crap out of this game, if nothing else but to prepare it for a future PC version. Can you imagine everyone losing their minds because a Ryzen 3600/3700 (rough console equivalent PC CPUs) can barely run the game at 30 FPS?

@MattGPT True. I keep forgetting that US prices live in this weird wonderland where something costs, say, $70 but then it's another $5 or something that just "doesn't count" because they don't include VAT in pricing.

This is 100% to stave off any second hand copies from appearing in the market. You want to play GTA 6? Great, you’re buying it from Rockstar. Selling your copy? Nope. This also gives them a retail presence while maintaining release control.
Sigh. Boo.
Oh, and since it's $80 it's going to be at least €90-100 in Europe because the conversion rates for games are always complete ass.

@AmazingCass Right, but I'm not wondering why would anyone preorder ever. I get that there are preorder bonuses or preloads and stuff. What I'm wondering is why the heck would anyone preorder a game in June that doesn't come out in November? There's nothing to gain by preordering something months and months in advance.

Why would I preorder a game months and months ahead of launch when it's bound to have a gazillion copies (and digital options) with no issue?
I mean, it's cute for marketing but super pointless as a consumer.

With the current prices on digital games, any console without some alternate way to purchase games is out. Where I live, digital console games cost over €80 on launch day and that's just not happening. The only way I can still buy games without breaking the bank is by shopping for disc copies which typically retail for €10-20 less.

Oh for ***** sake, AMD. I want to like you, but you're so good at shooting yourselves in the foot recently for no reason.

@matmartin Well, good news! FSR 4 is coming to 7000-series GPUs in July.

I remain in the camp that the Steam Machine is a very cool idea but it is ever so slightly lacking in specs. If it had been a newer GPU with FSR 4 support and ~12-16 GB VRAM I think it would have been an excellent deal. 8 GB VRAM in 2026 is just not feasible for a device promising 4K output (even upscaled). Hell, I have a 12 GB GPU today, and it's juuuuust enough for some games.

As it stands now, and with the RAM/SSD prices it's just kind of a cool idea on paper but doesn't seem quite what I want in reality.
I still really like the form factor and all the ideas around it. I hope Valve continues developing it in the future and that the prices can drop to reasonable levels.

I'm imagining some Capcom developer opening up the first Digital Foundry article and going "wait, that's not the resolution we meant, woops" and sneaking it into the next update.

This is by far my favorite Assassin's Creed game through the years, so this definitely has me intrigued. The PC settings don't actually seem that unreasonable (unless you're cranking it to the supermax) - I hope the consoles can follow along on that same note.

I'm so thankful that I finally splurged on a new PC build back in June 2025. The 7600X/32 GB RAM/2 TB SSD/5070 build I went for back then cost me around €1500 then and the exact same build is now well north of €2000.

As much as I grumble about Nvidia, this kind of stuff is actually genuinely cool. Super Resolution upgrades being "upgradeable" through a variety of generations of their GPUs (at varying performance costs) is genuinely an awesome feature.
I really wish that Sony would have implemented something like this with the PS5 Pro/PSSR, letting games simply use a newer version without game intervention.

I feel like I really dodged a bullet with the RAM-a-geddon. I built a new PC (many years overdue!) back in the summer and the 32 GB DDR5 kit I picked up was around €95. That same exact kit now costs €450! >

I'm pretty curious if there are any resolution differences between the modes with unlocked frame rates. We know from before the game was running at roughly ~1080p-1440p in RT Pro 60 for example, does enabling unlocked frame rate move the needle more towards 1080p more often in favor of higher FPS?
Also curious what the graphics settings/resolution differences are for the Balanced modes.