The FUTURE for PS4 Players

[CMDR NIVALLICA]

Greetings Commanders!

I'm new to the board, so hello! I chucked this question over to the guys on the FD live stream but unfortunately it went unanswered and was lost (multiple times) in the maelstrom of questions being fired over.

Anyway, I love this game. It's more than a game and I'm sure a lot (if not most) of you agree. I'm so engaged and engrossed in what FD have created that it's become a hobby. Because of this, I have invested heavily. I've got a projector screen that comes down from the ceiling (so our living room is your typical family living room and not a crazy space zone during the day - lol?) with a 130" projection of the game. I have Philip Hue bulbs that match the HUD on either side of the projection and a bulb above to create the ambiance of inside my Asp Explorer... The Infinity & Beyond. I've also made my own HOTAS chair... it's pretty feckin' sweet.

But my question is: "What future proofing do we PS4 players have? I'm in this for the long haul. When the PS4 reaches maturity and is finally phased out in place of it's successor (The PS5?); will the game and our saves move seamlessly across or (science forbid!) is that the end? Do we scramble to our nearest PC shop and beg FD to locate our save on the servers and somehow transfer it over to PC? Are we left in the void?"

It might seem OTT but I'm thinking - as ED expands and develops and becomes bigger and better over time; should I be investing in the PS4 version of the game? It's kind of too late because I already have.... but, you know. I'm spit balling here.

Over to you Commanders. See you in the void. Fly safe and avoid Thargoids.

[TorTorden]

Main gist of what you are asking depends where the industry is taking itself.
Will it keep going on current architecture, go closer to a pc style upgrade path so old games work on the new without having to be updated, or rebranded?
Or will it be another complete overhaul, and like the ps3 games, I might as well dump all the ps4 games in the creek behind my house?

We know very little about the ps5 as of yet, I haven't even bothered googling it until today, cause consoles are cancer as far as I'm concerned.
They are rubbish for gaming, and utterly useless for watching movies. Anyhoo, those are my educated opinions.

I'm sure Sony is whipping their engineers into gear as we speak, but they are quite a bit behind Microsoft that are launching the xbox one X in just a few months, just in time so the tween kids can nag their parents into submission before Christmas.
Last uttering from Sony about the 'ps5' still say; "Don't expect anything before 2019." So there is that...

*Begin rant*
Now the next generation will be aiming for more closely to native rendered UHD+HDR, the pro for instance render internally to 1080p, adds HDR, then upscales via what practially equivalents to pixel doubling, and with many titles it might not even render to 1080p as a primary target resolution, since resolution can be scaled as needed these days.

This is where I call cancer, even if games are displayed at 3840x2160 it might be rendered internally at a primary resolution as low as 480p in certain load heavy situations. (this resolution is called 4k-UHD, not 4k. 4k is 4096x2160 (4K-DCI), ok I know. Nobody care)

Now add on the fact that consoles still only aim for 30fps, and the idiots in charge of them think that's still being generous for the next gen.
YES, Elite:Dangerous on the ps4 and xbx are 30fps games.
*End rant*

Personally, I suspect Sony will keep it's currrent architecture, the Cell processor was a dead end for gaming and general purpose computing like a console, so moving to a more common x86 framework was good, and has the most room to grow without having to force people to dump their old collection of games.
So chances are, when you get the ps5 FD will have a version for it, will you have to pay for this upgrade? Possibly.

Dunno, ask them, I doubt however FD knows anything about the upcoming playstation that we don't know, which is practically zip, they might have access to a devkit xbx 1 x but again I'm only guessing. They do have a long running relationship with making xbx games so chances of that remains fairly high.

As for transitioning to pc, FD has been known to migrate ships and assets, perhaps not ranks, but many have moved from xbx to pc and FD are helping them to not having to start from absolute zero, there seems to just be some things they just can't migrate for you.

As for immersion, I too have a projection, 7.2 home cinema setup, and even though I do miss the fidelity of my $7000 sound system, it can't hold a candle to how it feels to fly around the milky way in the Rift or VR in general.

In fact after getting VR, I barely touch "flat-screen games".
They are, just so flat..

My friends, if I had any, would call me "That guy with rift face".

I'm not trying to be anti consoles or start a "pc master race vs consoles" debate. If i wanted that I would make a post on reddit.
I'm 36 years old, I am old enough to know people just might have many reasons not to have a gaming pc.
The benefits for consoles are as many as they are for pc's, It just so happens I fall into a category of person who only see benefits with pc's and negatives with consoles.

I would maintain a pc setup anyways regardless of having consoles, so I recently ditched consoles entirely since I just can't stomach 30 fps gaming, when I know I have 60fps available to me.
And ditching console upgrading means I get to have a 1080ti, vs a 1070 GPU
Which is really coming to it's own with VR.

[Yeshe McGermot]

I think this is a legitimate and important question and deserves it's own thread over on the official forums.

[TorTorden]

I think this is a legitimate and important question and deserves it's own thread over on the official forums.

It might be a legitimate question, it's just the FD forums aren't a forum for such questions...
You might even get a better dev response from reddit.
Although if you ask them on twitter that might even be better again.

[CMDR NIVALLICA]

That's a very informed and respectable response Cmdr TorTorden and you are completely right. The PC version of this game has benefits to no end and yes; I would LOVE to be set up in VR. But it's purely down to current circumstance that the better/easier option at present is PS4. I just cant see FD Dev's having a long, long term plan on this subject. I just foresee a point in which we are going to have a lot of sad console commanders out there plodding along on an old console up until the point the service is removed from them entirely.

Thanks Cmdr Yeshe McGermot - I think it's definitely something worth considering. Especially early on when it comes to the point you realise that this is something you really, really want to continue.