Newest Sessler's Something Video

On ResolutionGate and Day One Patches. He doesn't allude to too much SonyArmageddon thread stuff. Still neat!

He doesn't allude to too much SonyArmageddon thread stuff.

This was something he did in the previous episode.

Actually, if you're referring to the video I think you are it was confirmed by other people at REV3 that Adam recorded that BEFORE he started tweeting all his cryptic bullshit.

Explain to me how his opinion is worth feeding his video a click? The guy seems more and more like a professional punchline by the day.

Also, Jesus Christ, that beard is never not ugly.

Wait, resolutiongate isn't just something that someone just farted out on some random forum thread? It's being used in those videos and other news sites?

Dumb...

Hmm. Guess that's pretty ironic, then.

I'm... I'm not sure this was worth a thread, nor what you typed. I mean, what's your opinion on it Blu-?

I was expecting some terrible comics.

As someone who works inside in the industry. This is fucking stupid and completely off base with our own customers. It so fucking easy to understand I found it hard to believe so many in the gaming press are misunderstanding the issue. Here is the real issue of that whole resolution thing:

Cheaper Console = better frame-rate/visual

More expensive Console = Lower Frame-rate and visual fidelity

Wow! So hard to understand why some people are not happy! And why some future X1 owner are angry/dissapointed. What the fuck? Am I crazy for seeing the problem or are the press so dense they can not see this?

I hate to say, but this seems a bit spammy. Sess or no Sess.

@ntm:Well my opinion is that Sessler usually says "Well maybe yes, maybe no. We'll see.", and that's what happened here. I'm pretty darn sure that there are no XONE people that canceled their pre-order and switched to PS4 because of this CoD resolution dealio. If they're not pre-ordering XONE its because they didn't want it the first time. So this resolution stuff just tokes the IGN comments. Neogaf, BGR, and good ol' Eurogamer, etc.

@csl316: I was really hoping to see a episode today on Sessler's Something that had a mess of stuff to do with SonyArmageddon and new YouTube rules, and so on. The fact that he didn't do exactly all that Speaks Volumes louder than we know.

This ResolutionGate stuff is at least interesting, because it does question XONE's capability in the future, regarding all and any upcoming games on the horizon, and indies and stuff.

About halfway through that video I got flashbacks to the old Saturday Night Live sketch that took Sarah Palin's rambling incoherent word salad interview responses and repeated them verbatim. I completely lost the plot of what Sessler was even trying to say in this video. He's upset that 1080p is being pushed forward as a standard? Literally everything else is leaving 720p behind in the dust. Computers have moved beyond it, televisions are moving beyond it, tablets are moving beyond it, even phones are moving beyond it. Sessler is actively whining that technological standards are increasing over time. Should we all still be gaming in 480p?

When was there ever a choice between gameplay and graphics? When was there ever a choice between a higher resolution or better AI? This is the definition of a false dichotomy. And where does he think all of these things come from? Pixie dust? He's arguing against something that doesn't exist and displaying astounding ignorance in the process. Good lord.

So he neither said nor confirmed anything of any importance and this deserves its own thread why?

@shinjin977:

What the hell happened last time? Why are people up in arms about this now? If you're someone in the industry, maybe you can explain where the hypocrisy comes from.

The ps3 launched for $200 more than the xbox 360. Third party games ran like shit on it. It was supposed to be all powerful, but the $200 cheaper and weaker xbox 360 to this day gets better ports.

Maybe it's the mob mentality of the average person on the Internet. Oh no, it's big bad Microsoft. It's cool to hate Microsoft right?

This exact same thing happened last time and you people don't remember. Except last time it was a $200 price difference that you were supposed to get a second job for. Then you got to play all those terrible ps3 versions.

You tell me why the average enthusiast on the Internet chooses to ignore what happened a generation ago.

@syed117: Well first I am not sure what you are arguing against? Second I think we are talking about the same thing? The media are saying "Hey' PS4 perform better! but you shouldn't care about that!" I mean wtf is that? Hey this car is great, perform better than the other one but who gives a shit? what? I feel like I am going crazy right now.

And for the record, I am not saying "Hey fuck X1! Go buy ps4". The customer can buy whatever he/she wants but for some one who works in the press to see these types of disparity in the console space that is suppose to be competing with each other and then instead of finding out WHY this happen, he just goes "oh its the game that matters". True enough, but that is not even remotely close to what people are angry about. Its WHY the more expensive console is performing worst. The ps3 got shit on this gen for having bad ports and now all of a sudden it doesn't matter? Yes you are right. The press and gamers are ignoring what happened a generation ago because according to the video above apparently people wanting to know which console perform better on the games available in order to make a purchase decisions are fan-boys now. You know what? Fuck this, I am going back to playing FFXIV. How out of touch with their own customer/fanbase of the press is super depressing.

Because next-gen topics are hot right now no matter how trivial!

Huh. There's some key things being forgotten here

• Sony came off the high of the PS2 era, you know, the most popular video game console ever. At the time they were the undisputed market leader and were able to charge that ridiculous price. People were shocked but still bought it...unfortunately for Sony, MS had a year head start.
• The PS3 wasn't all powerful, it was only a lot more powerful on the CPU end which was crazy hard to figure out by anyone other than first-party developers. If Sony didn't have the enormous clout that they had from the PS2 then a shit load of people including most developers would have given Sony two fat middle fingers and ditch them to solely play/work on Xbox.
• Nearly all multiplatform ports are comparable now, developers have managed to figure out the PS3 hardware in the closing years of the current cycle
• This isn't about "big bag MS." People are quick to forget that it was only after the Xbox One announcement and leading up to launch that majority opinion suddenly turned against them, they were the popular crowd everyone loved during the current gen.
• This isn't the exact same thing happening again because there isn't a whole year between these launches, these things are coming in hot and in close proximity of each other's launch dates. Any and all comparisons will be made and paid attention to because people are hungry to move the fuck on from old ass hardware.

hmmm, he's more talking about his own excitement of the new console but never really addressing the real issue that it's reaction over the reaction. Some people have legitimate complaints, and some are confused and easily excitable ranters. But it's funny he is talking about not seeing resolution when there's an uncharted poster behind him, that's 720p. My cousin refused to play Uncharted on his nice Plasma HDTV he wanted all of that 1080p games only on it. So yes, there are people like that out there. And they are silly.

Here's Sessler 4 months ago saying the exact opposite. Apparently his check from a certain company cleared. Skip to around 1:40:

Well at least he isn't talking about 'sexism in muh video game'. I'm glad that topic is nearly dead and burried by now. You can only ride on sensationalist news for so long.

@marokai: Sessler's opinion also could have started to change once he actually saw games on the new consoles and talked with developers who might better inform his opinion and expectations for next gen.

Because nobody has ever once changed their opinion on anything ever.

@truthtellah said:

I don't particularly care how people want to rationalize this one. The point is that at one place in time not that long ago, Sessler has gone on record considering resolution as an important and worthy expectation and matter for discussion. He is now explicitly saying the opposite and dismissing anyone who does consider it important as fanboyish. He's been in this industry for what, two decades? He would suddenly discover resolution can be a resource hog within the last three months? I can give people the benefit of the doubt, but I'm not wide-eyed naive. Come on.

Edit: I want to be explicitly clear I'm not alleging he's on the take or something. I think people who say stuff like that are bananas or are just trying to get a rise out of people. I just think Sessler is an arrogant hypocrite who likes to appear smarter than his audience and thus is playing the contrarian to seem 'above it all.' There's no conspiracy at work, just good old human arrogance and pride. I think assuming he just now in the last three months had a complete turnaround and figured how how graphics work is making much larger assumptions than that.

Grumbling about resolution and day 0 patching is just frustration is going through a lot of effort, money or time, for little or no gain. It is highly irrational but people like to have the gee-wiz feature for their expensive toy where this time, there is almost nothing to showcase.

I don't feel any sympathy for anyone who is so eager to throw money into new hardware and expecting something radically different just because they spent the money. The problem is their expectations are way off not the tech or the vendor.

It's a little weird how many opinions on this matter have changed recently. Our own Brad Shoemaker went from a tech guy that loved his 1080p 60fps to completely discounting it as a non issue. It's weird how the ps3 got pounded this gen for multiplats looking worse (especially early on) and now every video game site seems to be under some mandate to make it sound like these new consoles have parity.

He has expressed concern over resolution before, and he has routinely criticized and mocked those making too much of a deal about things like resolution. He has expressed caring about quite a lot of things in games, as he has done game reviews. He hasn't ever lacked care for things like resolution, and I doubt he doesn't care about it now. He does have personal priorities though, and in his priorities, resolution is apparently not the biggest thing in the world to him. I bet he still does hope that most games will be 1080p, 60fps, just as he said a few months ago. But his priorities when talking about the potential games are whether they're good games. A bad game at 1080p is as much rubbish as it would be at 720p. That isn't suggesting that resolution doesn't matter at all; it's just keeping it in perspective.

Sessler appears to be doing what he has always done. Expressed excited hopes for games and also criticized those who make too much of a big deal about the lesser parts of games. I think it's important to note that his biggest criticism in this video is of publishers and, frankly, people like himself, who made too much of a big deal about resolution before and during the announcements. Now that he has seen more of the next gen titles, he appears to be more accepting of possibly lower resolutions than expected in favor of improvements elsewhere. Though, as he said, they won't know what the standard will really be on the new consoles until sometime into 2014 once devs are really making games for them from the ground up.

I think it's fair for him to criticize those obsessing too much about resolution and those using it far too much as a selling point of their games. I wish he would acknowledge that he was part of that before they were announced, as well, but I'm guessing he probably calmed down a bit and got more realistic after the initial new console announcement high rather than some nefarious reason coercing him to change his mind.

As much as I can find disagreements with a lot of what has been said in recent memory, I do have a bit of an issue with the "conspiracy" stuff that's been tossed around. We live in a world where we have access to the filter-less minds of people via Facebook and twitter. We can literally see their thoughts and beliefs on our screens or phones each day. We can see the changes. For the lay person, these changes in thought go unnoticed because they are 1) not held up to a magnifying glass by a group of people & 2) largely insignificant.

For whatever reason (we can thank psychology for the actual reason - not worth getting into), people change their minds. They are allowed to do so and we are allowed to agree or disagree, but it's silly for us to take a stance on acceptance or dismissal. That, in itself, is judgmental. If you aren't content with they way that a person is reporting on things, you can just as easily close the tab in your browser and find somebody that does.

It's easy to see how Brad can be lenient when better versions of current gen games are coming out on next-gen before PC (like AC IV: Black Flag) so it's perfectly reasonable to be lax on wanting the best possible experience that the PC provides.

Also developers have figured out how the PS3 hardware works, of course there wouldn't be any major differences between the two current gen console versions now.

And people like you really do exist, huh. You should have never left the Gamespot system wars forum.

Agreed. Sessler is a man that lives and dies by his stature and reputation, which he was able to maintain for years by being the big fish game reviewer/commentator/whatever with his own TV show. Now he's just some guy on Youtube, and surprise! His opinions aren't any more or less revelatory than those that have been spouted by Youtube superstars for years now. Combine that with his Twitter freakout over what has apparently amounted to nothing whatsoever, and he looks like a once-powerful figure on the ropes thanks in no small part to his own hubris.

In any case, he got caught reversing direction on this whole resolution argument. I'd say that it's an argument that's barely worth the discussion people are giving it to begin with, but apparently this console transition has turned the internet into Thunderdome. All that's missing is 1980s-era Tina Turner in post-apocalyptic dominatrix attire.

So he didn't slyly mention something that he knows that the rest of us don't and then be all like...

@marokai: Having said that, I wouldn't deny that Sessler may have let his mouth get away from him in the past. ha. He seems like someone that does that, either through arrogance or simple lack of self-restraint. He gets excited or worked up and expresses quite a bit. It has perhaps helped him in being a more dynamic personality for entertainment, but it hasn't always helped him as a credible voice in commentary on the industry. For that reason, I have always considered him more of an entertainer than a newsman.

I would at least agree that this is far more discussion than should likely be had on this. ha. And a lot of that blame sits rather squarely on publishers and major outlets making a bigger deal about things like resolution than they should. People's expectations are more and more out of wack, and with how far the Internet has come since even the last big console launch so many years ago, we're likely in for an even bumpier time.

@truthtellah: No one disagrees with "a bad game at 1080 is still a bad game" or that the game is the most important thing. Literally no one. Which is why I don't understand why this point keeps getting brought up as if it's at all relevant to the discussion. I've seen this point mentioned a lot recently. (CheapyD was on 8-4 for instance and mentioned there could be trade-offs between higher resolutions and graphical detail or level of animation, despite that having nothing to do with any of this and providing no example of where that could, or has, happened.) It's a totally false choice, which is what makes this video a rambling, pointless retread of Sessler's same speech he's given in these "Sessler's Something" videos all year.

Look, I have appreciated and understand where you're coming from in wanting to hold back the aggression. I get that Sessler is a nice guy personally, has a lot of issues he tries to deal with on a daily basis, and it's a rough time for people in the industry right now. But some things Sessler has said have just been completely irrational and bordering on concern trolling all year, which is why there's been such hostility to him for months.

You never want to assume the worst about a person, and I still don't, but there comes a point where there simply is no known logical explanation for Sessler's sudden changes of tune. Hell, this goes for many people in the industry that have been acting inconsistent throughout all of these news stories. Not everyone is perfect and does everything for a perfectly rational reason. The world is full of flawed people and there's no reason to think that Adam Sessler is somehow impervious to the kind of arrogance that a lot of people can show in positions like his. I think there are plenty of reasons people could be acting in apparently hypocritical or inconsistent ways compared to past actions and words, reasons that don't have anything to do with some sort of vast conspiracy. Paranoid fears of appearing to be taking sides by agreeing with their readers is one good one.

Edit: Seeing your response above now, I don't think we disagree much.

Resolution matters because...

It's still crazy to me that people actually care about and respect Sessler.

@jasonr86 said:

Resolution matters because...

Yup.

So you're just trying to say that Sessler might have said something while excited months ago that wasn't as well thought out as it should have been? And maybe Sessler puts his foot in his mouth on occasion and could possibly have some excessive and troublesome pride as a big gaming media entertainer?

Sure. I wouldn't disagree with that impression.

@truthtellah: You keep referring to Sessler as a gaming media entertainer, but I don't think that's what Sessler sees himself as.

@truthtellah: More or less. I get more frustrated with Sessler than I do others because he makes a stupid statement and then kind of keep repeating it for a good long while. (He kept omitting Xbox Live in price comparisons, and implied that Sony's DRM policy, after E3, was no different than Microsoft's for a solid month, despite everyone losing their minds trying to correct him on both counts each time. He's a walking balance fallacy.)

And I don't really revel in it; I watched him on X-Play and loved doing so for years, but since he's been on YouTube he doesn't really seem like he's well-suited for it. I just don't understand how he says some of the things he does and is so thoroughly convinced of it every time.

Well, then ol Sess and I don't happen to agree. From what I've seen over his career, he's a gaming commentator that primarily makes gaming-related videos for entertainment. I'm not him; so, I can't quite speak to what he would consider himself.

Sounds like he's another guy on the Internet to me.

Maybe he considers himself the czar of gaming; I don't know. All I can refer to is his history as a gaming-related entertainer that has moved toward making gaming-related youtube videos in recent years. It doesn't bother me too much that, when left to his own devices, he seems to be as muddled as most.

I can't speak for him, either, but he always struck me as more of a gaming equivalent to Bill O'Reilly. A lot of hot air masquerading as a voice of insight and reason; someone that seeks attention through pompous displays of supposed wisdom and is entertaining as a means to gain the attention he desires, regardless of whether or not he's self-aware of the nonsense he speaks.

*shrug* I imagine he's not for everyone. I know many more conservative gamers didn't like that he was one of the first prominent gaming personalities to talk a lot about gay marriage and sexism many years ago, and he has never been particularly receptive to modern Japanese RPGs. So, he hits on some things that really get people riled up. I personally didn't like that he occasionally made jokes about Republicans on G4, as I generally don't like politics in entertainment shows like that, but it's just how he is. He's a boisterous entertainer who, for better or worse, has had a significant place in gaming media for a long time now.

I'm unclear why there seems to be so much vitriol towards Sessler. From everything I've seen, he's just someone passionate about gaming. I've never gotten the impression that he values his own opinion more than anyone else does to their own. Someone enlighten me? And please, do so reasonably?

A lot of people hold his opinion in high regard, and what he says is regularly brought up on topics he has talked about. He used to be one of the most visible faces in all of American gaming media through the program X-Play. So, even if he hasn't necessarily said that his opinion is more important than anyone else's, many people still perceive how others treat it as important.

He's a gaming celebrity with opinions. He's bound to get a large response on things, both positive and negative, even if he is far from the big face that he once was.

@jasonr86 said:

Resolution matters because...

FYI, those images are extremely zoomed in, which enhances the aliasing by a lot. It would be extremely hard to notice a meaningful difference otherwise, especially if it was in motion and being displayed in real time.

People like Sessler really do seem to feel the need to look down their noses at others. It's the same with sexism, racial issues, and making political references. I like Sessler, and I like the work that he does, but there has to be something to push you from "Do you want a star for doing your fucking job? Come on! We're buying these new consoles, they better be running at 60 fps in 1080p!" to whatever long-winded apologist nonsense Adam rattled off in his latest video, and being able to consider yourself above the crazy rantings of "the internet" seems to be it.

Ultimately, it's not all that different from looking down at someone because of the music they listen to, or the television shows they watch.

@naru_joe93 said:

@jasonr86 said:

Resolution matters because...

FYI, those images are extremely zoomed in, which enhances the aliasing by a lot. It would be extremely hard to notice a meaningful difference otherwise, especially if it was in motion and being displayed in real time.

Go to the four minute mark. I notice it big time and I find it really distracting. That said, there are some textures on the Xbox One that look better. But aliasing is really noticeable to me and it bothers me an awful lot when it is really bad.

So despite the recent hate train on Sessler, I still really enjoy watching his videos.

@jasonr86: For one, digital foundry stated that they didnt adjust any color/picture settings on the television between the 2 systems to accommodate for differences, which there were big differences; the Xbox outputs a weird bump in contrast and saturation that provides a false sense of vibrance. Also, who cares it's a fucking shooter; it's gonna play the same and have the same shit. Actually the console versions might be better cause there's no shitty battle log to deal with

Also, no...