The Giant Beastcast: Episode 48

Another Matrix screen shot for the week...

Thx Vinny

woo something to listen to on my death march to pax. have fun you guys

Perfect after work while waiting for Brad's stream to start!

@amyggen: Oh man there is a Bradstream today? Hopefully from the BradCave 2.0

Gonna fuel the first half of my road trip with this little baby.

Yeah. Brad stream (the It's a Painted, Painted, Painted World thing on the schedule) and then a Jason stream (Not So Home Alone on the schedule).

I appreciate the lesser known Matrix thumbnail.

Weeee!

i agree with Jeff on the Neo. if there's no big difference between the 2 ps4's, what's the fucking point?

Yikes... what's up with the sound quality this week?

Edit: Oh that's why. That was scary...

It's ok. I still love you guys even when you sound like shit.

Edit: thank you for making me look like a crazy person at work as I scream "APOC! APOC! APOC!"

Whoo, new edition of the beastcast with the best cast. Some time until the number of the beast.

I guess I'm the only one in the world that enjoys the other two Matrix movies. I also really like some of the Animatrix.

I own a 4K TV. Upgraded from a 6 year old 46" 1080p (bought the TV 10 years ago but got a replacement from Best Buy) to a 65" 3D 4K right before Christmas. Cost the same as what I paid for the 1080p TV back then. Gave my mother the old TV to replace her TV which had horrible burn in in the center of the screen that made it look like a book.

But here's the thing, I use the TV for everything, including the PC. So I have it set to work with the TV at full resolution and can play most PC games at 3840x2160. And the goal is to not have to buy another TV for another decade. I haven't bought 3D glasses yet. Did have to buy a new receiver that did 4K.

So, for the Neo, there is a temptation, but that comes down to if it will use UHD. I haven't played my PS4 since Bloodborne. The PC has almost everything and I get the games in 4K. So there is a temptation, but not the must buy the PS4 was for me.

PS4.5 sounds like a great idea to me. Consoles used to work like this:

First 2 years, nothing happens, very few reasons to buy the console. Then you get 3 years of awesome stuff, then you get two more years of shaky PC ports at 30ish FPS, Fallout4 style.. That's 4 years down the shitter, and then the PS5 comes out and you get two years of no games again and then 3 years of awesome, two years of crap PC ports, new console, 2 years of nothing and so on and so on.

This has always been a huge bummer about consoles. If I can buy a new console that can run everything that came out already, that's super awesome. I loooooved that about the Vita. You feel like you get awesome value for your purchase because there's actual stuff to do on your brand spanking new console.

I've held off on buying a console this generation because they took a long time to take off, and now they're underpowered as fuck compared to PCs so they are way less tempting at this point.. An upgraded PS4 is suuuuper compelling to me.

399 every 3 years is about 11 bucks a month.. I'm fine with that, seeing as I pay 13-1500 bucks every 3-4 years for a new PC.

The Neo is the slim. Sony probably ain't making any more 28nm chip systems, Neo w/ 14 nm lithography is the PS4 now, I really see it coming out that way.

Yes, you are not buying a Neo game....because the Neo IS the PS4. Just like your PS3 Slim was still a PS3.

The media is really twisting with people the wrong way, yet its not the medias fault its Sony's for not getting in front of this. But really the PS4 is still the PS4 because the the changes are not significant enough. This is not GTX 950 to GTX 960, this is a GTX 950 1.04 Ghz vs GTX 950 1.10 Ghz....who the fuck cares.

The discussion behind all of this is crazy because people admit the change is minor, they then whine about pipe dream notions of getting left behind. How are you left behind if the change is not significant? How are you left behind if Sony is telling developers to not use it that way? For the things that people fear to happen the CPU and GPU would need to be significantly more powerful...your worst case scenario is being mitigated to not happen.

Is this the new normal? Fuck dudes, this was normal when PS3 became PS3 Slim that was 90 nm lithography becoming 45 nm lithography. This isn't unprecedented this is entirely 'precedented' by PSone mini, PS2 Slim, PS3 Slim, Xbox 360 Slim...etc etc.

I was gonna get a ps4 sooner or later and the neo stuff certainly killed that haha. I'll wait patiently for it and I'm ok with that. I was never dying to have one being a pc gamer n all, until it has a decent number of exclusives in its backlog I basically have no reason to get one anyway.

"Easter's like, this is a Jesus thing."

@shrinerr: It's the oldest trick in the book on how to sell your clients the same thing twice. By making a slightly better model of the same PS4 you are effectively tempting your existing consumer base that would otherwise have no reason to purchase more hardware to go out and purchase another unit with the promise of better performance and the pressure of not wanting to experience games in an "inferior" state. If this coincides with a price drop on older models then any way you cut it, they're moving inventory at an increased rate.

What does the consumer get out of all of this? From the looks of it, not a whole lot just yet, but Sony has a lot to gain in the long run. If this litmus test on iterative console hardware proves a success they could possibly annualize the entire process much like how Apple does it. There will always be people who want the newest and fastest hardware out there no matter the price, they just need to get the rest of their consumer base to jump onboard this moving train.

They will eat losses for a bit as people who wanted a PS4 hold out for the NEO model, but once that catches on it's off to the races with "awarding" gamers the ability to buy the same console over and over again at an increasing rate with tiny jumps in performance along the way while continuing to remain way behind the PC market.

@monkeyman04: The Animatrix is a bunch of cool sci-fi short films, ad totally OK in my book.

My issue with Reloaded and Revolutions are primarily that every character and plot event in Zion seemed basically irrelevant, and there were a lot of them. The first film had this Alien-like quality where it's just this one ship and its crew, out there without any backup, and I think any and all of the stuff in Zion just muddled the focus a lot.

Austin sounds rough!!

@austin_walker the different easters are not right by because it's a complete mess of calculations based on 3 different calendars, lunar cycles, pre-abrahamic religions' traditions tied to seasons and equinoxes, etc

I am with you sir.

I think they're all pretty fun for different reasons. I never understood this philosophy that yah the Matrix is this amazing thing and then the latter two movies are just too much or something. They are all equally dumb and ridiculous which is honestly half the fun.

Pietar Stoarmara

Why is this night different from all other nights? That on all other nights eggs are inside the refrigerator, but on this night we search for them on the ground?

yup, not all movies have to be high art.

I was experimenting with a new podcast player and was about to throw it under the bus..

Edit: I think in the future if there are similar audio issues I would appreciate a short notification before the podcast starts with Vinny explaining whats going on.

@monkeyking1969: Yes, I remember a lot of talk about games running in PS3 Slim mode and PS3 Fat mode.

@monkeyman04: I was very into the Agent Smith fight in 2 at least.

I see a lot of similarities between The Matrix and Back to the Future trilogies. The first films of each series were freakin' fantastic on their own, became hugely successful, and eventually both became cultural touchstones. Both films tied up their stories with a cool flourish at the end to hint at bigger things, and both series' sequels were shot back to back.

To me nothing tops the original Back to the Future and The Matrix, though I greatly enjoy all their sequels and consider them my two fave film trilogies.

More Fiasco!

Yay beastcast! Though the sound quality in this episode hurts; especially Austin's.

Edit: Nevermind it's addressed in the podcast.

"hurts" is a good and fair word here. Don't remember it ever being so bad.

@monkeyking1969: Not even close, you could put a game in a prior-gen slim or OG console and it would run exactly the same. This is not the case with the Neo. There's going to be a distinct performance gain (whether it be visually or in other areas like framerate).

The graphics comparison is not apt, given that the spec jump on the gpu improvement seems to be the equivalent of going from a R9-270 to ~R9-390 (which is pretty big jump).

The main worry is something like the whole Hyrule Warriors situation where the 'base' version on the 3DS runs significantly worse than on the New (read: Neo) 3DS. Which is what Vinny alluded to in this episode. Technically it would pass Sony's criteria where the Neo game would have to match or exceed the performance of the base variant, but only by nerfing the base variant to set such a low performance ceiling.

The audio this week is bad... really bad.

APOC!

thanks for the ride, lady

@fram: Yah it's the novelty factor for sure. At some point you're going to get diminishing returns on time travel or bullet time.

And, that's because... Maybe because PS3 wasn't launching in the middle of HDTV like PS4 is sandwiched at the tale end of 1080p and 4K?

The fact is consoles have had revisions ever since PSOne and to view PS4 Neo as something new or never seen before. It is a narrative some parts of the media are using to place this in a context of their own design and imagination. They do this because because they never bothered to view what PS2 SLim, PS3 Slim PS3 super slim, etc were or how they changed.

The human mind want to connect the dots. We know NX coming, we hear rumblings about Xbox One and we weave a narrative that places Neo into some sort of movement that would be similar to iPhone. But it is possible to look back to see the threads to see nothing new. What we see can be seen as just a modern spin of design when you use nearly off the shelf chips. And, that is how this will occur now, all consoles use PC parts and the pace and reduction in lithography is more rapid on the PC side.

Wii U uses a 3-Core PowerPC chip, Sony and MS use AMD SoC; so as these system evelove (if they even get to in the case of Wii U) they are going to take advantage of what their supplies can make to lower thermal design points (TDP) chips. The new smaller lithography is more efficient and allows for smaller, coller running, less power needing consoles - i.e. a slim. Yes, some of those changes allow for efficiency that can improve raw output, that is a byproduct, not a goal of the design.

Sony is saying what and what cannot be done with the overhead, and because they are taking 'that' step the differences will be minor.

Bloodborne's framerate is a rock a solid 30fps. It was a little dicey at launch but it became much more stable with the first couple of patches.

Judging from the comments section so far, Vinny may want to consider recording a drop-in/intro for the top of the show when there are audio issues.

Thanks for the heads up, guys :)

@yummylee: Ehhhh I wouldn't say "rock solid," but it's servicable in most cases as far as console games go. Some fights can get dicey but not since Demons Souls has one of these played at a consistent framerate - and even then Valley of Defilement was rough.

@austin_walker How many Australian dollars do I need to pay you to get your longform thoughts on the Matrix trilogy????

It's not you, it's me!

Man I love you guys and am so grateful for you guys doing a podcast every week (love getting a double dose of Giantbomb every week) but man with the audio issues for the first half and the amount of yelling during this podcast, as someone else put it, hurts!

@Vinny: is there a way to fix the audio through a new output rendering? Or was it fuckAD while recording?