Sacred Symbols+, Episode XXXIII: Mark Cerny's Power Hour

Thank you for your feedback! We're a PlayStation podcast, but we'll always dedicate plenty of chatter toward third party games on PlayStation, and will talk about PC, Nintendo, and Xbox when it makes sense.

Colin Moriarty

Hey Colin, long time reader/listener dating back to the ign days. I think you should incorporate Xbox/PC into your podcast theme more so as to not alienate that consumer base. Especially when Sony keeps dolling out announcements of discontinuing Vita support/putting games on +, upping the price of PS+, not allowing cross-play and then allowing it but for only certain games, and treating people's past purchases as worthless and demanding more of their hard earned cash. The Playstation network itself is also slow and shitty, and I'm also tired of my controllers turning to shit and the analogs wearing off unlike my non Sony ones. My PS4 Pro also sounds like, and gives off the heat of a jet engine. I'm fucking sick of these guys. They are on a downward trend that only tells me greedy, arrogant SOB's are running the show there, and there's gonna be a big flip flop in terms of their consumer base that will unlikely be going back. Me being one of them. I told Nintendo to go fuck themselves awhile ago with their overrated and overpriced pieces of shit, and that's exactly what I'm doing with Sony now. I'll wait and play the Last of Us 3 on my PC.

Corey Robbins

Yeah dude, I sound like a butt-hurt fanboy. Take a look at your posts here, attacking everybody with personal insults, and using harsh language. You don't have to defend your choice dude, if you want to go with XSX, then do it, we don't care.

Hoder Erroneus Jensen

Cerny was talking about the audio being better on the PS3 than PS4, and getting back to that, which is a comparison to the PS3. You really sound like a butt-hurt fanboy who did not like that the podcast was pointing out how bad that conference was and the negative light Sony has put the PS5 in, which it most certainly has. The XSX is simply more powerful, and respects your past purchases where as Sony is really hoping to milk more money from its customers. The extra possible loading times the PS5 will have over XSX will arguably be meaningless as well. XSX has more CU's on the gpu which will be able to handle ray-tracing so much better, which means games will simply look better on the XSX. I'm a PS4 user who will be jumping ship this gen, and with the way my library will carry forward with Xbox, I will be unlikely to ever use Sony as my main console ever again. Sony was also very vague when it came to enhancements on past games with likely little improvements, where as Xbox already ups the resolution on older games. It's obvious Sony wants to continue selling you remasters and PSNow, which is shit consumers really don't need or should be paying for if they already bought the game before.

Corey Robbins

True! I think this will be dividends for them in the long run.

KB

cerny talked about this in the presentation. he didn't name the expansion because he is still working with the ssd tech to be faster. so it's future proof.

Benjamin

Hey Col, I was curious as to what your thoughts are regarding Microsoft's solution to expandable storage in the way of proprietary(!) memory cards. I fully anticipated Sony to follow suit given their class leading SSD specifications. However, when Cerny confirmed 3rd-party NVMe drives (assuming they meet the requisite speed requirements) would work, I was shocked! And pretty relieved. It seems they've learned their lesson from the Vita. What say you?

KB

Everyone take it easy!

Colin Moriarty

I saw. =)

Colin Moriarty

Yeah! We saw the update.

Colin Moriarty

Alright, thanks man!

Cody Mahoney

Again, this is a Sony PR and marketing problem.

Colin Moriarty

That's how they clarified it after the fact, it seems.

Colin Moriarty

They are dropping the ball when it comes to marketing. Who knows if it'll matter, ultimately.

Colin Moriarty

Yeah, my dates are a bit off.

Colin Moriarty

Too bad they didn't say this on stage when everyone was paying attention!

Colin Moriarty

Thanks for listening!

Colin Moriarty

Yeah, we did the best we could with the info we had.

Colin Moriarty

Yo Matt buresh watch it again and stop spreading false information. Legacy mode will play Ps4 games as is. 100 so far are boosted. Not all games have to run in boost mode

Dom posa

Nerd!

Colin Moriarty

Thank you!

Colin Moriarty

It's important to maintain audiences. You're essentially abandoning an entire library!

Colin Moriarty

They seem to be a mess behind-the-scenes. It just is what it is at this point.

Colin Moriarty

Third parties already spec games to PC first.

Colin Moriarty

I mean, I could. But it's a fair point: Will it truly matter?

Colin Moriarty

Thank you! <3

Colin Moriarty

Dude, it's not my fault they didn't communicate it properly and needed to issue a clarification. We recorded before the clarification, so we spoke about it with the knowledge provided.

Colin Moriarty

That would be totally unacceptable. They need to figure it out with emulation!

Colin Moriarty

They really have to sort this out.

Colin Moriarty

Perhaps he misspoke!

Colin Moriarty

They really shouldn't have advertised it at all. Then people would have had non-existent expectations.

Colin Moriarty

We shall see! I think we're looking at $499 for PS5.

Colin Moriarty

Yeah, their communication is poor.

Colin Moriarty

Yeah, the damage control was necessary.

Colin Moriarty

Thank you. <3

Colin Moriarty

I know! If you're explaining, you're losing.

Colin Moriarty

Yup!

Colin Moriarty

You can maybe be a little more polite when you provide feedback.

Colin Moriarty

Thanks!

Colin Moriarty

Yeah, he does.

Colin Moriarty

He definitely wasn't, which is why Sony needed to issue a clarification.

Colin Moriarty

This I can't speak to. I've never even heard that term before!

Colin Moriarty

I disagree. It was very much on Sony. It's their console, and they need to market it better.

Colin Moriarty

Glad to hear it. =)

Colin Moriarty

Yeah, it just seemed like an inflexible decision.

Colin Moriarty

If only.

Colin Moriarty

LOL.

Colin Moriarty

He could read me my death sentence and I'd be happy.

Colin Moriarty

You're welcome. Thanks for listening!

Colin Moriarty

Also, Microsoft have gone back on their BC talk as well. Both companies will have majority of last gen available

Corey Ramón

Hi Colin, have you had a chance to see that all PS4 games will be near enough available at launch and the top 100 games are to be boosted?

Corey Ramón

So... there IS backwards compatibility, right? It’s just the PS5 boosting that they’re talking about when it comes to testing each on a case by case?

Cody Mahoney

I honestly don’t understand what exactly is going through sony’s head at the moment. Backwards compatibility is absolutely essential for the next gen. I can understand not making the feature for ps1, ps2, and even ps3 however ps4 is a must.

Shae

Colin, Sony bought Naughty Dog in 2001. Jak 2 didn't come out till 2003.

Kirk Nordbusch

Sony just updated its blog a few days ago, complete PS4 BC is in. "A quick update on backward compatibility – With all of the amazing games in PS4’s catalog, we’ve devoted significant efforts to enable our fans to play their favorites on PS5. We believe that the overwhelming majority of the 4,000+ PS4 titles will be playable on PS5. We’re expecting backward compatible titles will run at a boosted frequency on PS5 so that they can benefit from higher or more stable frame rates and potentially higher resolutions". This is amazing news.

OOf that was hard to listen to :( I know you guys are not technical, but their was straight up a lot of misinformation and necessary details left out. Also the critique that Cerny wasn't talking improvements compared to PS4, but to PS3, was straight up incorrect and silly. And really while I can accept you not understanding the hard technical details (though simple details as storage space for XSX should be simple to remember), that was quite an oversight. PS5 has a much improved storage system, PS5 has an actual proper audio chip, PS5 is easier to develop for (no they did not say it was the same as PS4), PS5 has improved cooling, PS5 has BC, PS5 has more power and much more. Not your best episode, but thanks for all the rest! :)

Hoder Erroneus Jensen

I really find it some what hard to listen to the specs talk on here to be honest. Everything I’m hearing about both consoles from third party sources is that the ps5 and Xbox will be fine overall with maybe some minor issues. I do think colin that your eh feeing on the tech of the consoles really makes it hard to listen to. I will give leeway to you as well cause this was recorded before more and more news keeps coming out. Which is why it’s hard to make a podcast like this cause it gets dated fast which isn’t your fault at all.

Adamthm

Hey Chris. It's funny you used RE2 Remake as example of good audio, since it's actually one of the few games on xbox that use dolby atmos (3D audio). https://www.dolby.com/us/en/categories/games.html#OPEN_FILTER Cheers, Pete

Pete

Hey Colin. Appreciate you taking the effort to tackle something a bit more technical. Even though I don't fully agree with some of your assessments and interpretations, it was still informative and entertaining. Let's hope the messaging from Sony improves going forward. Cheers, Pete

Pete

Backwards compatible games sounds good and is probably fun for ten minutes. I've never sold an old game or console going back through all the playstations and sega and so on. I love collecting them but rarely play them. It's definately overrated

Garibaldi

Sony needs to get the word out on PS5 fast. “Almost 100” is not the quote you want to have sitting around. They didn’t make themselves look too good with this presentation and as we learned with Xbox One, it’s really bad to start off on the wrong foot. Gamers are quick to be critical, very vocally so at that. They’ve got to fix this right away.

Oliver Johnson

Exactly.... This is why it's frustrating to see people act like both the big players aren't doing the exact same thing.

Shawn Hayden

FWIW, Microsoft has since clarified their position on backward compatibility via Twitter. And it's basically exactly the same as Sony's. They expect that most XBO titles will be compatible, but they need to evaluate each title. They have backed off the "100% BC" claim. This is to be expected. Chris mentioned Windows. And yeah, for the most part, a Windows game will run on Windows despite the version or hardware, but that's also not 100% the case.

Sam Dunham

Games will load so fast that 3rd parties games will make the game for PC first then XSX and PS5 because pc gamers computers don’t have or buy the new ssd cards, also you need to have your games available to low end pc if you want to make a big profit

Hose A Contra Razz

Also I just want to put this out there: I defy any person in here to to name 100 PS4 games that they'd want to play on the PS5. That they'd actually, genuinely be interested in playing on their PS5. In fact, I defy you to name 50 PS4 games that you'd actually play years from now on the new hardware.

Jack Sibert

Thanks for the quarantine entertainment. Hope you feel better soon Colin!

Jack Sibert

Man, this was super frustrating to listen to. Col, you're letting the cart go before the horse with the BC thing. Just wait, let's find out WHY and how many actual games are a bit buggy (if I had to guess, some games are coded in a way they only work at 30fps, and when boosted on ps4 to higher framerates, they break. Throttling will fix this...) Also hard disagree regarding their messaging. This is the perfect thing to 'open' with. If they'd had a talk with more of what you want, you'd have just called the 'Cerny section' the boring bit and lambasted them for it. The exciting news won't get less exciting if you have to wait longer... obviously the opposite happens. If you'll be excited/interested about news at any point, it doesn't really matter when it drops. If I were to armchair 'Marketer' like you guys, my play would be to drop news to the consumers from most boring to most hype in that order, and not leave long stretches of time for that hype to wane... Regardless, I'm super excited by the prospect of the memory speed. This is the first time in years a console beats out any high-end PC for any kind of specs. It could be a game-changer.

hugplx

Looks like i was wrong about 100 BC games that will be playable at the launch, Mark talked about boost mode function, not total number of playable titles.

Anastas Lyakh

I was like most thinking that the backwards compatibility wouldn’t be a problem. But the between the lines speaks volumes. All the arguing about the specs and such is already tiring. And in the past they said it would be too expensive to put it the parts to play everything of past. Clearly Sony can’t engineer as well as Microsoft so I ask you this Colin. If Sony were to just announce a PS5 Pro but instead of beefier specs, it has all the hardware to become truly backwards compatible. I’m talking PS1 to PS5 discs, a SD card slot like area to play Vita games, and somehow to play PSP. Sell it for $600,$700, hell even $800. I’d buy it. I’m sure it wouldn’t sell as well but it would clearly only be for a specific audience. Because of all this, it’s pretty much a fact that my PS4 will have to remain hooked up and apart of my main area because I’m not getting a PS5 to play all the PS4 call of duty’s, etc that dominate the playtime.

Quintin Propes

The backwards compatibility thing is nonsense. Absolute nonsense. I must say, I did not care about backwards compatibility in 2013. I also didn’t have hundreds of digital games, from PS+ and just my many purchased digital games. It’s just a different environment nowadays. It’s a bit of a deal breaker to be quite honest. At this moment, I think I’d rather just get a PS4 Pro later this year, when it inevitably gets a bit cheaper, than invest in a PS5.

Zack E

I’m kinda confused by Chris saying it’s the standard to be able to use any compatible SSD and that he’d be befuddled if PS5 didn’t have it. Their only competitor Xbox Series X doesn’t allow that lol. Xbox Series X only allows their proprietary memory expansion when it comes to SSDs, which Chris literally just said he was fine with in a recent Sacred Symbols podcast.

Josh Lucas

This wasn’t a good presentation for what Sony advertised this as. Yes, this was definitely more a dev-focused/ GDC type presentation, which is fine. However, Sony themselves advertised this as a PS5 reveal, which they broadcasted on social media and they invited everyone to attend...All of this immediately after Microsoft dropped more cool content, deep dives, and demos on the Series X....this makes Sony look bad. Also, these guys totally botched the backwards compatibility announcement. Before Cerny could say anything, a slide showed a PS3 and PS2 graphic with the title “Backwards compatibility” ...so here I am going, “Oh shit, here we go!” And then Cerny goes “ Nevermind! We are actually supporting only PS4 and PS4 Pro for the Top 100 games ( btw why did they separate the two as if they are two different platforms)...wtf?! Granted, I didn’t have high hopes for backcompat past PS4, but you KNOW people have been asking about this feature, and You decide to announce it that way?!?! Oh and then shortly there after, you decided to rub salt in the wound and talk about Dead Space, a game i wont be able to play natively on PS5. Gee, thanks. This announcement in particular just seemed absolutely tone deaf. You should have nipped it in the bud early and IMMEDIATELY should have started your backcompat slide by saying this will only support PS4 games. Unreal. I thought Sony’s silence this entire time was them waiting for MS to talk and then “striking” at the right time...now their silence just gives off the impression that they lack confidence in this thing.

William

What if Sony plays up the tech talk to interest PC players? No matter how much you spend on a PC, it won’t come close to the performance of a (presumably) $499 box with native PC/Mouse support. Probably not, but based on the presentation, PS5 is going to look VERY appealing to lower-income individuals that want a great, dependable piece of hardware. Just thinking out loud.

Maxx Lazos

Here's the text of the BC update - UPDATE: A quick update on backward compatibility – With all of the amazing games in PS4’s catalog, we’ve devoted significant efforts to enable our fans to play their favorites on PS5. We believe that the overwhelming majority of the 4,000+ PS4 titles will be playable on PS5. We’re expecting backward compatible titles will run at a boosted frequency on PS5 so that they can benefit from higher or more stable frame rates and potentially higher resolutions. We’re currently evaluating games on a title-by-title basis to spot any issues that need adjustment from the original software developers. In his presentation, Mark Cerny provided a snapshot into the Top 100 most-played PS4 titles, demonstrating how well our backward compatibility efforts are going. We have already tested hundreds of titles and are preparing to test thousands more as we move toward launch. We will provide updates on backward compatibility, along with much more PS5 news, in the months ahead. Stay tuned!

Bryan Finck

I got so triggered with Colin saying PlayStation engineers being worst than Microsoft. That SSD is like some NASA shit. I still love you guys. Btw BC thing got an update from Sony. They just need to communicate things better.

Carlos Borrero

I’m glad they’ve done some damage control on the BC front since you posted this. Now if only they don’t make us wait for the official reveal for too long.

NeO JD

100%

TheBufferPiece

Not really agree with you regarding BC guys, tho having around 100 games at the launch sucks. I don't think it is as a big deal as you make out of it, the statement that Sony is working on BC is good enough for me for now. I think you missing that Xbox had also releasing BC games on game by game basis as they were testing each title individually, it just they were losing this gen, so Microsoft started working on it like 6 years ago. Regarding why Sony's BC is not on pair with MC is because XBox one to XBox series X is just beefy upgrade but with almost exact architecture. PS4 to PS5 transition is a bit more complicated - PS5 architecture is tho similar, in ways, still quite different, as Mark stated - BC games are running on PS5, but some of them glitch on new system.

Anastas Lyakh

Would love to do that but Sony refuses to make this service available in my country and I don't see the point in going through setup loops just to trick the system. Lack of full backwards compatibility sucks.

tejotl

The 100 games are referring to boost mode. They all will work

Dom posa

Hey Colin! Keep the positive vibes during this quarantine. Though it won’t affect us introverts that much, I know how my mental health can get at times. Take this time to work on your happiness! Always here.

Nathanael Haller

Not too concerned about the storage on PS5, the 1tb number advertised on most drives is not the actual number you get usable. My 1tb PS4 shows its usable storage space is around 840gb, and I think that has to do with how space is counted in a digital context vs a marketing one, so it's possible they were talking about the actual useable space on the drive, which would end up matching a 1tb drive on xbox series x, assuming that's the metric they're using

Travis Johnson

Yeah bizarre they didn't know this. 175 GB isn't that much more, and with PS5's faster SSD the games could be smaller and make the difference meaningless for all we know.

Jake Z

People that want to play ps3 games on PS4 just use PSNow. I think it's time to quit downplaying the service because the market kind of speaks for its validity. I think it's great that MS is claiming they'll have the entire Xbox library available on the series X, but they haven't done that yet. The PS5 backwards compatibility sounds like it'll be just like the backwards compatibility we HAVE seen MS accomplish. Maybe at this point we should consider the possibility that Sony is under promising and MS is over promising?

Shawn Hayden

Its an update on backwards compatibility

Edson

https://blog.us.playstation.com/2020/03/18/unveiling-new-details-of-playstation-5-hardware-technical-specs/

Edson

Switch is selling great and it's the weakest console and it doesn't have backwards compatibility. Y'all are completely talking out of your ass about what gamers want lol

Jake Z

Also, Xbone having a la carte 360 compatibility is much more reasonable than PS5 having only a la carte PS4 compatibility. Primarily, it was never promised or assumed that the Xbox One would have any backwards compatibility at all. Also, since the 360/PS3 generation was quite awhile ago, a lot of games were not even available digitally, creating practical issues and licensing nightmares.

Matthew Cooper

Not having full PS4 backwards compatibility in the PS5 is a disaster. I knew having PS3 compatibility was a long shot, but just, come on.... With Series X all I have to do is unplug my external drive with all my Xbone and 360 games from my Xbox One X and then plug that drive into my Series X and all my games will work. That's fantastic, don't have to redownload or reinstall. I am glad that I bought almost all my third party games on Xbox this generation, that has worked out well.

Matthew Cooper

Colin- the Digital Foundry quote talking about not comparing teraflops is in regards to previous gen architecture/hardware vs next gen architecture/hardware. The PS4/XB1 run on AMD’s GCN graphics architecture, whereas the PS5 and XSX run on AMD’s all new RDNA2 architecture. The RDNA architecture can run games significantly more efficiently than GCN, so RDNA chips will see better game performance when compared TFLOP to TFLOP over last gen. This does not carry over to a comparison between the PS5 and XSX, because they’re both using the same RDNA2 architecture. Great discussion so far!

Michael Galletti

Series x has 1 Tb custom ssd, Playstation has 825 gb custom ssd. Not 2tb for xbox.

Edson

I just rewatched the Cerny presentation regarding the backwards compatibility. He made a point that the PS4 BC (for what its worth) is permanently in the PS5, because of it's integration, unlike the PS3's PS2 BC, which was much more expensive to produce.

Drew Sleezer

Sorry Colin, your wrong about backwards compatibility. Cerny is referring to boost mode when he’s speaking about the top 100 games.

BM

From my understanding, the reason why Sony has a much harder time supporting backwards compatibility than Microsoft is because their development tools and APIs are much "closer to the metal" than Microsoft's are. This allows developers to program with very specific knowledge of exactly how the hardware will perform with less abstraction/middleware, and the software will run quicker, which is the reason why developers (especially first parties) can squeeze much more out of Sony hardware than a similar Xbox or PC. This however makes it extremely hard to come up with a stable emulation solution. This is why Cerny keeps saying that they need to essentially have the actual hardware of the previous gens baked in to play those games. It's still surprising that with all the extra power of the PS5 they haven't figured out a software solution to fill in the gaps caused by the differences between the ps4 and ps5 hardware.

desperateLuck

I agree. I'm a deep tech guy, and I find this reveal riveting. I very much prefer this style of hardware reveal. I don't want to hear the mass marketing speak and the dumbed down general public chunks of nonsense. I know I'm certainly in the minority, but personally, I thought it was great. I could watch Mark Cerny do his incredibly intelligent rendition of Dana Carvey all day.

Raumulus

I agree that they should have thrown in some consumer-friendly details, just because so many people were looking to this event with anticipation because of the COVID19 lockdown and wanting to get away from it all. That wasn't on Sony, nor did they need to do anything for "us" beyond what they delivered, but it would have helped. This talk was exactly what it was supposed to be, but people just had different expectations. Not fair to Sony for all the trash-talk they are getting, we learned a ton about the machine and I am very encouraged about he system. People hear what they want to hear though, and don't take 30 seconds to think about it before blasting off on Twitter.

Bryan Finck

I love the title of this episode.

John Quinn

While I enjoyed the talk I think it would have been better served for the general public to have a different one. All they had to do was have a PS4 and PS5 on the stage side by side hooked up to different TVs. Cerny walks out, presses x to load Spider-Man, and walks away saying saying, “boom bitch”.

Jimmy

Colin, I really appreciate that you put so much effort into trying to wrap your head around all the technical details. It really showed and this show was better for it.

Michal Dudic

When he said a friend of his says " a rising tide lifts all boats" I imagined that he was referring to you. Haha!

Jason Stafford

Mark Cerny, the TED talk of PlayStation

Kale Ng

I love hearing Mark Cerny talk tech. I’m now very excited for the PS5, it’s going to literally be a game changer.

Shaun Wilkinson

Honestly, I liked what he had to say despite all of the criticism. At the end of the day, we are gonna get a console where we can play some really amazing games, and that’s what I’m looking forward to. Plus, the man knows how to speak, god damn. Lol

Will Hahn

Thanks Colin! Can't wait!

Will