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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • The PS3 fat could only read PS2 disks because it had stripped down PS2 hardware included. It was effectively a PS2/3 combined. This was part of what drove the cost up, so they gutted that hardware from the slim.

    PS4s can’t read PS3 disks because the PS3 used a bespoke PowerPC based chipset that was a colossal pain in the ass to develop for. So for the PS4 to have backwards compatibility, they would have had to either A, include PS3 hardware in the PS4 (expensive) or B, create an efficient software translation layer/built in emulator (see “pain in the ass”).

    From what I have heard, they smartened up with the PS5. It’s basically just a faster PS4. At it’s core, it’s based on very similar hardware, so it’s easy to make PS4 games run without issue, but the boost in performance allows games designed specifically to take advantage of it.



  • Good point, I shouldn’t have used the world ‘literally.’ I was just trying to make the point that there are plenty of creative ways where tremendous amounts of money could end up back in someones pocket when by all means it should have gone elsewhere.

    And yes, your example is perfectly believable and I wouldn’t at all be shocked if that kind of thing happened frequently.









  • bigmclargehuge@lemmy.worldtoGames@lemmy.worldKotaku being Kotaku
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    2 months ago

    I had a conversation with my sister about that recently.

    The amount of shows and movies that have $100,000,000+ budgets is rising, yet more and more of them feature very limited sets, small casts of mostly mid range talent, and a dozen executive producers all putting up their own money (this is all especially prominent with big shows on streaming networks, cough Star Trek cough The Acolyte)

    Here’s my comparison: a group of 10 investors come out and announce they’re spending a billion dollars to develop a new luxury car. They drum it up as being the next big thing. Then, when it comes out, it’s about as nice and luxurious as a base model Toyota Camry. Fine, but not “a billion dollars” fine. Immediately, everyone would be wondering where the hell that money went? There’s definitely a chance it was just squandered, but you have to wonder. When you have a group of private investors with executive power over the project, what goes on behind closed doors?

    For all we know, they’re literally just passing massive checks in a circle to one another to say “yes, it says right here in our bank records that we spent a combined $100,000,000”, meanwhile only 25% actually goes into the production, and they pocket the rest. Then, when the flock of people have to come and check out the new megaproject, all they need to recoup is a few million more than they spent (far less than the perceived budget), and they can run for the hills.

    Anywho, crackpot theory time over. But think about it, if my simple brain can think this stuff up, why can’t the hollywood bigwigs, who actually have the capital to make it happen?




  • This kind of opens up its own point: people need to accept that non-free software isn’t the devil. It actually can be really good for a community to have large entities investing real, actual USD dollars into it, and creating products and services that people want to pay for. It absolutely shouldn’t be the only option, FOSS is a beautiful thing and I love that the Unix community puts a huge emphasis on it. But, without some heavy hitters putting some money on the table, Linux/BSD will always be niche. They won’t go away, but they won’t blow up either.