"No plans to port Elite Dangerous to PS5"

[[Cancelled Consoleer] boppa_]

Don't make me link to the 2017 PS4 launch FAQ twice in 2 days... containing such classics as

"nothing to announce"
"not at launch"

and "looking into it"

for infamous items such as PSVR, Cobra MKIV and CMDR transfers.

 

[stormyuk]

Don't make me link to the 2017 PS4 launch FAQ twice in 2 days... containing such classics as

"nothing to announce"
"not at launch"

and "looking into it"

for infamous items such as PSVR, Cobra MKIV and CMDR transfers.

It actually says 'when' which is a little different but, I am not counting chickens and all that until we get something concrete.

 

[[Cancelled Consoleer] boppa_]

When they say "When" in one place, and then almost immediately "we have no plans for that" in another, you don't know which is true. It's the inconsistent, vague messaging, lack of a real road map, we never know what we're buying into until it's either delivered, or it's 4 years down the line and features you were expecting have still not arrived.

I'm not saying it's deliberate, but it would take very little effort for someone to come along and clear up with a concise, definitive statement.

 

[Old Duck]

When they say "When" in one place, and then almost immediately "we have no plans for that" in another, you don't know which is true. It's the inconsistent, vague messaging, lack of a real road map, we never know what we're buying into until it's either delivered, or it's 4 years down the line and features you were expecting have still not arrived.

I'm not saying it's deliberate, but it would take very little effort for someone to come along and clear up with a concise, definitive statement.

This thread reminds me of the PSVR and 4K on PS4 Pro threads of old. We all know how those turned out.

 

[Snowymonk]

This thread reminds me of the PSVR and 4K on PS4 Pro threads of old. We all know how those turned out.

add Cobra MkIV to that list

 

[Old Duck]

add Cobra MkIV to that list

I blame Lloyd

 

[stormyuk]

I blame Lloyd

He never did get back to us.

He's busy on bigger and better things.

 

[stormyuk]

Even EA / Bioware couldn't be bothered to do a PS5 native version of the Mass Effect Legendary edition and they are selling that commercial. The wrong decision I think and the reason even though I loved Mass Effect, I'll be giving it a miss. Maybe when it's in the bargain bucket (At least it has a 4K mode though).

I guess it's not just FDev after all. The trend is definitely in the other direction though.

 

[Aeorath]

True, but Legendary Edition was never meant to receive a native version for the consoles, it's marketed as a compilation of ME, ME2 and ME3, with over 40 DLC from all those games. Not to mention the fact that they did remaster and optimize it for 4K. And that's single player games, which came out in 2007, 2010 and 2012. They are not on-going MMO's like Elite Dangerous. And yes, EA, with all these taken into consideration, they still did it.

I bet a lot of PS5 players would like to play Elite in 4K even though at 30 FPS? For now, they cannot. Personally, I still appreciate what EA did even though they capitalize on nostalgia, but they did a good thing, not to say they included all that DLC content.

I will definitely wait for a price drop and I will get the Legendary Edition, as I loved all those game, even Andromeda which was a bit of a stretch from the previous iterations.

And all this while we still wait for a 4K version of Elite Dangerous; not saying it will never happen, but I am not holding my breath for now.

 

[stormyuk]

I honestly would be willing to put up with 4K@30fps with Elite if that's what Odyssey demands of the PS5.

Even as an ex-PC gamer who used to run Quake at stupid FPS and marvel in my multi hundred frame rates I can still thankfully enjoy games at 30fps.

As long as it's a consistent framerate without frame pacing issues.

I am a console peasant after all. I played Control and Valhalla PS5 versions at 30fps in quality modes rather than performance modes.

 

[Aeorath]

I honestly would be willing to put up with 4K@30fps with Elite if that's what Odyssey demands of the PS5.

Even as an ex-PC gamer who used to run Quake at stupid FPS and marvel in my multi hundred frame rates I can still thankfully enjoy games at 30fps.

As long as it's a consistent framerate without frame pacing issues.

I am a console peasant after all. I played Control and Valhalla PS5 versions at 30fps in quality modes rather than performance modes.

Not to sound like a idiotic PS5 fanboy now, but the PS5 hardware could run Elite Dangerous at stupid resolutions and frame rates too. It only needs a team to work on that.

 

[stormyuk]

Not to sound like a idiotic PS5 fanboy now, but the PS5 hardware could run Elite Dangerous at stupid resolutions and frame rates too. It only needs a team to work on that.

The way the Cobra engine seems to be engineered I am not sure the PS5 has the brute force tbh. It would require way too much work, we are talking first party studio here (Naughty Dog, Insomniac etc) to squeeze the hardware. FDev are not going to do it. This is wishful thinking on console. Elite is a PC game.

With Horizons I think we could easily get 4K@60fps on the PS5 but, the Odyssey Alpha was tough on PCs.

Depending on optimisation 4K@60fps might be beyond the PS5 with the Cobra engine.

Hence why I'd settle for 4K@30fps.

 

[Aeorath]

The way the Cobra engine seems to be engineered I am not sure the PS5 has the brute force tbh. It would require way too much work, we are talking first party studio here (Naught Dog, Insomniac etc) to squeeze the hardware. FDev are not going to do it. This is wishful thinking on console. Elite is a PC game.

With Horizons I think we could easily get 4K@60fps on the PS5 but, the Alpha was tough on PCs.

Depending on optimisation 4K@60fps might be beyond the PS5 with the Cobra engine.

Hence why I'd settle for 4K@30fps.

That's why FDEV need optimization, it's not the hardware, it's their engine. If they cannot provide it, they should move on but they're not done milking this cow. If they cannot make the game even work well enough on PC's it's time for them to either start working on this game's next version, or to find something else to do in a different line of business since they cannot succeed in this.

Elite isn't a PC game - since they sell it on consoles as well, they need to be ready to support. Or end this thing for us like they did with the Mac commanders. But it seems they still like our money but provide almost nothing in return, that is not how it works, before people realize they're left in the dust and move on.

I agree with 4K and 30 FPS; but on XSX it runs in 4K at almost locked 60 FPS, albeit in BC mode. But initially, when they made that work for Xbox One and Xbox One X, they DID have to put the effort in to make it work. So it can be done, even on console, this game is not so PC specific that they couldn't make it work on Microsoft's console, right? I agree, the PS4 Pro didn't have the power back then to have this graphics mode, but PS5 does have it now; what's stopping them now to enable that for PS5 as well?

 

[stormyuk]

They are not going to rewrite the engine for this game. That really is wishful thinking. It's probably wishful thinking we are getting a 4K mode but, a complete rewrite of the core base game graphics architecture is just pie in the sky at this point.

Its a PC game, with console ports. That's not changing.

What's stopping them is time and effort as we've debated here. Financially is it worth it? We are a minority of a minority group so while I hope they do it and very much want them to do it. Will they? Who knows...

 

[Aeorath]

I am not talking about a complete re-write; I have no idea how this even works, but I am sure they didn't have to re-write too much to enable 4K and 60 FPS for Xbox, did they? Now PS5 can do that as well, so why not do it again for this console as well? Maybe they will, with the launch of the EDO, I don't know.

If they don't, we could have this conversation yet again with them (is it really a conversation with FDEV here, or just the few same posters over and over though?) and talk about double standards.

 

[Northpin]

They are not going to rewrite the engine for this game. That really is wishful thinking. It's probably wishful thinking we are getting a 4K mode but, a complete rewrite of the core base game graphics architecture is just pie in the sky at this point.

Its a PC game, with console ports. That's not changing.

I disagree. Cobra Engine is cross-platform. They even released JWE on Nintendo Switch.
Sure it may need an update to be cross-platform with XB Series and PS5, but i'd say it doesn't since Planet Coaster Console Edition is marketed for the new consoles.
However, Planet Coaster does not reach the same level of complexity as Elite, so yea the engine might need extra work

So, if their market analysts will find it profitable, they will release PS5/XBSeries versions.

Full description here:

The current engine is the fourth generation of our cross-platform technology. The engine provides a common platform-neutral core API and resource pipeline that isolates both the game code and resources from the underlying hardware, while maximising use of the multi-processor, multi-threaded environment.

 

[stormyuk]

I was planning to buy the new Xbox early next year but if ED isn't going to be backwards compatible then I'll wait.

Elite Dangerous is backwards compatible. This thread is talking about taking specific advantage of the PS5 hardware (and by inference the XS hardware).

 

[Scoob101]

Even EA / Bioware couldn't be bothered to do a PS5 native version of the Mass Effect Legendary edition and they are selling that commercial. The wrong decision I think and the reason even though I loved Mass Effect, I'll be giving it a miss. Maybe when it's in the bargain bucket (At least it has a 4K mode though).

The games were developed in UE3 and porting them to UE4 would have meant a complete rewrite rather than simply a remaster due to heavy dependencies on EU3 scripting tech. Digital foundry touched on that in their analysis. Most of the time there are practical real-world limitations that explain why things are done the way they are - generally, that doesn't have much to do with a lack of motivation.

 

[stormyuk]

The games were developed in UE3 and porting them to UE4 would have meant a complete rewrite rather than simply a remaster due to heavy dependencies on EU3 scripting tech. Digital foundry touched on that in their analysis. Most of the time there are practical real-world limitations that explain why things are done the way they are - generally, that doesn't have much to do with a lack of motivation.

As I said at least it's native 4K/2160p on PS5.

I'll probably pick it up when it's bargain basement. Now over to FDev on Elite Dangerous.

 

[Old Duck]

I still think part of the problem is that Frontier dismissed their dedicated Playstation dev team shortly after 2.3 released. As someone quoted a few posts back, Cobra engine is designed so general updates can be made to ED without giving any consideration to the platform. I think of the Cobra engine like Java - write once, run everywhere. Unfortunately you need a new JRE for PS5.

One of my biggest complaints as a PC gamer is that Frontier has never given us full DS4 support on the PC, again probably because the brilliant people who coded the DS4-specific code (like gyroscopic headlook and touchpad support) were moved to other projects or even another company. With Odyssey coming with its forced 2D play, I desperately want my gyroscopic headlook, but no matter how many times I ask, Frontier ignores my requests. In my mind it should be easy for the devs who wrote this code for PS4 to port it over to PC (it's probably a page of code), but odds are nobody working on ED these days has a clue how the DS4 code works. In fact, do you remember when headlook got screwed up by one of the early updates and it took weeks (if not months) to fix it? For all we know, Frontier hired a bunch of temp workers to code for the Playstation and then let them go a couple weeks after 2.3 dropped.

This would also explain all the other problems with the Playstation version, like Elephant Butt Leather and Dancing Disco Shadows. Frontier abandoned supporting the Playstation long ago, and you've all been plodding along on borrowed time.. It kinda reminds of the Titanic during the early hours after hitting the iceburg before people realized what was actually happening.

/rant

ps - it would be kinda funny if the primary reason you're not getting a PS5 version is because Frontier doesn't want to hire someone to program the new DS5 controller