The Artisan
Member
Oh I see. So a fan went through the trouble of basically making the graphics sharper, at the higher res.
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The Mass Effect Community Thread
- Thread starter shinobi602
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Well... Not "a fan". It's basically just turning on a graphics setting, anyone can do it. Like changing resolution.
The Artisan
Member
oh, it is a feature in the PC version in the game itself? the custom part in that quote gave me the impression that it was a mod
Not really a mod. Think of it like this, you can run a PC game at 720p on a 1080p monitor/tv and it'll look like shit because you're stretching/scaling the game to fit the screen. Downsampling is running the game at 2160p and scaling the game down to fit on a 1080p monitor/tv allowing for the elimination of aliasing and allowing for a sharper picture. Most standard GPU drivers/software allows for this out of the box.
The Artisan
Member
yeah that all sounds great yo but is the downsampling a possibility made by the options within the PC version of the game, or tweakage by someone playing the game? I guess that's what's confusing me
Both. Basically most games inherently allow for downsampling but the user needs to enable it in (the simplest way possible) their general PC's graphics settings.
The Artisan
Member
Oh I see. Well that's cool. No such thing exists on consoles but the closest such thing I remember, in ME particularly is the "film grain" option, which I keep on. I remember the old Ps2 GTA games also had some sort of "sunny" option or some shit like that too. Doesn't really affect the fidelity of the visuals though.
JohnnyFootball
GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
I don't see it as winning a lot of goodwill for EA since it's a simple business request.
Now if they offered the entire trilogy at 1080p/60fps, all DLC for like $39.99 then yeah that's goodwill....and not gonna happen.
I really do wonder if part of their hesitation is that they're still making money off the DLC, and thus would possibly be in a position to "lose" money if they bundled it all together in a single low-cost package.
DOWN
Banned
pretty sure that license issue is BS that came up in rumors a while back. There are many remasters on the market using engines that the franchise no longer uses. The remasters proceed anyway because engine fees and development costs are nothing in comparison to the net profit and marketing driven by the remaster for the publisher. I wouldn't buy for one second that EA refuses to outsource a remaster like many other remasters just because it uses an old engine.
That's not the same thing as a company not extending the license to the engine.
Poodlestrike
Banned
Honestly, all anecdotal evidence aside, it just comes down to EA not thinking it's worth the time and money to make. Whatever the obstacles may be, they don't think there's enough money on the other end to justify them.
Sure. I think it's reasonable to assume that there are internal business barriers that make it not cost effective for them to do remasters.
DOWN
Banned
If a cult game like Beyond Good and Evil or an underperformer like Darksiders II get outsourced remasters, there's no obvious reason why a huge active franchise from a huge publisher wouldn't thrive.
Well, I mean none that you know of. There easily could be licensing/legal issues making it a non-existent priority for EA.
prag16
Banned
Yeah, I mean, EA likes money. If it was a guaranteed no strings attached, no complications cash cow, they'd probably have done it already.
JohnnyFootball
GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
On a sidenote, darksiders 2 pisses me off like no other. That needed to include both games...ugh.
Imagine if EA only remastered the 2nd and 3rd game....
The Artisan
Member
if it wasn't worth the time or money we wouldn't have been seeing so many remasters this generation.
There's only 2 explanations why there isn't a remaster.
1) It's a licensing issue with Unreal Engine.
2) EA is really stubborn in not making remasters, if their message from a few months ago wasn't clear enough.
There's no point in trying to find any more reasons than this.
1) It's a licensing issue with Unreal Engine.
2) EA is really stubborn in not making remasters, if their message from a few months ago wasn't clear enough.
There's no point in trying to find any more reasons than this.
Ein Bear
Member
I'm sure there'll be a remaster at some point. I imagine they've just been waiting until Andromeda was on the horizon so they could release it in the run up to that. They'll sell more copies re-releasing the old games to build hype for the imminent sequel than they would doing it now.
Likely both. I mean it's pretty clear that it's never going to happen.
The Artisan
Member
what exactly is the issue with getting the license? rocket league uses 3, and that came out last year.
as for the second, it's time to stop being stubborn
They have to pay for an engine they as an entire company they don't use anymore? I mean none of it matters now, nobody will ever get to play ME in 1080p+ unless it's on PC, EA has made this extremely clear. Honestly I don't see how they could be clearer.
The costs of re-licensing the engine makes the project more expensive to do. Add to that the potential opportunity cost of doing the trilogy, and EA decides that it's not worth it.
Remember, it's not that it won't make money. It's that in EA's eyes the amount of money it makes may be lower than the amount of money they would make deploying those same resources to do something new.
The Artisan
Member
they were paying for it when they worked on the trilogy wern't they? so what's the big deal? yes, they'd have to go back to it to remaster the game but I don't see why that would be such a headache for them.
eh, well I guess. but, fuck...I wanted a remaster so bad
Companies don't like paying other companies cuts of their own games's revenue. There's a reason that EA pretty much stopped using outside engines and moved all their studios onto Frostbite.
Yeah, and they stopped. EA probably believes they can spend the resources and get a better return on other projects.they were paying for it when they worked on the trilogy wern't they? so what's the big deal? yes, they'd have to go back to it to remaster the game but I don't see why that would be such a headache for them.eh, well I guess. but, fuck...I wanted a remaster so bad
The Artisan
Member
they were paying for it when they worked on the trilogy wern't they? so what's the big deal? yes, they'd have to go back to it to remaster the game but I don't see why that would be such a headache for them.eh, well I guess. but, fuck...I wanted a remaster so bad
To add to what others have said, that was before they decide Frostbite would be their sole game engine to use for all their games.
The Artisan
Member
a couple of years ago I thought of the idea of them remastering them using frostbite but I know that would take way too much manpower for 3 old games.
The Lamonster
Member
Sadly, the original trilogy is turning into a game where you kinda just "had to be there" if you don't have a gaming PC and are willing to spend lots of time and money configuring it and buying all the overpriced DLC.
The Artisan
Member
i would've got a psnow subscription if they made these games part of it.
DOWN
Banned
None that we know of would qualify as not "obvious," no?
Nah, I mean we know for sure that they don't have any UE3 games in the pipeline, and that releasing a UE title requires a license. I don't think it's a stretch to say it's a clear factor.
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Banned
I think that's a stretch. We have no indication that there would be any significant cost in licensing an old engine. It doesn't carry the same costs as utilizing the current Unreal engine and we have no historic examples to tell us that old engines make problems with remaster costs. EA hasn't said that it's an issue.
A UE3 license would be like 500k iirc, for one platform. I mean even if it isn't, it's a cost they're incurring when they can literally do anything else without having to incur engine licensing.
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Banned
Ok assuming UE3 costs that much still, even if they only made like $30 off of every copy sold, the remaster could be a massive bomb at like 35k units total sold on all platforms and still make money. If they make more than $30 per copy, this thing is golden. That license is just nothing in the grand scheme.
I mean, The Last of Us Remastered is just one game and was $50 and that sold 1.5 million copies on day one. So yeah, that license cost can't be the reason if it's that cheap per platform because even the bomba sales could cover that cost no problem. And I don't even know that it still costs that much ever since UE4 took the lead. It's just too easy for a high value package like a trilogy to sell plenty of units for big profit.
And really, 2K is releasing BioShock collection this summer which is three games on the UE3 AND UE2.5 engine they no longer use either. And those games weren't as consistent in sales as the ME trilogy. Until I hear an official say the engine is a factor for a remaster, I'm not latching onto that idea.
It's likely not the single factor, but it definitely helps weigh down the opportunity cost of doing it.
Where does this bizarre assumption that actually making or porting the game is free coming from? The fact of the matter is that it costs money to use a third party engine, a cost they're not incurring on anything in production. Ultimately it's not worth doing when it's so much easier to invest in new expansions/products.
Basically this.
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Banned
There is zero assumption it's free so you've misread, but you sure are making a bunch of unfounded assumptions about EA's thought process.
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Banned
You have a fundamental reading comprehension issue. The whole quote "Zero assumption it's free" is irrelevant to the line you quoted.
You're assuming it could make money on 35k. Idiotic. Not that it ultimately matters since I was right in the end that it wasn't going to happen.
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Banned
I never said it would happen. I've given JohnnyFootball many headaches over me saying EA doesn't do remasters. I've said it isn't going to happen, but clearly you've been confused as now you are misinterpreting all around. And you really haven't backed up anything you've said since you aren't capable of doing so, so let's not keep jumping in with outsider irrelevance. If you're going to speculate on cost factors with numbers like you have, don't bite back at the speculation estimating you sparked.
Here's what we know: the engine on which these are built require a license to use, a license that has its own associated costs. We also know EA would prefer to work on releasing new content because... they actually said this. Unless you're suggesting that EA is willfully making a lesser profit because reasons it'd be reasonable to assume that it isn't worth the cost of development versus their current plans.
Edit: circa the last licensing announcement Epic would have received 25% of revenue after the first $5k.
Edit: circa the last licensing announcement Epic would have received 25% of revenue after the first $5k.
DOWN
Banned
The royalty structure for UE publicly accessible is not the same as the commercial agreements for the engines. Individual publishers and studios who are making many huge games and requiring bigger support from Epic have their own up front private deals. The cost of letting an experienced studio publish old games on UE3 is potentially minimal and you've inaccurately cited a public license cost structure, so again I don't see where the engine cost factor is any proven hurdle for a project with massive sales potential like this. One person brought up the engine a long time ago with no evidence sparking their concern, yet it keeps getting regurgitated.
So here's what we know: EA hasn't said a damn thing about remasters besides them not being interested when asked. Seemingly unwritten policy is all we have to go on as concrete evidence that EA would say no. So as I said, there are no obvious reasons (that we as outsiders) know of for EA not getting in the remaster space when publishers in similar scenarios with much weaker portfolios have repeatedly put out profitable remasters, on current engines or not.
Each and every single dollar they could put towards a port can be put to something that doesn't give a quarter of their revenue to Epic.
I've accurately given you the royalty costs accociated with the engine. If you want to plug your ears and believe otherwise, go ahead.
Poodlestrike
Banned
Man, you don't know that. I'd like to think so too, but it's not like we've got actual data.
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