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Guy who leaked FF Origins: “Kojima will sign a contract with Microsoft to publish his episodic horror project”

I've followed Kojima's twitter account for years now and he sure does share a lot of photos of movie posters and blu-ray cases. It wouldn't surprise me to see him try and marry movies and games into a new Kojima experience in the form of episodic releases, but I wonder if the xbox exclusivity is true. I somehow doubt it after the goodwill Sony must have with him for funding Death Stranding after Konami kicked him to the curb unexpectedly.
 

ZoukGalaxy

Member
Episodic and cloud ?

Well, no thanks. Sony was right to refuse if true.
Cbs No GIF by HULU
 
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platina

Member
Holy shit, well the new info here is that it’s episodic and horror, which means this is what the cancelled episodic until dawn style Silent Hills game was supposed to be. Oh boy...if this is indeed Silent Hills..wow
 
Considering the mind of Kojima the game is gonna have some interesting ideas for sure. Also will probably predict a future again :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
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D

Deleted member 471617

Unconfirmed Member
Not surprised. Once Google went down and out, Kojima's only real option would be Microsoft since Sony passed on his next project. Lucky for Kojima, Microsoft is willing to spend a shit ton of cash in the Xbox eco-system. Haven't played a Kojima game since MGS 2 but I always look forward to seeing what he comes up with next.
 
It doesn't use the "power of the cloud" for anything, the purpose the cloud serves in the case of flight sim is data storage/streaming. The game is possible without the cloud, it would just mean the game file size would be much larger locally
Like couple of petabytes larger :messenger_tears_of_joy: Why do people like to undermine the achievement which is Microsoft Flight Simulator? I know the planes cannot be sad, but hey you fly in third person there.

If this person had suggested that he'd gone straight to Microsoft or even that Microsoft approached him first would be far more believable but this story doesn't really ring true.
He first went to Stadia and the to Microsoft. Sony doesn't have the cloud infrastructure.

Or team Stadia didn't want Stadia owners to know they cancelled a game form Kojima...
More likely did not want gaming community to know too - imagine the backlash if people learnt that Google cancelled Kojima's game..
 
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Calverz

Member
For me the only game that was ever good as episodic was Hitman 2016, but that was a really niche case where each level was like a whole game worth of content if you did most all of it (and 90% of it was really fun so not just filler), and repeating the level over and over was the point of the game so unless you have an ultra memory you will have a worse time moving between levels as you complete them because you won't make obscure connections you'd make if you stay in each level until its done.

So I can take episodic but only if its similar to that, where repetition is incentivised heavily and its extremely dense. He kind of already did that with Phantom Pain in that each mission is like its own self contained, mini-game you can replay over and over discovering new methods/content and come back to with new tools, etc.

It would be pretty cool to have something like Hitman with the dense levels but as they release more levels they introduce much bigger gameplay changes like in Phantom Pain and Death Stranding. In Hitman you can bypass parts of the level and kill from a distance which makes a big difference obviously, but going from being on foot in PP to, you can start in a tank or with stealth camo makes a bigger difference for the gameplay imo.
Siren: Blood Curse??
 
Need to be self contained stories in order to work (Episodic Horror)
It is probably gonna be that. I am more curious about the length of the episodes. I wonder if it is around 3 hours or less.

What doesn't add up is that according to certain "insiders" this contract has been on the verge of being signed for months yet nothing is confirmed and nothing has come out. So precisely why this deal is taking so long? Should have been done and announced at E3.
I suspect the deal is not simple "make the game in a couple of parts".
 

cireza

Banned
Might give it a try if it's in Gamepass.

The only good game I played from him was Snatcher on Sega-CD. Policenauts wasn't that great, and MGS... :messenger_weary:
 
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Amiga

Member
episodic fits very well with game pass. no sense for MS to make one go single player games anymore. they should bring back Telltale games to do content for them.
 

brian0057

Banned
I think it's pretty clear Abandoned is not Kojima. That game has gotten 100x more attention than it ever otherwise would have due to all this.
I honestly feel bad about the Abandoned guys.

They keep swearing up and down that they're not involved with Kojima, Silent Hill, or Konami in any way.
But people just don't believe them every time they deny it and insiste that it's some sort of 4D marketing campaign and "KojiPro is just that misterious."

Hideo Kojima was a mistake for the industry.
 
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I honestly feel bad about the Abandoned guys.

They keep swearing up and down that they're not involved with Kojima, Silent Hill, or Konami in any way.
But people just don't believe them every time they deny it and insiste that it's some sort of 4D marketing campaign and "KojiPro is just that misterious."

Hideo Kojima was a mistake for the industry.
Oh, whatever. They knew exactly what they were doing and it will benefit their game drastically.
 

driqe

Member
Do people understand cloud gaming?

I am seeing alot of very smart people here.

Cloud games is flight simulator. Not games you play on xcloud. It uses the power of cloud, to push the game to absolute limit. They will utilize the Azure cloud system to achieve that.

An episodic game at the level of flight simulator would be epic. Kojima could make things he wasn't able to achieve on hardwares.
Im surprised that so many people here think its a game exclusive to xcloud lmao
 

brian0057

Banned
Oh, whatever. They knew exactly what they were doing and it will benefit their game drastically.
Maybe.
But the cult of personality around Kojima is such that from now on, no one can make a game that takes even tangential inspiration from Silent Hill without every Kojima zealot going "Oh, this is just like Silent Hills. Is KojiPro involved? He has to be."
 
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i think its cool he's making an xbox exclusive for a change. hate the idea of episodic though and why wasnt it announced at E3 if its real?
 
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GHG

Gold Member
Like couple of petabytes larger :messenger_tears_of_joy: Why do people like to undermine the achievement which is Microsoft Flight Simulator? I know the planes cannot be sad, but hey you fly in third person there.

Petabytes? You wish.

Have you ever done a manual/rolling cache for the game before doing a flight? At most you'll be looking at a couple of GB even on a long flight and all of that data gets stored locally on your machine until you delete it. It would probably be a few hundred GB of data for the world, it's bing map data that the game then converts into what you see using the models/textures in the game files. For areas/cities that have been given special treatment they have a specific set of files that are pre-downloaded anyway since they have been issued in the world update patches.

It's not about "downplaying" anything, all of this is not a slight on the game. The achievements of the game is nothing to do with "the power of the cloud", it's all to do with the rendering engine, the physics engine, photogrammetry and how the data is processed on the fly. There's a lot running under the hood, hence it's a CPU hog. The data can be pre-downloaded, it being available on the fly as you fly somewhere is a matter of convenience, not necessity. If you want you can even swap out the bing map data for Google map data for better results:


It's a bit more grey than that, it's using azure to do a bunch of stuff like removing cloud from the bing maps to ensure the generated world is accurate and then the question is how real-time does that modelling of the world need to be counted as 'power of the cloud'. It also pull weather information but unsure what the refresh rate is on that data set.

You could probably run the model once and get it downloaded locally but it's a very static and difference experience.

Again, all of the stuff they did with removing the clouds from the satellite data was done long before the game was finished and that stuff is now static ready to be served to anyone playing the game.

Live weather (and live time) is something that relies on real time data from bing but flying without it doesn't result in a "static" flight since you can set randomised weather conditions prior to setting off. All of the things you see and feel on the game (such as types of cloud, wind, visibility, etc) are all calculated on the fly using the weather physics system in your game based on the conditions:

and phenomenon have been created for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. For example, clouds are no longer flat “billboard” style textures that just randomly appear. Now they are based on certain weather conditions, such as updrafts and temperature, which in term create true volumetric 3D models that evolve in real time. From clouds, you’ll get rain, and that includes rain droplets covering the plane and windows. Every single droplet of rain will roll across the planes window, simulated to react as it would in real life, based on the plane’s speed, wind condition, and other factors. It’s not just some visual trick or effect, it’s actual physics being used to create these realistic conditions. And with rain, and the right amount of sunlight, comes rainbows. Again, these rainbows are not just textures that pop up at random – they will only appear if the right weather conditions occur. Colder temperatures will bring snow, and the snow will actually accumulate on the world below your wings. And if the temperature is cold enough, your plane will start to accumulate ice. The ice build up is a very cool effect, but it’s not just there for show, the build up of ice will impact the planes performance, so you’ll need to do whatever necessary to properly de-ice the plane.


And here's what it looks like if you want to set it all up manually:

how-to-change-weather-settings-microsoft-flight-simulator.jpg


Also to answer the question of how often it updates using live weather, it's once an hour but there are mods you can use that will allow it to update much more frequently (and more accurately than bing's weather data) as you fly:

https://rexsimulations.com/weatherforce.html


Top one is 6 times an hour, bottom up to 4000 times a day.

The main thing you actually miss out on by flying the sim offline is the presence of other players planes on the map and in the skies. Apart from that you can have pretty much the same experience provided you pre-cache your route.
 
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Rolla

Banned
Of all the Kojima rumours this is the most believable.

I don't play episodic games, personally, but it'll be interesting to see how this pans out.
 

GHG

Gold Member
Of all the Kojima rumours this is the most believable.

I don't play episodic games, personally, but it'll be interesting to see how this pans out.

I'd actually like him to do some episodic stuff.

Ground Zeros was better than MGSV. MGSV would have been better if it were a series of "episodes" like ground zeros. Fight me.
 

GhostOfTsu

Banned
This is the same rumour from Grubb and co for months now. At this point we'll believe it when we see it. It's been too long.

I don't see why Sony wouldn't be able to offer a cloud/streaming game. They were the first to offer this service back in 2015. You could stream even on TVs. Microsoft is still in beta and they are an actual cloud company. 7 years later and they are just copying what came before.
 

DarthPutin

Member
Personally I'm glad Kojima gets to make the game he wants to make. His "loyalty" as a creator should be to his ideas first and foremost. Maybe he has some interesting take on cloud-based tech.

Clearly he has great relationship with Sony and his next game could be with them, or multi-plat.
 

Ge Os

Member
So that whole "PLAYSTATION Studios" logo at the beginning of the Death Stranding Director's Cut trailer/teaser is meaningless?

Cause what I got from that is that KojiPro is (or will be) part of the PS family.
 

01011001

Banned
This is the same rumour from Grubb and co for months now. At this point we'll believe it when we see it. It's been too long.

I don't see why Sony wouldn't be able to offer a cloud/streaming game. They were the first to offer this service back in 2015. You could stream even on TVs. Microsoft is still in beta and they are an actual cloud company. 7 years later and they are just copying what came before.

why is it so hard for people to understand that this is not a game that will be played by streaming it... wtf? if it will use the cloud servers it will be used to do some multiplayer stuff like Death Stranding, and maybe it doesn't even involve this stuff, and the rumors about him wanting to make a cloud streaming game were just terribly reported because he wanted to make a game for Stadia, which is streaming only, so not much choice there. maybe he thought the episodic structure would lend itself better to a streaming service, but they didn't want to invest in it, so now he is doing it, without the cloud, with Microsoft.
 
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Petabytes? You wish.

Have you ever done a manual/rolling cache for the game before doing a flight? At most you'll be looking at a couple of GB even on a long flight and all of that data gets stored locally on your machine until you delete it. It would probably be a few hundred GB of data for the world, it's bing map data that the game then converts into what you see using the models/textures in the game files. For areas/cities that have been given special treatment they have a specific set of files that are pre-downloaded anyway since they have been issued in the world update patches.

It's not about "downplaying" anything, all of this is not a slight on the game. The achievements of the game is nothing to do with "the power of the cloud", it's all to do with the rendering engine, the physics engine, photogrammetry and how the data is processed on the fly. There's a lot running under the hood, hence it's a CPU hog. The data can be pre-downloaded, it being available on the fly as you fly somewhere is a matter of convenience, not necessity. If you want you can even swap out the bing map data for Google map data for better results:
So what are you saying MFS is not using the power of the cloud when it allows you to fly across the world without downloading gigabytes of data for each and every route you want to fly, while providing real time weather and flight data and having all those features integrated in the engine.

It is like saying that 3D is no different from 2D game because you can move from one point to another there :messenger_tears_of_joy: There is no power of cloud if I can run the mainframe in my house :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
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Forsythia

Member
I'd love this to be true just for the meltdowns and PlayStation fanboys suddenly not caring about Kojima anymore (and Xbox fanboys suddenly being in love with the man).
 

GhostOfTsu

Banned
why is it so hard for people to understand that this is not a game that will be played by streaming it... wtf? if it will use the cloud servers it will be used to do some multiplayer stuff like Death Stranding, and maybe it doesn't even involve this stuff, and the rumors about him wanting to make a cloud streaming game were just terribly reported because he wanted to make a game for Stadia, which is streaming only, so not much choice there. maybe he thought the episodic structure would lend itself better to a streaming service, but they didn't want to invest in it, so now he is doing it, without the cloud, with Microsoft.
Damn you seem to know a lot about this game and how it's gonna play when we don't even have a title or screenshot. Hasan?
 

CatLady

Selfishly plays on Xbox Purr-ies X
Don't know whether to believe this or not, but I don't really much care anyway. I am not a Kojimbo fan at all nor am I a big fan of episodic games.

I guess if true, it's nice for Xbox owners that really like Kojimbo, and I might try it if it's day 1 on Game Pass, but it's certainly nothing I personally would be excited about.
 
I guess the only believable reason would be that Kojima has an idea that can only be done using cloud streaming technology. And on that front, it's not Microsoft Vs Sony, Microsoft Vs Amazon.

He first went to Stadia and the to Microsoft. Sony doesn't have the cloud infrastructure.
Microsoft run Sony's cloud infrastructure, they specifically mentioned using Microsoft because of the scalability that they are able to provide them with.
 

GHG

Gold Member
So what are you saying MFS is not using the power of the cloud when it allows you to fly across the world without downloading gigabytes of data for each and every route you want to fly, while providing real time weather and flight data and having all those features integrated in the engine.

It is like saying that 3D is no different from 2D game because you can move from one point to another there :messenger_tears_of_joy: There is no power of cloud if I can run the mainframe in my house :messenger_tears_of_joy:

The rendering, physics calculations and data processing for the game is all done on your local hardware, not in the cloud. You can opt to download all the data you need long before you go on a flight anywhere. The fact that the data is available online is a convenience rather than a necessity.

"Power of the cloud" was borne out of the idea that physics calculations would be done in the cloud in crackdown 3 and then sent to your local machine because the local hardware wouldn't be able to process the calculations as accurately/quickly.

When you use Google maps for GPS do you call it "power of the cloud" or do you see it for what it is, map/traffic data streaming?

The latest update for AMS2 allows you to use 42 years of historical weather data for races that is accurate on a per-hour basis, is that also "power of the cloud"?

The only time "power of the cloud" is accurate is if something is being rendered or calculated online due to the task being too intense for the local hardware it's being visualised on. Power of the cloud is stadia or X cloud running on a mobile phone, not an instance where data is being stored online to give players the option to not have their flight sim install folder be 200+ GB.
 
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