Sony / Insomniac / Nixxes
On Thursday, Sony’s latest game-packed “State of Play” presentation featured great news for PC gamers: It’s critically acclaimed Marvel’s Spider-Man coming to Windows PCs on August 12. The news came shortly after a leak suggesting that Return and Sackboy: a great adventure Not only coming to PC this year but will also include switches to make them look and perform better than the PlayStation 5 versions.
The event was packed with impressive-looking new games, although most have release dates before 2023 (and anything shown on the upcoming PlayStation VR2 platform is undated so far, as the new peripherals don’t have a release date). However, as PC gaming enthusiasts, we want to start with the PC-specific news.
Why Sony’s PC bullishness makes us believe in today’s leak
Marvel’s Spider-Man launched on PlayStation 4 and PS4 Pro in September 2018, landing near the top of our favorite games of that year. The port, which we’re seeing to our surprise given its success selling PlayStations, will hit PC courtesy of Nixxes, a development studio known for some of the best console-to-PC ports of the past decade. Sony acquired Nixxes in early 2021, but to date that acquisition hadn’t paid off as Sony’s other recent Windows game releases didn’t credit Nixxes in any way.
Although the State of Play presentation didn’t mention it, Sony has since confirmed on PlayStation Blog that 2020’s Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales shall also launch on PC towards the end of 2022. For the most part, that’s not surprising, given that that semi-sequel shares the same engine and other technical elements, although that’s certainly a faster transition from console to PC than the original game’s four years . Today’s news includes confirmation that the ray-traced reflections added to the PS5 versions of both games will be arriving on PC.
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Leaks of supposedly legitimate PC settings for the game Returnal, which is currently a PS5 exclusive.
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Leaks of supposedly legitimate PC settings for the game Returnal, which is currently a PS5 exclusive.
Shortly before the YouTube presentation went live, a leaker appeared supposed menu images of the PC versions of two other PlayStation games† The games in question, Return and pocket boy, are already rumored to be coming to Windows PCs soon. While there is a chance that the images of the leak may have been faked, the images related to pocket boy have been vetted by at least one reputable moderator of the Reddit community.
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Leaks of supposedly legitimate PC settings menus for the game Sackboy, which is currently exclusive to PS5 and PS4.
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Leaks of supposedly legitimate PC settings menus for the game Sackboy, which is currently exclusive to PS5 and PS4.
The legitimacy of these leaked images shouldn’t be surprising, given Sony’s recent track record of solid PC ports and its statements last week about PC game sales. The company forecast a 375 percent increase in PC game sales year-over-year between FY 2021 and FY 2022 — and it will take no less than five new PC game launches, each selling gangbusters, to reach that target. . (I estimate there will be more Sony PC games released than that in the next year, including games that debut on PC, based on my calculations.) At the time of writing, Sony representatives had not answered Ars Technica’s questions about the legitimacy of the leak.
Why today’s leaked PC ports look better than on PS5
Thursday’s images include switches for “ray tracing,” which neither game features on their original PlayStation 5 versions. ReturnThe PC menus point to “ray-traced Reflections,” which, if other games are any indication, make specific in-game surfaces reflect light more naturally, rather than relying on classic tricks like Screen Space Reflections (SSR) . Both games on PC support ray-traced shadows, which are also less computationally expensive and allow for more light-reflecting data before shadows are drawn (as opposed to simpler shadow and environmental occlusion methods).
Good news: Both games support arbitrary framerate caps, allowing players to exceed the 60fps cap for each on PS5. ReturnThe PC’s PC port also includes automatic resolution scaling as an option for times when the frame rate might drop. We have no confirmation on whether either port will support Nvidia’s popular image reconstruction technique called Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS). Anyone looking to toggle ray tracing effects on Nvidia GPUs would appreciate the latter. They probably need help to maintain performative frame rates with expensive effects enabled. DLSS also generally does a good job of rendering fewer pixels, while bringing the pixel density and anti-aliasing to a nice level.
Each game also features different sliders for detail and intensity of effects, which are similar to the menus seen in other Unreal Engine 4 games on PC – which isn’t surprising given that the PS5 versions of both games are also in Unreal Engine 4 are made. That’s great news for high-end systems and anyone who dreams of scaling these games on low-end machines like the portable Steam Deck.
Personally, I highly recommend both games. pocket boy has proven to be an enduring feature as one of the best co-op platformers of the past five years, and I regret not getting it in that year’s “Best Games of 2020” feature. Return has only gotten better since the first PS5 launch, thanks to much-needed bug fixes and great new features.
