PlayStation Acquires Nixxes, a Game Porting Specialist

[ZHobbs]

Playstation has purchased Nixxes, it seems the majority of their work was for Square Enix & porting their games to PC. I wonder if this is so Sony can bring more titles to PC or port older games to PS5 as remasters. Maybe both?

PlayStation has acquired Nixxes, a Dutch studio that specialises in porting games to PC.

Announced by Head of PlayStatio Studios Hermen Hulst, Nixxes has been bought for an undisclosed fee. The studio will "provide high quality in-house technical and development capabilities for PlayStation Studios," according to a press release.

Nixxes has worked extensively with Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal and IO Interactive since forming in 1999, porting the recent Tomb Raider trilogy and the two most recent Deus Ex games to PC. While no specifics have been given about Nixxes' work for PlayStation, it feels likely that the studio will support Sony's increased focus on porting its console exclusive games to PC.

“I highly respect Nixxes and am excited for this very experienced team to become part of the world-class development community at SIE,” said Hulst in a statement. “They have a passion for improving games and for delivering the best possible experience for gamers. Nixxes will be a strong asset for everyone across PlayStation Studios, helping our teams focus on their most important goal, which is to create unique PlayStation content at the best possible quality.”

“We can’t wait to get to work and are so excited to bring our technical and development expertise to an IP powerhouse like PlayStation Studios,” said Nixxes founder Jurjen Katsman. “We’re looking forward to working with some of the most talented teams in the industry to deliver the highest-quality gameplay experiences for PlayStation fans.”

It marks the second Sony studio acquisition this week, after Housemarque officially became a part of PlayStation Studios. It feels likely that we may see a third soon, after Sony Japan seemed to leak that it would also acquire remake studio Bluepoint.

https://www.ign.com/articles/sony-ac...ort-ps5-studio

[Steelmaker]

Well this was unexpected. Hmmm, I guess more PC ports are coming then.

[tcripe]

PC ports be coming in bunches now. After this acquisition don’t be surprised to see every PS console exclusive eventually make their way to pc.

[JayTL]

Originally Posted by tcripe

PC ports be coming in bunches now. After this acquisition don’t be surprised to see every PS console exclusive eventually make their way to pc.

Remember when the fanboy war was raging, and people said Xbox didn't have any exclusives because they all went to PC? lol

Maybe I should have invested in a gaming PC instead of next gen systems.

Nah thats too much work and maintenance lol

[NARMAK]

The specific experience of porting to PC and the issues faced by Sony thus far getting PC ports to an acceptable level at launch more than likely fuelled this acquisition. I was going to say if Bluepoint were destined more for original IPs assuming the announcement is made soon for them being acquired, then i guess it also makes sense acquiring a more specialised team for PC ports.

[ZHobbs]

Originally Posted by JayTL

Remember when the fanboy war was raging, and people said Xbox didn't have any exclusives because they all went to PC? lol

Maybe I should have invested in a gaming PC instead of next gen systems.

Nah thats too much work and maintenance lol

I started a build months ago with the thought process of "I was able to get a PS5 at launch, how hard could a GPU be?" Was I wrong...

[Batman90]

Sony needs to port God of War 1 and 2 to PS5.

[NARMAK]

Originally Posted by Batman90

Sony needs to port God of War 1 and 2 to PS5.

Nope, they need to remake the series now and do it in the new God of War style 3rd person action adventure way. They scream for it all these years later. A port simply cannot do them justice imo.

[Batman90]

Originally Posted by NARMAK

Nope, they need to remake the series now and do it in the new God of War style 3rd person action adventure way. They scream for it all these years later. A port simply cannot do them justice imo.

What’s wrong with porting over the first 2 and doing both? And they basically have reboot the series. The last one was both a reboot and sequel.

[Talal86]

Originally Posted by NARMAK

Nope, they need to remake the series now and do it in the new God of War style 3rd person action adventure way. They scream for it all these years later. A port simply cannot do them justice imo.

[Hayabusa85]

Originally Posted by NARMAK

Nope, they need to remake the series now and do it in the new God of War style 3rd person action adventure way. They scream for it all these years later. A port simply cannot do them justice imo.

[Steelmaker]

Yeah I have to agree. While I think 2018 God of War did a lot for the series in terms of advancing Kratos as a character and the story was great, I wasn't as high on the game from a mechanics standpoint as a lot of other people were. I'm a much bigger fan of the old-school GOW mechanics than I am of the more rigid, Souls-like mechanics of 2018. I liked God of War 2018 but I didn't enjoy it as much as Horizon Zero Dawn or Ghost of Tsushima or Spider-Man.

[Zivouhr]

Cool to hear they're good at porting PC games to consoles. Here's hoping for plenty of great new games to pick from sooner during this drought. EDIT: Nevermind, they port console games to PC. But here's hoping they port PC games to consoles!

Here's also hoping they iron out some known issues of PC games if ported to consoles, like lots of crashes from my computer gaming days years ago. All the specs could match and the game might still crash unexpectedly. Save often!

As far as God of War PS4, I like the gameplay controls but also would prefer the original games remastered with higher res and textures, frame rate.

Ragnarok will hopefully expand the series with much less hand holding as in God of War PS4, and more authenticity in terms of not pretending to be open world when it's linear level leads you to a new section and says "New location discovered"...
That seems artificial since the player has no choice but to discover it along the linear walled paths that led right to it. It wasn't discovered in the sense of finding it in an open world, where it would be hidden or found by the player stumbling onto it through exploration. A minor complaint.

[heyadol]

To me the coolest thing about Sony doing PC ports is ultrawide screen support, because I'm one of the dumbasses who actually thought it would be useful to buy an ultrawide pc monitor.

That being said, I'm a console gamer. It's great that Sony (and MS) are expanding their reach, but for me PC is tmw. Even if Sony went day & date for every game in their lineup, I'd still be playing on a PlayStation. Hopefully someday soon I can add a 5 to the end of that sentence.

[NARMAK]

Originally Posted by Batman90

What’s wrong with porting over the first 2 and doing both? And they basically have reboot the series. The last one was both a reboot and sequel.

They could but i just don't think the way the series played out from the top down view really lends itself to graphically flexing as much as the 2018 entry. Also wasn't a massive fan of the mechanics but it does seem from the replies others prefer them.

[Zivouhr]

Originally Posted by heyadol

To me the coolest thing about Sony doing PC ports is ultrawide screen support, because I'm one of the dumbasses who actually thought it would be useful to buy an ultrawide pc monitor.

That being said, I'm a console gamer. It's great that Sony (and MS) are expanding their reach, but for me PC is tmw. Even if Sony went day & date for every game in their lineup, I'd still be playing on a PlayStation. Hopefully someday soon I can add a 5 to the end of that sentence.

Having a PC is a lot of upkeep work, that's true. It's like a new graphics card is finally installed, and then there's a new one that is released the next year and a new must have game requires it. At that point, it's like what's the point? That's why consoles are so much easier and why I stopped gaming on computers (other than some smaller Steam games now and then).

[NARMAK]

Originally Posted by Zivouhr

Having a PC is a lot of upkeep work, that's true. It's like a new graphics card is finally installed, and then there's a new one that is released the next year and a new must have game requires it. At that point, it's like what's the point? That's why consoles are so much easier and why I stopped gaming on computers (other than some smaller Steam games now and then).

I know it can feel like that, but i would honestly say getting a decent mid to high end GPU doesn't mean you'll upgrade as often imo. Plus, if you look at it like a 5-6 year thing, you get a decent bump up in power and can get the mid to high end GPU again.

Right now, the biggest problem with GPUs isn't even related to actually being used for gaming etc. but Cryotocurrency and mining for it. Under normal times, a 2000 series card would have been cheaper by now and reasonable to upgrade to from their launch prices and easily you could use Nvidia DLSS 2.0 and get 4K/60fps gaming.

Yes, the cost barrier is higher but i think these days, it's moreso the GPU and CPU sides that see upgrades more often than not. With NVMe drives, you can get a 2TB and use that for your main applications which require speed and get a massive HDD for storage. RAM etc. are all a bit stagnant atm in terms of speeds etc. to buy.

However, it's a commitment not everybody is willing to make and i completely understand the buying a console option.

[Zivouhr]

I'm playing Ark, a PC game ported to PS4, and it's set up very much like a PC game. The dinosaurs look great, but the graphics look like PS3 resolution, pretty rough even on a PS5. I hope though that more PC games can be ported to PS5 sooner than later. That would be good to see and already it's been a lost opportunity during this drought of PS5 games.

Originally Posted by NARMAK

I know it can feel like that, but i would honestly say getting a decent mid to high end GPU doesn't mean you'll upgrade as often imo. Plus, if you look at it like a 5-6 year thing, you get a decent bump up in power and can get the mid to high end GPU again.

Right now, the biggest problem with GPUs isn't even related to actually being used for gaming etc. but Cryotocurrency and mining for it. Under normal times, a 2000 series card would have been cheaper by now and reasonable to upgrade to from their launch prices and easily you could use Nvidia DLSS 2.0 and get 4K/60fps gaming.

Yes, the cost barrier is higher but i think these days, it's moreso the GPU and CPU sides that see upgrades more often than not. With NVMe drives, you can get a 2TB and use that for your main applications which require speed and get a massive HDD for storage. RAM etc. are all a bit stagnant atm in terms of speeds etc. to buy.

However, it's a commitment not everybody is willing to make and i completely understand the buying a console option.

Thanks NARMAK for the details. That stinks about the higher costs during this time than normal. That's true, the timing of buying the upgrades is important.
Computers can be great, so I can imagine a gaming computer that can also be used for the creative arts would be really nice to have, easily being able to handle large image files without any slow down while saving, editing or opening files.

[NARMAK]

Originally Posted by Zivouhr

I'm playing Ark, a PC game ported to PS4, and it's set up very much like a PC game. The dinosaurs look great, but the graphics look like PS3 resolution, pretty rough even on a PS5. I hope though that more PC games can be ported to PS5 sooner than later. That would be good to see and already it's been a lost opportunity during this drought of PS5 games.




Thanks NARMAK for the details. That stinks about the higher costs during this time than normal. That's true, the timing of buying the upgrades is important.
Computers can be great, so I can imagine a gaming computer that can also be used for the creative arts would be really nice to have, easily being able to handle large image files without any slow down while saving, editing or opening files.

Yeah, unfortunately the PC versions of games can be brute forced and they include better texture settings for GPUs that can handle it. There's a more robust modding community but on console for Ark etc. you're stuck st the mercy of the porting and developing teams competence.

For consoles and PCs though, 4K native resolutions basically the gold standard in terms of not needing to go above that. Monitors are only so large and even if you switch to TVs now with 4K/120hz, the truth is that we're no longer at a point where they are truly going to push towards 8K. It will be pushing the graphical quality and FPS now. Even with DLSS 2.0 we see how basically the goals to max out the settings graphically as much as possible for 4K with higher refresh rates where possible.

I think i'm going to wait till the start of the next gen (PS6) or whatever that looks like to decide to go full on into a higher end PC for gaming and probably use that to play Xbox titles and PC exclusives. Playstation i'm gonna have to wait and see what happens.