One might think that paying extra would simply cover the extra costs of a specific audio license. I’m not claiming anything regarding this, as I don’t know, but I do would say that CoD games had spatial audio for many many years already.
Anyways, next up: “thanks for purchasing our game, are you interested in purchasing access to the 3D renderer or the input handler? both are billed separately for your convenience”
Balatro is like, $10 and available on my phone tho-…
Before I read the article I just assumed that the developers put uncompressed audio files into a DLC, in order to both reduce filesize of the game and provide people that car about audio a better experience.
But actually its just an extra charge for spatial audio for some reason. Who will even actually buy this? I wonder if this is a test to see if it is financially valuable to keep in the game engine (spoiler alert, most people do not care about this and wont pay extra for it).
I care a lot about audio and that’s why I don’t use spatial. Stereo all the way with a good pair of headphones, or better yet, a really nice stereo monitor setup.
Then again, audio is also a drop in the bucket of why I don’t care for COD games lately. The sound is often weird, and the hit marker sounds too much like a cash register, which reminds me what COD games are really about - in case I forgot about the clowns and gorillas running around for a moment.
Proper spatial audio, ie not the DSP effect that upconverts stereo, but something like Atmos or DTS:X that’s sending object based audio to an arbitrary number of speakers, does sound better to me on headphones in the few games that support it. The only game where use it regularly that I can think of is MSFS, but it does sound better than headphone stereo. You do have to pay Dolby to use it, or buy headphones that come with it, however. Sounds best on my 5.1 home theater, but also does a good job with binaural headphone output.
My Sexy Farm Simulator?
Microsoft Flight Sim
“For some reason”? Greed. That is the exact reason.
“Because fuck you, give me money” - AJ
Imagine paying for the privilege of hearing unemployed dudes and 12 year olds call you racial slurs in higher quality.
So sound whoring is a pay to use privilege now?
Greedy corpos aside, going back to BO1 the audio design was fantastic; everything from the subtle crunch of a boot on gravel to the clack of reloading a gun. Pure ear candy (except for maybe the crazy over-dramatic melee sound). BO 2-5 were good too in terms of sfx but nowhere near 1. I feel like that era had a special attention to detail to audio that modern games don’t care to emulate. Maybe they will with 6; either way microtransactions suck and I’ll stick to playing the older COD games for this very reason
I think the audio detail was so high because it helped to sell the realism of the game. Go back and play those early games and they don’t look nearly as good as my brain remembers, but the audio helped to fill in the lack of gravel looking texture and leaves tussling sounds in bushes that had two twigs on them.
I played BO Cold War a few years ago, and was very disappointed in both sounds and visuals. It just wasn’t a well-made game on the technical level. The fire in a Vietnam flashback location looked like something from the 90s, a 2D model that was rotating to where I was watching it from. A rip-off for a full priced AAA game.
This was the last COD game I tried, I don’t bother anymore with the franchise.
Oh shit this is hat immersive game pack shit?
Yeah, it’s garbage, don’t fucking use it. FFXIV did a whole thing back in end Walker and it just ruins audio
Meanwhile my 5.1 setup works with most games out of the box, and universal HRTF works better than IG on the 6 pairs of phones I’ve tested it on on 2 different fucking Games
Scam software
“A Personalized Profile analyzes your unique head and ear shape for precision sound,” reads the option on the Call of Duty store.
Sounds customized for your specific ear shape??? I’ve never been less willing to believe something in my life
It is a real thing. Very few people have identical ears on both sides of their head, and almost no one shares the same shape with another person. There’s a few active implementations of this on truly wireless earbuds, but the latency makes it irrelevant for most things except music. Depending on just how unique the ear shape is, it can drastically change how things sound.
In no capacity should it be a paid feature in a game, though. In a more competitive game with a lot of value placed on audio like Escape From Tarkov, this would completely change the game and how it is played.
TLDR: Your ears are unique, and your brain spends your entire life from the moment your ears are hearing things, tuning to them.
Sony did this with the ps5, you had to send Mark Cerny ear pics…
Shocking. A company mistreats the people purchasing their game like crap with a micro transaction for “better audio quality”. I really hope this bites them in the ass.
Shocking. A company mistreats the people purchasing their game like crap with a micro transaction for “better audio quality”. I really hope this bites them in the ass.
a general setting thats available to everyone, and a paid version of that same setting but customized to your individual ears seems pretty reasonable to me actually
No. The game is paid. It should come with all available settings. This is just one step away from studios hiding HD textures behind paywalls.
And this line of thinking is what let’s them get away with it.
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Greed. That reason is greed.
Fun (probably) fact. Warzone players complained almost constantly about the lack of audio quality. It was an issue that only got worse with each “season”. So now that this happens, I can see why.
“Hey players, you complained and we listened! Now pay the fuck up!”
