Class Action Lawsuit Over Killzone Resolution Moving Forward

[Clive Howlitzer]

I love how everyone wants game companies to be held to task for all the lies, misrepresentation and false advertising. However, when someone actually does something about it via a lawsuit(Money is often the only way game companies will listen, it certainly won't be from your quiet indignation) everyone says it is a frivolous waste of time.

Sometimes, a lawsuit is the only thing a company understands. If that is must be done to make game companies show more honey, than so be it.

 

[Cartographer]

Given this is in the US, and in the states the right to lie in advertising is currently protected by law, Thanks Coke (and others), anything that could force companies to actually truthfully represent their products can only be a good thing.

Put it this way, if he loses, a game's menu screen alone could output 1080p and the publisher could then happily claim that the game was 1080p. If he wins, there is a chance that all future games would have to, you know, tell the truth about their capabilities in their advertising.

 

[Guffe]

Well, at least in the United States, Sony can pretty much say anything on their products since it's protected by the First Amendment (free speech) to some extent.

Food product have done this since forever.

Personally I am torn between this.
Yes this might raise awerness to companies (if the guy wins) that you can't just market for the case of marketing.
But then again... it feels somewhat... stupid... I don't know how to explain it :/

EDIT: I think my problem with this is that it's such a fine line. The game isn't running on 1080p, it's running on a 960 x 1080 resolution somehow mixing these to make the image seem 1080p even if it isn't "full 1080p".
So basically this is going to court because there isn't an explanation for the legal term of the word "native". Sony sais it's native 1080p, the guy sais it isn't, the problem is in the wording, as always when it comes to legal stuff. This might have a big impact on the legal side of things, for the one consumer, not so much.

 

[Doom972]

And this is just another obvious example of suing someone for the sake of suing someone. Sony really has had a bad month, and this doesn't really help anything.

Oh, I'm so sad for the poor little global megacorporation.

Sony can take it and they should - They could've easily avoided this by not lying about the game's resolution. I'm glad that there are people who won't let companies like Sony get away with deception, no matter how small.

 

[blackrave]

Define "useful"?

Easy.
Osamu Nagayama, Kazuo Hirai and other Sony higher-ups could spend that money on dick sucking concubines.
And if your heart doesn't bleed knowing that their dicks will be sucked a little less, then you, good sir, are a monster.

 

[faefrost]

Frivolous for sure but companies can't be allowed to get away with false advertising.

It's a little more complicated and nuanced then that though? At this point he seems to be suing over not just a matter of false advertising but to do so requires an argument and debate governing the actual definitions of video resolution as they apply to games and consumer electronics. Also what is the standard for advertising? To claim a game is 1080p does the entirety of the game have to run at 1080p? Every frame of every scene and mode? Or does it simply have to clearly and obviously feature a sizable portion of 1080p gameplay? Just as a related example the new Alienware gaming console thingy claims it can support 4k ressolutions. Now we all know that there is no way in hell that it can actually put out a 4k ressolution at an acceptable frame rate for gaming. But yeah it can show a nice pretty 4k picture or pre rendered cutscene or movie. Where is the boundary?

My point is as much as I support "truth in advertising" and frown upon the all to frequent outright fraud, this one seems just a bit to soft and squishy to even consider bringing a case over.

 

[Tradjus]

I see this as a great thing. Not because I care THAT much about resolution, but because there have been a bevy of problems with game developers straight out lying to their customers and getting away with it scot free lately, and it's time for some consequences. If they win this, and it gives game devs even a moments pause before lying to us as consumers, then it would have succeeded in a worthwhile endeavor in my opinion.

 

[Lightknight]

I don't see this as a resolution issue so much as a false advertisement issue. The game was fine in multi-player. But if it wasn't in 1080p then they shouldn't have said it was.

At least this wasn't a multi-platform game so the consumer shouldn't be able to say that they bought the ps4 version over the XBO one or something.

 

[Amir Kondori]

While the actual resolution differences are small the onus is really on Sony to be completely honest and up front about what resolution their game runs at.

There are some people who really care about that stuff and may even base purchasing decisions on it. Sony, like every other company out there, should be expected to be honest when advertising facts like resolution to its customers. They can say "best shooter on next gen!", but if they are going to release a technical specification like resolution then it needs to be true.

 

[Baresark]

Class action lawsuits are the very definition of a waste of time. That said:

Part of me gets annoyed by whiners when shit like this comes up. The new consoles just don't have the capability to do this, this shouldn't really surprise anyone.

The other part of me wants Sony to pay hard for this. They shouldn't have been lying about lots of things when it comes to this newest generation of consoles. I'm sure everyone remembers how both MS and Sony were talking about 4k before the new systems came out.

 

[Atmos Duality]

So the moral of the story is: Nobody wins.
Yeah, that sounds about right.