Surely you noticed something strange in those more than 60 minutes of presentation. Among many playstation wallpapers and great game after great game, some managers of the brand and other heads of development studios appeared on camera to continue talking about the benefits of PS5 and the great games that would await us with its launch. But were those real people?
The magic of CGI
I must admit that the person who writes these lines was quite surprised by the intensity of Jim Ryan's message when speaking on camera. Such was the concentration and intention that the Sony manager did not blink once in his intervention.
This man doesn't blink pic.twitter.com/1yYaOLYii5
— Carlos Martínez (@krlitosmtnez) June 11, 2020
The broadcast continued its course, and in another of the interventions Yushei Yoshida appeared to give way to one of his favorite games. The image of the good Yoshida once again drew the attention of many, who noticed the image of the broadcast as something strange. Until the famous analyst Daniel Ahmad launched the following joking comment:
What you may not know is this isn't Jim Ryan.
It's a simulation running in Unreal Engine 5. pic.twitter.com/L7k4GRRuyx
- Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) June 11, 2020
What you should know is that this is not Jim Ryan.
It is a simulation running on Unreal Engine 5.
Many may have drawn their own conclusions, but it is clear that Daniel's tweet served to add fuel to the fire. Opinions among users began to spread like wildfire, and all because of a simple message that Sony showed at the beginning of the feature:
All of the gameplay footage you're going to see below from now on throughout the show has been captured from PlayStation 5 systems.
If everything that is going to come out from then on has been captured with the PS5 hardware, does that also mean that the people that appear are generated by CGI? Well no. For some the word "game footage" seemed not to be enough to settle the issue. And it is one thing to do calculations with the playstation 5 size and another elaborate theories like this.
Sooooooo the PS5 presenters were CGI fr fr ??????? 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯 pic.twitter.com/KajFw7PZ2V
— 🤙🏾BUCKY🤙🏾 (@chrisnicome08) June 12, 2020
No, PS5 is not that powerful
As much as you love the theory, none of the people that appeared in the presentation video are the result of a work of computer generated graphics. They are actually people of flesh and blood, so erase from your mind that fantastic idea that PS5 had generated the face of each of these people. The solution is simpler than it seems, and was actually easily guessed during the broadcast if you stopped to think about the situation for a second.
We must start from the origin of this broadcast. The Coronavirus situation forced suspend E3 and all the events around the fair, and with it, the PS5 event. This halted production of the entire planned approach, and many companies have had to improvise, including Sony.
Knowing that everyone has been confined at home in recent months, Jim Ryan, Yoshida and each and every one of the people who appeared in the video have stayed at home at all times without being able to go to their offices or places of work. work, so having a suitable camera to record yourself on video was not an option.
If you look closely, all the statements appear in spaces with a dark background to show a serious and solemn shot, but obviously that is something very difficult to achieve at home, especially when recording yourself with a mobile phone or a laptop webcam, something which probably did many of those who appeared. With this material, those in charge of assembling the final trailer that would be shown live had to make funding cuts, color adjustments and white balances in the image so that all the fragments looked more or less alike.
These adjustments are responsible for the images of the managers look "strange". Editors have been forced to remove backgrounds and apply adjustments that affected the image of the video itself, hence the strange feeling of seeing something that did not fit correctly.
To leave doubts, Polygon has asked Sony directly if the images of the presenters had been manipulated and the company's response is quite clear:
“All the presenters recorded themselves from their homes.”
This obviously explains everything we've discussed before, so rest assured, PS5 hasn't created any extremely realistic humanoids. At least not for now.