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Control Dev gives the most detailed account of development on next gen consoles.
- Thread starter DukeBlueBall
- Start date
He's not entirely wrong. Some games released in last couple of years run in atrocious state on base consoles, especially vanilla Xbone.
Yeah but that was the same guy who was disappointed the consoles didn't have over 100 gigs of ram so people took him less seriously. He deleted the post like a few days before the Beth purchase announcement lol.
This was obvious from the start, but console warring on both sides meant that a rational discussion on the impact of the series S on game development is next to impossible.
I'm surprised he was so enthusiastic for visuals taking a large leap tbh as I've been rather underwhelmed by next gen visuals so far even the UE5 demo which to me isn't far off something like Tomb Raider 3 on a high end PC purely visually. The size of the World and how fast they can stream them in was obviously the sell with the UE5 demo but despite the micro polygons or whatever it is it wasn't that wow factor I was expecting.
Yeah, better always because the cross gen period will be over. Lets do a hypothesis:
Series S is an issue right now for cross gen games. Its more powerful than the last gen consoles.
Why cant this be applied to all next gen games that have to also run on Series S? He even said they will have to build the engine with the Series S in mind. Not even porting, but built with it in mind. He said that for a reason.
This was also something many of us said for months. It will either be ports or built with the Series S in mind.
Now....if he says you cant just turn down resolution (again was said for months) ....and this doesnt matter for the Series S.....why do some ppl still think it will mean a huge gulf between the XSX and PS5?
You literally cant have it both ways.
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Interesting to get thoughts on quite a few topics. Cool to hear.
I mean.. we always knew it was going to take more work than changing a line and slapping the resolution. (Though, of course, it'd be even better if it was super simple - on the level of One to One X ports or One to Series X ports). The argument from Phil Spencer himself has been: that work will be worthwhile for your studio. That remains to be seen, but over the next couple years, let's keep an eye out on Series S sales. If XSS starts to sell beyond XSX (as I expect it will), the underlying calculus will be clear. Expand the pool of entrants, increase your customer base, and hopefully reap the rewards.
The real question for me is: how much better, if at all, development on XSS (and to a lesser degree XSX) will be once we're fully into the gen. People are worried that it'll get worse over time. I don't think so - the hardware won't change, just how well devs can use it. But it's an open question how much that will improve things.
I mean.. we always knew it was going to take more work than changing a line and slapping the resolution. (Though, of course, it'd be even better if it was super simple - on the level of One to One X ports or One to Series X ports). The argument from Phil Spencer himself has been: that work will be worthwhile for your studio. That remains to be seen, but over the next couple years, let's keep an eye out on Series S sales. If XSS starts to sell beyond XSX (as I expect it will), the underlying calculus will be clear. Expand the pool of entrants, increase your customer base, and hopefully reap the rewards.
The real question for me is: how much better, if at all, development on XSS (and to a lesser degree XSX) will be once we're fully into the gen. People are worried that it'll get worse over time. I don't think so - the hardware won't change, just how well devs can use it. But it's an open question how much that will improve things.
Why would they struggle on a console with basically the same CPU and SSD speeds, and with scaled back RAM and GPU to target a lower resolution? If game engines are targeting that base then it should be easier than it right now with engines designed for last gen (which is what he mentions in the video).
They've been stretching their QA teams across 4 consoles plus a variety of PC configs for quite sometime. The issue is the cross-gen period being more stressful but as stated by the dev, that will ease up over time.
Do we actually know that Series S (specifically) is doing well?
How about you actually watch the video before saying stupid shit like this
I can't complain too much cause I learned to live with it, but it's definitely been the really inferior way of experiencing games. Something like running animation doesn't always function in some games, camera movement sometimes goes into slo mo, lots of slideshow moments. There's also the textures and resolution issues. Some games, like Control, needed many patches to become playable on base consoles.
love the enthusiasm for activity cards ...really think going fwd this is going to get great support from devs with their new games
so a studio making a game only for ps5 in the future wont have the same workload as a studio making a game for xbox s/x and pc configurations?
Who is lying about what? You said the issue with Series S is that cross gen engines store everything in RAM because they can't stream from the SSD. That's nonsense given the Series S has more RAM than other systems the game already runs on. Doesn't mean there are no other possible costs or issues associated with supporting Series S.
I think people forget that Series S supports the following Direct X 12 Ultimate features:
Mesh shaders
SFS - we've seen the demo, we've seen the significant difference in RAM usage this can make when it's used.
Hardware accelerated VRS (Tier 2 if memory serves me)
Along with a decently fast SSD.
No "last gen" engine is using these features so you're stuck trying to shoehorn your next-gen game into a box that's smaller than you'd like with tooling that isn't quite ready for prime time.
Start using all the features that the new box provides and suddenly a lot of the issues you were having start to go away (or at the very least, start to be less of an issue).
If I was a Series S owner I'd expect a little bit of bumpy ride as we cross the generational border but mainly smooth sailing once developers and engines start to use the new features. There'll still be some games that don't use them and you'll get choppy results but in the main I'm less worried about series S than I was when I first heard about it.
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I mean paying 299 for an electronic device is already luxury. People acting like it is cheap.
Yes, the cross-gen period is the most painful period, hence why cross-gen games are not designed to truly push any boundaries. Developers intentionally hold back features because of all the constraints involved.
That still does not invalidate anything else I have said. The XSS is an added layer of complexity for game development that is unique to this console generation. Added complexity comes with increased risks like I mentioned. It's that simple. If you rewatch the video you will understand the dev alludes to many of those increases in risks which will result in compromises across all machines.
That isn't to say next-gen will suck or anything like that. I don't believe that at all. What it means is developers have to adapt to a more complex development cycle this generation because XSS exists, and some developers have voiced displeasure with this reality. I feel for the developers.
At the end of the day, what some on this forum and one developer thinks about Series S doesn't matter. If that was the case, the Wii would have been dead on arrival. Price versus performance is very attractive to the majority of gamers. When the Series S hits $279 or cheaper it will sell like hotcakes; if for no other reason, it's the cheapest way to access Game Pass. At the end of the day, games makes the difference, not tech.
But to address the tech side of things, next generation upscaling techniques like AMD FidelityFX Super resolution and Direct Machine Learning are coming soon. Many of the features of the of these new consoles haven't even been leveraged by developers yet. Current game engines don't use mesh shades, variable rate shading, or sampler feedback streaming. These will help mitigate current bandwidth issues. Because of this, I believe that the Series S is in a good position to surprise a lot of people. I look forward to seeing a next generation game like Hellblade 2 and other Xbox first party software running on it. That should answer a lot of questions.
There's nothing unique about the XSS situation. Developers have been fighting with four console SKUs for a while now. Please enlighten me how this is different from the mid-cycle refresh.
I haven't played a game from EA or Rockstar in 5 years. So perhaps I'm concerned about the type of fruit I like to eat. Which is not an unreasonable reaction to the devs comments.
what is this take? The wii had killer Nintendo exclusives( and some 3rd party). Large 3rd party exclusives largely skipped the Wii. They simply opted not to develop for it. If devs drop the S, MS will go ape shit and perhaps not let them develop on the X either.
Well yeah... That's what happens at the start of a new generation.
You can either develop with cross gen in mind for a few years following a new console release to maximize audience potential or you can aim for a much smaller audience during a time when A: the fanbase is < 10% of the curren existing market and B: it's still near impossible to find the hardware needed to play the game.
What I am saying is that Xbox now has premiere 1st party development. They will have killer exclusives, i.e. games and they will be on Game Pass. They also have a diverse library. An affordable console with great games is an excellent value proposition for the masses. That is essentially what happened with the Wii. The Wii didn't even have Game Pass or decent 3rd party support and it sold well. There is a precedent for this working.
I agree with this view.
When Bethesda and MS first party games start to drop, Series S will sell a lot. And then developers will have to know the system perfectly and how to milk it to the maximum, if they haven´t done so already.
Series S will probably end up like one of the best-selling SKU´s this gen.
I like how he says that they didn't do anything to improve the load times. I'm guessing its the same for many games that started out with lastgen in mind, the improvements are simply coming from the upgraded hardware. So maybe games in a few years will have better load times when dev show their advances with the new hardware.
I'm all for affordable next gen gaming. But I'm also for next gen gaming to be more powerful than last gen gaming. Xbox Series S is objectively less powerful in some ways than the Xbox One X was, which you have to admit is pretty wild.
3rd party devs almost always already have to design games with low specced PCs in mind. Seriously, it won't be an issue.
My worry is with console shortages we won't see a move til year 3 or 4.
All I'm going to say is to look at the switch. That console is underpowered and yet people are still getting it. If those specs can lost almost 4+ years, the series s should have no problem
True but the PS4 was technically among the entry-level range of PCs.
So budget, dedication and talent could catch any of their studios due to these modest requirements
Here the gap is far more significant, but it also requires significant efforts to fill it and make the difference.
I think Sony would if PS5 supply wasn't so constrained. Sony needs to sell games as well as consoles. If there are not enough PS5 out there yet, you gotta put the new games on both PS4 and PS5. Unfortunately a business decision.
It's not even controversial to say that the lowest common denominator affects development, but MS cares more about GP subscriptions.
Don't be concerned. MS have shown they can scale and enhance their games on the fly with a number of solutions, and would've simulated a number of these scenarios when specing their machine. Also, games have yet to take advantage of the full suite of technology Series consoles provide, they have the genius of Id, Coalition, Turn 10 and Rare running a number of their tech Initiatives, they're in safe hands.
A reminder that Remedy apparently built their last engine to run their games @ 10fps on last gen consoles.
There may be truth to what this dev says but it's not coming from a source I'd put much stock in.
There may be truth to what this dev says but it's not coming from a source I'd put much stock in.
The only thing "less powerful" is that the Series S has less memory. Or are you thinking of something else?
I personally think having less memory is sub-optimal in general terms but SFS (which is not available to the One X) is billed as a 2.5x memory and I/O doubler. We've seen the video of the demo where using SFS results in significantly less RAM usage, a next-gen engine using this should fit more in a game scene on Series S than can fit on the equivalent scene on One X so I'm not convinced the available memory size will be as bad as people think long term (definitely an issue for last-gen engines though)
Edit: actually, isn't the XOX RAM clocked higher or am I misremembering that?
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Historically over the last couple of console generations, the bar was always set by the consoles when it came to multiplat development, not PC, because as time moved on, consoles became the lowest common denominator. The exception was Wii back in the day because of the notable gulf in performance as well as control interface which at times necessitated development. And now we see a similar thing with the Switch where quite a few notable games were/are ported over at a later date.
The mid-cycle refresh complicated game development. It's that simple. At least it happened after the base consoles, software and tools had years to mature. Games were still built around the lowest common denominators.
You should rewatch the interview, pay extra close attention to his comments, read some books about project management and maybe earn an engineering degree or certification.
The XSS adds complexity to the iterative process of game development, period. It also serves as the development floor. This sucks because XSS will likely represent x>10% of the entire console market. When features are being tossed during the preliminary-development phase, it will be the most advanced features from the big brother consoles because of budgetary constraints and a customer requirement of parity. The engineers will assign risk values to certain features and if the overall risk of developing those features exceeds project tolerances, they will get cut. That's how this works, sorry to burst your bubble.
And when another mid-cycle refresh happens again, devs will complain extra hard. Why? Because more systems to develop, optimize, test and validate for means increased risk. Why? Because of finite manpower, resources, and budgetary reasons. Game development doesn't happen with magic fairy dust like you are treating it. Nothing engineering related does. It is obvious from his answers, pauses and sighs that he is frustrated not only with cross-gen development, but also the XSS serving as a limiting factor and additional development variable moving forward.
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