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Digital Foundry: Yakuza Like a Dragon: Xbox Series X Tested - 60FPS Returns To Console

chandoog

chandoog

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Oct 27, 2017
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Sega offers up our second Xbox Series X game for analysis. Yakuza Like a Dragon swaps out the 3D brawling action for more traditional RPG combat - but keeps its richly detailed city open to explore. It's everything you know and love the series for is here, but now on the next generation of hardware with some key benefits. Xbox Series X, in this case, offers three unique modes - allowing 4K resolution, up to 60fps performance, and also rapid loading times. Tom explains all.

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Text Article:

www.eurogamer.net

Yakuza: Like a Dragon on Xbox Series X - how next-gen hardware delivers a cross-gen experience

Yakuza: Like a Dragon has Sega's much-loved series taking to the new generation in style, an Xbox Series X launch title…
www.eurogamer.net www.eurogamer.net


Three modes are on offer: normal, high resolution and high frame-rate. Tackling normal mode first, Series X renders this at native 1440p, with no dynamic resolution scaling. The trade-off for not going for a true native 4K is that everything targets 60fps with full v-sync. Meanwhile, resolution mode aims for a native 3840x2160 but does so with a half-rate refresh, busting down the action to 30fps (with rare frame-pacing issues). Lastly, we have the frame-rate mode; this returns us to a fluid 60fps - though the resolution drops to a native 1080p in this case. The idea is it takes the resolution down even further than the normal mode, in a bid to smooth over some of its performance drops.
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The article does not mention anything about Series S's resolution profiles.
 
Theorry

Theorry

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Oct 27, 2017
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Normal mode: 1440 fixed full vsync - solid overall but can drop rarely with very heavy alpha effects. But overall solid
Resolution mode: Native 4k - 30fps
Framerate mode - 1080p - 60fps locked (not secret 120fps mode. They tested that)

Normal mode is the one to choose they say
 
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EJS

EJS

The Fallen
The Fallen
Oct 31, 2017
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Great to see. I am excited to give this a go next year on PS5 - hopefully it can hit 60fps on that environment as well.
 
Tora

Tora

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Jun 17, 2018
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No visual differences between the three modes, it's just:

1080p/60 (High FPS)
1440p/60 (Normal)
4k/30 (High Resolution)

Also regarding loading:

The best part is, even zipping around by taxi, loading times are almost instantaneous. Series X's promise is to leverage fast NVMe storage access, and in Yakuza's case it translates to a friction-free experience when hopping between areas of the map. Loading screens flash by within a couple of seconds, barely giving time to see the bar animate. Most of the world can be explored without interruption, in fairness, but Series X helps further remove the down time.
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SpottieO

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Oct 25, 2017
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Does the XSX have any sort of up scaling? It does, right? So then the 1440p would just be up scaled to 4K?
 
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chandoog

chandoog

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Oct 27, 2017
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Going by the 3 options the Series X has, I guess we can assume Series S may also have 3 modes ?

1440p/30.
1080p/60~50
900p/locked 60
 
natestellar

natestellar

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Sep 16, 2018
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Not sure, what's up here. Neither this nor Dirt 5 demonstrate anywhere the capability of what's possible on Series X.

chandoog said:
Going by the 3 options the Series X has, I guess we can assume Series S may also have 3 modes ?

1440p/30.
1080p/60~50
900p/locked 60
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900p/60 is a rather optimistic prediction for Series S if Series X is managing only 1080p.
 
nib95

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Tora said:
No visual differences between the three modes, it's just

1080p/60
1440p/60
4k/30

Definitely normal mode for me
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Definitely the middle one for me. Bit surprised this game isn't 4K/60 though. It's not exactly the most graphically impressive title, in-fact it looks decidedly current gen.
 
xem

xem

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Oct 31, 2017
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the models and animation look so dated. i cant get into it. considering these things it seems like it should run even higher res.
 
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chandoog

chandoog

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Oct 27, 2017
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natestellar said:
900p/60 is a rather optimistic prediction for Series S if Series X is managing only 1080p.
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We already know its doing 900p/60 FPS based on the other Yakuza topic, I'm trying to be optimistic with 1080p here lol.

In the other topic we didn't know the game has three performance profiles, we only knew about two.
 
MouldyK

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nib95 said:
Definitely the middle one for me. Bit surprised this game isn't 4K/60 though. It's not exactly the most graphically impressive title, in-fact it looks decidedly current gen.
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They address that:

In plain text, some of these numbers may seem disappointing - but again, it's important to put it all into context: the Dragon Engine is historically very taxing.
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chandoog said:
We already know its doing 900p/60 FPS based on the other Yakuza topic, I'm trying to be optimistic with 1080p here lol.

In the other topic we didn't know the game has three performance profiles, we only knew about two.
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Think S will have a 720/60 3rd Option?

Or maybe the options are:

900/60
1080/60
1440/30
 
AndrewDean84

AndrewDean84

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Digital Foundry is going to be super busy, lol. Good on them. I hope nothing but continued success and hope they keep doing great work for a great many years.
 
Theorry

Theorry

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Oct 27, 2017
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Normal mode: 1440 fixed full vsync - solid overall but can drop rarely with very heavy alpha effects. But overall solid
Resolution mode: Native 4k - 30fps
Framerate mode - 1080p - 60fps locked (not a secret 120fps mode. They tested that)

Normal mode is the one to choose they say
 
Dictator

Dictator

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Oct 26, 2017
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nib95 said:
Definitely the middle one for me. Bit surprised this game isn't 4K/60 though. It's not exactly the most graphically impressive title, in-fact it looks decidedly current gen.
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I think in this case the engine just has a very high GPU cost at its base, whatever it is doing. Really heavy on PC (2080 Ti has trouble getting 4K 60) and 1080p 30 on PS4Pro.
 

bes.gen

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Nov 24, 2017
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chandoog said:
Going by the 3 options the Series X has, I guess we can assume Series S may also have 3 modes ?

1440p/30.
1080p/60~50
900p/locked 60
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1080p locked 60 on xsx doesn't sound like it'll translate to 900p locked 60 on xss,
its %30 pixel difference, for a gpu thats 3times more powerful.

then again nothing about this games performance profiles make much sense,
seems horribly optimized.
 
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chandoog

chandoog

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Dictator said:
I think in this case the engine just has a very high GPU cost at its base, whatever it is doing. Really heavy on PC (2080 Ti has trouble getting 4K 60) and 1080p 30 on PS4Pro.
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These fantastic hair don't render for cheap.

okkzp.jpg
 
CabooseMSG

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Dictator said:
I think in this case the engine just has a very high GPU cost at its base, whatever it is doing. Really heavy on PC (2080 Ti has trouble getting 4K 60) and 1080p 30 on PS4Pro.
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Yakuza games have always looked like they were very GPU hungry intensive to me, mostly due to how cluttered and full of detail everything seems to be
 
Shark

Shark

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Oct 28, 2017
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I'm really curious how long this whole 'choose frame rate or resolution and effects, etc.' trend lasts.

Also, Tom is my favorite. Good watch as usual.
 
nib95

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Dictator said:
I think in this case the engine just has a very high GPU cost at its base, whatever it is doing. Really heavy on PC (2080 Ti has trouble getting 4K 60) and 1080p 30 on PS4Pro.
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Wow at the bolded, that is surprising. Sounds like a pretty unoptimised engine. Compared to these numbers however, the Series X's look impressive. 1080p/30fps for the Pro is pretty poor, especially given how it looks graphically.
 
Tailzo

Tailzo

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Raigor said:
It's both Dragon Engine and SEGA Japan/RGGS not putting any effort on optimizing their own engine and game.

Kiwami 2 on PC with much better hardware than XSX couldn't keep 4K/60fps.
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Not putting any effort, or just not having the time? This is not a huge rockstar-level team.

anyway, my most hyped game next gen game of the year.
 
Dead Man Typing

Dead Man Typing

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Oct 27, 2017
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Raigor said:
It's both Dragon Engine and SEGA Japan/RGGS not putting any effort on optimizing their own engine and game.
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I don't think that's fair. There's more to an engine than just the raw graphical output. The fact that their tools allow them to put out so many large games so frequently is a credit to their tech.

It would be nice to see better performance but the games don't look bad or run terribly. They're behind the cutting edge but that doesn't mean the studios don't care.

That said, if the engine supported dynamic resolutions we could probably get higher average resolutions across the 60fps modes.
 
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chandoog

chandoog

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Oct 27, 2017
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nib95 said:
Wow at the bolded, that is surprising. Sounds like a pretty unoptimised engine. Compared to these numbers however, the Series X's look impressive. 1080p/30fps for the Pro is just poor.
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The last couple of Dragon Engine games were all the same on Pro.

Yakuza 6, Kiwami 2 even Judgment.

All ran at 1080p/30 on Pro and 900p/30 on OG PS4.
 
dreamfall

dreamfall

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Oct 25, 2017
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I think this is the standard we're looking at for all of next gen. 1440/60, or 4K/30. I don't think 4K/60 is truly viable for heavy games, maybe 1800p at most.
 
so1337

so1337

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Oct 28, 2017
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Sounds like the Xbox Series X version will easily be the best console version even if they didn't exactly go above and beyond in optimization.
 
nib95

nib95

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chandoog said:
The last couple of Dragon Engine games were all the same on Pro.

Yakuza 6, Kiwami 2 even Judgment.

All ran at 1080p/30 on Pro and 900p/30 on OG PS4.
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Last Yakuza I played was Zero so I hadn't realised, though I have others in my backlog.
 
nib95

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Will Yakuza Like A Dragon be on Game Pass?
 
btags

btags

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Oct 26, 2017
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Dictator said:
No it don't

hah

Also looking at Tom's great video here - it looks like this game, like so many japanese games budget's its effects very highly. All of that alpha, so close to the camera. Yeah, no GPU likes that.
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Alex, you should do a video on why alpha close to the camera tanks framerate so much. Maybe it would be a shorter video, but it could be useful to reference whenever performance problems related to this issue pop up.
 
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