I understand the business will behind this decision. Hooray. Cheers. I'm happy for MS shareholders and budget gamers.
But please stop with downplaying obvious game design limits waving with a 'but scalability' argument.
I'll give you a few examples:
- You can't scale the physics written for a better CPU from the ground up. Either you water the whole engine to match the lowest CPU (because crossplay parity) or you create two radically different versions, and this is not an option. Microsoft's own Forza series will suffer among the first because of this decision, actually. I would even argue and say, that despite the stellar visuals. car physics this gen hardly progressed both in GT and FM, especially when you compare tthem with CPU-heavy AC Competizione, iRacing or rFactor 2. Jaguar is the limiting factor even now.
- You can't make a universal XSX/XO game with highly interactive environments(destruction, landscape deformation). You either remove the features alltogether, or they will bear little to no effect on overall gamedesign. Because naturally, you don't want to build a game around a tech feature that you can't scale. It's actually the reason why current gen games (even the first party ones) are so static and limited when you try to interact with them. Walls are indestructable, beer cans are made of solid bricks, and there is no Burnout-like game around. Jaguar simply can't hold a candle in the face of a serious mayhem.
- Slow HDD and Weak Jaguar as a lowest target = Less unique asstets you can place on a location (cuz streaming, you'll need to duplicate a lot of things because of bandwith limits), strict limit om interactive NPCs you can spawn, slower travel speeds that you can afford within a streaming budget, less sounds you can play simultaneously. If you're building your game around those features (rich sound palette, lots of unique objects to look at, crowds of NPCs with tons of unique animations to interact with), many features are not scalable. That's why the whole Nemesis system is missing from past-gen Shadows of Mordor altogether.
The Horde system in Days Gone, for example, is possible entirely because PS4' GPU can (barely) handle huge crowds. You can't scale this feature to PS3 or X360. And it's the main routine that the game is build around. Days Gone is clearly working on the bleeding edge though, I guess the hordes in the sequel will be much smarter thanks to a better CPU. And framerate whould be smoother.
- Slow CPU will actually seriously limit procedural generation in your game, especially in NMS-clone or something like Dwarf Fortress. Mind you, DF could be a tough game even for current top PC chips. And everything in DF is build around procedural generation.
- Better CPU = better netcode and way better AI. You can't scale those things down to Jaguar from Zen without hurting the integrity of your vision. The Jaguar baseline it just too low. Honestly, XBO/PS4 CPU wan't great even back then. The player limit in MP will be tied to Jaguar, the density of the Battle Royale map will be tied to 5400rpm of XO' HDD and the brains of your AI-teammates in Halo will be limited by the ancient CPU.
I mean cheer, hooozah, all hail GP and everything else. But be honest with yourself for a second, please.
