Phil Spencer: "the diversity of hardware choice in PC has not held back the highest fidelity PC games on the market"

[JuniorSophitia]

From the sound of it, it took a lot to get Spider-Man PS4 to where it was. I guess if it's not on PS4 that they didn't want to deal with making it work on PS4 (maybe they could send it off to a port team to do), but they have their hands full with this and Ratchet & Clank PS5.

Spider-Man Miles Morales is out this year so it shouldn't take long to see what has changed. I bet faster swinging, and maybe interesting fights are going to be part of it.

Click to shrink...

Yea I suppose so. But just to play the devil's advocate, if I were a parent who bought my son a PS4 in December 2019, and purchased Spiderman as a package deal, and we both loved the game - I mean it was hugely successful for Sony right. So now I'm being told by Sony that if you want to play the next episode(not a full-on sequel by the way), I have to buy a brand new console costing possibly twice as much!!

I personally think this is not a very customer-friendly policy. Moreover, what about all those nice customers who are going to buy a PS4 this Christmas?

I would not be surprised if we get to hear at some point in the near future, they have gotten another studio to backport the game to PS4.

 

[chris 1515]

Yea I suppose so. But just to play the devil's advocate, if I were a parent who bought my son a PS4 in December 2019, and purchased Spiderman as a package deal, and we both loved the game - I mean it was hugely successful for Sony right. So now I'm being told by Sony that if you want to play the next episode(not a full-on sequel by the way), I have to buy a brand new console costing possibly twice as much!!

I personally think this is not a very customer-friendly policy. Moreover, what about all those nice customers who are going to buy a PS4 this Christmas?

I would not be surprised if we get to hear at some point in the near future, they have gotten another studio to backport the game to PS4.

Click to shrink...

They will buy all the nice games on PS4 and buy a PS5 when the price will decrease. Early adopters and late adopters aren't the same consumers.

 

[Ploid 6.0]

Yea I suppose so. But just to play the devil's advocate, if I were a parent who bought my son a PS4 in December 2019, and purchased Spiderman as a package deal, and we both loved the game - I mean it was hugely successful for Sony right. So now I'm being told by Sony that if you want to play the next episode(not a full-on sequel by the way), I have to buy a brand new console costing possibly twice as much!!

I personally think this is not a very customer-friendly policy. Moreover, what about all those nice customers who are going to buy a PS4 this Christmas?

I would not be surprised if we get to hear at some point in the near future, they have gotten another studio to backport the game to PS4.

Click to shrink...

I thought about getting the PS5 for my nephew, but he'll get it eventually. Kids are spoiled these days, PS+ getting free games every month on top of paid games. Spider-Man Miles will be waiting on him when he gets PS5 at a reduced price, and he'll be ok (who am I kidding, he'll get a PS5 on holiday 2).

I think for parents on a budget it's best to get them the old consoles and go crazy with the dirt cheap quality games. Then eventually go for the new consoles. Let's be honest, all the kids want to do is play those games as a service titles. I remember borrowing a cousin's NES and a basket full of games as a kid, I already had a SNES but the basket of games!!!

 

[AegonSnake]

What you're talking about it different from what he actually said.

It really doesnt matter if he's talking about lockhart, xbox one, or PC, the point remains that graphical fidelity is scalable, regardless of the baseline hardware.

Trying to compare AC Valhalla and Horizon Forbidden West to prove your point would be an exercise in confirmation bias. The games and engines are built with completely different presention goals.

ACs visuals on XSX wont be held back by hardware limitations of Xbox One. If anything, they'd be held back needing to spread development resources across multiple hardware configurations and have them all ready for launch launch.

The things you mentioned,


All of these things are scalable. when developers create assets ( your geometry, your textures, your effects, etc) they create them in a higher fidelity than we see in the game. They then downscale these assets to be handled on the consumers hardware. The better the hardware, the better the version of these assets you see. The low end has no bearing on the quality of the assets high end users see

Dont compare apples to oranges. Compare high end games that appear on both console and PC. Having access to better hardware allows you to use those better assets as well as cracking up vegetation, draw distances, water simulations and visual effects, regardless of what those settings are on lower end devices.

Click to shrink...

This is simply not seeing as how we have an actual comparison of a cross gen AC game like AC Black Flag and a game designed exclusively for next gen like AC Unity. The difference is not just staggering, it's generational. No amount of scalable geometry, textures, effects etc made Black Flag on PS4 or even PC make it come close to AC Unity on PS4.

And this is before we even look at those insane NPC crowd in Unity that clearly couldnt be done on the PS3.

 

[Trup1aya]

Ryse son of Rome began as a Kinect title and change a lot. Same code from a Power PC chip without the same endianness I doubt it a lot. They did a reengineering of the game using some Cryengine code from PC, this is much more plausible.

Because CryEngine is an x86 PC engine at the beginning long before some port on PS3 and 360.

And the first-party studios are not magicians if Sony asks them to do a cross-gen game working from base PS4 to PS5, the game will not look as good and they will need to design the game around PS4 no portal in Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart. Reduce the speed traversal in Miles Morales. They will not have two models of base geometry on character and they will not do any hair strand but use hair cards on every version.

Do a cross-gen game does not mean the budget is multiplay by 2. You can scale the textures but not the base geometry for example and all the design will be around the last-gen version.

Click to shrink...

Note. Your now talking about gameplay changes and budget issues not technical limitations old gen versions impose on the fidelity.

As far as geometry and character models, developers always create an ultra-high definition asset, then scale it down for the game. This is a facet of game design that is ALWAYS scaled.

 

[JuniorSophitia]

Of course. However not all games will do this, so not all games can be scaled back to current gen.

Which is the point the posted I quoted was making, I believe.

Click to shrink...

Yea agreed, absolutely. I think by the time the main 1st/3rd party developers get to grips with the new tech in interesting ways, we will have moved on from last-gen altogether.

Although I did find it fascinating how some developers this generation took on the challenge/added expense of dealing with back-porting titles such as Forza Horizon 2 with significant compromises.
So, two separate versions by two different teams, the Xbox 360 version fundamentally provided a similar experience but lacked many of the advanced features of the newer XBOX version.

 

[Iwao]

AC Origins and Odyssey take full advantage of the current-gen consoles not AC Black Flag because the game is held back by PS3 or 360. When you do cross-gen games you can't concentrate all the effort on next-generation hardware. Consoles, since they use AMD hardware, are nearly the same, exploit them is easier.

There is fact Cross gen games don't look as good as next-generation. You only talk. No PS3 or 360 games reach the fidelity or have better technology than KZ SF or Ryse Son of Rome. You can search since consoles exist this a fact. You can search for an example of cross-gen game better than next-generation game. I think I know where we will all be when you find it.

Click to shrink...

It's undeniable and this is what I'm so puzzled by, and why people are arguing so hard against it.

"I've been searching for a way to make this game for a long time.
With the amazing power of Xbox One and the latest CryEngine, we are finally able to achieve this vision."

Click to shrink...

"It is something we could only do on Xbox One."

Click to shrink...

"So yeah, the game simply cannot work the same way on current-gen platforms. And that's why we are developing the game for Xbox Series X, plus PC."

Xbox Series X Makes Horror Game The Medium's Key Feature Possible, Developer Teases

Wojciech Piejko, lead designer of the Xbox Series X exclusive horror game The Medium, says he had a secret feature in mind that kept it from being made for almost a decade.

www.gamespot.com

Click to shrink...

These developers were (and still are) saying that their vision would be compromised if they had to release their game on older hardware. Developers are more trustworthy on this matter than someone that is trying to convince people of the opposite of what he was stating at the start of this gen because their business strategy is different now.

 

[Ploid 6.0]

This is simply not seeing as how we have an actual comparison of a cross gen AC game like AC Black Flag and a game designed exclusively for next gen like AC Unity. The difference is not just staggering, it's generational. No amount of scalable geometry, textures, effects etc made Black Flag on PS4 or even PC make it come close to AC Unity on PS4.

And this is before we even look at those insane NPC crowd in Unity that clearly couldnt be done on the PS3.

Click to shrink...

I never played Black Flag before I got it, but I got it right after playing a lot of Unity and I couldn't stick with it. Unity ruined me, and I hear Black Flag was pretty good. I'm pretty shallow. Though I don't think I'll ever dislike Final Fantasy XII's art, it's still so pretty artistically (stylistic vs realistic though).

 

[chris 1515]

Note. Your now talking about gameplay changes and budget issues not technical limitations old gen versions impose on the fidelity.

As far as geometry and character models, developers always create an ultra-high definition asset, then scale it down for the game. This is a facet of game design that is ALWAYS scaled.

Click to shrink...

I talk about graphics too. Hair card and base geometry are technical limitations. Higher textures do not replace better base geometry.

 

[Trup1aya]

This is simply not seeing as how we have an actual comparison of a cross gen AC game like AC Black Flag and a game designed exclusively for next gen like AC Unity. The difference is not just staggering, it's generational. No amount of scalable geometry, textures, effects etc made Black Flag on PS4 or even PC make it come close to AC Unity on PS4.

And this is before we even look at those insane NPC crowd in Unity that clearly couldnt be done on the PS3.

Click to shrink...

This is simply not seeing as how we have an actual comparison of a cross gen AC game like AC Black Flag and a game designed exclusively for next gen like AC Unity. The difference is not just staggering, it's generational. No amount of scalable geometry, textures, effects etc made Black Flag on PS4 or even PC make it come close to AC Unity on PS4.

And this is before we even look at those insane NPC crowd in Unity that clearly couldnt be done on the PS3.

Click to shrink...

Again. Apples to oranges. Black Flag was a launch title. You give it an extra year and all the engine enhancements Unity had and it would look like Unity. Ofcourse it wouldnt have unity's crowds but that's not fidelity.

 

[Trup1aya]

I talk about graphics too. Hair card and base geometry are technical limitations. Higher textures do not replace better base geometry.

Click to shrink...

Again, base geometry and assets are all ultra-high fidelity, then scaled down to meet hardware limitations. That's how games are made.

 

[AegonSnake]

I never played Black Flag before I got it, but I got it right after playing a lot of Unity and I couldn't stick with it. Unity ruined me, and I hear Black Flag was pretty good. I'm pretty shallow. Though I don't think I'll ever dislike Final Fantasy XII's art, it's still so pretty artistically (stylistic vs realistic though).

Click to shrink...

black flags takes a long time to get going. i would say around 5-6 hours. once you get into the ship building and map opens up, it becomes a far better game.

Again. Apples to oranges. Black Flag was a launch title. You give it an extra year and all the engine enhancements Unity had and it would look like Unity. Ofcourse it wouldnt have unity's crowds but that's not fidelity.

Click to shrink...

nope. its a last gen game. not a launch title. unity was built from the ground up for next gen consoles. black flag wasnt. you could give black flag six more years and it still wouldnt look that good because it had to be made on last gen consoles.

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

The people at Epic Games said that demo can scale to run on a cellphone so I'll have to defer to them on the matter. As for the number of triangles, yeah, of course, lower fidelity/resolution/framerate, I said that.

It obviously wouldn't look exactly 1:1, but that's not the point, people are talking about 'games that can only be done on nextgen will be limited if they need to support older hardware'... using the Unreal 5 demo as your evidence of that is a mistake considering they said all of those features are made to be able to run and scale down to cellphone level hardware, which obviously XB1/PS4 is more capable than.

Click to shrink...

LOL, that's the point I don't want downgraded games. That's why I buy NEW hardware to play games that USE it... Maybe we should scale down to PS3 and 360 too lmao.

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

Again, base geometry and assets are all ultra-high fidelity, then scaled down to meet hardware limitations. That's how games are made.

Click to shrink...

UE5 doesn't need to do that, that's why its awesome and next gen.

 

[headspawn]

LOL, that's the point I don't want downgraded games. That's why I buy NEW hardware to play games that USE it... Maybe we should scale down to PS3 and 360 too lmao.

Click to shrink...

How is that your point?

You wouldn't be getting a downgraded game on the new hardware.

Anything below that can exist, you don't have to buy it.

 

[JuniorSophitia]

This is simply not seeing as how we have an actual comparison of a cross gen AC game like AC Black Flag and a game designed exclusively for next gen like AC Unity. The difference is not just staggering, it's generational. No amount of scalable geometry, textures, effects etc made Black Flag on PS4 or even PC make it come close to AC Unity on PS4.

And this is before we even look at those insane NPC crowd in Unity that clearly couldnt be done on the PS3.

Click to shrink...

This is a good reminder of what is possible for sure. However, The only thing I'll add here is that for each successive generational leap, I feel we are getting closer to the diminishing returns problem.
AC Unity still to this day looks amazing, except for the horrible pop-in. Will we see a similar magnitude of fidelity jump/scope/NPC counts as we see in the videos above? GI and PBR were typically missing from the PS3/X360 era, these do make a significant difference to the look of the game.

In addition, the NPC numbers in AC unity was off the charts. Never seen anything like it. Practically from a game design perspective, you could not fit any more NPCs without possibility negatively impacting the gameplay.

They could certainly be more intelligent, and their daily routines/animation more complex, but this is all down to developer ambition/time/money/resources. etc....Hopefully, we do get to experience all this from Unisoft with there next installment.

 

[Morgan J]

LOL, that's the point I don't want downgraded games. That's why I buy NEW hardware to play games that USE it... Maybe we should scale down to PS3 and 360 too lmao.

Click to shrink...

Think.

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

So turn off ray tracing? It would play exactly the same without it. You are misunderstanding his point.

Click to shrink...

No, it wouldn't everything is better Textures, AA, Resolution, RT, Framerate all because of PS5.

 

[chris 1515]

Again, base geometry and assets are all ultra-high fidelity, then scaled down to meet hardware limitations. That's how games are made.

Click to shrink...

No, that not how it is done in games out of Unreal Engine 5. If you think people not need to redo all the normal maps depending of the base geometry. Have you an idea of what is UV and UV unwrap? Currently, you create the base geometry for the lowest console or PC requirement and build the normal maps around it. The thing you can do on a more powerful machine is to do some tesselation on the silouhette.

Create two different base geometry is like having two different models in the game and it cost two times more.

EDIT: And it made sense for the third party to be cross-gen. This is a stupid idea from an economical point of view to do only next-gen title at launch for them. EA will release Battlefield 6 one year later letting the next-generation install base growing.

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

This is simply not seeing as how we have an actual comparison of a cross gen AC game like AC Black Flag and a game designed exclusively for next gen like AC Unity. The difference is not just staggering, it's generational. No amount of scalable geometry, textures, effects etc made Black Flag on PS4 or even PC make it come close to AC Unity on PS4.

And this is before we even look at those insane NPC crowd in Unity that clearly couldnt be done on the PS3.

Click to shrink...

This.

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

Think.

Click to shrink...

This is simply not seeing as how we have an actual comparison of a cross gen AC game like AC Black Flag and a game designed exclusively for next gen like AC Unity. The difference is not just staggering, it's generational. No amount of scalable geometry, textures, effects etc made Black Flag on PS4 or even PC make it come close to AC Unity on PS4.

And this is before we even look at those insane NPC crowd in Unity that clearly couldnt be done on the PS3.

Click to shrink...

It's not as simple as just lowering the resolution and effects. Game design etc is factored too. You think a dev won't downgrade a game when developing cross gen...?

 

[Trup1aya]

UE5 doesn't need to do that, that's why its awesome and next gen.

Click to shrink...

UE5 allows you to use the ultra high end models if you have the appropriate hardware . But epic says the engine demo scales all the way down to cellphones which would require the traditional path of downscaling assets.

 

[Trup1aya]

No, that not how it is done in games out of Unreal Engine 5. If you think people not need to redo all the normal maps depending of the base geometry. Have you an idea of what is UV and UV unwrap? Currently, you create the base geometry for the lowest console or PC requirement and build the normal maps around it. The thing you can do on a more powerful machine is to do some tesselation on the silouhette.

Create two different base geometry is like having two different models in the game and it cost two times more.

EDIT: And it made sense for the third party to be cross-gen. This is a stupid idea from an economical point of view to do only next-gen title at launch for them. EA will release Battlefield 6 one year later letting the next-generation install base growing.

Click to shrink...

No you got it backwards. This is how every game has done it. Unreal5 is breaking that trend by using IO gains to allow ultra-high Fidelity's assets to Be used in full.

The normal maps are derivative of the original ultra-high assets

 

[chris 1515]

UE5 allows you to use the ultra high end models if you have the appropriate hardware . But epic says the engine demo scales all the way down to cellphones which would require the traditional path of downscaling assets.

Click to shrink...

This is the only engine to work like this because they don't have normal maps and details are made of geometry but I think the lowest will not use the same engine and the same rendering path and make a cross gen games using the two path will be two times the cost.

Again I think the new rendering path will only be used in the next-generation title. If Unreal Engine 5 was available all cross-gen games will use the old rendering path.

 

[AzerPhire]

No, it wouldn't everything is better Textures, AA, Resolution, RT, Framerate all because of PS5.

Click to shrink...

All things that can scale down for lesser hardware.

Are you guys being this obtuse on purpose?

 

[chris 1515]

No you got it backwards. This is how every game has done it. Unreal5 is breaking that trend by using IO gains to allow ultra-high Fidelity's assets to Be used in full.

The normal maps are derivative of the original ultra-high assets

Click to shrink...

This is not because you create the normal maps from the high res assets than you don't need to decide on a base level of geometry. Did you know than doing the high level assets in Zbrush took less time than all the work around normal maps, decimation of the models and so on?

The details on base model will depend of the machine and here you will made it for the weakest machine the Xbox One.

 

[TreeMePls]

Yea I suppose so. But just to play the devil's advocate, if I were a parent who bought my son a PS4 in December 2019, and purchased Spiderman as a package deal, and we both loved the game - I mean it was hugely successful for Sony right. So now I'm being told by Sony that if you want to play the next episode(not a full-on sequel by the way), I have to buy a brand new console costing possibly twice as much!!

I personally think this is not a very customer-friendly policy. Moreover, what about all those nice customers who are going to buy a PS4 this Christmas?

I would not be surprised if we get to hear at some point in the near future, they have gotten another studio to backport the game to PS4.

Click to shrink...

The people who are now just buying a PS4 in its 6th year during a Black Friday sale will do the same with the PS5 since they had no problem doing it to begin with. PS5 isnt targeting them as consumers at launch

 

[chris 1515]

Here the creation of a AAA quality fire hydrant and environment assets are much less complex than character.

Creating a AAA Game Asset

In this seven-part course, Emiel Sleegers covers the creation of an environment asset, in this case a fire hydrant, for use in AAA games, in real time.

www.artstation.com

Here it covers everything about the creation of an asset in AAA games. The only part you can share if you want to create multiple low poly model is the creation of the version of the high asset and all other part takes more time depending on the complexity of the model, a fire hydrant is not the most complex environment asset. Creating the motorcycle of Day's Gone is much longer for example. The worst is the character model. For example, people complaining about Spiderman costume have no idea how much time is needed to do a character asset.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

This is a good reminder of what is possible for sure. However, The only thing I'll add here is that for each successive generational leap, I feel we are getting closer to the diminishing returns problem.
AC Unity still to this day looks amazing, except for the horrible pop-in. Will we see a similar magnitude of fidelity jump/scope/NPC counts as we see in the videos above? GI and PBR were typically missing from the PS3/X360 era, these do make a significant difference to the look of the game.

In addition, the NPC numbers in AC unity was off the charts. Never seen anything like it. Practically from a game design perspective, you could not fit any more NPCs without possibility negatively impacting the gameplay.

They could certainly be more intelligent, and their daily routines/animation more complex, but this is all down to developer ambition/time/money/resources. etc....Hopefully, we do get to experience all this from Unisoft with there next installment.

Click to shrink...

I think you're correct that there are diminishing returns from a visuals perspective to a certain extent.

HOWEVER, this new generation will probably have a much bigger impact on GAME DESIGN compared to the PS3/360 gen to PS4/XB1 gen transition.

The CPUs, SSDs are simply a massive game changer for game design, and it is extremely unfortunate if we are going to continue designing games with last gen limitations in mind.

The visual leap as proven by the UE5 demo is also massive if done properly, and that required better GPU/SSD resources.

 

[chris 1515]

I think you're correct that there are diminishing returns from a visuals perspective to a certain extent.

HOWEVER, this new generation will probably have a much bigger impact on GAME DESIGN compared to the PS3/360 gen to PS4/XB1 gen transition.

The CPUs, SSDs are simply a massive game changer for game design, and it is extremely unfortunate if we are going to continue designing games with last gen limitations in mind.

The visual leap as proven by the UE5 demo is also massive if done properly, and that required better GPU/SSD resources.

Click to shrink...

The diminishing return will probably arrive for PS6 but seeing Horizon 2 Forbidden West I know this is not a PS4 game. When geometry level reaches nearly one polygon per pixel and texel density is one texel per pixel, filtering and AA begins to be very good, diminishing return is a reality.

 

[Trup1aya]

This is not because you create the normal maps from the high res assets than you don't need to decide on a base level of geometry. Did you know than doing the high level assets in Zbrush took less time than all the work around normal maps, decimation of the models and so on?

The details on base model will depend of the machine and here you will made it for the weakest machine the Xbox One.

Click to shrink...

We're going down an unrelated path here. Yes, the UE5 method add a lot of efficiency to the process because you dont have to downgrade your asset.

This doesnt change the fact that the normal work flow is to first create ultra-high fidelity assets, and then down-scale for use on the consumer hardware.

The whole normal mapping process exists to preserve some of the detail lost in the trasition from high-fidelity assets to those used in game.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

The diminishing return will probably arrive for PS6 but seeing Horizon 2 Forbidden West I know this is not a PS4 game. When geometry level reaches nearly one polygon per pixel and texel density is one texel per pixel, filtering and AA begins to be very good, diminishing return is a reality.

Click to shrink...

Yeah I agree, we've already seen big leaps so far for next-gen. I expect PS6 leap to be massive too, because that's the gen where almost everything should be Ray-Traced. After that, it may not be as big going forward. There could also be some radical changes in infrastructure that may leverage the cloud and change things dramatically as well.

Still exciting times, tbh.

 

[chris 1515]

We're going down an unrelated path here. Yes, the UE5 method add a lot of efficiency to the process because you dont have to downgrade your asset.

This doesnt change the fact that the normal work flow is to first create ultra-high fidelity assets, and then down-scale for use on the consumer hardware.

The whole normal mapping process exists to preserve some of the detail lost in the trasition from high-fidelity assets to those used in game.

Click to shrink...

I know but what you said is not true, people don't create multiple base geometry. They create one base geometry for the weakest configuration, here it is Xbox One and they only improve some of the textures. This is not because they are lazy but because this is too expensive to works on multiple models for different configurations. And it is easy to see it is the same model on every configuration. This is the same on the PC version of a game, sometimes PC version has silhouette tesselation but not a full upgrade of the base geometry model.

Yeah I agree, we've already seen big leaps so far for next-gen. I expect PS6 leap to be massive too, because that's the gen where almost everything should be Ray-Traced. After that, it may not be as big going forward. There could also be some radical changes in infrastructure that may leverage the cloud and change things dramatically as well.

Still exciting times, tbh.

Click to shrink...

I think later this generation we will see many hybrid indirect lighting with GI or other lighting is done with a mix of other representation of the scene(voxel, signed distance field or point cloud) and triangle raytracing or maybe some games with a system like Lumen but without screen space system at all.

Point cloud Global illunination is interesting to explore.

 

[Chettlar]

Phil literally addresses this. The idea is that some games could scale down to Xbox One and still be incredibly impressive on Xbox Series X, not that they have to.

Maybe some games can't support Xbox One, and if the developer wants to exclude that platform, there is still a variety of devices to support such as Switch, Mobile, Lockhart, PS5, XSX, PC, etc. There is always going to be a device that is 'holding back' some prospective game, because not all target platforms are equally powerful.

Click to shrink...

That is not what he said. He says they choose what to support, like it's logistics, which it is indeed. But this ignores that it is also hardware too.

He goes " So this idea that developers don't know how to build games, or game engines, or ecosystems, that work across a set of hardware... there's a proof point in PC that shows that's not the case"

This is so fucking obvious literally everyone knows it. No one saying this thing he is trying to rebuttal are just completely ignorant about PCs. It's almost like that's not what they are talking about.

Also his statement literally doesn't say "some games could scale down and some games don't have to." He literally says "old hardware doesn't hold back games" which is patently false.

 

[CrispyGamer]

Every generation we've had wayyy too many devs speak on this topic on how they needed the next generation of hardware to realize their vision and couldn't do some gameplay mechanics because of current gen.....so what's changed? Hell, didn't CDPR cut wall running from Cyberpunk, do we think this feature would've been cut if Cyberpunk was next-gen/PC only? If it's so easy to scale then Phil should just commit to all first party games go cross-gen the entire generation.

 

[Chettlar]

You're getting (really) worked up about one part of my comment and ignoring the other.

I mean, he literally says this which acknowledges that developers will choose a baseline:



His comments are far more about people having options for fidelity/cost than saying XB1 is good enough for low fidelity for all of next gen or whatever people are trying to extrapolate from his comments.

Click to shrink...

This is a logistical thing. For example. The developers of Scorn could probably make it work on Xbox One, but chose not to because it is a massive amount of work. This choice does not prove that some games are not scalable. So no, he is not acknowledging it.

The issue I have here is that his general message is "old gen doesn't hold back new gen. We understand sometimes developers choose not to support old gen though." This completely ignores the fact that some games CANNOT work on old gen and be the same game. His statement is about choosing not to support a platform, not about choosing to make a game that can't be supported on a platform.

He is framing it like not supporting xbox one is purely a choice and has nothing to do with the capabilities of the hardware, and as if it's merely a logistical thing. And it is true. It is a logistical thing. But acting like pointing out that someone acknowledges the opposite of his general sentiment is silly. At best it's very weak and vague because again, it makes it out to be a simple choice whether a dev ports their game to xbox one. " Yes, every developer is going to find a line and say that this is the hardware that I am going to support ."

If what you are saying is true, why do we have so many people in this thread agreeing with him and saying see xbox one won't hold back XSX games it's a myth!

What is the myth then in that case?

Do you seriously fucking think that Microsoft invested all of that money into making the Series X the most powerful next gen console to not use it's full power? There is going to be cross gen games for a year at max, this isn't something to worry about.

Let's wait to see the games before trying to say whether or not the Series X is being held back by the Xbox One.

Click to shrink...

They absolutely will use its full power, yes. What's the issue?

You do realize the Medium is also releasing on PC, right?unless I'm missing something, that's not contradicting Phil's quote.

I think it will be interesting to see whether it has an SSD requirement, or whether they just let HDD owners have more loading screens. That's the beauty of PC though, you can scale the games and experience. If you can afford to upgrade your hardware, you can get that top-tier fidelity.

Click to shrink...

The game heavily is hinted to use a mechanic of environmental switching. A hard drive would likely not handle that well. And even if it could, it is possible that a PC port could require way way more RAM, or some other way of making it work that just isn't achievable on xbox one.

Phil said that xbox one will not hold back xbox series x. This is wrong. The medium cannot run on xbox one. Thus, if the developers were required to make the game for xbox one, they would in fact be held back. This contradicts what he's saying.

 

[Deleted member 18161]

Phil is being clever. There are always cross gen games. The 'next gen' versions of them have higher resolutions, higher framerates and in some cases higher graphical settings (AC Black Flag and Watch Dogs are a good example of this).

Then there's fully next gen games where the geometric budget (overall poly count) as well as the quality of lighting would not work on older hardware without monumental compromises in almost every way (like Outer Worlds on Switch).

Developers usually don't bother down porting those games to older gen consoles because the compromises would be too great and at the expense of their vision to make it work. You can see that when you downgrade the likes of AC Unity or Arkham Knight (two early current gen only games that can be played on PC using PS360 level hardware).

I don't see how this generation will be any different from the above outside of Xbox using it as a marketing tool and appearing consumer friendly this time as well as the new Halo being cross gen. PS5 will have plenty of cross gen third party games. By mid 2021 most games will be XBSX, XBSS, PS5 and PC only. Lower end PC's will be able to play those games with major visual compromises like always (probably resolution if the new consoles target native 4k).

 

[LCGeek]

Yeah I agree, we've already seen big leaps so far for next-gen. I expect PS6 leap to be massive too, because that's the gen where almost everything should be Ray-Traced. After that, it may not be as big going forward. There could also be some radical changes in infrastructure that may leverage the cloud and change things dramatically as well.

Still exciting times, tbh.

Click to shrink...

Man that's hopeful, I hope we get there.

We don't need radical changes in cloud just smart tuning.

 

[Chettlar]

Phil is being clever. There are always cross gen games. The 'next gen' versions of them have higher resolutions, higher framerates in some cases higher graphical settings (AC Black Flag is a good example of this).

Then there's fully next gen games where the geometric budget (overall poly count) as well as the quality of lighting would not work of older hardware without monumental compromises in almost every way (like Outer Worlds on Switch).

Developers usually don't bother down porting those games to older gen consoles because the compromises would be too great and at the expense of their vision to make it work. You can see that when you downgrade the likes of AC Unity or Arkham Knight (two early current gen only games that can be played on PC using PS360 level hardware).

I don't see how this generation will be any different from the above outside of Xbox using it as a marketing tool and appearing consumer friendly this time as well as the new Halo being cross gen. PS5 will have plenty of cross gen third party games. By mid 2021 most games will be XBSX, XBSS, PS5 and PC only. Lower end PC's will be able to play those games with major visual compromises (probably resolution if the new consoles target native 4k).

Click to shrink...

I think a lot of people forget Forza Horizon 2 on xbox 360. It's rough. It isn't even the same game practically. I recently played through it to get the 100% since it had a different achievements list and a few things were different. The game just... Like yes unlike FH1 the open world is actually open world this time...but it sucks. There is nothing in it. It's not the same game. Unless you are a completely diehard completionist fan of this series, do not play FH2 on xbox 360. It physically is not the same game. They even didn't have as many events because no rain. So rain based races and dynamic weather are just gone. It's just a completely different experience. It really didn't scale well.

Dragon Age Inquisition is rough as well. Some things scale. Others really don't. Armor looks so bad. Everything is astoundingly glitchy. Textures can't load in. They even made the game both forced install and disk only in order to load in enough data to try and make it work. It honestly is this weird confusing mess of like, sometimes looking better and sometimes looking worse than the older games. Because there's things that clearly had their settings reduced tremendously to the point of looking awful. Also the performance is astoundingly bad. They did everything they could to pare the game down and it suffers.

By contrast Titanfall did work. I'm playing in on xbox 360 right now before I'll eventually move to xbox one. The game looks fantastic. Bluepoint are wizards and it was small enough in scope they made it work.

Tomb Raider 2013 scaled well but that game was clearly clearly designed around ps360. The low res really really hurts it though. Rise of the Tomb Raider I haven't tried. It does look like a game that targeted both at once. I wonder if it would be physically possible to port Shadow of the Tomb raider to 360 given some of the scenes in that. Probably some way of doing it, although it would likely suffer.

Shadow of Mordor...has a hard time with graphics, and it is missing a game mechanic.

Some things in some games scale down well others don't.

 

[Deleted member 18161]

It's undeniable and this is what I'm so puzzled by, and why people are arguing so hard against it.

These developers were (and still are) saying that their vision would be compromised if they had to release their game on older hardware. Developers are more trustworthy on this matter than someone that is trying to convince people of the opposite of what he was stating at the start of this gen because their business strategy is different now.

Click to shrink...

100% true.

Series S/X only first party games will visually wipe the floor with Xbox cross gen games that are still hamstrung by XB1/XB1X. Halo included.

 

[theAllseeingEYE]

This is a logistical thing. For example. The developers of Scorn could probably make it work on Xbox One, but chose not to because it is a massive amount of work. This choice does not prove that some games are not scalable. So no, he is not acknowledging it.

The issue I have here is that his general message is "old gen doesn't hold back new gen. We understand sometimes developers choose not to support old gen though." This completely ignores the fact that some games CANNOT work on old gen and be the same game. His statement is about choosing not to support a platform, not about choosing to make a game that can't be supported on a platform.

He is framing it like not supporting xbox one is purely a choice and has nothing to do with the capabilities of the hardware, and as if it's merely a logistical thing. And it is true. It is a logistical thing. But acting like pointing out that someone acknowledges the opposite of his general sentiment is silly. At best it's very weak and vague because again, it makes it out to be a simple choice whether a dev ports their game to xbox one. " Yes, every developer is going to find a line and say that this is the hardware that I am going to support ."

If what you are saying is true, why do we have so many people in this thread agreeing with him and saying see xbox one won't hold back XSX games it's a myth!

What is the myth then in that case?



They absolutely will use its full power, yes. What's the issue?



The game heavily is hinted to use a mechanic of environmental switching. A hard drive would likely not handle that well. And even if it could, it is possible that a PC port could require way way more RAM, or some other way of making it work that just isn't achievable on xbox one.

Phil said that xbox one will not hold back xbox series x. This is wrong. The medium cannot run on xbox one. Thus, if the developers were required to make the game for xbox one, they would in fact be held back. This contradicts what he's saying.

Click to shrink...

Like I mentioned, it will be interesting to see if there's an SSD requirement on PC. We still don't know how the mechanic actually works, or if it's possible but just not ideal (lower asset quality with some loading or texture pop-in?) on a hard drive.

I don't disagree that there are possibly instances where games could be too compromised on an HDD to make it worthwhile. But i also think those cases are going to be quite rare for a while. Even for the PS5 games shown, Outside of Ratchet and Clank I'm hard pressed to think of anything during their show that really would need SSD speeds. Even Horizon 2 seemed scalable back to PS4.

In other words, I don't believe the vast majority of games will be compromised simply due to the existence of ports to lower-spec systems, but there could be rare cases where the sacrifice might be too much. Look at Microsoft Flight Simulator as an example, one of the best looking upcoming games, and it's still getting an X1 port. This could also be down to the talent and experience of the team themselves.

 

[chris 1515]

Like I mentioned, it will be interesting to see if there's an SSD requirement on PC. We still don't know how the mechanic actually works, or if it's possible but just not ideal (lower asset quality with some loading or texture pop-in?) on a hard drive.

I don't disagree that there are possibly instances where games could be too compromised on an HDD to make it worthwhile. But i also think those cases are going to be quite rare for a while. Even for the PS5 games shown, Outside of Ratchet and Clank I'm hard pressed to think of anything during their show that really would need SSD speeds. Even Horizon 2 seemed scalable back to PS4.

In other words, I don't believe the vast majority of games will be compromised simply due to the existence of ports to lower-spec systems, but there could be rare cases where the sacrifice might be too much. Look at Microsoft Flight Simulator as an example, one of the best looking upcoming games, and it's still getting an X1 port. This could also be down to the talent and experience of the team themselves.

Click to shrink...

Scale back, they need to redo all the models inside the trailer, the game will not run on PS4 with so much geometry or in sub 10 fps. This is like redo a new game. They need to redo all the streaming system maybe all the lighting systems too.

They need to do a new game like TW3 on Switch but after maybe like The Outer World, it will be too much for PS4.

 

[Trup1aya]

nope. its a last gen game. not a launch title. unity was built from the ground up for next gen consoles. black flag wasnt. you could give black flag six more years and it still wouldnt look that good because it had to be made on last gen consoles.

Click to shrink...

This is why the comparison is nonsensical.

A assassin's game that looked like Unity couldn't exist in 2013 - Because the tech to create that game wasnt finalized yet in 2013. If Black flag was targeting a 2014 release instead of 2013, it more than likely would have had more ambitious rendering tech designed to better utilize next gen hardware - the tech that Unity ended up using.

Black Flag looks like it does because of logistical and economic realities of creating a multiplatform launch game. Had they nixed the 360 version, it wouldnt have magically looked as good as Unity ended up looking. The fact that Ubi's advanced rendering tech was a year out would still have presented itself.

 

[theAllseeingEYE]

Scale back, they need to redo all the models inside the trailer, the game will not run on PS4 with so much geometry or in sub 10 fps. This is like redo a new game. They need to redo all the streaming system maybe all the lighting systems too.

They need to do a new game like TW3 on Switch but after maybe like The Outer World, it will be too much for PS4.

Click to shrink...

Do you play many PC games Chris, or are you familiar with LODs and how artists currently make game assets? Almost every PC game offers LODs and settings to adjust assets quality and models. They also offer lots of settings for lighting, shadows, post-processing. Considering Horizon is an open-world game and just by how the engine appears to work, I'd actually assume they use heavy LODs and assets quality variation, all of the geometry scaling you are referring to is possibly already getting generated as we speak and already being used in the engine.

I don't think world, character geometry or lighting would be the hurdle here. I think it would be getting the game to seamlessly blend between on-foot, underwater, and flying sequences, but Rockstar has been doing that type of thing with GTA for years on HDDs. I'm certain there would be a great visual quality divide between the systems, but I don't see any actual reason this couldn't scale back to PS4.

Perhaps as a test, we could try running the PC version of Horizon: Zero Dawn and see how it scales.

 

[Gatsbits]

If you can run a game on all system , do it , if you cant , lock it at one system. Simple to understand.

 

[AegonSnake]

The diminishing return will probably arrive for PS6 but seeing Horizon 2 Forbidden West I know this is not a PS4 game. When geometry level reaches nearly one polygon per pixel and texel density is one texel per pixel, filtering and AA begins to be very good, diminishing return is a reality.

Click to shrink...

Diminishing returns will likely never arrive. Visually sure, we will hit photorealism at maybe 40 or 500 tflops. But thats just environments and character models. you still have to have realistic destruction, realistic explosions, realistic weather effects, realistic NPC behavior, NPC count, world simulation, etc. can 40 tflops do photorealistic environments and all that other stuff? highly doubt it.

Like movies nowadays, photorealism is never the end game. you will always need more horsepower to push for larger scale. Could Avengers be done back in the 60s when they finally got color and started doing big scale movies like Lawrence of Arabia and Ben Hur? not really. Hollywood needed 60 more years to get to that point.

Hellblade 2 can get photorealistic visuals now, but can they do that with hundreds of enemies and dozens of superheroes with full scale destruction? Dont think so. Maybe with indie games with smaller scope like indie movies nowadays. but AAA games that will push NPC counts, explosions and scale? Diminishing returns will never kick in when it comes to design and scale. We havent even scratched the surface of whats possible yet.

 

[AegonSnake]

This is why the comparison is nonsensical.

A assassin's game that looked like Unity couldn't exist in 2013 - Because the tech to create that game wasnt finalized yet in 2013. If Black flag was targeting a 2014 release instead of 2013, it more than likely would have had more ambitious rendering tech designed to better utilize next gen hardware - the tech that Unity ended up using.

Black Flag looks like it does because of logistical and economic realities of creating a multiplatform launch game. Had they nixed the 360 version, it wouldnt have magically looked as good as Unity ended up looking. The fact that Ubi's advanced rendering tech was a year out would still have presented itself.

Click to shrink...

you do realize both the ps4 and xbox one were using AMD GPUs released in march 2012? this has nothing to do with tech being finalized or not. devkits are always sent out years in advance. they are traditionally PCs early on.

besides, if you look at launch games by both ms and sony, they were using the same next gen techniques used in AC unity. everyone knew where the tech was going when it came to lighting, shaders and photogametry. Ryse, Killzone SF, Forza 4, and Infamous all used the same rendering techniques that made AC unity look so special.

 

[Firefly]

Every generation we've had wayyy too many devs speak on this topic on how they needed the next generation of hardware to realize their vision and couldn't do some gameplay mechanics because of current gen.....so what's changed? Hell, didn't CDPR cut wall running from Cyberpunk, do we think this feature would've been cut if Cyberpunk was next-gen/PC only? If it's so easy to scale then Phil should just commit to all first party games go cross-gen the entire generation.

Click to shrink...

That feature has nothing to do with hardware limitation.

 

[Cipherr]

Gotta love all the "yeah, but..." responses. Phil is right. "Held back" is just a fanboy meme at this point. It's really staggering how many people don't understand scaling. The only thing I see happening going forward is that some folks might be forced to finally move over to SSDs, and that might still take a couple of years.

Click to shrink...

Yeah he nailed it. But we see this sort of nonsense every gen. People are going to fight it because it doesn't fit their internal narrative. But we have literally been saying the same thing in all the other threads. Phil knows what hes talking about here. I like that he called it out as a console war meme too, that shit HAD to sting a little for the people that buy into it and try to defend it to the death.

 

[Chettlar]

Yeah he nailed it. But we see this sort of nonsense every gen. People are going to fight it because it doesn't fit their internal narrative. But we have literally been saying the same thing in all the other threads. Phil knows what hes talking about here. I like that he called it out as a console war meme too, that shit HAD to sting a little for the people that buy into it and try to defend it to the death.

Click to shrink...

The nonsense from devs talking about how excited they are to do things they couldn't do before? Every gen? From literally everyone every single generation except this one suddenly? This topic has never had a debate before. Everyone accepted new machines could do things old ones couldn't especially in the early generations where that was very obviously easily understood to be true. You couldn't make PS2 games on PS1. No one said PS1 doesn't hold PS2 games back, because that's fucking stupid.