Xbox 360 was released a year earlier, was cheaper and had the biggest install base through most of that generation.
Don't developers optimize for their biggest hardware seller?
Or am i thinking about this the wrong way?
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VG24/7: Developers making Xbox Series X games will learn to address PS5’s SSD advantage, says ex-Xbox lead
- Thread starter chris 1515
- Start date
Xbox 360 was released a year earlier, was cheaper and had the biggest install base through most of that generation.
Don't developers optimize for their biggest hardware seller?
Or am i thinking about this the wrong way?
Agreed. But let's not beat around the bush - most people here know they don't have a clue, but get involved anyway because console warz.
Yep, most games will still have load screens and corridors/elevators because of PC.
Sony exclusives will really be the only games with zero or near zero loading tricks.
You design for the lowest common denominator for a particular area. That would be the slower XSX SSD and its IO.
Everything you said was true, but the 360 just was way easier to develop for. Did take some time to devs learn how to develop for the PS3, and just a few first parties in the whole lifetime of the console learn how to take the potential of the Cell. It was a beast, but a weird, crazy and hard to tame beast, so it was not worth it.
For these cases the absolute differences will be so small that I don't think most will be fussed that the relative difference is vast. Like 2 vs 4 seconds to fast travel in assassin's Creed or whatever.
People are really excited about zooming through asset rich environments at supersonic speeds which is cool for sure, but I don't know how much attention people will be paying to fine detail when it's blurring past the camera on a sample and hold display. More aggresive LoD and some assets being culled on xbox, but still a major impepvement on XSX versus XBO. 2x increase in RAM but a 16x increase in storage speed should already be very freeing for most purposes.
This is factually untrue, at the very least when it comes to exclusives.
It certianly did not help with the complications of making Cell games. Often PS3 titles performed worse, which really harmed the image of the PS3 being more powerful and more expensive. After a couple of years Sony turned things around and once again their 1st party titles (plus MGS4) showed the power of the PS3 but the damage was already done. Most developers did not want to work harder for little gains.
Always appreciate your insight - this makes a lot of sense for third party devs. It's no secret that the SSD will probably shine the most in first party titles.
The SSD in the XSX will allow for new game designs. For some, the PS5 SSD is the secret sauce that counters any perceived relative weaknesses in the PS5. The reasonable among us know that these machines are comparable, with the XSX having a slight edge.
Seriously, this "3rd parties will not take advantage of PS5 I/O other than only loading times" rhetoric sounds like a wishful thinking at best (and kinda demonstrates which "side" someone takes as better utilization of new hardware should be objectively good thing).
It will definitely take more time to see results but engines can be scalable in different ways.
It will definitely take more time to see results but engines can be scalable in different ways.
As far as I remember, after the reveal at least one dev mentioned that they are exploring how to implement scalable adjustments for different SSD speeds. And I'm pretty sure that all big multiplat devs are doing similar work. Will they find a way? Who knows. This is uncharted territory. But they won't just ignore it, especially considering the importance of the PS platform.
Actually, this did happen during the PS2 / Xbox / GC gen.
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There probably will not be any fundamental level design shift between the different versions, but it's more likely that third-party developers will still take the I/O increase and put it to use in ways that add up to more than just load times. It's not an all-or-nothing approach.
How much did Rapid Packed Math help the PS4 Pro? I'm sure it did on some first party games.
The problem is, we don't know enough about the details of these machines and the proof will probably be invisible unless it's pointed out by the game developers. Like that switching worlds thing in the Xbox series X demo.
The problem is, we don't know enough about the details of these machines and the proof will probably be invisible unless it's pointed out by the game developers. Like that switching worlds thing in the Xbox series X demo.
So the reasonable take is that xsx has the slight edge? Thinking that 2x the ssd performance may have more relevance than a 15-20% extra TF is not reasonable then. Lol
In fact, if first parties do something with that ssd that cannot be replicated on xsx the answer is clear, regardless of 3rd parties talking advantage of it or not.
I know there are people with high expectations for the SSD, but I see more people pointing out that there are people saying that the SSD is to "compensate for the weaker GPU" than actual people saying things like that, (almost)nobody thinks that, it's another area, another aspect of the hardware, there is no reason for anyone to think that it is to compensate for something.
It won't happen anyway.
Specially because these machines are focused on different aspects.
DF face off's gonna be wild since we won't have a "clear winner" like we got used this gen first with PS4 and after with One X.
100%.
Both MS and Sony made design choices and invested in areas that they wanted to. It was never situation where Sony couldnt ask AMD to get them a more beefier GPU, or MS couldnt slap on a slicker SSD.
I don't think there was any actual metric for RPM to help in Pro games. Oddly enough, MS is talking RPM for their implementation of RT.
Console wars are weird.
If people are expecting major differences due to the SSD speed when the slowest one is already crazy fast, they're gonna be disappointed lol
Yeah, there may be slightly longer load times on one platform than the other (and even that remains to be seen). I doubt it'll be deal breaking. Most likely loading will still be constrained by CPU power and memory bandwidth. There's no way stuff will be stored "uncompressed" with only 1TB of base storage.
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I doubt it won't end with a "XSX is churning out 20% more pixels" most of the time, as that's what the theoretical GPU power should yield.
If people are expecting major differences due to the SSD speed when the slowest one is already crazy fast, they're gonna be disappointed lol
Yeah, there may be slightly longer load times on one platform than the other (and even that remains to be seen). I doubt it'll be deal breaking. Most likely loading will still be constrained by CPU power and memory bandwidth. There's no way stuff will be stored "uncompressed" with only 1TB of base storage.
Edit:
We'll see how they perform in real world scenarios.
I doubt it won't end with a "XSX is churning out 20% more pixels" most of the time, as that's what the theoretical GPU power should yield.
Okay. Show me one example of a third party game that was drastically different on the original Xbox to make use of its far superior perf compared to the PS2 version.
Please don't point me to 'This xbox game had higher texture res and rendered at a higher resolution!', cause of course you can easily make global changes based on hardware. But making actual content changes to squeeze the most out of one platform over the other? That just doesn't happen and for good reason, the amount of work involved would be insane and I'd argue that it'd not be financially viable in any way, not to mention that fans of the lesser platform would lose their shit that a certain game plays way better on one hardware than the other.
Now factor in things like Crossplay, etc. and it makes even less sense that actual content would change. Think of these boxes as PCs with different specs. That's the amount of differences you'll see between third party releases, nothing more, nothing less.
The reasonable, in my opinion, is that:
- Both systems have I/O capable to allow for revolutionary new advances in game design as a baseline for third parties
- It's unlikely that third parties will leverage the PS5 I/O architecture by employing technologies or techniques that can't be also used on Series X when making multiplatform games. How technologies that can be used on both will look when scaled to each system is anyone's guess at this point, but potentially the difference can be significant in the PS5's favor. In the other hand, I expect the XSX's visual advantage to be minor even in best case scenarios.
- When it comes to exclusive games, the PS5 I/O advantage is much larger than the XSX's compute advantage and both will be fully leveraged. How that's going to actually translate to the games themselves is anyone's guess at this point, but if new, innovative techniques can be developed specifically around the PS5 I/O advantages, the PS5 will be able to do things that the XSX can't. The compute difference is so small that the inverse is very unlikely.
But that's exactly why we won't have a clear winner.
Their extra power will make them have more resolution and possibly better RT.
On the other side Sony SSD will provide them better draw distance and possibly better assets.
Perfomance slightly better on SeX, loads slightly better on PS5.
And the list could go on and on.
Face offs will be a lot more complex this time.
XBOXseriesXSSDedition in 2022.
Also, I agree that the first parties are really where this is going to shine. When we get to second gen PS5 games. Watch out!
Also, I agree that the first parties are really where this is going to shine. When we get to second gen PS5 games. Watch out!
It wasn't common, but there were actually some exceptions - the whole splinter cell series had very noticeably simplified levels on the PS2 / GC versions, while Xbox and PC got the full original versions.
Those were still the days when it was viable to have multiple studios each work on unique versions of a game, of course.
They wouldn't necessarily need to make content changes though. For example, if as Epic engineers have implied, Unreal 5 depends on or benefits from SSD/IO bandwidth with their Nanite virtualised geometry and virtual texture systems, essentially allowing more triangles per pixel or better asset density/quality the faster the IO can stream in assets, then they wouldn't need to make content changes, it would be more an engine side benefit.
Obviously we're yet to see if real world ramifications play out like that, but that is what has been implied, and also how they've stated they'll get the demo to run on lesser hardware (fewer triangles per pixel, scaled back asset density/quality etc for reduced data streaming requirement, down to MB/s).
Regarding differences between PS2 and Xbox games, I think the starkest was probably Splinter Cell, but those days are long gone. I doubt third parties will bother to invest so much time to extract so much more based on hardware differences between the two systems. Like you, I'm expecting differences between these systems in multiplatform games to be minimal.
So since all or most first party Xbox games will be on PC this seems to indicate that those studios won't have the freedom to create content that fully takes advantage of Velocity Architecture. You acknowledge that Sony first party can "go wild", but Xbox games that run on PC with traditional hard drives won't be able to unless MS reverts back to making truly exclusive Xbox Series X games, correct?
Thanks for your insight, BTW.
I very, very much doubt that. All that eats computing power, being able to stream assets is only one part of the picture.
Once loaded GPU draws them 60 times per seconds... sounds balanced to me
thanks Tom for all your input so far on this matter. In regards to next gen what features are you most hyped about?
The speed advantage of PS5 is factor 2, isn't it? If the next area can be loaded in a time that one cannot feel on PS5, then XSX should take twice that time, so an elevator would be quite a lot to compensate. A longer hallway is probably a more reasonable solution.
Not if UE5 works the way I understand it to work. If raw format art is being constantly sampled to generate what you see on screen, PS5 can do that at a much faster rate. Native rendering will be lower, detail will be higher.
There is performance and there is resolution. I am expecting better resolutions on XSX and slightly better performance (or similar) on PS5. We have seen plenty of games running better on Pro because devs were using higher resolutions on XBX.
ahhh that takes me back. lol there was a thread of untold length on the other forum where one poster would not let the whole rapid packed math FP16 thing go. I also remember countless youtube videos on it as well where this feature was extolled and signaled as the item that would help propel the pro past the xbox one x (I may be wrong, but I also seem to remember people saying that the X was not a 6TF machine due to FP16 or something or other....fun times)
The console warriors are really on their high horse over an SSD.
I was just giving examples based on the hardware info we have.
Anyway the point is exactly on the matter you touched : resolution and perfomance.
We got used to only these two factors being the ones "that matter" in DF face offs.
This will change next gen, there will be another major factors on the table and both PS5 and SeX will take some of them.
Not necessarily.
For example, PC could have an elevator where you stand in it and wait. PS5 could have you enter the elevator and then exit on the next floor right away.
The design would still be there, but there could be differences. Games could also start requiring SSDs for PC.
Great post here. Kind of states the obvious but some won't accept it unfortunately.
- SSD speeds on PS5 will manifest in exclusive content. Same can be said for the sheer compute in the XSX.
- At this stage its hard to say what will be the main differences between 3rd party games on the platforms. I suspect higher res and framerate on XSX, while load, pop in and and data streaming will be somewhat better on PS5.
- None of this ofc factors in new methodology developers will build for each system.
Thanks for your insight thomasmahler
I agree with you, I think differences will be resolution/framerate in favor of XSX and faster loading times in favor of PS5, but absolutely nothing crazy like this:
This is too much.
PS5 games won´t be blurry at all nor XSX games will spend ages loading stuff.
I agree with you, I think differences will be resolution/framerate in favor of XSX and faster loading times in favor of PS5, but absolutely nothing crazy like this:
This is too much.
PS5 games won´t be blurry at all nor XSX games will spend ages loading stuff.
I can't really see PS5 and PC getting games that XBX can't run as well. XBX will run multiplats better then most PC's because of its SSD. I expect 3rd party to take advantage of SSD as both consoles have good ones. PC's can't optimize the SSD for gaming as much as the consoles can.
Pretty much all the tech MS will be working on, will end up being a core part of the PC. Xbox is helping push PC forward. All the DirectX Ultimate stuff like direct storage etc will end up on PC.
I think the point of what Epic is doing with UE5 is to make it as easy for a dev to scale certain things on the input data side (i.e. assets) as it is to scale things today in multiplat games on the output side (output res etc).
Of course a multiplat dev won't make game design choices, and choices around fundamental things that will only work on super fast SSDs, but with tools like UE5 getting into more hands, other scalings on memory access/throughput may happen that aren't just related to load time and that are relatively transparent to the developer.
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Is it not pretty simple.
Xbox SSD is super fast
PS5 SSD is ultra fast
You can only store so much content, cost and size.
You can only use so much content at any one time, bandwidth etc.
Super fast versus ultra fast could be 2 seconds versus 4 seconds or 1 second versus 2 seconds, possibly even less depending what the game is loading in making it almost indistinguishable.
I'm sure it will be impressive on both and PS5 may have some unique stuff but I feel it's hard to say what until we see it and just thinking logically, asset creation, time, money, tech ceiling it possibly won't be that noticeable.
I'm really hope there is some amazing stuff that can't be done elsewhere because the speed is wild and would be shame if it didn't introduce new stuff. Hope they show some stuff at the event in a few days.
Xbox SSD is super fast
PS5 SSD is ultra fast
You can only store so much content, cost and size.
You can only use so much content at any one time, bandwidth etc.
Super fast versus ultra fast could be 2 seconds versus 4 seconds or 1 second versus 2 seconds, possibly even less depending what the game is loading in making it almost indistinguishable.
I'm sure it will be impressive on both and PS5 may have some unique stuff but I feel it's hard to say what until we see it and just thinking logically, asset creation, time, money, tech ceiling it possibly won't be that noticeable.
I'm really hope there is some amazing stuff that can't be done elsewhere because the speed is wild and would be shame if it didn't introduce new stuff. Hope they show some stuff at the event in a few days.
Iconic! Best dialogues and moments in the citadel! Mass Effect won't be the same without them. Actually ME2 and ME3 wasn't the same!
