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How are the Series X development kits behind despite early hw showing?

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rntongo

rntongo

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Jan 6, 2020
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Update to make things clear: I remember for months the belief was Series X hw was ahead. It was the general consensus. I find it hard to believe even in hindsight that Sony's final hw was ahead. But what was a fact was that PS5 devkits were more abundantly available. So thats where my biggest question comes from. Even if MSFT waited for more RDNA 2.0 features they were ahead in terms of their hw. But behind in delivering devkits.

MSFT showed their console first, had their specs out by Jan 2020, and even showed a full tear down of the Console(APU, Power supply, etc) in March 2020. I understand Phil Spencer said they had to wait longer for some chips from AMD but they were still ahead in terms of the hardware at least compared to the PS5 which even by March were still optimizing the processor clock profiles.

I read this comment from this Verge article

Our team is working on a smaller Xbox game coming to both XB1 and Series S/X and we absolutely were not able to get new devkits to test on, so it's totally legit. We literally had to get it up and running on Series X when we bought a retail unit (runs amazing, so that's great.) The Series devkits have definitely been rolled out slowly/late.

Depends how you look at it imo. For us and most devs, we're developing on XB1 and it just works on the Series consoles with zero effort. So in a way, it's very much ready. If you are looking to optimize for the new consoles, obviously the delay didnt help, but I wouldn't call it rushed.
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So my question is how come the Series X devkits came out late despite the final hardware being almost complete by March?
 
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Doctor_Thomas

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Oct 27, 2017
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Wasn't it something to do with Sony's SDK basically being the same as the PS4s while the new XBox one was completely different? I think someone mentioned that on here. I may be making that up.
 
Liam Allen-Miller

Liam Allen-Miller

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Nov 2, 2017
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Shibuya
There are a million reasons this could have happened and nobody will be able to specify the ones that actually happened with any certainty, but as an example it's possible that the logistics of getting them produced were simply backed up by other products using the physical factory space. Again, this is a completely random example, but just because a few hardware units were made and shown off early does not mean the actual production pipeline was in full swing.
 
Septimus

Septimus

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Oct 27, 2017
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Doctor_Thomas said:
Wasn't it something to do with Sony's SDK basically being the same as the PS4s while the new XBox one was completely different? I think someone mentioned that on here. I may be making that up.
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That's what has been going around yeah. A new abstraction layer called GDK I believe for Xbox/PC. Less to the metal but broader support for different platforms.
 

Deleted member 8688

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It's an interesting state of affairs for the biggest software company in the world to be using poor tools as an explanation for underwhelming performance.
 
thuway

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Oct 27, 2017
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1. It's not that serious. Ignore anyone trying to sell you an excuse for one machine or the other.
2. The media and enthusiast forums have already made the conclusion both machines are close enough to where it doesn't matter.
3. This isn't worth thinking about.
 

BaileyBLM

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Aug 25, 2020
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The Dirt 5 dev just recently said he wouldn't say the Xbox is behind and he was talking about how easy it was to develop for Xbox because it was so similar to what he already knew
 
Azurik

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User Banned 3 days: Driveby trolling
In before the inevitable thread closure
 
Joule

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i just love how ironic this whole situation is. for a whole year and a half there was major concern about playstation on this website because sony was "silent" (as if marketing isn't MONTHS of planning and work)
 

Deleted member 50374

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I love how people keep forgetting that March was the month that COVID hit so hard most cities were barren landscapes, but ok
 
Yasuke

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Joule said:
i just love how ironic this whole situation is. for a whole year and a half there was major concern about playstation on this website because sony was "silent" (as if marketing isn't MONTHS of planning and work)
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Mmhmm.

None of this is worth thinking about this much though, especially this early.
 
the-pi-guy

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Oct 29, 2017
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1.) There's a difference between the hardware being complete and the software libraries to interface with it being complete.

2.) There are logistic challenges to getting the hardware to every developer.

3.) Having a year isn't always a large amount of time. Games take years to develop.
 
thuway

thuway

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Oct 27, 2017
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Joule said:
i just love how ironic this whole situation is. for a whole year and a half there was major concern about playstation on this website because sony was "silent" (as if marketing isn't MONTHS of planning and work)
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Because people don't know any thing that aren't engineers or professionals. If you ventured into our next gen threads, you'd learn that Cerny was a hack with a broken 2018 design, had to implement last minute changes, and was ultimately an embarrassment.

This was all over 2 Teraflops.
 
OP
OP
rntongo

rntongo

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Jan 6, 2020
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BaileyBLM said:
The Dirt 5 dev just recently said he wouldn't say the Xbox is behind and he was talking about how easy it was to develop for Xbox because it was so similar to what he already knew
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Yeah I listened to his interview. They were very prepared for the new HW although he also stated that they are still trying to figure out how to use the GPU. They're game engine can utilize SMT which is impressive for the CPU. Its the devkits that are very surprising tbh.

Flutta said:
It's weird because they showcased the chip in January, yeah.

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I'd even forgotten about this. Definitely seems they had the hw in check.

Doctor_Thomas said:
Wasn't it something to do with Sony's SDK basically being the same as the PS4s while the new XBox one was completely different? I think someone mentioned that on here. I may be making that up.
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Yes some people have been mentioning that as well. I don't know about game SDKs so if someone knows more it would be good to elucidate so we can all know.

Azurik said:
In before the inevitable thread closure
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Lol right on time
 
elenarie

elenarie

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Jun 10, 2018
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While I cannot comment on the specifics of this, just a reminder that there is a damn pandemic going on.
 
bsigg

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Oct 25, 2017
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They showed a render in December.

They rolled out prototype hardware for the spec reveal.

We know the GDK was only ready to start certifying games in June. Covid clearly blew up their workflow for production on both software and hardware. Sony clearly felt the same issues given all the issues we see with PS5 OS stability.

And insiders have said that Sony had PS5 dev kits rolling out far before the new Xbox dev kit.
 
OP
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rntongo

rntongo

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Jan 6, 2020
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Nightengale said:
Publicly revealed early =/= actually sent to developers earlier.





We've known this for over a year now.
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Exactly my question. In terms of the final hw MSFT was ahead, but Sony still had widespread devkits despite the final hw not being ready. Rich at DF even mentioned that the PS5 devkits didn't have the same processor profiles as in the expected final retail units. MSFT surely should have been able to provide devkits early as well no?
 
bsigg

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Oct 25, 2017
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rntongo said:
Exactly my question. In terms of the final hw MSFT was ahead, but Sony still had widespread devkits despite the final hw not being ready. Rich at DF even mentioned that the PS5 devkits didn't have the same processor profiles as in the expected final retail units. MSFT surely should have been able to provide devkits early as well no?
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Well, no. There were no RDNA2 GPUs available they could have used in place of the finalized SoC. There were no AMD cards that supported really any of the features that the the Series X/S GPU have and they would have had to substitute an Nvidia GPU which doesn't make any sense.
 
Aska

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Jan 11, 2020
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There are probably a multitude of reasons, including a global pandemic, we will never know.

MS scored on almost every front on the beginning of this generation, it's a shame they couldn't get the dev kits out on time and more games to help sell XSX but I'm sure with time this will soon be a no issue.
 
Mr.Deadshot

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Oct 27, 2017
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This is all based on some probably rushed third-party launch games. Just relax, everything will be fine.
 
bsigg

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kambaybolongo said:
I would imagine that the pandemic would impact both companies though
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I think you see where it affected Sony with the overall stability of the PS5. Games were clearly able to be worked on earlier, therefore longer, and it shows across the board but you can see how the pandemic has affected their ability to make sure the PS5 OS isn't having issues.
 
Psyrgery

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Nov 7, 2017
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Crossgenerational titles benefit more from the GPU in the PS5. As Cerny stated back in March, less CUs that are faster can be saturated with data easier than with more CUs that are slower. (You get no benefit to having more CUs if they arent programmed properly and mostly stay idle).

Plus, Microsoft's tools (as happened in the previous gen) are very undercooked. They will supposedly improve over time
 
CloudsFromSpace

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kambaybolongo said:
I would imagine that the pandemic would impact both companies though
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That's true that it impacts everyone, but it doesn't necessarily follow that it impacts everyone evenly. Different companies will have different capacities for responding to events like this. That said, we don't really know to what extent either MS or Sony were impacted.
 
WhtR88t

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May 14, 2018
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Septimus said:
Less to the metal but broader support for different platforms.
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If the GDK is supposed to be for better broader platform support, wouldn't this be bad for optimization around specific platforms (Series X)?

Isn't the advantage of consoles being able to punch above their weight by focusing on optimizing around a single platform, thus giving higher than expected performance?
 
Mula

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Jan 18, 2019
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Blocking a discussion is wrong I think. "Most powerful" and "the games of four generations look and play best on series x" is from MS, not the fans. In addition to gamepass, that was a big selling point. It is legitimate to ask for answers
 
Hidant

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Oct 27, 2017
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I think some people are misreading the OP as I did, he's talking about the delivery of the XSX devkits, not about performance disparity between the two consoles.
 
Deusmico

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Psyrgery said:
Crossgenerational titles benefit more from the GPU in the PS5. As Cerny stated back in March, less CUs that are faster can be saturated with data easier than with more CUs that are slower. (You get no benefit to having more CUs if they arent programmed properly and mostly stay idle).
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But the xss has also less cu's than the xsx. Phil spencer even said that xss could sell more than the xsx.

So less cu's will be the typical config for this gen.
 
Stooge

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This has been known for at least a year and may have something to do with RDNA2 not being finalized as we know MS waiting on AMD to finalize the design. Could have been to allow for easier work on PC/XSX at the same time.
 
minato

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CloudsFromSpace said:
That's true that it impacts everyone, but it doesn't necessarily follow that it impacts everyone evenly. Different companies will have different capacities for responding to events like this. That said, we don't really know to what extent either MS or Sony were impacted.
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Right and Covid hit in the US is way worse than in Japan. I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of Sony's engineers are still working in the office where Microsoft has been mostly working from home since Spring.
 
Vashetti

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A devkit is made up of both hardware and software. The hardware has been done for ages, but the software came in hot.
 
Badcoo

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I'm part of a small software development team and we lost a 30% of our team due to covid. It has hampered us and changed our timelines dramatically.
I can't imagine what MS and Sony would be going through trying to manufacture and ship HARDWARE along with developing software.
 

DrowsyJungle

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Oct 25, 2017
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WhtR88t said:
If the GDK is supposed to be for better broader platform support, wouldn't this be bad for optimization around specific platforms (Series X)?

Isn't the advantage of consoles being able to punch above their weight by focusing on optimizing around a single platform, thus giving higher than expected performance?
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Pretty much this. I'd imagine that games right now might be using some form of HLSL considering everything is so new. As time rolls on when DX12U and the specific implementations of hardware are better realized things will change. These things just take time, Sony was smart in the short term with their solution.
 
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