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Xboxone Resolutiongate (Eurogamer)

madmackem

Member
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-resolutiongate-the-fallout

While Digital Foundry has yet to see either next-gen version of Call of Duty, our experience with Battlefield 4 demonstrates that you can easily see the visual difference between them. The Xbox One version holds up well given the gulf in resolution, but it doesn't require a pixel counter to tell that the PS4 game is crisper and cleaner either. At last week's Battlefield 4 review event in Stockholm, we noted that the resolution change from one version to the next was obvious to many of the press in attendance, with some even suggesting on-site that the PS4 version was operating at native 1080p when its actual resolution was 1600x900.

The reality for Microsoft is that the raw spec differential it has battled against is not only borne out in what is arguably the most technologically advanced multi-platform game of the next-gen launch, but the gulf actually increases on a title that, on the face of it, isn't pushing boundaries to anything like the same degree.

However, the hardware make-up itself could be more troublesome for multi-platform developers in the longer term, despite Microsoft's outline of how the Xbox One tech operates and the theoretical advantages it chose to highlight. In our In Theory piece, we could only address the teraflop difference - we couldn't measure the impact of Xbox One's reduction in memory bandwidth, and we certainly couldn't factor in what was then the big unknown: the controversial 32MB of Embedded Static RAM (ESRAM) built into the Xbox One's central processor.
 
At least they're willing to admit that this is a noticeable disadvantage rather than trying to play it off as nothing or spin it into a win for the Xbone.
 

phuturist

Banned
Eurogamere said:
"Kinect functionality and other features take up ten per cent of Xbox One GPU resources that developers can't access right now, though plans are afoot to change this."

Can they even do that? Won't this mess up games for the console that use the 10% GPU for Kinnect and shit so far?
 

Fistwell

Member
you can easily see the visual difference between them. The Xbox One version holds up well given the gulf in resolution, but it doesn't require a pixel counter to tell that the PS4 game is crisper and cleaner either. At last week's Battlefield 4 review event in Stockholm, we noted that the resolution change from one version to the next was obvious to many of the press in attendance
Were obviously sitting too close to the screen.
 
There seem to be two mindsets here:

1) That the devkits were given later to Xbox One and that the gap will achieve parity soon enough as developers get used to Xbox One.

2) That the gap will continue to widen given that these launch games aren't exercising the potential of next gen hardware, and that if this is the state it is in now, it will only get worse given that developers will get more out of the PS4's potential.

I don't know which to believe.
 

Timeaisis

Member
That's a pretty decent sum-up article about everything going on. It's way too early to tell if this is going to continue to be the case for the rest of the generation, but it's obvious for launch titles, PS4 has the leg-up with resolution.
 
As I said in another thread, there's been too much focus on the resolution and it's causing people to overlook that the PS4's performance with BF4 is also superior. And that's something that people will definitely notice. The resolution being difference is just one piece of this puzzle. You can look at how games were on the current-gen. If a PS3 game was running at lower resolution than the 360 game then you can almost be certain that it's got other issues as well.
 

george_us

Member
Man I never thought that 2005/2006 could be surpassed in terms of pure entertainment value but 2013 has blown those years out of the water. This week alone is the most entertainment I've ever experienced on the Gaming side of GAF.
 
I personally think this is the key part here where MS is concerned:

In the here and now, few game franchises are more important than Battlefield and Call of Duty. PlayStation 3's Blu-ray drive added significantly to the bill of materials back in 2006/2007, while the next-gen Xbox One comes with Kinect - an expensive addition that failed to gain traction with the core in the current generation. Looking forward to the next, Microsoft and third-party developers appear to be doing little to champion the capabilities of its successor, despite the sheer wealth of system resources dedicated to the technology.

tl;dr

futurama-kinect.gif
 

cyberheater

PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
I honestly never thought it would come to this. A next gen console from MS that can't run COD at 1080p. It's still a shock and it's still raw to me.

Why have you done this MS, why?
 

Possum

Member
At least they're willing to admit that this is a noticeable disadvantage rather than trying to play it off as nothing or spin it into a win for the Xbone.

I don't recall anyone ever calling it a "win" for Xbox. Only downplaying it. That would be preposterous.
 
we certainly couldn't factor in what was then the big unknown: the controversial 32MB of Embedded Static RAM (ESRAM) built into the Xbox One's central processor.
Was the ESRAM the legendary secret sauce?
 
I couldn't honestly pick out much from the single player in terms of disparities - people resorted to cropping and zooming into background objects to highlight the aliasing.

The multiplayer, however, was a completely different story. It's not that the X1 multiplayer visuals looked bad but rather the concern I felt for what the console could achieve in the longterm with more graphically demanding games.

As it stands now, the differences are not and night - they won't become topics for the mainstream audience but if it fails to recover in time for when developers start to produce bigger and better games. That is, of course, unless Microsoft's first and third-party developers are able to produce visually impressive titles to counter multiplatform woes (just like Sony did last gen)
 

velociraptor

Junior Member
So it turns out that there actually is a significant difference between the PS4 version of BF4 versus the Xbox One. I'm impressed; the footage looks largely similar so I didn't expect it to be like that.
 

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
There seem to be two mindsets here:

1) That the devkits were given later to Xbox One and that the gap will achieve parity soon enough as developers get used to Xbox One.

2) That the gap will continue to widen given that these launch games aren't exercising the potential of next gen hardware, and that if this is the state it is in now, it will only get worse given that developers will get more out of the PS4's potential.

I don't know which to believe.
1) The. Hardware. Is. Not. Equal. Period. 50% more CUs and over double the RAM bandwidth means that no matter how much the XDK improves, the PS4 will be more powerful.

2) Honestly only sort of true. If (1) is true (it is), and the hardware is similar (it is), then the gulf in performance is a known quantity. So it's not that the gap will widen because developers will get more power from PS4 than they do now, it's that they aren't getting as much from it now as they will eventually be able to. Yes it's a semantic argument, but it is important. We know the difference in hardware. But while the developers are still experiencing learning curves that difference isn't going to be fully realized.
 

EGM1966

Member
Now I'm confused. Everyone keeps changing sides!

Actually not fully - not bad article but like everything he's written recently it seems to focus on trying to explain MS choices and downplay probably impact of spec differences.

TBH the feeling right now is of a primarily US/UK centric online gaming community reacting to a sudden sea change to a long held status quo and they're clearly floundering to various degrees as a result.
 

madmackem

Member
It's standard American journalism to add the suffix "gate" to any controversy name, but aren't these guys in Europe? They big Watergate history buffs?

Its well known over here of course and it is used all the time over here in paper headlines etc.
 

Samyy

Member
Anyone who thinks there isn't a difference or the Xbox version looks better is just kidding themselves at this point, from a technical standpoint the difference is pretty clear.
 

eot

Banned
However, in directly addressing the specs differential, whether in the Xbox One architects interview or in online forum posts, it has seemingly set itself up for another own goal. Microsoft itself has made the story about parity with the competition, when highlighting what makes Xbox One unique in terms of exclusive games, services and functionality - along with more effort in returning some of the magic to Kinect - may have served Xbox One more effectively in the run-up to launch.

pretty much this
 

Piggus

Member
There seem to be two mindsets here:

1) That the devkits were given later to Xbox One and that the gap will achieve parity soon enough as developers get used to Xbox One.

2) That the gap will continue to widen given that these launch games aren't exercising the potential of next gen hardware, and that if this is the state it is in now, it will only get worse given that developers will get more out of the PS4's potential.

I don't know which to believe.

There will not be parity. The PS4 is a lot more powerful and that's not going to change just because devs learn how to get past the eSRAM bottleneck. The gap will only get bigger as more games use GPU compute, since the PS4's advantage in compute is arguably bigger than the CU or ROP count.
 

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
It almost sounds like he regrets being the platform for the own-goal MS set up for itself, in the 'architects' articles etc.

At least, he seems to want to thoroughly shake the idea that the ideas presented in those articles were ideas or points shared by him. It's a whole new world when real software tells a story.

Anyway, the only major insight into WHY what's happening is happening comes here:

We hear different stories about ESRAM from virtually every source we speak to, but two gripes are common. Firstly, the notion of operating between two memory pools for render targets is an additional pain that is not an issue on PlayStation 4's unified 8GB of GDDR5. Secondly - and perhaps most importantly - the most common compliant we hear is that developers really want more than 32MB for their high-bandwidth graphics work.

As a lay observer there'd be one other suggestion I'd make - that the copying around of possibly hundreds of megs of render target data per frame at 60fps causes quite an overhead on bandwidth, that the DDR3 in particular can ill afford. With a modern engine with many passes, and dependencies between the output of one pass and the rendering of another, that could be a lot of shuttling around of a lot of data, even before we talk about the bandwidth cost of normal operations. That's just a suggestion though, but I'd be curious about that cost and how well it scales with large render targets.
 

SummitAve

Banned
As long as it looks good, I don't care what resolution it is. There are just too many other factors that determine how a game look.
 

madmackem

Member
So it turns out that there actually is a significant difference between the PS4 version of BF4 versus the Xbox One. I'm impressed; the footage looks largely similar so I didn't expect it to be like that.

Im guessing it becomes easy to spot when they are side to side being played at the same time on tvs.
 
So it turns out that there actually is a significant difference between the PS4 version of BF4 versus the Xbox One. I'm impressed; the footage looks largely similar so I didn't expect it to be like that.

Arthur Gies was the only person there that claimed that there was little to no difference. Everyone else said that there was a big difference between the two versions. Jack Frags in his impressions video noted that multiple journalists agreed with him about the PS4's multiplayer looking better than the Xbox One's single player. And CV&G posted this in their review comments for BF4

Hi guys. We were told by EA we couldn't cover the Xbox One version, but clearly that's not what was sent out to other media.

I've added a previously edited line back in to the review pointing out that the PS4 version, to our critic, looked vastly superior to Xbox One. Expect a more detailed comparison shortly.

http://www.computerandvideogames.co...a-slick-introduction-to-next-gen-multiplayer/
 

.hacked

Member
id take 60fps locked at 720p over 1080p at fluctuating lower fps. Just wish I didn't have to.


Still remember when the PS3 was supposed to do 2x 1080p screens at once...
 

StuBurns

Banned
Leadbetter taking that first step back to credibility.

Let's see if there are any lazy developers in his face-offs.

EDIT: although, "PlayStation 4 with no appreciable compromise in effects or performance in single-player gameplay", that's bullshit, BF4's single player does run worse and is missing effects, on XBO.
 

Corto

Member
Great article from Richard Leadbetter. Can't wait to read posts from people that egged him this past week.
 

BigDug13

Member
Its well known over here of course and it is used all the time over here in paper headlines etc.

It's funny that one major scandal from WAY back in the U.S. has spawned a suffix to be used worldwide in any headline about a controversy or scandal.
 
and what games are running at that. And I mean full games. Not just one part of it.

Forza 5, NBA2K12, NFS Rivals, and Knack?

Blacklight Retribution, Warframe, Killzone : SF Multiplayer, Call of Duty, Res0gun, NBA2K, Fifa, etc. etc.

Lots on the PS4

I think War Thunder is too but not certain, Planetside 2 will likely be 1080p x 60fps, DCOU is 1080p x 60fps ...
 
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