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“PS5 Is the Least Constrained Hardware We’ve Ever Worked On” R&C Game Director

PS5 Means More to Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart than Better Visuals​

Through the preview sessions, Insomniac’s developers seemed super-enthused to work on the PS5. Usually, studios tend to talk about how they circumvented hardware constraints on consoles to make better games. For Daly and his team though, this wasn’t exactly the case.

“Game development is always constrained,” he says. “But one of the reasons we are so excited to work exclusively on PS5 is because it is the least constrained hardware we've ever worked on. The new features of the console give us opportunities to take our games further than we've taken it before.”

Interestingly, he points to some of its more bespoke features rather than the obvious bump in visual and processing improvements that you’d expect from a generational leap in console hardware.

“And now that I've had experience working with a super fast hard drive 3D spatial audio and controller haptics and adaptive triggers, I would see the lack of those things as much more of a constraint than anything that the console gives us,” he says. That said, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart will ship with two modes allowing for 30fps and 60fps gameplay options.

Source: IGN
 

AnotherOne

Member
yIkJmvL.jpg
 

Dr Bass

Member
I guess first party studio Insomniac has never worked on PC games before.
PS5 still has a better IO setup than any PC just about. And before you "laugh" or balk, go read up on it. And it's going to be years and years before the average PC can hit the PS5 baseline. That performance informs design as well.

Anyway, this statement is a little silly overall, because it should always be true of new hardware. Of course the newest hardware is going to be the "least constrained" in general.

It's like Apple always saying "this is the best iPhone we've ever built!" at every single reveal. Well ... yeah ... I hope so.

Kind of a non-story quote.
 
PS5 still has a better IO setup than any PC just about. And before you "laugh" or balk, go read up on it. And it's going to be years and years before the average PC can hit the PS5 baseline. That performance informs design as well.

Anyway, this statement is a little silly overall, because it should always be true of new hardware. Of course the newest hardware is going to be the "least constrained" in general.

It's like Apple always saying "this is the best iPhone we've ever built!" at every single reveal. Well ... yeah ... I hope so.

Kind of a non-story quote.
3060 ti + direct storage could best it. But of course the update isn't out yet, but presumably soon. And direct storage will work with every DX12 capable GPU which is a big surprise to everyone, as GPU's from several years back can take advantage of this.
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
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So this guy never heard of a pc ?

also : no shit. New hardware than is more powerful than previous ps consoles. Of course you have more room for shit .

also 2: Sony first party studio praising a song console . CNN level of news here
When developing for PC, don't you have to sort of cater to lower end machines though? Slower mechanical drives and stuff? Also, it's probably a pain getting your game to work properly on a variety of hardware configurations.
 
I love reading through the evolution of what ppl think of a studio :nougat_rofl:

Insomniac... is now a studio that has never made any game on any platform other than PS. Now doesn't know anything about developing on or for PC. Things changed really quick. Yes, obviously they are now owned by Playstation. They don't have to say these things, right? Maybe PS has a gun to their head... say these things or your budget gets cut.

I mean is there any studio who is a 1st party that we're supposed to "trust" How are we supposed to feel about anything any of the Bethesda studios say now? Shills too? The salt in ppl vag/butt over this :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
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When developing for PC, don't you have to sort of cater to lower end machines though? Slower mechanical drives and stuff? Also, it's probably a pain getting your game to work properly on a variety of hardware configurations.
It's the same thing with consoles. Take the game control for instance, or any 3rd party game. It will always look and play best on PC. You can play with more raytracing features enabled, not just the few ones next gen consoles support. They take the PC version, and downgrade it for consoles.

You can always make the best possible version, with the developers/artists goal in mind, and scale down to lower end GPU's and consoles.
 

Leyasu

Banned
I love reading through the evolution of what ppl think of a studio :nougat_rofl:

Insomniac... is now a studio that has never made any game on any platform than PS. Now doesn't know anything about developing on or for PC. Things changed really quick. Yes, obviously they are now owned by Playstation. They don't have to say these things, right? Maybe PS has a gun to their head... say these things or your budget gets cut.

I mean is there any studio who is a 1st party that we're supposed to "trust" How are we supposed to feel about anything any of the Bethesda studios say now? Shills too? The salt in ppl vag/butt over this :messenger_tears_of_joy:
Exactly how it would play out if an xbox 1st dev said the same thing about the series x.

These threads are best avoided
 
It's the same thing with consoles. Take the game control for instance, or any 3rd party game. It will always look and play best on PC. You can play with more raytracing features enabled, not just the few ones next gen consoles support. They take the PC version, and downgrade it for consoles.

You can always make the best possible version, with the developers/artists goal in mind, and scale down to lower end GPU's and consoles.
What I mean is designing your game around hardware limitations such as a slow hard drive. In Ratchet and Clank the drive is so fast they don't have to use loading screens, cutscenes or slow walking sections to load in the next section. In fact, they can design their game by embracing the fast SSD speed and let you warp to different levels in real time. That's just not possible on PC right now.
 
Exactly how it would play out if an xbox 1st dev said the same thing about the series x.

These threads are best avoided
Exactly the same. Some ppl are just homers and will vouch for their "team" 100% of the time and shit on the other "team" 100% of the time. I just find the mental hoops that are jumped through, fascinating.
 
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Dr Bass

Member
3060 ti + direct storage could best it. But of course the update isn't out yet, but presumably soon. And direct storage will work with every DX12 capable GPU which is a big surprise to everyone, as GPU's from several years back can take advantage of this.
Was pretty sure even direct storage wasn't up to the same capability. Looking for links to verify that DS can compete? Also even if it was true (which I cannot find sources to say it's in the same league, just a similar idea) it misses the point. The PS5 is out now and is quickly approaching 10 million units in the wild in a matter of months. DirectStorage doesn't exist yet on any consumer PC. Nothing really seems to be happening with it, just some PR from last year. So like I said, its going to be years, and years ... and years. Before the average PC has a similar setup.

Also you can't really compare PC GPUs to console, you can always get more out of console because of the closed and specialized nature of the box. John Carmack estimated it takes around 2X the PC specs to achieve the same thing as a console I believe.
 
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Dream-Knife

Banned
PS5 still has a better IO setup than any PC just about. And before you "laugh" or balk, go read up on it. And it's going to be years and years before the average PC can hit the PS5 baseline. That performance informs design as well.

If its unique to one system that means it won't get used.
Because I say so. But really, come on dude.
1) 6nm is not enough of a process improvement over 7nm to justify a Pro. That would make the chip much bigger, worsen yields and the Pro prohibitively expensive.
2) Why on earth would they release a Pro less than 2 years after launch when they are nowhere near able to supply the current demand for the current model?
Why is nvidia releasing a 3080ti when the 3080 is vaporware? AMD released the 6700xt, but does it exist? Nintendo is releasing a new switch even though the old switch outsells everything else ever made.

Companies want money. Expect new stuff to continue to come out until the economy collapses.
When developing for PC, don't you have to sort of cater to lower end machines though? Slower mechanical drives and stuff? Also, it's probably a pain getting your game to work properly on a variety of hardware configurations.
Minimum specs exist for a reason. Usually thats around console level hardware.
 

Excess

Member
TLDR

>Game development is always constrained
>New hardware with less constraints is made available
>Least constraints we've had
 
What I mean is designing your game around hardware limitations such as a slow hard drive. In Ratchet and Clank the drive is so fast they don't have to use loading screens, cutscenes or slow walking sections to load in the next section. In fact, they can design their game by embracing the fast SSD speed and let you warp to different levels in real time. That's just not possible on PC right now.
Why not? Do you know the asset streaming speeds being used for the game right now? We would know if they released the game on PC. Project Athia is coming to PC, and features similar asset streaming and transversal of the world, which people thought couldn't be done on PC. That's why the unreal engine 5 demo being delayed for whatever reason (possibly Sony paying money to keep it exclusive as long as possible), is crazy right now, as all of the crazy claims will be put to rest as far as needing a 5+gbps SSD to be able to run the demo or future games.
 

Dr Bass

Member
If its unique to one system that means it won't get used.

Why is nvidia releasing a 3080ti when the 3080 is vaporware? AMD released the 6700xt, but does it exist? Nintendo is releasing a new switch even though the old switch outsells everything else ever made.

Companies want money. Expect new stuff to continue to come out until the economy collapses.

Minimum specs exist for a reason. Usually thats around console level hardware.

Wrong. Being a part of every PS5 sold means engines catered to PS5 will use it on every game. Are we ignoring how the last 30 years of game dev on consoles has gone?
 
Was pretty sure even direct storage wasn't up to the same capability. Looking for links to verify that DS can compete?

Also you can't really compare PC GPUs to console, you can always get more out of console because of the closed and specialized nature of the box. John Carmack estimated it takes around 2X the PC specs to achieve the same thing as a console I believe.
Which Carmack was probably correct back in the day. But consoles aren't custom like they used to be. Now they are closer to PC than ever. X86. The magical optimization doesn't exist anymore, all it means is that the settings are dropped lower and lower until the game runs good. This can be said for last gen as well. Ps360 were the last consoles to have this sauce. Long gone are those days though, and even then, PC could run games like Crysis just to put things into perspective.
 

sainraja

Member
Why not? Do you know the asset streaming speeds being used for the game right now? We would know if they released the game on PC. Project Athia is coming to PC, and features similar asset streaming and transversal of the world, which people thought couldn't be done on PC. That's why the unreal engine 5 demo being delayed for whatever reason (possibly Sony paying money to keep it exclusive as long as possible), is crazy right now, as all of the crazy claims will be put to rest as far as needing a 5+gbps SSD to be able to run the demo or future games.
I don't think you were paying attention to what he was saying there (or you just don't know how to follow a conversation.) Let me simplify it for you so you can stop flexing your PC knowledge - Ratchet & Clank as designed will work on ANY PS5. Ratchet & Clank as designed will NOT work on any PC (for example, mine.) Is it possible for it run on a PC as designed, yes. It still won't run on my PC.

I mean, he even said RIGHT now. Before that, he said "don't you have to sort of cater to lower end machines though" which you are completely brushing aside.
 
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Dr Bass

Member
Which Carmack was probably correct back in the day. But consoles aren't custom like they used to be. Now they are closer to PC than ever. X86. The magical optimization doesn't exist anymore, all it means is that the settings are dropped lower and lower until the game runs good. This can be said for last gen as well. Ps360 were the last consoles to have this sauce. Long gone are those days though, and even then, PC could run games like Crysis just to put things into perspective.
It had nothing to do with the instruction set architecture. The old CPUs and GPUs weren't better on consoles than what was on PC, it's just the closed nature and direct access-to-the-metal setup that would allow consoles to perform more efficiently. X86 means nothing in regards to that. PS5 doesn't have to run the giant OS called Windows 10. It has a small purpose dedicated OS. On consoles you know what you can count on. Yeah the GPU APIs are better these days with lower level access, but you still don't see productions like The Last of Us 2 happening on PC. High water marks (outside of pure technical rendering like Metro) in game creation/visuals still seems to be happening on consoles. That said ...

Yes of course PC could run Crysis, if you bought a beefy enough GPU, and even that was a slog for years, hence the emergence of the phrase "can it run Crysis?" I'm not denying PC is better. It is. Just not in the IO department when compared to PS5. The entire design ethos for the system revolves around that component, and you're arguing some off the shelf parts are just as good. It's just not going to be the case that PCs in general can match the system in that one specific area for a long time.
 

iHaunter

Member
Well it's literally a PC, and this time it doesn't have a terrible laptop APU in it, so yes.
The price to performance is what it is. a 1TB SSD that matches the speed of the PS5s is almost $500 on its own. The more impressive part is the IO, I don't believe that's fully replicable on PC as all parts are separate, even with PCIE 4.0. Linus tried to and ended up with egg on his face if I recall.
 

Dr Bass

Member
The price to performance is what it is. a 1TB SSD that matches the speed of the PS5s is almost $500 on its own. The more impressive part is the IO, I don't believe that's fully replicable on PC as all parts are separate, even with PCIE 4.0. Linus tried to and ended up with egg on his face if I recall.
Yeah, that apology video was hilarious. He just didn't understand what the PS5 SSD was about at all.
 
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