Support NeoGAF

[Evilms]

I mean what Microsoft showed wasn't anything they were doing nor were they bigger projects in their event pipeline, they were overflow titles.

Sony showed what they did and it was very much generation 8.5 looking stuff, so we'll have to see what Microsoft actually puts out there before there's anything conclusive.

What we've seen from their first party though and the only instance of it yet looks better than anything Sony showed.

Cinematic running on a high end PC
in engine
not real time
24fps
3840x1608
Just a target render

You're never gonna get that ingame rendering (gameplay).

Some people make too many movies with the XseX with excessive expectations.

But the reality is this :

10 tflops machine

12 tflops machine

 

[Marlenus]

Yes but we are at the point of diminishing returns so the extra detail afforded by a 10x GPU performance increase (xbox one to series x) has less impact on the overall graphical quality than previous 10x increases.

What will hopefully happen this gen is more games will have locked frame rates and everything will look crisper without post processing AA methods making images look smudged.

The CPU uplift will hopefully help with framerates and enable more advanced AI or worlds with more stuff in them so they feel more alive.

 

[Stiflers Mom]

3d audio, ...

3D audio is just a a PR term, imo.
I have been able to locate audio sources in games since the mid 90ies.

and on OT:
Last generational jump that felt substantial was inbetween PS2 and PS3, imo.
What we saw after that were only incremental jumps.

 

[YCoCg]

The Next Gen consoles are more Next Gen than Current Gen was Next Gen during the Last Gen.

 

[ZehDon]

I think the less than significant next gen look can be blamed on the system specs, specifically the amount of physical memory. From PS1 to PS4, memory grew by a factor of around 16x. From PS4 to PS5, memory only grew 2x. Let's look at how the consoles' ram grew over each generation.

PS1 - 2MB
PS2- 32MB
PS3- 256MB
PS4- 8GB
PS5- 16GB

As you can see, each generation from PS1 to PS4 saw massive improvements to ram, which meant bigger worlds and details. PS4 to PS5 only saw a 2x improvement. I would think that it would take at least 64GB of ram before we can recognize an immediate improvement.

That's... not how that works. More RAM simply facilitates more pre-loaded assets. Once we broke into the GB territory for RAM, games have more than enough scratch pad space for virtually any game you can conjure. The number one reason you need more RAM in modern machines is the size and quantity of the assets that require pre-loading. Those assets require pre-loading because ever since we moved to optical media, the transfer speed to file size ratio skewed badly in the wrong direction. That's why PS4s and Xbones came with harddrives - the blu-ray drives simply can't stream the data in at usable speeds for real-time gameplay. The next generation of consoles shifts the ratio back closer to cartridges thanks to SSDs as standard. The 16GB of RAM on a PS5 or XSX has a multiplier behind it as a result. We don't need 64GB of RAM to load a levels worth of assets because we can load 5gb of data in less than a second. So, instead, we just need 16GB of RAM. You're comparing apples to volkswagens.

The reason the first round of "next gen games" isn't as dramatic as "The Last of Us" to "The Last of Us 2"... is because they're the first round of games. Those two titles had an entire generation between them, and The Last of Us 2 has had nearly six full years of development. It happened last generation, and the one before it. That's due more to the time frames of modern game development and thus effort required to produce assets that use the hardware feature set. PS1 games could be made by teams of about 15 to 30 people. Major development teams today can have closer to 300, and some at over 1,000 at their peak. It takes time to get teams that large mature tool sets to work towards the new standards and features the new consoles offer up.

The jump from Xbone to Series X is going to be larger than the jump from 360 to Xbone. No anemic CPU, no platter HDD, and a GPU that's close to the high end consumer market. We're in for a real treat this generation.

 

[bumleforce]

next gen doesn't fee l like it right away. I have not been blown away by Any game from either company. we only have one next gen game confirmed for 120 fps (dirt). one last gen game (gears 5) and no games with 8k. Now with that being said all the games shown are star of the gen or first year so I will give a pass on that. Think about how games looked at the start of this current gen and how they look now ending with last us us.

 

[Infested Goblin]

Hardware wise we should expect massive jump but we cant see it now for some reason and that's pretty strange. ps 4 was considered weak spec machine in 2013 yet we could clearly see jaw droping games like shadoefall and roder 1886. PS 5 is pretty much high end (not highest) pc on paper but we are underwhlemed by new games. ooof

 

[dr guildo]

Yes, truely nextgen, in game shots :

 

[RaySoft]

I think the less than significant next gen look can be blamed on the system specs, specifically the amount of physical memory. From PS1 to PS4, memory grew by a factor of around 16x. From PS4 to PS5, memory only grew 2x. Let's look at how the consoles' ram grew over each generation.

PS1 - 2MB
PS2- 32MB
PS3- 256MB
PS4- 8GB
PS5- 16GB

As you can see, each generation from PS1 to PS4 saw massive improvements to ram, which meant bigger worlds and details. PS4 to PS5 only saw a 2x improvement. I would think that it would take at least 64GB of ram before we can recognize an immediate improvement.

The faster your storage is, the less RAM you need, It's as simple as that!

 

[Stilton Disco]

Since 7th Gen the entire games industry has basically stabilised and matured to the point that best practices for development have become standardised.

Console generations are still important mind you, as they lay the baseline for what developers should be aiming for as the minimum specs to be aiming for, and standardising technological improvements, such as online gaming, post launch updates, HDD's, SSD's, etc.

It's also a great marketing gimmick. Bringing out a new CPU or Phone each year is great when dealing with multipurpose devices, but just doesn't work as well with niche interest items.

A new console gen that comes with games you couldn't play on your old system is a far more desirable product than just being able to play the same games with slightly nicer image quality after all.

 

[ZywyPL]

My point was that with massive improvement to ram also saw massive improvements to details. If PS1 went from 2MB to 4MB or PS2 went from 32MB to 64MB and PS3 went from 256MB to 512MB, we would all probably consider such improvements as not next gen. But that is the case with the PS4 to PS5.

I get why the PS5 has 16GB, it's a cost issue. The physical memory market, especially on the consumer side, has been stagnant and slow to grow.

You're not counting the VRAM, for example PS3 had 256MB RAM but also equal amount of VRAM, so 512MB total. Which was low anyway judging by all the washed-out textures games had during PS360 era.

On the paper, we have incredible generation jump thanks too CPU alone, From trash mobile jaguar level to fucking 8 cores Ryzen 2, from 1.8 TF gpu to 9-10.2 RDNA 2, ssd and bunch of other technological improvements yet games shown by sony, besides fast level loading in Ratchet, did not represent such a big hardware improvements. Maybe we should blame crossplay and multiplatform? Im sure we will see incredible looking games in 2-3 years from now, but even ps 4 which hardware-wise was considered pretty bad on paper, melt our eyes with Order 1886 and Shadowfall soon after release. And now we have consoles in par wth high end pc's and they showed us games that sometimes looked worse than Order 1886 lmao. If 4k with few ray tracing improvements is that demanding for new consoles, then i would be more than happy for playing amazing looking games in 1444p or even 1080p without RT imo

I think CPUs really need to start to shine so people will say "WOW, this is some real next-level next-gen shit!", because as it is now, we saw exact same games, just a bit prettier. I remember back in the day people had their jaw dropped when they saw cars destructing in Motorstorm every single time there was a PS3 stand in a store/shopping mall, that was something truly impossible on PS2, with much improved graphics on top of that, then there was KZ2 with all sorts of advanced physics and animations, and again jaw dropping graphics, we need those kind of games for PS5/XBX.

 

[The_Mike]

Console wise? Yes
Hardware wise? No

 

[genesisblock]

I want more games to take the emergence and persistence of Eve Online and place it in an adventure game of sorts.

 

[DynamiteCop!]

Cinematic running on a high end PC
in engine
not real time
24fps
3840x1608
Just a target render

You're never gonna get that ingame rendering (gameplay).

Some people make too many movies with the XseX with excessive expectations.

But the reality is this :

10 tflops machine

12 tflops machine

I'm aware of Hellblade II's implications but fact is that's the most graphically advanced thing we've seen yet.

Im also not understanding the image comparison. One is several years old not to mention 30 vs. 60 FPS.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Maybe Nintendo's next console will be more to your taste.

They could innovate at cost of falling behind rivals in terms of raw power output.

 

[DrAspirino]

Microsoft have already done this with smart glass, on both the 360 and current gen. It's not as great as it sounds. Dead rising 3 made use of it and the novelty soon wore off.

I think it depends on the game. For example, it could be used as a map or inventory. It could be very useful for those situations (although I'm biased, since I play a lot of RPGs) xD

Maybe Nintendo's next console will be more to your taste.

They could innovate at cost of falling behind rivals in terms of raw power output.

That's why I got a Switch almost day 1

 

[kruis]

The faster your storage is, the less RAM you need, It's as simple as that!

Storage gets the biggest upgrade: from 50 MB/sec to 5.5 GB/s. That's 100 times faster! Plus this time we get consoles with desktop calss CPUs and GPUs compared to the mobile chips in PS4/Xbox One. Considering what programmers were able to achieve with the slow (by 2013 standards) mobile APU in the PS4, I expect a lot from the PS5 that's got very competitive hw even by PC standards. The only thing keeping devs back is simply the sheer cost of creating modern AAA games, not the hw.

 

[-Arcadia-]

Basing it on the experience, Horizon 2 looks like something I could never get on current gen. Running around and swimming in something that looks like CG is going to be a transformative videogame experience for me.

We can talk numbers and architecture decisions until the cows come home, but in my opinion, what matters is what’s on screen, or alternatively, what’s in your hands (Wii Remote, Hybrid console/portable).

 

[kikii]

lets play next gen

 

[Astral Dog]

SSD and CPU are a HUGE UPGRADE, current gen CPUS are MOBILE shit they weren't upgraded properly on PS4/Xbox One, you will see MANY GAMES that can't be made with the current tech not everything is about GRAPHICS and developers are EXCITED

heck the Sound is getting an upgrade too with 3D Audio or some shit Sony is putting on the PS5

 

[Mister Wolf]

Its about as next gen as when I swapped out my 1080 for a 2080ti. Nicer visuals nothing revolutionary anymore. We will never get that magic we felt going from genesis/SNES to Playstation or Playstation to Dreamcast/PS2/Xbox ever again.

 

[Mister Wolf]

Cinematic running on a high end PC
in engine
not real time
24fps
3840x1608
Just a target render

You're never gonna get that ingame rendering (gameplay).

Some people make too many movies with the XseX with excessive expectations.

But the reality is this :

10 tflops machine

12 tflops machine

Was that Halo footage even confirmed running on the Series X?

 

[Astral Dog]

My point was that with massive improvement to ram also saw massive improvements to details. If PS1 went from 2MB to 4MB or PS2 went from 32MB to 64MB and PS3 went from 256MB to 512MB, we would all probably consider such improvements as not next gen. But that is the case with the PS4 to PS5.

I get why the PS5 has 16GB, it's a cost issue. The physical memory market, especially on the consumer side, has been stagnant and slow to grow.

Memory increases that big are not really that necessary or cost effective anymore, though i was hoping to see a little more RAM on the upcoming consoles

You don't need much more RAM to push amazing details anymore, before this gen developers had to fight with the hardware, finding clever tricks to get more off the tiny 512MB memory pool for Animations, Textures, Models, Geometry, etc. But thats not the case anymore, they are fighting the Jaguar CPUs and slow Hard Drives now, consumer computers also don't need more RAM than 8GB to run most programs, including games, Sony are saying the new SSD will help developers get more juice off the RAM they have now instead of a huge increase in amount its an increase on efficiency.

 

[JohnSpartanLee]

PSVR2 on PS5 will be a huge difference to PSVR on PS4.

 

[Nico_D]

Personally I think it is games and game design that should change and not the hardware. It is - mostly, there's luckily a good amount of exceptions - the same thing but with prettier graphics.

Easiest solution for me is naturally to stay away from AAA games.

Answer to your question, no, I don't see anything new (yet).

 

[OutrageousFacts]

Cinematic running on a high end PC
in engine
not real time
24fps
3840x1608
Just a target render

You're never gonna get that ingame rendering (gameplay).

Some people make too many movies with the XseX with excessive expectations.

But the reality is this :

10 tflops machine

12 tflops machine

What's a tflops machine

 

[Rhazer Fusion]

I still think the mid generation upgrades as much as I enjoy them, kind of messed up the impact of the next generation unveilings. Especially seeing the introduction of 4k, smoother frame rates and improved textures this generation which has been available for awhile.

 

[Caio]

You have seen nothing about XSX, so I will not even discuss here, it's a waste of time.

 

[Dunnas]

Its about as next gen as when I swapped out my 1080 for a 2080ti. Nicer visuals nothing revolutionary anymore. We will never get that magic we felt going from genesis/SNES to Playstation or Playstation to Dreamcast/PS2/Xbox ever again.

That’s really not remotely similar. Your upgrade was let’s say a 2 times increase in performance, being generous, and only the gpu.

Using the xboxes as an example, Xbox one
1.4tf gcn 1.0 to Series x 12tf could be around a 14 times increase in overall gpu performance, depending on the Ipc gains from rdna 1 to 2.

12 x 1.5 (Ipc gain from gcn 1.0 to rdna 1) = 18tf x 1.1 (modest assumption for Ipc gain from rdna 1 to 2) = 19.8tf gcn 1.0 equivalence.

While the ps5 increase is quite a bit less (more due to the higher ps4 baseline than lower ps5 specs) that still works out at over a 9 times increase.

As Rhazer Fusion said, the mid gen updates have reduced the impact for many people on what we’ve seen for the new consoles so far, but I’m sure in a couple of years people will realise that the next gen will be as big (or bigger) an overall jump than this gen to last.

 

[fran.fernandez]

last of us 2 is next gen

 

[Hunnybun]

Its about as next gen as when I swapped out my 1080 for a 2080ti. Nicer visuals nothing revolutionary anymore. We will never get that magic we felt going from genesis/SNES to Playstation or Playstation to Dreamcast/PS2/Xbox ever again.

Funny, I remember being distinctly underwhelmed playing early PS2 games back in 2000.

PS1 was cool but even then I was vaguely aware of how ugly all the games were. Not least cos we had arcade games that looked a generation ahead, freely available.

I think once some of the big hitters come out this new generation will blow people away just like new consoles always do.

 

[Mister Wolf]

Funny, I remember being distinctly underwhelmed playing early PS2 games back in 2000.

PS1 was cool but even then I was vaguely aware of how ugly all the games were. Not least cos we had arcade games that looked a generation ahead, freely available.

I think once some of the big hitters come out this new generation will blow people away just like new consoles always do.

I remember going from Resident Evil 3 to Resident Evil Code Veronica and being in disbelief how much of a jump it was in character models, cutscenes, and enviroments. Keep in mind those two titles came out only 5 months apart from each other.

 

[Major_Key]

Cinematic running on a high end PC
in engine
not real time
24fps
3840x1608
Just a target render

You're never gonna get that ingame rendering (gameplay).

Some people make too many movies with the XseX with excessive expectations.

But the reality is this :

10 tflops machine

12 tflops machine

Lol, let's wait see July and you know nothing if Hellblade 2 is target render.

Remember when you all think that PS5 exclusive will do better job than UE5 demo

 

[Maogp]

I get your point but what you want means risk, and risk means money, a lot of money. I totally understand why both competitors went to a well know path.

 

[Birdo]

PSVR2 on PS5 will be a huge difference to PSVR on PS4.

 

[EverydayBeast]

If we're building a console for the future I respect what SONY is doing.

 

[Evilms]

Lol, let's wait see July and you know nothing if Hellblade 2 is target render.

Remember when you all think that PS5 exclusive will do better job than UE5 demo

If you think hellblade 2 will be like this in gameplay then you're naive.

 

[CrysisFreak]

I never agreed to being filmed REEEE

 

[Armorian]

It's like DLC for current gen.

 

[Fbh]

Sure, but now that the market has shifted to being dominated by third party games that try to release on every platform I actually prefer incremental upgrades to the existing architecture over every console maker having a completely custom system that realistically is only going to be fully taken advantage of by first party devs.

Back then you had tons of third party games made for specific systems or even multiplatform releases with so many differences between them that they were pretty much different games. I personally prefer the current model where you can have one device and have access to the majority of major releases with minor differences aside from resolution, framerate and some graphical settings..

 

[PresetError]

Interesting debate. But if you compare games like Knack 2 or Infamous Second Son to God of War or TLOU2 you wouldn't say they are from the same generation. Also, i'm sure the improvements in all areas will be evident when people actually play the games in next gen consoles.

By the way, i'm always utterly baffled at how people talk about Hellblade 2 as if Microsoft actually showed gameplay and not a pre-rendered cinematic.

 

[Silvawuff]

I think we've hit a point of horizontal progression spec-wise. Next-gen to me is a sum of different parts -- how developers design games and how publishers distribute them. The fact PS5 is getting an all-digital console release is something in itself. What we're looking at is the foundation of next-gen or maybe a stop gap until we get a real technological breakthrough.

 

[Rayderism]

To me, next-gen just means the next console you have to buy if you want to play the latest games.

 

[Neo_game]

I think the less than significant next gen look can be blamed on the system specs, specifically the amount of physical memory. From PS1 to PS4, memory grew by a factor of around 16x. From PS4 to PS5, memory only grew 2x. Let's look at how the consoles' ram grew over each generation.

PS1 - 2MB
PS2- 32MB
PS3- 256MB
PS4- 8GB
PS5- 16GB

As you can see, each generation from PS1 to PS4 saw massive improvements to ram, which meant bigger worlds and details. PS4 to PS5 only saw a 2x improvement. I would think that it would take at least 64GB of ram before we can recognize an immediate improvement.

I agree. The ram is most disappointing upgrade this gen. Both in size and BW speed. Gfx IMO has reached quite good level already. Some genre like racing, fighting and sports games especially.

What we need is good physics in games and using CPU more effectively not just for fps boost.

 

[Azelover]

I haven't seen enough to say for sure yet, but so far my answer is no.

I agree with most of what has been said here so far. Videgaming is not only about visual fidelity, it has to do with gameplay. The only thing that impressed me on that end was Ratchet and Clank, not because of visuals but the real-time world travelling seemed like something that couldn't be done before.

Although I will say one thing, for those that think graphics is all that matters. It does make a huge difference if you see the footage in 4k.

 

[TheCrimsnFuckr]

Honestly, considering that the XSX APU can virtualize 4 X1S systems (if I had to guess, only in a server environment as the console will not ship with enough RAM) I would say that both consoles are significantly powerful enough to be considered next gen.

And also, considering there’s always been a transition period with new consoles where devs figure out how to use the new system architecture (and they learn throughout the whole generation) (and hell, devs were just figuring out how to best use Cell in 2013, if the PS4 was just a new Cell machine with more RAM I think it would have done great) id honestly say that I’m happy with the new machines only being more powerful but similar design wise. Devs can just port over existing projects and let imagination run wild.