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[TheBROgamer]

Now that Sony, MS, and a few others have had their 2023 game showcases, this gives us an idea on the power of these consoles considering that they will be turning 3 years old this year.

I have been gaming since the SNES and to me personally, this is the smallest jump yet.

While there are few games that are standouts (mainly from the companies that have the money and the talent), most games don't really seem like they couldn't be ran on the PS4 or Xbox One at medium-high settings rather than high-ultra.

We have Starfield which is a game with a massive scale that certainly wouldn't be possible on last gen, but what else?

This question extends beyond visually, for example when the PS2/Xbox/GC/Dreamcast released it was obvious day 1, that these games could never been pulled off on the previous generation systems.

We're 3 years in and still haven't truly gotten a "this is next gen" moment, outside of a Matrix Tech Demo (not a game) and probably Starfield due to it's scale.

Your thoughts?

 

[RCU005]

It feels like we are still in the first year. Everybody will blame COVID, and maybe they are right, but the games don’t feel like a generational leap.

Final fantasy XVI looks great, but it still feel like a first-year game. Like those games that surprise you when the new gen launch, but when you look back when we are at the end of the generation that look very outdated.

I believe the PS5 and Series X are capable of so much more, but we won’t see any of it. Xbox has the Series S as a bottleneck and both have huge development times.

By the time a true next gen launches, it will be already a cross-gen game.

 

[TheBROgamer]

It feels like we are still in the first year. Everybody will blame COVID, and maybe they are right, but the games don’t feel like a generational leap.

Final fantasy XVI looks great, but it still feel like a first-year game. Like those games that surprise you when the new gen launch, but when you look back when we are at the end of the generation that look very outdated.

I believe the PS5 and Series X are capable of so much more, but we won’t see any of it. Xbox has the Series S as a bottleneck and both have huge development times.

By the time a true next gen launches, it will be already a cross-gen game.

COVID is the easy excuse to latch on to, the real problem extends beyond that.

The PS360 gens DNA still lives on in the current era, most of the design mechanics used in games today are from that era.

It's a combination of the risk factor associated with the costs of pushing the envelope, a lack of willingness to push the envelope, and honestly perhaps a lack of talent capable of doing so.

 

[Astray]

Literally every game that's shipping for current gen is aiming for about 4 times the resolution as last gen on top of larger scale higher fidelity etc.

This is actually a very large jump, it's just that COVID delays/shortages + the blurring of console generations into larger "platforms" has given us the illusion of this not being a big jump imo.

 

[Tal Shiar Agent]

The final boss fight of Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores says otherwise.

Its less about graphical fidelity and more about complexity of systems.

 

[Salz01]

This gen is a mistake. Bring on PS6, with equivalent of a 4090. Then wake me up.

 

[DenchDeckard]

i feel like this year was the first year we saw actual next gen games but like youve said its like year 1 of next gen, three years in.

 

[tryDEATH]

UE5 will be the primary pusher for this generation and unfortunately many of the games we are seeing now got caught mid development along with Covid. Also some very big development studios haven't yet released or shown their true next gen games such as Rockstar, Naughty Dog, Id Software, and DICE who push systems to the max.

 

[winjer]

Oh look, another thread from someone that wants a 500$ console to perform like a 5000$ PC.

 

[T4keD0wN]

You would be right if all you are doing is looking at still pictures, this might be the smallest jump, but not for long, PS6 and Series X successor(s) are not that far ahead and the jump will be even lower.

Problem is there is so much more to it than just comparing the screenshots, mainly the load times and HFR modes.

The humans/time are becoming the limiting factor rather than hardware (aside from path/ray tracing where there are advancements to be made) cpus/storage/memory are all far from being fully utilized.

 

[TheBROgamer]

UE5 will be the primary pusher for this generation and unfortunately many of the games we are seeing now got caught mid development along with Covid. Also some very big development studios haven't yet released or shown their true next gen games such as Rockstar, Naughty Dog, Id Software, and DICE who push systems to the max.

Games struggle to hit a solid 60 FPS with UE4's most high end games, on the current generation.

I guarantee you the real power of UE5 won't be seen until mid-gen refreshes or until the PS6/XSX2, consoles are launched.

 

[TheBROgamer]

Oh look, another thread from someone that wants a 500$ console to perform like a 5000$ PC.

The Xbox 360 and PS3 were stronger than the top gaming PCs, when they launched in 05/06.

No game on PC looked better than Gears of War on 360, in 2006.

This is coming from a guy who had a top of the line PC at the time, and also a 360 (purchased at launch).

It wasn't until 2007 with Crysis and a few others, where PC took the lead.

 

[winjer]

The Xbox 360 and PS3 were stronger than the top gaming PCs, when they launched in 05/06.

No game look better than Gears of War on 360, in 2006.

It wasn't until 2007 with Crysis and few others, where PC took the lead.

No they weren't. Might I remind you that the GPU on the PS3 was a cutdown 7900GT. Even a normal 7900GT would beat the GPU inside the PS3.
Above it there were already the X1900XTX and the 7900GTX.
The GPU inside the X360 was more advanced than the 7900GT of the PS3, but not that much more powerful.
And in 2006 we had the 8800 generation, that obliterated everything before.
The CPU inside the PS3 did have great FP throughput. But it also had a ton of limitations, being a in-order architecture and having only one PPE.

And you might remember that Gear of War only ran at 720p on consoles. A low resolution, compare to the norm on PC.
And it's not like the PC didn't have great looking games at the time, such as Half Life 2, FEAR, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, Oblivion, Battlefield 2 and many others.

The PS3 and X360 also only had 512Mb of memory. The PS3 was even worse, since it had it divided in 2 pools of 256Mb.

 

[FalsettoVibe]

You guys are are so dramatic. lol. This is the first generational jump where:

• Load times are significantly reduced due to SSDs.
• Framerates have doubled in most games to the point where people 100% expect it.
• 2-4x Resolution jump
• Raytracing is an option.

The jump is there. Just not always smacking you in the face.

 

[Low Moral Fibre]

The huge leap from even the Xbox One X is the CPUs but with all the cross gen stuff we are mainly getting higher res last gen stuff. They are still laptop CPUs I think but a far cry from the tablet equivalent ones last gen.

If games were built around having a much stronger CPU then I'm sure we'd see games that maybe aren't graphically a huge leap but that wouldn't be possible in any way, shape or form on PS4 or XBone.

I can't remember what it was like around the time of the x360 and PS3 but IIRC the PS4 was trading blows with the r9 270x and both released in the same year while the PS5 and XSX get comfortably outperformed by a 2080ti that was released two years before the PS5 so if you already had a 2080ti I guess you wouldn't be that impressed.

Edit: Although I'm comparing mid-range to halo with those GPUs so that sentence makes no sense I guess. What's that oldest GPU that is roughly in line with a PS4?

 

[TheBROgamer]

No they weren't. Might I remind you that the GPU on the PS3 was a cutdown 7900GT. Even a normal 7900GT would beat the GPU inside the PS3.
Above it there were already the X1900XTX and the 7900GTX.
The GPU inside the X360 was more advanced than the 7900GT of the PS3, but not that much more powerful.
And in 2006 we had the 8800 generation, that obliterated everything before.
The CPU inside the PS3 did have great FP throughput. But it also had a ton of limitations, being a in-order architecture and having only one PPE.

And you might remember that Gear of War only ran at 720p on consoles. A low resolution, compare to the norm on PC.
And it's not like the PC didn't have great looking games at the time, such as Half Life 2, FEAR, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, Oblivion, Battlefield 2 and many others.

The 360 had a modified/custom version of ATI's X1900XTX, no GPU on PC was capable doing the shader effect it was capable of at the time.

Look it up, also Gears of War visually blew all those games away.

Some of those games you listed are all time greats, but Gears of War in 2006 blew them away.

 

[TheShocker]

Could be the biggest? We don’t know because most games still support last gen consoles.

 

[Poltz]

I will judge at the end of the gen.

 

[Mr.Phoenix]

This is becoming annoying.

The problem is not that the consoles are not powerful enough. The problem is that it takes a ridiculous amount of time to make games look the way some of you seem to want them to look.

Eg... it takes 270 days to build a car from scratch in GT7. That's 270 days of man-hours spread out over the team.

To put that into perspective, The entire multiplayer mode of Goldeneye on the N64 was made in 40 days.

The hardware is there to make games like that first UE5 demo, or even the matrix demo. We literally have a playable demo of that on the current-gen consoles. So there is no question that the consoles can do it.

What we do not have is time. Making a game, that in its entirety matches that level of fidelity.... is gonna take a lot of time, be really expensive or take up a lot of space.... or all three. This also ties into that diminishing returns thing. Maybe 5 years ago, if a team spent 100hrs on a model they could get an A-grade mode from what would otherwise have been a C-grade model. But now, to take that from A grade to A+... they wud need to spend like 200hrs. Those smaller finer touches that makes it look that much better.... take up much more time.

 

[radewagon]

It's kind of premature to continue thinking this considering we haven't even seen footage of Knack 3 yet. Must be pretty special considering how closely Sony is guarding development of the title.

 

[alphachino]

You can't tell ANYTHING from the showcases. MS show practically all games running on PC, and Sony failed to play their hand.

 

[winjer]

The 360 had a modified/custom version of ATI's X1900XTX, no GPU on PC was capable doing the shader effect it was capable of at the time.

Look it up, also Gears of War visually blew all those games away.

Some of those games you listed are all time greats, but Gears of War in 2006 blew them away.

No it didn't. There was no equivalent on PC of the GPU inside the X360. It was the first generation of a unified shader architecture, which is very different from a X1900XT.
Gears of war might have been advanced, but it was nothing that the PC GPUs of the time couldn't do, at a higher resolution. Because PC had more powerful hardware.

 

[Gamer_By_Proxy]

For Xbox Yes. For Playstation No.

Playstation has a current gen controller, great gaming vr headset, more games with ray tracing, games actually running at 60fps, etc.

Xbox literally has a last gen console that outperforms one of their current gen consoles

 

[Bonfires Down]

It was pretty cool to see in Star Wars Outlaws immediately moving from one high detail environment in the bar to another in the ship, all in an open world. That’s the kind of stuff that last gen would be less detailed or further apart or behind a subtle loading section.

 

[TheBROgamer]

No it didn't. There was no equivalent on PC of the GPU inside the X360. It was the first generation of a unified shader architecture, which is very different from a X1900XT.
Gears of war might have been advanced, but it was nothing that the PC GPUs of the time couldn't do, at a higher resolution. Because PC had more powerful hardware.

And yet, no games on PC looked as good Gears of War did on 360 until 2007.

A year later.

That is not to say there weren't impressive looking games at the time, Gears was on another level with what the UE3 brought to the table.

 

[analog_future]

I just think game development takes way longer than it used to.

We haven't even seen the AAA games that started development in late 2020 yet. Games that were truly built from the ground up around the spec of these new consoles.


Fable is a bit of a hint of what's to come. And I think games in 2024 and beyond are really going to start to blow our socks off.

 

[Del_X]

Starfield, that Avatar game, and Forza all clearly looked current-gen. These games are I/O and CPU intensive. Spider-Man 2 has much faster traversal as a result of being PS5-only.

 

[JaksGhost]

The PS4 Pro and Xbox One X is what killed the generational jump.

 

[winjer]

And yet, no games on PC looked as good Gears of War did on 360 until 2007.

A year later.

That is not to say there weren't impressive looking games at the time, Gears was on another level with what the UE3 brought to the table.

That is not an argument for hardware being more powerful, only for software lagging behind.
And the reality, is that the PS3 and X360 were weaker than PCs of the time.

 

[Tal Shiar Agent]

Oh look, another thread from someone that wants a 500$ console to perform like a 5000$ PC.

Wish I could spend $500 and build a PC that performed as well and as consistently as a PS5/XSX.

 

[lh032]

Meanwhile PS5/ Series X running games at unstable 60fps.

 

[TheBROgamer]

That is not an argument for hardware being more powerful, only for software lagging behind.
And the reality, is that the PS3 and X360 were weaker than PCs of the time.

Incorrect, the 360 was powered by a custom IBM tri-core CPU and the PS3 was powered by the Cell Processor.

Both exceedingly much more capable than the Core 2 Duo's, Pentium D's, and AMD Athlon's of the time.

 

[rodrigolfp]

People were screaming R&C, Demon Souls and MFS were current gen games, but suddenly they are not anymore?

 

[SlimySnake]

We have Starfield which is a game with a massive scale that certainly wouldn't be possible on last gen, but what else?

 

[diffusionx]

So far, the PS5 has felt like the PS4 Pro Pro. It’s a good system, and I like it, and games like Demons Souls really do look amazing, but it is the smallest jump so far.

 

[winjer]

Wish I could spend $500 and build a PC that performed as well and as consistently as a PS5/XSX.

That is a good point, because budget PC's are almost dead. Mostly because of GPU prices.
But the point remains, that we can't expect a 500$ console, to perform like a PC that has a 4090 and 7800X3D.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Pc’s are difficult for the casual crowd, over the last 10 years consoles have averaged millions of sales.

 

[diffusionx]

That is a good point, because budget PC's are almost dead. Mostly because of GPU prices.
But the point remains, that we can't expect a 500$ console, to perform like a PC that has a 4090 and 7800X3D.

There once was a time when high end GPUs delivered high end experiences both graphically and in terms of gameplay. Just off the top of my head that seems to have died around Battlefield 3 but I’m probably missing something. Anyway now it’s just extra polish on console games. Even stuff like CP2077 overdrive is nice but slightly more accurate shadows and lighting isn’t exactly Crysis in 2007.

 

[TheBROgamer]

From the company infamous for their E3 to actual game downgrades?

 

[winjer]

Incorrect, the 360 was powered by a custom IBM tri-core CPU and the PS3 was powered by the Cell Processor.

Both exceedingly much more capable than the Core 2 Duo's, Pentium D's, and AMD Athlon's of the time.

The CPU on those consoles had a high max theoretical FP throughput. That is true.
But because they were in-order architecture, reaching that value was impossible for games. Especially for the Cell processor.
Besides, games are a mix of FP and Int calculations.
So in certain tasks, the Cell and Xenos could outclass a C2D and A64. But in other tasks, it they were behind.

 

[Ronin_7]

This gen is a mistake. Bring on PS6, with equivalent of a 4090. Then wake me up.

The shit takes we get in every thread give me life

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

The more advanced rendering technologies, e.g. Nanite and Lumen, will take some time for developers to get to grips with. As well as it taking time to fully realize the possibilities of what these SSD and advanced I/O stacks can deliver.

Combine this with the fact that the gen got off to a stunted start due to COVID and the semi-conductor supply shortage, which extended the cross-gen period way longer than it had any right to be, and you're left with a good 3 - 4 years post-launch before the REAL next-gen games start to hit.

But believe you me, when the REAL next-gen stuff starts hitting, it will blow fucking minds. No question.

 

[Kataploom]

Literally every game that's shipping for current gen is aiming for about 4 times the resolution as last gen on top of larger scale higher fidelity etc.

This is actually a very large jump, it's just that COVID delays/shortages + the blurring of console generations into larger "platforms" has given us the illusion of this not being a big jump imo.

Not really, though, all of current gen only games use very low internal resolution (like even sub-1080p) and some kind of upscaling like FSR to get up to 1440p or 4K... All the time they're using dynamic resolution too.

In my opinion, the problem is beyond hardware. The hardware leap is smaller than previous gen but it requires some specific workflow to be taken advantage of and budgets/development time/etc. are already large enough so they don't fell like readapting their current workflow to the new one in the middle of a project development.

Remember "the tools" meme? It's all real, you can see it on PC where they had access to most console features set for a while yet engines are not adapted to use them yet. DirectStorage came out last year and yet it was only used on Forspoken.

Games are still developed as previous gen games and engines are slowly being adapted to current gen tech... But project scopes, complexity and budget don't leave enough room to quickly maneuver and make important changes as they did before. These days games are just in a whole different dimension of complexity compared to 20 years ago so changes will be made slower for next generations to come.

 

[TGO]

Technically any game can be ported down.
Tekken 8 could be ported to PS4
But not without major cutbacks and you would literally see the difference.
Watch Dogs was ported to PS3 and well just look at the PS4 version.

 

[Caio]

Literally every game that's shipping for current gen is aiming for about 4 times the resolution as last gen on top of larger scale higher fidelity etc.

This is actually a very large jump, it's just that COVID delays/shortages + the blurring of console generations into larger "platforms" has given us the illusion of this not being a big jump imo.

This. No further words. I feel lazy today

 

[NahaNago]

We made the move closer to 4k this gen,60 fps is more of a thing, and plus that lighting upgrade for certain games and games are bigger/more complex so of course this gen's graphics will look like a smaller upgrade to an extent. PS6 and XBSX2 should seem like far larger jumps.

 

[ThaMonkeyClaw]

You guys are are so dramatic. lol. This is the first generational jump where:

• Load times are significantly reduced due to SSDs.
• Framerates have doubled in most games to the point where people 100% expect it.
• 2-4x Resolution jump
• Raytracing is an option.

The jump is there. Just not always smacking you in the face.

Just the load time different with have the NVMe SSD drives is worth it!

 

[Crispy Gamer]

That wind is gonna be taxing in star wars

 

[Astray]

Remember "the tools" meme? It's all real, you can see it on PC where they had access to most console features set for a while yet engines are not adapted to use them yet. DirectStorage came out last year and yet it was only used on Forspoken.

PC has a different challenge set imo because you are buying different parts from competitors (think Intel/AMD/Nvidia, even Microsoft in some aspects like APIs etc) and adding them into your PC's hardware or software.

These companies have no incentive to work with each other to optimize the final output, they each guard secrets from one another and have adversarial relationships that would make it hard for them to deliver a cohesive combined design that is greater than the sum of its parts. That's why these systems largely outperform their rough PC equivalent.

Almost every piece of tech in the Xbox Series X or PS5 has some sort of equivalent in the PC space, but no one in that space is willing to share the wealth, so to speak.

Fragmentation is an additional challenge when it comes to optimization as well.

Not to mention that PC parts overall are slowly delivering less of an uplift every gen, particularly GPUs.

 

[The Pleasure]

I'm just glad that loading times are a lot shorter this time around. That's a great improvement to me.