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PS4 vs Xbox One | Expectation of differences between multiplatform launch titles

N

nib95

Banned
A lot has been said about the hardware performance advantages of the PS4 over the Xbox One, however, not as much has been said on the development process and roadmap of each console, which imo will play a crucial role to how the launch titles look and perform. My guess is that launch titles will not properly show off the hardware differences between the two platforms, and may even go the opposite way, and here's why I think that.

Firstly, when did the next gen development process start? Realistically we can assume that several devs started on their PS4 games in some form, even conceptual, in 2011. Especially the first party studios.

DevilWillcry said:
Guerrilla Games (Last major game was KZ3 in early 2011)
Sucker Punch (Last major game was Infamous 2 in mid 2011)
Naughty Dog team 2 (Last major game was Uncharted 3 in late 2011)
Evolution Studios (Last major game was MS:Apocalypse in mid 2011)
Click to expand...

---

Now lets look at the hardware roadmap. These were the kits developers were working with over the said time periods.

PS4 dev kit Road Map.

2011

Stage 1) R10 boards with special BIOS, running in generic PC’s.

• Requires Windows 7 64 bit edition
• Sandy Bridge (Intel) or Bulldozer (AMD)
• Minimum 8 GB RAM (system memory)
• 2 GB Vram (GDDR5)
• VS2010 SP1

July 2012 onwards

Stage 2) DVKT-KS000K initial dev kit

• Runs Orbis OS
• CPU: Bulldozer 8-core, 1.6 Ghz
• Graphics Card: R10 with special BIOS
• RAM: 8 GB (system memory)
• 2.2 GB Vram (GDDR5)
• BD Drive
• HDD: 2.5 ” 160 GB
• Network Controller
• Custom South Bridge allows access to controller prototypes

January 2013 onwards

Stage 3) SoC based dev kit

• CPU: 8-core Jaguar
• GPU: Liverpool GPU
• RAM: unified 8 GB Vram (GDDR5) for devkit (4 GB for the retail console)
• Subsystem: HDD, Network Controller, BD Drive, Bluetooth Controller, WLAN and HDMI
• Analog Outputs: Audio, Composite Video and USB 3.0
• ORBIS Dualshock
• Dual Camera

February 2013 onwards

Stage 4) Announcement that the PS4 will ship with 8GB GDDR5 to the surprise of most devs, even first party,

• New dev kit with even more ram?
Additional ram over the retail spec is required for debugging and development etc.

---

Xbox One

Now compare that to the Xbox One (Durango) development road map. From what I can gather, in early 2011 a similar PC set up was used, however, shortly after both the following subsequent dev kits sent out had similar amounts of ram, that is 8-12 GB DDR3. On the ram front, nothing has really changed.

---


To summarise, whilst the development road map for both consoles has changed considerably over the last few years, I'd argue the PS4 has seen bigger changes. Theoretically Xbox One devs have always been aiming to use 8GB of DDR3 for the final kit (minus the amount reserved for system use), whereas for 2 years PS4 devs would have been working towards the basis of having just 2GB GDDR5 for retail, and only switched to double that in January this year, and double that still (to 8GB) in February after the big reveal. I don't believe the final dev kits have even been sent out yet.

Given the above, what are your expectations for differences between launch window multiplatform titles? Do you even expect the PS4 to have the advantage from the off set, or do you think those benefits will be only seen a bit later down the line, perhaps with the second batch of releases?
 
nib95 said:
No opinions or takers?
Click to expand...

Hard to say, because despite people knowing that this time they are very similar and comparable, most posters will downplay the differences saying "it won't be noticeable".

I trust CBOAT
I trust thuway

So, Xbone titles will be rough compared to some PS4 ones.
 
I'm no expert, but if previous gens are any indication, the two consoles should be fairly neck and neck at first. Developers probably didn't know until recently that they would have such significant differences in raw power.
 
I'd guess multiplat designers will design for the least powerful system ( XB1 by the looks of it), and PS4 first party stuff will look a couple notches better throughout the gen. Looking forward to seeing what Naughty Dog stretches out of the system though when it's all over.
 
Thanks for the consolidated roadmap. Hadn't seen it before.

Based on the late term ram explosion, most PS4 launch engines will probably be already built to leverage asset streaming in a way that will now be far less necessary. Given how late the extra ram came, I imagine it is too late for launch titles to seriously rework their asset loading/unloading pipeline. That alone will, i imagine, incur a significant performance impact that will be heavily mitigated once devs are able to respin their engines a bit for their next game. I think this will be most heavily felt in open world games where streaming content in and moving other things out of memory caused noticeable stuttering in many games. It'll probably be less significant in linear structured games.

This may give some multiplatform games such as Watch dogs more stable framerates on the Xbox, though I would expect to see peak framerates be higher on PS4.

I think that we might see some launch titles such as Battlefield 4 hit a slightly reduced resolution on the Xbox one thanks to the PS4's higher GPU performance. I believe it was Durante (could be wrong on this) who made the comment awhile ago that the PS4's GPU strength is almost a perfect candidate for a resolution bump over the Xbox. We may see PS4 in native 1080p with the xbox using some sort of scaling shenanigans like we had this gen to bring something sub 1080p to a proper resolution (perhaps 1920x800, as some devs seem to be doing). Alternatively, the difference could manifest in higher resolution dynamic shadows on the PS4, or more precision in some other effect.

I expect CoD Ghosts to be essentially identical between the two. They don't seem to be targetting an ambitious enough spec to really put the hurting on either system. Maybe ghosts 2 will see some differences.


FAKE EDIT-

I'll also add that I expect very few instances this gen of one version of a game being seriously poor compared to the other. I tihnk the similar architectures will be a huge win for single platform gamers being relatively safe to buy whatever version of the game they have the system for. I don't think we'll see many, if any, Bayonetta like scenarios where one platform is extremely superior.
 
I'm with everyone else. I think the first wave of games will be neck and neck or have minor differences in favor of PS4. But once the tools for both platforms mature, PS4 will begin to set itself apart from other consoles.
 
The difference in quality will widen as the generation progresses with the PS4 obviously having the upper hand. I don't think the gap will be remotely close to the 3:2 ratio the raw power stats suggest though.
 
It really just comes down to the tools available.

3rd party may look at development for x1 due to the shared kernel making portability theoretically easier.

it also looks as though ps4 and Xbox one are approaching their hardware in a completely different way.

ps4 is a very 'brute force' high theoretical performance machine.

Xbox one looks like a heavily optimized machine, with lower theoretical performance but little drop-off for real time performance.

I have concerns over the brute force method, because without proper tools optimization will be very tricky.

we still don't have the full picture though on either, but I'm really not expecting much of a difference if any. Neither machine is perfect, we just need to see which will equip developers better to take advantage of their methods and architecture.
 
Have either of these systems mentioned whether they have a built in Scalar? IE it does not cost any system resources to render an image at 1080P
 
Gaz_RB said:
I'd guess multiplat designers will design for the least powerful system ( XB1 by the looks of it), and PS4 first party stuff will look a couple notches better throughout the gen. Looking forward to seeing what Naughty Dog stretches out of the system though when it's all over.
Click to expand...

Things are different this gen. The architecture is so similar I expect that you will see differences in pretty much every game.

It's not like in the past where there were drastic differences in hardware. Since the PS4 just simply straight up offers more, it should be extremely easy to get more out of it over the xbone. It won't take a whole lot of extra effort and will most likely just be a part of the general development process.
 
Whipped Spartan said:
Wow. People really want the xbox to be bad. It's going be ok...PS3 had a better CPU, GPU and 7 SPU!!!!!
Click to expand...

PS3 did not have a better GPU. Xenos was actually a good bit better than the RSX was, which is why developers had to leverage the Cell significantly for rendering.

This is a very different scenario though, as both manufacturers have EXTREMELY similar designs. Far more so than in any previous generation.

This alone could raise the ceiling on multiplatform games. While they won't have a single fixed baseline to work to like a exclusive does, they will likely be able to leverage that similarity between the architectures to get more out of each than in previous generations.
 
WHOAguitarninja said:
PS3 did not have a better GPU. Xenos was actually a good bit better than the RSX was, which is why developers had to leverage the Cell significantly for rendering.

This is a very different scenario though, as both manufacturers have EXTREMELY similar designs. Far more so than in any previous generation.

This alone could raise the ceiling on multiplatform games. While they won't have a single fixed baseline to work to like a exclusive does, they will likely be able to leverage that similarity between the architectures to get more out of each than in previous generations.
Click to expand...

I agree 100% I was being sarcastic. Just so sick of people trying to play up hardware differences with these two systems. At least in prior gens there were specs that mattered that were different.

Games is all that matters. All this ram talk is silly.
 
you've been working overtime to try to temper expectations and there's no need for that. we know the ps4 is more powerful.
 
I think people should also consider the fact that with the third-party games like Battlefield 4 and Watch Dogs they are developing them not only for the next-gen consoles, but current-gen consoles, (the WiiU in Ubi's case) and PC. So if you take Watch Dogs, that's ports for PS4, Xbox One, PS3, 360, WiiU and PC. Granted, Ubi has like 5,000 employees or something, but I'm wondering if the overall performance of third-party games will be hampered by the sheer number of platforms they are releasing for. I could be wrong, but I imagine the One and PS4 launch third-party launch titles probably won't be optimized for either platform's strengths.
 
My thoughts are that any intelligent developer with an aim to develop for 2 platforms would look at his resources available and use the lowest common denominator as a reference point, much like current gen. My view is that PS4 has simply looked at the core gamer and reevaluated its specs accordingly. While the specs are impressive there indications there is little optimisation involved leaving the rest to the devs. MS on the other hand went for a broader appeal and decided 'most' people wouldn't be looking for the difference between MSAA and SSAA etc so used the budget instead to create optimizations such as ESRAM and move engines while giving them room to dedicate silicon to Audio and Kinect.

Both strategies have merit, both strategies have flaws.

In short devs will make their experiences as close as possible regardless of platform.
 
smerfy said:
3rd party may look at development for x1 due to the shared kernel making portability theoretically easier.
Click to expand...
Disagree with this. It's my understanding that the windows kernel is for OS level actions and that games run in a seperate OS, hence the need for the hypervisor (third OS) to communicate.

it also looks as though ps4 and Xbox one are approaching their hardware in a completely different way.

ps4 is a very 'brute force' high theoretical performance machine.

Xbox one looks like a heavily optimized machine, with lower theoretical performance but little drop-off for real time performance.

I have concerns over the brute force method, because without proper tools optimization will be very tricky.
Click to expand...

The Xbox's 'optimizations' are all attempts to overcome engineering tradeoffs made early on in the design process. They KNEW they needed 8gb of ram, but could not count on being able to use GDDR5. So they had to go to DDR3 and try and insert things to mitigate the performance tradeoffs made to accomodate their other OS level design goals.

Sony's approach is astonishingly simple, given their previous history. Give developers a big chunk of memory, a fast pipe to the memory, and a (relatively) powerful GPU. There isn't much they have to work around. Microsoft is in the unusual position of having the more complicated architecture this time.
 
GillianSeed79 said:
I think people should also consider the fact that with the third-party games like Battlefield 4 and Watch Dogs they are developing them not only for the next-gen consoles, but current-gen consoles, (the WiiU in Ubi's case) and PC. So if you take Watch Dogs, that's ports for PS4, Xbox One, PS3, 360, WiiU and PC. Granted, Ubi has like 5,000 employees or something, but I'm wondering if the overall performance of third-party games will be hampered by the sheer number of platforms they are releasing for. I could be wrong, but I imagine the One and PS4 launch third-party launch titles probably won't be optimized for either platform's strengths.
Click to expand...


Yep. That's why the first generation of multiplat games aren't really good indicator of what's to come. There are subtle hints, but you won't see truly amazing third party games, outside of a handful, until year 2 and 3.
 
I have a feeling the Xbox will see an advantage for multiplatform games at launch. Most developers would have developed for 4gb of ram at most on Ps4 while utilizing 8gb of ram for Xbox. Hopefully I am wrong and they are at least even because after the final dev kits are sent out I feel the ps4 versions will get noticeable improvements.
 
Launch titles? Multiplatform games will probably have no differences at all. I expect that to continue for a while. Maybe the odd game here and there a few years down will have PS4 looking a bit better, but that's about it.

You'll definitely see the difference in first party/exclusive titles though. But with multis, I doubt they will do much if any optimizations for one over the other. What incentive is there really to spend extra time and money to do it unless there are severe game play issues? Which won't occur with the architectures being so similar. You optimize for the lowest common denominator and be done with it.
 
Gaming Nostalgia said:
I have a feeling the Xbox will see an advantage for multiplatform games at launch. Most developers would have developed for 4gb of ram at most on Ps4 while utilizing 8gb of ram for Xbox. Hopefully I am wrong and they are at least even because after the final dev kits are sent out I feel the ps4 versions will get noticeable improvements.
Click to expand...

Plausible. But the GPU, and memory bandwidth on the PS4 would likely mitigate that.
 
Tenacious-V said:
Launch titles? Multiplatform games will probably have no differences at all. I expect that to continue for a while. Maybe the odd game here and there a few years down will have PS4 looking a bit better, but that's about it.

You'll definitely see the difference in first party/exclusive titles though. But with multis, I doubt they will do much if any optimizations for one over the other. What incentive is there really to spend extra time and money to do it unless there are severe game play issues? Which won't occur with the architectures being so similar. You optimize for the lowest common denominator and be done with it.
Click to expand...

You have to remember that both platforms have nearly identical architectures and therefore very little optimization is needed to improve one version over the other. This isn't cell vs xenon. This is AMD x86 apu vs better AMD x86 apu.
 
Gaming Nostalgia said:
I have a feeling the Xbox will see an advantage for multiplatform games at launch. Most developers would have developed for 4gb of ram at most on Ps4 while utilizing 8gb of ram for Xbox. Hopefully I am wrong and they are at least even because after the final dev kits are sent out I feel the ps4 versions will get noticeable improvements.
Click to expand...
Xbox One games don't get full access to all 8GB of RAM. IIRC 3GB is reserved for the OSes.
 
Launch titles and cross-gen titles wont have a stark contrast whatsoever I think.

Exclusive games like Infamous SS and KZ SF might show what's to come
 
What proof or sources state that the PS4 architecture is not as optimized as the XOne? That just sounds like a bunch of baloney.

On topic: I am not expecting much from the 1st batch of games since devs were making due with un-finalized hardware. It's the 2nd wave and on that we should start seeing what each system is capable of.
 
Gaming Nostalgia said:
I have a feeling the Xbox will see an advantage for multiplatform games at launch. Most developers would have developed for 4gb of ram at most on Ps4 while utilizing 8gb of ram for Xbox. Hopefully I am wrong and they are at least even because after the final dev kits are sent out I feel the ps4 versions will get noticeable improvements.
Click to expand...
How long can it possibly take to expand the RAM usage?

I don't know when they changed it, but KZ:SF used more than 4GB for the February showing. So however long they had, plus another nine months, I can't believe that's an issue.
 
I expect launch games to be technical messes on both to the point where I bet its not about which platform performs the best but which is less shit.

Just because devs have the launch deadline I bet we see poor framerates and sub 1080p on pretty much every game.
 
RibbedHero said:
The difference in quality will widen as the generation progresses with the PS4 obviously having the upper hand. I don't think the gap will be remotely close to the 3:2 ratio the raw power stats suggest though.
Click to expand...
Higher quality visuals almost always seem to be correlated with increased dev costs.

However, I think the differences should be quite obvious with the first party studios.

Launch titles will be practically the same. I doubt there will be any obvious differences between the two consoles.
 
I2amza said:
What proof or sources state that the PS4 architecture is not as optimized as the XOne? That just sounds like a bunch of baloney.

On topic: I am not expecting much from the 1st batch of games since devs were making due with un-finalized hardware. It's the 2nd wave and on that we should start seeing what each system is capable of.
Click to expand...

There are none. All signs point to the PS4 architecture as being the "easier" of the two to develop for. That said, I would imagine both are fairly easy for any competent development team.
 
Gaming Nostalgia said:
I have a feeling the Xbox will see an advantage for multiplatform games at launch. Most developers would have developed for 4gb of ram at most on Ps4 while utilizing 8gb of ram for Xbox. Hopefully I am wrong and they are at least even because after the final dev kits are sent out I feel the ps4 versions will get noticeable improvements.
Click to expand...

Xbone only allow 5GB of Ram for gaming, Devs still have 6 months to optimize their games for the rumored 7GB available of the PS4.
 
smerfy said:
ps4 is a very 'brute force' high theoretical performance machine.

Xbox one looks like a heavily optimized machine, with lower theoretical performance but little drop-off for real time performance.

I have concerns over the brute force method, because without proper tools optimization will be very tricky.
Click to expand...

What in the world gave you this idea? It's 100% false.
 
smerfy said:
It really just comes down to the tools available.

3rd party may look at development for x1 due to the shared kernel making portability theoretically easier.

it also looks as though ps4 and Xbox one are approaching their hardware in a completely different way.

ps4 is a very 'brute force' high theoretical performance machine.

Xbox one looks like a heavily optimized machine, with lower theoretical performance but little drop-off for real time performance.

I have concerns over the brute force method, because without proper tools optimization will be very tricky.

we still don't have the full picture though on either, but I'm really not expecting much of a difference if any. Neither machine is perfect, we just need to see which will equip developers better to take advantage of their methods and architecture.
Click to expand...

Reiko is that you?
 
smerfy said:
It really just comes down to the tools available.

3rd party may look at development for x1 due to the shared kernel making portability theoretically easier.

it also looks as though ps4 and Xbox one are approaching their hardware in a completely different way.

ps4 is a very 'brute force' high theoretical performance machine.

Xbox one looks like a heavily optimized machine, with lower theoretical performance but little drop-off for real time performance.

I have concerns over the brute force method, because without proper tools optimization will be very tricky.

we still don't have the full picture though on either, but I'm really not expecting much of a difference if any. Neither machine is perfect, we just need to see which will equip developers better to take advantage of their methods and architecture.
Click to expand...

timetostopposting.gif
 
smerfy said:
It really just comes down to the tools available.

3rd party may look at development for x1 due to the shared kernel making portability theoretically easier.

it also looks as though ps4 and Xbox one are approaching their hardware in a completely different way.

ps4 is a very 'brute force' high theoretical performance machine.

Xbox one looks like a heavily optimized machine, with lower theoretical performance but little drop-off for real time performance.

I have concerns over the brute force method, because without proper tools optimization will be very tricky.

we still don't have the full picture though on either, but I'm really not expecting much of a difference if any. Neither machine is perfect, we just need to see which will equip developers better to take advantage of their methods and architecture.
Click to expand...
I am getting dejá vu here...
 
qa_engineer said:
There are none. All signs point to the PS4 architecture as being the "easier" of the two to develop for. That said, I would imagine both are fairly easy for any competent development team.
Click to expand...

What makes the PS4 easier to develop for other than esRAM on XBOne?
I haven't heard about anything other than that.
 
COD + Digital Foundry in December should be very interesting. Titanfall on ps4 after a year VERY interesting.
 
angelic said:
COD + Digital Foundry in December should be very interesting. Titanfall on ps4 after a year VERY interesting.
Click to expand...
COD + Digital Foundry? LOL

There is nothing remarkable about COD and I'm sure it will run exactly the same on both consoles with the exact same visual appearance.
 
WHOAguitarninja said:
Thanks for the consolidated roadmap. Hadn't seen it before.

Based on the late term ram explosion, most PS4 launch engines will probably be already built to leverage asset streaming in a way that will now be far less necessary. Given how late the extra ram came, I imagine it is too late for launch titles to seriously rework their asset loading/unloading pipeline. That alone will, i imagine, incur a significant performance impact that will be heavily mitigated once devs are able to respin their engines a bit for their next game. I think this will be most heavily felt in open world games where streaming content in and moving other things out of memory caused noticeable stuttering in many games. It'll probably be less significant in linear structured games.

This may give some multiplatform games such as Watch dogs more stable framerates on the Xbox, though I would expect to see peak framerates be higher on PS4.

I think that we might see some launch titles such as Battlefield 4 hit a slightly reduced resolution on the Xbox one thanks to the PS4's higher GPU performance. I believe it was Durante (could be wrong on this) who made the comment awhile ago that the PS4's GPU strength is almost a perfect candidate for a resolution bump over the Xbox. We may see PS4 in native 1080p with the xbox using some sort of scaling shenanigans like we had this gen to bring something sub 1080p to a proper resolution (perhaps 1920x800, as some devs seem to be doing). Alternatively, the difference could manifest in higher resolution dynamic shadows on the PS4, or more precision in some other effect.

I expect CoD Ghosts to be essentially identical between the two. They don't seem to be targetting an ambitious enough spec to really put the hurting on either system. Maybe ghosts 2 will see some differences.


FAKE EDIT-

I'll also add that I expect very few instances this gen of one version of a game being seriously poor compared to the other. I tihnk the similar architectures will be a huge win for single platform gamers being relatively safe to buy whatever version of the game they have the system for. I don't think we'll see many, if any, Bayonetta like scenarios where one platform is extremely superior.
Click to expand...

I agree with this summary. Might be too late in the game to completely re-work things for the new hardware, though the next batch of titles shouldn't have the same issues.
 
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