Support NeoGAF

[Killer Sakoman]

I think the major Capcom games still sell well on Xbox. Japanese developers are also using a lot of western engines (more specifically Unreal) that help make cross-platform development easier and in turn less expensive. Also, I'm going to assume, that the business people at these companies are going to rather get the extra revenue then let developers follow their vision. Also, like the dev mentions, they can probably work around these scenarios that are optimal for the PS5's SSD. It can be as simple as just loading lower res or quality textures (temporarily) on the Xbox for a slightly less immersive experience. Yes there would be a tiny bit of extra work, but software development in general you might have to spend a bit of extra time on one platform over another because of different language, runtime, APIs or tools available. Some devs dropped the PS3 in favor of 360 only not because of a little extra work, but because they had to do a lot of extra work.

Many times following vision brings extra revenue, but yes I agree that 3rd party publishers will find away to work around xsx limitations. However, if ps5 development isuch easier and cheaper then expect earlier releases and some exclusives ( similar to PS360 era where x360 got some exclusives and earlier releases because of ease of development)

 

[D.Final]

Many times following vision brings extra revenue, but yes I agree that 3rd party publishers will find away to work around xsx limitations. However, if ps5 development isuch easier and cheaper then expect earlier releases and some exclusives ( similar to PS360 era where x360 got some exclusives and earlier releases because of ease of development)

Yeah..

 

[jigglet]

Loading is really important to me, enough to sway me towards Sony, but I'm yet to be convinced there will be any tangible differences in third party titles as they might develop for the lowest common denominator. I'm going to wait a few months post-launch to see the reality of it. I really want Halo Infinite though.

 

[D.Final]

Loading is really important to me, enough to sway me towards Sony, but I'm yet to be convinced there will be any tangible differences in third party titles as they might develop for the lowest common denominator. I'm going to wait a few months post-launch to see the reality of it. I really want Halo Infinite though.

The third party difference

 

[Hostile_18]

Any differences will be marginal. Like really marginal for both sides.

The idea the X Box will have elevators sounds like a fan boy comment to get people wound up .

 

[BRZBlue]

Its worth noting, if third parties are going to be shifting to using no LODs like UE5, then PS5 has a definite advantage, as its possible to stream more high quality assets faster, and all the developer would have to do is just set the detail level at the point where the hardware can load it fast enough.

Basically meaning, if it takes x amount of time to load a tank, and ps5 loads the tank faster, they could just crank up the detail level to match the load time.

Lots of game assets are created at much greater fidelity than what actually goes into the game itself, and get downscaled. If the LOD creation is in engine now or per pixel render, like UE5 (and I think a lot of third parties are going there for the future development benefits) you'd end up with third party games where the PS5 might have higher quality textures or models, simply because its capable of loading those assets into the game at higher quality without affecting game play performance, and it would take almost no extra work.

Heck, any game built in UE5 should see better assets on PS5 if per pixel render is being used, since PS5 can just... load a higher quality version in at the same speed the XSX can.

 

[Xplainin]

Why do you think it won’t keep up?

PS5 literal streams every second of content as it happens, that’s how they’ve removed load times.

It’s all explained in the road to PS5.

Maths.
If the RAM only holds 1 second of gameplay, using 13.5gbs of data for games, then the SSD is going to need to put out 13.5gb of data every second.
It cant put out data at that rate.

 

[BRZBlue]

Maths.
If the RAM only holds 1 second of gameplay, using 13.5gbs of data for games, then the SSD is going to need to put out 13.5gb of data every second.
It cant put out data at that rate.

You're assuming everything in RAM is replaced every second.

If you have the player model and textures loaded into RAM, you don't need to load that into memory every second, it's already resident in RAM. Same goes for geometry, ground textures, HUD, etc.

 

[cormack12]

Any differences will be marginal. Like really marginal for both sides.

The idea the X Box will have elevators sounds like a fan boy comment to get people wound up .

Pretty much, those elevators/crawlspaces etc. are not taken out of games at the moment for other platforms. So we'll all be watching them if that's the case. Plus there's actual artisitic design to consider. Instant transitions are very jarring. Like a direct cut to a scene. There are times still (Fallen Order) where you will want a form of skipped travel without motion. Someone like Spiderman cans wing back to the level in seconds yeah, but the Jedi would need to walk his ass back all the way. So you;d want to fast travel to the start of the level (maybe a teleporter). Clicking 'Beam me up' and then you're suddenly there will be jarring. Like a badly cut movie. There will still be fade transitions for direction etc, and honestly all I'm expecting is that there may be a slightly longer linger to the transition on the XsX, maybe 0.5 to a 1 second. A 'fade to black' for example.

First party next gen titles will be much different though for Sony, as their entire systems can be built around the tech, and added to the world. As an example, Aloy could be on a horse/machine riding and the distance skip could be seen as a location rebuild as she is riding. Basically what you see in the Forza seasons trailer but in real time (either for time or location). You could basically tell the story of Demon Souls while the knight is stood there and the world is aging and decaying in real time over hundreds of years in the 2/3 minute opening, leaving you standing there ready to start the adventure.




This is all just speculation though but it's exciting from all points of view.

 

[phil_t98]

Pretty much, those elevators/crawlspaces etc. are not taken out of games at the moment for other platforms. So we'll all be watching them if that's the case. Plus there's actual artisitic design to consider. Instant transitions are very jarring. Like a direct cut to a scene. There are times still (Fallen Order) where you will want a form of skipped travel without motion. Someone like Spiderman cans wing back to the level in seconds yeah, but the Jedi would need to walk his ass back all the way. So you;d want to fast travel to the start of the level (maybe a teleporter). Clicking 'Beam me up' and then you're suddenly there will be jarring. Like a badly cut movie. There will still be fade transitions for direction etc, and honestly all I'm expecting is that there may be a slightly longer linger to the transition on the XsX, maybe 0.5 to a 1 second. A 'fade to black' for example.

First party next gen titles will be much different though for Sony, as their entire systems can be built around the tech, and added to the world. As an example, Aloy could be on a horse/machine riding and the distance skip could be seen as a location rebuild as she is riding. Basically what you see in the Forza seasons trailer but in real time (either for time or location). You could basically tell the story of Demon Souls while the knight is stood there and the world is aging and decaying in real time over hundreds of years in the 2/3 minute opening, leaving you standing there ready to start the adventure.




This is all just speculation though but it's exciting from all points of view.

forgot how epic that trailer was

 

[azertydu91]

Maths.
If the RAM only holds 1 second of gameplay, using 13.5gbs of data for games, then the SSD is going to need to put out 13.5gb of data every second.
It cant put out data at that rate.

Except that you don't have to flush all the RAM every second.Which is true for both consoles unless you are teleporting to a different environment every second with a different character some can stay in the ram like character UI and a lot of parts of the surroundings.

So you mostly need to load what's new and flush what you can no longer see.

I just hope it won cause latency but when you look at how Horizon Zero Dawn renders the environments that your camera sees and a few meters more around it I'm hopeful.But in this case it is proceduraly generated I believe.

 

[MadViking]

How will devs address the Sony shortcomings?

Why is everyone trying to make this a one way street?

Just typical spinning by certain fans, especially before launch of next generation. Remember when 360 was Xbox 1.5 and Cell was going to be a paradigm shift?

 

[Self]

Remember when ... Cell was going to be a paradigm shift?

It was. It helped fighting Alzheimer’s disease and stuff. What more do you want from a freaking chip!?

 

[oldergamer]

It was. It helped fighting Alzheimer’s disease and stuff. What more do you want from a freaking chip!?

it wasn't a game changer. if it really helped fight anything, it would still be used or at least used in more products.

 

[Self]

/s

 

[psorcerer]

Ok but at 6gb per second the SSD will burn through that in no time.

It's not sequential.
You load and re-load the same assets multiple times.
Faster SSD means that working set will be either smaller or have 2x more data.
If a game for XBSX is 50GB then PS5 can run 100GB game at the same speed.
I.e. 2x bigger textures, and models.

 

[phil_t98]

It's not sequential.
You load and re-load the same assets multiple times.
Faster SSD means that working set will be either smaller or have 2x more data.
If a game for XBSX is 50GB then PS5 can run 100GB game at the same speed.
I.e. 2x bigger textures, and models.

Yeah but games are going to be around the same size as this gen according to what people have been saying so how much data will be needed for a scene in like a 12 hour game at a time. I get the PS5 gonna be super fast at streaming but hope much will be needed

 

[Knitted Knight]

If there is a big sale number disparity (and I'm not liking what I'm hearing from Phill in that regard), people will be surprised how many devs actually fall in "love" with PS5 hardware and say fuck it to the competition - specially if it's a genre that doesn't sell well on Xbox. Sales numbers are King. The XSX and/or Lockhart combo better sellout within the year like it's expected of the PS5... otherwise people thinking devs will simply "ignore" that SSD will be in for a rude awakening.

 

[JustP_Gaming]

I would say more like DirectMl is MSFT secret weapon

You could be right!

 

[yurinka]

Well, multiplatform devs always designed their games with the minimum common denominator in mind. In this case, between platforms regarding SSD they will design considering that Series X speed is half of the PS5 one. Same goes with GPU speed, they will use Series X as minimum common denominator for GPU tasks where no CUs or just a few of them are used because its GPU has lower frequency than the PS5 one. And will use PS5 as minimum common denominator for tasks where all CUs are used because it has less CUs. And so on.

But in any case, other than with the SSD and I/O solution, performance difference between consoles is less than the half we saw last gen, so the results will be pretty close in both consoles.

 

[Clintizzle]

Yeah but games are going to be around the same size as this gen according to what people have been saying so how much data will be needed for a scene in like a 12 hour game at a time. I get the PS5 gonna be super fast at streaming but hope much will be needed

Friend I just want to be honest with ya. You are not going to get your answers about PS5 hardware from NeoGaf. The users here have literally no idea but have the most confidence I have ever seen when defending things they are passionate about.

I've watched Cerny's talk and its actually pretty amazing how he thinks the PS5 games are going to be designed.

However, the first thought I had after finishing the video was are 3rd Party Devs even going to bother optimizing? The answer may well be yes but I don't think we'll see the SSD advantage untill we see a proper game running.

Again, NeoGaf is not going to give you the answers. People here are really good at confusing their emotions for facts.

 

[phil_t98]

Friend I just want to be honest with ya. You are not going to get your answers about PS5 hardware from NeoGaf. The users here have literally no idea but have the most confidence I have ever seen when defending things they are passionate about.

I've watched Cerny's talk and its actually pretty amazing how he thinks the PS5 games are going to be designed.

However, the first thought I had after finishing the video was are 3rd Party Devs even going to bother optimizing? The answer may well be yes but I don't think we'll see the SSD advantage untill we see a proper game running.

Again, NeoGaf is not going to give you the answers. People here are really good at confusing their emotions for facts.

I own both PS4 and xbox, so am not warrioring I just curious because i cant see scenes in games being a full 6gb at a time. I think if that’s the case game sizes are gonna be massive next gen but according to what people on here are saying they gonna be about the same. Nobody seems to be able to give a good answer to it

 

[psorcerer]

I own both PS4 and xbox, so am not warrioring I just curious because i cant see scenes in games being a full 6gb at a time. I think if that’s the case game sizes are gonna be massive next gen but according to what people on here are saying they gonna be about the same. Nobody seems to be able to give a good answer to it

This gen games were bigger than needed because of:
1. Duplication. Any big game was duplicating stuff a lot. I would guess ballpark of at least 30% of redundant assets.
2. Compression. Decompression was expensive (need to waste CPU cycles).
Both of these may contribute to the games being at least 1.5x smaller for exactly the same IQ.

 

[phil_t98]

This gen games were bigger than needed because of:
1. Duplication. Any big game was duplicating stuff a lot. I would guess ballpark of at least 30% of redundant assets.
2. Compression. Decompression was expensive (need to waste CPU cycles).
Both of these may contribute to the games being at least 1.5x smaller for exactly the same IQ.

yeah I heard that to. so if games maybe smaller how much data per average will be needed per scene, lets say Witcher 3 as an example. I know that the Level of detail will stretch out much much further it will prob have ray tracing to and higher quality of textures but how much data would something like that be. I know PS5 will fill the memory and GPU quicker

 

[Xplainin]

You're assuming everything in RAM is replaced every second.

If you have the player model and textures loaded into RAM, you don't need to load that into memory every second, it's already resident in RAM. Same goes for geometry, ground textures, HUD, etc.

That's exactly the point I made. I said that the majority of data in the RAM is reused, and maybe only 10% is discarded each second. Others have said that the PS5 will stream from the SSD on the fly.
Thats obviously not true.
So the question I posed was exactly how much data is going to be needed to be replaced in the RAM each second for a typical game. We still dont have an answer for this question.

 

[-Arcadia-]

Microsoft’s William Stillwell, who currently manages the company’s Mixed Reality program

Not anymore. Lol.

I’m surprised at how candid some people are. You don’t have free speech about matters your employer is involved in, unless you’re anonymous. Hopefully, the reaming he receives from PR and his boss isn’t too bad.

 

[SirTerry-T]

No, but per model we are also talking about creating more texture layers to add back the detail you lost from the million polys model to the decimated one and I have heard rarely people working with these tools taking the automatically generated output as is and not cleaning it up/checking/and correcting manually afterwards, but I guess it depends on who you ask, and that is per model (hence why both the developer and the Epic artist both made a point about it when showing the demo video).

A good decimation tool, such as the one Epic themselves created for ZBrush will do a very good job of optimising a multi million poly object down into something more reasonable but that tool wouldn't really lend itself to anything other than static meshes. A good character modeller, for example will create a base model that can be sub-divided up for sculpting work, that has all the rings and loops in place for effective skinning and for ease of LOD creation. I've rarely found the LOD process a huge task in my time as a character artist to be honest. I think a lot of the savings in Dev time is that are being quoted will be more on the environment art and code side.

 

[AlexxKidd]

Not anymore. Lol.

I’m surprised at how candid some people are. You don’t have free speech about matters your employer is involved in, unless you’re anonymous. Hopefully, the reaming he receives from PR and his boss isn’t too bad.

To be fair he's been a PR machine for the XBSX and has said a lot of positive things, it's just that when he says things like this people take notice more because no one cares about a Microsoft employee speaking about how good a Microsoft product is.

 

[psorcerer]

yeah I heard that to. so if games maybe smaller how much data per average will be needed per scene, lets say Witcher 3 as an example. I know that the Level of detail will stretch out much much further it will prob have ray tracing to and higher quality of textures but how much data would something like that be. I know PS5 will fill the memory and GPU quicker

Witcher 3 HD Reworked is 7GB in size.
Mostly 2x textures of the vanilla.

 

[AGRacing]

I'm disappointed in you guys. 3 pages and still not one meme of a mall elevator in the middle of red dead redemption or something... This stuff isn't going to make itself guys.

 

[Klart]

They could give it that special MS spin.

"Elevators On Xbox Only"

 

[Vawn]

They will just not use the full speed of the PS5 SSD. That's the solution that costs the least and that's how businesses work.

So basically the Xbox Series X is holding back next-gen games.

 

[AlexxKidd]

I'm disappointed in you guys. 3 pages and still not one meme of a mall elevator in the middle of red dead redemption or something... This stuff isn't going to make itself guys.

 

[eastwood333]

Thomas Mauler(head of Moon Studios) just confirmed what I thought. The difference in multiplats between PS5/XSX in terms of SSD will come down to mere seconds for loading times.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Bundle the console with free games

 

[Naddy]

So basically the Xbox Series X is holding back next-gen games.

This is like saying Xbox 360 is hold back the industry, because it didn't have PS3 CELL, or:

PS5 is holding back games, where you need 12 TFLOPs, or at least 3.8 GHz, or 560 GB/s memory bandwidth. Lol.

Again, everything that is possible on PS5, is also possible on XSX. It's beyond ridiculous to say that - only because of the PS5 SSD/IO - you can create that can't be on XSX.

You guys are acting like XSX is shipping with an HDD lol

 

[Clear]

Its more about which platform the lead SKU is targeting, which is why Sony's install-base advantage, and charm-offensive on the dev community is so significant.

 

[Naddy]

Its more about which platform the lead SKU is targeting, which is why Sony's install-base advantage, and charm-offensive on the dev community is so significant.

PC is and will always be lead platform. Especially when a new generation arrives, the install base of both consoles will be very low at the beginning:

PC is still developers' favorite gaming platform, and its lead is growing

A Game Developers Conference survey asked nearly 4,000 developers about their preferred gaming platform.

www.pcgamer.com

 

[eastwood333]

So basically the Xbox Series X is holding back next-gen games.

With nearly a 2 TF advantage, I don't think so. Just like Matt has said, both have pros and cons. However, XSX is more powerful in MANY WAYS vs PS5, and can do things PS5 CAN"T

XSX will have better resolution,framerates,Ray Tracing etc... that's the opposite of " holding back" lol

 

[Ascend]

It's not sequential.
You load and re-load the same assets multiple times.
Faster SSD means that working set will be either smaller or have 2x more data.
If a game for XBSX is 50GB then PS5 can run 100GB game at the same speed.
I.e. 2x bigger textures, and models.

This is true for the SSD speeds.
It should be noted that using 100GB instead of 50GB is only viable/relevant/practical if the GPU can handle it. Whatever you transferred still needs to be processed by the GPU after all.

 

[Haemi]

Developers: "Because of the power of the PS5s SSD, buildings in the PS5 version of our game don't need to be as high as in the XBox version."

PS5: "Rescue the hostages located on the 2nd floor!"
XBox: "Rescue the hostages located on the 10th floor!"

 

[psorcerer]

It should be noted that using 100GB instead of 50GB is only viable/relevant/practical if the GPU can handle it. Whatever you transferred still needs to be processed by the GPU after all.

In most cases (if it fits in RAM) the difference in performance will be negligible.
Unless you go into very small triangle territory (>4x4 or even subpixel) but then faster clock will reign over wider chip (it will be slow though).

 

[IntentionalPun]

This guy is a glorified Project Manager... (ms just gussies up the position and calls them program manager, and their ass is on the line for products failing more than a typical PMs would)

I've worked with some good PMs in my day, but what they aren't is ambassadors of technology. They focus on features/business value, spend their time in meetings, making presentations, etc.

Not the person you want to be asking about how SSD I/O is going to effect next-gen game development.

 

[eastwood333]

This guy is a glorified Project Manager... (ms just gussies up the position and calls them program manager, and their ass is on the line for products failing more than a typical PMs would)

I've worked with some good PMs in my day, but what they aren't is ambassadors of technology. They focus on features/business value, spend their time in meetings, making presentations, etc.

Not the person you want to be asking about how SSD I/O is going to effect next-gen game development.

Because he doesn't discuss tech with his team like at all...am I right? What he said is pretty common sense stuff. When devs make games that have to run on multiple platforms, it's not really hard to understand.

 

[Clear]

PC is and will always be lead platform. Especially when a new generation arrives, the install base of both consoles will be very low at the beginning:

PC is still developers' favorite gaming platform, and its lead is growing

A Game Developers Conference survey asked nearly 4,000 developers about their preferred gaming platform.

www.pcgamer.com

Not really. Look there's no doubting the popularity and accessibility of PC as a platform, but the truth is that there is no singular "PC". Its an architecture that covers a massive spread of specs and configurations, so its hard to craft a specific vision around. Which is why console specs represent the baseline to be built around.

The reality is that even conservatively targetting for specs comparable with next-gen console hardware its going to be setting the bar way too high for millions of PC's out there, so its not like the capabilities of the SSD are the only limiting factor. How common are octa-core cpu's for example?

 

[AlexxKidd]

PC is and will always be lead platform. Especially when a new generation arrives, the install base of both consoles will be very low at the beginning:

PC is still developers' favorite gaming platform, and its lead is growing

A Game Developers Conference survey asked nearly 4,000 developers about their preferred gaming platform.

www.pcgamer.com

You keep telling yourself that.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

So there will be a difference? That's a more important question.

Upto now I am assuming both will be similarly capable. None will render at native 4k so tera flops advantage is moot. And xbox SSD is fast enough to keep up in real world scenario.

 

[SLB1904]

They will just not use the full speed of the PS5 SSD. That's the solution that costs the least and that's how businesses work.

or you will see more ps5 exclusives.

 

[eastwood333]

So there will be a difference? That's a more important question.

Upto now I am assuming both will be similarly capable. None will render at native 4k so tera flops advantage is moot. And xbox SSD is fast enough to keep up in real world scenario.

For 3'rd parties, mere second differences in loading times to the PS5 advantage, while XSX should have better resolution,framerates,Ray Tracing etc..

Take your pick

 

[IntentionalPun]

Because he doesn't discuss tech with his team like at all...am I right? What he said is pretty common sense stuff. When devs make games that have to run on multiple platforms, it's not really hard to understand.

The guy is not a part of the Xbox team, hasn't been for some time.. and when he was he was in charge of the Backwards Compatability program.

So no this guy has not discussed next-gen I/O speeds with his Hololens project team lol

And no it is not common sense that devs will design around insanely fast I/O speeds 100 x's faster than last gen all the time. Very few games are likely to actually require that level of I/O for anything. We'll mostly be getting better load times on PS5 and the same damn games.. that's common sense for a number of reasons.

Beyond that games that do push that far are probably far more likely to lower detail on the lesser machine than design a fucking elevator into one version of a game lol