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WIRED - Mark Cerny - How the PS5 was made

kyliethicc

Member


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Watching now.

Interesting that they are putting this out, I wonder what motivated them to do so.
Imo its just more general marketing and awareness.

The customisations they do with these consoles seem to be quality of life improvement and more practical improvements (BC, PSVR2) and not the secret sauce Which have some radical performance improvements.
 
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Seem's like a bite sized and revised version of the Road to PS5.

It's also interesting to note how Mark Cerny constantly stressed that the PS5's hardware specifications were born from the needs of game developers, especially Tim Sweeney who heavily pushed for an SSD implementation.

Also curious timing from Sony to release this now, hopefully this opens the door to more talks and interviews focused on in-depth discussions surrounding the development of the PS5. Similar to what we had with the PS4.

EDIT: Also might have just been me but it felt like he was deliberately holding back on discussing the technical details of the GPU.
 
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I could listen to Mark talk all day. I love how informative this was. PLEASE GIVE US MORE!

In saying that, my favourite pieces of PS5 so far has to be Dualsense and 3d audio. I know people are focused on the TF numbers, but there is much more to PS5 that, if focusing on TF, you'll be completely blind to.
 
Seem's like a bite sized and revised version of the Road to PS5.

It's also interesting to note how Mark Cerny constantly stressed that the PS5's hardware specifications were born from the needs of game developers, especially Tim Sweeney who heavily pushed for an SSD implementation.

Also curious timing from Sony to release this now, hopefully this opens the door to more talks and interviews focused on in-depth discussions surrounding the development of the PS5. Similar to what we had with the PS4.

EDIT: Also might have just been me but it felt like he was deliberately holding back on discussing the technical details of the GPU.

I've always had a sneaky suspicion since the reveal of the specs that Sony understimated Microsoft when it came to the GPU & CPU.

They probably wanted to release a slightly lower clocked CPU and less teraflops GPU.

The thing is... I don't think it would have really mattered. Sony would still continue to dominate but Microsoft would definitely begin to get much closer to Sony than they did last gen.

Either way and from what I've seen, I don't think people would mind paying more $$$ for a better specs console ( PS5 Pro in 2023?)
 
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And on the first day Mark said "let there be Playstation 5" and there was Playstation 5. And Mark saw that Playstation 5 was good and he separated the Playstation 5 from the darkness.
 
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I've always had a sneaky suspicion since the reveal of the specs that Sony understimated Microsoft when it came to the GPU & CPU.

They probably wanted to release a slightly lower clocked CPU and less teraflops GPU.

The thing is... I don't think it would have really mattered. Sony would still continue to dominate but Microsoft would definitely begin to get much closer to Sony than they did last gen.

Either way and from what I've seen, I don't think people would mind paying more $$$ for a better specs console ( PS5 Pro in 2023?)
I'd gladly pay far more for a PS5 Pro. Problem is, i'm not sure how much of the market I represent.
 
I like how he mentioned the haptic feedback in Ghost of Tsushima PS5.

It's such a surreal feeling when walking over different surfaces especially the rocks/stones and wooden bridges. I was actually blown away.
 
I've always had a sneaky suspicion since the reveal of the specs that Sony understimated Microsoft when it came to the GPU & CPU.
What is with this stupid take? I thought these would die down once the consoles were actually released.

"Mark Cerny saw the power of the Xbox and overclocked the ps5 to its limits"

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Cerny is a genius, yes, and the PS5 a greatly designed piece of hardware...But why are we still discussing the genesis of the system 12 months into this generation?
 
Sounds more like an ad than a behind the scenes. I was hoping for more anectodes and details on their brainstorming sessions. This is basically Road to PS5 in summary form.
 
I've always had a sneaky suspicion since the reveal of the specs that Sony understimated Microsoft when it came to the GPU & CPU.
I get the opposite impression. MS went with 4 and 12 tflops as a sandwich strategy thinking the PS5 was going to be 8 tflops and $399.
 
Maybe they were.
On RDNA 2.0? Nah. They shouldve known what AMD was targeting with RDNA 2.0. The 32 CU 6600xt hits up to 2.75 Ghz. They targeted 2.2 on purpose to fit it into the console thermal budget. This thing pulls just as many watts as the PS3 and similar to the XSX so it's not like they went super saiyan trying to match XSX in a desperate hail marry attempt.

MS got wind of the gonzalo tests which had the PS5 at 1.8 ghz back in 2018, but they didnt realize sony was using RDNA 1.0 chips at the time. Panello admitted that he thought Sony would go for $399 when they decided on the sandwich strategy. I wouldnt be surprised if they thought sony was launching in 2019 with a RDNA 1.0 card. Thats probably why so many MS insiders were convinced the PS5 didnt have ray tracing even after Cerny announced it. Alex kept going on about audio only ray tracing even after Cerny said there was RT hardware in the PS5 GPU.

All these guys talk to each other and they all seemed to think Sony was going with an 1.8 GHz 8 tflops GPU based on those gonzalo tests. They built their entire strategy around it, but it seems Sony knew about the lower TDP of RDNA 2.0 cards and planned ahead.

Dedicated 3D Audio unit in main custom chip. Tempest 3D Audio.
Playing CoD right now and I am just not feeling the 3d audio. I loved it in returnal but almost no one is using it to its fullest potential. I dont recall Ratchet or RE8 being as effective either. Maybe ive just forgotten but i supposed that just means it wasnt too memorable.

I appreciate the thought behind it, but dont really care for something that will only be fully utilized by a few devs.
 
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I disagree that ray tracing is a third era, but it's nice to see him reiterate that the 2d/3d jump was a huge and defining moment for games. For that reason, I can't view PS1/N64 as vintage.
 
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