Do you work for Xbox Game Studios? if so, can you let us know which approach they're going with? Are they going to build Halo Infinite for PC at its finest look, then have Xbox Series X be a close 2nd, followed by Xbox One X and so on with a possible rework of assets to accommodate Xbox One? or are they building an engine that will scale down to Xbox One instead making Infinite on PC look like a polished Xbox One title in higher resolution?
Regular non-armchair developers are curious, please let us know.
Honest question but what, exactly, do you think gaming has been doing for, well, ever?
There are certain things you can’t just downscale and be ok with. If your game is built around SSD tech for loading assets on the fly, a bog standard HDD isn’t going to cut it. In these cases you simply need to rethink how it will work, something that’s been done since day dot.
Most things can be adjusted with no real loss of anything other than quality. Texture mips can be downscaled, shaders can be run at lower samples, shadows dialled back or disabled etc You can run in lower resolution. Those are bog standard things. When it comes to processor intensive tasks, these can also be adjusted just as easily. AI can be disabled or toned down with reduced counts, animation blending and all forth can be cut back over certain distance, and extra geo can be added to block vis in certain areas without much work. Physics intensive objects usually have no bearing on what’s going on and can be culled completely even.
Is it extra work? Yeah, it is. But it also has no bearing on your highest quality.
I can’t give specific examples because that means talking about specific cases, so for example the optimisations you would make to a game like GTA is totally different to Forza, or Gears.
But Ive been optimising media to work in various hardware for 20 odd years near enough. it’s not difficult, it’s actually easy. It just requires extra work, and sometimes forward thinking. But you absolutely can make a next gen, utterly drop dead looking and playing game work on a potato. The question isn’t can you, it’s how much are you prepared to sacrifice of the vision to make it work.
I think some games that are SX but also 1X , I think they will surprise some people. You can do a LOT.
but even then, this is year one. And I’m sorry but at no point in time, ever, in the history of consoles, has a game ever come out that maxed the potential of the console that quick. Games willbe made the exact same way they always have, at least for the first year or so. This is for BOTH consoles.
So when people are being wowed at how good the PS5 exclusives look, remember to ask yourself what is being done that couldn’t be done on older hardware at reduced fidelity? I’ve spent many, many years writing materials and materials of multiple stages and quality configurations, as well as multiple lods and mips. I’ve done a lot over the years, and trust me, it can be done.