Marty Chinn
Member
It's still fragmentation no matter how you dress it up to a developer.
PS4K information (~2x GPU power w/ clock+, new CPU, price, tent. Q1 2017)
- Thread starter OsirisBlack
- Start date
It's still fragmentation no matter how you dress it up to a developer.
Even if you can release the same code for both? Ps4 games will work on ps4k, right? So why not just make ps4 games? Frag solved.
Marty Chinn
Member
Reread what I said. You're talking short term; I'm talking long term if we move away from the concept of generations, where a PlayStation 5 thrown into the mix is no longer a generational leap like we're used to.
Hype!
More news is welcome.
Sony sure as hell won't be saying shit till E3 unfortunately, possibly even later :/
What's fragmented? not the user base because every game is going to play on the PS4 & PS4K.
where is the fragmentation?
Does it matter to a dev if I play a game on my laptop vs playing it on my desktop? does it matter to him if the laptop is 1080P while the desktop can play the game at 1440 x 2560?
How is this fragmented? it's the same game but now there is hardware that can render it at a higher resolution.
boredandlazy
Member
All those people who've jumped to PC won't be able to play the PS4 only games any more!
Marty Chinn
Member
Again, you're thinking short term when only 2 levels of performance exist. I'm talking about when there are more than 4 targets that exist if we move away from generations. In other words, PS4, PS4.5, PS5, PS5.5, PS6. Which group of users do you target? Which platforms do you leave behind? Which platforms do you not really exploit? That's fragmentation to a developer. From a developer's standpoint it doesn't matter if you play a game on your desktop or laptop, but it does matter which GPU you have. Do you develop a game only a 980 can run? Of course not because very few people can play that.
CosmicQueso
Member
Are you a developer? Because from what I understand, this isn't the case at all. Like, at all. At all. In fact, just the sense of awe I have for how off base you have been this whole day is bordering on the colossal.
This is a silly argument because it's already like that when a dev is making games for PS3 & PS4 at some point they are going to move on from PS3. so how are you trying to use that as a argument against PS4K?
Marty Chinn
Member
Yes, I am a developer. Primarily console development. Also, I supported my claims on the previous topic and you never acknowledged or came back to it. That info combined with first hand experience at the time fits with what happened, not this so called reasoning that the Wii not being HD was a problem.
PS3 wasn't forward compatible to PS4 and vice versa. The change in the business model now is that systems will be forward and backward compatible. Now that you have that, you've introduced fragmentation to the userbase and which systems they have. The affects aren't going to be immediate, but over time they do introduce fragmentation.
Here's another way to look at it. Under an iterative model where we get rid of generations, the following will happen. With only a PS4, developers target the full potential of the PS4. PS4.5 gets added, and now we have developers target the PS4 to its full potential and extra polish on the PS4.5. Now what happens when the PS5 comes out. Do you support PS4 still? Do you make PS4.5 the baseline instead and leave the PS4 behind? Let's say you do PS4 as your baseline. Then you're now failing to fully exploit the PS5 and it's just adding extra polish such as framerate, or more particles or higher res shadows. Because you have the PS4 in the mix still, it's holding back what you could do. Now add a PS5.5 into the mix, do you support the PS4 still at this point? Drop it? Now move on to PS5 as the baseline since the PS4.5 userbase was much smaller than the PS4? At what point does the PS5 really get pushed? In the old generation model, if we simply went from PS4 to PS5, the PS5 would have been the baseline and fully exploited moving forward. The removal of generations for an iterative model means the latest system doesn't get fully exploited as long as it's the latest. You see this now in Android phones, iPhones, and PC GPUs. That's what a fragmented userbase who is spread across varying level of hardware brings to the table.
We're still thirsty.
Hades Hotgun
Banned
That is not true. When the PS4 came out almost all of the games were cross-gen that didn't fully exploit anything about the system. The same scenario you laboriously described is what has happened in previous generations anyway. You are describing what has been the case for years and acting as though it would be some terrible new status quo.
Wouldn't it work the same as it does now? Like when PS5 comes out that's the new target and the old gen gets a pretty big downgrade from that until support fully stops a couple years later. I don't see how adding 1 mid gen refresh will completely change how development has always been. You are smart you will figure it out so we can play games and you collect a paycheck
Mister Megative
Banned
Marty Chinn
Member
Wouldn't it work the same as it does now? Like when PS5 comes out that's the new target and the old gen gets a pretty big downgrade from that until support fully stops a couple years later. I don't see how adding 1 mid gen refresh will completely change how development has always been. You are smart you will figure it out so we can play games and you collect a paycheck
No, it wouldn't because there wouldn't be a clear generation line like we have now. I'm talking about the removal of generations all together and moving to an iterative model. There's a very clear cut off and shift that happens when we have a generation change and the target goes way up on what developers target. Changing an iterative model actually slows down where developers target to reach the largest audience. You need not look any further than the mobile phone market to see this. The latest and greatest GPU or mobile phone is never fully exploited while it's the latest and greatest in favor of being able to still sell to the wider audience.
Mind you I've never once said these are impossible issues to overcome. All I said was now there's fragmentation and some people here seem to get all defensive when that word pops up. Fragmentation by itself doesn't mean doomsday, but to deny that there is fragmentation is silly too. When you do these things it affects time, money and resources. These are the facts but they don't establish the scope of what the ramifications are. Some people here seem to want to think that nothing bad can come of this, but there are trade offs that this comes a business model like this if we move towards it. Bad things also aren't always immediately visible; sometimes things take time to creep in until it's too late. We've had plenty of examples of that happening in the past.
Yeah you're right some bad things could and probably will come of this but I think the good will out weight that. I can't speak to mobile as I can't handle gaming on it, and I had no idea there is even that big of differences in mobile GPU's.
Seems like in a way it could potentially make dev easier if they keep same architecture with a refresh every 3-4 years. Instead of a completely different beast that you have to learn but has a small install base so you also have to make it for last gen. Is that possible?
Marty Chinn
Member
Don't get me wrong, the move to x86 has a lot of benefits and makes things easier in many ways moving forward. There's nothing wrong with that. The thing is almost nobody knows what the business model will be moving forward. The move to always make future systems backwards compatible is great. It's the question of forward compatibility that brings things into question and makes it harder to have those hard cut off points. Also it really depends on how many iterations there are and how frequent they are. Also it will depend on the policies established moving forward. There's so many unknowns right now to simply assume everything will be great.
foolishoptimist
Member
You keep ignoring how many many games were released on previous generation and current generation consoles. Not to mention supporting PS and XBox and PC.
How are they any different from a development/business point of view?
Marty Chinn
Member
I'm not ignoring it. We had a longer than usual cross gen port in this transition than was done in the past, but the time frame for that cross over typically is very short. Also, typically a cross gen title wasn't done by the same developer either. It was farmed out to another development team. You don't have that luxury when you're working on one version that works on multiple hardware specs and when the gap in performance decreases because you have so many iterations accompanying it. A finer granularity in performance and more frequent number of iterations in combination with a single sku and the idea of forward compatibility makes things pretty different than previous generation shifts.
wapplew
Member
The different is, we get some cross gen games in traditional gen but we will get all cross gen games in iteration model.
All of them, third party, first party, every game will be "cross gen" game. No game will design with the latest hardware in mind, which hardware the target will depends on install base. Could be PS4.5, could be PS4, but never PS5.
edit: Iterative cross gen won't be as bad as what we have now, but still.
ThoughtsOfSpeaking
Banned
The reality however is very few developers have access to the budgets too fully exploit current gen hardware and next generation will be no different.
The previous idea of coding to the metal and wringing every last of power out of a system is becoming less and less common when hardware is current.
So yes fragmentation will exist, but the reality even without an iterative model, the amount of titles that really push hardware to its full potential wouldnt be significant anyway. Most developers are aiming for "good enough" regardless.
foolishoptimist
Member
So you admit that fragmentation is a thing that happens at gen switches?
I actually was a games developer a few years back. I worked on a game that was released on PC, as well as every last-gen platform(inc. handhelds). Internally we only handled 4 of those, each one had their own services to hook into, and TRC quirks.
Unless you're a single platform developer, I don't see how the extra work here is such a problem.
Without being anywhere near as much work as supporting PS3 & PS4,X360 & XB1, is that really a problem?
jhmtehgamr20xx
Banned
Simple: you still have two different PS4s, and one can do additional things the other can't. That's still market fragmentation; you fragment the userbase between those w/ the machine that can do extra things, and those w/ the machine that can't.
But as I also said, that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, and as long as the disparity isn't too crazy, I think the market can support it. Although, anyone thinking there won't be games created w/ PS4K in mind and then downscaled to PS4 are fooling themselves; Sony has to have some big reasons to justify a PS4K aside from the hardware itself :/
Marty Chinn
Member
There's definitely a transition period. If you want to call that fragmentation, so be it. It's not in the same vein as what could evolve here though. Some people are saying there is no fragmentation which is what I'm disagreeing with.
In my experience, it takes more work to get more variance to work across multiple platforms. Even simply getting shader effects working across multiple platforms took extra work to get them working and performing well across each platform. So when you add more variance into what each system has to do, that creates more complexity and which in turn means it takes more time, money and resources in order to make sure those things work across each platform. Some things will be easier; some things will be harder. Heck some things you might think should work between one configuration and another can be painful. Hell, having to debug something that works in debug but not release was always "fun". Depending on what the extra work is will of course affect what it takes to get it done. All things aren't equal; some things are easier, and some things take more effort. Regardless, even you agree it's extra work, and that extra work isn't free. Developers are already constrained on time and resources, and now this is going to increase those needs.
It's amazing that this is being waived off as a non issue when just today a major game was released and people are already bitching about the port on one platform.
But how is it fragmented when there is 1 game being released that will play on PS4 & PS4K?
PS4K is still a PS4.
The ultimate goal is for it to not even matter what hardware the customer has as long as they can buy your game & enjoy it,
Yeah - but for example PC's have been always around and it's not like game developers already haven't build those difference makers aka scalability/ customizability to game-engines for years now.
Difference between PS4 and PS4K will be native resolution, framerate or some graphical settings pumped up a bit. Things people have fiddled around for years in the PC market.
It doesn't require a huge extra effort from developer to build two different graphic-settings.xml files for both PS4 and PS4K versions.
wapplew
Member
It will be a problem for me because I want my PS5 exclusive make for PS5 day 1, not day 1095.
-Plasma Reus-
Service guarantees member status
I'm not buying it until I see a real visual upgrade. And I'm not talking about resolution alone.
bitbydeath
Member
FFXV isn't out til September 30, we should hear from Sony about this at E3 in June.
Might as well hold out another 2 months at this point.
GamerMax73
Member
Why are you assuming that every model has to be supported for all eternity? How old do you think the PS4 will be when PS6 is announced let alone released?
I can understand the argument of extra work for a dev to make their games salable and to properly play test and optimise the right default settings for each supported model.
I can't understand the argument of fragmentation. It seems to me the answer is patently obvious and has been the status quo in other markets for decades. And yes we can draw parallels with the iPhone market.
Game X requires iOS 8 and above. iOS 8 will only work on an iPhone 4S and above. Game X will only run on an iPhone 4S and above.
Okay, that might be an overly simplified argument, but if Sony move in to console iterations and if Sony do console iterations properly then you'll only be supporting 2 or 3 concurrent models.
Targeting what is expected to be the lowest current model around the time the game is expected to be released and scaling up makes the most sense to me. Again, this is how I understand PC game development to work today - target a common minimum spec and scale up.
Cthulhu_Steev
Member
That's less fragmentation then. Instead of throwing everything in the bin for the new gen, you can keep developing games for all gens.
Sniffynose
Member
Meanwhile in Canada the shitty Rogers digital cable service streams at most 1080i (not P) and has worse audio and compression than over the air HD channels I get free with an antenna, our shit internet can't handle 1080p without it costing us $200 a month, I don't even want to know how big a 4k stream would be.
It's gonna take more then 5 years for me to give a shit about 4k lol
It's gonna take more then 5 years for me to give a shit about 4k lol
Marty Chinn
Member
I'm not assuming all models will be supported. I'm saying when you introduce iterative releases, remove hard generations, and have forward and backward compatibility, decisions need to be made on which systems to target and which systems to not. This is due to fragmentation. We also don't know how frequently or infrequently iterative systems will be released at this point.
They are one in the same. The fragmentation causes extra work which takes time, money and resources. It's that simple and you do understand that there is fragmentation once you acknowledge more work is involved now.
Right and now you no longer have PS3 games, and PS4 games. You have some games that work on the PS4, and some don't. No longer will you have a unified library. You don't think this could result in some consumer confusion from people who aren't normally checking to see if they meet the minimum requirements that a game needs in order to be played? iOS has the gateway of the App Store to make sure the software will work. A retail store doesn't have that automatic check.
Right, it relies on Sony to do console iterations properly and we don't know at this point how they plan to do it. I think it's premature to assume everything is going to be great and work out perfectly. I see a bunch of questions that need to be answered before we even can begin to understand how this is going to play out. Right now all that's know is the amount of complexity has increased and by default that means an increase in time, money and resources. The more complexity you add, the more concerns and issues that can come up.
Nope, because you've created more bins. More bins is a more fragmented user base. Which do you think has more fragmentation, going from a PS3 to a PS4, or the iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPhone 5S, iPhone 6, and iPhone 6S that was released in the same time frame?
Look, there shouldn't be a question if there is or isn't fragmentation. The discussion should be more about to what extent the fragmentation will cause issues. It just seems weird to me that people still want to deny that there is fragmentation, especially from a developer standpoint.
foolishoptimist
Member
Nothing you said there is any different to what devs/publishers do now.
We already have Indies targetting one platform at a time due to lack of resources to tackle both. Big publishers target previous gen to ensure they're not leaving too big an audience behind, but eventually, that market shrinks and isn't justified.
If your game is also targetting PC, I really don't expect PS4/PS4K differences to be anything more challenging than selecting appropriate PC settings.
Marty Chinn
Member
Let's just simplify this. A developer is currently doing a PC, PS4 and Xbox title. Do you think there is more work or no work involved to support the PS4K on top of those three platforms? Any reasonable person is going to say there is more work involved. I'm not quantifying how little or how much just the simple fact that more work is involved. Adding another target to support takes time, money and resources. That increases every time you add a target. It's that simple. Developers struggle with the number of platforms they have right now. Heck, Quantum Break was just released, is only on two platforms and people are already complaining about the quality of the PC version. Why do people think this won't have any affect when you add ANOTHER target?
StrongBlackVine
Banned
PC is like a thousand targets. PS4K would not be nearly as much work comparatively. It is still a static box.
GamerMax73
Member
I've said this before, If Sony are going to do this then they need to be upfront in how they are going to manage Playstation as a platform going forward. Until Sony make an announcement it is all just guesswork at this point.
I'm sorry, but I can't see extra work being equal to fragmentation, unless you are arguing that PC is hopelessly, impossibly, fragmented and not a single platform?
But we're even talking the same platform there? That's a key difference in this discussion. PS3 and PS4 are not even in the same ball park as far as system architectures go.
I grant the games buying public with a lot more skill and intelligence in making buying decisions than a lot of people here seem to. Seriously, checking the back of PC boxes for minimum specs has been a thing since the 80's. And done properly we're talking about a problem that spans years - in that will Joe Public really expect the latest and greatest in video games to play on his 8 year old console? No. Should a game support a 4 year old console? Probably yes.
Marty Chinn
Member
PC development doesn't have to deal with with things like console TRCs either so comparing the two isn't equal. You're still adding work on top of what is currently being done otherwise you're saying its free which it is not.
If you're having to factor in which users to cater to and the amount of work you're going to do based on different user base sizes, that's fragmentation. The amount of work being small or a lot doesn't change the nature of fragmentation.
Callibretto
Member
If a developer dont have any resource at all to target ps4k. Can't they just submit ps4 version, I assume it'll automatically work because ps4k is backward compatible with ps4. There's no pressure for developer to absolutely need ps4k setting. They could even just patch it later when they have time/resource post release.
Developer don't need to do anything for their game to be playable on ps4k
For a publisher, having to cover off two machines with similar architectures would be far more favourable than having to deal with the usual generation shifts of significant performance deltas, different archtectures, new toolsets, new and likely immature documentation etc.
The cost of this incremental approach is lower for publishers, and reduces risk by smoothing out the development roadmap and making it possible to plan longer term with confidence that your products will be usable on the same platform going forwards.
Marty Chinn
Member
Well that's the thing. Nobody knows what the policies are yet. Are you going to have to verify that at least all the TRCs pass on both a PS4 and a PS4K even though you don't really do anything to target the PS4K? Nobody knows what the requirements are going to be and what you'll need to test to pass certification.
I don't disagree. The reason everyone was happy with the move towards x86 was to get past the issues you described above. It was assumed moving forward the architecture wouldn't change like they had in the past. This has been widely assumed long before the notion of a mid generation was on the radar. The issue was never about the change or benefits in the current architecture. What comes in to question is this shift in the business model, to which we don't even know what the new business model is. You can gain all the benefits you describe by simply having traditional generations and releasing a PS5 5 to 6 years after the PS4 launched. What you described doesn't change by having traditional generations with this architecture. I'm not convinced on the other hand of removing generations and doing frequent and constant iteration releases either.
Callibretto
Member
Ps4k play all ps4 games back from it first launch when nobody had idea that ps4k exist, it's not going to suddenly have different policies to be accepted for ps4k. Ps4k is not gonna require different certification from ps4, maybe it will have extra certification for ps4k setting. But the normal ps4 setting will still be playable just as if it's a normal ps4.
John Wick
Member
Sony aren't going to be updating every year you know. It'll probably be every 3-4 years. A generation is usually about 6 years. At some point PS4 will be dropped and so forth. 2-3 iterative platforms isn't a problem at all. It's much easier for developers now as consoles are very close to PC. Developers managed fine developing for PS3,X360,Wii or Wii U and PC.
HandsomeCharles
Member
iOS is not a good example of how to do it "Properly", as Apple only let developers support OS Revisions, not hardware devisions.
For example, whilst the 3GS is no longer supported by Apple, it floated around for a long time which caused numerous headaches for mobile developers. Why? Because it was technologically inferior to the other devices on the market, but could not be excluded by the developer because it supported the latest version of iOS.
This essentially meant that users of a 3GS would be able to download a game that simply could not run to an adequate standard. It actually became the case that Devs found a nasty work-around that prevented 3GS users from using their apps. This involved checking for the presence of a front-facing camera on the device, and only allowing the application to continue if it was found.
This in turn meant that developers were faced with two choices: "Hold back" (read: hinder) their games and applications' developments so that the 3GS users could tag along too, or face scathing reviews on the App store that most likely would affect sales. If Apple had allowed developers to restrict access to a certain device, then none of this would have happened.
Right now, a similar problem is developing with the iPad 2 (and iPhone 4s). That device is now five years old, and is still "supported". That said, when running the latest iOS, the user experience is not great to say the least. The older tech simply can't compare to the newer devices and it puts developers in a sticky situation.
So, what's the solution here? You could have "supported" devices have much shorter, but then that means the consumer has to pay out more often in order to say relevant, or you could have a longer time-period between revisions. That second option isn't attractive if you make a profit from selling hardware, but is definitely a better option if you make your money from software.
And that is why I'm not in favour of an iterative hardware cycle for games consoles. It should stay as "defined" generations.
Bitch Pudding
Member
I feel flattered, but that was just a reference to one of Henry Ford's most famous quotes (which is well-known around marketing and strategy people). Steve Jobs certainly heeded this advise.
Surely the PS4K is exactly a "faster horse"?!