Remedy Games Dev on Series S: You have to take into account the technical limitations from the beginning of development

duh! to think that this mega turd will hold back devs all the way to 2028, and possibly even more if you count cross-gen years of the nextgen.
 
What exactly did they think the series s was? We expected it to offer less power but a cheaper price.

Season 1 Vic GIF by Sony Pictures Television
 
So at what point do you refuse to do a Series S version?

What's Microsoft going to do? Tell you that you can't put the game on Xbox?
 
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SmokedMeat said:
So at what point do you refuse to do a Series S version?

What's Microsoft going to do? Tell you that you can't put the game on Xbox?
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pretty much. no chance in hell they will allow devs to skip it and antagonize majority of their console base.
on a hopefull note, they might turn it into a streaming box at some point, which is still a "fuck you" to majority of their base,
but im sure "the influencers" can work with that
 
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Why we see many trailers promising visuals that never see the light of the day then? Honest question. I thought scaling back is always a thing. You start big and ambitious and realise you can't keep up this kind of level that even Pro consoles wouldn't handle (or your budget and work force I guess).
 
SmokedMeat said:
So at what point do you refuse to do a Series S version?

What's Microsoft going to do? Tell you that you can't put the game on Xbox?
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Isn't that pretty much what the parity clause demands right now? If you don't do a series s version then no series x version either.
 
Fools idol said:
honestly I could give a flying shit about cRPGs on a console. I feel for Larian having to get such a complex set of systems working on a severely limiting machine.

They made Divinity OS 2 work so well on switch all things considered, but playing that kind of game on a hand held felt atrocious
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Complex system that doesn't even have day/night cycles or dynamic weather.
 
Negotiator101 said:
No, AW2 I imagine is not the most ambitious of games (it looks good though). Far more ambitious have come before on lesser hardware than Series S and far more ambitious games will come on Series S, you do the math.
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How do you know that though? They've shown very little of it. Visually it looks really good.
 
jm89 said:
Isn't that pretty much what the parity clause demands right now? If you don't do a series s version then no series x version either.
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Is Microsoft really going to pass up having the game on their platform over a parity clause?

If anything that'll put heat on them to do away with the silly clause, if more games skip Xbox because of Series S.
 
Honestly, Series S should have just been a digital only Series X (and $100 cheaper). Would have saved Microsoft the headache.
 
Are you for or against series S! Stand and be counted!

I only have a series S as a backwards compatibility machine. I'd rather devs ignore it for current gen. It will just hold us back otherwise.
 
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RoadHazard said:
How do you know that though? They've shown very little of it. Visually it looks really good.
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It's a safe assumption it's not going to push the boundaries of these machines. If Rockstar come out and say Series S is a limiting factor on GTA6 then I'll agree but I don't think they will. Also let's see how this performs on PC and its many configurations, given he said it scales differently.
 
SmokedMeat said:
Is Microsoft really going to pass up having the game on their platform over a parity clause?

If anything that'll put heat on them to do away with the silly clause, if more games skip Xbox because of Series S.
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They don't have a choice. They sold XSS to customers with the promise that it will play the same games as XSX.
 
Of course any clever dev would design their engine with their target platforms in mind and not just optimise for some insane high end Epyc + 5090 Titan prototype sample and then pretend to flip a switch for those "similar" AMD APU on any of the basically three consoles, duh? Also Switch should be in their mind- where some devs seem to wonder how Zelda even runs on that shit-, and then XSS can't be hard then...

The CPU budget of your engine has to be designed around the XSS CPU, which almost automatically should run then on XSX (and some, maybe already major, tweaks to equalize the different PS5 CPU for parity... clocks I need versus parallelization I need) and the graphics side needs to acknowledge the different CU numbers and speeds, downgrade or upgrade depending on viewpoint. And eventually you might be able to improve some minor bits on XSX if you are almost done, but only in the end.
4Pro and Xone X were bruteforce upgrades of the base variants and they still managed to scale okay, here they need to think the other way round.
It might not be super easy but in my simple mind, it is the same problem and should be possible with some effort.

But seems like devs who made CryEngine run on PS3 or RDR2 on netbook Jaguars are becoming the minority and most programmers rather crave better HW than actually squeeze the most out of what they got. The Series S might be a headache for them, but expecting FHD/fauxK versions of current gen games on a XSS should not actually be some impossible task, especially since we hardly got breathtaking current gen games to begin with, something that actually feels like impossible on PS4 or One and a whole new level.
 
When you have PS5 and XSX running games at native 1200p for fidelity mode and < 800p for performance mode, clearly those machines won't be limited at all by the S... They're limited in their own, of anything they're benefit by the S optimizations.
 
crackajack said:
But seems like devs who made CryEngine run on PS3 or RDR2 on netbook Jaguars are becoming the minority and most programmers rather crave better HW than actually squeeze the most out of what they got. The Series S might be a headache for them, but expecting FHD/fauxK versions of current gen games on a XSS should not actually be some impossible task, especially since we hardly got breathtaking current gen games to begin with, something that actually feels like impossible on PS4 or One and a whole new level.
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you are already getting FHD/fauxK on its big brother. wake up
 
Thought the the S was supposed to be a stopgap system. Seems I remember them saying that back at launch and it was supposed to be dropped in like two years in favor of X. Think it's time to do that "dropping it" thing. Or at least give devs the option of not releasing on it so they can focus development around the more powerful consoles.
 
Look at the silver lining. If Series S is your base platform, that means the games should run a lot better on Series X / PS5. I wonder how many more 720p 30fps games we'd see without the Series S existing in the first place.
 
Are modern day developers only discovering right now that you have to take into account the specs of the hardware you develop for ?

Someone give them a NES and ask them to make a game for it.
 
damidu said:
you are already getting FHD/fauxK on its big brother. wake up
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which is my point. Devs were able to do impressive Pro and One modes and now it sometimes sounds like scaling down from more powerful 4k/ still fauxK (native is imho anyway just dumb) machines is a whole other type of task as that mid gen upgrade was?

The tweet is not even very negative about it, just says as I interpret: the XSS fork of my engine needs to be designed with XSS in my mind from the start, which is a water is wet statement, and that XSS requires work, which may or may not be significant in his schedule, but just shows that Larian Studios did not properly think about it at their start or at least in the mid of development. Basically imho this can't be taken as XSS is holding anything back but almost a jab at Larian that they fucked up by having XSS on ignore for too long.
Remedy better not need do have to postpone a Xbox version because AW2 runs like Cyberpunk on last gen on XSS... they at least have XSS in their mind right now...
 
cireza said:
Are modern day developers only discovering right now that you have to take into account the specs of the hardware you develop for ?

Someone give them a NES and ask them to make a game for it.
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it was a general comment. I somehow doubt this tweet is a revelation to any experienced developer.
 
I been saying since early in the year that the Series S will be Xbox's downfall this gen. Once the PS5 Pro drops, it's game over for Xbox hardware and a closure of this generation. Imagine Xbox having 3 SKU if they release a PRO. Developers don't want to deal with that.
 
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It really is a shame for developers today. God help them if they had to shrink a arcade machine that was a least 10/20/30 times more powerful than home machines. And there was only 3 of you.

Now I don't doubt there would be some issues but they don't know they're born.
 
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RagnarokIV said:
oh no xbox doomed
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No, but it means multiplatform PS5 games will need to be gimped because developers have to take technical limitations of the S into account for their next gen game right from the start. This means things that would work on the more powerful series X and PS5 will need to be scaled back to allow for the S to even run the game. The size of the open world without loading barriers for example.

Oh split screen coop, too.

iTueDHI.jpg
 
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Bogroll said:
It really is a shame for developers today. God help them if they had to shrink a arcade machine that was a least 10/20/30 times more powerful than home machines. And there was only 3 of you.

Now I don't doubt there would be some issues but they don't know they're born.
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I think there is another part of this, I don't think it is fair to say that they can't port it to the S, I think it is more they can't port it to the S in a way that will be viewed as acceptable and not shit all over. If they released the equivalent of an NES arcade port on the Series S there would be endless mockery and so much negative press that they would be better off not doing it. There are 200 post threads when there is a 2fps difference between the Series X and PS5 the way it is.
 
To be clear, all developers know this. This is standard practice/ competency. You would never intentionally seek out to make a game without developing within the boundaries of the capabilities of the device(s) that will be eventually running the game. Series S dev kits have been out since 2019 🤷‍♂️.
 
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