Programming Issues on XBox One - Johnathon Blow

That 30fpsvs60fps, even if technically possible, isn't going to happen.

Microsoft will just go "Both games must be pretty much the same or we won't let you publish it"

Exclusives however, I'm expecting a pretty big difference.


If you say that, why not take it a step further?

"If your Xbox One version is not better we won't let you publish it?"

If they have clout to demand parity, why not clout to demand one more step?

Think.
 
I can't wait to see how this gen plays out. Half you idiots on this board were doing the same thing when the 360 was released.
 
Can you imagine all those who saw it thinking it's gonna do all that stuff then take it home and find out all it does is connect to the devices you still need?

That was one of my first questions during the reveal. Will it come with a cable card slot or coax in? Nope? Why do I need another box that essentially performs the functions of a cable box with a few more add-ons?

Back on topic. Is there something inherently different to the architecture that devs don't like. Outside of the processor, it's pretty much the same setup as the 360. Main pool of ram with some esram on the side and a gpu. Are their tools just not up to snuff this time around?

Before you ask, yes, I do understand that it'll probably be much easier to code on Sony's machine, but some of these arguments seem almost moot if they've been coding on similar architecture for years.

At the same time, you can see a difference based on the spec sheet for both consoles, but is that really one of their main gripes? I'm all for more powerful systems, but I'm sure you can still get visually stunning stuff from the One.
 
I can't wait to see how this gen plays out. Half you idiots on this board were doing the same thing when the 360 was released.

EDC7R.gif
 
I don't really grasp most of the tech talk but this one made me laugh so hard:

* Super Meat Boy creator Tommy Refenes - "Little brothers everywhere have been given the ultimate trolling tool While older brother and friends play COD "XBOX NETFLIX MY LITTLE PONY"
 
That's delusional.

MS can't even make devs make apps for W8 phones with all their muscle.

It's funny you say that as this year a cavalcade of top tier mobile games have been pouring into WP8 thanks to the update to Windows kernel.

Just today alone: Tiger Woods Golf, Mass Effect, NBA Jam, and Real Racing 2 were released for Windows Phone 8.

Gameloft has been releasing 12 games in the first half of the year. All Rovio games are being released suddenly and Angry Birds updates are coming out day and date. The Temple Run series has started hitting as well thanks to the porting of Unity to WP8.

Top tier mobile apps and updates are pouring onto the phone this year as well thanks to the Windows 8 kernel and Microsoft's developer muscle. Microsoft isn't chasing volume on phone they are chasing brand names right now like Pandora, Tumblr, Instagram. Same seems to be true for Xbox.

Does a normal person care about Jon Blow's next game? If it was Braid 2 it would be one thing. If MS wants a popular game they will get it.
 
It's funny you say that as this year a cavalcade of top tier mobile games have been pouring into WP8 thanks to the update to Windows kernel.

Just today alone: Tiger Woods Golf, Mass Effect, NBA Jam, and Real Racing 2 were released for Windows Phone 8.

Gameloft has been releasing 12 games in the first half of the year. All Rovio games are being released suddenly and Angry Birds updates are coming out day and date. The Temple Run series has started hitting as well thanks to the porting of Unity to WP8.

Thanks, didn't know these were out.
 
I think most devs picked the 360 as their lead platform because it was easier to develop for, and had many issues with porting their games over to the PS3 due to the more complicated architecture despite having more power in theory.

Third parties leading on XBox one, and having to deal with the super over-complex PS4 architecture and super difficult development environment is like totally going to happen again.

Hmm - you may want to read some internets as that is pretty much all wrong.
 
So, a little update. Turns out the trailer I have on my PS3 is (at least) ever so slightly different from the one that I linked to above. For one thing, there's no text on the lower left in the opening seconds.

The funny thing is, the Youtube video I ripped that one from was also titled "Killzone: Shadow Fall Gameplay", and was also from the official Killzone channel. So I guess what I ended up downloading on Feb. 21st must have been quietly replaced with the current video.

It's possible that the frame skippage I'm seeing on the currently uploaded vid is just YouTube/computer fuckery, and even then, it doesn't look as bad as the one on my PS3. Conversely, Youtube compression may be smoothing out the rough parts. So, I'm ripping this video (again, the 1080p mp4 source), and going to play it in my PS3 for comparison.

Okay, this has gotten really bizarre. Turns out the newer uploaded video, apart from a few additional seconds of footage at the beginning, and a logo at the end, is identical (as far as I can see). Choppy framerate, again.

For some reason that trailer is choppy, but during the live stream it was a smooth 30fps.

See for yourself: http://youtu.be/RiNGZMx2vhY?t=48m18s

This is where it gets interesting. Despite being from a lower quality source (the livestream), the framerate is 30 fps here. This is what Digital Foundry was looking at.

But the clincher is that the livestream video is 720p max, whereas both of the other videos are 1080p. The "Killzone: Shadow Fall Gameplay" vid is linked to on the official KZ website, where it says this:
"The video below has been encoded for optimal quality, so it’s the closest thing to being at the Meeting and seeing the game running on PlayStation 4 yourself." Oops.

Either the video encoder screwed up big-time, or Killzone Shadow Fall has trouble maintaining 30 fps at 1080p.
 
It's funny you say that as this year a cavalcade of top tier mobile games have been pouring into WP8 thanks to the update to Windows kernel.

Just today alone: Tiger Woods Golf, Mass Effect, NBA Jam, and Real Racing 2 were released for Windows Phone 8.

Gameloft has been releasing 12 games in the first half of the year. All Rovio games are being released suddenly and Angry Birds updates are coming out day and date. The Temple Run series has started hitting as well thanks to the porting of Unity to WP8.

Top tier mobile apps and updates are pouring onto the phone this year as well thanks to the Windows 8 kernel and Microsoft's developer muscle. Microsoft isn't chasing volume on phone they are chasing brand names right now like Pandora, Tumblr, Instagram. Same seems to be true for Xbox.

Does a normal person care about Jon Blow's next game? If it was Braid 2 it would be one thing. If MS wants a popular game they will get it.

You have such a magnificent encyclopedic knowledge of Microsoft. why?
 
Okay, this has gotten really bizarre. Turns out the newer uploaded video, apart from a few additional seconds of footage at the beginning, and a logo at the end, is identical (as far as I can see). Choppy framerate, again.



This is where it gets interesting. Despite being from a lower quality source (the livestream), the framerate is 30 fps here. This is what Digital Foundry was looking at.

But the clincher is that the livestream video is 720p max, whereas both of the other videos are 1080p. The "Killzone: Shadow Fall Gameplay" vid is linked to on the official KZ website, where it says this:
"The video below has been encoded for optimal quality, so it’s the closest thing to being at the Meeting and seeing the game running on PlayStation 4 yourself." Oops.

Either the video encoder screwed up big-time, or Killzone Shadow Fall has trouble maintaining 30 fps at 1080p.

If the game was running poorly then every video would show this. Any video showing sub-30fps is obviously an encoding problem.
 
That presentation was terrible. I'm a little dissappointed in the specs but I'm happy that the fight this gen will mostly be in games and features. E3 better be good in the games department for ms.
 
then why did they allow FF13 on 360 while it was inferior then the ps3 visually speaking?

also the fact how hard such a move could backfire.
It wasn't Square Enix wanting to put FFXIII on 360 as much as it was Microsoft wanting it. It was a big franchise that had been exclusive to Playstation for years. Giving incentives to SE to make it multiplatform was a big coup for MS at the time. That's why all the early commercials for the game showed Xbox at the end instead of Playstation. Microsoft didn't care about having an inferior port as much as they just wanted the game on their platform, period.


You have such a magnificent encyclopedic knowledge of Microsoft. why?
Microsoft provides excellent employee training.
 
If the game was running poorly then every video would show this. Any video showing sub-30fps is obviously an encoding problem.

Rendering resolution affects framerates. So it's not obviously an encoding problem. That being said, I think it's very unlikely that KZ SF was shown in 720p to audiences at the conference. I'm not one to believe in conspiracies, so it probably is just an encoding problem. Don't know why Sony didn't upload a 1080p video of the conference, though.
 
I called this months back on GAF. i said if the specs were true the only difference you would noticeably see is either framerate or resolution. If frame rate is the problem then the resolution gets dropped down to a level that is acceptable.

This was the exact same thing we saw on multi-platform games with ps3 and 360. PS3 owners hardly ever noticed the resolution being lower or missing AA. Why do you think upscaling played such a pivotal role? it will again 100%!!

People are making a bigger deal out of the GPU differences then they will play out. if one GPU is 33% faster at certain operations, you need to add "at the same resolution" to the end of it.
 
I called this months back on GAF. i said if the specs were true the only difference you would noticeably see is either framerate or resolution. If frame rate is the problem then the resolution gets dropped down to a level that is acceptable.

This was the exact same thing we saw on multi-platform games with ps3 and 360. PS3 owners hardly ever noticed the resolution being lower or missing AA. Why do you think upscaling played such a pivotal role? it will again 100%!!

People are making a bigger deal out of the GPU differences then they will play out. if one GPU is 33% faster at certain operations, you need to add "at the same resolution" to the end of it.

dunno. new architecture this time around wrt gcn etc. It will be great fun seeing what devs can do with those closed boxes over the next few years. saying only framerate/resolution is outdated.
 
Most of gaf is pro gaming. Stuff that detracts from that gets blasted here. Conversely, I'm sure over at other forums they're happy the XBox One is not just about gaming.

I can appreciate a pro gaming bias. I'm sure many people would love to claim they fall under that category but the reality on gaf doesn't reflect that. Most people here are simply posturing. There is a lame follow the leader/cool kid/mob mentality that's present in many threads/topics. That's certainly evident in the PS4/Xbox One discussions.

All we know are some technical specs on the next gen Xbox and PS4 and you see tons of juvenile PS4 > Xbox like type posts. Or how about Xbone LoLLLzzz!! type posts.

It's one thing to declare what one thinks is the better console a year after the systems are on the market...but it's clearly fanboyism to say it when they're both ~ 6 months away from launching.
 
It's funny you say that as this year a cavalcade of top tier mobile games have been pouring into WP8 thanks to the update to Windows kernel.

[...]

Top tier mobile apps and updates are pouring onto the phone this year as well thanks to the Windows 8 kernel and Microsoft's developer muscle.
Are you a real person? Do real people write like that?

And I really have no idea at all what any of this has to do with the Windows kernel. Do you know what a kernel is?
 
Are you a real person? Do real people write like that?

And I really have no idea at all what any of this has to do with the Windows kernel. Do you know what a kernel is?

Take a look at his history.
If he is no Microsoft employee or has ties with anyone within the industry I'm eating a crow.
 
I can appreciate a pro gaming bias. I'm sure many people would love to claim they fall under that category but the reality on gaf doesn't reflect that. Most people here are simply posturing. There is a lame follow the leader/cool kid/mob mentality that's present in many threads/topics. That's certainly evident in the PS4/Xbox One discussions.

All we know are some technical specs on the next gen Xbox and PS4 and you see tons of juvenile PS4 > Xbox like type posts. Or how about Xbone LoLLLzzz!! type posts.

It's one thing to declare what one thinks is the better console a year after the systems are on the market...but it's clearly fanboyism to say it when they're both ~ 6 months away from launching.


So with the information we have now, you don't believe that the xboxone currently has enough bad press on it(with 24 hour online, used/sharing games, and ect) to be hated on on purely a consumer perspective?

On princible alone, MS is out of bounds enough with their presentation to warrant the "juvenile Ps4>Xbox like posts". As someone who is mainly a PC gamer, who has no vested interest in any console, from my perspective almost all the hate MS is getting is on point, at least for the core crowed. As for everyone else? Who the fuck care what they think, I'm not interested in the "quite minority", we have American Idol because of them.
 
This may be stupid but can someone please explain this chart to me...?

PS4 has about 50% more of the raw power compared to Xbox One and it has video RAM bandwidth comparable to PC GPUs of the class in the console. Basically PS4 should be crazy easy to develop for. Xbox One might be able to get 66% the performance of PS4, but not for free. Kind of like how 360 ports to PS3 could look just as good (so 100% here) on PS3 if developers were able to mess with the memory caching split on PS3.

Sony made a very pragmatic console.

Microsoft is chasing that living room waggle. In doing so they seem to be reducing COGS by making their console have an obscure memory hierarchy.

I think Sony will win this generation with sales inbetween PS2 and PS3.

I say this trying to be as unbiased as possible. I'm primarily as PC gamer and think all consoles will relatively be weak.

As a gamer in general it's a shame MS did this. If both PS4 and Xbox One were x86, GDDR5 DX GPU, we'd have developers spending time making games, not tools.
 
In regards to the "MS won't let them do it" argument, the concept is (as far as I'm aware) limited only to features and content, not to performance. And, as noted, it doesn't seem to be enforced.

What they can't do is piss off their content creators. If they really do try to clamp down and prevent devs from using PS4's extra muscle, at least some of those devs are going to simply not develop for the system.

While the 30/60 variance may be possible on paper, I think it's more likely that they'll use the gap to simply improve the look of the games. Take a look at some of the things that plague today's games, like blocky low-res shadows. That's going to live on next-gen in some form, if not as bad as today, and if they can use a little extra power to clean up the shadows on one system, they'll do it. Or maybe bump up the texture resolution a bit, or improve the antialiasing, or maybe even a bump in resolution.
 
I can appreciate a pro gaming bias. I'm sure many people would love to claim they fall under that category but the reality on gaf doesn't reflect that. Most people here are simply posturing. There is a lame follow the leader/cool kid/mob mentality that's present in many threads/topics. That's certainly evident in the PS4/Xbox One discussions.

All we know are some technical specs on the next gen Xbox and PS4 and you see tons of juvenile PS4 > Xbox like type posts. Or how about Xbone LoLLLzzz!! type posts.

It's one thing to declare what one thinks is the better console a year after the systems are on the market...but it's clearly fanboyism to say it when they're both ~ 6 months away from launching.

Congrats on just making shit up.
 
You can hate Blow, but you have to realise the dude will talk shit about Sony if Sony ever fucks up anything. It's Blow.

That's why I have to agree on this, The problem isn't only the hardware but MS has the games being handled by a different OS than the main one. Isn't that a recipe for disaster? If it isn't so, can someone inform me how MS can negate the expected performance issues?
 
It is. He still shouldn't be listed as a credible source for anything in this context.

Kotaku and Phil Fish have been used as heroes and credible sources because they support the feelings people have after xbox one's announcement. So why not Johnathan Blow? Keep them standards low.
 
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