[tech4gamers] New Sony Patent Aims To Simplify Console Game Development Without Devkits

Topher

Topher

Identifies as young
Both Xbox and PlayStation consoles have had exclusive hardware that sets them apart from regular PCs. Hence, developing games for these different ecosystems has always been a pain for studios over the years, but Sony may finally have a solution for this dilemma.

We have found multiple new patents published by Sony that aim to simplify how games are developed for consoles while preserving their proprietary nature in the process. Sony wants to convert the traditional devkits into small PCIe cards that serve the same purpose.

The company proposes PCIe cards with core console hardware to replace scarce devkits for game development. These PCIe cards can fit into regular PCs and servers to convert them into devkits instead.

Why it matters: Sony aims to preserve the exclusive nature of its console while making it easier for developers to create games for it. So, studios could soon utilize a PCIe card that can replace the traditional, bulky devkits currently in use.

fig1_-e1755583806741.png.webp


The patent, dubbed 'GAME CONSOLE ENDPOINT MANAGEMENT BRIDGE FOR LOCAL SYSTEM GAME DEVELOPMENT,' also talks about using a special chip called the endpoint management bridge to manage communication between a host PC or server and the PCIe card.

Sony argues that console exclusivity complicates game development, and specialized devkits aren't easily adapted for cloud use. So, it proposes using these console PCIe cards instead.

fig7_-e1755583954335.png.webp


These PCIe cards can be used to create efficient devkit servers that can be accessed remotely over the internet or serve as local workstations for direct console game development.
tech4gamers.com

New Sony Patent Aims To Simplify Console Game Development Without Devkits

Sony has published a new patent that aims to replace traditional devkits with a regular PCIe card that can be plugged into a regular PC.
tech4gamers.com tech4gamers.com

No more wild looking dev kits?

vwxhmyqr78v51.jpg
 
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So stupid question, can they not produce OEM 'PS5' cards, so your PC can emulate a PS5 completely? Leveraging and isolating the necessary compute and GPU? Which also locks you into PSN....
 
Topher said:
No more wild looking dev kits?
vwxhmyqr78v51.jpg
Click to expand...
Not gonna lie, the wild dev kits are some of my fondest memories of gamedev.
PS2_Prototype_EB-1000_by_koukimonster91.jpg
bundel_zwart_phat.jpg

Ps2 early kit that looked like a giant modem/switch was particularly awesome.
And it ran at 200mhz so I knew it'd be 30% faster when I switched to final.

That said I also dunno how well pci cards will scale with unfinished hardware or 500W APUs.
I suppose it's less of a concern since they stopped making custom chips.. but still.

Kuranghi said:
What parts of the "console" are not on the PCI card? I take it this is using the GPU and CPU of the system its installed in?
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No, this would be a complete system on a pcb. I suppose console "blade" is more accurate than a "card".
 
Fafalada said:
Not gonna lie, the wild dev kits are some of my fondest memories of gamedev.
PS2_Prototype_EB-1000_by_koukimonster91.jpg
bundel_zwart_phat.jpg

Ps2 early kit that looked like a giant modem/switch was particularly awesome.
And it ran at 200mhz so I knew it'd be 30% faster when I switched to final.

That said I also dunno how well pci cards will scale with unfinished hardware or 500W APUs.
I suppose it's less of a concern since they stopped making custom chips.. but still.


No, this would be a complete system on a pcb. I suppose console "blade" is more accurate than a "card".
Click to expand...
Wow, PTSD memories unlocked of working with HP Blades and their wonderful chassis firmware upgrades
 
Topher said:
The CPU and GPU are combined in the APU. I think it has everything it needs to run debug code as if it was a dev kit.
Click to expand...
Fafalada said:
No, this would be a complete system on a pcb. I suppose console "blade" is more accurate than a "card".
Click to expand...

Got it, thanks for the swift replies guys.

I just figured it couldn't be miniaturised that much but I suppose a massive bulk of the console itself is the case/cooling system and power supply.
 
I really respect the pivot towards easing development Sony have made under Cerny's stewardship. I appreciate that this aspect isn't really the concern of end-users, but its a very big deal for devs in terms of quality-of-life.
 
Clear said:
I really respect the pivot towards easing development Sony have made under Cerny's stewardship. I appreciate that this aspect isn't really the concern of end-users, but its a very big deal for devs in terms of quality-of-life.
Click to expand...
Will make games development cheaper, easier and faster. Hopefully back to the good old days of Ps1 on ease of game development and bringing back AA and A games.
 
Makes sense to me, especially given how less bespoke the hardware is given the move to x86 AMD APUs since the PS4 era, and it could potentially reduce the barrier to entry for indie teams.
 
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Good idea, but would be even better to allow you to program in a normal PC with no special hardware required and to use a normal retail console to test the games, like in Xbox.

yogaflame said:
This gives hope that PS Japan studio comeback for AA and A games exclusives.
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They did an awesome job with Astro Bot, Stellar Blade and Death Stranding 2, I don't see why they would need a comeback.

ChorizoPicozo said:
well, can the sell those "cards" and make your PC a Play Station?
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Woulnd't make sense since you can buy a PS5 with the missing stuff to have the same not needing as player to pay the rest of the PC.

ChorizoPicozo said:
well, can the sell those "cards" and make your PC a Play Station?
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No, because the I/O of the PC sucks compared to PS5 and misses stuff like how data gets compressed and decompressed by hardware from the (not included in the card) SSD etc.

This is just to compile and debug games, not to run them at full performance like in a retail console. To test the games under development there's a different device: the testkit.

cormack12 said:
So stupid question, can they not produce OEM 'PS5' cards, so your PC can emulate a PS5 completely? Leveraging and isolating the necessary compute and GPU? Which also locks you into PSN....
Click to expand...
PCs aren't powerful enough to emulate PS5, particularly their I/O part. What this card does is basically to put almost the entire PS5 (devkit) hardware in a PCIe card to reduce the cost and have a faster connection than the current method, which is to have it in a separated dedicated device and connect from the PC to it via LAN.

With this card they directly connect the devkit inside the PC, or to another server the company pretty likely already has (like to handle the studio's intranet, backups, etc). Normally devkits were placed in the server room/rack.

Depends on the console, but devkits often are ugly bulky motherfuckers that inside are basically like a retail console but with extra memory and some extra debug buttons, ports or displays and using a different OS/firmware. Plus are way more expensive than a retail console because fuck the indies.
 
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Seriously though, this could be very useful / quite a big thing for devs to make it a lot cheaper to give DevKits to people and could lower the barrier to development of games…

Imagine if they sold it as a PS6 in a Card solution to play your PS6 games on PC on top of maybe acting as a normal GPU.
 
yurinka said:
No, because the I/O of the PC sucks compared to PS5 and misses stuff like how data gets compressed and decompressed by hardware from the (not included in the card) SSD etc.
Click to expand...
This card has the SSD controller and it would have the I/O HW unit which is inside the main SoC so it would not be a problem. It need to have that to function as a device kit properly.
 
Panajev2001a said:
This card has the SSD controller and it would have the I/O HW unit which is inside the main SoC so it would not be a problem. It need to have that to function as a device kit properly.
Click to expand...
As I said, the SSD isn't connected to this card, but instead to the PC's motherboard separatedly, which doesn't have the same I/O (reading and decompressing by hardware the SSD data, allocating it in memory, memory management) like a PS5.

fig7_-e1755583954335.png.webp


Reason being an SSD is too big and heavy to put it in a card, and isn't needed to replicate the exact SSD behavior for what a devkit is used (which isn't the same than a retail console or testkit). So for them is better to keep it separatedly, something it also reduces costs for the card.

It also provides more flexibility, like to have different SSD sizes or multiple SSDs if desired. Because devkits often include extra RAM and storage, because they aren't made to run retail versions of the game, but instead early, unoptimized versions of the games during early stages of development, where in addition to the normal game code, on top there are many debug related stuff plus metrics and telemetry stuff to track the behavior or performance of several other things. Meaning, the performance of the game isn't the same than in a retail console, and devs don't care because in early stages of development this is not the important thing where they are focused at.

Once a game is on its final stages of development it's tested instead in testkits, which are way closer to retail consoles
 
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yurinka said:
As I said, the SSD isn't connected to this card, but instead to the PC's motherboard separatedly, which doesn't have the same I/O (reading and decompressing by hardware the SSD data, allocating it in memory, memory management) like a PS5.

fig7_-e1755583954335.png.webp


Reason being an SSD is too big and heavy to put it in a card, and isn't needed to replicate the exact SSD behavior for what a devkit is used (which isn't the same than a retail console or testkit).
Click to expand...
The I/O complex is not in the SSD, but it is part of the "APU" box there (the main custom chip as in the original diagrams).

As long as the PCI bus can deliver 5+ GB/s RAW (more for PS6) you are fine.

9ejQxiL05N9KowAX.jpeg

HMd9kFCNFKn4NmAI.jpeg

Not to talk about the "local SSD" and RAM buffer too… and the SSD controller on the card. Think how the secondary expansion slot works in PS5 and replace that with a fast PCIE bus.

The custom SSD controller and the I/O complex with all the features you were listing are respectively in this card and inside the APU. I do not see the problem you are raising 🤨.
 
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But yurinka yurinka kept saying all this time that console games are made on PCs and Windows, even all the PlayStation and Nintendo ones! 🤣🤣

Panajev2001a said:
Seriously though, this could be very useful / quite a big thing for devs to make it a lot cheaper to give DevKits to people and could lower the barrier to development of games…

Imagine if they sold it as a PS6 in a Card solution to play your PS6 games on PC on top of maybe acting as a normal GPU.
Click to expand...

It actually reminds me of what companies like NEC did back in the '90s, where they had PC-FX development boards you could install in DOS/V compatible PCs (including PC-9821, naturally). Tho they made two versions; one for their own C-bus and another for a standard interface (maybe PCI), I can't remember.

Neat idea, and that one even had the 3D graphics chip onboard that should've been in the actual console.

omegasc said:
Google 3DO Blaster
Click to expand...

I don't think you were actually able to use that as a development kit, IIRC. Could be misremembering, but 3DO Blaster (and Diamond Edge NV1, which was basically a Saturn on a PCI card) were for playing compatible games on a PC, not software dev.
 
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yurinka said:
As I said, the SSD isn't connected to this card, but instead to the PC's motherboard separatedly, which doesn't have the same I/O (reading and decompressing by hardware the SSD data, allocating it in memory, memory management) like a PS5.

fig7_-e1755583954335.png.webp


Reason being an SSD is too big and heavy to put it in a card, and isn't needed to replicate the exact SSD behavior for what a devkit is used (which isn't the same than a retail console or testkit).
Click to expand...
You are interpreting FIG.7 wrong.

Console Card still has NAND 'Local SSD' (112) which is separate from SSD (704) that connects to the PC Motherboard via PCIe.
 
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Loxus said:
You are interpreting FIG.7 wrong.

Console Card still has NAND 'Local SSD' (112) which is separate from SSD (704) that connects to the PC Motherboard via PCIe.
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True, I was wrong. I thought that because the description says about 112:

"Optionally, the console compute card 100 includes NAND flash memory 112 (or other non-volatile memory), which can be configured to function as a local SSD. mimicking the setup of a game console in which a separate SSD or hard drive is connected as a peripheral device to the game console's motherboard. The NAND flash memory 112 can be connected to the Southbridge 106, and as noted above, the Southbridge 106 can have integrated SSD controller functionality to manage access and read/write operations to the NAND flash memory 112."

"Accordingly, in the illustrated implementation, the console compute card 100 is disposed in a devkit server system 600, which acts as the host system for the console compute card 100. More specifically, the console compute card 100 is connected to a server motherboard 602 via PCIe (e.g. inserted into PCIe slot on the motherboard 602). In some implementations, the console compute card 100 includes a local SSD storage 112. In some implementations, the console compute card 100 supports external connections such as HDMI, USB, Ethernet, etc. For example, in some implementations, video rendered by the GPU portion of the APU 102 may be output over HDMI. In some implementations, data communications involving the Southbridge 106 may be carried out over a USB connection or over an Ethernet connection to an external device."

" In the illustrated implementation, the console compute card 100 is integrated into a workstation 700, which acts as the host system for the console compute card 100. More specifically, the console compute card 100 is connected to a PC motherboard 702 via PCIe (e.g. inserted into PCIe slot on the motherboard 702). In some implementations, the console compute card 100 includes a local SSD storage 112. In some implementations, the console compute card 100 supports external connections such as HDMI, USB, Ethernet, etc. For example, in some implementations, video rendered by the GPU portion of the APU 102 may be output over HDMI. In some implementations, data communications involving the Southbridge 106 may be carried out over a USB connection or over an Ethernet connection to an external device."

"In some implementations, the local SSD 112 is utilized for game and OS storage. In some implementations, the console compute card 100 is configured to enable remote storage to be accessed through the workstation 806."

But I missed that also says:

"As shown, the console compute card 100 may include a local SSD 112. In some implementations, the local SSD is configured to have the same performance characteristics as that of the regular game console. In this manner, game development can occur using storage that will be indicative of the final game behavior on the regular game console."

thicc_girls_are_teh_best said:
But yurinka yurinka kept saying all this time that console games are made on PCs and Windows, even all the PlayStation and Nintendo ones! 🤣🤣
Click to expand...
Yes, it's a fact that games are made in PCs and you can't make a console game without a PC, and that in case of console games most of the stuff is made on PCs and only a portion requires devkits (accessed remotely from a development PC, which is what this patent tries to optimize, if not why would a dev want to plug this card to their development PC or server), and that testkits are just to test the final results in final hardware.

Only retarded flatearthers who have no idea what are they talking about would say it isn't the case.
 
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Panajev2001a said:
This card has the SSD controller and it would have the I/O HW unit which is inside the main SoC so it would not be a problem. It need to have that to function as a device kit properly.
Click to expand...
Panajev2001a said:
The I/O complex is not in the SSD, but it is part of the "APU" box there (the main custom chip as in the original diagrams).

As long as the PCI bus can deliver 5+ GB/s RAW (more for PS6) you are fine.

9ejQxiL05N9KowAX.jpeg

HMd9kFCNFKn4NmAI.jpeg

Not to talk about the "local SSD" and RAM buffer too… and the SSD controller on the card. Think how the secondary expansion slot works in PS5 and replace that with a fast PCIE bus.

The custom SSD controller and the I/O complex with all the features you were listing are respectively in this card and inside the APU. I do not see the problem you are raising 🤨.
Click to expand...

I wasn't specifically talking about this I/O chip, I mentioned the I/O system of the console, of which this I/O chip is only a part of it and involves more things. In what I thought, specifically the SSD, its bus to this chip, then its bus to the RAM, GPU and CPU.

But I was wrong, I forgot this chip was inside the APU, I previously thought it was missing in the card. Which means that yes, in the configurations that would have the 'RAM of the console/devkit' in the card (which I assume would be the normal case, and would use the same bus than in the normal devkit/console), and would use the configuration (that I also missed, see my post above it) that have the NAND configured to mimick the SSD of the regular consoles, it would theorically work like a normal devkit/'console' but in this case plugged to a development PC/server.

So wouldn't have the issue I previously described. And yes, should also work in configurations where not using the internal NAND/SSD for that and instead using an external one from the PC/server as long as it would be 5.5GB/s to replicate the internal one of PS5/PS5 devkit.

It also means that pretty likely could also use these same cards -or slightly a different variant- for the PS Cloud Gaming server blades instead of curent ones. Meaning, could potentially optimize the costs of both PS cloud gaming servers and PS devkits doing a single hardware they could use for both, which I assume is their idea.
 
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yurinka said:
Good idea, but would be even better to allow you to program in a normal PC with no special hardware required and to use a normal retail console to test the games, like in Xbox.


They did an awesome job with Astro Bot, Stellar Blade and Death Stranding 2, I don't see why they would need a comeback.


Woulnd't make sense since you can buy a PS5 with the missing stuff to have the same not needing as player to pay the rest of the PC.


No, because the I/O of the PC sucks compared to PS5 and misses stuff like how data gets compressed and decompressed by hardware from the (not included in the card) SSD etc.

This is just to compile and debug games, not to run them at full performance like in a retail console. To test the games under development there's a different device: the testkit.


PCs aren't powerful enough to emulate PS5, particularly their I/O part. What this card does is basically to put almost the entire PS5 (devkit) hardware in a PCIe card to reduce the cost and have a faster connection than the current method, which is to have it in a separated dedicated device and connect from the PC to it via LAN.

With this card they directly connect the devkit inside the PC, or to another server the company pretty likely already has (like to handle the studio's intranet, backups, etc). Normally devkits were placed in the server room/rack.

Depends on the console, but devkits often are ugly bulky motherfuckers that inside are basically like a retail console but with extra memory and some extra debug buttons, ports or displays and using a different OS/firmware. Plus are way more expensive than a retail console because fuck the indies.
Click to expand...
We need more Ps exclusives like Astrobot, stellar blade and death stranding 2, not those woke and dei infested gaas that sony is pushing and endless remasters of LOU, Horizon and Spiderman. Hopefully with this tech, maybe Japan studio will comeback and give us again A and AA games.
 
yogaflame said:
We need more Ps exclusives like Astrobot, stellar blade and death stranding 2, not those woke and dei infested gaas that sony is pushing and endless remasters of LOU, Horizon and Spiderman. Hopefully with this tech, maybe Japan studio will comeback and give us again A and AA games.
Click to expand...
I agree that we need more games like Astro Bot, Stellar Blade or DS2 and less woke stuff.

But Japan Studio, even if now formally split again in the two parts it always had and using other names, continues there doing the same as always but avoiding money sinks and avoiding making turds. Astro Bot pretty likely is the best selling, most awarded and most profitable internally developed game ever. The best selling externally developed ones pretty likely are Bloodborne and Death Stranding by far.

Regarding AA games, they work in stuff like Astro Bot, (this one may be considered a AAA too) Stellar Blade, Lost Soul Aside or Convallaria.

Regarding A projects like ports, remasters and very small games from internal IPs they now outsource them to other people. In this case some are licensed to Bandai Namco and the DS ports were licensed to somebody else. Regarding very small teams made by Japanese indie teams, they now support them via PlayStation Indies helping them to self publish and only ask them maximum timed console exclusivity, because nowadays makes more sense for both sides.
 
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yurinka said:
I agree that we need more games like Astro Bot, Stellar Blade or DS2 and less woke stuff.

But Japan Studio, even if now formally split again in the two parts it always had and using other names, continues there doing the same as always but avoiding money sinks and avoiding making turds. Astro Bot pretty likely is the best selling, most awarded and most profitable internally developed game ever. The best selling externally developed ones pretty likely are Bloodborne and Death Stranding by far.

Regarding AA games, they work in stuff like Astro Bot, (this one may be considered a AAA too) Stellar Blade, Lost Soul Aside or Convallaria.

Regarding A projects like ports, remasters and very small games from internal IPs they now outsource them to other people. In this case some are licensed to Bandai Namco and the DS ports were licensed to somebody else. Regarding very small teams made by Japanese indie teams, they now support them via PlayStation Indies helping them to self publish and only ask them maximum timed console exclusivity, because nowadays makes more sense for both sides.
Click to expand...
A really hope AA and A exclusives be back like Gravity rush, Ape escape, siren, etc. Especially for Sony to win back Japan , they need Japan studio AA and A games be bqck
 
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