Death Stranding 2 technical director says that the jump from PS4 to PS5 "isn't so great," it's just "more efficient"

It's budget, time, manpower, priorities and prolonged cross gen tail leading to a lack of meaningful upgrades even in current-gen titles, not to mention pushing 60fps and/or native or close-to-native res in first/second party titles. I'd rather they be honest about that than blame the hardware.

PS5 is a bigger step up than it's given credit for. The only area where it really fell short on gen-on-gen multipliers is memory bandwidth.

They're just making the decision to push the sliders up rather than make any significant, fundamental changes.

DS2 looks very nice and I'm looking forward to play it, but it's very much "we decided to turn the values up and concentrate on other things" rather than "we implemented lots of optimised 'next-gen' tech".
 
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So we can't expect ground breaking titles made from ground-up just for PS5 hardware in mind ? because its just a little more efficient.
I think post GTA6 we had officially hit the graphic benchmark for the next decade.

Shame the raw power difference between the PS3 and PS5 doesn't seem to be reflected in gameplay innovation. We are playing just prettier and faster PS3 games, not better.
 
With lithography nodes getting a lot more more expensive, and advancements being much slower, we can never hope to see hardware jumps like the one from the PS1 to the PS2.

The nodes barely shrink now and for a good reason it's approaching all limits of optics and silicon. It would need a paradigm shift to go a lot smaller.
 
Its nice jump, about 3x more cpu performance and around 5-6x gpu performance, add to that ssd/more vram and low(but still some) rt capabilities and its fine-ish but compared to for example ps1 to ps2 jump, its crazy small, hell ps1 to ps2 was at least as big as ps3 to ps5pr0
Just look at tekken tag arcade version which was made on system12 mobo, that already was miles above ps1 specs, vs tekken tag on ps2, not even tekken5 but just launch title TTT:


Or gran turismo 1/2 vs gran turismo 3/4:

The jump from PS1 to PS2 was crazy really.
 
Oh really. Did DS1 have a 60fps mode on PS4? Of course not.

Seems like they're not really pushing the systems graphics capabilities as hard as they did in DS1.
Maybe they just mean more efficient at hitting the technical targets.

Like death stranding 1 was amazing and all and a big jump on anything from the ps3 gen but it ran at 30fps and a low resolution. Unless you want DS2 running at 30fps and a low resolution with no RT you can't expect a big jumpy. DS2 will have a 60fps Day 1 it won't need to wait for the PS6.
 
More than 2-3x the raster power, more than 3-4x CPU power over the PS4, bleeding edge SSD technology, advanced feature set with Mesh/Primitive Shaders & Ray-tracing.

but it's only "mOre eFFeciEnT" ?
Yes, what he means by this is that the graphical jump isn't huge but it's doing it at double the framerate or twice the resolution. That's efficiency and not so much a big technical jump in the engine.
 
Maybe using multiplatform games that don't really push the hardware, but using their game from 1080p30fps to 2160p60fps on PS5 is a 8x improvement of pixels pushed by the hardware.

I really don't understand his point. He expected 20x more pixels? Did we ever got that previously?
 
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I think Sony knocked the hardware part of this generation out of the park with the PS5. The software side on the other hand...
 
A couple of things here.

One, I think it comes down to the timing. I do think PS5 came out maybe a year too early. It should have had zen3 CPU and complete rdna2.

I think it is clear that Sony locked in the PS5 design before Microsoft did. There's this rush to make sure you launch your system at the same time as your competitor and in that holiday block and I think it is short-sighted. Sony was afraid of giving Microsoft the advantage like they did with the 360 that was on the market a year by itself with no competition.

The PS6 should seek to have a few advanced technologies, but a lot of these technologies aren't even built to improve gaming at all.

PCIE5 for example has been a major let down. Sequential R/W isn't as important as random R/W, so unless we see Sony do something custom here again where it has a major focus on random R/W, we're not going to see significant improvement moving forward.

I don't think there's any reason to rush to market on the PS6 though, so we should be able to have Sony wait on things like Zen7 for example. I think when we often bring up Sony and Microsoft being competitors, we only look at the positives of that (of which there has clearly been few) but we never stop to consider the negatives. The rush to the market in almost every generation is a result of having to be first to market and as a result we often end up missing out on key future tech and generations are too long to miss out on some tech.

It's the equivalent of buying a really expensive tv in 2018 like an LG C8, but then being locked out of things like HDMI 2.1, 4K120 gaming e.t.c. for the rest of the duration of the TVs life... 2018 is a terrible year to have bought an LG (and I know, I own an LGC8 as well as two LG CXs)

What's worse is these problems extend to the PS5 Pro in ways I wish they wouldn't.

If Sony can wait til 2029 or 2030, we'll get a much better PS6 with significant improvements over the PS5.

Sony looking to make a handheld with a shared architecture also complicates things, but waiting longer in ways may pay dividends here too. Advancements in silicon carbon batteries for example could give significantly longer battery life with the same frame.
 
I've been mostly fine with it. I don't think the big issue is hardware power. It's just software development cost, ballooning man hours needed. Most studios can't really even afford to make games that max out the system.
 
Well yeah, the extra graphical and computational power that ps5 brings get used up by the increased frame rate and increased resolution in games. Not to mention ray tracing.
 
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Considering what we've seen on the PS5/PC, this is obvious.
Same applies to every piece of equipment. No more leaps, it's why graphics cards had to resort to AI to justify $2000 pricetags.
 
Nonsense, it's like saying that an fx 6300 + gtx 750ti and Ryzen 2600 + RTX 2070 is just efficiency.If some current games don't live up to the power of the ps5, it's not the hardware's fault.

comparing with ps2 is not fair because although it is not common, both ps1 and N64 had games in 480i, so the resolution was maintained for two gens, if ps5 uses 1080p as a target the jump would be huge, in fact it is huge as GTA 6 shown.
 
Lol to think that everybody here claimed back in 2020 that it was a giant leap now that next gen consoles were equipped with a SSD and decent cpu. This gen has been a huge letdown
 
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Since DS doesn't feature particularly fast travel speed or high number of enemies (probably?), I'm legit curious about how would this run on PS4
 
Dont underestimate the importance of efficiency. Efficiency and ease of use to develop game is very important. Its not always about monster increase in horse power in flops, memory etc. Its like an F1 cars, for example each season its always the same horse power but it becomes better on other factors like fuel economy, safety, acceleration, aero dynamix design, suspension adjustment, handling, torque, etc. Same with Ps5, time the memory and loading is much faster, and more efficient programming, more frame rate options, and more textures can be created , ray tracing option, etc. You know what I mean. Its much smoother and easier and more space and freedom in creativity.
 
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Meanwhile Ubisoft`s Anvil,Id Softwares Id-Tech, UE5, Rockstar`s RAGE and even Unity show what this "not so great" difference can translate into when you have competent engine developers.
........
Japanese devs aren`t exactly known for their engine tech prowess and it shows.
Sure, but in this case it isn't a Japanese engine
 
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I'm sorry, what's your background in game dev guys? Are you cooking one of the best looking game of the generation?
and what`s yours that you can just dismiss engines like UE5, Anvil, RAGE, Id-Tech whose output seems to directly contradict this random Japanese Engineer`s comment?

Sure, but in this case it isn't a Japanese engine
Using an engine is not a one and done thing. you need to know what to do with it, fork and extend it if necessary etc. It´s just a toolkit that you still need a lot of competence to use to its fullest. My point stands.
 
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HA!

Same thing for Switch 2 vs PS5.

Remember Death Stranding 1 ran on vanilla PS4 and looked amazing. It would look even better on Switch 2.

This is the perfect argument for why graphics don't matter. After a certain point you just don't get much return for tripling the power. Diminishing returns are here and it is a glorious day for Nintendo. We need like 10x the power and a VRR TV to notice a slight difference. You know its true. You know just like me you look at these screenshots and are like "they're the same picture." Who GiIVES a fuck about graphics beyond framerate, assuming graphic are at least Switch 2 level? Do you despise gaming that much that the graphics have to keep you entertained?
 
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Demons souls looks like CGI to this day, and never looked like it could have been achieved on a past gen. GTA6 trailer just revealed a whole new echelon of what is possible realtime on the PS5.

These bums are still using last gen tech, and thats why they can't muster up anything that looks better than ps4
 
and what`s yours that you can just dismiss engines like UE5, Anvil, RAGE, Id-Tech whose output seems to directly contradict this random Japanese Engineer`s comment?

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These are the kinds of bottlenecks GCN had that Kojima would refer as architectures being better optimized.

GCN was one of the worst SE:CU ratio in history, too big of a computational pool for one little rasterizer. That architecture favored large computational tasks over small draw calls.

As AMD's own slide shows, small geometry would choke the pipeline, full of stalls, draining.

That's exactly why you won't see nanite on PS4 and you see it on PS5. Meshlets are small geometry. Modern games are full of small draw calls.

Its more efficient 🤷‍♂️
 
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Demons souls looks like CGI to this day, and never looked like it could have been achieved on a past gen. GTA6 trailer just revealed a whole new echelon of what is possible realtime on the PS5.

These bums are still using last gen tech, and thats why they can't muster up anything that looks better than ps4
Sometimes its just a mistranslation. If you see the next sentences , they praise the system and even said that its more of a challenge with more process can be done. But to be honest, even DS1 directors cut for ps5 looks so impressive. And DS2 is even more impressive.
 
Isn't it crazy that this is being said when last gen used the POS Jaguar cpu's? That's crazy to me. But hey, this is what you get when you hype the ps5 with a god damn ssd instead of some revolutionary gpu/cpu that would make an actual difference.
 
I'd argue that late PS4 gen games achieved pre-render/photorealism (to a degree) already. We're just upping FPS/Res and make thing more procedural (like RT) at this point.

Titles like The Order, Uncharted 4 TLoU 2, Horizon 4 or Gears 5 hardly aged outside of resolution or input lag.
the addition of PBR to that gen felt like the final advancement. Stuff like RT is just refining that and making it realtime.

Isn't it crazy that this is being said when last gen used the POS Jaguar cpu's? That's crazy to me. But hey, this is what you get when you hype the ps5 with a god damn ssd instead of some revolutionary gpu/cpu that would make an actual difference.
This is part of the problem. Those Jaguar CPUs led to a way of doing things and devs are still doing things that way.
 
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The moment we hit good pre-calculated GI last gen, things kinda slowed down. While real time RTGI and reflections look nice, it's not exactly a generational leap on its own while being exponentially more hardware taxing in comparison. We currently live in a weird transitional period.
RTGI makes other advancements possible though, like much bigger world size. This graphic was used in another thread showing that baked lighting in a huge open world game isn't feasible due to the GI file size becoming enormous.
AC Shadows wouldn't have been possible without RTGI
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RTGI makes other advancements possible though, like much bigger world size. This graphic was used in another thread showing that baked lighting in a huge open world game isn't feasible due to the GI file size becoming enormous.
AC Shadows wouldn't have been possible without RTGI
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Is it really an advancement to make a game world 4x bigger than the already tediously large and repetitive Origins? I also think not for nothing, Valhalla and Odyssey are bigger than Origins.
 
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I prefer taking the red pill, I'll scrap the ex86 architecture for something much more complex like esram, risc-v. Screw easy development cause it'll essentially lead to failure. The more reasonable answer would be is there's no such thing as easy development, we've got ai, quantum computing ....etc to replace easy development and definitely not at the cost of lazy devs.
 
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More than 2-3x the raster power, more than 3-4x CPU power over the PS4, bleeding edge SSD technology, advanced feature set with Mesh/Primitive Shaders & Ray-tracing.

but it's only "mOre eFFeciEnT" ?
It's actually 7-8x GPU power. Not 2-3x. 10.2 PS5 Tflops are equivalent to 15.2 PS4 tflops. PS4 had 1.84 tflops, so thats an 8x boost in raw GPU raster performance.

We can easily measure this by looking at Kojima's own DS1 PS5 version. it can do native 4k 60 fps which is exactly 8x the pixel budget of the 1080p 30 fps PS4 version. It actually drops the framerates in the same cutscenes as the PS4, albeit at much higher resolutions and framerates.

PS3 to PS4 has a similar jump of 8x. Going from 240 gflops to 1.84 tflops, and im sure there were architectural gains there as well. But even if it was 10x more powerful, the 8x leap the PS5 is getting is still very close.

And the CPU leap is 7-8s. DF calculated this. The clocks alone are 2.2x higher. There are 2x more threads. Thats 4.5x right there. Then you have the massive architectural gains from jaguar to Zen 2.

You mentioned the SSD upgrade is 100x. Along with ray tracing and mesh shaders.

This guy is just making excuses and doing damage control because he knows other devs have managed to make their games look much better by leveraging ray tracing, mesh shaders and the 8x leap in GPU power. GTA6 literally shows this.
 
RTGI makes other advancements possible though, like much bigger world size. This graphic was used in another thread showing that baked lighting in a huge open world game isn't feasible due to the GI file size becoming enormous.
AC Shadows wouldn't have been possible without RTGI
ntX1Fc6.png
Exactly, which is why developers are more and more making the transition. It's just that the advantages are not always apparent to gamers that judge the end (graphical) result and in that sense, the overall visual level hasn't improvement that much in games, especially if you also count the drive for 60fps. You kinda need to look under the hood to appreciate that while the improvements aren't always too obvious to the eye, we're doing in real time things that could only be calculated offline a few years ago which is amazing and will ultimately be a big boon as more and more developers embrace the change and use it to either developer products faster or with greater ambition.
 
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The smart way to think about console progression moving forward is this -

How many great PS4 games exist that the PS3 couldn't have played in some form? It's not as many as you think.

This problem gets exponentially worse as the technical ceiling rises. There are very few PS5 games that the PS4 just couldn't run...the number is probably in the teens somewhere.

The problem is not technical limitations anymore it's the cost of development. Only like ten to twenty studios can even afford to make games that max out the consoles at this point.

If the above is true (it is), SIE is going to have to find OTHER routes of innovation besides horsepower going forward. They themselves have sort of acknowledged this, because many of the primary marketing beats for the PS5 are things that aren't graphics related (3D Audio, Haptics, Load Times).
 
I didn't make Death Stranding, but the jaguar CPU paired with a HDD was just archaic. You can't convince me that PS5 is just a more efficient way to realize the same possibilities.

Of course, how much those possibilities have actually been tapped is a different story. Most games are still possible on a PS4, perhaps owing to the fact that we still wanted them on Series S and Switch 1 (and PS4).
 
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Lol to think that everybody here claimed back in 2020 that it was a giant leap now that next gen consoles were equipped with a SSD and decent cpu. This gen has been a huge letdown
It IS a giant leap.

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You just need devs who are willing to put in the effort and not phone in graphics after a 6 year dev cycle. kojima along with nearly all Japanese devs are hooked on jerking off to Hentai porn instead of actually working for a change.
 
What a nonsense, Just the jump from the Jaguar CPU to Zen2 is huge, and everything else too, GPU, RAM, SSD, etc.
The guy could have been talking just about the kind of hardware is used, not the power itself. So just a statement about innovation in hardware solutions, not the level of performance. Since we know perfectly the numbers, it looks like that.
But click-bait title makes people read what they think the would read.
 
The guy could have been talking just about the kind of hardware is used, not the power itself. So just a statement about innovation in hardware solutions, not the level of performance. Since we know perfectly the numbers, it looks like that.
But click-bait title makes people read what they think the would read.
??

He was asked what the team managed to accomplish on the PS5 that they couldnt on PS4 and this was his answer. He mentions loading and starts making excuses about how they didnt have enough power to do what couldnt be done before.
Talking to Edge Magazine in its latest issue – on sale now, by the way – Sakamoto takes a question over what the team can achieve on PS5 that wasn't possible when PS4 was the lead format. The jump from PS1 to PS2 this is not, but the new hardware system certainly helps in making development easier.

"The most obvious improvement from a technological point of view is the reduction in loading times, but to be honest, the difference between the two hardware systems isn't so great," he says. "It's more a case that on PS5 there are more efficient ways of arriving at similar goals.

What about ray tracing? What about mesh shader support? Neither of which were supported on the PS4. Why didnt his team utilize those features when nearly every big AAA game utilizes them. It's been 5 years since the gen started and he's out here making excuses.

Sounds like the technical director spent the last 6 years jerking off and now has to blame the hardware to save his job.
 
It IS a giant leap.

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You just need devs who are willing to put in the effort and not phone in graphics after a 6 year dev cycle. kojima along with nearly all Japanese devs are hooked on jerking off to Hentai porn instead of actually working for a change.
I mean, GTA is an outlier here and it'll come out 6 freaking years after the consoles released. AC shadows looks great but certainly not groundbreaking on consoles. The game has its moments but it's inconsistent. I was more impressed by horizon Fw in early 2022.
 
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Using an engine is not a one and done thing. you need to know what to do with it, fork and extend it if necessary etc. It´s just a toolkit that you still need a lot of competence to use to its fullest. My point stands.
Does it? seems to me like they are utilising the engine well, Death Stranding was one of the best looking games last gen, and 2 looks to follow that. They are also extending on the base engine, look at the fluid and destruction physics for example. This is one engine that is being iterated upon by both Guerilla and Kojima Productions, they are sharing tech. Also, arguably, Kojima's studio before going solo, had one of the best engines out there (Fox engine)
 
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