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

we reached a point where indie devs can make games like this

Travel Landscape GIF by Xbox

Catch Flower Petal GIF by Xbox


there is a lack of creativity these days not lack of power
 
??

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.


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's the technical directors job to implement the features he feels are important to the game they are making. It sounds like it wasn't necessary.
 
This is the benefit of keeping the same architecture and upgrading with a more powerful APU, more total and faster RAM, and fully integrated NVM storage - faster than your computer because it's soldered directly onto the mobo, connected right into the APU memory controllers.

Some PS5s may melt down, and the first generation of controllers had build issues, but overall it's the best hardware they've ever released.

Shame about the first party games though.
 
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)
You have the lead tech engineer talk about how PS5 is "not much different, just more efficient" while prepping to release a game that`s missing nearly all of the next gen features we`ve seen implemented in other games with other engines. Now if the engine is simply behind the curve or feature xy is not useful for a specific game ...ok, all valid reasons to not go cutting edge, and ofc its a budget question, too.

But this generalized statement is such blatant bullshit considering what others have already brought to the table that it doesn`t exactly shine a good light on that guy`s competence.
 
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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 think we're stuck in a paradigm of Ubisoft open world/skill tree games.

I think we're still waiting for games to redefine gaming.

Games like Mario 64, Halo, Zelda 64, GTA3, Diablo 2, Uncharted, Arkham Asylum. We're at a point where we rarely get games with control schemes that are just pure trash. The baseline for games seems to have greatly improved. Most AAA games run at 60 fps and pretty solid. But we're held back by the fact that we have 10 fingers and our thumbs are the primary actioneers.

Take Hogwarts Legacy for example. The fact that we have to select which skills are readily available to us feels archaic. Voice controls may have been the way to go here at least as an option. I don't think voice control has been explored enough and if the game wasn't so long, it may have been more viable.

Immersion is the next great frontier in gaming. Right now the barriers seems to be scripting/voice acting and the controller. AI can fix the second one, but we still need to find a way to fix the second and VR might be the answer.
 
You have the lead tech engineer talk about how PS5 is "not much different, just more efficient" while prepping to release a game that`s missing nearly all of the next gen features we`ve seen implemented in other games with other engines. Now if the engine is simply is behind the curve or feature xy is not useful for a specific game ...ok, all valid resosns to not do it, and ofc its a budget question, too.

But that general statement is such blatant bullshit considering what others have already brought to the table that it doesn`t exactly shine a good light on that guy`s competence.
He isnt wrong though, the leaps between (console) generations are getting smaller and smaller, the PS5 'can' do raytracing but at a cost so it's really not something you should use too much if you want to keep the performance high and viewing distances long like in Death Stranding (and Horizon). So then what is there? faster loading, faster GPU and faster CPU? thats pretty much it, so due to those everything is more efficient than last gen. We are only talking about the leap between PS4 and PS5 here, we arent talking about 5090
 
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The jump between Horizon 1 and 2 seems good enough for me. That was cross gen game that was clearly limited by it yet still showed progress. A current gen only game should have more room for creativity.

Either DS2 has minimal form of pushing stuff and just focused on cinematic stuff or they just lack creativity which from Kojima, I very much doubt.

Engine limitation perhaps? It certainly looks good but looking good isn't the only way you can judge an engine.
 
He isnt wrong though,
yes he is...massively so, as other developers have already proven, on console.


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.
Full RTGI with large render distances thanks to virtualized geometry plus wind, destruction and other physics simulations in dense worlds x-times the size of prior generations are already in released games, and GTA 6 is on its way to pulverize these metrics again on the same hardware. Meanwhile that guy working on an "empty landscape with one person in it"-game which doesn`t have any of that (well, maybe the environmental stuff like wind/fire/water will not just be scenedressing) gives such statements......
 
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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.
When Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is released this technical director will be put to shame.
 
Saying the quiet part out loud...

I think people are misunderstanding what he's saying here. Once we went x86, there wasn't gonna be any MEGA shifts in hardware from console to console. That doesn't mean the jump from the PS4 to PS5 generation is small.
 
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.

THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If developers would just make games that run at 30 fps at a resolution of 1080p-1440p, you'd see a HUGE difference from PS4 games.
 
Take Hogwarts Legacy for example. The fact that we have to select which skills are readily available to us feels archaic. Voice controls may have been the way to go here at least as an option. I don't think voice control has been explored enough and if the game wasn't so long, it may have been more viable.
Comfortability while playing a game is something to consider as well. We have the technology for voice control, feet control, VR, and all sorts of stuff. But it would take a lot of mental and physical energy to play those games. Like you said, that's an experience best left for shorter games.

Innovating on the current experience would require not compromising on current comfortability. For consoles, the Switch 2 adding mouse support is a step in the right direction (although using a JoyCon as a mouse sounds terrible).
 
Yes he just needs to go fuc. himself and saw graphics of games like, avatar, ac shadows, Hellblade 2 and gta vi in current gen machines
 
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consider this a remaster of that quote
That checks out, sony loves remasters.

This quote screams damage control to me. DS2 isn't a leap above DS1, and most first party sony (with a few exceptions) haven't really pushed boundaries beyond the ps4.

Odd to die on this hill though when bloober team is cranking out next gen visuals.

Sony huffing too much GAAS, they're delusional.

I wonder why they had so many Cerny showcases about next gen hardware to have this dude pipe in 5 years later just to shit on it lol
 
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Like I've said before the core issue is "big" detail versus "small" detail.

Previous gens had enough grunt to render the big picture, so all that's left now are the small details. And the unfortunate reality is that those small details are more expensive to render than, or at the least, less impactful on the overall result relative to render cost then the big things,
 
Diminishing returns and stagnating software sales.
Getting 3X the power no longer means your games will look 3X better, and you can't keep increasing game budgets forever if sales don't grow accordingly.

we reached a point where indie devs can make games like this

Travel Landscape GIF by Xbox

Catch Flower Petal GIF by Xbox


there is a lack of creativity these days not lack of power

IMO E33 is a good example that wasting hundreds of millions on graphics isn't worth it.
Decent graphics with excellent art direction will always be more memorable than " next gen graphics"
 
Diminishing returns and stagnating software sales.
Getting 3X the power no longer means your games will look 3X better, and you can't keep increasing game budgets forever if sales don't grow accordingly.



IMO E33 is a good example that wasting hundreds of millions on graphics isn't worth it.
Decent graphics with excellent art direction will always be more memorable than " next gen graphics"
GTA6 is arguably only game that is actual game and on pair the matrix demo, and it will sell a lot, but i understand u, where there is only graphical progress without actual substance, game will usually not sell well, hell we had example of that back in last gen with the order 1886 bombing(bought it for like 30euro few weeks after launch and enjoyed truthfully for what it was, short corridor shooter with crazy graphics :D ) or hellblade2 this gen :P
 
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Like I've said before the core issue is "big" detail versus "small" detail.

Previous gens had enough grunt to render the big picture, so all that's left now are the small details. And the unfortunate reality is that those small details are more expensive to render than, or at the least, less impactful on the overall result relative to render cost then the big things,
Thats where mesh shaders come in. Had they utilized virtualized geometry features in the PS5 hardware, they couldve gotten those small details to render without breaking their GPU power. They just didnt. This was their oppurtunity to show the journos the new features like RT, mesh shaders, etc. but they chose to complain about not having enough power instead. Ive been waiting 2+ years now for GG or KojiPro to give an update on the latest Decima features and when the time finally came to tout its features they said sorry not enough power for us to do anything next gen.

Frankly, these kind of rock details are embarrassing for an AAA studio. Especially when C tier studios were able to pull off better rocks and smaller detail two years ago.

11_Enemy.jpg


09_Environment.jpg


2b4RDhE.jpg


F-bc5t0WAAAM0_O


Regardless, had they implemented RTGI, RT Reflections, virtualized geometry, VSM shadows, and still failed to provide a next gen leap then fine, i will give him the benefit of the doubt. At least they tried but the hardware jump was not there to make the game look better despite all this tech and their best effort. But if you dont even try and just raise your hands and say i wont even touch the actual next gen features then you deserve to be called out.

Kojima is my favorite developer of all time. But no he doesnt get a pass for phoning it in.
 
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Thats where mesh shaders come in. Had they utilized virtualized geometry features in the PS5 hardware, they couldve gotten those small details to render without breaking their GPU power. They just didnt. This was their oppurtunity to show the journos the new features like RT, mesh shaders, etc. but they chose to complain about not having enough power instead. Ive been waiting 2+ years now for GG or KojiPro to give an update on the latest Decima features and when the time finally came to tout its features they said sorry not enough power for us to do anything next gen.

Frankly, these kind of rock details are embarrassing for an AAA studio. Especially when C tier studios were able to pull off better rocks and smaller detail two years ago.

11_Enemy.jpg


09_Environment.jpg


2b4RDhE.jpg


F-bc5t0WAAAM0_O


Regardless, had they implemented RTGI, RT Reflections, virtualized geometry, VSM shadows, and still failed to provide a next gen leap then fine, i will give him the benefit of the doubt. At least they tried but the hardware jump was not there to make the game look better despite all this tech and their best effort. But if you dont even try and just raise your hands and say i wont even touch the actual next gen features then you deserve to be called out.

Kojima is my favorite developer of all time. But no he doesnt get a pass for phoning it in.
Actually, after looking at the picture, the first two picture, Ds2 looks so impressive. It looks better in motion for sure. Cant wait for DS2. Is the technical director just being sarcastic and kidding around? Kojima and his team loves to joke around and make exaggerations, especially when talking about game development.
 
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Thats where mesh shaders come in. Had they utilized virtualized geometry features in the PS5 hardware, they couldve gotten those small details to render without breaking their GPU power. They just didnt. This was their oppurtunity to show the journos the new features like RT, mesh shaders, etc. but they chose to complain about not having enough power instead. Ive been waiting 2+ years now for GG or KojiPro to give an update on the latest Decima features and when the time finally came to tout its features they said sorry not enough power for us to do anything next gen.

Frankly, these kind of rock details are embarrassing for an AAA studio. Especially when C tier studios were able to pull off better rocks and smaller detail two years ago.

11_Enemy.jpg


09_Environment.jpg


2b4RDhE.jpg


F-bc5t0WAAAM0_O


Regardless, had they implemented RTGI, RT Reflections, virtualized geometry, VSM shadows, and still failed to provide a next gen leap then fine, i will give him the benefit of the doubt. At least they tried but the hardware jump was not there to make the game look better despite all this tech and their best effort. But if you dont even try and just raise your hands and say i wont even touch the actual next gen features then you deserve to be called out.

Kojima is my favorite developer of all time. But no he doesnt get a pass for phoning it in.
I died when some people were comparing those rocks to the best ue5 rocks.

Decima won or some shit :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
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Actually, after looking at the picture, Ds2 looks so impressive. It looks better in motion for sure. Cant wait for DS2. Is the technical director just being sarcastic and kidding around? Kojima and his team loves to joke around and make exaggerations, especially when talking about game development.
the last two screenshots are from robocop. not ds2.
I died when some people were comparing those rocks to the best ue5 rocks.

Decima won or some shit :messenger_tears_of_joy:
some of the mountains in the trailer tricked me but these screenshots at the previews are simply last gen.
 
Diminishing returns and stagnating software sales.
Getting 3X the power no longer means your games will look 3X better, and you can't keep increasing game budgets forever if sales don't grow accordingly.



IMO E33 is a good example that wasting hundreds of millions on graphics isn't worth it.
Decent graphics with excellent art direction will always be more memorable than " next gen graphics"
Funny thing is, you can't even argue E33 doesn't have good graphics. Not even artstyle related, it's a phenomenal looking game using all of UE5's latest and most advanced features, even Niagara for dense particle effects. If it wasn't by Hellblade 2, just the facial rendering alone would be near top of the line.
 
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He is a fool then or it is a misunderstood interview.
People might think the games look the same as on ps4... until they play ps4 games again.

-ps5 runs ps4 games at 4k60, while it was 1080p30 on ps4. So that's 4x the resolution and 2x the performance. 8x in total.
-SSD/NVME with VERY fast access to data streaming.
-Much better cpu and gpu of course.
-Rat tracing. Especially on PRO.

This was simply not possible on ps4
AWe8TMB.jpeg



p7tf6FX.jpeg
 
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the last two screenshots are from robocop. not ds2.

some of the mountains in the trailer tricked me but these screenshots at the previews are simply last gen.
Those mountains are gonna look like shit when you zoom a little, they never looked ue5 caliber to me.
 
Triple the budget and time, more efficient, slightly better result
 
GTA6 is arguably only game that is actual game and on pair the matrix demo, and it will sell a lot, but i understand u, where there is only graphical progress without actual substance, game will usually not sell well, hell we had example of that back in last gen with the order 1886 bombing(bought it for like 30euro few weeks after launch and enjoyed truthfully for what it was, short corridor shooter with crazy graphics :D ) or hellblade2 this gen :P

Yeah GTA6 is an outlier that works on a set of rules that don't really apply to the rest of the industry. Rockstar can afford to spend $1+ billion on it because this thing will sell 150+ million copies and will be among the best selling games every single month/year for the next 10+ years. It's the same with something like Mario Kart 8 selling 60+ million units, but you wouldn't really suggest the average AAA studio to heavily invest in making Kart racers.

For the average game spending a ton of money on graphics doesn't really seem worth it. Graphics have reached a point where they are "good enough" for most people, no one gave a shit about Avatar, Outlaws, Hellblade 2, Alan Wake 2, etc. People in the posts above are arguing about the rocks in Death Stranding 2 but that's literally irrelevant to the success of the game. If you made a game like TLOU2 for $250 million and sold 10 million units, spending $500 million on your next game isn't really logical if you aren't going to sell substantially more than 10 million units.
 
I think there is nowhere a big jump anymore. It is only better resolution, better Ray Tracing, better effects these days.

I will never forgot the jump when Nintendo 64 came out, this was a wtf feeling that I never felt again.
 
??

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.
That's what I'm saying: he is not talking about graphics, he is talking about game features and general tech.
 
He is a fool then or it is a misunderstood interview.
People might think the games look the same as on ps4... until they play ps4 games again.

-ps5 runs ps4 games at 4k60, while it was 1080p30 on ps4. So that's 4x the resolution and 2x the performance. 8x in total.
-SSD/NVME with VERY fast access to data streaming.
-Much better cpu and gpu of course.
-Rat tracing. Especially on PRO.

This was simply not possible on ps4
AWe8TMB.jpeg



p7tf6FX.jpeg
Dat ugly protag tho, u can tell right away in which game DEI was at works and where it was pure masculine creativity :P
 
I think there is nowhere a big jump anymore. It is only better resolution, better Ray Tracing, better effects these days.

I will never forgot the jump when Nintendo 64 came out, this was a wtf feeling that I never felt again.
It's because you're a Nintendo fan, no one who had a Saturn or PS1 2 years before was impressed with the N64.
 
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Something tells me there is far more nuance than the clickbait rage-war title.
Here is the full quote. he's literally asked what can you do with the PS5 that you couldnt do before and he's like nothing.

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.
 
Here is the full quote. he's literally asked what can you do with the PS5 that you couldnt do before and he's like nothing.
This is something we all knew. But there is more nuance in that efficiency statement.

There's no real difference in a 2080 to a 5080 but more "efficiency" either. But it makes for faster pipelines, etc., to get more out of the hardware. Unified shaders are unified shaders.
 
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This is something we all knew. But there is more nuance in that efficiency statement.

There's no real difference in a 2080 to a 5080 but more "efficiency" either. But it makes for faster pipelines, etc., to get more out of the hardware. Unified shaders are unified shaders.
Except there is a real difference between the 2080 and 5080 which can be easily measured. Its almost 3x more powerful.
3GMfqL1.jpeg


The PS5 is almost 8x more powerful, and has support for mesh shaders on top of that. Mesh shaders help devs get around the limitations of unified shaders.

It's actually a very easy question to answer had he invested in mesh shaders, ray tracing, and other features exclusive to the PS5. The fact that he didnt and simply talked about efficiency shows that he very likely didnt. Or maybe he;s being modest and he invested in these features and we just have to wait and see until the game launches. But this was a preview event where he was told to come and market the game, and its very odd for him to say we got nothing.
 
Except there is a real difference between the 2080 and 5080 which can be easily measured. Its almost 3x more powerful.
3GMfqL1.jpeg


The PS5 is almost 8x more powerful, and has support for mesh shaders on top of that. Mesh shaders help devs get around the limitations of unified shaders.

It's actually a very easy question to answer had he invested in mesh shaders, ray tracing, and other features exclusive to the PS5. The fact that he didnt and simply talked about efficiency shows that he very likely didnt. Or maybe he;s being modest and he invested in these features and we just have to wait and see until the game launches. But this was a preview event where he was told to come and market the game, and its very odd for him to say we got nothing.
It's still the same unified shaders. Still more effient card.

That's the gist of it. x86 and RDNA are x86 and RDNA. CUDA is CUDA etc etc, We are in the same paradigm, whether you're on the PC or consoles now. Just faster framerates, and ability to push more resolutions and effects. It's the same damned shader pipelines across their family of more efficient prducts.

It's all diminishing returns from card to card, box to box now. Just pushing better IQ goals.
 
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you are blind. the model is excellent. Both technically and as copy of her into the game
Since we are in DS2 thread we can compare her to first DS, on base ps4 aka 1,8tf mashine, compare her model to those:
In forspoken u would never recognise actress if u didnt know game model was made after her coz it looked like generic black chick(not even 50% mixed like Ella is), here in DS u knew right away...
 
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