sendit
Member
I'm starting to think Don Mattrick did a better job from 2007 to 2013 (6 years) versus Phil from 2013 - Present (10+ years).Bring back the one and only console exclusivity breaker
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/14380361/05-21Mattrick_Web.1419979689.jpg)
360 (Don)
Xbox One (Don
hil)Series S/X (Phil)
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Engadget: Why Baldur’s Gate III is an accidental PS5 console exclusive
- Thread starter AlexxKidd
- Start date
360 (Don)
Xbox One (Don
hil)Series S/X (Phil)
poppabk
Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
The XSS makes sense. As soon as they let one dev drop a feature the S would be getting Nintendo level 3rd party feature sets.
CamHostage
Member
Maybe... but these are ancient quotes from semi-related developesr; we already talked about their quotes and meaning back when they originally posted these deleted tweets. Nobody new came forward to comment, nor did anybody directly experienced with shipping on Series S.
(Not that it'd be smart to jeopardize your career to talk spit about MS's console woes, but surely there are people out of work who could say how mixing Series S into the SKUs worked at their old job...)
Until now, Series S has been... fine. Functional. The math has worked as described. Until BG3, which is a perfect storm of a thing made outside the box not fitting back into the box. So that's one failure case. (And Halo Infinite coop might have hit on the same problem, but what problems didn't Halo hit on?) Generally though, the graphical features, the upcoming tech in new versions of UE and other middleware, these are not pushing on the same stress points and have scaled appropriately. And online, open- world, untethered drop-in-anytime coop, is that something many developers have pitched and then gone, "Oh shoot, never mind, Xbox Series S...."? It's not a common feature and not much in demand... yet. (Would have been funny if Sony were able to capitalize on this by promoting such a feature in Helldivers 2, but there's no splitscreen AFAIK and also it's a different world scale.)
...of course, the question remains, what else could Series S suffer trying to do?
Series S was a gamble, and there are many reasons to blog concerns about its limitations. But 3 years in, it has also skirted a lot of those concerns by working just fine with the most complicated tech anywhere in titles like Matrix Awakens and MS Flight. (And if PS5 was kicking Xbox ass techwise and pulling on its anchor chain, then it'd be a straight nightmare, but that hasn't been the case.) If the worst damage Series S does will be that PS5 will be the only console with open-world online splitscreen, then it'll be hard to claim it was a bad gamble. But if PS5 pulls away with revolutionary new features powered by its full RAM allocation, then that will be catastrophic for Xbox.
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CamHostage
Member
ChiefDada
Gold Member
$20 says MS makes an exception for GTA VI. Either that or it's skipped on Series consoles. Rockstar has to make a game that will span another 3 console generations, they will not cripple their marquee title for a thoughtless console designed with 8gb of useable memory. And if you think lower resolution = problem solved you've willfully buried your head in the sand.
Icymanipulator
Member
Just scrap the Xbox version. It’ll only had a few sales any way
CamHostage
Member
Good bet that MS will turn a blind eye to any GTA6 policy violations if it hits technical hurdles, but little to no chance that GTA6/GTAO will have roaming online splitscreen.
ReBurn
Gold Member
What would GTA VI be doing that would need an exception? Was there some groundbreaking feature announced other than drive around city, watch cutscene, do crime?
Sleepwalker
Member
Pretty much what they're doing, It will take more than 6 months and they will prioritize supporting the PC and PS5 versions in the meantime instead.
Codeblew
Member
You are severely underestimating how much memory is used for AI, especially in a game like GTA with all of the pedestrians, cars and cops. Then there is online where you have all of that plus the state of all of the other online players.
Rykan
Member
He really hasn't. It's important to remember that the Xbox 360 owes all of its success to Sony's fumbling with the Playstation 3. The PS3 made the Xbox 360 successful.I'm starting to think Don Mattrick did a better job from 2007 to 2013 (6 years) versus Phil from 2013 - Present (10+ years).
360 (Don)
Xbox One (Don
Series S/X (Phil)
ChiefDada
Gold Member
You're right, but still. It's GTA 6.
For reference, Killzone 2, a linear FPS released in 2013 used 4.5gb of PS4 memory for a 1080p render budget. See breakdown below.
Inside Killzone: Shadow Fall
Guerrilla Games has released its own post-mortem for the Killzone: Shadow Fall demo revealed at the PlayStation Meeting…
www.eurogamer.net
Forget about visuals for a sec (still a BIG problem). Next gen AI, animation, physics and lines of dialogue all cost data. Again, it's GTA VI.
Sleepwalker
Member
Sony fumbled the PS3 and Xbox had Peter Moore at the helm, not Don.
CamHostage
Member
We don't know how deep GTA6 will go, but I'm not really seeing RAM being a devastating crucible for the project.
AI for clusters of NPCs will use behavioral algorithms like Matrix Awakens, and only certain elements will be "live" by proximity/play. (Matrix uses the UE Niagara particle to track these in bulk) Online will be hosted on servers where the key elements are ran on the host. Going by history, there won't be splitscreen.
R* might hit on troubles, but they would have to do something unusual to push beyond the capacities of even the lowest of these machines. Tracking NPCs or online sessions isn't typically done unusually.
Icymanipulator
Member
It really is a piece of garbage.Pretty much what they're doing, It will take more than 6 months and they will prioritize supporting the PC and PS5 versions in the meantime instead.
Feel sorry for everyone who got duped into buying one.
ReBurn
Gold Member
AI in GTA?
All I'm saying is that GTA V has everything you're talking about and it runs extremely well on low spec systems and Series S doesn't have a problem with it. I'm not inclined to believe that Rockstar is looking to break the fourth wall in anything other than MMO revenue generation with GTA VI, so I would expect lower spec machines to be able to run it at 1080p/30 without much trouble.
Codeblew
Member
GTA V is 10 years old by now. You would hope that their next GTA, 2+ console generations later, would be a huge step up in AI and physics. That will all take a lot more memory than 2 generations ago. Maybe I am overestimating what GTA VI will be and they are able to scrape something passable out on the S.
The other thing to keep in mind is that if they support an 8 GB system now, they will have to for the next ~10 years when consoles may have 64 GB by then.
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ReBurn
Gold Member
You would hope, but let's be real. They're probably not going to go for a huge step up in AI and physics. Any meaningful change is going to be in the online portion and a lot of the heavy lifting for that will probably be server side. GTA V is 10 years old, but it has received upgrades in subsequent generations. It's not the same game that released 10 years ago on PS360.
ReBurn
Gold Member
Exactly. It's GTA . They're not going to go all out on AI, animation and physics because they literally never have.
And lines of dialogue? How would that impact anything? Are you saying that dialogue can't fit in Series S?
Kerotan
Member
It was a move out of desperation. They couldn't compete head on with Sony so had to make this half assed weak hardware.
Rhazer Fusion
Member
I still think the XSS should of been an XSX without the disc drive instead of featuring stripped down specs. It’s honestly just creating extra work for developers.
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TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
I know right...
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James Sawyer Ford
Gold Member
Yep. But desperate moves lead to disasters.
They should have just been content with where they were rather than try to do something different (but terrible) to try and beat Sony. Their strategy was "hey, let's get the cheapest console on the market and launch it with an awesome Halo game" to try and win the generation early and get off to good momentum. Didn't turn out well. At all.
Microsoft tends to try and swing for the fence and ends up striking out. They are too obsessed with Sony, tbh. That's why they end up making further desperate moves like acquiring Bethesda and Activision. I am not confident that they will pan out how they like, given how much headcount they added and how few properties are actually relevant and whether they can manage all of those studios, many of which underperform greatly on the Zenimax side.
ChiefDada
Gold Member
One would hope that a decade old game that was also accommodating to run on 2005 console hardware wouldn't give the Series S much problems. But this is 2024 or 2025 we're talking about, not 2005.
Literally, huh? This makes me question your age and whether you've played GTA 4. The reason GTA V had a lesser physics engine is because PS4 and Xbox One consoles were already compromised with CPU especially and much resources going to enhancing visuals. Much better situation this time around.
Grand Theft Auto 4 Anniversary: The Beginning of the Age of RAGE
Grand Theft Auto 4 is an important game for Rockstar, not least because it was the first title in the franchise to use the newly created RAGE engine.
gamerant.com
Oh, and in regards to your bogus theory of Rockstar not aiming for cutting edge animation, here you go:
Take-Two Interactive Software Acquires Dynamixyz
www.bloomberg.com
Banjo64
cumsessed
Looks like a man giving a diplomatic answer to avoid damaging his relationship with one of the two console manufacturers where he plans to ship his game.
Baldur's Gate 3 Lead Says Xbox Series S Isn't Holding Back Current-Gen
Swen Vincke likened developing for the Xbox Series S to minimum spec PCs and the Nintendo Switch.www.thegamer.com
"Larian Studios CEO and Baldur's Gate 3 creative lead Swen Vincke says that "the platform is perfectly fine".
"Do I think it holds [gaming] back?" Vincke said in an interview with Skill Up. "It just defines certain parameters within which you have to develop. There are ways of doing that - it just takes development effort [...] Despite us having grown, we don't have infinite resources. That means we can't do everything at the same time."
Looks like more a question of resources.
It’s not surprising that you blame Larian, who ported Divinity 2 to the Switch, but at this stage it’s obvious to anyone without an agenda that it’s the S that’s the problem.
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ChiefDada
Gold Member
Sure Riky honey, let's go with that. Larian only has enough resources to ensure a 2023 release for PC and PS5. Now how does this alternative take make the Series consoles situation any less problematic?
Embearded
Member
It's not the first generation with trainwrecks and it will not be the last. The idea that Series S keeps them in check is stupid, sorry. If they really are incompetent, they need more resources not less, and they are not going to become exoerts because of the restraints because management is not going to give them time.
i don't believe that it's only a matter of ability though, and because X number of games launched with problems on Y platform, the statements of other devs for Series S are wrong.
Klosshufvud
Member
By shortcuts, I don't neccessarily mean programmers. I mean the whole process. So yes, greedy, shortsighted publishers who see the games meet the minimum performance requirements and then rush it out. 2023 has been a really rough year for PC ports especially. And the culprits are all games using current-gen consoles as baselines. It would be ignorant of me to see past that correlation. Now whenever a game is current-gen only, I just assume PC version is a complete travesty of stutters and underwhelming performance. Saves me the disappointment.
peish
Member
baldur gate vs starfield is something sony never saw it coming. ps only gamers can have lengthy discussion on bg3 without feeling left out by starfield hype.
It is really their lucky generation. everything just went their way. the cheap ssd crash! the shortages mitigating cross gen crap! the fast 6nm turnaround. MS attention held up by actiblizzard lawsuit
It is really their lucky generation. everything just went their way. the cheap ssd crash! the shortages mitigating cross gen crap! the fast 6nm turnaround. MS attention held up by actiblizzard lawsuit
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Klosshufvud
Member
Not all just luck IMO. Sony made smarter decisions from the start. Despite SeX being more expensive in manufacturing, the performance differences are neglible. In fact, PS5 is better in some technical aspects despite being the cheaper construction. The Dualsense was also a 200 IQ move. It really transforms games with the haptics. In Ratchet, you feel every step the character takes in a distinct and subtle way. It just feels good. And finally, Sony were quick to patch their best PS4 games for PS5 support. This urged on faster adaption.
MS, on top of the Activision clusterfuck just bet too big on GamePass. I think reality is setting in at MS now that GP is not the paradigm shift they intended. So they are stuck in this awkward position of trying to make premium games a thing again all while trying to save GP simultaneously. They are hopelessly overstretched and unfocused. In some sense, they are worse now than the early Xbone years. Management needs to go.
foamdino
Member
It wasn't lucky to predict that standard M2 SSD prices were going to follow a standard technology adoption curve - it was basic common sense. Just as it was common sense that the proprietary Microsoft SSD expansion was going to stay high price for much longer - anyone who's been in technology for any length of time could have predicted that. Not lucky, good planning.
MasterCornholio
Member
If only they were allowed to do the same with the Series S. That would be an easy fix to this problem.
I'm not really blaming the hardware but Microsofts policies for feature parity.
Kumomeme
Member
FF16 situation come to my mind when come to this issue. dropping Series S support at launch is one of reason why the devs end up releasing a time exclusive game on PS5 instead. later not suprise if FF7 Remake devs also gonna mention simillar things.
recently Square Enix claim they commited to release more game on Xbox. even if the CEO didnt sugarcoat things for sake of the moment, i can see that similliar situation with FF16 could still happened due to Series S despite even if they end up genuinely want to release their game on Xbox platform. in the end devs cant help but would prioritize their development and launch window.
kind of waste, to think that MS did lot of right things at very beginning compared to last gen, but later afterward its like they purposely throw wrench toward themself and end up jeopardize everything.
they should has a really good start of generation if they didnt done this to themself.
recently Square Enix claim they commited to release more game on Xbox. even if the CEO didnt sugarcoat things for sake of the moment, i can see that similliar situation with FF16 could still happened due to Series S despite even if they end up genuinely want to release their game on Xbox platform. in the end devs cant help but would prioritize their development and launch window.
kind of waste, to think that MS did lot of right things at very beginning compared to last gen, but later afterward its like they purposely throw wrench toward themself and end up jeopardize everything.
they should has a really good start of generation if they didnt done this to themself.
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Hudo
Member
"Baldur's Gate vs Starfield" is something that only gaming blogs and try-hard console warriors could come up with. Those are really different types of games.
SkylineRKR
Member
I think MS didn't do things particularly right, but because of the overall global situation and PS5 also receiving cross gen games for 80% of the time, they got away with it at first. MS could capitalize on Gamepass while Sony had nothing of the sort yet, too.
The Series launched without a next-gen only game. But the PS5 didn't go much beyond a Demon's Souls remake and a small Astrobot game too, so the playing field was kind of even and people flocked to cross gen gaming while being impressed by short load times and quick resuming at first. MS then kind of kept the fanbase satisfied by boosting legacy games and doubling down on Gamepass. This worked during launch period with typical drought. It also helped Sony backpedaled on the likes of Horizon 2 and Gran Turismo being cross gen after all.
But then next-gen only announcements of games start to take over. Sony starts to release more and more PS5 exclusives and move away from PS4. Third parties slowly follow suit, like Square. MS however still has nothing and the fanbase seems to lose patience, especially when their delayed flagship, Halo, kind of sucks and is incomplete. On top of that, since games do get more advanced by now, their S strategy is starting to show cracks and developers start to vent their opinions on the matter more.
MS strategy just wasn't suited for the long term. You eventually need software that justifies the purchase of your system, on Series X there is too little to justify.
Thick Thighs Save Lives
NeoGAF's Physical Games Advocate Extraordinaire
mrcroket
Member
I read on reddit that by launching the game with "SteamDeck=0 %command%" on steam deck it's possible to activate the splite screen mode. They commented that it run between about 25-30 fps, so I don't understand the problem with the s-series. We're talking about a handheld with a ryzen quad-core with 1.6 tflops...
Mokus
Member
But how extensively they tested it? Could you give us a link?
hyperbertha
Member
"Keep devs in check". It's astounding where mental gymnastics can get you.
balls of snow
Gold Member
The real question will sony fans take well towards a real hardcore rpg. They (and I) very much love the walky talky sections of sony fp and Bg 3 having a cinematic camera for dialogue trees is fantastic. But this combat system is not some Persona 5 rock paper scissor shit.
hyperbertha
Member
Bullshit. They have improved the npc behaviour and systems every gen. Gta 5 and 4 came out in the same gen so there wasn't much improvements. Devs are always limited by what the system can do, and rockstar absolutely pushes it. The series S will limit how much they can push.
Mokus
Member
This is going to be interesting see. JRPGs originally were copying the CRPGs in the 1980s. But since the home consoles were more popular in Japan, they had adopted the mechanics for the gamepad and console's hardware limitations. Also adding their own ideas, the turned based JRPGs became it's own big subgenre (in the RPG genre).
S0ULZB0URNE
Member
You mean continue to hamstring this generation...
Astray
Member
Well no shit, it not only runs on a lower targetted res on the Steamdeck, but it also benefits from more shared RAM (16 GB for Deck vs 10 for Series S).