[Insider Gaming] The Witcher 4 is Aiming for 60FPS on Consoles, but Series S will be “Extremely Challenging”

Your only argument will be the predictable GTA VI, and you'll have nothing else.
So why GTA or any Rockstar titles are released later on pc. Explain me this.
You Got It Agree GIF

Or better: how many titles AAA with an huge investment of money are released first on pc and year later on console, if exist.

How many PlayStation games are on Xbox? How many Xbox games are on PC? Where is Starfield day 1 on PS5? PC isn't a corporate entity. It won't fund any game like Sony or Microsoft, so that question doesn't even make sense. PC has the largest amount of AAA games day 1, so that route isn't leading where you think it does.
 
You Got It Agree GIF



How many PlayStation games are on Xbox? How many Xbox games are on PC? Where is Starfield day 1 on PS5? PC isn't a corporate entity. It won't fund any game like Sony or Microsoft, so that question doesn't even make sense. PC has the largest amount of AAA games day 1, so that route isn't leading where you think it does.
What you said not make sense. I clearly ask to you how many AAA title do you know with the same level of investiment are released first on pc later on console. And because you know perfectly the answer (it's more risky and dangerous on pc hardly you will ever see any) you make a weird sentence about the corporation thinking to show to be the smartest one where indeed you prove how your argument missed the big point of the equation.
 
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What you said not make sense. I clearly ask to you how many AAA title do you know with the same level of investiment are released first on pc later on console. And because you know perfectly the answer (it's more risky on pc) you make a weird sentence about the corporation.
You name one game that comes out once a decade and decide to ignore the dozens of AAA games out there. Now quit wasting my time.
 
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You name one game that comes out once a decade and decide to ignore the dozens of AAA games out there. Now quit wasting my time.
You continue to avoid my point. Why none AAA invest big amount of money first for pc as for console. And Rockstar it's not the only one. Also there is a corporation named Nvidia on pc. Ah I wasting your time now. Got it. Forgive me.
 
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This console was doomed from the start.
And those who saw value in this thing should be ok with the results, because thats exactly what the price this thing is worth for.
 
Watch the video?

It looks pretty damn great, the one obvious compromise is image quality. It's not really bad per se, but it is low res and soft.

But that's something I care about a lot, since I sit quite close to my 65 inch Sony A95K. I don't want a soft picture or whatsoever, so I really hope they also provide a quality/resolution mode because I'd be ok with 30fps or maybe 40fps if possible.
 
There is no need to waste time on series S 60 fps optimizations when next gen is around the corner with higher frame rates. Make it stable 40 fps or 30 and be done with it. Since it is UE5 I don't believe the series X or PS5 will run it smoothly.
 
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"Consoles"
so Playstation + XBOX + Switch ?
That's not a platform, that is a series of platforms that share a common form factor

Or do you think when you make a Playstation version you magically get a "free" port to XBOX and Switch ?
every single one of these platforms has to have it's own budget - porting team - tech support - localization... etc, it's not free

and in that case the PC (platform) is the single biggest platform in terms of units AND revenue (even with all those $5 sales as you said)

and guess what, for The Witcher 4, the PC will once again be the leader in both units sold and revenue generated even with their "PS5 focus"

Yes "consoles" because that's what CDPR is talking about, they didn't say they are focusing on just PS5.
And if the Witcher 4 sells best on PC that's cool. It's still going to sell a ton on consoles, so it makes sense to focus on the lowest common denominator and then scale up on PC.
A half assed console version isn't going to exponentially increase sales of the game on PC, it's just going to make game sell less overall.

Most PC players should be happy too, because designing the game around consoles should ensure it will run well on low and mid tier GPUs, which is what the vast majority of PC players have.
 
I think a move like this would benefit all platforms including PC even more. If the baseline is solid on all fronts, then scaling upwards will be a lot easier. I do hope CDPR adds PC-centric features for the PC version though.
 
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CDPR partnered with Epic to quite literally help them improve the underlying engine. I imagine CDPR got a handsome licensing deal for Unreal Engine, while Epic gets to finally have real game developers actually make their Engine perform like a video game should.

???
We are pretending that epic didnt already have top tier devs working on their engine now?
 
Yes "consoles" because that's what CDPR is talking about, they didn't say they are focusing on just PS5.
And if the Witcher 4 sells best on PC that's cool. It's still going to sell a ton on consoles, so it makes sense to focus on the lowest common denominator and then scale up on PC.
A half assed console version isn't going to exponentially increase sales of the game on PC, it's just going to make game sell less overall.

Most PC players should be happy too, because designing the game around consoles should ensure it will run well on low and mid tier GPUs, which is what the vast majority of PC players have.

The GAF PC crowd think every PC owner has a 5090, and all games should target that.
 
The game already renders at 800p-1080p as per their presentation.
I'm surprised you would focus on that aspect of the rendering result when games like Halo Infinite rendering much higher native but what gets rendered doesn't look great.

The Witcher 4's use of nanite for foliage, pre baked complex water physics simulation and ML animation deformer to exploit nanite mesh levels of detail for animation make the final output very high fidelity even if they had to render out to 480p native and use reconstruction.

So much of what was shown in the tech demo was getting closer to the 4 triangles per pixel, and regardless how much people like DF fixate on resolution the closer we get to rendering everything with nanite level tessellation the smaller and smaller the importance of resolution, and that's what I was seeing in that tech demo. So if it is 800p60 native in the end for that geometric detail and then reconstructed to 1080p, 1440p or 4K then so be it.

AFAIK the bigger issue for the Series S will be the memory streaming for nanite and the geometry instancing at the 4TF level. Realistically they can only save so much performance by rendering native at 576p on the S, I suspect they'll either cut the Series S release or fallback to traditional lower mesh rendering for characters and animals to keep the new nanite foliage system in so that the nanite terrain, UE5.6 nanite foliage and new water system sell the (mostly) mid-gen graphics lift on the Series S too.
 
Yes, Witcher 3 was/is extremely popular on the PS4, as per CDPR's own data.


This was in 2020 ;



Regardless, I think it's a wise choice from CDPR to target PS5 first at 60 FPS, the results are already astonishing to say the least, and it means those with PC hardware will get an even better experience. I suspect this game won't be out till after the PS6 launch, and I'll be curious to see how it scales on that as well.

And the PS5 ain't even that weak- unlike the PS4.

PC gamers are gonna be fine game will be great.
 
I'm surprised you would focus on that aspect of the rendering result when games like Halo Infinite rendering much higher native but what gets rendered doesn't look great.
343 is incompetent. What does Halo Infinite have to do with this? It's an ugly game.
 
343 is incompetent. What does Halo Infinite have to do with this? It's an ugly game.
It runs at 60fps, has much higher native rendering, tries to render forests and looks like an Xbox 1 game. So the fidelity of what is rendered is the limiting factor, not the resolution.

Keeping everything the same in Halo Infinite except lowering res to 800p and replace the foliage and terrain with nanite versions and you'd instantly have a major improvement with far more immersive visuals, no?
 
It runs at 60fps, has much higher native rendering, tries to render forests and looks like an Xbox 1 game. So the fidelity of what is rendered is the limiting factor, not the resolution.

Keeping everything the same in Halo Infinite except lowering res to 800p and replace the foliage and terrain with nanite versions and you'd instantly have a major improvement with far more immersive visuals, no?
Sure, but Halo Infinite's problems go far beyond just resolution or assets. It was made by untalented people.
 
Sure, but Halo Infinite's problems go far beyond just resolution or assets. It was made by untalented people.
Okay, but that didn't feel like the reasoning for you pointing out the tech demo was at 800-1080p, and felt more like an Alex from DF generalised derision of the resolution.

I could have equally taken Wukong, Forbidden West, Tsushima, Rebirth, Last of Us etc - even on Pro - that all have poor foliage use compared to the tech demo and would be worse rendering at 4K with existing modelling than the tech demo looks at 800p60-1080p60 ray traced(just shadows?) with the new UE5.6 features, but Halo being such a poor looker and 60fps on everything, replacing the foliage and terrain with nanite at a 800p res would make the multiplayer look and feel like a brand new game more befitting of the hardware IMO.
 
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And the PS5 ain't even that weak- unlike the PS4.

PC gamers are gonna be fine game will be great.
Yes it bodes even better for PC in my opinion, as by the time the game releases most PC configurations will have surpassed the PS5's performance which will mean a a really good experience for PC gamers as the game will run smoother and look much better.

Knowing CDPR as well, they'll be pushing a lot of heavy tech on the PC side as well so there really isn't much to worry about. I suspect some of these higher end features might also find there way into PS6 as well, as that'll be out by the time this game releases.
 
How many PlayStation games are on Xbox? How many Xbox games are on PC? Where is Starfield day 1 on PS5? PC isn't a corporate entity. It won't fund any game like Sony or Microsoft, so that question doesn't even make sense. PC has the largest amount of AAA games day 1, so that route isn't leading where you think it does.
That simply isn't true. PS5 has the largest number of AAA games day 1, even in the period where MS bought and blocked for a while. Now MS have started to do simultaneous on PS5 for those too.
 
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Yes it bodes even better for PC in my opinion, as by the time the game releases most PC configurations will have surpassed the PS5's performance which will mean a a really good experience for PC gamers as the game will run smoother and look much better.

Knowing CDPR as well, they'll be pushing a lot of heavy tech on the PC side as well so there really isn't much to worry about. I suspect some of these higher end features might also find there way into PS6 as well, as that'll be out by the time this game releases.
The increased use of nanite in the Witcher is going to push up the steaming/VRAM requirements in all likelihood, I'd guess that 16GB of VRAM, maybe even more and an NVME at 3GB/s Peak will be recommended specs(like a SeriesX storage) for all those UE5.6 features on a PC version.
 
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The increased use of nanite in the Witcher is going to push up the steaming/VRAM requirements in all likelihood, I'd guess that 16GB of VRAM, maybe even more and an NVME at 3GB/s Peak will be recommended specs(like a SeriesX storage) for all those UE5.6 features on a PC version.
Do we have any actual information on streaming requirements for UE5.6, I have no doubt that the new fast geometry system will be sensitive to storage latency and bandwidth, but I imagine the figure for streaming requirements will vary.
 
That simply isn't true. PS5 has the largest number of AAA games day 1, even in the period where MS bought and blocked for a while. Now MS have started to do simultaneous on PS5 for those too.
The releases of Xbox have been much more pathetic than I thought. In my head, Indiana Jones, Avowed, South of Midnight, and STALKER 2 were all 2025 games, but I realized both Indy and STALKER 2 were 2024. I thought this was 5 day 1 with Dune Awakening compared to PS5 that has Ghost of Yotei and DS2. I don't even know what Microsoft has left for 2025.
 
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The same same way raytracing is done, it uses the same hardware, where did you hear they would be "adding pathtracing"
They are working/collaborate with AMD to achieve path tracing for their next generation gpu, leaked time ago? Doubt ps5 and ps5 pro hardware can handle it.
 
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Okay, but that didn't feel like the reasoning for you pointing out the tech demo was at 800-1080p, and felt more like an Alex from DF generalised derision of the resolution.

I could have equally taken Wukong, Forbidden West, Tsushima, Rebirth, Last of Us etc - even on Pro - that all have poor foliage use compared to the tech demo and would be worse rendering at 4K with existing modelling than the tech demo looks at 800p60-1080p60 ray traced(just shadows?) with the new UE5.6 features, but Halo being such a poor looker and 60fps on everything, replacing the foliage and terrain with nanite at a 800p res would make the multiplayer look and feel like a brand new game more befitting of the hardware IMO.
No, I would have just preferred they target ~1440p 30 fps like GTA VI is seemingly doing and consider the performance mode the secondary.
 
Do we have any actual information on streaming requirements for UE5.6, I have no doubt that the new fast geometry system will be sensitive to storage latency and bandwidth, but I imagine the figure for streaming requirements will vary.
I was asking CoPilot about nanite's limitations following UE5.6/5.7 features improvements and it was giving generalised info about stressing the data streaming system...with a RTX 3060 being a very common card and shipping with 8-12GB I was inferring that today's minimum spec already has issues with nanite pre-ue5.6 and adding those features is going to stress it more.
CoPilot also made reference to issues with groups with 100k instances crashing the renderer, which might just be a Nvidia/AMD driver issue, or might also be an issue with performance throughput, meaning those features will maybe not work on PS4Pro/X1X/Xss 4TF level and might actually need a 4060 with 12/16GB or better
 
Yes "consoles" because that's what CDPR is talking about, they didn't say they are focusing on just PS5.
There is no such things as "consoles" for these companies, there is individual platform, individual SKUs each with their own APIs, software stack, rules and guidelines... etc
and each require a dedicated effort and man power to get them up and running for a commercial release.
If "consoles" was a single platform they wouldn't talk about how "challenging" get the game to the Series S, they wold also announce a port to the Switch 2 since we know they have dev kits since Cyberpunk is on it at launch if these ports were free since consoles is a unified platform with no additional costs between the hardware boxes
And if the Witcher 4 sells best on PC that's cool. It's still going to sell a ton on consoles, so it makes sense to focus on the lowest common denominator and then scale up on PC.
A half assed console version isn't going to exponentially increase sales of the game on PC, it's just going to make game sell less overall.
If you read my first post in this thread I said exactly that.

CDPR is interested in increasing their sales on PS, XBOX, Switch AND PC

They messed up the Playstation and XBOX release for CP77 and they don't want to repeat that

PC will still be the leading platform sales wise but they want to increase the other platforms too because they want to make more money, and the same is also true (other way around) for other AAA franchises that usually sell more on Playstation, those companies want to increase their PC (or Switch... etc) sales too because as a business why wouldn't you ?
Most PC players should be happy too, because designing the game around consoles should ensure it will run well on low and mid tier GPUs, which is what the vast majority of PC players have.
It also means the game could be less ambitious than their previous one (CP77). Now it's too early to say, and I'm sure Nvidia already has the rights for marketing + technology just like the last couple of CDPR releases so the game could still be a tech show-stopper but we'll have to see when the time comes (just look at GTA VI on PS5).

but I find it funny, if CDPR came out and said that they are making the Series S (or even worse the Switch 2) their "main" platform and scaling up from there, I wonder if the playstation crowd would be "happy" having their more advanced box being "gimped" by the Series S or Switch 2 even if it means a less next gen looking but smoother running UE5 open world game :messenger_winking:
 
Cant they just make all Series S games 30/720p min settings and be done with it and just put pump all that wasted dev time into making it run decent on the proper consoles?
 
No, I would have just preferred they target ~1440p 30 fps like GTA VI is seemingly doing and consider the performance mode the secondary.
The small difference between 800p and 1440p resolution rendering mostly nanite data will be more than bridged by PSSR on the Pro and be close enough with that fidelity reconstructed with FSR3 on the PS5, losing 60fps for diminishing increased fidelity feels like the wrong solution and going down the diminishing returns route.

GTA6's reveal looks closer to last-gen compared to the Witcher tech demo IMO. So the GTA solution is inferior in my opinion - on a technical level.
 
The small difference between 800p and 1440p resolution rendering mostly nanite data will be more than bridged by PSSR on the Pro and be close enough with that fidelity reconstructed with FSR3 on the PS5, losing 60fps for diminishing increased fidelity feels like the wrong solution and going down the diminishing returns route.

GTA6's reveal looks closer to last-gen compared to the Witcher tech demo IMO. So the GTA solution is inferior in my opinion - on a technical level.
spit GIF
 
How does this voxel-based approach to foliage fit into the classic lighting pipeline? How is everything lit and shaded?

Kevin Örtegren
: They actually fit in every nicely - part of the standard Nanite pipeline is replaced by the voxel path, and that same path runs for VSMs. That's why it's kind of cheap to render into shadows in the distance, because they're just voxels - that just works out of the box. Lighting-wise, it's regular directional light, with improvements to the foliage shading model, on the indirect side, we have a simplified representation which is static for performance reasons, so it scales up.
aka KCD2?
 
The small difference between 800p and 1440p resolution rendering mostly nanite data will be more than bridged by PSSR on the Pro and be close enough with that fidelity reconstructed with FSR3 on the PS5, losing 60fps for diminishing increased fidelity feels like the wrong solution and going down the diminishing returns route.

GTA6's reveal looks closer to last-gen compared to the Witcher tech demo IMO. So the GTA solution is inferior in my opinion - on a technical level.

michael jordan laughing GIF
 
Hey, I know GTA is popular, but just do the maths of nanite for those resolutions of the matrix demo versus the witcher tech demo and the lit geometry on display per frame - well, actually per 2 frames of Witcher demo at 60fps for everyone one frame of GTA6 30fps(matrix demo at most) -and it is no contest.

It isn't a technical slight against GTA6 and the game's subject matter limiting its fidelity with nanite with lots of flat urban surfaces, but just a reality that nanite foliage is unbelievably impressive at that scale combined with mega scanned assets to kitbash rural landscapes with nearly as many triangles as screen pixels for the 50-70% of resolution coverage the renderer will typically fill.
 
Once Death Stranding 2 launches, we'll have an idea of what an open-world game(60fps) on the base PS5 is technically capable of.
I'm pretty optimistic.
 
This is fanfiction from your part, there's a whole section solely explaining how they scaled hardware lumen accordingly through distance fields to fit a 16.6ms target. UE5 is over 150% faster than it was back in 2020, the Matrix Demo could easily run today at 60 frames with overhead to spare. "30 FPS is evidently what it was built around", did you watch the presentation again?

And...? What's the problem with this? If anything, the scale down approach caused them many problems that are literally mentioned in the presentation. You think you know better than the engineering leads at the studio?
You'll find many an armchair developer here on Gaf. They have never made a game but still know more/better than actual developers. Just because some of them might have/build gaming PC's they think they are suddenly an authority on game development.
 
They should skip the Xbox consoles and focus on 'Xbox PC'. ;) Or at least delay an Xbox release like it already happened with BG3 and Wukong.

Also it's looking more and more likely they'll encounter the same problems as with Cyberpunk - releasing the game at the end of the generation and some of the outgoing hardware will be too weak, BUT it will still be an attractive prospect with its large userbase.
 
I don't imagine this game will skip Xbox, but what could happen is that the game is delayed on Xbox due to Series S, as we've seen a few times in the past.
 
Yet all the evangelists were saying it will not hold anything back, will be ported to easily with "a flag/ flick of a switch" at 1440p, was a stroke of genius that will "pincer move" the competitor, etc. It's crazy the amount of fake hype/FUD people create.
Oh how I miss Ricky and his dumbass posts.....
The Series S should be pushing the PS5 hard anyday now............VRS2 baby
 
Why is Switch 1 not the baseline then?

Series S has proven what people were saying about scaling things upwards (PS5 Pro is kind of proving it for PS5 again)… scaling things upwards generally lead to underutilisation and/or compromises.
For the same reason the PS4 and Xbox One aren't baseline, competitive pressure means if Assassin's Creed Shadows, Alan Wake 2, Doom TDA were PS4 games their PS5 exclusive competitors would have a clear edge. At some point you have to move the baseline forward because if you don't do it someone else will. If GTA6 was on PS4 it wouldn't be anywhere as impressive.
 
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