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Next-Gen PS5 & XSX |OT| Console tEch threaD

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I don't know how much simpler I can say this but I'll go over it one more time.
I download a game , the last one was Outriders on my Series X to the expansion card, it works on my Series X. I take that card and plug it into my Series S and the game works instantly. Therefore as I said in the beginning the file works on both machines so contains code for both versions in one file.

If you have time, please try testing something downloaded straight to the XSS (one of the first-party titles). It seems like it would be much better for XSS owners if they could realize the smaller sizes directly from the initial download. Not doing that would require you to need additional storage available on the drive etc.

I completely agree that the XSX versions should work on the XSS, it's the same game after all. Any contextual switches should get triggered just by the game running on one platform or another. Now, whether or not the XSX would let you run the lower-res version would be another good experiment.

Just if you have the time, I'm curious.
 
Where did I say that you can minus off the size of one version to give you the size of the other? I didn't. I said the file size contains both versions, and it's one file. Some people even doubted that at first, but now they accept that fact so we've got somewhere.
Like I've said several times already, there will be a degree of code in that file that relates directly to Series S, that may vary by game and developer, I dont know how much there is but it's not going to be zero.
I also never said anything about PS5 or a comparison to PS5 file sizes, that's something else people have just made up.
The point is the file size contains code for both Series consoles, how much of that code is specific to Series S you would have to ask a developer to find out, I'm not claiming to know that figure and people who are saying it's zero have offered no proof of that either.

KrWkD8y.gif
 

Riky

$MSFT
If you have time, please try testing something downloaded straight to the XSS (one of the first-party titles). It seems like it would be much better for XSS owners if they could realize the smaller sizes directly from the initial download. Not doing that would require you to need additional storage available on the drive etc.

I completely agree that the XSX versions should work on the XSS, it's the same game after all. Any contextual switches should get triggered just by the game running on one platform or another. Now, whether or not the XSX would let you run the lower-res version would be another good experiment.

Just if you have the time, I'm curious.

Ok, I'll try that but it's 1am at the moment here so it'll be tomorrow, I almost always download to one of my Series X consoles as it's a wired connection but I'll try the Series S tomorrow.
 

jroc74

Phone reception is more important to me than human rights
Where did I say that you can minus off the size of one version to give you the size of the other? I didn't. I said the file size contains both versions, and it's one file. Some people even doubted that at first, but now they accept that fact so we've got somewhere.
Like I've said several times already, there will be a degree of code in that file that relates directly to Series S, that may vary by game and developer, I dont know how much there is but it's not going to be zero.
I also never said anything about PS5 or a comparison to PS5 file sizes, that's something else people have just made up.
The point is the file size contains code for both Series consoles, how much of that code is specific to Series S you would have to ask a developer to find out, I'm not claiming to know that figure and people who are saying it's zero have offered no proof of that either.

Again, this is the very first thing you posted that started all this:

Also the Xbox version contains the Series S and X versions.

You conveniently forgetting this and just focusing on Series X, S now doesnt change what you initially said....

C'mon.
 
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kyliethicc

Member
If you have time, please try testing something downloaded straight to the XSS (one of the first-party titles). It seems like it would be much better for XSS owners if they could realize the smaller sizes directly from the initial download. Not doing that would require you to need additional storage available on the drive etc.

I completely agree that the XSX versions should work on the XSS, it's the same game after all. Any contextual switches should get triggered just by the game running on one platform or another. Now, whether or not the XSX would let you run the lower-res version would be another good experiment.

Just if you have the time, I'm curious.
If an XSS owner downloaded a game (like Gears 5) from the store, I assume it would download the smaller sized file by default.

If that user then copied that game onto an expansion card, then plugged that card into an XSX and tried to play it, I bet the system would automatically start downloading the extra data necessary for the XSX verison before launching the game, or at least prompt the user to do so.

I doubt the XSS is setup by default to download the maximum full sized file that includes the XSX version. Lots (if not most) of XSS users will not own an XSX and would only want the smallest possible sized files installed on the SSD.

Of course, doing the same process but in reverse wouldn't require any extra downloading before launching the game on XSS cause its asymmetric.
 
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If an XSS owner downloaded a game (like Gears 5) from the store, I assume it would download the smaller sized file by default.

If that user then copied that game onto an expansion card, then plugged that card into an XSX and tried to play it, I bet the system would automatically start downloading the extra data necessary for the XSX verison before launching the game, or at least prompt the user to do so.

I doubt the XSS is setup by default to download the maximum full sized file that includes the XSX version. Lots (if not most) of XSS users will not own an XSX and would only want the smallest possible sized files installed on the SSD.

Of course, doing the same process but in reverse wouldn't require any extra downloading before launching the game on XSS cause its asymmetric.
I agree. I would expect that the additional download on XSX would be a requirement since not having the expected files for the hardware platform being identified at runtime would likely bugger the works. There may come a time when the larger download won't work on the XSS either, say in something in UE5 where you aren't using LODs. The XSX version might not have the smaller assets that the XSS needs in that scenario. Most games today I assume would always have the smaller files still incorporated (used for a lower LOD, etc.)
 

Riky

$MSFT
Again, this is the very first thing you posted that started all this:



You conveniently forgetting this and just focusing on Series X, S now doesnt change what you initially said....

C'mon.

I'm not forgetting anything. The Xbox file contains both versions, fact. How much of that code is specific to Series S is unknown, I couldn't hazard a guess, but the people who are saying it's zero seem to have no proof of that fact. They are also the same people crying about Series S and that developers are having a hard time with it.......yet it needs no specific code to run a game on it, strange that.

Also people are forgetting that not every game can be shrunk on Series S, only a small minority. I didn't see any option to shrink Control or Outriders, so those games seem to have just one file that runs on both machines and even if you download them on Series S it's the same file and size.
 
Also people are forgetting that not every game can be shrunk on Series S, only a small minority. I didn't see any option to shrink Control or Outriders, so those games seem to have just one file that runs on both machines and even if you download them on Series S it's the same file and size.

There probably is some additional work there as far as going in and figuring out exactly what files have been made redundant by the setting differences between the two systems. I'm not surprised that first-party is showing the biggest net gains there. Though some of the third-party titles I've read about do have a nice reduction.
 

Riky

$MSFT
Still me no understand...

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If you download a game on Series X, say Outriders you can take that file and it plays on Series S. There is not two different files that Smart Delivery sends to different consoles. That is probably the case on some specific games like Gears 5 and Forza Horizon 4 where you can "shrink" the file on Series S and it deletes assets that only Series X would use.
I presume if you downloaded one of those "shrinkable" games directly from the store you would get the smaller file size downloaded, that's actually what Smart Delivery does. The vast majority of games seem to be just one file though no matter which Series console you download it to.
 

Derift

Member
If you download a game on Series X, say Outriders you can take that file and it plays on Series S. There is not two different files that Smart Delivery sends to different consoles. That is probably the case on some specific games like Gears 5 and Forza Horizon 4 where you can "shrink" the file on Series S and it deletes assets that only Series X would use.
I presume if you downloaded one of those "shrinkable" games directly from the store you would get the smaller file size downloaded, that's actually what Smart Delivery does. The vast majority of games seem to be just one file though no matter whic?h Series console you download it to.
whose idea was it that having double assets in one file is a good idea?

I'm sorry dude but regardless of how you want to spin it, this is a stupid idea and just wastes space...

why cant it just pick the files it needs when downloading on either system?
 

PSX

Member
If you download a game on Series X, say Outriders you can take that file and it plays on Series S. There is not two different files that Smart Delivery sends to different consoles. That is probably the case on some specific games like Gears 5 and Forza Horizon 4 where you can "shrink" the file on Series S and it deletes assets that only Series X would use.
I presume if you downloaded one of those "shrinkable" games directly from the store you would get the smaller file size downloaded, that's actually what Smart Delivery does. The vast majority of games seem to be just one file though no matter which Series console you download it to.

Bigger console means bigger files make sense :goog_unsure:

RHHKU0c.jpg
 

Sinthor

Gold Member
I'm not forgetting anything. The Xbox file contains both versions, fact. How much of that code is specific to Series S is unknown, I couldn't hazard a guess, but the people who are saying it's zero seem to have no proof of that fact. They are also the same people crying about Series S and that developers are having a hard time with it.......yet it needs no specific code to run a game on it, strange that.

Also people are forgetting that not every game can be shrunk on Series S, only a small minority. I didn't see any option to shrink Control or Outriders, so those games seem to have just one file that runs on both machines and even if you download them on Series S it's the same file and size.
Well, the PS5 code has code for both versions of the PS5! It's not zero but it's SOME amount. guess we'll just never know! Funny thing though, trying to minimize this by acting like there's maybe even 2x the code that would normally be needed. If you had some 'fat binary' that ran on Xbox ONE and the Series X/S you might have something. Because different processors and GPU require different code bases. But with the Series S it's the same GPU and CPU. So can run the same code. The differences would be with memory management and that's it, right? So..doesn't seem like it would be a very appreciable amount of extra code at all. But I agree we have no way of REALLY knowing how much of a difference, if any, actually exists. Logic just suggests it isn't much at all.
 
I'm pretty sure XSS just uses the same base assets for textures and meshes as XSX and samples them in-engine at a lower quality for rendering (at LOD 0).

Given that most games currently released aren't fully next-gen games, designed to fully exploit the new hardware, it doesn't make sense to design them any other way.

Full next-gen games might behave differently, especially if devs decide to push asset fidelity to the maximum on the XSX and PS5. However, the mere existence of the XSS with its severe RAM capacity and bandwidth penalties, places a hard limit on opportunities to achieve this for any multi-platform dev.
 
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arvfab

Banned
As a software developer, I fail to see how XSX and XSS are not the same code base, with just some if-else statements for platform specific stuff. And I also fail to see, how the extra lines of code should increase the size of a game significantly. We are talking about 10s of Megabytes, if we are being very generous.
 

reksveks

Member
As a software developer, I fail to see how XSX and XSS are not the same code base, with just some if-else statements for platform specific stuff. And I also fail to see, how the extra lines of code should increase the size of a game significantly. We are talking about 10s of Megabytes, if we are being very generous.
It won't be code but assets which could be significantly larger than 10mb.
 

Neo_game

Member
As a software developer, I fail to see how XSX and XSS are not the same code base, with just some if-else statements for platform specific stuff. And I also fail to see, how the extra lines of code should increase the size of a game significantly. We are talking about 10s of Megabytes, if we are being very generous.

Absolutely. The only difference is going to be high res textures. Everything else should be the same like the PC where it does not matter what specs you have the install size is same.
 

reksveks

Member
So if you look at this Job title, it looks like Sony plan on continuing to work with Kojima Productions amongst other Studios mentioned, well lets hope so anyway. 👍
39GFlbc.png
Think you might be slightly misreading this, it's them saying the VASG has worked with KojiPro before. They could also be working with KojiPro now or in the future but that's not implied here.
 

Riky

$MSFT
whose idea was it that having double assets in one file is a good idea?

I'm sorry dude but regardless of how you want to spin it, this is a stupid idea and just wastes space...

why cant it just pick the files it needs when downloading on either system?

I don't know I'm not a game developer, there is no spin just the facts on how it actually works.
 

reksveks

Member
Absolutely. The only difference is going to be high res textures. Everything else should be the same like the PC where it does not matter what specs you have the install size is same.
Aren't 3d models still at the moment relatively static therefore that is a possible reason that could cause some file size differences? If the dev decides to cut some more polygons on the xss, then it's another saving.
 

Neo_game

Member
Aren't 3d models still at the moment relatively static therefore that is a possible reason that could cause some file size differences? If the dev decides to cut some more polygons on the xss, then it's another saving.

That should not make difference because they can use lower setting poly count for the SS where as SX use high if needed. Something we can find on PC gfx options. But I doubt we will have different charcter or car models. They might be less dense crowds or trees etc instead. The main differences would only be resolution, textures and RT. If there is more head room then shadow quality or draw distances.
 

reksveks

Member
That should not make difference because they can use lower setting poly count for the SS where as SX use high if needed. Something we can find on PC gfx options. But I doubt we will have different charcter or car models. They might be less dense crowds or trees etc instead. The main differences would only be resolution, textures and RT. If there is more head room then shadow quality or draw distances.
I know that that the SX would use the higher poly count and the SS would use the lower one but unsure that each engine is able to dynamically 'cull' the model to the right poly count. This is also going to be an engine by engine issue.

I also think there is likely to be only 'wastage' on the Series S.
 
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Riky

$MSFT
If you have time, please try testing something downloaded straight to the XSS (one of the first-party titles). It seems like it would be much better for XSS owners if they could realize the smaller sizes directly from the initial download. Not doing that would require you to need additional storage available on the drive etc.

I completely agree that the XSX versions should work on the XSS, it's the same game after all. Any contextual switches should get triggered just by the game running on one platform or another. Now, whether or not the XSX would let you run the lower-res version would be another good experiment.

Just if you have the time, I'm curious.

Ok I have some answers.

I have 16 Series games on my Seagate card, out of these only 3 are shrinkable, Gears 5, Forza Horizon 4 and Dirt 5.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla is the same size regardless of what you download it on 73.4gb, you download it on Series X or S it's the same and the download works on both machines.

The smallest shrinkable game was Dirt 5, my download on my storage card which was downloaded on Series X is 62.7gb, that also works on both machines.
If I remove the storage card and download Dirt 5 on Series S it is 38.1gb, so for the shrinkable games Smart Delivery does detect you are using a Series S and downloads a smaller file.
If you then transfer that file to Series X it tells you to update the game with a 24.63gb download.

So in conclusion 3 out of 16 Series games let you download a smaller file to Series S, the other 13 just use one file that runs on both machines. If you have the Series X version of those three games then despite being larger is still runs on Series S anyway.
 

Elog

Member
Out in the UK minor improvements, nothing really I could see major as a hidden feature.

Except one thing people may like, Auto HDR is now automatic based on whether the game supports HDR or not.
Quite a lot of quality of life improvements to be honest. One of the good ones is that you can 'unfollow' games so you only see activity cards from games you are actually playing at the moment.
 
Ok I have some answers.

I have 16 Series games on my Seagate card, out of these only 3 are shrinkable, Gears 5, Forza Horizon 4 and Dirt 5.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla is the same size regardless of what you download it on 73.4gb, you download it on Series X or S it's the same and the download works on both machines.

The smallest shrinkable game was Dirt 5, my download on my storage card which was downloaded on Series X is 62.7gb, that also works on both machines.
If I remove the storage card and download Dirt 5 on Series S it is 38.1gb, so for the shrinkable games Smart Delivery does detect you are using a Series S and downloads a smaller file.
If you then transfer that file to Series X it tells you to update the game with a 24.63gb download.

So in conclusion 3 out of 16 Series games let you download a smaller file to Series S, the other 13 just use one file that runs on both machines. If you have the Series X version of those three games then despite being larger is still runs on Series S anyway.

Good to know. I guess it's just like PC then, some games separate out everything needed for higher-res and make that available as a download, while others don't give you that option.
 

ToadMan

Member
Where? All David gave was a generric number but the reality is there's no one budget that fits all for AAA games. It's a wide spectrum

I timestamped it once already 🤷‍♂️

You say David gave a “generic” number like it’s meaningless coming from him - he has direct experience of the industry in general and Sony, and he said that “generic” number to Ross who replied “yep”.

A few moments later Ross refers to big budgets being set and exceeded and later said big games need 4 or 5 mil sales to “break even”. That’s about what DG sold.

No they didn’t give specific numbers, but they are both experienced industry guys and one of them was co-director of Days Gone. If those numbers were way out of line, I’d have expected Ross to shoot them down or make a comment to effect of them being lower or even significantly lower for DG. He didn’t.

Not sure what you think they’d gain by inflating those numbers or deliberately misleading people as to the financials of it in the context of DG.

This is about as close to a primary source of this data as anyone will likely get without Sony publishing the Days Gone accounts in detail.
 
Good to know. I guess it's just like PC then, some games separate out everything needed for higher-res and make that available as a download, while others don't give you that option.
I guess smart delivery really only benefits xss then and seems so far only supported on a handful of games. Not sure why this was hyped up so much, unless I'm missing something.
 
I guess smart delivery really only benefits xss then and seems so far only supported on a handful of games. Not sure why this was hyped up so much, unless I'm missing something.

Would probably depend on the particular games each user is playing. I know most of the sports titles do see a reduction on the S, as do the first-party stuff. This might be something that is more apparent as time goes on. Space is going to be at a premium for XSS users, so, devs might want to accommodate that if at all possible (don't want any resistance to a potential purchase).
 

reksveks

Member
I guess smart delivery really only benefits xss then and seems so far only supported on a handful of games. Not sure why this was hyped up so much, unless I'm missing something.
You just need to look at the avengers upgrade processes to see the xbox solution is really useful. Not sure how to quantify the hype but it seems like it's a really useful thing. Especially in a world where your gaming library (if digital) is constantly growing and could expand decades.
 
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