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

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We can't say there's an 18% gap in third party games. What happens when UE5 becomes the go to engine and developers start using streaming assets? The PS5 has a massive throughput advantage. I'm betting the PS5 outperforms the XSX as we get further into the generation.
I/O throughput is just one aspect. The other aspect that gives the PS5 a big advantage is the ability to load and stream assets from memory to cache on the fly as opposed to evicting the whole cache before filling it with new data.
 


Their faces:

Upper left "what a primadonna! I should be in charge of Xbox!"
Upper right "Zzzzzzzzz ... show me ElderScrolls 6 u compulsive Liar!"
Bottom left "Oh boi! STFU ... now they regret the purchase! Thanks Todd!"
Bottom right "16x times the detail, Fallout 5 will have over 200 Endings! I was on stage with Elon Musk! I can chess!"
 
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Xbox Series became bestsellers on Amazon

It's #45
 
Sure, there can be in abstract. However, what happens in practice is a lot more situational, and dependant on a series of additional factors that are on top of the model itself, but that we must keep into consideration.

For example, monopolization is bad news for users, regardless of the model - both can be more or less monopolistic. However, the current paradigm is relatively dispersed as far as game production and publishing goes, because users disperse their expenses on a game-by-game basis, so the system allows for several independent publishers, and even self-published games, to exist. If you move towards a subscription based model in line with what Microsoft is planning, the user is put in front of a drastically reduced number of options on where to practically spend the money. There could exist a "softer" subscription-based model in theory, where individual publishers create mini-subscriptions for all of their products, but it's quite obvious that is not what we are looking at right now.

This centralization inevitably deals a blow to healthy competition, because now individual users cannot "punish" individual game makers for bad products or practices, they are forced to accept the whole package as it is, good and bad, because there is a new agent in the system that acts as a blurring screen between people paying and studios delivering the goods. And since this entity in the middle has agency of its own, and can direct or even dictate to game makers, there are even more chances of anti-consumer practices being pushed on the users via syndication.



If we assume that your premise (total expenditure per user goes up), there are only two ways it can happen: either you up quality of games (and their budget) leading people to willingly dedicate more of their income into the hobby, or the extra money comes from the economic package being offered masking the real cost to the average user and leading them to spend more over time out of unawareness/apathy/habit.

What is preventing the first option to also happen right now, with the current model? It does happen already in fact, because certain platforms have overall attach rates higher than others, and it's usually those platform with a larger and better catalogue to offer. So, is this really an advantage of a subscription system, or just an external factor for which the model is irrelevant?

And in light of this, my next question is: if the subscription system by its very nature succeeds in increasing the per-user expenditure over a certain period of time... where is the incentive to re-invest the extra money into making better games exactly?



Is the door really more open though? It's a bit of a risky statement, because in this scenario the door for anything is exactly as open or close as Microsoft (or whoever manages the service) wants it to be, no more, no less. You assume Microsoft might want to go there. Remember that you moved from a mostly open market where by law of large numbers untapped demand will eventually receive offer, to one where a very limited amount of central entities hold unprecedented control over what is published and what isn't. Sure, in theory the same could be said for console makers right now as well, but remember that you are also moving towards a model where the effective "success" of any game goes through an opaque glass panel and it becomes a lot harder to outline failure and success regardless of what a platform holder could decide to promote right now.


But even if we completely disregard all of these specific considerations, my reasoning on why I don't want to see this is incredibly straightforward.

The gaming industry is a very simple market once you strip it down to the basics: products come from one single side, game publishers, and money comes from one single source, consumers. The goal of publishers is to end up with the highest possible amount of money, subtracting all they spent for game development and adding what users paid them for the products. The goal of consumers is to end up with the best possible product offering according to their standards for as cheap as possible. If the system moves too far in one of the two directions (which can happen on a company-by-company basis or on a wider level) either the customers stop playing games or the studios can't pay the bills anymore (and either one also leads in turns to the other).

This is an inescapable truth of the system, and a service-based model won't change that. Games will still come from a single direction, and money will still come from the other one. If the service will be too terrible people will stop paying, and if the offer will be too good for the customers studios will start closing down. You are shuffling the intermediate steps a bit, but neither of the two fundamental sides of the equations have changed.

Now, considering all this, ask yourself: since what is changing is the shape of the road, but neither the beginning or the end of the journey, why do you think Microsoft would want to pay billions to push for this change? Every last penny they spent to ensure games coming to Game Pass, or entire studios becoming dedicated to making games for it, is a penny they plan to recoup from you later down the line. And it's not money spent strictly speaking in game development, it's not you giving a company twice as much for a product that is twice as good, the games could have been developed even without all of this other money on top of it just to alter the product delivery method. If making Assassin's Creed 19 costs 100, why would Microsoft throwing Ubisoft an additional 20 just to guarantee the game comes to Game pass?

Microsoft is investing hard in a restructuring of the gaming economical system; and where do you think the point of balance of the new system they planned and paid for will lie? Will it be one where the user has it better than now, or where Microsoft does?

That's a long, well thought out read. These more existential questions are for the free market to decide. Very similar to cable TV vs. Netflix, etc. If GP is going to be successful long-term it will need to provide users with enough value to justify the price paid, if it can't do that it will fail. Obviously, a subscription services can be looked at as a way to get users to spend more in total by breaking things into bite-sized pieces stretched over time, nothing new in that. I expect to see quite a few smaller "AA" type experiences from MS, I'm excited for that. Those have been largely missing since the Xbox/PS2 days, when there used to be a lot of games that fell between indie and AAA blockbuster status before expense started to stifle creativity. They'll need plenty of solid AAA games to boot, and they should really double down to ensure that some games launching on the service are included in the GoTY discussions. If they can do all that, they can have my $15/mo. till the cows come home. I'll be a well satisfied customer. After that, I'd just hope that they have enough customers that feel the same to make the whole venture profitable. :messenger_tears_of_joy:

As to do I think MS is completely altruistic in their motives, obviously I don't. That's not the way I typically look at trillion dollar conglomerates. :messenger_beaming:

Nintendo, Sony, MS all make the moves they make to benefit themselves and their respective position in the market. Things that bring success to these companies generally will trickle down to pubs/devs in some form or another. Nintendo and Sony sell to consumers primarily based on the strength and value of their first-party offerings, MS is trying to provide a similar reason to buy in to their ecosystem as well. Just with a bit of a different purchasing proposition.
 
Well the gauntlet has been thrown down. MS really wouldn't have survived 10 years and then thrown down 7.5 billion if they weren't staying.

No one else can give everything away and than drop billions because that didnt work.

Release the consoles and lets see what happens.
 
I/O throughput is just one aspect. The other aspect that gives the PS5 a big advantage is the ability to load and stream assets from memory to cache on the fly as opposed to evicting the whole cache before filling it with new data.

This will mean nothing. No 3rd party dev will create their multiplatform titles based on a single platform. Never. Not going to Happen. Thing is with this is that's it not scalable at all.
It's not like gpu, where you can easily scale using the resolution.
Or it's not like CPU where you could change the FPS.
 
Maybe it's the guy at the top failing to execute with common sense marketing strategies(Eric Lempel) or simply the restructuring consolidating the marketing departments under one roof not really panning out in practice (and only serving as a cost saving measure) but boy do I miss SCEA's marketing. There is a lot to be said when a product is marketed for a particular audience and not globally trying to suit everyone. Specialization if you will. Each region targeting the tick boxes of their area of responsibility.
 
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just realised that I can play any bc game on xbseries X with enhancements, my whole library will load much faster, run at higher resolution and FPS, no additional cost, and with ps5, to experience improvements I have to buy games (For $70) I already own again to experience these improvements and no game saves will transfer?

serious question; Why Sony didnt show how bc games will run on ps5? Why Sony didn't show official loading speed demos(I am ignoring that out of context leak, which seems was from the remaster version of the game)? No UI, no tear down, I would like to see loudness test as well.

Serious question: Why Microsoft didn't show any game running on Xbox Series X in the first place?
 
Serious question: Why Microsoft didn't show any game running on Xbox Series X in the first place?
exactly, the burden is on the xbox team. i have seen enough of PS5's capabilities. i have no doubt about its power. yet XSX showed nothing but BC of old games. At least show me some AC gameplay on XSX? gladly it seems people are getting review units already. We should be able to see more sooooon.
 
Come on no, its expensive.

Those who already played it and have the game (like myself) should get a free update with all the bells and whistles You would expect, or pau an extra simolic price, like 1.99 dollars, If they want to make some cash out of It.

I have no interest on playing the Spiderman released PS4 enough to pay that extra money.

Let's see how this pans out. Personally, I'll wait and see how the remastered looks. If it's like MM with all the officially expressed updates, then it deserves my $20, easy. But I'm not sure if I'll play it and finish it, I usually don't like repeating a game. That happened started to vanish like 13 years ago, used to replay games too much before, like beating MGS1 17 times, MGS2 21 times.
 
Yeah man, I agree with you a 100%

I just don't understand why so many defend and celebrate this shit, it's really annoying and sad state of gaming that we're heading in, Microsoft buying all of Bethesda and putting their games on Game Pass is a huge industrial move that I don't think many people comprehend, imagine releasing:

- Next-gen DOOM.
- The Evil WIthin 3.
- The Elder Scrolls 6.
- Star Field.
- Wolfenstein 3.
- Dishonored.
...and many many more!!

On Game Pass for $10 a month while on PS5, they'll be for $70, that's a huge incentive for people to go to Game Pass instead of buying the games, this will result in, like you said, developers not listening to consumer demand and no ambition from developers, you'll just asset flipping, new games using same old assets, no art, no ambition, they'll be small and agile.


And we know the eventuality of the 10-dollar subscription model...it becomes 12.99, 14.99, then 19.99. It's a loss leader now and spending 7 billion on acquisitions only adds to those losses. The more content they provide the more quality will diminish. It won't be overnight, but in the subscription future most content will be buggy unpolished garbage. That's not the "value" I'm looking for. Value does not equate to quality.
 
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This will happen to Bethesda and Sega if Microsoft is not careful. Those IPs means nothing if the people who make them and understand them will be leaving.


I can't see them accept another bully without signing to their terms. Kojima is silent, and still independent, mostly because he heated the chamber he was put in back when he worked for Konami. Buy Konami and Kojima? Would sound funny like Obsidian and Bethesda on the other side.
 
This is PS5 expansion SSD.

980 Pro

500GB @ 6.9GBps for $150
1TB @ 7GBps for $230


I would rather buy a Sony SSD that's 12-channel instead of that. I hope they make it, and leave the choice as well for other to contribute. Some might use them as simple as storage, and bring them back internally when they wanna play them. 8-channel instead of 12-channel, 2 priority levels instead of 6? I can't see it working 100%.
 
I would rather buy a Sony SSD that's 12-channel instead of that. I hope they make it, and leave the choice as well for other to contribute. Some might use them as simple as storage, and bring them back internally when they wanna play them. 8-channel instead of 12-channel, 2 priority levels instead of 6? I can't see it working 100%.

That's how they all will be. Thus Sony's requirement that the drives run at 7GB/sec instead of 5.5GB/sec so that the PS5 controller can "translate" the 6 priority levels into 2 and other overheads like that. The only thing I'm wondering about is how the heck can they guarantee a sustained transfer speed for third party devices? Or is that another situation why they need 7GB/sec so if the drive runs too hot and has to throttle, it'll still manage 5.5GB/sec. It's all rather unknown at this point.
 
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Did you manage to secure yours?

Yeah, at Walmart via inside my car lol. Gamestop only had 10 between the two models.

I was placed on a waiting list, but it was just going to be a courtesy call to let you know when the next round of orders were coming. You would just be going back on line again at another chance. Fuck that lol.

So now PS5 and Series X both secured at Walmart. Seems a lot of people who got both got them from within the same Retailer.
 
Yeah, at Walmart via inside my car lol. Gamestop only had 10 between the two models.

I was placed on a waiting list, but it was just going to be a courtesy call to let you know when the next round of orders were coming. You would just be going back on line again at another chance. Fuck that lol.

So now PS5 and Series X both secured at Walmart. Seems a lot of people who got both got them from within the same Retailer.

Strange how things work there. Here like the whole company has a set of PS5's, no matter where you place your preorder, and what branch. Didn't check again about if they are sold out, secured mine + Pulse 3D and waiting for 19th of Nov.

Congrats, mate!
 
Well the gauntlet has been thrown down. MS really wouldn't have survived 10 years and then thrown down 7.5 billion if they weren't staying.

Next-gen was really looking like MS last attempt at gaming before they sell the brand. But they sort of tried to save their asses by spending billions. Whether it works is still up in the air.

I still think they wasted money on Bethesda. Their anticipated games are years away and there's no guarantee that they will be good. Employees come and go and it will be illegal to tie them to MS just because of billions of acquisition.

Sega IPs will cost MS a lot of money but Sega has no studio to make them games that are good as they used to. IPs without the right people to make them is nothing.
 
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I would rather buy a Sony SSD that's 12-channel instead of that. I hope they make it, and leave the choice as well for other to contribute. Some might use them as simple as storage, and bring them back internally when they wanna play them. 8-channel instead of 12-channel, 2 priority levels instead of 6? I can't see it working 100%.
They probably will

At least the option is there to use an off-the-shelf nvme
 
This will mean nothing. No 3rd party dev will create their multiplatform titles based on a single platform. Never. Not going to Happen. Thing is with this is that's it not scalable at all.
It's not like gpu, where you can easily scale using the resolution.
Or it's not like CPU where you could change the FPS.
Mark Cerny literally said that the enhancements from the increased I/O throughput, coherency engines, and cache scrubbers will happen invisibly to developers. All developers need to do is inform the system what data to read from the uncompressed file and where to put it. That's it. The coherency engines and cache scrubbers are big because that means the PS5's GPU will constantly do work. In addition, this benefit is further enhanced by the higher frequency because a byproduct of higher GPU clock speeds is higher cache bandwidth. This is in contrast to the XSX and traditional GPU's where the entire cache needs to be evicted before feeding in new data. And while the time it takes to refill the cache is small, you still have to deal with the fact that for a certain period, the GPU is basically spinning its wheels in midair.

Lastly, it is speculated that cache scrubbers will eventually be an RDNA3 feature, and knowing Nvidia and their propensity to stay one step ahead of AMD, I bet they will implement their own solution as well. This is yet another point against your claim that no 3rd party devs will utilize this tech because eventually, PC's will have this too.
 
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