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[Brad Grenz]

I've been thinking about how the multi-platform games are gonna look between the consoles, how much of an advantage PS4 will have and so on.

Here is a curveball... I predict some MPs will look and/or run better on X1 due to the drivers and other software things.

"You start with the base [DirectX] driver, and then you take out all parts that don't look like Xbox One and you add in everything that really optimises that experience. Almost all of our content partners have really picked it up now, and I think it's made a really nice improvement."

That's a quote from Nelson.

You know what it could be like? Nvidia vs AMD driver situation where AMD used to have performance issues due to their drivers despite the cards being the same power or even AMD's being faster. I'm thinking X1's drivers and other optimization tools might be better since MS is a software company so some early multi-plats might look better. And then later on in the gen the PS4 versions will look better. Another reason could be maybe devs take their familiarity with the superior dev tools from the 360 and use them for X1.

Idk, probably a stupid thread but just a gut feeling I have. I've only got a PS4 pre-ordered, this isn't a fanboy post. But can anyone else see this happening or am I crazy?

That "mono driver" stuff is complete nonsense. Every closed console platform ever has used "mono drivers". He's bragging that they're tearing all the cruft out of the normal DirectX driver, but most systems have their drivers built from the ground up for that specific hardware. They may be trying to promote this as some kind of advantage, but it's just industry standard.

As for an AMD versus nVidia type situation, well, AMD is largely going to be providing the drivers for both of these systems. It's not like MS is writing theirs and Sony is writing theirs. AMD will be heavily involved on both sides so it's silly to assume there will be some large difference in quality.

Additionally, while MS is making DirectX as thin as they can for the Xbox One hardware, it will never be as slim and low level as libgcm which is what most Playstation games have traditionally been developed in. It provides far more direct access to the hardware with very little performance overhead.

 

[c0de]

Additionally, while MS is making DirectX as thin as they can for the Xbox One hardware, it will never be as slim and low level as libgcm which is what most Playstation games have traditionally been developed in. It provides far more direct access to the hardware with very little performance overhead.

So you say that also this gen PS3 had an api-advantage over 360? Wow, this makes 360-games even more surprisingly looking good then.
Btw, how do you measure "thin" in this context? Do you have any concrete examples, perhaps similar api-calls, which you can compare and show us what you mean?
Thanks.

 

[KageMaru]

IMO we'll mostly be seeing a resolution difference between the xbone and ps4 versions. At the start, we should expect some parity, BF4 is a good example of this. However it won't be long until we see 1080p on the ps4 and 900p-720p on the xbone.

 

[Brofist]

Launch window - Nearly identical, some even either way. Nothing properly conclusive. PC versions not that different except in a few titles like BF4, but in games like COD, Witcher 3, NFS etc etc, differences are minor.

Post launch window - PS4 starting to show its hardware dominance over the Xbox One. Either a mix of better graphics, post process effects, AA, af, better frame rates or higher resolutions. Becomes more common and more noticeable.

End cycle - Same as above, but now consistently. PS4 titles are the defacto version for all multiplatform games. Sometimes the differences are quite noticeable or game changing (eg, constantly sub 30fps vs locked 30fps).

I also think PC versions of games will show less of a difference than ever before as diminishing returns are greater. This isn't 720p vs 1080p any more, it's 1080p vs 1080p. For people who are frame rate sensitive and have the cash and convenience to spare, PC will be the ideal choice, otherwise console versions of games will be more popular than ever before.

So PS4 games will be much better looking than XB1 versions, but PC versions won't look that different from Ps4? Keep smoking that good shit.

 

[Pistolero]

IMHO, the multi-plats will run almost the same, with minor enhancements (better AA, a slightly superior framerate...) to the PS4 version. Nothing an Xbox-One owner would lose sleep about.

 

[Mistwalker]

IMO we'll mostly be seeing a resolution difference between the xbone and ps4 versions. At the start, we should expect some parity, BF4 is a good example of this. However it won't be long until we see 1080p on the ps4 and 900p-720p on the xbone.

This is my thinking as well.

For multiplatform games, developers are probably not going to spend all day balancing subtle graphical options. They'll get it running at the target framerate at 1080p on the PS4, and then keep the same detail either at 720p or 900p on the XBox depending on graphics intensity/optimization time, and call it a day.

A straight-up resolution difference (probably 1080p vs 900p, that's a 44% difference in pixels) is going to be the most common scenario IMHO.

 

[AlfeG]

The way I see it in most cases:

PC -> Extreme settings
PS4 -> High settings
Xbox One -> Medium settings

PC -> Extreme settings (only apply for few thousand enthusiasts, every other PC player play on low settings)

 

[Brofist]

PC -> Extreme settings (only apply for few thousand enthusiasts, every other PC player play on low settings)

Who cares the breakdown, do you feel better knowing your PS4 beats your mother's netbook for gaming?

 

[shinobi602]

I don't think the Xbox One will have a disadvantage to be honest. I know of at least one major studio that is developing on the Xbone as a base and porting to the PS4.

 

[Steroyd]

A lot of X1 games are already confirmed to be running at 60fps, Battlefield 4 included. This is all that matters to me. Eye candy be damned. If this is the standard in the launch window its highly doubtful games will revert to worse performances down the line. For example - if Halo 4 is confirmed to be running at 60fps, no way in hell will Halo 6 go back to 30. Devs get better with hardware experience, not worse.

It's more to do with devs choosing the framerate moreso than being talented enough to pull it off.

 

[MercGH]

Not really sure but I imagine for the first year or more, multiplatforms will be near identical on both consoles. Games in development now surely have been using alpha dev kits with much lower specs and customization as current dev kits have. After a year or two, we will start to see which console performs better for multiplatforms.

I don't think the Xbox One will have a disadvantage to be honest. I know of at least one major studio that is developing on the Xbone as a base and porting to the PS4.

Which one?

 

[boredandlazy]

Who cares the breakdown, do you feel better knowing your PS4 beats your mother's netbook for gaming?

Just like you obviously do with your PC right?

 

[idrinkalone]

My honest prediction. Ps4 titles will and should look better. Will the average person notice the difference? That should be the question.

 

[gofreak]

The only developer comparisons I've sofar seen between maturity of drivers and tools on PS4 and Xbox one has favoured PS4. Avalanche's CTO said a couple of months ago that while driver performance was improving with every release, Microsoft had some catching up to do.

Just because Microsoft comes out a few months before launch and talks about having, finally, a reasonably optimised driver for Xbox One doesn't speak at all about how that compares to the situation on PS4. And Sony isn't standing still here either, at least not until things reach a mature and stable state.

In the heel of the hunt both will mature to an optimised state. They're dealing with one box each.

 

[TheD]

The PS4 GPU has substantially more processing power and double the ROPs.

Right out of the gate games on it will have better quality effects and/or higher rendering res and/or better performance, it just depends on what the extra power is used for.

 

[Mihael Mello Keehl]

I don't think the Xbox One will have a disadvantage to be honest. I know of at least one major studio that is developing on the Xbone as a base and porting to the PS4.

A wild guess infinity ward and cod?

 

[rallaren]

I hope I don't have to see the fiasco that was ps3 vs 360 with the mp's. Shouldn't really with mainstream hw.

 

[shinobi602]

Which one?

Can't say, unfortunately. It's not Infinity Ward, that's all I'll say.

 

[Shtof]

My prediction is that multiplats will look noticably better on PS4. And the difference between multiplats and exclusives won't be nowhere near as big as this gen. The reason for this is basically that there is no Cell this time around.

I remember when Killzone 2 released early 2009 it just looked so much better than the multiplatform titles of the time, it was out of this world. Still no multiplatform titles can really compare, maybe except for Crysis 2 and Rage.

 

[stryke]

The PS4 GPU has substantially more processing power and double the ROPs.

Right out of the gate games on it will have better quality effects and/or higher rendering res and/or better performance, it just depends on what the extra power is used for.

Bu...bu..but moneyhatzzz

 

[FranXico]

Can't say, unfortunately. It's not Infinity Ward, that's all I'll say.

EA lol

 

[Usobuko]

I really doubt the mainstream audience could tell the difference, if there is one. Unless it's one of the few notorious exception like Bayonetta, Skyrim on PS3.

 

[Mihael Mello Keehl]

Can't say, unfortunately. It's not Infinity Ward, that's all I'll say.

Well its the opposite

 

[ChorusLindarr]

The PS4 GPU has substantially more processing power and double the ROPs.

Right out of the gate games on it will have better quality effects and/or higher rendering res and/or better performance, it just depends on what the extra power is used for.

This is quite literally the only outcome I can percieve.

Devs don't leave performance on the table for no reason. I have a hard time thinking how the extra computational power of the PS4 won't be utilised.

Even if in the beginning the differences are slight, they will still be there and will still be evident.

At the end of things, the PS3 and Xbox 360 were very closely matched, and the differences in multi-format titles were obvious. How much more then in a case where one console now has 40+% more GPU performance and significantly greater memory bandwidth?

I will go on record and speculate that there's a good reason we are this close to launch, and yet haven't seen a single 3rd party title actually running on XBone hardware.

 

[Steelyuhas]

With both platforms running the same processing architecture (x86), it will be even easier this gen for developers to make their multiplatform games as nearly identical as they can.

In terms of lead platforms to development, worth keeping in mind that the respective SDK's can often decide which platform a developer start development on. With this generation, it is commonly stated that MS had an easier to work with SDK for the 360 than Sony had for the PS3. Obviously it remains to be seen if one companies SDK has a significant advantage with the new generation.

 

[goomba]

remember the time when ps3 was hyped as far more powerful than the "xbox 1.5" ? people expected ports to the ps3 would be technically superior yet that was not to be the case. deja vu

 

[stryke]

remember the time when ps3 was hyped as far more powerful than the "xbox 1.5" ? people expected ports to the ps3 would be technically superior yet that was not to be the case. deja vu

False equivalency to the max.

 

[badb0y]

remember the time when ps3 was hyped as far more powerful than the "xbox 1.5" ? people expected ports to the ps3 would be technically superior yet that was not to be the case. deja vu

Yea, except this isn't the same situation at all.

 

[FranXico]

remember the time when ps3 was hyped as far more powerful than the "xbox 1.5" ? people expected ports to the ps3 would be technically superior yet that was not to be the case. deja vu

This time, chips manufactured by the very same company are quite comparable, and you can really tell the difference.

This is the first generation in which this happens. No deja vu at all.

 

[goomba]

This time, chips manufactured by the very same company are quite comparable, and you can really tell the difference.

This is the first generation in which this happens. No deja vu at all.

xbox and ps3 were both powered by ibm powerpc based cpu's . i know ps4 and xb1 are more similar but ps3 and 360 wernt as different as people think.

edited not gpu i forgot ps3 was nvidia

 

[badb0y]

xbox and ps3 were both powered by ibm powerpc based cpu's with amd gpu's . i know ps4 and xb1 are closer but they wernt as different as people think.

Wrong. Look harder.

 

[CassidyIzABeast]

This time, chips manufactured by the very same company are quite comparable, and you can really tell the difference.

This is the first generation in which this happens. No deja vu at all.

we've seen multiplats running on both consoles?

 

[FranXico]

xbox and ps3 were both powered by ibm powerpc based cpu's with amd gpu's . i know ps4 and xb1 are more similar but ps3 and 360 wernt as different as people think.

No, they were more different than you believe.

The PowerPC instruction set is pretty much where the similarities between the Xenon and the Cell ended.

Where the 360 had a very powerful GPU and a competent purely general purpose CPU, the PS3 had a weaker GPU and a frankenstein CPU with one general purpose core and several (pun intended) DSPs, which had to be used to share the load of the GPU.

Completely different design philosophies there.

 

[FranXico]

we've seen multiplats running on both consoles?

Referring to the fact that the specs are more directly comparable than before.

 

[Shtof]

remember the time when ps3 was hyped as far more powerful than the "xbox 1.5" ? people expected ports to the ps3 would be technically superior yet that was not to be the case. deja vu

Just because it was hyped doesn't mean everyone believed it. Evidence suggested from the start that the 360 had a better GPU.

 

[ZehDon]

remember the time when ps3 was hyped as far more powerful than the "xbox 1.5" ? people expected ports to the ps3 would be technically superior yet that was not to be the case. deja vu

Well, technically the PS3 is more powerful than the Xbox 360 - but getting access to that power means going through the CELL processor. Not worth the effort for multi-platform titles, negating the benefit. Naughty Dog made the PS3 sing.

With the Xbone and PS4, however, their hardware being so similar means the differences are actually going to be more apparent, and it'll become visible faster.
Aiming for the high-end PC and scaling down to the PS4, and then scaling down again for the Xbone, means hitting every platform at the top of their game - and since they're all using the same hardware architecturally speaking, the amount of work required isn't all that much.

 

[M°°nblade]

xbox and ps3 were both powered by ibm powerpc based cpu's . i know ps4 and xb1 are more similar but ps3 and 360 wernt as different as people think.

edited not gpu i forgot ps3 was nvidia

Yes, the PowerPC core architecture was similar. But you have to remember that it's functionality and the way games had to be programmed was entirely different in the two machines.
The PS3 had 1 PowerPC CPU with 7 custom SPE's while the X360 got 3 of the same PowerPC cores.
In the PS3, the PowerPC core only acted as a controller for the SPE's.

In the PS4/Xbone situation, the PS4 literally is a more advanced, higher-end version of the Xbone without any trade-offs like last gen. That's why the outcome for multiplatform games has never been as predictable as it is now. It's a direct apples to apples comparison of specs.

 

[TheD]

xbox and ps3 were both powered by ibm powerpc based cpu's . i know ps4 and xb1 are more similar but ps3 and 360 wernt as different as people think.

edited not gpu i forgot ps3 was nvidia

No, They were very different!

Only the PPE in Cell was close to a core in Xenon, the SPEs were not.
RSX was nothing at all like Xenos, fixed pixel and vertex pipelines vs Unified, R500 microarchitecture vs G70 microarchitecture ect.
The PS3 used a split RAM pool, with 256MB of XDR RAM connected to Cell and 256MB of GDDR3 connected to RSX vs a shared 512MB pool of GDDR3 on the 360.

The PS4 and XB1 on the other hand both have CPUs that are based on the same microarchitecture and have the same number of cores, way different than Cell vs Xenon.
The GPU are also the same microarchitecture, difference is that the PS4 has the more powerful version.

Around half of the PS3's power was tied up in Cell and needed programmers to come up with ways to use it for graphics. The PS4 on the other hand has it all in the GPU and thus programmers do not need to write different code to use it.

 

[schuey7]

I don't think that the scenario put forward by the OP is correct at all.I think we will get mostly the same games on both platform with maybe some AA or effects reduced in quantity or quality on the XBOX One in comparison to the PS4 which will not be noticeable to most without a side by side comparison.Also the Edram may result in a few scenarios where the xbox may be superior such the the 360 with its good alpha effects.

Also in some rare cases there may be significant differences in physics etc but still comparable.

 

[ekim]

Well its the opposite

BF4?

 

[IvorB]

I've been thinking about how the multi-platform games are gonna look between the consoles, how much of an advantage PS4 will have and so on.

Here is a curveball... I predict some MPs will look and/or run better on X1 due to the drivers and other software things.


That's a quote from Nelson.

You know what it could be like? Nvidia vs AMD driver situation where AMD used to have performance issues due to their drivers despite the cards being the same power or even AMD's being faster. I'm thinking X1's drivers and other optimization tools might be better since MS is a software company so some early multi-plats might look better. And then later on in the gen the PS4 versions will look better. Another reason could be maybe devs take their familiarity with the superior dev tools from the 360 and use them for X1.

Idk, probably a stupid thread but just a gut feeling I have. I've only got a PS4 pre-ordered, this isn't a fanboy post. But can anyone else see this happening or am I crazy?

I don't think you are crazy but you are being taken in by meaningless PR drivel from Microsoft. Woohoo! They made efficient drivers for their console. Big woop. That's not a power advantage, that should be a given. Don't be hoodwinked by this fluff, OP.

 

[kartu]

So you say that also this gen PS3 had an api-advantage over 360? Wow, this makes 360-games even more surprisingly looking good then

Uhm, why is that? 360 has more powerful GPU.

 

[nelsonroyale]

I think there will be differences, I mean there should be considering the specs, but they won't be a huge deal. They are on the same playing field, one just has a bit more grunt than the other.

 

[Feindflug]

I don't think that the scenario put forward by the OP is correct at all.I think we will get mostly the same games on both platform with maybe some AA or effects reduced in quantity or quality on the XBOX One in comparison to the PS4 which will not be noticeable to most without a side by side comparison.Also the Edram may result in a few scenarios where the xbox may be superior such the the 360 with its good alpha effects.

Also in some rare cases there may be significant differences in physics etc but still comparable.

I'm not sure about that, esram on the Xbone looks like it's being put there for improving things on the bandwidth more than anything but I guess we'll have to wait and see if and how devs will use it.

Sony 1P will still clown everyone else.

Well there's still the possibility that 1st party games will look much better but I think there's a chance that this time around we'll see something along the lines of 360 where the quality between the 1st and 3rd party offerings will not differ that greatly.

As I said earlier this will be more clear at launch.

 

[deadlast]

I've been thinking about how the multi-platform games are gonna look between the consoles, how much of an advantage PS4 will have and so on.

Here is a curveball... I predict some MPs will look and/or run better on X1 due to the drivers and other software things.

I think one thing that people are not taking into consideration when comparing how the multi-platform games are gonna look between the consoles is the back-end network infrastructure. Look at all of the persistent online games and how those game will be affected by the infrastructure that they run on.

I want to know more about that part of the equation, but I can never find solid information.

 

[TheD]

I think one thing that people are not taking into consideration when comparing how the multi-platform games are gonna look between the consoles is the back-end network infrastructure. Look at all of the persistent online games and how those game will be affected by the infrastructure that they run on.

I want to know more about that part of the equation, but I can never find solid information.

Network infrastructure has nothing to do with how a game will look!

 

[Cornbread78]

Out of place question, but, Do we have a complete list of multiplatform games that will be available at launch for both systems?

 

[Barack Lesnar]

Out of place question, but, Do we have a complete list of multiplatform games that will be available at launch for both systems?

Not even close but we can make educated guesses. They prob won't confirm them all till a month before launch

I don't think you are crazy but you are being taken in by meaningless PR drivel from Microsoft. Woohoo! They made efficient drivers for their console. Big woop. That's not a power advantage, that should be a given. Don't be hoodwinked by this fluff, OP.

I think you're right. Looking back on this thread, Major got me good. Still could be some truth to what they say but most of it is probably fluff.

 

[Durante]

Most multi-plats will probably be similar on the consoles, with PS4 having either a slight performance (fewer frame drops) or IQ (higher resolution/better AA) advantage.

PC -> Extreme settings (only apply for few thousand enthusiasts, every other PC player play on low settings)

That's a silly thing to say considering standalone graphics card sales and technological development over an entire console generation.

 

[Cornbread78]

Not even close but we can make educated guesses. They prob won't confirm them all till a month before launch


I think you're right. Looking back on this thread, Major got me good. Still could be some truth to what they say but most of it is probably fluff.

Makes sense, all I could find was:

Assasin’s Creed IV: Blackflag
Battlefield 4
Call of Duty: Ghosts
FIFA 14
LEGO Marvel Super Heroes
Madden NFL 25th
NBA 2K14
NBA Live 14
Skylanders: Swap Force
Watch Dogs

not sure if I was overlooking something....