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[DeepEnigma]

Thomas is a fucking communication director. He's not even a dev at Remedy. I'd like to hear what one of the people actually working on the Northlight engine has to say.

Not saying the Series S isn't gimped by RAM, and not saying MSFT shouldn't drop the parity clause (seriously, it's not a big deal if Series S owners get fewer cars rendered on screen or lack split-screen).

I'm sure he is repeating what his colleagues are complaining about. Along with other AAA devs have said over the years.

We don't know how in depth starfield's systems are. They could be as shallow as fallout 4. In terms of scale and scope, size stopped being impressive in 7th gen. Zelda and bg3 do faar more impressive things.

People repeat this, I've noticed, but never describe what it means.

 

[hyperbertha]

People repeat this, I noticed, but never describe what it means.

He probably meant the size of open worlds. I just don't see what's so impressive, especially with the loading screens in between.

 

[Topher]

Thomas is a fucking communication director. He's not even a dev at Remedy. I'd like to hear what one of the people actually working on the Northlight engine has to say.

Not saying the Series S isn't gimped by RAM, and not saying MSFT shouldn't drop the parity clause (seriously, it's not a big deal if Series S owners get fewer cars rendered on screen or lack split-screen).

Gorgon posted this link earlier with Id developers commenting on this being a potential issue even before the console launched....

Id Software Devs Express Their Concerns Over the Xbox Series S’ Hardware Specs; Memory “Situation” Not Easy to Compensate

Several devs at id Software have expressed their concerns over the specs of Microsoft’s Xbox Series S, more specifically, its memory.

wccftech.com

 

[RaySoft]

Interesting, I always assumed it just scaled in the exact same way, even easier as it's just 2 sets of hardware

On a PC game "everything" has to be designed with scaling in mind from the start, but on fixed hardware you typically don't do that to the same extent, wich leads to much better optimization.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Gorgon posted this link earlier with Id developers commenting on this being a potential issue even before the console launched....

Id Software Devs Express Their Concerns Over the Xbox Series S’ Hardware Specs; Memory “Situation” Not Easy to Compensate

Several devs at id Software have expressed their concerns over the specs of Microsoft’s Xbox Series S, more specifically, its memory.

wccftech.com

Sounds like Remedy needs a purchase for their verbal insolence. Silence, worker!

 

[Trogdor1123]

On a PC game "everything" has to be designed with scaling in mind from the start, but on fixed hardware you typically don't do that to the same extent, wich leads to much better optimization.

That is exactly my point. Only needing to hit two skus, instead of many can't be that hard (comparatively)? Is it?

 

[xiskza]

They should just release their games on PS first and then worry about Xbox

 

[Zheph]

They should just release their games on PS first and then worry about Xbox

Like what's happening...?

 

[FalsettoVibe]

As bad as Series S is for this gen, imagine Series console sales if it didn't exist.......

 

[RaySoft]

That is exactly my point. Only needing to hit two skus, instead of many can't be that hard (comparatively)? Is it?

What I beleive the devs talk about is that when they are planning new games now (wich will be 3rd-4th wave of new gen tech) they are talking more of the core backbone structure of the game, not so much graphical settings etc. That's something you plan out early, and probably now have to go through hoops to support the S. It's obvious that the X and PS5 will suffer from this, since they could have designed it in a more streamlined way to push the more powerfull consoles. Alas...

 

[StueyDuck]

Today in obvious news:

Popular games developer says obvious thing.

Check back in tomorrow for more obvious things

 

[DeepEnigma]

What I beleive the devs talk about is that when they are planning new games now (wich will be 3rd-4th wave of new gen tech) they are talking more of the core backbone structure of the game, not so much graphical settings etc. That's something you plan out early, and probably now have to go through hoops to support the S. It's obvious that the X and PS5 will suffer from this, since they could have designed it in a more streamlined way to push the more powerfull consoles. Alas...

 

[Jose92]

I own all three next gen consoles.

But where are the people who were shouting, series s would perform even better than ps5 because of variable clocks ?

 

[MisterXDTV]

I own all three next gen consoles.

But where are the people who were shouting, series s would perform even better than ps5 because of variable clocks ?

SUSTAINED is the word you are looking for...

 

[DeepEnigma]

I own all three next gen consoles.

But where are the people who were shouting, series s would perform even better than ps5 because of variable clocks ?

Getting the mental help they needed?

 

[cireza]

100 dollars is not pocket money for a new console, but I think most gamers would rather save a bit and get a PS5 than buy the Series S

You are not targeting the same audience anymore with a 400$ product. And if MS had removed the memory bottleneck, then developers would have simply reached the next one and complained the same way. There will always be a bottleneck.

 

[Heisenberg007]

MS has had to send help to Larian studios to be able to port Baldurs gate 3, these and other studios like Remedy complain but according to the neogaf engineers this is solved by putting 10 minutes in the .exe of the game and that's it xDDDDD always the same.

Exactly. If Larian devs are lazy and incompetent, why is it taking Microsoft engineers 7+ months to make it work on Xbox Series S.

 

[Mokus]

So basically what you are saying is that devs don't want to do the work of scaling and rather push it to the end user.
So basically it has nothing to do with Xbox Series S. But everything with Devs not wanting to do one second of extra work to find the perfect mix of optimized setting.

As Alex from DF said, "I'm tired of doing free QA for these companies".

The problem is not the console its the devs.
If you have a pc version that can go all the way to Low settings, then its nonsensical to claim that XSS is holding back anything.
When your settings option on PC for your game is LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH and ULTRA.

Again XSS has the same CPU as XSX with just lower memory and lower GPU.

Again just reducing the texture resolution and render resolution should cover 95% of the cases.
For other situation you reduce number of point light on VFX similar to what Matrix Demo did or slightly lower crowd/pedestrian/traffic density or simply don't include RT.

This is much ado about nothing.

if Its Native 4k on XSX, simply make it 1440p on XSS.
if its Native 1440p on XSX, simply make it 1080p or 900p on XSS.
if its 4k Textures on XSX, simply convert all the textures to 2k.

Its not rocket science.

Du you actually understand that scaling back visually games can go so far? Many other parts of the games that are critical can't be scaled unless you rewrite them specifically for the Series S: AI, physics, the amount of polygons on characters or environment, animations, global illumination... On the Series S developers have to work with 6 GB of RAM less out of 14 GB compared to the main consoles. You can't compensate that with the reduction of the resolution output and texture quality alone.

So far things worked out because because almost every game that came on the Series S was upscaled mostly with assets used from the previous generation.

But now after 3 years it's time for the PS5 and Xbox Series X to become slowly the smallest denominator compared PC hardware in game development just like it happened in previous generations: Xbox One - PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 - PlayStation 3... Sadly some morons from Microsoft had one of the stupidest idea in home console history, to give us the Series S that is just a little bit better performance wise than Xbox one X and force it on the developers for parity.

Processor: Intel i5 4690 / AMD FX 8350
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GTX 970 / RX 480 (4GB VRAM)

Are you kidding me? This is obviously an engine problem. Alot of devs are refusing to do actual development and upgrade their damn engine and blaming the hardware. So they are dragging around a dead engine to next gen and crying foul. Unbelieveable.

Take it from the beloved insominac, the PS5 were so fast they had to upgrade their engine to take advantage of it.
Note, if you don't take advantage of next gen features, you are dragging an old engine into the next gen. Your game will suck.
I mean even today no game other than UE5 games use mesh shaders (XS/PC) (primitive shader on PS5).

Its not the consoles, its the devs.

Insomniac's open world Spiderman was used as the main demo showcase for the implementation of the innovative SSD + RAM solution for Sony's new console. To push for this new technology and to prove it's usefulness as soon as possible, Insomniac probably had almost unlimited resources from Sony.

The fact that Series S has a super fast SSD with decompression I/O chip, direct storage, sampler feedback streaming, mesh shaders support and faster RAM than the PC requirement means if their engine actually took advantage of next gen features, they wouldn't even need 10 GB Ram.

Oh, wow. You fail to understand that a very few game developers used this feature so far because for an ongoing project is not worth rewriting the memory management. It's too hard and probably would make the project too expensive. Even God of War Ragnarok didn't implemented it.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Exactly. If Larian devs are lazy and incompetent, why is it taking Microsoft engineers 7+ months to make it work on Xbox Series S.

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

So at what point do you refuse to do a Series S version?

What's Microsoft going to do? Tell you that you can't put the game on Xbox?

That's literally how it works. They are the same platform. That was the whole point of the X|S. One does 4K, one does 1080p, same exact games otherwise.

 

[DeepEnigma]

That's literally how it works. They are the same platform. That was the whole point of the X|S. One does 4K, one does 1080p, same exact games otherwise.

Like flipping a switch!

 

[avin]

I think it could have been designed that way. But there were other compromises to memory amount and bandwidth that they thought would scale, and they don't. At least, not always.

avin

 

[Negotiator101]

I own all three next gen consoles.

But where are the people who were shouting, series s would perform even better than ps5 because of variable clocks ?

Go on then let's see?

 

[FrankWza]

Like flipping a switch!

Sliding. Scaling.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Sliding. Scaling.

Lower res textures,

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

Like flipping a switch!

Regardless. That's the mandate MS set for this console generation. Doesn't matter if you like or hate it . It is what it is

 

[DeepEnigma]

Regardless. That's the mandate MS set for this console generation. Doesn't matter if you like or hate it . It is what it is

It should matter, we're the consumer.

 

[ShadowkillXNA]

You forget we don't need a console anymore to play Xbox games. Even with that they already managed to sell more than half (not less - 22+ vs 40m) of PS5, which is a great success. Seems terrific numbers for me.

 

[Zuzu]

Here's my Series S atm - sitting on the floor underneath my Wii. And that's what it deserves; the thing is TRASH! Really wish Microsoft never released this gimped thing!

 

[Topher]

nuh-uh


case closed

Hardly. Other devs have similar statements as the Remedy guy.

Id Software Devs Express Their Concerns Over the Xbox Series S’ Hardware Specs; Memory “Situation” Not Easy to Compensate

Several devs at id Software have expressed their concerns over the specs of Microsoft’s Xbox Series S, more specifically, its memory.

wccftech.com

 

[Topher]

You forget we don't need a console anymore to play Xbox games. Even with that they already managed to sell more than half (not less - 22+ vs 40m) of PS5, which is a great success. Seems terrific numbers for me.

When we don't need a Playstation console to play Playstation games we can compare.

BTW, if more than half of PS5 consoles are so low, why bother develop for them, right? By this type of argument third parties could just skip Xbox and develop for Playstation, Switch and PC.

I don't see anyone at Xbox bragging about selling 50-ish% of PS. Those numbers are not great, but obviously obviously good enough to garner continued support.

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

It should matter, we're the consumer.

Right. But what I'm saying is that decision was made in 2020 and they have to stick with it. They can't just all the sudden splinter the user base mid-cycle. Defeats the whole purpose of their X|S console proposal. Games have to be content-identical, because Series S runs all the same games, just not in 4K. That won't change til the next console cycle, assuming they don't go this direction again.

 

[FrankWza]

Regardless. That's the mandate MS set for this console generation. Doesn't matter if you like or hate it . It is what it is

Nothing like 3rd place out of 3 setting mandates and precedents when they never even sniffed 100 million sales.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Right. But what I'm saying is that decision was made in 2020 and they have to stick with it. They can't just all the sudden splinter the user base mid-cycle. Defeats the whole purpose of their X|S console proposal. Games have to be content-identical, because Series S runs all the games, just not in 4K.

We know. Which is why it was a shit decision (for devs and gamers) to make that anemic box for "next-gen" as the baseline for development design.

 

[Topher]

Right. But what I'm saying is that decision was made in 2020 and they have to stick with it. They can't just all the sudden splinter the user base mid-cycle. Defeats the whole purpose of their X|S console proposal. Games have to be content-identical, because Series S runs all the same games, just not in 4K. That won't change til the next console cycle, assuming they don't go this direction again.

Rock and a hard place, really. They have to deliver what they promised but what they promised means some games will either be delayed to make some features work or skip Xbox altogether. Thankfully this is a rare occurrence. In either case, this is on MS for cutting a bit too deep to get to that $299 price tag.

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

We know. Which is why it was a shit decision (for devs and gamers) to make that anemic box for "next-gen" as the baseline for development design.

I've got zero complaints. I have both machines, and love having my Series S in my office for quick gaming when I'm not in the living room on my couch in front of the big screen with the Series X. I think it's super cool to have two machines that play the same exact games and the cloud saves are instantaneous. MH Rise plays at 120fps on Series S, just at lower resolution. It works great.

 

[DeepEnigma]

I've got zero complaints. I have both machines, and love having my Series S in my office for quick gaming when I'm not in the living room on my couch in front of the big screen with the Series X. I think it's super cool to have two machines that play the same exact games and the cloud saves are instantaneous. MH Rise plays at 120fps on Series S, just at lower resolution. It works great.

You can do that with two Xs and raised the design potential bar 4-fold or more.

 

[GHG]

Only time will tell, 50 series cards are apparently will be a big jump, well I don't think they have much choice after the bad press and sales of the 40 series.

Also ( I haven't looked into this as I only know a little about PC's) What's the difference in power between a Xbox One and a mid range GPU and the top GPU after 3 years of that being on the market v Series S v mid range GPU and a top GPU of today ?

Like I said in the previous post of mine I referenced, it's usually the xx50 cards that tend to match (or slightly exceed) the current gen consoles from a theoretical performance standpoint.

Console teraflops:

• PlayStation 4: 1.84 teraflops. (2013), launch price $399
• Xbox One: 1.41 teraflops. (2013), launch price $499

x50 Nvidia card teraflops (the 9xx series was the first batch of cards developed and released after the ps4/xbox one generation of consoles released):

• GTX 950: 1.825 Tflops (2015), launch price $159
• R7 360: 1.613 Tflops (2015), launch price $109

What is also important to note here is the fact that the GTX 950 performed ~50% better than its predecessor (the GTX 750ti) and was priced at just $10 more at launch.

The current GPU situation is not the same (even though cycle-aligned we are a year past the point of those aforementioned GPU's releasing) and will likely never will be.

This is what the steam hardware survey looked like at the end of 2015:

And at the end of 2016:

This is what it looks like now:

 

[VolticArchangel]

Exactly. If Larian devs are lazy and incompetent, why is it taking Microsoft engineers 7+ months to make it work on Xbox Series S.

Seriously. The amount of armchair devs online telling Larian Software Dev 101, is absolute fucking hilarity. Especially on twitter, where our braincells are left die.

 

[GHG]

I've got zero complaints. I have both machines, and love having my Series S in my office for quick gaming when I'm not in the living room on my couch in front of the big screen with the Series X. I think it's super cool to have two machines that play the same exact games and the cloud saves are instantaneous. MH Rise plays at 120fps on Series S, just at lower resolution. It works great.

Sorry to inform you, but cloud saves syncing across various devices in the same ecosystem isn't something that is exclusive to the Xbox ecosystem.

 

[lucbr]

That's the reason a frequent this forum, comedy!

 

[VolticArchangel]

This is what it looks like now:

It's insane how the xx60 series adoption at such a fast rate. The 3060 at 5% already is just nuts, keeping in mind that this timeline includes the mining boom (Ampere launch to mid Ada), which means people were flocking to overpay way more than MSRP.

Also, not to nitpick on your TFLoP numbers, but wasn't the initial Xbox Durango 1.3 TFLoPs (VCR model with bundled Kinect) and then there was a slight bump to the base console when they launched the Xbox One S, which featured a new GCN 3.0 cut down Polaris 10, at 1.40 (as I said, slight bump)? I clearly remember threads here going apeshit over a tiny perf delta, when your main Bane in performance, the esRAM, remains the same lol

 

[NT80]

Meanwhile…Nintendo with the weakest spec sells tons of consoles.

But how well would it do against the other systems if it wasn't a handheld?

 

[Katatonic]

Thomas is a fucking communication director. He's not even a dev at Remedy. I'd like to hear what one of the people actually working on the Northlight engine has to say.

Not saying the Series S isn't gimped by RAM, and not saying MSFT shouldn't drop the parity clause (seriously, it's not a big deal if Series S owners get fewer cars rendered on screen or lack split-screen).

That's why he's the one communicating it for his company.

 

[Deputy Moonman]

He better hope he never has to develop games for Nintendo. What devs do for that ancient hardware is incredible. Cry more.

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

You can do that with two Xs and raised the design potential bar 4-fold or more.

I don't need 4K on my 27" monitor 18" from my face. Also don't need to spend an additional $300 and all that extra power consumption

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

Sorry to inform you, but cloud saves syncing across various devices in the same ecosystem isn't something that is exclusive to the Xbox ecosystem.

Who said it was?? Not being a fanboy just stating a fact. Your issues about having to choose a side or whatever the problem is, are your own.

 

[skit_data]

Posted the Remedy devs tweet in the thread about Jez Cordens "Xbox problem is hardware"-thread because I felt it was sorta related but kinda the same thing said since Series S and it's specs were leaked.
I log in a day later to see a 500 post thread on the tweet.

Have I missed something? Any drama?

 

[GHG]

Who said it was?? Not being a fanboy just stating a fact. Your issues about having to choose a side or whatever the problem is, are your own.

Unfortunately the only person that's talking about "picking sides" here is you.

 

[Physiognomonics]

As bad as Series S is for this gen, imagine Series console sales if it didn't exist.......

Most likely higher sales if they had the same hardware with 2 models (digital, disc) like PS5?