Support NeoGAF

[Redneckerz]

Introduction:
A often forgotten fact about Unreal Engine 5 is that you can also deploy your projects to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Hardware that's now 10.5 years old is certified to run Unreal Engine 5.

But with UE5 introducing a lot of CPU overhead, aswell as Nanite and Lumen, how does last-gen perform?

What one should consider is that Nanite and Lumen are not possible on last-gen. I personally believe that Software Lumen could be achieved on PS4 Pro/Xbox One X, similar to how SVOGI was achieved for Crysis Remastered on these machines. But that's for another day.

Today, we look at some UE5 games that happen to have last-gen counterparts. A big thanks to Fuzion Xbox Testing, who generally test last-gen Xbox hardware for this, though most of these titles also hit PS4.

Footage:

Horror Tales: The Beggar: Xbox One: 720p/900p, 30-50 FPS. Xbox One X: 1080p, 40-50 FPS

By comparison: Series S: 720p-900p, 50-60 FPS, Series X: 1080p-1440p, 50-60 FPS

Xbox One version:



Nightghast: Xbox One: About 900p, wildly fluctuating from 40 fps to around 15-20 fps sustained. Xbox One X: 1800p/4K, 30-15 fps, around 20 fps sustained

Xbox One version:



By comparison: Series S: 1080p, 40-60 FPS, Series X: 4K, 30-40 FPS

Pombero: The Lord Of The Night: Xbox One: 1080p, 15-30 FPS. Xbox One X: 1800p/4K, 20-30 FPS

By comparison: Series S: 1080p, 40-50 FPS, Series X: 4K, 40-50 FPS

Xbox One version:



Conclusion:
As impressive as it is that some developers take on the asinine idea to run a Unreal Engine 5 game on last-gen hardware, it goes to show that this isn't always without positive merit. Nightghast in particular is especially damning: Sporting a realistic artstyle and assets, the game simply fails to run smoothly on last-gen, even with the enhanced hardware of Xbox One X.

Pombero generally looks great too, but suffers the same fate as Nightghast: Incredibly poor performance on last-gen, despite looking pretty good.

Horror Tales: The Beggar is the only game that somewhat has playable framerates by opting to stick to 60 FPS and resolutions more in line with the consoles capabilities (instead of going for 1080p in the Xbox One's case to a full 4K in One X). In doing so it sacrifices a lot of the image based lighting that is still present in Pombero and Nightghast. Nevertheless, here too we see unstable FPS, though atleast 50-60 FPS is far better than barely hitting 30 with all niceties on.

In short, a last-gen project with UE5 definitely needs its own levels of optimization, as the Jaguar cores simply can't keep up. In which case, sticking to Unreal Engine 4 might be a better option. Unless one is willing to drop the quality a lot, simply trying to achieve parity (Something Epic has claimed it wants to achieve with UE5 on last-gen) will be met with framerates harking back to the end of the Wii U indie era, or better yet, the N64 era.

 

[IntentionalPun]

Aren’t those framerates pretty common last gen?

 

[Cattlyst]

Interesting comparisons. I’ve never heard of any of these games but it’s definitely intriguing that the developer tried to put UE5 games on last gen hardware, even if the results are mixed.

 

[Redneckerz]

Aren’t those framerates pretty common last gen?

The PS360 era, yes. The PS4/XBO era is generally regarded as pretty stable.

 

[CamHostage]

Eh, I really like the topic pulled together here and appreciate the examples (I wasn't aware that so many shovelware UE5 games are on the market already, I've been waiting to check some uses of the engine out on console but the indies didn't rush to it as fast as I thought.) I'm very curios to see more of examples in this thread, for educational purposes alone.

...However, I'm not agreeing that UE5 produces a hellscape on past-gen platform just yet, it seems more that shitty games play even shittier on hardware that can't handle their shit.

We're already seeing some examples of UE5 being a 'swellscape' on lesser hardware, actually. Not necessarily that the games perform better, but that the features of UE5 seem to strip out okay in some cases and it possibly may make perfectly fine games on past-gen. There are some aspects of UE5 actually (not the graphics necessarily, but the overall development tools) which could make UE games better on old boxes while they last since some hurdles are eased in development using the more modern middleware kit. Eventually, pretty much every UE game will be made in UE5, even if the game doesn't take advantage of the next-gen features like Lumen or Nanite.

LEGO Horizon Adventures, for example, is being made in UE5 for PS5 and Switch (and PC, no PS4 so "last-gen" is kind of an extrapolation here) and it seems to look fine on both platforms. The PS5 version has all of the sheen and lighting and depth in it to look like it's living toys on your screen, while the Switch version has an acceptable framerate (in the trailer) and looks like a nice-enough Switch game.



We're also going to see in just a week what a high-end UE5 game looks like downgen when Nexon's UE5 looter-shooter The First Descendent releases on PC/PS5/Xbox Series as well as PS4/X1...

 

[CamHostage]

Another title to take a look at on the topic, the previously mentioned Nexon UE5 looter-shooter The First Descendent, available on past-gen (even Xbox One) as well as current gen. It's not getting raves for its graphics anywhere, but it does have some nice visuals in spots, and a good deal of that has managed to survive the downscale. (In fact, the past-gen versions apparently have a bit of a framerate advantage since there's issues with visual performance when high-end features are enabled.)



I don't think this is a great example of next-gen power though, more that just UE5 will continue to deliver UE's strengths (and in some cases improve upon them, depending on what's left when the ambitious material is stripped out) while current-gen strives to harness its upper-scale powers.

 

[SimTourist]

It's not a big deal, with Lumen and Nanite turned off UE5 is just UE4, there wasn't some fundamental change like going from UE3 to 4.

 

[fatmarco]

I mean, it's pretty great that these games run at all I guess.

I know it's not directly comparable because Hardware and fidelity has been fairly stagnant for over a decade, but the idea that you could even have a Sixth Generation/ PS2 game running on a Sega Saturn is quite funny.

That's roughly the same difference in years Hardware wise between modern current gen consoles and the Xbox One.

 

[SimTourist]

I mean, it's pretty great that these games run at all I guess.

I know it's not directly comparable because Hardware and fidelity has been fairly stagnant for over a decade, but the idea that you could even have a Sixth Generation/ PS2 game running on a Sega Saturn is quite funny.

That's roughly the same difference in years Hardware wise between modern current gen consoles and the Xbox One.

Have you seen Shenmue running on Sega Saturn? I'd say even back then everything could run on the previous generation. Even today you see projects like Portal running on N64, nothing is impossible really with enough effort and cuts.

 

[RCU005]

The fact that we are still talking about last gen consoles when we are 4 years into this gen is very depressing and pathetic.

Had I known it would be like this, I wouldn’t have bought a PS5 at all. Sony say that PS5 adoption is slower and that more than half the user base is still on PS4, well duh! There is no reason to buy a next gen console.

I’ll get the Switch 2 when it launches and I will definitely not buy the next consoles at launch. It will never be worth it anymore.

This is just the beginning. They will still be making PS4 and PS5 games well into PS6. Gaming generations have become a joke in the worst possible way.

They will never make a game that is impossible to run on a previous gen console again.

 

[Redneckerz]

Eh, I really like the topic pulled together here and appreciate the examples (I wasn't aware that so many shovelware UE5 games are on the market already, I've been waiting to check some uses of the engine out on console but the indies didn't rush to it as fast as I thought.) I'm very curios to see more of examples in this thread, for educational purposes alone.

There is also Garden of Bantan, but that's very dry bones.

Having said that, the high-end First Descendant convinces in a sense that somewhat stable performance is guranteed, which does lead into the suggestion if all those previous examples were just botched up jobs.

Nevertheless, barely hitting 720p@30 looking like a blur fest is something the Switch got away with on the virtue of being a handheld. A Xbox One, however.. its reaching.* Not too sure of PS4 performance.

* Having said that, BLOPS 3 did also exist on PS360. I bought that on the real cheap knowing it had no campaign (So to me its a simple offline deathmatch shooter) but even there i see very similar cutbacks to TFD on XBO:

• Blurry as hell
• Shadowmap resolution is really poor
• Loading of textures is significantly increased

The lighting may look nice, but TFD showcases how bad of a fit UE5 is for legacy platforms. You could achieve a better look with UE4 on the same hardware and yield better performance.

It's not a big deal, with Lumen and Nanite turned off UE5 is just UE4, there wasn't some fundamental change like going from UE3 to 4.

PBR rendering seems to be improved, as does lightmap quality. But the overhead is a lot more present than with UE4.