MilkyJoe
Member
It's basically the same with a smaller gpu, and being that the gpu only needs to paint a much smaller picture, then what's the big deal?
What is it about the Xbox Series S that worries developers?
- Thread starter BlueXImpulse
- Start date
It's basically the same with a smaller gpu, and being that the gpu only needs to paint a much smaller picture, then what's the big deal?
Explosive Zombie
Banned
The post I cited is from an insider, he's not giving specifics for what exactly will need to be changed but you're limited it to just a few factors. But you did set up a goalpost of XSS being a 1080p console, so doesn't that mean if it ever releases a game at say 900p? Or 1080 but dynamic res then you'd need to concede your point?
Jon Neu
Banned
The Xbox Dev said games are going to be programmed for the Series X and then ported to the series S. That's the MS intention with the console, I don't know if all third party devs are going to follow that line, probably some are going to go the lazy and cheap way and do the reverse, and those games aren't going to be the best graphically. But those games already weren't going to be the best graphically anyway if a dev is so lazy and cheap to begin with.
But still, first party, second party and some third party devs are going to follow MS's vision and squeeze the Series X and then port to the Series S with whatever downgrades you have to make. Some games are going to need more downgrades and others less, it will vary. But I'm sure MS has put a lot of thought into design this consoles so porting for the Series S should be easy and cheap. But obviously it would never be as easy and cheap as to not having to do a port in the first place, so devs bitching is understandable. They don't want to do ports for the same ecosystem because they feel it's extra work and there's nothing in it for them.
Of course there's legitimate concerns, conversations to be had and criticism to be made. And what you are doing looks like it.
GreatnessRD
Member
This is always the case. Gotta account for the lowest denominator and the parity goofs.
BlueXImpulse
Banned
It shows that they might not have had that much developer input in making this console or why else would they be surprised that devs want to make for Lockhart and then just up-res?
Jon Neu
Banned
If you don't buy the XSS will hit 1440p in most games then I'm not sure what you're arguing. That said the idea that is' just a resolution slide is silly...
Really interesting how that insider is saying that the people who claim that "every game this gen will be worse because the S exists" are deluded.
That destroys the narrative of most of the people in this thread.
People can now buy a next gen console for 299€ and will not have to buy a new 4K (HDMI 2.1) TV.
Lower prices and more options are pro consumer, you like it or not.
Explosive Zombie
Banned
Some would be lazy but some others would be under pressure from publishers to meet deadlines. I shouldn't spend so much time ruminating on what future events would entail but I totally picture certain games releasing like say... how Bethesda games tended to on PS3. If MS actually wants people to focus on X then that's a good thing and I'm hopeful. But I do think that will be massively affected by how much the X sells vs the S.
I appreciate you saying that last part. Even I view myself as being a Sony pony lately but I just have to ask myself the question: "Do I WANT Halo Infinite to be bad? Do I WANT games held back?" and the answer is, of course, no. Just like I don't care to own a Switch but man do I hope Metroid Prime 4 turns out well (I'd buy one if it does). It'd be weird to hope Metroid Prime 4 is a failure so I can avoid the idea of having to spend more money on another console, I'm fine with having a reason to buy more consoles and more games but it feels like some people actively want something to win/fail and that always kinda saddens me. The weird thing is you see this sort of tribalism in other entertainment media like movies where the barrier for entry is so much lower, like okay, I get it, you can only afford one 500 dollar console so fuck the other one right? It better be bad so you feel better... but why do Marvel fans care if a DC movie succeeds? Is 10 dollars to see that movie and enjoy it, too so painful?
Bernd Lauert
Banned
Yes, I limited it to factors that make sense (as I explained in my earlier posts). We all know the specs of all the consoles, so being an "insider" here is truly irrelevant.
I guess you missed my point. My point was that the XSS won't hold back the PS5 or the XSX, since games between all consoles are fairly easily scalable.
sncvsrtoip
Member
maybe because ps5 is powerful and developers are happy with specs
Kumomeme
Member
are you are developers? if you are i like to know more about this. It would be nice if we can share the knowledge here.
but as far i know, optimization is never been that simple. Not everything is all about adjusting magic slider like how other share devs tweet here. We pc user thought it easy because it been laid for us by them, the developers. But for them it wont exist magically.
Remember AC Unity? that game is such a mess even graphical sliders wont do a shit and yet lot of people here insist it all 'simply' about adjusting resolution, lower or high visual setting.
Before former FFXV lead game designer used to describe on his blog that optimization process is " Hell on earth". i cant find the post though since it been too long. That AAA game studio. Imagine smaller one. Even Ubisoft with massive resource can screw up with AC Unity.
you remember that generation drag too long to the point lot of developers complaint how ps360 held back games even on pc? to the point lot of developers rejoice when see 8gb memory on both ps4 and x1?
game requirement increasing day by day. we even approaching 4k as the standard. Ofcourse, all those asset and textures wont fit in 256mb or ram. Even mobile phone nowdays has more memory than ps4. Asset resolution getting bigger and detailed, we want photorealistic visual but surely there will be catch. Game getting bigger, surely there will be more asset. All those required memory.
that 256mb memory for ps3 and xbox 360 is one of biggest bottleneck last gen and that gen most of game run only 720p, some even sub 720p with low resolution textures.
with advancement of technology ofcourse the hardware resource demand will increase. before 8gb ram on pc already considered beast but nowdays even 16gb kind of normal things out there. Even gpu shipped with vram more than 8gb.
dont forget how people laught at xbox 360's dvd to the point kojima dont bother to port mgs4 to xbox 360 because it could end up multiple disc.
as other posted here, i share it again insight of one of ID software programmer:
also if i not mistaken memory is one of most important resource for developers.
as other already share here, i share again incase someone missed it.
these people surely will care, because unlike us who only know how to playing with graphics and resolution slider, at most modified few lines of txt. files configuration but the devs will handle way deeper part of the game to the code.
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Bernd Lauert
Banned
That's... not an answer.
Astral Dog
Member
I find it hard to believe RAM won't be a huge problem down the line and that only textures and resolution will be affected, but we will see.
My problem with Series S is not the price or even the specs, but that its online only, i remember that its to push the GamePass and thats ok but with that and its 500GB SSD i find incredibly limiting and anti consumer, its a discless console really made for the mainstream market? Why not give the consumers the choice how they want to play their games?
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Explosive Zombie
Banned
Yeah, which is a bad point because developers like to scale up, not down. Scaling down is a much bigger process to endeavor with, it's why games get delayed, ports come out later, etc. but up scaling is what most people do, it's why the new CoD just looks like a slightly shinier current-gen game to most people. We don't want slightly shinier, we want revolutionary.
bellome
Member
Honestly, it is a middle gen in disguise.
sncvsrtoip
Member
what don't you understant, multiple devs said that because of memory constraints xss is a problem, ps5 has same amount of memory as xsx (even more as it's uniform speed access so could have more than 10 for gpu)
Shmunter
Member
Why would anyone be surprised? It's the basics of engineering. You build up, not down.
Bernd Lauert
Banned
If you think that is a problem now, we already had that problem with Xbone and PS4. I can't remember if there was any outcry back then, but the games turned out to be fine.
No, the new CoD looks the way it looks because it's based on current gen consoles. It'd look much better if it were next gen only.
Bernd Lauert
Banned
A 1080p game with lower resolution textures needs much less memory capacity and bandwidth than a 1800p game with higher resolution textures. That's the point.
sncvsrtoip
Member
the point is also that you are not dev (not am I) but you behave like you have more knowledge than devs of aaa studios
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Bernd Lauert
Banned
So you have no argument, just an appeal to authority fallacy. Got it.
Explosive Zombie
Banned
There was, lol, specifically for games like Watch_Dogs which were intentionally gimped on PC for parity purposes.
Um... yeah... that IS why it looks that way. Because it's built for a lesser spec... and upscaled... which is what we fear will happen with Series S.
sncvsrtoip
Member
ok, I'm done wasting time for you
Well, I'm not a game developer but still a software engineer
As a software developer, it is totally natural, that I want as much memory as possible, just so I don't need to worry about it. Yes it saves some time, but it is most time the most inefficient way and optimization not only helps to reduce the memory footprint, most times it also helps to reduce other resource-cylces you could better use for other stuff.
Also a big difference is, in the current gen GPU resources had to be inside of the memory just because you couldn't stream them fast enough. This is no longer needed. From the SSD you can buffer only as much as possible from the resources that no longer must get packed into packets so only things that are needed are loaded. Additional things like SFS are there to further reduce the memory footprint of needed GPU resources.
The only thing that can get a problem is gameplay logic. But to be fair, we haven't seen any big increase in memory footprint for gameplay logic in the current gen. All games are more or less still the same as on the last gen but with better graphics. Even open-worlds games are more or less still the same. HDD streaming in the last gen made it possible that the worlds could get a bit bigger (not optimal, but way better and faster than disc-based streaming).
But still, gameplay wise, it were more or less the same games. Scripted AI and scripted events. This is still used, because for a developer it is just better to predict what happens than using AI (wich is much more complex and resource intensive and much less reliable).
And because of the asset thing. Assets have always different qualities, because you need different quality steps if things are far away from the camera. Not really because of optimisation (that is also a thing, but it is not the only reason) but because it wouldn't look that great if you have something like a character that is far away and the polygons and details get smaller than pixels. This could lead to graphical glitches which you don't want to see. Therefore you always create models for different stages. Just don't load the higher sets and the memory footprint is automatically lower. This is no extra work, it is work that must be done this either way.
btw, AC Unity had a CPU resource issue. Btw, the engine worked fine with later AC titles, so they seem to have fixed that issue.
The 0.2 Ghz less cpu frequency won't change anything at all. Well I don't really get why they downclocked it, but well, after all, CPUs in games are more or less only doing GPU preparation stuff, so less GPU-stuff -> a bit less CPU stuff.
Won't change the fact that PS5 CPU & GPU configuration is much less predictable.
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Bernd Lauert
Banned
Lesser spec, as in 4x slower CPU, 3.5x less memor bandwidth and around 4.5x less GPU power. It adds up. The discrepancy between XSS and PS5 isn't even close to that bad. It's acually much closer to the discrepancy between Xbone and PS4.
Explosive Zombie
Banned
Not what actual developers are saying. Stuff like having variable clocks and their SSD throughput totally matters, plus we've endured months upon months of people saying SONY fans would have meltdowns every time a DF analysis found the X being better because of a TWO TERAFLOP ADVANTAGE. It's just mind numbing to me the way the narrative contorts, how we go from 2 TFlops being the entire world to it being fine a console has 6-8 less.
Bernd Lauert
Banned
Not an argument.
Not for 3rd party games. Sony first parties might squeeze that SSD advantage and higher clocks a bit, who knows.
I mean yeah, that's how it's gonna be. The XSX will consistently deliver higher resolutions and/or frame rates than the PS5. It's not gonna be a huge difference, but it will be measurable.
Again, my point is that PS5 and XSX games won't look worse because the XSS exists.
Explosive Zombie
Banned
It depends on the game, if even one dev makes the game to suit the Series S instead of X and the game is less because of it your point crumbles, like you really think no developers at all are going to just upscale from S?
Phrixotrichus
Banned
The amount of people who think downscaling is simply done with a slider in the engine is mindboggling.
Anyone who`s ever done a big software project knows the massive difference between something running at all and something running well. For anything that actually pushes the envelope on the X the S will cause major headaches for the respective developers.....
I can guarantee that there is not a single developer/publisher out there wo was happy with the introduction of the S as it means a lot of extra work, a second verification process, optimization, QA, extr staffing etc etc etc..., no matter what the marketing @MS says.
That being said, as long as the developers are allowed to freely butcher the S version as they see fit I don`t think that this will be an issue for the customer.....of course options like full GPGPU usage for advanced physics or sth. on the X kind of died with the introduction of the S as that`s hardly scalable, but you can`t miss what you never had I guess.
Anyone who`s ever done a big software project knows the massive difference between something running at all and something running well. For anything that actually pushes the envelope on the X the S will cause major headaches for the respective developers.....
I can guarantee that there is not a single developer/publisher out there wo was happy with the introduction of the S as it means a lot of extra work, a second verification process, optimization, QA, extr staffing etc etc etc..., no matter what the marketing @MS says.
That being said, as long as the developers are allowed to freely butcher the S version as they see fit I don`t think that this will be an issue for the customer.....of course options like full GPGPU usage for advanced physics or sth. on the X kind of died with the introduction of the S as that`s hardly scalable, but you can`t miss what you never had I guess.
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Jon Neu
Banned
Because that console's target is 3 or 4 times less demanding than the PS5/Series X target.
Bernd Lauert
Banned
Yeah, it can and will totally happen. But those devs weren't aiming to deliver top notch AAA graphics anyway. I can imagine many indie devs doing this, and that's fine.
Explosive Zombie
Banned
I get that in terms of resolution but I feel like next-gen has to be more than 4K, heck I don't even care much about native 4K... I still remember back in 2011 playing PC games at 720p because they'd run better and not caring.
Kumomeme
Member
my concern with xss is, the additional optimization task will added burden for them. Even big developers like ubisoft can have issue with their engine and games, imagine smaller one. That what my concern is. It not impossible but the devs surely not gonna like it considering we already heard lot of unhealthy working culture in industry.Well, I'm not a game developer but still a software engineer
As a software developer, it is totally natural, that I want as much memory as possible, just so I don't need to worry about it. Yes it saves some time, but it is most time the most inefficient way and optimization not only helps to reduce the memory footprint, most times it also helps to reduce other resource-cylces you could better use for other stuff.
Also a big difference is, in the current gen GPU resources had to be inside of the memory just because you couldn't stream them fast enough. This is no longer needed. From the SSD you can buffer only as much as possible from the resources that no longer must get packed into packets so only things that are needed are loaded. Additional things like SFS are there to further reduce the memory footprint of needed GPU resources.
The only thing that can get a problem is gameplay logic. But to be fair, we haven't seen any big increase in memory footprint for gameplay logic in the current gen. All games are more or less still the same as on the last gen but with better graphics. Even open-worlds games are more or less still the same. HDD streaming in the last gen made it possible that the worlds could get a bit bigger (not optimal, but way better and faster than disc-based streaming).
But still, gameplay wise, it were more or less the same games. Scripted AI and scripted events. This is still used, because for a developer it is just better to predict what happens than using AI (wich is much more complex and resource intensive and much less reliable).
And because of the asset thing. Assets have always different qualities, because you need different quality steps if things are far away from the camera. Not really because of optimisation (that is also a thing, but it is not the only reason) but because it wouldn't look that great if you have something like a character that is far away and the polygons and details get smaller than pixels. This could lead to graphical glitches which you don't want to see. Therefore you always create models for different stages. Just don't load the higher sets and the memory footprint is automatically lower. This is no extra work, it is work that must be done this either way.
btw, AC Unity had a CPU resource issue. Btw, the engine worked fine with later AC titles, so they seem to have fixed that issue.
The 0.2 Ghz less cpu frequency won't change anything at all. Well I don't really get why they downclocked it, but well, after all, CPUs in games are more or less only doing GPU preparation stuff, so less GPU-stuff -> a bit less CPU stuff.
Won't change the fact that PS5 CPU & GPU configuration is much less predictable.
another my concern is at later further in generation where they already hit bottleneck with the consoles specs for example memory. For now maybe we can argue that lof of new technique and features like sfs and ssd will help reduce memory usage and surely some of the devs will do their best to optimize but there surely be a limit. The first The Last of Us game for example, or even GTA V, despite they pull some awesome achievement with the ps360 hardware, there still obvious limitation visible like resolution, framerate and textures. Even dragons dogma on ps360 has blackbar to improve performance. Worth to mention even FFXIV still stuck to the low res texture due to need support of ps3 and since the game dropped ps3 support, second expansions onward has less instance area compared to how it been before.
We want next gen can last another atleast 4-5 years but apparently the lower baseline has been lowered than what it should be.
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Jon Neu
Banned
I doubt physics will be a problem when they have almost the exact same CPU.
The funny thing is that the biggest jump this gen provides is actually the CPU's and the SSD's.
And the Series S it's perfectly fine with both it's CPU and SSD.
-Arcadia-
Banned
I find it hard to believe RAM won't be a huge problem down the line and that only textures and resolution will be affected, but we will see.
My problem with Series S is not the price or even the specs, but that its online only, i remember that its to push the GamePass and thats ok but with that and its 500GB SSD i find incredibly limiting and anti consumer, its a discless console really made for the mainstream market? Why not give the consumers the choice how they want to play their games?
Well, you do have the choice. Series X has a disc drive. You may not want to pay $200 extra for just that, if you're only interested in a baseline of performance, but there are production and retail realities to be considered. Two consoles at launch already is historic.
Likewise, 500GB is slim, but there may be solace in that data no longer needs to be duplicated across a hard drive hundreds of times to keep speed up, and games may very well see a huge reduction in file sizes for the new generation. Further on, we'll have to see how that goes.
Don't forget that it's also a budget system, with only 200-500 GB less than top-end systems, and you can upgrade the storage any time you want.
As far as the RAM issues, indeed. It is going to be fascinating to see how this wrench in the works of console traditionalism (I don't mean that negatively or positively) will shake out in the end. Nobody has ever done anything like this, and I'm really intrigued to see the results, from sales to technical aptitude.
Phrixotrichus
Banned
No developer in his right mind would ever use the CPU for large particle systems as that absolutely tanks the performance.
The CPU is better suited for rudimentary physics with a lot of branching interactions, but the moment you have a large amount of objects interacting with each other you either use the GPU or you have to scale down the accuracy massively. GPUs are easily factor 10 faster here.
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TTOOLL
Member
You're not helping their case son.
Agnostic2020
Member
Damn so many negative comments from devs 
SF Kosmo
Banned
So, I think if you're targetting 4K/60 on XSX, then scaling down to S is probably going to be pretty reasonable (although a drop in res alone is not going to free up the RAM/VRAM needed so we might also see texture res drop).
But that's a big caveat. And in practice I think it means a lot of games will be developed with S as the target at 1080p and then scaled up rather than fully exploiting the X hardware and scaling down. Even MS themselves seem like they're doing things this way, and it's why a lot of their games aren't really that impressive looking.
I personally don't think Native 4K is necessarily the best use of next gen hardware, especially when you look at the progress that has been made with image reconstruction. And Sony certainly seems to be targetting 30fps in plenty of next gen titles as well and those games make a much bigger visual impact.
But then also remember MS is pushing 3 SKUs on their titles, not 2; PC is also central to their strategy. So maybe in that context it makes some sense right now, at the start of the gen. But unlike Series S, PC min spec is a moving target and will grow as the gen goes on where Series S could really hold things back once we get 2, 3 years in.
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Craig of War
Banned
You guys need to chill and actually do some research on these devs tweets most if not all of them so far are like little indie devs this Dan Weiss guy these are the game he makes it like that other dev that make that dolphin game that said he can't get it to run at 120fps on PS5 lol why are only small indie devs with game that look like it will run on PS3 and Xbox 360 talking.
Kumomeme
Member
what sad is from what i see at here and various place out there like social media, lot of people simply label these developers as 'lazy' and stuff.Damn so many negative comments from devs
jufonuk
not tag worthy
Hey maybe the S means Switch ? So any game made on the S can come easily to switch. Thanks MS
Kumomeme
Member
they are developers. no matter what game they made, they has experience and knowldege unlike us who trying to pretend to know better. Also some of developers tweeted here used to work on various well known studio.You guys need to chill and actually do some research on these devs tweets most if not all of them so far are like little indie devs this Dan Weiss guy these are the game he makes it like that other dev that make that dolphin game that said he can't get it to run at 120fps on PS5 lol why are only small indie devs with game that look like it will run on PS3 and Xbox 360 talking.
even if they bunch of indies, the concern hit the mark since optimization required resources and for smaller devs especially indies its something that they are troubled with.
We cant ignored them just because they are not AAA game developers. Thats not fair.
Phrixotrichus
Banned
The broad public doesn`t know what they are talking about, but thanks to thousands of tech-outlets that spew superficial information on the idiot crowd everyone is now a professional in every tech discussion
An idiot always thinks things are easy, a professional knows about the complexity lurking below the surface. The Dunning Kruger syndrome is rampant on the internet especially.
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Jon Neu
Banned
Which games are you talking about again?
The Xbox One Halo Infinite? Or the rest of crossgen titles that aren't next gen games?
Please, tell me how is this not impressive looking.
I'll be honest. Scaling games between the S and X, shouldn't be too much of a problem. Pretty close to a normal PC and sliders. The point of contention would be where does the Xbox One fit into this game pass landscape? If they have to scale outside the same CPU/GPU, and take into account the Jaguar CPU, that will be a big hurdle. I've read mixed articles, stating Microsoft wants to support the original Xbox One, S and X consoles as well.
Phrixotrichus
Banned
That you still have to fall back to posting cinematics and not actual gameplay for the next gen MS systems ~3 months pre-launch doesn`t make you think? The Halo Infinite cinematics looked great, too......
As it stands that small "Bright Memory" game is probably the best looking MS showcase still....
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Jon Neu
Banned
The Xbox One fits the same way the PS4 fits in all of this. They are still going to receive some crossgen games through 2021 but they are going to lose next gen support and more and more true next gen games are going to be released with time.
Sorc3r3r
Member
Agnostic2020
Member
This is a 24 fps cgi cutscene at 1600p lol dude last time Ms showed in engine trailer was halo infinite and we know how that turned out . So please spare us.