Devs react to PS5 specs - Twitter edition

ShadowRunner · Mar 20, 2020

jett said:
This is a ridiculous notion. Nobody is going to design a multiplatform game where you're forced to move your character or the camera twice as slow on non-PS5 platforms.

I think the point is that in theory if you can load twice the amount of data into RAM within the same time frame then this would allow for higher quality assets to be streamed in.

Another way of looking at it is that assets outside of the view frustum could be loaded in/out of memory much sooner so the amount of RAM used within the frustum can be higher. As an example slow storage could require assets 180 degrees in front of the player to be held in RAM, whilst a fast SSD may allow something closer to the players FOV maximising the RAM available for what is actually being rendered on screen.

thuway · Mar 20, 2020

P40L0 said:
Interesting comments from someone in the Dev industry in comments section in the latest TheVerge article on PS5 v Xbox XS Link to the article:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/18/...ries-x-comparison-specs-features-release-date

He says Xbox XSX is more powerful and easier to develop for, and Microsoft caught Sony off guard with their initial announcement and they have been scrambling ever since.

Link to the user so you don't have to trawl though hundreds of comments:

https://www.theverge.com/users/JR78#activity

Some extracts:

xeroyear · Mar 20, 2020

[X] got caught by surprise and is now scrambling to respond to [Y] is such a bad take.

Platform holders work within a framework laid out years in advance. There are multiple pathways that narrow to a solid point as time advances. Let's examine one aspect that hardens later in development: the appearance of the console. The outer casing needs to be designed and produced in volume. Have you any idea how much thought goes into that process? The case needs to meet specification for components to fit together. It needs to reflect the internal design for thermals. We are talking precise engineering. Where does that plastic case originate from? It needs to be injection moulded. Before that, we need to design and manufacture a large mould. Moulds are very expensive. You need multiple moulds to sustain production. That design process alone would have started 1-2 years ago with the dev kit and through to the retail unit.

It's highly improbable Sony were "caught by surprise" by a console with more floating-point operations. Nobody is "scrabbling" to alter their design. That's silly talk, seized upon by warriors who want to promote a narrative there's something fundamentally wrong with PlayStation's latest console. Here's the boring reality. PS5 is a product of the meetings Mark Cerny and his team held with developers. They worked within a budget that had some wriggle room. They spent a not inconsiderable sum of that budget on aspects that don't normally grab headlines but that will make development better long-term.

Lys Skygge · Mar 20, 2020

thuway said:

Pretty much lol

plow · Mar 20, 2020

PlanetSmasher said:
Both consoles have an SSD. Sony's won't markedly improve games that much beyond the basic upgrades both consoles will see from not being tethered to the HDD format any more.

Didn't know you were a Dev, care to explain from where do you know that?
Because a dev on this Side said somethign else, but pls, enlighten us.

thuway · Mar 20, 2020

jett said:
This is a ridiculous notion. Nobody is going to design a multiplatform game where you're forced to move your character or the camera twice as slow on non-PS5 platforms.

The biggest benefit to the SSD - it has dramatic effects on level of detail on assets. PS5 version can keep those assets in higher quality and closer to the player. Devs design insanely detailed assets which can be compromised big time by streaming challenges / limitations of hard disk bandwith.

PlanetSmasher · Mar 20, 2020

plow said:
Didn't know you were a Dev, care to explain from where do you know that?
Because a dev on this Side said somethign else, but pls, enlighten us.

What major, gamebreaking advantages are you expecting to see for multiplatform games, the overwhelming majority of the market? You really don't think multiplatform developers are going to design their entire gameplay experiences around the PS5's SSD, do you?

Dekim · Mar 20, 2020

If the PS5's high clocks were "last minute rush jobs" to try to eke out more performance from a weaker APU, then it is a "rush job" that Cerny seemingly put a lot of effort and thought and engineering resources into.

thuway · Mar 20, 2020

Dekim said:
If the PS5's high clocks were "last minute rush jobs" to try to eke out more performance from a weaker APU, then it is a "rush job" that Cerny seemingly put a lot of effort and thought and engineering resources into.

They patented an entirely novel cooling solution and have tied the high clocks to increasing GPU cache speed. This was all deliberate.

goonergaz · Mar 20, 2020

Dekim said:
If the PS5's high clocks were "last minute rush jobs" to try to eke out more performance from a weaker APU, then it is a "rush job" that Cerny seemingly put a lot of effort and thought and engineering resources into.

Yep, people say GitHub was right but then say the incredibly high clocks are last minute. Clearly they were pushing the clocks as high as they could at all stages (people were saying 2ghz was impossible). I suspect Cerny fully expected at least 2 ghz+, a bit like the educated gamble on RAM last gen.

Hilarious_Bearious · Mar 20, 2020

PlanetSmasher said:
What major, gamebreaking advantages are you expecting to see for multiplatform games, the overwhelming majority of the market? You really don't think multiplatform developers are going to design their entire gameplay experiences around the PS5's SSD, do you?

I see where you're coming from. If we look at the current situation with the One X and the PS4 Pro, the One X is what; almost 50% more powerful in terms of raw teraflops? Plus with more ram at its disposal etc. All I've seen third party devs do with it is make games hit true 4k a more consistently (or at all), and maybe apply some nicer texture filtering. Are there any third party games that really leverage that extra grunt on the One X to do something that stands out?

I think the big wildcard that could change things with the next gen SSD situation is market share. If we see a similar 2:1 split pretty early on next generation, maybe devs will be more motivated to target the capability of the PS5 SSD more?

PsyDec · Mar 20, 2020

QuiteSomething said:
What are you even talking about?
Show me a dev that said ps5 gonna be 14tf, will have full bc with every gen and so on.

All that stuff was said by internet "Insiders". People are dumb for believing random nobodies

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com

These leaks also mentioned the BC. But I suppose you are right, lots of these people are likely insiders pretending to be devs.

Now I aint no dev, but there were also overstatements I believe, like Schreier's "the most exciting hardware in 20 years." from an anonymous dev who particularly emphasized "the CPU (which has long been a bottleneck for gaming consoles) and the SSD (which is said to allow for some wild possibilities vis-à-vis loading times, open worlds, etc". Now having SSD's on consoles we all know is a huge deal and PS5's SSD is an even bigger deal, but the CPU is substantially better on the XSX, i just don't understand why these sorts of comments were being directed towards the PS5 exclusively.

Kamaros · Mar 20, 2020

TIL that random people here and on twitter know more than devs and apparently you are only allowed to be excited for one machine, rather than the two.

Exodia · Mar 20, 2020

pixelation said:
What Tempest could mean for PS5:

This is fabricated nonsense, the XSX has it's own dedicated audio chip and doesnt use the GPU.

I wish all these warriors will take acouple seconds to do a google search before making and spreading propaganda.

Dekim · Mar 20, 2020

thuway said:
They patented an entirely novel cooling solution and have tied the high clocks to increasing GPU cache speed. This was all deliberate.

That can't be true. Cerny was caught completely off guard by the brilliant engineering of the XSX and had to desperately boost the clocks so Sony can claim in marketing the PS5 is over 10 TFs. The PS5 is actually a 9.2 TF machine. That's the narrative some people are honestly going with.

PlanetSmasher · Mar 20, 2020

Hilarious_Bearious said:
I see where you're coming from. If we look at the current situation with the One X and the PS4 Pro, the One X is what; almost 50% more powerful in terms of raw teraflops? Plus with more ram at its disposal etc. All I've seen third party devs do with it is make games hit true 4k a more consistently (or at all), and maybe apply some nicer texture filtering. Are there any third party games that really leverage that extra grunt on the One X to do something that stands out?

I think the big wildcard that could change things with the next gen SSD situation is market share. If we see a similar 2:1 split pretty early on next generation, maybe devs will be more motivated to target the capability of the PS5 SSD more?

No, because they'd be making an entirely distinct version of every game for the PS5, which is not the kind of work multiplatform developers would want to do considering how viable the PC and XSX platforms will still be.

plow · Mar 20, 2020

PlanetSmasher said:
What major, gamebreaking advantages are you expecting to see for multiplatform games, the overwhelming majority of the market? You really don't think multiplatform developers are going to design their entire gameplay experiences around the PS5's SSD, do you?

Whos talking about Multiplatform? You know there is first Party too? And yu know that thats where we will see Design changes?

amstradcpc · Mar 20, 2020

Dekim said:
That can't be true. Cerny was caught completely off guard by the brilliant engineering of the XSX and had to desperately boost the clocks so Sony can claim in marketing the PS5 is over 10 TFs. The PS5 is actually a 9.2 TF machine. That's the narrative some people are honestly going with.

what is worse PS5 could very well end being a 275 watts oven machine while XSX could be less.So much for Cernys efficiency care...

CelestialAtom · Mar 20, 2020

PlanetSmasher said:
What major, gamebreaking advantages are you expecting to see for multiplatform games, the overwhelming majority of the market? You really don't think multiplatform developers are going to design their entire gameplay experiences around the PS5's SSD, do you?

I would think they get a huge boost for their assets since they make incredibly high quality assets in advance and typically lowers them based on how fast the HDD's can process those textures and such, so since Sony's can handle far great amounts of data, the assets from 3rd Parties could be potentially higher on PS5 (depending on the game, of course). Then again, I don't know if that's 100% how it will work, but I'm just guessing at this point.

Simuly · Mar 20, 2020

thuway said:
They patented an entirely novel cooling solution and have tied the high clocks to increasing GPU cache speed. This was all deliberate.

Yep exactly, I think this 'rushed overclock' notion is complete fanboy FUD.

Man-is-Obsolete · Mar 20, 2020

Philippo said:
Not that I am against anything this person says, but back in 2019 didn't we have opposite infos by some other insiders/journalists that Sony devkits were further along and communication actually was crystal clear?
Could it be possible that some studios have the difficulties mentioned above while others are in a better situation?

This thought was also going through my head as well, though it was hard to focus on that thought over me thinking this is an unverified person in the comment section of an article!

lunanto · Mar 20, 2020

P40L0 said:
Interesting comments from someone in the Dev industry in comments section in the latest TheVerge article on PS5 v Xbox XS Link to the article:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/18/...ries-x-comparison-specs-features-release-date

He says Xbox XSX is more powerful and easier to develop for, and Microsoft caught Sony off guard with their initial announcement and they have been scrambling ever since.

Link to the user so you don't have to trawl though hundreds of comments:

https://www.theverge.com/users/JR78#activity

Some extracts:

Thanks a lot for sharing. Very interesting indeed.

amstradcpc · Mar 20, 2020

Simuly said:
Yep exactly, I think this 'rushed overclock' notion is complete fanboy FUD.

Do you mean they invents a 275 watts or something good cooling solution to end up being 2 tflops behind while consuming more. Its a fudge...

Deleted member 61469 · Mar 20, 2020

Simuly said:
Yep exactly, I think this 'rushed overclock' notion is complete fanboy FUD.

Github showed that testing was very recent though. It's entirely believable that they upped the clocks after seeing xsx. MS did the same thing back then.

modiz · Mar 20, 2020

ShadowKingpin said:
I would think they get a huge boost for their assets since they make incredibly high quality assets in advance and typically lowers them based on how fast the HDD's can process those textures and such, so since Sony's can handle far great amounts of data, the assets from 3rd Parties could be potentially higher on PS5 (depending on the game, of course). Then again, I don't know if that's 100% how it will work, but I'm just guessing at this point.

If developers implement thanks to the SSD the abillity to stream asset textures on the fly even as the camera turns, then yea you could see massive gains on that front for the PS5 in terms of textures on each direction you look at as you dont need to save the data of what the camera doesnt see (to an extent, depending on the speed of the camera), and thus use higher texture resolution on the camera's FoV.

Exodia · Mar 20, 2020

P40L0 said:
Interesting comments from someone in the Dev industry in comments section in the latest TheVerge article on PS5 v Xbox XS Link to the article:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/18/...ries-x-comparison-specs-features-release-date

He says Xbox XSX is more powerful and easier to develop for, and Microsoft caught Sony off guard with their initial announcement and they have been scrambling ever since.

Link to the user so you don't have to trawl though hundreds of comments:

https://www.theverge.com/users/JR78#activity

Some extracts:

This is the most amazing post.
It's not surprising that rather than attempting to address the content of the post. People are ad hominem attacking the identity of the poster and at the same time appealing to authority to no one other than current and ex sony devs.

PlanetSmasher · Mar 20, 2020

plow said:
Whos talking about Multiplatform? You know there is first Party too? And yu know that thats where we will see Design changes?

First party games make up maybe ~5% of a console's total library, if that. If the overwhelming majority of games that come out on the console don't benefit from the design, the design was a poor choice in my book.

ShadowKingpin said:
I would think they get a huge boost for their assets since they make incredibly high quality assets in advance and typically lowers them based on how fast the HDD's can process those textures and such, so since Sony's can handle far great amounts of data, the assets from 3rd Parties could be potentially higher on PS5 (depending on the game, of course). Then again, I don't know if that's 100% how it will work, but I'm just guessing at this point.

Right, but if the PS5 is going to lose in resolution and frame rate comparisons, what does asset quality really matter? I don't want games that LOOK good but RUN worse, y'know? Frame rate and resolution are important - playing Control on my base PS4 was like having a dental drill jammed through my eyeballs because of the frame rate.

Simuly · Mar 20, 2020

amstradcpc said:
Do you mean they invents a 275 watts or something good cooling solution to end up being 2 tflops behind while consuming more. Its a fudge...

Yeah you have no idea of the power draw for the PS5. That figure is your imagination. If Xsx is fixed frequency with a very high clocked CPU that could draw more power, ever ponder that?

Rixan · Mar 20, 2020

This discourse sucks.

Not only is it premature without performance data in hand, Its also hard to take opinions on this subject at face value. Especially considering the long and cringe inducing lineage of console warrior bias, likely underlying so many of the posts itt.

I'll stick to Digital Foundry and objective, positive analysis.

AtomicShroom · Mar 20, 2020

So what I'm getting away from all of this is that 3rd party multiplatform games will perform/look better on the Xbox One Series X, but that PS5-exclusive games that take full advantage of the SSD will blow all of them out of the water. And if there's one place where Sony has a clear advantage, it's 1st party developers.

gofreak · Mar 20, 2020

PlanetSmasher said:
First party games make up maybe ~5% of a console's total library, if that. If the overwhelming majority of games that come out on the console don't benefit from the design, the design was a poor choice in my book.

I think every game that streams data will benefit. Not to the same fundamental degree, around design etc., but around data management and memory usage. I think there's a reason - if true - developers were crying out for SSDs, and many seem very enthused by the extent to which the PS5 doubled down on that.

PlanetSmasher said:
Right, but if the PS5 is going to lose in resolution and frame rate comparisons, what does asset quality really matter? I don't want games that LOOK good but RUN worse, y'know? Frame rate and resolution are important - playing Control on my base PS4 was like having a dental drill jammed through my eyeballs because of the frame rate.

Games shouldn't run worse if the resolution is scaled appropriately, or in dynamic resolution scenarios. So it might be a case of similar performance, higher output resolution on one, higher input (asset) 'resolution' on another? That could make for interesting comparisons.

amstradcpc · Mar 20, 2020

Simuly said:
Yeah you have no idea of the power draw for the PS5. That figure is your imagination. If Xsx is fixed frequency with a very high clocked CPU that could draw more power, ever ponder that?

no, 5700 at 2 Ghz is near 220 watts, RDNA 2 at 2,2 for the 30% clocks improvement should be near 200 the gpu alone. Add cpu wattage and other components...

Equanimity · Mar 20, 2020

Sony vs. Microsoft

Exodia said:
This is fabricated nonsense, the XSX has it's own dedicated audio chip and doesnt use the GPU.

I wish all these warriors will take acouple seconds to do a google search before making and spreading propaganda.

Exodia said:
This is the most amazing post.
It's not surprising that rather than attempting to address the content of the post. People are ad hominem attacking the identity of the poster and at the same time appealing to authority to no one other than current and ex sony devs.

I like your consistency.

/s

GattsuSama · Mar 20, 2020

Just curious, has there been any positive and specific dev reactions to the XSX?

I have seen the "Everyone will think the XSX is better, and it a great machine, but let me tell you about the PS5" comments from devs or others but have yet to see anyone directly praise the XSX like this.

Not a thing about choice since I am getting both, but find it odd everyone keeps saying everyone thinks the XSX will get the attention, be the talk but then praise PS5 specifics but nothing on XSX. Is there really nothing unique about it?

foamdino · Mar 20, 2020

liquidmetal14 said:
I've said it once and I'll say it again, so many people are going to be eating crow once they see the games on this platform.

And to be clear we already know that both platforms will be powerful and this isn't the topic for that. But what the PS5 has going for it will simply be impossible to ignore and that's not counting the company's heritage when it comes to their software which frankly speaks for itself.

I'm of the same opinion - I think this gen round Sony is not playing safe with their design. Microsoft have built a fabulously powerful machine - but I'm not seeing the innovation, I think we will get great looking and great performing games on Microsoft hardware - undoubtedly butter smooth framerates, great ray-tracing, etc - however I don't think anything they've mentioned makes it easier for devs to create something we haven't already seen (except at higher resolutions/framerates).

I'm glad the Microsoft fans got what they wanted (powerful GPU and CPU) because I got exactly what I wanted - totally different designs. DF must be salivating with the thought of actually digging into the differences

SolidSnakex · Mar 20, 2020

Exodia said:
This is the most amazing post.
It's not surprising that rather than attempting to address the content of the post. People are ad hominem attacking the identity of the poster and at the same time appealing to authority to no one other than current and ex sony devs.

Yes, people who are verifiable developers. You know, like the Lead Engine Programmer at id

As people have said, we've seen developer after developer praise the PS5. Jason has stated that developers, both first and third party, seem to really like it. People that do tech analysis (DF and NXGamer) have been impressed by what Sony's doing. But some random comment on a Verge article without a single ounce of verification is somehow more believable than all of that.

ShapeGSX · Mar 20, 2020

xeroyear said:
It's highly improbable Sony were "caught by surprise" by a console with more floating-point operations. Nobody is "scrabbling" to alter their design. That's silly talk, seized upon by warriors who want to promote a narrative there's something fundamentally wrong with PlayStation's latest console. Here's the boring reality. PS5 is a product of the meetings Mark Cerny and his team held with developers. They worked within a budget that had some wriggle room. They spent a not inconsiderable sum of that budget on aspects that don't normally grab headlines but that will make development better long-term.

It's fairly standard to change clock speeds late in a project. Microsoft did the same thing to the Xbox One in reaction to the PS4 fairly soon before launch.

That said, they know there is a maximum reliable clock speed from AMD for a given yield. And they know the yield curve associated with given frequencies and voltages. They know this far in advance. And they have predictions of what they feel the competition will be implementing. But the target voltage and frequency can change fairly late to help intercept the competition once they know the real values. It just depends on how expensive they are willing to go when it comes to the chip manufacturing and yield.

Sony even (famously) made a very late change to the amount of RAM in the PS4, which was a much larger change than a frequency or voltage change.

PJV3 · Mar 20, 2020

Rixan said:
This discourse sucks.

Not only is it premature without performance data in hand, Its also hard to take opinions on this subject at face value. Especially considering the long and cringe inducing lineage of console warrior bias, likely underlying so many of the posts itt.

I'll stick to Digital Foundry and objective, positive analysis.

I was really interested in hearing from devs who would be making the most of the box i'm buying but that's problematic for some reason.
So it's just another thread for the same people to club each other with specs. Sony had better reveal the console soon.

Exodia · Mar 20, 2020

Rixan said:
This discourse sucks.

Not only is it premature without performance data in hand, Its also hard to take opinions on this subject at face value. Especially considering the long and cringe inducing lineage of console warrior bias, likely underlying so many of the posts itt.

I'll stick to Digital Foundry and objective, positive analysis.

This.

Wait for real world performance test. Anything else is simply speculation. Some people speculate with some evidence. Other speculate with absolute zero evidence.

Let's just sit back and wait for the games.

plow · Mar 20, 2020

PlanetSmasher said:
First party games make up maybe ~5% of a console's total library, if that. If the overwhelming majority of games that come out on the console don't benefit from the design, the design was a poor choice in my book.

SO the games that make a console standout?

Of course if you think having 4 FPS more is more important than having exclusive games that do something completely new, than i could get why you think that.
Don't know why anyone would think that but okay. I'm happy Sony did go this route.

Eeyore · Mar 20, 2020

THEVOID said:
Read this in the Xbox thread. Super interesting read...

Just so we're clear, we have people attacking journalists in here and yet people of a similar 'persuasion' are willing to believe a random comment on The Verge. That is an absolutely perfect example of confirmation bias.

Titanpaul · Mar 20, 2020

GattsuSama said:
Just curious, has there been any positive and specific dev reactions to the XSX?

I have seen the "Everyone will think the XSX is better, and it a great machine, but let me tell you about the PS5" comments from devs or others but have yet to see anyone directly praise the XSX like this.

Not a thing about choice since I am getting both, but find it odd everyone keeps saying everyone thinks the XSX will get the attention, be the talk but then praise PS5 specifics but nothing on XSX. Is there really nothing unique about it?

There's no need to damage control for the XSX. It's a beefy system. It's a high end PC.

Decarb · Mar 20, 2020

Holy shit at that Verge post and dude defending proprietary storage as a plus. I mean, holy shit. Thanks Era for linking to real developer posts like these.

Lupercal · Mar 20, 2020

SolidSnakex said:
Yes, people who are verifiable developers. You know, like the Lead Engine Programmer at id

As people have said, we've seen developer after developer praise the PS5. Jason has stated that developers, both first and third party, seem to really like it. People that do tech analysis (DF and NXGamer) have been impressed by what Sony's doing. But some random comment on a Verge article without a single ounce of verification is somehow more believable than all of that.

P40L0 · Mar 20, 2020

AtomicShroom said:
So what I'm getting away from all of this is that 3rd party multiplatform games will perform/look better on the Xbox One Series X, but that PS5-exclusive games that take full advantage of the SSD will blow all of them out of the water.

You're getting it bad then.

EDIT: It's more like all 3rd parties will look and play better on XSX.
Exclusives/Optimized 1st parties will be incredible on both, but SSD advantages on PS5 are all to be demonstrated and most probably could translate to faster loadings of mere seconds compared to XSX ones.

Exodia · Mar 20, 2020

Equanimity said:
Sony vs. Microsoft

I like your consistency.

/s

Uhm one claimed that xsx doesnt have an audio chip and will use 20% of its GPU for audio processing. It's not even speculation about the unknown. Its false because we know. It's like saying that the next gen consoles dont use RDNA 2, they use GCN. Its fabricated because we know they use RDNA 2.

Its blatantly false and should be called as such. Now if you can prove that the verge post is blatantly false then you should make the same post.

Kaswa101 · Mar 20, 2020

thuway said:

This, lmao

Graven · Mar 20, 2020

I don't want to change subjects, but a noob question:

Do all this new information about specs and architecture for both consoles, affects the PC hardware makers in any way?

I just wonder what would take for PCs to keep up with these new machines.

PJV3 · Mar 20, 2020

Titanpaul said:
There's no need to damage control for the XSX. It's a beefy system. It's a high end PC.

Where is the damage control?, some of us are just thirsty for Playstation news/stuff and all we have is a very dry lecture from Cerny.

Simuly · Mar 20, 2020

amstradcpc said:
no, 5700 at 2 Ghz is near 220 watts, RDNA 2 at 2,2 for the 30% clocks improvement should be near 200 the gpu alone. Add cpu wattage and other components...

Stop picking numbers from thin air. The GPU is heavily customised, and the boost behaviour is unlike any theoretical off the shelf RDNA2 dGPU that you have in your head, as they havent been released yet.

I'm not continuing this discussion with you as it seems you wanted to push a certain idea without any facts.

Devs react to PS5 specs - Twitter edition

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