Devs react to PS5 specs - Twitter edition

[Noosa]

I am an indie developer (Kyodai) with a recent release on all major console platforms (Xbox, PS4 and Switch) and PC. My game is a quite complex one (using UE4) - fully dynamic lighting, PBR materials, volumetric fog, light shafts, dof, heavy post-process profile, etc. As a small two-person studio, I am making all the programming stuff (plus all three console ports with full support for PS4 Pro and Xbox One X), sound design, lighting, scripting, ui, optimizations, environmental art.

I will be short - personally I am more excited for PS5, because of the SSD/io speeds and VR opportunities (I am working on a VR title right now). At first, I
designed my game based on SATA3 SSD performance - I wanted everything to be seamless in the game - no loading screen, everything to be streamed in the runtime without any hitches and pauses. And I succeed until I started testing the game with normal HDD and made the first playable build on Xbox One. I changed quite a lot of the game until I got it to work properly with HDD (I am even using the "industry standard" elevators to stream and release huge chunks of data in runtime. From my point of view the capable developers this gen are making very special magic with the 5400 rpm restriction of today.
I can go in technical details, but it will be a long and boring wall of text.

I must add though that Microsoft, at least in our case, are more open with information about Scarlett (we have detailed relevant information from months). Like I said we are a small indie developer from Eastern Europe. Sony, on the other hand, are not. This doesn't mean that Sony are behind the schedule - maybe they just have a different approach. Maybe they have more (hardware/software) surprises that they want to keep a secret at the moment. If you give detailed information to a vast amount of (small) developers there is a better chance for leaks, etc.

Both consoles will be beasts of machines and huge upgrades to what we have today in PS4/Pro, Xbox One/X. I am execting a new golden era from a game design perspective. Even in AAA form.

Now, on the interesting stuff - I also talked with a friend, who is working for AAA developer (making multiplatform games for many years now) and has the latest devkits of both consoles.

My friend just shows me this pose regarding the power difference in favor of Series X:

Sadly can't give you more information because of the strict NDA.

One more thing though - also told me that actually, the PS5 devkit box is bigger than the Series X one. Of course, this can change with the retail version of the consoles. Neo devkit, for example, is huge and vastly different compared to the final Pro design.

Click to shrink...

Thanks for the insight!

 

[PJV3]

Great analysis, Koralsky. Thanks. Sad to hear about information sharing protocol differences between the two.

Click to shrink...

It's frustrating/interesting but Sony just has most stuff still underwraps, the Cerny talk must mean we are very close to seeing the reveal though. i hope there's a small tech demo of some of the capabilities, i don't see a game that really makes the most of the system appearing for years.

 

[Deleted member 50658]

I am an indie developer (Kyodai) with a recent release on all major console platforms (Xbox, PS4 and Switch) and PC. My game is a quite complex one (using UE4) - fully dynamic lighting, PBR materials, volumetric fog, light shafts, dof, heavy post-process profile, etc. As a small two-person studio, I am making all the programming stuff (plus all three console ports with full support for PS4 Pro and Xbox One X), sound design, lighting, scripting, ui, optimizations, environmental art.

I will be short - personally I am more excited for PS5, because of the SSD/io speeds and VR opportunities (I am working on a VR title right now). At first, I
designed my game based on SATA3 SSD performance - I wanted everything to be seamless in the game - no loading screen, everything to be streamed in the runtime without any hitches and pauses. And I succeed until I started testing the game with normal HDD and made the first playable build on Xbox One. I changed quite a lot of the game until I got it to work properly with HDD (I am even using the "industry standard" elevators to stream and release huge chunks of data in runtime. From my point of view the capable developers this gen are making very special magic with the 5400 rpm restriction of today.
I can go in technical details, but it will be a long and boring wall of text.

I must add though that Microsoft, at least in our case, are more open with information about Scarlett (we have detailed relevant information from months). Like I said we are a small indie developer from Eastern Europe. Sony, on the other hand, are not. This doesn't mean that Sony are behind the schedule - maybe they just have a different approach. Maybe they have more (hardware/software) surprises that they want to keep a secret at the moment. If you give detailed information to a vast amount of (small) developers there is a better chance for leaks, etc.

Both consoles will be beasts of machines and huge upgrades to what we have today in PS4/Pro, Xbox One/X. I am execting a new golden era from a game design perspective. Even in AAA form.

Now, on the interesting stuff - I also talked with a friend, who is working for AAA developer (making multiplatform games for many years now) and has the latest devkits of both consoles.

My friend just shows me this pose regarding the power difference in favor of Series X:

Sadly can't give you more information because of the strict NDA.

One more thing though - also told me that actually, the PS5 devkit box is bigger than the Series X one. Of course, this can change with the retail version of the consoles. Neo devkit, for example, is huge and vastly different compared to the final Pro design.

Click to shrink...

Thanks for the info always very appreciated to have actual devs give their two cent regardless if some things still are u set NDA and good luck with your games 👍.

 

[degauss]

Honestly Sony deserve this. They've done such piss poor job at marketing the PS5 so far.

Its not even fully revealed and yet the tone has been set that its inferior to the XSX.

If they price yet equal to XSX then they will have a problem.

Click to shrink...

Deserve what? The ire of a tiny fraction of impatient enthusiasts?

Sony are a smaller company and have won every generation so far, even when they messed up with the PS3.

They've been underpowered against Xbox in every generation but half of the last one, underpowered by far bigger margins than this theoretical 17% we are looking at here.

And they haven't revealed shit yet. Would you say Apple have done a piss poor job marketing the new iPhone in the period before they've actually revealed it?

There is barely anyone talking about the new consoles yet because we haven't seen any games.

Just because Microsoft are in the position they are in, coming from behind (and honestly, maybe in third place in console mindset behind Nintendo) doesn't mean Sony have to suddenly reveal their hand.

 

[PJV3]

Deserve what? The ire of a tiny fraction of impatient enthusiasts?

Sony are a smaller company and have won every generation so far, even when they messed up with the PS3.

They've been underpowered against Xbox in every generation but half of the last one, underpowered by far bigger margins than this theoretical 17% we are looking at here.

And they haven't revealed shit yet. Would you say Apple have done a piss poor job marketing the new iPhone in the period before they've actually revealed it?

There is barely anyone talking about the new consoles yet because we haven't seen any games.

Just because Microsoft are in the position they are in, coming from behind (and honestly, maybe in third place in console mindset behind Nintendo) doesn't mean Sony have to suddenly reveal their hand.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, console wars are usually stupid, but this phony war over a Cerny presentation and a limited xbox xhowing is something else.

 

[Marble]

Deserve what? The ire of a tiny fraction of impatient enthusiasts?

Sony are a smaller company and have won every generation so far, even when they messed up with the PS3.

They've been underpowered against Xbox in every generation but half of the last one, underpowered by far bigger margins than this theoretical 17% we are looking at here.

And they haven't revealed shit yet. Would you say Apple have done a piss poor job marketing the new iPhone in the period before they've actually revealed it?

There is barely anyone talking about the new consoles yet because we haven't seen any games.

Just because Microsoft are in the position they are in, coming from behind (and honestly, maybe in third place in console mindset behind Nintendo) doesn't mean Sony have to suddenly reveal their hand.

Click to shrink...

This. Sony will be fine. MS won't magically take over EU and Asia because their box has a minor GPU difference.

Social media traction says it all. Even here on Era older Xbox threads are overtaken quickly by newer PS threads, posts wise.

Which doesn't mean MS will not also be fine. They will undoubtly gain more market share because they doing a far better job than last gen.

 

[Alexandros]

You heard what Cerny said right? Freeing up multiple full Zen 2 cores due to their custom hardware? That's not something your average gaming PC has to spare, most people are still on 4 or 6 core processors. And without compression a PC can't get close to what XSX and especially PS5 can reach in terms of average throughput.

Click to shrink...

Most people are still on 4-core and 6-core processors now because more are not necessary. As soon as they become necessary people will upgrade and many of them will go for CPUs that have more cores and higher clockspeeds than the console CPUs. As I said, in most gaming PCs there will be power to spare. Right now it is a bad time to upgrade which is why most gamers are on a waiting pattern.

 

[Iwao]

Deserve what? The ire of a tiny fraction of impatient enthusiasts?

Sony are a smaller company and have won every generation so far, even when they messed up with the PS3.

They've been underpowered against Xbox in every generation but half of the last one, underpowered by far bigger margins than this theoretical 17% we are looking at here.

And they haven't revealed shit yet. Would you say Apple have done a piss poor job marketing the new iPhone in the period before they've actually revealed it?

There is barely anyone talking about the new consoles yet because we haven't seen any games.

Just because Microsoft are in the position they are in, coming from behind (and honestly, maybe in third place in console mindset behind Nintendo) doesn't mean Sony have to suddenly reveal their hand.

Click to shrink...

These are some interesting and eye-opening facts.

If people are worried or "worried" that the smallest % gap that there has EVER been between Xbox and PlayStation consoles spells trouble for Sony or the PS5 in general, they are in for a rude awakening. Especially when everything else is revealed. There's so much more we don't know about these consoles, foremost: games, OS and price. What we're seeing is just the kind of imbalanced and inconsequential outrage that's reared its head several times this gen already. Just because MS is making strides as they should be, doesn't mean Sony has to follow their playbook.

 

[Koralsky]

Great analysis, Koralsky. Thanks. Sad to hear about information sharing protocol differences between the two.

Question (if you can):

Without divulging the number, have you been made aware of the PS 5'sOS footprint? If so, then is it satisfactory?

Danke.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I cannot give you concrete numbers or specific information (the ones that I know). NDA's are deadly. On the os/api front though, things are progressing steadily, but it is a WIP - some elements are not working optimally, some are not working at all (for both). This is a constant process and I am sure the engineers of both platform holders will continue to optimize them even after the consoles are released on the market. This is nothing new of course.

I also mentioned that Sony potentially maybe have some more surprises, but so does Microsoft. And we have a lot of information regarding Series X that is still not public. And from the perspective of just a gamer, heavily invested in the MS ecosystem, there are some exciting stuff.

In addition, I don't know why MS didn't talk bout the audio capabilities of Series X in detail. There's excellent documentation for devs and the audio in Series is not an afterthought. Not at all. But again, it is very difficult to present audio in visual/writing form so it makes sense to not go in specific details.

Overall I am quite happy with the two different approaches by both platform holders - one is headed for speed, the other toward power. In the end, both will be powerful and speedy. And most importantly - easy to develop, with the opportunity for more freedom in constructing game/level design.

 

[Westlo]

See.. thats what Im talking about lol

Sony better get their shit together

Click to shrink...

Yeah Sony are in a big trouble, history shows the spec dominant console always wins.

 

[zeuanimals]

Thats unfortunately how it works nowadays.

Time for Sony to get back up and do a proper reveal with some fireworks and show some true next gen PS5 games that aren't limited by Jaguar and all is good again.

Click to shrink...

But why would they do they when they've still got games to sell?

 

[Pat002]

I am an indie developer (Kyodai) with a recent release on all major console platforms (Xbox, PS4 and Switch) and PC. My game is a quite complex one (using UE4) - fully dynamic lighting, PBR materials, volumetric fog, light shafts, dof, heavy post-process profile, etc. As a small two-person studio, I am making all the programming stuff (plus all three console ports with full support for PS4 Pro and Xbox One X), sound design, lighting, scripting, ui, optimizations, environmental art.

I will be short - personally I am more excited for PS5, because of the SSD/io speeds and VR opportunities (I am working on a VR title right now). At first, I
designed my game based on SATA3 SSD performance - I wanted everything to be seamless in the game - no loading screen, everything to be streamed in the runtime without any hitches and pauses. And I succeed until I started testing the game with normal HDD and made the first playable build on Xbox One. I changed quite a lot of the game until I got it to work properly with HDD (I am even using the "industry standard" elevators to stream and release huge chunks of data in runtime. From my point of view the capable developers this gen are making very special magic with the 5400 rpm restriction of today.
I can go in technical details, but it will be a long and boring wall of text.

I must add though that Microsoft, at least in our case, are more open with information about Scarlett (we have detailed relevant information from months). Like I said we are a small indie developer from Eastern Europe. Sony, on the other hand, are not. This doesn't mean that Sony are behind the schedule - maybe they just have a different approach. Maybe they have more (hardware/software) surprises that they want to keep a secret at the moment. If you give detailed information to a vast amount of (small) developers there is a better chance for leaks, etc.

Both consoles will be beasts of machines and huge upgrades to what we have today in PS4/Pro, Xbox One/X. I am execting a new golden era from a game design perspective. Even in AAA form.

Now, on the interesting stuff - I also talked with a friend, who is working for AAA developer (making multiplatform games for many years now) and has the latest devkits of both consoles.

My friend just shows me this pose regarding the power difference in favor of Series X:

Sadly can't give you more information because of the strict NDA.

One more thing though - also told me that actually, the PS5 devkit box is bigger than the Series X one. Of course, this can change with the retail version of the consoles. Neo devkit, for example, is huge and vastly different compared to the final Pro design.

Click to shrink...

Thanks for the insight. Of course i don't want to be rude, but could you verify yourself with a mod?

 

[Chaystic]

I am an indie developer (Kyodai) with a recent release on all major console platforms (Xbox, PS4 and Switch) and PC. My game is a quite complex one (using UE4) - fully dynamic lighting, PBR materials, volumetric fog, light shafts, dof, heavy post-process profile, etc. As a small two-person studio, I am making all the programming stuff (plus all three console ports with full support for PS4 Pro and Xbox One X), sound design, lighting, scripting, ui, optimizations, environmental art.

I will be short - personally I am more excited for PS5, because of the SSD/io speeds and VR opportunities (I am working on a VR title right now). At first, I
designed my game based on SATA3 SSD performance - I wanted everything to be seamless in the game - no loading screen, everything to be streamed in the runtime without any hitches and pauses. And I succeed until I started testing the game with normal HDD and made the first playable build on Xbox One. I changed quite a lot of the game until I got it to work properly with HDD (I am even using the "industry standard" elevators to stream and release huge chunks of data in runtime. From my point of view the capable developers this gen are making very special magic with the 5400 rpm restriction of today.
I can go in technical details, but it will be a long and boring wall of text.

I must add though that Microsoft, at least in our case, are more open with information about Scarlett (we have detailed relevant information from months). Like I said we are a small indie developer from Eastern Europe. Sony, on the other hand, are not. This doesn't mean that Sony are behind the schedule - maybe they just have a different approach. Maybe they have more (hardware/software) surprises that they want to keep a secret at the moment. If you give detailed information to a vast amount of (small) developers there is a better chance for leaks, etc.

Both consoles will be beasts of machines and huge upgrades to what we have today in PS4/Pro, Xbox One/X. I am execting a new golden era from a game design perspective. Even in AAA form.

Now, on the interesting stuff - I also talked with a friend, who is working for AAA developer (making multiplatform games for many years now) and has the latest devkits of both consoles.

My friend just shows me this pose regarding the power difference in favor of Series X:

Sadly can't give you more information because of the strict NDA.

One more thing though - also told me that actually, the PS5 devkit box is bigger than the Series X one. Of course, this can change with the retail version of the consoles. Neo devkit, for example, is huge and vastly different compared to the final Pro design.

Click to shrink...

I appreciate this post, thanks for posting.

 

[nib95]

I am an indie developer (Kyodai) with a recent release on all major console platforms (Xbox, PS4 and Switch) and PC. My game is a quite complex one (using UE4) - fully dynamic lighting, PBR materials, volumetric fog, light shafts, dof, heavy post-process profile, etc. As a small two-person studio, I am making all the programming stuff (plus all three console ports with full support for PS4 Pro and Xbox One X), sound design, lighting, scripting, ui, optimizations, environmental art.

I will be short - personally I am more excited for PS5, because of the SSD/io speeds and VR opportunities (I am working on a VR title right now). At first, I
designed my game based on SATA3 SSD performance - I wanted everything to be seamless in the game - no loading screen, everything to be streamed in the runtime without any hitches and pauses. And I succeed until I started testing the game with normal HDD and made the first playable build on Xbox One. I changed quite a lot of the game until I got it to work properly with HDD (I am even using the "industry standard" elevators to stream and release huge chunks of data in runtime. From my point of view the capable developers this gen are making very special magic with the 5400 rpm restriction of today.
I can go in technical details, but it will be a long and boring wall of text.

I must add though that Microsoft, at least in our case, are more open with information about Scarlett (we have detailed relevant information from months). Like I said we are a small indie developer from Eastern Europe. Sony, on the other hand, are not. This doesn't mean that Sony are behind the schedule - maybe they just have a different approach. Maybe they have more (hardware/software) surprises that they want to keep a secret at the moment. If you give detailed information to a vast amount of (small) developers there is a better chance for leaks, etc.

Both consoles will be beasts of machines and huge upgrades to what we have today in PS4/Pro, Xbox One/X. I am execting a new golden era from a game design perspective. Even in AAA form.

Now, on the interesting stuff - I also talked with a friend, who is working for AAA developer (making multiplatform games for many years now) and has the latest devkits of both consoles.

My friend just shows me this pose regarding the power difference in favor of Series X:

Sadly can't give you more information because of the strict NDA.

One more thing though - also told me that actually, the PS5 devkit box is bigger than the Series X one. Of course, this can change with the retail version of the consoles. Neo devkit, for example, is huge and vastly different compared to the final Pro design.

Click to shrink...

Appreciate the insight! And good luck with your project!

 

[Hey Please]

Yeah, I cannot give you concrete numbers or specific information (the ones that I know). NDA's are deadly. On the os/api front though, things are progressing steadily, but it is a WIP - some elements are not working optimally, some are not working at all (for both). This is a constant process and I am sure the engineers of both platform holders will continue to optimize them even after the consoles are released on the market. This is nothing new of course.

Click to shrink...

That sounds wonderful. It is intriguing and praiseworthy how early MS has been able to nail down OS's footprint, however. Furthermore, they also stated that it only consumes 1 core (2 threads). It will be interesting to see whether Sony can match them.

I also mentioned that Sony potentially maybe have some more surprises, but so does Microsoft. And we have a lot of information regarding Series X that is still not public. And from the perspective of just a gamer, heavily invested in the MS ecosystem, there are some exciting stuff.

Click to shrink...

As a Game Pass subscriber, this is indeed great news. Plus, they have already talked about their 'Smart Delivery System' which makes games almost platform agnostic (at least for MS's first party and participating third parties).

As for the rest of the info, given how far we're out (and esp. with the current pandemic, schedules may yet change), both companies have all the time to execute their own marketing strategies for general public.

In addition, I don't know why MS didn't talk bout the audio capabilities of Series X in detail. There's excellent documentation for devs and the audio in Series is not an afterthought. Not at all. But again, it is very difficult to present audio in visual/writing form so it makes sense to not go in specific details.

Click to shrink...

Indeed. I have only heard that they have worked ensuring that their sound processing, akin to Sony, seeks to eliminate the system's bottlenecks by off-loading tasks to separate silicon.

What is interesting is how both companies have been investing in independent interdependent silicon to eliminate and/or alleviate stresses on CPU this time around despite it (the CPU) being much faster and capable than Jaguar. As an average Joe, I can only imagine the positive ramification of unburdening the CPU on level not seen this gen.

Overall I am quite happy with the two different approaches by both platform holders - one is headed for speed, the other toward power. In the end, both will be powerful and speedy. And most importantly - easy to develop, with the opportunity for more freedom in constructing game/level design.

Click to shrink...

"easy to develop, with the opportunity for more freedom in constructing game/level design." - Amen. Anything that makes the lives of devs easier is a win.

Thank you again for sharing your thoughts. Good luck with your project.

 

[mordecaii83]

Most people are still on 4-core and 6-core processors now because more are not necessary. As soon as they become necessary people will upgrade and many of them will go for CPUs that have more cores and higher clockspeeds than the console CPUs. As I said, in most gaming PCs there will be power to spare. Right now it is a bad time to upgrade which is why most gamers are on a waiting pattern.

Click to shrink...

Even people that do upgrade will be upgrading to at most an 8 core processor, which only matches the consoles. Add in decompression, and you lose a couple cores or forget decompression and your I/O throughput is much lower than the consoles. I think it's silly to insinuate consoles won't have an advantage in terms of storage for at least a couple years.

 

[Koralsky]

Thank you for sharing your opinion. Is this sentiment shared across other indie devs?

Good luck with Elea.

Click to shrink...

Thank you.

On your question - actually idk. The vast majority of indie devs in Bulgaria are not developing for consoles - they are mostly working on mobile products. I was talking with one of the studio managers of another AAA dev though and he is mighty impressed specifically with Sony's approach towards PS5. My colleague devs are impressed by both platform holders - it is in our/their interest both to be successful of course.
Dev environment by both will be excellent next-gen, as it is a logical/evolutional continuation of thе current one. Everything will be even more streamlined and easy to work with.

 

[Pat002]

Thank you.

On your question - actually idk. The vast majority of indie devs in Bulgaria are not developing for consoles - they are mostly working on mobile products. I was talking with one of the studio managers of CA though and he is mighty impressed specifically with Sony's approach towards PS5. My colleague devs are impressed by both platform holders - it is in our/their interest both to be successful of course.
Dev environment by both will be excellent next-gen, as it is a logical/evolutional continuation of thе current one. Everything will be even more streamlined and easy to work with.

Click to shrink...

Thank you for being so much cool in sharing information without being vague. If you can't say something you said it without making some vague hint at nothing.

 

[Alexandros]

Even people that do upgrade will be upgrading to at most an 8 core processor, which only matches the consoles. Add in decompression, and you lose a couple cores or forget decompression and your I/O throughput is much lower than the consoles. I think it's silly to insinuate consoles won't have an advantage in terms of storage for at least a couple years.

Click to shrink...

Perhaps, but a couple of years is the traditional cross-gen period during which most games will be playable across a vast array of configurations and the overwhelming majority of games will belong to that category. PC gaming is not that different than consoles in the sense that software pushes people to upgrade, with the only difference being that instead of a hard cut-off there is a gradual one. As for the hardware itself, not all 8-core processors are alike. New hardware comes out every year, Zen 3 CPUs are expected this year which means that an 8-core, 16-thread Zen 3 CPU clocked at the same frequency as the PS5 CPU will have a definite performance advantage, even without taking into account differences in cache sizes and the like.

Anyway, we seem to be veering off to a different discussion than the main topic but I'd love to talk about this some more.

 

[hubertuss03]

That site is such a joke .

Click to shrink...

Yeah... And not funny joke.

 

[platocplx]

Deserve what? The ire of a tiny fraction of impatient enthusiasts?

Sony are a smaller company and have won every generation so far, even when they messed up with the PS3.

They've been underpowered against Xbox in every generation but half of the last one, underpowered by far bigger margins than this theoretical 17% we are looking at here.

And they haven't revealed shit yet. Would you say Apple have done a piss poor job marketing the new iPhone in the period before they've actually revealed it?

There is barely anyone talking about the new consoles yet because we haven't seen any games.

Just because Microsoft are in the position they are in, coming from behind (and honestly, maybe in third place in console mindset behind Nintendo) doesn't mean Sony have to suddenly reveal their hand.

Click to shrink...

apple doesnt even reveal their devices until damn near a couple weeks before they launch. like I see now sony is trickling information so they do ruin a lot of game releases for the PS4. They will be just fine whenever they decide to give most of their info. They could do it a month before launch and hype would be immediately there if the games look good. lol. people act like hype for a device needs to happen months and months before launch. it doesnt.

 

[SIXSE7N]

Resetera: "Just how awesome is the PS5?"

Devs on twitter: "So Awesome!"

 

[blastprocessor]

Ex-Sony Game Designer (F1, Killzone 2, Wipeout)



We will only know when a game is designed for the XSX, any game just being modified to work on it won't have the same level of optimization. Also, there are different levels of RT that different games will have use for.

Click to shrink...

If the power difference is staggering one wonders about the price difference.

 

[Talus]

Even people that do upgrade will be upgrading to at most an 8 core processor, which only matches the consoles. Add in decompression, and you lose a couple cores or forget decompression and your I/O throughput is much lower than the consoles. I think it's silly to insinuate consoles won't have an advantage in terms of storage for at least a couple years.

Click to shrink...

Consoles are already losing 1 core to OS and PC parts clock higher.. and DirectStorage is coming to PC as well. It's also worth mentioning that most gaming PCs will have more RAM than either console.

 

[Deleted member 18161]

Your first sentence is wrong, the previous generation (360/PS3) launched with unified shaders that weren't available at that time in PC graphics cards. As for the playing down, I think it's more a matter of dreams versus reality. It is reasonable to expect significant improvements in game design due to the new hardware in next gen consoles. It is not reasonable to expect things that are way beyond the scope of the hardware. It is also not reasonable to theorize that PC hardware will not be able to catch up and surpass console tech in a very short period of time.

Click to shrink...

Fair enough on the first point. I was actually going to say that but have seen PC players say in the past that the 9800 or something could do much the same as the 360.

On the second point, let people be excited and dream of what might be possible with a 4x increase in CPU compute, real time Ray Tracing and an SSD as standard for God's sake. It's an enthusiast forum and with what's currently happening in the World who the fuck cares...

On your third point I've never, ever seen people claim that PC won't catch up very quickly and if they do they're dumb considering it's a scientific fact. Aren't people already theorising there will be a 23tflop AMD GPU based on the new console tech released around this Winter lol? Boom there you go, twice the GPU performance of the Series X within weeks of it being released 😋

High end PC's will always run rings around console tech but at least this time with Series X and PS5 we're starting from a much more powerful base and many less bottlenecks vs the launch of PS4/XB1. There will also probably be mid gen upgrades again to keep the gap between PC and console from becoming ridiculous like the PS360 gen.

 

[PJV3]

Overall I am quite happy with the two different approaches by both platform holders - one is headed for speed, the other toward power.

Click to shrink...

Sounds good, i like it when there are different approaches.

v

I'm too old for all that Dragonball bollocks.

 

[liquidmetal14]

I'll not share any names as I have some friends but here's a small quote regarding PS5. This is from a major 3rd party dev......

"The data transfer is so damn fast that you don't need to keep shit rendered behind the player. That's just one part. You don't need to have a loud ass console rendering all that. Just in front." **

The rest is personal stuff and just so some realize, it's the same that I've been personally hearing for a long while.

So again, happy times ahead for all.

**Keep in mind we talk pretty straight up so the words aren't PR speak.

 

[amstradcpc]

I also mentioned that Sony potentially maybe have some more surprises, but so does Microsoft.

Click to shrink...

hardware related?.

 

[Equanimity]

Thank you.

On your question - actually idk. The vast majority of indie devs in Bulgaria are not developing for consoles - they are mostly working on mobile products. I was talking with one of the studio managers of CA though and he is mighty impressed specifically with Sony's approach towards PS5. My colleague devs are impressed by both platform holders - it is in our/their interest both to be successful of course.
Dev environment by both will be excellent next-gen, as it is a logical/evolutional continuation of thе current one. Everything will be even more streamlined and easy to work with.

Click to shrink...

Your insight is much appreciated, thank you.

Excellent dev environment by both is ideal for indies to flourish.

 

[Koralsky]

Sounds good, i like it when there are different approaches.

v

I'm too old for all that Dragonball bollocks.

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Me too. This is exelent :D

amstradcpc - for MS both hardware and software are connected. But I expect to be communicated as software-related announce. Again this is just my speculation based on the information I have as a dev. I am sure there are more layers I am not aware of. What I know is MS wants end Xbox user to be a quite happy one. As a user with almost 200 titles in their ecosystem (without gamepass) I am excited.

 

[Iwao]

Both consoles will be beasts of machines and huge upgrades to what we have today in PS4/Pro, Xbox One/X. I am execting a new golden era from a game design perspective. Even in AAA form.

Now, on the interesting stuff - I also talked with a friend, who is working for AAA developer (making multiplatform games for many years now) and has the latest devkits of both consoles.

My friend just shows me this pose regarding the power difference in favor of Series X:

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Thank you for the insight - great to hear both consoles will please. This statement stuck out to me, and makes me QUITE sure who to believe. That's cause on a single hand we have some calling the difference "tiny" and on the other it's "staggering" when the % difference is smaller than ever before.

 

[AllChan7]

He is Ex-Sony Game Designer (F1, Killzone 2, Wipeout) so has some credibility

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Anyone who says that the difference in power between SX and PS5 is "staggering" loses any credibility they had. Especially when everyone else has said that the power difference is negligible but there is still a difference.

Also why would devs say that the smallest gap in power between the 2 consoles ever is staggering? That doesn't make much of any sense

 

[Micerider]

Anyone who says that the difference in power between SX and PS5 is "staggering" loses any credibility they had. Especially when everyone else has said that the power difference is negligible but there is still a difference.

Also why would devs say that the smallest gap in power between the 2 consoles ever is staggering? That doesn't make much of any sense

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Game designer (not an engineer or dev) that has not been in the industry for close to a decade is the next most reliable feed after Verge Comment's section anonymous poster though.

 

[AllChan7]

Game designer (not an engineer or dev) that has not been in the industry for close to a decade is the next most reliable feed after Verge Comment's section anonymous poster though.

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Ah yes...I forgot the opinions of ex dev fanboys matters more than Mark Cerny, DF, Jason Schrier and actual current devs

 

[metalgear89]

Sounds good, i like it when there are different approaches.

v

I'm too old for all that Dragonball bollocks.

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XSX being fed roids?

 

[Thera]

I didn't realise there was Beyond Good & Evil 2 gameplay!

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A lot of people forget this game. But this is the only next gen gameplay we have seen to date. It is not officialy a next gen only game, but what they demonstrate can't work on HDD.
Did you take time to see it? There is some impressive stuff.

 

[platocplx]

Thank you for the insight - great to hear both consoles will please. This statement stuck out to me, and makes me QUITE sure who to believe. That's cause on a single hand we have some calling the difference "tiny" and on the other it's "staggering" when the % difference is smaller than ever before.

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yep which says to me, based on both using similar architecture is that the "tiny" is more accurate than staggering. One just went wider(MS) and the other narrow(Sony) in what they wanted to focus on thus the differences. two different approaches to solve certain issues. overall we need both of these consoles successful and we all win as gamers.

 

[ThatNerdGUI]

it's not, it's 320bit for 10GB and 192bit for 6GB

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lol that's not how it works mate

 

[Deleted member 20297]

it's not, it's 320bit for 10GB and 192bit for 6GB

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Which Twitter account misled you?

 

[-Le Monde-]

These next gen console threads have devolved into how can I downplay the competing console. Seriously has ruined all next gen system threads. Can't go into a single thread without warring.

Complete embarrassment

Both machines are awesome, with their own advantages here, and there. Ultimately you're going to be playing/experiencing the same game.

 

[thuway]

I'll not share any names as I have some friends but here's a small quote regarding PS5. This is from a major 3rd party dev......

"The data transfer is so damn fast that you don't need to keep shit rendered behind the player. That's just one part. You don't need to have a loud ass console rendering all that. Just in front." **

The rest is personal stuff and just so some realize, it's the same that I've been personally hearing for a long while.

So again, happy times ahead for all.

**Keep in mind we talk pretty straight up so the words aren't PR speak.

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Did he say any thing about ports with xsx? Which would be better looking and by how much?

 

[NaturaNonFacisSaltus]

You heard what Cerny said right? Freeing up multiple full Zen 2 cores due to their custom hardware? That's not something your average gaming PC has to spare, most people are still on 4 or 6 core processors. And without compression a PC can't get close to what XSX and especially PS5 can reach in terms of average throughput.

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Mark describes an ASIC which combined performance equals about 9 Zen2 SIMD, but it's similar to people telling the XSX actually is 25 Teraflop worth of compute power because of RTRT, it doesn't make much sense to discuss aggregate performance when the ASIC completely changes the use cases. If consoles were a different form factor, on a different power budget with a phase-change cooling system like most PC rely on, power densities would be different and CPU frequencies would allow avoiding the ASIC altogether. You gotta realize they build their system around compromises that forces them to address new bottlenecks nobody else knows about.

Anyone who says that the difference in power between SX and PS5 is "staggering" loses any credibility they had. Especially when everyone else has said that the power difference is negligible but there is still a difference.

Also why would devs say that the smallest gap in power between the 2 consoles ever is staggering? That doesn't make much of any sense

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Well I don't know what makes the right definition for "staggering" but in my mind definitely about 50% higher performance or higher. I would contradict you on this though: if there is a "power difference", it is not negligible. You'd need to define margins of error (likely at least 5%) to conclude anything.
From what I can gather I would expect a minimum of 25% difference in overall GPU performance, especially if the PS5 is chiplet-based and not monolithic. Scaling to higher resolutions increases the performance delta from 25 to 35% on as example a RTX 2080 to a 2080 Ti.
We're also talking about consoles, so it is unlikely that this matters much since quality levels are set and can't be modified.

 

[jett]

XSX being fed roids?

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Yeah that's not right.

XSX is natty

PS5 taking a teraflop shortcut with performance-enhancing roidclocks

;)

 

[modiz]

I'll not share any names as I have some friends but here's a small quote regarding PS5. This is from a major 3rd party dev......

"The data transfer is so damn fast that you don't need to keep shit rendered behind the player. That's just one part. You don't need to have a loud ass console rendering all that. Just in front." **

The rest is personal stuff and just so some realize, it's the same that I've been personally hearing for a long while.

So again, happy times ahead for all.

**Keep in mind we talk pretty straight up so the words aren't PR speak.

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I assume that by rendering your friend meant keeping those assets behind the player in memory? there are already working algorithms on current gen for rendering only whats in front of the player (horizon is an example of that), what that the SSD could allow according to Mark Cerny is keeping in memory only the assets that are supposed to be rendered for the camera's FoV, and thus allowing much more higher quality textures.

 

[pswii60]

You heard what Cerny said right? Freeing up multiple full Zen 2 cores due to their custom hardware? That's not something your average gaming PC has to spare, most people are still on 4 or 6 core processors. And without compression a PC can't get close to what XSX and especially PS5 can reach in terms of average throughput.

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Right now, my 2 year old PCIE 3.0 SSD provides 3.5gb/s raw, which is faster than XSX's SSD raw speed, albeit not as fast as the 4.8.gb/s compressed speed. But it's 2 years old - you can now buy cheap PCIE 4.0 SSDs (eg Sabrent Rocket) which provide 5gb/s raw speed, which is faster than even XSX's compressed speed. Before the end of the year there will be SSDs that can match what is in PS5.

With regards to the CPU utilisation, have you not seen that DirectStorage is also coming to Windows PC?

DirectStorage is an all new I/O system designed specifically for gaming to unleash the full performance of the SSD and hardware decompression. It is one of the components that comprise the Xbox Velocity Architecture. Modern games perform asset streaming in the background to continuously load the next parts of the world while you play, and DirectStorage can reduce the CPU overhead for these I/O operations from multiple cores to taking just a small fraction of a single core; thereby freeing considerable CPU power for the game to spend on areas like better physics or more NPCs in a scene. This newest member of the DirectX family is being introduced with Xbox Series X and we plan to bring it to Windows as well.

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Even with the current situation, I have a 9900k clocked at 5ghz so no issues with spare bandwidth for decompression, but with DirectStorage coming to Windows it soon won't be utilising much in the way of CPU power regardless.

Also I never understand why people compare existing/old PC tech to future console tech. Surely it would be fair to compare the new consoles to what is actually available for PC when they launch. Which will be 7gb/s+ PCIE 4.0 SSD, 3080 (Ti), Zen 3...

 

[sncvsrtoip]

lol that's not how it works mate

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it's how it work couse you have 10x 32 bit memory controllers but last 6 GB is connected only to 6 out of 10, it's nothing clever here, it just cost reduction to fulfill console budget limit edit: also c0de

 

[gofreak]

Right now, my 2 year old PCIE 3.0 SSD provides 3.5gb/s raw, which is faster than XSX's SSD raw speed, albeit not as fast as the 4.8.gb/s compressed speed. But it's 2 years old - you can now buy cheap PCIE 4.0 SSDs (eg Sabrent Rocket) which provide 5gb/s raw speed, which is faster than even XSX's compressed speed. Before the end of the year there will be SSDs that can match what is in PS5.

With regards to the CPU utilisation, have you not seen that DirectStorage is also coming to Windows PC?

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I think it will be interesting to see how decompression factors into that. Maybe they're offloading to the GPU there? There are also a variety of other IO operations that might be being optimised there, other than general decompression - from the PS5 presentation, there are some other bits of IO silicon doing non-decompression work that would take '1 or 2' zen2 cores otherwise, IIRC, so it could be that kind of work that's being referenced in that quote rather than decompression work.

 

[NaturaNonFacisSaltus]

it's not, it's 320bit for 10GB and 192bit for 6GB

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I'm fairly sure you're also part of the other thread which saw me addressing this matter so i'll import my answer from there.

You don't have more than 320 bit physical connections. There is no 192-bit buses, only a total of 10x32b physical connectors. see here.

• 10 connections of 32 bits wide, 320 bits wide memory controller,
• but a portion of GDDR6 (6GB) ICs use a slower 1050MHz QDR (336GB/s),
• and a larger portion (10GB) uses 1750MHz QDR clock frequency (560GB/s),
• There are 10 GDDR6 chips on the XSX PCB, 3 on two sides, 4 on top. Those 4 on top are 16Gb/2GB chips running at 1750MHz QDR and the remaining 6 are 8Gb/1GB chips also running 1750MHz QDR, all connected on 32 bit GDDR6 memory controllers.
  • 1750MT/s x 32bits x 10 ICs is 560 GB/s if you multiply by the total capacity per chip and divide by 8.
  • 1750MT/s x 32 bits x 6 ICs is 336 GB/s, similar.
• The CPU and GPU can access both pool, but it's certain the GPU only works with the faster pool, and uses the slower part is a buffer.
• The source is the same as my 3 previous links, here of Scorpio SoC. Because they still use a similar CCX structure and the memory controller layout is unlikely to be changing a lot from GDDR5 to GDDR6.

In the case of the PS5, if it turns out to be a chiplet-based architecture and not a monolithic chip, there will be two completely separate memory subsystems with a separate Infinity Fabric link to the CPU and GPU, and to the massive I/O die. It won't be ideal for latencies as well.

• The GPU is more powerful and uses more physical connections to GDDR6 ICs, because the memory controller is larger. And even though the pool is 2.5GB smaller, 13.5GB is still a very large amount of memory. 10GB@1750MHz QDR + some slower GDDR6 is a large difference to 16GB@1400MHz QDR, keep in mind total memory capacity isn't always 100% utilized for computation, a slower subsystem is welcome.
• GPU and CPU cannot access the same VRAM cell at the same time, but they can queue read and write requests for the same rank within a memory channel that's then processed by priority. Each CCX in the Zen2 CPU has a separate connection to a crossbar that adresses all GDDR6 ICs. Then, the GPU also has redundant connections to the GDDR6 ICs.

 

[Thekiddfran]

Did Devs have the same reaction to new XBox?

 

[ShapeGSX]

I'll not share any names as I have some friends but here's a small quote regarding PS5. This is from a major 3rd party dev......

"The data transfer is so damn fast that you don't need to keep shit rendered behind the player. That's just one part. You don't need to have a loud ass console rendering all that. Just in front." **

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I thought it was pretty standard these days not to render objects behind the player.