I don't think that this is a restriction for the series x, but something MS itself does with it's upcoming titles.
Or did I get that wrong and even a developer like Ubisoft can't make a Series X exclusive?
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Digital Foundry | Can Microsoft deliver next-gen experiences while still supporting Xbox One?
- Thread starter nib95
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Or did I get that wrong and even a developer like Ubisoft can't make a Series X exclusive?
Good news for tens of millions of people as opposed to potential early adopters? They will get their money's worth and their ground up next gen games too. Look up the games released in 2014. Only a handful justify being on PS4/XB1 only that too because of their graphics only. There was nothing revelatory as far as game design was concerned.
To this day I regret not selling my launch day PS4 for an insane price because of that.
They should let developers decide. It's not going to hold back every single game, it depends on the scope and ambition of the game.
I keep thinking about how certain games that rely on streaming can already throw a loading screen at you if you move fast enough. That new fangled Star Wars on base consoles has loads of loading screens for this reason that just aren't there on the high end consoles.
I'd expect that to be quite common.
I'd expect that to be quite common.
Yep but you'd assume people are talking about 'AAA' marquee launch titles or others landing the first year or two, not Ori 3 or similar 🙂 But even those types of indie games would be helped by only having the Series X power to utilise.
Yep, on X it was terrible. I could see the objects first load in and then sift through LoD states. Between that and currently Gears 5's 2m 36s time requirement to go from Dashboard to in-game as well a well as those narrow corridors designed to aid in loading in new areas are becoming long in the tooth.
Even after reading, I'm still not entirely clear about what kind of experiences would be enabled by this faster CPU that would be impossible to scale down to the Jaguar
This is not even up to debate. Of course new game will be gimped, that's just a fact.
But business wise MS will not take any burnt of this at all by gaining so many new players. Their library is getting strong with indie and AA games which works well with Gamepass which is cheap. What a masterstroke.
But business wise MS will not take any burnt of this at all by gaining so many new players. Their library is getting strong with indie and AA games which works well with Gamepass which is cheap. What a masterstroke.
This conversation is the exact reason I wanted next gen 2 years ago. Many current gen games are compromised and/or the design is limited by the hardware. 3rd party publishers are always going to try and address the largest possible market. Launch window exclusives are hardly ever the classics of a generation either. The sooner we get to yearly upgrades the better, and then innovation and excellence in game design will scale much more linearly rather than this lumpy generation model we've been stuck with.
Advanced AI systems in a game like Nemesis system in Shadow of war/ Mordor which was cut from PS3 version because of such limitations.
It's only for 1 year presumably maybe 2 which is usually the period where devs are just starting to get the hang of it so overall I understand the business decision and don't think we're going to miss out on a lot.
My main issue is that Halo Infinite is a make or break situation for a lot of Xbox gamers. Not just for the franchise but Xbox as well.
You need to impress with that one like never before. That's one title that should have only been made with the nextgen console in mind. Other titles being made with the base xbox one in mind for 1-2 years isn't such a big deal. But not Halo Infinite. The last footage they showed wasn't bad by any means...but it didn't WOW me. It's gonna be 4-5 months to its release date before we're even going to get gameplay footage. The 2019 E3 footage they showed wasn't even gameplay and some parts looked good but some parts also really looked disappointing considering it was just a cutscene.
I feel like Xbox made a business decision which is understandable...BUT...Sony now has the upper hand at the start of nextgen in that they can show off an exclusive game only meant for next gen and wow people whereas Xbox is going to be held back a bit and the difference can really damage Xbox again. The start of a console cycle is really crucial. Sony can skip that business decision because they know they can skip making games with the PS4 in mind and still sell another 100m PS(5)s. It's gonna be interesting to see how it plays out. But I'm not as optimistic as a lot of other people, especially regarding Xbox and their ability to knock it out of the park. But for the sake of competition I hope I'm wrong and they DO knock it out of the park.
My main issue is that Halo Infinite is a make or break situation for a lot of Xbox gamers. Not just for the franchise but Xbox as well.
You need to impress with that one like never before. That's one title that should have only been made with the nextgen console in mind. Other titles being made with the base xbox one in mind for 1-2 years isn't such a big deal. But not Halo Infinite. The last footage they showed wasn't bad by any means...but it didn't WOW me. It's gonna be 4-5 months to its release date before we're even going to get gameplay footage. The 2019 E3 footage they showed wasn't even gameplay and some parts looked good but some parts also really looked disappointing considering it was just a cutscene.
I feel like Xbox made a business decision which is understandable...BUT...Sony now has the upper hand at the start of nextgen in that they can show off an exclusive game only meant for next gen and wow people whereas Xbox is going to be held back a bit and the difference can really damage Xbox again. The start of a console cycle is really crucial. Sony can skip that business decision because they know they can skip making games with the PS4 in mind and still sell another 100m PS(5)s. It's gonna be interesting to see how it plays out. But I'm not as optimistic as a lot of other people, especially regarding Xbox and their ability to knock it out of the park. But for the sake of competition I hope I'm wrong and they DO knock it out of the park.
You're opinion isn't shitty. Not even close. We're all just guessing at this point. It's just interesting to read different opinions.
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Or you'll just be able to override a Stormbird to your side (like you can other machines for travel or for fighting), and then simply ride it around the skies, perhaps even call it like a regular mount once it's turned.
This is not true. It was less varied in depth but not cut from the game as in completely absent.
But that's what I'm saying, the Xbox One would get an obviously compromised version of a game, but does that mean necessarily that the Series X couldn't have those features?
they can't for one simple reason the biggest improv we gonna have next-gen is CPU. With ryzen 3(4-5X jaguar power) they will be capable of new stuff for AI and Physics that can change gameplay a lot.
With Jaguar in mind they can't try that. The improvements will be restricted like a PC, better resolution, textures, fps
With Jaguar in mind they can't try that. The improvements will be restricted like a PC, better resolution, textures, fps
It can if they have 2 teams making every game for them. It is not gonna happen. Shadow of Mordor had 2 versions made by diff teams.
to me its like this
XBOX series X - Will have a large gap performance wise over PS5. All third party games will run better and even moreso than the differencial we see today between the various consoles. Microsoft will have gamepass ( and it will continue to boom ) and THE best peforming hardware across the board with every single title. This will be their marketing focus for the next year or two. Migrate all xbox fans to the newer systems then load up with exclusives for the hardware.
PS5 - The weaker console, more of the same as PS4 as I think sony isnt going to take risks. I really think they are suprised with the ground Microsoft is making now and it kind of caught them off guard. They will rely on cheaper hardware and a an exclusive or two at launch. All third party games will run worse and microsoft will take advantage of this crutch.
XBOX series X - Will have a large gap performance wise over PS5. All third party games will run better and even moreso than the differencial we see today between the various consoles. Microsoft will have gamepass ( and it will continue to boom ) and THE best peforming hardware across the board with every single title. This will be their marketing focus for the next year or two. Migrate all xbox fans to the newer systems then load up with exclusives for the hardware.
PS5 - The weaker console, more of the same as PS4 as I think sony isnt going to take risks. I really think they are suprised with the ground Microsoft is making now and it kind of caught them off guard. They will rely on cheaper hardware and a an exclusive or two at launch. All third party games will run worse and microsoft will take advantage of this crutch.
Exactly. Hellblade 2 looking as good as it does is getting your moeny's worth, playing a significantly superior version is getting your money's worth. People have no clue how these games will be engineered, they had no idea Spiderman was masking its limitations up until that video, PCs have featured SSDs for years but is only now taking centre stage with console interests, exposing how it can be maximised and the possibilities that can be utilised. The same can apply to scaling on fixed hardware with the backing of hardware & tool creators, with industry wide focus on supporting it, results will almost definitely be much better then what's been achieved previously. Devs have historically always come up with smart and intelligent strategies to obscure 'background work', i just assume older hardware will have to put up with more of these, but users can have that alleviated with an upgrade to better hardware. Its actually a great way to up-sell.
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If that it was cut it was because they had specific density and graphical settings that they opted to not compromise to allow flying.
And their requirements for that are very high. IIRC they even limited the speed of the camera and how far the camera goes from Eloy to have more time so they could have really dense environments.
So in this case it's less like: SSDs are required to enable flying in an open world game and more like SSDs allows for faster traversal speeds without compromising the asset quality and variety.
I meant in general. The only reason DF is entertaining the idea is because of how much discussion it generated.
The article is actually very level headed though not much definitive (again for obvious reasons
It's admirable that Microsoft see Xbox now as a platform with first party games (for now) bought being playable on any of their systems going back to the Xbox One. But as you say with Halo, that's the one game that could and should drive people over to the platform. People like me who were huge Halo and Xbox fans back in the day but who now game on PlayStation. However this decision to design the next big Halo around the base XB1 will immediately show it up in comparison with games designed from the ground up to make the most of powerful GPU/CPU and orders of magnitudes faster storage. At the time you most want to impress people with the power of the Series X and you will be artificially holding back your own games. The transition last time around showed once we have new tech people very quickly discard gaming on their old system. This is good news for people not willing to buy a new console who are happy with the XB1, but it's a weird position to be in when wanting to promote your new one.
This can of course be an argument, but, playing devil's advocate, you could scale it down to "of course, all of that would be possible if all games looked like Dwarf Fortress".
The look and feel of the game (not only talking about pure technical increment) is a full part of a game's identity, compromising on it makes it a different game.
No. It is constrained by the fact that <2% of the user base has invested in an RTX 2080/2080Ti.
Imagine the increase in draw calls- consequently, we would definitely see improvement in object density per scene as well as greater number of LoD state per object.
It is kind of weird people arguing against the merits of a new hardware. Technology is iterative in its progress and as such scaling things back is essentially regression from what the developers had envisioned. And even on next gen HW, there will be limits both technological as well as financial. People often forget that "scaling" it down done "right" is so, so much more than simply finding the .ini settings toggle.
Compared to next gen, current gen ought to see regressions in:
1. Load times (I don't know why some people are against classifying this as a next generation feature given the state of things on current gen consoles).
2. Orders of magnitude worse streaming rate (Fafalada post quoted in earlier page underscores the benefits of SSD)
3. Physics simulation
4. Animation system (DF's video showed performance savings of Halo 5 which halves the refresh rate of AI animation depending on distance from player, i.e. LoD system for animation). Furthermore, even greater depth to animation blending would be amiss from current gen rendition.
5.. Level design size (ties in with point 2). I was simply amazed at how much larger Uncharted 4's encounter levels were compared to PS3 renditions and how it altered the encounters themselves. Then, I saw Star Citizen and how the player can move seamlessly between highly detailed and very large environments without load times and artificial gaps that act as load point between two zones.
6. Draw calls, draw calls, draw calls - the bed rock.
As I have stated countless times, if MS can manage to have two teams who can develop one game in parallel, one to serve next gen and the other for current gen then, even with notable compromises, I do foresee better playability for current gen renditions.
Between the framerates for PS3/360 versions of LoTR SoM, FC3 & 4, TR compared to current gen ones, it is somewhat sad to see some folks have such short memories.
Have to co-sign this, thanks Dark1x. Really looking forward to Sony's next gen-only offerings, the perfect way to get us marching towards the next 100 million.
This falls apart if thier games are just as ambitious as anything PS5 offers.
I think if every PC gamer had a RTX 2080, devs in the 'AAA'/mainstream space who want to put their games on consoles would still be keeping consoles in mind. Consoles are an access point for a huge swathe of the market, and I think their technical progression dictates a lot about how the center of gravity shifts in the requirements devs/publishers feel comfortable targeting. There is a section of PC games going all out on higher end hardware without care for console portability, but I assumed - maybe wrongly? - that when the poster I was replying to referred to 'AAA on high-end PC', he was mostly talking about the multiplat AAAs that come to console and PC.
If that poster was referring to the smaller group of 'AAA' PC games that are clearly not targeting current gen consoles, in order for next-gen console games to reach that same level they'll have to let go of legacy console support anyway.
Why would anyone get banned for speaking the truth that SC could theoretically be ported with some effort and run just fine on an Xbox One X?...
There's videos of it running 25-55fps on a PC with a 1050 Ti (a 2tflop card). The X has an 8 core 2.3GHz CPU, 12GB's of extremely fast RAM, a 12tflop GPU with the option of an SSD.
You would think people would learn from "The PS360 could never run Crysis bahaha" - amazing PS360 port of Crysis. "The Switch could never run The Witcher 3 bahaha" - amazing Switch port of TW3...
I get it wont happen but people saying it can't happen and being ridiculed or threatened with bans over saying it could be possible in theory is highly bizarre to me.
Separate from that issue I wish MS and Sony would make exclusives for their new consoles from the off. Let third parties carry the burden of doing cross gen games for the first year or two.
I'm saying if the consoles didn't exist, developers would still be making games like they do today based on the market trends so the largest share of the audience can play their game.
To the underlined quote, what games are those? Star Citizen is built around 4 physical CPU cores, not 6 or 8. SSD is 'strongly recommended' but SSD can be anything based on SATA or PCIe x4 NVMe.
Shadow of Mordor Is Way Less Fun On Old Consoles
When Shadow of Mordor first arrived in September, it was met with heaps of well-deserved praise. The last-gen versions of the game arrived today to considerably more muted fanfare. After playing a few hours on my PlayStation 3, I can see why. This is not the Mordor I remember falling in love with.
kotaku.com
To me why would anyone bother with it? Especially when it ran like shit as well.
Compromises had to be made with that version of the game.
And honestly that's something to talk about and be concerned with in how they are going to be hamstrung even more with these shitty Juguar cpu's. More so than CPU's that were in previous gen.
You're right, now all that every publisher has to do is pay a separate dev team to make a highly-compromised port for every game years after it originally launches, just like TW3 on Switch and Crysis on PS3/360
I was thinking of Star Citizen, in that I think if that game was from the start developed with PS4 and XB1 in mind, it might be quite different to where they've ended up sofar.
But if we're not talking about 'those games' but rather multiplats, then the point remains - if the argument is that next-gen will be no better or more sophisticated than those games already are on high end PCs, it's a bleak outlook for the technical evolution of the medium IMO. I don't think it's going to be that way.
You're right that in the end, for devs who are independent, the issue of minimum requirements is dictated by what hardware is out in the market. My point is that consoles have a big role to play in shaping that market, and consoles and new software cycles based on new consoles have played a big role in pushing more advanced hardware into the market. With the knock on effect that has on the economics of targeting more powerful hardware. Softening these transitions may not be desirable to everyone in that regard.
The ban was in reference to the conspiracy theories and against disingenuous arguments. Scaling up and down is a factual and so are its limitations.
I would write more, and no offense to you or anyone but I am simply tired of reiterating my earlier talking points as well as that of DF's and KJack, ad nauseum.
for ms side, are they mandating devs to make xbox series x games one capatiable or it just an opt in kinda deal?
trying to strike a balance between series and one on mp side might be hard. unless they just detect and put u on one or series only mp lobbies. and like said, its might end up dev will have to cutback of things on the series side to get one playable with series player.
now if its and opt in option, i would see more dev just make a series/5 nextgen only game and then maybe think of a downport for current gen console.
trying to strike a balance between series and one on mp side might be hard. unless they just detect and put u on one or series only mp lobbies. and like said, its might end up dev will have to cutback of things on the series side to get one playable with series player.
now if its and opt in option, i would see more dev just make a series/5 nextgen only game and then maybe think of a downport for current gen console.
Crysis being impossible never made sense.
It's cpu and gpu requirements are under what is in PS360, the only requirement that goes over PS360 is the mem (1 + 256), but the consoles didn't have to run Windows in the bg.
The first Assassin's Creed that came out the same day has higher PC requirements.
Right. Consoles are viewed as the bare minimum that the largest audience is ready to invest money in, hence targeting those specs, but games on PC tend to scale below that too. But adoption could be slower if the consoles are more expensive than what PS4/Xb1 launched at. Either way, for a first couple of years, games are mostly cross gen and even exclusives tend to be prettier versions of previous gen game design. Always takes a while to raise that bar because game development costs are always increasing and developers don't magically get accustomed to the hardware from the get go. Audience gradually grows and tools advance to take advantage of the hardware. This is why I feel MS mandating their own exclusives to run on Xb1/Xb1X is not a bad thing. Its what generally happens anyway.
They could negate that, depends on how much they are willing to compromise. Say they accept 30fps 480p low settings for base Xbox One that would give them a lot of room for the next gen version. Not saying that's exactly the same as an exclusive, but it would negate the impact as much as possible.
For third party it's the norm, but for first party it's not. I suppose the argument is that you excite people into buying a new generation of hardware with the promise of a new cycle of software that will be bigger and better than before etc. And that 'push' onto the market expands the addressable market for devs who want to target higher requirements, allowing more of them to do so sooner - and that's traditionally fallen to first party to do from day one. By softening the transition you could risk slowing it further than it already is for third parties. Your points are also a good argument for getting the ball rolling on dedicated next-gen development sooner. If exploitation of next-gen tech in a fundamental way is going to take time and iteration and the really good uses will come later, why delay the iteration that gets us past those early, less sophisticated attempts, among the developers (first party) who can afford to invest strategically for the future market rather than by the demands of the existing market?
I'm not saying, by the way that the decision is purely a bad thing. It has advantages for some users, it has advantages for MS business strategy especially with regard to Gamepass and xCloud infrastructure (for the latter, in particular, I think the softer the transition the better from MS's perspective). But I think the negative consequences from the points of view of other users, and some potential risks, are there too.
You think Xbox would seriously would consider a game running not only sub HD but at 480p on their console. 😂
Not only would probably customers buying the game be very disappointed, especially those who would not know about it before, the internet would tear them to pieces and they would be bombarded with ridicule and a PR nightmare.
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Probably not, but at least people would get to play a next gen game on a current console.
That's fair enough. I enjoy your posts so no need to repeat. I actually agree with your main assertion about MS and cross gen just not that SC was impossible on the X (or Pro for that matter) with the right budget, time, compromises and resolution / framerate targets.
Have a good one.
They don't limit the PC versions of those games, but they prevent much more ambitious games from being developed.
The nightmare scenario that plays out in my head around this (based on speculation and what we know right now): Microsoft has already announced the most powerful console hardware that will probably have the highest price tag. Sony announces a probably slightly less powerful PS5 with most of the same bells and whistles at a slightly lower cost. Microsoft shows off their games and they look great. Sony shows off their games developed with SSD and CPU enhancements in mind and they just look like something that could not be pulled off on the XBO/PS4. The community starts saying "it's the XBO all over again" and Microsoft once again has a messaging problem.
Then again, I am not really convinced Xbox is all in on this concept of supporting the XBO. I think it is an experiment they will do for their big games. They will adjust as needed. I also expect they will show off a few "Designed for Series X" games if it looks like the PS5 is a bigger powerhouse than expected.
I like the concept but not sure how well it ports over to consoles. It is going to be interesting to see how it pans out.
Then again, I am not really convinced Xbox is all in on this concept of supporting the XBO. I think it is an experiment they will do for their big games. They will adjust as needed. I also expect they will show off a few "Designed for Series X" games if it looks like the PS5 is a bigger powerhouse than expected.
I like the concept but not sure how well it ports over to consoles. It is going to be interesting to see how it pans out.
In this thread we're discussing about the the Digital Foundry article, and now a video. You call it a "non issue", and "nonsense". Do you have a particular part of the article you'd like to refute? Or are you just lashing out at a perceived threat to an unreleased product?