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Kotaku: Microsoft Is Still Planning A Cheaper, Disc-Less Next-Gen Xbox
- Thread starter Spectromixer
- Start date
Let's give another example.
PS4 and Xbox One being as weak as they are compromised Witcher 3. Remember the reveal trailer? If the consoles weren't that weak we'd be seeing a better looking Witcher 3 on PC(No mods).
As a 90% console gamer, agreed. This Lockhart Xbox is like our crappy Jaguar situation all over again.
S is going nowhere. X, an expensive console designed to display xb1 games at 4k, will be irrelevant and cease as Anaconda does what it does and much more at the premium end. If/when Lockhart launches it'll sit between the two.
Silicon is set. Power is pretty much set. Power targets have been known by devs for a while. It's not as early as you think.
Kind of amusing seeing people throw hissy fits over something that didn't and may or may not happen at all.
"Bu bu but muh baseline" lol
"Bu bu but muh baseline" lol
This lowest common denominator argument is the most disingenuous I've heard in a while considering the LCD of PS4 Dev targets is is the OG PS4 and nobody ever said that held back Horizon or God Of War, same way nobody says Gears is held back by the OG XB1.
To say in 2019 that developers do not know how to scale their builds to different development targets especially ones that use similar chip sets is just plain wrong when they do it with the current consoles and PC on literally every single release without comprising graphical quality.
To say in 2019 that developers do not know how to scale their builds to different development targets especially ones that use similar chip sets is just plain wrong when they do it with the current consoles and PC on literally every single release without comprising graphical quality.
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Even more when the scaling probably will happen the most on the GPU. You still get a so much better CPU in these consoles and SSD. Wich were the biggest problems this gen.
Say the only difference in Lockhart and Anaconda is the GPU.. What then? Couldn't devs with some amount of ease just scale down the res to 1080p? I'm not a dev or anything but it seems possible that resolution could scale while still being able to build ambitious next gen games. It seems feasible.
Right now 'baseline' for the Lockhart discourse is like the new 'sustainability' from the Gamepass discourse.
A kind of made up concern about a problem that doesn't exist yet...
This already happens the baseline argument is pretty short sighted it's taking a PS2 / PS3 era development issue and applying it to today when tooling as evolved far enough that this just isn't an issue. PS4 with the Pro and the XB1X prove this.
"May have" is a vauge statement from an unknown person.
What we do know is that the Witcher on the highest settings brings even the most powerful PC hardware to its knees. There's not some magical console thing that makes more powerful PC hardware just stop working to its potential.
What kinda graphical advances do you think the Witcher 3 would have had if consoles didn't exist?(not to mention the fact CD Projekt also targeted mid/low end PC hardware)
Still won't listen to hearsay and speculation. You'll only set yourself up for disappointment
Great points. Let's put this argument to bed everyone. Yes?
It's literally from the co-founder of CDPR.
most powerful PCs to its knees lol. If that was true, people wouldn't even slap graphic mods to improve it more if their PC couldn't handle it. There is a magic that can do so. It's called money, sales, cash. They had to downgrade or else it couldn't run on consoles. The money is on console sales.
Just look at the reveal trailer. Those are your graphical advantages If the console didn't exist.
Downgrading for consoles are inevitable but at the very least I want as little compromise as possible.
This might be the Xbox for me if it's real. PS5 is going to be my main platform next gen, and any Microsoft game I ever get from now on will be through Gamepass so this makes the most sense. Hope it's real and hope the price reflects what it is.
resetera. seriously, if MS is doing this, it aint going to be a big deal
cue comparisons to xbone launch and kinect MS...
I didn't say otherwise? That decision is just a result of their poor marketing approach IMO. They might not have had to go nuclear like that if they were willing to open up more.
Anyway, I don't see that happening again like I said.
I've heard plenty of people lament aspects of the hardware in the PS4 and XB1, and that those aspects held back the generation or whatever.
Something has to define the specs devs accomodate, there has to be an entry point. I don't think anyone's disputing that. People - and some devs it seems - are just lamenting that the entry point may not be as high as they previously thought. I don't see why that's such a controversial idea.
Going to sound like a broken down record here, but unless you're arguing that PC games would look no better if devs targeted a very high minimum spec, vs what is typical today, then yes, there's a compromise. I think it's really hard to argue games would be no better off given, say, a very high minimum spec. That they would be just the same as they are now on a given high end spec. Devs are always compromising. And that's fine. Something has to give. People, and some devs, just didn't expect in a next-gen console context that the defining spec would necessarily be Lockhart, and thought it was gone. Some people, and some devs, are unhappy with that turn of events.
Life goes on, the generation will go on. Lockhart will still, hopefully, at least be a decent entry point in CPU and memory and storage IO terms. But to try to invalidate the opinion that things might have been simply better with a different entry point... I don't get the insistence on that. It's a perfectly reasonable stance to have. It doesn't conversely mean the world will end or that the generation will be terrible as a result or whatever.
No interest in 4K? Kind of a baffling statement... Because you don't want to buy a new TV or???
Again. CDPR targets a wide range of PC hardware.
And his quote isn't about technical things. Like they had to make the game a certain way to accommodate consoles. Or remove things from the PC version.
"as there would be nothing else - they would be so focused, like if we would develop only on Xbox One or PlayStation 4."
It's more about time and resources going to one platform than any technical issue holding games back, as he also says graphics would have been better on the individual consoles if they only concentrated on one platform. But then again they'd make less money, so would they really be able to spend all those resources on maxing out one platform?
I don't think that quote is actually saying what you think it is.
Mods don't automatically mean "more advanced" most mods are simply different artistic choices. Again Witcher 3 was no slouch to the most powerful hardware. That's a fact.
No, you made that up
and this
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A question name me one game, released on XB1, PS4 or PC that has released for a single lone Dev target in recent times?
It doesn't happen anymore and probably won't as console makers will be loathed to cut off populations of users on older hardware.
The argument is disingenuous because it asks for something (single target) that will never happen
No one's asking for a single target (that I can see). People are asking for a baseline target that's as high as possible with the parts and budget available. The PS5 and Scarlett sound like they fit the bill. Lockhart doesn't.
So, this could be a situation similar to what I described in the PS4 Dev kit thread.
A smaller, weaker box for those who care more about how it looks next to their AV setup, and a bigger box, large enough for adequate cooling box for those who prefer performance.
A smaller, weaker box for those who care more about how it looks next to their AV setup, and a bigger box, large enough for adequate cooling box for those who prefer performance.
This is the same thing they said at the end of the Xbox 360 and PS3 generation. The increase in CPU power alone will be a game changer.
But nobody knows the difference in specs between Lockhart and Scarlett. So how can they possibly make this argument?
It doesn't ask for that. It just acknowledges that devs do have to accommodate technology still - that they can't design willy-nilly without performance constraint - and that this range of spec that needs to be accommodated is dictated by the hardware that's out there in the market. And that consoles play a big role in shifting that spec over time, and thus some people would prefer a higher to a lower spec in new consoles, or would think it would be 'better'. Again - not to say the spec we are getting is horrible or terrible or generation ruining, but that some people would have taken PS5/Anaconda as the new entry level console spec over Lockhart, and thought that's what was happening previously and aren't particularly over-the-moon to see that change. It's valid for people to be of that opinion. Some devs apparently seem to have that opinion too. I don't mind people disagreeing with that, but I think equally people shouldn't mind if others do agree with that.
It's like people forgot Crysis existed. It also targeted a wide range of specs. Except it decidedly required higher floor specs. You may say that it could run on PS3 and Xbox but remember that they were state of the art at the time compared to bargain bin pc parts that PS4 and Xbox had.
"they had to make the game a certain way to accommodate consoles"
Simply put downgrades.
The point of that quote was that developing for the consoles absolutely affected PC. There's no ifs and buts about it. Whether for sales or whatever it affected what the game was gonna look and perform because they HAVE to accommodate for it. You always have to unless you plan on making an exclusive.
I don't think you know how wide the range of things a mod can do. Skyrim with all bells and whistle mods on 4k can tank your high end pc and it was a game developed in 2011. It's not simply "artistic choices". Textures, amount of npc, ai, draw distance etc so many things affect performance. That's a fact.
Let's just give one example of a graphical downgrade which is even in the article. The billowing smoke and roaring fire. It was mentioned in the article that it would be detrimental to PCs because it required DX12. Except plenty of GPU supported DX12 at the time. You know what didn't support DX12 in 2015? The Xbox One. It was only later added in the recent years. It's probably the same for the PS4 except it uses a different API which are updated just like XBO.
So this doesn't seem to be an issue with most third-party games as weaker pc's are going to be the "baseline" for the foreseeable future, but what about exclusives then? When the transitional period is over, Sony exclusives only need to run on 10+ TFlops PS5 where Xbox exclusives are going to be on the whole Scarlett family and also low-specced PC. If this is the case, I don't see there being anything else than a massive difference between exclusives somewhere down the road. It's not like e.g. Xbox 360 or PS4 games can just "scale" indefinitely when played on better hardware and with SSD's and such it's going to get even harder.
I just don't believe this rumour. Doesn't make any sense for MS.
I just don't believe this rumour. Doesn't make any sense for MS.
Ill leave it from here to say that I find it ridiculous that the knowledgeable posters here would seriously ask for Sony and MS to release next gen exclusive games for an install base of only the users that pick up next gen consoles on day one.
Both companies have over 100 million consumers between them in their ecosystems.
No way will they release anything for Scarlett and PS5 that ignores all of that population, some maybe, but not all. That's just leaving money behind.
Well, we're on to a different topic now, but on that point - surprise ;) - I also disagree, but will do so without calling you ridiculous. I'll just point to the fact that platform holders have always done this as an investment in the transition of the userbase to new platforms that they believe will keep gamers around longer than the old ones. Microsoft may be shying away from doing this upfront or so soon next gen - and that's grand - but it's a divergence from what platform holders have typically done in the past. I think you will see, in the coming months, PS5 only games at least, and that would be totally in line with how Sony's managed software transitions before so I don't think it's too ridiculous to anticipate that.
Anyways, this is kind of a subtly different point. With the Lockhart stuff, I think the debate has been had every which way... I'm minded to leave it too, until we get some more information or something new to talk about at least.
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The game literally exists because of the console market, else CDPR couldn't have afforded the expense to even develop such a large game.
I'm not arguing that fact though. I'm arguing that compromises exist because they have to develop for the consoles and that having a higher base console will in turn allow for less compromises.
The first person I replied to said that the consoles didn't affect what the PC can get. I simply said otherwise. That's the point. It will always affect their PC counterparts.
Point doesn't make sense as Crysis was released on both consoles, and no they weren't "state of the art" compared to high end PCs
no, once agin, you made that up.
If that's the case, the PC version held back the console version. The quote goes both ways.
I never said all mods were artistic choices. Obviously you can alter draw distance etc. In the case of the Witcher 3 the base game was already very demanding on modern hardware, so most mods were cosmetic/artistic stuff.
Obviously DX12 works on consoles. The existence of consoles did not stop them from putting those features in the game. In fact even before DX12 was officially released on Xbox, lots of DX12 features we're already available on Xbox. They didn't remove smoke and fire cause Xbox exists, lol.
Just look at this and it's not someone unknown lmao.
It was downgraded, and a game can look like shit and still bring the most powerful computer to it's knees. Graphics doesn't equate powerful pc needed.
Also why didn't anyone here talking about Witcher 3 even consider to just post the videos here proves the points a lot faster and with a lot less words with how much the game changed,
There's absolutely no evidence of this? The Witcher 3 we actually got on PC struggled to hit 60 frames a second without turning down settings on a GTX 980 which IIRC was the second most powerful GPU in existence when the game launched.
The hardware to run something that looked like the reveal trailer didn't really exist when the game launched. The reveal trailer was just a whole bunch of bullshit.
Saying it's been "downgraded" has nothing to do with consoles.
They didn't match their target once the game had to be developed with the consumer in mind. Happens to plenty of games.
What does this prove?
Crysis was ported to consoles way after the fact and they had to move it (the console ports) to Cry Engine 3 to even getting it in a runnable state—and only barely.
And current gen showed that it doesn't really matter. Current gen titles were seeing 70-30 splits between ps4/xbone vs ps360 just a month after release. That 100M+ install base is not an active 100M+ and those that are there are moving over to ps5/scar pretty quickly. Don't worry though, EA will continue to release fifa on ps4/xbone til 2025 as they have this gen.
Sony saying they're looking to migrate even quicker and MS going with lockhart should tell you that the it'll be even more apparent this time around.
You're telling me that PS4 and Xbox One are at least equal to PS3 and Xbox 360? People were praising 7th gen consoles because of their tech. On the other hand people were complaining about 8th gen console specs before it even got released. They were not comparable at all.
What are you gonna call it then, upgrades? It was worse. What else can you call it.
PC held it back in terms of sales yeah but it wasn't what we were initially talking about. The first post I replied to was always about how console could affect what the PC version get. The poster argued it could never affect PC cause you can always scale it but it doesn't always work that way and I simply provided an example for it.
It really wasn't that demanding. You can run it on a 970 and max every setting at 30fps. That's not even using a 980 or 980ti.
Oh they literally did remove smoke and fire because it hampers non DX12 compliant GPUs. maybe read the article. It may not be entirely because of the consoles but it certainly has a part in it because they literally could not run it.
So they moved it to a more scaleable engine?
Sounds about right.
That works already done, most modern game engines are scaleable. "Crysis" will never happen again.
what people are complaining about on forums usually doesn't much have bearing on reality.
You claimed PS360 were "state of the art" when compared to PC hardware of the time. That's just not true.
No. go back and read to ur quote.
He literally says the game would have looked better if it was exclusive to one or the other consoles.
By your logic, we can conclude that the PC held back the console versions.
No for 4K 60fps you'd need 1080 sli and even then you'd get some dips.
You realize that even still today, most gamers and devs have not moved exclusively to DX12. And that plenty of games have released with features only available to DX12.
So what does this have to do with consoles again?
I used to think the same but you can argue that it can be used for SOME video games:
Media Mail CANNOT be used for:
Game cartridges [... ]that contain a computer chip. Blank Media such as blank CDs, DVDs, audio tapes and/or video tapes. Video Tapes with advertising (trailers for movies are not considered advertising).
So switch games are a no-no, but PS/Xbox DVDs/Blu-Rays are ok. Also, from the link you supplied:
Media Mail rates are limited to the items listed below:
- Books (at least 8 pages).
- Sound recordings and video recordings, such as CDs and DVDs.
- Play scripts and manuscripts for books, periodicals, and music.
- Printed music.
- Computer-readable media containing prerecorded information and guides or scripts prepared solely for use with such media.