Phil Spencer: "the diversity of hardware choice in PC has not held back the highest fidelity PC games on the market"

[Fliesen]

Problem with PC gaming is precisely because of the extreme low-max ends and how it scales next to optimizing games.

What is he talking about?

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Yup, PC games can be an unoptimized mess. Like, sure, you can have the prettiest games running at 60fps on PC, but to achieve all of that you tend to need $2000 worth of hardware.
The fact that performance on PC can be brute forced by just "throwing hardware (and money) at the problem" is an advantage, but also a disadvantage on PC.

To Spencer's point about the "held back" meme:
Of course games are held back by having to target an ecosystem of devices instead of just a single, powerful SKU. How would they not?
Any game that has to run on PS4 and PS5 can only be designed in a way that adheres to the constraints provided by, say, the PS4's slow HDD.

Sure, you can always have the same games just be prettier and smoother on better hardware, but you cannot create user experiences that require hardware features that only the more powerful device offers.

Any 'cross gen' game on Series X (or PS5) is - in my eyes - just a last-gen game at higher visual fidelity / performance.

 

[supercommodore]

Console exclusives aren't the prettiest because of designing for one tech spec, they are prettiest because they don't have the same financial implications with regards to budgets as third party games in that they don't have to pay a platform cut for every game sold, probably don't have to pay for certification, and that the cost of them can be partly considered as marketing for their consoles whose real money maker is the cut from the third party games sold on it

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Spot on. When a game does have a larger budget to ignore what you said above, e.g. Red Dead 2 it shows what PC can do. I don't think there is a console game that is close to Red Dead 2 on a 2080 Ti.

 

[Spark]

Considering how much more powerful PCs are compared to consoles, yet how the best looking games are often console exclusives, I just don't buy that.

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That has more to do with budget than anything. Also outside of PlayStation funded games console exclusives aren't really a thing these days. Almost every third party and Microsoft game is on PC, and they'll look better on PC that they will on any console.

 

[Voodoopeople]

Glad Spencer tackles this head on. Its just an annoying distraction at this point.

The game boy version of Street fighter 2 didn't hold back the SNES version. The difference is that today, devs don't have to make multiple versions of the same game like they did then. They don't need to be whole different games. The whole thing scales. Lighting, resolution, Ray tracing on/off, framerate. The load on a console between the highest setting on all those and the lowest is a generational difference.

I get that historically PR has always told us that things are "only possible through the POWER OF NEXT GEN!" TM. But thats because console makers lives or died on someone dumping the old box for the new. Now, MS dont care.

We won't have long to wait but the difference between XSX and current game cross gen games is going to be massive.

 

[Sky87]

Considering how much more powerful PCs are compared to consoles, yet how the best looking games are often console exclusives, I just don't buy that.

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PC exclusives don't have the same budget of console AAA like TloU2. One exception is Star Citizen and that looks better than anything on console. Multiplatform games also always look and run better on PC despite the lowest end of PC's are on par with the OG Xbox One or even lower.

EDIT: RDR2 is on PC as well and is currently the overall best looking game this generation.

 

[tzare]

I don't think this is true. HW is always the limiting factor, what would be the point of having better hw every few years then?
It is obvious that some games can be scaled, with a variety of configurations in mind, we could even say most of them. But there are times when hw doesn't allow certain things, or compromises are too much.
That doesn't necessarily mean that Lockhart will limit next gen games vision, seems well designed if the rumors are true. Time will tell

 

[Playboi Carti]

They should start by asking the same question to the people that actually make games and see their response.

 

[daninthemix]

I get that historically PR has always told us that things are "only possible through the POWER OF NEXT GEN!" TM.

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I feel it's not even PR any more - it's platform warriors who seize the excuse to justify or evangelise exclusivity to their platform of choice.

 

[RelaxItsJustMe]

Spencer is absolutely right. Low end PCs have never held back high end PC gaming. That would actually be consoles. There's a clear reason the graphics and details go up every new console cycle despite PC gaming not really changing much and that's because publishers by large focus on console over PC.

 

[Deleted member 11626]

Gotta love all the "yeah, but..." responses. Phil is right. "Held back" is just a fanboy meme at this point. It's really staggering how many people don't understand scaling. The only thing I see happening going forward is that some folks might be forced to finally move over to SSDs, and that might still take a couple of years.

 

[Samiya]

I think the challenge is still two things:

1) Multiple SKUs does indeed increase the amount of work for developers to implement. Games for different console SKUs still need to go through certification, something that isn't a thing for PC hardware. Game devs back in the day used to complain about how difficult it was accounting for many different types of hardware, I definitely see how multiple consoles does increase the required amount of work.

2) Multiple SKUs can make it difficult for consumers to understand the differences between the various versions.

 

[Shpeshal Nick]

They didn't say enough to appease my concern

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

People often mention fringe stats from Steam surveys etc, but they forget that even in that case it's the top 20% of the users that makes roughly 80% of the software purchases.
So no, "the majority of PC has integrated INTEL graphics" doesn't really mean shit in the grand scheme of things.

 

[T0kenAussie]

Eh, I think games not being built around SSDs definitely holds them back in a sense. Lockhart having that means it won't hold anything back, but exclusives bridging Xbox One and Series X for a while is a bummer.

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It bears repeating that it's only until 2021 holiday because the quote was from a 2019 interview. So like 2-3 exclusives that were already being developed for Xbox one anyway.

like UE5 we won't see anything that's up to next gen until 2022 at the earliest imo

 

[DigSCCP]

Stop lying Phill.
Development for current gen consoles always held back both PC and next gen consoles.

 

[Shpeshal Nick]

I think the challenge is still two things:

1) Multiple SKUs does indeed increase the amount of work for developers to implement. Games for different console SKUs still need to go through certification, something that isn't a thing for PC hardware. Game devs back in the day used to complain about how difficult it was accounting for many different types of hardware, I definitely see how multiple consoles does increase the required amount of work.
2) Multiple SKUs can make it difficult for consumers to understand the differences between the various versions.

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Except it's not multiple SKUs. It's one code base that scales and gets patched for each platform.

 

[dgrdsv]

He is right in a context of comparing two systems which differ in GPU power and RAM sizes / bandwidth.

He is absolutely wrong in a context of some old or just slow PC (iGPU, 2C/4T CPU, HDD, 4 GBs of RAM, etc) not limiting a game's design, stripping features from it which would only run or even being possible to implement on a high end PC. The obvious example here is the requirements which modern VR has.

 

[Deleted member 23046]

Spencer should know better than anyone that the era of Word of Warcraft, STALKER, Supreme Commander, Doom 3 and Half Life 2 - huge computer games entirely made without the console market in mind - has ended a decade ago.

Valuing next-gen scaling capabilities with 8th gen game would be like saying that having a Raspberry Pi as a baseline is without constraints on PC gaming creation just because SNES emulation is running well on both platforms.

You can scale only what has been designed to be scaled, even when using the same engine. I can fill my Unreal Engine scene with so much elements that a simple resolution/shadow/AA scale won't be enough to make it running well on a more modest hardware.

So while the transition will be someway transparent at least during 12-18 month, don't expect all publishers to not use the PS5 competitive advantage regarding a higher baseline, when Gamepass will force XGS to compose with the Windows hardware landscape.

 

[MrKlaw]

hm we don't know what games would look like if there were only a 2080ti and ssd's in the pc sector
i think there would definitely be more games with ray tracing

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this - you can't say that games aren't held back just because they look nice on top end PCs. If games are designed around a dual core CPU and relatively low spec GPU then surely they are being held back? You're getting more on the high end - more pixels, more framerate, more detail settings - but additive features aren't the same as designing from the ground up for a higher baseline

 

[UltimateHigh]

The games will look and run great.

 

[Vitamin_B_Complex]

If that were to be true, there would be more Crysis type games that only run on high end rigs.

This whole idea of holding back and technology is nonsense. This is all about money. If it were financially viable to make a game exclusively for Titan graphics cards and 16 core Ryzen, they would make it. But it's not because most people have normal computers that wouldn't be able to run it. So the creators vision and lofty goals is not hempered by hardware but by market demands and money.

Same reason people saying Witcher 3 was held back by console technology fail to mention that it wouldn't be half the game it is if there was no console market.

 

[Fezan]

Well I need to read the whole interview but low end pc do hold games back. Just look at any esport games or any vr game.

 

[armadillopoke]

The proof will only be in the pudding. If there's obvious corners cut on MS's next-gen offerings to allow for Xbox One and Lockhart then it doesn't matter how much Phil bluffs.

 

[1.21Gigawatts]

That has more to do with budget than anything. Also outside of PlayStation funded games console exclusives aren't really a thing these days. Almost every third party and Microsoft game is on PC, and they'll look better on PC that they will on any console.

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Console exclusives aren't the prettiest because of designing for one tech spec, they are prettiest because they don't have the same financial implications with regards to budgets as third party games in that they don't have to pay a platform cut for every game sold, probably don't have to pay for certification, and that the cost of them can be partly considered as marketing for their consoles whose real money maker is the cut from the third party games sold on it

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PC exclusives don't have the same budget of console AAA like TloU2. One exception is Star Citizen and that looks better than anything on console. Multiplatform games also always look and run better on PC despite the lowest end of PC's are on par with the OG Xbox One or even lower.

EDIT: RDR2 is on PC as well and is currently the overall best looking game this generation.

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I wouldn't say that console exclusives necessarily have higher budgets.
The thing on PC is just that only a fraction of the audience has real high-end PCs. So the optimization, asset creation and general targeting of high end specs as base specs makes no sense.
It is not worth the effort for this comparatively small chunk of the audience.
So instead high-end PCs get the easy stuff. Higher resolutions, higher framerates and higher values for basic stuff like AF. That stuff scales well and it an easy and quick improvement and therefore justified even for a small part of the audience.
But these things aren't pushing visual boundaries.

 

[MrKlaw]

I can certainly see logic to suggest how some games could be held back, and others not.

But I also think how this actually plays out on the ground is the thing that matters. How many games early in a generation take full advantage of certain things, how many workarounds are possible (e.g. Forza Horizon 2), and how what actually is made conforms to PR speak AND fan speculation alike: after all, stuff like The Medium is next-gen only (not 1st party, but still there), and as pswii60 says above, certain PS5 games don't appear to be only possible next-gen - indeed some are not, like that cat game or the little-girl-in-pretty-woods game.

I think that, in the wash, this will be far, far, far less of a drama than some people seem to want it to be.

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great post, agree completely.

In the specifc case of Lockhart Vs XSX I think XSX will not be held back - assuming based on rumours that MS are scaling those parts related to resolution and are maintaining performance of those parts that are core regardless of resolution (CPU, SSD) then that relatively closed segment of two devices should not hold back the high end

I could argue that MS' games also being on PC day one is more likley to hold back XSX games than Lockhart - depending on what min/recommended spec MS goes for. The faster they transition to DX12/DirectStorage and perhaps require an SSD (or enough ram to mitigate) the better in that situation

 

[P40L0]

I agree on paper, but at some point there will be some games that just won't run on HDD, as they will be totally designed for SSDs and faster machines in general, forcing users to upgrade if they want to play it.

Well, we've already two of those coming this year: The Medium and Ratchet.

 

[noyram23]

Consoles have generally hold PC back, We got a huge technological leap like Crysis 1 in the past without the restrictions. Hopefully publisher would just drop the dead weights eventually

 

[Macross]

He's right in most ways but ignores the advantages of a single specification for development.

If a developer-only has to worry about one system specification, they will be able to optimize the game easier, allocate multi-spec resources into other development areas and potentially improve the game, and/or reduce development time and increase their potential profits.

 

[Fisty]

Fidelity? Maybe not

Game design? Absolutely

 

[DigSCCP]

Glad Spencer tackles this head on. Its just an annoying distraction at this point.

The game boy version of Street fighter 2 didn't hold back the SNES version. The difference is that today, devs don't have to make multiple versions of the same game like they did then. They don't need to be whole different games. The whole thing scales. Lighting, resolution, Ray tracing on/off, framerate. The load on a console between the highest setting on all those and the lowest is a generational difference.

I get that historically PR has always told us that things are "only possible through the POWER OF NEXT GEN!" TM. But thats because console makers lives or died on someone dumping the old box for the new. Now, MS dont care.

We won't have long to wait but the difference between XSX and current game cross gen games is going to be massive.

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He is talking about Xbox One not holding Series X here.
Your last paragraph its basically you saying : "You are wrong Phil".

 

[platocplx]

Well duh fidelity isn't tied to anything but your configuration. But having faster I/O is a whole different ballgame. And that can impact Game design.

 

[Trieu]

I am really not a fan of the "holding back" discussion. It always feels to me like people are talking about two different things or don't want to accept the reality that there is always something holding something back.

For my personal definition of holding back I would say that weaker hardware indeed does "hold back" games, but I also have to live in the reality where I have to admit to myself that it isn't possible that the entire industry runs on ultra enthusiast high end hardware being the focus point and it also wouldn't make sense to make games that only run on a 9900K/32GB/2080Ti.
Also the same reality that Xbox and Playstation are not going to bring out $1500 consoles with 20TF of performance and 600W power usage.

Since I will never be able to know how games would look in a parallel universe where things are being solely developed for one set of top end hardware there is no point in me guessing. We have seen E3 trailers running on high end PC hardware and then we have seen the final game. There will always be a bottleneck, but it is not something to be upset about. The industry couldn't live on catering to only the best.

In the end I am extremely excited about the Playstation 5 and the Playstation 5 exclusive games being developed for solely that platform. I am also a PC gamer with high end hardware that is 10x the performance of the PS4, but Playstation exclusive games are always the ones impressing me the most. The Last of Us 2 and Uncharted 4 stunned me way more than Metro Exodus with Ray Tracing on my PC.

In that regard (holding back) I see it more as some sort of diminishing returns for the best hardware. The difference between multi platform games on the lowest end of hardware (switch/xbox one) and PC (or Xbox One X / PS 4 Pro for that matter) are not as big as the hardware difference would suggest. They are still the same game. Sure they look a bit prettier on my PC, but it is not like it is 5x/10x/25x as good. For that to happen they would need to develop entirely different games for each set of hardware and the resources, work and hours that would require is beyond imaginable.

 

[Deleted member 50658]

Lol good old Phil trying to spin their marketing decision questioning on console warriors.

A PC running a 3080ti, Ryzen 4, 64GB of DDR4 and a NVME drive still won't make the long as corridors or crawling between rocks in FFVII remake disappear.

No one doubts a beefy PC will be able to push things further even when designed only with next gen hardware in mind but as long as you keep also developing the games for very outdated hardware while you can push pixels and lighting far more the core game design simply can't change.

 

[IHaveIce]

He's right, qlso the most played games in the world run on basically everything taling bout LoL, Fortnite, Valorant and co, people on here are just thinking in terms that are extreme

 

[rras1994]

I wouldn't say that console exclusives necessarily have higher budgets.
The thing on PC is just that only a fraction of the audience has real high-end PCs. So the optimization, asset creation and general targeting of high end specs as base specs makes no sense.
It is not worth the effort for this comparatively small chunk of the audience.
So instead high-end PCs get the easy stuff. Higher resolutions, higher framerates and higher values for basic stuff like AF. That stuff scales well and it an easy and quick improvement and therefore justified even for a small part of the audience.
But these things aren't pushing visual boundaries.

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Console exclusives do have higher budgets, that's why they look prettier compared to even third party console games, never mind PC exclusives. They are marketing for their consoles.

 

[LAA]

While this is true there's also the fact that not every game runs on every pc

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Yup true. While what Phil says its true as well, it doesn't take into account there's likely going to be a requirement for games to run on both Series X and Series S/Lockhart, while on PC, there's no such requirement for games to run on specific lower end hardware.
That said, it won't affect Series X, but may mean more time/money to make it work on Series S/Lockhart, which from a consumer standpoint, it's a good thing.

 

[MatrixMan.exe]

There are those of us using common sense who will continue to echo this, as we already have done, and yet people still won't listen or come up with excuses as to why this isn't the case.

Edit: Aaaannnd they've already shown up.

 

[Prine]

You can do new forms of gameplay when you are designing with an SSD as a baseline.

Xbox One and Xbox One X don't have SSDs.

Xbox is supporting Xbox One and Xbox One X for two years after next-gen launch.

I don't see how Microsoft Studios exclusives WONT be held back a few years. It just doesn't make logical sense. A HDD is not an SSD.

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This is mostly forum speak, even Tim Sweeny (when commenting about UE5) mentioned there's certain knobs and switches they have access to which helps with efficiently scaling thier games. Console space is still a small number of fixed hardware configurations, so the complexity isnt anywhere near PC, it will mean a game running on a lower piece of hardware will obviously not be as good as the higher end, but that's expected.

Phil is right, why leave out the gamer that can't access latest hardware?

There are those of us using common sense who will continue to echo this, as we already have done, and yet people still won't listen or come up with excuses as to why this isn't the case.

Edit: Aaaannnd they've already shown up.

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Yup, you can detect the undercurrent of warrior in their posts.

 

[Ra]

"Hardware doesn't hold back gaming. Meeeemmme"

Also: "Look how these SSDs allow us to do things never seen before! HDDs suuuck."

Spencer should know better than anyone that the era of Word of Warcraft, STALKER, Supreme Commander, Doom 3 and Half Life 2 - huge computer games entirely made without the console market in mind - has ended a decade ago.

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This is a fact. He's being incredibly disingenuous when 95% of PC games right now are console ports, and PC exclusives as you said are rarely pushing the absolute cutting edge like the old days.

If every PC exclusive was a Star Citizen, you'd choke on such a sentiment.

Just look at Crysis -> Crysis 2, can Phil say hardware limitations didn't play a role in intrinsic changes in game design?

Good luck having an actual technical discussion in this thread.

 

[DigSCCP]

There are those of us using common sense who will continue to echo this, as we already have done, and yet people still won't listen or come up with excuses as to why this isn't the case.

Edit: Aaaannnd they've already shown up.

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There is no common sense on current gen not holding back next gen.

 

[Sems4arsenal]

Obviously the argument is flawed, but he won't come out and say that it will hold back next gen.

I think the proof will always be in the pudding.

 

[Skyfireblaze]

But what about SSD? PC game design have to take in account PC with HDD. Star Citizen require SSD for that reason. Not to mention even PC games have a limit to how far they can go. I can't run most recent games on my 670, can I? at least not with a decent frame rate.

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Honestly at least on the storage front that would be a flimsy excuse going forward, you can add a SSD to literally any PC and laptop for 50-100 bucks, even if it's an old system that still runs SATA II you should probably be fine. The biggest improvements with SSDs are non-existing seek-times and much improved random-reads, raw throughput speed won't limit things by a ton.

 

[Deleted member 2254]

This has been obvious for many years, but suddently the appearance of cheaper hardware in the console industry made people lose their minds. Good to have someone big point it out though.

 

[Siresly]

It's not really a good direct comparison, because on PC the thousands of hardware combinations do hold better hardware back.
Basically the jack of all trades, master of none deal.

The PC situation being more complicated aids Spencer's argument. Compared to PC it's super easy for developers to keep graphics and performance in check with just two hardware setups. S shouldn't hold X back at all in that regard. No reason why it shouldn't be like One S vs One X.

As always the question regarding S holding X back, is 7.5GB vs 13.5GB RAM. 6GB is significant difference that seems like it might impose limitations.
But this won't matter until Microsoft dumps the Xbox One.

 

[Lkr]

Random dev says something on twitter: the gospel
Microsoft says something: lies

I think Phil might be on to something about this being a console warrior meme

 

[Laver]

It's going to be interesting to see how Sony's first party games will take advantage of being next-gen exclusive game design-wise, because so far they haven't communicated that at all. The only aspect that could be impossible would potentially be Ratchet's dimension jumping, but even that looked super gimmicky.

No. Up to November 2021.

That how long all their games will work 'up and down' their devices.

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It'll be interesting to see how games released after Matt Booty's comment but before the XSX launch (Bleeding Edge, Ori 2, Tell Me Why, Wasteland 3) will take advantage of XSX. Or if they even bother with Bleeding Edge?

 

[MatrixMan.exe]

There is no common sense on current gen not holding back next gen.

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Current generation will, sure, but in the grander scheme of things this is being used as a concern point for Lockhart, which makes no sense. Fundamentally, what Phil is saying is correct. And think about it this way, The Witcher 3 is a current gen game that can run on hardware that sits in between Gen 7 and 8 (the Switch). Saying that X will hold back Y is an over simplification of game development.

 

[Prine]

Obviously the argument is flawed, but he won't come out and say that this is a bad strategy.

I think the proof will always be in the pudding.

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It's a great strategy for millions in existing player bases.

Kena is one of the best games shown in PS show, looked next gen and will be playable on PS4.

 

[Sems4arsenal]

It's a great strategy for millions of existing player bases.

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Poor wording on my behalf. I meant that what not holding back next gen isn't entirely true.

 

[DigSCCP]

Current generation will, sure, but in the grander scheme of things this is being used as a concern point for Lockhart, which makes no sense. Fundamentally, what Phil is saying is correct. And think about it this way, The Witcher 3 is a current gen game that can run on hardware that sits in between Gen 7 and 8 (the Switch). Saying that X will hold back Y is an over simplification of game development.

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He is talking about Xbox One not holding back Series X here, its not about Lockhart.
Its just PR spin.