Some of the technical specifics are over my head, but one example is the APIs. I've talked to some engineers who aren't huge fans of Microsoft's DirectX and have grown much fonder of Sony's approach over the past few years, with PS4 and now even more so with PS5.
"They can parse it just enough to have a super strong but not entirely informed opinion."
This wonderfully describes humanity in the days of internet as a whole.
Some of the technical specifics are over my head, but one example is the APIs. I've talked to some engineers who aren't huge fans of Microsoft's DirectX and have grown much fonder of Sony's approach over the past few years, with PS4 and now even more so with PS5.
But meanwhile, the people I've been talking to over the past few months and the past couple years who are actually working on the PlayStation have pretty much unanimously all said: This thing is a beast. This thing is one of the coolest pieces of hardware that we've ever seen, we've ever used before. There are so many things here that are revolutionary, so many behind-the-scenes tools and features, APIs, and all sorts of other stuff that is way beyond my scope of comprehension. This is why I'm a reporter, and not an engineer.
Oh and thanks Jason, for clearing this up. I had the Splitscreen podcast queued up to get the context for myself!Sure the specs are out there, but let's face it. Computer and graphics hardware is complicated stuff, specs only tell part of the story. On top of that there is software in between games and that hardware that is another whole part of the performance/development ease equations. We do know that both of these consoles are theoretically beastly. Only once we start seeing games built specifically for them will we know which design decisions really paid off in the end.
The only people that really know for sure are the engine programmers that have experience with both machines, and let's face it, they're probably testing the new features for the future's awesome games (I am so envious), and not posting much on twitter/forums.
Yeah, it screams like a lot of marketing people must have been sidestepped for that video to go out as the debut presentation for PS5.Did the marketing department even get a look in on that decision?
It felt like anti-marketing to me.
Sony really should had done some demo videos like MS did with the Series X. At least you can see it in action even if it's not optimized.
Battlefield 4 actually ran at 720p on Xbox One and 900p on PS4. Just downright embarrassing stuff.I remember Battlefield 4 was out on both systems and it was running at 1080p on one and 900p on the other. There were just these numerical ways you could say well here's the same game running on both, and they could only get it running this well and not the other.
Some of the technical specifics are over my head, but one example is the APIs. I've talked to some engineers who aren't huge fans of Microsoft's DirectX and have grown much fonder of Sony's approach over the past few years, with PS4 and now even more so with PS5.
Many console devs prefer Sony's approach at providing a much lower lever h/w access as this allow them to push stuff out of the same h/w which would be impossible to do through a more walled off higher level API like DX on Xbox.Lead engine programmer at ID software confirmed.
He's Vulkan enthusiast :)
As soon as Guerrilla or Santa Monica or Insomniac show a built from the ground up PS5 exclusive, everything will change. Especially with Xbox first party developers still mostly designing early gen games around and shackled by the Jaguar / standard HDD's from the base Xbox One.
Some PS5 exclusives will look a generational leap over most Xbox Series X exclusives imo because of the above and Sony's design philosophy shift around their insane SSD technology then suddenly no one will care about specs.
We will see but I firmly believe that Godfall could run on OG PS4.
Jason,
You make it sound like the Xbox has a hard drive or something (Hard drives are vastly slower). You sound like a cool Sony fan that doesn't have the technical knowledge to know the differences and that's fine. The Xbox Series X has a FAST NVME SSD (Not as fast as the PS5), but it's not a hard drive. The PS5 will be faster of course, but that's not a game changer by itself.
For example... If you have something like RAM that can have latency in Nanoseconds (NS), that's going to make a big deal rather than something in Milliseconds (MS). NVME drives have latency in Milliseconds, so while they are much faster, they are not radical game changers compared to something like main memory.
Sony's own solution isn't radically different than Microsoft's, it's just faster, but it's not MS to NS faster. Microsoft has virtual ram using their method and so that can act as almost like a ramdisk that can stream in new content at will which allows you to have a lot more memory than 16 Gigabytes.
Both consoles are not fully finished yet and we will see the results by the end of this year.
I just don't see how in the world the SSD speed alone between the two is going to make much difference to be honest. I mean if the Xbox had a hard drive and thus no virtual memory, then sure the PS5 would cleanup on the storage front easily and be able to do things Xbox couldn't do, but that's simply not the case here.
I tried to explain why I had felt that the "insiders" were all wrong about the PS5 power and they were. Not because of lies or anything, but because they are not technical people. I would like to see more journalists become more technical so they can hold these companies to be honest with their marketing.
Anyway, that's my thoughts about it.
Imagine if Sony can get the marketing right, they will control the conversation on which console is more powerful.
We will see but I firmly believe that Godfall could run on OG PS4.
Both of these machines, I think, are going to do some incredible things.
Lol..
Jason,
You make it sound like the Xbox has a hard drive or something (Hard drives are vastly slower). You sound like a cool Sony fan that doesn't have the technical knowledge to know the differences and that's fine. The Xbox Series X has a FAST NVME SSD (Not as fast as the PS5), but it's not a hard drive. The PS5 will be faster of course, but that's not a game changer by itself.
For example... If you have something like RAM that can have latency in Nanoseconds (NS), that's going to make a big deal rather than something in Milliseconds (MS). NVME drives have latency in Milliseconds, so while they are much faster, they are not radical game changers compared to something like main memory.
Sony's own solution isn't radically different than Microsoft's, it's just faster, but it's not MS to NS faster. Microsoft has virtual ram using their method and so that can act as almost like a ramdisk that can stream in new content at will which allows you to have a lot more memory than 16 Gigabytes.
Both consoles are not fully finished yet and we will see the results by the end of this year.
I just don't see how in the world the SSD speed alone between the two is going to make much difference to be honest. I mean if the Xbox had a hard drive and thus no virtual memory, then sure the PS5 would cleanup on the storage front easily and be able to do things Xbox couldn't do, but that's simply not the case here.
I tried to explain why I had felt that the "insiders" were all wrong about the PS5 power and they were. Not because of lies or anything, but because they are not technical people. I would like to see more journalists become more technical so they can hold these companies to be honest with their marketing.
Anyway, that's my thoughts about it.
Imagine if Sony can get the marketing right, they will control the conversation on which console is more powerful.
Pretty sure MS can just advertise as the mist powerful or jet they'd games and 3rd parties speak for themselves.
"At the end of the day, that is fundamentally the big question -- when Assassin's Creed Kingdom, or whatever it's called, Assassin's Creed Vikings comes out this fall, presumably, corona aside. Presumably it comes out this fall on both Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 -- which one will it look better on, which one will have a better resolution and better framerate on? I don't think we can know the answer to that question just from the spec sheet, and that's the point I'm making. "
There won't be any "fatal" flaws for Playstation.Interesting that you think the messaging that Xbox is stronger could be a fatal flaw for PlayStation.
Sony need to have a good showing or the messaging will only get worse
"Devs are the ones making the game, pal"
from what i understand of ssd performance on pcs, random read/write speeds are more important for gaming and from what benchmarks i can find, unless its a intel optane which are over $1000, even a $200 nvme drive has only about a small advantage over a sata ssd in random read/write speedsNot sure multiplat games will be able to take advantage of that, yeah. I think the advantages of the SSD speed will be most apparent in PS5 exclusive open-world games. I think developers are still trying to figure out what they can do there, but I think it can fundamentally change the way they design those kinds of games.