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What I actually said on Kotaku Splitscreen about the PlayStation 5's specs
- Thread starter jschreier
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Lead engine programmer at ID software confirmed.
He's Vulkan enthusiast :)
I feel like we'll get a lot of mileage out of this quote in the upcoming months.
I think there was a running assumption that MS's APIs had been improving wrt performance vs Sony's, but maybe that wasn't entirely accurate. I wonder if this is the same 'compatibility vs performance' approach as last gen. That could be a little twist in the tale in terms of paper and real performance.
If this isn't exciting to hear, I don't know what is ! Thanks a lot for the transcript o/
jschreier
Thanks for posting the entire transcript, I found the discussion very informative listening earlier today.
Related to the marketing and messaging in general. Do you have any more info by chance on the PS4 backwards compatibility situation? A ton of confusion on whether BC is currently limited to the 100-ish titles that Sony alluded to or whether that was just a sample size to determine the overall results of how BC is going (or even if it's referring to a PS5 enhanced boost mode). Just curious if you heard anything more or not.
Thanks for posting the entire transcript, I found the discussion very informative listening earlier today.
Related to the marketing and messaging in general. Do you have any more info by chance on the PS4 backwards compatibility situation? A ton of confusion on whether BC is currently limited to the 100-ish titles that Sony alluded to or whether that was just a sample size to determine the overall results of how BC is going (or even if it's referring to a PS5 enhanced boost mode). Just curious if you heard anything more or not.
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Good stuff jschreier. This is hopefully how things will spiral out of control less. Admittedly, I latched onto that quote in the now-locked thread and got an unfunny quip in, which isn't like me. Thanks for helping me check myself. Admittedly not in the best headspace these past couple weeks due to the obvious.
Great job with the transcript Jason, sorry you have to keep up with bullshit from other users.
I agree on most points, especially on the parity aspects and that the PS5 itself has some bomb unique characteristics, although personally I think the damage yesterday's event did to the PS5 brand is being a little overblown and the narrative will change a lot as soon as the first 1st party titles and sequels will start being shown.
I am really, really hyped for next-gen but man, the negativity and eagerness to attack a lot of folks have is starting to wear down on my enthusiasm...
I agree on most points, especially on the parity aspects and that the PS5 itself has some bomb unique characteristics, although personally I think the damage yesterday's event did to the PS5 brand is being a little overblown and the narrative will change a lot as soon as the first 1st party titles and sequels will start being shown.
I am really, really hyped for next-gen but man, the negativity and eagerness to attack a lot of folks have is starting to wear down on my enthusiasm...
Let's get the proper reveal out of the way, if not then it's probably going to be a long slog.
I think it's worth reiterating what I said in that trash fire of a thread earlier:
Oh and thanks Jason, for clearing this up. I had the Splitscreen podcast queued up to get the context for myself!
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.
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.
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.
They will in time.. This is where context is important. The Audience this was created for, developers, understand that stuff. Many of us, we dont, we need to see video examples to know what they are really talking about. I think Sony would have been better off to float something out there for gamers, non technical types, in addition to, this reveal for developers. I think that is one of the biggest flaws in this presentation is presenting a technical reveal for developers before presenting something more basic for gamers.
Earlier today, someone made a truly awful transcript based on a lengthy conversation jschreier had on the Kotaku Splitscreen podcast by transcribing it and it could lead to 12 pages of truly embarrassing discourse. Since nobody has commented and reacted while still not actually listening to the episode, and since the thread's creator did such a piss-poor job of correcting this error, I took the time to type out a correction to the incorrect information in the transcript. Here you go.
Battlefield 4 actually ran at 720p on Xbox One and 900p on PS4. Just downright embarrassing stuff.
/s, obviously. Love ya, Jason.
With the system being this close things like API , how the engine done or even what tricks they use can make a difference .
Really looking forward to see what devs going to do on both systems when they get fully into them.
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 based around their insane SSD technology. Suddenly no one will care about specs.
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 based around their insane SSD technology. Suddenly no one will care about specs.
jschreier
But jason knowing that the SX goes up to 4.8GB / s in compression, do you really think that PS5 exclusive games taking full advantage of the console SSD could not run on SX?
Frankly sometimes it is as if the SX was still on HDD, with the Nvme techno the Go / s become less and less important and it is where it is important to have a Hardware / Software SSD Solution.
Did you hear some dev feedback on the new Xbox velocity architecture and especially the DirectStorage?
But jason knowing that the SX goes up to 4.8GB / s in compression, do you really think that PS5 exclusive games taking full advantage of the console SSD could not run on SX?
Frankly sometimes it is as if the SX was still on HDD, with the Nvme techno the Go / s become less and less important and it is where it is important to have a Hardware / Software SSD Solution.
Did you hear some dev feedback on the new Xbox velocity architecture and especially the DirectStorage?
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.
That being said, I doubt that many users are happy about PS5 not being able to fully support all PS4 games at launch and about the complete lack of support for earlier PS titles - which is a direct result of Sony's insistence on providing very low level h/w access in their consoles.
And as for performance, with what is essentially 99% similar underlying h/w (with the exception of 100% custom parts of course) you don't really get a lot from this low level h/w access, especially in engines made to run on several platforms (multiplatform titles). So I feel that this is a net negative more than a positive when it comes to a modern gaming console consumer qualities.
I personally do not feel that the transcript changes anything.
"I'm getting texts even today from developers being like this is such a shame -- the PS5 is superior in all these other ways that they're not able to message right now" is what it is and nothing about seeing the full context changes that.
Either way, spec sheets have always been good indicators of capability, have they not?
"I'm getting texts even today from developers being like this is such a shame -- the PS5 is superior in all these other ways that they're not able to message right now" is what it is and nothing about seeing the full context changes that.
Either way, spec sheets have always been good indicators of capability, have they not?
Agreed, that was a god awful introduction to the PS5. No idea what Sony were thinking doing that.
He's not a Sony fan, he's reporting on what he's hearing, you all need to stop throwing accusations for the dumbest stuff.
Thank you for making this thread. I think people are going crazy because we have all these numbers but nothing to show for it. Once we actually see some games, the attention of the community will focus on that. I can't believe the consoles are launching later this year and the only true nextgen game we've seen so far was Hellblade 2. And I guess godfall...
Pretty sure MS can just advertise as the mist powerful or jet they'd games and 3rd parties speak for themselves.
Yeah, that's really different from what the other thread was trying to pass off as information.
And of course the PS5 is "a beast" compared to the PS4.
Any platform with a modern GPU, a good CPU (that gen was awful on that side) and any SSD (the super PS5 model or the "regular" XSX one) is a massive improvement over that gen. Including the X1X.
Any dev would be happy with that, even with a platform weaker than the PS5.
And of course the PS5 is "a beast" compared to the PS4.
Any platform with a modern GPU, a good CPU (that gen was awful on that side) and any SSD (the super PS5 model or the "regular" XSX one) is a massive improvement over that gen. Including the X1X.
Any dev would be happy with that, even with a platform weaker than the PS5.
Truth. Next gen should be a treat, regardless of which box you play on.
Lol..
And ?
It's the same kind of production of bluepoint games.
You look at the team behind godfall there are a lot of AAA veterans. It is a mainly AAA team.
On the other hand, it is also fairly easy to see how the difference in TF won't necessarily amount to much...I mean what is it effectively? The difference between 1800p and 2160p? Add in reconstruction...I think there is a good argument to made that real world differences to these will be less than pretty much any comparables of systems for the past two generations. In contrast to that, the SSD on PS5 could give it some gains in exclusive software. Not that the SSD in the XSX won't be able to replicate, just not as fast.
I actually find the messaging from here on out to be super interesting...I think it'll def. be power vs. speed at the top level.
I'm glad both consoles are just different enough to push different things.
Like they did with Xbox One X? Not sure about 3rd party will speak for them yet.
Plus this quote:
There won't be any "fatal" flaws for Playstation.
It will still sell like pancakes, and even surpass XSX eventually just because it's called "Playstation 5" , and because of the great gen PS4 had overall, no matter how much they are mismanaging current communication and marketing.
At next round tho, Xbox will just be again the most powerful gaming console like OG Xbox and X360 era, even if not by an huge margin, and everyone should just deal with this and let it sink in already without being delusional later on.
With that said, NO One is arguing that we all can still expect PS5 exclusives to be incredible and also a bit more innovative on paper thanks to the superior I/O speed, and this alone may be a reason to pick the console compared to competitors for many.
Others will prefer the basically already guaranteed superior third party games performance on XSX, and Microsoft new 1st party line-up, it's full BC with Xbox One console family and Gamepass.
Some will just get them both for all the reason above. :)
There are no actual reason to fear a flop in sales for any of the two.
I'm actually expecting a great competition once again, and we as gamers are the first to benefit from this.
Great times are ahead indeed (as soon as this f*ING COVID-19 will be eradicated from Planet Earth once and for all, damn!)
After reading that thread I put all next gen threads on ignore so I appreciate a new thread being made by the quoted to set things right and call out the horrible job the original OP did. Maybe being called on shit like this will deter people from doing so somewhat going forward (not likely, I know).
"Devs are the ones making the game, pal"
he says, condescendingly, to a member of this board who does more to further game dev and tech understanding than most, because that member dared to challenge a narrative that he liked
Jason, that was amazing. Thank you for clearing it up and great work on providing the transcript. Both boxes sound absolutely amazing and both have their strengths. I can't wait to get my hands on them.
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 speeds
its hard to see the ps5 drive having a big gap over the drive in the xbox series x in random read/write while being affordable
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