As I understand it, on Xbox, each game has a unique identifier and is treated as one game - regardless of what hardware its running on. On PlayStation, each different version of a game is treated as a separate game, which is causing some issues with carrying cloud saves over from PS4 to PS5.
Yeah, who could’ve figured that MS were talking about this for a reason, and Sony were being silent for a reason. I’m so glad that as we near launch, the real information is coming out, so Sony can’t hide behind their silence. It’s shady to not inform customers about the actual capabilities of the console and its backend.
Another area where Xbox actually planned out this feature and executed it flawlessly.
That’s the difference between Xbox and Playstation, they both have similar features but one of them does it half-baked and operates as a workaround rather than a full solution.
It’s wonderful, though I do need to point out that Major Nelson’s tweet isn’t relevant to Smart Delivery per se. He’s just playing the backwards compatible Xbox One version of Fallout 4 on Series X.
So much of Xbox “just works.” I have multiple Xbox Ones in my home and it is so great that I can just sit down at any of them (or even on my phone now lol), play my game and my save is just there, behind the scenes, no manual upload or download needed. It just works. Can’t imagine what a cluster it would be with multiple PS4s.
Now, on the subject of Smart Delivery, frankly it’s blowing my mind that Sony is dropping the ball on save transfers for upgraded games. Maneater and Yakuza are RPGs for god’s sake. Folks are going to be pissed when they get out their shiny new Christmas present PS5 and have to start all their games over from the beginning. Like I cannot fathom how Sony doesn’t understand that this is a big deal and apparently thinks their fans will just swallow it.
Xbox just behaves like you expect it to do. Obviously this takes some forethought from the Xbox Live devs who architectured the system the right way. Good job!
Having recently watched the Spider-Man Remastered video, I have yet to find a reason for that to be a paid upgrade at all. Are they putting any more work into this than The Coalition is with Gears 5 Series X upgrades, which will feature improvements to textures, lighting, particles, higher framerates? Except for the redesigned character model, of course, I’d say it’s similar work, so Sony’s approach stands in contrast with Xbox’s, frankly. I’m glad it’ll be all very simple with Xbox. One game across generations, adapted to the different hardware, that’s it.
I said the following on other forums and Twitter months ago -
Smart Delivery is NOT just for the upcoming Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles, it’s for all the future Xbox console generations from Microsoft.
I always try to be as objective and fair as possible when I can. Sony is really fucking things up for me though: All of my friends are PS-only, and I’ve only recently switched over to Xbox. I’m also the only one who really follows gaming news.
It’s starting to look like I’m being intentionally unfair by passing along all of these bad news to them. I’m not doing it on purpose! I’m passing along important information that is immediately relevant to them that they wouldn’t know otherwise! I’m not even mentioning how Microsoft are handling things on their end because as far as I’m concerned it doesn’t matter to them, but still they ask and I can’t just lie about it.
Seriously, are they wrong? It seems to me based on Animal Crossing, Mario Kart and God of War that resolution/frame rates/console features/cloud capabilities are all irrelevant IF you have a monster game.
For a primary gaming system? Yeah, those are dealbreakers for me. The few (I got 8 games on the PS4) great games exclusive to the PS5 is something you can pick up on a sale with a cheap console further into the gen. The other 99% of games I play is more important.
I’ve been insanely into video games since the early nineties. I still don’t really know all that much about resolution and framerates. All I know from the DF video that came out recently is my current games will look and feel better and that’s rad. Cloud capabilities are cool, but it wasn’t until I started considering the Xbox late last year that I saw how much better things were for me here.
I didn’t have any particular affinity for the PS4, I just didn’t know any better after writing off the One’s early issues, and believe you me, I was pretty tuned in to general gaming discussion. I think if everybody were starting from zero and had all the information, Xbox would be more popular than it is now.
It’s perfectly fine to choose the system/platform that’s right for you. Slagging off another for doing things differently, or making ignorant statements is dumb though. Refusing to acknowledge the things the “opposing” platform does well is downright myopic.
Not having an automated process to upgrade your games from PS4 to PS5 is surprisingly poor from Sony, what with Microsoft having figured how to do hardware-specific upgrades years ago. Hell, even Sony did with the Pro! The entire situation of visual upgrades and saves depends on the good will of the developers, who decide if they want you to do that stuff for free or make you pay a sum. The Borderlands remasters from this generation are a good example of a studio going out of their way to make a specific system to import save from a version that isn’t directly compatible, but the burden should not be on the developers on a console where BC is a thing. A thing we yet have to see in action, actually.
