Yeah, I can’t deny I don’t like this at all. It honestly pisses me off a little. I think we all expected this to at least be on Deathloop levels, basically meaning no less than PS5, and actually a bit better than that version.
This hands off approach is fine, but MS absolutely CAN and should demand at least their games to be polished, especially with that extra year because Sony timed deal, and certainly not fall behind the competition actually.
We can keep saying “but this and that…” reasons like they were busy with HFR too, but that was in development already in like 2018? At some point we gotta stop making excuses, because they did were able to optimize further for PS5. No matter what anyone says, last week just was not good. This here basically is last week’s news.
With PS5 now out of the way they don’t have that worry anymore. Let’s just hope we won’t see this again. We very likely won’t, HFR is super polished and smooth on Xbox.
Just to be clear, I’m not making excuses here. It’s a shame and honestly pretty embarrassing that GW:T isn’t performing as well as it does on the competition’s console! I’m expecting that they’ll patch it to be equivalent and I’m fine with waiting a bit longer for that if need be.
I just meant that if the decision for personnel allocation boiled down to “take people off of GW:T optimization so we can have all hands on deck for HFR” then that makes sense to me. Let’s be honest, the media enjoy having a punching bag in Xbox and if the first exclusive published by Bethesda (correct me if I’m wrong) were anything less than perfect, that would overshadow everything good about the game itself.
All the money in the world can’t conjure up talent to work on your game, and that probably goes double for Microsoft’s sole Japanese studio. I guess an alternative would have been to delay the game’s release but that would just make a different contingent of people angry. I think that if my assumption is close to what happened, this was the right decision, especially since post-release performance patches are the norm now.
I agree with that. Let’s go with that being the case about HFR, then yeah, it was worth it. They have a big hit with that one. Yep, let’s hope they do patch it out.
I’m sure that it’s bothering them and they intend to update it. A quick search says the studio has under 200 employees so they were probably spread pretty thin with the new mode they added to GW:T and I think a new update to HFR came out last week?
What I find most disappointing is they had an extra year. Generally when this happens, we see improvements or at least parity. I don’t agree for a second that Xbox isn’t to blame. You don’t make trailers and round table discussion videos talking about being one large team and family once the acquisition goes through to just distance yourself and deflect any and all responsibility.
Xbox needs to have a set of standards for their console releases. Their output is supposed to demonstrate what their hardware can do. Releasing games that are objectively worse than on competing hardware, after an extra year of development, is just not a good look. Then you add on the whole reveal about Redfall only offering 30fps at launch.
This is why I’ll never understand nor agree with the victim mentality some fans have. I see it with fans for all platforms, but more so from Xbox fans. There’s a reason why many think Xbox has a history of taking one step forward and one step back. It’s not because of bias or some mass agenda deeply rooted in the media. It’s because of all of these little trip ups and mistakes. Every time I see someone say “none of these concerns/complaints will matter once the game is out and people are playing the game” it’s clear that person doesn’t understand that these types of mistakes do matter. Sure this conversation may die down once the game is out and people are playing the game, but people will remember this misstep when they make their next one. Hand waving the concerns and disappointments as if they don’t add up to an overall, long lasting impression is not the best way to look at their situation holistically.
A year late port of a game (by a 1st party now studio) that is technically inferior on the most powerful system sure is disappointing and there’s no excuses. We should wait to see if there will be any improvements in the coming weeks via patches though.
Now about the Xbox development tools and how hard it is to get good performance out of the Series consoles we have some instances where RT reflections are lower quality (Ghostwire and The Callisto Protocol are two examples) and/or affect performance more (like in REmake 4) on Xbox than on the PS5…what all those games have in common is that they had most likely the PS5 as the lead platform.
I am saying this because we have examples of (equally or more demanding games than the above) like Metro Exodus (with the RT GI) and DOOM Eternal where SX comes on top so what I get from this is that Xbox versions for some reason may be more complicated if the games have the PS5 as the lead platform due to the different GPU hardware designs? I may be completely off base here due to my lack of knowledge but maybe some folks that know their stuff (and we have enough here) can shed some light into this. Is that a possibility or you guys think that it’s probably the Xbox tools that need to improve?
I think not much resources were put into this port. Maybe because the original release wasn’t that big idk and Tango is certainly busy elsewhere so they maybe didn’t want to focus too hard on this. They didn’t even bother porting the 30 minute visual novel or putting it on the Xbox PC store.
A year later for a port and you can’t at least match performance is a bad look on the studio. And not only is the performance not a match its downright bad. Very disappointing.
I saw in a tweet today that apparently Xbox had even sent engineers to help out on the port. Not sure where they get that from though, no source was provided. But assuming that’s true, that’s just a really bad look.
It definitely would explain a few things. Fortunately there are barely a handful of games where RT reflections are inferior on X. I think Watch Dogs legion was either better or at least on par with PS5, but Callisto remains unfixed, they probably don’t want to bother much with it anymore. GT being from a Xbox studio is just a bad look. Xbox and Tango aren’t oblivious to DF and know damn well it would get analysed and talked about online. Maybe they don’t care too much, but I hope they do though.
We can only hope this doesn’t happen again, meaning the Redfall situation too. Can only hope the wait for the patch won’t be very long and let those fears about it “coming in hot” turn out to be unwarranted please. Starfield is hopefully the start of seeing a 100% complete game on Xbox, a new IP at that and just something to he super stoked about. That’s why I really hope they have Xbox footage for June.
Is this a prequel for the game itself? Can I find it somewhere?
Again it’s like the length of an anime episode. Was pretty much just marketing for the game really but the game wasn’t that big, so they probably didn’t care to put resources into porting it.
This is a very bad look for Microsoft and bad for their customers that a first party game runs this bad on their console compared to their competition If tango doesn’t have the resources at least hire a porting studio smh
Even if there is no money or little money to be made you do these things to ensure your product remains premium and MS is failing at that in comparison Sony throws devs at random third parties to make their games look and run better while MS can’t make their first party even perform to standard
I have to agree with this. Also, exactly due to Ghostwire Tokyo releasing on Game Pass it should be extremely polished and perfectly running because what happens if someone wants to play it in 2 or 3 years time? What impression does that person get from the service, the console, the brand?
Xbox should strive for a holistic notion of QUALITY.
Considering that the PS5 is derived from the same GPU core, but with fewer features, I don’t think the difference in GPUs is the issue. But I do think you have a point in the PS5 being the lead platform and would be surprised if the difference in APIs contributed to what we see here. This is not to say one API is better or worse than the other, but it doesn’t seem like the Xbox code has been given as much love and care.
The limited integration isn’t universally applied on all levels. It’s all considered under the Xbox umbrella or at least under Phil’s division. They need to do better and the absence of another port to compare it to won’t automatically absolve them of any issues, as we see with the feedback on Redfall.
I also completely disagree about people not caring enough to matter. It’s these types of moves that paint the image some have with Xbox, so it does seem to matter.
Indeed. We have to stop making excuses for Microsoft they are a multi trillion dollar corporation that behaves like a mom and pop shop. Series X was described as the most powerful console ever and it’s been underperforming and now by MS’s own first party studio that is unacceptable
I feel like they most likely put a skeleton crew on the xbox port and all hands on deck with hifi rush and new IPs. I feel the issue with xbox port being this much worse than PS5 port falls in line with what Klob was saying in his tweets the other day. I know many don’t want to hear that narrative, but it seems like not a good streak with Microsoft products on console vs other platforms.
If Starfield runs well and is a banger then this will most likely be forgotten. However, this is not a good look for the brand when a year old port runs much worse and they’re adding support of negative rep Xbox Series X/S is building. Then it can also lead to the series s question if that’s hamstringing the Series X.
