Is there a reasonable explanation about those XSS 'bottleneck' critics from devs?

Ultimate Edition is on Xbox and I assume PS4 for 40 bucks and it has the next gen upgrade plus all the DLC. Was thinking of copping it since I was going to give Remedy game’s another go (AW QB and Control)

I think the truth lies somewhere between Microsoft “it’s the same but 1440p” and the fanboy devs acting like it’s an Atari 2600 on steroids.

Talented devs will most likely have no issue adjusting, less talented devs will have to work a bit harder and their game could suffer a bit.

So basically, kinda like the last 4 years.

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I got it free on PS Now so I don’t mind buying it at some point.

If Rockstar can make RDR2 look fantastic on wimpy OG Xbone. Series S will be fine.

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Devs can be fanboys to. Or just stupid.

The fact they give little explanation on there concerns and dont state if they know this to be true of the hardware or they think it will be the case really shows they either have some agenda or just really stupid and cant be trusted as people who know about these things.

In fact I dont even see the point in discussing these devs opinions, when there are countless examples of games running well on vastly less powerful hardware they were designed for.

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I really don’t think the 1440p target will pan out well beyond mid gen, I would definitely say 1080p would be the actual resolution most will opt for as fixed or with maybe dynamic 1440p. Oh and this will never do 4k, they shouldn’t even bother with it even if they get DirectML and all that shit working on it. My guess is they’ll use far smaller resolution textures that upscale to 1440p, not 1440p to 4k like what we speculated.

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From this AMA…

Series S has all the same next-gen features as Series X and will not hold things back. Unless the engine makes it extremely difficult to alter gfx settings/resolution then it’s a total non-issue to run games on Series S (and if the engine IS like that then the devs seriously need to rethink their engine design/code). Compared to base X1, Series S will be a big breath of fresh air.

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I guess that’s possible and this is one of the reasons I go for the best thing MS has to offer, the XSX. What you say here only seems like it will affect the XSS, if it’s going to go down like that of course. Naturally I hope this isn’t the case for the XSS buyers, but I do expect XSX will be fine, won’t be “held back” or anything. Games are XSX first and then scaled down for XSS. But it seems some on other sites and forums are afraid XSX and even PS5 will be in trouble and will be shackled because of this. Nah.

Yeah, I think they’ve been up front about 4k and basicalyl have said it’ll upscale to 4k, whether that be through DirectML or other methods, it’s fair to say they won’t be any/much 4k on the S but then it’s not designed for that.

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I posted this in the Series S thread but it’s more applicable here (I’m going to leverage a forum feature so I don’t create a wall of text for those not interested in that topic):

Not every game developer is a graphics or engine expert.

Keep in mind that there are different sorts of game developers. My friend & I took comp sci together and took similar courses. My math wasn’t good enough for computer graphics courses. So I was relegated to using Direct X in C++ while my friend got into that heavily and codes to the metal. I worked in Oil & Gas for a bit and come back and he’s coding for major game studios, while I’m getting into XNA at the time. It was a world of a difference then in how you’d rank our understanding of graphics hardware, and has gotten more significant since then.

Currently I’m using Unreal Engine and Unity and he is coding his own engine from scratch (he’s done it many times) for his latest game, for example.

All that said, I’m underselling myself in regards to how much I understand graphics hardware, but my point is that I know little compared to him, and the only reason why I know as much as I do is because I pick his brain a lot (he also mentors me in game development).

I am not saying that using an engine doesn’t make you a Game Dev, just want to be clear there. But I’m saying it’s possible to use these engines and become an incredible games developer and still not really know much about graphics hardware, APIs like DX, or how game engines work. This group of game developers may be in that situation and that explains why they don’t know much. A graphics programmer or games engine developer would know a lot more than most game developers. Some game devs create AI systems, physics systems, or dev tools for artists. They all have their own needs from the hardware, whether it’s a fast and capable CPU or more memory. But when it comes to engine scaling the most intensive thing is visuals so I value what graphics and engine programmers have to say.

One id Software developer, Billy Khan, does have a background in graphics and is an engine developer. I’d consider his opinion on the matter highly. In now deleted tweets he claimed that the Xbox Series S will become the new base unit for development and hold the next generation back. Which if the assumption that it will be the next base unit were true, I would agree.

But his statement on the XSS now repesenting the base unit is something I have to heavily question. id Tech 6 was started back in 2014. Did they create the engine considering the Switch as the base console that the engine needed to run on? The Switch wasn’t released until years later. We’ve all heard about the PS4 being the primary target platform to hit goals like 1080p @ 60 fps, with the games then downgraded to try to hit the same performance on the Xbox One. It’s likely the same case with id Tech 6.

The other thing was that he wasn’t very compelling in his argument. The amount of RAM is definitely a restriction, he’s right about that, but having to store 1-2K textures instead of 4-8K textures puts the XSS at an advantage to even the PS5. 8GB of RAM vs 13-14GB RAM available for games for textures that are 3-4 times smaller. More than half the RAM available with a resolution target 4 times smaller. You need more than textures in RAM, obviously, but they do take quite a bit.

Another id dev claimed there was no RAM increase over last gen, which is false. Last gen only 5GB was useable. On the XSS, likely 8 is usable (the XSX OS uses 2.5GB for OS but renders at 4K and as per MS comments on the XOX, the OS RAM requirements are inflated when it rendered at 4K and that’s why the XOX GUI isn’t 4K). That’s a 60% increase. And again, textures that are 1/4 to 1/2 the size needed compared to the PS5 and XSX.

I completely agree that RAM hasn’t made the same jump as everything else over the past generation. But it’s too cost prohibitive to go to 32GB consoles.

But it’s as if these 2 developers forgot that it’s not a 4K render target. It’s also as if they forgot that DX12U addresses limited RAM with sampler feedback, which seems to require far less texture data stores in RAM.

Are these 2 folks saying that with the PS5 CPU, one that can’t run at full speeds when the GPU needs 10TF, that it will bottleneck future games? The measly XSS gets a fully capable CPU that is running at a fixed clock speed, so it’s not the bottleneck there…but will they comment on what console’s CPU will hold games back?

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Funny enough, many of the modern gpu advancements are they getting back to a similar scenario they had with Emotion Engine and what the dual Cell ps3 would have been.

It’s like they bet at the right horse but at the wrong time and all development issues came mostly from going against the rest of the market choice.

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Some developers can and will moan, but I suspect XSS will be sell plenty of units to justify the optimization work for it. It whips the One S in every way, without the hassle of ESRAM usage.

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I think that’s how it will pan out as the gen increases as well, which is fine because Microsoft keep stating it is designed for 1080p-1440p gaming. Also, if you are gaming on a 4K set, from an upscaling point of view 1080p is much more preferable, because it scales perfectly to 4K while 1440p doesn’t.

I think that veterans have been working on things in mostly same ways for years so any change is not well received.

For instance they are used to holding enough assets in ram that MIGHT be used, with such fast SSD they only need to hold few seconds ahead now. People don’t want to change their methods especially as it’s easier to want 128GB or vRAM and just throw everything into it

Does the XSX really render the dash at 4K? I know for a while that it was planned to on the One X but they gave that extra memory to developers instead for games, hence 9Gig for games on that console and the resulting 1080p dash.

I’m hoping they’ve got the overall OS usage down to 2GB, leaving all of the 8GB ‘fast’ memory for games on XSS and hopefully 14GB for games on XSX. I’d rather have better games over a 4K dashboard.

This is what MarK Cerny spoke about no at the GDC showing? He used an example how a game would have enough assets in RAM for 30 seconds of where the user might go and how this can be reduced to mere seconds with the PS5.

It’s crazy when you think about it, but both the PS5 and Xbox Series are capable of filling up their entire RAM in mere seconds under peak performance. This certainly allows developers to only store assets that are needed immediately rather than storing them as a buffer.

i think this console won’t last for 5-6 years

you will see low performance on this console 4-5 years from now

so hopefully this gen is 6 years only unless MS want to extend this gen because of Xcloud

It’s hard to say honestly, I could see Nintendo releasing a Switch system that sits under the Series S in terms of power and this is suited for ports from next gen consoles and I could see devs being able to support a wide range of systems thanks to that.

I mean if the can scale down to the S from the X right now I don’t see why they couldn’t 5-6 years down the line.

The only thing imo is that we won’t be getting mid gen refreshes this time around. I think MS purposefully released both their systems at the same time as to not have to release another system in 3-4 years. If they do I’ll still buy it anyway, but that would make it even more complicated for devs at that point + what else is here to market above 4K anyway! Pro and One X were released to have something that could support 4K TVs, but this time around we are getting that from the start.

Devs fishing for attention from the toxic PS fanboy forums.

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I don’t see many complaints about optimizing with variable clocks from these devs!

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