So what's up with the Series X underperforming on launch?

Gaming
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We have had the first batch of games come through now, and comparisons with PS5 have been done. We have ACV, DMC5, COD etc.

Not one of those games has shown an advantage to XSX.

It’s interesting to see why this may be the case.

Firstly as nearly every dev has said, the PS5 development tools are well ahead on XSX. They are an improvement of the PS4 ones, just made better, while the XSX ones came in late with a revolution in the tools rather than an evolution.

This may account for some of it. Capcom initially saying no RT on DMC at launch tells you all you need to hear on that.

However, from the hardware point of view that shouldn’t be the case tho.

Both consoles use the exact same tech, in RFNA 2 GPU and Zen 2 CPU. There is no reason the XSX CPU should fall behind the PS5 as it has a higher frequency, unless they arnt identical CPUs and the PS5 has unified L3 as is rumoured.

The XSX has a more powerful GPU, so I would expect that the extra 2 tflops should allow the XSX to brute force at least parity even accounting for dev tools that are immature.

The XSX also has faster bandwidth, and so that shouldn’t create any issues.

Do people think the sole reason the XSX has had a poor showing with comparisons is only due to dev tools and that the XSX will soon go past PS5, or do you think PS5 may have some customizations that will allow it to close the gap in specs?

Yeah, I know I’m jumping the gun, but it’s fun to try and tech the answer.

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I believe that it’s because Game Core/SDK/GDK tools aren’t finalized yet. According to Dealer Gaming if I remember correctly, in one of his videos, he stated that as far as he knows, only one studio out of Microsoft’s first parties are currently utilizing Game Core.

When all of that is finalized, then people will truly see the power and capabilities of Xbox Series X.

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Yeah, that’s what I heard.

I see a lot of people saying Sony should’ve delayed the PS5 because of the HW/SW issues, underpowered GPU, etc., but right now it’s Xbox that doesn’t look ready imo. Obviously the launch lineups (and so far first year lineup) aren’t even close, Sony is destroying Xbox. Then the Dual Sense controller being praised by a ton of people and the Series X UI and controller same or almost identical to the xbox one.

It’s getting a bit disappoiting tbh. I’m very confident in what Xbox has been doing, but it looks like we’ll have to wait a couple more years.

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I agree in regards to Xbox looking like it wasn’t ready but Microsoft waited for full RDNA 2 feature set so im assuming that none of those tool kits could have been made until that was finalized. Someone who knows more than I do in this regard can easily explain it better than me especially if im wrong. I agree with the launch lineup being as of now, empty but at the same time, unless you’re someone who doesn’t play multi-platform games, there’s plenty of games to play in general.

I disagree with the Dual Sense controller. It was my second reason for going with Xbox Series X as my primary gaming console instead of PS5. I see it as nothing more than a gimmick that will die out within 2 years if not much sooner except for Sony’s internal studios. And I hate the touch pad. Plus, they made it bigger!!! Ugh. All that gimmicky stuff will be turned off once I get PS5. Just not for me and in general, I do think it will be pretty much forgotten.

I’m super happy that the Xbox controller is just a revision of what was already an excellent controller. I care way more about the size, feel, grip, buttons, triggers, response time and latency time than it having a gimmick. Simply, I just want it to work as best as it can without forcing stuff that I have no interest in using.

As for the U.I., watching a walkthrough of the PS5 U.I. and reading that so many people don’t like the changes, im going to say that the Xbox U.I. is better simply because you already know where everything is and how to navigate it all. I wish Sony would have just kept the PS4 U.I. and folders too.

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Oh yeah definitely, and I think Xbox Series X|S will look VERY good starting late 2021 or 2022 and beyond. It’s just a rough start with the Halo and Medium delays and everything else.

Still getting a Series X as my primary console.

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Well, I think this will be a problem for quite awhile, simply because of the S. Developers tend to work with the smallest denominator and scale. I’m sure most of the performance is going to be pretty equal as long as PS5 remains the market leader, anyway.

Internal studios will make the difference, and MS will have to account for the S in everything they make

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This is absolutely not the right answer. Devs start at the high end and optimize downward. They’re actually starting higher than Series X hardware. Issue is dev kits being late and less mature GDK. No console is being fully optimized this holiday but Xbox hurt a bit more due to what I just stated. There will be a large jump in performance next year.

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The problem is definitely related to GDK. Sea of Thieves and Ori are still running XDK, even after optimization patches.

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I wouldn’t think too much about this, even with immature dev tools is still performing very well in those games from what I’ve seen, some just seem to drop a few more frames than on PS5 but it’s not really a big deal, I think games coming out next year and beyond will perform much better.

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In a nutshell, the PS5 devkits were out earlier and in a COVID-19 world, it makes a huge difference.

I truly believe the PS5 was intended to be released in 2019 and so many things about it, including tools, are a bit more mature.

I’m actually surprised 3rd party games hit launch parity between both machines and it could speak to the extra horsepower on the Series X. While the S versions had to release at 1080p, the Series X’s releases have few sacrifices compared to their PS5 counterparts. A round of applause for all those that hit launch and hopefully they’re rewarded with a good amount of sales.

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Really? That is interesting… so which games ARE running with GDK? How can you tell?

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Probably none🤷‍♂️

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What I want to know is how PC hardware performs at console settings.

This will give us a good indicator on how optimized these consoles and SDKs are.

If the seriesX performs like a RX5700xt in rasterized games we know something is up.

However there is a chance that cernys customisations and higher clock speed do result in more performant tflops, it is unlikely and theres no precedence for this but it is possible. So prepare yourselves for this outcome, while I want my multiplat machine to have the best console visuals and performance it will still be that on the seriesX the only difference being is that the PS5 will also offer an almost identical experience which does not bother me, In fact look at the plus side your favourite playstation exclusives will be even better.

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It could be a similar case to the 360, in the first year people were talking it as the xbox 180 but it turned out it was the better machine then the ps3. If its true that the PS5 has an inferior primitive shaders (compared to mesh shaders) and tier 1 VRS then thats when we will see that gap widen.

PC centric games may heavily favour the seriesX in the future because the PC and seriesX share a lot of hardware and software features e.g Direct storage, VRS tier2, Mesh shaders, directML etc etc

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I assume Watch Dogs has to be since its using hardware accelerated ray tracing. But for example Observer system redux has RT on PS5 but none on XSX. MS tried everything to make sure WDL had its RT day one.

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[quote=“Xplainin, post:1, topic:4886”]Firstly as nearly every dev has said, the PS5 development tools are well ahead on XSX. [/quote]

Which developers or do you just mean DF?. Also, I don’t agree with you DMC V isn’t cut and dry and some of the Assassin’s Creed V comparisons are a little suspect.

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DMC5 clearly has a SeriesX advantage its better in 75% of the modes.

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You got a source for this? I had a quick google but can’t find any reference to this being a thing. Official store page still has a ray tracing label.

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This. As much as some want to declare a clear winner in some cases/modes Series X already has an advantage.

Either way cross-gen games definitely isn’t the way to judge the capabilities of both systems, we’ll see how it goes when games start to be designed around the new CPU’s, next gen engines become the norm and things like the VRS, Mesh Shaders and ML techniques are required to boost performance due to the more demanding games. Plus there is the whole not mature enough development tools from MS talk. It’s too early to tell at this point.

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https://www.gamespew.com/2020/11/observer-system-redux-is-simply-better-on-ps5-than-xbox-series-x/

Maybe not the best source and I’m not buying the game to check out the claims but a few articles similar to this around.