The scalability and evolution of game engines *spawn*

They are understandably upset because it's more work to target another SKU. I don't think there's anything gameplay design wise that couldn't be done on Series X or PS5 that can't on Series S. Maybe I'm wrong, but if devs are supposedly going to target Series X and scale down, then graphics will take a hit.. but that's the idea. PCs with cheaper GPUs have to lower settings for a playable experience... same thing applies here.

If the CPU was much worse, and the SSD had lower bandwidth to the system memory, THEN I'd say it was a botched idea from the start.. but they "should" be able to mostly just down res and drop texture and effect qualities and make it work.
 
Which you'll be done paying off your All Access & then you can upgrade to the Series X2 or Series S2 & keep a trucking playing all your games & not worrying about the hardware anymore.

Tommy McClain

Again it is a bit more complicated than this. What if the game you play aren't on the service day one like the GTA, FIFA, COD or are free to play like Fortnite or Apex Legends...

Why people will pay for a service when the game they play aren't on the services? Why pay an upgrade when you can buy a hardware for all generation and if you want it pay it in mutiple times retailer have offer to do it without interest?

In Europe you can pay in 10 times or 4 times your console if you want without any subscription and depending of the retailer without any interest rate.

They are understandably upset because it's more work to target another SKU. I don't think there's anything gameplay design wise that couldn't be done on Series X or PS5 that can't on Series S. Maybe I'm wrong, but if devs are supposedly going to target Series X and scale down, then graphics will take a hit.. but that's the idea. PCs with cheaper GPUs have to lower settings for a playable experience... same thing applies here.

If the CPU was much worse, and the SSD had lower bandwidth to the system memory, THEN I'd say it was a botched idea from the start.. but they "should" be able to mostly just down res and drop texture and effect qualities and make it work.

They don't complain about the CPU, GPU or SSD but mostly of the RAM configuration if Xbox Series S was 16GB and 128 bits bus all of them would be happy.
 
They don't complain about the CPU, GPU or SSD but mostly of the RAM configuration if Xbox Series S was 16GB and 128 bits bus all of them would be happy.

I realize that, but that's my point. Lower quality textures, a 1440p framebuffer for less taxing games, and a 1080p framebuffer for more taxing games, SHOULD allow them to scale for the most part.. maybe some graphical effects reduced or at lower settings. But generally it should be able to provide the same gameplay experiences as the other two consoles. Obviously it's more of a pain in the butt though.
 
I realize that, but that's my point. Lower quality textures, a 1440p framebuffer for less taxing games, and a 1080p framebuffer for more taxing games, SHOULD allow them to scale for the most part.. maybe some graphical effects reduced or at lower settings. But generally it should be able to provide the same gameplay experiences as the other two consoles. Obviously it's more of a pain in the butt though.

Read the answer, they said reduce framebuffer to 1080p is not enough and they said interleaved memory configuration is a problem too. Again they are developing the game, they aren't armchair game developer like the majority of us.

And when the CTO of Id software complains about the RAM, I think it is best to listen. Billy Khan and Alex Gneiting work on AAA games with one great engine and they complain.
 
Read the answer, they said reduce framebuffer to 1080p is not enough and they said interleaved memory configuration is a problem too. Again they are developing the game, they aren't armchair game developer like the majority of us.

And when the CTO of one of the best dev Id software on technical side complains about the RAM, I think it is best to listen. Billy Khan and Alex Gneiting work on AAA games with one great engine and they complain.
I've already spoken to him on twitter..

I'm well aware. They're echoing concerns... Devs ALWAYS want more memory.. None of them have flat out said things wont work.. they complain because it's MORE work.
 
I've already spoken to him on twitter..

I'm well aware. They're echoing concerns... Devs ALWAYS want more memory.. None of them have flat out said things wont work.. they complain because it's MORE work.

Time and money count, it means the time they will lost to try to run decenlty the game on Xbox Series S will mean probably less time to optimize on Xbox Series X and probably PS5 too.

Like another dev say they will descope a bit meaning they will scale down their ambition as a result third party gamew will be less ambitious on Xbox Series X and PS5.

EDIT:
He is clear about it. Something would have been different if the minimum specs were PS5.

 
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Time and money count, it means the time they will lost to try to run decenlty the game on Xbox Series S will mean probably less time to optimize on Xbox Series X and probably PS5 too.

Like another dev say they will descope a bit meaning they will scale down their ambition.
You're possibly right about that.. but there's still PC to consider as well. I'm sure they mostly do that already anyway.
 
PCs are another issue because if it runs badly on a low spec machine they can just point at the minimum recommended specs and say it's your problem.
Kudos to you if you manage to mod it with extra low res textures and manage to make it playable.
But when it looks bad that's on you.
 
While I'm not overly impressed with the specs of XSS it's nice that see MS going for a low cost upgrade for. If the thing sells well enough then developers will likely make more effort to having a decent experience on it. If sales aren't where they need to be then they won't put in that extra effort.

Hopefully on the development side MS will have competent tools to help devs get the most out of both systems. Just makes developers lives as easy as possible and it can go a long way to reduce the stress of making different versions. I prefer scaling down of assets and effects than scaling up. I'd hate to see XSS as the baseline platform and scaling up from there goes. Though that's arguably easier than scaling down.

At this point in time I skeptical of an XSS purchase. If sales are low after the first year then I worry MS may end up dropping support for it and discontinue production.

It will be interesting to see how XSS compared to its bigger brother. With the specs at hand if the target resolution is 1440p then frame rate may have to get sacrificed.







The one engine I'm truly interested in how it scales up to next gen is Dreams. Just thinking about it gives me chills.
 
Time and money count, it means the time they will lost to try to run decenlty the game on Xbox Series S will mean probably less time to optimize on Xbox Series X and probably PS5 too.

Like another dev say they will descope a bit meaning they will scale down their ambition as a result third party gamew will be less ambitious on Xbox Series X and PS5.

EDIT:
He is clear about it. Something would have been different if the minimum specs were PS5.


Shame he's not clear on the what doesn't get tried due to the lower memory bound of the S.

Also, is the the first public negative comment from someone who's actually an engine programmer? A presumably very good one at that, given Id's output.
 
Really bummed about this RAM situation on the Series S. This isn't easy to compensate and drags down base spec quite a bit for next gen multi platform. RAM increase was already small compared to previous gen, now it's almost non existent. RT BVHs also need a lot of mem on top.
Also "it always scaled on PC" is nonsense. Every AAA game in the past decade or so has their assets made once so they run on min spec. Increasing sample counts a bit here and there for high settings isn't what you could truly have done with more power. Min spec matters.
Axel Gneiting Principal engine programmer at id Software
 
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