Konami Fox Engine and its Games.

[Shortbread]

Besides its the "Lazy Developers" fault comments... what other scenarios could the new Fox Engine have with XB1 hardware? ESRAM? ROPs? MS not sending their mighty ninjas?

We have Metal Gear: Ground Zeros, PES15 (below), and possibly Metal Gear: Phantom Pain and Silent Hill running at 720p on XB1. There's got to be a better explanation than "lazy developer".

 

[Karamazov]

obviously their engine is not well designed for the XB1 architecture.
bandwidth must be the main issue.

 

[HTupolev]

Considering these Konami games are likely to sell much better on PS4 than on XB1, I wouldn't be shocked if the following things are true:
1-The Fox Engine was designed, at its core, more around the high-level architecture of PS4 than of XB1, and
2-More development resources were allocated to the PS4 versions on a project level.

what other scenarios could the new Fox Engine have with XB1 hardware? ESRAM? ROPs?

Hard to guess where exactly the bottlenecks are without knowing more. Possibly also depends on which part of the rendering sequence you're talking about.

 

[Grall]

Fundamentally, xbone and PS4 aren't that terribly different architecturally (SRAM on one console, more execution hardware on the other), so it's probably not so much an engine design issue as just game design (heavy shader use perhaps) and most importantly: Konami is a japanese developer, and xbone is selling TERRIBLY in japan right now. Just...ludicrously awful last I heard anything. Like a couple thousands per week in the whole country of ~120M people.

If I were to speculate, it's the usual japanese reluctance to buy and invest in foreign games consoles. Don't ask me where that comes from, but MS has been trying for almost a decade and a half to break into the japanese market, and if anything they're LESS successful now than they were in the past.

Is it the bone's huge physical size? Kinect's requirements for ample floor space? Kinect isn't even a requirement anymore, but the console is still fecking huge + a giant power brick on top, and japanese homes are known to be on the small side.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Fox Engine is also for PC, right? So I'd say it's been designed for a straight forward PC/PS4 architecture and XB1's ESRAM is a limitation to that. It also didn't represent a big enough market in Konami's eyes to warrant special attention. I'd say it was the result of business decisions, both Konami's in not over-spending for a particular SKU, and MS in choosing a design that wasn't mind-numbingly developer friendly.

and most importantly: Konami is a japanese developer, and xbone is selling TERRIBLY in japan right now.

I'm pretty sure development of this game and engine didn't start a few weeks ago based on the sales of the consoles in Japan. The engine would have been in progress for years, long before anyone knew how well any of the machines would sell.

 

[TheWretched]

I wouldn't call any developer lazy (I am one myself, not in game dev, but somewhere else). Some might be, but not full companies that make successful products.

I'd even go as far as saying that Kojima, being the "perfectionist" he is, wouldn't allow for that. However, as was said before... it might just come down to "who cares". Most people don't (want to or can't) see the difference anyhow. And I'd go as far and say 60Hz is more important than resolution, as long as the resolution isn't too low, which 720P surely is not.

Might even be that their initial development saw the esram and programmed towards it. Thus 720P was predetermined that way and a different solution might as well just take too long now (for the games on the roster that get a release soon) for changes to make it run with a different configuration. It's not like they employ full rendering architect teams just for the sake of making X1 games run at more than 720P. Fox team probably has a whole lot more to do right now "finishing" MGS5 for next year.

 

[TomRL]

I've been told that the Fox Engine uses deferred rendering which takes up a lot of space. So the ESRAM struggles to accommodate higher resolutions.

 

[HTupolev]

Fundamentally, xbone and PS4 aren't that terribly different architecturally (SRAM on one console, more execution hardware on the other)

The processors use similar modules. But a big pool of slow RAM augmented by a small pool of blazing-fast embedded RAM represents a substantially different high-level architectural decision than a large pool of decently fast RAM. There's certainly opportunity for mismatch of optimal functional characteristics.

 

[tuna]

Is that the pes spec sheet?

 

[Shortbread]

I've been told that the Fox Engine uses deferred rendering which takes up a lot of space. So the ESRAM struggles to accommodate higher resolutions.

So, why even adopt an engine that's not well suited for one (no pun intended)? I mean from a 3rd party developer perspective (multiplatform developer), not 1st party.

Did Konami feel that offering the players (PS4) the better visual experience, outweighed the need for having a unified experience across both platforms?

From a business perspective it seems flawed, not wanting both on equal footing... getting all the dollars you can. From a gamers perspective, especially a PS4 user, you can't help but feel good about your choice of hardware.

Personally, I think MS should have gotten with Konami on getting somewhere closer to 900p... Metal Gear and Silent Hill are two big of an IP just to settle for 720p. But that's my opinion anyhow...

 

[steveOrino]

So, why even adopt an engine that's not well suited for one (no pun intended)? I mean from a 3rd party developer perspective (multiplatform developer), not 1st party.

Did Konami feel that offering the players (PS4) the better visual experience, outweighed the need for having a unified experience across both platforms?

Uhh, the X1 is the odd man out. The PC and PS4 dont share the same limited cache technology so why design an engine around a limitation only one platform has? Plus Kojima has stated that he is pushing for 60 fps for all his Fox Engine games and on a gpu as weak as the X1 900p at 60 might be a stretch.

 

[Shortbread]

Uhh, the X1 is the odd man out. The PC and PS4 dont share the same limited cache technology so why design an engine around a limitation only one platform has? Plus Kojima has stated that he is pushing for 60 fps for all his Fox Engine games and on a gpu as weak as the X1 900p at 60 might be a stretch.

It seems EA, Activision, Blizzard and few others are quite content on offering similar experiences, without getting hardware specific. Meaning; no lopsided sales, which we have seen from Konami (Metal Gear: Ground Zero).

Mind you I'm talking from a business perspective - not so much a gamer.

 

[steveOrino]

No clue. Would have to ask Kojima. I dont know if the economic value of engineering for one platforms quirks is worth it. But with the near 2:1 install gap I doubt the incentive for technical parity is any greater.

Metal Gear (from Solid on up) & Silent Hill have always been a PS weighted brands. I doubt technical parity is going to matter at all because in the end how many people are going to buy the game on technical merits when the people who really care (Like me, I'll be getting the PC version for the best IQ) are the minority. As long as the assets are the same and the game is a stable 60fps why does it matter? If the connoisseur gamer really cared he would be getting it for the more powerful platform anyway. That is my opinion of course.

 

[Nesh]

So, why even adopt an engine that's not well suited for one (no pun intended)? I mean from a 3rd party developer perspective (multiplatform developer), not 1st party.

Did Konami feel that offering the players (PS4) the better visual experience, outweighed the need for having a unified experience across both platforms?

From a business perspective it seems flawed, not wanting both on equal footing... getting all the dollars you can. From a gamers perspective, especially a PS4 user, you can't help but feel good about your choice of hardware.

Personally, I think MS should have gotten with Konami on getting somewhere closer to 900p... Metal Gear and Silent Hill are two big of an IP just to settle for 720p. But that's my opinion anyhow...

Then again why should a developer not go with his vision because one platform has limitations? The only sacrifice is the resolution while everything else is intact. The engine was being made for some years. Why should the developer start limiting the engine's capabilities simply because there is a prospect of one of the platform holders providing a weaker machine?
I dont see anything flawed unless the developers had to proceed with sacrifices that extend beyond the lower resolution.
One platform has better specs and it would be a waste not to exploit the more juice just because MS made the wrong hardware choices. MGS 5 isnt the only game that performs better on the PS4. Its an XB1 hardware fault, not a business one

 

[Pugger]

It's also a case of budget, they are not going to waste time and resources on the XB1 version when its not the leading platform in terms of sales anyway. The only problem for Konami is that I can't see PES nor MGS selling at all well on the XB1.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So, why even adopt an engine that's not well suited for one (no pun intended)? I mean from a 3rd party developer perspective (multiplatform developer), not 1st party.

The choice of engine is for flexibility and ease of use (tool chain) for the content you want to use it with. Development of the Fox Engine either came about because other engines were evaluated as not really suitable for the intended tasks, or not as good for Konami's purposes as an in house one (and that can extend to support. You're using an engine, it has a serious bug, you're shafted if it's low priority for the engine developers), or, possibly, a sense of pride in wanting to create their own engine. We'll possibly never know.

As for why it doesn't fit well with XB1, I'd say that's MS's fault really. If work on Fox Engine began 3/4 years ago and targeted a high-end PC design, a console appearing needing careful memory management to get the most from it is suddenly a fly in the ointment. There's two choices - 1) rework the entire engine from scratch to support this platform. 2) reduce the game on the outlier platform until the engine fits. Factor in deadlines for releases, and a year of sales that shows PS4 and PC offering a very good base, and the choice to go with option 2 is pretty sensible. There'll be up side and down sides to those choices, such as there always is with every choice.

Personally, I think MS should have gotten with Konami on getting somewhere closer to 900p... Metal Gear and Silent Hill are two big of an IP just to settle for 720p. But that's my opinion anyhow...

It might not be that easy, especially to work into deadlines. How long do you want to delay work on the game while the engine is reworked? Because you can't necessarily continue with content creation if you'll end up completely changing asset formats and requirements.

People shouldn't be second-guessing Konami here or pointing fingers. It's much like PS3's early days. Launch games designed for hardware that doesn't reflect final hardware aren't going to make the most of it. After launch titles are released, the engine will possibly get a reworking to be more XB1 friendly, just as PS3 engines were made more Cell friendly (and RSX friendly, addressing its shortcomings).

 

[DieH@rd]

So, why even adopt an engine that's not well suited for one (no pun intended)? I mean from a 3rd party developer perspective (multiplatform developer), not 1st party.

Did Konami feel that offering the players (PS4) the better visual experience, outweighed the need for having a unified experience across both platforms?

Most likely, developers are not concerned much with dropping the resolution. If they can still use same assets and effect density, all is well in their eyes.

At last GDC KojiPro described the pipeline of FOX Engine. It's deferred rendering indeed uses a lot of layers, and it's not strange that they cannot fit everything in just 32MB of ESRAM [especially since they are aiming at 60fps].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17nje72VnPE#t=2119

I think that engine is great, MGSV looks phenomenal [with few drawbacks that are present because game had to optimized for oldgen], and I cant wait to see nextgen-only games made with it [Silent Hills].

 

[Pugger]

Seems that Konami has come to the opinion that the negative 720p story will hit them in the pocket.
https://twitter.com/Adam_Bhatti/status/516542112205381633

Not sure what happens when MGS is released though, I just can't see it doing more than 10% of the total sales, in fact I see the 360 version outselling it.

 

[SumoSaki]

This is the same chap that said there's not much difference between the two consoles. Right.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It'd be good to have a decent translation of the source. A slide in isolation doesn't mean much, and the media could be misreporting. Wouldn't be the first time. Are the listed specs: 1) A typo? 2) legitimate but a WIP? 3) Confirmed current state of the engine?

1's very plausible as we've been typing 1080p and 720p for years now. Someone given the job of filling the table may have easily skipped over 900p or similar out of habit, and put the 'not 1080p' res in automatically.

Edit: I don't even know what the source of the OP is! Like everyone else, I was discussing it at face value.