Are you disappointed with next-gen consoles for 2020? [XBSX, PS5]

Are you disappointed with next-gen consoles for 2020? (Unrevealed product version)


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A considerable increase in computing power could enable significant enhancements to games that aren't possible on today's consoles. Imagine GTA VI will a procedurally generated building interiors for all buildings and fully-destructible environments and where it's possible to even level buildings that don't just fade back in when you drive away and and return. Where new buildings get built and old derelict ones get pulled down.

Except in a few cases, we're expecting our game worlds to be static and unchangeable (except where scripted) because to do anything different requires changes to AI (adaptive pathing on a massive scale) and a very different way to store data about game worlds. Vastly better CPUs and the solid state drive solves both of these barriers.

We already have games with fully destructible everything (mostly open world survival games), so that doesn't exactly bring anything new. Although perhaps they haven't made it to console yet, so it could be new there? 7 Days to Die is a great example of this (and an absolutely incredible game). Every single thing in the game is destructible and you can build your own structures. And the AI can already path over altered geometry (both destroyed and created), so we also already have adaptive pathing.

We even have fully destructible games where the debris isn't there just for looks, it can actually kill you.

Now, I could see things going finer grained than 7 Days to Die (it operates on morphable voxel structures), but that's not a revolution, just a refinement. And it doesn't change the gameplay a single bit.

Hell, we had forays into fully destructible games way back in the 2000's...Red something? I can't remember the name of the series.

Regards,
SB
 
We already have games with fully destructible everything (mostly open world survival games), so that doesn't exactly bring anything new.
Anything with the game world density of GTA V?

Although perhaps they haven't made it to console yet, so it could be new there? 7 Days to Die is a great example of this (and an absolutely incredible game). Every single thing in the game is destructible and you can build your own structures. And the AI can already path over altered geometry (both destroyed and created), so we also already have adaptive pathing.

I've played 7DTD since beta and love it but comparing it to GTA is a a stretch.

We even have fully destructible games where the debris isn't there just for looks, it can actually kill you.
Yes, and something else had to be surrendered to achieve that technical goal. When your debris is just visual you're not having to calculate proximity, collisions and physics. The Red Faction games, the first of which was on PS2, have very sparse environments. It's simply not possible to do that one console in a game world as rich as GTA.

]Now, I could see things going finer grained than 7 Days to Die (it operates on morphable voxel structures), but that's not a revolution, just a refinement. And it doesn't change the gameplay a single bit.

As somebody who hugely appreciates Assassin's Creed Unity, I disagree. The ability cut through most buildings and not be limited to going around/over them gives you so many more options for ambushes, combat and escape - which are concepts common to a lot of third person action games. Something I really liked in San Andrea was the ability to rob houses for cash early on but there was only about three layouts and you could only rob certain houses. GTA V has pretty solid cover-shooter mechanics but all of the interior shootouts are specifically built and scripted for certain missions. GTA V gives you a couple of options for every mission, what if instead of robbing a safe this way, or that, the game just gave you the tools you need to do it any way you like, like cutting through the wall, or blowing the roof off and using the helicopter to life it out.

The more barriers you remove from what the game world engine can support the more options you give both developers and players.
 
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As somebody who hugely appreciates Assassin's Creed Unity, I disagree. The ability cut through most buildings and not be limited to going around/over them gives you so many more options for ambushes, combat and escape

I'm fond of Unity's Paris as welI. It was a bit of a false start, as most dense urban environments this gen have still been facades. Next gen GTA, Watchdogs, Spider-Man, ES6, Batman will hopefully all benefit from cities where buildings are actually buildings.

It would be nice to get new city based franchises next gen. They're so expensive to produce, even with procgen, it's hard to see that happening.

I'm pretty cold on total destructibility. As soon as they had a tank, GTA players would just level the city. Some level of persistant damage and NPC activity across a city would be lots of fun though.
 
I'm pretty cold on total destructibility. As soon as they had a tank, GTA players would just level the city. Some level of persistant damage and NPC activity across a city would be lots of fun though.
Sure, there has to be a balance. You shouldn't be able to easily access building-destroying items, make folks work hard for destructive capabilities and keep them ephemeral.
 
It could be possible that two things are hitting a ceiling here. One it is the technological advancement in graphics while keeping things at a realistic cost (diminishing returns in performance improvement). The other is the fact that the technology already allows for very high detail, and the game developers themselves although appreciate the extra performance, it should be very pressuring, costly and time consuming trying to aim even higher with "ten" (a placeholder number) times the detail, animation and physics. So they are fine with "less" technological jumps.

Some games already showcase some of that extra fine tuned detail in some areas and that requires super mastery of technical and artistic skill. Doing this almost everywhere is insane.

Expecting games to close the gap with hollywood CG movies is more challenging than in it looks. Games are interactive and the developers dont have 100% control of every situation. They will have to increase the fidelity of almost every asset and being able to accommodate it with the proper realistic animation and realistic physics all in real time to eliminate the uncanny valley.

All these are under the creator's control in movies and they can find tune each scene to look perfect since they are not interactive. Not so much in games where they are real time interactive mediums that should always give a lot of control to the player. Unless we want to make games play like Heavy Rain, Beyond two Souls and Detroit, games will require excessive labor and time to mutliply the quality.

Now at least the developers still have room to ignore some fine details and some visual representations that would look odd in a CG movie if they arent realistic/detailed enough. So for example it is ok if some objects in DMC V and Resi 2, like abandoned cars use lower quality assets. But they would look odd if developers have to multiply the fidelity and therefore unimportant objects and little details will also have to be greatly improved to blend well with characters and other highly detailed assets.
 
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Anything with the game world density of GTA V?



I've played 7DTD since beta and love it but comparing it to GTA is a a stretch.


Yes, and something else had to be surrendered to achieve that technical goal. When your debris is just visual you're not having to calculate proximity, collisions and physics. The Red Faction games, the first of which was on PS2, have very sparse environments. It's simply not possible to do that one console in a game world as rich as GTA.



As somebody who hugely appreciates Assassin's Creed Unity, I disagree. The ability cut through most buildings and not be limited to going around/over them gives you so many more options for ambushes, combat and escape - which are concepts common to a lot of third person action games. Something I really liked in San Andrea was the ability to rob houses for cash early on but there was only about three layouts and you could only rob certain houses. GTA V has pretty solid cover-shooter mechanics but all of the interior shootouts are specifically built and scripted for certain missions. GTA V gives you a couple of options for every mission, what if instead of robbing a safe this way, or that, the game just gave you the tools you need to do it any way you like, like cutting through the wall, or blowing the roof off and using the helicopter to life it out.

The more barriers you remove from what the game world engine can support the more options you give both developers and players.

Again, all of that exists, there is no revolution in game play. The fact that more developers may or may not make use of it doesn't change that it's already here and has been here for years.

So the gameplay already exists, the only thing that changes is the graphics attached to the gameplay. So again, increased graphical fidelity when that type of gameplay is used, but no actual new gameplay will be introduced because of it.

Regards,
SB
 
I wouldn't necessarily say that, without knowing the costs associated with each console or the actual specs (but we'll go with the agreed upon narrative right now), we can't say whether Sony are being realistic or conservative. Likewise we can't say whether MS are being overambitious.

On the face of it, MS are betting big on attempting to win back some of the consumers they lost this generation. It's entirely possible that they're eating a relatively large loss on each console sold in the hopes of winning back more market share. If so, that could bite them in the butt if not enough consumers come back and/or they can't cost reduce as aggressively as they hope to be able to.

If I were to rate each maker on the specs that many seem to believe is real (I'm still not convinced we have the right numbers for both consoles) then I see...
  • Sony having the more realistic approach to building their console, with an eye towards balancing the most powerful console they can make WRT how much money they expect to make during this next generation. Basically they are working within their established budget (expectations being that they'll retain all or most of their users from this generation).
  • Microsoft are over-achieving with their console. They have large cash reserves and the board has OK'd dipping into it heavily in order to win back consumers lost during the last generation. The plan is to grow and establish a large software ecosystem (PC, Console, and streaming with Netflix like game subscriptions alongside software purchases) with consumer confidence that whatever they buy, they'll be able to run it forever on whatever hardware they get. This could be seen as a stepping stone towards that, so they may be willing to take a loss, break even, or just have a small profit for this generation.
There's also many other narratives that we could come up with. Lockhart if it is released changes the dynamics of having a very expensive console (Anaconda). PS5 could be more powerful than people are currently saying it is. Perhaps there's some breakthrough in technology (whether fab related or other tech related) coming along that we don't know about that will change the cost calculations of the consoles this generation.

Basically...WE DON'T KNOW. :) And I see far too many people just buying into the narrative that these are the specs for this generation of consoles (and then either patting themselves on the back, panicking or whatever) rather than these just being data points that might or might not be valid when the consoles release to retail.

Regards,
SB

Yes Nextgen Consoles are very medicore , to much standard Tech , and hold back the Game Development and here the answers why:

Only 9-12 Tflops for the GPU , this is not enough for a generational Jump and for a Lifetime of 5-7 Years. They need 20 Tflops at a minimum. In 2021 GPUs coming to the market for the PC with a much higher Tflop number. And those Monster Consoles become very quick tiny Machines.

Only 8 CPU Cores , not enough , in 2021 we see 16 and 12 Cores are coming to the Massmarket for an affortable Price , so Multiplatformgames on Nextgen Consoles are cleary downgraded Ports with less Features, because they are still limited by 8 CPU Cores.

Only 16 Gbyte Ram , this is only 2 X more than last Generation and cleary not enough for nextgen Content/Games. And you cannot replace a big Ram Memory with a SSD , because they are not fast enough , not enough Bandwidth, and they have a limited Lifetime. When SSD Chips running hot, the Datarates becomes slower or going down, so you didnt have permanent 2 Gbytes /s .

UMA Memoryarchitektur with a small 256 Bit Bus shared by CPU and GPU combined with high Latency Memory GDDR6. This ist the same Bottleneckarchitecture from previous Generation. Not enough for 4K, Raytraycing ,60 Fps and Rgba32 Puffer. And cleary a Design Failure. Because CPU and Raytraycing needs low latency Memory to run well , so why they put high Latency Memory into nextgen Consoles???

No additional Caches, Secret Sauces etc. to solve the Bandwidth and Latency Problem. And VRS , Checkerboarding or other Compression Technics destroys Graphicquality.

No Interposer with HBM Memory or other wide I/O solutions. HBM2/3 has higher Bandwidth, Datarates and wider Bus with lower Latency, Powerconsumption in a smaller Package than GDDR6.

No Tensorcores, no Deep Learning functions to make Gaming AI, NPC etc more intelligent, for a really new Gaming Experiences or clean Resolutionscaling Technics.

No FPGAs to Update the Hardware for new GPU/CPU Functions in the Future.

No In-Memory-Computing. IBMs new Chiptech can make Calculations 200 x faster han with traditional Cpu/Gpu Computing. It make sense to put some parts of the CPU and GPU direct into the Memory. I would put the Rops and Raytraycingunits direct into the Framebuffer to push up the Calculation/Renderspeed.

Focusing more and more on Foward and Back Compatibility , for difffernt Consoleiteration, Pro Models etc. , focusing on Play Anywhere Ecosystem, focusing more and more on High Level Programming , Times where Game Companys coding to Metal like in the old 32/16 Bit era are definitiv over. So i dont believe in Consoleoptimations anymore. This makes Consoles total uninteresting.
 
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What you're asking for is not the slightest bit sane. Your requests for every single piece of bleeding-edge technology in a console are completely unrealistic. Either you'd not launch your idea of a suitable machine for another 3+ years, or you'd release a box at $1000.
 
Having more time to digest the possibilities of a 9.2 TF PS5 but with a small 36CU chip is pretty impressive.

I think people need a little bit more imagination here than looking at 1 metric. If the whole idea is to do more for less; I suspect they succeeded here. One should ask where the savings will go. I get people here are disappointed; but the same people wouldn’t be satisfied unless Sony had more. Period. This could have been 17TF to 20TF. 20TF to 23TF. There is no satisfaction from these folks without seeing a win; and we haven’t even gotten to benchmark of games yet; which should be the real determinant of the success of the hardware.

for XSX the size of the chip has upper bounds on what else they can accomplish lest the price runs sky high.
 
I will be disappointed by the PS5 if it really does have just a "regular" RDNA1 36 CU GPU doing 9.2 TFLOPs + RT hardware for BVH acceleration.

It would sound like the best possible option for a console released during late 2019 considering 2019's yields on 7nm DUV, but a rather mediocre option for a late 2020 release considering expected 2020's yields on 7nm DUV or even 7nm EUV.

If Sony had the chance to release the PS5 during holidays 2019 that could boost PS4 Pro enhanced titles to run at twice the performance, then they should have launched the console this year instead of waiting another full year. Even if it came with a very small PS5 library, just running the late 2019 PS4 Pro games with better framerate and loading times (I'm looking at you, Star Wars Fallen Order!) would have made the console a great purchase for me.

I won't be disappointed by the PS5 if instead of bringing a regular RDNA1 GPU, it has hardware that offloads the FP32 ALUs like e.g. dedicated units for INT32 processing (like Turing) and/or dedicated units for FP16 (like PowerVR Series 6 and up).
Otherwise we know how a 9 TFLOPs GPU performs, and I think it's just not enough to provide a generational upgrade from the current mid-gen consoles.

I'm also weary of the memory configuration. <500GB/s sounds really short considering it'll have to be shared with a much more powerful CPU that will probably have less L3 cache. The PCB leak claimed the presence of 3x 2GB DDR4 2400MT/s chips. Assuming these are 32bit chips using their full bandwidth, we're looking at a total 6GB at ~29GB/s, but the leak/rumor also says two of those chips are close to the NAND chips so it could be just cache for the storage system and not something the CPU can use exclusively, without taking memory requests from the GDDR6.


I'm not disappointed with SeX assuming it has a 12 TFLOPs GPU, but I'll be disappointed if Lockhart exists and forces devs to target a minimum common denominator with a 4-5 TFLOPs GPU..


Jonathan Blow (Braid, The Witness).

Sure sounds like another dev who hates Lockhart, or at least the obligation of having to develop for 2 different performance targets for each 9th-gen Xbox release right from the beginning of the generation..
 
Having more time to digest the possibilities of a 9.2 TF PS5 but with a small 36CU chip is pretty impressive.

I think people need a little bit more imagination here than looking at 1 metric. If the whole idea is to do more for less; I suspect they succeeded here. One should ask where the savings will go. I get people here are disappointed; but the same people wouldn’t be satisfied unless Sony had more. Period. This could have been 17TF to 20TF. 20TF to 23TF. There is no satisfaction from these folks without seeing a win; and we haven’t even gotten to benchmark of games yet; which should be the real determinant of the success of the hardware.

for XSX the size of the chip has upper bounds on what else they can accomplish lest the price runs sky high.

But IRC PS3 price adjusted fo inflation would be today around 800 $. I am not saying that is a reasonable price point, but I think anything up to 600 $ should be ok, if it would make next generation a bit faster. But as always, it's about balance and compromise.
 
Next generation isn’t going to be about power; it’s going to be about ecosystem and services; the types of games you can play.
I think the GPU TF race is just that. A race for better graphics; that won’t translate to better game design. It translates to just more evolution of what we have today. Hitting a critical mass with a cheaper box is going to open up creativity for games more than more realistic graphics would.

Just saying. mine craft is still the most successful game in the world. It’s pretty shitty looking.
 
Next generation isn’t going to be about power; it’s going to be about ecosystem and services; the types of games you can play.
I think the GPU TF race is just that. A race for better graphics; that won’t translate to better game design. It translates to just more evolution of what we have today. Hitting a critical mass with a cheaper box is going to open up creativity for games more than more realistic graphics would.

Just saying. mine craft is still the most successful game in the world. It’s pretty shitty looking.

A thing that differentiates both consoles seems to be the controller, with DS5 having programmable forced triggers and better haptic feedback. MS hasn't mentioned nothing special about the new controllers, at least not yet.
 
A thing that differentiates both consoles seems to be the controller, with DS5 having programmable forced triggers and better haptic feedback. MS hasn't mentioned nothing special about the new controllers, at least not yet.
Indeed. Hopefully it turns out they have similar features here. It is fun to have the rumble triggers work as they intended. But only first party titles took usage of them on Xbox. With PS picking it up we can see a lot more use and creativity across 3P developers.
 
A thing that differentiates both consoles seems to be the controller, with DS5 having programmable forced triggers and better haptic feedback. MS hasn't mentioned nothing special about the new controllers, at least not yet.
That and 4 rumored back buttons:

playstation-5-ps5-dualshock-5-back-buttons-1.jpg
 
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