Xbox Business Update Podcast | Xbox Everywhere Direction Discussion

[rntongo]

The issue is on Larians side or whatever the dev team is called.

This is what the game requires on pc

• OS: Windows 10 64-bit
• Processor: Intel i5-4690 / AMD FX 8350
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GTX 970 / AMD Radeon RX 480 (4GB+ of VRAM)
• DirectX: Version 11
• Storage: 150 GB available space
• SSD required4

Bulldozer came out in 2011. That was what 12 years before BG3 released. The geforce 900 series released in 2014 8 years prior to bg3 release. The rx 480 . haswell was a 9 years prior.

The devs could have actually spent time optimizing and got the co-op working fine. It works on the steam deck which is less powerful than the series s and it runs on machines that run full windows along with other programs while having only slightly more ram than a series s.

Respectfully I dont think this is true from what I read but you could correct me. The devs spent time optimizing the co-op from the get go on all console platforms!! But it was designed around the ram amounts in the PS5 and Series X. The missing part in all this discussion is the Series S from the get go could run the co-op mode but not in a way that meets console requirements i.e it didnt run well but if the Series S was a low spec PC no one would have cared. MSFT could not allow this since they wanted full feature parity that meets console requirements(minimal to no stutters a smooth experience at least empirically if not statistically) and couldnt let Larian ship the coop mode in the state it was in on the Series S. Larian informed MSFT that they were having issues meeting the requirements on the Series S, IIRC it was proposed to either ship as is or without the coop mode. The result was a delay of the Series(including X) version of the game since Larian wasnt going to delay it on Playstation over MSFT's SDK/hw/requirements issues, otherwise it could have shipped with a coop that was playable on the Series S but not anything different than on a struggling low end PC without enough RAM.

MSFT had to spend extra time and money to get their developers to work out the kinks. As soon as I heard MSFT was sending their people to help I knew memory optimizations would be found(and voiced this on other platforms which later turned out to be true) but there's a catch; If you give developers enough time they can further optimize but their job is not to fully optimize but work within constraints(money, time, human resources) to deliver a product that meets requirements on time. This is the basis of Software Development, reaching a good balance between creativity, optimizations, debugging, etc to produce something that meets requirements within the aforementioned constraints(money time, human and compute resources). So its not surprising that Larian found optimizations after the extra money and time spent by MSFT, but its not a good development experience or worthwhile compared to Sony's where there is more of a balance between creativity and debugging and optimizing for performance. If MSFT relaxed its requirements for the Series S as well it would lead to issues where sometimes games run choppy in some features. This isnt an issue on PC since a lot of people play with old specs with choppy frame rates. I'm not saying there isnt a considerable amount of people playing with great GPUs and CPUs with better performance than the consoles. Otherwise Larian could have spent that time implementing other creative features of the game for launch, the further memory optimizations can be discovered after launch and used for future titles for example, but I highly doubt Larian was excited to spend extra time trying to get the Series S version of coop running in a seamless manner. They wanted to ship as is and focus on other things.

 

[rntongo]

For MS there is the series s on the market already a long with a bunch of computers that have similar ram set ups. There are also computers that have access to more vram and system ram than 16 total gigs. For years there has been features to allow for increased quality textures as optional downloads. If developers are going to go through the trouble of creating textures for the pc that are higher resolution than the consoles then they can easily add them to a higehr ram console. If you look at ps4 pro and one x games the one x has much better texture work. So why wouldn't it happen again ? MS themselves are going to be releasing a slew of games a year. Why wouldn't they have their own big releases take advantage of the increase in ram ? Want to show off a difference between a 2024 ps5 pro and a 2025 xbox next / refresh ? Cod 2025 actually using that ram and making the game look better along with all of ABK , Bethesda, MS game studio games taking advantage of the additional ram.

This is an interesting angle. It makes sense to me and maybe the PS5 pro will come with more RAM but from the looks of things and feedback from devs seems PS5 pro is going to stick with 16GB of RAM and the only major change is going to be the memory bandwidth. I dont think they havent thought about or dont want to do it but maybe its some practical reasons why. I also dont think its because of cost because GDDR6 is dirt cheap at the moment till the end of the gen(holding things constant) but there may be practical issues with it again because of the console requirements. I personally think it would have made more sense if on the pro models they provide more RAM as well for higher quality textures but seems there are issues. Otherwise I know for a fact, the combination of console title requirements+ multiple RAM configs has caused issues for developers of Series games from the get go. They dont like it and if they could they'd just develop for the Series X and ship as is with the Series S. They prefer developing on the PS5. I really think MSFT missed a chance yet they had created really impressive hw with the Series X.

 

[eastmen]

Respectfully I dont think this is true from what I read but you could correct me. The devs spent time optimizing the co-op from the get go on all console platforms!! But it was designed around the ram amounts in the PS5 and Series X. The missing part in all this discussion is the Series S from the get go could run the co-op mode but not in a way that meets console requirements i.e it didnt run well but if the Series S was a low spec PC no one would have cared. MSFT could not allow this since they wanted full feature parity that meets console requirements(minimal to no stutters a smooth experience at least empirically if not statistically) and couldnt let Larian ship the coop mode in the state it was in on the Series S. Larian informed MSFT that they were having issues meeting the requirements on the Series S, IIRC it was proposed to either ship as is or without the coop mode. The result was a delay of the Series(including X) version of the game since Larian wasnt going to delay it on Playstation over MSFT's SDK/hw/requirements issues, otherwise it could have shipped with a coop that was playable on the Series S but not anything different than on a struggling low end PC without enough RAM.

The devs have never stated what they optimized for and what they didn't. They only had the pc and ps5 as release platforms and it wasn't like the ps5 appeared after a day. You can see the minimum specs required from the pc side. You can enable co-op on computers with the same specs as the minimum and it plays. That is while running full windows on said machine.

The devs also kept co-op disabled on steam deck even though it worked just fine. They stated they felt it wasn't how co-op was supposed to be played so they kept it disabled. Cause apprently people don't connect their steam decks to their pc.

You can go back into the BG3 thread to see some tweets I posted from them and other conversation around that

BG3 entered early access in what 2020 ? The series s was released in 2020. They had plenty of time to actually optimize for the platform. They choose not too and because of its commercial success they were able to get away with it.

MSFT had to spend extra time and money to get their developers to work out the kinks. As soon as I heard MSFT was sending their people to help I knew memory optimizations would be found(and voiced this on other platforms which later turned out to be true) but there's a catch; If you give developers enough time they can further optimize but their job is not to fully optimize but work within constraints(money, time, human resources) to deliver a product that meets requirements on time. This is the basis of Software Development, reaching a good balance between creativity, optimizations, debugging, etc to produce something that meets requirements within the aforementioned constraints(money time, human and compute resources). So its not surprising that Larian found optimizations after the extra money and time spent by MSFT, but its not a good development experience or worthwhile compared to Sony's where there is more of a balance between creativity and debugging and optimizing for performance. If MSFT relaxed its requirements for the Series S as well it would lead to issues where sometimes games run choppy in some features. This isnt an issue on PC since a lot of people play with old specs with choppy frame rates. I'm not saying there isnt a considerable amount of people playing with great GPUs and CPUs with better performance than the consoles. Otherwise Larian could have spent that time implementing other creative features of the game for launch, the further memory optimizations can be discovered after launch and used for future titles for example, but I highly doubt Larian was excited to spend extra time trying to get the Series S version of coop running in a seamless manner. They wanted to ship as is and focus on other things.

The proper way to deal with game optimize is to target a set of specs and move up or down from there after the optimization is done. Zen2 + RDNA 2 = a huge install base . Developers should be optimizing around the series s because you can easily adjust the game to work on zen / rnda hand helds to ps5/xbox and into higher end pc markets. It is the developers who messed up with optimization. But this is just rehashing old arguments i've had in the game thread anyway

 

[eastmen]

This is an interesting angle. It makes sense to me and maybe the PS5 pro will come with more RAM but from the looks of things and feedback from devs seems PS5 pro is going to stick with 16GB of RAM and the only major change is going to be the memory bandwidth. I dont think they havent thought about or dont want to do it but maybe its some practical reasons why. I also dont think its because of cost because GDDR6 is dirt cheap at the moment till the end of the gen(holding things constant) but there may be practical issues with it again because of the console requirements. I personally think it would have made more sense if on the pro models they provide more RAM as well for higher quality textures but seems there are issues. Otherwise I know for a fact, the combination of console title requirements+ multiple RAM configs has caused issues for developers of Series games from the get go. They dont like it and if they could they'd just develop for the Series X and ship as is with the Series S. They prefer developing on the PS5. I really think MSFT missed a chance yet they had created really impressive hw with the Series X.

Sony is miserly with ram counts ala apple. They also have the benefit of having a higher install base and are popular in markets that xbox is not.

However MS itself is now a gigantic game developer/ publisher and on the back of their games alone that can target for larger ram amounts in consoles. Like I said in a previous post if MS put out a 24gig console next year and their development teams targeted it you'd get games like COD looking best on xbox. MS seems on track to release 3-4 of their own games each year and that number may only increase going into 2025. So it can certainly set the stage for people choosing an ms console .

If you pair that up with perhaps zen4/5 to help alleviate cpu bottlenecks and a new generation of rdna to move past the ray tracing limitations of rdna 2 you could end up with a console that offers a very substantial increase in fidelity over the xbox series s/x and ps5/ ps5 pro

Developers are lazy which is why they don't like having to optimize for another console. However they have to optimize for pc to make the game work on their minimum spec. Larian had no issue getting BG3 working on 11+ year old computer hardware . however as I stated when talking about more ram its a lot easier to add more than it is to take away. Developers already create higeher res source textures that are then scaled and compressed. having more ram would allow them to use higher resolution versions of these. They already do it on the pc where you have options of the higher resolution textures. So they can simply intergrade that work back into the higher ram console release

 

[rntongo]

However MS itself is now a gigantic game developer/ publisher and on the back of their games alone that can target for larger ram amounts in consoles. Like I said in a previous post if MS put out a 24gig console next year and their development teams targeted it you'd get games like COD looking best on xbox. MS seems on track to release 3-4 of their own games each year and that number may only increase going into 2025. So it can certainly set the stage for people choosing an ms console .

If you pair that up with perhaps zen4/5 to help alleviate cpu bottlenecks and a new generation of rdna to move past the ray tracing limitations of rdna 2 you could end up with a console that offers a very substantial increase in fidelity over the xbox series s/x and ps5/ ps5 pro

Theoretically yes I agree with you 100%, practically this doesnt work for a whole bunch of reasons and its mainly technical reasons. I gave one example of Hi Fi rush running better on the PS5 as an example. This shouldnt be happening for a title that was an Xbox exclusive especially considering the higher mem bandwidth and higher GPU compute in the Series X. Its not that MSFT developers dont want to, but they face challenges we are not aware of. In the past we saw the 360 get better versions of games because of 2 reasons, better memory architecture(unified memory of 512MB), and better software tools for one system. Its really as simple as this, without this, the PS5 is getting better versions of games. MSFT with the 360 had beaten Sony despite Sony keeping up with innovations with their cell processor, the overall dev experience was better on the 360, Sony learnt its lesson and has never blundered again. Yes Sony and MSFT could release a midgen refresh with a Zen 4 8 core CPU but they wont for the simple reason it could lead to delays(caused by minor compatibility issues) when pushing out games due to stricter console requirements(even small minor compatibility issues are unacceptable). DF has spoken about this saying changing the CPU possibly would So you'll likely only see Zen 2/3 CPUs in the consoles up until the end of the gen. Even though Zen 2 and 4 share the same microarchitecture and the cost wouldnt be prohibitive.

MSFT isnt going to release a Zen 4/5 24GB unified memory midgen console because its impractical tbh. Despite us fans and nerds hoping they do, the theory meets the challenging real world software development challenges. But you can always build a PC possibly with those specs and brute force current titles. A much smarter strategy is to find out what developers want to create and build backwards from that which is what both Sony and MSFT have been doing, only issue is MSFT trying to push multiple hw configurations at the same time, causing issues with console development on their consoles. Wheras Sony has segmented it properly. You get to design games throughout a whole generation on one system then simply scale the game up on a midgen refresh hw, no hassles. And eventually they'll have a portable device as well as cloud gaming offerings but devs will be building to one target spec!. This is a much much smarter strategy and hopefully the execs at MSFT refocus back to working in this way like they did with the 360.

Developers are lazy which is why they don't like having to optimize for another console. However they have to optimize for pc to make the game work on their minimum spec. Larian had no issue getting BG3 working on 11+ year old computer hardware . however as I stated when talking about more ram its a lot easier to add more than it is to take away. Developers already create higeher res source textures that are then scaled and compressed. having more ram would allow them to use higher resolution versions of these. They already do it on the pc where you have options of the higher resolution textures. So they can simply intergrade that work back into the higher ram console release

Honestly I dont think its fair to call developers lazy. I just think the general public doesnt have good insight into the realities of the differences between PC and console requirements and the challenges that come with that. On PC there are multiple configurations of hw so the requirements for how the game should run are not as strict and again devs put in work to deliver the great experience on PC. But people base PC gaming on youtube videos of high end GPUs running games excellently but these High End PCs are actually brute forcing to produce such results and are not a typifying example of the PC gaming experience globally. Although these days PC gaming has greatly improved, its much better than years ago since GPUs are not jumping up in performance as much as they used to(so those with older GPUs get good results for a long time), and the jump in memory requirements has slowed down(this used to be a huge advantage of consoles). But still, there exists challenges of producing games that run well on multiple configurations of hw. And a platform like Sony's or Nintendos which creates to a target spec will always have some Software development advantages in this regard.

On the other hand, possibly next gen, as part of a midgen refresh they could add more RAM and offer DLC texture packs for midgen refreshes. This makes a lot of sense even to me. I think possibly some devs have thought about this.

 

[Cyan]

Rumor: Microsoft is going to invest in 3rd party games like they never did before to put them in gamepass, according to an editor of Windows Central.

The youtube link starts at the exact second he mentions that.

In this case, Uncle Phil seems fine to me. I have PC gamepass to play Paw Patrol with my nephews. There are a lot of games and sometimes I don't pay attention, but when I'm interested in a game from the service, I prefer to buy it on PC gamepass rather than on Steam or similar, because you can also buy the games on PC gamepass.

Sometimes the effect has been the opposite, I have bought a game on Steam because I had played it on PC gamepass but there are certain games on gamepass that do not allow mods and Steam does.

 

[Cyan]

this news seem to kinda confirm that:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1774886187511206356

 

[eastmen]

Theoretically yes I agree with you 100%, practically this doesnt work for a whole bunch of reasons and its mainly technical reasons. I gave one example of Hi Fi rush running better on the PS5 as an example. This shouldnt be happening for a title that was an Xbox exclusive especially considering the higher mem bandwidth and higher GPU compute in the Series X. Its not that MSFT developers dont want to, but they face challenges we are not aware of. In the past we saw the 360 get better versions of games because of 2 reasons, better memory architecture(unified memory of 512MB), and better software tools for one system. Its really as simple as this, without this, the PS5 is getting better versions of games. MSFT with the 360 had beaten Sony despite Sony keeping up with innovations with their cell processor, the overall dev experience was better on the 360, Sony learnt its lesson and has never blundered again. Yes Sony and MSFT could release a midgen refresh with a Zen 4 8 core CPU but they wont for the simple reason it could lead to delays(caused by minor compatibility issues) when pushing out games due to stricter console requirements(even small minor compatibility issues are unacceptable). DF has spoken about this saying changing the CPU possibly would So you'll likely only see Zen 2/3 CPUs in the consoles up until the end of the gen. Even though Zen 2 and 4 share the same microarchitecture and the cost wouldnt be prohibitive.

H Fi Rush runs better because it came out later. So its had the benefit of all the bug fixes and performance improvements already on the xbox and some that haven't been added into the xbox build again. MS has already said those improvements will come to the xbox versions of the games. Xbox owners have had those games for ever a year.

Having zen 4 or 5 vs Cell is a completely different beast. Developers are already encountering zen 4 in computers and handhelds. The newer zen processors all offer IPC improvements and clock speed improvements over zen 2 which makes them perform even better at current games than the previous cpus without any developer intervention.

For instance in BG3 the ps5/xbox series and zen 2 processors are all greatly bottlenecked in the third act. But you put a 7700x or one of the newer amd chips and they get vastly better performance



You can see here that the zen processors continue to scale with clock speed and generations of chip. Also the 3d cache is huge here. The developer doesn't have to specifically code to take advantage of any of this. Now it is obvious that there are features in the newer zen chips that if developers did code around would see even higher gains. But yes if MS put out a refresh with a zen 4 at 5ghz it would be much faster than what is in the ps5/pro and sereis consoles. This game and other games would either no longer be cpu limited or would become cpu limited at higher frame rates

The same thing with the graphics portion. If you are looking at a radeon 7600xt and compare it with a 7900xt even in the same game you will get significant increases in performance.

MSFT isnt going to release a Zen 4/5 24GB unified memory midgen console because its impractical tbh. Despite us fans and nerds hoping they do, the theory meets the challenging real world software development challenges. But you can always build a PC possibly with those specs and brute force current titles. A much smarter strategy is to find out what developers want to create and build backwards from that which is what both Sony and MSFT have been doing, only issue is MSFT trying to push multiple hw configurations at the same time, causing issues with console development on their consoles. Wheras Sony has segmented it properly. You get to design games throughout a whole generation on one system then simply scale the game up on a midgen refresh hw, no hassles. And eventually they'll have a portable device as well as cloud gaming offerings but devs will be building to one target spec!. This is a much much smarter strategy and hopefully the execs at MSFT refocus back to working in this way like they did with the 360.

I am not sure why you think its impractical. You can go buy handhelds with zen 4 in it today. It will only get more practical as the year goes on and into next year.

Let me ask you. If having multiple hardware configurations causes issues with development how does a company ever release a game on pc ? How did developers release games on ps4/xbox one/ ps4 pro/ xbox one x/ switch / xbox series s / ps5 / xbox series x and pc all at the same time ?

From the dawn of time developers have been targeting huge amounts of platforms all at the same time. What to see some crazy shit ? Go back and read up on the dawn of graphics cards. That was some crazy shit. Yet we still got games

Honestly I dont think its fair to call developers lazy. I just think the general public doesnt have good insight into the realities of the differences between PC and console requirements and the challenges that come with that. On PC there are multiple configurations of hw so the requirements for how the game should run are not as strict and again devs put in work to deliver the great experience on PC. But people base PC gaming on youtube videos of high end GPUs running games excellently but these High End PCs are actually brute forcing to produce such results and are not a typifying example of the PC gaming experience globally. Although these days PC gaming has greatly improved, its much better than years ago since GPUs are not jumping up in performance as much as they used to(so those with older GPUs get good results for a long time), and the jump in memory requirements has slowed down(this used to be a huge advantage of consoles). But still, there exists challenges of producing games that run well on multiple configurations of hw. And a platform like Sony's or Nintendos which creates to a target spec will always have some Software development advantages in this regard.

On the other hand, possibly next gen, as part of a midgen refresh they could add more RAM and offer DLC texture packs for midgen refreshes. This makes a lot of sense even to me. I think possibly some devs have thought about this.

I am calling a specific developer lazy based on their own tweets.

I also don't know how you can say well a high end pc is brute forcing better performance but if you took similar hardware and made a high end console it would no longer be able to brute force it ? How do you think the majority of ps5 pro games will get handeled ?

 

[rntongo]

H Fi Rush runs better because it came out later. So its had the benefit of all the bug fixes and performance improvements already on the xbox and some that haven't been added into the xbox build again. MS has already said those improvements will come to the xbox versions of the games. Xbox owners have had those games for ever a year.

Having zen 4 or 5 vs Cell is a completely different beast. Developers are already encountering zen 4 in computers and handhelds. The newer zen processors all offer IPC improvements and clock speed improvements over zen 2 which makes them perform even better at current games than the previous cpus without any developer intervention.

For instance in BG3 the ps5/xbox series and zen 2 processors are all greatly bottlenecked in the third act. But you put a 7700x or one of the newer amd chips and they get vastly better performance

View attachment 11126

You can see here that the zen processors continue to scale with clock speed and generations of chip. Also the 3d cache is huge here. The developer doesn't have to specifically code to take advantage of any of this. Now it is obvious that there are features in the newer zen chips that if developers did code around would see even higher gains. But yes if MS put out a refresh with a zen 4 at 5ghz it would be much faster than what is in the ps5/pro and sereis consoles. This game and other games would either no longer be cpu limited or would become cpu limited at higher frame rates

The same thing with the graphics portion. If you are looking at a radeon 7600xt and compare it with a 7900xt even in the same game you will get significant increases in performance.

I am not sure why you think its impractical. You can go buy handhelds with zen 4 in it today. It will only get more practical as the year goes on and into next year.

Let me ask you. If having multiple hardware configurations causes issues with development how does a company ever release a game on pc ? How did developers release games on ps4/xbox one/ ps4 pro/ xbox one x/ switch / xbox series s / ps5 / xbox series x and pc all at the same time ?

From the dawn of time developers have been targeting huge amounts of platforms all at the same time. What to see some crazy shit ? Go back and read up on the dawn of graphics cards. That was some crazy shit. Yet we still got games


I am calling a specific developer lazy based on their own tweets.

I also don't know how you can say well a high end pc is brute forcing better performance but if you took similar hardware and made a high end console it would no longer be able to brute force it ? How do you think the majority of ps5 pro games will get handeled ?

You should go read the history of Xbox and why Xbox was created. It was in large part because of issues faced by MSFT in developing an SDK and software suite for multiple hw configurations. Games dont simply scale on multiple hw configurations like some people imagine. There are issues with shader compilation on PCs and so many other problems that cant be listed here. You asked:

How did developers release games on ps4/xbox one/ ps4 pro/ xbox one x/ switch / xbox series s / ps5 / xbox series x and pc all at the same time ?

Its because PC game requirements are not as strict as on the consoles. You get better performance with higher end PCs. Series S has been a hit or miss for game development and since its a console devs are not allowed to ship with less stringent requirements like on PC. Otherwise some versions of games that end up on older hardware are developed by another studio while the main developer focuses on the current gen title. Its not them developing a game on one system and it simply operates on multiple hw configurations. This is a big misconception.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

S hasn't been much of a problem. It's more a forum warrior problem than a real life one. 99% of releases have had feature parity compared to X.

I'm not counting graphical differences as that's the point of the S: Same games, worse graphics for a cheaper entry price.

The S has lived up to that promise, which is why it is a majority of Series sales.

S stands for "Saved Xbox", btw.

 

[rntongo]

S hasn't been much of a problem. It's more a forum warrior problem than a real life one. 99% of releases have had feature parity compared to X.

I'm not counting graphical differences as that's the point of the S: Same games, worse graphics for a cheaper entry price.

The S has lived up to that promise, which is why it is a majority of Series sales.

S stands for "Saved Xbox", btw.

Devs have been complaining about it as soon as they got the devkits even before the consoles launched!

You can see here that the zen processors continue to scale with clock speed and generations of chip. Also the 3d cache is huge here. The developer doesn't have to specifically code to take advantage of any of this. Now it is obvious that there are features in the newer zen chips that if developers did code around would see even higher gains. But yes if MS put out a refresh with a zen 4 at 5ghz it would be much faster than what is in the ps5/pro and sereis consoles. This game and other games would either no longer be cpu limited or would become cpu limited at higher frame rates

The same thing with the graphics portion. If you are looking at a radeon 7600xt and compare it with a 7900xt even in the same game you will get significant increases in performance.

I am not sure why you think its impractical. You can go buy handhelds with zen 4 in it today. It will only get more practical as the year goes on and into next year.

Also in addition to my previous reply I would recommend you watch this recent video from DF, I think they present some good reasons why you wont be seeing a large CPU bump in consoles up until the end of the gen. Xbox cant simply put a Zen 3 or higher CPU in a midgen refresh with 24GB unified memory and games automatically scale from the Series X to the new box in a way that meets console requirements. They can get a good deal on faster CPUs and buy them in the millions but they need to look at how developers are going to use the hw.

 

[eastmen]

You should go read the history of Xbox and why Xbox was created. It was in large part because of issues faced by MSFT in developing an SDK and software suite for multiple hw configurations. Games dont simply scale on multiple hw configurations like some people imagine. There are issues with shader compilation on PCs and so many other problems that cant be listed here. You asked:

Its because PC game requirements are not as strict as on the consoles. You get better performance with higher end PCs. Series S has been a hit or miss for game development and since its a console devs are not allowed to ship with less stringent requirements like on PC. Otherwise some versions of games that end up on older hardware are developed by another studio while the main developer focuses on the current gen title. Its not them developing a game on one system and it simply operates on multiple hw configurations. This is a big misconception.

Awesome and that was over 20 years ago now. Times change you realize this correct?

I showed you proof with BG3 that the game scales with newer more powerful hardware and the developers didn't have to sit and program for each and every cpu configuration and gpu configuration as that would literally be impossible.

Series S has done a fantastic job at offering todays games on affordable hardware. When it comes to the consoles its obvious that the developers are able to focus on that specific hardware more so than on a pc which has literally millions of configurations available. But developers don't just make a game for a singular console. If we follow your logic who will focus development efforts on a ps5 pro that has sold 0 units vs the ps5 regular that has tens of millions of units in customers hands ?

 

[eastmen]

Devs have been complaining about it as soon as they got the devkits even before the consoles launched!


Also in addition to my previous reply I would recommend you watch this recent video from DF, I think they present some good reasons why you wont be seeing a large CPU bump in consoles up until the end of the gen. Xbox cant simply put a Zen 3 or higher CPU in a midgen refresh with 24GB unified memory and games automatically scale from the Series X to the new box in a way that meets console requirements. They can get a good deal on faster CPUs and buy them in the millions but they need to look at how developers are going to use the hw.

I don't always agree with DF.

I literally showed you proof with BG3 that simply by going from zen 2 to zen 4 you get a performance uplift in cpu limited games

here let me do that again for you



as a matter of fact the biggest gain would be going to a new zen and 3d cache. So a xbox with zen 4 or 5 would instantly see performance increases in any cpu limited game.




Here is another one


Now since you like to talk about DF they claim the Ryzen 3600 is the closest thing to the cpu inside of the xbox and ps5. You can see here it gets 75.6/91.9/145.7 the 3950x which is a moster 16/32 core/thread is only doing 79.5/96.8/150.4

The 7700x is getting 102.2/122.7/229.5 If you look at the 7800x3d its even better.

And here again is cyber punk

So let me ask you a question. Do you think if sony or Ms put a zen 4 inside of their new console offerings on BG3 and FF the performance would not improve ? Because this is showing me that it will improve.

edit- I'd also like to add again that MS itself is a large developer and can have its own games optimized for the new hardware. There is nothing stopping MS from targeting an xbox with zen 4/5 and rdna4 and more ram. They now control some extremely valuable IP. Like I keep saying if they were to put out a COD that just took advantage of the improvements that zen4/5 rdna 4 and more ram gave visually they would be able to sell through more consoles. There are gamers in which COD is the biggest game for them. They can also make modes exclusive. So if having a much more powerful cpu allowed them to have game modes with 64 players vs 32 on other consoles they could have it as an exclusive console mode that players with a higher end cpu on pc can also take advantage of.

 

[rntongo]

I don't always agree with DF.

I literally showed you proof with BG3 that simply by going from zen 2 to zen 4 you get a performance uplift in cpu limited games

here let me do that again for you

View attachment 11131

as a matter of fact the biggest gain would be going to a new zen and 3d cache. So a xbox with zen 4 or 5 would instantly see performance increases in any cpu limited game.




Here is another one
View attachment 11132

Now since you like to talk about DF they claim the Ryzen 3600 is the closest thing to the cpu inside of the xbox and ps5. You can see here it gets 75.6/91.9/145.7 the 3950x which is a moster 16/32 core/thread is only doing 79.5/96.8/150.4

The 7700x is getting 102.2/122.7/229.5 If you look at the 7800x3d its even better.

And here again is cyber punk View attachment 11135

So let me ask you a question. Do you think if sony or Ms put a zen 4 inside of their new console offerings on BG3 and FF the performance would not improve ? Because this is showing me that it will improve.

Again, you're looking at a few benchmarks which dont capture the whole user experience as well as the work needed to ensure the extra silicon is properly utilized on consoles. Again I would recommend listening to the DF video for example as well as listening to what developers are leaking to reporters. Sony and MSFT design the consoles around feedback from developers. So you're not considering that these PC games have other issues which would not be acceptable on consoles despite the more powerful individual parts.

So let me ask you a question. Do you think if sony or Ms put a zen 4 inside of their new console offerings on BG3 and FF the performance would not improve ? Because this is showing me that it will improve.

To answer your question, again you're looking at fps benchmarks alone. So the answer is no, simply sticking a Zen 4 CPU into a midgen console for say the Xbox would not provide improvements that meet console requirements, it would require extra work to get the games running in a way that justifies the extra cost while ensuring development is seamless across the different hw configurations.

 

[eastmen]

Again, you're looking at a few benchmarks which dont capture the whole user experience as well as the work needed to ensure the extra silicon is properly utilized on consoles. Again I would recommend listening to the DF video for example as well as listening to what developers are leaking to reporters. Sony and MSFT design the consoles around feedback from developers. So you're not considering that these PC games have other issues which would not be acceptable on consoles despite the more powerful individual parts.

You keep going back to saying work is needed to use the extra silicon. however this isn't true. There isn't any work being done to make sure zen 1,2,3,4 are supported. That is all done in the compiler. I have listened to DF and I said I don't agree with them. I've worked in the hardware field and I see how devs are. Also lets not pretend that these games don't have issues on consoles because they do. Games all release buggy as hell.

To answer your question, again you're looking at fps benchmarks alone. So the answer is no, simply sticking a Zen 4 CPU into a midgen console for say the Xbox would not provide improvements that meet console requirements, it would require extra work to get the games running in a way that justifies the extra cost while ensuring development is seamless across the different hw configurations.

Well then we disagree and I presented you proof and yet you haven't presented any. I will be more willing to engage in further conversation if or when you do.

 

[rntongo]

You keep going back to saying work is needed to use the extra silicon. however this isn't true. There isn't any work being done to make sure zen 1,2,3,4 are supported. That is all done in the compiler. I have listened to DF and I said I don't agree with them. I've worked in the hardware field and I see how devs are. Also lets not pretend that these games don't have issues on consoles because they do. Games all release buggy as hell.

Well then we disagree and I presented you proof and yet you haven't presented any. I will be more willing to engage in further conversation if or when you do.

Yes lets agree to disagree for now

 

[BRiT]

The devs spent time optimizing the co-op from the get go on all console platforms!!

Absolutely not. BG3 is using DX11. That's not optimized for PC nor for Xbox Consoles. DX11 was released in 2009-10. DX12 was released in 2015-07. DX12.1 was released in 2018-10. DX12.2 was released in 2020-11. If they spent even a tiny amount of time optimizing they'd have been running on DX12 from the get go.

 

[eastmen]

Absolutely not. BG3 is using DX11. That's not optimized for PC nor for Xbox Consoles. DX11 was released in 2009-10. DX12 was released in 2015-07. DX12.1 was released in 2018-10. DX12.2 was released in 2020-11. If they spent even a tiny amount of time optimizing they'd have been running on DX12 from the get go.

even if someone wants to go with ram being the issue the minimum specs require 8 gigs of system ram and 4gigs of vram so a total of 12 gigs of ram. But on windows you are running fulll windows of course which typically needs 2-4 gigs of ram itself depending on the version of windows and thats without any other programs running in the backround like geforce experiance or discord and other things.

The devs absolutely could have taken some time to optimize for the series s.

But at the end of the day this is a different problem than having the most ram or the most powerful cpu or the most powerful gpu. Because you can never actually have to much. If you give devs 24gigs of ram and others give them 16 gigs of ram that extra ram will get used. If you give them a cpu that is 40% faster then you will end up with 40% faster frame rates in cpu limited scenes and the same with a gpu. But of course if the devs take time to include the new features you will see a higher performance jump

 

[iroboto]

Absolutely not. BG3 is using DX11. That's not optimized for PC nor for Xbox Consoles. DX11 was released in 2009-10. DX12 was released in 2015-07. DX12.1 was released in 2018-10. DX12.2 was released in 2020-11. If they spent even a tiny amount of time optimizing they'd have been running on DX12 from the get go.

the title shipped with Vulkan and DX11. I don’t think they still have yet to ship the DX12 variant on PC.

Vulkan because this game was to be on Google Stadia originally and DX11 for steam.

 

[eastmen]

the title shipped with Vulkan and DX11. I don’t think they still have yet to ship the DX12 variant on PC.

Vulkan because this game was to be on Google Stadia originally and DX11 for steam.

dx 12 games work on steam so I don't understand ?