Console Exclusives: Are you for or against them & why?

For 1st party exclusive, it isn't about for or against because it is never about that. I believe it's more about whether 1st party exclusive is necessary or not. Should the platform holder pours money to make 1st party games?
If it's about for or against 1st party, then I surely go for "for", because if I'm against that, the game would probably never be made. Also for the reasoning like others have mentioned that 1st party have the opportunity to tailor their game perfectly to the hardware. But something that fits well doesn't mean it's automatically a good game. It simply fits the hardware. Hopefully, you'll get something that fits perfectly while the game itself also amazing. I have no doubt that if those 3rd party AAA multiplatform games were made exclusively for PS4, they can look/play better than they currently are. The same if the game were made exclusively for X1, the game would probably look/play better.

Now, if the question is about 3rd party exclusive, then purely as a consumer, I'm against that because I'd rather have the opportunity to play all the available games without the need to buy multiple hardware. But at worst, I don't want to see a multiplatform franchise tied to a single platform, except if it's inevitable (technical reason, market reason, monetary issue, etc). I also don't mind timed exclusive at all.

As for PC only world without console, I don't think right now it's possible. If there is no console, the gaming population would just shrink. Sure some are going to play with PC, but console advantage mostly is the practicality and you know it just (mostly) works. PC, even without running any games, I encounter multiple crashes, sometimes driver problem, etc that stems from the fact that PC hardware have a lot of permutations (for the latest example, look at the deployment of Win10). So I don't think those console gamers would easily switch to the PC, especially right now with mobile kinda took the casual market. My guess is that if there's only PC, then the overall gaming population would shrink (or move to mobile), because of that, the budget would be smaller, and etc etc (basically the gaming situation would be worse than current condition).
 
pjbliverpool said:
But if they look as good (or better) than the best exclusives we've seen to date - which presumably aren't compromising and are extracting maximum performance from the PS4 for this point in it's lifecycle, then how can you claim that the multiplatform games are extracting any less?



Clearly this is just a clash of opinions so won't get us anywhere but graphically the Witcher 3 is light years ahead of TW2 IMO. As stated before though I'm playing with a couple of graphical mods, but they aren't particularly performance intensive so could conceivably have been included as standard in the console version.
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AC Unity perfomance is very bad on consoles on PS4 900p and sub 30 fps a little better on XB1 with a better framerate but far from a stable 30 fps and same resolution... What can do exclusives developer if they decide to go 900p with sub 30 fps? Project Cars wait to see a comparable game on PS4 like GT. Forza is 60 fps locked on XB1 not Project Cars.... Maybe if Battlefront was consoles exclusives it will run better on PS4 and XB1 or better one team for consoles version and one team for PC version...

Ghost Recon Wildland will probably be downgraded like many AAA Ubi soft release(Unity on console, Watchdogs, The Division...)
 
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chris1515 said:
AC Unity perfomance is very bad on consoles on PS4 900p and sub 30 fps a little better on XB1 with a better framerate but far from a stable 30 fps and same resolution... What can do exclusives developer if they decide to go 900p with sub 30 fps? Project Cars wait to see a comparable game on PS4 like GT. Forza is 60 fps locked on XB1 not Project Cars.... Maybe if Battlefront was consoles exclusives it will run better on PS4 and XB1 or better one team for consoles version and one team for PC version...

Ghost Recon Wildland will probably be downgraded like many AAA Ubi soft release(Unity on console, Watchdogs, The Division...)
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Compared to Far Cry 4, Ryse and shadow of mordor that does run great on AMD cards compared to Nvidia cards, BF4 and AC Unity do run very poorly indeed on AMD GPUs. Far Cry 4, Ryse and Shadow of mordor are most probably optimized for AMD cards so they do run great on consoles (2 of them at 1080p except Ryse 900p but it was a launch title before the CPU + GPU boost + better API and the game looks incredible on XB1 anyways).

Now how do BF4 and AC Unity run on consoles powered by AMD? Not great and at 900p or 720p too. Watchdogs was running at 900p and 792p and its framerate was far from being locked.

My point is it's not only about consoles exclusives. Maybe if BF4, AC unity and Watchogs were from the start developed for AMD cards as a target, or at least a little bit optimized for AMD hardware, like I suspect FC4, Ryse and Shadow of mordor were, maybe those games would run at 1080p on PS4 (at least) or perform better, or both.

But at least Ubisoft got their Nvidias cards for free. That's still something. :rolleyes:
 
I was very impressed by how poorly AC:Unity ran across the board. Game needed a few months of optimization before being shipped. Even the Nvidia advertised tessellation patch was never released.
 
"What we did" is nebulous enough to mean almost nothing. We know video games can be made for multiple platforms, it just takes lots of work (which they haven't done).
 
I would be worried if a third party that worked on an exclusive didn't think about porting the tech to other platforms. Did anyone really think Ryse isn't possible on Ps4 or PC when it launched on X1? Any game is possible on any platform given enough time and money (the problem is the last two, of course :p ). Didn't also Crytek say Crysis wasn't possible on last gen consoles and later on they ended up porting it to Ps3/X360?
 
Clukos said:
Any game is possible on any platform given enough time and money (the problem is the last two, of course :p ).
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I agree with you but there are people who would claim an exclusive game like the Order is better looking than any multi platform game precisely because it's exclusive and can thus take full advantage of the platform. That argument kind of loses steam when the developer says they developed the engine to be multi platform and they could achieve the same results on other platforms.

Didn't also Crytek say Crysis wasn't possible on last gen consoles and later on they ended up porting it to Ps3/X360?
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It really wasn't the same game (graphically).


Those graphics are literally a generation apart. Can you imagine the fall out if that graphical difference existed between the PS4 and XBO and people claimed they were equivalent? It's a shame people generally still think the last gen consoles were running something that was near equivalent to the PC version of Crysis.
 
pjbliverpool said:
the Order is better looking than any multi platform game precisely because it's exclusive
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Yes, that's correct. Nobody would give them money otherwise. After all the end result is a clear flop, sales-wise.
Now when they will continue independently we will find out very quickly what graphics is really possible on multiplatform for them.
Being exclusive not only means targeting one platform, but also means that there is support from platform-holder, monetary and technical.
 
pjbliverpool said:
I agree with you but there are people who would claim an exclusive game like the Order is better looking than any multi platform game precisely because it's exclusive and can thus take full advantage of the platform. That argument kind of loses steam when the developer says they developed the engine to be multi platform and they could achieve the same results on other platforms.



It really wasn't the same game (graphically).


Those graphics are literally a generation apart. Can you imagine the fall out if that graphical difference existed between the PS4 and XBO and people claimed they were equivalent? It's a shame people generally still think the last gen consoles were running something that was near equivalent to the PC version of Crysis.
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The Order was the best looking game when he was out. Now I think some Frosbite 3 games look like very good but I wait to see final console version. UC4, Horizon and Quantum Break looks very good too... Quantum Break is the best looking Xbox One game for me and it is exclusive...

After it depends what they do but for classical AAA games without exotic rendering, the question is more which configuration I need to do as good or better than the PS4 and for Xbox One if the title push the PS4 which compromise I need to do...
 
The 3D realtime industry is good and every studios has has some competent developer and in the MM presentation, Alex Evans talk about the DICE presentation saying their idea is better than mine.

Researcher, all developer, demo maker(Simon Brown said some of the idea comes from nvscene), old offline rendering idea all help the 3d real-time Industry to progress...
 
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The advantage of exclusivity is that a game could utilize 100% of the console by tailoring their game to the console. It doesn't mean the game will be the best tech wise and it doesn't mean it can't be done on another console. It just mean that if The Order need to be released for X1, it might not look as good as currently is (unless simply lowering the res is enough for The Order to run at the same pixel quality as on PS4). Or Destiny might look better if it doesn't need to achieve parity for both console. Or you might see more X1 games @1080p if it wasn't for those multiplatform games that need to utilize PS4 hardware.

If we take this to the extreme, imagine if a dev targeting 980 (Nvidia) as the max hardware vs 660 as the max. Both were made to run @1080p 60fps. The game with 980 as the max will definitely look a lot worse on 660. The game with 660 as the max will only look marginally better on 980. At both situation, at least the target hardware can experience the game at the intended visual fidelity.
Compare this to a game that need to accommodate both 980 and 660. The dev probably can't make a game with the same pixel quality as an 980 exclusive but at the same time the game can't run as smooth on 660 vs a 660 exclusive (or it can, but need to sacrifice more pixel quality).

For me, it isn't about A game vs B game. It is about A game can look better as an exclusive vs if the A game were multiplatform from the start.

Like a suit made to tailor vs a ready made suit. The tailored suit should fit better vs ready made suit. It doesn't mean the tailored suit design wise looks the best. But if the designer for the tailor made suit is on the same level as the designer for the ready made suit, then surely the tailor made suit would come out better simply because it fits better.
 
pjbliverpool said:
I agree with you but there are people who would claim an exclusive game like the Order is better looking than any multi platform game precisely because it's exclusive and can thus take full advantage of the platform. That argument kind of loses steam when the developer says they developed the engine to be multi platform and they could achieve the same results on other platforms.
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IMO this whole discussion is pretty moot this generation. Xbox One and PS4 are too similar in design and technology. A bit like two cars of the same model - just one with a slightly bigger engine and therefore higher performance. All other characteristics are identical. In the Xbox and PS4, we find the same setup, same CPU (small differences, but only small) - the biggest change is in the memory and in the GPU. It's very different to when we look back to last generation, or even the one before when we had two very different approaches in technology to achieve very different looking games. On the PS2 - something aimed to extract the maximum out of it and you probably get something like ZOE2 - lots of particles to use all that bandwidth, but art-direction to mask the low texture memory etc. On the Xbox back then, a game aimed to take full advantage would be more of the opposite - high res textures etc.

PS3 and X360 were perhaps closer, due to differences in GPU design, but the reason PS3 had some unique games was thanks to CELL.

PS4 and Xbox One.. well... a game designed to get every ounce of performance of the Xbox One would also benefit PS4 (and vice-versa too). So naturally, exclusive games will not be leaps and bounds better than multi platform games this gen.
 
Still you have differences in API, async compute, memory and other things. If anything due to the systems being similar the only thing we'll see this gen is third party games being almost the same with small, if any differences between platforms (because publishers prefer visual parity between platforms for many reasons). While exclusives will be better in each system. For example let's take X1, there's no third party game that comes close to Quantum Break or Tomb Raider visually at the same res/framerate and tech being pushed right now. I am sure we could name many Ps4 games as well (Driveclub, Uncharted 4, TO:1886 etc.).

A good comparison already mentioned in this thread is Forza 6 and PCars, both on X1, running on the same hardware. PCars: 900p at 45-ish framerate. Forza 6: 1080p60. Is it because of some black magic ritual that Turn10 is able to deliver that on the same hardware?
 
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Phil said:
IMO this whole discussion is pretty moot this generation. Xbox One and PS4 are too similar in design and technology. A bit like two cars of the same model - just one with a slightly bigger engine and therefore higher performance. All other characteristics are identical. In the Xbox and PS4, we find the same setup, same CPU (small differences, but only small) - the biggest change is in the memory and in the GPU. It's very different to when we look back to last generation, or even the one before when we had two very different approaches in technology to achieve very different looking games. On the PS2 - something aimed to extract the maximum out of it and you probably get something like ZOE2 - lots of particles to use all that bandwidth, but art-direction to mask the low texture memory etc. On the Xbox back then, a game aimed to take full advantage would be more of the opposite - high res textures etc.

PS3 and X360 were perhaps closer, due to differences in GPU design, but the reason PS3 had some unique games was thanks to CELL.

PS4 and Xbox One.. well... a game designed to get every ounce of performance of the Xbox One would also benefit PS4 (and vice-versa too). So naturally, exclusive games will not be leaps and bounds better than multi platform games this gen.
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I completely agree. Last generation and certainly the one previous could have displayed big differences between exclusives and multiplatform games but hardware is too close this generation for it to make an appreciable difference. Sure there are some minor architecture differences (I'm not talking about variations in unit numbers here) but the impact they have on the end games visuals are going to be pretty small, and easily lost amongst general talent or budget differences between studio's.

Clukos said:
Still you have differences in API, async compute, memory and other things. If anything due to the systems being similar the only thing we'll see this gen is third party games being almost the same with small, if any differences between platforms (because publishers prefer visual parity between platforms for many reasons). While exclusives will be better in each system. For example let's take X1, there's no third party game that comes close to Quantum Break or Tomb Raider visually at the same res/framerate and tech being pushed right now. I am sure we could name many Ps4 games as well (Driveclub, Uncharted 4, TO:1886 etc.).
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The problem here is that you're putting the graphical quality of games like The Order and Tomb Raider down to being able to target a single hardware platform and yet both have been developed with multiplatform in mind.

As for no multiplatform games coming close to the likes of Quantum Break and Tomb Raider - I completely disagree. Sticking with a vaguely similar genre, Ghost Recon Wildlands looks better than both in my humble opinion. Obviously we know nothing about frame rate yet though.
 
We know nothing about the game at all, it is a 2017 title and it's also being published by Ubisoft so i don't expect it to look anywhere near as good at release, much like Watch Dogs, Unity and The Division. About Tomb Raider and The Order whether or not the tech was developed with different platforms in mind it benefits the single platform (X1, Ps4) anyway because the developers are able to focus on single spec and provide higher performance/res than they would be able to if they were developing for three platforms at the same time.
 
Clukos,
I am not sure you are going to find a consensus everyone will agree with. No one can agree on anything. Because it's just too subjective and it's hard to quantify what looks nicer (better), is actually also technically more demanding. Subjectively, the biggest wow-factor I think you can achieve in a game is always down to art-direction, and not necessarily technical achievement. Take Uncharted 4: It's probably (technologically) speaking the highest bar shown so far across all consoles, maybe even in PC space too with all the dynamic interaction with just about all objects in the game and how they behave according to physical laws. Yet, a game like Tomb Raider with an incredible gritty art-direction and awesome setting can impress just as much, without all that technical prowess. Which is better? On a technical level, undoubtedly Uncharted 4, but does it matter? Lot of the things we see is faked anyway - it needs to be, because performance is limited, so shortcuts are researched and found all the time.

I think the difference you see between two games on the same platform, one being multiplatform, the other one less, has a lot more to do with overal team talent (or perhaps how organized they are to know exactly what they want to achieve, how to achieve it and to then actually achieve it and complete it with a damn near constistent framerate/experience). This generation, the difference between multiplatform and exclusive content is going to be a lot smaller. Teams like Naughty Dog might still end this generation with perhaps the most impressive tech, not because they do exclusive games, but because they are that talented and have an incredible set of tools and know-how. Yes, perhaps the exclusive path is helping them in that they don't have to think about "oh, it has to run with 40% less resources on that console), but at the same time, teams that do have to work around these problems are usually good enough to still get good enough results.

I think if anything - instead of bringing out two games; one at 900p, the other at 1080p - perhaps instead of focusing on that 900p version of the game, they could have made the other game (that being the 1080p) one also at 900p but use that left-over in performance for more exciting things than just resolution. But in the end, it's easier to find the best common denominator and maximize what you can on the quicker hardware (usually res and framerate obviously).
 
All i am saying, and that's not an opinion, is that if you take any game and focus on a single platform it will be better for that platform than if the game was developed for multiple platforms. And i have 99% of the games being published to back this up. The counter argument to this is that with enough people and money you can get the best out of any platform even if you develop for multiple platforms but the games being released right now don't take this approach because:
  • Visual parity is pleasing for publishers, you don't want disparity which almost every time hurts sales more than visual parity (the 900p-1080p case we've seen so many times this generation), Sony can brag about 1080p while Microsoft can say resolution is not all that important, everyone's happy
  • Cost of making AAA games increasing while the selling price remains the same, not justifiable to develop completely different builds for different platforms (PC, Ps4, X1)
  • Maybe, just maybe, publishers are not good samaritans that care only about the customer and going with the simpler approach (parity across platforms) yields more profit overall
 
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