Current Generation Games Analysis Technical Discussion [2023] [XBSX|S, PS5, PC]

[GuardHei]

Until the vast majority of console gamers are willing to pay for performance beyond the $500 price point... console gamers just need to accept the realities of what these systems can deliver within their price point.

I hate to be that guy, but if want more performance and higher IQ settings, you know the deal? PC...



That we can agree on.

Think the game's only exclusive on PS5 for 6 months?
Although I don't have high hope on SE's PC port...

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Think the game's only exclusive on PS5 for 6 months?
Although I don't have high hope on SE's PC port...

There's a big difference the base engine (FFXIV) for this game has been working very well for many years now with periodic updates to implement newer graphics features.

Basically the team have been working with some version of this engine on PC since 2013. The current version of the engine is, of course, much more advanced than it was back in 2013.

Regards,
SB

 

[GuardHei]

There's a big difference the base engine (FFXIV) for this game has been working very well for many years now with periodic updates to implement newer graphics features.

Basically the team have been working with some version of this engine on PC since 2013. The current version of the engine is, of course, much more advanced than it was back in 2013.

Regards,
SB

Well FF7re is made by unreal and that doesn’t make it a good pc port. Don’t think the engine itself is a problem

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Well FF7re is made by unreal and that doesn’t make it a good pc port. Don’t think the engine itself is a problem

I'm talking about the development team. They've been releasing on PC since 2013 with a well performing product on PC. It's an MMORPG so they can't afford to have a game that runs like ass right out of the gate every time there's a large update to the engine that accompanies a major expansion.

Regards,
SB

 

[Inuhanyou]

Think the game's only exclusive on PS5 for 6 months?
Although I don't have high hope on SE's PC port...

Yoshida has said the PC version will not be available in 6 months. That's just the window for exclusivity contract. It's gonna take longer to actually dev the PC port and put it out since it's being done in house. So maybe double that time?

As for the conversation, it's kind of annoying. The whole point of consoles is their limited spec. So the goal is to work within that to gain a favorable result. Consoles having limited power doesn't give devs an excuse to not optimize the game in line with performance. Infact the fact that the game has only one sku should give them no excuses for putting out a game that isn't optimized. The only real explanation is that they really wanted this game to be 30fps(atleast outside of battle) and didn't actually plan the game around a 60fps target until late in development when they decided to unlock the fps and try to lower some graphics after the fact which is different from going to 60 as a early design choice.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Yoshida has said the PC version will not be available in 6 months. That's just the window for exclusivity contract. It's gonna take longer to actually dev the PC port and put it out since it's being done in house. So maybe double that time?

As for the conversation, it's kind of annoying. The whole point of consoles is their limited spec. So the goal is to work within that to gain a favorable result. Consoles having limited power doesn't give devs an excuse to not optimize the game in line with performance. Infact the fact that the game has only one sku should give them no excuses for putting out a game that isn't optimized. The only real explanation is that they really wanted this game to be 30fps(atleast outside of battle) and didn't actually plan the game around a 60fps target until late in development when they decided to unlock the fps and try to lower some graphics after the fact which is different from going to 60 as a early design choice.

You can aim for 60 and still not necessarily achieve a locked or consistent 60. You have a performance budget for say X section of the game for A, B, C, etc. things (polygons, textures, animations, AI, etc.). Artists are always going to want to try to push that boundary as far as they can and you'll run into a situation where a combination of all of those "things" cause a sub 60 framerate due to the interaction of all of those "things" even if the each of those "things" is within the performance budget of that section of the game.

COD on PS3/X360 often had PS3 unable to stay at 60 FPS even though COD was only targeting 60 FPS with no 30 FPS option.

Sometimes, you have time to then optimize every section that runs into a performance deficit despite technically being within the budget. Sometimes you don't because the deadline for shipping is getting closer and you can't delay the game or can't add further delays to the game.

Having a target is just that a target. Either you play it conservatively with your graphics and artists to maintain that target, or you try to push it as close to the target as you can and you end up with performance not locked to your target (to a greater or lesser degree). And it's not just 60 FPS targets, 30 FPS targets also often suffer drops. Except if your target is 30 FPS, any drops are far worse than dropping from 60 if they are a similar scale. IE dropping from 30 to 25 is going to be more immediately noticeable to more people than dropping from 60 to 50 (still noticeable to some people, but others will never notice unless they see a frametime graph).

Regards,
SB

 

[Karamazov]

i think they target 30fps like last gen, the only difference is with the new consoles having VRR abilities, most of devs propose an unlocked framerate for people with capable TVs.

 

[Inuhanyou]

You can aim for 60 and still not necessarily achieve a locked or consistent 60. You have a performance budget for say X section of the game for A, B, C, etc. things (polygons, textures, animations, AI, etc.). Artists are always going to want to try to push that boundary as far as they can and you'll run into a situation where a combination of all of those "things" cause a sub 60 framerate due to the interaction of all of those "things" even if the each of those "things" is within the performance budget of that section of the game.

COD on PS3/X360 often had PS3 unable to stay at 60 FPS even though COD was only targeting 60 FPS with no 30 FPS option.

Sometimes, you have time to then optimize every section that runs into a performance deficit despite technically being within the budget. Sometimes you don't because the deadline for shipping is getting closer and you can't delay the game or can't add further delays to the game.

Having a target is just that a target. Either you play it conservatively with your graphics and artists to maintain that target, or you try to push it as close to the target as you can and you end up with performance not locked to your target (to a greater or lesser degree). And it's not just 60 FPS targets, 30 FPS targets also often suffer drops. Except if your target is 30 FPS, any drops are far worse than dropping from 60 if they are a similar scale. IE dropping from 30 to 25 is going to be more immediately noticeable to more people than dropping from 60 to 50 (still noticeable to some people, but others will never notice unless they see a frametime graph).

Regards,
SB

This is all obvious of course, but that doesn't change the reality that it's on devs to deliver good performance for a product. That's just how every game should be. We can't blame the hw being too weak every time a game has fluctuating performance when plenty of games have solid performance when properly optimized

 

[see colon]

COD on PS3/X360 often had PS3 unable to stay at 60 FPS even though COD was only targeting 60 FPS with no 30 FPS option.

I know what you mean here, and it's mostly true, but COD3 on PS3 was 30FPS and 60 on 360. It's a historical anomaly.

 

[Seanspeed]

You can aim for 60 and still not necessarily achieve a locked or consistent 60.

True, but it's Square Enix and a mainline, big budget, next gen Final Fantasy RPG. I seriously doubt 60fps was any initial target.

 

[Inuhanyou]

True, but it's Square Enix and a mainline, big budget, next gen Final Fantasy RPG. I seriously doubt 60fps was any initial target.

It definitely wasn't.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

True, but it's Square Enix and a mainline, big budget, next gen Final Fantasy RPG. I seriously doubt 60fps was any initial target.

That might have some water if the developers behind FFXVI (the developers of FFXIV) had never targetted 60 FPS, but outside of PS3, they've only ever targeted 60 FPS on PS4 and PS5, albeit never a locked 60 FPS.

So it'd be weird if suddenly they changed their minds and were now not targetting 60 FPS. I suppose it could happen, but they ditched 30 FPS as soon as they could (everything on PS4 and PS5). And even on PS3 they allowed the framerate to go higher than 30 FPS because they didn't want to limit it to 30 FPS, unfortunately the hardware was too weak to do better (FFXIV was originally a PC engine game which always targetted higher than 30 FPS that was ported to PS3).

In other words, their engine is built to target 60 FPS.

Regards,
SB

 

[Nesh]

That might have some water if the developers behind FFXVI (the developers of FFXIV) had never targetted 60 FPS, but outside of PS3, they've only ever targeted 60 FPS on PS4 and PS5, albeit never a locked 60 FPS.

So it'd be weird if suddenly they changed their minds and were now not targetting 60 FPS. I suppose it could happen, but they ditched 30 FPS as soon as they could (everything on PS4 and PS5). And even on PS3 they allowed the framerate to go higher than 30 FPS because they didn't want to limit it to 30 FPS, unfortunately the hardware was too weak to do better (FFXIV was originally a PC engine game which always targetted higher than 30 FPS that was ported to PS3).

In other words, their engine is built to target 60 FPS.

Regards,
SB

If the games you are making have traditionally been setting a lower visual bar, then you might target higher framerates.
It is a challenge for every developer to target that framerate as the visual standards they want to achieve are getting higher and higher.
They are no exception regardless what games they made before.

Going from this


To this is going to have a huge impact

 

[Shortbread]

SOB... now I want grapes.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

If the games you are making have traditionally been setting a lower visual bar, then you might target higher framerates.
It is a challenge for every developer to target that framerate as the visual standards they want to achieve are getting higher and higher.
They are no exception regardless what games they made before.

Going from this
View attachment 9155

To this is going to have a huge impact
View attachment 9156

So is going from PS4 to PS5. That's going to have a huge impact.

The point remains that this particular dev. team and this particular game director/producer does not believe in limiting to 30 FPS the games that they are in charge of creating.

They historically target 60 FPS (the PS3 version of their game was the only exception), but don't mind not hitting 60 FPS.

Regards,
SB

 

[Seanspeed]

That might have some water if the developers behind FFXVI (the developers of FFXIV) had never targetted 60 FPS, but outside of PS3, they've only ever targeted 60 FPS on PS4 and PS5, albeit never a locked 60 FPS.

FFXIV is an MMO(which I dont consider a real mainline title) that released on PS3. :/

It's not at all useful comparison point. The specific developer isn't really that important, either. There are expectations for proper mainline Final Fantasy games in terms of presentation and ambitions, regardless of which Square division tackles it.

 

[Nesh]

So is going from PS4 to PS5. That's going to have a huge impact.

The point remains that this particular dev. team and this particular game director/producer does not believe in limiting to 30 FPS the games that they are in charge of creating.

They historically target 60 FPS (the PS3 version of their game was the only exception), but don't mind not hitting 60 FPS.

Regards,
SB

But how does this change the fact that they are just as limited as every other developer by the capabilities of the hardware?
The 30fps mode is extremely polished and stable. To me it appears that, they shifted their focus to push as much detail as they could in the 30fps mode, polish that mode as perfectly as they could, and then make the adaptations for the performance mode. It is understandable if that didnt pun out as well as we would like. This, unlike the games they made before, pushes technically more on PS5 than FF14 did on PS4.
Considering the scope and the expectations they had to meet for FF16, they had a shift of focus from 60fps, to super polished 30fps.

 

[GuardHei]

Interesting to see Pikmin 4 is developed by unreal engine. I believe this is Nintendo’s first first-party work in unreal? (excluding Yoshi’s crafted world and the remake of link’s awakening since they are outsourced to third-parties)

 

[ILikeFeet]

Interesting to see Pikmin 4 is developed by unreal engine. I believe this is Nintendo’s first first-party work in unreal? (excluding Yoshi’s crafted world and the remake of link’s awakening since they are outsourced to third-parties)

Link's Awakening isn't UE4. it's constantly mentioned, even by Digitial Foundry, but it hasn't been proven anywhere. the game's trademarks/copyright doesn't mention it, nor does datamining show it

 

[GuardHei]

Interesting to see Pikmin 4 is developed by unreal engine. I believe this is Nintendo’s first first-party work in unreal? (excluding Yoshi’s crafted world and the remake of link’s awakening since they are outsourced to third-parties)

Ok from the current info, Pikmin 4 is actually outsourced to Eighting which is the team that ported Pikmin 3 deluxe to switch. So this explains why the game is made by unreal, since it is still third party-ish