Economics of porting (RE: graphics power etc. )*spin-off*

[milk]

FIFA 18 doesn't run on Frostbite.

Interesting.

EDIT: I was an idiot and posted before reading. Its just the switch version that is not on frostbite. For a moment I thought the "next-gen" fork of the game had also ditched frostbite, but thats not the case. Well, all this probably means is switch is getting a port of the ps360 version, which I guess is not on frostbite.

 

[Goodtwin]

FIFA 18 doesn't run on Frostbite.

Not shocked in the slightest. I have made countless post regarding this very scenario. With sports games, it comes down to the path of least resistance. These publishers have been supporting the PS3/360 with their sports games as recently as last year. The game engines they use are ready to go. If it is easier to port a game using a 360/PS3 engine to Switch compared to the newer Frostbite engine, why not? There is absolutely nothing the Frostbite engine does for Fifa that drastically improves the experience. The truth is that just like fighting games, hardware advances aren't doing much to further the genre outside of prettier visuals. Sports games in general have hit a plateau, and more often than not, publishers start to intentionally gimp older versions to create the illusion that the newer hardware is offering advances. More often than not, late gen sports games that are missing features had these features a few years prior, they aren't new, they are being stripped and then refurbished for the new platforms.

No one that I can remember ever argued parity with the more powerful platforms. The argument has revolved around the idea that the Switch would be excluded because ports were "impossible". There will be compromises for multi plats that make their way to Switch, but that is a far cry from impossible that some have suggested. If COD WW2 shows up on Switch this year, probably the most popular game of the year, what ground do these people have to stand on really. Impossible? No, perhaps not economical is more accurate.

I'm happy to see developers maximize the potential for their games on Switch. If that means using 360/PS3 engines, great! I would rather see a product maximizing the potential of old tech rather than struggle with the newer tech. Seeing Tekken 4 running at 1080p 60fps on PS3 only to see its successor drop to 540p was pretty eye opening. Is resolution as important as we think? I don't know, obviously Namco didn't thing so when they significantly lowered the resolution for Tekken 4s successor.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Seeing Tekken 4 running at 1080p 60fps on PS3 only to see its successor drop to 540p was pretty eye opening. Is resolution as important as we think? I don't know, obviously Namco didn't thing so when they significantly lowered the resolution for Tekken 4s successor.

Tekken 4 and 5 were Playstation 2 games... There was a Tekken 5 Dark resurrection PSP port on PS3 with 1080P resolution, but that was with lower quality assets. Tekken 6 on PS3 was running at 576p though, but that was a first true Tekken for that generation.

 

[Goodtwin]

Tekken 4 and 5 were Playstation 2 games... There was a Tekken 5 Dark resurrection PSP port on PS3 with 1080P resolution, but that was with lower quality assets. Tekken 6 on PS3 was running at 576p though, but that was a first true Tekken for that generation.

My mistake, it was Tekken 5 that was ported to PS3. Regardless, it was still a 1080p game. It wasn't just a PSP port, the arcade version was a thing. It goes to show that resolution, although an easy metric used to compare games, simply isn't all that high on the priority list when it comes to your average gamer.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

My mistake, it was Tekken 5 that was ported to PS3. Regardless, it was still a 1080p game. It wasn't just a PSP port, the arcade version was a thing. It goes to show that resolution, although an easy metric used to compare games, simply isn't all that high on the priority list when it comes to your average gamer.

The arcade board was basically running PS2 hardware though. That level of assets was the reason it was able to run at 1080P60 on PS3. It released as a cheap 10-20 Dollar game. 700MB download... Great game though and fantastic sharp image back in the day . I haven't played any Tekken too much after that one. Resolution wasn't the reason I didn't like Tekken 6 though haha.

 

[Recop]

It goes to show that resolution, although an easy metric used to compare games, simply isn't all that high on the priority list when it comes to your average gamer.

It's false... no AAA game would dare to ship with a resolution lower than 900p on PS4. They all know that resolution is a marketing argument and that's why the vast majority of PS4 games run at 1080p (especially if they run at 30fps).

Actually, although 900p is still fine, any resolution under 900p starts to become a pain (unless you play on a handheld game console). 720p has a real impact on graphics and gameplay.

Also, i never said that Tekken 7 was impossible on Switch.

 

[Goodtwin]

It's false... no AAA game would dare to ship with a resolution lower than 900p on PS4.

I disagree, and do not believe your average gamer will fire up a game and be able to tell what resolution a game is rendering at. If they can look at them side by side, sure, or even flipping back and forth on a PC. It would be easy to think a 900p game with some heavy FXAA was a lower resolution than the same game at 720p with MSAA. There are around 30 million Xbox One users who chose that console despite the fact that the majority of its games render at lower resolutions compared to PS4.

720p has a real impact on graphics and gameplay.

Graphics is fair, gameplay? Not so much. I suppose there are some games like competitive shooters where shooting distant targets benefits from the increased resolution, but most games play exactly the same regardless if its 720p or 1080p. Not saying that I too wouldn't always prefer higher resolutions, but I do not see it as a deal breaker for most people.

 

[Recop]

There are around 30 million Xbox One users who chose that console despite the fact that the majority of its games render at lower resolutions compared to PS4.

And around the double chose a PS4...

 

[Deleted member 11852]

And around the double chose a PS4...

Because it had higher performance or because it was cheaper?

 

[AzBat]

Because it had higher performance or because it was cheaper?

Or they still thought Xbox One required it to be always online. Just found a user on Reddit this past week that still didn't know. Said he jumped ship from Xbox 360 to PC because Microsoft announced that Xbox One required an always online Internet connection. That's almost 4 years later!!

Tommy McClain

 

[Goodtwin]

And around the double chose a PS4...

I don't see how this supports your claim that anything less than 900p is completely unacceptable to your average gamer. If the majority of gamers shared your sentiment that resolution holds so much weight, wouldn't nearly all gamers have purchased a PS4? A two to one sold isn't exactly an overwhelming disparity. I am of the opinion that most gamers believe a game must be 1080p because their TV is 1080p, and have no clue what internal rendering resolution is.

Sony has had plenty of positives compared to the Xbox One. It was cheaper and has had a lot more exclusives. I believe it fair to assume that this was the rationale for many people choosing the PS4 and not the X1.

 

[Goodtwin]

Interesting.

EDIT: I was an idiot and posted before reading. Its just the switch version that is not on frostbite. For a moment I thought the "next-gen" fork of the game had also ditched frostbite, but thats not the case. Well, all this probably means is switch is getting a port of the ps360 version, which I guess is not on frostbite.

Yep, but what can we really take away from this? To me its obvious, its easier to port Fifa 18 to Switch using the PS3/360 engine rather than Frostbite. EA has been very cautious approaching Switch support, and porting their Frostbite engine to Switch was probably off the table when they decided that support would be very limited at launch. Basically EA is saying prove your platform credible in the market before we make a more substantial investment. The least expensive way to get Fifa onto Switch.

For Fifa, you have to ask yourself what does the Frostbite engine really bring that the previous engine didn't that really changes the experience. Even if there are missing modes in the Switch build, are they really tied to the engine? Sometimes missing features are just that, missing, and not tied to the tech powering the game at all.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

It's false... no AAA game would dare to ship with a resolution lower than 900p on PS4. They all know that resolution is a marketing argument and that's why the vast majority of PS4 games run at 1080p (especially if they run at 30fps).

Actually, although 900p is still fine, any resolution under 900p starts to become a pain (unless you play on a handheld game console). 720p has a real impact on graphics and gameplay.

Also, i never said that Tekken 7 was impossible on Switch.

I still play all games on my TV at 720p. And it's fine. I have a choice since it's a HTPC, 1080p with less graphical IQ settings or 720p with more graphical IQ settings. I'd much rather have 720p at higher than console IQ settings than 1080p with console or lower IQ settings.

The resolution increase is almost unnoticeable (in my living room at living room viewing distance) while the increase in IQ settings is usually very noticeable.

Resolution makes for a good marketing point, but often doesn't affect things significantly for most people in the living room.

Conversely at my desktop I play games at where from 1500p to 2160p.

Regards,
SB

 

[Rootax]

Yep, but what can we really take away from this? To me its obvious, its easier to port Fifa 18 to Switch using the PS3/360 engine rather than Frostbite. EA has been very cautious approaching Switch support, and porting their Frostbite engine to Switch was probably off the table when they decided that support would be very limited at launch. Basically EA is saying prove your platform credible in the market before we make a more substantial investment. The least expensive way to get Fifa onto Switch.

For Fifa, you have to ask yourself what does the Frostbite engine really bring that the previous engine didn't that really changes the experience. Even if there are missing modes in the Switch build, are they really tied to the engine? Sometimes missing features are just that, missing, and not tied to the tech powering the game at all.

Well, visuals are a big part of the experience... Inferior hardware, they're not wasting time porting a modern engine to it, they're right IMO. Even if they used Frostbite, with all the downgrades needed from ps4/one, I guess it was not worth it. I'm even surprise they're releasing fifa 18 at all...

 

[Rodéric]

Porting a PC game/engine to anything less powerful is a pain because
1/Good programmers are rare, you can hardly have a staff made solely of them, and a couple average ones will spiral the codebase to spaghetti and inheritance horror
2/Object Oriented is such a bad idea it could only originate from California (-Dijkstra)
3/The x86-64 is very good at running bad code, which leads to bad code everywhere because it runs smoothly anyway...
And that's about it, but I'm sure you can find other reasons, scaling down GPU programs and assets shouldn't be one, the engine I designed 15 years ago could scale up/down easily and without much efforts, that said I have NEVER seen any engine capable of that in ANY game company I ever worked for this last 15 years... (Which is telling about quality/effort of games companies)

 

[Entropy]

Well, visuals are a big part of the experience... Inferior hardware, they're not wasting time porting a modern engine to it, they're right IMO. Even if they used Frostbite, with all the downgrades needed from ps4/one, I guess it was not worth it. I'm even surprise they're releasing fifa 18 at all...

Frostbite was ported to mobile three years ago. There is no engine/hardware capabilities issue.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Frostbite was ported to mobile three years ago. There is no engine/hardware capabilities issue.

If this was true, it would be silly for EA Sports to make the "same game" using two different engines instead of just downscaling the assets from the big versions.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Frostbite was ported to mobile three years ago. There is no engine/hardware capabilities issue.

So your saying EA ported the PS360 engine to Switch just for FIFA18 when they could have used their already existing port of Frostbite to run the PS4 version? Why did they do this?

 

[Goodtwin]

Frostbite was ported to mobile three years ago. There is no engine/hardware capabilities issue.

I remember hearing that quote from in interview as well, but I have a feeling they did not follow through with it. I agree with others that if Frostbite scaled down to mobile tech with good results it should have been the easier port. Fifa is a game played zoomed out, so the newest versions really only showcase the improvements during cut-scenes. If the Switch build renders at 1080p and has a solid framerate, it will likely hold its own against the PS4/X1 builds during gameplay. Its just not a game that really pushes the PS4/X1, and the 360/PS3 builds already looked great. It just comes down to if Switch owners want to play Fifa on their Switch or not.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

It's just that Frostbite 3 engine is already running on PS360, so it should not be too hard in general to make the engine run on Switch. Perhaps the Switch port was just so low priority at the time it was decided that even that little extra work was not seen as a worthy thing to do. It's also possible that Frostbite wouldn't really offer all that much for the Switch version.