How do "lead platforms" work?

[Below2D]

I'd like to preface this by stating that I know what a lead platform is (at least I think). I just don't quite understand the logic and never actually heard a developer use the term.

It's generally understood as the main platform on which a specific game is developed, effectively making other versions "ports" from the lead platform. For example, it's often said that since PS5 has a much larger market share, it is the primary lead platform for most games. Thus it receives the most attention and the early development builds are mainly tested on it, making it more mature and proven by the end of the development cycle. Sometimes, this ostensibly explains the disparity and level of polish between the different consoles/PC.

My question is, how does that stuff even work? When do they start testing the other platforms during the development? Do they finalize the game on PS5 and then rewrite everything to make it run on Xbox or PC? Do different teams work on different builds simultaneously from the start? Also, wouldn't it just be easier to have PC as the lead platform most of the time since pretty much everyone knows how it works and also shares a lot of similarities with the Xbox? I understand that almost everything is built on PCs. Assets, models, coding, etc, if such is the case, wouldn't it make sense to run everything on it first? Or can they use development kits for that? Or maybe what they build early on simply isn't made to run on Windows PCs and as a result, cannot be tested on it since they would have been made specifically for a console like the PS5 with a different environment and APIs. Therefore, you simply cannot just "make it work" on a PC even though everything was done on PCs.

I know it's a loaded question and not 100% clear but I'm not familiar with game development and the whole process of multiplatform development sounds nebulous to me.

Thank you in advance for your insight.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Generally speaking, you need to get the game up and running, systems designed, basic renderer features, etc.

For the vast majority of developers you do this initial work on one platform as the key is just to get things to work at first. Once things work you can migrate them to other platforms. Depending on developer this could happen relatively soon after something is working or it could be held off until most/all systems are in place.

This means the primary development platform, the one where all the implementation, prototyping, etc. is happening on, determines how and what gets implemented/included in the game/engine. It'll get earlier optimization as that's just part of getting it all working and prototyped. So, if there are differences between platform X, Y and Z and platform X is the primary development platform, then any hardware differences will favor platform X.

Or to put it simply if some technique works great on X but not Y or Z, it'll likely get implemented and then they'll try to make it work on Y or Z. If something works great on Y or Z but not on X, it's unlikely that it'll be implemented since everything is first made to work on X before it's then made to work on Y or Z. So, it could happen that something implemented on X just happens to work better on Y or Z, but there's no guarantee that once something has been implemented on X that it'll work just as well or better on Y or Z.

Now, that doesn't mean a developer can't attempt to make use of technical features of Platform Y or Z that aren't supported on Platform X, but those will vary from developer to developer depending on time allocated to development, availability of engineers with specific and intimate knowledge of platforms Y or Z, release deadlines, etc.

No developer wants to release a game that isn't as optimized on platforms Y or Z as it is on platform X. But sometimes they don't have a choice. They may be more familiar with platform X and don't have luxury of time to get as familiar with platform Y or Z and can't afford to hire additional engineers specifically for deep optimizations for those platforms. Even if they are as technically familiar and experienced with those other platforms, they may not have the necessary time in order to leverage platform Y or Z as much as they could platform X (due to it being the platform where everything is first implemented and made to work).

Given enough time and budget all platforms could be optimized equally. But you could say the same things about technical performance. Given enough time all games would release with no technical issues. Not all developers have the luxury of time to do one, much less both of those.

With development time and budgets greatly expanding for the current generation fewer and fewer developers have the luxury of time to release a title with few if any technical issues much less ensuring that all platforms are relatively equally optimized for.

Regards,
SB

 

[iroboto]

I'd like to preface this by stating that I know what a lead platform is (at least I think). I just don't quite understand the logic and never actually heard a developer use the term.

It's generally understood as the main platform on which a specific game is developed, effectively making other versions "ports" from the lead platform. For example, it's often said that since PS5 has a much larger market share, it is the primary lead platform for most games. Thus it receives the most attention and the early development builds are mainly tested on it, making it more mature and proven by the end of the development cycle. Sometimes, this ostensibly explains the disparity and level of polish between the different consoles/PC.

My question is, how does that stuff even work? When do they start testing the other platforms during the development? Do they finalize the game on PS5 and then rewrite everything to make it run on Xbox or PC? Do different teams work on different builds simultaneously from the start? Also, wouldn't it just be easier to have PC as the lead platform most of the time since pretty much everyone knows how it works and also shares a lot of similarities with the Xbox? I understand that almost everything is built on PCs. Assets, models, coding, etc, if such is the case, wouldn't it make sense to run everything on it first? Or can they use development kits for that? Or maybe what they build early on simply isn't made to run on Windows PCs and as a result, cannot be tested on it since they would have been made specifically for a console like the PS5 with a different environment and APIs. Therefore, you simply cannot just "make it work" on a PC even though everything was done on PCs.

I know it's a loaded question and not 100% clear but I'm not familiar with game development and the whole process of multiplatform development sounds nebulous to me.

Thank you in advance for your insight.

Not my words, and doesn’t wholly touch on the topic but this developer touches on it indirectly:

https://x.com/ithreebit/status/1728270872115306979?s=46&t=9ipkEIzMT1JpOq5Evbpx2Q

There’s probably some parallel development at a few key points, but as we’ve seen it’s likely that PS gets its game done and in testing while they are building out the Xbox port. Perhaps the launch patch makes them “line up”.

Honestly I’d be curious to know more as well. With such a large user base as an advantage this is making sense to prioritize PS first almost entirely if Xbox isn’t getting you a fraction of the game sales.

 

[eastmen]

@Silent_Buddha has a great answer.

I will add that I think it was more important back in the day as say going from a ps1 to a saturn to a n64 required very different techniques to get the most out of each system. Today goinng from an xbox series to a ps5 isn't as big of a difference as then. zen2 + some form of rdna 2 to just a slightly diffperent zen2 and rdna 2 is a whole different beast vs the past

 

[Riddlewire]

Not nearly as well as steel platforms.



I'll see myself out.

 

[see colon]

@Silent_Buddha has a great answer.

I will add that I think it was more important back in the day as say going from a ps1 to a saturn to a n64 required very different techniques to get the most out of each system. Today goinng from an xbox series to a ps5 isn't as big of a difference as then. zen2 + some form of rdna 2 to just a slightly diffperent zen2 and rdna 2 is a whole different beast vs the past

Yeah there are some great examples from PS1/Saturn/N64 where you would see fairly large differences between versions, sometimes making 3 distinct versions that are all well made, and others that are not so much. The Castlevania SOTN port from PS1 to Saturn shows pretty well how to not take advantage of the hardware capabilities of Saturn, I think. A fairly good example of games that ended up pretty good even though they clearly had a lead platform are the Strike games from EA. Soviet Strike had a 3-4 month gap between the PS and Saturn release, and Nuclear Strike has 2 years between PS1 and N64. While there are differences between those versions, some for the better and worse, you can at least tell that the developers understood what needed to be done to ship a quality product on platforms that weren't the lead platform.

 

[Julian Scott]

I only have experience with this many many years ago!
I've done Saturn as lead, as I was more familiar with it than with PS1. Similarly with Genesis vs SNES.
In PS2 days we had PS2 as the lead platform I think because it was the most difficult to get working well. Conversion to XB was easier. Conversion to PC.. well we reluctantly did that at the end
I think similarly PS3 would be lead.
I imagine these days we'd be deciding which platform has the better working environment too. Or maybe even which one we could get the most or cheapest dev kits.

 

[dobwal]

I'd like to preface this by stating that I know what a lead platform is (at least I think). I just don't quite understand the logic and never actually heard a developer use the term.

It's generally understood as the main platform on which a specific game is developed, effectively making other versions "ports" from the lead platform. For example, it's often said that since PS5 has a much larger market share, it is the primary lead platform for most games. Thus it receives the most attention and the early development builds are mainly tested on it, making it more mature and proven by the end of the development cycle. Sometimes, this ostensibly explains the disparity and level of polish between the different consoles/PC.

My question is, how does that stuff even work? When do they start testing the other platforms during the development? Do they finalize the game on PS5 and then rewrite everything to make it run on Xbox or PC? Do different teams work on different builds simultaneously from the start? Also, wouldn't it just be easier to have PC as the lead platform most of the time since pretty much everyone knows how it works and also shares a lot of similarities with the Xbox? I understand that almost everything is built on PCs. Assets, models, coding, etc, if such is the case, wouldn't it make sense to run everything on it first? Or can they use development kits for that? Or maybe what they build early on simply isn't made to run on Windows PCs and as a result, cannot be tested on it since they would have been made specifically for a console like the PS5 with a different environment and APIs. Therefore, you simply cannot just "make it work" on a PC even though everything was done on PCs.

I know it's a loaded question and not 100% clear but I'm not familiar with game development and the whole process of multiplatform development sounds nebulous to me.

Thank you in advance for your insight.

IIRC most console games are coded on PCs then compiled to specific platforms so that they can run on those consoles' development kits where you can profile and optimize performance. Unless you have a big team, the lead platform usually goes first and other platforms are added later (thus less time in development) or the main developer concentrates on the lead platform and farms out the work on the other platforms to outside parties who work under the direction of the main developer.

Lead platforms get all the love as the priority is to get the performance and visuals as good as possible on that platform while the work on other platforms tends to be focused on getting the game to perform as well as the lead.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think similarly PS3 would be lead.

I remember reading PS3 build times were an order of magnitude (or two!) shorter than XB360 and so that was a major factor in leading PS3, among with having to babysit the SPEs and that design then working well for other platforms.

 

[Nesh]

I remember reading PS3 build times were an order of magnitude (or two!) shorter than XB360 and so that was a major factor in leading PS3, among with having to babysit the SPEs and that design then working well for other platforms.

What do you mean build times were shorter? What is defined as "build time"?

 

[function]

What do you mean build times were shorter? What is defined as "build time"?

You click something and a full build recompiles and links and packages an executable to run on a target platform.

Debugging, as far as I know, is typically managed in such a way that it related to builds.

A full build takes time even for my shitty UE "experiments", even though my C++ is limited in the extreme. I imagine a lot of time may be lost to builds in complex projects. A lot of time.

 

[Nesh]

You click something and a full build recompiles and links and packages an executable to run on a target platform.

Debugging, as far as I know, is typically managed in such a way that it related to builds.

A full build takes time even for my shitty UE "experiments", even though my C++ is limited in the extreme. I imagine a lot of time may be lost to builds in complex projects. A lot of time.

Interesting. I am surprised to hear that the PS3 was actually faster. How come? I thought it's weird architecture would actually make it slower and more problematic vs the more balanced 360

 

[Julian Scott]

Interesting. I am surprised to hear that the PS3 was actually faster. How come? I thought it's weird architecture would actually make it slower and more problematic vs the more balanced 360

This is more to do with the dev envoronment on the PC side of things than the complexities of the hardware. I didn't do PS3, so I can't be sure about the details, but this could just be down to things like having to include various large MS headers in the code on XB. PS SDK stuff is likely to be much lighter.
Also it could just be a difference in the the compilers one needed to use.
I've spent way too much of my career massaging big code bases to try to make things compile faster. A lot of it is user inexperience too. Maybe some common things people got wrong happened to be less bad with the PPC compiler?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

What do you mean build times were shorter? What is defined as "build time"?

That's how long it takes from pushing the 'go' button to having your WIP game start on the debug console connected to the dev PC to see how it runs. You can design something in UE and run it on the dev PC in editor, but then you need to push it to real hardware to see how it runs and if there are any other problems. While building, you can't really do anything else. It's a significant barrier to development and devs love a platform (or engine) with fast builds!

Interesting. I am surprised to hear that the PS3 was actually faster. How come?

The toolchain was just more efficient at that time. That was I think largely the part of a 2nd party, SN Systems, whom Sony then bought. I don't know what the current state it.