Sony PlayStation cross-platform game strategy

I know nothing about storage, but i agree because if this simple math:
I'll explain it using Insomniac's GDC presentation for their PS4 exclusive Spider-Man port-mortem as a base reference - links to this presentation have been linked several times in this thread.

Insomniac's New York is built around a large number of environment 'tiles' that hold all of the assets for small chunks of New York that load in as you move around. Each tile is 20MB (megabytes) in size and the reason for is because of the way the game streams in data and 20MB/s (second) is about the slowest HDD somebody may put into a PS4. Therefore 20MB is the absolutely effective limit for how much detail (geometry, textures, audio, event scripts, shaders, AI etc) can be included in any single tile.

Let's say for example PS5, with its custom SSD, can stream 6GB/s then Insomniac can build a much denser and more detailed New York for PS5. With more bandwidth you can go nuts, instead of faux interiors to buildings and cars that fall apart when you get close, you could procedurally generate vastly more detailed interiors with more random assets and textures - even NPCs.

Now, imagine Sony want to port PS5's Spider-Man 2 to PC in 2022. The challenge is that although there are a lot of PCs, your game requires a PCs with an SSDs much faster than are common now. So what's your potential market? Or do you revisit the entire world and just dumb it down, reducing the detail to bring down demands on the steaming system?

It's not about the size of the entire game, but about the ability to reliably stream - without hitches - the world fast enough for anything the player does. I thoroughly recommend watching the Insomniac presentation, it'll explains the fundamentals of the problem. It's only the numbers that change. :yes:
 
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Now, imagine Sony want to port PS5's Spider-Man 2 to PC in 2022. The challenge is that although there are a lot of PCs, your game requires a PCs with an SSDs much faster than are common now. So what's your potential market? Or do you revisit the entire world and just dumb it down, reducing the detail to bring down demands on the streaming system?
Worst case, the game is designed around a PC version with a slower storage solution and just has some faster operation on PS5. That's the primary fear of the PS faithful, I guess.
 
Worst case, the game is designed around a PC version with a slower storage solution and just has some faster operation on PS5. That's the primary fear of the PS faithful, I guess.

Maybe. But then what bandwidth do you set as your max and why did Sony bother engineering a super-fast SSD solution at all? The only people who are likely to use it to maximum potential are Sony's own first-party studios, because they are not concerned with the hardware limitations of other platforms.

Which brings us full circle back to my position from pages back, which is that I don't see PS4's HZD release on PC as an indicator that Sony plan to release all, or even some, of their future PS5 first-party games on PC.
 
hich is that I don't see PS4's HZD release on PC as an indicator that Sony plan to release all, or even some, of their future PS5 first-party games on PC.

Sony wouldn't be limiting theirselfs to just one device i hope. Saying pc will not match the PS5's SSD performance is abit strange too, as im sure there will be solutions to this 'problem'. If there is any problem that is, we don't even know what kind of SSD performance we will get with the PS5, and how that will translate into their games.
 
Maybe. But then what bandwidth do you set as your max and why did Sony bother engineering a super-fast SSD solution at all? The only people who are likely to use it to maximum potential are Sony's own first-party studios, because they are not concerned with the hardware limitations of other platforms.

Which brings us full circle back to my position from pages back, which is that I don't see PS4's HZD release on PC as an indicator that Sony plan to release all, or even some, of their future PS5 first-party games on PC.
On mobile here so a bit of a lighter response. This thread moved fast while I was shovelling snow lol.

@Scott_Arm talked about the way game developers utilize loading grids. So that if you are in grid 5 (middle) it will load the 8 other grid squares around it. And then as you move it only loads the newer grids.

Because traversal speed is known, geometry of the GPU is known, bandwidth and capacity of memory is known; developers can work out the maximum amount of detail that they want at any time running at the fastest the camera will move.

With more GPU you can render more triangles per second. With more hard drive speed you can render higher resolution textures and more things per grid OR you can increase the speed of traversal even faster.
So linking back to spider man

or if you want super fast; forza horizon with even more detailed worlds while going 300 kmph
 
Because traversal speed is known, geometry of the GPU is known, bandwidth and capacity of memory is known; developers can work out the maximum amount of detail that they want at any time running at the fastest the camera will move.

Yes. Insomniac's presentation goes into detail about this, including the options for optimum tile arrangement given the gameplay options the player has.

You touch on GPU utilisation, which can't be ignored but is a very separate problem. You could have a 100Tf GPU but if you can't reliably stream your data in so the engine can build the game world. it will fall apart. The focus on this particular here was realising a highly-detailed, dense New York with a lot of verticality. They talked in depth about the evolvement of the engine and streaming tech from Sunset Overdrive.
 
Each tile is 20MB (megabytes) in size and the reason for is because of the way the game streams in data and 20MB/s (second) is about the slowest HDD somebody may put into a PS4. Therefore 20MB is the absolutely effective limit for how much detail (geometry, textures, audio, event scripts, shaders, AI etc) can be included in any single tile.
Makes sense, thanks. Also watched the presentation.
I see with such a fast and crowded game it's harder than i thought. Yep, curious of what this SSD thing will deliver...
 
Are you compelled to include some supposed claim that nobody said in multiple posts every day? Have you spoken to a doctor about this? :rolleyes:
I wasn't the one who postulated the inability of PS5 exclusive games to work on a PC environment because they are not powerful enough storage wise, (or won't even be for a while), this wasn't my argument. And I certainly didn't write whole counter arguments about it because I imagined it in my head.

Let's say for example PS5, with its custom SSD, can stream 6GB/s then Insomniac can build a much denser and more detailed New York for PS5. With more bandwidth you can go nuts, instead of faux interiors to buildings and cars that fall apart when you get close, you could procedurally generate vastly more detailed interiors with more random assets and textures - even NPCs.
You are still limited by the GPU and CPU horsepower, you can't put too many details on a single scene or the CPU will be bogged down, or the GPU geometry throughput will be your limiting factor. We see this in PC games, once I put LoD quality beyond a certain limit (way above the default value), everything grinds to a halt, you can try this with Crysis or ArmA.

Worst case, the game is designed around a PC version with a slower storage solution and just has some faster operation on PS5. That's the primary fear of the PS faithful, I guess.
Again, increasing the RAM requirement for the game is the standard solution on PC, for example, Battlefield games used to do that for every new version, increasing map sizes and details necessitated doubling the amount of RAM required for each new version.

When the PS4 and Xbox One came out, most games demanded an increased amount of VRAM for using Ultra textures, and even though the game didn't really need that amount, it was used to store an overprovision of textures to prevent streaming pop ins as a result of limited HDD streaming speeds, the practice is still used to this day, so it's not like the old PCs (devoid of SSDs) will be left to the dust.

In other words PCs will adapt, new games will either require a brand new NVMe drive for max details, or increase their RAM+VRAM requirements, or do both actually, and that's before mentioning going the extra mile of creating new versions of existing filesystems to adapt to SSDs more.
The only people who are likely to use it to maximum potential are Sony's own first-party studios, because they are not concerned with the hardware limitations of other platforms.
So Sony designed the whole system to use it only for a dozen or so exclusive titles? Sounds like a very expensive way of doing things. All developers will seek to exploit the new storage system, especially third party developers with huge ambitions and tendency to create massive open worlds, the problem facing PS5 exclusive games, will be the same one facing ambitious multi platform titles. So now will the argument shift to "PCs will not run ambitious multi platform titles because their storage solution is not fast enough?".

I don't think so, games will demand more RAM, demand NVMe, or a combination of both, such radical changes always happen on the PC space, new demanding games trim down old PCs all the time, and not just on a hardware basis, but also software, forcing a shift to new OS (Xbox exclusives forcing people to go with Windows 10/DX12) , forcing the shift to 64-bit OS (basically all advanced games), forcing the shift to a higher version of DX (leaving people with old and powerful GPUs in the dust), forcing people to upgrade CPUs and RAM (happens to all games in the start of a new console generation), in short, it comes with the territory on PC, and SSDs will be no different.
 
@DavidGraham It'll be interesting to see if the consoles support something like Nvidia's mesh shaders. It would definitely allow the consoles to take advantage of fast streaming (in theory). If the consoles end up with nvme and "mesh shaders" as a base feature, it's a pretty large change in the engines rendering "front-end," and a lot of pc users would have to upgrade to reach that feature set. It would be a lot different than last gen, where the consoles really weren't at the leading edge of technology.
 
a lot of pc users would have to upgrade to reach that feature set. It would be a lot different than last gen, where the consoles really weren't at the leading edge of technology.
I’ve often wondered on this exact point and I think I settled on: does it even matter?

if you set a baseline so high that everyone has to upgrade everything the likelihood is that for most casuals, they won’t. They’ve had a good run on old parts for over a decade without needing to upgrade. So either they put out the huge bucks or they don’t get to play. And if they want to play and not put out the money; consoles will easily be the cheapest method to obtain it.

So I almost think this is a win for both MS and Sony to push the bar as high as they did.

for developers most profits come from consoles anyway; so set the baseline of performance as the console. Let the PC players figure out what they need to run it. Everyone else can buy a console.
And this is why I don’t think exclusives on PC means doom for either. I love reading the response of hur hur- don’t need an xbox anymore, hur hur don’t need a PS5. But few people will actually feel that way once they see the price tag they are in for.
 
It would be a lot different than last gen, where the consoles really weren't at the leading edge of technology.
Yeah indeed, the time of PS3/X360 had the biggest impact on PC upgrade cycles, it forced a lot of people to upgrade CPUs to cope with the powerful new multi core console CPUs.

Upgrading the CPU on PC is the most difficult and cumbersome task ever, as it often involves changing the CPU, Motherboard and RAM, sometimes even the PSU, getting a new NVMe/SSD sounds like a child's play compared to that.
and a lot of pc users would have to upgrade to reach that feature set.
I think if next gen games relied heavily on ray tracing, a lot PC GPUs will have to replaced with DXR capable GPUs anyway, don't think developers will care enough to create two different rendering schemes for their games (one with RT and one without).

It'll be interesting to see if the consoles support something like Nvidia's mesh shaders
On AMD's side there is the Primitive Shaders, as I understand it, it's very similar but lacks some of the capabilities of Mesh Shaders, but perhaps AMD will upgrade it to accommodate DX12 Mesh Shader update.
 
I’ve often wondered on this exact point and I think I settled on: does it even matter?

if you set a baseline so high that everyone has to upgrade everything the likelihood is that for most casuals, you won’t. They’ve had a good run on old parts for over a decade without needing to upgrade. So either they put out the huge bucks or they don’t get to play. And if they want to play and not put out the money; consoles will easily be the cheapest method to obtain it.

So I almost think this is a win for both MS and Sony to push the bar as high as they did.

Well, I guess that comes back to the question of whether PC will get ps5 ports. If to port to pc they have to really make massive changes to the renderer because people are using older hardware, and people are not upgrading their pcs ... then do you bother with a pc port? I think Sony will probably just bring older titles to PC and it'll always 2-3 years behind their latest. PC gamers will probably upgrade in that timeframe. PC is still home to the most played games in the world and pretty much any meaningful version of competitive gaming.
 
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Well, I guess that comes back to the question of whether PC will get ps5 ports. If to port to pc they have to really make massive changes to the renderer because people are using older hardware, and people are not upgrading their pcs ... then do you bother with a pc port? I think Sony will probably just bring older titles to PC and it'll always 2-3 years behind their latest. PC gamers will probably upgrade in that timeframe. PC is still home to the most played games in the world and pretty much any meaningful version of competitive gaming.
If I were a developer I would push forward and not lower it for PC. You kill several birds with a single stone.
A) you are not held back and you can make something new
B) you don’t have to write additional renderers
C) piracy works because games run on every machine. Not going to be the case here. This is an additional forced capital cost to dissuade piraters. And natural gate here. You’d can’t just be a pirate. You gotta be a rich pirate lol

it would drive people to consoles or streaming. If the price point for that hardware is right. That makes things a lot easier for them; dealing with hackers and piracy and the lot. Less support issues.
D) resets the baseline of technology. Get rid of all that old hacky hokey pokey legacy support garbage and lets them start fresh.
 
The death of pc gaming, has been said many times, yet its still the biggest and still growing
This is only true of legacy games. If a new title releases in 2021, I guarantee there will be more console players than PC players. And if the ports are direct ports of consoles, IE, you need a mobo, cpu, gpu, and hard drive change. It's going to be a long time for the PC population to transition. I have a solid gaming PC, but it's pretty dated compared to what's coming. I'll need to toss everything and redo. And to best the XSX or PS5 it's going to be a costly GPU as well. CDN prices I'm marking around 599/699 max.
Here is an equivalent PC build:
AMD Ryzen 7 2700 Processor 8 Core/16 Thread reg $388.88 $198.88
ASRock B450M PRO4 Socket AM4 reg $139.99 $114.99*
ASUS Turbo GeForce RTX 2080 EVO 8GB 1740 MHz Boost 14000 MHz Memory reg $898.88 $848.88
Kingston A2000 1TB NVMe M.2 Read: 2200MB/s; Write: 2000MB/s Solid State Drive (SA2000M8/1000G) $199.99

I'll skip out on memory, since DDR4 is reusable and I have 24 GB of it, case, OS, Blu ray, audio and cooling.
sub total: $1363
People with an older PC get to pick up on memory too so slap on an additional 100 to get 16 GB of it.

By next year, this PC build won't be 1/2 price.
Yea. I'll take $699 any day.

It's not the death of PC gaming by any means;
as long as there are PCs, there will always be PC gaming.
But just because you have a PC doesn't mean you have to game on it.
 
I think it's mostly likely we'd see older ps4 titles, or ps4/ps5 crossgen titles. Think PS5 exclusives will stay exclusive for a number of years. Hell, The Last of Us would probably be an instant buy for me on PC. Wonder if that game will get a Last of Us Remastered Remastered for PS5. Lol.
 
I wasn't the one who postulated the inability of PS5 exclusive games to work on a PC environment because they are not powerful enough storage wise, (or won't even be for a while), this wasn't my argument. And I certainly didn't write whole counter arguments about it because I imagined it in my head.

Not storage, I/O. The sheer bandwidth to get data from disc into RAM and VRAM so the CPU and GPU can use it. Games like GTA V and the Witcher (and most dense open world games) take a long initial time to load and limit the speed with which you can move through the environment. Fast travel to somewhere far away and you get another load load time. You may have an octacore i9 or 28-core Xeon W with dual Geforce 2080TIs, but I/O (disc to DDR, DDR to GDDR, CPU to GPU, GPU to DDR) remains a series of I/O bottlenecks while you wait for data to get where it needs to be in the format it needs to be in.

You are still limited by the GPU and CPU horsepower, you can't put too many details on a single scene or the CPU will be bogged down, or the GPU geometry throughput will be your limiting factor.

Yes, I said that in this post. Ultimately every game's design is constrained by the sum of the total bottlenecks of what the system architecture can and cannot do. There are PC mods that let you zoom (fly) through open world games like GTA V and the Witcher 3 and these show how I/O contained PCs can be - even when not going near as fast as Spider-Man was seen travelling the densely-packed New York on the "slow" PS5 devkit.

You can move through GTA's world at high speed - at higher altitudes. Try doing it at ground level in Los Santos and expect your experience to similar to watching a Power Point of GTA V screen shots.

So Sony designed the whole system to use it only for a dozen or so exclusive titles? Sounds like a very expensive way of doing things. All developers will seek to exploit the new storage system, especially third party developers with huge ambitions and tendency to create massive open worlds, the problem facing PS5 exclusive games, will be the same one facing ambitious multi platform titles. So now will the argument shift to "PCs will not run ambitious multi platform titles because their storage solution is not fast enough?".

I imagine Sony developed their solid state technology to help benefit all developers and PS5 customers but realistically acknowledging that if their I/O system was faster than what available on other platforms, that third party developers creating multi-platform games would not be able to use it to it's fullest.

This is only true of legacy games. If a new title releases in 2021, I guarantee there will be more console players than PC players. And if the ports are direct ports of consoles, IE, you need a mobo, cpu, gpu, and hard drive change. It's going to be a long time for the PC population to transition. I have a solid gaming PC, but it's pretty dated compared to what's coming. I'll need to toss everything and redo. And to best the XSX or PS5 it's going to be a costly GPU as well. CDN prices I'm marking around 599/699 max.
Bingo.
 
Reading all this stuff it's cool that it sounds like consoles will have a genuine leg up on PC's for once due to their closed environment leveraging SSD's. Hope there's not some catch.
 
And you can compress geometry too

https://github.com/google/draco

This is a google open source geometry compression library

Draco is a library for compressing and decompressing 3D geometric meshes and point clouds. It is intended to improve the storage and transmission of 3D graphics.

Draco was designed and built for compression efficiency and speed. The code supports compressing points, connectivity information, texture coordinates, color information, normals, and any other generic attributes associated with geometry. With Draco, applications using 3D graphics can be significantly smaller without compromising visual fidelity. For users, this means apps can now be downloaded faster, 3D graphics in the browser can load quicker, and VR and AR scenes can now be transmitted with a fraction of the bandwidth and rendered quickly.

EDIT: ASICs are not the only option for uncompressing the data during streaming but lost a big fragment of GPU power or use GPU in SLI and one dedicated to decompression or have a Threadripper CPU is the only other option. And it is not a realistic option inside a console. Use integrated GPU for decompression is maybe a good option for example.
 
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