Games Media is getting hands on access with the Xbox Series X

[Knottian]

@Staffy

Thanks a lot! I understand it much better now.

If that stuff is true that’s not a good look for Sony, especially since they haven’t been honest about it then. But it’s strange, didn’t DF hear nothing but praise from many developers?

They heard praise about the SDK, but there were no comments about the specs; it’s simply that development for some seems to be easier because of the fact that the SDK is an extension of PS4’s. Meanwhile, because of all the new additions like XVA, DX12U,DirectXR, and all the RDNA2’s new features for the Xbox, supposedly it’s been more difficult; think of it like upgrading a Blackberry to an 8530 from an 8330 (PS5) and then making the jump to an Android/iPhone (XSS/XSX) - in the latter situation, there are literally dozens of new capabilities that, at first glance, it’s intimidating because you don’t know what you can do nor do you “know what you don’t know”.

Also keep in mind that there are dozens of devs on the Twitterverse who’ve claimed the Series X is more than fine in response to that DF story, and Richard even notated his own statement by saying that ‘other developers have had nothing bad to say about the Series X’ essentially. Given the times, I wouldn’t be surprised if those praising PS5 whilst discussing the troubles for XSX were PS5-only developers… /slight s

Edit: Apologies for the massive digression there, basically SDK comments don’t equate to the capabilities of the hardware itself.

[Staffy]

@Knottian

…PS5) and then making the jump to an Android/iPhone (XSS/XSX) - in the latter situation, there are literally dozens of new capabilities that, at first glance, it’s intimidating because you don’t know what you can do nor do you “know what you don’t know”. Also keep in mind that there are dozens of devs on the Twitterverse who’ve claimed the Series X is more than fine in response to that DF story, and Richard even notated his own statement by saying that ‘other developers have had nothing bad to say about the Series X’ essentially. Given the times, I wouldn’t be surprised if those praising PS5 whilst discussing the troubles for XSX were PS5-only developers… /slight s Edit: Apologies for the massive digression there, basically SDK comments don’t equate to the capabilities of the hardware itself.

Got ya, we’ll just have to wait and see how it all pans out. But I have no doubts that Xbox will be fine. Once devs fully understand it, it’s going to be great. With some devs finding XSX a little more difficult, do you think that could be the reason we haven’t seen much actual XSX gameplay footage yet? Or isn’t that likely to be related?

[Knottian]

@Staffy

Got ya, we’ll just have to wait and see how it all pans out. But I have no doubts that Xbox will be fine. Once devs fully understand it, it’s going to be great. With some devs finding XSX a little more difficult, do you think that could be the reason we haven’t seen much actual XSX gameplay footage yet? Or isn’t that likely to be related?

Oh absolutely, Xbox is famous for assisting third-parties with development problems and now that DX12U bridges the gap by providing a single API/feature-set between PC and Xbox, it won’t take long and will benefit developers greatly. You also have to remember that by all accounts the PS5 dev kit has been matured more because it’s an extension of the current environment, and was originally set to launch last year (so devs have likely been tooling around longer). Any learning curve for the XSX will last a minimal amount of time and benefits will be apparent by both gamers and devs before long, I wager.

[No-1HoloLens-Fan]

@Knottian

Not sure on the validity of the claim, but in terms of the limitations of using boost speeds/SmartShift, those are absolutely valid. The moment Cerny said that both will be operating at the quoted boost number the majority of the time, I tuned out anything after that point because he had already convinced me that he was full of shit; any scenario where you have minimal leeway on TDP, you’re not going to be able to run boost for long and even more so, you cannot run both simultaneously unless they decided to put in 500w PSU with a massive liquid cooler (neither of which we have any evidence to suggest as their path).

Exactly!

If both can run at max boost for most of the time that gameplay won’t be affected then why need smartshift at all?

[No-1HoloLens-Fan]

@Shadowgasm

Oh definitely. The logic is there, I’m just not sure that Sony would give devs only three options. But again, I’m not an expert in how these things are done.

I am pretty sure that those ’ 3 profiles ’ are actually nothing but profiles for the early Dev kits to make early development possible.

Smartshift doesn’t work like this. There are no fixed profile at all. And power is shifted dynamically on load basis.

[BigTasso]

So are people claiming Geoff is a Sony stooge because he’s positive about Sony or did he actually say/do any of the things you’re accusing him of?

[No-1HoloLens-Fan]

@Knottian

Completely agreed. I love Alex, Thomas, and Richard from DF but John has been very vocal in the social media space about his bias, and frankly something I would consider a disqualification for that type of position. As you said, much like the overall anti-Xbox media bias, we have numerous occasions where he derides Xbox titles for no reason, then doesn’t apply the same to Sony titles when the same is exhibited and vice versa.

I haven’t seen any evidence from Sony, or AMD for that matter in their bevy of RDNA2 materials and press releases, that suggest PS5 is running full-fat RDNA2.0. If that’s determined to be the case after release, I think John and a whole slew of other media reps have some explaining/apologizing to do.

The most funny thing about DF is that they are basically the fooder factory for console wars.

There comparison video are a direct fuel to argue on console superiority and stuff.

But with all respect, they do there job unbiased.

[nrXic]

@Resist

The geometry engine uses primitive shaders, this is not the same thing as mesh shading.

I never said it was the same thing, I’m saying it’s very much like it. Sony’s own implemention of these features are sounding more developer friendly and we’re seeing it in the actual games shown. In the short term it’s not going to hurt the PS5.

What MS needs to do is to ensure that DX12U becomes adopted widely. DX11 is still extremely popular and DX12U has features that can change how things are done. Effeciencies like VRS, AI upscaling, sampler feedback, etc. significantly alter how developers deal with game performance.

But we may be one year or two years away from seeing games that truly take advantage of these features.

And so when it comes to the end result, whether PS5 supports RDNA2 is almost irrelevant. The games will probably be similarly developed for both machines, at least for the first couple years. The XSX has raw power going for it so they should end up looking better.

In 2023, the lack of full RDNA2 implementation will matter more when developers are looking to squeeze more out of both machines.

Whether the PS5 GPU supports INT4 for machine learning is irrelevant until there are Series X|S games that actually use it for AI upscaling. The “Geometry Engine” in the PS5 may not be as fully featured as mesh shaders but when we all saw Nanite on UE5, no one cared about the advantages of mesh shaders vs geometry shaders or vertex shaders.

When MS flexes games that use this tech (3rd parties will be late to the party), that’s when these differences matter.

I didn’t hide this under a summary because it all ties to the main thread: The proof is in the pudding.

With these hands on demonstrations we will finally know whether things like force feedback triggers and haptic feedback are worth it, whether VRS is truly “invisible” In regards to image degradation, whether the tempest acoustic engine is truly worth the added cost, whether 5-6 seconds shaved off of a loading screen is truly worth it, And whether current mesh shader implementation is actually that much better than using a vertex or a geometry shader for polygonal culling purposes.

Places like Digital Foundry talk about the tech but they never really compare theoretical numbers, they compare numbers that are measured in the end product.

[Swanlee]

@BigTasso

So are people claiming Geoff is a Sony stooge because he’s positive about Sony or did he actually say/do any of the things you’re accusing him of?

Geoff pretty much ran Sony’s PR for them after Sony’s last event. He ran their pre order schedule and sent details about launch lineup etc. He literally acted as a paid Sony employee.

[Biggzy]

@Swanlee

Geoff pretty much ran Sony’s PR for them after Sony’s last event. He ran their pre order schedule and sent details about launch lineup etc. He literally acted as a paid Sony employee.

Can I take a moment and say how weird that was lol. Sony has people on the payroll whose job it is to inform their customers and yet you had Geoff, who is not an employee of Sony, doing their PR lol. It was so bizarre.

[Swanlee]

@Biggzy

Can I take a moment and say how weird that was lol. Sony has people on the payroll whose job it is to inform their customers and yet you had Geoff, who is not an employee of Sony, doing their PR lol. It was so bizarre.

Yea not sure why this did not get more traction, it was really odd that he was filling in all the Sony PR details after their event when he otherwise had nothing to do with it.

Him and Jason Shreier defiantly get checks from Sony.

[Biggzy]

@Swanlee

Yea not sure why this did not get more traction, it was really odd that he was filling in all the Sony PR details after their event when he otherwise had nothing to do with it.

Him and Jason Shreier defiantly get checks from Sony.

I would refrain from saying they are being paid off. Instead you have to recognise that relationships matter in journalism and clearly Jason and Geoff have strong contacts within Sony and both Sony and the individuals in this case gain out of it.

The question I have is why Sony was funneling information to Geoff when they should have been doing it themselves. It’s not like Geoff has a bigger reach than Sony themselves. Like I said, it was weird.

[Resist]

@nrXic

…e to the party), that’s when these differences matter. I didn’t hide this under a summary because it all ties to the main thread: The proof is in the pudding. With these hands on demonstrations we will finally know whether things like force feedback triggers and haptic feedback are worth it, whether VRS is truly “invisible” In regards to image degradation, whether the tempest acoustic engine is truly worth the added cost, whether 5-6 seconds shaved off of a loading screen is truly worth it, And whether current mesh shader implementation is actually that much better than using a vertex or a geometry shader for polygonal culling purposes. Places like Digital Foundry talk about the tech but they never really compare theoretical numbers, they compare numbers that are measured in the end product.

You typed all that when I stated above games still better on Xbox One X despite devs liking the dev environment on PS4 more lol. And you neglect to mention the fact that most PS do not even use UE so the benefits of Nanite on Playstation are a non factor. and at the start of this gen games will look and run better on series x simply because the better specs on the console.

[Hammer24]

@Shadowgasm

Oh definitely. The logic is there, I’m just not sure that Sony would give devs only three options. But again, I’m not an expert in how these things are done.

The thing is, that a thermal envelope is not a fixed target. It depends on several external factors (from external temperature over dust in the vents etc.pp.). But that doesn’t work for devs - they need predictability how the code behaves, otherwise you’d get massive fluctuations in framerate and even more in frame times. So it makes a lot of sense to define profiles, that give the devs said predictability. Going by the list provided in the tweet:

• game profile
• cinematics profile (high GPU for added graphical bells and whistles, less CPU cause you need less AI etc)
• last profile is a bit of a headscratcher, I can’t see where a boost in 0.3GHz on the CPU would justify that massive GPU drop

[BlackheartVinyl]

@BigTasso

So are people claiming Geoff is a Sony stooge because he’s positive about Sony or did he actually say/do any of the things you’re accusing him of?

Nope. Geoff definitely prefers Sony, but so does most of the games media, he’s not extreme in it at all and I don’t get the hate-boner for him around here. Particularly the “Basic cable” thing, which just DIDN’T HAPPEN the way it’s talked like around here.

Although the Kojima stuff is a bit much.

[OneBadMutha]

Please don’t accuse media members of being paid off. These types of discussions are toxic and don’t have potential for meaningful discourse.

[OneBadMutha]

Additionally, I don’t think it’s fair to ask human beings to act like robots just because they’re in the media. They have opinions. Some of the names being discussed in this thread have been accused of biases on the other side in other places because people hold on to the opinions they don’t like. It’s true some have preferences and different perspectives. Let’s get over it. It doesn’t determine their character.

Human beings are also allowed to change their minds. Let Microsoft worry about that. Let’s have fun with the launch of exciting new console hardware instead.

[Biggzy]

Agreed.

To get the thread back on track, shouldn’t we be getting at least one embargo lifted today for the Series X?

[SRV]

Ooooh, I cannot wait to see the videos!

[Wom]

@Biggzy

Agreed.

To get the thread back on track, shouldn’t we be getting at least one embargo lifted today for the Series X?

Indeed. Wondering when the media starts sharing stuff. Ive seen enough pictures of the console and controllers tbh.