The Next Next Gen Thread o/\o - The Bear and Badger

GurtTractor

Yeah it pays to familiarise yourself with the sharpening filter available in both AMD and Nvidia's settings.

30FPS with mouse look is particularly awful, if you have to play at that framerate the more gentle input from an analogue stick works better.

Moot_Geeza

Are the next set of consoles likely to let you mess around with graphics settings a bit more? Is this already a thing with the Pro/X? I've seen it with a few games on the base consoles but not anywhere near the level I assume is offered on a PC.

[Deleted User]

Is the wider range of options on PC not reflecting the wider range of hardware? Consoles really shouldn’t need that.

I, for one, hated juggling the options when I occasionally played games on PC. It’s part of the reason I prefer console gaming.

afgavinstan

Yeah I'm happy with a shiny/speedy switch but nowt else.

Moot_Geeza

Agree, was just wondering if it's creeping in.

poprock

I think consoles have the ability to keep it largely automated. Your box knows what model/power it is and what TV it’s connected to. It can make most of the quality/speed decisions for itself.

mistercrayon

You could do that on a computer though - steam tells you the exact set up and games have defaults based on that. The tricky bit is personal preference - effects, Res, frame rate are of different importance to different people. For me I’d go lower res but for flashiness but the drives for Ps suggest people really care about that.

GooberTheHat

I think a speedy/shiny switch is probably the most you're going to get on next gen consoles.

Minkymu

MattyJ wrote:

I'm going day one this time. I've got the 4k TV, I can play all my existing games... I'm jumping in

Now the new consoles will defo take advantage of hlg hdr hdr10. And 120hz.

Not all 4k tvs can handle this. In fact only the new sony 48 inch oled and its lg twin can do this atm. Take into account peak brightness and to run the consoles as they should you need to drop a grand on a tv

b0r1s

Yeah but assuming you’re not just dropping the grand for gaming. HDR and great 4K source material looks amazing.

Bob

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-01-11-dont-expect-first-party-xbox-series-x-exclusives-for-a-couple-of-years

Can't decide if this is a great idea or utterly bonkers.

b0r1s

Well that kind of makes it easier come day one. Stick with my PC. See how the games perform and if they struggle get the X later. Means I can invest in PS5 from day one.

Diluted Dante

It seems like a messaging clusterfuck.

GooberTheHat

It's just Microsoft saying their in house games will be Microsoft platform exclusive, rather than Xbox SX exclusive isn't it? I don't really see a problem with that.

Raiziel

Looks like it’s just a PS5 for me this year then.

b0r1s

Doesn’t that hold them back? Same way Destiny, in scope, was held back by keeping it working on the previous gen consoles? Or am I reading it wrong and it’s saying they will work on SX and PC?

Diluted Dante

GooberTheHat wrote:

It's just Microsoft saying their in house games will be Microsoft platform exclusive, rather than Xbox SX exclusive isn't it? I don't really see a problem with that.

My understanding is its not going to be that there is an Xbox One disc and a Series X disc. There will be one disc, that you can put in either console and it will work.

Bob

It makes the series x sound like a souped bone though rather than a fresh new console no?

b0r1s

Yep that’s my worry. Games will look better but surely held back in scope and scale?

Minnesänger

Bob wrote:

It makes the series x sound like a souped bone though rather than a fresh new console no?

Yar - and seems especially bad when you consider the Xbone One S is reliably the worst performing console for most releases nowadays. The X is a great console by all accounts but you’re gonna end up with games that run shit on S, or games that are utterly compromised on X and Series X. Weird ass choice.

Paul the sparky

The games already scale between PC, X and OG Bone don't they? Why is adding another system at the top end of that scale, probably between PC and X, a problem?

GurtTractor

If they are stipulating that every new game also has to work on the previous gen then that's a bit of a shame, as I can definitely imagine some games being rather limited in potential complexity due to compatibility with the old hardware. Most of the time I guess the devs can scale stuff back, population density sliders in open world games for example. But I do wonder if this will put a damper on the ambitions of some devs in the short term, make them go for a safe easy project now and try that cool thing in a few years.

I can see this being popular with many people, but personally I would prefer to see devs really flex their capabilities with the new hardware and make experiences that weren't possible before. Maybe their idea is that some new games on the old gen will perform terribly, so pushing people towards buying a new box.

They could have just put a strong commitment to backwards interoperability, but still allow for the odd big exclusive. I was pretty excited for the next gen despite me not really planning on getting a console, because of the promise of new complex game worlds and ideas allowed by the new CPU silicon. But it seems like it might be a few years for anything dramatically different anyway now..

GurtTractor

Paul the sparky wrote:

The games already scale between PC, X and OG Bone don't they? Why is adding another system at the top end of that scale, probably between PC and X, a problem?

In terms of graphics scalability isn't much of a problem, they just raise or lower resolution and optimise other graphics settings until it's playable.

It's the vast difference in CPU horsepower that will chuck a spanner in the works, it's much harder or even impossible to get new complex large game worlds and the interactions within to fit into the available throughput of an older processor. At some point you have to cut so much back that it's not the same game anymore, it could affect the scope and complexity of games we see getting development for the next few years. In fact I wonder if this has taken some devs by surprise, and are now facing having to cut back on stuff to make it work reasonably on the old machines.

There's a big difference in the storage speed too, the new machines will make use of SSDs that are many times faster than the old HDDs, and from the sounds of it they'll be used to cache stuff and speed up loading. I've noticed some performance differences running some quite new games on PC between different SSDs and a HDD, faster storage allows devs to utilise it for streaming content in smoothly, so I wonder if that might also be something that won't be fully utilised for a few years.

EvilRedEye

I think the problem with this approach is you just need Sony to pop out some kind of Halo or BOTW-tier launch title that in some way wouldn't be possible on the current gen and Xbox will immediately look a bit bad in comparison. And I know it's easy to say 'pop out a great launch title' but Sony have solid first-party development and must have something in the bag for launch.

Bob

I can't see it making any sense from a business point of view either..

Presumably they'll reduce the price of the x at some point but say the series x drops at £399 at launch.

Hey guys here's a brand new console and here's some brand new games you can play on the console you already own!

Brilliant! Where do I sign? not.

Paul the sparky

BotW straddled two gens itself, and even then was still released on inferior hardware to the standard at the time. It's still an all time classic.

It's just feeling like the start of last gen, when people were happy with their PS360 and wondering what the next gen can bring to the table that couldn't be done on the current systems. That's where the infinite power of the clod stuff came in.

Is there anything out there being developed that definitely can't be done on current systems, or is it just a case of shinier with faster load times? Genuine question, I've got no idea what's planned for PS5 or the new Xbox.

Paul the sparky

Bob wrote:

I can't see it making any sense from a business point of view either..

Presumably they'll reduce the price of the x at some point but say the series x drops at £399 at launch.

Hey guys here's a brand new console and here's some brand new games you can play on the console you already own!

Brilliant! Where do I sign? not.

Did you not buy a PS4 Pro?

Bob

Good example.

Obvs there's going to be a lot of stuff ported to PS5 and Series X anyway..

Minnesänger

GurtTractor wrote:

Paul the sparky wrote:

The games already scale between PC, X and OG Bone don't they? Why is adding another system at the top end of that scale, probably between PC and X, a problem?

In terms of graphics scalability isn't much of a problem, they just raise or lower resolution and optimise other graphics settings until it's playable.

It's the vast difference in CPU horsepower that will chuck a spanner in the works, it's much harder or even impossible to get new complex large game worlds and the interactions within to fit into the available throughput of an older processor. At some point you have to cut so much back that it's not the same game anymore, it could affect the scope and complexity of games we see getting development for the next few years. In fact I wonder if this has taken some devs by surprise, and are now facing having to cut back on stuff to make it work reasonably on the old machines.

There's a big difference in the storage speed too, the new machines will make use of SSDs that are many times faster than the old HDDs, and from the sounds of it they'll be used to cache stuff and speed up loading. I've noticed some performance differences running some quite new games on PC between different SSDs and a HDD, faster storage allows devs to utilise it for streaming content in smoothly, so I wonder if that might also be something that won't be fully utilised for a few years.

Yup, this is it.

If you watch the Insomniac (pre-buyout) GDC talk about Spider-Man you’ll see every issue was to do with memory / CPU bandwidth. It’s a big thing and any game that comes out today will be hamstrung by that. The entire development pipeline on the tech side becomes about how to manage that.

b0r1s

I would also assume things like improved AI will have to be dumbed down.

This seems like a bit of a shoot in the foot from MS. Which they seem to like to do with console launches (I’m looking at you always on internet and wavy wavy Kinect). It’s like they have this seriously impressive tech then want to hand the keys back to Song, who if rumours are to be believed, are behind quite a bit power wise.

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