NEXT GEN Gaming Console, PS5 and Xbox Series X news/upates

For anyone that watched the PS5 stream and came away disappointed with the graphics, you might want to check out the 4K videos uploaded online. The stream was 1080p/30fps I think (plus a pretty low bitrate), and that didn't do the games shown any favors. Unfortunately, we're kinda getting to the point where it is hard to see differences on a regular stream. You might still be disappointed with what you see, but I personally came away pretty impressed with the PS5 showcase (some XSX games looked pretty good when shown previously as well). I do realize that many of the games shown were cross-gen and/or "indie" games (or at least from smaller developers), so it wasn't a perfect showcase of "next-gen" (both next-gen consoles kinda have this problem). Still, we had some pretty small developers producing some pretty great visuals, which is still super impressive to me.

Devs are probably still trying to figure out the best way to take advantage of the ray tracing hardware and SSD tech. PS4/XBO (and their upgraded variants) already were pretty good at pumping out HD resolutions, high-poly character models, high-resolution textures, super realistic (baked) lighting, etc. We'll get a bump in those areas with these new consoles, but maybe they'll be harder to notice for some (especially when not at 4K). RT/SSD/etc seem to have a big impact on how assets are created and leveraged in-game, so maybe it will take some time for devs to adapt their workflows for this tech. Right now, it seems like a lot of devs are taking their existing games/engines/workflows, pumping up the resolution and/or framerates, adding some ray-traced reflections here and there, and then calling it a day. Not to say this can't result in some good looking games (with no/short load times!), but I'm curious to see what we might see in 2nd and 3rd generation games. That UE5 demo from a few weeks ago might be a good indication of the types of new rendering techniques that could be leveraged on PS5/XSX. Even then, I'd expect/hope for some even bigger innovations. But we'll just have to wait and see.

For the console design...um it is what it is. I don't really care about designs too much to be honest, so even if I hated it, I don't think it would stop me from enjoying the system. I guess I'm more interested in figuring out how I can fit these consoles around my TV since they both seem pretty big and shaped somewhat differently from traditional consoles (more so PS5 I guess).

 

https://wccftech.com/xbox-series-s-lockhart-half-price-series-x/

Those price points would be insane. Intersted to see how itll play out.

 

I would take that with a huge grain of salt. Wccftech doesn't have a good history, and I (or anyone else?) can't find anything eastmen has leaked before that came true. Fun fact: I used to lurk Beyond3D forums (more so 10-15 years ago, not so much recently).

That doesn't mean those things couldn't happen, but I don't know if I would trust the source. The way Sony and MS are behaving, I don't think either one are 100% sure what price points they'll be hitting. They're just prepared to counter whatever the other does, which is good for us.



For you guys interested in these machines, have you been following things like checkerboard rendering and DLSS (1.0/2.0)? I only loosely followed the tech, but I dug a bit deeper into them recently, and they're actually pretty exciting to me when it comes to next-gen.

For those of you who don't know, these are basically super fancy cutting edge algorithms (potentially assisted by AI/machine learning depending on the exact technique). I'm kinda lumping multiple things together, but they basically all allow you to generate high (i.e., 4K) resolutions by sorta "faking" it. It isn't true 4K or whatever, but with these algorithms, you can generate a high resolution image that is nearly as good (or possibly better) than a native 4K image. This requires much less resources than natively rendering at 4K, so you can then use those extra resources on other things (more effects, pushing for 60 FPS, more raytracing, etc.). I'm grossly oversimplifying things, but hopefully you get the point. If you want to know more, here are some videos from Digital Foundry:


This is definitely something to keep in mind when it comes to the visuals for these next-gen games. Some of this stuff is pretty new and experimental, so it might take some time for developers to fully take advantage of them. But if this stuff pans out, expect some pretty big leaps in graphics beyond what we've already seen. Oh and this is all applicable to the PC as well (DLSS is actually more of a Nvidia proprietary tech, though I'm somewhat expecting similar solutions being possible on PS5/XSX). Switch 2 (or whatever Nintendo does) could probably benefit from this quite a bit as well, especially if they go with another Nvidia GPU (pretty likely I think).

 

Is this the type of tech that gives developers trouble and takes them a few years to master? And also the type of tech that forces developers creating multi-platform games to simply focus on the XBOX first, then port to PS5?

 

My switch from console to Laptop/steam was a huge learning curve. Now a week has passed. I'm using the steam controller, but I felt like a child trying to eat sushi with it. All over the place. It was brutal. But adapting well. The video game experience with mods on a game like cities skylines is like finally seeing in 4k. Spectacular freedom. The controller is battery operated with no recharger, that sucks, and the game does require a lot of CPU power, but I'm happier. As long as I have my sofa, tv connected, and controller, I'm good. No comfort lost. Better experience.

 

I wound up using an XBOX controller on PC to play Battlefield 5. I couldn't get used to the different aiming adjustments (coming from the PS4). But the controller was solid.

 

Um it is hard to give a specific answer as I was speaking to these techniques in a general sense. DLSS 2 for example isn't even directly supported on the consoles I believe. It is developed by Nvidia for their GPUs, and it takes advantage of some custom hardware ("Turing" units IIRC). I think I saw that the new AMD GPUs do have some hardware that could technically reproduce something similar to DLSS (and if not the GPUs, maybe Sony and/or MS have some custom hardware), but even if that's not the case, maybe they can still develop a solution that does not require hardware acceleration. Checkerboard rendering doesn't require any custom hardware (PS4 Pro might have had some custom hardware for it?), though it is a more simple solution. In another Digital Foundry video, I saw them mention that GT7 appeared to use checkerboard ray tracing (or something like that), so it appears this can have multiple uses.

The XSX's GPU is generally more powerful than the PS5's, so it might be better suited to take advantage of some of these techniques. But they're basically the same from a feature standpoint, so theoretically whatever is possible on one is likely possible on the other (XSX would probably just be better at it). But I'm thinking this kind of stuff is more about the algorithms being used, and how friendly Sony/MS make it to use these kind of solutions. Ideally, something like Unreal Engine (5?) will just support this on both consoles, and developers themselves won't have to worry about it *too* much.

It will be up to the developers to figure out if it makes more sense to use any of this stuff (and if so, how much?), or just go with the traditional techniques. This new stuff is cool, but it might not always produce good results for every game. To benefit the most from them, you might have to build your game a certain way, and for some developers, they might not want those limitations. PS5 and XSX seem easily capable of 4K/30 FPS and possibly 4k/60 FPS with traditional rendering, so unless you really want to squeeze out the best, you can possibly ignore these techniques.

I do think the best looking games will probably try to use something like this though. Ray-tracing and other new graphical techniques require a lot of processing power, and if you can get a pretty good "fake" 4K resolution for cheap, maybe it is worth doing it to maximize the hardware in other ways. The UE5 demo features "real-time global illumination," though it appears to use some kind of fakery with the lighting vs real global illumination. It is super hard to notice unless you're looking for it though, and the real-time lighting as a whole is super impressive (way better than what we currently have). This appears to be a running theme I see with a lot of new techniques (work smarter, not harder basically), and I'm excited to see what they come up with in the upcoming years.

 

Yooo skate 4 was announced today, anybody else hyped?

 

Can't wait, also that Skater XL game coming out soon.

Fans of skating games had a rough patch this decade, good to see publishers realizing that there's a huge demand.

 

Digital Foundry with a good video on next gen and ways to implement ray tracing in a sustainable manner:

 

Yes, that's another good video for next-gen expectations. I think that's where they talk about the checkerboard raytracing in GT7 that I alluded to earlier (though they explained it better than I could). Honestly, most videos Digital Foundry release are great, so people should check them out if they don't already. Their Retro stuff is pretty cool too. Kind funny to go from videos about raytraced 4K games to "hey this game actually supports hardware 3D acceleration!"

 

Car racing games on ESPN already look pretty real. I almost can't tell the difference between real and game already. Think graphics improvement is great, but what we really need are unique games. There' only so many shooter and zombie games we can play. Someone really needs to help the developers create new types of games.

 

Maybe you missed the surefire 2020 GOTY that was revealed during the PS5 event:

I'm talking bout Bugsnax.


The event actually did show off a lot of different games. Phil Spencer is doing a great job of diversifying the Xbox first party games too, as they have some interesting games lined up (probably some mystery titles yet to be revealed too). I agree with you, but I think we have plenty of developers working on that. We'll still have plenty of Call of Duty, Halo, Resident Evil, etc., but I think we'll see other types of games too.

The Bugsnax theme song is a major earworm.

 

If this becomes the standard, then next-gen isn't quite as exciting
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...usd10-more-expensive-on-xbox-series-x-and-ps5

Also mentions that 2K don't plan on free upgrades from PS4/XBO to PS5/XSX, unlike what some other devs are doing. You have to get the "Mamba" edition for ~$100 to get both versions if I understood correctly.

Funny thing is that NBA2K seems like a F2P game by design, so odd that they're the first one to push this pricing. We'll see if other publishers do the same.

FYI I brought this here so we can think about next-gen pricing in general, but the Dish has a thread about other NBA2K news I think, in case you're curious about that.

 

I stopped buying 2k because of it's excessive micro transaction nonsense.

Now they want me to pay even more money to get my ass kicked by the wallet warriors, no thanks. When I could grind at a reasonable rate to improve my character for free I was OK with it, but they completely nerfed the natural grind.

For companies that actually provide a fully developed game in which max enjoyment isn't hidden behind an extra paywall, 70 dollars won't matter to me personally.

 

2K is one of the very few games for me that is worth over it’s retail price, I play it throughout the whole year, due to my sheer love for basketball I never get tired of playing it, I never “beat it”.

That being said 2K is greedy as hell and are bastards for what they did to the career mode. I wonder how many games will be doing price increases this. I’m fine with the next gen upgrade isn’t free as long as it’s not more then like 10 bucks to upgrade. They are only going to be like a month apart so either wait for next gen or pay 10 bucks to get it a month early seems okay.

 

You ever play the Hakeem in 2k?

 

Yeah they have the 94 championship team that you can play with, and you. can use Hakeem in all star teamup as well. I’ve never been into my team but he’s on there too.

 

maybe i'll get the next generation version of it and play with Mad Max.

 

The Rockets all time team is completely stacked. I say it’s ties with the Celtics and the only other team better would be the Lakers and they don’t even have Lebron/Anthony Davis on it.