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"PS4 is like a 5 years old PC and it’s really holding developers back"

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Lister

Banned
No, it's still relevant, but not to the same extent as the quotes state. There is still a decent overhead. Enough that say without it would grant a pretty large performance increase.

Vulkan and DX12 are supposed to help with this, but if they actually will remains to be seen still imo.

Vulkan and DX12 are pretty standard now. And modern DX11 is pretty dman competitive. and all three are LEAGUES from DX9. So no, those quotes are NOT relevant.

There is still overhead, but it's not the level these guys were talking about back then. Not even close.
 

Swarna

Member
Off-hand comment in an article spawns a 20-page thread. Sounds about right.

Obviously there's much more nuance to the topic at hand but there is truth in that the relatively weak CPU across the board has an impact on how AAA games are designed. On the other hand a lot of AAA games wouldn't even get made without consoles. But then again, maybe if consoles had a different CPU-to-GPU ratio within the same price range the games might have been designed differently (better for some people's tastes).

Personally, I think it's been beneficial for me overall as a PC gamer. Maybe devs and some console users get annoyed at times, but consoles having a weak CPU and games having to be designed around that allows me to push 3 to 5 times the frame rate on PC hardware just because of the monstrous computing gap. High frame rates are my personal preference. If consoles had better CPU's the performance gain on PC hardware might not have been as big.
 
My games sure did.

Rage was just fucked, then unfucked after herculean efforts only to get fucked again weeks later. Driver: SF would only run at 24fps. Assassin's Creed - don't remember which one, ran fine in normal play but was a stuttery mess in the modern day/cyberspace parts. Far Cry 3 and GTA 4 had streaming issues, and other games would barely play at all unless I made custom Radeon Pro profiles for them.

When it worked, comfy couch PC gaming was the best thing ever, but it didn't work out that way a little too often for me. Was probably my crossfire setup and hybrid SSD but I really didn't want to swap out my parts and try again (it was a brand new box), so I ditched the platform and went with ease, comfort and reliability instead. Well, mostly ease and comfort with the 360, but the PS4 has been reliable as all hell.

And the only games I feel I'm missing out on are ones specifically designed for mouse and keyboard that the devs don't want to try and rework on a console.

Mirror's Edge Catalyst is used above as an example of consoles being too weak for it, but somehow Dying Light manages to pull off all of those example points in style, with co-op, so I'm going to blame the engine or its optimization, and not the console really.

Crossfire hands down was your problem. Crossfire and SLI are pretty crap and cause more problems than they're worth. I played all those games without issue on a i52400, 7870XT and 8GBs of some of the slowest DDR3 offered.

Funny you mention Dying Light. I played through it on the above set-up and now I'm playing it on my 6600K, 1070 and 16GB DDR4 3000 set up and it's flawless 1440p/60fps at max with one setting(shadow map size) knocked down a notch.

Consoles are easier, but the advantage of PCs with a little effort far out weighs the limitations of consoles for me. I still have a PS4 for exclusives, but I rented UC4 and Horizon and I'm ok with that. I think the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X are great for people that want to stick with consoles though.

The best game released this year was designed for the ancient Wii U hardware.

The best selling game of this generation once ran on an Xbox 360.

The only thing holding developers back is their reliance on tech and total lack of ambition in every other area.

Great points, but those games could have been even better on better hardware. Great developers will ultimately do great things. That doesn't mean that hardware isn't limiting their vision though.
 
The best game released this year was designed for the ancient Wii U hardware.

The best selling game of this generation once ran on an Xbox 360.

The only thing holding developers back is their reliance on tech and total lack of ambition in every other area.

QFT x 1000

Ori and the Blind Forest is the best game of all time (IMO) and it doesnt require better hardware.
 
The best game released this year was designed for the ancient Wii U hardware.

The best selling game of this generation once ran on an Xbox 360.

The only thing holding developers back is their reliance on tech and total lack of ambition in every other area.

You post a lot of dumb shit, but this isn't one of those posts.
 
Crossfire hands down was your problem. Crossfire and SLI are pretty crap and cause more problems than they're worth. I played all those games without issue on a i52400, 7870XT and 8GBs of some of the slowest DDR3 offered.
Oh yeah, I heard that plenty when I was struggling to get some games to work. PC GAF told me I shouldn't have gone with that setup without knowing I was basically modding my PC to unsafe levels and was going to be way out of the mainstream and so shouldn't be surprised that I ran into problems.

And yet it was the setup recommended to me by PC GAF beforehand, no warnings or disclaimers.

And yeah, I might still be a little touchy about that ;p
 

Lister

Banned
The best game released this year was designed for the ancient Wii U hardware.

The best selling game of this generation once ran on an Xbox 360.

The only thing holding developers back is their reliance on tech and total lack of ambition in every other area.

True. My favourite game in years, pillars of eternity, probably would run on my mom's laptop.
 
Oh yeah, I heard that plenty when I was struggling to get some games to work. PC GAF told me I shouldn't have gone with that setup without knowing I was basically modding my PC to unsafe levels and was going to be way out of the mainstream and so shouldn't be surprised that I ran into problems.

And yet it was the setup recommended to me by PC GAF beforehand, no warnings or disclaimers.

And yeah, I might still be a little touchy about that ;p

I had a friend that had two 7970s and just uninstalled one, because he was sick of dealing with it. He let me borrow it while I was waiting for my eventual 1070 or 480 purchase. It was a great card.
 
Oh yeah, I heard that plenty when I was struggling to get some games to work. PC GAF told me I shouldn't have gone with that setup without knowing I was basically modding my PC to unsafe levels and was going to be way out of the mainstream and so shouldn't be surprised that I ran into problems.

And yet it was the setup recommended to me by PC GAF beforehand, no warnings or disclaimers.

And yeah, I might still be a little touchy about that ;p

Well that's #&@$ed. Nobody should have been recommending SLI to anyone, pretty much ever. It's always been a nightmare for me as well. The last time I tried was GTX 770's as I was told how much better SLI has gotten. That was also the last time. I've been a high/mid tier single card guy ever since. Makes it super easy, I get near the best cutting edge for value, 770/970/1070 etc. They keep their value well and I just upgrade every couple years for a pretty small amount.

Support for SLI just hasn't been great. Any time you leave it in to developers to optionally support something it's just not really going to work out.
 

Epcott

Member
Like a 5 year old PC? Weird... it's almost as if the console were 4 1/2 years old. 🤔

Fares should skip consoles all together and go after that lucrative PC only market.
 

wapplew

Member
The best game released this year was designed for the ancient Wii U hardware.

The best selling game of this generation once ran on an Xbox 360.

The only thing holding developers back is their reliance on tech and total lack of ambition in every other area.

Now imagine those best games not holding back by ancient hardware. They could be bester game.
 

Dmented

Banned
Vulkan and DX12 are pretty standard now. And modern DX11 is pretty dman competitive. and all three are LEAGUES from DX9. So no, those quotes are NOT relevant.

There is still overhead, but it's not the level these guys were talking about back then. Not even close.

You've basically said everything I said in my post while making it seem like my post was incorrect, lol.

But whatever, we agree.

EDIT: Side note, great avatar/name fellow Red Dwarf fan.
 

jdstorm

Banned
My games sure did.

Rage was just fucked, then unfucked after herculean efforts only to get fucked again weeks later. Driver: SF would only run at 24fps. Assassin's Creed - don't remember which one, ran fine in normal play but was a stuttery mess in the modern day/cyberspace parts. Far Cry 3 and GTA 4 had streaming issues, and other games would barely play at all unless I made custom Radeon Pro profiles for them.

When it worked, comfy couch PC gaming was the best thing ever, but it didn't work out that way a little too often for me. Was probably my crossfire setup and hybrid SSD but I really didn't want to swap out my parts and try again (it was a brand new box), so I ditched the platform and went with ease, comfort and reliability instead. Well, mostly ease and comfort with the 360, but the PS4 has been reliable as all hell.

And the only games I feel I'm missing out on are ones specifically designed for mouse and keyboard that the devs don't want to try and rework on a console.

Mirror's Edge Catalyst is used above as an example of consoles being too weak for it, but somehow Dying Light manages to pull off all of those example points in style, with co-op, so I'm going to blame the engine or its optimization, and not the console really.

While Dying Light pulls off the concept of what Mirrors Edge Catalyst is trying to do, on a technical level they are very different. Dying Light is closer to Steep in that sense in where its a great open world that is largly static and empty. Every road is empty and filled with static burned out cars and enemy AI only has to create Zombie level inteligence. Despite this Dying Light only seems to animate around 15-20 zombies at maximum and that is often in dark environments where there is less demand on the CPU to create a large draw distance.

A better next gen CPU would allow a sequel to animate considerably more zombies say 50-70 at once, which on a gameplay level would create a significantly more compelling experience as you would have to outrun larger hordes making the game considerably more scary/challenging.

Mirrors Edge Catalyst on the other hand has a specific artstyle it has to replicate which is full of reflective surfaces that are considerably more CPU intensive. The aditional brawling mechanics given to the player require smart AI that is capable of both Shooting and Brawling, while the open world nature of the game adds a Chasing/Platforming requirement not seen much in the origional Mirrors Edge and slightly more advanced then zombie AI.

In adition to this, to create a fully realised non apocalyptic cityscape you need NPC AI, Veichle AI, and an active public transport system (jumping on top of trains played a big part in the first game) You also need seemless rooftop to ground movement.

The closest games in existance to what Mirrors Edge Catalyst was trying to achieve are Assasins Creed Unity* and Spiderman. Yet both of those games are 3rd person and dont have the same demanding requirements for ingame textures that exist in first person titles.

*Assasins Creed Unity notably also struggled against technical limitations and is currently the most ambitious Assasins Creed game this generation.
 
The best game released this year was designed for the ancient Wii U hardware.

The best selling game of this generation once ran on an Xbox 360.

The only thing holding developers back is their reliance on tech and total lack of ambition in every other area.

People quoted you 100 times but I had to make it 101. Beautiful post.
 
u guys make me blush.

azobY.gif
 

KazenY2J

Member
The best game released this year was designed for the ancient Wii U hardware.

The best selling game of this generation once ran on an Xbox 360.

The only thing holding developers back is their reliance on tech and total lack of ambition in every other area.
This sums it up pretty much.
 
While Dying Light pulls off the concept of what Mirrors Edge Catalyst is trying to do, on a technical level they are very different. Dying Light is closer to Steep in that sense in where its a great open world that is largly static and empty. Every road is empty and filled with static burned out cars and enemy AI only has to create Zombie level inteligence. Despite this Dying Light only seems to animate around 15-20 zombies at maximum and that is often in dark environments where there is less demand on the CPU to create a large draw distance.
Sorry, but I can't agree with that take on Dying Light at all.

Its world is not static and empty, its filled with zombies of all kinds, and human enemies. Its burning cars and wreckage and walkers everywhere. Multi-floored interiors dense with details and scavengeable loot and parkour routes above, below and inside, side missions and scheduled events like supply drops. This is all apparent during the daylight hours where the draw distances are impressive.

In the game's pitch-black nights you get lighting based gameplay (traps and UV lighting) and faster, nimbler zombies that actively hunt you down in packs.

And even those 15-20 zombies are far more than Mirror's Edge works with, even within the confines of its linear missions, and account for far more of a threat. And that's with multiple types of AI, the slow zombies, the newer-turned fast infected, human enemies and the night terrors, all clamboring around the vertical spaces and interiors.

I love Mirror's Edge Catalyst - had a wonderful time with it, but Dying Light beats it on most every technical level I can think of, and plays great on the consoles. ME: C needed more time in the oven.
 

EctoPrime

Member
The slow cpu in the console does seem to be holding back games. You wouldn't expect that a decade old computer that originally ran last gen games would be a viable gaming box with a new gpu in 2017.
 

Paz

Member
The best game released this year was designed for the ancient Wii U hardware.

The best selling game of this generation once ran on an Xbox 360.

The only thing holding developers back is their reliance on tech and total lack of ambition in every other area.

This is an A+ post.
 

jdstorm

Banned

I agree with you that Dying Light is a much better game then Mirror's Edge Catalyst. Dying Light absolutely nails the open world parkor concept better then any game i can think of. Its fantastic. Comparing it to Steep in terms of emptiness was probably overly harsh. Perhaps a Batman Arkham game would be a better comparison.

Dying Light is also really smart about understanding hardware limitations and makes smart decisions to maximize the hardware's potential. IE more advanced zombies at night due to reduced draw distances. Having cars with either destroyed or dusty windows to reduce reflective surfaces, having dense amounts of Zombies congregate in enclosed spaces like tunnels to make them seem overwhelming.

However even Dying light 2 could mechanically benefit from a PS5 with a new CPU. More enemies is the obvious advantage, but there are still other significant gameplay advantages to be had. For instance Dying Light at present doesn't do much with Dynamic weather. (My memory on the specifics is a little spotty) Yet on PC its modded in and works great. So its likely not a big part of the game on console due to technical limitations. This probably applies to a bunch of gameplay elements like environmental interactivity/physics and destruction. Better movement via higher FPS or more frequent animation calculations would also likely be included with a new CPU.

I would say those 3 elements that would be improved by a new CPU seem to effect gameplay quite substantially. Considering it is an open world platformer.
 
I would say those 3 elements that would be improved by a new CPU seem to effect gameplay quite substantially. Considering it is an open world platformer.
Sure, it could be better in those instances but as-is its still awesome and doesn't feel hobbled at all when playing it ;p
 

jdstorm

Banned
Sure, it could be better in those instances but as-is its still awesome and doesn't feel hobbled at all when playing it ;p

Agreed- Techland did an amazing job. However isn't that the point of gaming generations. To use technical advances to itterate improvement?

For instance after Modern Warfare largely standardized FPS controls in 2007 whenever you go back to an older FPS game it tends to feel clunky. In many ways its only after seeing what could be that we understand what we don't have.

In the case of gaming peformance, we can see modern games having their ambition limited by console CPUs. Even if we cant see exactly how the extra power would be used in future games.
 

Rayderism

Member
To a certain extent, the "underpowered" statement is somewhat overstated. PC's have lots of stuff running in the background, even when a game is running. The PS4 just needs to run the game.

Look at a game that exists for both a PS4 and PC, the PC requirements are usually higher than the PS4 specs.
 
There just isn't money to be made in PC exclusives, so you're not going to see that Crysis AAA money put into a PC exclusive anymore. The closest thing you're probably going to get is Star Citizen which looks absolutely insane (at least IMO).

Doesn't the second part of your post disprove the first? Star Citizen is a PC exclusive that is being designed for high-end PCs. It has made a ton of money.
 

GHG

Member
The best game released this year was designed for the ancient Wii U hardware.

The best selling game of this generation once ran on an Xbox 360.

The only thing holding developers back is their reliance on tech and total lack of ambition in every other area.

What's the best selling game this gen? GTAV?
 
The slow cpu in the console does seem to be holding back games. You wouldn't expect that a decade old computer that originally ran last gen games would be a viable gaming box with a new gpu in 2017.

You wouldn't but due to those crappy Jaguar based CPUs, here we are. While not quite a decade old yet we still have people running games on i7s from 2008-2010 and with GPUs from the last few years.

It's probably going to continue this way since no console maker is interested in putting hundreds of millions of dollars into pushing the technology envelope anymore and have a specific pricing and TDP targets that wouldn't allow it.

I wonder if this guy knows the PS4 is 3.5 years old

Yeah but it uses what was pretty much the equivalent to a mid-range GPU in 2012 and a CPU that would've been shit 10 years ago.

EDIT: Beat your edit.
 
Once again, that's not how this works.

Scope and ambition are the primary determinants of how big the budget gets for any specific game. Technological progress is orthogonal to that aim.

Well we are talking about aiming for the high end .
You can have scope and ambition on mid range hardware ( or any hardware really) it just won't looks as good.
Making high detail assets\content is what really take up a lot of the budget .
 

Ashler

Member
I swear to god Jim Ryan, if you made another statemen.... oh!

Yeah, we all knew when this gen was announced that it was not even a high end spec PC at the time.
 

mrqs

Member
Consoles are great, without them we wouldn't have those games.

It's a pain? Sure. But it's the only way possible.
 
PSX, N64 and such were not stronger than PC's at the time, neither was Genesis, SNES, many consoles you could point to at their respective time periods. Its a fake narrative.

Consoles are what they are, and like always, devs adapt to using them to their best ability until the next cycle.

You're going back 20+ years, bro.
 
So I caught up with the rest of the thread. Some of you really raked the developer over the coals over a harmless quote. Let's look at the facts.

He said that the PS4 holds developers back. This is undeniably true. In technological terms and compared to the advances over the last few years the technology that powers the PS4 is severely outdated and holds back developers from achieving what they want because they have to design for the lowest common denominator, which are the PS4 and Xbox One. This undeniable fact is why so many of you want a new console generation to be a clean break and not an iterative step. It is why so many of you hate cross-gen games with a passion. The developer said nothing controversial or out of the ordinary and the only reason why the reaction is so over the top is because he compared the PS4 to PC. Had he said "the PS4 is holding us back, I want a PS5" or "the Xbox One is holding the PS4 back" I would bet a sizeable chunk of cash that the reaction would have been completely different.

In purely technological terms, old tech is holding back new tech. Gasp, right? How dare he say that. By now it has been widely documented that the CPU used in these consoles was very weak even by 2013 standards. It's normal for developers to wish they had more power to work with. The business side of things, why developers have to code for these outdated platforms and can't just target high-end hardware, is a completely different issue and doesn't disprove the developer's quote.

Finally, since some of you may be too young to remember, there was a time when AAA big budget PC exclusives existed and proliferated. 1996's Wing Commander IV was the most expensive game ever made, its budget dwarfed every console game. Consoles didn't invent the concept of the AAA game. The reason we don't get AAA PC exclusives today is the same reason we don't get AAA console exclusives outside of first-party games and moneyhats: During the '00s the console and PC platforms and its games libraries converged to such a degree that it no longer made any financial sense to have a game be exclusive to one platform if you weren't getting paid for it. Think back to the days of the PS2 and realize that third-party non-moneyhatted exclusives have since completely died off. Why do you think that is?
 

cuate

Banned
So I caught up with the rest of the thread. Some of you really raked the developer over the coals over a harmless quote. Let's look at the facts.

Nah, fuck him. Super Mario Bros 3 is a far more ambitious and creative game than this developer will ever make, and that runs on potatoes. Blaming your own shortcomings on the level of tech we have today makes you sound like a creatively bankrupt piece of shit.
 

Offline

Banned
One Word: Nintendo.

Dont know any arguments that can beat that. Nintendo is making the best received games on hardware, that is from the last century.

Aside from that, Sony has proven more than one time that even though their hardware might be much weaker than a PC, that their games still look better than most, if not all games that have been released on PC so far.

I agree completely, it's what you do with the hardware, the games you make for it and how much you take advantage of the hardware that is so much more important that raw power. Switch and PS4 are fine exactly where they are and I don't think the potential of either system has been reached yet, we need more games, less power.
 

teokrazia

Member
While Dying Light pulls off the concept of what Mirrors Edge Catalyst is trying to do, on a technical level they are very different. Dying Light is closer to Steep in that sense in where its a great open world that is largly static and empty. Every road is empty and filled with static burned out cars and enemy AI only has to create Zombie level inteligence. Despite this Dying Light only seems to animate around 15-20 zombies at maximum and that is often in dark environments where there is less demand on the CPU to create a large draw distance.

You clearly don't know what you are talking about.

Every zombie in Dying Light is a physical entity, with proper reactions. They even react with each other, all the time, while usually is the kind of feature that developers cut in order to spare resources.

Go experiment with melee, explosions, hordes, buggy and check.
Physics is always there, enriching gameplay all the time.

Is CPU intensive stuff.

Also: runners and other monsters have better pathfinding than alot of 'serious' first person shooters enemies.


Mirrors Edge Catalyst on the other hand has a specific artstyle it has to replicate which is full of reflective surfaces that are considerably more CPU intensive. The aditional brawling mechanics given to the player require smart AI that is capable of both Shooting and Brawling, while the open world nature of the game adds a Chasing/Platforming requirement not seen much in the origional Mirrors Edge and slightly more advanced then zombie AI.

AI and collisions in Catalyst are garbage.


For instance Dying Light at present doesn't do much with Dynamic weather. (My memory on the specifics is a little spotty)

Rain affects electric stuff.
 
So I caught up with the rest of the thread. Some of you really raked the developer over the coals over a harmless quote. Let's look at the facts.

He said that the PS4 holds developers back. This is undeniably true. In technological terms and compared to the advances over the last few years the technology that powers the PS4 is severely outdated and holds back developers from achieving what they want because they have to design for the lowest common denominator, which are the PS4 and Xbox One. This undeniable fact is why so many of you want a new console generation to be a clean break and not an iterative step. It is why so many of you hate cross-gen games with a passion. The developer said nothing controversial or out of the ordinary and the only reason why the reaction is so over the top is because he compared the PS4 to PC. Had he said "the PS4 is holding us back, I want a PS5" or "the Xbox One is holding the PS4 back" I would bet a sizeable chunk of cash that the reaction would have been completely different.

In purely technological terms, old tech is holding back new tech. Gasp, right? How dare he say that. By now it has been widely documented that the CPU used in these consoles was very weak even by 2013 standards. It's normal for developers to wish they had more power to work with. The business side of things, why developers have to code for these outdated platforms and can't just target high-end hardware, is a completely different issue and doesn't disprove the developer's quote.

Finally, since some of you may be too young to remember, there was a time when AAA big budget PC exclusives existed and proliferated. 1996's Wing Commander IV was the most expensive game ever made, its budget dwarfed every console game. Consoles didn't invent the concept of the AAA game. The reason we don't get AAA PC exclusives today is the same reason we don't get AAA console exclusives outside of first-party games and moneyhats: During the '00s the console and PC platforms and its games libraries converged to such a degree that it no longer made any financial sense to have a game be exclusive to one platform if you weren't getting paid for it. Think back to the days of the PS2 and realize that third-party non-moneyhatted exclusives have since completely died off. Why do you think that is?

The point is that PS4 or XB1 is not hold back anything if he wanted to he could make the game for PC only.
Then he could make the game for high end PC only but of course he won't do that .
You don't have to design for the lowest common denominator just look at SC or EPIC .
He could just said fuck the low \ mid end be it consoles or PC .
 

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
You're going back 20+ years, bro.

Yeah, i am, because that's also part of my point. if we're talking about consoles as if they have standards, that's objectively wrong.

Saying "back in the day, all consoles were stronger than PC's when they came out!" as a slight against PS4 and XB1 is disingenuous is my point, because that's incorrect if all your referring to is arguably 7th gen and 6th gen, which is not really clear cut either.

In the 7th gen, PS3 had a weaker GPU, and an inferior ram set up to what was in PC's at the time, only the Cell was state of the art, and it gave terrible results when not coded to properly.

The 360 was pretty good in terms of its GPU and CPU, but it too didn't last that long, it was outdated a year after launch.

Wii needs no introduction.
 

yurinka

Member
Most players prefer to play on console, and one of them is the clear leader so it should be good enough for players, and many of them don't seem to pay more for a more powerful machine.

So devs make games considering where are their games mostly going to be played because to focus only in the most powerful hardware may not be profitable for them, so until the next gen of consoles we won't see a major leap. Nothing strange and nothing wrong here.
 
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