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[AndyD]

So they had it for a while, and actually did try, and still couldn't get it. That doesn't sound good....

That's my thought. It's not a last minute thing that can be fixed and patched as some hoped. It's more of a long term optimization thing.

They haven't of course as you know, but neither have the game graphical features, if both consoles continue to improve and developers add more and more effects, then we're likely still going to be sub-1080 on XB1, though the games will be prettier than this first round, they may not be higher resolution.

That would mirror this generation. Where resolution did not necessarily increase as we went on, but effects and visual quality did. In some cases resolution went down or even dynamic, but the ultimate game ended up looking better.

 

[spacemonkeynation]

It was more about resource allocation. The resource allocation is different on the consoles. That huge web of tangled resources, whether it's threads-based or if it's GPU threads or if it's memory - whatever it is - optimisation is something that could go theoretically on forever.

Anyone want to take bets on the issue coming down to the box running multiple OSes which drained available memory?

 

[CassidyIzABeast]

Sounds like 1080p/30fps was an option based on his "couldn't get it in the ballpark they wanted" comment. So my follow up question would then be, why go all the way down to 720p when 900p is a option.

 

[Skilletor]

Why is the q&a set up like activision got a call
From MS to do good PR for them ?

THey're saying they couldn't get the game to work as well as it does on ps4. How is this good PR?

 

[Mobius and pet octopus]

Interesting read. Maybe people will stop saying xbox one can't run 1080p native games now.

Mark Rubin: It's very possible we can get it to native 1080p. I mean I've seen it working at 1080p native. It's just we couldn't get the frame rate in the neighbourhood we wanted it to be.

And I personally agree with the decision. Frame rate in a fps is king. Hopefully they'll up the resolution to at least 900p native over time. And maybe even 1080p as well. I'll be getting ghosts on PC though if I do buy it at all.

 

[Nightengale]

Mark Rubin: Obviously the PR guys, when they found out, when they were told, that was more of an event than the devs sitting at work working on it. So you'd have to ask them.

So this was MS/Activision's PR reaction, huh?

Sounds like 1080p/30fps was an option based on his "couldn't get it in the ballpark they wanted" comment. So my follow up question would then be, why go all the way down to 720p when 900p is a option.

Could've been 1080p/15fps.

Devs work in environments where they could have games running below 10fps in their alpha stages, so it's not surprising for a dev to have seen a 1080p build.

 

[MutonCommander]

Why is the q&a set up like activision got a call
From MS to do good PR for them ?

Do we really have to do this in every thread? Why can't we just discuss what the guy said without constantly coming up with conspiracy theories?

On topic, it seems obvious that the Xbox One is harder to code for. This combined with the fact that the ps4 is more powerful caused the huge difference in resolution. I expect the gap to shrink in next year's game but the PS4 will probably always have the better-looking version.

 

[Ricerocket]

Seems like the OS on X1 is a huge hog on resources and it's expected after seeing Kinect/Snap in action about running other things alongside the game.

 

[OldAsUrSock]

Well, that seems rather obvious, no? I think the point is that when you HAVE to do a trade-off frame rate should beat out resolution. I agree.

That was the point I was making. Thank you

 

[Rafterman]

Because it is being upscaled? Silly question. It's not being displayed as native 720p. It's being displayed as 1080p. It's upscaled content.

It's not a silly question because it's never matter before now. Suddenly they talk like "upscaled to 1080p" is some amazing selling point and it's not. It's just a way to confuse people who don't know any better into thinking that the final product will give the quality of a 1080p native resolution and it's disingenuous as fuck. It's just as bad as all of these MS people claming, "our console supports 1080p" knowing full well that it's a non-statment. The 360 supported 1080p as well. Supporting 1080p and upscaling to 1080p are very different things that rendering natively at 1080p and the only reason why the MS people keep using these terms is because they know there are plenty of people out there that can be easily deceived by them.

Sounds like 1080p/30fps was an option based on his "couldn't get it in the ballpark they wanted" comment. So my follow up question would then be, why go all the way down to 720p when 900p is a option.

Probably because it wasn't an option? I assume that if they could have gotten a stable 60 fps at 900p they would have done it.

 

[Skeff]

Sounds like 1080p/30fps was an option based on his "couldn't get it in the ballpark they wanted" comment. So my follow up question would then be, why go all the way down to 720p when 900p is a option.

If you have to drop from 1080p to 720p, it means you were nowhere close to having it running at 1080p, he doesn't mention what frame rate it was at 1080p, so it could well have been as low as 30 on average meaning they'd have to drop it to 720p to start to get close to 60fps, halfing the resolution though doesn't double the framerate. From this interview I still kind of expect it to have a better framerate on PS4 than XB1, I think going below 720p is going to be a shit storm so really 720p is the lowest you can go down to.

 

[Raist]

Surprisingly little amount of PR bullshit in there.

The difference between this interview and the "secret developer"'s is rather amusing.

 

[BakedSardine]

Seems like the OS on X1 is a huge hog on resources and it's expected after seeing Kinect/Snap in action about running other things alongside the game.

I think everyone should have seen this coming. There is simply no way to make those features always available without robbing resources from somewhere else.

 

[Skeff]

Interesting read. Maybe people will stop saying xbox one can't run 1080p native games now.



And I personally agree with the decision. Frame rate in a fps is king. Hopefully they'll up the resolution to at least 900p native over time. And maybe even 1080p as well. I'll be getting ghosts on PC though if I do buy it at all.

Your really quite a fool, no one is saying it can't run games at 1080p, they are saying and are backed up by this interview, they cannot run games at 1080p using next gen techniques without having a poor framerate.

 

[SolidSnakex]

Interesting read. Maybe people will stop saying xbox one can't run 1080p native games now.

Who said that it couldn't run 1080p games? It'd be foolish to say since there are 1080p native games on the console even at launch.

 

[Nightengale]

Interesting read. Maybe people will stop saying xbox one can't run 1080p native games now.

PS3 and 360 could do 1080p native. Newsflash. Shocking.

 

[DBT85]

I have to wonder what the framerate at 1080 was that the only solution was to drop to 720. That's no small change.

 

[CosmicGroinPull]

Surprisingly little amount of PR bullshit in there.

Have to give credit to them for not using "720p was a design choice"

 

[Wynnebeck]

So basically, it's not just hamstrung by eSRAM and the number of ROPs, it's actually just shit hardware all round.

That's what I'm getting. Activision is just giving themselves an out in case consumers call for their heads on a platter later on. "It wasn't me! It was the lady in the green dress!"

 

[tinfoilhatman]

Coming from a long time hardcore Xbox fan the X1 sounds like such a cluster bomb,,,,,,,,,,,,not only did they use an under powered GPU but as an additional FU they are reserving what little resources are there or non gaming garbage.

Oh Microsoft how far you have fallen, could you have not just created a modern OG Xbox......it could have been as simple as that for you.......sigh

 

[semiconscious]

IMO Rubin just walked a very dangerous PR tightrope and managed it with grace. He deserves kudos. His wording leaves plenty of room for hope, as well as an out for IW.

that was my take. ms could learn from this guy...

 

[StoppedInTracks]

Pretty good interview.

In fact it is so good that both sides (xfans, sfans) can use it and spin as "told you so!"

Props to Rubin.

 

[LukasTaves]

I can understand the SDK changes being a nightmare development, but would 10% of processing resources really make a difference between 720p and 1080p? Unless there's some serious overhead other than the reservation, it seems absurd that the OS is responsible for such a significant drop in resolution...

Well... Whatever it is I hope they can sort it out for a eventual patch...

 

[silver.tongue]

These guys should be congratulated because they didn't just go with the low common denominator. They tried to make the game the best they could on each plataform.

I feel like the next CoD might be 1080p on the Xbone. They just need more time to get there and they didn't have it now.

 

[Hanmik]

I have to wonder what the framerate at 1080 was that the only solution was to drop to 720. That's no small change.

maybe the E3 thing was right..?

For reference, the story going around E3 went something like this:

"ATVI was doing the CoD: Ghosts port to nextgen. It took three weeks for PS4 and came out at 90 FPS unoptimized, and four months on Xbone and came out at 15 FPS."

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=81321425

 

[Darkwaknight]

I believe you answered your own question.

This

 

[BronsonLee]

Sounds like they didn't want to compromise on 60fps, which is fair.

 

[Sweep14]

Sounds like 1080p/30fps was an option based on his "couldn't get it in the ballpark they wanted" comment. So my follow up question would then be, why go all the way down to 720p when 900p is a option.

Because at 1080P, the frame rate was probably At 15-20 fps...

 

[Feorax]

I have to wonder what the framerate at 1080 was that the only solution was to drop to 720. That's no small change.

Wasn't the original rumour that when the games were first ported to next-gen, the PS4 version ran at 1080p/60fps within weeks, whereas it took months to get the XBO version to 1080p/15fps?

These guys should be congratulated because they didn't just go with the low common denominator. They tried to make the game the best they could on each plataform.

I feel like the next CoD might be 1080p on the Xbone. They just need more time to get there and they didn't have it now.

I think the general gist of the article was that they had time, but still couldn't manage it. Sounds like they're relying on MS tweaking the dev tools to allow more access to background resources, which is a big ask given that's where the XBO's strengths lie.

 

[Dezzy]

Because it is being upscaled? Silly question. It's not being displayed as native 720p. It's being displayed as 1080p. It's upscaled content.

Xbox 360 upscaled to 1080p as well.
Upscaling shouldn't be looked at as a positive, since it's only there to fit a low-res image onto a high-res screen. MS is now spinning upscaling as some kind of improvement, and so are Xbox defenders. People that aren't knowledgeable about this stuff are being led to believe that Xbox One upscaling is a good thing, and that's a disservice to them.

 

[Oppo]

To me, the most "accurate" simplification of the situation so far seems like the split lands (as others have pointed out) on forward vs deferred renderers.

i.e. we will see some 1080p Xboxone titles using a forward rendered setup, but due to backbuffer sizes and that ESRAM, probably more 720p deferred rendered titles. And sadly deferred is sort of where all the real eye candy is going.

 

[StoppedInTracks]

It is also reinforcing that neither MS nor Activision demanded to drop the framerate in favour of 1080p on Xbone.

Framerate is king in COD games and it is great they know it.

 

[Skeff]

I have to wonder what the framerate at 1080 was that the only solution was to drop to 720. That's no small change.

If I had to guess I'd say the Framerate when at 1080p was probably around 20fps, I imagine the PS4 was at 40fps, these were obviously both unoptimized states, and the decisions will have been made to drop to 720p and optimize for XB1 and to stay at 1080p and optimize for PS4.

It woudn't have been a case at the end of development where they we're at 1080/45 and dropped to 720/60 it would have been quite early on in development.

I don't know the situation for CoD:Ghosts but that would be my interpretation of the interview.

 

[MutonCommander]

I wonder why the gap is much smaller in Battlefield 4. Is DICE that much better as a developer than Infinity Ward or did they simply have more time for optimization?

 

[Metalmurphy]

What everyone will ask is whether this is the result of the Xbox One simply not being as powerful as the PS4, and you're doing your best with the hardware you have, or whether for future versions you may be able to get the Xbox One version running natively at 1080p?

Mark Rubin: It's very possible we can get it to native 1080p. I mean I've seen it working at 1080p native. It's just we couldn't get the frame rate in the neighbourhood we wanted it to be.

And it wasn't a lack of effort. It wasn't that it was like last minute. We had the theoretical hardware for a long time. That's the thing you get pretty quickly and that doesn't change dramatically. It was more about resource allocation. The resource allocation is different on the consoles. That huge web of tangled resources, whether it's threads-based or if it's GPU threads or if it's memory - whatever it is - optimisation is something that could go theoretically on forever.

That's a very polite way of saying "Yes".

 

[twobear]

And shit software by the sounds of it.

Obviously, COD is not a graphical powerhouse, but they're developing across five platforms simultaneously and have incrementally added technology to a 13 year-old codebase, and set 60fps as their goal. I would say all things considered they're doing pretty well. Looking at BF4 on Xbone, I would not say they're that far behind DICE given the same constraints (720p, 60fps).

 

[Bundy]

There's no specific, oh, well, the VO chat on Xbox took up so much resources that we couldn't do 1080p native. There's no definitive one to one per se cause and effect. It's just an overall thing. We took each system individually and said, 'okay, let's make the best game for each system.'

Which means = Overall, the Xbone is simply weaker than the PS4.

 

[BruiserBear]

I really don't even see what the point of this interview was. Rubin is a smart guy, and he completely dodges the question about PS4 just being more powerful. This is basically just a PR dancing piece with no real news.

He's not going to just come out and say "We couldn't hit 1080p because of that god damn ESRAM Microsoft put in the XB1". So he dances around all sorts of words and possibilities. While the PS4 definitely has a GPU advantage, ultimately I think the ESRAM is the reason so many XB1 games that try and hit 60fps cannot do so while also being 1080p.

 

[Tsundere]

That's a very polite way of saying "Yes".

Yep, he's probably being told not to full out admit it, but he states that they didn't have a lack of effort, they tried, but Xbox One couldn't hit their framerate target at 1080p. So all things being equal outside of hardware, Xbox One won't match the performance/resolution of PS4 games.

 

[Feindflug]

Interesting interview - he is worried about how much RAM to allocate to things when they have 8GB to play with over the paltry amounts on current gen? Seems odd.

The frame rate difference must have been massive to drop so much, surely 900p if it was close but not quite 60.

Adds further credence to that guy who posted that they were only getting 15 fps when they first got it up and running.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=81321425

So they had the game running at 1080p at some point but they weren't happy with the performance, ok I get that but did they have to downgrade the resolution that much to maintain a 60fps? the difference in pixel density is massive between the two...plus they had help from MS engineers all this time? wow.

On the other hand you have BF4 on Xbone running at the same res and frame-rate but looking much much better than what we've seen from Ghosts. Either Xbone is a total mess (even worse than what we expected) in terms of hardware, OS and tools or IW's engine is an unoptimized piece of shit...to be honest it sounds like a combination of the two.

 

[Feorax]

Obviously, COD is not a graphical powerhouse, but they're developing across five platforms simultaneously and have incrementally added technology to a 13 year-old codebase, and set 60fps as their goal. I would say all things considered they're doing pretty well. Looking at BF4 on Xbone, I would not say they're that far behind DICE given the same constraints (720p, 60fps).

When I say shit software, I wan't referring to CoD (although you're right that it's hardly a tour de force), I was referring to the 3 OS' on the XBO that seem to be eating up valuable resources.

 

[ElTorro]

That's a very polite way of saying "Yes".

I find the diplomacy in the last sentence to be more remarkable.

First launch, first time at bat at a new console is a challenging one. That's just the way it is. For people fearful one system is more powerful than the other or vice versa, it's a long game.

Walking on a thin line.

 

[Mobius and pet octopus]

Your really quite a fool, no one is saying it can't run games at 1080p, they are saying and are backed up by this interview, they cannot run games at 1080p using next gen techniques without having a poor framerate.

Really no one is saying that? I've read tons of people saying it cannot run games at 1080p and that was clearly true before this interview and I suspect it will remain true after it. The bit about not being able to reach the target framerate is not only something in the quote, it is something I acknowledged... so why are you calling me quite the fool... did you even bother to read my post beyond two sentences? It isn't like it was long.

Who said that it couldn't run 1080p games? It'd be foolish to say since there are 1080p native games on the console even at launch.

I agree that it would be foolish to say. Before this article it would be foolish to say as well. But make no mistake, people even on gaf have said that the xbox one is not capable of 1080p, even despite forza 5 being reportedly 1080p native.

PS3 and 360 could do 1080p native. Newsflash. Shocking.

Yes I know.

 

[zainetor]

that was my take. ms could learn from this guy...

Funny cuz 10 years ago, he was working at naughty dog and said that dreamcast, was barely more powerful than a psone.

 

[phosphor112]

Why do they always say 720p native upscaled to 1080p instead of just native 720p? It just adds confusion for those not knowledgeable on these things.

That said, the rest of the interview is pretty great. Very detailed info on the challenges of working on Xbox One and launch games in general.

The Order is rendered at 1920 x 800 natively.

COD:Ghosts on Xbox One is rendered at 1280 x 720 natively, and then upscaled.

Does that make sense?

One shows that it's rendered the way you see it on screen, the other is stretched to fit the screen.

 

[nampad]

He does mention the voice chat when talking about OS problems and allocating RAM.
Didn't our insiders say that the voice chat is a big problem right now?

 

[Foghorn Leghorn]

Mark Rubin: There's stuff in the console's OS that interacts with the game. So, for instance, voice chat is often supported by the hardware manufacturer rather than the software, and you're just using their channel. When that stuff is changing - because they're developing it on their side - and the resources they're using are changing - your, from a game design standpoint, challenge is with trying to make enough room for those resources to be used but at the same time use as much resources as possible.

Seriously, after months of listening to how SHAPE audio was going to give xbox a 400 Gflops advantage, it turns out games are using a software solution that eats their resource budget up even further LOL. So the secret sauce of SHAPE turns out to be a hardware block for kinect as others were saying.

 

[gofreak]

I really don't even see what the point of this interview was. Rubin is a smart guy, and he completely dodges the question about PS4 just being more powerful. This is basically just a PR dancing piece with no real news.

It was carefully constructed to deflect criticism aimed at IW without overtly pissing all over MS. I'd say he did OK if that was the brief. By emphasising that they spent some time on this and even had MS help, the interview leaves everyone looking elsewhere (i.e. at MS, their box) for answers.

 

[Coulomb_Barrier]

Pretty much as expected.

To reach parity with the PS4 version the XB1 would take a hit to the framerate.

 

[everyday math]

Yes, and that is much, much better and different than outputting 720p and letting it being upscaled by my AVR (or my TV).

That gif is memorizing.