Is the Xbox Series S a "potato" console holding next gen game dev back?

[bear]

Well those Series S launch requirements won't be getting dropped anytime soon based on that. 

[dumpster]

The Series S offers exceptional value for money, but do you remember when the Birds Eye Potato Waffles music was entered into Eurovision? That song sure is waffley versatile!

 

 

 

[Transient Curse]

16 hours ago, monkeydog said:

DF's look at Plague Tale 2: Rats, Rats! Rats! is out. Features 300,000 on-screen rats with the S at a fairly solid 30fps.

 

Based on the extra headroom the Series X shows in the 40fps mode, we could have had 350,000 rat on-screen at 30fps. GENERATION RUINED.

 

The PS5 has poorer fps during demanding scenes than the S, all be it at a higher resolution. Guess this makes that a turnip console, compared to the Series X's delicious roast carrot.

 

Just heard about this and came to see if it had been mentioned. 

 

Someone brave should make a thread on Neogaf: 

 

Is PS5 holding games back? 

[MattyP]

1 hour ago, Transient Curse said:

 

Just heard about this and came to see if it had been mentioned. 

 

Someone brave should make a thread on Neogaf: 

 

Is PS5 holding games back? 

That would be amusing... Technically it has the lowest speed processor out of all the current gen consoles. It's a variable clocked processor capped off at 3.5Ghz  Think the S starts off at 3.6Ghz and the X at 3.8GHz. However guess that is only part of the equation. 

 

However from the DF review PS5 drops to mid 20 fps on some busier scenes. Which to be honest is probably poor optimisation but still in these days sub 30 is poor really. 

[Transient Curse]

59 minutes ago, MattyP said:

That would be amusing... Technically it has the lowest speed processor out of all the current gen consoles. It's a variable clocked processor capped off at 3.5Ghz  Think the S starts off at 3.6Ghz and the X at 3.8GHz. However guess that is only part of the equation. 

 

However from the DF review PS5 drops to mid 20 fps on some busier scenes. Which to be honest is probably poor optimisation but still in these days sub 30 is poor really. 

 

I don't really care either way (as I'm sure you don't either) but I do find it tiresome the way that these things gather momentum thanks to a bit of cherry picking. I imagine it's possible to make an argument that any piece of hardware is spoiling games for everyone else if you cherry pick hard enough. What's weird is that people know they're doing it, they have to look at all the stats, including the good ones, to find the bad ones. I imagine you'd at least get banned at Neogaf for such a thread.

[Strafe]

Potato-gate continues, mentioned in the new skill-up YouTube, the week in videogames.  I don’t think anyone else posted these which I present without additional comment.

 

https://www.techspot.com/news/96342-developer-blames-potato-xbox-series-s-locking-gotham.html

 

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/developer-claims-many-studios-are-asking-xbox-to-drop-mandatory-series-s-compatibility/

 

 

[StumpyJohn]

Those 2 articles boil down to a couple of peoples twitter rants 

 

Quote

Devonald went on to claim that there’s an “entire generation of games, hamstrung by that potato”, because Microsoft insists that games are released on both Xbox Series S and the relatively powerful Xbox Series X.

 

Talk about hyperbole, they cite one game, Gotham Knights, where the developers decided to stick with 30fps across all versions rather than have separate performance and quality modes.  Games have scaled on PC since forever, the Series S, X and PS 5 consoles are essentially just fixed spec and largely similar PCs, deal with it!

 

I've jokingly called the S a potato a couple of times but MS are clearly not going to drop the requirement to support the Series S and split their user base in half on the basis of a handful of whiny little rants.

[thesnwmn]

Bad/lazy developer takes the easy route of blaming his tools. It's fine if it's a decision they made because they aren't very good at this stuff. But trying to ship blame is just dumb. PCs have existed for basically ever.

 

They have games that look stunning on top end and still run on low end. It turns out they just aren't very good developers.

 

I hope the developer didn't like their Twitter account. They deleted it now 🤣

 

* I don't really condone if people were particularly rude to home but what did he expect?

[MansizeRooster]

4 minutes ago, thesnwmn said:

Bad/lazy developer takes the easy route of blaming his tools. It's fine if it's a decision they made because they aren't very good at this stuff. But trying to ship blame is just dumb. PCs have existed for basically ever.

 

They have games that look stunning on top end and still run on low end. It turns out rockstready just aren't very good developers.

 

I hope the developer didn't like their Twitter account. They deleted it now 🤣

 

* I don't really condone if people were particularly rude to home but what did he expect?

 

Rocksteady are excellent developers. WB Games Montreal, who developed Gotham Knights, not so much.

[thesnwmn]

1 minute ago, MansizeRooster said:

 

Rocksteady are excellent developers. WB Games Montreal, who developed Gotham Knights, not so much.

 

Oh sorry, edited.

 

I got confused about who was commenting on the issue. So Rocksteady developer wades into WB's issue and gets burned.

[Mallet]

Let's face it, if we aren't all running RTX 4090s we are holding back games by the logic used by these people.

 

That's right folks, get those fat wallets out and buy £1800 graphics cards so you don't hold back games! And speaking of Gotham Knights in particular being held back...

 

 

[robotattack]

They're not devs, they're artists. As I saw someone remark on Twitter: you could give them a terabyte and they'd still want more.

 

Devonold had previously complained that games are being sold too cheap.

 

 

[Strafe]

The VGC article mentions that other developers have expressed their concerns to Microsoft (soundly rejected, understandably), privately so I don’t think it’s just one or two guys.

[Mallet]

 

[Strafe]

Cocaine and Bourbon.

 

[thesnwmn]

"concerns"

[Stanley]

The situation with A Plague Tale is interesting. There aren’t many ‘next gen’ exclusives released, but Asobo are no slouch’s when it comes to technical proficiency.

 

No one is expecting 4K or even 1440p on Series S, so it’s to the consoles benefit that it usually performs pretty well, and in this case apparently better than PS5, a console people expect greater IQ from, so there is less room for compromise there. 
 

Remember last gen when everyone was complaining about the weak CPU’s in PS4 and Xbox One? Developers will always want more but it’s what you do with what you have imo. 

[Mallet]

I have a question.

 

Is it really the push for ever increasing graphical fidelity at the cost of everything else that is really holding games back? What I mean are graphics pushed against allocating more resources to AI or to physics? More graphics instead of more interactive worlds? I also they made the jump to targeting 4k too early

 

Digital Foundry have an article up saying the return to 30fps games is inevitable https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2022-why-the-return-of-30fps-console-games-is-inevitable

[Siri]

DF having a chat about this subject in their most recent video:

 

 

Spoiler

The answer is 'not really', apparently. I haven't sat down and have a listen due to recent ear infections, so I'll have to wait until after work.

 

[Hitcher]

If anything they say developing for the S should mean better results for the X.

[MattyP]

2 hours ago, Hitcher said:

If anything they say developing for the S should mean better results for the X.

Absolutely devs will make much more efficient use of resources etc.

And agree with another point raised in the chat... there absolutely needs to be a low barrier to entry to gaming. A games consoles manta was always that. I mean you can pick up these things for as little as £150 which is a great way to get into gaming. Its the cheapest console on the market and capable enough. MS aren't in the business of making hardware anymore really as raised elsewhere its in the business of selling subs to their services. I can even see the Series S as a cheap PC if you are happy using the web versions of the Office apps!

[Broker]

I’m not super bothered about imaginary games that might have existed. Developers are obsessed with graphical fidelity, and will pour resources into increasingly pretty versions of the exact same games. I do sometimes wonder what a triple A developer could do with a game that had PS2 style graphics, how big or complex they could make it.

 

What concerns me a lot more is games shooting way too high and ending up running like shit, which no amount of hardware ever stops. Stuff like this:

 

https://kotaku.com/pokemon-scarlet-violet-performance-game-freak-nintendo-1849794943?utm_campaign=Kotaku&utm_content=1668700838&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_source=twitter

 

Makes me deeply concerned for Tears of the Kingdom. 

[MattyP]

Well I guess at least there is only one console for Nintendo to focus on so they should be able to optimise for it. 

 

In the end we've had games that push the hardware to the limit and they've been great... I mean Zelda on the N64 ran on limited host hardware (20fps IIRC) and from a cart and it was still a fantastic game. 

 

Played through A Plague's Tale requiem on the S recently and apparently it's only running at 30fps etc but really enjoyed it had no basis of comparison though so essentially I was happy with what I was playing. Like the old days of console gaming you kind of have to accept that there might be an odd limitation here and there but the experience overall is enjoyable. 

 

Think MS did muddy the console waters a bit this gen with the Xbox TBH with a low end system. 

 

Guess we'll just have to see how everything goes with the lower end hardware. But with Steam deck now in market I expect the devs will be going where there is money to be made so adapting their games to work well on all levels of hardware. 

 

[dreamylittledream]

1 hour ago, Broker said:

I’m not super bothered about imaginary games that might have existed. Developers are obsessed with graphical fidelity, and will pour resources into increasingly pretty versions of the exact same games. I do sometimes wonder what a triple A developer could do with a game that had PS2 style graphics, how big or complex they could make it.

 

What concerns me a lot more is games shooting way too high and ending up running like shit, which no amount of hardware ever stops. Stuff like this:

 

https://kotaku.com/pokemon-scarlet-violet-performance-game-freak-nintendo-1849794943?utm_campaign=Kotaku&utm_content=1668700838&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_source=twitter

 

Makes me deeply concerned for Tears of the Kingdom. 

Game Freak have always been fairly rubbish at optimising their games, needs to be remembered they are not a Nintendo internal team.

[Stanley]

2 hours ago, Broker said:

I’m not super bothered about imaginary games that might have existed. Developers are obsessed with graphical fidelity, and will pour resources into increasingly pretty versions of the exact same games. I do sometimes wonder what a triple A developer could do with a game that had PS2 style graphics, how big or complex they could make it.

 

What concerns me a lot more is games shooting way too high and ending up running like shit, which no amount of hardware ever stops. Stuff like this:

 

https://kotaku.com/pokemon-scarlet-violet-performance-game-freak-nintendo-1849794943?utm_campaign=Kotaku&utm_content=1668700838&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_source=twitter

 

Makes me deeply concerned for Tears of the Kingdom. 

Game Freak aren’t exactly known as a technical powerhouse, I wouldn’t worry about Zelda though it’s in the best hands. 

[Clipper]

I thought of this topic when I saw this image on a tweet - seems there is some sort of attempt to create a narrative through repetition

 

[thesnwmn]

44 minutes ago, Clipper said:

I thought of this topic when I saw this image on a tweet - seems there is some sort of attempt to create a narrative through repetition

 

 

🤣 I mean this is just a very good example of why to never visit Gamespot again. Job done.

To be fair I thought they'd died at least a decade ago.

[TehStu]

We should change the whole ecosystem because of what that dev says.

[dvdx2]

On 26/10/2022 at 17:02, Mallet said:

An Xbox series x & gamepass?

 

[Shimmyhill]

Good video in general this but clearly the S isnt holding anything back - first next gen game on new engine so pretty big news - Series X is king obvs excluding pc nerds but the S puts in a very good performance,