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Digital Foundry: Sea of Thieves Goes Multi-Plat: PS5 and Xbox Series X/S Tested!

reinking

Gold Member
The Story Continues




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Robert Garcia GIF by GIPHY News
 

sendit

Member
The Story Continues




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You've held on to this for ~4 years.
 

Darsxx82

Member
This makes no sense since the game has been updated and improved on Xbox for years. Make a PS5 port...and just say the hell with the Xbox version?

Other 3rd party multi platform games is whatever, many variables for those. This is about a former Xbox exclusive thats now on PS5.
The game has been updated in content, not in graphic assets or configurations. I do not know what you're talking about.

It is the same case as Hifi. New content and updates but shadows have not been improved even on PC at its highest settings.

From there the question is the same. It all depends on the interest of MS or its Studios in updating or polishing those details in the XSX version now that they launch the PS5 port which, among other things, has been created by third-party contracted Studios and not by Rare.
 
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adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
You've held on to this for ~4 years.

First O onQ123 post?


It's interesting that Microsoft's first party games (PS5 version) are better.
GhostWire Tokyo : better RT & fps, HifiRush : better shadow, Sea of Thieves : better shadow & Lod & fps , DoomEternal : better texture
*XSX version of DoomEternal (120Hz mode) has the advantage of resolution.


Sea of Thieves doesn't have better FPS, it has marginally less one-off skips, it matches Series S there. The FPS is locked to 60 on both, this video doesn't cover the 120hz mode so we can't comment on that.

Also, I posted an example contradicting this just last page.
 
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SKYF@ll

Member
Doom Eternal is superior on Series X not even close actually, runs at a higher resolution consistently.
Please see my PS5 and XSX screenshots. (no zoom)

1st image is PS5(1800p/RT) vs. XSX(1800p/RT)
2nd image is PS5(1584p/120Hz) vs. XSX(1800p/RT)

XSX(2nd image) has better resolution, but the visible images are showing strange results.
It's an interesting technical difference to see if VRS is the only culprit.
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Havoc2049

Member
All three versions are extremely close. Since it's a MMO and server based, many times the game with get some frame drops and the graphics will take a momentary hit just due to network issues. Sometimes the game will crash as well. It's just the nature of the genre.
 

onQ123

Member
It’s nice that Microsoft actually embraced the strengths of the PS5 to make it look as good as possible rather than seeking parity. That’s a good sign for future Microsoft multi-plat games and should be praised.
They didn't have to do much The shadow optimization is something done for Series consoles
 
The Story Continues




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That's not even the worst take, the GOAT will always be this gem:

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Ev1L AuRoN

Member
Weird how some PS fans are calling this a win for Sony, but the truth is it's a win for MS in revenue.
Getting the rivals' exclusives with seemingly no difference whatsoever is a big win for the PS audience. I don't mind supporting great games, I just don't want an Xbox, and now thanks to Phil I don't have to, now bring Forza Horizon and Hellblade 2 Phil.
 

Fess

Member
I wonder how long before Phil gets involved and starts to make sure the ps5 ports aren’t better.
Phil said: First or better on Xbox.
Was regarding Bethesda I think. Same thing here, these ports show that they’re first on Xbox, but not better. And the differences will increase once PS5 Pro is out, could be like late Playstation releases on PC, better visuals and sometimes raytracing and better resolution from not having to have as aggressive dynamic resolution.
 

Melchiah

Member
Getting the rivals' exclusives with seemingly no difference whatsoever is a big win for the PS audience. I don't mind supporting great games, I just don't want an Xbox, and now thanks to Phil I don't have to, now bring Forza Horizon and Hellblade 2 Phil.

Imagine the meltdowns in that case, if Hellblade 2 would be better on PS5 as well.


As for DF, and their bewilderment regarding these kind of results....

I noticed the PS5 had a consistent edge when it came to draw distances for distant foliage elements, which sometimes appeared on the PlayStation when absent from Series X. Once again, these were very minor differences that you'd need a side-by-side to spot, but there is a clear PlayStation advantage here for some reason, which I don't really understand at the moment.

...we only need to look their past thoughts.


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Source: https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-can-xbox-one-multi-platform-games-compete-with-ps4

Not to mention, how already back in PS3-360 gen their attitude was that it's perfectly understandable when Bayonetta was better on the 360, but it was something unfathomable, and clearly developers' fault, when the opposite happened with FFXIII.
 

GHG

Member
I doubted Mark Cerny when he was talking about the ‘magic juju’ prior to launch, I’ll never doubt him again. They’ve clearly made something insanely dev friendly, so well done.

This is something that probably isn't talked about enough and was probably overlooked during his road to PS5 talk:

I think about this in terms of balancing evolution and revolution.

Now with Playstation 1, 2 and 3 the target was a revolution each time with a brand new feature set.
That was great in many ways but time for the developers to get up and running got longer with each console.

In the past I've called this time to triangle.

Here's what I had for those three consoles.

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To be clear I'm not talking about time to make a game developers will be ambitious and it may take them six years or so to realize their vision what I'm talking about is that dead time before graphics and other aspects of game development are up and running and trying to minimize that.

On the other hand if we're trying to reduce that dead time to 0 that means the hardware architecture can't change at all we're handcuffed we need to judge for each feature what value it adds and whether it's worth the increase in developer time needed to support it.

So with Playstation 4 we were able to strike a pretty good balance between performance and familiarity we got required learning back to PlayStation 1 levels.

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With PS5 the GPU was definitely the area that we felt the most tension between adding new features and keeping a familiar programming model.

Ultimately I think we've ended up with something under a month of getting up to speed that feels like we're striking about the right balance i'll go into a bit more detail later today about our philosophy with the GPU and the specific feature set that resulted from it.


It's also very important for us as the hardware team to find new dreams by which I mean something other than CPU performance GPU performance and the amount of RAM.

And this is the end result of all of this - despite having less time and focus over the years the PS5 version is running better despite supposed "weaker“ hardware.
 

Lysandros

Member
And this is the end result of all of this - despite having less time and focus over the years the PS5 version is running better despite supposed "weaker“ hardware.
I think in essence the 'explanation' lies within the key word "supposed".
 
Please see my PS5 and XSX screenshots. (no zoom)

1st image is PS5(1800p/RT) vs. XSX(1800p/RT)
2nd image is PS5(1584p/120Hz) vs. XSX(1800p/RT)

XSX(2nd image) has better resolution, but the visible images are showing strange results.
It's an interesting technical difference to see if VRS is the only culprit.
mOzFWde.jpg
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I responded to a poster who said it's worse most of the time on SeriesX, in reality it's actually better most of the time with some instances of a VRS issue but my comment is factually correct.
 

Lysandros

Member
To be fair we are moving towards a time when depth ROPs won't matter because of Ray-Tracing but it's clear that PS5 has a big advantage in this area & it's been times where it really flexed on Series X.
Depends on the implementation of course. In cases where RT is being used for reflections exclusively the shadow maps will remain ROP bound.
 

JackMcGunns

Member
The Story Continues




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Dude, this is not a power issue. Different development times will generate different results, it's not like Sea of Thieves was in development at the same time. The code was originally created to run on Xbox One, then minimal coding was needed to make it run on Series X. PS5 would require an entirely different and more intricate process and more development time. There's no reason for the team to go back and do the same optimizations on an already finished Xbox Series X game just for the few warriors who are going to highlight an DF comparison, it's silly. The current code running on PS5 is better because it's newer. What's your excuse for Alan Wake 2? That's a current gen game with highly impressive visuals that's simply superior on Series X, now what? where will you move the goalposts to?
 
Dude, this is not a power issue. Different development times will generate different results, it's not like Sea of Thieves was in development at the same time. The code was originally created to run on Xbox One, then minimal coding was needed to make it run on Series X. PS5 would require an entirely different and more intricate process and more development time. There's no reason for the team to go back and do the same optimizations on an already finished Xbox Series X game just for the few warriors who are going to highlight an DF comparison, it's silly. The current code running on PS5 is better because it's newer. What's your excuse for Alan Wake 2? That's a current gen game with highly impressive visuals that's simply superior on Series X, now what? where will you move the goalposts to?
Just let it go dude XsX is not more powerful than PS5 in practice.
 

onQ123

Member
Depends on the implementation of course. In cases where RT is being used for reflections exclusively the shadow maps will remain ROP
Dude, this is not a power issue. Different development times will generate different results, it's not like Sea of Thieves was in development at the same time. The code was originally created to run on Xbox One, then minimal coding was needed to make it run on Series X. PS5 would require an entirely different and more intricate process and more development time. There's no reason for the team to go back and do the same optimizations on an already finished Xbox Series X game just for the few warriors who are going to highlight an DF comparison, it's silly. The current code running on PS5 is better because it's newer. What's your excuse for Alan Wake 2? That's a current gen game with highly impressive visuals that's simply superior on Series X, now what? where will you move the goalposts to?
Different games will hit the bottlenecks of each system differently

I gave you facts how you deal with the facts are on you
 

JackMcGunns

Member
Different games will hit the bottlenecks of each system differently

I gave you facts how you deal with the facts are on you


Are you saying that Sea of Thieves, a 2018 game developed for Xbox One and is currently using a newer build for PS5, is a better benchmark than Alan Wake 2, a game with current gen visuals using a cutting edge engine and using the same exact build/release date? I would love to hear your thoughts on that logic.

Having said that, can you explain why Alan Wake 2 runs better on Series X, despite the fact that the PS5 was the lead development platform for AW2? I would love to hear "The Facts".
 
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onQ123

Member
Are you saying that Sea of Thieves, a 2018 game developed for Xbox One and is currently using a newer build for PS5, is a better benchmark than Alan Wake 2, a game with current gen visuals using a cutting edge engine and using the same exact build/release date?

Can you give us the facts on why Alan Wake 2 runs better on Series X, despite the fact that the PS5 was the lead development platform for AW2? I would love to hear "The Facts".
Please go away lol
 
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