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[Buggy Loop]

I think we’re getting to the point now where most people (outside of NeoGaf, ResetEra and Digital Foundry) are more than happy with the current level of graphics.

You would probably get the same sentiment every gens but tech keeps pushing things further.

For one, it looks like pixel soup on consoles with FSR and games running in the 1080p/720p range.

 

[Terenty]

Are they planning on supplying these uber next gen machines with games to play by any chance or just a piece of a new plastic box collecting dust is good enough?

 

[Physiognomonics]

As usual they are missing the point altogether and they want to generalize the problems Xbox Series had as if those problems were also on PS5. This generation was actually a much bigger leap than PS3 / X360, at least on PS5 with 60fps in all games and RT / 60fps in those Insomniac games and instant loadings. Sony with PSSR on PS5 Pro is perfectly on time with AI upscaling. It's Xbox that is lagging behind, again with no hardware with AI upscaling in sight.

why didn't all RDNA2 XBX features gain support

Because the 2 features that weren't on PS5 had either negligeable results or failed (hardware VRS) because they were half-assed. Future is with custom smart software VRS and custom I/O. Even Nvidia is going there for the latter.

Basically this generation it's XBox that has a problem with their promises and had the lowest "generational leap". On PS5 we got RT at 60fps (Xbox didn't), or 60fps in the best looking games of the generation in their exclusives games. We also got instant loading in most of their exclusives, as promised by Cerny. On Xbox their exclusives are still plagued with long and regular loadings.

The only problem in Sony exclusives this gen is with lack of gameplay improvement. But that has nothing to do with hardware or features. It's a creativity problem.

 

[Buggy Loop]

AMD hasn’t halted GPU advancement.

I think he means that AMD gives up on high end for RDNA 4. Still some advancements technically as making RDNA 4 a more efficient and cheap RDNA 3 is still something. But likely won't be close to the monster that Blackwell will be.

 

[Rocco Schiavone]

I just want a gen where I can play games at native 4k at 60 fps with all of the effects at max on consoles.

If you want that you know what you have to buy/build. A PC.

 

[diffusionx]

Don't believe the lies. They say this every gen. And whatever level of graphics the PS6 (next Xbox, lol) is capable of hitting at 4K/60fps, devs will overshoot that quickly, I guarantee it. That's just how it works. People never seem to understand that this stuff is relative. If you can run a game at 4K/60fps, you can run a better looking game at 4K/30fps, or 1080p/60fps, so on and so forth. So it comes down to what the dev wants to do.

They were on release but not anymore dude. They've been surpassed.

I played Ragnarok earlier this year and I dunno, it's still one of the best looking games.

I remember I got my 2080 Super and turned on ray tracing for a game and shrugged. I think that DF type nerds have been overselling this tech from the beginning. We are really in the world of diminishing returns, and that minor enhancement costs so much in GPU power that even $1600 GPUs are relying on sub-native resolution and generated frames.

 

[Evil Smurf King]

 

[Three]

Digital Foundry has no doubt that both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X were oversold. 4K resolution at 60 frames per second was impossible to achieve without PS4 and Xbox One level of visuals

I'm sorry but DF are retarded if that's what they think since we had upscaling tech and things beyond resolution (like geometry and lighting) were improved on top of that too.

Edit: Just watched the video and it's Alex talking about native 4k. Just after talk of DLSS and its importance and adoption on PC . I doubt you MF have 8K monitors.

 

[knguyen]

With Phil still at the wheel for Xbox and Sony keep bending over for that DEI bullshit, the next gen systems will totally fucked.

 

[Senua]

I played Ragnarok earlier this year and I dunno, it's still one of the best looking games.

I remember I got my 2080 Super and turned on ray tracing for a game and shrugged. I think that DF type nerds have been overselling this tech from the beginning. We are really in the world of diminishing returns, and that minor enhancement costs so much in GPU power that even $1600 GPUs are relying on sub-native resolution and generated frames.

Ragnarok to me is just GoW (2018) with awesome textures. Not a bad thing per say, but it's very obviously cross gen. Like pretty much all first party Sony titles art direction is awesome obv but they could've pushed it way harder if it was PS5 only, we will see the full potential with the next game I'm sure (especially on Pro/PC)

RT to me depends on the implementation, in say a game like Alan Wake 2 isn't a huge leap over the standard raster because it's baked, so it already looks awesome, though it does have its limitations. But in a dynamic system like Cyberpunk it really shows an incredible leap. It's the future no doubt, we're just seeing nice previews and the potential for it atm.

 

[Metnut]

If the next generation of consoles can’t make things substantially easier and cheaper for developers then the industry is going to end up in a bad place. PS5 type performance for 1/4 to 1/3 the development cost should be the goal.

 

[PendekarRajawali]

…and then in the mid of next generation 60fps is not default on consoles.

 

[DenchDeckard]

I tell you one thing. I promise myself not to be fooled by unreal engine demos and talks of how games could be designed differently due to SSD streaming. That Cerny talk was heart breaking to what we received.

 

[Euler007]

I don't see how this gen was more oversold than any gen before. When's the last time you waited a minute for a level to load? You forgot that part about last gen. Baseline SSD, one of the selling points.

(upcaled to 4K)/60 was another selling point and it was true. Demon's Souls on its own hammers that point. Did some devs manage to way undershoot that mark with their spaghetti tangle of unoptimized libraries (with help from the artistic director asking for more vegetation)? Of course. It will always happen.

 

[M1chl]

What the fuck means "oversold", like too much sales or what?

 

[Three]

As usual they are missing the point altogether and they want to generalize the problems Xbox Series had as if those problems were also on PS5. This generation was actually a much bigger leap than PS3 / X360, at least on PS5 with 60fps in all games and RT / 60fps in those Insomniac games and instant loadings. Sony with PSSR on PS5 Pro is perfectly on time with AI upscaling. It's Xbox that is lagging behind, again with no hardware with AI upscaling in sight.


Because the 2 features that weren't on PS5 had either negligeable results or failed (hardware VRS) because they were half-assed. Future is with custom smart software VRS and custom I/O. Even Nvidia is going there for the latter.

Basically this generation it's XBox that has a problem with their promises and had the lowest "generational leap". On PS5 we got RT at 60fps (Xbox didn't), or 60fps in the best looking games of the generation in their exclusives games. We also got instant loading in most of their exclusives, as promised by Cerny. On Xbox their exclusives are still plagued with long and regular loadings.

The only problem in Sony exclusives this gen is with lack of gameplay improvement. But that has nothing to do with hardware or features. It's a creativity problem.

Yep, they turned a question about being sold "full fat RDNA2, VRS, SFS, and Velocity Architecture" into console bashing that it can't do native 4k. I don't think that was the question and judging by their discussion about DLSS 98% adoption and it becoming "needed" and standard neither are most PC next gen games. Sony and I don't think even MS ever once oversold or promised native 4k next gen games. The only thing I think was oversold in that regard was Series S promising just a reduction to 1440p but instead suffered much lower resolutions, half framerate games and missing features.

 

[Zathalus]

I think he means that AMD gives up on high end for RDNA 4. Still some advancements technically as making RDNA 4 a more efficient and cheap RDNA 3 is still something. But likely won't be close to the monster that Blackwell will be.

Yeah, but that doesn’t impact consoles really. AMD does this every so often, started with ATI with the 3000 series and most recently Polaris and RDNA1.

 

[Morrie’s wig shop]

Geee Whiz, you really think they were oversold… of course they were. Just like every generation before.

And now, the time has come to start over selling next gen consoles a few years before release…. and round and round we go..
Could’ve, should’ve, would’ve

 

[AJUMP23]

While graphical fidelity is nice, the manpower and time needed to create more graphical fidelity is detrimental to releasing more games. They need tools to help produce great graphics in reduced time.

 

[Insane Metal]

Here we go again.

We hear this every fucking time. And we get disappointed with consoles every single time as well lol.

 

[Astray]

Don't believe the lies. They say this every gen. And whatever level of graphics the PS6 (next Xbox, lol) is capable of hitting at 4K/60fps, devs will overshoot that quickly, I guarantee it. That's just how it works. People never seem to understand that this stuff is relative. If you can run a game at 4K/60fps, you can run a better looking game at 4K/30fps, or 1080p/60fps, so on and so forth. So it comes down to what the dev wants to do.


I played Ragnarok earlier this year and I dunno, it's still one of the best looking games.

I remember I got my 2080 Super and turned on ray tracing for a game and shrugged. I think that DF type nerds have been overselling this tech from the beginning. We are really in the world of diminishing returns, and that minor enhancement costs so much in GPU power that even $1600 GPUs are relying on sub-native resolution and generated frames.

Raytracing's value is in reducing the costs involved with creating hyperrealistic lighting and reflection effects.

One of main (and untalked about) issue the industry is facing now is the fragmentation of raytracing capability (and now AI Upscaling too) amongst the gaming userbase.

Which means you can't just set up light sources and reflection surfaces, raytrace and call it a day. You have to have fallbacks in case you want to have the maximum number of users be able to play and buy your game, and those fallbacks cost additional money and hired hands to implement.

It's part of the reason why costs are so inflated nowadays.

 

[scarlet0pimp]

When the next consoles come out, the current consoles will then start to get utilised properly and will then see them shine, but then the new console should perform better.
Games are taking too long to develop. A game that started development when the series x launched might launch in time for the hype of the next Xbox. it's daft.
I think the Series X might actually start to shine once the PS5 pro comes out and developers start to optimise games for it. Then though it wont matter too much since the PS5 pro will be the one in the spot light.

 

[Senua]

Here we go again.

We hear this every fucking time. And we get disappointed with consoles every single time as well lol.

That's humans for ya, short memories and high hopes.

 

[KeplerL2]

4090?
Stop giving these fools and kind of hope.

You are overselling it in a BIG way

Not at all, 4090 performance in 2028 would be way below historical trend.

 

[nightmare-slain]

Deleted

 

[SolidQ]

4090? Not a chance

PS6 is 2028, RDNA6 is near release, so mix RDNA5 and 6, can be easy take 4090lvl. Even mid RDNA4 gonna be between 7900XT/XTX, so 30% not hard for RDNA5.5 lvl gpu

 

[Zathalus]

Regarding new features:

Hardware VRS was a good idea but it’s been superseded by newer upscaler technologies that don’t play well with it. Sampler Feedback Streaming is really good technology but it requires changes to how engines stream texture data, and since the PS5 doesn’t support it most developers don’t want to do that just yet. Cross-gen is also probably responsible. I can see this slowly getting adopted next gen once the PS6 supports it. The PS5 Pro does have it, but again no support on the base PS5 makes it rather moot.

The only “new” feature that is getting wider support is Mesh/primitive shaders. Alan Wake 2, Avatar, and Star Wars Outlaws leverage them for really high detail geometry and UE5 can also leverage it. The PS5 is less programmatically flexible with primitive shaders, but the the Pro is fully feature compliant with mesh shading so the PS6 will be as well.

Really, the only major thing this console generation missed out on is more powerful RT and ML, with the former not being the end of the world with how weak the consoles GPUs are for RT, but the later being a big miss for AMD.

 

[nightmare-slain]

Deleted

 

[Iced Arcade]

What the fuck means "oversold", like too much sales or what?

Over hyped, marketing bs etc

 

[Doctor Hades]

I never for one second thought the PS5 or Xbox Series X would deliver 4K 60 fps games as standard, even back in 2019 before I bought either console. That is because I already knew from PC that upscaling was needed to run most games at 4K with all the eye candy enabled and a decent 60+ fps framerate. It's why I stuck with 1440p for my display and bought a 360 Hz QD-OLED monitor in February this year for my i5-13600KF / RTX 4080 PC rather than upgrading to a 4K display. In my opinion, 4K is overrated for games, especially on consoles where you don't sit close enough to the screen to really see the difference between 1440p and 2160p.

There was no way a console was ever going to compete with that, especially with AMD hardware that typically lags behind the technology used by NVIDIA. I am glad that Sony have gone with their own PSSR upscaling because FSR is pretty awful on PC and even worse on consoles due to their low base resolutions. With the next Nintendo Switch having NVIDIA hardware, it wouldn't surprise me if the Switch 2 or whatever it's called will have better upscaling hardware than the PS5 or Xbox Series X|S.

 

[ZehDon]

If memory serves, there was an internal push for machine learning upscaling inside of Microsoft before this gen, but it got shot down. Big mistake, in my opinion. Now that DLSS has shown itself to be incredibly reliable, and the PS5 Pro apparently having Sony's own version of the tech, it stands to reason the next-gen consoles will use it to push harder on paper.

If there's one thing I fucking hate about this generation, it's the atrocious IQ on the back of shit-tier upscaling like FSR. The sooner we move past it, the better.

 

[nightmare-slain]

Deleted

 

[Lucifers Beard]

This is said every generation.

 

[nightmare-slain]

Deleted

 

[Three]

but ... but super duper fast SSD.

/s

that was what they sold the PS5 on. it was like welcome to 2007 i guess? SSDs are cool but they've been around for a long time. Nothing new or exciting.

Welcome to 2007? The time of PS3 and 360. Nah son, SSDs were a godsend and new and exciting.

 

[DAHGAMING]

I wonder if they will have the same graphics as Toy Story ?

Its a shame but I wont be getting to excited for next gen. We have had about 10yrs of this 4k UHD shit now, I fell for it went out got 4k tv and monitor ect. 4k is great but once the initial "wow thats clear and looks good" has worn off im just about the gameplay. For eg over the summer I have been playing AC Odyssey on Series X (dynamic res upto 4k) up in my Xbox control center on 27inch 4k monitor (Xbox wallpaper, bed covers ect) and Series S (dynamic upto 1080p) downstairs on 4k 50inch LCD . 100% theres a difference and I notice it when I change between them, but after a few mins im not giving a fuck and just enjoying the game.

I would much rather native 1440p and higher FPS be the target going forward. I have started moving to PC as my main platform now anyway so I have my own choice anyway.

The main thing for me though is the games, you can have this great console but both Xbox and Playstation have been a massive let down with games this gen, and if that dont change people will just fuck them off and keep with what they already have. For us lot we love the tech side of it ect, but for the majority of people its about the games or even a game. If there is that 1 game thats only on that console people will move on, not for the tech. Take COD and FIFA/EAFC , watch the sales for both PS5 and Xbox X/S increase by a large % when them games are no longer coming to last gen.

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

the tech experts

 

[Topher]

While graphical fidelity is nice, the manpower and time needed to create more graphical fidelity is detrimental to releasing more games. They need tools to help produce great graphics in reduced time.

Yeah, I agree. Right now it feels like we are getting less games for the sake of better graphics. That puts more pressure on every single game released as it takes longer and cost more than previous generations. Personally, I'd rather have lower graphical fidelity in favor of more game releases or, as you say, develop tools to make that happen.

 

[nightmare-slain]

Deleted

 

[Rentahamster]

This generation was oversold? Feels like every generation after PS2 was oversold.

 

[MarkMe2525]

"YO EVERYONE CHECK OUT THESE NEXT GEN SYSTEMS THAT CAN RUN ANYTHING"
Everyone: cool so, what games are we getting?
"HERO SHOOTERS!!!!!"

The obssesion with new systems is so ridiculous. We have indie games carrying gaming in these times that run on potatoes lmao.

Flat gaming as become commoditized. "New experiences" are not on the menu any longer, just rehashed and remixed mechanics. The fact that one can infer the button layout of a game, on first boot, tells a story in itself of stagnation.

I'm not claiming I no longer participate in the medium, as there is comfort in the familiar, but I have turned to VR more and more for novel experiences and mechanics. Of course, even this market is not immune to these pitfalls, and it is only a matter of time before I will be able to make the same claims of stagnation in that space as well.

Edit: I want to clarify that I recognize there are always exceptions to the rule.

 

[AJUMP23]

Yeah, I agree. Right now it feels like we are getting less games for the sake of better graphics. That puts more pressure on every single game released as it takes longer and cost more than previous generations. Personally, I'd rather have lower graphical fidelity in favor of more game releases or, as you say, develop tools to make that happen.

I think there is some AI or machine learning that can help with it. But it would need to be as ubiquitous as speed tree for fidelity. High quality asset generation is time consuming.

 

[Sooner]

No, it couldn't. There isn't enough room to grow to ever compete with early 2D and early 3D generational leaps.

Sure, on paper, the specs could be a bigger jump. But, actual, wow factors - no chance.

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

I know many don't think so but nothing has changed my mind we will get the next gen Xbox likely 2 years ahead of the PS6, especially since they skipped the pro model this time around

Maybe something has changed in the last few months at castle green but it hasn't made its way into the "grapevine" if it has

 

[Three]

I was using an SSD in my PC back then. I know consoles didn't have them and when they finally got them it was a big improvement for sure.

I think you're severally underselling the improvement or overselling your 2007 SSD. In 2007 SSDs had a sequential write speed of 100MB/sec and sequential read speed of 120MB/sec. This is not what we have today in consoles and games changed how they worked to take advantage of the SSD especially compared to 2007. In 2007 your 120MB (if that) SSD would have meant very little in games.

 

[SegaSnatcher]

First, let me clarify what I'm about to write below this is not coming from fanboyism or hatred towards Microsoft. I'm 41 yrs old I don't have time for console war BS.

Having said that, Microsoft really needs to hit it out of the park next-gen because well these past two generations have not been their greatest of moments in gaming. Look how amazing the 360 generation was, they really need to get back to that.

 

[King Dazzar]

Yeah, I agree. Right now it feels like we are getting less games for the sake of better graphics. That puts more pressure on every single game released as it takes longer and cost more than previous generations. Personally, I'd rather have lower graphical fidelity in favor of more game releases or, as you say, develop tools to make that happen.

Yeah I get some of that and no doubt it takes time. But dont game engines come with the tools to help with that? I wonder if the problem isnt more linked to game length expectations and building and implementing all the content and all the numerous cutscenes etc we have today. I remember when Far Cry 5 came out and players could build large sections of the world, with loads of assets easily deployable.

 

[Trogdor1123]

Am I the only one who thinks both PS5/Series X are excellently designed HW that both punch beyoned their specs?

This gen is providing us with really stable fps performance with multiple options. Yes there are some exceptions and some poorly optimized games but still we are far cry from 7th gen (PS3, X360) regarding fluctuating performance.

Also performance degredation is not exclusive to consoles, the more you add features to your game (RTX, higher resolution, 120fps and beyond ... etc) the more taxing it becomes to render even for the highest end of PC GPUs. It has been this way forever.

I was thinking this exactly. Going 4K and doubling (or more) fps in games that look better than last gen is exactly what I was hoping for.

Games load way faster too, I think some people haven’t actually gone back to see what the older games were like in a while to really compare them

 

[RCX]

Maybe throw some NFT/Web3 in there, really spice up the bullshit soup.

 

[HL3.exe]

Cute, they said the same with the PS5 zen CPU architecture. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Not sure if most got the memo, but hardware leaps isn't the savior anymore, hadn't been since the 8 gen.

It's ridiculously high budgets, a small army of devs working internationally and risk-aversion + tools that don't catch up in practice as suggested. That's what is actually stagnated high fidelity game development.

A future (and current day) where high-tier dev studio's (like Rockstar or Naughty, etc) can, in practice, only produce 1 title per generation

Edit: the last I actually got existed by "next gen hardware" where the 6th (PS2/XBOX/NGC) and 7th gen (PS360) leaps, as those games actually showed a fundamental and substantial leap in visual and simulation fidelity, leading to actually "next gen" feeling gameplay. Games that simply couldn't be possible on previous hardware.