Bethesda: New Consoles Are Cross-Platform Development Hell

[Somebloke]

So it's, as usual, a marketplace sequestration thing (...shaping infrastructure for purely "political" reasons), then - not a fundamentally technical one?

 

[ph0b0s123]

The PS4 and Xbox One are basically high-end PCs,

Erm, that's not quite right. Mid range at best.

"Is it any good?

In a word, no. Not in a gaming context. To be fair to AMD, the A4-5000 is a nice chip for its intended market ? mobile devices at the cheaper end of the market. It?s got miles more horsepower than existing Atom chips (though Atom is due a major overhaul to its cores very soon).

But as a gaming CPU? Let me give you some numbers. In raw processing terms, these four Jaguar cores have slightly less than a quarter the grunt of a Core i5-3570K. It?s the same story on a core-by-core basis. Less than one quarter of the performance."

Source: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/05/27/week-in-tech-hands-on-with-those-new-games-consoles/

If you click through to the source article, you'll see that the "high-end PCs" observation is a direct quote from Pete Hines.

Don't see how that changes my point. Does not matter who said it, they are wrong wrong. The new consoles will be using CPU's and GPU's that later in the year will be used in mobile phones and tablets. Hardly high-end.

OT: Don't see why this is a surprise. It is in Sony and Microsoft's interest to have it, that if you want to on-line game with your friends who own one system, you will need to have the same system. Don't see how this is news worthy. Headline 'Companies want you to buy their hardware rather than any hardware and be supported by open standards...'

-SNIP-

-SNIP-

TL; DR
Most machines at the 'current' level run things just as fine as the 'next' level. To a lot of people the different between 30 frames and 120 frames is minimal. It's not a comparison between fast and slow, but between fast and faster. Or to fit the vernacular used by these execs, High-End vs Higher-End.

Most mid to lower end PC's run games fine at the moment as most games are console ports with some scaling up. Console ports generally don't push PC's that much. The longer than usual last console cycle has made this even more the case. So it is a comparison between fast and slow. Just that with the last console generation slow was good enough to play the ports.

With the new generation being of the same architecture, even though towards the lower end, Dev's will have an easier time to put in features that can be scaled up to give high end PC's the ability to differentiate themselves. So next gen consoles will be running high end PC hardware, but the fact that they are essentially to mid range PC's will be a boon for high-end PC owners. So everybody win's, lets just not make untrue claims about next gen consoles. OK?

 

[TiberiusEsuriens]

Most mid to lower end PC's run games fine at the moment as most games are console ports with some scaling up. Console ports generally don't push PC's that much. The longer than usual last console cycle has made this even more the case. So it is a comparison between fast and slow. Just that with the last console generation slow was good enough to play the ports.

With the new generation being of the same architecture, even though towards the lower end, Dev's will have an easier time to put in features that can be scaled up to give high end PC's the ability to differentiate themselves. So next gen consoles will be running high end PC hardware, but the fact that they are essentially to mid range PC's will be a boon for high-end PC owners. So everybody win's, lets just not make untrue claims about next gen consoles. OK?

I was just trying to make a point that PC specs will always over deliver what current consoles can/will provide, and that PC enthusiasts know this but complain anyways.

And then you complained anyways. Kinda proving my point there XD

I do totally agree though that with the new architecture both console and PC will reap the benefits. We've seen with the next-gen game demos that the mentality has become "see what the PCs can do? I want to be like that!" Simply due to the nature of the devices, the iterative and modular PC has that unique ability to always creep ahead and lead the field.

 

[UnnDunn]

Spoiler: wall of text

The PS4 and Xbox One are basically high-end PCs,

Erm, that's not quite right. Mid range at best.

"Is it any good?

In a word, no. Not in a gaming context. To be fair to AMD, the A4-5000 is a nice chip for its intended market ? mobile devices at the cheaper end of the market. It?s got miles more horsepower than existing Atom chips (though Atom is due a major overhaul to its cores very soon).

But as a gaming CPU? Let me give you some numbers. In raw processing terms, these four Jaguar cores have slightly less than a quarter the grunt of a Core i5-3570K. It?s the same story on a core-by-core basis. Less than one quarter of the performance."

Source: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/05/27/week-in-tech-hands-on-with-those-new-games-consoles/

If you click through to the source article, you'll see that the "high-end PCs" observation is a direct quote from Pete Hines.

Don't see how that changes my point. Does not matter who said it, they are wrong wrong. The new consoles will be using CPU's and GPU's that later in the year will be used in mobile phones and tablets. Hardly high-end.

OT: Don't see why this is a surprise. It is in Sony and Microsoft's interest to have it, that if you want to on-line game with your friends who own one system, you will need to have the same system. Don't see how this is news worthy. Headline 'Companies want you to buy their hardware rather than any hardware and be supported by open standards...'

-SNIP-

-SNIP-

TL; DR
Most machines at the 'current' level run things just as fine as the 'next' level. To a lot of people the different between 30 frames and 120 frames is minimal. It's not a comparison between fast and slow, but between fast and faster. Or to fit the vernacular used by these execs, High-End vs Higher-End.

Most mid to lower end PC's run games fine at the moment as most games are console ports with some scaling up. Console ports generally don't push PC's that much. The longer than usual last console cycle has made this even more the case. So it is a comparison between fast and slow. Just that with the last console generation slow was good enough to play the ports.

With the new generation being of the same architecture, even though towards the lower end, Dev's will have an easier time to put in features that can be scaled up to give high end PC's the ability to differentiate themselves. So next gen consoles will be running high end PC hardware, but the fact that they are essentially to mid range PC's will be a boon for high-end PC owners. So everybody win's, lets just not make untrue claims about next gen consoles. OK?

I think your PC performance scale is skewed towards gaming. In the grand scheme of things, any relatively recent PC with a discrete GPU and 4GB+ of RAM is "high-end". Most PCs still ship with integrated GPUs and 4GB of RAM or less; both consoles will handily outperform those PCs.

 

[Strazdas]

Lets dumb it down to just the basics:
Last gen PCs: used 32x bit OS, and could only use max 4GB ram.
Current gen PCs: are those that first adopted the 64x bit OS, letting us use the current standard of 8GB ram, computers often have multiple cores.
Next gen PCs: have excessive tons of ram, (my buddy has 64GB) and require many cores and many SLI graphics cards to do the super cool/neat graphics stuff.

wow, hold your horses there sir.
While it is trie there still are PCs sold with 32bit system it has nothing to do with generations of PC. PC generations depend on CPU and GPU mainly (one could argue ram going SDR-DDR-DDR2-DDR3 is also a generatino thing, but thats rarely a selling factor and its the cheap part). For example Nvidia GPUs are counting their 16th cycle now, and thats ignoring in-cycle iterations which we could equate to Xbox 360 models. The GPU cycles i dont even count.
Its just that most people skip multiple generations, as they are not that far apart, and the backward compactability makes sure you never loose anything by buying a PC every 5 cycles. Sure maybe you cant play all games on max graphics, but its not liek consoles can even run PCs min graphics most of the time.
Your budy is a bit extreme with 64 GB, 16gb is exessive, especially for games created for consoles who has 512mb, which usually mean you need mroe GPU ram than normal ram sadly.
You never need multiple graphic cards unless your a 3d designer/graphics generator. some people do put multiple in and they may even find uses for it, but that isnt really a requirement. the single GPU speed has been keeping up to date very well.
single-core computers arep retty much extinct btw, and only oldies like me still got singlecores runing as secondary PCs. heck, mobile phones arep retty much done with singlecores already.

The two major leaps forward that could theoretically require new fancy cards are open world environments and fluids simulation. if we look at the new consoles, they are running older hardware like ours and they seem to be doing both of these just fine. While the consoles are upgrading, there's no NEED to go for the crazy new stuff when the newer-but-not-NEW hardware is all that mass consumer (again not us) really want. It's also hella cheaper to mass produce.

Wait, did you just say they were doing open world just fine? are you seriuos? the copy paste flat tectures and instantly dissapearing items behind you, draw distance so small things litterary appear after you already hit them is doing fine? excuse me while i watch pigs fly.
fluid mechanics.... lets not even start how few games even attempt those....

Just as you pointed out with Intel, there are many iterations, but they're in between generations, not generational leaps themselves. Next-Next-Gen will bundle it all together, but not because it's cool and hip, but because by that time hardware will have evolved to contain it all as base operational procedure. By that time all the PC enthusiasts will be complaining about some other niche thing that new hardware can do that doesn't actually effect anything.

By that logic, there is a sum total of 1 generation of PC and everything else is iterations. there were no general leaps in PCs. well maybe multicore processors, but even that is just more of the same. altrough the new i-core architecture may prove me wrong.

I think your PC performance scale is skewed towards gaming. In the grand scheme of things, any relatively recent PC with a discrete GPU and 4GB+ of RAM is "high-end". Most PCs still ship with integrated GPUs and 4GB of RAM or less; both consoles will handily outperform those PCs.

most PCs are low-end office PCs though, so your point is moot.

 

[ph0b0s123]

Spoiler: wall of text

The PS4 and Xbox One are basically high-end PCs,

Erm, that's not quite right. Mid range at best.

"Is it any good?

In a word, no. Not in a gaming context. To be fair to AMD, the A4-5000 is a nice chip for its intended market ? mobile devices at the cheaper end of the market. It?s got miles more horsepower than existing Atom chips (though Atom is due a major overhaul to its cores very soon).

But as a gaming CPU? Let me give you some numbers. In raw processing terms, these four Jaguar cores have slightly less than a quarter the grunt of a Core i5-3570K. It?s the same story on a core-by-core basis. Less than one quarter of the performance."

Source: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/05/27/week-in-tech-hands-on-with-those-new-games-consoles/

If you click through to the source article, you'll see that the "high-end PCs" observation is a direct quote from Pete Hines.

Don't see how that changes my point. Does not matter who said it, they are wrong wrong. The new consoles will be using CPU's and GPU's that later in the year will be used in mobile phones and tablets. Hardly high-end.

OT: Don't see why this is a surprise. It is in Sony and Microsoft's interest to have it, that if you want to on-line game with your friends who own one system, you will need to have the same system. Don't see how this is news worthy. Headline 'Companies want you to buy their hardware rather than any hardware and be supported by open standards...'

-SNIP-

-SNIP-

TL; DR
Most machines at the 'current' level run things just as fine as the 'next' level. To a lot of people the different between 30 frames and 120 frames is minimal. It's not a comparison between fast and slow, but between fast and faster. Or to fit the vernacular used by these execs, High-End vs Higher-End.

Most mid to lower end PC's run games fine at the moment as most games are console ports with some scaling up. Console ports generally don't push PC's that much. The longer than usual last console cycle has made this even more the case. So it is a comparison between fast and slow. Just that with the last console generation slow was good enough to play the ports.

With the new generation being of the same architecture, even though towards the lower end, Dev's will have an easier time to put in features that can be scaled up to give high end PC's the ability to differentiate themselves. So next gen consoles will be running high end PC hardware, but the fact that they are essentially to mid range PC's will be a boon for high-end PC owners. So everybody win's, lets just not make untrue claims about next gen consoles. OK?

I think your PC performance scale is skewed towards gaming. In the grand scheme of things, any relatively recent PC with a discrete GPU and 4GB+ of RAM is "high-end". Most PCs still ship with integrated GPUs and 4GB of RAM or less; both consoles will handily outperform those PCs.

Since the consoles being compared against are in the original article are predominately gaming devices, I think that comparing against PC gaming performance is completely justified. When consoles are just for going spreadsheets or surfing the web then the comparison you are talking about would be justified. You need to compare apples to apples not apples to oranges...