John Carmack: PS4 and Xbox One Are "Essentially the Same"
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Not really the PS3 was slightly more powerful in certain areas that was certain BUT it was hard to code for so the games coming out on both platforms tended to do worse on the PS3.VinLAURiA said:
With the PS4 and the Xbox One pretty much being the same console with different kind of software running it..sure there are some hardware differences but it certainly won't be huge. This means game developers won't have to worry that much. AND we gamers don't end up with ports that just run worse. Or situations like with Skyrim, remember that, remember that the PS3 didn't get the DLC, remember that with save files over 10Mbyte things turned into a super laggy mess. Yeah that was the trouble.
With these consoles being quite equal yet different we probably have equal performance. Meaning less reasons to complain "My version runs worse then yours", yeah stuff like that! It should run quite equal now!
4-5 GB of ram means it will have a longer game development cycle the Xbone will be hurting after 4 years....
Don't forget the PS3 has a hard time with textures making most 360 ports look better. The codeing issues were not as bad as the bottleneck issues IMO. Now the Xbone is limited while the PS4 is twice the system it is and its going to be alot easier to code for. MS really messed up this time around.masticina said:
I think that while the numbers are different, I think I'm forced to agree with Carmack. I expect the games that come out for each console are going to end up looking very similar. But because the ps4 has a bit of an edge, I expect games (and software) to run better on the ps4. The extra wiggle room could mean higher frame rates, less texture pop ins, and less bugs so if we have buggy ports like skyrim the ps4 will probably be more stable. Not to mention, using the console's features to multitask might be snappier in theoryLightknight said:
To be honest, "almost" isn't good enough, and I still think the technology in gaming is a gimmick and I simply do not want it, especially considering it's not exactly cheap and I never asked for it to be forced upon me and my potential Xbox.Baldr said:
Exactly the reason why I'm not getting an XboxOne. Cost too much more for the same product, but most importantly it comes with a peripheral and simply do not want, which is practically worse than an controller.
"A bit of a witchhunt"? Really? I resent that. This word is generally being used when the crowd gets overly angry over something that doesn't deserve it.
Calling it a "Witchhunt" would mean that we where being way too angry over Microsofts bumbling attempt to wrestle even more control from the customers away, to eventually no longer sell any games but licenses to play the games.
I do not think the gaming community was being too angry about the attempt to indirectly do inconceivable damage to the medium.
Allow me to expand: It is my choice when i don't want to play a game anymore. Microsoft would have taken that decision away from me; there would be a point where i could no longer play a game because it was server shutdown day and with microsofts pre 180 policies that wouldn't just cut me off from multiplayer but from the rest of it as well.
This "threat" would be always hovering over the customer. One day, the servers will shutdown and you can't play this game anymore.
This would only touch nostalgia (which is bad enough) if the servers went down long after i'm done playing.
But we've had a few cases where servers went down quite early.
"Freelancer" was pretty much the last big space shooter. If you want to fly around in space now you'll have to get Eve online or play that one level in Halo 4.
There where quite a few ideas in that game on which one could improve, to make an entirely different game.
You could play this game now and improve on how things are done in there. Find out what goes on and how freelancer does things. Maybe you can find out where things went wrong and avoid those before your game suffers.
You can play all sorts of old games and maybe bring some genres back, with new and improved ideas.
Well, that wont be happening with the current console generation because the hardware is shit and falls apart if you look at it wrong. You could play the games until the hardware breaks down, which could be happening before the multiplayer servers for your favorite games where taken down.
With the next generation microsoft would have liked to outright make it impossible to play the games.
With no past, there is no future.
Eventually, we would be paying for a license to play the newest game and realize that it is basically the previous title with a new gun or something.
But we'd play it anyway because there's nothing else to play.
More and more people would eventually just get bored with gaming.
Gaming would eventually become a niche hobby for few people.
While i agree with the rest of the statement i don't like the implication that microsoft did a little whoopsie and the world got way too angry about it.
Calling it a "Witchhunt" would mean that we where being way too angry over Microsofts bumbling attempt to wrestle even more control from the customers away, to eventually no longer sell any games but licenses to play the games.
I do not think the gaming community was being too angry about the attempt to indirectly do inconceivable damage to the medium.
Allow me to expand: It is my choice when i don't want to play a game anymore. Microsoft would have taken that decision away from me; there would be a point where i could no longer play a game because it was server shutdown day and with microsofts pre 180 policies that wouldn't just cut me off from multiplayer but from the rest of it as well.
This "threat" would be always hovering over the customer. One day, the servers will shutdown and you can't play this game anymore.
This would only touch nostalgia (which is bad enough) if the servers went down long after i'm done playing.
But we've had a few cases where servers went down quite early.
"Freelancer" was pretty much the last big space shooter. If you want to fly around in space now you'll have to get Eve online or play that one level in Halo 4.
There where quite a few ideas in that game on which one could improve, to make an entirely different game.
You could play this game now and improve on how things are done in there. Find out what goes on and how freelancer does things. Maybe you can find out where things went wrong and avoid those before your game suffers.
You can play all sorts of old games and maybe bring some genres back, with new and improved ideas.
Well, that wont be happening with the current console generation because the hardware is shit and falls apart if you look at it wrong. You could play the games until the hardware breaks down, which could be happening before the multiplayer servers for your favorite games where taken down.
With the next generation microsoft would have liked to outright make it impossible to play the games.
With no past, there is no future.
Eventually, we would be paying for a license to play the newest game and realize that it is basically the previous title with a new gun or something.
But we'd play it anyway because there's nothing else to play.
More and more people would eventually just get bored with gaming.
Gaming would eventually become a niche hobby for few people.
While i agree with the rest of the statement i don't like the implication that microsoft did a little whoopsie and the world got way too angry about it.
A witch hunt generally implies someone being wrongfully persecuted. Microsoft received backlash for exactly what they were doing.Andy Chalk said:
The response may have been over the top (even then, I'm not sure I agree), but calling this anything close to a witch hunt is like crying persecution because someone doesn't share your favourite colour.
The latency is supposed to be much better on the Bone. Part of that will be it's not leeching off resources that would otherwise go to a system not originally designed with it in mind. I don't know if the Kinect has any onboard processing power or the like, but it would help.shirkbot said:
And a worse thing, since the Kinect is "half the price" of the unit, reportedly.ThunderCavalier said:
Huh. Interesting and unexpected. I will of course be waiting for proper benchmarks, but didn't initial reports put the PS4 at about 30% more processing power than the Xbone? That's hardly close in capability. I wonder if Carmack just hasn't managed to figuratively stretch either new console's legs yet, or if those initial benchmarks were bullshit.
Either way, it's a win for the industry that both major core console platforms are finally running on x86 hardware.
Either way, it's a win for the industry that both major core console platforms are finally running on x86 hardware.
An interesting point indeed and to make it simple this generation will be interesting for such reasons that the hardware at least isn't bottlenecking in the worst of places.ZippyDSMlee said:
I was kinda not to happy to hear that the PS4 used more then 2,5Gbyte of memory for its OS and system [caches, video, etc] but eh.. both systems have around 5Gbyte of space left for actual games. So it isn't bad news.
And the different types of memory and memory speeds..we have to see just how much difference that will offer in the games we end up buying. But yes I think that Sony is going to do good this run. The basis it runs on is good!
And now we wait and see what the game developers can do with it. Mmm maybe a Skyrim version he, one can hope. Lets open up the graphics and get things running better shall we.
The thing is, while they are very similar developers will use the next few years to start optimizing software for the console hardware and the machines are different enough to give one (likely the ps4) and advantage over the other.PoolCleaningRobot said:
At the end of the day though, they are just computers. The ps3 gave up its hardware advantages when game assets got to be so large that juggling them amongst the ps3's asset categories became a real difficulty but in this generation, you have two roughly equal machines with one that has much better RAM. It's just a question of how much better it is. It may not be enough to really notice but I'd expect at least some advantages. Skyrim wasn't a particularly buggy game. It had a particularly large problem with bloating assets. That, as I stated, is the ps3's weakness. If any of those asset categories get too bloated, the system crashes. That's what was happening. I was testing the environment when the game first came out and came across all kinds of things like stacking nirnroot blooms and even the dungeons were not resetting before the first major patch. The ability to refresh the outside world and dungeons would have gone a long way to resolve the problem.
In any event, without running benchmarks for both consoles and especially benchmarks that are customized for the respective machines (like the games will be) then we simply won't know. One thing that's for sure is that these consoles are a ton better than their predecessors so we will see a lot of advancement in the line of the average game's capabilities.
They'rs so similar architecturally that you can guess at their relative performance from the specifications alone. On that basis, the PS4 is almost certainly faster.Lightknight said:
But probably only by a factor of 2-4 at most. And to a PC developer (And remember who Carmack is here...) that's nothing.
(Dealing with 10x performance gaps has been routine for years. Modern PC's even force 100x performance gaps to be an issue - which is pretty demanding, and seems to have led to a lot of lower performance systems being unable to run games...)
For a point of reference, the Wii was about 20 times less powerful than the 360 and PS3.
That gap is huge compared to what the PS4 Xbox one gap is likely to be even in the worst case scenario.
Hell, even the Wii U is unlikely to even get much past 5-6 times slower than the fastest of these systems at the most...
Which is why thr claims that it can still compete with them aren't as crazy as some people make it sound...
(Remembering that a 10x performance gap was routinely handled by PC developers for quite a long period.)
I doubt both consoles will have a similar performance. PS4, we know will work really well and have improved graphics. We already saw that at E3. It played games (Specs wise it is superior to a slightly considerable degree). Xbox One on the other hand didn't. All of the demos were played on gaming rigs (PCs). Not really sure what to expect but the latter wasn't a good sign, especially if they intend to sell that thing this holiday season.
masticina said:
The 2.5 GB for The PS4 OS was a rumor...and a false one at that.
The actual true distinction is that:
"Direct Memory" is memory allocated under the traditional video game model, so the game controls all aspects of its allocation
"Flexible Memory" is memory managed by the PS4 OS on the game's behalf, and allows games to use some very nice FreeBSD virtual memory functionality. However this memory is 100 per cent the game's memory, and is never used by the OS, and as it is the game's memory it should be easy for every developer to use it.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/07/26/35gb-of-playstation-4-ram-reportedly-reserved-for-os
I agree with that. When it comes to 2 devices with about a "50%" (finger quotes here) difference in power, its not really that much on paper but the whole goal of consoles is to squeeze out as much performance as possible on these machines. Eventually that 50% will be huge. Moar reasons to love the ps4!Lightknight said:
... a quotebomb from hell, if you quote to deep things break up 
Anyhow I am going to wait and see it out myself. Yes to many rumors go around and yes to many things are still being changed.
In the end we have two platforms that both will pull gaming up to 1080p standards.. finally.
Anyhow I am going to wait and see it out myself. Yes to many rumors go around and yes to many things are still being changed.
In the end we have two platforms that both will pull gaming up to 1080p standards.. finally.
I been reading more(bbwwaaiinnsssss.....) and it seems the Xbone is not that far off from the PS4 but ya it all will come down to their real world bottle necks, I've not seen a huge difference in 4GB of DD2 and DDR3 but ddr3 and ddr5 might make a difference in loading times but that's a minor issue. The PS4 might do a bit better with graphics and loading but there again there is not a huge gap between them. All in all it seems Sony put out more effort but since they approximate each other in power most devs will not use any extra power.masticina said:
I'm watching the hardware should be interesting to see what all they can do.
At this point and time I wish they would license their older console tech so people can build all in one units... I'd rather put 400$ into a PS3 that played Xbox/PS1/PS2 games with some filtering and resolution tweaks than get a PS4 or Xbone.....
I don't think the difference will be hugePoolCleaningRobot said:
As I stated in a previous post (#53) above to PoolCleaningRobot, consoles allow for optimizations that pcs simply can't compete with directly (they do it indirectly by allowing upgrading of the components over time). When developers know all the hardware that is in most of their consumers hands they can create efficiencies between those components and push them in a way that simply won't work on other machines that have been compiled of unknown but equally powered hardware.CrystalShadow said:
You could potentially do this with any computer. Come up with a standard set of hardware and software that is somewhat closed to alteration and then developers can begin to pick away at its strengths and weaknesses until they get the most use out of the system. This is why Oblivion and Skyrim are so very different in quality on the same machines. I mean, frankly (and after the Skyrim patches to the ps3 for the reasons I also mentioned earlier), these games were playable on consoles that were significantly slower than the comparable minimum specs for the games. I mean, 1/4th the minimum RAM (or less, if you consider that the RAM was divided on the ps3) and 5-6 year old CPU/GPUs. This is nothing ot scoff at where advantages are concerned. I don't think the difference will be so severe at the end of this generation but it will still be there.
As such, how can anyone expect to just divine the difference in processing power without taking that into account? The smallest of advantages could make a noticeable difference and the ps4 is supposed to have a significant advantage comparatively. That isn't going to be immediately apparent but should become noticeable as the sytems become older. I think the ps3 crippled themselves by partitioning the RAM and forcing developers to balance assets into various categories. The thing is, they did the asset category on purpose. The CEO (a project lead when he said this) actually stated that the reason was they were afraid developers would unlock the full potential of the system. They should have been so lucky to have games that look like they do today back in 2006. I was quite pleased when they dropped the proprietary hardware crap.
As for the WiiU pacing alongside the major consoles. It's doubtful. You're right that it is closer to these machines than the Wii was to the ps3/360. But the difference is significant enough to require downscaling in AI and graphics. It'll be one of those things where you can definitely see the difference. The WiiU has a few things other things against it:
1. Proprietary hardware: It will now be the only system that is particularly difficult to program for and port to. Porting between pc, XBO and the ps4 will be remarkably easy thanks to x86 architecture. While this should mean more multi-platform games in general, it will make the WiiU the only one that requires special attention to both code for and to downscale large titles appropriately.
2. Sales: The WiiU sales are outright sad and only getting slower as per Nintendo's announcement last week. At this rate, it may not outsell the Dreamcast. The dreamcast only sold 10.6 million units in about 2.5 years before it was discontinued. The WiiU has slowed dramatically and has only sold 3.61 million units since Nov 18th, 2012. 3.06 million of those units were sold in the first month (numbers released on Dec 12, 2012) but only 390k sold in the following three months (Mar 3, 2013) and then 160k for the next three (June 6, 2013). Sales like this would (and has) quickly lead developers to wonder whether or not it's worth their development time to port a game to the system. It will especially have difficulty attracting exclusive titles.
3. The Disk and small HDDs: It still isn't known whether or not the WiiU disk can read dual layers up to the current 50GB standard. If not, this could lead to some serious issues mid-way down the road since the small HDDs on both WiiU models are really not friendly. Also, DLC can quickly become an issue if only a few GBs.
Can the WiiU turn around and become a major competitor in this market like the Wii was and is? I don't think so. I think Nintendo systematically failed this console's release and continued interest. They'd have to pull something wildly impressive and I don't think they can.
Likewise, a multitude of however many times faster or slower something is doesn't necessarily translate across generations. What I mean is this. Imagine that last generation's standard was 10units per second. Being half as slow was a smaller disparity than a generation whose standard is 100units per second. The first would be 5units, the second would be 50units. Whatever those units are, a multiple number of times gains significant gravity as the average number of them increases. We'll have to see though. Maybe it will be able to keep pace. From what I've seen though, it's not much stronger than the 360 though. While the 360 is over 10x weaker than the XBO appears to be, I don't think it's 20x.
Graphically, we're getting close to a time when graphical differences aren't that noticeable though.