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Xbox is doing a stream about Series X and xCloud next week on the 18th.
Sony is still holding their cards close to their chest.
I am watching the old PS4 announcement and Sony knocked it out of the park. They showed off the controller, they showed off prototype performance using the Unreal Engine. They showed off new gameplay from Knack and the dashboard. They showed social features like the share menu and uploading videos. They showed remote play between the PS4 and Vita. They showed off performance within KillZone Shadow Fall. Drive Club, Infamous Second Son, Watch Dog, Destiny... So many games.
Today we got....
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To say I am disappointed would be an understatement.
What I don't get it is - both current and next gen are basically identical machines - Jaguar cpu to Zen 2, new AMD RDNA 2 gpu, with a difference in CU/memory etc based on individual choices, but its still the same sysem.
Why then is Xbox 100% backward compatible but PS5 isn't? That's a HUGE deal because I can just trade in my Xbox on launch, get a Seriex X and not lose anything. And with the great deals MS runs this is exactly what I plan to do.
Sony's 'top PS4 games will be playable' is the kind of hand wavy nonsense I don't expect from them. This isn't some massive engineering effort and emulation layer they had to build like MS did, its the exact same x86 code and gpu architecture. This is just being lazy.
Of course its all about the games but I just don't get it.
Not only is Sony limiting their backwards compatibility but it seems they are not upgrading the games in any way. They should load faster and have more stable frame rates. But if they were 30FPS on PS4 they will be 30FPS on the PS5. Same goes for resolution. From my understanding they are just making them playable in whatever fashion they were able to on the PS4. So if you watch a Digital Foundry video where a game on PS4 might dip from time to time. They shouldnt dip anymore. However, if they were 1080/30 on a PS4 they will still be that same setup on the PS5.
Where on the Xbox they are already showing how they can add HDR to newer titles like Halo 5 as well as OG Xbox games like Fusion Frenzy. Both running at 4k 60.
I suppose I shouldn't talk too definitively on the PS5 just yet. However, with what was shown and said during the presentation yesterday nothing lead me to believe that we were getting anything other than their native PS4 modes. At this point we know they will run in their "legacy modes". Nothing more or less was stated yesterday.
Trust me I never intend to miss lead anyone. I'm just trying to learn as much about the these next gen systems as everyone else. I want nothing more than to play the full Kill Zone and Resistance series in glorious 4k/60 HDR. But short of a remaster, I don't think I am going to get that wish.
Third parties don't have that incentive, they only stand to benefit from updating their back catalog if they think it will sell more copies. Expect far less updated games from third parties.
PS1 and PS2 games, I agree with you, they should be able to emulate those.
THe PS3 is a different beast.
Though, as I've said before, I'm honestly fine without backwards compatibility. I still have a fat PS3 which played PS2 games. The PS3 games that I still have, I haven't touched since I got a PS4. I had more, but, they remade some of them for the PS4, I purchased the remakes, and sold my PS3 copies.
My PS3 died, and, I don't feel the need to fix it, as I am able to play PS1 and PS2 on my PC, if I wanted, and, I haven't wanted to. Yeah, the option is nice to have, but, I haven't taken advantage of it in years.
People are different, but, I also know there are a lot of people who feel the same way.
Sony followed Microsoft in saying that the launch of the PS5 this year will not be delayed.
I'm going to take a leap and posit that Sony isn't committing to backward compatibility because they're changing their OS and API to better take advantage of the new hardware.
Perhaps there's something limiting about the PS4 software stack that would inhibit performance on the PS5.
Of course, if backward compatibility were something they were interested in to begin with, they'd have made it happen. I don't buy them having less resources for the purpose than MS. Sony is a different company overall, but software development is absolutely something they're in resources for. They simply chose not to go there.
And honestly, I see the idea of a second new Xbox running previous games with better performance upon release to be a feather in Microsoft's cap.
I wouldn’t say completely unacceptable, sometimes things just do change enough. Look at the various audio media changes, or home video. No BC used to be pretty common with consoles, and even on PC upgrading can absolutely kill how an old game runs.But all PS4 games should work day 1, none of this 'top 100 will be playable'. Its like upgrading your pc and suddenly your old apps/games don't work, its completely unacceptable.
Outside of their consoles and perhaps simpler devices, Sony ranks about the level of ass when it comes to software / UI / ergonomics.I don't know about that them having the software resources. Have you used any Sony products outside of the PlayStation? Their TVs run a very stripped down Android OS. Phones, cameras, receivers, car radios.... Pretty much everything Sony makes has either a very basic UI/OS or is using someone else's product like Android. Not that the PS4 OS is bad. I like it a lot. Same for their other products. I like how simple they are. I just don't see Sony investing a lot of resources into their UIs.
Sony is a massive multi-conglomerate. They do in fact produce software.Sony is not a software company. It works out in their favor for most of their product lines - I don't wany yet another skin for Android etc or like their tv's like mentioned ^.
Top 100 have been tested in ps5 boosted mode, all work in ps4//ps4 pro mode, they are still testing and they can't say that all will work on boosted mode because it depends on how the games got coded, I'll point out the original Dark Souls on pc with the 60fps patch, you know what happened? The game had durability tied to frame rate for some reason and it took the talented hobbyist that created the 60fps patch (Durante) a lot of tinkering to find a way to unlink those two things without breaking the game. That kind of interaction is out of the hands of the console maker and this is why they didn't commit to every game will work boosted as a statement.
Edit: I did try to play with the 60fps patch and not fixed durability, it had issues. A couple of speed run skips also became impossible at 60fps and immunity frames were iffy. Still fun tho.
FPS caps are still a thing these days because it has become common for things like AI and physics to run on their own threads at a fixed rate and then push updates into the main loop when it's ready. These caps are usually around 200-300 FPS, though. It is much easier to synchronize everything when all your update loops are predictably finished at the same time, so I understand why developers do it especially on consoles. But for forward compatibility they really need to get with the times. Back in the day it was as simple as just updating with delta time, but things have gotten much more complicated both from a design and hardware perspective. I know a bullet physics system I designed 15 years ago gets wonky over 300 FPS and completely breaks above 500 FPS.Dead Space is a console port. The terrible floaty controls and lack of many common options are a “dead” giveaway.
FPS lock issues don’t exist on properly coded PC games. Doom is a perfect modern example of this.
the Xbox Series S is likely going to be announced only when the pricing can be confirmed. As the console is not going to be as powerful as the Xbox Series X, it wouldn't make much sense to reveal it without announcing its most enticing feature.