Topic: PS5 Digital vs. XSS

@SirAngry I can't thank you enough for your detailed elaboration.

https://www.purexbox.com/news/2020/09/xbox_series_s_wont_hold...

Indie developer Gavin Stevens of Team Blur Games has taken to Twitter to write a lengthy thread about why the Series S won't hold back next-gen "in the slightest"

Stevens explains that the Series S has a slight drop in CPU performance but "likely won’t even use most of its power, as maxing out all 8 cores at full speed is a rarity." He also says that despite what some are saying online, the GPU in the system "eats the past-gen Xbox One X alive, and it really is no contest."

He goes on to suggest that if any concerns crop up for developers, it will be in the smaller and slower RAM in the Xbox Series S (although the drop in resolution will also mean a "massive drop in VRAM utilisation"), and also mentions that unlike making a next-gen game and porting to the current-gen Xbox One X, the Xbox Series S is built so similarly to the Xbox Series X that it can be "as easy as dropping the res and a few quality settings."

Now I know its not as Simple as just setting the output resolution lower as suggested here as someone will no doubt have to check that their settings balance to give the best 'compromise' but its not like a whole team of people have to spend weeks porting it to a 'different' system and ensuring that every aspect works as expected, nothing gets 'broken' by porting that needs to be 'fixed'.

Interestingly, according to Digital Foundry, they expect that XB1 games will not run at XB1X standards on the Series S due to RAM and therefore the VRAM too. It does make sense to me as the XB1X has more available RAM and more Bandwidth too and MS themselves has stated the Series S is a '1440p' console - not a 4k console and the RAM has been scaled down for that. Of course some games will get 'next gen' enhancements - like Gears 5 and Forza Horizon 4 so won't be running at XB1X limits anyway. Of course BC games can still benefit on Series S with more GPU/CPU resources available so could run better than XB1S versions - even if you don't get the XB1X option(s) and the Series S is 'more cabablel' than XB1X. It seems the GPU is being used more to pump out more frames per second rather than pump out higher resolutions. Cutting the frame time by (at least) 50% (33.333ms to 16.667ms) means the GPU has less time to render a frame so needs more resources to achieve that.

MS haven't confirmed that the Series S won't offer XB1X versions via BC but I wouldn't be surprised if they don't - maybe something that could factor in if people are deciding whether or not to purchase this. Obviously, the All Digital version of the PS5 will run BC games the same as the more expensive PS5 as it has the exact same CPU/GPU/RAM specs...

@BAMozzy with all due respect the Gavin Stevens, people like lead engine programmer at id software Billy Khan has the same concerns I do. I know the leads on Snowdrop have grumbled about it for years too. The fact is the XSS is a bottle neck, it just is. It's also a significant wrinkle in the development pipeline, but it's here, we all have to deal with it. I know some studios are hoping either the XSS tanks or the PS5 does so well they can just ignore the XSS. The problem as I see it is the bandwidth of the RAM, and also the fact that unlike pixels many components of modern games just do not scale in a linear direction like pixels. Particle effects aren't linear, and neither is ray tracing or physics. There's a lot of things the XSS is going to potentially cause problems with, but that's why the engine guys get paid the slightly bigger bucks.

It’s an interesting little console but SirAngry is right. It’s going to bottleneck a lot of game development in the future because it is the lowest common denominator of this generation.

Early on, IMO, it won’t be a real issue since none of the games we’ve seen so far are really taxing these systems. But in two to three years, once the true next-gen games that are using updated engines and new technologies start releasing the Series S is going to cause some problems for developer’s visions.

I think Microsoft should have spent some extra money and gave it the same amount of RAM and bandwidth as the Series X. The GPU cut isn’t as big of a deal as the Ram limitations.

I remember digital foundry overclocking the switch and finding that it often did nothing because of the bottleneck in the RAM speeds. I fear that Microsoft have made the same mistake with the series S.

@Ryall That’s the exact thought I had. The RAM’s the problem for me.

@nessisonett you say that... and I agree... but their initial plan was to ship it with 6 Zen cores and the same SSD size. They've rowed back on the SSD, and the RAM to give us an 8 core CPU... not sure which I'd have preferred, but I guess higher bandwidth RAM would have been useful. But having a 6 core CPU would have seen major AAA studios revolt over the XSS. I'll be honest... I hope the XSS tanks and Microsoft quietly drop it, but maybe big next-gen games like GTA6 going PS5 exclusive will tip Microsoft over the edge. There are a lot of people in a lot of big studios very unhappy with the XSS. Doesn't really affect me all that much because the CPU is fine, would like more cache, but hey, I say that about every system. I think as more senior engineers speak on the topic I think the more it'll seep through.

That doesn't surprise me. Microsoft is really good at making software run well on many different types of machines. In the long run I think their investment in backwards compatibility all the way back to the original Xbox will pay of greatly, and so will the idea of no Xbox Series X exclusives for one year. The PS5 will of course take the lead since they will have exclusive games from the start, but in the long run I think consumers will gravitate to were they can play all the games they want, old and new.