Platform Discussion Thread

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

I really hope they won't start the "60 fps" marketing (numbers are easy to sell) otherwise next gen consoles will be absolutely useless and we won't play anything new until 2030...

What do you mean? I doubt even new consoles will handle 4K at 60 fps. So why would they market it? Since consoles are sticking to APUs / iGPUs, they'll remain rather limited for years to come. If you want framerate and resolution - consoles are just a bad option due to hardware limitation.

 

[Mybrokenenglish]

What do you mean? I doubt even new consoles will handle 4K at 60 fps. So why would they market it? Since consoles are sticking to APUs / iGPUs, they'll remain rather limited for years to come. If you want framerate and resolution - consoles are just a bad option due to hardware limitation.

Well, if they want 4K@60fps they just make very dull games and it's easy peasy. No enviromental interaction, stupid AI, low graphical settings and they can do it.
Remember 2 things:
1) Forza motorstorm 7 runs already at 60ish fps in 4k on xbox 1 x, same for battlefield V (same fps but 1080p on standard consoles);
2) 500$ console in fall 2020 (considering stock prices for sony/microsoft) correspond to at least 7-800$ hardware for human beings today. Add a lot of optimization and specialized middleware and it's not that impossible.

Again, I really hope they won't do it, it would be a disaster for the industry. Give us good, innovative (at least on graphics/animations) games at 30 fps and we're happy. 60 fps for frenetic games, exactly how it is now.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Heh, sure you can display a black square even at 144 fps and 4K, no big deal But we are talking about some demanding games, not fillers that don't do anything.

Disaster to the industry is insanely long hardware refresh cycle of current consoles. Incumbent console pricing model needs to die, in order for consoles not to be held back hardware wise. For that, there needs to be more competition, like in the mobile space now. So you'll pay full price for console with high end CPU / GPU, and you'll get normal performance. Question is though, why would you even care to buy a console in such case, if you can simply build your own PC, and set it up the same way controllers wise, if you need to.

Valve kind of proposed such idea with Steam Machines. But they weren't very serious about it, or rather they weren't really ready (since they are using Linux graphics stack). Vulkan didn't arrive at that time yet and Mesa wasn't in shape. Today, they can actually do it, if they wanted to. I suspect they will, since OpenXR will shape up, since they seem to be very busy with it.

 

[Mybrokenenglish]

Heh, sure you can display a black square even at 144 fps and 4K, no big deal But we are talking about some demanding games, not fillers that don't do anything.

exactly, I don't want to play ps3 games in 4K@60fps. That's the point. On the contrary I don't agree with expensive consoles, they need to be affordable by -almost- anyone. 500$ every 5-6 years is good compromise, otherwise they should start making games that only people with expensvie top notch PCs can play cutting off 95% of the market, steam included.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

exactly, I don't want to play ps3 games in 4K@60fps. That's the point. On the contrary I don't agree with expensive consoles, they need to be affordable by -almost- anyone. 500$ every 5-6 years is good compromise, otherwise they should start making games that only people with expensvie top notch PCs can play cutting off 95% of the market, steam included.

You might not want to, others might want though. That's the point of competition - there should be a range of up to date hardware from low to high end, not shoved onto people outdated low end one. I.e. see normal PC market and mobile one. You can get any type of desktop, laptop and handset from low to high end, and they are refreshed regularly. That's because there is a lot of competition and nothing is stagnating. You don't need to change them often - but you can if you want, with reasonable frequency.

Console market on the other hand is rather sick, dominated by two players who don't feel any pressure to refresh their hardware frequently (5-7 years production refresh is insane for today's CPUs/GPUs), or offer any options by performance. It's not a compromise, it's a classic oligopolistic stagnation.

 

[Mybrokenenglish]

Sony and MS made market researches and realized that the vast majority of console customers wants a single console that lasts for around 6 years and is relatively cheap, so they did that and the market replied enthusiatically buying those consoles. To meet people with higher requests they made mid-gen consoles (and a lot of customers criticizes them). You want a more expensive/cheaper hardware? Buy a PC and you can play with your hardware as much as you want. Portable console? Nintendo switch/3ds. I don't really see any problem.

There's another advantage of long-lasting fixed consoles: optimization. It wouldn't be possible to have such quality in games like RDR2, and all sony's exclusives if they had to optimize on 15 different possible consoles. I prefer this to "yeah, just buy a better GPU" approach. Other people don't agree and are happy to play on pc. Not my problem, at all. Is it a problem for you? Do you think sony and MS are wrong? You know market better than them? Send them an email where you explain how your strategy is better than theirs, but remeber that people choose consoles also because they're plug-n-play, they want to go to the supermarket, buy a console, go home and play, no need to think about hardware compatibility, performances, tuning settings for optimization... For people who like this, PC gaming is happy to welcome them, but I've seen people getting mad with installing different launchers than steam, so all this good competion is appreciated only when it comes with hardware or what?

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Don't drink their Koolaid. Sony and MS do what they want, not what customers want "according to research". That's the nature of lack of competition. In higher competitive market, they would have produced new consoles every year or two (aligned with CPU and GPU refresh cycles), without any research excuses, like any other computer manufacturer today in PC and mobile space.

And not just one console, they would have offered a whole range from cheap to expensive with different performance. And surprise, that could also satisfy those who like buying low end ones and change them rarely. More includes less

Sony and MS don't want that to happen, because it means actually doing something instead of nothing for 5 years. Incumbents don't like progress.

 

[Mybrokenenglish]

Yeah, sorry, I'm more convinced by my point of view based on facts, not on companies' marketing as you say. Anyway, I don't have much to add, console and PC gaming will continue to follow the 2 different approaches which cover the market in its entirety. And everybody is happy to decide where to play. Otherwise, and I agree with you:

why would you even care to buy a console in such case, if you can simply build your own PC, and set it up the same way controllers wise, if you need to.

 

[Hoplite_22]

Don't drink their Koolaid. Sony and MS do what they want, not what customers want "according to research". That's the nature of lack of competition. In higher competitive market, they would have produced new consoles every year or two (aligned with CPU and GPU refresh cycles), without any research excuses, like any other computer manufacturer today in PC and mobile space.

And not just one console, they would have offered a whole range from cheap to expensive with different performance. And surprise, that could also satisfy those who like buying low end ones and change them rarely. More includes less

Sony and MS don't want that to happen, because it means actually doing something instead of nothing for 5 years. Incumbents don't like progress.

i mean it's becoming increasingly obvious that is a terrible business plan in those other products. Apple have just had to issue profit warnings because the yearly cycle of incresingly expensive but nothing new phones is starting to kill even them. has been true for even longer for everyone else.

 

[Mybrokenenglish]

smartphones also have something gaming hardware lacks: they can be shown as status symbol. Like expensive watches, clothes and cars. That's why people didn't mind spending 900$ on yearly basis with no real purpose other than showing off.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

i mean it's becoming increasingly obvious that is a terrible business plan in those other products. Apple have just had to issue profit warnings because the yearly cycle of incresingly expensive but nothing new phones is starting to kill even them. has been true for even longer for everyone else.

How it affects profits is another issue, but they have little choice, since otherwise their competitors will grab the market from them. Surely they'd prefer a complete monopoly, where they don't need to spend any money on progressing while reaping soaring profits.

I personally think progress is better than stagnation, and lack of competition is bad. A few more major console makers can totally disrupt MS and Sony as well and make consoles less stagnated in result.

 

[Snowflakez]

we already have 4k on xbox1x, next gen consoles will be more powerful so no further sacrifices will be done for 4k. I really hope they won't start the "60 fps" marketing (numbers are easy to sell) otherwise next gen consoles will be absolutely useless and we won't play anything new until 2030...

You may have missed my point.

60 FPS does NOT (necessarily) = poorer gameplay. FPS is literally just the amount of frames displayed on your screen, it has no bearing on anything else. Many, many things can be tweaked to make a game smoother or less smooth without compromising its gameplay. Are some features more demanding than others? Possibly - but it's up to devs to optimize their games accordingly.

Your belief that 60 FPS (or anything above 30, really) will somehow lead to "not playing anything new until 2030" is, to me, nonsensical. If you want to elaborate on why you think that way (possibly providing examples to back it up), I'd appreciate it. If anything, it's the nature of consoles that prevent progress from happening. Same hardware for 5-7 years and all that. It's like squeezing water from a stone. Or perhaps a sponge - you'll only get so much out of it before it dries up.

It's not the fault of FPS advocates that consoles are extremely restrictive - that's on console makers and console game devs. No meaningful graphical settings to tweak (to boost performance), no resolution options in most cases.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Console developers have little choice too, since they are restricted by draconian requirements of console makers who wouldn't allow games that provide some major configurability.

 

[Mybrokenenglish]

Your belief that 60 FPS (or anything above 30, really) will somehow lead to "not playing anything new until 2030" is, to me, nonsensical. If you want to elaborate on why you think that way (possibly providing examples to back it up), I'd appreciate it.

Given that consoles will guarantee native 4K, that graphics can't be worse than now (otherwise mass market won't see them as an improvement, fairly I might add) and that they can't cost more than 500$ (400 is not enough to have improvements compared to xbox1x), you need to squeeze all the resources in those dollars. If you aim for both 4K and 60 fps you won't have much left to improve anything else. If you accept 30 fps (as it's been for the last 10+ years, given that the vast majority of console players doesn't give a fuck of 60 fps except for frenetic games), then you can use the remaining resources to improve other aspects of gameplay.

I like the sponge metaphore though, it's actually the best thing of consoles: optimization. Having a fixed hardware, during consoles' lifetime you observe a drastic improvment in games thanks to software houses learning how to use consoles at their best. Look at how games looked like in 2013-4 on ps4 and compare them with RDR2, or uncharted 1 vs uncharted 3 on ps3. If consoles had a shorter lifetime (3 years? less?) this wouldn't be possible, they'd just say "you want better graphics? buy the new console", and we also need to keep in mind that most AAA games now have longer development times than 3 years. Plus, mass market refuses to spend 500$ every 3 years for a console.

it's the nature of consoles that prevent progress from happening.

this is the typical argument that to me makes no sense market-wise. It would be true if every PC gamer played on high-end PCs (and we all know it's absolutely false, check steam statistics) and if consoles were only a small part of the market. The reality is that developing a game has become much more expensive than 20 years ago, if we don't want to pay 100/150$ for a game like in the '90s (considering inflaction that was the price for ps1 games in my country) we need a lot of people to buy games (kingdom of amalur failed because it sold "ONLY" 2 millions copies). Now, no need to explain why mass market is not willing to buy high-end PCs only to play videogames, just imagine how many people would buy videogames if they needed to spend 1000+$ every 3 years because, hey, technology runs, we need to keep up or progress stops. How many of those 90 millions people who have a ps4, 60(?) millions of xbox 1 would have spent all those money to play videogames? Don't tell me all of them, it wouldn't be true. And what about people playing on low/mid-end PCs? I don't even think it's realistic to expect less than half of those people to spend all those money for gaming. But let's pretend that half would do that. Videogames' development would have the same cost, of course. How many copies they'll need to sell? Same number but with half of the gamers? Not realistic. "Only REAL mater race gamers would stay, buying all games?" Again, not realistic and we need market to expand, not to stay still otherwise companies wouldn't invest at all, basic economics. 3 options then:
1) higher prices (PC gamers would love it, like no one buys russian keys);
2) lower costs (=lower quality);
3) f2p games with microtransactions (already demonstrated it works = mobile games and fortnite).

And all of this just to make few technology enthusiast happy? No, thanks, I don't think it would be progress, but a regression in quality. Why do you think every company is bringing their games on consoles? Why do you think consoles costed only 400$ in 2013? Because SH and hardware companies want as many people as possible to play, gaming only for rich people (and willing to spend/waste their time in building PCs) wouldn't be susteinable by the market.

Games are developed for the highest number of gamers (consoles+low/mid-end PC), if you have a better PC you can push the game to better graphics, fps, whatever you fancy. A good compromise not to see the industry reduced to shitty mobile f2p games.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

You are trying to judge consoles as driven by the normal market. They are not, I already explained it above. Normal market is driven by competition. Oligopoly works differently. Oligopolists have enough leverage to sustain profits while avoiding any major improvements.

So MS and Sony can PR support for 4K, without actually investing in the hardware that can handle it properly. No matter how users would see it, there is no market to actually change it for the better. And to mask the issue, they'll push a story that 30 fps is "good enough for you". Stories don't cost money.

 

[Mybrokenenglish]

Console developers have little choice too, since they are restricted by draconian requirements of console makers who wouldn't allow games that provide some major configurability.

I agree on the concept but not on the consoles' makers imposition, software houses know what sells and what doesn't as much as sony and microsoft. Consoles are made together with devs, only limitation is the price, but everybody knows that 4K sells more than 60 fps to mass market

 

[Snowflakez]

Given that consoles will guarantee native 4K, that graphics can't be worse than now (otherwise mass market won't see them as an improvement, fairly I might add) and that they can't cost more than 500$ (400 is not enough to have improvements compared to xbox1x), you need to squeeze all the resources in those dollars. If you aim for both 4K and 60 fps you won't have much left to improve anything else. If you accept 30 fps (as it's been for the last 10+ years, given that the vast majority of console players doesn't give a fuck of 60 fps except for frenetic games), then you can use the remaining resources to improve other aspects of gameplay.

I like the sponge metaphore though, it's actually the best thing of consoles: optimization. Having a fixed hardware, during consoles' lifetime you observe a drastic improvment in games thanks to software houses learning how to use consoles at their best. Look at how games looked like in 2013-4 on ps4 and compare them with RDR2, or uncharted 1 vs uncharted 3 on ps3. If consoles had a shorter lifetime (3 years? less?) this wouldn't be possible, they'd just say "you want better graphics? buy the new console", and we also need to keep in mind that most AAA games now have longer development times than 3 years. Plus, mass market refuses to spend 500$ every 3 years for a console.


this is the typical argument that to me makes no sense market-wise. It would be true if every PC gamer played on high-end PCs (and we all know it's absolutely false, check steam statistics) and if consoles were only a small part of the market. The reality is that developing a game has become much more expensive than 20 years ago, if we don't want to pay 100/150$ for a game like in the '90s (considering inflaction that was the price for ps1 games in my country) we need a lot of people to buy games (kingdom of amalur failed because it sold "ONLY" 2 millions copies). Now, no need to explain why mass market is not willing to buy high-end PCs only to play videogames, just imagine how many people would buy videogames if they needed to spend 1000+$ every 3 years because, hey, technology runs, we need to keep up or progress stops. How many of those 90 millions people who have a ps4, 60(?) millions of xbox 1 would have spent all those money to play videogames? Don't tell me all of them, it wouldn't be true. And what about people playing on low/mid-end PCs? I don't even think it's realistic to expect less than half of those people to spend all those money for gaming. But let's pretend that half would do that. Videogames' development would have the same cost, of course. How many copies they'll need to sell? Same number but with half of the gamers? Not realistic. "Only REAL mater race gamers would stay, buying all games?" Again, not realistic and we need market to expand, not to stay still otherwise companies wouldn't invest at all, basic economics. 3 options then:
1) higher prices (PC gamers would love it, like no one buys russian keys);
2) lower costs (=lower quality);
3) f2p games with microtransactions (already demonstrated it works = mobile games and fortnite).

And all of this just to make few technology enthusiast happy? No, thanks, I don't think it would be progress, but a regression in quality. Why do you think every company is bringing their games on consoles? Why do you think consoles costed only 400$ in 2013? Because SH and hardware companies want as many people as possible to play, gaming only for rich people (and willing to spend/waste their time in building PCs) wouldn't be susteinable by the market.

Games are developed for the highest number of gamers (consoles+low/mid-end PC), if you have a better PC you can push the game to better graphics, fps, whatever you fancy. A good compromise not to see the industry reduced to shitty mobile f2p games.

Okay, thank you for clarifying.

Here's where I think I misunderstood you: I'm 100% with you that we shouldn't be targeting 4K 60FPS for consoles. I don't think I ever said that.

What I want is more control given to customers. Let's say I want to play a game at 60 FPS (or even 50, or 45), but I don't care about 4K - I should be allowed to turn the resolution down to 1080p, and reap whatever extra frames I can get from doing so. I should also be able to adjust textures, NPC counts, shadow quality, etc.

Such settings could all be tucked away in an "Advanced" menu, and the normal settings could be the same as what we see in consoles now.

Of course, what I propose will never happen in practice. In fact, I doubt the next gen of consoles will even be consoles as we know them today. They will probably be always-online streaming boxes. And if they are, I wouldn't be surprised if they were all running mid-range PC hardware.

EDIT: BTW, I agree that the mass market cares more about 4K than 60 FPS right now, but I think that's because they've been bamboozled by TV makers, filmmakers, and console creators for years now. But that's another topic and not one I want to get into here (for now).

 

[Mybrokenenglish]

What I want is more control given to customers. Let's say I want to play a game at 60 FPS, but I don't care about 4K - I should be allowed to turn the resolution down to 1080p, and reap whatever extra frames I can get from doing so. I should also be able to adjust textures, NPC counts, shadow quality, etc.

Such settings could all be tucked away in an "Advanced" menu, and the normal settings could be the same as what we see in consoles now.

some games have it already on mid-gens, tomb rairder and nioh for sure. I don't know how this wll be handled on next gen. Maybe the same, maybe not. I understand your point of view but personally I don't really like because I want my console to have perfectly optimized game to use every drop of its power (RDR2 doesn0t give you the option, but it's mainly optimized for standard consoles and not mid-gens, given the fake HDR and the shitty checkerboard on ps4, surprisingly thay failed where other SH succeded). For your tastes, PC is perfect.

 

[Snowflakez]

some games have it already on mid-gens, tomb rairder and nioh for sure. I don't know how this wll be handled on next gen. Maybe the same, maybe not. I understand your point of view but personally I don't really like because I want my console to have perfectly optimized game to use every drop of its power (RDR2 doesn0t give you the option, but it's mainly optimized for standard consoles and not mid-gens, given the fake HDR and the shitty checkerboard on ps4, surprisingly thay failed where other SH succeded). For your tastes, PC is perfect.

You are correct that PC is perfect for my tastes, but console exclusives exist, and on PS4, they're (allegedly) pretty damn good. RDR2 was awesome, for example, but I found it hard to play with all the blur and camera jerkiness that comes with lower FPS.

It's OK if you don't like it. All I ask is understanding, we don't have to agree.

Just to clarify, though, advanced graphical settings and good optimization for consoles are not mutually exclusive. You have a very well-optimized "baseline," and then you let power users tweak things further if they so choose. It would require very little additional effort on the part of developers.

But as I said, I doubt this will happen, even if it would only take an extra 3 hours of work. And the next gen of consoles will probably be streaming boxes, not actual consoles, so graphical settings are pointless there.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

@Mybrokenenglish One thing I mentioned above, which is really the key here, is choice. For user to have more choice, there should be more competitors. It doesn't only drive the progress and prevent stagnation, it allows you to choose something according to your needs, instead of being forced into "one solution should fit all or get lost if you don't like it".

I.e. in the ideal situation, competitive console market would provide a range of options, from cheap to expensive ones, to address full range of users who prefer low or high end hardware. And game makers would provide configuration options to adjust to the use case. Same as it's now on PC.

Console gameplay is simply different in its human interface, that's all. It's not an inherently different market model from PC just because it's console, or anything the like, that's completely artificial add-ons to the idea shoved by those who now control the market. So nothing should really prevent having more hardware options in consoles, except for lack of competition.