@mousieone There has never been a Launch in similar circumstances and many areas have been severely impacted by Covid. A lot of Devs maybe able to work from home, but they cannot access SDK's from home, have to communicate and send files to others and wait for them to report back rather than be able to see the data or impact themselves - all whilst struggling with the current situation, maybe with friends/family suffering with the effects, or dealing with loss.
Officially, I don't think DX12 Ultimate is released yet either. Not only have developers not got access to SDK's, they also haven't got access to the API's to take advantage of a lot of the features that would help to optimise games for the new hardware. MS were later at getting out SDK's to studio's and some were certainly not final spec - waiting on AMD and RDNA2.0.
A lot of cross gen games in the past really didn't do a lot more than just boost the resolution. A lot of the visual settings are the same. Also they only had 2 generations, 2 specs to worry about per 'family'. On Playstation, they have 3 (PS4, Pro and PS5) and on Xbox, they have 4 different specs to optimise for (XB1, XB1X, Series S and Series X) as well as PC and in a lot of cases, Stadia too. Most games at the start of last gen only released on 5 platforms - PS3, PS4, XB360, XB1 and PC. Also didn't have a global pandemic ongoing with Governments changing the rules every week. When devs/publishers set a release date, they may base that on having their offices open - albeit on a reduced staffing level for 'Social Distancing' but then the Government decides to go into Lockdown for all but non-essential businesses and force those devs to work from home with little/no access to the hardware they are supposed to be optimising for.
Patches too have to be passed by platform holders as well so they have to wait for MS/Sony to allow them to update - again takes time if they are not able to verify the patches as they are not in the office either...
Its a crazy world right now so lets just give them the benefit of doubt and more time to put things right. Its crazy to expect them to get things 'right' with the current situation and conditions they are trying to work with and around to get games released. A lot of the games were certainly not built with current consoles and haven't necessarily got access to the right tools to optimise them, take advantage of the features etc so to expect them to suddenly be 'next gen' with at most, the minor issues we have normally had is unrealistic. I obviously hope they can update their games sooner rather than later but I am willing to give them a lot more leeway than normal with the current state of the world.
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By any chance, has anyone taken a whack at Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires on the Series X yet? I recall it consistently crashing/freezing on the Xbox One systems, so I'm curious if it was ever fixed, or if it just works right on the Series X.
@Senua very little between the two. I like DF but did they really need to ask why we are not seeing a benefit from the hardware on Xbox near the end over the PS5, I mean it’s a cross gen game and Ubisoft, who used the exact code for PS5 and the series X. Seemed to just be put in there to fan some flames.
What i was surprised by was the Ray tracing on this S, it actually looks pretty decent, inferior to the X but still pretty nice.
@Fenbops Maybe its because they have had very little time with the actual Dev Kits and therefore just coded the game with the same settings as the PS5 and whilst you may think that on paper, the basic specs should still give Xbox the advantage - 12>10, CPU is faster etc but if the game isn't optimised to take advantage of wider GPU for example, its not going to be running as efficiently. The way devs get there game engines running on multiple different hardware is by using API's.
Graphics APIs provide a standard platform that enables software developers to access specialised hardware (especially graphics hardware) features without needing to write hardware-specific code. For example, instead of having to write specialized code for Nvidia, AMD or Intel integrated GPUs, you can simply use an existing API such as DirectX12 or Vulkan to handle the draw calls and leave it to the API to instruct the hardware on how to do it.
However, if you are not 'optimising' for the specific hardware, you could have 'bottlenecks' or some cores/shaders not working whilst other(s) are pushed too hard. A game like Crysis for example pushes 1 CPU core very hard and as such, the games performance is based around the speed of one CPU core. If that 'bottlenecks', the game slows down despite the other cores only being utilised by upto 40% of the time. If you aren't able to optimise the game because you don't really have access to dev kits to understand where the 'bottlenecks' maybe, have experience with the API and Tool set to make changes, you can't get the 'best' gaming experience.
From what I hear, the PS5 tool set is very similar to the PS4 - it also has a very similar Spec to the PS4 Pro - in terms of cores/shaders etc - obviously running much faster. Devs also had access to PS5 Dev Kits a lot earlier too. That's important to consider as the Devs have that experience of working with the PS4 Pro and the tool kit. Both have 36 Core GPU (2304 shaders) but the PS5 has many more cycles. That also means that the Devs can optimise their games more efficiently as they know where any potential bottlenecks (like certain Cores being overloaded whilst others are waiting) and have the experience of the tool set to optimise their game for that platform.
Its still very early days for both next gen consoles and Devs are running 'older' game engines and have little experience with the new hardware and tool set to get the most from the hardware. We are not seeing games yet that use the hardware features promised and its not surprising that they are not getting to grips with the Series consoles as they didn't have Dev Kits and the tool kit isn't as 'familiar' to them as Sony's is.
Hopefully, they will get to grips with it sooner rather than later, but its a very difficult climate to work in right now.
A pessimist is just an optimist with experience!
Why can't life be like gaming? Why can't I restart from an earlier checkpoint??
Feel free to add me but please send a message so I know where you know me from...
I'll be new to xbox whenever I can get a series x. Does anyone know if the game pass cards expire? I was thinking about just buying one since they are really cheap right now?
Very interesting - talks about the differences and some of the features differences too. May help to explain some of the reasons Devs are not utilising the Series consoles as well as they could too
@nrg630@Krzzystuff It depends on where you get the codes from - sometimes they do have an expiration date. Your best bet is to contact the retailer you're buying from and ask directly.
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