Sure. The biggest thing for me in all of this is how much game development lifecycles have grown. Rockstar put out ONE game this gen. Bethesda Softworks put out ONE game with any real content. Naughty Dog will just be squeezing in two games. CDPR will just be squeezing in two games. The fact that we're lucky to see one of two games from our favorite publishers makes me less excited about jumping in. And I think it's safe to say it will only get stretched even thinner on the next gen. I'm all for quality or quantity which is I don't mention any publishers that churn out yearly sequels. But I think Sony putting so much emphasis on backwards compatibility speaks to the fact that they KNOW we won't have a lot of new games to choose from.
And when it comes to backwards compatibility for me, the nostalgia only lasts so long. I have PSNow. I can fire up some of my favorite games from last gen like Red Dead and Fallout 3 and well, they just don't hold up all that great. Not to mention I played those games so damn much. And now moving into the next gen I've played the absolute shit out of every current gen release I have any desire to play. Backwards compatibility is close to a 0 as a selling point for me.
There's always some fancy lingo for why you're getting an increasingly shortened end of the stick:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_as_a_service
Interesting.......
The PlayStation 5 GPU Will Be Supported By Better Hardware Solutions, In Depth Analysis Suggests
"The PlayStation 5 will feature a weaker GPU, compared to the Xbox Series X, but developers continue to praise the console. The raw specs are definitely not painting the whole picture about the new consoles, and a recent in-depth analysis suggests that the Sony next-gen console's GPU will have a better system supporting it, resulting in better overall performance.
Zzzzzzz. More schlock. Also, LOL, nowhere in this analysis is it suggested the PS5 will have "better overall performance". The guy who tweeted that is either ignorant or a shill.
Here is technical analysis in question:
https://hole-in-my-head.blogspot.com/2020/03/analyse-this-next-gen-consoles-part-9.html
Allow me to decipher this for everyone. The Xbox has an "asymmetrical" design: the first 8GB of sytem (V)RAM is faster than the second 8GB. So when more than 8GB of RAM is in use, in total, whatever function that second set of RAM is performing in the XSX is running slower than the PS5. When will this matter to actual game performance? The only time it will have a real impact is when the VRAM in use by the GPU itself runs over, and even then, only for the portion of the VRAM running at that slower speed. Microsoft will still enjoy a significant VRAM speed advantage for virtually all of the RAM that is actually being used to render frames. In other words, using the current gaming landscape as a measuring stick, the Xbox would still be significantly superior in well over 99% of conditions (in terms of memory; not even touching its gaping GPU disadvantage).
The I/O and SSD throughput details he mentions are silly. I don't care if the SSD relieves the system RAM of slower jobs by performing them itself. SSDs-- even the fastest ones like the one in the PS5-- are
massively slower than GDDR6. The only time that throughput would practically matter is if literally every GB of RAM is in use, and the game still wants more. I can't believe the devs will
ever code their games to put that demand on the consoles because it's explicitly bad programming, and they
know their target hardware. Otherwise, until this point in history, Jeff's skepticism of SSDs is on point. All this throughput will reduce loading times: whether in games or for menus. There isn't a more creative or substantive in-game implementation than that.
A couple things have me looking at this otherwise objective analysis sideways. He says the XSX CPU will only be as much as 10% superior, and that the increased frequency of the PS5 GPU will reduce its effective power disadvantage to just 20%. Both of those are errant assumptions that accept the peak turbos as sustained turbos. A guy writing what he is writing is undoubtedly aware of that. It makes me not trust his motives. Second, he slobbers all over the Sony audio solution, and the burden it relieves on the CPU, without any specifics. Smoke and mirrors.
I don't disagree with Pendergrast's general sentiment that the PS5 is more balanced as a system, but that's theoretical. Practical game demands on a system aren't balanced, and are never uniform throughout a game. The only time that will matter is when they are. So maybe some PS5 exclusives will
perfectly code their peak demands to squeeze out every last drop they can to....still come up short in the effective, utilized hardware power.
Not much of a consolation.
