PC vs console in 2023

[Admin]

The issue with PC gaming is the budget options are downright awful.

If your budget is right you end up having to go with something like the r5 5600 CPU which while better than the PS5/XSX CPU is still not something you want to use for high refresh-rate gaming.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/FQc6Tn
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/dTpjfv

The reason why PS5 gets away with having a weak zen2 CPU (which was ok relative to PC at launch) is thay don't really push for 120+ fps, only a few titles even try that. Unfortunately in order to have a good gaming experience you need to be consistently above 100fps and this not only rules out console gaming but it also rules out budget PC gaming, instead we end up having to go with something like the intel i5 13700K or AMD 7800x3d.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/vHq6Tn
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/

The issue with the 7800x3d is that the productivity performance is pretty bad so i selected the 13700K instead, it's an overall better CPU for mixed usage (when you are not wasting all your time on dumb video games).

We also need a more powerful GPU to drive said higher refresh-rate

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/PdJzBj
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/fnNLhk
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/xHnmnt
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/swDC3y
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/qsv8Ls
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/cpDC3y
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/qVfMBj
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/XbybW4
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/mNsH6r

The issue here is that the cards below the 4090 just aren't particularly great. The 4080 is over 1100$ for 16GiB of vram which isn't particularly great value, the 4070ti only offer 12 GiB of vram which ruins what would otherwise had been a good option for the price.

The 4090 will of course destroy the consoles in terms of performance so it's ironically great value at 1600$, it's unfortunately too much money for a lot of people and it's also overkill if you just game at 1440p.

Unfortunately AMD cards tend to be bad for productivity so they are not really a great option despite offering good gaming performance for the price.

 

[Admin]

PCs are useful for productivity, consoles aren't
Especially nvidia GPUs are very useful for things other than just wasting your time with videogames, this makes the 4090 in particular a great value option.

The 13900K and 7950x CPUs in particular are useful for productivity thanks to the strong multithreaded performance (with the intel option winning with sufficient overclocking and cooling). It might be worth paying 150$ more for 8 more e-cores since the extra e-cores will be useful for non-gaming tasks (while basically useless for gaming).

 

[Admin]

The PS5 digital edition is a much better option than xbox series S
I have seen many awful youtubers promite the xbox series S for supposedely offering good value, it actually doesn't if you go by the MSRP and take a look at the alternative, PS5 digital edition.

PS5 digital edition is sometimes offer 3 times better performance while just costing 110$ more (if you can actually get it for 399$.

The issue with PS5 digital edition is that it prevents you from using cheap physical version of games so you might actually end up spending more money long-term. On PC you don't really need a bluray player for anything since you physical games on PC are kinda dead anyway.

If you for some reason need a bluray player for PC that will set you back maybe 62$

You do get a controller with your console purchase which might be worth 60$, when you factor into that it becomes basically impossible to get the equivalent hardware performance on PC for a similar purchasing price.

One big issue with xbox series S is that it only comes with 364GiB of usable storage and adding more storage is very expensive (much more so than the PS5) so when you factor into the storage cost it's no longer any cheaper than the PS5 digital edition. It's a really bad gaming system and anyone who promotes it should be discarded as a shill/moron.

 

[Admin]

You don't have to pay anything for games on PC
On PC you can pirate games very easily so you don't have to put up with the awful epic games store launcher to enjoy free games.

You also don't have to pay a monthly fee to sony/microsoft to use your own internet (PS+, xbox live).

This further illustrates why merely looking at performance/$ is the wrong approach, consoles are very restricted so you get a lot less value relative to the performance of the hardware than if you have a proper PC that offer similar hardware performance.

 

[Admin]

xbox series X storage is very expensive and awful value
At least with PS5 you can use basically any gen4 nvme drive but xbox owners don't have the same luxery, they end up having much more for storage that only offers around 30% of the performance (yes it's that bad).

This is one of the reason why i don't recommend xbox for anyone, it's simply a bad option for gaming.

 

[Admin]

Real world performance figures
When we look at the actual performance of the PS5 it tends to be between the 2060 super and the 3060ti, maybe around 3060 on average.

Many PS5 fanboys wanted to believe that the PS5 had some "secret sauce" resulting in the PS5 "punching above its weight" but it just hadn't, there is nothing remarkable about how PS5 perform given the public information available regarding the hardware. What is remarkable however is how bad XSX has performed.

https://www.youtube.com/@ElAnalistaDeBits/videos

I have not found any good meta-study regarding PS5 vs xbox series X hardware but in terms of graphics and FPS it seems to be about the same on average in modern titles while the xbox is a bit better for playing last gen titles (due to xbox one x being stronger than PS4 pro).

 

[Admin]

Why you shouldn't buy xbox series X
microsoft initially promised "games will look and play better on xbox series X" and they only partly delivered that. A lot of games ended up running better on PS5.

Potential causes include

0. PS5 having simpler ram architecture (while the XSX faces issues when using more than 10GiB)

1. the PS5 GPU is clocked 17% higher.

2. The PS5 is a more popular console than series X so devs will often priorotize it.

3. xbox series X having worse dev tools (xbox fanboys believed this to be the main reason but it probably isn't).

Microsoft dropped the ball again in terms of their console hardware, nit the first time they screwed up. With PS5 you get much better storage performance and also a much better controller. As a whole PS5 actually has better hardware which might be the nail in the coffin for the xbox brand.

There are currently 0 games that can only be played on the xbox series X.

Microsoft has bought up a lot of studies but when you look at the actual output from that it hasn't been great, it seems like they are running the studios the bought into the ground failing to actually deliver great games. In the rare cases where they actually deliver a great game you can play it right away on PC and enjoy better graphics and much higher frame-rate.

xbox dying might actually be a good thing since they are currently holding back progress by not supporting things like gyro aiming and haptic feedback. If there is only PC, PS5 and nintendo left as relevant actors we might actually see more progress in the controller area.

 

[Admin]

Why the xbox series X ram architecture is awful
The series X has a 320 bit memory bus which is good but unfortunately microsoft had to screw up. In order to save money microsoft opted for having just 16GiB of gddr6 memory which is a very bad match for a 320 bit bus, their 'brilliant' (not) solution was to connect 6GiB of vram to only part of the bus which will make it much harder to actually take full advantage of the hardware, it's much more complicated to develop for a sstem that doesn't have unified video memory at least.

It's actually worse than on PC because on PC the video ram is indemendent from the lower bandwidth dram, on xbox there isn't one slower pool of gddr6, it's all on the same bus so if you try to use more than 10GiB in total (including for the operating system). Unfortunately the xbox series X operating system is very wasteful so you end up only having 7.5 GiB of ram game itself (without risking performance issues).

https://segmentnext.com/2020/03/25/xbox-series-x-memory-setup/

This reminds me of the 970 '4GB' where the last 512 MiB were basically useless due to them using a similarly ideotic memory setup, nvidia learned from that and never attempted something like that again. Microsoft maybe thought they could overcome those issues with software tools which didn't exactly pan out great for them.

Note that i wasn't able to find a good source for xbox series X resoerving 2.5 GiB for the operating system.

PS5 instead has a unofied memory or 16GiB gddr6 @ 448 GiB/s (256 bit bus).

Interestingly PS5 also has 512 MiB DDR4 used for background tasks.

 

[Admin]

Modern console exclusives are underwhelming
There are many great games only released for a console but almost all these games can now be emulated. It's a bit ironic that the switch is easy to emulate while nintendo refuses to release their games on PC.

PS5 cannot be emulated but luckily sony has opted to release most of their former exclusives to PC too so you can still play most of them. Sure you might have to wait several years but when you finally get to play the exclusive you wanted you can actually get a great experience.

A general theme with playstation 'exclusives' is that the focus in on graphics and story instead of actually delivering great gameplay. Often thoese games are basically walking simulators with very easy interactions. Actual great playstation exclusives are few and far between. Often playstation fanboys overhype mediocre exclusives in order to justify their platform choice only to later see the same game release on PC (and not get nearly the same success there since PC gamers have better taste).

Blood borne and demon souls is maybe the best real exclusives left for PS4/PS5 not counting the fact that you can actually play the original deamon souls on PC via PS3 emulation.

I have also seen a lot of praise for the game astros playroom that comes free with the PS5. Since that's a real exclusive i havn't tried it myself since i do not have and will probably never buy a PS5, i want my 120+ fps.

Spiderman which seems like one of the better former exclusives on runs significantly better on high end PC than on the PS5

If you are willing to put up with bad graphics (no RT) the performance is better:

https://www.techspot.com/article/2518-spiderman-remastered-benchmarks/

 

[Admin]

Xbox series S 1TB is a joke
Microsoft plans to charge 50% more for the 1TB version.

https://www.ign.com/articles/the-new-1tb-black-xbox-series-s-is-up-for-preorder

That's 50% more for 500 GB (466 GiB) of extra storage. Now let's see what you get for 50$ or less when you buy storage for PC/PS5

Kintston NV2 1TB for 42.7$
Crucial P3 plus for 50$

Sadly there is hardly any pushback against that nonsense. Most xbox owners are cucks that accept 30fps and paying twice as much for storage while getting less than half of the performance.

btw: typically you do not actually need a heatsink for your SSD if you use it for PS5/PC, in most cases (but not all) it will work just fine without it. The reason sony recommends a heatsink is because of those very rare cases where not having one will cause issues.

 

[Admin]

The PS5 SSD didn't live up to the hype
Mark Cerny caused a lot of people to believe that the PS5 SSD would deliver amazing new gameplay, unfortunately we didn't exacly see that, instead we pretty much only saw games that could have ran just fine from an old HDD (which is why most games could also be ported to PS4).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEXSbIM7RiU

Loading times did improve significantly with PS5 but it didn't improve nearly as much as Mark Cerny made the PS5 fans initially believe. It seems like there are still major bottlenecks preventing great SSD performance which does explain the lack of significant progress.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BCJP3xKz-w

The issue is that the PS5 has a weak CPU with about half the single-threaded performance offered on PC, it seems like sony was only partly able to work around that issue which is why we still see significant loading times in pretty much every game.

One application for fast storage is more aggressively managing the ram to get away with having less of it, this is not really needed on PC where you can just get 48GiB of dram or more (in addition to 24 GiB of video memory).

 

[Admin]

Console gaming isn't what it used to be
In the past with console you could just inset a disk/cartridge to play the game, it was a very simple process which was a big part of the appeal with consoles.

Modern consoles no longer offer that, even if you buy the game on a disk it will need to be installed on the much faster SSD (bluray is much slower at 4.3 MiB/s

Modern console are basically locked down PCs that doesn't really offer much in terms of convenience advantages over PC gaming. If anything gaming on PC is actually more convenient once your system is up and running.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2bzOmg1RZc

Ironically you can actually make cartridges for the steam deck yourself with SD cards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2bzOmg1RZc

We are reaching the point where PCs are better at doing what consoles used to offer than modern consoles (who abandoned what actually made consoles great). The last traditional console was the wii (the game had full access to the hardware, no need to install games).

In theory consoles like the PS5 should at least allow developers to make the game run without too severe issues early on due to it only being one set of hardware to optimize for but in practice we are not really seeing that. Games that launch broken on PC also tends to be broken on console.

Gollum on consoles (disaster):

It actually ran worse on the XSX compared to PS5, so much for "we just need better tools". Unfortunately on the PS5 hair physics resulted in crashes so the devs disabled that on the next update, so much for having a fixed set of hardware resulting in less bugs.

Gollum is on pc (also disaster but at least graphics/fps is decent):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2bzOmg1RZc

In the case of cyberpunk 2077 the game ran best on high end PC while PS5 and XSX owners got stock with boosted last gen versions (very limited crowd density, etc).

The issue here is that when the hardware is a lot weaker than ideal for a game there will be a lot of issues with trying to run it, sure you usually get the game to actually play but the experience can be really bad.

 

[Admin]

Censorship
In order for a game to be released on a console it has to get the approval of the console manufacturer. If you buy a PS5 you will need to approval of sony to play some game and sony is rather heavy handed when it comes to censorship. You don't have to put up with any of that nonsense on PC.

But unfortunately that's not just a problem on PS5, microsoft is also censoring games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzRqJ1yZbPo

Meanwhile on PC:

This is a mode to code vein making mia nude

And of course you can play full sex-games if you are into that. There are even some games where you can rape young girls (the dev of rapelay stopped selling their game but you can still pirate it).

 

[Admin]

The vram issue will keep getting worse wrecking most nvidia cards
We are already seeing 8GiB cards having a lot of problems and these issues will just keep getting worse for people who actually want to use high graphics settings.

There are already games pushing vram usage past 16GiB so you actually want to get a 4090, used 3090/3090ti or the 7900xtx, anything below that is basically asking for trouble down the line, especially if you don't want to get compelled to upgrade your GPU due early due to insufficient vram.

It is pathetic how few of the so called "pc master race" have more vram than the 400$ PS5 digital edition. Of course it's better to have 16 GiB dedicated to the GPU than to have 16 GiB in total but a PC with 16 GiB of vram is at least 3 times more expensive so you should expect something better rather than basically being a PS5-style peasant in terms of vram.

 

[Admin]

Is microsoft about to finally deliver some great games?
Lately the sony game showcases have basically been a joke with pretty much nothing shown.

When you look at the trailers the microsoft games actually show a lot of promise indicating that all the studios they bought will finally deliver some great content for gamepass.

As far as we know all those games will still be available on PC since microsoft is more interested in pushing gamepass than to actually push consoles. You will however miss out on a lot of upcoming microsoft games if you just have a PS5.

But of course making a compelling trailer is much easier than actually making a great game, it remains to be seen is microsoft will actually deliver great gaming experiences.

 

[Admin]

Buying both PS5 and XSX is generally an idiotic thing to do
Unless you have multiple people interested in playing on consoles it just doesn't make sense to buy two different consoles these days. It's just too expensive when you also include the costs for various subscriptions showed down your throat.

But if you only buy a PS5 you will miss out on a lot of xbox 'exclusives'.

If you only buy a XSX you will miss out on a lot of sony exclusives.

xbox series X and PS5 are 1000$ together for the disk versions so you are then already at the point where you can build a better PC for basically the same price.

I have seen some tech enthusiasts buy both PS5 and XSX even though they also have a PC and in that case it's more about buying it because you are fascinated by the tech rather than actually needing a console to play on.

It does actually make sense to buy both if you are a gaming youtuber since then you can produce better content for your audience.

But for typical people with tight budgets it's often best to focus on just getting a good PC rather than spreading out the budget on 2 or 3 different machines.

500$ for a console, i wouldn't pay it if i could.

Last year, i bought a 3090, im out out money

 

[Admin]

Starfield will be locked to 30fps on xbox
This illustrates how bad the xbox consoles are. Even if starfield turns out to be a good game (which we don't know yet) the experience on the xbox consoles will still be downright awful due to them forcing you to play the game at 30fps which is basically unplayable.

https://www.pcgamer.com/starfield-will-be-30-fps-on-consoles/

That's not the first time this has happened, it happened earlier with redfall (still no 60fps option for consoles) but luckily in that case the game itself sucked regardless so it wasn't much of a loss.

This further illustrates that the notion that xbox series X merely needed better developer tools to deliver better performance was a lie, the hardware itself is clearly flawed and xbox buyers are the ones paying the price (in addition to microsoft losing some console sales).

It is worth noting that the zen2 cores on xbox series X are significantly weaker than the zen2 cores on the 3700x due to the 3700x having 4 times more l3 cache (in addition to reaching higher clock-speeds). It is however unclear if the XSX CPU is actually a bottleneck in the case of starfield, it might just be a case of a boneheaded developer pushing for as good graphics as possible while not even wanting to give the players the option to play at higher framerate (even though the console would allow it).

Going by the recommended specs it doesn't seem like the game is CPU limited, otherwise they should have recommended something much stronger than the r5 3600x.

 

[Admin]

Graphic options are mods
The new norm for consoles is to provide a 30fps option and a 60fps option. Some games do offer more options (such as a 120hz mode) but most game developers try to keep it very simple by only offering 2 modes, that actually make sense given the target audience.

On PC it's instead the norm that games has a lot of graphics options allowing you to make much better choices than what the devs made for the consoles (actually getting good framerates, etc).

There are some games that by default doesn't run above 60fps on PC but very often in these cases you can actually fix that by modding the game. This illustrates the value in being in control yourself, trusting developers to make good choices for you is a very bad idea.

Mods can also unlock things like better clothing and nudity. Mods can unlock gameplay modes not available by default.

On PC you can mod a game without getting approval from the console manufacturer or the game publisher. There are some mods available on console but due to all the approval required for that most never make it over resulting in a lot of gaming experiences remaining exclusive to PC.

 

[Admin]

Mouse and keyboard support
One big advantage with PC is proper native mouse and keyboard support for pretty much every game.

With the overwhelming majority of console games you end up having to use an expensive adapter to use mouse and keyboard and that's still inferior to native mouse and keyboard support. Most console games don't even support gyro aiming instead opting for aim assist or full auto aim.

But if you use an adapter like XIM to play online you will risk getting your account banned due to to you getting an 'unfair' advantage over your opponents. Not that you should play online games with your console in your first place, you don't want to get stuck having to perpetually pay a bullshit subscription like playstation plus or xbox live.

But even if a console game natively support mouse and keyboard the experience will still be bad unless you actually get an acceptable framerate. Using a mouse will make low framerates (such as 60fps) a lot less tolerable due to the quicker camera movements.

 

[Admin]

MarlonGamingNation waking up to reality
He did point out that there was hardly any gameplay shown in the xbox showcase so while the trailers may have made a lot of people excited it does not mean they are actually going to deliver. He realized that both sony and microsoft is doing job at actually delivering great games (not just impressive looking trailers).

More importantly he realized that the xbox series X he owns is basically pointless and he is seriously thinking about switching to PC.

Of course high end PC gaming (which is what he might be finally switching to) does have a high barrier of entry, he can only partly offset that cost by selling the xbox series X and the games he bought for it. You also need to do a lot more research for high end PC gaming to avoid getting ripped off or ending up with subpar performance.

https://vintologi.com/threads/ddr5-overclocking-nightmare.1229/

 

[Admin]

The PS5 + PC luxury combo
If you have both a PS5 and PC you can play basically every game ever made. Thanks to emulation you can play all nintendo games, you can also emulate all sony consoles up to and including the PS3, this is useful since sony still hasn't added PS3 backwards to the PS5 even though adding that would require very little effort on sonys side. The PS5 CPU is powerful enough to emulate PS3 games just fine.

For that combo go for the PS5 disk version and use it only for single player games not yet released on PC, that way there will be no need to pay for any subscription, you will not even need to connect your console to the internet.

One advantage with having a console besides the PC is that then you can play games if you are doing some really havy productivity on your PC that cannot be interrupted.

Having more than one gaming system can also be useful if there are more than 1 person gaming in your household.

This can also serve as a good middle ground for people interested in switching to primarily game on PC. You can still keep your console, you might be emotionally attached to that and in that case you may aswell keep it for the sake of your feeling. Maybe occationally play it for the sake of nostalgia or whatever.

 

[Admin]

PS5 cpu vs PC CPUs
When PS5 launched many people (especially PS5 fanboys) were excited about the supposed great leap in CPU performance. We do for example have the following comparison.

The issue is is that the zen2 cores in the PS5 is significantly weaker than the desktop zen2 cores to to only having a quarter of the L3 cache and having gimped FPUs.

So 3700x at 4300 Mhz is 15% faster than 4700g supposedely running at 4500 Mhz. I have however seen other sources claim 4300 for the 4700g so i will use that for the estimates.

But the PS5 cpu is limited to 3500 Mhz so it's 22% slower than 4700g.

3700x beats PS5 by around 41%

5700x beats PS5 by around 67%

13700k beats PS5 by around 129% in singlethreaded application and slightly more when more than 8 threads are utilized.

https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-list/cinebench-scores

PS4: 15fps
PS4 pro: 20fps
PS5: 60fps
3700x: 84fps
5700x: 97fps
13700k: 135fps

Of course in actual games the difference in fps is often significantly smaller due to games often being GPU bound.

 

[Admin]

Final fantasy 16 has severe performance issues on PS5
It's having a very hard time on the PS5 with the 'performance mode' being very inconsistent and the "quality mode" being consistently awful.

Hopefully performance will improve significantly with updates but by the time it actually performs decent (on PS5) it will already be available on PC.

This is a general pattern with games that don't release on PS4/xbone, when the developers don't have to make it run on weaker hardware they will put less effort into optimization resulting in the performance being bad even when the hardware is good.

 

[Admin]

Why you shouldn't pay for gamepass
Game4pass is often brought up as something that would supposedly give the xbox value even though you can use it just fine on PC.

But you do not want to pay microsoft 180$ a year to play a limited selection of games.

If you actually want to support developers you should actually buy the game so they get money from it.

If you don't care about supporting developers you like then why are you not pirating?

The reason why piracy is great is that it allows you to decide which if any corporations is going to get your money, you shouldn't for example buy games that has microtransactions or other predatory monetization in them.

You can actually get a lot for your money on PC for 180$ a year if you insist in actually paying for videogames and you actually get to keep playing those games for as long as you like.

 

[Admin]

Last gen consoles are awful
Many game studious are not even bothering to release on PS4/xbone anymore due to how awful it would have performed. Thanks to GTA online we actually knows the price of supporting weak last-gen hardware and it's not pretty. Rockstar might end up dropping PS4/xbone support completely since it's basically unplayable if you don't have an SSD.

This is not surprising given that the PS4 cpu was really bad even when the consoles launched and the situation is much more now with games being made with PS5/PC/XSX/XSS in mind. Another issue was the hard drive only being 5400 RPM.

The game cannot load assets in time when it isn't played on an SSD, this can cause the game to look completely wrong graphically or even worse freeze completely. Luckily this is cheap to fix since you can get a decent sata/usb SSD for 30$.

It was actually bad even when PS5/XSX launched and since then it has gotten progressively worse.

But even if you somehow are fine with 15fps you will not actually get that option in most cases due to the extra effort required to release on last gen consoles and the negative PR that is likely to follow. Cyberpunk 2077 on PS4 ran far better than GTA online and it still got a lot of negative reactions from how bad it ran on the PS4/xbone, it would have been far worse if they hadn't made very significant cuts in crowd density.

 

[Admin]

Consoles are hard to repair and cannot be upgraded
Usually when your console breaks for some reason actually replacing that will be hard and you will not be able to just buy something better instead.

You cannot really upgrade a console, all you can do is to buy extra storage but on the PS5 front you are limited to just using one NVME at a time and on the xbox front the storage upgrade options are much more expensive, more limited in capacety and also a lot slower than what even the PS5 is offering (PS5 is actually fine in terms of storage, there are other issues with the console).

At least sony didn't add DRM to make it basically impossible to upgrade the storage, unfortunately it's still a pretty complicated task to actually replace the memory modules since it is soldered to the console motherboard directly.

 

[Admin]

Emulation on the series S/X is coming to an end
Microsoft is now going further and further to prevent people from running emulators on their consoles.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-banning-people-using-emulators-xbox

Currently you can still use the dev mod to run emulators but it's just a question of time before microsoft closes that loophole.

If you want to keep using your xbox as emulator you should probably disconnect it from the internet.

 

[Admin]

Baldur's gate 3 delayed on xbox due to xbox series S
Microsoft screwed up by only giving series S 10 GiB of ram (shared between the CPU and GPU) causing a lot of issues.

In the case of baldur's gate the microsoft had to send engineers to help get the game get working on the series S and there still isn't even a fixed release date.

nordic.ign.com/baldurs-gate-iii/68968/news/microsoft-engineers-helping-get-baldurs-gate-3-split-screen-working-on-xbox-series-s

Microsoft require full feature parity between the series S and series X so if the series S cannot pull of a certain feature said feature also cannot come to the much more powerful series X. Thus series x owners end up missing out due to the cheaper console having bad hardware, this is not acceptable.

Note that i am personally excited to play baldurs gate 3, ill probably don't even try it since i an not into dungeons and dragons.

 

[Admin]

microsoft finally caves allowing baldur's gate 3 to launch on series S without splitscreen
This was probably the best solution.

gamespot.com/articles/baldurs-gate-3-is-coming-to-xbox-this-year-but-no-split-screen-on-series-s/1100-6517181/

This will allow the game to launch late 2023 on xbox.

The alternative was delaying the series X version for many months only to eventually see a badly functional splitscreen version on series S or not releasing with splitscreen on either console.

This may encourage more games to be made for PS5/XSX (and higher end PCs) since they might be allowed to cut features from the series S version (otherwise series X will miss out on features too).

 

[Admin]

Why microsoft deserves to lose the console war
They tried and partly succeeded to hold back gaming in general for years trying to force developers to cater to the series S. They didn't allow xbox series X to have any gameplay features over the series S (parity was required) and it's very likely that big microsoft titles such as haly infinite recieved significant downgrades to accomedate the much weaker series S.

The issue with the series S is that it only has 8 GiB ram in total available for games. There isn't really any decent fix for this since even if microsoft were to reduce how much ram the operating system uses (such as by using virtual ram for the OS instead) it would still be hard to utilize more than 8GiB for the game due to bandwidth dropping massively when utilizing more than 8GiB in total (XSS does not have 2 independent pools of ram)

By holding the series X hostage microsoft tried to hide the fact that they lied earlier here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6ftY7t8bJ0

It's not as simple as merely reducing the render resolution since that is not going to reduce the vram usage by 6 GiB, what you need to do as a developer is to for example massively reduce texture quality which is extra work developers do not like to do these days.

But as PS5 and high end PC is picking up sales while xbox series S/X is struggeling devs will be increasingly willing to just skip xbox completely pushing microsoft to allow devs to not have full parity. At first it might be to have some games only have splitscreen on the series S but it can be other things in the future.

We will see more and more games be delayed for xbox due to devs prioritizing PS5/PC

https://gamerant.com/lord-of-the-rings-return-to-moria-xbox-version-release-date-delayed/

Developing for xbox is a lot more effort for a lot less return so we of course many studios will focus on PS5/PC and then look at what if anything they should do for xbox. Devs might end up cutting features on both the series S and X rather than trying to get some exception from the parity requirement.

 

[Admin]

Playstation massively increases the price of playstation plus
Sony realized that they could rip of their costumers even more. It will now start at 80$ per year with the more expensive tiers increasing even more in price.

nordic.ign.com/playstation-5-1/72122/news/sony-raises-price-of-playstation-plus-12-month-subscriptions-across-all-tiers

Now 5 years of playstation plus will cost at least 400$. Why not put that 400$ towards better PC parts instead?

 

[Admin]

Are consoles holding back gaming?
The least problematic console is actually the playstation 5 since it has a very fast SSD and doesn't really have any hardware issue likely to cause much issues for game developers.

Main weakness i can see with the PS5 is only having 16.5 GiB of ram in total (with the OS taking up maybe 2.5 GiB). But the steam deck and rog ally also only have 16 GiB and with fast storage you can get away with having less ram (since you can quickly load from the NVME SSD as needed).
It is worth noting that both the steam deck and rog ally are limited to 16 GiB of ram in total.

Another concern with consoles is being constrained by inferior input methods but sonys controllers has actually supported gyro aiming since the PS3, it's just that most devs ignore those capabilities. xbox controllers does unfortunately not have any gyroscope build in.

I am only aware of one game developer who had issues with the series X, he claimed that he needed more time for the xbox versions due to slower SSD.

In response to criticisms, TeamKill pointed out that it merely shared why it needed extra time to bring Quantum Error to Xbox Series X, and was in no way implying that the game cannot work on Microsoft’s platform.

What we might see more of is game developer launching for PS5/PC first since and only later launching for xbox series s/x (possibly as a downgraded version).

The biggest issue is of course the series S only having 10 GiB of ram in total with only 8GiB being available for games. That's definitely a big problem for game developers. Luckily the xbox series s/x isn't selling very well so many third party developers will not care too much about the performance there, especially not if the xbox version launches later avoiding bad PR at launch.

Microsofts first party games are almost certainly held back by the series S though and microsoft also has the unfortunate habit of buying studies only to basically destroy them.

 

[Admin]

Confirmed: microsoft thought they had the better product
They actually expected games to perform significantly better on the XSX than PS5 which didn't happen overall. They very much overlooked things like the haptic feedback, 3D audio, SSD performance, SSD expansion options and the value in keeping the hardware configuration simple and easy to develop for.

https://www.gamesradar.com/microsoft-leak-reveals-what-phil-spencer-really-thinks-of-the-ps5-we-have-a-better-product-than-sony-does-not-just-on-hardware/

It's only now almost 3 years after launch that microsoft is looking to actually add haptic feedback to their controller but that will require that people buy new controllers. Since only a part of the install-base will feature it a lot of developers will not bother to actually implement that feature for xbox.

They did not mention having gyroscope but hopefully it the controller they are actually finally adding support for gyro aiming. "Accelerometer" could technically mean just measuring acceleration in the (x,y,z) direction but not (roll,pitch,yaw).

Unfortunately the new controller isn't planned to launch until june 2024 which is way too late. People who bought xbox before that will have to pay 70$ for it while people who bought PS5 already have the same (or better) features without paying extra money.

Microsoft should have quickly developed haptic feedback and delivered it for free to all xbox owners to make sure game developers would actually bother to add support for it on their inferior xbox platform.

 

[Admin]

Microsoft to go all digital with the brooklin?
The xbox series x does at least have a disc-drive but it very much looks like microsoft is going to axe that. Unclear if people will be able to use external bluray player(s) to still play physical media, i wouldn't hope for too much in that department.

You do get double the storage as compensation but that's not really an improvement or at least it wouldn't if it wasn't for extra xbox storage being obscenely overpriced.

They need to drop the price to 399$ to compete effectively against the PS5, now most people who want an all digital console will just opt for the 100$ cheaper PS5 all digital edition, you can get 2TB of storage for those 100$ you save giving you more for your money.