Console & Gaming Thread
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Far Cry is a FPS? I thought it was more of an RPG like the rest of Bethesda's offerings. So is it more like Bioshock, because I did enjoy Bioshock. Never beat it on my 360 but my sister did on her Switch and she enjoyed it. But she's liking Bioshock 2 more now, so maybe I'll revisit it on my 360. I think I got it for free from some Games with Gold offer, back when you still were able to keep the game despite not having Gold anymore.
We're only a week out from the Xbox launch and the PS5 a few days after that. I hope the embargo on the reviews is lifted soon and I can't wait until some reviewers tear it down and run some real intensive tests on all three consoles and benchmark them against each other.
I'm still set on getting a One S if the price drops for BF and using that as a Gamepass machine for a few years. Once there's a game that's actually worth getting from next-gen for next-gen consoles, then I can look at an SX or SS.
The One S was $199 last BF and I'm hoping it goes to $179 or $149 this time around because of the Series consoles driving the price down. If it doesn't happen, I'm just going to raid my local Gamestop for old 360 games and play through those. I got Dragon Age Origins, GTA4, DMC4, and Sleeping Dogs for $14 last time lol. I imagine Gamestop will basically be giving these games away for free to make room for next gen consoles.
I'm really enjoying Sleeping Dogs more and more. About 44% of the way through the game, according to the in-game stats, at least for the story mode. I'm sure the side quests add about 50% more to the game. While it's that "open-world" style of gameplay, it's still not quite like GTA, which is good. In the beginning, it felt like Crackdown and other games where you just walked around, jacking cars and causing damage instead of doing missions, but Square did a good job with this. Leveling up abilities and learning new ones adds more of an RPG feel to it; something that GTA didn't quite have. And the story isn't lame like a lot of the GTA stories have been, it feels like a proper drama film that you're able to interact with. Like an RPG.
On the forums, it looks like some people are getting their Xboxes early. They've either already shipped and a few have taken pictures of the boxes being delivered. I think these are regular people, so it's not reviewers getting a console early, as they probably got theirs close to two weeks ago and are just waiting on the embargo to end to drop their "reviews."
What I'm most interested in seeing is seeing the deep-dive testing and reviewing of the hardware and performance of all three consoles. There's been so much misinformation and misunderstanding about what these consoles can and can't do and what it's dependent upon, like the 4K/120 that some people think will be on every game for the PS5 and Series X. I've seen some stuff on load times, and that can be important too, but it's more about the visuals between the consoles on a high end 4K TV that supports HDMI 2.1. Even TV manufacturers are saying that some features will need to be updated via a patch later on and that there still might be some technical issues in 2019 and 2020 models of TVs. I know LG said something about this, so we'll see just how bad it is and if it can be fixed.
Seeing the size of the PS5, I wonder if Sony knows something about the internals that made them design it in such a way. Like there being a reason for the size of the PS5 that MS may not have figured out, like heating and cooling issues. We'll see but I won't be going next-gen until these problems are weeded out and that could take a few months in to next year to discover and/or solve. And I need to see what MS decides to do about its exclusive titles situation. Gamepass looks and sounds great but if someone can play an "Exclusive" on PC as well, I might as well go the PS5 route for its exclusives and see if it's worth getting the Xbox variant on PC, which I know is what many people did during this current generation with their PS4s and PCs to bridge the gap.
On the forums, it looks like some people are getting their Xboxes early. They've either already shipped and a few have taken pictures of the boxes being delivered. I think these are regular people, so it's not reviewers getting a console early, as they probably got theirs close to two weeks ago and are just waiting on the embargo to end to drop their "reviews."
What I'm most interested in seeing is seeing the deep-dive testing and reviewing of the hardware and performance of all three consoles. There's been so much misinformation and misunderstanding about what these consoles can and can't do and what it's dependent upon, like the 4K/120 that some people think will be on every game for the PS5 and Series X. I've seen some stuff on load times, and that can be important too, but it's more about the visuals between the consoles on a high end 4K TV that supports HDMI 2.1. Even TV manufacturers are saying that some features will need to be updated via a patch later on and that there still might be some technical issues in 2019 and 2020 models of TVs. I know LG said something about this, so we'll see just how bad it is and if it can be fixed.
Seeing the size of the PS5, I wonder if Sony knows something about the internals that made them design it in such a way. Like there being a reason for the size of the PS5 that MS may not have figured out, like heating and cooling issues. We'll see but I won't be going next-gen until these problems are weeded out and that could take a few months in to next year to discover and/or solve. And I need to see what MS decides to do about its exclusive titles situation. Gamepass looks and sounds great but if someone can play an "Exclusive" on PC as well, I might as well go the PS5 route for its exclusives and see if it's worth getting the Xbox variant on PC, which I know is what many people did during this current generation with their PS4s and PCs to bridge the gap.
I love this game and I'm glad to hear that you like it too. It's one of the most criminally underrated games of that time imho. It's a more unique open world game with a great, big, and vibrant in-game world, and to me it aged much better than GTA 4 did too, despite getting infinitely more hype at the time. 8 years after launch it still plays great. I really wish they made a sequel specifically so I can get more of it. It's a bit sad it flew under the radar and a lot of people never had a chance to try it.
We can already easily tell just based on what the hardware is capable of in those consoles. Xbox Series X is the most powerful, PS5 is just a bit behind but should provide a similar experience - multiplatform games may look like their details are "high" as opposed to "ultra", but should play largely the same and great. The PS5 controller has some cool additional features that Sony exclusives will be able to take advantage of. Xbox Series S is weak, it will still have fast loading times and smooth UI due to fast storage and CPU, but graphically it isn't even stronger than the One X and games will look similar to the way they do on the One X, sometimes with a higher framerate at best.
Regardless, both XSX and PS5 will be initially targeting 4K/60, but dropping to 4K/30 in "pretty" games, and often needing to render in lower resolutions upscaled to 4K later in the gen, particularly once they start introducing ray tracing. I can see toggles between 4k at 30fps, or 60fps but at lower internal resolution/graphics becoming more common over time. There's still no way we'll see 4K/60 in every game this generation simply because it's not the right thing for devs to push for, since they could make their worlds look better now if they could lower the resolution or make framerates lower. Impressive effects and details sell more copies than hitting native 4K or 60fps. The GPU is not powerful enough to tick all boxes though, and that's especially true for ray tracing which looks great but requires dropping resolutions quite low for GPUs to be able to handle it - you may see games rendered in as low as 1080P and upscaled to 4K in heavily ray-traced games on this hardware.
Exactly my situation. The Xbox Series X is the perfect console for people who don't have gaming PCs though - it's the strongest, can play all Microsoft exclusives, and has Gamepass. Otherwise Playstation wins simply due to having their typical exclusives that you specifically need PS5 for.
We can already easily tell just based on what the hardware is capable of in those consoles. Xbox Series X is the most powerful, PS5 is just a bit behind but should provide a similar experience - multiplatform games may look like their details are "high" as opposed to "ultra", but should play largely the same and great. The PS5 controller has some cool additional features that Sony exclusives will be able to take advantage of. Xbox Series S is weak, it will still have fast loading times and smooth UI due to fast storage and CPU, but graphically it isn't even stronger than the One X and games will look similar to the way they do on the One X, sometimes with a higher framerate at best.
Regardless, both XSX and PS5 will be initially targeting 4K/60, but dropping to 4K/30 in "pretty" games, and often needing to render in lower resolutions upscaled to 4K later in the gen, particularly once they start introducing ray tracing. I can see toggles between 4k at 30fps, or 60fps but at lower internal resolution/graphics becoming more common over time. There's still no way we'll see 4K/60 in every game this generation simply because it's not the right thing for devs to push for, since they could make their worlds look better now if they could lower the resolution or make framerates lower. Impressive effects and details sell more copies than hitting native 4K or 60fps. The GPU is not powerful enough to tick all boxes though, and that's especially true for ray tracing which looks great but requires dropping resolutions quite low for GPUs to be able to handle it - you may see games rendered in as low as 1080P and upscaled to 4K in heavily ray-traced games on this hardware.
Exactly my situation. The Xbox Series X is the perfect console for people who don't have gaming PCs though - it's the strongest, can play all Microsoft exclusives, and has Gamepass. Otherwise Playstation wins simply due to having their typical exclusives that you specifically need PS5 for.
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It's been great. It's very linear, which I'm starting to realize is the style of games I am able to make it through and, therefore, enjoy. Sure you can change the order of how you complete missions, but it's still more or less the same route to finish the game. I think this helps me a ton because I'm not a "bright" gamer. I get easily frustrated with games that have puzzles and rather than look at a guide, I just give up on the game. Zelda is notoriously bad for me, in that sense. But I love the fighting mechanics since they're pretty simple. More complex than GTA where you can carry an arsenal of weapons to clear an area instead of trying to land combos and time your counter attacks just right. In fact it was today that I learned that Square released this game for Mac, as well lol. You don't see that too often for any game, let alone from Square.
I've seen some videos of it in action and it looks really cool and complex. I'm surprised Xbox fans aren't asking for a similar feature for the Xbox controllers because while it may be gimmicky on most titles, I think some titles may really benefit from it in bringing the player deeper in to the game. Obviously I haven't tried it out but I am looking forward to. My only concern would be that mechanism breaking easily. Some people are rough with their controllers and even if you aren't, I think the PS5 controllers are $70 or $80? $10-20 or so more than an Xbox controller, if I'm not mistaken. It's definitely a complex piece of hardware but also quite pricey. But if it truly adds another level of gameplay to PS5 games, that's great and I hope Sony leads the way for other publishers by implementing it well and across all its first party titles to show how serious they are about it.
It's becoming clearer and clearer every day just how handicapped the SS is. I think the truth about its capabilities were lost when it was leaked a few months back and the price was so good at $299, shattering what people were expecting it to end up costing compared to the X. I'm slowly learning about about native rendering vs...output? So the SS can, at best, do 1440p at 120hz and anything beyond that is upscaled. I'm not sure what the pros and cons are for both upscaling and downscaling, but the fact that it's so messy to learn about in the first place gives me the sense that it's going to be more compromise than improvement compared to the current gen consoles.
I probably need to see an example of a "resolution vs framerate" where a game is at 1080p but 120 hz (likely a Series S situation) vs different, higher resolutions at lower frame rates. I don't know which one I prefer and which one (resolution or frame rate) my eyes can notice more and appreciate more. Everyone seems to be different in that regard in which one suites them best. But as it stands, I doubt I would enjoy 4K/30 over 1440/120. I'll just have to see for myself. But even those resolutions look like they won't be commonplace for the Series S. Then $299 for a console that may or may not perform as well as a $349 One X just seems dumb and not an option for me. Load times and quick resume are nice features and I'd probably value them a lot but if my games run at 900p, like Yakuza might, then I'm OK with longer load times on a One X if they still look better. Or longer load times and inferior graphics on a One S, if the One S drops to a $150 console. That I can accept from a $150 One S, almost 4 years after its release. Not from a Series S for $299 that is just launching and will likely have some form of hardware failure that is typical for all launch consoles.
And if most of my time playing the next two years, or so, will be catching up on old games from the One generation, then there's no need to do so using a $299 console that seems like a One X Plus type of console. If I go the Gamepass route for 2-3 years, I still get most of the new games that come out for the Series SX and they'll be on Gamepass at some point, too.
I'll have to see a comparison of the Sony exclusives and if I'd actually enjoy those games; otherwise if they're games that are not my style, I'm still better off going the GPU route on Xbox via the One S. As silly as it might sound, I really want to play the Kingdom Hearts series lol. I had the first one for PS2 back in the day, but never finished.
I've seen some videos of it in action and it looks really cool and complex. I'm surprised Xbox fans aren't asking for a similar feature for the Xbox controllers because while it may be gimmicky on most titles, I think some titles may really benefit from it in bringing the player deeper in to the game. Obviously I haven't tried it out but I am looking forward to. My only concern would be that mechanism breaking easily. Some people are rough with their controllers and even if you aren't, I think the PS5 controllers are $70 or $80? $10-20 or so more than an Xbox controller, if I'm not mistaken. It's definitely a complex piece of hardware but also quite pricey. But if it truly adds another level of gameplay to PS5 games, that's great and I hope Sony leads the way for other publishers by implementing it well and across all its first party titles to show how serious they are about it.
It's becoming clearer and clearer every day just how handicapped the SS is. I think the truth about its capabilities were lost when it was leaked a few months back and the price was so good at $299, shattering what people were expecting it to end up costing compared to the X. I'm slowly learning about about native rendering vs...output? So the SS can, at best, do 1440p at 120hz and anything beyond that is upscaled. I'm not sure what the pros and cons are for both upscaling and downscaling, but the fact that it's so messy to learn about in the first place gives me the sense that it's going to be more compromise than improvement compared to the current gen consoles.
I probably need to see an example of a "resolution vs framerate" where a game is at 1080p but 120 hz (likely a Series S situation) vs different, higher resolutions at lower frame rates. I don't know which one I prefer and which one (resolution or frame rate) my eyes can notice more and appreciate more. Everyone seems to be different in that regard in which one suites them best. But as it stands, I doubt I would enjoy 4K/30 over 1440/120. I'll just have to see for myself. But even those resolutions look like they won't be commonplace for the Series S. Then $299 for a console that may or may not perform as well as a $349 One X just seems dumb and not an option for me. Load times and quick resume are nice features and I'd probably value them a lot but if my games run at 900p, like Yakuza might, then I'm OK with longer load times on a One X if they still look better. Or longer load times and inferior graphics on a One S, if the One S drops to a $150 console. That I can accept from a $150 One S, almost 4 years after its release. Not from a Series S for $299 that is just launching and will likely have some form of hardware failure that is typical for all launch consoles.
And if most of my time playing the next two years, or so, will be catching up on old games from the One generation, then there's no need to do so using a $299 console that seems like a One X Plus type of console. If I go the Gamepass route for 2-3 years, I still get most of the new games that come out for the Series SX and they'll be on Gamepass at some point, too.
I'll have to see a comparison of the Sony exclusives and if I'd actually enjoy those games; otherwise if they're games that are not my style, I'm still better off going the GPU route on Xbox via the One S. As silly as it might sound, I really want to play the Kingdom Hearts series lol. I had the first one for PS2 back in the day, but never finished.
I think it's safe to say that very few games will do 120hz at all on this gen, it's just a gimmicky thing they added to their marketing slides, that the consoles can technically output 120hz, except you won't see it in most big name games apart from maybe some shooters and racing/sports games, if even that.
Same with 1440P being a gimmicky number for the Series S - I think we'll typically see ~1080P/60 upscaled to 4K, which means four times lower resolution than native. I won't be surprised to see 900P/60 as well, or some games choosing higher resolutions but only at 30fps. The prettiest games simply won't be able to do anything close to 1440P/60 upscaled to 4K on the Series S, only the lighter titles, and that's still less than half of 4K.
You also have to consider that ray tracing and effects quality will often be prioritized and resolution will be dropped to make the best use out of the limited GPU resources. Ray tracing is extremely GPU-heavy - heavier than any effect we've had last gen.
Upscaling means trying to make low resolution image look less shit on higher resolution screens - there are many tricks to do that, some getting quite decent. But typically you will see less detail, blurrier textures and shimmering/rougher edges compared to something rendered in native 4K where things would look razor sharp.
I think for most people gaming on their TVs the sweet spot would be 4K/60, or 1440P/60 if a drop was absolutely needed. Most people have 4K TVs at this point, but TVs that take 120hz inputs are owned maybe by 0.001% of people, if not less - these are extremely rare still. 30fps is just too slow though, and upscaling from 900p/1080p to 4K is also too painful - this is like picking whether you'd rather have your left arm or right leg ripped off. Game devs have been erring on the side of lowering fps to maintain prettier graphics, as better graphics look and sell better than frames per second.
Same with 1440P being a gimmicky number for the Series S - I think we'll typically see ~1080P/60 upscaled to 4K, which means four times lower resolution than native. I won't be surprised to see 900P/60 as well, or some games choosing higher resolutions but only at 30fps. The prettiest games simply won't be able to do anything close to 1440P/60 upscaled to 4K on the Series S, only the lighter titles, and that's still less than half of 4K.
You also have to consider that ray tracing and effects quality will often be prioritized and resolution will be dropped to make the best use out of the limited GPU resources. Ray tracing is extremely GPU-heavy - heavier than any effect we've had last gen.
Upscaling means trying to make low resolution image look less shit on higher resolution screens - there are many tricks to do that, some getting quite decent. But typically you will see less detail, blurrier textures and shimmering/rougher edges compared to something rendered in native 4K where things would look razor sharp.
I think for most people gaming on their TVs the sweet spot would be 4K/60, or 1440P/60 if a drop was absolutely needed. Most people have 4K TVs at this point, but TVs that take 120hz inputs are owned maybe by 0.001% of people, if not less - these are extremely rare still. 30fps is just too slow though, and upscaling from 900p/1080p to 4K is also too painful - this is like picking whether you'd rather have your left arm or right leg ripped off. Game devs have been erring on the side of lowering fps to maintain prettier graphics, as better graphics look and sell better than frames per second.
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That's what I was afraid of. As it became more obvious that the Series S' capabilities were largely exaggerated by fans and intentionally vague, yet legally specific, from MS, I felt that even the Series X was being over-hyped. Same with the PS5. Just the next-gen consoles in general, the expectations were through the roof simply because it had gained a considerable amount of ground on the best of the PC hardware.
I imagine that racing games like Forza will still look amazing at 4K/120 so I'm happy for that. I can understand that a more GPU-taxing game with lots of other enemies/characters/NPCs on the screen at once can definitely slow the game to a crawl at Ultra settings and that devs will likely aim to give the smoothest experience rather than the prettiest one. I think a lot of us that were naive about how hardware works and what all the terms mean just bit the apple on "4K/120" and assumed this was an improvement on the magnitude of the PSX to the PS3, or something. Which is not the case as we're learning through reviewers.
I've heard people say that while 4K looks amazing, 1440p is still very good and if the SX can do that consistently at 120, we'll forget about 4K/120 for a few years. I don't know how true that is but just looking at the numbers and understanding that 1440 to 4K is still not that big of a noticeable improvement, I'm ready to accept that, too.
Only two more days for the Xbox and 4 for the PS5. While I won't be getting the FOMO, I'm still interested in the tests reviewers run. I don't know if anyone does hardware tests on consoles the way Anandtech does them for various other tech, but it should clear the picture for the rest of us non-tech folks that chase numbers and specs without understanding what they are or mean. Because from what I'm hearing about the SS, and as you explained, the console might sacrifice resolution so much for frame rate that we're back to almost-current-gen resolution with 60 fps. Which shouldn't be acceptable to anyone that has experienced a high refresh screen in any other tech like tablets or phones. 30 fps is laughable, unless we're talking 4K, which is pretty intensive. But even 4K/30 on a Series X seems like a caveat considering PC GPUs have been doing it for a couple of years now. I guess that would have the X another $150-200 more expensive if it was to target even the 20 Series Nvidia cards' performance.
I imagine that racing games like Forza will still look amazing at 4K/120 so I'm happy for that. I can understand that a more GPU-taxing game with lots of other enemies/characters/NPCs on the screen at once can definitely slow the game to a crawl at Ultra settings and that devs will likely aim to give the smoothest experience rather than the prettiest one. I think a lot of us that were naive about how hardware works and what all the terms mean just bit the apple on "4K/120" and assumed this was an improvement on the magnitude of the PSX to the PS3, or something. Which is not the case as we're learning through reviewers.
I've heard people say that while 4K looks amazing, 1440p is still very good and if the SX can do that consistently at 120, we'll forget about 4K/120 for a few years. I don't know how true that is but just looking at the numbers and understanding that 1440 to 4K is still not that big of a noticeable improvement, I'm ready to accept that, too.
Only two more days for the Xbox and 4 for the PS5. While I won't be getting the FOMO, I'm still interested in the tests reviewers run. I don't know if anyone does hardware tests on consoles the way Anandtech does them for various other tech, but it should clear the picture for the rest of us non-tech folks that chase numbers and specs without understanding what they are or mean. Because from what I'm hearing about the SS, and as you explained, the console might sacrifice resolution so much for frame rate that we're back to almost-current-gen resolution with 60 fps. Which shouldn't be acceptable to anyone that has experienced a high refresh screen in any other tech like tablets or phones. 30 fps is laughable, unless we're talking 4K, which is pretty intensive. But even 4K/30 on a Series X seems like a caveat considering PC GPUs have been doing it for a couple of years now. I guess that would have the X another $150-200 more expensive if it was to target even the 20 Series Nvidia cards' performance.
People way underestimate how big of a jump there is from 1440P to 4K because almost every enthusiast has a 1440P monitor, and they praise what they have. 4K is still in its infancy amongst gamers. 1440P has been a very practical resolution, the same way back in the days we had excellent 1680x1050 monitors in the absence of hardware powerful enough to do no-compromise 1080P. But 1440P is less than half of 4K in terms of the sheer number of pixels and the information/details rendered. The main saving grace here is that upscaling from 1440P to 4K doesn't look anywhere as bad as upscaling from something like 900P or even 1080P.
As for 120hz, there's pretty much no market for 120hz on consoles, and they aren't strong enough to handle that without too many sacrifices - I don't think it'll be something you can reasonably expect to be mainstream this generation. Maybe for PS6 if mainstream TVs ever go that route. I don't think in the upcoming years we'll have many devs willing to make a whole separate setting to support the tiny niche of gamers who have their consoles hooked up to high refresh rate monitors, no matter how vocal and misleading that group may be on Reddit.
At this point even I have a 4K/60hz TV, as there's pretty much nothing outside of extremely expensive TV models that support high refresh rates. And honestly, I don't even care about 120fps on a console - I'm more than happy if I can play every game at stable 60fps. Everyday console gamers care even so much less, they've been content with 30fps up until now. The perceivable difference between 60 and 120 is nowhere as large too.
PC GPUs have always been ahead of consoles, but a GPU that can do 60fps at 4K today costs more than the entire Xbox Series X, and that's just one part. The Series X GPU is around the RTX 2080 Super in performance, a GPU that launched at $699 just last year, and now you're getting an entire console with what would be that, a ~$300 Ryzen CPU and a $200 SSD, for less than that GPU alone. If you wanted to build a PC as strong as the Series X, it'd cost you at least ~$1000, even today, and it would be considered to be a high end gaming PC by all means. It's really quite incredible and exciting that the XSX and PS5 can pack as much cutting edge hardware for so little money. None of their components are far behind the most flagship PC parts you can buy today, for a fraction of their price. And by the way the 2080 Super isn't good enough to do 60fps in 4K in most AAA games today either.
In all of those expectations around graphics, people also forget that by far the most groundbreaking upgrade we are seeing is in CPU and storage speeds. The CPU in those next gen consoles is insanely powerful. It opens up incredible possibilities to build bigger, denser and more advanced game worlds. Storage speed makes it that everything could load in real time too. These upgrades are really what's hopefully going to push the envelope and get us more immersive game worlds. It's a much larger jump than the jump in GPU performance, since that one was the focus of mid-gen refreshes last year which really pushed graphics forward further than expected - there was far less room for improvement in this one regard that PS5 and XSX could leverage to start with. The mid-gen refreshes still came with abhorrent CPUs and storage, and now in the Series X and PS5 we are seeing something that could be compared to a 15-year jump forward in CPU and storage performance even compared to the One X and PS4 Pro.
As for 120hz, there's pretty much no market for 120hz on consoles, and they aren't strong enough to handle that without too many sacrifices - I don't think it'll be something you can reasonably expect to be mainstream this generation. Maybe for PS6 if mainstream TVs ever go that route. I don't think in the upcoming years we'll have many devs willing to make a whole separate setting to support the tiny niche of gamers who have their consoles hooked up to high refresh rate monitors, no matter how vocal and misleading that group may be on Reddit.
At this point even I have a 4K/60hz TV, as there's pretty much nothing outside of extremely expensive TV models that support high refresh rates. And honestly, I don't even care about 120fps on a console - I'm more than happy if I can play every game at stable 60fps. Everyday console gamers care even so much less, they've been content with 30fps up until now. The perceivable difference between 60 and 120 is nowhere as large too.
PC GPUs have always been ahead of consoles, but a GPU that can do 60fps at 4K today costs more than the entire Xbox Series X, and that's just one part. The Series X GPU is around the RTX 2080 Super in performance, a GPU that launched at $699 just last year, and now you're getting an entire console with what would be that, a ~$300 Ryzen CPU and a $200 SSD, for less than that GPU alone. If you wanted to build a PC as strong as the Series X, it'd cost you at least ~$1000, even today, and it would be considered to be a high end gaming PC by all means. It's really quite incredible and exciting that the XSX and PS5 can pack as much cutting edge hardware for so little money. None of their components are far behind the most flagship PC parts you can buy today, for a fraction of their price. And by the way the 2080 Super isn't good enough to do 60fps in 4K in most AAA games today either.
In all of those expectations around graphics, people also forget that by far the most groundbreaking upgrade we are seeing is in CPU and storage speeds. The CPU in those next gen consoles is insanely powerful. It opens up incredible possibilities to build bigger, denser and more advanced game worlds. Storage speed makes it that everything could load in real time too. These upgrades are really what's hopefully going to push the envelope and get us more immersive game worlds. It's a much larger jump than the jump in GPU performance, since that one was the focus of mid-gen refreshes last year which really pushed graphics forward further than expected - there was far less room for improvement in this one regard that PS5 and XSX could leverage to start with. The mid-gen refreshes still came with abhorrent CPUs and storage, and now in the Series X and PS5 we are seeing something that could be compared to a 15-year jump forward in CPU and storage performance even compared to the One X and PS4 Pro.
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Some of you will be getting your consoles today. Well, Rukas probably now and whoever got the PS5 in a few more days. I think it was Casey? I don't remember what Fatal said he was going to get. Maybe Pitts
Yeah and the SS will have trouble even hitting 1440p, it sounds like. At least that's what the few games people have tested so far on the SS have said. Ray tracing brought the resolution to 1080, or lower. Upscaling that will be a bitch and a half to look at on a 4K screen.
I was looking at a few gaming laptops, only because they were on sale and I wanted to see the reviews for them to see where they stood on performance, relative to the new consoles. The Asus Zephyrus still comes with a 60hz screen. I guess laptops really don't come with displays with high refresh rate, so I can understand that, but a lot of the benchmarks with games showed it running 4K below 60fps. I know it's an apples to oranges comparison and a desktop PC would likely fare much better, but that's what it hit me just how ridiculous it was for people like me to fall of the hype of the spec sheet and expect the "4k/120" printed on the SX box to be something commonplace.
It looks like a lot of MS' first party titles will be upgraded for the Series and we'll see at least 1440p/60 or 120, but this is really going to depend on the developers, when it comes to third party games. And that kind of sucks because while I don't think devs are going to gimp a version for a certain console over another, but I do feel that if third party devs don't take the hardware as seriously as Sony and MS probably will with their first party titles, third party titles are going to run at odd resolutions and frame rates because the devs are too lazy to optimize it. So it may not be a hardware limitation, but it still might mean a PS5/X version of a game runs worse than expected (1440/60 vs 1440/120 or 4K/120) and the SS runs even more poorly than that. Like what we've seen with Yakuza running at 900p on SS. "Poorly optimized" is the reason I've been seeing given for the shit performance. If every dev does the same thing to a similar degree, the best performing and looking games will probably be first party titles from their respective companies.
That's what I've been seeing as well since the Series S was leaked almost two months ago. Actually two months to the day, almost, wow, time flew. I've been seeing and hearing that this generation will be all about storage and MS and Sony will be looking to make bank on expansion storage because many players are going to run out quickly. That's compounded by the fact that storage is already so expensive, at least the ones compatible with the next gen consoles. But yeah, the videos I've been seeing that show the speed with which PS5 and Xbox, both, are booting up and getting to a menu and then in to a game is nuts. Since I'm still on the 360 generation, I missed out on the excruciating load times that people complained about with the PS4 and One consoles. I think I read some bigger games were over a minute long. Which is nuts. I don't know who will appreciate the reduced loading times more, me who has never had to deal with terribly long ones but is a generation behind everyone else, or the current gen console owners who did have to deal with those long load times.
Unrelated, but in Sleeping Dogs, did you go through and finish all the side quests, like the Jobs and other random stuff outside of the main story? I'm at 21/30 missions completed, so 70% done according to the in-game stats, but I was never big on side missions in games like GTA outside of the story mode. Especially stealing those armored trucks that send the cops after you almost immediately. Level 5 heat makes it basically impossible to just bash the cops in to the wall and run away.
Yeah and the SS will have trouble even hitting 1440p, it sounds like. At least that's what the few games people have tested so far on the SS have said. Ray tracing brought the resolution to 1080, or lower. Upscaling that will be a bitch and a half to look at on a 4K screen.
I was looking at a few gaming laptops, only because they were on sale and I wanted to see the reviews for them to see where they stood on performance, relative to the new consoles. The Asus Zephyrus still comes with a 60hz screen. I guess laptops really don't come with displays with high refresh rate, so I can understand that, but a lot of the benchmarks with games showed it running 4K below 60fps. I know it's an apples to oranges comparison and a desktop PC would likely fare much better, but that's what it hit me just how ridiculous it was for people like me to fall of the hype of the spec sheet and expect the "4k/120" printed on the SX box to be something commonplace.
It looks like a lot of MS' first party titles will be upgraded for the Series and we'll see at least 1440p/60 or 120, but this is really going to depend on the developers, when it comes to third party games. And that kind of sucks because while I don't think devs are going to gimp a version for a certain console over another, but I do feel that if third party devs don't take the hardware as seriously as Sony and MS probably will with their first party titles, third party titles are going to run at odd resolutions and frame rates because the devs are too lazy to optimize it. So it may not be a hardware limitation, but it still might mean a PS5/X version of a game runs worse than expected (1440/60 vs 1440/120 or 4K/120) and the SS runs even more poorly than that. Like what we've seen with Yakuza running at 900p on SS. "Poorly optimized" is the reason I've been seeing given for the shit performance. If every dev does the same thing to a similar degree, the best performing and looking games will probably be first party titles from their respective companies.
That's what I've been seeing as well since the Series S was leaked almost two months ago. Actually two months to the day, almost, wow, time flew. I've been seeing and hearing that this generation will be all about storage and MS and Sony will be looking to make bank on expansion storage because many players are going to run out quickly. That's compounded by the fact that storage is already so expensive, at least the ones compatible with the next gen consoles. But yeah, the videos I've been seeing that show the speed with which PS5 and Xbox, both, are booting up and getting to a menu and then in to a game is nuts. Since I'm still on the 360 generation, I missed out on the excruciating load times that people complained about with the PS4 and One consoles. I think I read some bigger games were over a minute long. Which is nuts. I don't know who will appreciate the reduced loading times more, me who has never had to deal with terribly long ones but is a generation behind everyone else, or the current gen console owners who did have to deal with those long load times.
Unrelated, but in Sleeping Dogs, did you go through and finish all the side quests, like the Jobs and other random stuff outside of the main story? I'm at 21/30 missions completed, so 70% done according to the in-game stats, but I was never big on side missions in games like GTA outside of the story mode. Especially stealing those armored trucks that send the cops after you almost immediately. Level 5 heat makes it basically impossible to just bash the cops in to the wall and run away.
I don't think I did. I'm not the kind of guy who'd go for 100% completion in any game. I just try side missions and do those that I like for as long as I feel like it, or if I hear that they unlock something cool. I definitely spent a lot of time playing this game and had a lot of fun with the side-quests, in particular the fighting ones (although the tournament island was a bitch) but I remember just giving up on some of them. I don't like feeling like I'm wasting my time grinding, and the final completion percentages usually do feel like that in most games.
So I said before I wasn't super interested in Stadia....
But Google just gave me Stadia Pro for free, for being a YouTube Premium member, so I guess I'll check it out! Free controller, free Chromecast Ultra (which I don't actually need since I have the new Chromecast with Google TV, but the new one doesn't support Stadia yet I think, which is weird) - and 3 months of Stadia Pro membership.
Nice offer.
But Google just gave me Stadia Pro for free, for being a YouTube Premium member, so I guess I'll check it out! Free controller, free Chromecast Ultra (which I don't actually need since I have the new Chromecast with Google TV, but the new one doesn't support Stadia yet I think, which is weird) - and 3 months of Stadia Pro membership.
Nice offer.
Yeah, saw this earlier today. It's a good move by Google to help with the onboarding of more users from one media platform to another. I believe that Stadia is supposed to (eventually) have a feature where users can watch a video about a game (e.g. a trailer) and then click play now and it loads the game straight from the video.
I am looking to get the new Chromecast with Google TV and hopefully a Nest speaker depending on what I decide to do with the conservatory. Need to get some furniture for that first and a rug otherwise the sound will just bounce/echo around.
Casey, I know you have some coloured lights in your apartment from when you previously posted up some of your collectors items. Do you use smart lighting strips?
I am looking to get the new Chromecast with Google TV and hopefully a Nest speaker depending on what I decide to do with the conservatory. Need to get some furniture for that first and a rug otherwise the sound will just bounce/echo around.
Casey, I know you have some coloured lights in your apartment from when you previously posted up some of your collectors items. Do you use smart lighting strips?
Yeah, same. I strive for the 100% completion of the main story but the side quests might be something I do along the way if it's worth it or I'm bored.
I'm at 90% completion now. Time to find Jackie lol. I think that means there's only 3 missions left. The rest are the blue missions, which I guess are for the cop missions. Might do a few of those and the orange missions, which I think are "jobs."
I think I've stolen so many security trucks that now when I steal one, I'm at an instant level 5 for the police and I can't shack them off. They've got trucks too now and bashing them does nothing. And going down a street for 10 seconds leads to one road block after another. Might be done with those.
I was following some launch day stuff yesterday and I saw a good number of people that had their Xbox damaged in the mail. One guy's Series X had the body cracked/broken and the Xbox box was also bashed. It may be a mix of being damaged from MS to the carrier and also by the carrier, too.
One more thing I saw was a long, Torx screw coming loose and rattling around inside the system. One guy turned his Series X upside down and the screw came tumbling out. Another user claimed that their Series X was smoking upon turning on, but I think that turned out to be a hoax.
I get new consoles come with their own set of problems at launch but that screw issue could be pretty serious. I imagine those users can return the console but if supply is low, they'll be waiting a long time for a new one. Or if MS has some in reserve to send to them, then that means people who haven't bought on as yet will be waiting longer to get one.
There's still no sign of a One S or PS4 price drop for BF, despite the $199 units we saw last year. They're in stock, so I know stock isn't an issue as yet. It's just funny to see MS and retailers have a One S and Series S, both, at $299, sitting on the same shelf. And they have to explain to customers what the difference is despite the same price.
I'm at 90% completion now. Time to find Jackie lol. I think that means there's only 3 missions left. The rest are the blue missions, which I guess are for the cop missions. Might do a few of those and the orange missions, which I think are "jobs."
I think I've stolen so many security trucks that now when I steal one, I'm at an instant level 5 for the police and I can't shack them off. They've got trucks too now and bashing them does nothing. And going down a street for 10 seconds leads to one road block after another. Might be done with those.
I was following some launch day stuff yesterday and I saw a good number of people that had their Xbox damaged in the mail. One guy's Series X had the body cracked/broken and the Xbox box was also bashed. It may be a mix of being damaged from MS to the carrier and also by the carrier, too.
One more thing I saw was a long, Torx screw coming loose and rattling around inside the system. One guy turned his Series X upside down and the screw came tumbling out. Another user claimed that their Series X was smoking upon turning on, but I think that turned out to be a hoax.
I get new consoles come with their own set of problems at launch but that screw issue could be pretty serious. I imagine those users can return the console but if supply is low, they'll be waiting a long time for a new one. Or if MS has some in reserve to send to them, then that means people who haven't bought on as yet will be waiting longer to get one.
There's still no sign of a One S or PS4 price drop for BF, despite the $199 units we saw last year. They're in stock, so I know stock isn't an issue as yet. It's just funny to see MS and retailers have a One S and Series S, both, at $299, sitting on the same shelf. And they have to explain to customers what the difference is despite the same price.
I finished Sleeping Dogs. I enjoyed it but the story felt...eh. I was expecting more emotion from a Square Enix game but maybe I'm expecting RPG type of story and emotion instead of a free world, mission-based game. I guess it's like expecting GTA to have a gripping story instead of appreciating its gameplay.
I finished it just in time for Gamestop's sale of B2G2 free. Which is how I got the other batch of 360 games back in April. I might pick up FF13 since I haven't played the series since FFX-2. It's $3 lol
I might pick up the DMC 1-3 collection as well. It's looking less and less likely the One S goes for $199 or less for BF so I may just ride out the 360 until stock meets demand for the Series consoles.
I'm also still considering a PS5 depending on how this generation shakes out in terms of exclusives. But it doesn't feel like "exclusives" apply to IPs and titles anymore; it looks like some multi-platform games, like COD, have special, timed- exclusive modes and features on the PS5 that the Xbox won't get until next year. Even if I don't care or play those game modes, it's bad developers are doing this. But it's also the way of the business for these devs, too and it will definitely effect more games in different ways in the future.
And as nice as the principle of Gamepass is, I'm not seeing anything that grabs me to buy it or an Xbox. The only thing I'm waiting on is either MS to acquire more studios and see how it pans out, or finally release news on what it plans to do with the recent acquisition of studios, i.e. new projects, or I'm waiting for Sony to return fire with even more studio acquisitions.
Also, I'm pretty butt-hurt that there's no news on the FF7 Remake being released on Xbox or PC. I know it's a timed-exclusive for PS4, but that should be up early next year. You'd think Square would start dropping hints on when it will be released for other consoles.
I finished it just in time for Gamestop's sale of B2G2 free. Which is how I got the other batch of 360 games back in April. I might pick up FF13 since I haven't played the series since FFX-2. It's $3 lol
I might pick up the DMC 1-3 collection as well. It's looking less and less likely the One S goes for $199 or less for BF so I may just ride out the 360 until stock meets demand for the Series consoles.
I'm also still considering a PS5 depending on how this generation shakes out in terms of exclusives. But it doesn't feel like "exclusives" apply to IPs and titles anymore; it looks like some multi-platform games, like COD, have special, timed- exclusive modes and features on the PS5 that the Xbox won't get until next year. Even if I don't care or play those game modes, it's bad developers are doing this. But it's also the way of the business for these devs, too and it will definitely effect more games in different ways in the future.
And as nice as the principle of Gamepass is, I'm not seeing anything that grabs me to buy it or an Xbox. The only thing I'm waiting on is either MS to acquire more studios and see how it pans out, or finally release news on what it plans to do with the recent acquisition of studios, i.e. new projects, or I'm waiting for Sony to return fire with even more studio acquisitions.
Also, I'm pretty butt-hurt that there's no news on the FF7 Remake being released on Xbox or PC. I know it's a timed-exclusive for PS4, but that should be up early next year. You'd think Square would start dropping hints on when it will be released for other consoles.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/16...short-supply-april-q3-tim-stuart-phil-spencer
Ain't that some shit...
Ain't that some shit...
I've been watching a lot of Digital Foundry's videos on YouTube of the console comparisons they've been doing. Despite them stating facts from their findings in every video about the differences in visuals between the S and X, I still can't make up my mind. The price of the S is enticing. But the visuals, the obvious reason for the pricing, seem different enough that I'd rather get the X. I'm not sure if I'd spend most of my time playing on the C9 or on my old-ass monitor, which is 2560*1080 and 29" with a 75hz panel.
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