I don’t care about split screen but more evidence that the Series S was a mistake. At the very least Microsoft is going to have to ease up on the requirements.
Edit: It has come to my attention that I need to improve my reading comprehension. This only affects the S. 🤦♂️
Is that because people actually want an S… or because they settled because they couldn’t find an X? Everywhere I go there’s tons of S’s available and almost no X’s available. Obviously anecdotal, but maybe it’s not so much buying it over the X as buying it because the X just isn’t in reach… either because of price (though if you can’t afford a hundred dollars extra for a console… you can’t really afford the console at all, and you’re just justifying it to yourself) or because of lack of availability in general.
Just a note, it’s not $100 difference. It’s $200 difference ($300 vs $500). Having said that, the only reason I got the SS was because I couldn’t get the SX. I tried and failed. I would have preferred a $400 digital version of the SX even. Settled for the SS. Had to get an SSD expansion card, feature parity is apparently not a thing, had to rebuy a couple games digitally.
I don’t see how I’m a fanboy. The Series X lost a feature because of the Series S. I’m sure the parity requirement had good intentions but I doubt this is the last time this will happen.
As others are pointing out the Series S is selling well but it’s the weakest link.
Please respect the rules of the instance if you choose to comment here.
The only rule at Beehaw is Be(e) Kind. Your comment was needlessly aggressive and abrasive and you could have made your point just as easily in a kind way.
Thanks for keeping this a positive space for everyone.
In what world is “It will last longer” an answer to “I can’t afford that”? I doesn’t matter how long something will last if people don’t have the extra money to spend on something more expensive.
that’s highly debatable if we’re talking about a $600 PC. I mean, yes you can argue that with games on PC you can always figure something out to get acceptable performance, but people in the market to buy a $300 console likely lack the experience, knowledge or time to do that
If it was a mistake, how the game now coming to Series S proving that? The only thing it proves is that split screen is a demanding feature and MSFT shouldn’t impose parity of that, which they shamelessly accepted after the success of BG3. It’s still a good console to play modern games, of course not at best fidelity, but I don’t think that matters.
Edit: just realised you’re saying that with an incorrect conclusion that split screen wouldn’t be coming on Series X. Well, that isn’t the case, and probably brings the game to more people with least amount of harm.
I was talking about the person(s) at Microsoft, who decided that it’s a good idea to have less RAM on the Series S than on the Series X…
(And for context: I work in gamedev, and in my experience making games stay within the memory budget is one of the toughest parts of porting games to consoles.)
who decided that it’s a good idea to have less RAM on the Series S than on the Series X…
Supply chains are complicated, and MS probably did their due diligence to ensure minimal blockages. From seeing the memory structures of newer video cards, I’m pretty sure there are supply constraints to memory to think of.
Honestly I think gamedevs leaning on memory this hard instead of compute is a mistake. You can have intelligently tiled, procedurally generated textures and have a lot more of them, but instead everyone is leaning on authored content on disc. This goes against industry trends in non-game rendering where procedural generation is the norm. If Doom Eternal can look that good with forward rendering, there are no excuses.
My main beef with the hate on the Series S is that both times it’s been a big deal (BG3 and Halo Infinite), it has been split screen which has held back shipping. The community would be as justified going after split screen as they are going after the Series S.
Tell that to our artists 😉.
As a coder I’m all for procedurally generated content. I did replace several heavy textures in our games by procedural materials, to squeeze out a couple of extra MB.
However, that’s not the way artists traditionally work. They often don’t have the programming knowledge needed to develop procedural materials on their own, and would need to rely on technical artists or programmers to do so. Drawing a texture however, is very much part of their skillset…
But yeah, the mention of “squeezing out a couple of MB” brings me to another topic, namely that (at least in our games) the on-disk textures are only part of the RAM usage, and a relativley small one on comparison. In the games I worked on, meshes made up a significantly larger amount of RAM usage. We have several unique assets, which need to fulfill a certain quality standard due to licensing terms, such that in the end we had several dozens of meshes, each over 100 MB, that the player can freely place… Of course there would still be optimization potential on those assets, but as always, there’s a point where further optimization hits diminishing returns…
In the end we had to resort to brute-force solutions, like unloading high quality LODs for meshes even if they are relatively close to the player… Not the most beautiful solution, but luckily not often needed during normal gameplay (that is: if the player doesn’t intentioally try to make the game go out-of-memory).
But I’m rambling.
The tl;dr is: The memory constraints would not be a big deal if there was enough time/money for optimization. If there is one thing that’s never enough in game dev, it’s time/money.
OK so this is now offtopic for the conversation, but…
However, that’s not the way artists traditionally work.
To some extent, it’s authoring tools which affect how they work. A procedural materials pipeline can help them compose on top of already procedural content. In a way, you could see PBR as a part of that pipeline because PBR materials are physics modelled. Having said that I do take your point, even building out that pipeline takes time. Creating a PBR materials library is not super easy, and obviously organic stuff is very hard to model as a material.
meshes made up a significantly larger amount of RAM usage
From watching blender modelling, I thought the pattern was to have minimal rigging on the base mesh and then tesselation via normal maps + subdivision (apparently this is very doable even with sculpting). Obviously for animation you need a certain quality but beyond that I thought everything would be normal maps, reflection maps, etc etc.
I’m not an artist - my 3D modelling experience can be summed up as “none”, so I can’t really answer your last point.
I know for certain that we don’t use normal maps to the extent they could be used, and therefore have way more detail in the meshes than they would need to have. I’m also pretty certain that we don’t do any tesselation on player pawns, and I think (but am not certain) that this is due to some engine limitation (again, don’t quote me on that, but iirc Unreal doesn’t support tesselation on skeletal meshes on all our target platforms).
I don’t care about split screen but more evidence that the Series S was a mistake. At the very least Microsoft is going to have to ease up on the requirements.
Edit: It has come to my attention that I need to improve my reading comprehension. This only affects the S. 🤦♂️
The most popular Xbox this generation was a mistake?
Most popular Xbox this generation, as opposed to… the second most popular Xbox this generation?
The point being it’s hardly a mistake if most are buying it over the X.
Is that because people actually want an S… or because they settled because they couldn’t find an X? Everywhere I go there’s tons of S’s available and almost no X’s available. Obviously anecdotal, but maybe it’s not so much buying it over the X as buying it because the X just isn’t in reach… either because of price (though if you can’t afford a hundred dollars extra for a console… you can’t really afford the console at all, and you’re just justifying it to yourself) or because of lack of availability in general.
Just a note, it’s not $100 difference. It’s $200 difference ($300 vs $500). Having said that, the only reason I got the SS was because I couldn’t get the SX. I tried and failed. I would have preferred a $400 digital version of the SX even. Settled for the SS. Had to get an SSD expansion card, feature parity is apparently not a thing, had to rebuy a couple games digitally.
So, does that mean the X was a mistake since the S has more sales? What is your point
No it means there’s clearly more demand for the S. My point is you claiming it was a mistake could not have been any less accurate.
I never said it was a mistake? I’m just saying what you said was meaningless…
The dreamcast is the most popular SEGA console of its generation. A raging success!
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I don’t see how I’m a fanboy. The Series X lost a feature because of the Series S. I’m sure the parity requirement had good intentions but I doubt this is the last time this will happen.
As others are pointing out the Series S is selling well but it’s the weakest link.
I guess calling it a mistake is about strong…
Read again. Spilt screen has been dropped for the S but not X.
Well, it seems, I can’t read. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
To be fair, I heard a lot of rumours about it not coming to Xbox because Microsoft required parity of features.
So, I can understand your misreading
Please respect the rules of the instance if you choose to comment here.
The only rule at Beehaw is Be(e) Kind. Your comment was needlessly aggressive and abrasive and you could have made your point just as easily in a kind way.
Thanks for keeping this a positive space for everyone.
deleted by creator
Not everyone is able to afford a gaming PC, let alone a current gen gaming console.
Series S offers them a great opportunity. It is far from a mistake.
deleted by creator
Still twice a much as a series S. $600 is alot of money for many people
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In what world is “It will last longer” an answer to “I can’t afford that”? I doesn’t matter how long something will last if people don’t have the extra money to spend on something more expensive.
deleted by creator
that’s highly debatable if we’re talking about a $600 PC. I mean, yes you can argue that with games on PC you can always figure something out to get acceptable performance, but people in the market to buy a $300 console likely lack the experience, knowledge or time to do that
deleted by creator
If it was a mistake, how the game now coming to Series S proving that? The only thing it proves is that split screen is a demanding feature and MSFT shouldn’t impose parity of that, which they shamelessly accepted after the success of BG3. It’s still a good console to play modern games, of course not at best fidelity, but I don’t think that matters.
Edit: just realised you’re saying that with an incorrect conclusion that split screen wouldn’t be coming on Series X. Well, that isn’t the case, and probably brings the game to more people with least amount of harm.
The console itself wasn’t a mistake. Their promises of feature parity was the mistake.
Not making it have the same amount of RAM was also a mistake, it could have been just a weaker GPU which would have had less issues.
Whoever made that decision obviously never worked in gamedev.
I don’t think anyone in these comments has worked in gamedev.
I was talking about the person(s) at Microsoft, who decided that it’s a good idea to have less RAM on the Series S than on the Series X…
(And for context: I work in gamedev, and in my experience making games stay within the memory budget is one of the toughest parts of porting games to consoles.)
Supply chains are complicated, and MS probably did their due diligence to ensure minimal blockages. From seeing the memory structures of newer video cards, I’m pretty sure there are supply constraints to memory to think of.
Honestly I think gamedevs leaning on memory this hard instead of compute is a mistake. You can have intelligently tiled, procedurally generated textures and have a lot more of them, but instead everyone is leaning on authored content on disc. This goes against industry trends in non-game rendering where procedural generation is the norm. If Doom Eternal can look that good with forward rendering, there are no excuses.
My main beef with the hate on the Series S is that both times it’s been a big deal (BG3 and Halo Infinite), it has been split screen which has held back shipping. The community would be as justified going after split screen as they are going after the Series S.
Tell that to our artists 😉. As a coder I’m all for procedurally generated content. I did replace several heavy textures in our games by procedural materials, to squeeze out a couple of extra MB. However, that’s not the way artists traditionally work. They often don’t have the programming knowledge needed to develop procedural materials on their own, and would need to rely on technical artists or programmers to do so. Drawing a texture however, is very much part of their skillset…
But yeah, the mention of “squeezing out a couple of MB” brings me to another topic, namely that (at least in our games) the on-disk textures are only part of the RAM usage, and a relativley small one on comparison. In the games I worked on, meshes made up a significantly larger amount of RAM usage. We have several unique assets, which need to fulfill a certain quality standard due to licensing terms, such that in the end we had several dozens of meshes, each over 100 MB, that the player can freely place… Of course there would still be optimization potential on those assets, but as always, there’s a point where further optimization hits diminishing returns… In the end we had to resort to brute-force solutions, like unloading high quality LODs for meshes even if they are relatively close to the player… Not the most beautiful solution, but luckily not often needed during normal gameplay (that is: if the player doesn’t intentioally try to make the game go out-of-memory).
But I’m rambling. The tl;dr is: The memory constraints would not be a big deal if there was enough time/money for optimization. If there is one thing that’s never enough in game dev, it’s time/money.
OK so this is now offtopic for the conversation, but…
To some extent, it’s authoring tools which affect how they work. A procedural materials pipeline can help them compose on top of already procedural content. In a way, you could see PBR as a part of that pipeline because PBR materials are physics modelled. Having said that I do take your point, even building out that pipeline takes time. Creating a PBR materials library is not super easy, and obviously organic stuff is very hard to model as a material.
From watching blender modelling, I thought the pattern was to have minimal rigging on the base mesh and then tesselation via normal maps + subdivision (apparently this is very doable even with sculpting). Obviously for animation you need a certain quality but beyond that I thought everything would be normal maps, reflection maps, etc etc.
I’m not an artist - my 3D modelling experience can be summed up as “none”, so I can’t really answer your last point. I know for certain that we don’t use normal maps to the extent they could be used, and therefore have way more detail in the meshes than they would need to have. I’m also pretty certain that we don’t do any tesselation on player pawns, and I think (but am not certain) that this is due to some engine limitation (again, don’t quote me on that, but iirc Unreal doesn’t support tesselation on skeletal meshes on all our target platforms).