Not much I have to say about this anymore tbh, we'll see how it pans out. If they ensure their minimum spec on PC is at least roughly around PS5 in configuration, then we shouldn't worry too much about optimization strain in the pipeline. Although the min spec on PC would change depending on the needs of the game; I'm just saying if it's a AAA game meant to "push the PS5's limits", then the min spec on PC should at least be roughly equivalent to the PS5's performance profile otherwise that's not being truthful.
I'm curious how this may affect timing intervals for releases going from PS5 to PC going forward. Genuinely I'm thinking now the gaps are going to get shorter, and we'll probably see at least a couple of 1P AAA non live-service/GaaS games be Day 1 on PC before the end of the generation. However, I also think it's all tied to plans for their own PC launcher & storefront, otherwise I just see too much left on the table pushing that strategy through Steam, not even to mention the advantages buyers of the games on PC would get that PS5 losers miss out on.
We should probably prepare for other PS 1P studios to come out with similar statements over the next few months, FWIW. Depending on how they plan to handle ports to PC going forward for the non live-service games, I'm most likely going to go PC for Sony, Microsoft and most 3P content this gen, and get a Switch 2 for Nintendo's games (if the specs are reasonably good for the price). I'm assuming PSVR2 will be PC-compatible as well, which would be pretty cool.
That's fair, but with any piece of code, the less hardware you have to account for (as well as APIs, etc) the easier it is to optimize and get every last CPU cycle to render what you want on screen. Games like TLOU 2 would never run on a PC that's not substantially better than the PS4 as a whole package. Hell, just compare the minimum CPU requirements for GoW on PC vs what the PS4 offers.
Comparison between AMD Jaguar and AMD Ryzen 3 1200 with the specifications of the processors, the number of cores, threads, cache memory, also the performan...
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In spite of having more cores, both the PS4 and PS4 pro pale in comparison with the Ryzen 3 1200. Unless a company is not being their usual lazy self with ports, more platforms to develop for usually = less of a specific hardware combination being exploited to its maximum, even if that HW is also X86.
Absolutely true, and it's something Sony's studios have to be mindful of going forward if they're going to support PC more. If the timing interval for ports to PC shortens even further (or goes Day 1, particularly for non-live service games), that's a lot more hardware configs devs have to scope, design and optimize their game around out of the gate, and that can definitely mean less of them pushing certain hardware (such as PS5 in this case) to their absolute limits.
Even though I think budgets, time and manpower are the bigger limitations for huge AAA games these days, exploiting specific hardware specs to their peak is still really important for the cream of the crop games showing off what a system can do, and those usually tend to be the 1P games when it comes to Sony's systems. There may be neat tricks with Tempest Engine that can be exploited at a technical level that could get looked over for a future game if it also has to be scoped out with some lower-end PC config in mind.
The good thing with PC is the minimum spec can always increase and depends on the game; the issue there though is total amount of market penetration for certain GPUs in the PC gaming space. Right now the top 5 GPUs on Steam are: GTX 1060 (2016, 4.375 TF, 6.94%), GTX 1650 (2019, 2.984 TF, 6.32%), RTX 2060 2019, 6.45 TF, 5.19%), GTX 1050 Ti (2016, 2.138 TF, 4.91%), and RTX 3060 Laptop (Max-Q) (2021, 9.846 TF, 4%). There's definitely a GPU roughly equivalent to PS5's in that list, but it's dead last for 4% of the market. The top 5 altogether account for less than 30% of the total Steam GPU market, though among the Top 15 there are some other RTX 3060 and up GPUs in the mix.
Kind of wild that the top GPU, though, is still one that is 4 years older than the PS5 and less than half its performance in TF, much less pixel and texture fillrate as well. It's just somewhat more performant than a Series S from the looks of it. Let's hope GPU adoption for GPUs at around PS5's level jumps up considerably within the next year or two; I'm assuming most of the big spenders in terms of actually buying games on stores like Steam normally have the more performant GPUs. That's what I'd hope, anyway, because it'd mean for future ports of 1P games meant to really push the PS5 hardware, Sony teams don't have to worry about appealing to more than say 12% of the total PC gaming market because vast majority of their customers would be the ones with those 12% of the upper-end (around PS5 perf level) anyway.
I still think the 1660 or 1660 Ti are the most popular GPUs on PC; I would figure that GPU & a decently capable CPU at the time of its release would've given performance roughly on par with a PS4 Pro or One X, but that GPU came out 3 years after PS4 Pro and 2 years after the One X.
I would agree if we were still living in PS3 days but we are not. Do you guys have any problem with UE5? It's platform agnostic and yet includes features that no custom game engine have to date (ala Nanite + Lumen)
Do you have documentation on other custom engines to say that definitively? I don't think other engines would have exact things like Nanite & Lumen, but there are likely at least some with features that provide similar benefits and results to what Nanite & Lumen do.
It's like the people who want to say PS5 doesn't have SFS. Well yeah obviously it doesn't have SFS, but it certainly has means within the way it's I/O system is built and the APIs to provide results similar to SFS. Not to mention, SFS is MS's specific branding for a package of solutions doing the heavy lifting, similar to how Nanite & Lumen are branding-specific by Epic for similar reasons.