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THQ Nordic Exec is “Not Sure if the Market Will Adopt” the Xbox Series X / S Dual-Console Model | PS5’s SSD is “the true advancement”

DForce

NaughtyDog Defense Force
The demo also ran well on a laptop with a standard NVMe SSD, apparently. And even if we assume that the PS5 can stream 2x the assets, what are the odds that a third party dev will invest vast ressources into building exclusive assets for the PS5 (and optimizing for them) which one would not be able to use on the XSX or your average PC?
It apparently did run on a laptop with a standard SSD.........at a reduced settings.

This goes to show you that devs can push further on the PS5.
 

JonkyDonk

Member
The demo also ran well on a laptop with a standard NVMe SSD, apparently. And even if we assume that the PS5 can stream 2x the assets, what are the odds that a third party dev will invest vast ressources into building exclusive assets for the PS5 (and optimizing for them) which one would not be able to use on the XSX or your average PC?
I'm pretty sure the demo wasn't running on a laptop, they were just showing the video on a laptop. Tim Sweeney debunked it if I'm not misremembering.

And no one is saying devs will make exclusive assets for PS5. They will just have an easier time making games for PS5 and that can result in games running smoother.
 

JonkyDonk

Member
I looked it up. The UE5 demo wasn't shown running on the laptop. A Chinese engineer said that it could run on a laptop. Which is fine, UE5 is designed to run and scale on everything, from the most monster PC all the way down to mobile phones. We don't know how it will look and perform on each of those platforms though; and more importantly that demo wasn't the end all be all of UE5 or next-gen development. Also that demo was just a demo, running on unfinished PS5 dev kits at the time; it was just an example of what could be possible next-gen and it wasn't an exact indication of the PS5's full capabilities or implying that a game will look exactly like that demo.
 

cryptoadam

Banned
S is dead in the water. It will be dropped in 12-18 months. Its already scaling back and isn't the 1440P everything is the same except resolution console MS was hypeing it to be. And I doubt they sell to many. COD doesn't even have an RT of 120 FPS mode on S. Foilage is always pared back. Alot of games don't even hit 1440P. And you have to spend 200$+ to get more storage so in the end its not even worth it.

If it was a Nintendo machine it would be great, just the right spot to get "next gen" games, but still have amazing looking Nintendo 1st party games while coming in at 300$. But at that price you might as well get a PS5 Digi or go full in on the series X.

Devs are going to release unoptimized low settings games, or just not bother at all eventually. Then MS will quietly discontinue it probably when they release the XSX PRO and some sort of cheap set top box for streaming Xcloud.
 

Schnozberry

Member
Some of the claims around Sony's SSD are pretty amazing. I guess it remains to be seen how much better it ends up being in practical use compared to the PCIE4 NVME and DirectStorage implementation in the Xbox.
 

tusharngf

Member



“I understand the reasoning behind it,” he said. “From a development perspective it’s always better to just focus on one spec. I am not sure if the market will adopt this model of having two next gen consoles.”


giphy.gif
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
The demo also ran well on a laptop with a standard NVMe SSD, apparently. And even if we assume that the PS5 can stream 2x the assets, what are the odds that a third party dev will invest vast ressources into building exclusive assets for the PS5 (and optimizing for them) which one would not be able to use on the XSX or your average PC?

Never happened. They just showed a video playback on the laptop, and Tim Sweeney confirmed that laptop never actually ran that demo.

And to answer your other questions:

Why only praise the PS5 SSD?. Because PS5's SSD is 129% faster than the XSX SSD.
What's the real-world application? Better-looking games and new types of experiences. Demon's Souls devs sent 4 Gb/s of compressed data to make the game run and look that beautiful. Guess what? XSX has a raw speed limit of 2.4 Gb/s. In other words, XSX could not run Demon's Souls without downgrading graphics.
 
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What's the real-world application? Better-looking games and new types of experiences. Demon's Souls devs sent 4 Gb/s of compressed data to make the game run and look that beautiful. Guess what? XSX has a raw speed limit of 2.4 Gb/s. In other words, XSX could not run Demon's Souls without downgrading graphics.

That sounds like nonsense tbh. It's not like the game has to constantly stream 4 GB of new textures every second.
 

longdi

Banned
I think he was talking or asked in a particular manner about ps5, but the gist is fast i/o storage as standard is a big game changer for making games.

This is like a jump and more when the Xbox OG brought persistent storage in the form of hdd. The difference is now we have both major players delivering the industry standard in ssd, rather than half assery like ps2 or 360.

🤷‍♀️
 
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GenericUser

Member
People chill. As the generations unfolds, devs will learn to use the raw power of the xboxx better and will learn how to use the faster ssd on the PS5 better. Just wait. The consoles are barely three weeks on the market and the final dev kits are probably just a couple of month old. I'm looking forward which crazy things devs will be able to pull off with a 20GB/s throughput on the SSD on sonys console.
 
3-4 Gb/s on average. And the developers mentioned it. How is that nonsense?

And if it were in just a few scenes (which it is not), the graphics would have dropped significantly on XSX. That's the real-world application.

Your link has no time stamp. And it seems like nonsense when you use common sense. In Demon's Souls, you're not flying through an open world at ridiculous speeds or anything. There's no need to stream that much texture data per second. What they're probably doing is loading 4 GB/s of data when loading a new chunk of the game. That makes loading times faster and helps with the development because there are no super tight bottlenecks you have to consider. But that doesn't mean the XSX can't run the game lmao. It just means loading times would be slightly longer and that the chunking intervals would be slightly tighter.
 

GhostOfTsu

Banned
The idea that loading screens were this huge bane that Sony thankfully slayed is laughable.

If the only advantage of the SSD is faster loading, than fuck it.

To you it's just a loading screen but behind the scenes for developers it is a GAMECHANGER. That will result in PS5 having the best multiplatform versions (when they are optimized for PS5) and exclusives that will shatter all expectations.
 

karasu

Member
1: Loading times really are not going to be the game changer people think it will be.

2: what do these developers think is going to happen with the Xbox one X/S. They're going to ignore the Xbox entirely and put their games on playstation alone?
It's possible but highly unlikely.
The ability to add content that you wouldn't add before due to loading times and resource management will be HUGE.
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
Your link has no time stamp. And it seems like nonsense when you use common sense. In Demon's Souls, you're not flying through an open world at ridiculous speeds or anything. There's no need to stream that much texture data per second. What they're probably doing is loading 4 GB/s of data when loading a new chunk of the game. That makes loading times faster and helps with the development because there are no super tight bottlenecks you have to consider. But that doesn't mean the XSX can't run the game lmao. It just means loading times would be slightly longer and that the chunking intervals would be slightly tighter.

No time stamp. I watched that interview when it was first released. I can't go through it again right now to put the time stamp.

And do you think more data is required only when you're flying? lol. Even a single scene or area could require that much data, based on the level of details it has. Demon's Souls has insane, unprecedented level of details in each scene.

The developer has confirmed that they send 3-4 gb/s data. Who are you to differ? XSX has a limit of 2.4 Gb/s, so XSX can't run it with the same graphical fidelity.

Publishers and developers continue to praise PS5 SSD and calling it "the true next-gen advancement". And here is an example why. It all makes sense. But you won't get it (or accept it) if you don't want to believe it.
 
Some people need to understand that games are 'loading' things all the time, not just during the traditional loading screens we know. And it's that constant loading that is a real bottleneck for developers. Having a very fast SSD and very efficient I/O means they don't have to worry about that limitation anywhere near as much. We have not seen this in effect in any of these early games. All of these games are still designed for last gen speeds.

And like I already said, the reason they praise the PS5 in particular is because it is like twice as fast in this area compared to the other platforms and it will just make things that much easier for developers. They don't have to optimize memory as tightly because they can lean more on doing things straight from the SSD.

I'm going to be honest. You're all over the place man. I think you've made it abundantly clear that you're a Sony fan through and through.

But to go from thread to thread reading your posts is frustrating. You'll post about how the XSX won't reach parity with the PS5 in one, mention how these early multiplats are indicative of how they'll be going forward in another.

Then come into this thread, and first use those early multiplat games comparisons as part of your pro Sony argument, only to then post about how we haven't seen anything in these early games due to being held back by last gen.

Like, man just stop. You're using single points of data to argue both ways to fit your preference, and at other times using a specific argument in one thread, while simultaneously claiming it moot in another.

If you're going to argue or debate with people, at least do so from an honest standpoint.
 
Even a single scene or area could require that much data, based on the level of details it has. Demon's Souls has insane, unprecedented level of details in each scene.

The entire game is 66 GB. So no, a single area doesn't have to stream 4 GB of data per second lmao.

The developer has confirmed that they send 3-4 gb/s data. Who are you to differ? XSX has a limit of 2.4 Gb/s, so XSX can't run it with the same graphical fidelity.

As I explained, they send the data every time they load a new chunk of the game. That doesn't mean they're constantly streaming 4 GB of data every second. I'm also sure they didn't claim that because it makes no sense.
 

Schnozberry

Member
Never happened. They just showed a video playback on the laptop, and Tim Sweeney confirmed that laptop never actually ran that demo.

And to answer your other questions:

Why only praise the PS5 SSD?. Because PS5's SSD is 129% faster than the XSX SSD.
What's the real-world application? Better-looking games and new types of experiences. Demon's Souls devs sent 4 Gb/s of compressed data to make the game run and look that beautiful. Guess what? XSX has a raw speed limit of 2.4 Gb/s. In other words, XSX could not run Demon's Souls without downgrading graphics.

Do you have some documentation on the hard limit of 2.4Gb/s? The NVME Drive in the Series X can run at PCIE 3 x4 or PCIE 4 x2, both of which have 3.9GB/s worth of throughput.

Also, a lot of the DX12 technologies like DirectStorage API and Sampler Feedback Streaming are designed around limiting the amount of data required to be streamed from disk into memory. It also allows the GPU to read directly from system storage, which is something Sony also placed a lot of emphasis on.

The real advantage Sony has is the custom SSD controller built into their APU, but the practical advantages of this haven't really been tapped into yet.
 
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TonyK

Member
The entire game is 66 GB. So no, a single area doesn't have to stream 4 GB of data per second.
I need to point that install size is not the total of data a game needs to load. 66gb contain all the data the game will need, for example, separate assets, but games read those assets, vfx, materials, etc, all the time in different combinations. So, at the end of the day, when you will end playing Demons Soul, you will have read hundreds and hundreds of data.
 
Does he have an update on Biomutant and Vampire Bloodlines 2? I'd like to know about the progress of the games lol, I plan on getting Bio Mutant and i MIGHT buy vampire bloodlines 2

Edit: Nvm he works on Chronos. I don't care lol
 
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FranXico

Member
I think the XSS would have to seriously flop sales wise for devs to not support it. They didnt have a problem supporting the Pro and OneX, and i dont see the XSS doing wose numbers than those consoles, percentage wise.
The difference is that supporting additional consoles that are more capable is not going to have any negative impact on game design and development.
The same cannot be said for a much weaker console.
 
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mcjmetroid

Member
The ability to add content that you wouldn't add before due to loading times and resource management will be HUGE.
SSD has been available on PC for years and nothing has seen significant improvement besides loading times.

If the argument is that you have to make every PC game work with an HDD then fair enough.

I'll put it to you though that even Sony themselves make an excellent game like God of War which has barely any load times at all and that was doing it without an SSD.

There hasn't been any example of anything besides loading times for the SSD for the PS5 so far.

I'm seeing perhaps Ratchet and Clank that might use it but nothing else.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Do you have some documentation on the hard limit of 2.4Gb/s? The NVME Drive in the Series X can run at PCIE 3 x4 or PCIE 4 x2, both of which have 3.9GB/s worth of throughput.

Also, a lot of the DX12 technologies like DirectStorage API and Sampler Feedback Streaming are designed around limiting the amount of data required to be streamed from disk into memory. It also allows the GPU to read directly from system storage, which is something Sony also placed a lot of emphasis on.

The real advantage Sony has is the custom SSD controller built into their APU, but the practical advantages of this haven't really been tapped into yet.

No, they have not fully realised that for BC games especially, but the drive itself is still about 2x as fast in raw speed. It is what it is, PCI-E 4 can run above 5.5 GB/s but you can read that for PS5 and we are back where we started. On top of that you have a custom SSD I/O unit designed to minimise CPU overhead and reduce GPU cache bandwidth waste.

SFS is a useful addition to make texture streaming easier but it is not the game changer performance multiplier vs the kind of virtual texturing developers can do with the current NAVI hardware or even earlier GCN cards with tiles resources/Partial Resident Textures (PRT’s).
 

The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
Your point is...? This is a last gen game, the internal SSD is just acting as a bog standard external SSD. The difference is because of the X1X and PS4 Pro versions of these games having different optimization.

I never thought optimization were meant to make it slower than last gen.

Either way, it should be faster regardless.
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
Do you have some documentation on the hard limit of 2.4Gb/s? The NVME Drive in the Series X can run at PCIE 3 x4 or PCIE 4 x2, both of which have 3.9GB/s worth of throughput.

Also, a lot of the DX12 technologies like DirectStorage API and Sampler Feedback Streaming are designed around limiting the amount of data required to be streamed from disk into memory. It also allows the GPU to read directly from system storage, which is something Sony also placed a lot of emphasis on.

The real advantage Sony has is the custom SSD controller built into their APU, but the practical advantages of this haven't really been tapped into yet.

Here are the numbers from the official Xbox website.

What you're mentioning is the Velocity Architecture, which is a combination of 4 things. That takes the compressed data speed from 2.4 gb/s to uncompressed 4.8 gb/s, as is also noted in the link.
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
There hasn't been any example of anything besides loading times for the SSD for the PS5 so far.

Demon's Souls is a shining example of PS5's SSD and I/O capabilities. It's the reason why it looks so good with such high details. See my previous comments on this page for more details.
 

OrtizTwelve

Member
So many “business analysts” on here talking about the Series S being a mistake and a failure, Microsoft should hire all of you. It’s obvious some of you know something that Microsoft doesn’t.

/s


It’s a $299 console with next gen features, specs, and graphics tech. It can do everything the Series X can at a targeted resolution of 1440P / 120 FPS. It was made for widespread appeal and the majority of buyers of the Series S are NEW TO XBOX, they’ve never owned an XBOX before. It’s the “entry” console into the new XBOX ecosystem that is being built for the future. It’s a smart business move and it will likely pay off well. These customers don’t give a shit or know anything about teraflops or SSD or IO or 4K or ray tracing or any of that bullshit. They just want to play and enjoy video games.

The amount of ignorance on here is shocking.
 
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Boglin

Member
Demon's Souls is a shining example of PS5's SSD and I/O capabilities. It's the reason why it looks so good with such high details. See my previous comments on this page for more details.

It's an incredibly difficult thing for Sony to market clearly. If the PS5 truly can improve visuals by streaming in higher quality assests than the XSX is able to, how are they going to show or prove it if the 3rd parties don't leverage it in multiplatform titles?
The Demon Souls developer saying they are streaming 4GB/s of compressed data or people bringing up the Unreal demo makes no difference to the skeptical because they can't verify one way or the other if there would be a quality hit on another platform and developers are known to bend the truth to pander.

Taking a developer at their word doesn't help a layperson who wants to see the difference and if the loading times of the same games are similar but one box has bigger and easier to market numbers like teraflops, then that's an easy tie breaker for a lot of people.

It's the job of the Sony or developers explain the benefits because it's not reasonable to expect every consumer to be technically minded.
Just look at how many people don't know the difference between software and hardware emulation and draw invalid conclusions from comparing BC titles.

My point is, Sony still hasn't proved that their box can do anything unique. I personally do think there's something to the PS5's SSD regardless of developer praise simply because l don't think Sony would develop a custom storage solution if it didn't benefit them in some way.
It would be nice of Sony put out some sort of Demo showing a difference. Something like a scene streaming in textures or geometry and showing how quality can be limited do to low bandwidth.
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
It's an incredibly difficult thing for Sony to market clearly. If the PS5 truly can improve visuals by streaming in higher quality assests than the XSX is able to, how are they going to show or prove it if the 3rd parties don't leverage it in multiplatform titles?
The Demon Souls developer saying they are streaming 4GB/s of compressed data or people bringing up the Unreal demo makes no difference to the skeptical because they can't verify one way or the other if there would be a quality hit on another platform and developers are known to bend the truth to pander.

Taking a developer at their word doesn't help a layperson who wants to see the difference and if the loading times of the same games are similar but one box has bigger and easier to market numbers like teraflops, then that's an easy tie breaker for a lot of people.

It's the job of the Sony or developers explain the benefits because it's not reasonable to expect every consumer to be technically minded.
Just look at how many people don't know the difference between software and hardware emulation and draw invalid conclusions from comparing BC titles.

My point is, Sony still hasn't proved that their box can do anything unique. I personally do think there's something to the PS5's SSD regardless of developer praise simply because l don't think Sony would develop a custom storage solution if it didn't benefit them in some way.
It would be nice of Sony put out some sort of Demo showing a difference. Something like a scene streaming in textures or geometry and showing how quality can be limited do to low bandwidth.

I understand your point and agree with what you said. But, as you just noted, it is a challenge. And though bigger GPUs are more easily marketable, Xbox has failed to demonstrate that advantage. They didn't have any first-party exclusive to show that advantage (like Demon's Souls), or a demo specifically created for it (like the UE5 demo), and also failed at third-party performance advantages (AC:V, COD, DIrt 5) so far at least.

Sony didn't make PS5 for on-paper specs or marketing material. DualSense is another thing that couldn't be marketed properly, but Sony invested in it anyway. This is truly a console for developers and will yield many tangible and many more intangible benefits for users. One of such big benefits is Sony's goal to reduce development time by 6 months.

Demo: The UE5 demo was that demo, and it showed the capabilities of the PS5 perfectly. Tim Sweeney heavily implied that a demo like this will scale down on other consoles. But I agree a comparison would be even better.

It's capabilities will also shine more in first-party games. Moreover, when UE5 eventually comes, that will really show the differences. UE5 Nanite is all about virtualizing geometry, and it depends on I/O throughput. A demanding multi-platform UE5 game will likely perform much better on PS5, and the disparity will be noticeable. Epic also mentioned that they rewrote UE5 to leverage the SSD and I/O tech that Sony unlocked.

By 2022-2023, these differences will become very prominent.
 
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Boglin

Member
And though bigger GPUs are more easily marketable, Xbox has failed to demonstrate that advantage.
It does not need to be demonstrated because it is assumed. Sony is the only one who has to prove their graphical prowess in this scenario and you can see how resistant people are to accept any evidence that contradicts their understanding of the paper specifications.

Demo: The UE5 demo was that demo, and it showed the capabilities of the PS5 perfectly. Tim Sweeney heavily implied that a demo like this will scale down on other consoles. But I agree a comparison would be even better.
Prior to Sony's investment into Epic, countless people came to the conclusion that Tim Sweeney is full of it and the demo can be run on a laptop with a SATA SSD at the same quality precisely because they didn't show a direct comparison.
Side by side comparisons are an absolute necessity because most people can't and shouldn't be expected to grasp new technical concepts without them.


We agree on mostly everything it seems but I can see where the Xbox fans are coming from and I don't think Sony has shown enough yet that could break through their skeptism. Btw, I hope it's clear that I'm not talking about console warriors who won't change their minds no matter what. Obviously it doesn't matter what is presented to those types.

I also think that once UE5 comes out there might be a performance gap. Not only because of it taking advantage of the PS5's I/O but also because it seems to lean hard into geometry which is also supposedly a relative strength of the PS5. I'm curious to see how the differences between the memory and cache systems of the two consoles will show up in the future.
 
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Md Ray

Member
The demo also ran well on a laptop with a standard NVMe SSD, apparently. And even if we assume that the PS5 can stream 2x the assets, what are the odds that a third party dev will invest vast ressources into building exclusive assets for the PS5 (and optimizing for them) which one would not be able to use on the XSX or your average PC?
It apparently did run on a laptop with a standard SSD.........at a reduced settings.

This goes to show you that devs can push further on the PS5.
It was an mp4 playing on laptop.
 

Md Ray

Member
The real advantage Sony has is the custom SSD controller built into their APU, but the practical advantages of this haven't really been tapped into yet.
Little correction: The custom SSD controller isn't built into the APU. It's located separately elsewhere on the motherboard surrounded by 825GB NAND flash memory. Every SSD (whether it's SATA-based or PCIe-based) has its own controller similar to this.

EjukDo-XcAEbx5s


What is built into the APU aside from GPU and CPU is the custom I/O complex. This custom I/O complex consists of a lot of units namely direct memory access controller, I/O coprocessors, SRAM, Kraken decompression unit, and coherency engines to significantly reduce CPU overhead and remove as many bottlenecks as possible, and they sit between the custom SSD controller and system RAM inside the main SoC (we really need a die shot of the SoC).

4so2vqs82or51.png

dl9lfc2bsgn41.jpg
 
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Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
SSD won't make games look better.

Are you a game developer? Because multiple game developers have explicitly mentioned that SSD helps with graphics.

“The exceptionally powerful SSD on the PlayStation 5 offers a new level of detail for each individual object." -- Keith Lee, Counterplay Games, Godfall.

"The ability to load in the highest resolution version of any asset just in front of you and drop it immediately as you turn around means that every tree can have 3D bark and moss and ants marching on it just when needed, without blowing up the budget. It’s going to be great." -- Former Naughty Dog Techical Art Director, Andrew Maximov.
 
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