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Developer Speaks About Lockhart "Holding Back Next Gen." And PS5 VS XSX Dev Kits.

Yams

Member
Context is key and we must understand all this information (if true) is centered around porting a current-gen game to next-gen. So comments of Lockhart can do anything Anaconda can is housed within that parameter.

I’d wait for more info.

I really don't think it's a controversial claim. A RTX 2060 can do everything a RTX 2080 can and the RTX 2080 is almost double the price. The 2060 just does it at 1080p, whereas the 2080 does it at 4K with some graphical flourish. I'm oversimplifying but I'm sure you get my drift.
 
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Nikana

Go Go Neo Rangers!
I think what he means is that the developer is porting a current gen game (Borderlands 3) to next gen systems. Once developers start building true next gen games maybe their opinion on Lockhart will be different.

That's what I'm interpreting from his comment.

It's the exact same architecture.
 
It's the exact same architecture.

I think that with true next gen games the differences might be greater than just a resolution drop. I don't expect framerate to take a hit bit other things like RT, shadow quality and texture quality might.

We have to wait and see what happens though.
 
Based on all those companies track records I wouldn't be too excited yet.

Uh...what? Forza's been consistently fantastic. Gears 5 was quite well received (certainly more than games like Days Gone and Death Stranding, anyway). Sea of Thieves basically reinvented itself successfully and has been a best-seller on both Xbox and Steam. Hellblade was extremely impressive visually for a game made by that small a team at the time. Obsidian literally has a super-solid track record going back to games like KOTOR, KOTOR2, Neverwinter Nights, New Vegas etc.

You guys should really try talking out of your mouths instead of your ass for a change; it's okay if those games don't appeal to you, but trying to ding them as not being good devs based off something you can try objectively measuring as a track record, when the literal evidence flies in the face of that, just makes you look dumb silly.

Bunch of old games that don't say much about the studios ability to create modern games. Forza is widely enjoyed and sells well but their new team with new leadership might not be so great.

No don't change the goalposts because people smell your BS. There's no cutoff date for a track record, it's either there or it isn't. o need to weasel out now.

You're just wrong on it, dude. Again, your tastes might prefer differently but you could've literally just stated that instead and wouldn't be in this predicament. As for Playground..well duh it could go bad with new management but that's literally a non-issue to bring up because studios change directions and leads all the time. Was there a similar concern for Guerrilla Games when they announced Horizon?

Given PlayGround's track record it's more sensible to give them the benefit of the doubt in trying something new.

That means they are going to use that huge power gap for scalable effects and resolution bumps? GPU is just for graphics apparently? Maybe thats why Sony is investing in some Playstation Ai. GPU can be used to give enemies deep learning of your attacks. Its a bummer, if the extra power is just used on frames and resolution bumps. Oh wells at least we got a SSD. Only thing that thats selling me to next gen right now.

Are you aware that AI, game logic, physics etc...can also scale with GPU power? It's only gotten easier and easier to do this over the years, not harder. Especially with advancements in asynchronous programming techniques, algorithms and feature support within the hardware itself.

It's an unfounded concern.
 
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Xaero Gravity

NEXT LEVEL lame™
- KOTOR 2
- Neverwinter Nights 2
- Alpha Protocol
- Psychonauts
- Forza Horizon (any)

Just some names, all great games. I'm so excited for MS event :messenger_sunglasses:
Never let the truth get in the way of a convenient narrative good story.

Although to be fair, I'm a little skeptical about Obsidian if their last project is any indication of the direction the studio is heading towards. At least in terms of writing.
 
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Bryank75

Banned
Well, playing Fallen Order it is clear that map, texture and geometry loading is a huge issue on current gen..... every map has several cracks in the wall to go through to hide loading and even when you have a meditation point and load back into the world....enemies take a few seconds to appear. You can sometimes run past where they spawn before they do so.

Now, I can see how the SSD will help a little in this area but the ram is a lot lower than the main next gen systems and the GPU isn't much different from a One X...... so I have a hard time believing that this will keep up with PS5 and Series X if they are allowed off the leash!

If one version doesn't need LOD models, cracks in walls, elevators, load screens, takes time for textures to load in or uses lower detail textures etc etc..... it's going to be a different experience. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe this is exactly what the market needs to get casuals onboard...... it's just my take.
 

jakinov

Member
Uh...what? Forza's been consistently fantastic. Gears 5 was quite well received (certainly more than games like Days Gone and Death Stranding, anyway). Sea of Thieves basically reinvented itself successfully and has been a best-seller on both Xbox and Steam. Hellblade was extremely impressive visually for a game made by that small a team at the time. Obsidian literally has a super-solid track record going back to games like KOTOR, KOTOR2, Neverwinter Nights, New Vegas etc.

You guys should really try talking out of your mouths instead of your ass for a change; it's okay if those games don't appeal to you, but trying to ding them as not being good devs based off something you can try objectively measuring as a track record, when the literal evidence flies in the face of that, just makes you look dumb silly.
Playground's main team is arguably good, new team we don't know yet. Coalition wasn't even mentioned. Sea of Thieves is successful but it doesn't bode confidence in Rare with all the people leaving, the many layoffs over the years and the debatebly okay games they had before. Sea of Thieves may be doing better now, that they spent extra years getting direct feedback and fixing it but it's hard to be excited for their next game if what they initially launched with was the best they could do with 3-4 years of development on their own. And then needed more years and direct feedback in order to improve. Hellblade is pretty, might be a fun game for some people, it's all subjective on what's good but they haven't really been able to create massive hits with their games, especially their more recent one. Aaron Greenberg used to poke fun of PlayStation games that reviewed and sold better than Hellblade. In regards to Obsidian, they made a lot of games that people liked at the time, but companies change and so do standards; it doesn't say much to their ability to create a modern games today because they made a game people really liked over a decade ago. You didn't mention it but Outer Worlds is doing okay so far. Far from bad, but it's minimal impact and okay success doesn't spark a lot of excitement in their ability to deliver something impactful for Microsoft/Xbox.

I never said they were bad. I said I wouldn't be excited yet. Implying that they could have getten better (as Microsoft is pumping money into them).
 

Aidah

Member
This is a good and valuable read, but I not sure if it's a good indicator for long term since it's just a current gen game in the form of Borderlands.

Good to hear again that Lockhart has the same CPU and SSD, those are the more important.
 
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if Microsoft did their job right, the Lockhart should be almost indistinguishable from Anaconda on a 1080p screen. Because that would be the real world demo that the System works as intended.
but of course if you own a 4K tv, 1080p can look a bit blurry and just not great, especially if you sit close to the TV and if your TV is bigger than 50". that's when you would want Anaconda.

they have to show that Lockhart can actually fulfill this promise, if they can, I think it will be a success... if they can't on the other hand... it could be a giant failure.
I was actually referring to PS5 versus Series X, but yeah, I think Lockhart could be a great budget console for people on 1080p.
 
People were never going to notice them side by side and if they have both consoles they wouldn't care either way.
It will be 200% zoom, it's a point of discussion, for me it's personal as in 2016 or 2017 i told myself the next-gen needs to be 12TF or I'm skipping it.
In regards to Lockhart, what it is, what is might be, not really interested (except from a technological point of view).
12TF or skipping it? Really odd standards my dude. Teraflops are not a good measurement of performance. Nvidia versus AMD graphics cards prove this time and time again. What kind of games and innovation through the use of a systems hardware I find is much more substantial. I'll probably end up getting both systems, but I'm more interested in PS5 at this point due to its DualSense controller, Tempest audio engine, and possibility of PSVR2.
 
Are you aware that AI, game logic, physics etc...can also scale with GPU power? It's only gotten easier and easier to do this over the years, not harder. Especially with advancements in asynchronous programming techniques, algorithms and feature support within the hardware itself.

It's an unfounded concern.
Ai and game logic can scale down? So youre saying if they ported TLoU2 on PS3, and it scale down the enemy AI. That wouldnt be a fundamental change? They stated they had to cut out a few things from enemy AI. You cant tell me there wouldnt be gameplay improvements if PS4 Pro was the target console instead if the PS4.

Anyways none of this matters, if its a portable console and has crossplay.
 

01011001

Banned
Ai and game logic can scale down? So youre saying if they ported TLoU2 on PS3, and it scale down the enemy AI. That wouldnt be a fundamental change? They stated they had to cut out a few things from enemy AI. You cant tell me there wouldnt be gameplay improvements if PS4 Pro was the target console instead if the PS4.

Anyways none of this matters, if its a portable console and has crossplay.

TLOU2 has absolutely nothing special in terms of AI, at least nothing that's hardware intensive. literally the animation work on said AI is most likely way more taxing than the logic running the AI.
the AI in TLOU2 is very much predictable and simply cycles through a bunch of preset patterns. there's nothing there a PS3 couldn't do.
 

Xaero Gravity

NEXT LEVEL lame™
it was.

the publisher is Private Division... ever heard of them? most likely not. they are pretty small and only published like 4 games till now.
I figured since Private Division was a subsidiary of Take Two they'd have higher budget games under their publishing belt, but you're right it seems like it was more of AA title.

Not sure how a smaller budget somehow justifies the God awful writing though 🤷‍♂️
 

beni12

Neo Member
The problem with Lockhart is about quality of its games not holding next gen back. as consoles get older and games more demanding, devs put their focus on PS5 and series x because majority of people will own those two. time and resources is already limited for most devs and when you add a weaker console to base models and demands devs to release their games at same time on series x and Lockhart, results won't always be good. and i wonder if Lockhart doesn't sell that well what effect it's going to have on devs.
 

Lort

Banned
...Anaconda has the upper hand in terms of us being able to really push effects. The difference will come down to effects over resolution for us. We have both dev kits pushing 4K/60 on Borderlands 3 and we have almost zero loading times on both kits. Looking at them side by side the image is very similar.

So first verified developer confirmed everything those with a technical background suspected...
  • 1080p xbox will not hold back 4k xbox
  • Xbox GPU and mem performance will mean better effects and or resolution
  • PS5 SSD speed initially at least will make almost no difference to gameplay
 
TLOU2 has absolutely nothing special in terms of AI, at least nothing that's hardware intensive. literally the animation work on said AI is most likely way more taxing than the logic running the AI.
the AI in TLOU2 is very much predictable and simply cycles through a bunch of preset patterns. there's nothing there a PS3 couldn't do.

You can kill 2 enemies with bow. Then you can booty trap where you are, then leave. Enemy can still find the body, look at where the arrow or bullet is lodged in their comrade, and infer in which direction they were attacked. Then again, alot of the AI becomes moot because they have listening mode. Idk where you seen better AI systems. But you can point then my way. Ill gladly play these games.
The animations you mention are also dynamic. System picks the right order of animations and blends them.
 
Ai and game logic can scale down? So youre saying if they ported TLoU2 on PS3, and it scale down the enemy AI. That wouldnt be a fundamental change? They stated they had to cut out a few things from enemy AI. You cant tell me there wouldnt be gameplay improvements if PS4 Pro was the target console instead if the PS4.

Anyways none of this matters, if its a portable console and has crossplay.

Yes, ND could've ported TLOU2 to PS3 if they wanted...if they wanted to work with the Cell architecture in particular and PS3's other architectural differences relative to PS4. Also, if Sony saw a financial incentive to port down TLOU2 to PS3.

Obviously none of those were true for TLOU2, but none of those factors are even factors between Series X and Series S. Exact same architectures (that are much friendlier to work with than Cell), and financial incentives to do so. Plus benefit of modern gaming development pipelines.



I just finished watching a podcast (Rand Al Thor) and the guest there was saying that MS might have had devs using a single devkit for Series X and Lockhart games because their next-gen game development platform, Gamecore, wasn't ready earlier.

So going by what this guy was saying, Lockhart might've had its own devkit earlier with E.R.A but now that Gamecore is ready, Lockhart performance can just be targeted through profile settings on a single devkit.

They also mentioned possibility that Xbox Edinberg could be another devkit (probably Lockhart's). None of this is verified of course, I'm just going with what someone else mentioned that could be relevant to the topic.
 
Yes, ND could've ported TLOU2 to PS3 if they wanted...if they wanted to work with the Cell architecture in particular and PS3's other architectural differences relative to PS4. Also, if Sony saw a financial incentive to port down TLOU2 to PS3.

Obviously none of those were true for TLOU2, but none of those factors are even factors between Series X and Series S. Exact same architectures (that are much friendlier to work with than Cell), and financial incentives to do so. Plus benefit of modern gaming development pipelines.
Ok sure.
 
You start on Anaconda and then optimize for Lockhart
So they'll have to optimize things for Lockhart. There is no easy toggle "Lockhart version". So more work for devs meaning either each versions will be less optimized or they'll reduce their ambition about their project meaning.

In both case it could mean holding back the game.
 

Yams

Member
So they'll have to optimize things for Lockhart. There is no easy toggle "Lockhart version". So more work for devs meaning either each versions will be less optimized or they'll reduce their ambition about their project meaning.

In both case it could mean holding back the game.

Options Menu

Resolution: 1080p
Texture Detail: Medium
Effects Detail: Medium
World Level of Detail: Medium
Etc, Etc: Medium



Tada! Optimized for Lockhart.
 

Dodkrake

Banned
TLOU2 has absolutely nothing special in terms of AI, at least nothing that's hardware intensive. literally the animation work on said AI is most likely way more taxing than the logic running the AI.
the AI in TLOU2 is very much predictable and simply cycles through a bunch of preset patterns. there's nothing there a PS3 couldn't do.

Wrong. Play it in survival.
 

93xfan

Banned
“There is nothing the Lockhart can't do that the Anaconda can.”

So whats the point of Anaconda if thats the case? How can you Hype up Anaconda while at the same time not talk shit about lockhart? And if all above is true. Basically saying flops dont matter. Wouldnt that make the PS5 the sweet spot.

Gameplay design wise. What impression do you think people are getting about you when you cannot read things in context?
 
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I heard from my insider friends that the Series X will be under 1K. No. Really.
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