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[Vawn]

What if XBox game sales are really low due to Gamepass?
I can see studios just going exclusive to PS5 to make what they want and use the new tech while not sacrificing too much in sales.

A lot of Japanese developers do that already. There's nothing stopping Persona 5 and Dragon Quest XI from being on Xbox, for example.

 

[The_Mike]

'Scaling down to XSX and PC'
is the sentence of the week.

Goes down like good liquor

Can't wait for all the crow getting eaten by most of the people in here when next gen launches

 

[Jtibh]

ok, then let’s wait. Hopefully Sony will reveal something this year. Still, acting like Xbox series x has only currentgen games is ridiculous. We already have two games announced that are nextgen only on XSX

Yeah thats what i say. Lets wait.
I am also positive xbox still has to show more games.

Its way to early to conclude anything and fuck knows what happens next in the world its been 3 months of crazy and crazy didnt end yet

 

[Dee Dah Dave]

XSX will come out ahead for current gen games (made for jaguar and HDD)

For true next gen high asset streaming, made of zen2 and fast SSD games, Ps5 will win comfortably.

Nah, the core components are still what matters most. Fast SSD’s still don’t come close to RAM bandwidth.

 

[ToadMan]

You basically said the same thing than him... so is what you said false?


Well his post just agreed with yours but I think he will take some time to realize that.

Yeah I realised. Just going along with it really. Seems like some here love to accuse people of lying or whatever... when it’s just an opinion

I think he was going to tell me the demo “didn’t look best on PS5”.

I was going to end up pointing out that it’s unusual for UE to demo on console first - if my memory serves UE is usually tech demo’d first on PC.

But that could just be coincidence because a new gen is coming.

Oh well ...

 

[ToadMan]

ok, then let’s wait. Hopefully Sony will reveal something this year. Still, acting like Xbox series x has only currentgen games is ridiculous. We already have two games announced that are nextgen only on XSX

2 “whole” games from what are unproven indie devs.

I say “whole” because Scorn is 8-10 hours long for an “average” player according to the studio. So that’s about 5 hours worth of game lol.

The medium better be a 300 hour epic because 2022 is looking a long way away for new MS produced games

 

[HE1NZ]

“The ability to stream in content at extreme speeds enables developers to create denser and more detailed environments, changing how we think about streaming content. It’s so impactful that we’ve rewritten our core I/O subsystems for Unreal Engine with the PlayStation 5 in mind,” he added.

More at the link.

Epic Games had to rewrite parts of Unreal Engine to keep up with the PS5's SSD

The SSD inside every PS5 is going to be transformative for game development, and the maker of Unreal Engine has seen it firsthand.

www.vg247.com

They tonguing Sony real deep this gen.

 

[geordiemp]

Nah, the core components are still what matters most. Fast SSD’s still don’t come close to RAM bandwidth.

Unreal demo that was shown says the opposite, I predict we wont see anything close to that image quality on XSX for a long time.

 

[Sophist]

They optimized for consoles what should have been optimized for PC years ago. Classic story.

 

[ToadMan]

Do you know how marketing works? its a marketing deal.
it’s was the same with ps4. They did an exclusive demo, too.
It’s just MARKETING. and we will see what Sony paid for it, maybe their games come to the epic games store or so.

A marketing deal that Tim Sweeney has denied?

Awesome, let’s see your copy of the contract then ...

Ill just play through scorn while I wait for you to post it.

 

[MiyazakiHatesKojima]

I can smell more 3rd party exclusives for PS5. When the gap is massive between SWWS games and other studios, standards will be pushed higher, and gamers' expectations will be higher as well. Any cross-gen, current-gen-like game will get butchered by reviewers. Big studios won't want that, and DICE is already leveraging the Tempest engine, the true 3D audio.

Thanks for the article!

I'm liking the sound of this

 

[Knitted Knight]

.

 

[Knitted Knight]

I can smell more 3rd party exclusives for PS5. When the gap is massive between SWWS games and other studios, standards will be pushed higher, and gamers' expectations will be higher as well. Any cross-gen, current-gen-like game will get butchered by reviewers. Big studios won't want that, and DICE is already leveraging the Tempest engine, the true 3D audio.

Thanks for the article!

Japanese devs are a wrap. I don't think reviewers will be the drivers here... consumers will. "Game looks like shit" "Last gen... pass". They don't want any of that heat.

 

[Paracelsus]

They optimized for consoles what should have been optimized for PC years ago. Classic story.

It is not meant to be the standard.
It was never done for pc because this engine is not conceived for a versatile upgradable environment. Specific hardware, specific software.
Genius when it comes to cut bottlenecks, in the end it can't become the standard unless you cut PC gaming, XBOX gaming and Nintendo out the business.

Any CPU, any GPU, any SSD = standard

What PS5 is doing is tantamount to an engine tailored around Apple machines.

Japanese devs are a wrap. I don't think reviewers will be the drivers here... consumers will. "Game looks like shit" "Last gen... pass".

I don't think the Japanese give any less of a * about graphics. If anything we'll see even less Japanese games next gen and more on Switch 2.

 

[onQ123]

Rewrite:

// max_transfer_speed=1000

max_transfer_speed=5000

Nope more like rebuild the engine around a steady stream of data instead of X amount of RAM

 

[Knitted Knight]

It is not meant to be the standard.
It was never done for pc because this engine is not conceived for a versatile upgradable environment. Specific hardware, specific software.
Genius when it comes to cut bottlenecks, in the end it can't become the standard unless you cut PC gaming, XBOX gaming and Nintendo out the business.

Any CPU, any GPU, any SSD = standard

What PS5 is doing is tantamount to an engine tailored around Apple machines.

I don't think the Japanese give any less of a * about graphics. If anything we'll see even less Japanese games next gen and more on Switch 2.

I think we'll see a boom for Japaneses devs next gen. It's no surprise to me to see Square and Capcom doing well as opposed to the ps3/x360 era. When both Sony and Nintendo do well so do Japanese third party devs - a rising tide lifts all boats kind of thing. I do agree that their games are unoptimized messes but better hardware will ease the pain and push them forward. Western devs will continue to be king tech wise.

 

[Bryank75]

A lot of Japanese developers do that already. There's nothing stopping Persona 5 and Dragon Quest XI from being on Xbox, for example.

Yup, exactly. Now if you remember the Capcom sales...they were really low on Xbox compared to PlayStation and I would say other games like ones from Platinum and Square also sell very small amounts on Xbox. So maybe you can see where I got this idea!

 

[Paracelsus]

I think we'll see a boom for Japanesse devs next gen. It's no surprise to me to see Square and Capcom doing well as opposed to the ps3/x360 era. When both Sony and Nintendo do well so do Japanesse third party devs - a rising tide lifts all boats kind of thing.

Capcom and Square thrive off brand recognition. Capcom sold well even when RE sucked, FF hasn't quite stopped sucking aside the FFVIIr exception.
FFXV sold 9m and it quite objectively stunk, that didn't help anybody.
Persona 6 will be made, and it'll look like it can run on PS3 still.

 

[thebigmanjosh]

Nah, the core components are still what matters most. Fast SSD’s still don’t come close to RAM bandwidth.

I don't get why this is so hard to understand.

RAM bandwidths don't mean anything when that RAM isn't being fed data fast enough to keep up with GPU and when that data is chunked out to account for expected needs.

A GPU is only going to render what's in its VRAM and that data is going to be less dynamic with the current slow storage speeds. By increasing the I/O speeds to 4.8GB/s or 8-9GB/s and minimizing latencies by tackling traditional I/O and DMA bottlenecks like coherency, you're no longer restricted to loading in data based on the player expected actions.

You can allow the hardware and data to react dynamically to the player (up to those speeds or a fraction thereof) since that fast RAM is no longer housing an entire level or section of the world. Console GPUs will still be a bottleneck, but they won't be THE bottleneck. PCs titles are going to get around this by requiring faster SSDs (but not the fastest) and more RAM/VRAM.

It's that simple.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

Japanese devs are a wrap. I don't think reviewers will be the drivers here... consumers will. "Game looks like shit" "Last gen... pass". They don't want any of that heat.

Yup Japanese games most of the time look like shit but they have plenty of stuff happening around and they need to scale the graphics down for the shitty Jaguars.

 

[scalman]

i dont mind loading times thought as much as others i guess, more calm with years ... but i will buy PS5 and test it for sure. we need go forward at some point at least there...

 

[Dee Dah Dave]

Unreal demo that was shown says the opposite, I predict we wont see anything close to that image quality on XSX for a long time.

I don't get why this is so hard to understand.

RAM bandwidths don't mean anything when that RAM isn't being fed data fast enough to keep up with GPU and when that data is chunked out to account for expected needs.

A GPU is only going to render what's in its VRAM and that data is going to be less dynamic with the current slow storage speeds. By increasing the I/O speeds to 4.8GB/s or 8-9GB/s and minimizing latencies by tackling traditional I/O and DMA bottlenecks like coherency, you're no longer restricted to loading in data based on the player expected actions.

You can allow the hardware and data to react dynamically to the player (up to those speeds or a fraction thereof) since that fast RAM is no longer housing an entire level or section of the world. Console GPUs will still be a bottleneck, but they won't be THE bottleneck. PCs titles are going to get around this by requiring faster SSDs (but not the fastest) and more RAM/VRAM.

It's that simple.

That’s fine and all, but just how much new data do you think is going to be needed, say every second?

Lets just pretend for a moment that the PS5 SSD is refreshing the RAM with new information as fast as it can, continuously. That’s a lot of data. How big are these games going to be, 1TB+?.....are the retail versions going to come on 10 discs?.....are games now going to take 10 years to develop instead of 3?

There’s a whole lot to consider besides the raw capabilities. My prediction is that multi plat titles will find a happy medium somewhere which is realistic both with respect to capabilities of multiple hardware configurations, and also development time constraints.

edit - there are also other technologies coming like procedural texturing, machine learned texture up scaling, and who knows what else. These paradigms are the most efficient of all as they reduce the need for I/O to the minimum.

 

[RaySoft]

Nah, the core components are still what matters most. Fast SSD’s still don’t come close to RAM bandwidth.

Fast RAM is always nice, but compared to previous gen, you don't have to do as much RAM copying anymore.
The storage is so fast you more or less fetch your data straight off the SSD. No need for RAM copying.
Also, a chain is no stronger than its weakest link.

 

[geordiemp]

That’s fine and all, but just how much new data do you think is going to be needed, say every second?

Lets just pretend for a moment that the PS5 SSD is refreshing the RAM with new information as fast as it can, continuously. That’s a lot of data. How big are these games going to be, 1TB+?.....are the retail versions going to come on 10 discs?.....are games now going to take 10 years to develop instead of 3?

There’s a whole lot to consider besides the raw capabilities. My prediction is that multi plat titles will find a happy medium somewhere which is realistic both with respect to capabilities of multiple hardware configurations, and also development time constraints.

Go look out for the developer video who took the assets used to make that UE5 demo cliff face....It was made with 6 rocks, yes 6.

Does not work like that. Fast high quality assets using clever repurposing are here to stay and games that use it will look more photo realistic, it is not going away

Also games are devloped using 8K testures and then smaler textures and LODs are made and crafted and then carefully lighting baked to look OK. That takes allot of time and budget and its all gone, bam !

Just using the original assets will take LESS time. Go watch the UE5 video again, you might learn something.

Whats your issue, do you not want better looking games, or is it the realisation that Ps5 will be better at it that is hurting you ?

 

[thebigmanjosh]

That’s fine and all, but just how much new data do you think is going to be needed, say every second?

Lets just pretend for a moment that the PS5 SSD is refreshing the RAM with new information as fast as it can, continuously. That’s a lot of data. How big are these games going to be, 1TB+?.....are the retail versions going to come on 10 discs?.....are games now going to take 10 years to develop instead of 3?

There’s a whole lot to consider besides the raw capabilities. My prediction is that multi plat titles will find a happy medium somewhere which is realistic both with respect to capabilities of multiple hardware configurations, and also development time constraints.

That's a totally valid concern. At least for this gen, it will obviously depend on the engine and studio. Obviously first party studios have probably all migrated to this, but I would be surprised if third party devs don't jump at the opportunity to transition sooner than later.

At least with UE5, games will stream in data as fast as the hardware supports in real-time. The reason why developers are so excited by this is because it fundamentally changes the workflow to reduce headaches that have existed for a very long time.

As for storage, developers won't need to author and store multiple LODs since that geometry gets virtualized on the fly and can adapt to the hardware. Just one structure that also doesn't need to be duplicated dozens or hundreds of times in storage. Also, textures won't need to be baked with normal maps, further reducing sizes.

At worst, I expect dev times to stay about the same, but I would not be surprised to see development cycles and average game sizes shrink over the coming years.

 

[Dee Dah Dave]

That’s fine and all, but just how much new data do you think is going to be needed, say every second?

Lets just pretend for a moment that the PS5 SSD is refreshing the RAM with new information as fast as it can, continuously. That’s a lot of data. How big are these games going to be, 1TB+?.....are the retail versions going to come on 10 discs?.....are games now going to take 10 years to develop instead of 3?

There’s a whole lot to consider besides the raw capabilities. My prediction is that multi plat titles will find a happy medium somewhere which is realistic both with respect to capabilities of multiple hardware configurations, and also development time constraints.

Go look out for the developer video who took the assets used to make that UE5 demo cliff face....It was made with 6 rocks, yes 6.

Does not work like that. Fast high quality assets using clever repurposing are here to stay and games that use it will look more photo realistic, it is not going away

Also games are devloped using 8K testures and then smaler textures and LODs are made and crafted and then carefully lighting baked to look OK. That takes allot of time and budget and its all gone, bam !

Just using the original assets will take LESS time. Go watch the UE5 video again, you might learn something.

Whats your issue, do you not want better looking games, or is it the realisation that Ps5 will be better at it that is hurting you ?

You just answered my point for me, scenes are highly optimised using every trick in the book. You don’t need huge amounts of new data every second or whatever. And you are ultimately limited by what the GPU can draw to screen in either 33.3ms or 16.6ms.

There’s nothing to learn. The UE5 demo is pretty basic really, it’s an optimised scene (repeated assets) and a character controller. It’s not doing anything that the Xbox couldn’t run better. If you believe it is then I’m sorry but you’ve been duped.

 

[geordiemp]

You just answered my point for me, scenes are highly optimised using every trick in the book. You don’t need huge amounts of new data every second or whatever. And you are ultimately limited by what the GPU can draw to screen in either 33.3ms or 16.6ms.

There’s nothing to learn. The UE5 demo is pretty basic really, it’s an optimised scene (repeated assets) and a character controller. It’s not doing anything that the Xbox couldn’t run better. If you believe it is then I’m sorry buy you’ve been duped.

Nope if you believe the XSX with its virtualisation and bloated apis / file systems and slow IO will come close to ps5 for streaming high quality assets its you who has been duped.

I will predict we will see NOTHING close to equivalent image quality on XSX for years, just current gen at higher resolutions and frame rates (You will win DF on those, you will have victories on Jaguar games ), but we will have high quality asset gaming on Ps5 shown in about a week or 2, not long now. You KNOW whats coming dont you.

Also you understand pipeline, faster I/O and assets speeds up part of the pipeline..that 15 % starter has to deal with slower abstraction layers and slower caches (Ghz) .....mmm..

 

[Uusis]

Im no tech expert but everytime I hear about PS5 SSD speeds it's like bigger jump on graphics than GPU will ever be. Next gen ain't my cup of coffee (I hate tea motherfuckers) but I bought PS4/Pro and Xbox One/X so maybe I will buy PS5... or maybe I have already purchased one... because the speed... of Speedy Gonzales!

 

[geordiemp]

Im no tech expert but everytime I hear about PS5 SSD speeds is like it's bigger jump on graphics than GPU will ever be. Next gen ain't my cup of coffee (I hate tea motherfuckers) but I bought PS4/Pro and Xbox One/X so maybe I will buy PS5... or maybe because it's so speedy gonzales I have already purhased one... because the speed...!

You dont need any technical know how. Why does a movie on DVD that is only 720p look better and more life like than any 4k Game ?

A movie uses real life, infinite details on models (assets). So what does high asset game look like ? Go watch the UE5 demo.. ...Done.

 

[Journey]

How did you come to the conclusion that every PC has a RAM pool larger or even matching that of next consoles? How many gaming PC's we talking..... lets pull numbers out of our behind? 2 million PC's, 3 million? 10 million... Not to mention the bottlenecked IO's etc...

The hec you talking about?

The engine is releasing in 2021, games made with this engine will be releasing in 2022 and beyond. What do you expect GPU's and PCs for 2022 and beyond?

Be realistic now. Far better than anything the PS5 and XSX can muster. Bookmark this if you like, I'll bookmark as well to see how well this ages lmao.

 

[Psykodad]

Anyway, curious to see the improvements to VR.

 

[itsjustJEFF]

You just answered my point for me, scenes are highly optimised using every trick in the book. You don’t need huge amounts of new data every second or whatever. And you are ultimately limited by what the GPU can draw to screen in either 33.3ms or 16.6ms.

There’s nothing to learn. The UE5 demo is pretty basic really, it’s an optimised scene (repeated assets) and a character controller. It’s not doing anything that the Xbox couldn’t run better. If you believe it is then I’m sorry but you’ve been duped.

Can I ask you something? Are you a developer or engineer? Have you coded something similar to what the UE5 demo ran? Cause you just called a demo that other Developers have been impressed by "Pretty basic really" as if you have done something like this before? Or like you've seen this demo already and know how it works.

If you are a dev/engineer that's cool cause i'm genuinely fascinated by that demo and would love a breakdown of how shit in that demo is happening.

If you are not one, could you please not shit on the hard work these guy did as "pretty basic really" just cause it wasn't showcased running on your preferred piece of plastic.

 

[Knitted Knight]

The engine is releasing in 2021, games made with this engine will be releasing in 2022 and beyond. What do you expect GPU's and PCs for 2022 and beyond?

Be realistic now. Far better than anything the PS5 and XSX can muster. Bookmark this if you like, I'll bookmark as well to see how well this ages lmao.

I never claimed PC's wouldn't eventually catch up with a "mainstream-like" set up or that adoption of said components wouldn't reach critical mass sometime in the future. I've clearly said, that for at least 1 1/2 to 2 years from the PS5 launch date that will not be the case - read my previous posts. Hence this is not a Xbox One/PS4 generation redux where you only needed 8 gigs of Ram and a GTX 960 to match. Even if equalizing set ups were to appear quickly 1 year after launch, the adoption rates will be slow and low, compared to console adoption rates. In essence you're agreeing with me, not the other way around. Do bookmark it.

 

[Quantum253]

With most of the talk between TFlops and I/O throughput, do you think Sony/developers will highlight how these apply to the game design/performance during the showcase? Or will it be slow drip for content until console release?

 

[Bumblebeetuna]

A lot of Japanese developers do that already. There's nothing stopping Persona 5 and Dragon Quest XI from being on Xbox, for example.

Yeah I miss the pre-GamePass days when games like DQ and Persona came to Xbox.

Or maybe those games don’t come to Xbox because they don’t light up sales charts even on PS4.

 

[Mobilemofo]

I just want the xbox series X to do well. It's in our interest after all.

 

[Quantum253]

I'd also love to see how other engines (Snowdrop, Decima,etc) will incorporate the new hardware on PC, Xbox, and Ps5. Determining on the game genre, how the I/O TFlop discrepancies will level out. For example, I'm curious if Open worlds will see a bigger difference in loading/LODs/Textures, etc. over an Indie Third-Party plat former. I could imagine that stylized art directions could also have an impact on how the game will perform/look across platforms too (I'd like to see a next gen patch to Boarderlands 3).

 

[sendit]

Nah, the core components are still what matters most. Fast SSD’s still don’t come close to RAM bandwidth.

 

[Handy Fake]

I'd also love to see how other engines (Snowdrop, Decima,etc) will incorporate the new hardware on PC, Xbox, and Ps5. Determining on the game genre, how the I/O TFlop discrepancies will level out. For example, I'm curious if Open worlds will see a bigger difference in loading/LODs/Textures, etc. over an Indie Third-Party plat former. I could imagine that stylized art directions could also have an impact on how the game will perform/look across platforms too (I'd like to see a next gen patch to Boarderlands 3).

Piqued my interest somewhat as well. I have a feeling the Decima engine particularly will benefit hugely from a fast streaming SSD.

Disclaimer: This is merely a hunch from things I have gleaned over the years and as I am old and decrepit it's probably a steaming pile of cornfed nonsense.

 

[Knitted Knight]

It's one of the safest bets you could make Handy fake...

 

[Vawn]

Yeah I miss the pre-GamePass days when games like DQ and Persona came to Xbox.

Or maybe those games don’t come to Xbox because they don’t light up sales charts even on PS4.

I'm saying developers already skip Xbox without GamePass. Expect it to get worse.

You can downplay Persona, Dragon Quest, Disgaea, etc, but they're fantastic games you're missing out on.

Persona 5 has sold 3.2 million, Dragon Quest XI 5.5 million.

Xbox's biggest exclusive in a while, Gears 5 hasn't released their sales numbers, but boasted 3 million people PLAYED it for at least 1 minute - most of those for free with GP they were already paying for.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

Not sure where have you guys been, but my friend zaitsu has made some great bullet points summarizing everything without all the brain gymnastics:

TLDR

Tittle :

"Epic Games had to rewrite parts of Unreal Engine to keep up with the PS5’s SSD " - has XSX/PC same SSD ? - NO

Inside Article :

a) “The ability to stream in content at extreme speeds enables developers to create denser and more detailed environments, changing how we think about streaming content. It’s so impactful that we’verewritten our core I/O subsystems for Unreal Engine with the PlayStation 5 in mind,” has XSX/PC same I/O -

b)“The PlayStation 5 provides a huge leap in both computing and graphics performance, but its*storage architecture is also truly special,” has XSX/PC same I/O - NO

c) " While it’s true that both Xbox Series X and PS5 have NVMe SSDs, Sony took things furtherby boosting the transfer speeds well beyond what’s possible on even the most expensive consumer-grade products available today, and certainly faster then Xbox Series X."

 

[GHG]

Or maybe those games don’t come to Xbox because they don’t light up sales charts even on PS4.

Keep telling yourself that if that's what makes you feel better. You should also tell Phil to not bother with all those trips to Japan in that case then.

Gotta love it when people try and justify there being less games on their single platform of choice. Madness.

 

[ABnormal]

Well that was unnecessary since no third party devs will take advantage of the faster SSD anyway

Well, only a sad sore loser could be happy for something like that.

"We can't so I'm happy that they can't". That would be really miserable.

If nobody tries to expand gaming development towards unexplored possibilities, we would see only an increase on resolution and rendering, but no new gameplay possibilities. And no significant improvement of development efficiency. Luckily somebody does; somebody has to do the first step.

And I hope that alongside first party titles developed around the new possibilities, there will be also some third party exclusives that do the same.

The box of possibilities is there. All that is needed is a developer with a vision that requires those new possibilities, and the financial base for it.

There no need of hundreds of great titles. A good bunch of them is enough, as usual, to define the generation.

 

[Brofist]

Can't wait for all the crow getting eaten by most of the people in here when next gen launches

Nobody is going to eat anything. They'll just crawl back into the woodwork and disappear until the next new gen speculation starts.

 

[Bumblebeetuna]

I'm saying developers already skip Xbox without GamePass. Expect it to get worse.

You can downplay Persona, Dragon Quest, Disgaea, etc, but they're fantastic games you're missing out on.

Persona 5 has sold 3.2 million, Dragon Quest XI 5.5 million.

Xbox's biggest exclusive in a while, Gears 5 hasn't released their sales numbers, but boasted 3 million people PLAYED it for at least 1 minute - most of those for free with GP they were already paying for.

Why am I missing out on anything? I own all the platforms and game on PC too

I don’t expect anything to get worse. I think MS has made strides in getting more Japanese support.

 

[Knitted Knight]

Why am I missing out on anything? I own all the platforms and game on PC too

I don’t expect anything to get worse. I think MS has made strides in getting more Japanese support.

They are nowhere near the "strides" during the early X360 era and in essence are much worse off. And it takes a lot more effort than what they did in the X360 era to truly outcompete the shoguns of Japan (PS/Ninty). And this "effort" would need to be done consistently. Japan is dead for Xbox and will continue to be so. MS will pay a couple developers to get content but it will be a drop in the bucket. They don't care - or should I say, don't care enough. Now it can argued whether the sort of level of investment, (both in human capital and hard cash) required to get parity in support (and above) is worth the trouble. MS has clearly come to the conclusion it's not - long ago I may add. But for a launch window you want those bullet points and that buzz, no matter how superficial in the grand scheme it's.

 

[Quantum253]

Why am I missing out on anything? I own all the platforms and game on PC too

I don’t expect anything to get worse. I think MS has made strides in getting more Japanese support.

Xbox 360 didn't do to great in the Japan market and we still got some pretty good Japanese games. I remember people were losing their minds when Final Fantasy and Metal Gear initially came to Xbox. I believe Ninety-Nine Nights was exclusive to the 360. It wasn't the greatest, but it was fun. I think Phil and team can bring developers to Xbox, but do you pay for overseas content to have quality or quantity?

 

[Vawn]

I think MS has made strides in getting more Japanese support.

What gave you that impression?

They did little to nothing this gen to further Japanese support. They at least made an honest effort with the 360, giving us Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, among others, but when that all failed, they've seemed to throw in the towel.

 

[Allandor]

Fast RAM is always nice, but compared to previous gen, you don't have to do as much RAM copying anymore.
The storage is so fast you more or less fetch your data straight off the SSD. No need for RAM copying.
Also, a chain is no stronger than its weakest link.

You still need it. It would be stupid to use most of the time of 16 ms timeframe (@60fps) to wait for assests to load. Yes you don't need as much data in RAM as on current gen consoles, where more or less the whole level is in memory and just small parts get streamt (because of the bandwidth). The new techniques require that you reduce the time something stays in memory as low as possible. It is not such a big deal how fast your SSD is (not in this dimensions) but how you still reduce the memory footprint. Streaming at high speeds also costs memory bandwidth and you still don't wanna waste that even if it only are a few gigabytes (BTW, memory contention can now also be a problem because if a third high access device, but that is buffered by faster memory and caches for the decompression).
But as we have seen higher res assests do not bring that much on the table. The difference between high and ultra textures is most of the time minimal but memory usage increase is not. So you still want to minimize your memory footprint.
And for really higher asset quality, the disk is to tiny. So you need other techs to increase the image quality. E.g. well done RT can be something but it really depends how good the and solution is.