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[cormack12]

This gen I really felt the hardware was really solid and not as far behind at launch as previous gens - which hasn't mattered that much because now it's 9 months old and we don't really have any true next gen games so it's kind of balanced things out unfortunately. But despite this, I feel this has been the generation I'ev seen devs struggle the most with all kinds of weird performance and optimisation issues. Even games on the new consoles with the overhead in BC modes etc.

Valhalla with weird tearing and Legion with its various issues
Cyberpunk which was just a mess in general
Fifa 21 has weird slowdowns and lag when just playing normally
The Medium has a few noticeable drops in game as well as the weird loading of assets in menu
The Ascent has really strange juddering on consoles too
Maneater was grim on PS5 ( I believe the Xbox version did too but I only had the PS+)
Frame drops and skipping on Biomutant etc.

First party titles seem largely ok. Miles, TLOU II, Halo 5, Halo:MCC (except Halo:CE), Forza Horizon 4, GT:S etc. but I think this generation more than any other I've really noticed performance issues are a broad problem across many titles. What I found interesting was the Bugsnax dev response when asked why their game performs bad on the power of the PS5 which was:



Is this likely to be a common problem related to the rise in noticeable issues? Are we here because devs just aren't optimising across threads still and that's the bottleneck? Why is this a limitation - is it an expertise problem or resource/capacity problem?

Enlighten me Gaf

 

[WitchHunter]

I can't wait to get to the bottom of this.

 

[Greggy]

Flight Simulator is extremely demanding and it's out there on the Series consoles running more stable than on high end PCs pre- console launch patch. I don't think your observation is true anymore. The devs are getting a solid grasp of those machines.

 

[German Hops]

Programmers started abandoning assembly since the late 1990s. That's the root of the problem.

Programmers now days are too coddled and don't know how to maximize with the hardware they're working on.

It's sad.

 

[Captain Toad]

Part of it is, we put graphics and performance under a microscope more than ever before. Half the things people stress over would go by complete unnoticed if not for things like DF breakdowns.

 

[Kuranghi]

If you mean performance problems and not just visual bugs and errors yes its annoying as fuck, RE8 is simultaneously amazing and shit on PS5/XSX, because if you turn off RT then its essentially flawless locked 60fps, even in cutscenes, but RT on is the default so most people played the game with constant stutters and you wonder why they wouldn't just drop the res/DRS minimum to fix that Probably because the non-RT mode was the target and they didnt really pay as much attention to it, since the RT mode has no proper replacement for the AO from the non-RT mode and makes many models look floaty and ruins the whole mise en scene of many parts.

The Ascent is still a no go for me until they fix the shader issue or whatever it is, I can live with the minor asset loading stutters since its engine related and not really their fault, but 100s of millisecond long freezes on every barrel explosion is a no from me dawg. I checked the patch thread on steam and it was 95% of people just saying "oh thanks so much! I love this game!" and "Thank god you fixed it!" then the other 5% were people saying how none of these issues are fixed and its even worse in some cases. I'm sure they'll get it done eventually though + its a small team and all that.

Obviously many giant games from previous gens ran like shit, so its nothing new, but you'd think they would be better at locking performance by now given how big displays are now, which makes perf issues much more visible.

 

[justiceiro]

Game dev is hard

 

[Mr Hyde]

Remote working probably ups the ante regarding development. You have new hardware and new work conditions, so shipping a polished game is gonna be extra difficult. Then you have publishers breathing down your neck to make the deadline and yeah, recipe for disaster.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

Absolute nonsense. This isn't remotely true.

 

[Ironman_Bad]

I'm playing 10 games on series x right now all in glorious 60fps and up to 4k I don't know what you're talking about console gaming hadn't been this smooth since dreamcast

 

[Fafalada]

is it an expertise problem or resource/capacity problem?

Pretty much always the latter.

 

[Omnipunctual Godot]

The vast majority of these games are cross-gen thrid-party games that were designed for different hardware originally and likely don't take advantage of the new hardware. Case-in-point: your Bugsnax quote.

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

.

 

[Magnific0giganticus]

Cyberpunk and The Medium are not next-gen games and they are both poorly developed.

 

[Kenpachii]

U start to move into the PC territory where nobody cares to optimize anymore unless they are specifically paid for it.

 

[Omega Supreme Holopsicon]

Too many tv series and too much entertainment a lot of people have trouble dedicating more time outside of work to work, that extra time doing work makes all the difference.

 

[MaKTaiL]

Part of it is, we put graphics and performance under a microscope more than ever before. Half the things people stress over would go by complete unnoticed if not for things like DF breakdowns.

DF is the worst thing to happen to gaming this generation. They spot a micro stutter that happens ONCE in a game and make a big deal out of it to make it seem the game is unplayable. If they focused on showing avarage results instead of one time lows the picture would be very different.

 

[FStubbs]

Programmers started abandoning assembly since the late 1990s. That's the root of the problem.

Programmers now days are too coddled and don't know how to maximize with the hardware they're working on.

It's sad.

VD-DEV was your team a decade ago. The fact that they used assembly into the 2000s meant that they were able to push graphics a whole generation of anyone else on Nintendo handhelds.

This was a GBA game they made:



This was a DS game they made:



This was a 3DS game they made:

 

[Astral Dog]

Those games come from developers well known for performance issues, so don't worry bro

 

[Decontamination Silo]

Operator error. Look at the teams who made the games you mentioned.

 

[rapid32.5]

some devs take more than they can handle and pressure with crunch from publishers. Even Rockstar not fucking around on all platforms at once, first consoles then a year later release their game on PC.

 

[RoadHazard]

We have more 60fps games than we've had since the 2D days though. Like, pretty much every worthwhile game has a performance mode. Even the few truly impressive next-gen experiences do. I'm honestly surprised, as I thought for sure visuals would win out over performance as usual, and we'd have mostly 30fps games again.

 

[StateofMajora]

Early days. Cross gen leaves a lot of work for devs ; too many platforms to optimize for.

In particular, the og xbox one must be dragging things down but then you have 3 (3!) other last gen consoles.

 

[anthony2690]

Valhalla has screen tearing?
It was a beautiful silky smooth experience for me.
A little tedious towards the end, the game is massive, but I was genuinely mega impressed by the game.
Huge beautiful open world, at 60fps.

Edit:

Oh, Actually I forgot VRR eliminates screen tearing lol

 

[Snake00]

To prove your claim you also have to list games which ran perfectly in previous gens. The problem is you can't. Almost every game had some performance problems. Some games even dropped below 30 fps regularly.

 

[TGO]

Both the PS4 & Xbox One could run previous gen games in Higher Resolution & FPS.
With the exception of load times I haven't seen a game that looked graphically impossible for last gen.
So I wouldn't call it a leap
This so far is what the so called mid gen Pro consoles should of been.
I'm still waiting for my next gen moment
I mean it's not even hard to go back to a last gen game because it doesn't look much different.
And in some cases even have better graphics and that shouldn't happen....at all.