crispy4000

All consoles are close enough to PC architecture (from a development perspective) nowadays. We’re seeing that play out already in Series X / PS5 comparisons. Nevertheless, scalability doesn’t save the Series S’ GPU from being grossly underpowered. We all saw how the og Xbox One limped to the finish line this gen (in Control, Avengers, etc). Series S begs the question: what if a next-gen console cut even more corners than the last time? Games already intended for low spec PCs will be fine on it. AAA games, it’s undoubtedly going to get rough as the gen goes on. World building is such a nebulous term. Consoles have been capable of large scale open world games for several generations now. The larger concern with Series S should be performance and optimization effort. Some games will take serious elbow grease to not look and/or run like a bad port job. As for Cyperpunk, it’s not (yet) indicative of next-gen demands on consoles. It’s an example of a game poorly optimized for last gen machines getting a slight but much needed boost until a proper next-gen patch comes. Sea of Thieves and Forza Horizon 4 are 1080p on Series S. These are Series S optimized, 1st party, last-gen ports. Its capable of 1440p60 in some circumstances.

https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Bluetooth-Adapter-Nintendo-Switch-Raspberry/dp/B0786JC6VW Get this instead if you want to save some money. Might be able to find it cheaper than that if you search around.

What did you think of Rise compared to the reboot?

Anyone else have any gaming resolutions for the new year? I won't be building a PC or getting a current gen console anytime soon, so it's going to be another big backlog year. Beat another Final Fantasy: I've finished 4-7, FF7R and FFXIII. But I own the whole rest of the series outside of FFXII, and the MMO ones (which aren't for me). Thinking of starting with either FFIX (w/ upscaled backgrounds) or FFX remastered. Use my Switch more: Hopefully a new Switch model will be released, so I'll be more motivated to play Torna and Age of Calamity. Otherwise, it might be time to give Mario & Rabbids a good go. I'm almost done with Hades now. Polish off the Wii U: Almost done with Captain Toad. Still need to get around to Tropical Freeze. Retro stuff: I've been slowly but steadily making my way through Yoshi's Island. I'd like to play Castlevania SoTN for the first time in 2021 too. Been eying Alundra and Minish Cap as well. Sony catch-up (Part 2): I beat most of the Uncharted series from scratch in 2020, as well as remakes of the first Ratchet, Crash and Sypro. Still have a lot left: SoTC, Last of Us, Horizon, finishing up GoW, etc. I just got Ghosts as a Christmas as well... but no PS5 so I might wait on it.

Desert Child free on Indiegala. https://freebies.indiegala.com/desert-child Most of their freebies aren't good at all so I don't share, but this seems alright.

Jurassic World Evolution today on EGS. Crying Suns next week.

If you see it that way, its shown it’s capable of more in some indie games. The whole issue here is MS repeatedly stated that 1440/60 was its “performance target.” It’s missing that target far too often, at a point when the games should be the least demanding. Even Digital Foundry said it’s deceptive, and it should have be marketed as a 1080p+ machine in the current landscape. Expectations were set out of whack. Take a look at the way Cyberpunk is being received on the base consoles. PC releases come with the expectation that a game might not be optimized for your spec. Console releases come with the expectation that it’s been optimized specifically for your machine to run acceptably. There’s no way Series S won’t be a thorn in AAA devs side in the later part of the generation. We’ll likely see some games’ PC min req overshoot it. But if it was working more often as advertised today, it would be a little less of a concern.

To be fair, there's a large number of Series S games that hit 1080p60 (which is still less than advertised). Most of the 1st party last-gen ports do. It's some 3rd party ports like Yakuza 7 or Destiny 2 that fail to hit 1080p60. And of course, games like Watch Dogs Legion that try to push things a little further into current-gen territory. It feels like Microsoft designed the Series S spec around what the Coalition could do with a Gears 5 port. It's super impressive on it, but that's also in comparison to everything else.

It won’t be that rough in the cross gen period for Series S. Just as it won’t be for One X. The real problem for Series S is that we’re not seeing most cross-gen games and last gen ports hitting 1440p. 1080p in the here and now doesn’t imply there’s much headroom left for future demands. Watch Dogs Legion doing 900p-1080p at 30fps is probably the best window into the future we have for it. But games will still get more demanding than its cross-gen target as time goes on. We’ll see RT cuts when possible in some games, but there’s reason to question if even that’s enough. Or how games heavy on the GPU (or RAM) in other ways will be forced to scale back. Performance woes are pretty much inevitable.

... But why even buy a Series S for that? Xbox chief hints at TV streaming sticks for xCloud WWW.THEVERGE.COM Additional tiers of xCloud game streaming could be on the way Going cloud-based won't help devs unless MS straight up says Series X games no longer have to run directly on Series S hardware. I doubt it'll ever happen.

Sony and MS both get a bigger cut from digital sales than from retail. There's no game resale market either. It cuts out all middlemen. Neither the PS4 Digital or Series S would be priced as low as they are if that wasn't the case.

Solitairica | Download and Buy Today - Epic Games Store WWW.EPICGAMES.COM Solitairica takes RPG combat and challenging roguelike progression to a fresh new place - the world of solitaire! Using a variety of magical items and spells, battle your way through a horde of ever-changing enemies and defeat the horrible Emperor Stuck! Free today.

People are buying it though, which is kind of the problem. For a generational comparison, it's as if a low-end Xbox One model was saddled with the Switch's GPU. How are most AAA devs going to support it the whole generation? They might have to, given the way things are going. A Switch 2 could even have more GPU oomph than Series S, especially with DLSS factored in.

Would've been very odd if Series S could be $200 cheaper than Series X with only the disc drive and storage space lacking. It's surprising enough that Sony was able to answer at $400. They pretty much had to, given that Microsoft decided to deceptively market the thing as a 1440p 60fps+ machine.

Some would say it forced Sony down to $400 for the all-digital edition. Series S is $300.

I got one of those 8bitdo adapters for Switch/PC for Christmas, to use my DS4. Highly recommend it, it’s only $10 and sure beats the price of a new controller.

The GPU is ~3x as weak and it has less RAM. But the CPU and SSD tech is the same as Series X.

Meant Guacamelee 2 actually, not that it'd matter to you. Loved Guacamelee 1, probably more than Ori 1.

I don't think anything should have been expected, given how little gameplay we saw pre-release from both consoles. Direct gameplay footage comparisons came absurdly late. Some games like Watch Dogs were even shown running on Series S before Series X. I'm mostly surprised by how close the two platforms are to each other in the cross-get multiplat stuff. Almost every game has the same framerate and resolution target, with relatively small performance discrepancies distinguishing them. It's refreshing compared to the wider gaps we saw with PS4/XBO and Pro/OneX. It just means that the other distinguishing factors (exclusives, subscriptions, controllers, price, storage, etc) matter for even more. Even if a performance victor is crowned definitively, it won't be decisive enough to make the other look like a bad buy. By the time it could matter, we may already be focused on mid-cycle refreshes. The only major disappointment thus far IMO is Series S. Too many cross-gen games and last-gen ports are opting for 1080p, which is a bad sign. There's no way it won't feel like dead weight to devs within a few years.

Cross-manufacturer comparison. You'd really have to look at an equivalent AMD Navi PC card to see what the console architecture is helping (or not).

Any thoughts on Ori 2? I'm second guessing if it's worth it now, or if I should just wait for a later cheaper sale. Because I've got a few other Metroidvania's to play in the meanwhile (Guacamelee, Axiom Verge, Symphony of the Night). I might get Nier Automata if not. Reading that mods mostly fix its PC woes. Or maybe FFXV?

Do we know that for certain? I’m curious what games you’re thinking about that illustrate that so concretely. Typically console GPUs punch above their weight class. It would be atypical if PS5 (or Series X) didn’t. PS5 also has variable clockrates for both it and the CPU. Wouldn’t that make like-for-like comparisons less directly scalable with desktop PCs? In theory, you’d expect more fluctuations on the PS5. It’s still early days for both these machines as well. Devs are still coming to terms with the new tools these consoles offer (high speed I/O, velocity architecture, geometry engine, etc). And those will see software updates too. So what might seem true at first today could change in the future.

Watched it yesterday, must have forgotten it was in the honorables.

I’m noticing that Ghosts didn’t get a mention. Snubbed? Never played it, but it looks pretty good to me.