Duderino

Recall any graphics specifics? My memory is a bit hazy but I remember the tech behind Doom 3 and idTech4 paving the way for that console generation before UE3, Gears, and the 360. Gears was impressive, but Doom 3 was like seeing next-gen early.

Trying to remember, what was shown on the 360 that broke ground on consoles first? It's been quite a while. On Sony's end the PS3's cell processor never had a breakthrough game demonstration on this level.

More of Tim setting the record straight:

It's kinda crazy that we're seeing some next-gen tech on a console first. When was the last time that happened? The psx/n64 era?

Epic stands to gain way more profits from gamers buying Unreal 5 tittles through the PC Epic Games store. I could never see Epic agreeing to avoid talking about other platforms. Money hat joking aside, it doesn't add up.

It clears up the false claims, not how well we can expect this demo to run on other platforms. We need more information and further demonstrations from Epic to get better understanding there. No one outside of Epic has those answers yet.

That is easily explained. The 40fps number comes from this statement in the China presentation that multiple people speaking the native language have confirmed: People just ran with it, misrepresenting what was actually said (and shown). Hopefully that clarifies things.

@Xbob42, that dsogaming article is misleading, as confirmed by Tim Sweeney: Said it earlier, but there is plenty of misinformation being spread.

Epic's primary goal here is to sell people (and developers) on what Unreal 5 will be capable of. The PS5 happens to be the ideal platform to demo it. Sony's priorities have aligned well with Epic's tech. A comparison video now would probably drive PS5 sales and increase intent to purchase future NVMe drives, but work against Epic's pitch of their tech being a paradigm shift for the industry as a whole.

Given how new this tech is and how key the SSD and file I/O is to this process, I doubt Epic wants to show this running on anything less than the ideal hardware right now. Why show something "pretty good" now when they can potentially improve on it in the coming months.

Informative article from PCgamer that clarifies a few things:

So it sounds like with some concessions and careful planning it was possible to get this demo running without the PS5 SSD's level of bandwidth. Given this was only a tech demo, I would expect actual games to have more overhead to contend with. What that means, who knows yet. Looking forward to seeing what the actual games can do and how this applies to each platform.

The proper translation of the Epic China presentation: That colteastwood guy loves to fudge numbers and stretch the truth. I've had the misfortune of stumbling on his YouTube videos from time to time.

Ok.

The idea of the PS5's I/O stack being a notable step forward is not all that far-fetched. Question away though.

Yup, there are some truly awful hot takes happening right now across the web. Lots of people that obviously don't want these PS5 statements to hold water. As I said, a healthy amount of skepticism is warranted. It's not every generation that a console launches with notable market leading tech.

Tim Sweeney is not saying anything outlandish here, unless of course you were not taking Mark Cerney at his word during the PS5 presentation. Seems like there was and still is a lot of selective listening happening. Not that a degree of skepticism isn't warranted. Sony is challenging the status quo here.

Beyond the SSD, CPU, and GPU, there's also the general architecture advancements to consider if you're looking to build a PC that will match and/or surpass the PS5 here. Sweeny also speaks to this: It may be a while before you can build a PC with similar improvements. Imagine that will (hopefully) come with the next wave of PC hardware. Either way I could see there being a period where people need even higher-end components (such as top end NVMe drives) to reach PS5 parity.

I take all this to mean the PS5's specific architecture did play an important role in this demo, but the software side tech behind it can scale to other platforms. One takeaway here is the PS5 is particularly well suited for this massive increase in asset detail. May even be a differentiating factor for next gen. If I were in the market for a new PC build and not a PS5 I would probably take a wait and see approach. Conventional wisdom about how to best balence your system may change a bit in the future.

The level layout in 1 & 2 stood out partially because there was no revert to chain everything.

I do suspect many more games will target 60 FPS this gen, but this showcase was not exactly the best demonstration of the Series X's performance capabilities either. One other reason live gameplay demos on the actual hardware would have been much appreciated.

Think this article sums up the disappointment quite well: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/xbox-series-xs-inside-xbox-event-didnt-deliver-on-/1100-6476997/ The event just felt more like an extended games sizzle reel than a next-gen showcase.

What was the last first party Xbox game to show a live on-stage gameplay demo at E3? I honestly can’t remember.

Maybe it's time to resurrect: