Positives and negatives of publishing a game on Xbox One as opposed to a PS4?

[doodle123 110]

For example:

 

- Audience

- Emerging technologies...

[Hodgman 51860]

Why either/or? Why not both?

If you're picking just one, then it might be because one of them has provided you with a funding deal in exchange for exclusivity... In which case, unless the other side can beat that deal, go where the funding is :)

If you're making VR, PlayStation is the only option atm.
If you're doing full body controls, Kinnect is far better than PS camera.

Audience depends on the game. Certain genres do actually sell better on one than the other.

Tech-wise, the PS4 has simply hands down superior hardware than the XbOne (CPU/RAM/GPU). They're both almost identical parts, except that the PS4 is way faster...

As for tools, SDKs, services and human relationships, that's probably too close to NDA to go into.

[Tom Sloper 16204]

For example:
 
- Audience
- Emerging technologies...

Moving this to Business. Choice of platform is not a game design question.
The game design forum is not the junk drawer of the forums. Edited June 12, 2016 by Tom Sloper

[Gian-Reto 7087]

Audience: bigger on PS4. http://www.hngn.com/articles/175002/20160201/ps4-outsells-xbox-one-89-ea-executive-reveals-sales-figures.htm

 

Emerging Tech:

Yeah well, hard to speak about that without resorting to rumours.

 

 

Be aware there are hardware refreshes incoming for both consoles. There will be a new "PS 4 Neo" this year (confirmed, name also), and there might be a newer XBOX One version next year (not confirmed yet but highly likely).

 

Both new version make the (currently quite underpowered) "next-gen" consoles considerably faster (bringing them inline again with midrange gaming PCs in 2016 (PS4) and 2017 (XBox One) again). This will hopefully make them as powerful as they would have needed to be 3 years ago for 1080p/60Hz gaming, and might make them VR Ready, if only for low end VR expieriences (the 5 TFlops projected by AMD seems pretty low even for the current low resolution 1st Gen VR goggles, thanks to two screens and 90+ Hz refresh needed).

 

PS4 Neo is projected to bring 4 TFlops of Graphics power. That is roughly 2.2 times as much as it has now. It is confirmed to use the newest 14nm AMD tech...

 

The weedy 8 core Jaguar CPU gets upgraded to Zen, hopefully bringing way better IPC, MAYBE SMT (the general name for Intels hyperthreading, which would give an 8 core Zen CPU 16 logical threads it could work on in parallel). Additionally to a better architecture, the Clocks get bumped to 2.1 GHz from 1.6 GHz.

 

The amount of Shader cores gets doubled to 2304 cores, and the architecture gets updated to polaris. That is exactly what the rumoured RX 480 graphics card will bring to PC starting at 200$, which is AMDs non-maxed midrange card for 2016 (maxed should bring 2560 shader cores, might not come out soon as Apple is rumoured to buy up all the fully enabled Polaris chips)... so the new PS4 would bring midrange gaming PC performance, if not for the hit the clocks took because the GPU is now part of a SoC instead of being on its own die. The rumoured 1266 MHz clocks of the RX 480 have been cut considerably (to the 900-1000 MHz range), which is why the new PS4 only brings 4 TFlops of graphics power while the RX 480 is rumoured to pack 5,5 TFlops.

 

And before anyone burns me at the stakes for my comment up there: Midrange PC GPU performance for 2016! Which seems to pan out to be between 5-7 Tflops, if we judge that looking at the AMD offering RUMOURS (Nvidias GTX 1070 might have a hard time this year seeing how it only packs 6.5 TFlops for a Performance Card price).

4 TFlops was only found in Performance card territory in 2014, for example the GTX 970... its nowhere near "bad" given the GTX 970 will most probably run most games on high settings for some years (just not in 4k or VR), and how the current version of the PS 4 soldiered on with considerably less since it came out.

 

You can expect the console to bring 4k image outputs (AFAIK the old PS4 didn't have the capability but I could be wrong), and HDR capabilities thanks to the new GPU architecture.

Of course, it still has nowhere near enough power to run a modern 3D title at 4k, even 30Hz would be a stretch. But for less taxing titles, 4K rendering might be possible now.

 

 

The new XBox one is projected to be 50% faster than the PS4 Neo at least on the graphics side, with 6 TFlops of graphics power. That, and the rumoured release date in 2017 is all that is rumoured by now. You can expect it to also pack a faster CPU, most probably upgraded to Zen cores.

 

Why the XBox is able to pack 50% more graphics power is anyones guess. Given the new 14nm architecture might clock quite well, with an improved SoC design and better power delivery (speak, higher TDP), the same GPU as used in the PS4 Neo might actually be tuned to output 50% more power just by clocking it higher. It could also use the fully activated Polaris 10 chip, AND faster clocks.

Or it might be using a more expensive Vega chip as its base, which should be coming out in fall, and add AMD PC GPUs for the performance and high-end sector for 2016. Given the console comes out in 2017, maybe it already uses a next-gen architecture that increases the power available for the same tier card (given the XBox One.5 cannot cost more than the PS4 Neo to produce, it is not very likely they will buy vega chips from AMD... even in a SoC, AMD would charge more AFAIK).

 

 

As for the model Sony and MS might choose for supporting two console "half-generations" at the same time, Sony will force all game devs to also support the older console version, and only enabled graphical tweaks if the game is played on a PS4 Neo (you know, actual 1080p/60Hz instead of 1080p/30Hz, AA, additional effects).

Nothing is certain about how MS will go about, but some people speculate they might actually ditch the current XBox One and come out with a "XBox Two" in 2017. Backwards compatibility (its a x86 PC with a modded Windows on it, after all), but not forward (so SoL for current XBox One owners).

 

 

Moving on to VR, be aware that MS is rumoured to bring the Occulus Rift to XBox One. If that will also be possible with the current XBox Ones, or only for the faster model available in 2017 is anyones guess. Given the non-impressive stats of the current console, I guess it will not be supported.

 

Of course, the projected price of the PS VR Goggles is about half what an Occulus currently costs for PC, so unless MS lowers the price for the XBox version somehow, that will not go down well with the console audience.

Edited June 13, 2016 by Gian-Reto

[Hodgman 51860]

Why the XBox is able to pack 50% more graphics power is anyones guess.

The original PS4 has 50% more graphics power than the original XBone, by simply putting 18 CU's on the die rather than 12 CU's (1152 vs 768 "shader cores").
The PS4 die is only slightly larger and they're both made with a 28nm process, so that was more of Xbox's blunder than PS's secret sauce -- they chose to sacrifice 1/3rd of their CU's in order to fit their ESRAM in there...
This time around, if your rumors are right, maybe PS has chosen to put something extra in there, like the xbone's ESRAM, or MS will go to 20nm while PS stays on 24nm -- which would nearly double their density.
I wouldn't put too much faith in hardware rumors at this point though.
 

will hopefully make them as powerful as they would have needed to be 3 years ago for 1080p/60Hz gaming, and might make them VR Ready, if only for low end VR expieriences (the 5 TFlops projected by AMD seems pretty low even for the current low resolution 1st Gen VR goggles, thanks to two screens and 90+ Hz refresh needed).

PSVR is 120Hz, but most games will probably interpolate from 60Hz rendering (Vive/Oculus support interpolating from 45Hz rendering too, but it isn't great...). A bunch of PSVR prototype games that I've played have also just done single-eye rendering and post-processed it into stereo, which honestly works almost as well except when objects are almost touching your face  :lol:
It will be interesting to see if PSVR ends up locked to Neo or or not. If they do lock it to Neo, it will certainly make the life of VR devs a lot easier :D

[Gian-Reto 7087]

 

Why the XBox is able to pack 50% more graphics power is anyones guess.

The original PS4 has 50% more graphics power than the original XBone, by simply putting 18 CU's on the die rather than 12 CU's (1152 vs 768 "shader cores").
The PS4 die is only slightly larger and they're both made with a 28nm process, so that was more of Xbox's blunder than PS's secret sauce -- they chose to sacrifice 1/3rd of their CU's in order to fit their ESRAM in there...
This time around, if your rumors are right, maybe PS has chosen to put something extra in there, like the xbone's ESRAM, or MS will go to 20nm while PS stays on 24nm -- which would nearly double their density.
I wouldn't put too much faith in hardware rumors at this point though.

 

Well, given the rumours for the PS4 Neo turned to be spot on, I give the XBox ones a little bit more credit (at least all the newer PS4 rumours were, but then the early rumours where just that "a more powerful PS4 will be coming", with all the specifics then being a whishlist (Funny enough nobody saw a 2.2 times perfomance improvement coming :)))... The rumours from about 3-4 months ago already had the specifics down to the core count, and the architecture correct.

 

While the new XBox, if we believe the rumours, is farther out still (specifics might not leak out until next year, they might not even be certain to MS yet), I tend to believe the rumours THAT a new XBox is coming. Given we know that Sony IS upgrading their console, it would make the XBox One's life even harder if they wouldn't even try to compete.

 

Also, someone on Gamasutra made a good point as to why MS might actually kill off the XBox One and bring a completly new console. Given the XBox ones dissapointing sales, that would make sense. At this point in time, MS might really want to get it over with the current console generation and start fresh with a new one.

Given the shuttering of Lionhead some time ago and the story behind it, it seems MS is really restructuring their XBox division and do not seem stop making bold moves (like shutting down a 20 years old studio with a big fanbase just because their newest fable got overscaled because of MS Execs).

 

As to the rumoured power of the XBox, given the release a year later the console SHOULD be able to pack in more power. You could be right that this time MS tries to one up Sony by going with a bigger die. I also guess this time we will see no bundled Kinect, no always online shenigans or the "Xbox Two" being promoted as a Media Center first, Game Console second... but that is just my very personal opinion.

 

 

 

 

will hopefully make them as powerful as they would have needed to be 3 years ago for 1080p/60Hz gaming, and might make them VR Ready, if only for low end VR expieriences (the 5 TFlops projected by AMD seems pretty low even for the current low resolution 1st Gen VR goggles, thanks to two screens and 90+ Hz refresh needed).

PSVR is 120Hz, but most games will probably interpolate from 60Hz rendering (Vive/Oculus support interpolating from 45Hz rendering too, but it isn't great...). A bunch of PSVR prototype games that I've played have also just done single-eye rendering and post-processed it into stereo, which honestly works almost as well except when objects are almost touching your face  :lol:
It will be interesting to see if PSVR ends up locked to Neo or or not. If they do lock it to Neo, it will certainly make the life of VR devs a lot easier :D

 

 

120 Hz... ouch. Cool indeed, but not with this hardware. At least not for anything more taxing.

Yeah, I remember that was why some people claiming PSVR to be superior the the Rift and Vive.

 

Well, given that I predict MANY VR Games and "expieriences" to be not pushing high-end graphics at first (because most probably AAA studios will stay the hell away from it until more people have bought the goggles (and people not buying the goggles wanting AAA content first.... catch 22)), I don't think locking the old PS4 from PSVR completly makes sense.

Maybe they will bring two tiers of PSVR compatibility, with the basic one being available on both versions of the console, and the higher one only on the Neo? Games could then choose to only implement basic support (so the expierience runs the same on all consoles, for very simple games that can be played at 120 Hz even on the old PS4), to implement basic support and a Neo mode (so the game would run at reduced rates on the PS4, and at full 120Hz / better resolution on the Neo), or be locked to the Neo as the game is only running at 60 Hz even on the Neo.

Edited June 13, 2016 by Gian-Reto

[doodle123 110]

What would be the advantages and disadvantages of developing for a well known console as opposed to a lesser known console?