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Overhyped and unused console secret sauce.

Moses85

Member

The power of the

mostly cloudy sky GIF
 
As a point of historical comparison the evolution of PS2 software is pretty on-point.

The PS2 hardware was the first system to really leverage co-processer function to massively improve performance. Without using the VU's it was physically impossible to drive the GS at close to capacity, so as developers got more familiar with parallelzing their engines visuals improved dramatically. If you consider that dev-cycles back then were generally below 2-years, you can see how many product cycles it took for this insight to filter through to product on the market.

Long story short it took roughly 3 years, or 1.5 product cycles. The first big examples coming towards the end of 2001, those being projects that likely began sometime in 1999 a year or so in advance of the hardware being launched.

If you consider modern dev-cycles are generally 3+ years, with a year lost for Covid on-top, its going to be awhile yet before we really start to see things. I'd say late 2023, 2024 seems about right.

Ding ding ding ding!

This right here is the answer to the OP's hyperbole-laden post.
 

poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
It's not just the console space. Resizable bar was a touted secret sauce a year or so ago but it mainly did nothing. Strangely for Intels Arc it is basically a requirement for the card to work properly.
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
It's not just the console space. Resizable bar was a touted secret sauce a year or so ago but it mainly did nothing. Strangely for Intels Arc it is basically a requirement for the card to work properly.
Should help quite a lot with low effort PC ports, tho.
 

sankt-Antonio

:^)--?-<
"playstation games can't come to PC because of PlayStations custom I/O ssd engineering."
Well I guess the management division to shift Playstation games to PC was made after PS5 Hardware was signed off, by the new Sony management.

As a studio, you have console dedicated hardware but have to make games with the mindset that they release 2 years after launch on PC. What do you do as a studio? One game that can run on booth but isn't utilizing custom PS5 features / speeds or retool a game, that's already costing you millions to develop, years after its finished, balance and QC it, for PC release? I think we know the answer to that question. I strongly believe if Sony hadn't had a service (PS+) in mind and the shift to PC, we would have not seen as many cross gen games and would already have had much more PS5 specific games. But it's a business at the end of the day.
 
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The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
Well I guess the management division to shift Playstation games to PC was made after PS5 Hardware was signed off, by the new Sony management.

As a studio, you have console dedicated hardware but have to make games with the mindset that they release 2 years after launch on PC. What do you do as a studio? One game that can run on booth but isn't utilizing custom PS5 features / speeds or retool a game, that's already costing you millions to develop, years after its finished, balance and QC it, for PC release? I think we know the answer to that question. I strongly believe if Sony hadn't had a service (PS+) in mind and the shift to PC, we would have not seen as many cross gen games and would already have had much more PS5 specific games. But it's a business at the end of the day.
I expected a similar post but I'm still dissapointed.
 

sankt-Antonio

:^)--?-<
I expected a similar post but I'm still dissapointed.
To further get my point across and disappoint you some more.

I think I can pin point the day the decision was made to throw PS5 specific features under the bus. When Sony announced that 5gb/s SSD were okay to use in the PS5 was the day Devs were told to make games that can easily work on PCs and reach a large userbase there. PC games with min. 7gb/s SSD speeds would have been a bad business move.
 

BbMajor7th

Member
Outside of loading times, the SSDs in both consoles were going to allow devs to revolutionise game design. Well, a qtr of the way into this gen and there isn't one game who's design is any different what would be done on the previous gen. Even the rifts in R&C were done in fortnite on tradition HDDs in the previous generations.
There is no game announced that fits the revolutionary tag.
So what's the issue?
Game engines need to be changed to take account of the SSDs?
Game devs need to open their minds and move away from traditional game designs?
Or were SSDs not really going to do what they were trying to hype them to do?
That kind of difference in through-put, particularly on PS5, should allow some bonkers innovations - it should, but innovation these days tends to be an additive process, rather than an foundational upheaval. The place you'd normally see this is on exclusives, but true exclusives are largely on the wane. Sony are porting most of their games to PC now and MS have been headed that way for a while.

There are some things you could pull off on PS5 that would be very hard to brute-force replicate on PC, but if your game is going to be ported onto PC down the line, then limiting it to only higher end gear, or having to compromise the foundational design is just not in the brief. So you do flashy gimmicks, like rift jumps and one-second loading screens, knowing that by the time it's hits PC, it'll just be slightly on the slower side, not busted, and you'll still make your money.
 
SSD is definitely not secret sauce bullshit. It's a very real thing that can do things games built for HDDs never could, this is easy to understand just from the fact that it can literally load data 100x faster (more with proper compression). That's on PS5, Xbox maybe 50x, but still.

The reason we haven't seen much of it is that most games are still cross-gen, so they still have to be designed around those limitations. And even among those that aren't, they have still been built on a last-gen foundation so far. We do have some games with pretty much instant load times, which is very nice, but that's the simplest use case.

The question is if we will ever see it. PS5 exclusives seem like the most likely candidates for taking full advantage of these possibilities, but with all Sony games seemingly being slated for PC release sooner or later, can they build a game that DEMANDS that level of data throughput knowing that this is a rare thing on PC so far? I guess you could have lower texture settings etc to reduce throughput requirements for lower spec machines (the minimum requirement would still need to be a reasonably fast SSD though, HDDs need to be left behind), but yeah, we'll see.
This is why ps5 owners should be pissed off and feel like we've been lied to, esp with Sony bringing everything over to PC. The one thing that the Ps5 has over the ps5 is now going unused and we're supposed to feel bad because we're not happy about it.
 
Current gen consoles have no secret sauce inside, unfortunately.

They are basic low to mid end PC's. 8 core Zen 2 CPU, RDNA2(ish) 10 - 12 TF GPU, SSD, PCIE4.

Nothing special feature wise, Nvidia's Turing architecture from 2018 is better and more advanced than RDNA2. And PC's have had SSD's for years already.
 

ResurrectedContrarian

Suffers with mild autism
Cloud making Xbox One uber-powerful was probably my favorite secret sauce.

Microsoft is the biggest bullshitter in the world of tech, drives me insane all the things which barely left proof-of-concept stage but which they hyped at events and put in their product videos.

- remember Minecraft for hololens? All the articles about it?
- a ton of Kinect features that never materialized but were also played on loop at tech blogs
- remember Illumiroom? How your next xbox was going to project the screen beyond itself onto your walls?
- cloud-power, they knew they were just making it up by that point
 
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Neilg

Member
The reason we haven't seen much of it is that most games are still cross-gen, so they still have to be designed around those limitations. And even among those that aren't, they have still been built on a last-gen foundation so far. We do have some games with pretty much instant load times, which is very nice, but that's the simplest use case.

Not only this, but if you started making a game today, even UE5 doesn't have all the theoretical tools to aggressively utilize the SSD. It benefits from it, sure, but all this 'secret sauce' also requires a major shift in how the tools used to make games even work. And then on top of that it needs experienced designers with the ideas to use them in creative ways. It's a long road.
 

b0uncyfr0

Member
But the tech is there on Sony's side regarding the SSD - RnC was/is bloody awesome.

I just don't understand why they haven't implemented it on a system level. The series X is 2.5 times slower (or 2?) and yet because of Quick Resume, it easily makes it a better all rounder for almost all games.

So yeah, Sony's SSD's claims are somewhat laughable right now, but they have a working example. Whether they wanna make it more accessible is another question.
 
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Danknugz

Member
pretty-cool-cerny.gif


I don't really feel that there's anything overhyped about the SSD capabilities. The load times of games like Demon's Souls and Miles Morales are near-instant. Unfortunately most games don't fully utilize the capability, I guess because they're cross-gen or cross-console or just poorly optimized for whatever reason.

SSD is still a gamechanger in many cases though.
i think he was referring to the hype not around SSD tech in general, because that had existed for close to a decade before the ps5, but rather that which suggested there was something significantly better about how the ps5 SSD was designed that was supposed to give it a huge noticeable difference both over existing SSD tech and also in actual games, neither of which materialized.
 
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phil_t98

#SonyToo
But the tech is there on Sony's side regarding the SSD - RnC was/is bloody awesome.

I just don't understand why they haven't implemented it on a system level. The series X is 2.5 times slower (or 2?) and yet because of Quick Resume, it easily makes it a better all rounder for almost all games.

So yeah, Sony's SSD's claims are somewhat laughable right now, but they have a working example. Whether they wanna make it more accessible is another question.

Didn’t they show that RnC ran on slower SSD on the PS5 so it didn’t need the full speed and could be easily done on other consoles or pc
 

Danknugz

Member
I'm not sure which benchmarks are you talking about? Optane-like SSD will never show any difference when used by naive applications.
Obviously you need to specifically use their APIs but that will make the game unportable to PC.
just a simple benchmark to show this huge noticeable difference you're talking about to back it up. not a very complicated question. it could even be pc loading times on standard ssd vs ps5 ssd, i'm not saying it's false i just never bothered to look.
 
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just a simple benchmark to show this huge noticeable difference you're talking about to back it up. not a very complicated question. it could even be pc loading times on standard ssd vs ps5 ssd, i'm not saying it's false i just never bothered to look.

I'm not sure how can PS5 SSD be installed into a PC. Your request is unrealistic.
 

Danknugz

Member
I'm not sure how can PS5 SSD be installed into a PC. Your request is unrealistic.
you could have just said "no" to my first question. i thought ps5 loaded levels in games slightly faster than a pc with a standard ssd, but not a "huge noticeable" difference? surely someone has benchmarked that.

here, i looked it up for you quick googl search:

https://www.polygon.com/platform/am...-comparison-fast-travel-pc-steam-deck-ps5-ps4

spider-man comparison
fast travel
  • PC: 2.8-3.5 seconds
  • PS5: 3-3.1 seconds
  • Steam Deck: 6-8 seconds
  • PS4: 17-20 seconds
boot up

  • PS5: 2 seconds
  • PC: 2.9-3.35 seconds
  • Steam Deck: 7-13 seconds
  • PS4: 35 seconds


so yes, "huge noticeable difference" compared to ps4 for sure. PC? not so much. to be fair, he didn't say what kind of ssd was in the PC. but chances are it was just a standard one.
 
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Danknugz

Member
I'm not sure how level loading, which is usually bottlenecked by linear read can have any "huge difference".
PS5 SSD wasn't made just to make level loading faster, then simple PC ssd would be enough.
you're drifting off the topic of this thread though.

he didn't just benchmark loading times, he benchmarked fast travel as well, and ps5 was actually slower in that test. yes, one could argue that fast travel is essentially loading, but it's not quite the same because a lot of stuff is already in memory.
 
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you're drifting off the topic of this thread though.

I'm just answering your questions.
On topic I've already answered: using any "secret souce" would make these games effectively unportable to PC. And porting to PC is required it seems by both console holders.
 

Danknugz

Member
you're not answering my questions you're cherry picking and deflecting them. like i said, you've somehow stretched a simple "no" answer into 4 or 5 rambling responses. i provided a simple, objective, real world benchmark that shows ps5 is actually slower 😂 on a ps5 exclusive hyped up release nonetheless

i don't even bother to look at ps5 performance just like i don't bother with pentium 3s, this kind of stuff doesn't interest me but i just did a quick google search is all.
 
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you're not answering my questions you're cherry picking and deflecting them. like i said, you've somehow stretched a simple "no" answer into 4 or 5 rambling responses. i provided a simple, objective, real world benchmark that shows ps5 is actually slower 😂 on a ps5 exclusive hyped up release nonetheless

i don't even bother to look at ps5 performance just like i don't bother with pentium 3s, this kind of stuff doesn't interest me but i just did a quick google search is all.

Optane P5800X costs around $2500
As you can see in a lot of "real world benchmarks" that just test linear read it is behind competition too.

 

skneogaf

Member
All the consoles needed were an ssd and as powerful APU that AMD was able to give at the price the 2 companies were willing to offer.


Games are still the same and old pc hardware can still play all the games.
 
PS2- Emotion Engine, VU0/VU1, Toy Story graphics, etc
PS3- The power and omnipresence of Cell chips, Blu Ray etc.
Xbox One - eSram against gddr5 on ps4
PS5- The power of NVME

The list is huge and we always fall for it.
Ehh I don't know man but I sure do as hell love my instant loads/teleportation in Demon's Souls Remake. Playing God of War Ragnarok on PS5 right now as well and the game loads super fast when reloading checkpoints or just game saves. Quick resume is also pretty amazing on the Xbox Series X. Get out of here with that bullshit, the NVME is a MASSIVE quality of life change.
 

DaGwaphics

Member
Cloud making Xbox One uber-powerful was probably my favorite secret sauce.

Certainly was the truth though. Have you seen FS running on it, impressive stuff.

arrested development hiding GIF

Seriously, I think it's too early to call the SSDs a gimmick, QR is worth its weight in gold anyway.

#1 vaporware secret sauce for Xbox has to be Project Milo
 
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Topher

Gold Member
Certainly was the truth though. Have you seen FS running on it, impressive stuff.

arrested development hiding GIF

Seriously, I think it's too early to call the SSDs a gimmick, QR is worth its weight in gold anyway.

#1 vaporware secret sauce for Xbox has to be Project Milo

Oh.....they meant literally in the clouds?

Jim Carrey Alrighty Then GIF by Ace Ventura
 

SHA

Member
If they stay with the same old gameplay mechanics without even touching it to make something completely different then games will stay the same as we see it without any major changes except adding more digits to the same stuff we already knew , this is completely different than building let's say a more realistic world cause let's be honest , it's overrated if they just keep using the same old formula dealing with the same variables , it's stupid, video games are just toys , there's no such thing as technical advancements, nothing revolutionary in the last decade or more , you can't even apply a legit science experiment into video games , as we see how video games keeps evolving they actually lean more towards tv series and movies styles while moving away from its unique form of entertainment , heck , you can't even tell if it's a f video game.
 
Jaguar will have a game better than the Dreamcast any year now. Kyle Tonks said so, he talked to the professionals, and they said people only used 10% of the chips power. Clearly a reliable man with valid sources.

PS2- Emotion Engine, VU0/VU1, Toy Story graphics, etc

The current PlayStation introduced the concept of the Graphics Synthesizer via the real-time calculation and rendering of a 3D object. This new GS rendering processor is the ultimate incarnation of this concept – delivering unrivalled graphics performance and capability. The rendering function was enhanced to generate image data that supports NTSC/PAL Television, High Definition Digital TV and VESA output standards. The quality of the resulting screen image is comparable to movie-quality 3D graphics in real time

PR is funny sometimes.
 
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