Possible Launch titles for next Xbox / overview of current MS Studios

[Mr Puggsly]

Pemalite said:

Mr Puggsly said:

I'm not sure if using a single engine for every game is a good idea, but I think 343 can certainly do better than what Halo 5 has.

Why not? Last generation it felt like 99% of games were using Unreal Engine 3 anyway.

Mr Puggsly said:

Halo 3 had more resource intensive lighting, but it also had lower quality assets and resolution.

It could have bolstered asset quality and resolution if it cut back on the amount of buffers it was running with.

Mr Puggsly said:

In Halo MCC its the most dated looking game for a reason even if it has better effects. So its not like Halo Reach and 4 look better simply because they opted for less taxing effects, there is also better optimization, resolution and assets there.

It's also technically the "oldest". - As Halo 1 and 2 were remastered.
But it plays into my point that it's smart design to cut back on expensive effects, opting for lesser quality ones in order to bolster image quality elsewhere, it plays into the strengths/weaknesses of the hardware.

Mr Puggsly said:

What is really using X1X to its fullest though? Would that be a really great looking game designed to run 1080p and 30 fps on the X1X? Maybe providing more stable performance and higher resolution in X1 game is already pushing the hardware?

The bandwidth and fillrate that the Xbox One X has... 1080P would be a wasted endeavor.
The sweet spot would be 1440P with settings dialed up... Which is also the sweet spot for the Radeon RX 580, the closest relative of the Xbox One X on the PC.

Mr Puggsly said:

I think most people would opt for 1440p over 4K if they saw a significant improvement in 1440p. We even see people saying they prefer 1080p over 4K if it comes with better performance. I think most people find 1080p perfectly acceptable especially with some post processing effects.

Well. 1440P is still a benefit to 1080P users anyway thanks to downsampling... And that still gives headroom to dial up the effects or improve performance.

UE3 is pretty great for shooters and did pretty well in some open world games as well. I just don't think it always gets the polish as some in house engines. For example, its hard to imagine creating something like Forza on UE. I also recall a Tony Hawk remaster being terrible on UE3 and had lack of polish that's common with the engine.

You're having it both ways with your Halo 3 argument. You're trying to argue changing the lighting effect gave it significantly more headroom to improve everything else, but its also the oldest so optimization in future games would obviously be better. If anything, lowering the resolution alone was probably enough headroom for Halo 3's lighting. Destiny on 7th gen for example has great lighting effects and asset quality, but the resolution is sub-HD. However, Halo 3 has a very jaggy presentation while Destiny is blurry, so they must have used different post processing effects.

I'm simply suggesting less resources used on resolution is more resources that could be used on other visual aspects. But it also depends on the performance that's being aimed for.

On a side note, I would argue Forza 7 is using the X1X hardware extremely well. Its 4K/60 fps and higher quality graphics settings on top of that. I think Gears 5 is gonna be a game that utilizes X1X very well too. Frankly, I'm sure there are a lot of example of the X1X hardware being used well and it does deliver the visually best ports at the moment.