Xbox Series X's cross-gen approach is robbing players of the next-gen thrill

[ArchangelMadzz]

Mr Puggsly said:

ArchangelMadzz said:

Because XSX and PS5 uses SSD's, cross gen games will never be on the level that games designed specifically for them, not even close. Level design and game mechanics change massively. Uncharted for example has so many of the super slow, sully and nate helping each other climb over obstacles, because the system needs to load up the next part of the level. The layout of levels is so that pop in isn't too bad for asset loading, the speed of travel in open world games is limited due to the storage. 

Surely they can look decent but the entire game design changes when you know everyone playing this game will have a super fast SSD. I think that's the point most people are trying to make.

I'm not drinking the SSD Kool Aid yet. At the very least I hope it does speed up load times.

I believe Uncharted had slow sections because that was the game they designed. Walking and talking is just a big part of that series.

Hence, I don't think the average game design is necessarily going to change. Many games are designed the way they are to tell a story. Games focused on telling a story aren't necessarily focused on large environments that have you flying across the map quickly.

Everyone who's involved in game development is very excited about the SSD's in the XSX and the PS5. It would be difficult to get you on board, that's not what I'm trying to do, the only thing I can say is that storage speed has fundamentally hindered game development for many years.

Again, I know you've said about uncharted but a lot of these games have many ways that they hide loading by slowing you down. Whether it's unlocking doors mechanics, to squeezing through small cave openings very slowly so that the game can load the next section. Spiderman's web slinging speed and many more subtle ways, these would not be needed anymore. 

Cross gen titles would still need these mechanics in because of the HDD's on PS4P and XB1X, and that includes slow, story based games with their level design. A game specifically designed to run on a 2.4GB/s SSD would almost need to be redone to function on a HDD. Cross gen titles will load much quicker but there won't be any of these major changes until games are built from the ground up for superfast SSD's. 

Time will only tell, but even a game like Horizon: Zero Dawn, built specifically for a 5.5GB/s SSD would work fundamentally different to what it turned out to be. 

Mr Puggsly said:

ArchangelMadzz said:

No goalposts has been moved. The point is that last gen we had titles that were clear next generation in terms of either visual fidelity or things the game could do that previous gen games could not. 

We still had cross gen titles that had added resolution/frame rate and a cleaner image like we will have this year.

But I don't think we've seen anything so far that says, yep that definitely couldn't have been done on XB1X without severely cutting back. Resogun for example, a small indie game that came out with the PS4 that could never ever have ran on a PS3.

Again, the focus has become presentation because we are admitting the actual game design was underwhelming.

I also feel more developers are now building their games to scale between specs better. Hence, visual disparity between cross gen games should be more significant this time than 2013. I could be wrong, but its what I expect.

Another example, if we get Control on 9th gen consoles that would be a noticeable upgrade over the 8th gen versions simply for using existing assets, effects found on PC. 60 fps would also show a huge disparity.

I'm confused, are you suggesting Resogun wouldn't work on PS3?

Whoops correction:I remember reading a piece of PR about how much GPU power Resogun uses and that it can't be doneon PS3. But they did manage to port it, apparently my 2013 memory isn't amazing.