SvennoJ said:
Ram also puts a limit on world size and how dynamic/interactive a world can be. That's where the innovation is that will be held back by the the existence of a console with less memory. For example Minecraft, it works on everything, but not the full fat unlimited world experience. Different editions all have different limits on number of active 'actors' and world size. Fine for different systems, yet here game play parity is assumed to be a must. |
We need to look towards the PC as an example of how games scale with resolution and memory capacity...
And a good example of that is actually Doom Eternal.
At 1080P Ultra settings (The Series S will likely target Medium in the real world, let's be honest.) Doom Eternal will gobble up 5.230GB of Ram on the Graphics Card.
Bump that resolution up to 2160P/4k and that same game pushes it to 6.025GB of Ram used... That is a 15.2% increase in Ram usage accompanying the 300% increase in resolution.
Thus we can surmise that resolution alone has a negligible impact on memory consumption, it's there... But not a day and night difference.
But if you were to run Doom Eternal at 1080P Medium it will only use 3.500GB of Ram... That is a reduction of 66.9% in memory consumption by lowering detail settings... And that memory consumption discrepancy falls in line with the memory differences between the Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X.
Texture Resolution accounts for a *massive* amount of Ram consumption irrespective of resolution... And that is what will happen with the Series S.
On the resolution side of the equation... Resolution is only one aspect of the graphics presentation of a game... And one that I would argue is actually becoming less important with each successive console generation thanks to new post-process effects and frame reconstruction methods, granted I would prefer the full fat native resolution of my displays being met by the gaming hardware.
So whilst yes... Massive Ram limitations can have ramifications to things like world size, developers will likely cut back on things like texturing first and rely on the SSD as a "scratch pad" to retain world sizes.
--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--