scrapking said:
Back when a lot of games only came to consoles, I would have agreed with you. Now with almost every game also coming to PC, and with PC games needing to scale, I don't think it's a big deal anymore. Recent Digital Foundry analysis shows that most console releases these days are simply set to settings that match PC pre-sets, rather than custom settings. And even when they are custom settings, they're still within a scale-able engine. So scaling between multiple console configurations just isn't as big a deal as it used to be. And here we are with cross-gen games, 2 years into this generation and counting. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I think most developers would rather retire the last-gen as fast as possible, as that's a bigger hassle for developers than supporting both Series X and S (which are on the same architecture and run the exact same code base). |
No one builds games to the metal anymore. Not even first party titles.
It makes sense to build your games/engines to scale upwards and downwards to match the hardware (In-fact, it's technically always been a thing anyway, even back in the 90's with Glide/OpenGL/DirectX render paths.).
Especially as games these days often get "remastered" in a generation or two's time anyway. Easy money.
| Kyuu said: 1. Sony can choose to reduce the SSD capacity, saving a few $. Series S can't match because the capacity is too small as is, and GamePass (the main selling point) skews to higher capacity demand. Do keep in mind that game sizes are also generally smaller on PS5. |
No. Sony chose to reduce the SSD capacity, because they made their SSD faster, by building a wider NAND interface... So it was a cost cutting measure.
Sony is likely spending roughly the same amount as Microsoft for their SSD, but chose to sacrifice capacity for speed.
Game sizes are smaller due to a myriad of factors... Less games are built to install on Playstation 4 and Playstation 5 simultaneously, they release a variant specific for each platform... Or run the PS4 version in backwards compatibility mode on the PS5.
Compression.
Localization.
And such.
| Kyuu said: 2. PS5 selling a lot more than Xbox can enable Sony to pay chip makers less for more. Xbox reportedly never made money from hardware. |
No one can pay TSMC more money, for more chips.
They are at capacity.
The only way to get more chips is by making smaller chips so you can get more chips per wafer.
| Kyuu said: 4. Sony are transitioning to smaller die sizes quicker than Microsoft. They've already switched to 6nm months ago, and are reported to go 5nm and launch a cheaper and smaller model in September. This saves costs and improves production. Microsoft is yet to transition to 6nm. I'm aware that there are more complications, but it is something to consider. |
Keep in mind that "7nm and 6nm" are actually just advertising numbers, they don't actually represent the geometric feature sizes of transistors on a silicon wafer anymore.
TSMC's advertised "6nm" is actually 7nm+ or 7nm EUV. It uses identical design rules, just denser rooting libs... And not all logic scales the same, if you are SRAM heavy with your chip, it -will- be cheaper to stick to 7nm.
There are advantages to TSMC's "6nm" but it's not a night and day difference, Microsoft may have a contract in place and the cost to move to 6nm may override any tiny cost saving.
That... And TSMC is at capacity, they simply may not have any capacity available.
The real jump will be at 5nm.
Sony and Microsoft are also not the ones shrinking these chips... That is actually AMD and TSMC as the technology is propriety, Microsoft and Sony just hand over a contract/cheque to get the job done.
| Bofferbrauer2 said: The Ryzen 6000 mobile chips are already dangerously close to the series S in terms of performance (both CPU and GPU) and I'm fairly sure that by 2025, even the PS5 and XSX will be getting in range of AMD's APUs. |
Some Ryzen 6000 mobile chips are definitely better than the Series S on the CPU front already.
The 6980HX based on Zen 3+, 3.3Ghz-5Ghz, 16MB L3 cache kinda makes the Series S 3.4-3.6Ghz Zen 2, 8MB L3 seem whimpy by comparison.
Plus the move from Zen 2 to Zen 3 had 19% more performance at the same clock...
Series S has a 20CU/1280 Shader GPU @1.565Ghz fed by 224GB/s of memory bandwidth... Which places it in the same rough ballpark as a GPU sitting just below the Radeon RX 6500XT. (Mostly thanks to Infinity cache and 1ghz higher core clock that is.)
None of AMD's APU's in the PC space have a GPU with the memory bandwidth that can match the Series S... So in order to get "competitive" results you need to cut back on features that gobble up fillrate/memory bandwidth and push up effects that suck up compute time instead.
The Series S is a very low-end device by PC standards... Heck the Xbox Series X/Playstation 5 is mid-range... But that also doesn't say much as the PC high-end has climbed a few tiers (and cost) over the past decade... Does mean we will need mid-cycle refreshes to keep consoles competitive with mid-range PC gaming.
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