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Kyuu on 03 September 2025
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Hardstuck-Platinum said:
Kyuu said:

It's a complicated topic.

All popular platforms (including PC, which is a very wide range of specs) have a "gravitational pull" that will influence some developers in some way. But highend hardware are at a disadvantage, because making a technically jaw-dropping game then down porting is so much more expensive than making a less impressive version of the game then scaling up. AAA developers will try to adjust and find their new balance by targeting a reasonable average (then scaling down or up from there). So they will not go all the way down to Switch specs in 2020, or Switch 2 specs in 2027. PS5 seems destined to be the base spec for most AAA games in at least the first half of the PS6 generation, regardless of the existence of the PS6 handheld. The handheld will simply take advantage of that.

Switch 2, Series S, and comparable PC's will "future proof" each other to some extent because their specs are fairly similar, and one of them is massively popular. It should be relatively cheap to port less-demanding games between them. Future demanding games will use the PS5 as a base, until even more demanding PS6 exclusives arrive late in the gen (and I guess this is where you can argue that PS6 handheld and comparable hardware will hold back the PS6 IF the handheld is permenantly mandated. But the PS6 handheld should be powerful enough to run even PS6 exclusives at lower resolutions, fps, and settings. Turning off some RT features alone could save a ton of resources).

This I half agree with, but I disagree that it will just be incidentally taking advantage. It will be a strict instruction from Sony that any PS6 game must support the handheld too and...therefore PS5 because it's easy port. Why would Sony damage it's PS6 handheld image as soon as devs move on from PS5? That's what would happen and fans would be angry that handheld is no longer supported. These things require commitment. 

Also, It's unfair to the Series S to say Switch 2 is similar in power. XBSS has CPU at least 3x more powerful, and superior bandwidth by 2-3x.

Disagree again. Handhelds are so weak relative to dedicated consoles. It will only just barely keep up with PS5 but won't come anywhere near the PS6 high end machine. 

Switch 2 is already getting a few "current gen only" games, and the power gap between it and PS5 is about as large as PS6 handheld vs PS6 if the reports are to be believed. Next gen is going to have a strong focus on RayTracing, and we know for a fact that disabling RT features can save a lot of resources. This makes scaling down to the handheld easier.

A GPU bound PS6 exclusive running at native 1080p-1440p (PSSR'd/FSR4'd to 4K) 60fps can theoretically run at 720p (reconstructed to 1080p) 30fps on the handheld with lower settings and some disabled/reduced RT features. CPU bound games are more of a challenge, but it's doable, or they can just be released in a bad shape and hope for the best lol. All consoles have some games than run terribly, expect the PS6 handheld to get more of them.

Watch this:

PS5 version of this "current gen exclusive" is basically 10 times better here (nearly twice the fps, 4x the resolution, and much higher settings), and yet it's more than fine on the Switch 2. RT isn't even a factor here. Disabling a RT feature or two should save extra resources for the PS6 handheld to play with. It'll depend on the game.

The PS6 handheld might be a lot better suited than PS5 for RT, RAM capacity, ML heavy games, which may be the focus of nextgen's more demanding games.