You know, I'm not a developer myself, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that developing a game to run in a range of GPUs from GTX 2080 down to GT 1050 might be a little bit different than porting a game from PC to Switch.

If a game is designed with parity in mind, how would they then be able to really push and optimize for GTX2080 if it also has to run and look smooth on a GTX1050? I can't believe we are even arguing this but here's an interesting read, straight from the mouth of a AAA developer...

"One of the first things that you have to address when developing a game is, what is your intended target platform? If the answer to that question is "multiple", you are effectively locking yourself in to compromising certain aspects of the game to ensure that it runs well on all of them. It's no good having a game that runs well on PS3 but chugs on Xbox 360, so you have to look at the overall balance of the hardware. As a developer, you cannot be driven by the most powerful console, but rather the high middle ground that allows your game to shine and perform across multiple machines.

When you are developing a game, getting to a solid frame-rate is the ultimate goal. It doesn't matter how pretty your game looks, or how many players you have on screen, if the frame-rate continually drops, it knocks the player out of the experience and back to the real world, ultimately driving them away from your game if it persists. Maintaining this solid frame-rate drives a lot of the design and technical decisions made during the early phases of a game project. Sometimes features are cut not because they cannot be done, but because they cannot be done within the desired frame-rate."

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-the-secret-developers-what-hardware-balance-actually-means-for-game-creators

Parity is a thing developers need to work around as they need to hit certain performance targets on the lowest common denominator. Halo Infinite for example can't be running in 360p and look like dog shit on the Xone. It has to hit at least 1080p/30fps and with all the visuals and core game elements intact from the Series X version.

Like I said, scalability of the engines and hardware won't hold Series X back, parity with Xbox, Lockhart and low-end pc's will. With every design idea they will have to ask themselves "will this run at 30fps/1080p on a jaguar cpu, 1,3Tflops gpu and HDD too?" If the answer is no, then they just have scale it down across the board or remove it all together.

If a game is designed with parity in mind, how would they then be able to really push and optimize for GTX2080 if it also has to run and look smooth on a GTX1050? I can't believe we are even arguing this but here's an interesting read, straight from the mouth of a AAA developer...

If a game is designed with parity in mind, how would they then be able to really push and optimize for GTX2080 if it also has to run and look smooth on a GTX1050? I can't believe we are even arguing this but here's an interesting read, straight from the mouth of a AAA developer...

"One of the first things that you have to address when developing a game is, what is your intended target platform? If the answer to that question is "multiple", you are effectively locking yourself in to compromising certain aspects of the game to ensure that it runs well on all of them. It's no good having a game that runs well on PS3 but chugs on Xbox 360, so you have to look at the overall balance of the hardware. As a developer, you cannot be driven by the most powerful console, but rather the high middle ground that allows your game to shine and perform across multiple machines.

When you are developing a game, getting to a solid frame-rate is the ultimate goal. It doesn't matter how pretty your game looks, or how many players you have on screen, if the frame-rate continually drops, it knocks the player out of the experience and back to the real world, ultimately driving them away from your game if it persists. Maintaining this solid frame-rate drives a lot of the design and technical decisions made during the early phases of a game project. Sometimes features are cut not because they cannot be done, but because they cannot be done within the desired frame-rate."

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-the-secret-developers-what-hardware-balance-actually-means-for-game-creators

Maybe we should ask that question to RDR2 developers who developed their game to run on a GTX 770, or FH4 developers who developed their game to run on a GTX 650 TI, or MSFS developers who developed their game to run on a GTX 770. I guess none of those games take advantage of the GTX 2080 Ti power since they can also run on such low end hardware.

So you are pushing your parity fairy tale again? We had this discussion before. Parity = the same / equal.

We have parity, if a game looks and runs the same on system A and system B and the game is wasting the additional performance of the faster system.

But games on Xbox One S and Xbox One X don't look the same (unless the developer was too lazy for an X enhancement patch... and even then there are performance differences).

Games on PS4 and PS4 Pro don't look the same (unless the developer was too lazy for a Pro patch... and even then there are performance differences).

Games on Xbox One S and PS4 don't look the same (the PS4 version almost always looks and/or performs better).

Games on Xbox One X and PS4 Pro don't look the same (the XBO X version almost always looks and/or performs better).

And games definitely don't look the same on an GTX 1050 and an RTX 2080 Ti!

Oh, and more and more games have dynamic resolutions / effects... in these cases parity ain't even possible anymore.

I find it very unlikely that the DLSS2 or any other technique upscaling an 720p image can look better than the same image in native resolution of 1080p or higher. Or do you mean having your system running to the limit to generate a 720p instead of a 1080p and then with the upscalling your result be better?

Still MS already have machine learning and similar technique, plus Sony have been using temporary reconstruction (not that much different) for a lot of PS4Pro titles.

The upscaling technique isn't superior to native, it is less hw expensive though. And with that power can be used to improve other aspects of image quality.

So you admit they could scale that UE5 demo to an Iphone so how in anyway would the Iphone version looking shit ruin the PS5 version looking good and nextgen?.

And how many first party games will they need to make that decision with? its 2021 when they stop supporting XBOne right?. So how many first party games will release between now and their deadline/.

Series S is a nextgen system it will not hold back Series X anymore then PS5 will.