Multi-platform Game Comparisons - Console Wars Redux

Games
#1

With another generation of consoles from Microsoft and Sony we have more comparisons and shitposting. The newest age of Console Wars have begun!

The release of Microsoft’s Xbox Series X - the most powerful console ever - and Series S - the console you hope you don’t get for Christmas.

The newest skyscraper console from Sony, with or without a disc drive. You’ll need a zoning permit either way!

The Switch and Switchless Switch Lite, still shipping the best hits the WiiU has to offer.

And the venerable PC, waiting desperately for the new NVIDIA card that never comes.

#2

What? Why? Are we all twelve?

#3

Only at heart.

#4

All 3 of the major consoles will be awesome in their own way. Whoever buys a switch or PS5 or Xbox will be happy with what they get. Why does there need to be a console war?

#5

All that versus one crank boi.

#6

Kumbaya my friends, kumbaya

Consoles suck, real men game on PC’s! Those who disagree are degenerate vermin who are only good for target practice in cross platform titles.

That enough of console war talk, OP?

#7

Yeah. Let’s not. Like Dive said, we aren’t 12 anymore.

Phil Spencer:

“Especially in the console space, there’s like a core of the core, that have, I think, taken it to a destructive level of, ‘I really want that to fail so the thing that I bought succeeds,’” Spencer said. "I’m saying on both sides. I’m not saying that it’s all people crushing Xboxes and everybody that loves Xbox is always completely inviting to all the PlayStation stuff. I’ve said before, that I find it distasteful, but maybe that is too light. I just really despise it. I don’t think we have to see others fail in order for us to achieve the goals. That’s not some kind of ‘kumbaya’ thing. It’s actually real. We’re in the entertainment business. The biggest competitor we have is apathy over the products and services [and] games that we build.

“We see that today. Everybody is doing well in the industry right now for the most part with the stay-at-home and the surge. That’s what we should be focused on as an industry. We’ve done it with things like cross-play and other things that we focused on breaking some of those tropes. But there is a core that just really hates the other consumer product. Man, that’s just so off-putting to me. Again, maybe that word is probably too light. To me, it’s one of the worst things about our industry.”

#8

To be fair, Phil Spencer speaks from the place of a last-place loser. He wouldn’t be anywhere near this magnanimous if he was working on a product with Sony’s numbers.

#9

At least one guy around here gets it, sheesh.

My favorite thing about the derangement zone some people enter when they give up their identity to The Brand was back in my old life whenever we’d publish a review of any high-profile game on a Nintendo system.

We liked the game? We’re blind Nintendo fanboys! Didn’t like the game? We’ve been salty Nintendo haters for years! Indifferent to the game? Somehow we were both at the same time!

It wasn’t uncommon to get reader e/mail accusing us of both in the same month. Good times, good times.

#10

There are so many wars featured in video games, people are just getting into the spirit of things!

#11

To be clear, my intention was to pull the multi-platform game comparisons from the individual console threads to one thread for discussion. I guess I let the tongue-in-cheek overwhelm the message. I’ll tweak the title to make the intent clearer.

#12

I think people were worried that Series S would hold back the console generation. It’s the PS5 that’s going to hold back the new console generation. And because it does, it wins.

The PS5 will be the target platform and all development will aim at getting the “ideal” experience out it. And then, because it’s memory and SSD are slightly faster, will outperform the Xbox X running the same gameplay. The Series S will be given a 60 fps mode that will drop resolution down to “whatever”, 1080p, 720p, nobody cares, because 60 fps is that much better. But it won’t hold the generation back, it will just be the scrappy kid trailing behind.

You see this with Watch Dogs Legion from Digital Foundry - it’s 1:1 almost exactly the same, almost frame for frame, with the Xbox X and the PS5. So the PS5 is clearly the target. Instead of running faster, the Xbox X will just run it the same as the PS5.

#13

I think you were way over the top in the original post.

This should definitely be the thread for the Digital Foundry comparison videos which are often going to be contentious, instead of having them ruin the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series threads.

#14

The game uses dynamic resolution scaling. If the XSX had an excess of available graphics power it would manifest in higher pixel counts. The average resolution would automatically be higher without developer intervention. That’s not happening.

#15

Guess so. I was trying to have some fun with it.

Or it’s a bug.

#16

How? The dynamic scaling appears to work as intended. The resolution fluctuates as expected based on scene complexity to maintain the target framerate. How could a bug explain the dynamic results mirroring a completely different, isolated platform?

#17

Off the top of my head…
If the system API the game uses to monitor performance isn’t reporting back accurate data.
If the game is making the wrong assumptions with the returned data.
If the game is capping the scaling.

#18

The scaling resolution bounds are the same on both. In the other two cases it’s highly unlikely the result would be to consistently mirror the PS5 of all things…

#19

I wasn’t aware you worked at Ubisoft on the project and were intimately familiar with the code.

#20

Guys I can’t believe you’re fighting over the PS5 and the Xbox One X, when we all know that the Nintendo Switch is the best console of all. Is there that much concern about who gets second and who gets third??