Ben-DutkaAnother developer who claims to be pushing the next-gen consoles to the limit.
Not long after Sledgehammer Games said Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare really embraced the power of the new systems, Ubisoft says the latest Assassin's Creed will take "full advantage" of the power of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Of course, that doesn't specifically mean they're utilizing 100 percent of each system's available power. But it's worth noting that we're not used to hearing similar statements so early in a new console generation. As Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said at the Ubiblog :
"It's a game that takes full advantage of the new gen. It's really a good demonstration of what those machines can do. And people are amazed. They didn't expect those machines to deliver that level of graphics and animation quality, the depth of the number of people that can move in the environment, and so on. It's helping the brand to have a new beginning with totally different possibilities."
We've also heard from CD Projekt Red on the subject of harnessing next-gen power; The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt supposedly uses most of the available horsepower in each of the new consoles. Maybe this doesn't bode well, though. We've been saying for a while that with the increased accessibility comes – by default – less of a technical leap as the years go on.
I'm not really worried. Using "the full power" and optimizing that resource are two different things.
They (developers) always say they're using the full power.
Would they really say they're not using the full power? Of course not. Don't get me wrong — Unity looks great but later down the road AC: _ _ will look so much better and they will say the same thing.
Last edited by MRSUCCESS on 7/9/2014 12:18:28 PM
Just to clarify: To take "full advantage" does *not* mean they've pushed the performance of the hardware to the max. It only means they have used the full hardware, ie all of the ram, the gpus, cpu load is high, etc.
Let me try a comparison:
Let's say Jon managed to say the letters from A to K in the alphabet in 20 seconds. We can say he used roughly half the alphabet.
Then Michael tries, and he manage to say the letters from A all the way to Z within 20 seconds. We can now say that Michael used the full alphabet.
But Michael keep practising. And the next time he tries, he managed to go from A to Z in fifteen seconds! So, still he used the full alphabet, but his performance were much better.
It's the same with code. To write code that utilize the full hardware capacity is in itself not much of a challenge. But to write better code, more effective code and come up with clever tricks to ease the load and thus be able to do *more* within those same frames, now that is the whole deal here.
So when developers say they take full advantage of the hardware they may be right – but that does *not* mean that nobody (even themselves) can come later and perform better within that same framework.
Last edited by Beamboom on 7/9/2014 12:39:47 PM
yah, the real trick is in getting the most out of the limited amount of what you have.
As a reference, I remember the Red Faction dev claiming early on that their X360 game maxed the console. Heh, well, 343 Industries with Halo 4 also "maxed" the 360. There's a world of difference in quality between those two games. And they happened over 5 years apart from each other. probably more like 7 years apart. Other games like Rage and AC4 are testament to the type of advances that can be made on old hardware with software alone.
It's much the same here. Similarly, there'll be a future AC game that'll look significantly better than what we have now, even though they're working with the same hardware.
Also, as another point. Sony went on to say that GTA5 HD for PS4 takes "full advantage" of the PS4. I garuntee you when GTA6 hits the scene, the one made exclusively for the XO and PS4, it will surely mop the floor with GTA5 HD.
Context is really the big factor here. And while it's tempting to take these statements as deductive evidence of something, it's very easy to be mislead if you don't have a technological understanding of how this stuff actually works.
Last edited by Temjin001 on 7/9/2014 7:11:17 PM
I think we'll see plenty of these headlines in the coming months. Optimization, now that's another thing.
With all this talk coming from devs and optimization to come in mind, does anybody foresee this new gen lasting more than 5 yrs before the next machines hit the market?
If a new gen of consoles launch before 5 years time you'll find very few publishers jumping on board. It would basically be commercial suicide.
EDIT: and the last thing we need is more power. there's way more power than any dev needs to create anything they want. throwing more shaders and more pixels at us and such isn't going to do much at this point, especially for anyone other than the AAA studios. i hope this hardware gen lasts 10 years or more. It really sucks having these hard transitions.
Last edited by Temjin001 on 7/9/2014 2:37:49 PM
…and am I mistaken in claiming that most of the best rated games on PS4 right now, those being Rayman Legends, Resogun, Child of Light, Gaucomolee, and Transistor barely even tap the capacity of the PS4? Doesn't that say something about the necessity for power?
Very good posts from Temmy here.
These days there's a lot better tools for the new consoles so devs can more easily hit the ground running. There's also a lot more experience with multithreaded design now as well. Back when the 360 and PS3 hit the scene parallel computing wasn't nearly as common ground as it is today. I imagine many experienced devs from that era had to school themselves on concurrent processes. To reference that, I remember reading an interview with Ted Price that with Resistence FoM they didnt even touch any of the PS3's other processors other than the PPU on the PS3. But as they grasped parallel computing and developed tools to more easily monitor system resources they made big computing advances on future projects.
It was a big change of thinking having to schedule many jobs across multiple processors/threads than it was in prior eras where one beefy cpu did all the work. Now devs have all that experience that carries with them into the new gen. There's no paradigm shift so to speak.
…unless of course VR headsets take off.
Last edited by Temjin001 on 7/9/2014 2:32:30 PM
Doubt it. Unity doesn't look anywhere near as big as Witcher 3, and the new Zelda looks as big as Witcher 3. So either everyones lying or the Wii u is stronger than pcs, ps4s and xbox ones.
the hell?
…do you really believe it can only be one of the two outcomes you just framed?
news flash: the Wii U is NOT stronger than any of the systems listed. period. no ifs ands or butts about it.
…so, um, yah, everyone MUST be lying. that's it.
Last edited by Temjin001 on 7/9/2014 5:28:01 PM
It sounds like they mean they were able to do more with the new consoles, so they took advantage of the opportunity.
Simple as that.