Developers Question PlayStation 5 Pro's Validity - Base Model's Full Potential Not Unlocked

[T0@st]

The recent PlayStation 5 Pro specification leak has caused quite a stir—even games development studios were surprised by some of these details. Chris Dring (Head of GamesIndustry.biz) attended last week's GDC industry event, where he met many developers who "did not understand the point" of Sony's upcoming mid-generation console refresh. The most hardcore segment of the current PS5 userbase will likely enthusiastically embrace a more powerful variant, but Dring's observations indicate that development studios are not expressing as much excitement—over a refreshed model—as the gaming community. This topic was discussed during yesterday's GamesIndustry.biz Microcast—industry figures believe that the base PlayStation 5 model's full potential remains untapped.

This mirrors a debate over a possible upgraded Xbox Series variant—gaming fans have complained about restrictive 30 FPS performance, even on the more potent Series X console; but experts believe that developers need to spend more time optimizing their software or produce "truly next-gen" experiences. Dring's sources expressed doubt about the PS5 Pro's predicted ability to "grow the market" or "move the needle"—ultimately, Sony will make some more money and gain headline coverage post-launch. The refreshed variant is expected to reach retail later this year, but industry watchdogs reckon that momentum will be lost due to the absence of a system-selling title around launch time. Grand Theft Auto VI would be the ideal "killer app," but insider murmurs posit a delay into 2026.




Fast forward to the four-minute mark to listen in on their discussion of PlayStation 5 Pro rumors:

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[Denver]

Using the hardware's full potential costs money and time, son. That's not how we do things.

 

[Double-Click]

Considering on the PC side of things a 4090 is still ideal for 4K...no they are very much not true 4K gaming machines.
Sure there's more optimization to be had, but they only manage to just swing 4K 60 by lowering settings and/or upscaling as it is.

 

[konga]

A large part of the problem is where the specs are improving. Improving the GPU with 50% faster rasterization and even faster ray tracing ("2 - 4x", though probably only in specific microbenches) while only making the CPU 10% faster and not providing more VRAM makes for a heavily imbalanced system that will be hard to get excited for if you're a developer. Developers will have to work around the constraints of a 3.85 GHz Zen 2 CPU and 16GB of total system/video memory while trying to implement more advanced graphical features somehow. It doesn't sound very fun for them, especially when many console games are already struggling to deal with the slow console CPUs.

 

[cvaldes]

I agree that many game developers are doing a piss poor job at code optimization.

Hardware specs has nothing to do with it.

Xbox Series X is arguably the best spec-ced console hardware on the market today and yet Xbox lost the console wars generations ago. PlayStation has outsold Xbox pretty much every single generation head to head. PS5 is outselling Xbox X|S at a 2:1 ratio. And the wimpy underpowered "kid's toy" Nintendo Switch is stomping over Sony and Microsoft, now approaching 140 million units sold.

Like always, the answer is "Duh, content is king."

Xbox game devs need to step up and deliver appealing titles that use the hardware to its maximum capabilities. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is an example of a Switch title that has fulfilled this objective. In pretty much every major Nintendo console generation, there has been a late period game title that has fully exploited that hardware.

Xbox? Not so much. Clearly it is possibly, it really comes down to A.) how much developers care, and B.) competency. To be honest, I don't see a lot of either from much of the videogame industry.

Nintendo cares. FromSoftware cares. Remedy cares. Larian cares. Indie publisher Annapurna cares. Capcom cares and is mostly competent.

Therein lies the problem. Neither PlayStation nor Xbox is going to be a thriving marketplace of excellent content until the senior management of both companies decide to stop working with careless incompetents. Something has to change because whatever they've been doing isn't working and now there are mass layoffs in the videogame industry because many titles aren't recouping costs.

The hardware is fine. It's the people writing games for it who suck. Unfortunately some of the fault goes to people who say "PS5 Pro needs this hardware spec or that hardware spec". These are people focusing on the wrong thing. It's easy to add a few more polygons to a model, increase the size and number of texture maps. But in the end, how many polygons are painted on the screen isn't what makes a game good.

A lot of people will NEVER understand this. Including quite a few who get paid to write videogames. Pity.

 

[Denver]

A large part of the problem is where the specs are improving. Improving the GPU with 50% faster rasterization and even faster ray tracing ("2 - 4x", though probably only in specific microbenches) while only making the CPU 10% faster and not providing more VRAM makes for a heavily imbalanced system that will be hard to get excited for if you're a developer. Developers will have to work around the constraints of a 3.85 GHz Zen 2 CPU and 16GB of total system/video memory while trying to implement more advanced graphical features somehow. It doesn't sound very fun for them, especially when many console games are already struggling to deal with the slow console CPUs.

Almost nothing you said makes sense. The CPU is not a limitation in any way on a console.

The Nerfed FPU in PS5’s Zen 2 Cores – Chips and Cheese

 

[bonehead123]

Well, we certainly can't have too many software or hdrw-based improvements at the same time, since that would get in the way of the near-constant cash-cow milking from one "upgraded" version to the next, now wouldn't it

 

[cvaldes]

Well, we certainly can't have too many software or hdrw-based improvements at the same time, since that would get in the way of the near-constant cash-cow milking from one "upgraded" version to the next, now wouldn't it

Game console manufacturers profit very little from the base console hardware. Nintendo admitted this in the Nineties. The lion's share of the profits come from software sales as well as peripheral sales, things like $70 gamepads, travel cases, and merchandise.

New console hardware is intended to drive videogame title sales.

But if your videogame library sucks, then fewer people will buy the hardware. Although many here at TPU might be different, the average console gamer isn't buying Xbox Series X or PS5 for the hardware specs. This is why Xbox console unit sales suck. It has nothing to do with the specs.

 

[_Flare]

So, that guy thinks together with his unmentioned sources, that Sony is kinda stupid. But he oversees that the PS5 was not as impactful as one might think, the intended early spread and availability was hindered by scalpers and miners.
Also it only has an equivalent of a RX6700 non-XT plus some nice gimmicks. I do not consider that a strong Playstation in 2024 anymore. Again, similar journalist publication existed before and after the PS4pro launch and if Sony considered to do the mid-term refresh after 4 years again, they must see a point in that.

I agree that many game developers are doing a piss poor job at code optimization. [...]

And i think that will stay with a rather high percentage of Console-, PC- and mobile games, where Nintendo seems an exeption with its more proprietary ecosystem.
The trend of producing games with the nearly only goal of monetization but poor shamefull gameplay will continue.
I think in general, that the influence of art and creativity may rise again if there where more studios that do less production expensive games but more fun to play ones.
Maybe some engines will help at that, or maybe pure realtime rendering where the cost and time of baking and reiterating might be way lower so creative gameplay and stories may get more room again.

 

[konga]

Almost nothing you said makes sense. The CPU is not a limitation in any way on a console.

The Nerfed FPU in PS5’s Zen 2 Cores – Chips and Cheese

Of course it is. We just got a great example of this in Dragon's Dogma 2, a game that cannot go above 30fps because of a CPU bottleneck. There have been several others over the last few years too, like Plague Tale Requiem (until it received an optimization patch), Starfield, and Gotham Knights. Many people have been hoping that a PS5 Pro would allow games that are stuck at 30fps on PS5 to hit 60fps, but this is looking unlikely due to the lack of CPU upgrade.

 

[Denver]

Of course it is. We just got a great example of this in Dragon's Dogma 2, a game that cannot go above 30fps because of a CPU bottleneck. There have been several others over the last few years too, like Plague Tale Requiem (until it received an optimization patch), Starfield, and Gotham Knights. Many people have been hoping that a PS5 Pro would allow games that are stuck at 30fps on PS5 to hit 60fps, but this is looking unlikely due to the lack of CPU upgrade.

Your game, cited as an example of CPU limitations on consoles, exhibits stutter even on the most powerful processors available(7800X3D/i9). This issue is attributed to poor optimization.

The CPU is not a limiting factor here. The last generation consoles utilized a Jaguar architecture, equivalent to an Atom processor. If you attempt to replicate this configuration on a PC, regardless of the GPU, I'd bet any amount that you wouldn't be able to effectively run games from that generation.

 

[konga]

Your game, cited as an example of CPU limitations on consoles, exhibits stutter even on the most powerful processors available(7800X3D/i9). This issue is attributed to poor optimization.

The CPU is not a limiting factor here. The last generation consoles utilized a Jaguar architecture, equivalent to an Atom processor. If you attempt to replicate this configuration on a PC, regardless of the GPU, I'd bet any amount that you wouldn't be able to effectively run games from that generation.

You and I are clearly talking about different things. Of course Dragon's Dogma 2 is badly optimized. I never said otherwise. The fact remains that a more powerful CPU would make a difference, but the PS5 Pro's CPU upgrade won't be enough.

 

[cvaldes]

Of course Dragon's Dogma 2 is badly optimized. I never said otherwise. The fact remains that a more powerful CPU would make a difference, but the PS5 Pro's CPU upgrade won't be enough.

This type of attitude captures in a nutshell what's wrong in the videogame industry.

Let's just throw more hardware at the problem instead of actually writing optimized code that will run on that console sitting under peoples' television sets. This attitude is not sustainable. That's why people are getting pink slips.

We have people here at TPU (and elsewhere) actively defending incompetence.

Hey, I have a great idea, why don't we require new hardware for every single AAA game launch? That's right, a new $500 console a couple times a year for the Dragon's Dogmas, Jedi Survivors, Hogwarts, Immortals of Aveum, whatever. And for the PC kiddies, let's require a new $1500 graphics card. Again, twice a year when a new AAA game comes out.

As an indirect NVDA and AMD shareholder, I'm all for that.

Over the course of a typical console generation lifespan, seven years, that would be the original device plus maybe fifteen upgrades (two per year). Forgetting inflation, let's just say $500 x 16. That would be $8000 in hardware expenses alone. Yes, sounds like a plan, throw more hardware at it. Sure, whatever you say. And some people have both PlayStation and Xbox. Well, that's $16,000. Meanwhile, those stupid Switch gamers only shelled out $300 for theirs. Lame, huh?

And the PC gamers will dig deep into their wallets. $1500 x 16 is $24K. Just to stay up to date to play Dragon's Dogma 2? Really? Oh, but wait, there's also the CPU to change in PCs. Let's say $400 x 16 = another $6400. So over $30K of hardware to throw at based on this attitude.

That isn't just asinine, that's borderline insane.

What people need to do is to stop buying shitty games. For Cyberpunk 2077, gamers finally sent a message and CD Projekt RED went back and made an attempt at cleaning up their garbage. But since then people have been pretty complacent. Look at Redfall. It's still available for purchase but quite often, there are ZERO viewers on Twitch. That's pathetic.

And CDPR still reneged on a bunch of promises that they originally made. No multiplayer, tons of things that were supposed to function in the game that don't. It's playable. It's pretty. It even runs well on an RTX 4090 with DLSS 3 Frame Generation turned on.

Like I said, Switch is CRUSHING PS5 and Xbox. With a laughably underpowered SoC when it launched as many derided.

A perfect example of someone completely disconnected from reality.

 

[dgianstefani]

I agree that many game developers are doing a piss poor job at code optimization.

Hardware specs has nothing to do with it.

Xbox Series X is arguably the best spec-ced console hardware on the market today and yet Xbox lost the console wars generations ago. PlayStation has outsold Xbox pretty much every single generation head to head. PS5 is outselling Xbox X|S at a 2:1 ratio. And the wimpy underpowered "kid's toy" Nintendo Switch is stomping over Sony and Microsoft, now approaching 140 million units sold.

Like always, the answer is "Duh, content is king."

Xbox game devs need to step up and deliver appealing titles that use the hardware to its maximum capabilities. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is an example of a Switch title that has fulfilled this objective. In pretty much every major Nintendo console generation, there has been a late period game title that has fully exploited that hardware.

Xbox? Not so much. Clearly it is possibly, it really comes down to A.) how much developers care, and B.) competency. To be honest, I don't see a lot of either from much of the videogame industry.

Nintendo cares. FromSoftware cares. Remedy cares. Larian cares. Indie publisher Annapurna cares. Capcom cares and is mostly competent.

Therein lies the problem. Neither PlayStation nor Xbox is going to be a thriving marketplace of excellent content until the senior management of both companies decide to stop working with careless incompetents. Something has to change because whatever they've been doing isn't working and now there are mass layoffs in the videogame industry because many titles aren't recouping costs.

The hardware is fine. It's the people writing games for it who suck. Unfortunately some of the fault goes to people who say "PS5 Pro needs this hardware spec or that hardware spec". These are people focusing on the wrong thing. It's easy to add a few more polygons to a model, increase the size and number of texture maps. But in the end, how many polygons are painted on the screen isn't what makes a game good.

A lot of people will NEVER understand this. Including quite a few who get paid to write videogames. Pity.

The problem is the Xbox series S.

All games made for Xbox must also run on this.

So where is the incentive to make high fidelity or high performing games? The Xbox ecosystem is held back by this "MS shooting themselves in the foot" lowest common denominator, that didn't even sell well.

 

[cvaldes]

Another example of defending incompetency.

That's still doesn't explain why there can't be good games on Xbox.

Xbox devs need to write something that'll perform acceptably on Series S and Series X will have some extra frames and eye candy at a higher resolution. Devs writing for a multi-platform title need to focus on the weakest spec-ced device. This isn't brain surgery, that's common sense.

Exhibit A: if Fortnite is playable on Nintendo Switch, I don't see what the issue is. Someone (Epic) knows how to write a popular game that'll run on hardware with modest specs. I bet Fortnite runs fine on Series S (which is also really a 1080p/1440p box, not a 4K box). Switch is 720p handheld and 1080p docked. It's scalable because someone actually cared not because Device Q has 2.5M graphics cores.

And remember, we are talking about a long history of Xbox coming up short not just the current Series X|S generation.

Let me repeat: good gaming is not about polygon counts. If you think you have too many polygons for an enjoyable framerate, get rid of a few polys. Nintendo does.

STOP BLAMING THE HARDWARE. Hardware only does what people ask it to do. It's the people (game developers) who are the problem here, not the hardware. I know this is way too much for many people online to understand. But the fact that Nintendo has a deep portfolio of games for their wimpy Switch toy is proof positive that PlayStation and Xbox (and their developer/publisher partners) are being run by clowns for clown gamers who point at the hardware when the software sucks.

 

[Vya Domus]

The claim that there is still untapped potential is very bizarre. We're mid generation, console hardware isn't what it used to be, there are no novel pieces of hardware like the Cell or Emotion Engine, what more can you squeeze out of a Zen 2 CPU and RDNA2 GPU ?

 

[cvaldes]

The claim that there is still untapped potential is very bizarre. We're mid generation, console hardware isn't what it used to be, there are no novel pieces of hardware like the Cell or Emotion Engine, what more can you squeeze out of a Zen 2 CPU and RDNA2 GPU ?

And yet when Tears of the Kingdom came out there were multiple news stories about other game developers who looked at TotK gameplay and said "this shouldn't be possible."

Did Nintendo sneak in a 4090 under the hood when no one was looking? NO.

Professional web programmers are the ones who need to figure out the best way to make this stuff work, not random commenters on some Q&A forum.

Because the Nintendo guys can.

I know there are a lot of people here (and elsewhere) who brush off Nintendo and their consoles as "kids toys". Well, sorry, the people getting fired these days are mostly PS5, Xbox, and PC game developers.

And I know when Nintendo unveils their next generation device, many people here will stay the same damned thing they did in 2017, "Haha, what a pathetic toy."

(Disclaimer: I own a Nintendo Switch and game on Windows PC with a 4080 Super)

 

[_Flare]

[...]
So where is the incentive to make high fidelity or high performing games? The Xbox ecosystem is held back by this "MS shooting themselves in the foot" lowest common denominator, that didn't even sell well.

Sounds like you are 100% sure that there is no great game without high fidelity nor high performance. If so that is 100% wrong.
But there are genres where that higher similarity to reality is a factor, true. But that are mostly simulation games like car racing and such, also a poor but good looking sim is crap too.

 

[Vya Domus]

And yet when Tears of the Kingdom came out there were multiple news stories about other game developers who looked at TotK gameplay and said "this shouldn't be possible."

Tears of the kingdom is a pretty basic looking game and it doesn't look much better than breath of the wild

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Our household is very late to the Switch party, and my wife has always been a Zelda fan. She was watching a YouTube video of Skyward Sword, and she thought the game looked beautiful. Pretty telling that the graphics of that game was sufficient for her eyeballs. While great graphics will certainly help, the storyline and gameplay matters even more, IMO. Nintendo can make a living on Mario, Zelda, Kirby, DK, etc. No one is going to look at any of those games and call them graphically superior to the lead titles on Xbox and PS, but it simply doesn't matter. And just think how much overhead probably went into making Skyward Sword versus any AAA PS or Xbox title. In the end, Zelda is probably a much higher-margin cash cow.

Personally, I don't care how much better game graphics can get. I'm of the opinion that we're already past the point where the juice is worth the squeeze. It requires drastic investments in hardware to get the best visuals (considerably more than just a couple generations ago), and even then we're talking AI-gen frames, resolution scaling, and AAA titles with Hollywood-movie-studio-like budgets and timelines. Then we have Skyward Sword, which will sell just fine on a $300 console that comes with a built-in display. I know there's this need to drive hardware innovation and such, but it's becoming very cost-prohibitive, and it burns a good amount of energy to boot.

Also, while I have no clue how well it plays, you can get Hogwarts Legacy on Switch. I suspect that there had to be some optimizing to get that one to run!

 

[Vya Domus]

She was watching a YouTube video of Skyward Sword, and she thought the game looked beautiful. Pretty telling that the graphics of that game was sufficient for her eyeballs.

Aesthetically pleasing =/= good graphics.

 

[_Flare]

I think @Vya Domus has a point with "new/differing hardware" but that is the Switch for Nintendo.
Also beside some gimmicks even the PS4 was similar to a PC, different than the PS5 but still kinda similar.
Does Sonys SDK include something like the Work-Graph programming API? I doubt the XBox Series have that when DirectX just recently announced it.
May there be games on PS5 already launched from very competent studios almost extracting such a level of perf. and efficiency, i think the chance is higher than 0%.
Again i think throwing HW after poorly optimized SW is stupid, but there is a break-even somewhere, may it be developer plattform reach involving time, money or competence.
There is a limit on peak competence human resources somewhere.

 

[cvaldes]

I think @Vya Domus has a point with "new/differing hardware" but that is the Switch for Nintendo.
Also beside some gimmicks even the PS4 was similar to a PC, different than the PS5 but still kinda similar.
Does Sonys SDK include something like the Work-Graph programming API? I doubt the XBox Series have that when DirectX just recently announced it.
May there be games on PS5 already launched from very competent studios almost extracting such a level of perf. and efficiency, i think the chance is higher than 0%.
Again i think throwing HW after poorly optimized SW is stupid, but there is a break-even somewhere, may it be developer plattform reach involving time, money or competence.
There is a limit on peak competence human resources somewhere.

The videogame industry is seeing a lot of layoffs.

There are a lot of people in the videogame industry who don't know what they are doing and/or are just doing it badly. They should really find something else to do if they can't come up to speed quickly.

And none of this explains why Nintendo can pump out a portfolio of high quality titles, a point that has been ignored time and time again by PlayStation and Xbox apologists. We've seen plenty of that already in this discussion thread. Every time someone brings up Nintendo in a videogame discussion, people just pretend they didn't read anything.

Remember that the comment that PS5 has not seen extraction of its full potential COMES FROM DEVELOPERS not consumers. But it really does have to approach that "aha" moment just like when some developers watched Tears of the Kingdom and said "this shouldn't be possible." For hardware to be exploited to its maximum potential, it really needs to have moments like that.

There is none of that in PS5 or Xbox Series gaming.

All we see here is people rattling off spec at spec, technology after technology pointing blame at the hardware not understanding that the hardware does what people tell it to do. If a game is a stuttering awful mess, it's because human beings typed in instructions to the device that told it to generate a stuttering awful mess. If the humans don't like it, they can fix their mess. Or they can ship it and hope the consuming public won't think the stuttering awful mess is a big deal even though they paid $70 for the software and $500 for the console hardware. Because $570 for a horrible experience isn't so bad. Right?

 

[_Flare]

I agree, but Nintendo has a strong focus on gameplay and kinda unique looks, wich especially on a handheld console needs innovative solutions and some studios seem capable to do that.
For me it seems like way too much studios focus on expenses unneeded for the genres of their games, wich eats money and time better spend in gameplay and creativity.

 

[Totally]

Sony to devs: "Sounds like a skill issue."