i think both the PS5 and Series X have plenty of headroom where once devs are able to eek out more of its potential, we’ll see native titles hit 60fps and 4K without much difficulty. Returnal confused me at first, but I’m guessing with more time and knowledge of the PS5 SDK, they would have been able to hit a stable 60 with 4K. Even with all those particle effects. The game looks stunning regardless by the way.
When you consider that DLSS and VRR are coming to PS5, these will go a looong way to making games run smooth with high fidelity. So taking into account the specs on these consoles are very impressive and high end, along with devs still learning their way around the SDKs, I think all your fears will be assuaged.
Edit: and this being the perfect thread, if you look at what Naughty Dog managed to create with Lou Part 2 on a PS4, imagine what they’ll be able to do with the much, much, much better specs of the PS5 once they get a handle of it.
Its true that studios are still learning and we dont have enough examples at the moment
but i still think it could go both ways.
In a best case scenario, every single game would have a performance
and a resolution option, so people can simply choose between lets say 1440p 60
or true 1800-2160p 30 fps
But thats probably just unrealistic because this kind of option was already possible
on PS4 (Pro) for example but only a couple games used it. Most games simply forced you to use a specific preset
AND a lot of times even the games with performance modes still struggled with stable 30 / 60 fps.
And this is my fear for now. You know, not that the developers wont offer performance modes
but i fear a lot of times they will just call it performance mode or 60 fps mode or something like that
to make it sound like its true 60 fps but in reality what they mean is simply a unlocked frame rate
which doesnt mean that its stable 60 fps but that it can reach 60 fps. Thats not the same thing.
A Resident Evil Village with RTX on at 40, 50, 55 fps is not the same thing
as Resident Evil Village with RTX off at 100% stable 60 fps.
Not all PS4 60 fps games are actually stable 60 fps games on PS5.
The frame rate is just unlocked. And there are great examples
like Ghost of Tsushima, Judgment, Sekiro, Monster Hunter World and other PS4 games
that have perfectly fine 60 fps on PS5.
But there are also PS4 and PS5 games that dont have perfectly fine 60 fps on PS5.
The fear i have is not about graphics at all. Sony First Party exclusives
and so on are going to look better and better over the years.
But what about performance? A lot of the latest PS4 games (before the PS5 was out)
struggled with stable 30 fps on PS4 (Pro) because
the graphical quality simply pushed the machines to literally 100%
and there was no more headroom for performance,
which kind of made 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 fps nothing special.
The looks were always a more important goal than the performance.
So how is this going to be on PS5? Will they also push the graphical quality more and more and more
until the machine is at 100% simply because of the graphical quality
and be okay with the frame rate stuck at 45-58 fps instead of 60?
Because i dont like that idea.
Or will they acknowledge that 60 fps should be a main goal
and therefore leave a bit of headroom just for the performance?
If they go all in on the graphics, the resolution, the foliage, shadows, draw distance,
NPCs on screen etc, it will get harder and harder to reach 60 fps.
Sure, there still can be better optimization and resolution upscaling modes
but even that could be used to make the graphics even better, instead of using it for performance.
No one will force them to use the headroom from software updates to reach a better performance.
So my biggest fear is simply that we could reach a point where 'next gen 60 fps'
just means: its not locked at 30 fps. The frame rate is somewhere between 35 and 55 fps.
And that would be absolutely terrible in my opinion.
60 fps is not just the double of 30 fps, you also need way more headroom
so that intense scenes still have enough ressources to not tank the frame rate. The drop height is way higher.
Of course at the same time they want to upgrade the looks of these games
to make them look way better than PS4 games. And these two things,
a lot of performance headroom, and pushing the graphical quality beyond PS4 quality,
are pretty much working against each other. I'm a bit afraid of the results.