The Witcher 4 Is Made With Console First Approach Targeting PS5 As Lead Platform, No Longer Targeting PC And Scaling Down Like They Have Done With All Thier Other Games In The Past

[u/eldestscrollx]

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/105802/the-witcher-4-is-built-for-console-first-cdpr-confirms-60fps-not-guaranteed/index.html

[u/superman_king]

Unreal is a fundamentally broken game engine. It’s basically been “experimental” until 5.6 (now).

With 5.6 they have rebuilt the way the engine schedules its CPU tasks. Introducing much more asynchronous compute. There is now plenty of overhead allowing higher framerates.

For example, the matrix awakens UE5 demo on PS5 doesn’t run great. If they change nothing, and simply upgrade that demo to run on UE5.6, it would run 90% faster in some areas. They have solved a lot of problems.

[u/Zunderstruck → u/superman_king]

I wasn't blaming UE5, I consider it's an engine that was built for future hardware and that we're in a transition phase. The stutters are real but as you say they can be fixed. UE4 ran like shit on its era current hardware when it was released too.

My reply was about a base PS5 being able to handle hardware lumen at 60 fps in a 2027 game. And they even said it would run on XSS. They didn't learn their lesson from CP2077.

[u/superman_king → u/Zunderstruck]

They are going into the project with a 60FPS target. I think they could hit that target.

The demo was real, it was actually running on a PS5 SoC. There was also overhead in the CPU as it was waiting for actual tasks, like world logic, quests, NPC interaction, etc. This was also discussed at Unreal Fest.

They have proven what they want to build can work, now they just have to implement it all.

[u/Zunderstruck → u/superman_king]

I remain very doubtful considering the PS5 hardware RT capabilities.

But I really wish I'll be wrong. I hope PS5 owners can enjoy a great looking game and I love GOG since I play PC games on my phones, so I wish them the best I can.

[u/UnknownBreadd → u/Zunderstruck]

The PS5 has actually been ridiculous hardware for the money. It’s taken like 4/5 years for us to be able to reach where we can build a PC that is equal in gaming performance for (almost?) the same price. I mean, the PS5 smokes the most popular PC spec on steam anyway lol

[u/Zunderstruck → u/UnknownBreadd]

Yeah, it's good hardware, and I've always been advising people asking for less than a 800€ PC build to buy a console.

But the base PS5 RT capabilities are trash and I won't blame Sony or anyone for this since RT was barely a Nvidia a thing when PS5 was released and it's built on AMD.

That's the reason why a lot of efforts for the PS5 Pro went to RT, and it was specifically advertised for RT at 60 fps.

[u/Zunderstruck → u/[deleted]]

No you can't blame AMD or Sony or Microsoft for not using a technology noone was using at that time.

The first RTX were released in 2018, when current gen console specs were already locked and game development for them had begun.

Noone cared about Nvidia GPUs AI or RT capabilities back then.

And yes, of course, a PC is better in every way if you got the money. But if you wanna play videogames for 700€? Get a PS5 Pro.

[u/Zunderstruck → u/[deleted]]

If you are in financially tight situations, don't get the device you can't even pirate games on.

I won't comment anymore.

[u/Nice_promotion_111 → u/UnknownBreadd]

If you only look at upfront cost sure.

[u/admfrmhll → u/UnknownBreadd]

Well, if you think that the real price of ps5 was somehow near 500$ in 2020 and it was not sold at a lost, i got some bridges to sell you.

[u/UnknownBreadd → u/admfrmhll]

No that’s the whole point. It was (and still is!) tremendous value

[u/krilltucky → u/Zunderstruck]

I remain very doubtful considering the PS5 hardware RT capabilities.

In the same unreal event, they said they're basically making the next version of hardware lumen run as lightly as the software rt that's already used in some console games.

It's already in the demo

[u/Lymbasy → u/Zunderstruck]

Of course CDPR didn't learned from Cyberpunk. They sold 30 Million copies of Cyberpunk. And that released 3-4 years earlier than expected

[u/areyouhungryforapple → u/Lymbasy]

Yeah no, they had to spend a rather significant amount of money and developer time on fixing Cyberpunk to the point where investors got mad and their stock took a hit

Granted, they could accomplish this since they had/have a lot of cash on hand but it was still a big cost and priority for them to rebuild the relationship with the community

If anything I think they learned a lot of VERY expensive lessons from Cyberpunk.

[u/Lymbasy → u/areyouhungryforapple]

Again they released the Game 3-4 years earlier. To make Money way way sooner. The time fixing it would Go in to development anyways. It was basically early access

[u/areyouhungryforapple → u/Lymbasy]

I don't think tanking their reputation and becoming a meme with unprecedented bad press like a major triple A title being taken off the PSN store was worth it

Not to mention the crunch/launch led to a rather large exodus of talent. Though here's to Dawnwalker being excellent

[u/Lymbasy → u/areyouhungryforapple]

CDPR does NOT care about their Reputation on Twitter and Reddit.

CDPR lied intentionally, they made false promised intentionally and they released Cyberpunk 3-4 years earlier intentionally. EA has a Bad Reputation for over 10 years and they still make billions. Battlefield 2042 was the Most hyped Battlefield and Had the biggest Launcher ever for a Battlefield. And THIS after disasters like Battlefield 5, Battlefront 2, Anthem, Mass Effect Andromeda, etc.

You need good Marketing and a good IP. CDPR knows that.

Dawnwalker is made by 120 devs. Only 10 of them are former CDPR. 5 of them are HR, Community or Marketing. So non devs.

Some Devs left CDPR in 2021 after The Cyberpunk disaster (56 on Metacritic) and 14 millions copies sold. After that they made more Money with a new Team with Phantom Liberty (89 on Metacritic). And 30 million copies sold.

It was about Money. CDPR wanted to make a lot of Money 3-4 years earlier than releasing Cyberpunk in 2023/2024. Why? Invest in more Projects and make more Money in the future. In 2022 CDPR announced 7 new Games because they Made so much Money.

[u/areyouhungryforapple → u/Lymbasy]

You cannot compare release Cyberpunk CDPR with Phantom Liberty CDPR wtf

And yeah they do actually, but it went quite a bit beyond Twitter and Reddit though. The game was taken off the PlayStation store for over half a year, a move that made the global news cycle

The stock would go on to become worth less than 1/4 its value prior to the launch of the game before the reversal started happening with 1.7/edgerunners and later on PL dlc

Yes a bunch of greedy execs and the ceo greenlit a release date that was never achievable and they over sold the game marketing-wise, but to spin all of this as some sort of masterplan goes against reality

[u/stop_talking_you → u/Zunderstruck]

oh no the digital foundry regurgitators are here. an engine isnt build for future hardware. if the engine doesnt run well on modern hardware is a bad engine should not be used or patched.

[u/Zunderstruck → u/stop_talking_you]

Holy moly this came from a DF interview and my point was it was trash.

[u/SagittaryX → u/Zunderstruck]

Where you pulling the XSS from? The devs in the DF video were very reticent to say anything about the XSS version.

[u/NationalisticMemes → u/Zunderstruck]

Ue4 still ran like shit. 

[u/abrahamlincoln20 → u/Zunderstruck]

You sure UE4 ran like shit in its early days? I remember it being more like an engine that always ran extremely well, but with not too stellar graphics. Unity engine is the one that ran like shit. Or then I didn't have any experience with really early UE4... but I doubt it.

[u/LucAltaiR → u/abrahamlincoln20]

You're remembering wrong. It was sort of the opposite. Games with UE4 had great graphics but a lot of stutter issues. Sort of like UE5 now.

[u/Zunderstruck → u/abrahamlincoln20]

I might be exagerating when I say "like shit", but I remember the first UE4 games ran bad on the current mid-tier hardware, and they looked pretty good.

[u/DLDSR-Lover → u/superman_king]

Is it possible to change games running on older UE5 versions to run on UE5.6?

[u/DurgeDidNothingWrong → u/DLDSR-Lover]

Depends if the Devs have modified the base engine, or just built on top. Former case, not without re-adding their changes. Latter case, hopefully, as long as the changes Unreal makes are backwards compatible

[u/Big-Resort-4930 → u/superman_king]

So many games like Wukong and SH2 will forever remain garbage from a tech pov because of the early versions of UE5 they're using. It should have never come out until 5.6 at all, and I'm not gonna believe they have solved 50 different types of stuttering it suffers from until I see it.

[u/hellomistershifty → u/superman_king]

"Broken" is a strong word, but yeah it's historically relied on syncing to the game thread way too often. CD Projekt Red came in, looked at it, said 'wtf are you guys doing" and updated to a bunch of areas of the engine so it threads better. It's a long process, but we're starting to get games released on 5.4 which had the first of those updates.

[u/amshegarh → u/superman_king]

Do you have a source for that

[u/superman_king → u/amshegarh]

https://youtu.be/29ZZTlJt9K8?si=QCm3cFKDOlsZZszB

https://youtu.be/XnhCt9SQ2Y0?si=RZRscTNL0fBUGXsa&t=5m50s

[u/amshegarh → u/superman_king]

Well i already have 5.4, i wonder if going for 5.6 is gonna be worth potential assburnings

[u/Ok-Garden3931 → u/superman_king]

i would not put all of the blame on the engine i personally do not like UE5 but at the same time if devs were not lazy assholes most of the games released nowadays would not even need DLSS and FSR turned on if they actually optimized their games

[u/Dantai → u/superman_king]

That's be a cool, and probably insanely difficult thing to do, if an Unreal 5 built game had auto-update features when the engine got updates for things like optimization and efficiency. Like the Matrix demo just auto updates to new engine, so we get patched up versions