If Halo Infinite was developed natively for and really took advantage of the XSX (stated by Jason Ronald), then how does the XONE (with HDD) handle the next gen game DESIGNS?? Game designs are NOT scalable.
Is 343 going to make completely two SEPARATE versions of the “same” game?? Rumor has it the budget is $500 million after all.
Or is Infinite really going to have design compromises?? Hope that’s not the case. Would rather get 2 different versions.
At 1:02:30 Dealer said that he has heard that Infinite is “extremely demanding and the base consoles are not running very well.”
Halo means a lot to many of us… And it just upsets me that Halo Infinite will not reach its full potential game DESIGN wise just because it has to be on the Xbox One.
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> RDX: Xbox Series X Phil Spencer Reveal! Xbox July Event, PS5, Xbox Lockhart, Halo Infinite, Fable 4 - YouTube
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> At 1:02:30 Dealer said that he has heard that Infinite is “extremely demanding and the base consoles are not running very well.”
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> Halo means a lot to many of us… And it just upsets me that Halo Infinite will not reach its full potential game DESIGN wise just because it has to be on the Xbox One.
It’s also going to be on PC, and potential there is capped only by the power of whatever computer you’re using. Most computer games have graphic settings available. When I first got Oblivion, I had to play it on Very Low (Yep…), but my next computer could play it on Ultra. There’s not two versions of the game, just different settings.
Theoretically, they could design Infinite so that the same “Low/Medium/High” settings that you’d use on PC would be in effect there too - Series-X would be Very High, the One would be Medium or Low. Same game, but with reduced graphical settings on the One compared to the SX and PC.
Additionally, just because it “can be run” on a given platform, doesn’t mean it has to run well on top of that. For all we know the One could be capped at 30fps with framerate dips while the SX version would be running amazing. We’ll just have to wait and see for more info on that, maybe in July?
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> > RDX: Xbox Series X Phil Spencer Reveal! Xbox July Event, PS5, Xbox Lockhart, Halo Infinite, Fable 4 - YouTube
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> > At 1:02:30 Dealer said that he has heard that Infinite is “extremely demanding and the base consoles are not running very well.”
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> > Halo means a lot to many of us… And it just upsets me that Halo Infinite will not reach its full potential game DESIGN wise just because it has to be on the Xbox One.
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> It’s also going to be on PC, and potential there is capped only by the power of whatever computer you’re using. Most computer games have graphic settings available. When I first got Oblivion, I had to play it on Very Low (Yep…), but my next computer could play it on Ultra. There’s not two versions of the game, just different settings.
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> Theoretically, they could design Infinite so that the same “Low/Medium/High” settings that you’d use on PC would be in effect there too - Series-X would be Very High, the One would be Medium or Low. Same game, but with reduced graphical settings on the One compared to the SX and PC.
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> Additionally, just because it “can be run” on a given platform, doesn’t mean it has to run well on top of that. For all we know the One could be capped at 30fps with framerate dips while the SX version would be running amazing. We’ll just have to wait and see for more info on that, maybe in July?
The thing is, you’re talking about performance. I’m talking about design. Gameplay/level design. Performance is scalable, yes. The XONE version will have lower res and framerate.
But design is different. With the XSX specs such as the SSD, velocity architecture, ram, and etc. Game designs are taking new creative challenges.
Here is an example… May not be the best example but bear with me. Let’s take Halo CE Assault on the Control Room…
Remember when you had to cross the bridge, then take the elevator way down to meet up with your marines and drive a warthog?? You fight various enemies as well as a wraith.
Well, did you know speed runners can actually jump off that bridge in a specific way to avoid using the elevator?? This method prevents the enemies from spawning. Why is that?? BECAUSE they haven’t loaded in yet. Game design wise, the elevator portion was NEEDED to load in the enemies and the wraith.
** Whenever you’re in an elevator or a tight hallway in almost ANY game, it’s because it was put there to load in assets (enemies, AI, etc) for the NEXT big area.**
So when a speed runner SKIPS the elevator and just jumps down without dying, it makes sense why the enemies aren’t there. They were never loaded via the elevator.
Now with the XSX specs, that problem is fixed. Because the XSX is SUPER FAST, the enemies WILL spawn even IF the speed runner jumps off the bridge and AVOIDS the elevator. In fact, the wraith and covenants WILL be there BEFORE you even GET to the bridge.
So with that said…
If the XSX has the power to INSTANTLY spawn an entire section of assets like AI. Then why design the map in such a linear and limited way??? That’s the CRUX I’m trying to get at.
What’s the point of having that elevator if the enemies are already there in the 1st place. And THAT, is when developers can change level DESIGNS. Maybe there could have been an entire open field with enemies everywhere. Like on mountains and off in the distance.
Here’s another example:
Halo 2 Regret. Remember those underwater elevator rides? Those elevator rides were put there to load in enemies for the NEXT tower.
With the power of the XSX, that underwater elevator wouldn’t be needed because all the enemies WILL have been loaded in an instant. Thus, completely changing the map design.
XSX has an SSD whereas the XONE uses an HDD.
THIS is what bothers me. Graphics is scalable. But level designs like this are NOT. It’s possible that 343 can create TWO versions of Halo Infinite where XSX has COMPLETELY different level designs than the XONE. It’ll almost be a DIFFERENT game altogether. But, that probably won’t happen.
P.S.
The reason you keep seeing ‘Loading done…’ In Halo campaign is because the area you’re in finished loading assets for the NEXT area. XSX allows developers to avoid the “area to area” level design. Because it can spawn an entire level all at once. Which changes how a level is designed.
I love Halo… It’s my favorite franchise of all time. And that’s why I’m typing all this out. It’s because of passion. I just hope 343 finds a way to get the XONE version to work WITHOUT making any compromises from the XSX version.
HDD ain’t the issue here, unless loading times is what you define as game design. As for loading points, those will always exists. It might not be a long elevator run, but you still need those to tell the game when to spawn a set of something, like enemies or cut-scenes. I imagine that on Xone you just get a freeze frame while the next scene loads like in Half Life 2 - if they don’t want to devide the game like that.
No, the CPU on Xone and the bottleneck coming with it is what should concern you a little. XoneX is a powerhouse too, even to this day, but the CPU is still the same so devs have huge issues getting those sweet, sweet 60 fps running like it should.
There might be differences between AI trees complexity (think Reach campaign vs. Firefight), number of fauna, obviously framerate and some minor physics related issues. I’m not afraid of the XSX/S Version though, I’m afraid for the Xone one. … Pun not intended, I swear! Anyway…
I really doubt there are going to be differences outside of such CPU based systems. Map geometry and actual mechanics (including movement, physics, weapons etc.) shouldn’t be impacted at all. Open worlds run smoothly even with Xone FAT specs after all. We’re talking about consoles running on the same architecture keep that in mind! So what might be impacted is the level of detail ON the geometry, primarily vegetation. But again, that’s more of a Xone issue than a next gen one.
To be honest I feel like this is a topic that is sort of pointless to discuss as fans. Unless you/we have some real in depth experience of knowledge of game design and development of course. Not that I don’t get the concerns OP but I’m sure 343i has figured out how to make this work. Creativity leads to new solutions for new problems after all!
I wonder if the forge will be impacted by this, the budget may be limited because of the xone
343 has had a few years figure this out. I’m sure they came up with the best solution, whether it be a freeze frame for loading, graphics settings, or something else entirely. Their whole team likely looked into this and I’m confident the game will be playable well on both consoles; although, the XSX might have a few differences if MSFT is trying to incentivize an upgrade.
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> HDD ain’t the issue here, unless loading times is what you define as game design.
If XSX’s storage system (not just the hard drive) turns out to really perform as they’ve announced, and Infinite is designed to actively harness that power, then shorter loading times are likely to be among the least significant changes it will bring, and consequently old HDDs of the XB1 family will be a much more serious issue than one might think. Assuming MS was being honest, then XSX’s leap in storage performance is a qualitive change rather than a quantitative one, and can reshape mindsets for next-gen game developing.
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> If Halo Infinite was developed natively for and really took advantage of the XSX (stated by Jason Ronald), then how does the XONE (with HDD) handle the next gen game DESIGNS?? Game designs are NOT scalable.
Which brings the question of how much of XSX’s advantage Infinite will take? It’s unlikely they can actually squeeze every drop of XSX’s potential right on debut – that’s near impossible from an engineering perspective and a stupid move from a marketing one even if they pull it off (becuase that means people won’t see any more improvements throughout XSX’s lifespan). I guess Jason’s words were more PR than literal. Maybe he was refering to XSX’s raytracing and audio processing and dynamic CPU clocks and stuff?
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> And it just upsets me that Halo Infinite will not reach its full potential game DESIGN wise just because it has to be on the Xbox One.
Being on PCs should lead to compromises too, with or without XB1. Who knows, maybe 343i can make miracles happen. Or maybe 343i focuses on the XSX and contracts outsource studios to make other ports, like how Crystal Dynamic handled Rise of the Tomb Radier.
Whatever the outcome, I think there’s really no need to worry about “full potential” things in terms of game design. There’s no way for Infinite to be the pinnacle showcase of XSX even if it was exclusive – that’s not gonna happen until the end of XSX’s lifespan just like every generation. It’s also 343i’s first step into the new era of possiblities as well, so even if they do push their software and hardware to the limits, they are certainly not totally used to next-gen paradigms yet. So Infinite not “reaching full potential” isn’t really that much of a deal at all. Just not leveraging every next-gen feature won’t automatically make it a lesser game. In case Infinite does flop, amazing features enabled by XSX aren’t gonna save it either.
Honestly I think MS is looking for Xcloud to supplement the older consoles. Anyone still running the original xbox one could be playing the game through streaming as opposed to running off the machine itself, Xcloud is a huge strategy for MS and proving it definitely could be the next huge step for the industry like what netflix did with movies.
I think they are going to integrate xcloud into the base memberships into game pass/ultimate and if MS feels your machine (original Xbox one) isn’t good enough, they will stream the game to you. While I’m sure a lot of us serious gamers don’t like that, Microsoft is playing to a wider demographic with this, and chances are, everyday casual gamers might night even notice this.
Just my thoughts anyway.
I too have concerns about the xbox one holding back the design of Halo Infinite. I have said this before of this forum, I am lucky enough to be able to purchase the series x when it comes out. I am glad Halo Infinite will be playable for everyone who has the xbox one.
With that said, developing Infinite for Xbox one is holding it back. It is a fact. It would take advantage of more next gen features if it was developed exclusively for Series X. The same can be said for PC. If they weren’t developing for PC then 343 could focus all time and money on tuning Infinite for the Series X - not to mention the rumored Series S (Lockhart).
Overall, I am okay with it being cross-gen because multiplayer lobbies should be filled for a long time.
Game “designs” aren’t scalable, I suppose, in that a game like Skyrim couldn’t be scaled down to play on something like a Nintendo Gamecube (worth a - yoink!-, anyways). That’s just one arbitrary example that proves the rule that, within reason, boundary pushing games can’t be effectively run on old hardware.
I can see where you might be concerned about Infinite, accordingly. But I think that, like the last console gen transition, the sheer amount of radical, revolutionary improvement and advancement will be relatively limited. The biggest differences between this gen and next gen are likely going to be marginally improved graphics, higher and smoother frame rates, and the virtual extinction of load times, owing to the long awaited ubiquity of SSD’s.
Graphical assets and system resources are something that very much be scaled; PC games have always had to contend with a dizzying array of supported hardware of varying capability, and the Nintendo Switch has proven that devs can do some truly remarkable work “making do” with a proverbial potato to optimize their games on (Witcher III, Mortal Kombat 11, and Doom being three particularly impressive examples of this). So in terms of the fidelity of the game being “limited” by the Xbox One family’s capabilities, I’m sure the approach being taken is to design the game’s assets for the Series X, and then to scale back where needed to optimize for the lower power hardware. There’s half of the problem solved.
Back to the Skyrim on Gamecube example for a moment. The biggest reason this could never work (aside from the sheer absurdity of it) is that the old system architecture of the NGC simply couldn’t possibly handle something on the scale of Skyrim. In this sense, the fundamental game design truly did surpass anything possible for that platform, so scaling down to it just isn’t at all feasible.
Is Halo Infinite going to be the kind of radical, once in a generation (or two) game that redefines what the industry considers impressive scale? It shouldn’t be. Even if it is an open world or semi-open world game as has been so rampantly speculated, would anyone really want it to supercede the biggest open world games the Xbox One family is capable of playing? Do you want an even bigger than RDR2 sized map for Chief to explore in Halo Infinite? That sounds so foreign, aimless, and non-Halo to me, and it seems like a ridiculous thing to attempt coming off of the pedigree of pretty linear games leading up to it.
So; in conclusion. Halo Infinite will run blazing fast with almost no noticeable loadtimes with extremely high fidelity both graphically and performance-wise on Series X and high-grade PC’s. It will run with correspondingly lower fidelity and noticeable loadtimes on the Xbox One family and lower grade PC’s. Like every other cutting edge game since Crysis and earlier, it will be able to adapt to the hardware it is expected to run on (within reason) , without the higher fidelity versions of it having to suffer. Not at all an unprecedented situation.
I think that the game design will stay the same. Reduce or no physics element that are available on the most powerful plus they can introduce loading screen throughout the game for Xbox one freeze frame as people said. Maybe less AI display 2 the only thing they will try to do is to make sure that we can play the same multiplayer like PUBG on high PC VS low PC
I’d imagine we’ll see a similar scenario to Forza Horizon 2 which released for both 360 and XB1. The 360 version was noticeably paired back and different and I would guess things shall be the same for the original XB1. As an owner of the original large XB1 that personally that sits well with me even though I’ll likely be playing on this machine. There’s much potential in the open world approach but on dated hardware and with some folk on here expected a framerate of 60, well it can’t be expected that with such scope to come with all the bells and whistles too. It is my hope that the standard XB1 version runs at 30 frames to allow it to at least look relatively decent for people that still have older machine but MS also knows how enticing it shall be having a very clear difference between the machines. It’s a great opportunity for them to show a gulf in the same way Horizon2 felt comparatively inferior. I certainly don’t want a Halo game held back
I do recall however in Horizon 2 that it was also quite different regards to it’s freedom to drive just about anywhere and I’m guessing that sort of change wont sit well. I’m guessing each version of Infinity will be exactly the same in actual level designs but with various visual niceties cut back a whole load. But maybe it will be a different version like Horizon 2 meaning things wont be held back at for the new machines- I’d rather that myself
I think at this point though with MS and the older machines, they’re not so important other than to show a reason why people need to upgrade. With such disappointment felt for Halo5 campaign and now some 5 years work I’d imagine 343 have been driven towards innovating as much as they can. Even more so with the new hardware and this will mean somehow getting their game to work with older machines whatever the cost is to them
Developed for XSX, but ported to PC. But who knows, they may create it for both.
If anything I think they should do what they did for COD Black Ops 3 (most notable game that comes to mind). Strip the game down graphically and literally remove parts of the game for Xbox One if it can’t handle it. Or, make the original Xbox one not compatible (I can see that being the biggest issue) but keep the Series X and S compatible. I have full confidence in MS and 343. I think they know they can’t mess this up.
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> > HDD ain’t the issue here, unless loading times is what you define as game design.
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> If XSX’s storage system (not just the hard drive) turns out to really perform as they’ve announced, and Infinite is designed to actively harness that power, then shorter loading times are likely to be among the least significant changes it will bring, and consequently old HDDs of the XB1 family will be a much more serious issue than one might think. Assuming MS was being honest, then XSX’s leap in storage performance is a qualitive change rather than a quantitative one, and can reshape mindsets for next-gen game developing.
Look, I hope you’re right, but frankly you’re also just repeating the hopes I had well over ten year ago on PCs. To be fair on various 3D software not having a SSD is suicide. You get some interesting features with faster storage, from virtual RAM to cache histories. I can’t see that being used in gaming though. Maybe in features like Halo’s cinema and Forge? However, for once we got raw power on our hands, so I’ll doubt we’ll need such usages!
And on the pure gaming side of things? What are those practical approaches? In all those years of PC gaming I only saw faster loading times. This is my experience! And that’s also why I chuckled when Sony revealed its super fast SSD as a “trump card” to close the gap with XSX. It’s eSRAM all over again! Still happy we got them finally, but that’s more a quality of life kind of mentality. Download writing speed and installation times to say the obvious.
Outside of faster loading times though? Maybe we’ll see some gimmicks like those in the Portal mods that can only run properly with fast storages. Or even the much more impressive one we saw recently in the amazing R&C presentation during Sony’s stream. Still a gimmick though, and outside of such gimmicks I can’t think much of practical uses. On PC we got faster loading times and reduced bottlenecks based on the setup.
Consider this, devs create high end games that have to run on thousands of different configurations. And while it’s true that optimization on a specific setup will always be superior even with equivalent hardware, thanks to the same architecture scaling of features - from poligonal complexity to texture resolution - is a hell lot easier than you might think. Having the Xone and the PC market to develop for ain’t barely going to have an impact if not for more resources (but it also means they gather to a bigger audience).
I also read some comparisons about the 360 versions of Forza and Whatchdog, but those were different cases due to different architecture. In this case you can’t just scale assets down and hope it will work! Those two were developed on a Xone SDK and than ported on X360. Hi is developed on a XBox Anaconda SDK and than its assets were scaled down (and up) based on different settings. Two completely different processes!
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> > > HDD ain’t the issue here, unless loading times is what you define as game design.
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> > Assuming MS was being honest, then XSX’s leap in storage performance is a qualitive change rather than a quantitative one, and can reshape mindsets for next-gen game developing.
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> And on the pure gaming side of things? What are those practical approaches? In all those years of PC gaming I only saw faster loading times. This is my experience!
Shorter load times are the only things you currently observe because so far no games were designed specifically around fast storage systems, and more importantly, lots of SSDs are still using the SATA 3.0 standard just like HDDs. Under SATA 3.0, high-end HDDs typically have a maximum transfer rate of around 120MB/s (this is pretty much the limits of spinning disks regardless of interface standards), whereas high-end SSDs reach 550MB/s (near the limit of the standard). That’s of course an impressive improvement, but throw in PC’s fragmentation and HDDs in consoles, no wonder nobody’s really fully optimizing games yet.
And hard drives are only part of a machine’s storage system, or more precisely its data transfer abilities. When you run a game PCs, its assets are pulled from the hard drive to the RAM, then accessed by the CPU, or then gets further pulled to your GPU’s VRAM for your GPU (if you’re using an integrated GPU, data travels from your hard drive to a section of your RAM’s allocated to the CPU, then is copied to the section allocated to the GPU). For current and next-gen consoles there’s no data transfer between RAM and VRAM. Combined with much faster SSDs, much larger and faster GDDR6 memory pool, dedicated compress/decompress processors, custom packaging and board designs, PCs (even with PCIe 4.0 drives equipped) will need a fairly long time to catch-up with next-gen consoles’ data throughput performance.
Shorter loading times and lesser/none LOD pop-ups should be a given. For game design, what if you can load and run the entire map and AIs right at the beginning of a level instead of using sequential checkpoints to trigger pre-defined events, and have the world organically interact with you? In previous Halos you know a fight won’t start before you arrive, and rare countdown situations are all just lifeless timers pushing you to move on. With XSX’s powers you can feel truely immersed in a battlefield as a soldier where war unfolds in real time.
That’s of course assuming Infinite does fully take advantage of XSX and the console is really that powerful. I’m merely speculating what can be enabled by high performance storage. Realistically I don’t expect Infinite to actually be designed around it. I guess it’s gonna be a rather traditional linear shooter (with collectables and optional press-button-to-talk dialogs, since it’s said it’s gonna have RPG elements), just with next-gen visuals and audio with classic art style, so XB1 simply gets graphical downgrades. If not then either 343i pulls of the impossible or performance on the XB1 version will be very worrying.
I’ve always felt that compromising your artistic vision so that it’s available to a larger consumer base is loss for everyone involved. Even for those who dont have the capable hardware. It gives them something to look forward to knowing that when they do finally get a Series X or high end GPU a truly superior game is waiting for them.
If the vision for Infinite is really so huge that putting it on the Xbox One would compromise it, then I think it’d be fair to just sell the small scale arena multiplayer modes (or whatever other modes are viable on it) for a cheaper price. That way XSX and PC owners will get the experience they expect and paid for, and X1 players wouldn’t be left out completely either.
This is all assuming the vision for Halo Infinite is well beyond the capabilities of the Xbox One hardware though. At this point Halo Infinite could be a twin stick shooter for all we know… Except for the fact that it’s not a twin stick shooter lol…