Watch Dogs: Legion - essentially identical on PS5 and Xbox Series X

Eurogamer writes:

Featuring a beautifully rendered open world recreating one of the world's most iconic cities, while leaning heavily into hardware accelerated ray tracing, Watch Dogs: Legion is one of the most technically ambitious games for the current cross generation period. The cross-platform comparison between the next generation machines isn't the most interesting head-to-head we've seen so far - PS5 and Xbox Series X are very, very close - but it's great to see ray traced reflections appear on Xbox Series S. Yes, we're getting hardware RT on a £250/$250 console.

[alextdarling]

More stability patches underway for both platforms this week.

Its so disappointing that this is capped at 30fps. I dont intend to pick this game up so not really a problem for me.

[potatoseal]

I won't be playing this game, but that really is strange. Considering all the other games are going 60fps, or at least giving the option to go 60 fps.

[Eonjay]

He states that the consoles had 60 FPS modes in the config files but have been disallowed for some reason. He also seems genuinely surprised that the Xbox doesn't out perform the PS5.

[WireMucks]

He is surprised because Alex is a MS shill,..

[ArchangelMike]

Isn't the Series X suppose to be powerful enough to run multiplatform games at significantly better resolutions and framerates than the PS5?

I thought this was the whole power narrative coming into this gen? But out the gate there doesn't seem to be a next-gen advantage on the Series X side of the fence when it comes to multiplatform games.

[solideagle]

Please stop...I am a PlayStation fan but bringing in every other article especially in launch games is unfair I think. wait for a year or so when all devs are comfortable with dev kits we will see the results. I am pretty happy with Mark Cerny's genius approach on designing PS5 but everytime there is a comparison article someone says that XSX was supposed to run better etc...wait 1 year I think

[SullysCigar]

^ I get both sides here, but this is a comparison video, so it should be okay to compare and validate what Mark Cerny told us and we didn't understand back on the 'Road to PS5' video.

Microsoft sold their console on the back of the slogan 'the world's most powerful console' and that's not what we're witnessing in real terms at a game level. In fact, the only notable difference is the load times, which take 45% longer on Series X/S compared to PS5.

In a year, we can talk about what's happening at that point. That seems logical and fair.

[Eonjay]

We were told over and over for much of the year that the difference would be staggering.

[Computersaysno]

If Series X is sold as the best multiplatform console then it needs to show clear evidence of that early on. PS4 early on battered Xbox One in most multiplatform games, it was obvious from the very off how this was going to play out and gap if anything only got bigger as time went on.

To me these early titles only show how small the gap is between Xbox series X and PS5. It's academic. A gap may appear later on but it'll be so small as to be entirely insignificant. Don't expect to be seeing future multiplatform Series X versions with lots more resolution and framerate, early games have already pretty much killed that idea.

[bouzebbal]

XSX one two 60 Tflops in the works.

[bouzebbal]

Solide

PS4 crushed X1 games performance wise since day one.. You could be PlayStation fan, but you can't deny what happened last gen.
Difference in power should be noticeable from the beginning.. What we have is the compete opposite, where PS5 is crushing the box..just look at Dirt 5 comparison.

[SmokinAces]

@solideagle

I appreciate your desire to want to stifle arguments, but do you honestly think if the article stated that Watch Dogs Legion was far superior on series x compared to PS5 anyone would be saying "just wait a year". We all heard for months how multiplat games were going to outperform PS5 in every way, turns out that was incorrect and we're not waiting a year to point that out.

[Sirk7x]

I think the problem is that third party developers might not want to spend the time to optimize their titles to take full advantage of either console if it's multiplat. At the very least, not on the Series X anyways. Install base is too small, Sony will undoubtedly have more units out, so it's not worth their time. It kinda sucks, because if it continues all gen, what does it matter how much more power the Xbox has if the devs think it's hardly worth the time? That's one of the reasons why we see games having performance issues that the PS5 doesn't.

[Babadook7]

“Isn't the Series X suppose to be powerful enough to run multiplatform games at significantly better resolutions and framerates than the PS5?”

Significantly? No. Although it was implied by the Xbox faithful, it was never looking like it would be a significant difference. X1X wasn’t even a significant difference over the cheaper earlier Pro, and this was looking about 1/3 as big as that, counting only it’s strengths.

[Neonridr]

we won't know until the gen is over. Using a handful of games and acting like that is law moving forward is silly. Right now it seems to not be, but it could also be the devs not wanting to waste time when they both look and run solidly at their current states. Time will tell if Series X games start rendering at higher base resolutions at all or not.

[Army_of_Darkness]

@solideagle

Wait one year to see if the series X can actually out preform the ps5?? 🤣 If the ps5 is doing equally as good if not better right now, what makes you think the ps5 won't do even better by then?? Demon souls is literally just the beginning.....

[FyBy]

Its little salty. But yeah. Its strange. Also for XSX being more close to the PC ecosystem (DirectX). Maybe it also its burden. And sign, that PC version is not also optimalized as PS5 one. Of course XSX will be pushed further next years, but so will be PS5. I trusted Mark Cerny, that he knew what he is doing. It seems so now. I think Super resolution (or how will AMD DLSS alternative be named) can also shuffle cards a bit in the future. Im very curious about it and about its implementation in XSX or PS5.

[Darthpaul84]

Why can’t all three next generation systems be good? Even the series s has a good showing here. I get ur point but at 4k 30 FPS both systems should perform similar. I’d be mad as a ps5 owner if it couldn’t.

[TheProblem]

I’d like to see nx gamers comparison

With ac Valhalla. He found that PS5 version had:

Higher quality shadows
Higher quality bloom effects
Held a higher fps
Held higher resolution

[Profchaos]

Yeah but this game screams boring it looks decidedly last generation besides the reflections and fr playing it on my ps5 and PS4 pro I'm just like meh it's not a good next gen upgrade it's clearly a last gen game that was delayed so much it had to launch on next gen systems.

[neutralgamer1992]

It's UBI what do people really expect? Here are few things about ubi

Their games drop in price quickly

They don't patch a lot of their games quickly or ever

They have micro transactions in single player games

And they barely release GOTY or complete editions with all the dlc post launch

[RazzerRedux]

Summary:

PS5 XSX have nearly exact same quality setting
Lower quality on Series S

Series X has lower anisotropic filtering than PS5. Probably bug
Puddles are missing in RT reflections on PS5. Puddles! Probably bug

Loading times
PS5 load time 18 seconds
XSX XSS 26 seconds

Resolution
PS5 and XSX same rez
XSS 900p to 1080p
XSS low quality ray tracing

Solid frame rates all around

[crazyCoconuts]

Starting to see those load times break more significantly in favor of PS5. I'm still wondering what technique Spiderman uses because that load time is in a class of it's own. Different API or compression or something...

[potatoseal]

Miles Morales load times are truly next-gen. 2 seconds from the menu to playing in the open world.

[SullysCigar]

Yup, Spiderman is crazy quick. Sony showing us what's possible. Just a case of waiting for the rest of the devs to catch up.

Even untapped, that's a massive difference between PS5 and Series X though to load Watch Dogs Legion..

[andy85]

Demons souls too, around 5 seconds from menu and under 2 seconds after a death. I guess the ones we'll see amazing times on are the first party ones where they are developed around the SSD

[Babadook7]

This is a good question. My gut level reaction is most developers aren’t using the I/O block and/or APIs weren’t available in time for them to do so.

[Neonridr]

we knew that games would load faster on PS5. Pretty sure that was well established. Would you think they would be slower? I'm glad to see both consoles are capable of loading games faster. My god, I remember playing GTA V on my PS4 and I swear I could go make a sandwich and be back before it was done loading.

[ED-E]

They propably just load ahead a lot more than it would be needed for the next gen systems. I doubt this will change much for cross gen games.

[Ju]

None of the 3rd party games will/is use(ing) hw decompressed dma-to-texture (I suspect). At least none of them do, yet. PS5 titles do, like Miles Morales and Daemon Souls (level loading). So all you get is a higher bandwidth shoveling data to system memory and have the CPU crunch through those in these games. Performance optimized sequential loading. PS5 fills that buffer twice as fast but still needs CPU workload on it hence the "modest" improvement over the XSX.

BTW: For a game to use that the whole IO subsystem needs to be designed around that. Most likely that is a lot of work for multiplatform (especially if they must support the PC as well). Its not just throwing some APIs at it. It requires fundamental differences how a game accesses assets.

[spdarksky]

Surprising that XSS can maintain solid 30fps with RT (albeit low res) when even XOX cant even maintain solid 30fps. Good gameplay on all platforms all around, but i expected 60fps gameplay instead of 30fps.

[BrettAwesome]

@TheLastRun
You wanna compare CPU's, then it's Zen2. Not RDNA2 😉

[waverider]

Dude the machine run the game at sub 1080p.... Who cares about rt. Its a waste of resources with almost zero impact. They should put all resources to get stable 1080p....

[ZeroBlue2]

Wow, really doesn't line up with the pre-launch narrative...interestering. Now if I could just get one. [email protected]#$ Walmart btw for giving us 5 seconds last night to get a PS5, and then removing it from my shopping cart while I was entering my payment information. There's really no excuse for all this, and I don't buy the fact that it's all "scalpers", that business model is only viable if the supplier continues to play along and drip feeding stock.

[Ju]

Not just scalpers. But if a couple of 100k people hit that server in those 5 sec, its probably a bit rough on compute ;) And same. Page went down for me right on time, and when it came back, all stock was gone.

[Profchaos]

Yeah fairly boring comparison no surprises at all to be found here just a run of the mill crossgen game that was probably not designed with next gen in mind given it was announced a few years back and the only next gen features seem to be rtx
Bouncing between this and Spiderman mm makes me look at their representation of London as flat and boring the city feels lifeless in a game that is meant to make you feel like your next hero is around the corner

[Ju]

Since this also runs non RT modes, they should have enabled a 4k60 mode (or at least a 1440p unlocked mode with RT - VRR).

[AmUnRa]

Problaly a "bug" again in the Xbox SeX according to DF again. O boy the SeX versions of third party games haveba lot of bugs....Time for DF call a spade a spade, it must be them tools..

[Father__Merrin]

This game is so incredibly details with so many npc there's no way this could be 60fps. Only the highest tier pc can run it at 60.

The fact there more or less same on PS5 series X give ps5 the win. We was led to believe series X will blast ps5 away and now we are being told by the same fans wait till 2021?

[S2Killinit]

The wait will never end.

[ArchangelMike]

My thoughts exactly. With the extra tflops of the SeriesX - aka "The worlds most powerful console" You'd expect it to be running the game at 4K 60fps!!! No?! Well what's all that power doing then?

It seems when it comes to the architechture, the PS5 (with less tflops) can match - and in some cases exceed, the power of the series X.

But I'm sure the xbox fanboys will have a convenient excuse why we should "wait till E3"... again.

[ocelot07]

"The worlds most powerful console"

They changed that slogan to "The most powerful Xbox".

[Sirk7x]

I don't think devs feel like putting the extra time into optimization when it won't make them any extra money. When multiplats just go for parity, any extra power is just not being utilized. Unfortunately, even if XSX is significantly more powerful, we'll probably see games running worse than PS5 if it doesn't sell enough to warrant the publishers giving a shit. Really unfortunate and not fair to gamers. Makes you think, how would these companies act if there was only one console and no competition at all?

[Ju]

They don't have to put the extra effort into it. Just the same amount. Wouldn't those 2 extra TFs in HW scale automatically? How can that be the tools if it is in fact a HW feature?

[SullysCigar]

Digital Foundry seem nervous with that headline. The fact is Xbox Series X takes 45% longer to load the game (presumably the same after deaths, fast travel, etc.) which is 8 seconds longer every - single - time.

[pingthing]

I was hoping that both consoles would perform better here, especially with a 30fps target. Can't help feeling a bit underwhelmed. :/

[S2Killinit]

So all the talk about series x being more powerful was a bit premature.

[russo121]

Now the excuse is if it runs slower in xsx then it's a bug, well, MS has presented it's fans with the most bugged console system ever released.

Or... is it the tools?

[Sirk7x]

I think it's devs not seeing specific optimization as being worth their time or investment.

[Chevalier]

Notice DF suggested a bug for Dirt 5 as well. Yet when anything looked better on the One X over the Pro they hammer it home.

[WireMucks]

Not premature,.. just MS BS marketing campaign,.. They lie about everything ,.. since mid 360gen and cicus de solei kinect crap,..
Only time that xbox was actually pretty good was first 2-3 years into 360 genetration,.. And only great thing MS ever did for gamers is to force Sony to lower the price for both SKUs,..

[waverider]

Not really. The ps5 loads 45% faster then the x. Not 5 or 10%. Sony didnt lied to its gamers about the speed of ssd. Its a reality from day one.

[TheTony316]

FPS, graphics and resolution are identical. PS5 has a 8 sec loading advantage.

[headshotfrosty]

I’m guessing that XBSX has development issues. PS5 is probably a bit easier to develop for based on dev feedback on tools. Per DF and pure tech knowledge there’s no logical reason for this otherwise. There isn’t some magic sauce in either console and both have solid builds in terms of hardware. Worse case they’d be exactly on par but hardware alone will not make PS5 inherently perform better. Just won’t. Xbox being more powerful means nothing if devs can’t optimize however I think as things go on we will see slight gains from MS. Could be wrong but that’s where I’m at. PS5 will still dominate however overall this gen. It’s game over in terms of pure sales between them.

[SullysCigar]

I'm not so sure. Cerny's presentation (that was largely written off as boring) is making more sense with every new game released. There are key differences over and above CU count, but you're right to suggest that alone make the Xbox less easy to develop for.

The scrubbers, the reduced bottle necking and the clock speed are all elements of the PS5 architecture that look after themselves, requiring no additional work by the devs and delivering noticeable benefits.

The Series X loading 45% slower than the PS5 isn't to do with the tools or the developers of this game either, it's just the difference between the SSDs in the two consoles.

The Dirt 5 devs, Code masters, have denied delayed or incomplete tools being an issue, so I honestly think that what we have now is what we can expect for the gen, considering both consoles will see improvements in many areas as the years roll on.

[Destiny1080]

The Series X has split CPU clusters, The PS5 are unified
The Series X has split memory pool, The PS5 is unified
The PS5 cache scrubbers, will not only make coding easier for developers but is one of the main reasons why the PS5 will reach its full Potential, CUs do lots of waiting around doing nothing, while waiting for data, by constantly feeding them with data potentially all CUs can be maxed out on the PS5
PS5 Rumor, RDNA 3 feature, infinity Cache
Also a 25% faster GPU

[headshotfrosty]

Loading 45% slower??? Show me where, in more than one instance consistently..

[SullysCigar]

^ @headshotfrosty, it's literally right there in the Digital foundry video on this very article.

That's why I pointed it out in this comments section and that's why I used the words "this game"... there's no need to be upset with me, but it's fine if you want to doubt DF's testing - I can't prove it's right any more than you can prove it's wrong.

[Sirk7x]

Question is, do devs WANT to optimize for Series X? MS has an uphill battle with this. Publishers all last gen saw games selling far less on the platform due to Sony's incredible lead, so they probably allocate less resources to Series versions of games, especially considering that they have to develop two different versions. It's becoming evident no one is going to spend the time to squeeze every bit of performance out from the XSX that they can, if it's not going to make a ROI. I'm not sure what MS could do to even remedy this, other than pitching in for dev, delaying their versions of the games, or offering incentives.

[headshotfrosty]

I can agree with this

[Atticus_finch]

Ps5 matches and outperforms xsx while 1st party exclusives are way ahead any other game. The ps5 is an impressive machine at a lower price tag.
Let the excuses continue.
A) "it's too early to tell"
Didn't stop PS5
B) "The API hasn't been updated"
Doesn't make sense given Ms is a software giant. Simply an embarrassing excuse.
C) "Devs are lazy"
This also applies to the people making the ps5 version.
D) Ps5 was more cleverly designed and clearly outperforms "The world's most powerful Xbox".

[Gunstar75]

How is it a lower price tag... like for like?

[ApocalypseShadow]

PS5 Digital is $399. Series X is $499. That's what he's taking about. Series S is irrelevant to the conversation about power. Power that 12 teraflops in the Series X is supposed to be displaying.

[Atticus_finch]

How is it not?

[Sirk7x]

Digital version is same hardware but cheaper.

[tontontam0]

"Series S is irrelevant to the conversation"
Looking at the specs of the series S it feels like microsoft is exploiting it's consumers. it looks like it is a great value because you don't have many choices. They could have drop the price more considering the power difference between the series S and the X.

for $100 you can buy the significantly more powerful ps5 digital edition console.
it's like upgrading from a gtx 1660ti to rtx 2080 the price gap of these two cards is about $400.

[tontontam0]

During the specs reveal
xbox gamers are like: architecture is similar, every mulitplat game will perform best on the beast xbox series x, ps5 sucks.

[Father__Merrin]

Anyone else notice the nuance in DF voices? Anytime they hesitatingly have to bring up Xbox version to par with ps5 version they always sound a little funny!!

I'd love to see DF specifically Alex to go through Polygraph test with on screen results akin to frame analysis...

[Gunstar75]

It because the x is more powerful and they Re struggling to understand the lack of performance difference

[RazzerRedux]

Maybe they are struggling to understand Cerny's system. They are not engineers. Cerny is.