News & Rumors: Xbox One (codename Durango)

[Bagel seed]

Greenberg trolling?

https://twitter.com/aarongreenberg/status/396066138875912192

That twitter convo is something.

 

[XpiderMX]

Greenberg trolling?

https://twitter.com/aarongreenberg/status/396066138875912192

That twitter convo is something.

720p/900p rescaled to 1080p.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I wouldn't call 50%-125% res increase on two biggest launch tittles "some difference".

Human perception is generally logarithmic. A halving of sound pressure results in a moderate decrease in perceived sound. A halving of light results in a moderate decrease in perceived brightness. To actually get halfway between full and nothing (mid-grey between black and white), in the case of light, you need something like 1/100,000 of the amount of light.

50% less pixels does not equate to 50% 'worse graphics' when dealing with human perception. If people say they don't perceive much difference, than they don't, regardless of the numbers.

I can understand 720p being okay, but I do have to say, I find it a low standard in this day and age. Playing Diablo 3, which is 600p I think, weapons are chunky, crawling blobs. Whereas PvZ2 on my 220 ppi phone looks beautifully crisp. I want that crispness on all games. D3 would look a lot better at 1080p. I put up with less than stellar, aliased graphics last gen, and I'd like to put that behind me. The low power target of both consoles kinda puts the kibosh on that.

 

[kots]

Greenberg trolling?

https://twitter.com/aarongreenberg/status/396066138875912192
That twitter convo is something.

No , it's not trolling ...that's what happens when you 're content ,and take your customers for granted . Seems that a few successful years changed their attitude , for worse .
They'll find out , the hard way .

 

[ramr]

I dunno , 2014 would give them 22nm over the current 28nm. 2015 seems to be a dead zone for process nodes . Unless you think tmsc will actually have 16nm finet ready then.

2013 was always the absolute worst year possible to launch. I never understood it. MS should have launched in 2011 or spring 2012, with Yukon (4 GB GDR5, including valhalla chip) and made a product refresh all-in-one box using 8-16 GB HMC @500 gb/s 290 level tech in 2014 at 20nm. 2011 games would be forward compatible with 2014 box. Have 3 SKUs 360 at 99, Yukon at 250 and 2014 box at 499 dropping rapidly. Sony would be squeezed at all levels.

Given Sony's other issues, that strategy could dominated the market. NI in 11-13 might have been slightly lower (although given how stagnant 2012 and 2013 were I am not sure about that) but NPV would have been vastly higher.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

It appears that you don't understand how the console business works. The cycles are long because it takes that long to amortize hardware costs to acceptable levels and be able to make a profit. If you refresh mid-cycle, you're back to selling expensive hardware at a loss and you'll probably move far less units because of the higher price, too.

Also, anything weaker than the current level hardware would have been a disaster. Even now we have people complaining that the systems are far too weak, at a ~8x performance jump. Imagine what the reactions would have been to something like 2.5-4x performance... There would have been practically no visible difference between generations.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It appears that you don't understand how the console business works. The cycles are long because it takes that long to amortize hardware costs to acceptable levels.

If the hardware sells at cost, you make profit on the software. Then you make profit on the hardware with future cost reductions (depending on how that happens, refresh rate, etc). Lossy hardware massively eats into early profits, effectively making the early adopters a non-profiting service, just using them to launch the platform. Hence the possible alternative console model of less powerful, more frequently updated, non-lossy hardware providing an perpetual ecosystem.

This discussion is already underway here.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Shifty, the thing to remember is that console hardware is expected to become cheaper over time, while remaining just as able to run all the games. A large portion of the market won't buy in at the starting price and thus the vendors need to lower the price through the cycle. That can't be done if they refresh to more powerful hardware.

Cheapest X360 is now just $180. If Microsoft was to phase it out at $300 and reintroduce an early X1 at $500, they would have lost at least half their sales IMHO. Without enough units out there, the software sales will suffer too. It'd be suicide.

And again, a marginal refresh wouldn't allow a sufficient jump in visuals, and would only serve to mess up the life of developers and publishers.


The time for the new consoles is now. Even just a year earlier, the hardware would have been too weak; and a year later it would've been too long for a single generation and other vendors and platforms would've become a much bigger threat too.

 

[joker454]

I can understand 720p being okay, but I do have to say, I find it a low standard in this day and age. Playing Diablo 3, which is 600p I think, weapons are chunky, crawling blobs. Whereas PvZ2 on my 220 ppi phone looks beautifully crisp. I want that crispness on all games. D3 would look a lot better at 1080p. I put up with less than stellar, aliased graphics last gen, and I'd like to put that behind me. The low power target of both consoles kinda puts the kibosh on that.

If I remember right you are a ps3 gamer, so you have to remember that upscaling on ps3 in general is quiet terrible because they had to either do a quick and dirty upscale in software, or rely on the tv to do it which is also usually terrible quality. It was a constant problem I had when I owned a ps3 and the only way I was able to finally get good upscaling to my tv's native 1080p was to buy a new a/v receiver that specifically did high quality upscaling over hdmi, that finally solved the problem. The 360 didn't have that issue so upscales on that machine weren't as bad as they were on ps3, and presumably the xb1/ps4 will also both have similar high quality hardware upscalers. So in your case if you're relying on your ps3 or tv for the upscale, what you are seeing is probably worse quality than it needs to be.

 

[ramr]

Shifty, the thing to remember is that console hardware is expected to become cheaper over time, while remaining just as able to run all the games. A large portion of the market won't buy in at the starting price and thus the vendors need to lower the price through the cycle. That can't be done if they refresh to more powerful hardware.

Cheapest X360 is now just $180. If Microsoft was to phase it out at $300 and reintroduce an early X1 at $500, they would have lost at least half their sales IMHO. Without enough units out there, the software sales will suffer too. It'd be suicide.

And again, a marginal refresh wouldn't allow a sufficient jump in visuals, and would only serve to mess up the life of developers and publishers.


The time for the new consoles is now. Even just a year earlier, the hardware would have been too weak; and a year later it would've been too long for a single generation and other vendors and platforms would've become a much bigger threat too.

You obviously don't understand the market, business, or strategy as everything you just said was misapplied at best. You made some reasonably accurate statements of fact then completely botched the analysis with the exact opposite of optimal portfolio management, from both developer and manufacturer standpoints. And as Shifty said this is not the thread for the business discussion. I would be happy to continue in the other thread.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Cheapest X360 is now just $180. If Microsoft was to phase it out at $300 and reintroduce an early X1 at $500, they would have lost at least half their sales IMHO.

You don't have to phase it out. You sell it as an entry-level model.

So in your case if you're relying on your ps3 or tv for the upscale, what you are seeing is probably worse quality than it needs to be.

There may be something in that. My TV does a stellar job upscaling SD to HD and eliminating jaggies. Let's not pretend that upscaled is as good as native though. Upscaling is never crisp. BRDs look better than upscaled DVDs, and it'll be the same for games. How much of a difference and whether cause to choose a platform over another is subjective and down to personal preference.

 

[joker454]

Let's not pretend that upscaled is as good as native though. Upscaling is never crisp. BRDs look better than upscaled DVDs, and it'll be the same for games. How much of a difference and whether cause to choose a platform over another is subjective and down to personal preference.

In the case of movies it's not. In the case of games it can indeed be perceived as better if you do more in the upscale step than just upscale. You can't recover from a 320x240 to 640x480 upscale, there's just too big of a visual difference there. But past a certain point you get presented with the option of either going with higher resolution, or going a bit lower and upscaling with more sophisticated post process or aa options. Games can do that because they have access to all the data that built the scene to begin with, unlike movies which don't. That's where things get interesting because it gets more difficult to predict what the end user would more visually prefer.

 

[RudeCurve]

BRDs look better than upscaled DVDs

Not due to resolution alone. Blu-ray also uses much better encoders and at much higher bitrates. Also upscaling DVDs to 1080p is a huge step considering DVDs are 480P not 720P or 900P...

 

[tuna]

Regarding Greenbergs tweet, if that is the case, why not just stay with the 360 which does exactly the same.

 

[RudeCurve]

The X360 can't offer the same per pixel fidelity as X1 at the same resolution.

 

[XpiderMX]

And the Xbox 360 is slow, too much xD.

 

[Cyan]

Xbox One can be used as a media server. It supports HDMI PT + DLNA + Miracast.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/1/5...hdmi-pt-dlna-is-the-future-of-your-livingroom

 

[scf]

Their quote confirms only Play To.

 

[tuna]

The X360 can't offer the same per pixel fidelity as X1 at the same resolution.

You missed the sarcasm in my post....

 

[XpiderMX]

Their quote confirms only Play To.

I confirms Xbox One can act as play to renderer. We don't know the DLNA features supported by the system.