So true ... i'm waiting for the 21th reveal to confirm all the rumors so i can jump ship and never look back .
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So true ... i'm waiting for the 21th reveal to confirm all the rumors so i can jump ship and never look back .
That's for two reasons. One, society perpetually reinforces competition and a 'winner versus losers' mentality. It's ingrained in culture to celebrate the best and completely overlook the other runners, even if the differences are minimal. When you can stick a metric on that comparison to judge them, such as 'most sold', it's easy to identify the 'winner'. Two, many entering the discussion have a platform affiliation and, like sports, gain a vicarious sense of achievement by siding with a winner, and thus defend their choice as protecting their adopted sense of achievement, which in turn colours much of the discussion for neutral contributors.
The concept of 'winner' is the same as 'best' - it needs to be measured against a given metric. Wii won this generation in terms of profit even if not in terms of total units sold (once the generation is out) or total hours spent on machine. One console might win tie ratio, another total sales, another most fun had by players (although good luck getting a metric on that to compare platforms!). As far as the corporations producing these things, the only metric is profitability, which may also be across the wider business, such that PS3's lack of profitability in the console space may still have been a win for Sony in terms of BluRay. With consoles straddling so many markets now, there are lots of ways for them to earn cash. A console that sells decent numbers with absolutely fabulous content sales is probably a better win than a console that sells gangbusters with no ongoing revenue, so the strategy of any console company may even intentionally accept lower platform volume for higher revenues. As such, it's a mistake for anyone to assume that a console maker is looking to be the best selling platform and to judge their hardware relative to that target.
Pfft. If IQ was the single biggest factor when it came to gaming preference then you and those millions would be gaming on the PC.
Obviously 10s upon 10s of million of gamers choose consoles over PCs for a variety of reasons. Visual quality isn't one of them.
When the most powerful console hardware starts dominating sales on a regular basis then my opinion will change.
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of course I play on PC too, as the most of core gamers;
I can afford both consoles but I don't want two console with some games in one and some in another, I want the best console and one games library for it; it's not an achievement to side on the winner console, it's a smart buy to take the best one, simply
if durango will be a 1,61 TF with 8 GB of GDDR5 or 16 GB DDR3+eSram, I will choose xbox because of I like more occidental games than japanese, but if we are on 1,2 vs 1,84, 8 GB DDR3 vs 8 GB GDDR5, I don' care about halo or gears, I'll be fine with the best version of multiplatform games.
that is, that we are
Microsoft knows, if they choose to save 1 dollar per console but to disappoint the core, they loose my dollarS, a lot of dollars, good luck to they.
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The goal is high software attache rate.
The core gamer is more likely to procure game software and extra controllers. The core gamer is more likely to gravitate to a higher spec machine or if he owns both platforms buy 3rd party games on the higher spec device.
GrimThorne
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Well...........it was only a matter of time before we got around to this.
Bagel seed
Veteran
Being 'successful' as a concept means you have a goal your company has set out to achieve. There's no such thing as being a success or failure without a goal to measure performance relative to as a reference point.
MS didn't intend to make money on the original Xbox. They wanted only to get a foot in the door and they were very successful there. Sony wanted to dominate the 360 and Wii in all regards as they had the past two generations. That was their goal, along with using PS3 to make BR the dominant medium for games/movies. They were massive failures in the former and largely successful in the latter. Both had goals to make money this gen. Sony totally failed that endeavor, MS has been more successful. Both tried to open up their gaming offerings to broader audiences. MS was successful, Sony was not.
My point is you guys talking about successful consoles are doing so in a wholly meaningless, naive fashion. Without a goal to measure your performance by, the notion of success/failure doesn't even exist.
just some thoughts.. My 21st predictions
recap-Xbox 360 - ring motif, connected, online features and services,
Xbox Infinity - infinite possibilities, connected+, modest specs, PaaS/cloud rendering/computing/AI *enhancements* using Azure infrastructure, (as 2nd gen software features) using display planes and new APIs/ DirectX update, Private cloud streaming functionality of interactive/non interactive content. heavy integration between xbox and windows systems in private and public cloud.
Less of a console launch and more of an ecosystem launch..
recap-Xbox 360 - ring motif, connected, online features and services,
Xbox Infinity - infinite possibilities, connected+, modest specs, PaaS/cloud rendering/computing/AI *enhancements* using Azure infrastructure, (as 2nd gen software features) using display planes and new APIs/ DirectX update, Private cloud streaming functionality of interactive/non interactive content. heavy integration between xbox and windows systems in private and public cloud.
Less of a console launch and more of an ecosystem launch..
Ha I noticed that too. I dismissed the 384 bit as being too large?
People are going too much into specs which is not be all and end all. My biggest problem with Microsoft is their vision. IMHO xbox was better in a way than 360 and 720 is not looking as if it will change my mind. Obviously they are targetting larger and different audience. But as a gamer for me there is little intreset in xbox.
Anyways they will do what they believe their strength are and what is good for them. Lets wait and see
Anyways they will do what they believe their strength are and what is good for them. Lets wait and see
Well these figures are just total guesses on your part. The move engine blocks are probably not that big a deal at all, I would figure negligible cost for those not $20 (hell when they were first discovered people were trying to downplay them saying all GCN GPU's already contain something similar, the Durango ones might be just slightly modified/beefed up)
The ESRAM cost MIGHT be a decent guess. But I think the key there is that silicon cost should fall while RAM cost generally wont. So MS might gain a bigger cost edge after some shrinks than initially.
At the end of the day the cost difference between 8GB DDR3 and 8 GB GDDR5 is going to be very significant. It's probably $30 vs $120. And BOM differences tend to be multiplied in retail pricing (partly why you pay $100 more for the hard drive equipped model of Xbox when it probably costs $25 more)
As I've said all along I dont know that you'll necessarily see that difference in pricing though, MS can pocket the difference, there is Kinect 2 pack in costs to consider, etc etc.
Also as a million people have written, MS probably initially saw DDR3 as the only way to get to 8GB feasibly (these plans may have been laid years ago, 8GB GDDR5 may have seemed impossible back then). And if they wanted to reserve 3GB for non-gaming functions, they needed 8.
Well just for RAM, it should still be around half as much, to go all the way to 16GB!
Just as 8GB of DDR3 was probably half as expensive as 4GB GDDR5!
16GB DDR3=$60, 8GB GDDR5=$120 in my estimation.
Now what the ESRAM block costs is a different subject.
I realize it's quibbling but could easily end up 100 million or more units, even. 360 is close to 80 million now (I believe it's shipped 77 or 78 million so far, with presumably more to go)
Of course we dont know what will happen, maybe it will be massively popular and do 150m, or get harpooned by PS4 and do 40m...
On 100 million consoles, if you can save $10 per, you just saved 1 billion dollars over the lifetime.
Similarly PS360 usually shipped 12m+ per year in their height, those clamoring for "just $50 price drop" should realize 50X12=$600 million of lost revenue in just one year.
Well it doesn't make sense, no. I would rather see MS burn a few more dollars on the hardware, yes. I think it would pay off as an investment with greater lifetime profits.
But it's up to the company goals. If MS wants to be mizerly while others want to be spendthrift, it is what it is. Maybe it's why ms makes 6 billion dollars every quarter while sony is usually in the red?
I think the goal now is more to lock you into their ecosystem and to make it as difficult as possible to leave it. Do that and you have a customer for life.
Interesting analysis, but lets not forget there's also something to gain there. When Mom and Pop's are helping make purchase decisions in the crucial holiday seasons, Kinect 2 pack in could sell a lot of units.
I dont necessarily think core gamers are as turned off by MS non-core stuff as message boards have you believe. I'm def a core gamer, and I stay with Xbox because I like the controller and online better, and because of Gears and Halo. Kinect didn't ruin anything for me, for sure. And I even have a little interest in it at times (whenever I get a workout phase going, I always figure to try some of those Kinect fitness games, even though I never actually have yet). You could argue the last 3 years of the 360 have already been marked by this non-core focus, yet 360 still does ok (you could also note it's not doing spectacularly either, I guess).
also, i think the core will always be served by third parties, and maybe that's the way to go. boardies tend to overrate the importance of exclusives imo. activision and ea will give the core their bf's and cod's, and those are a bigger deal than exclusives.
i even think it's overblown. boards act like kinect is all ms talks about, i do remember one e3 that was pretty bad, but for the most part kinect stuff has been the minority of time spent at e3.
Yes, this is honestly true. Those super giddy over a 50% possible Durango flops deficit, should think back to Xbox-PS2.
I would say Xbox was 2X (or more) as powerful as PS2, easily. It had 64MB of RAM vs 32MB to look at one crucial parameter. Yet they were often treated as same class machines. The differences we haggle over for Durango Orbis are not that large in a worst case scenario, neither of these machines has 2x the ram even if you take worst/best case os reserves (EG 5GB Durango, 7.5GB Orbis, worst/best, when reality could end up 6GB:7GB or even less gap easily).
That said, I will still be hoping for any small shred of an overclock or RAM increase on Durango.
(((interference)))
Veteran
The thing is will Durango losing every single DF faceoff have any significant effect? Negative word of mouth on Durango being the weaker console is probably more important than the small visual disparity between games running on both.
And also remember that the PS4 also comes with PS Eye in the box, which is superficially like Kinect and I doubt your average gamer will be able to know the difference in capabilities between the two - especially if there's also some Dance Central type game available for PS4.
And also remember that the PS4 also comes with PS Eye in the box, which is superficially like Kinect and I doubt your average gamer will be able to know the difference in capabilities between the two - especially if there's also some Dance Central type game available for PS4.
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