You cannot go and count make believe MS fairy dust to inflate flops -- a flop is a flop. And there is no point pretending the pixie dust does crap until there is some real information on it.
There's also no point in assuming the pixie dust doesn't do crap until there is some real information on it.
MS invested 1/3 less in their GPU than Sony did. Get over it people, MS shifted their budget away from competing with Sony--very likely, based on their own leaked documents, BOM prices and Kinect are the center of the platform, no longer the core gamers who wanted the biggest and best in Xbox1.
TBH, I think you're being overly dramatic. If the design methodology was, ""F" enthusiast-class performance" why bother with the custom logic? Ostensibly, the whole reason these functional units were designed was to mitigate the effect of having less CUs and lower available bandwidth. If you don't care about performance at all, what purpose do these units serve?
I can accept the view of the Durango as presented to be a "jack-of-all-trades, master of none". That as a result of design choices made to support non-gaming functions, Durango is logically not going to be as good of a gaming device as it would have been had that been the sole or even the overriding focus. But, I think it's giving in to the typical knee-jerk everything is great/terrible, win/loss, black/white internet reaction to say that since gaming isn't the sole or dominant focus of this device that it therefore isn't even an important focus of the device.
I'd argue that maybe, just maybe, that assessment is a bit premature given how much we still don't know about the system at this point.
The cringe worthy part of all of this is Sony seems to have really embraced "multiplatform" development. Orbis is sounding like an easy platform to quickly port to and from the PC. This and Sony's hoard of 1st party devs should allow Orbis to stretch its legs.
Why cringe-worthy? I think that's great. This should be a boon for both platforms.
Durango? MS's strong suit has usually been not going esoteric. Now they find themselves the odd man out: Sony/PC are very similar and Durango comes trotting along with 2/3 the power and *demands* you bend over backwards to bring up to parity. I guess they still have Bungie ... FASA ... Ensemble ... Carbonated ... Flight ... oh snap, MS has a very limited portfolio of developers working on core AAA games. Hint hint.
What little feedback we have that has filtered back to the public from developers indicates they are enthusiastic about Durango. Should this be discounted since it doesn't fit with your narrative?
What did you expect from a platform that pretty much spits in the face of the most preferred gaming perspective (FPS) and spits in the face of it with Kinect and says "You do not need to be able to move! No controller for you! Or buttons!!"
I'm not clear on what you're railing against here. What control setups for Kinect games were you hoping for that didn't come to fruition because of MS's stubborn clinging to their marketing focus for Kinect? And, "spits in the face" reinforces my overly-dramatic assessment.
Embedded memory is there to address the cost of high bandwidth (high power, large pad) memory. MS wanted a lot of memory (OS folks, set top box) and it is hard to have:
* A lot of memory
* A lot of bandwidth
* Cheap
So you take 1 and 3 and solve the bandwidth problem on-chop with die space that will scale down. MS's design is cheap (RE: the leaked PDF wanted a BOM around $200 with the SoC at $50) and it opens the door to scaling. Cheap will become cheaper.
A larger, more power hungry GPU that would require better memory (wider bus, more expensive) but also not allow as much memory was not in the cards.
Durango, good or bad (and most people I know think good--but they are not core gamers), is really shooting for a different demographic. The design documents and console design all aim at keeping costs very low to push into being a major player in the set top box market. The savings on console BOM will allow a better Kinect devise and cheaper retail prices AND the huge amount of cheap memory means MS can go crazy with Apps (prediction: XBL will NOT be Free).
And before anyone back peddles about how a 1TF+ console is so awesome compared to 2005 when the Xbox came out--this is 2013. You can get a 2TF/s GPU at retail for $160 after all extra mark up (and it has a PCB, high speed memory, etc). The MS leaked PDF made it clear silicon costs were taking a HUGE cut and the Durango leak, if real, confirms this. Total area in silicon dedicated to core gaming is going to drop over 30%.
None of which prevents Durango from being a very good gaming device. Maybe not the best and if that's your only criteria, than perhaps Orbis would be a better option. Good for you, good for Sony. I don't see the problem.
My real concern as a gamer is if Sony comes out with a 50% edge in compute Durango will (a) suffer in IQ and (b) suffer in framerate, or both. The 360 regularly owned the PS3 in these areas and as a more core gamer it concerns me. The last thing I want is an entire generation--10 years, ouch--of torn frames, chugginess, and blurry crap.
No thank you.
If Durango doesn't represent as good of a value as a gaming device and the non-gaming functions don't add enough value in a consumer's perception to make up for that deficiency then there will be a viable option in Orbis. That's great. For those that do find value in those additional capabilities they will have a viable option, too. Everybody's happy.
