Middle Generation Console Upgrade Discussion [Scorpio, 4Pro]

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No matter what you think (or anyone else) exclusives will be a factor (either small or large in deciding is debatable).
I never said it doesn't factor in at all. I personally don't like discussing it because it's so subjective. You say many small titles outweigh the few bigger ones. Someone else will just say it's the other way around, that's my point. You will both have valid arguments for your views, and neither is wrong! Then it just spirals downwards from there. I don't think I've ever not seen that be the case, but you and others are welcome to try.

So I take it as a default fact that may or may not sway particular people, but hard to end up with a good discussion regarding. I never said I didn't want to discuss it because it's some how a 'win' for some side hence I'm not going to discuss it.

My point with Ps now was that it just muddies the water even more, and some people will be ok playing the odd ps console exclusive that way. How many big or small, just like the exclusives are an unknown factor. Hence I prefer to just leave it at console exclusives, and even then not go down that path too far, there just a given.

You seem to think that I'm arguing for ms or something. Last year I'm sure people thought the same but for Sony.
Most of my views as to why I think the 4pro will 'ultimately be successful' defined by the company, hold true for Scorpio.
I'm more of an advocate for iterative consoles, but also find the differences in approach intriguing, and what the merits and cons for each are, etc.
Currently also find the discussion around Scorpio interesting, because it's not out yet, and it's a lot of speculation, deductions, and conjecture to be discussed etc.
I've only once ever said that I think the Scorpio may outsell the 4pro, but that's because of marketing or availability, not because it was better so it's going to 'win'.
 
Personally I'm looking forward to what kind of VR/MR proposition Microsoft will show at the E3. Or any other thing that is beyond just traditional gaming. For Sony, what kind of major titles will fully support PSVR.
 
I understood the Pro, it offers a simple nice upgrade at a reasonable price. It's a clear product in my mind. With Scorpio it seems to me they are offering a similar product but with better results at a substantially higher price. If it sells more than Pro I will be shocked. The only reason it might is if it's life-span is substantially longer because if you're suggesting MS will struggle to get below £200 with XBO then what is the bottom price of Scorpio which doesn't have a Kinect you can throw away from the build cost!?
I personally think that once x1s hits £200 rrp, that it will only get lower in sales. That's because I believe that £199 is the magic price for consoles, and also gives scope for sales.
If ms wants to make the value proposition higher, I believe their more likely to drop the 500GB sku and make the lower end £200 a 1TB sku.
So it's less about racing the price to the absolute bottom, but adding value.

We don't know the price of the Scorpio, but I personally like to discuss it from the higher end of the price point. Because I find that more interesting, the lower the price the easier it becomes to 'sell it' to people.
So what do they need to do to make it successful as defined by them (or my interpretation of what they've said) at a higher price point. Even though it may only be say £50 more expensive than a 4pro for all we know.

4pro at 4k I find to be easily the best console experience at the moment, especially for the price.
4pro at 1080p yes it's better but not hugely so in my eyes. So then it becomes is the difference worth the extra money. (much like the discussion around Scorpio) and is it worth a little future proofing
If the games at 1080p were consistently running at 60fps, I would find that more compelling at 1080p, I suspect that the games may be CPU limited though.
 
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I find a little perplexing that there have been multiple people in this thread that have convinced themselves that Scorpio will be way more expensive than current offering. MS has said very little regarding price. Not enough to extrapolate it's price. I would hope those individuals at the least would refrain from posting hard numbers here as fact. Maybe someone should create a poll thread for that kind of discussion?

Tommy McClain

Sent from my LG-H634 using Tapatalk
 
Ok, I'm out now - no more about why I think Scorpio is a bad console or why I think it could be great (because that involves PCs which for some reason is not allowed to be included in the discussion).
Feel free to stay in the discussion and respond goonergaz. I don't think you've attacked anyone in your commentary, or said anything that is inciting anger or anything. A big of part of discussion is that people will disagree with you, it happens to me all the time. And I've been ganged up on a few times as well when I first started on this board, felt like I was just responding left and right trying to stave off some sort of assault on my person. But that was often because we weren't talking the same things, or when I let non data based arguments come into play, and people are quick to jump on me for it.

And over the 3 years, I've been learning where the pit falls are, asking more questions, learning more about the topics and I run into those situations less, I still run into them, but less, and often with less severity. The best part of B3D is that you don't get instant banned for making a mistake here, you get a good heaping amount of time to learn how to conduct ourselves before mods step in. It takes a lot of craziness and general disregard for the other members to be banned from this board.

In ending, I encourage you to keep posting. Especially if you have more to add.
 
I personally think that once x1s hits £200 rrp, that it will only get lower in sales. That's because I believe that £199 is the magic price for consoles, and also gives scope for sales.
If ms wants to make the value proposition higher, I believe their more likely to drop the 500GB sku and make the lower end £200 a 1TB sku.
So it's less about racing the price to the absolute bottom, but adding value.

We don't know the price of the Scorpio, but I personally like to discuss it from the higher end of the price point. Because I find that more interesting, the lower the price the easier it becomes to 'sell it' to people.
So what do they need to do to make it successful as defined by them (or my interpretation of what they've said) at a higher price point. Even though it may only be say £50 more expensive than a 4pro for all we know.

4pro at 4k I find to be easily the best console experience at the moment, especially for the price.
4pro at 1080p yes it's better but not hugely so in my eyes. So then it becomes is the difference worth the extra money. (much like the discussion around Scorpio) and is it worth a little future proofing
If the games at 1080p were consistently running at 60fps, I would find that more compelling at 1080p, I suspect that the games may be CPU limited though.

I don't know, I only have 1080p but appreciate the advantages Pro offers me (in both standard gaming and VR). I really don't think 4k is worth pursuing (with the current and Scorpio hardware limitations), I'd rather checkerboard with more effects...but that's just me.

I find a little perplexing that there have been multiple people in this thread that have convinced themselves that Scorpio will be way more expensive than current offering. MS has said very little regarding price. Not enough to extrapolate it's price. I would hope those individuals at the least would refrain from posting hard numbers here as fact. Maybe someone should create a poll thread for that kind of discussion?

Tommy McClain

Sent from my LG-H634 using Tapatalk

Apologies, from my PoV I have been quoting a leaked price but of course that is just a rumor - I suppose it started when I said it'd never sell any decent numbers at that price and the discussion has followed from that.
 
I don't know, I only have 1080p but appreciate the advantages Pro offers me (in both standard gaming and VR). I really don't think 4k is worth pursuing (with the current and Scorpio hardware limitations), I'd rather checkerboard with more effects...but that's just me.
You've misunderstood me, or I wasn't very clear.
I'm not saying that 4pro is or should be rendering 4k native or anything of the sort.
What I'm saying is, that on a 4k display I can see a bigger difference (however it's produced) to what any other console is able to produce.
I'm also not saying it's not worth it at 1080p, or especially vr. I think like 4k displays, vr probably gives the biggest impact compared to ps4.

I think 4k (displays) & VR the 4pro easily shows it's worth.
For me it's little less at 1080p, not saying there isn't any.
If the games at 1080p was consistently at 60fps, then the value would be just as high as 4k & VR.

All this is especially the case for someone upgrading from ps4 depending on if you have 1080p, 4k TV, VR, Imo.
 
You've misunderstood me, or I wasn't very clear.
I'm not saying that 4pro is or should be rendering 4k native or anything of the sort.
What I'm saying is, that on a 4k display I can see a bigger difference (however it's produced) to what any other console is able to produce.
I'm also not saying it's not worth it at 1080p, or especially vr. I think like 4k displays, vr probably gives the biggest impact compared to ps4.

I think 4k (displays) & VR the 4pro easily shows it's worth.
For me it's little less at 1080p, not saying there isn't any.
If the games at 1080p was consistently at 60fps, then the value would be just as high as 4k & VR.

All this is especially the case for someone upgrading from ps4 depending on if you have 1080p, 4k TV, VR, Imo.

Out of interest, what size TV and what viewing distance? I'm curious because I find it hard to believe unless sitting up close the difference can be perceived (especially when something is in motion). I remember when people said the same going from 720p to 1080p but the difference going 1080p to 4k should be even harder to see (in theory).
 
Out of interest, what size TV and what viewing distance? I'm curious because I find it hard to believe unless sitting up close the difference can be perceived (especially when something is in motion). I remember when people said the same going from 720p to 1080p but the difference going 1080p to 4k should be even harder to see (in theory).
ehhhh... this is a tough one. There are a couple diagrams that do this. I think each person will honestly perceive it differently. I was just at a Costco the other day looking at TVs, 4K HDR ones, and yea from far away the detail is impeccable, but up close it looks way different from my Panny Plasma that I'm used to.

I'd say, it might be best to test the sets and get a feel for it. I've still yet to see 4Pro running 4K native HDR on a 4K set. I want to see it though, I need to know what this looks like. It's entirely possible while I can on paper justify things, in person might be a completely different story.

And motion resolution is still a thing. I haven't seen the numbers for that (4K sets) quite yet, but I want to be sure of a TV's motion resolution before I buy in.
 
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Out of interest, what size TV and what viewing distance? I'm curious because I find it hard to believe unless sitting up close the difference can be perceived (especially when something is in motion). I remember when people said the same going from 720p to 1080p but the difference going 1080p to 4k should be even harder to see (in theory).
Thinking back most 720p and 1080p sets were the same size or very close.
4k TV's seems to have jumped in size but I'm guessing viewing distance hasn't gotten a lot bigger.

I've only seen 4k in stores, and that's obviously not at a good distance away. So to me the difference is big, may not be representative though.

For me personally I would like to have 60fps at 1080p, maybe even more so than a better 4k30 image, upscaled or native. Not saying every game 'needs' to be 60fps.

my set up is probably not average.
tv is 2-3 metres away depending where I sit. That's what I'll be replacing with 4k TV, probably min 40+ inches. Not given it much thought yet, I'll think about it when I come to change it later in the year.
92"+ 1080p pj, sitting about 3-4 metres away.

edit : never been good at judging distance
 
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Out of interest, what size TV and what viewing distance? I'm curious because I find it hard to believe unless sitting up close the difference can be perceived (especially when something is in motion). I remember when people said the same going from 720p to 1080p but the difference going 1080p to 4k should be even harder to see (in theory).
I have a 50' 1080p Panasonic plasma - and I sit about 3 meter away. I can only start perceiving the pixels if I move closer at 1.7 meters.

So - I got thinking it makes no sense for me to upgrade to a 4K TV, unless it is about 80-100 inch diagonal, AND a price under 1500 USD. That would probably be in 3-4 years?
 
I have a 50' 1080p Panasonic plasma - and I sit about 3 meter away. I can only start perceiving the pixels if I move closer at 1.7 meters.

So - I got thinking it makes no sense for me to upgrade to a 4K TV, unless it is about 80-100 inch diagonal, AND a price under 1500 USD. That would probably be in 3-4 years?

I am not sure simply seeing pixels is the right metric to decide on a distance where a higher resolution would not benefit.

Let's take aliasing, this is a shimmering pixel(s) at the geometry edge, pixel size they are tiny yet we clearly see them much further back than you can resolve a pixel by eye. I think 4k where there will be motion within this pixel detail will be noticeable at similar distances just because our eyes detect motion so well.
 
I am not sure simply seeing pixels is the right metric to decide on a distance where a higher resolution would not benefit.

Let's take aliasing, this is a shimmering pixel(s) at the geometry edge, pixel size they are tiny yet we clearly see them much further back than you can resolve a pixel by eye. I think 4k where there will be motion within this pixel detail will be noticeable at similar distances just because our eyes detect motion so well.
I would rather game devs solve this antialiasing issue ingame, than me having to solve it by buying a 4k TV...
 
It's one thing to scale the visuals, which is a concept that extends back to the 1980s, but it's another to have makes fundamental decision about what the lowest common specification that can run your game in. Developers have had to do this on PC for a long time and many devs/publishers have had to make decisions like making 6Gb or 8Gb RAM the minimum when a third a Steam users have 4Gb or less, or dropping support for dual core processors because the game just will not run.

This is very different to scaling the visuals and is the problem I am talking about. Assassin's Creed Unity would not have worked on 360/PS3 because those machines just could not render the several hundred NPCs on screen needed for an immersive revolutionary Paris. How long before the need to support Xbox One holds back developers for exploiting Scorpio?

Given the CPUs in the consoles are so relatively underpowered, GPU is often the only place to put certain processing tasks. This is not the case for most PCs.

And again, the X360/PS3 is irrelevant in this discussion of a rolling generation. Developers wouldn't be required to support them, although they'd have the option to if they wanted. They'd need to have support for the consoles that released after the X360/PS3. While it wouldn't have 8 GB of ram, it'd likely have come with between 2-4 GB of RAM. The current gen consoles released with over double the amount of ram available on high end GPUs at the time (7970 had 3 GB) and 4-8x the memory of the GPUs they were directly correlated with (7770 had 1 GB and 7870 had 2 GB). GPUs at the time had between 256 MB to 1 GB of memory although 1 GB was very rare.

Speaking of memory. You have to include system memory in your calculations. Greater than 83% of PC's on steam have more than 4 GB of system RAM. Greater than 98% of users have 1 GB or more of VRAM. Greater than 55% have 2 GB or more of VRAM.

At 1080p console settings, games rarely need more than 2 GB of VRAM. And with tweaks to graphics setting will happily run with only 1 GB of VRAM. At 720-900p (what the hypothetical pre-current gen consoles would likely run at), there'd be no problems supporting a current generation title on the hypothetical console WRT to memory requirements.

AC: Unity is also perhaps the worst (or best) posterchild of this. As it is by far the worst optimized and worst performing title (along with the first Watchdogs) released so far this generation on PC. Users had problems getting consistent frametimes much less consistent framerates on PC. And that's with some users using dual Titan X and i7 CPUs in the 4+ Ghz range. Even the minimum requirements have a CPU that is far more powerful than the one in consoles. AC: Syndicate actually reduced the minimum requirements.

We can also look at another example of a current generation title that takes advantage of technology advancements available in the current gen console GPUs. Technology advances that weren't even available on PC until a few years after the release of the consoles due to graphics API limitations on PC. Doom 3. It is incredibly well optimized. And as a result it'll even run on a Radeon 9550 (a 2004 era GPU).

The biggest issue would have been how reliant are modern games on actual hardware differences when scaling to lower quality levels. Doom shows a case where a developer can take advantage of new technology while still scaling down extremely far. AC: Unity obviously shows the opposite. However, would that be still be true if they were required to support that hypothetical console. Would they instead have put more time into optimizing their game and engine? Or would they have just not bothered.

That's a hard question to decipher as consoles are the primary target of development. There's no use in supporting older consoles as there is no compatibility. This effect is seen when you look at ports to PC which developers spend the minimum amount of time doing. GPUs will be mostly in the same generation (GCN1) of the console GPUs. So there's not much that we can infer from that.

However, what about a console title that while it had an X360/PS3 release had an update that did not support X360/PS3? GTA V. The updated engine cannot run on the previous generation of consoles, it's just not possible. However, this was a release that was initially developed for PC and ported to console. I use this as a good case in point. It's a large open world and it is one of the better looking titles of this generation. It's also a title that would have been required to support the hypothetical console (while something like Horizon Zero Dawn would only have had to support PS4). And when you look at the minimum requirements, it supports the 4870 (a 2008 era GPU).

Or how about Battlefield 4? It features large levels, great graphics, and needs a 3870 at low end. This would be a great example of a developer taking advantage of new technology while also optionally supporting 2 generations into the past. It's a good example of a launch title. One where you won't have a lot of time to optimize heavily for the advances in GPU technology.

Battlefield 1 later in the generation shows a much better grasp of the technology and in the case of PlayStation wouldn't have to support PS3. Would support of a hypothetical Xbox console launched between X360 and XBO have completely precluded the development of the game? Probably not, as it runs just fine on a 5870 (a 2009 GPU) on low settings despite the minimum recommend specs listing a 7850.

When looking at Exclusives. I'd argue that the developers that actively take advantage of new technologies would follow the Doom, GTA V, Battlefield 4 and 1 examples. They'll want to take advantage of the newest features and will find a way to make it work on the older console. Multiplatform developers will have varying degrees of desire or capability of doing this, pretty much exactly the same as it is now.

Also note, that titles released around this time frame wouldn't necessarily be required to support that hypothetical console anymore. IE - on the PlayStation Side, the only consoles that would have required support would be the PS4 and PS4-P since late last year, while on the Xbox side it wouldn't be dropping until later this year.

At least to me, it shows that if the developer is willing, they can take full advantage of a new generation (in as much as any developer can in the first few years of that generation) while still ensuring compatibility with a previous generation.

BTW - an interesting link.

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=es&ie=UTF-8&u=https://www.computerbase.de/2017-01/radeon-hd-7970-290x-fury-x-vergleich/2/#abschnitt_benchmarks_von_skyrim_bis_battlefield_1&edit-text=

A lot of current generation game title releases will happily run on a 2009 era GPU. Benchmark scores there aren't meaningful however due to the settings and resolutions used. They may or may not run on a 2008 era GPU (Radeon 4xxx) due to API and GPU driver limitations. A limitation that wouldn't apply as it does in the PC landscape in the case of a console.

Regards,
SB
 
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Heh, yes a long reponse. And it isn't mean to say that prior to now that it was feasible or necessarily a good idea to go with rolling generations. Just that with the technology available at the time, it certainly was possible. And isn't without precedent as it happens all the time on PC, which is why it's used to show the viability of something like rolling generations.

A lot of factors in play that would have made a 2009/2010 "rolling" generation console not feasible. For example, AMD weren't competitive at all in x86 CPUs. Intel CPUs would have done just fine, but they come at a price premium.

While it was certainly technically possible for something like this to have started as early as the Xbox generation, the costs involved weren't as favorable for something like that as it is today. The first Xbox could have been a good starting point, but the hardware proved expensive and cost reductions were blocked by NVidia, and I'm going to guess Intel as well. Which prompted them to change things up for X360.

How to handle the OS was also an issue. Sony have gotten much better on that front with the PS4 OS, but PS3 OS was pretty bare bones and bloated compared to X360. PS2 OS was even more minimal. While MS had a history of writing OSes they hadn't done anything on the scope of the XBO. That being a multiple OS system under a hypervisor in a performance critical situation (much more so than a business OS virtual environment).

There's a lot of things converging that make it feasible for one or both companies to think about something like that in an economically feasible manner.

BTW - this also doesn't mean that this is absolutely going to be what one or both console makers decide to do. It's just speculation on the possibility and why it would or wouldn't work.

Regards,
SB
 
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Heh, yes a long reponse. And it isn't mean to say that prior to now that it was feasible or necessarily a good idea to go with rolling generations. Just that with the technology available at the time, it certainly was possible. And isn't without precedent as it happens all the time on PC, which is why it's used to show the viability of something like rolling generations.

A lot of factors in play that would have made a 2009/2010 "rolling" generation console not feasible. For example, AMD weren't competitive at all in x86 CPUs. Intel CPUs would have done just fine, but they come at a price premium.

While it was certainly technically possible for something like this to have started as early as the Xbox generation, the costs involved weren't as favorable for something like that as it is today. The first Xbox could have been a good starting point, but the hardware proved expensive and cost reductions were blocked by NVidia, and I'm going to guess Intel as well. Which prompted them to change things up for X360.

How to handle the OS was also an issue. Sony have gotten much better on that front with the PS4 OS, but PS3 OS was pretty bare bones and bloated compared to X360. PS2 OS was even more minimal. While MS had a history of writing OSes they hadn't done anything on the scope of the XBO. That being a multiple OS system under a hypervisor in a performance critical situation (much more so than a business OS virtual environment).

There's a lot of things converging that make it feasible for one or both companies to think about something like that in an economically feasible manner.

BTW - this also doesn't mean that this is absolutely going to be what one or both console makers decide to do. It's just speculation on the possibility and why it would or wouldn't work.

Regards,
SB

As an aside, I consider the XBO OS the equivalent of the bloated PS3 OS. I expect the next iteration to be exponentially better than anything we have now.
 
As an aside, I consider the XBO OS the equivalent of the bloated PS3 OS. I expect the next iteration to be exponentially better than anything we have now.

Yeah, I'm not at all sure where it's going to end up but Microsoft continue to put a lot of working to trying different things with the non-game OS. Some of it makes me extremely sad. Snap, for example, was one of my favorite features. Waiting to see how its replacement turns out.

Regards,
SB
 
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