Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2018]

[Shifty Geezer]

There's other places that give OG Xbox framerate/times e.g. VG Tech.
Considering the amount of work that goes into DF and what they cover, I think it's more than fair for them to leave the OG up to others to do, and if your interested in that metric then you can hunt them out.
90% of the time the differences between OG and S are negligible at best.

That's one of the many reasons it's good to have multiple places doing it in the first place, including checks and balances.

Why pick the S model as base instead of the original? If you pick the original as the reference point, you cover all Xbox owners, with S owners knowing their experience will be at least the same. Same workload for DF; broader, more applicable results for readers.

 

[Sigfried1977]

Now had a chance to review both videos, really interesting stuff. There is some hyperbolic commentary in places like there the claim the Xbox One S framerate "tanks" while the onscreen counter shows 28fps which is just silly.

DF keep referring to the Xbox One S as the "base Xbox" but isn't S clocked higher than the original Xbox One? Maybe there is nothing in it but why aren't DF testing the original Xbox One, have they covered this before?

It's funny how last gen, anything that managed to hold an above-20-to-24fps graph was lauded (like Gears of War, Killzone2 or the original Uncharted), whereas now a 2-3 fps deviation is refered to as "tanked performance". But Hyberbole is what drives traffic I guess.

 

[iroboto]

Replacement theory for me I guess. Each OG Xbox upgrader moves to S or X. They don’t really sell the OG anymore so each year upgrades continue to swap causing the difference to shift by 2 instead of treating them as individual SKUs trying to increase their own share. There are 2 consoles gutting it’s numbers.

That being said, NPD showing that the X and a combined sales are blowing out previous years of sales when it was just the OG.

If the OG isn’t on sale anymore I don’t see a point in showcasing the platform. You cannot buy one anymore nor is it desirable to compared to the S as a base model.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

How many original Xbox One's were sold? Looks to me to be about 20 million. Have they all stopped working? Or should 20 million console owners be ignored as they're outdated?? For me, the obvious scientific approach is to cover the bottom and top ends of the spectrum.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Replacement theory for me I guess. Each OG Xbox upgrader moves to S or X. They don’t really sell the OG anymore so each year upgrades continue to swap causing the difference to shift by 2 instead of treating them as individual SKUs trying to increase their own share.

I may misunderstand you but if the majority of OG Xbox One owners were accounting for sales of X and S then Microsoft would have serious platform issue because the overall Xbox One user base would be having little real growth however sales of software for Xbox One do not support that. Did some OG Xbox owners buy an S or X and not sell on their OG Xbox, sure. A significant amount? Software sales says Bzzzzzt!

The reason for DF using S could be as simple as their OG Xbox One dying and them not replacing it but I am curious. Hopefully Richard will see the discussion and offer clarity.

 

[BRiT]

The typical deaths of launch Xbox One model is the internal hard drive getting trashed and having to be replaced. It's not too horrible to replace it, but spending $50 on it and the tools and a few houes when there have been some amazing deals on the S seems a bit foolish, even if drive+tools+time is the more economical repair option. The difficulty is in knowing the technical steps required to prepartition and format the drive.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I had no idea replacing the Xbox One's HDD was a chore.

 

[BRiT]

Didnt have this link at the time, but here's the steps required which involves disassembling the console and using a PC with software to hook up the replacement drive, taken from ifixit https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Xbox+One+Hard+Drive+Replacement/36771

It's only 24 assembly steps!
I didn't count the PC software steps.
So even myself, I'd opt for entirely new console instead of spending even more money on a repair place doing it all for me.

Follow this guide to remove the hard drive from your Xbox One, and follow it in reverse to install a new drive.

Your Xbox One console is not capable of formatting a replacement hard drive for use as the main drive.

Before you install your replacement drive, you will need to reformat the drive in a computer and install the necessary software, following this technique:

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Unless the failure rate is massive, and the active install base of XB1's is many millions less than the total sales, the original XB1 shouldn't be ignored on account on being dead.

 

[BRiT]

I'm guessing the second most frequent cause of Xbox One launch model death is the external power supply, but thats extremely simple to replace.

Gone are the days where the entire motherboard would die from Yellow Light of Death or Red Ring of deaths. Also seemingly gone is the optical drive lasers becoming unaligned.

 

[iroboto]

Did some OG Xbox owners buy an S or X and not sell on their OG Xbox, sure. A significant amount?

Yea I'm among them. But we aren't given stats on active consoles, only on sales.

I mean generally speaking, the life span of OG xbox cut short at 3 years, because shortly after it was just the S. They had major trade in programs for the S. The year following was the X, and they had major trade in programs for that.

I guess for me I don't see the point for them to expend the effort to do it. It's not a different version of the game, the only thing the OG can do is a frame rate test. That's about it. everything else should be the same.

 

[Jay]

Nobody is saying that should add another platform for comparison, but perhaps instead actually use the defacto slowest platform as base because a lot of people have that console. The last official figure from Microsoft was 10 million units in November 14 so its 10 million + x million sold in the following 20 months before One S launched.


So 10% are not negligible performance differences. Is RDR2 in that 10%?

By definition their not catering to every Xbox owner, how many read DF?

As for the 10% and if RDR 2 falls into it, that's what VG Tech will tell you, if you've got an OG, or that interested.

The S isn't going to run anything a lot better than the OG now, and if it's a concern then check one of the other tests that are on YouTube.

It's not like the information won't be out there.

Why did they choose the S instead of OG, no idea, maybe the OG was getting loud for all i know

edit:
for the record i do understand you're position, and why not do OG instead of S.
I just think considering there's other sources, and the level of difference between the two, their target audience. For me not a big deal.

 

[milk]

edit:
for the record i do understand you're position, and why not do OG instead of S.
I just think considering there's other sources, and the level of difference between the two, their target audience. For me not a big deal.

Realistically, anything and everything about Digital Foundry is no big deal. Same goes for Beyond3d. But we are unhealthily obsessive people.

 

[see colon]

I don't think framerate performance is as much of an issue now when comparing S to OG Xbox ones because in the last year or two it's become increasingly common for games to support HDR (the reason MS gave for the slight clock increase is to not degrade performance when it was enabled) and nearly every title now ships with a dynamic scaler that changes resolution based of performance. Framerate is probably pretty consistent between the two models but resolution may not be. This is conjecture, of course. There are other places that do test on both OG and S models but there isn't, to my knowledge, any where that compiles that data into easily digestible charts or reports.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Framerate is probably pretty consistent between the two models but resolution may not be.

When DF analysed performance differences between OG One vs S (linked above) they reached the opposite conclusion and RDR2 seems to have a fixed resolution on all platforms.

edit: OG One vs. S (not X).

 

[Jay]

Realistically, anything and everything about Digital Foundry is no big deal. Same goes for Beyond3d. But we are unhealthily obsessive people.

I meant not a big deal in context of everything i highlighted, if it was the only source of framerate then it would be a bigger deal to me.

But then I do go and like VG tech vids, put them on in background sometimes, just because i value their work, even when I'm not interested in the comparison.
It even gives breakdown of framerate in in description if you don't want to watch it all.

So I do understand peoples views, I just think it's easy to find the details you want usually, via a single click.

 

[Recop]

The difference between the XB1 and XBS is usually not big but it does exist. Most of the time it will translate in 2/3 more fps at best. Larger differences can exist, but they seem pretty rare.

But it does highlight how the base XB1 was underporwered compared to the PS4...

 

[dten]

What a strange turn this RDR2 discussion has turned into. We've got one of the best looking open world games to have ever come out, and in 4K too, with no virtually no pop-in , and everyone is focused on XBO One vs XBO One S?

 

[iroboto]

lol.
everyone agrees the game looks great and it's worth while to discuss that.
but i'm glad that we're a bit muted and talking about non hot-button topics.
and i don't want to see a repeat of what's happening at resetera here.
xbox folks have been on the receiving end of that type of console warring for too long, just because the tables are reversed doesn't make it right.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Well I was quite blown away when I watched the gameplay footage and reading first it's running native 4k on the X, WOW!... A stunning achievement imo. I hope Pro get's a native 1440p patch or better implementation of their current technique. If I didn't travel so much I'd run to the store to buy an X right now!, but Pro and an LG 1080p portable projector is my current "travel entertainment kit" and I'm not going to carry two home consoles in my luggage haha, but this game definitely counts as a couple nice feathers on the X's cap