Xbox Series X [XBSX] [Release November 10 2020]

I don't know what the options are for the SSD portion - higher density? Not sure what the impact is on I/O ala memory chips.

Depending on what they use, if they're only using MLC (always poorly named, should be DLC for Dual) they could switch to TLC, and if using TLC they can switch to QLC or if they're already on QLC they could use more layers of it to price reduce.
 
With the talk of 200GB next gen games, a 512GB SSD is surely a point of concern?

You can quick resume between the 2 AAA games installed on the SSD but the 3rd takes 2 hours to download and reinstall before you can pick up from your save point?
 
With the talk of 200GB next gen games, a 512GB SSD is surely a point of concern?

You can quick resume between the 2 AAA games installed on the SSD but the 3rd takes 2 hours to download and reinstall before you can pick up from your save point?

Quick resume has nothing to do with the size of the installed game, but the size of it's footprint in RAM. I believe Microsoft is using a 40 - 50 GB portion of the NVME for it's Quick Resume functionality. Think of it as hibernation file for a game.

But yes, if you want to install more games than you have room for, you'll have to juggle. You can run original Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One, and Xbox One X games from any typical external USB HDD.

From memory footprints, here's roughly the various sizes from what I can guesstimate: a little over 64 Meg for Original Xbox games, 512 Meg for Xbox 360 games, 5 GB for Xbox One games, 9 GB for Xbox One X games, 8 GB for Xbox Series S games, and 13.5 GB for Xbox Series X games.

Also, saves are also persistent to the cloud. If the game is part of xCloud, then you can pick up and play from your last save point on your Android device or anything that supports xCloud.
 
With the talk of 200GB next gen games, a 512GB SSD is surely a point of concern?

You can quick resume between the 2 AAA games installed on the SSD but the 3rd takes 2 hours to download and reinstall before you can pick up from your save point?
The great thing about these consoles is that they have hardware compression. According to Cerny, just using Kraken gives you about 10% more data in the same space compared to the ZLIB compression used on PS4. When you combine this with the removal of the need to duplicate data to reduce seek times, and Smart Delivery only installing the files you need you get games that can be the same size, or perhaps even smaller, than previous generation. Also,you can use a USB hard drives to back up games so you only have games you are currently playing on the SSD.
 
The great thing about these consoles is that they have hardware compression. According to Cerny, just using Kraken gives you about 10% more data in the same space compared to the ZLIB compression used on PS4. When you combine this with the removal of the need to duplicate data to reduce seek times, and Smart Delivery only installing the files you need you get games that can be the same size, or perhaps even smaller, than previous generation. Also,you can use a USB hard drives to back up games so you only have games you are currently playing on the SSD.
Well 10% ist still no much. And you will lose some compression efficiency because you no longer want to compress multiple "files" into one package. Instead you compress everything even in parts but on it's own. This is not really good for the efficiency but therefore the resources can be loaded on it's own, which saves bandwidth and main memory.

I really hope that the "deduplication" can really save much space. E.g. the call of duty games are really big. In games like these, it always seems that each level has its own set of packaged resources. This shouldn't be the case any longer.
 
Game sizes should start out smaller. You should be able to get 6-10 games on an XSS or PS5 and a little more on XSX.

Yes I've no doubt you're right. And I also expect the average game to be well under 200GB just as the average was well under 100GB this gen despite outliers like RDR2.

I guess I'm describing more of a corner case where later in the generation a gamer may have next gen versions of CoD and Gears installed but then not enough room to install Read Dead 3.

The great thing about these consoles is that they have hardware compression. According to Cerny, just using Kraken gives you about 10% more data in the same space compared to the ZLIB compression used on PS4. When you combine this with the removal of the need to duplicate data to reduce seek times, and Smart Delivery only installing the files you need you get games that can be the same size, or perhaps even smaller, than previous generation.

I'm not clear whether the 200GB claims already account for all these efficiencies or not. Certainly last gen consoles already use hardware compression (albeit the ratios are lower) and smart delivery presumably still installs the full game, but simply allows you to start playing before everything is installed.

Anyway I hope you're right. Smaller install sizes are in all our interests.

Also,you can use a USB hard drives to back up games so you only have games you are currently playing on the SSD.

True but that breaks the quick resume model for games that need to run off the SSD.
 
True but that breaks the quick resume model for games that need to run off the SSD
Quick resume has limited slots.

So where as suggested you back up games not currently playing you will be unlikely to break quick resume.
Even if you do, not sure how big a deal it would be for a grame that you decided to back up.

Possible they also back up the snapshot data for quick resume, if it is deemed a core functionality.
 
My understanding was that file sizes would be smaller due to compression and at least a partial removal of data duplication.

Maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding of why COD has such an enormous file size is because each map resides on disc in its own area. So reused textures across multiple maps, would be present the same amount of times as they're used. So you could get 8 versions of the same texture.

They populated the data on disc like this to reduce the number of seek times.

If the new machines only populate each piece of data only once, then that'd have a large impact on the total file size - it should be substantially smaller.

Didn't Cerny make some exaggerated claim of the SSDs having no seek times? I'm sure it's not zero, but close enough for it not to be a worry in the same way that HDDs are, since they're essentially mechanical.
 
Didn't Cerny make some exaggerated claim of the SSDs having no seek times? I'm sure it's not zero, but close enough for it not to be a worry in the same way that HDDs are, since they're essentially mechanical.

They don't have seek time. That's literally the head moving across platter on a HDD. There's latency, but that shouldn't be enough to get in the way of a la carte asset selection.
 
Well 10% ist still no much. And you will lose some compression efficiency because you no longer want to compress multiple "files" into one package. Instead you compress everything even in parts but on it's own. This is not really good for the efficiency but therefore the resources can be loaded on it's own, which saves bandwidth and main memory.

I really hope that the "deduplication" can really save much space. E.g. the call of duty games are really big. In games like these, it always seems that each level has its own set of packaged resources. This shouldn't be the case any longer.

I think deduplication is a bigger gain than compression. But looking at the spiderman talk from GDC https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1026496/-Marvel-s-Spider-Man about 22:30 to 30:00 minutes in it.
You see that there is a lot of optimisations that can be done. I found it very interesting that they had to go back and change their thinking about space speed tradeoffs.
This generation you have even more CPU, so maybe use CPU to save space will be even more used on XSX & PS5?
But I am wondering, does the stuff on the BD get unpacked to HDD? If not, how come people say that the games are bigger in size than the BD? Without DLC of course.

//EDIT

Look at 37:00 to 41:00 also for more savings in streaming bandwidth etc, I like this spiderman postmortem thingy.
 
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But I am wondering, does the stuff on the BD get unpacked to HDD? If not, how come people say that the games are bigger in size than the BD? Without DLC of course.
not 100% sure whether it is unpacked or just copied, but this is what Sony had said back then in 2013
When playing disc-based games on PS4, do I need to install data to the hard drive?
Yes, all PS4 Blu-ray Disc games must be cached to the hard drive to ensure a smooth gaming experience. However, certain titles may not require you to wait for the game data to be fully cached before starting gameplay. In order to start playing disc-based games, users will need to insert the game disc into PS4 just like on the PS3 system.
https://blog.playstation.com/2013/10/30/ps4-the-ultimate-faq-north-america/
 
not 100% sure whether it is unpacked or just copied, but this is what Sony had said back then in 2013

https://blog.playstation.com/2013/10/30/ps4-the-ultimate-faq-north-america/

Anybody know if there is a difference on XBox in regards to installing games on HDD?

For fun I just checked my Spiderman install and it was 72.28GB, but there are 3 DLC connected to that one. Also I checked Ghost of Tsushima, it is 47.10GB with no DLC, except for some cosmetics stuff, like sadle and horse you got in the deluxe version.
RDR2 is 103.1GB, it got some Pre-order bonus and special edition content, I doubt that they are very large size.

I got 111 games and 20 applications installed on my PS4 Pro, it has 2TB drive, which I installed day one. 1.65TB of the available 1.77TB is used.
 
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Quick resume has limited slots.

So where as suggested you back up games not currently playing you will be unlikely to break quick resume.
Even if you do, not sure how big a deal it would be for a grame that you decided to back up.

Possible they also back up the snapshot data for quick resume, if it is deemed a core functionality.

But if you can only fit 2 big games on the drive at a time, then you may well be "currently playing" the third as well, but switching to it won't be quick.

This is based on 200GB next gen games. Perhaps (hopefully) they'll be much smaller as discussed above.
 
But if you can only fit 2 big games on the drive at a time, then you may well be "currently playing" the third as well, but switching to it won't be quick.

This is based on 200GB next gen games. Perhaps (hopefully) they'll be much smaller as discussed above.

But would both MS and Sony be so out of touch that they would release a console with severely lacking SSD space for mainstream gamer? They must have an idea how much space a next gen game would need and will probably have made an effort to make it work for the mass market people?

I installed a 2TB in my PS4 and then again in my PS4 Pro, so I feel like I am not the target audience with a 1TB/825GB SSD, I am in the likely to upgrade anyway group.
 
But if you can only fit 2 big games on the drive at a time, then you may well be "currently playing" the third as well, but switching to it won't be quick.

This is based on 200GB next gen games. Perhaps (hopefully) they'll be much smaller as discussed above.
Ok misunderstood when you said broken.

Sure you won't have quick resume as you'll have to copy the game back.

A few factors
We don't know what the actual average install size of next gen games will be. I'm not sure how indicative current gen is.
How many games does the average gamer actually play concurrently (I think we over estimate this)
Gamepass I expect to increase that number though

Possibly for the XSX 5 games may be the average (although sounds high to me, but just random figure I chose)
XSS 3 Games

Either way I suspect its compromises gamers will adjust to.
 
I'm not clear whether the 200GB claims already account for all these efficiencies or not. Certainly last gen consoles already use hardware compression (albeit the ratios are lower) and smart delivery presumably still installs the full game, but simply allows you to start playing before everything is installed.
The way I understand it, Smart Delivery is designed to only install the assets you need for the hardware you have. There are games on Xbox One, Gears 4 and Shadow of Mordor I think were 2 examples, that had fairly large "4k texture" packs for Xbox One X, but they didn't replace the textures already installed on the system. You had to have those as well even though those files were no longer used. Smart Delivery is supposed to help in by installing only the assets you need, so the higher quality assets for Series X and lower quality (smaller) ones for Series S. The low quality assets don't even need to be available on a Bluray version of the game because the S doesn't support them.

So the full game is installed, but there is even less duplication for games with separate assets for higher quality modes.
 
How many games does the average gamer actually play concurrently (I think we over estimate this)

Depends how many people in the household are sharing the console. 2 or more and that limit might be reached pretty quickly. Personally I tend to have one or two big AAA action/adventure games on the go, a racing game on the side (for the change) and then a library of VR titles for the experience (e.g. having a drink, break out Beat Sabre).

But my wife also has 1 or 2 AAA's on the go at the same time, and as she games way more than I do she's always a few games ahead of me.
 
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