Series X Refresh and Next Generation Xbox Hardware

[Nesh]

I disagree it requires a poll to conclude that a large number of people believe XBOX games are coming to PS when games already came and the messaging is out there by MS themselves both in practice and communication.
But sure if you want to measure the size, for reasons of accuracy.

Word of mouth have a big impact, and youtube views do not reflect how many read or heard the news. People not interested in XBOX don't bother watching XBOX podcasts. But they are exposed to news.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I disagree it requires a poll to conclude that a large number of people believe XBOX games are coming to PS

But the argument is these people will ignore XB and buy PS. The amount of people needs to be enough to swing the balance away from what it already is. "Large number" means nothing. For the 'very large amount' to be relevant, it needs to be a massive fraction of those who would buy Xbox who will now instead buy PS because XB no longer gets exclusives.

youtube views do not reflect how many read or heard the news.

I literally said it wasn't conclusive - "(though nor does it prove few gamers know or care - maybe 100 million gamers listened to this Podcast on Spotify??)" - and I didn't present it as evidence - "not trying to prove nor disprove either way". I presented it as a data point. Something the other side hasn't done to quantify their "large number" of gamers who expect every (most) MS titles to come to PS. Large number could be anything from 100,000 to 100 million. Someone give it a figure and explain how they know that many people believe all Ms titles are coming to PS and how that many impacts the swing from XB to PS.

 

[iroboto]

Xbox doesn’t need a hardware refresh. At best a clock bump. But a price drop would be most effective for them.

They have massive development power that they can make themselves the lead platform, games like Call of Duty. So that should be sufficient.

I’m not expecting a refresh. I would be surprised. A price drop is desperately needed.

 

[Seanspeed]

But the argument is these people will ignore XB and buy PS. The amount of people needs to be enough to swing the balance away from what it already is. "Large number" means nothing. For the 'very large amount' to be relevant, it needs to be a massive fraction of those who would buy Xbox who will now instead buy PS because XB no longer gets exclusives.


I literally said it wasn't conclusive - "(though nor does it prove few gamers know or care - maybe 100 million gamers listened to this Podcast on Spotify??)" - and I didn't present it as evidence - "not trying to prove nor disprove either way". I presented it as a data point. Something the other side hasn't done to quantify their "large number" of gamers who expect every (most) MS titles to come to PS. Large number could be anything from 100,000 to 100 million. Someone give it a figure and explain how they know that many people believe all Ms titles are coming to PS and how that many impacts the swing from XB to PS.

I get what you're saying here, but just because we cant definitively prove with facts that this will be a significant factor, I do think a bit of common sense would suggest that it will definitely sway people. People are different, but anybody who has been a part of the gaming community for a long time and stays informed on the industry trends and whatnot will have a good idea of what tends to drive gamer's buying habits.

And it's just anecdotal, but even myself, who I dont think is some special, unique snowflake - would agree with the thinking if I were to choose between Playstation and Xbox. The decision to start putting 1st party exclusives on Playstation absolutely makes the Playstation more attractive as a result, while making the Xbox less attractive at the same time. I can have ALL of Playstation's 1st party titles and many Xbox 1st party titles or I can just have all Xbox 1st party titles? That's a pretty clear imbalance in my eyes unless there are simply some must-have Xbox 1st party games that wont ever go to Playstation(though without MS being clear about this, people will definitely have hopes/expectations).

I'm making it wordier than it really needs to be, though. Gamers want games, and this will be an obvious sort of perceptual advantage to Playstation for anybody weighing up a decision of which box to potentially buy. And this will only accelerate the more Xbox games get ported over, much like how PC gamers are absolutely expecting most of Playstation's 1st party lineup to eventually come to PC nowadays.

 

[RDGoodla]

Till now XB is still using 7nm and PS5 only uses N6 process which is improved 7nm.

We have already entered a time that die shrinking is not that cost effective. Considering Series X sells least in current gen, there may not be any refresh of Series X.

 

[iroboto]

Till now XB is still using 7nm and PS5 only uses N6 process which is improved 7nm.

We have already entered a time that die shrinking is not that cost effective. Considering Series X sells least in current gen, there may not be any refresh of Series X.

If in the situation money can be saved significantly, it’s worth doing. They still need to staff up chips on the cloud side. But I agree otherwise.

 

[Proelite]

they need a handheld more than anything else.

 

[iroboto]

they need a handheld more than anything else.

They just need games and a lot more of them. lol. Honestly. Nothing else. They already have a hardware strategy that works. They have the easiest access to get into their ecosystem. More hardware won’t change things for them.

 

[Janne Kylliö]

MS is releasing a new dev kit?

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1769666172281303538

 

[Johnny Awesome]

The same digital ecosystem lockdown that has hurt MS when trying to switch PS gamers to Xbox will help them preserve their own ecosystem. While not scientific, I don't know any Xbox gamers planning to jump to PS right now. They're just as invested in staying Xbox users as PS users are in staying PS users.

MS should announce some barebones info about their 2026 system just before the PS5P launches just so hardcore Xbox fans know they have something shiny and new coming.

I agree 100% with Iroboto - MS just needs to get their 30+ studios cranking out games. 6 AAA per year on 5 year dev cycles with some AA sprinkled in between.

I'll add something else that isn't popular around here - The S wasn't a mistake for MS - The S stands for "Saved" Xbox (>50% of sales). Soon it will be $199 and then shrunk into a handheld (if not literally, then at least spec wise).

They should release the new X this holiday for $399 with 2TB.

Then 2026 should be good for the handheld (S-level power) with Banjo or Crash game and the X2 for $599 with Gears 6, some visually stunning evolution of Forza and Doom Next or Outer Worlds 2.

Sony who?

 

[B m A]

The same digital ecosystem lockdown that has hurt MS when trying to switch PS gamers to Xbox will help them preserve their own ecosystem. While not scientific, I don't know any Xbox gamers planning to jump to PS right now. They're just as invested in staying Xbox users as PS users are in staying PS users.

MS should announce some barebones info about their 2026 system just before the PS5P launches just so hardcore Xbox fans know they have something shiny and new coming.

I agree 100% with Iroboto - MS just needs to get their 30+ studios cranking out games. 6 AAA per year on 5 year dev cycles with some AA sprinkled in between.

I'll add something else that isn't popular around here - The S wasn't a mistake for MS - The S stands for "Saved" Xbox (>50% of sales). Soon it will be $199 and then shrunk into a handheld (if not literally, then at least spec wise).

They should release the new X this holiday for $399 with 2TB.

Then 2026 should be good for the handheld (S-level power) with Banjo or Crash game and the X2 for $599 with Gears 6, some visually stunning evolution of Forza and Doom Next or Outer Worlds 2.

Sony who?

“Sony who”

PS5 is drastically outselling Xbox Series (HW Sales just came out for Europe, Xbox Series down 47%) while not releasing a lot of big exclusives at all in recent times. Yeah, I wouldn’t downplay Sony.

Xbox need to do a lot more and a lot better if they want to compete. Otherwise, the multi platform future seems like the likely path for them.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I imagine there are some console gamers who aren't in the current gen who were XB gamers last gen and will move to PS on the expectation that MS is opening its boarders, as it were. But I doubt that number is enough to make a difference. I think the deciding factors are more substantial (just plain liking Xbox or PS at this point) and the proportion of gamers thinking the next Halo will be playable on PS5Pro will be fairly small. Even those expecting MS games on PS may be doubting flagship titles and will be taking a 'wait and see' approach.

Once we see all MS titles on PS, the situation becomes very different, but I personally don't think the migratory influence is there yet. As such, XBSX+ just needs to do like PS5Pro, and appeal to upgraders. Or just be a refresh to hit a different price point.

I'm not really sure who and how MS can market XBSX to now though. I feel they want a "cheaper but better than PS5" option to sell to the 'still-not-upgraded-to-current-gen' crowd, the crowd that's been waiting for a PS5 price drop who may be tempted when they see that's not really happening while MS offers a nice bit of a hardware at a lower price.

 

[QPlayer]

The basic Xbox Series X/S with an increased clock speed and AI-based frame generation. No need to add extra stuff to the present hardware. It has INT4/8 as designed by MS engineers. Certainly for a reason.

All it takes is good marketing and an externally redesigned console, with games.

 

[QPlayer]

And they can still lure many people from the increasingly expensive PC market, especially with a well-priced console.

 

[davis.anthony]

And they can still lure many people from the increasingly expensive PC market, especially with a well-priced console.

Comparable PC's get cheaper as time goes on. So your comment doesn't entirely ring true when it comes to PC hardware.

The RDNA2 6600XT (Which is the PC GPU equivalent of PS5) launched with an MRSP of $379

Then 2 years later the RDNA3 7600 released at an MSRP of $269 and was 10% faster

The direct RDNA3 replacement, the 7600XT had a $329 MSRP, was 13% faster but had double the VRAM at 16GB

With RDNA4 coming end of this year, you could up in a situation where a $200 GPU (maybe even sub $200) matches base PS5.

The 7700XT which is essentially the equivalent PC GPU of PS5 Pros GPU has an MSRP of $449, and by the time PS5 Pro releases that level of performance may only cost $300.

This is something that both Sony and Microsoft are also going to be competing with, an ever changing PC performance/dollar dynamic and I imagine, as these console performance leaps get smaller and prices increase, the chances of people just going 'screw it' and building a PC is a real thing they no doubt think about.

 

[I'mDudditz!]

PS5 Pro is only 20% faster than series X in "unoptimized games", which will be the majority.

What sort of mathematics are you using here? 12TF *120% = 14.4TF. Furthermore, it would be very short sighted to disregard the improvements to Ray-Tracing and upscaling on PS5 Pro. In real world performance, there will be little comparison between PS5 Pro and Series X if these specs are the real deal.

With the current information, I don't think Microsoft needs new hardware to compete. They just need games that people want to play. Some of these need to be of the AAA variety.

Agreed.

 

[QPlayer]

"the chances of people just going 'screw it' and building a PC is a real thing they no doubt think about."

Comparable PC's get cheaper as time goes on. So your comment doesn't entirely ring true when it comes to PC hardware.

The RDNA2 6600XT (Which is the PC GPU equivalent of PS5) launched with an MRSP of $379

Then 2 years later the RDNA3 7600 released at an MSRP of $269 and was 10% faster

The direct RDNA3 replacement, the 7600XT had a $329 MSRP, was 13% faster but had double the VRAM at 16GB

With RDNA4 coming end of this year, you could up in a situation where a $200 GPU (maybe even sub $200) matches base PS5.

The 7700XT which is essentially the equivalent PC GPU of PS5 Pros GPU has an MSRP of $449, and by the time PS5 Pro releases that level of performance may only cost $300.

This is something that both Sony and Microsoft are also going to be competing with, an ever changing PC performance/dollar dynamic and I imagine, as these console performance leaps get smaller and prices increase, the chances of people just going 'screw it' and building a PC is a real thing they no doubt think about.

You are only talking about VGA prices, a PC contains a CPU, motherboard, memory, power supply, etc... These always cost much more together than a 250-400 dollar console.

And to think that the majority of people will start installing it is nonsense. People want to play games on a ready-assembled platform, assembly affects a smaller and smaller group... The majority go into the store and ask for a game machine they want to play on. Then you can get a console for, for example, $400, and you can get an assembled PC with roughly the same skills for $1,000. Simple people don't build, they just want to play...

And this customer segment can be addressed with a good console offer.

 

[Remij]

Instead of improving the hardware this coming generation... improve the software. Improve the tools, dev kits, improve efficiency.

There's so much more there than what's being used.

 

[function]

A 5nm shrink of the Series X could get up to about 2.2 ghz for a fixed clock, and if MS were to implement variable clocks they could get up to about 2.6 ghz even if they were being fairly conservative. If they kept the 320-bit bus they could move up to 16 or 17 or 18 gbps ram and have a huge amount of bandwidth, along with up to 20 GB of memory (sinlge sided) so plenty for 8K output resolutions and additional buffers for upscaling and frame gen. It would (upscaling aside) be pretty competitive with the proposed PS5Pro in many core areas and ahead in terms of bandwidth. Anything extra like a NPU for higher quality upscaling would be a bonus.

Of course, this isn't going to happen. MS don't seem to know what they want to target with Xbox at the moment, and rather than go for a higher end SKU they're more likely to want to cut costs and go for volume.

One cost reduction strategy might be to drop to a 256-bit bus with 18gbps ram (saves die area, allows for a cheaper mobo and fewer memory chips) and take 5nm's power savings and turn that into a cheaper cooler and PSU rather than higher clocks. I've also wondered if MS could go from 56 CUs (52 active) to 48 CUs (44 active) to save even more die area, and make up the lost compute through higher clocks. This would probably make the chip even cheaper (though increase heat output of the remaining CUs), and would have the benefit of making the front end and rops etc faster and give the L1 cache fewer CUs to service.

The Series X APU has a lot of potential to be used in a rather more powerful console, but I doubt we'll see it.

 

[davis.anthony]

"the chances of people just going 'screw it' and building a PC is a real thing they no doubt think about."



You are only talking about VGA prices, a PC contains a CPU, motherboard, memory, power supply, etc... These always cost much more together than a 250-400 dollar console.

And to think that the majority of people will start installing it is nonsense. People want to play games on a ready-assembled platform, assembly affects a smaller and smaller group... The majority go into the store and ask for a game machine they want to play on. Then you can get a console for, for example, $400, and you can get an assembled PC with roughly the same skills for $1,000. Simple people don't build, they just want to play...

I don't want to get in to the whole price of building a PC vs console as there's a whole loads of things to factor in the value of a gaming PC (A library of 60,000+ games spanning 30+ years being a huge deal) as this thread isn't really the place for it.

But I will say I have seen two people on X (Twitter) over the last 2 days who have asked for support with building their first gaming PC after being disappointed with PS5 Pro's specs.

A prebuilt PC these days (in the UK at least) that costs just under £1k will get you nearly 2x the performance of PS5 and Series-X in raster and over 3x the RT performance, so performance/pound is actually better than the consoles.

Give it another 12 months and that same prebuilt could cost half that.

But back to Series-X....