Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech
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My post addressed that. I believe it was at ~-$600m if you just straight add the division P&L through the 360's life (may have been 2-3 profitable quarters ago).
Now if you assume the 360 is consistently more profitable than the division as a whole (and this was stated by MS in one past conference call at some point IIRC), it's probably already break even or better, would be my guess.
I agree Nintendo has been vastly more profitable Wii vs 360 life to date. But right now Microsoft is arguably in a better position.
Anywhere I can see the (more or less) exact sales numbers? It sounds rather unbelieveable considering pretty much everyone that I know that owns a Wii uses it just a few days a year at best and several haven't touched it for over a year.
The 360 managed 8x in 4 years by doubling the number of ram chips. That's not a trick MS can pull again. It's possible they might want to use less than the absolute highest density chips for supply reasons, or 8Gbit chips may not be ready, or MS may even want to go back to 4 chips (with 8 for the devkits).
The 360 narrowly dodged 256 MB!
Frame buffers have to go somewhere, as does audio. On the PS1 and Saturn it was common to store texture (or other) data in audio memory. It doesn't matter what you call the memory, it's what you can do with it that matters.
Disregarding memory that will be used because you don't like its name isn't very fair.
If your 360 game is using MSAA then the edram is saving you main memory. If your 360 game is using all 10 MB of edram to store a framebuffer that is then switched with the front buffer during vblanc, then yes, it's like the 360 has 522MB of memory.
archangelmorph
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What temp buffers?
Framebuffer, Z-buffer, backbuffer, particle buffer, and if you use any level of deferred rendering than that's a few more buffers again. Reflections and other off-screen render targets will stay there too.
X360 keeps the backbuffer in main RAM and depending on the title it might get away with using the EDRAM only for everything else. If you do tiling or deferred rendering, or use more space for HDR (like Reach) then it might get complicated but then you can always go sub-HD
Monthly NDP charts usually had 3-5 Nintendo titles, and most of them in the top spots. Many games have sold more than 20 million copies whereas even the X360 only has a few that went 10+ million.
I think there was a developer here that explained you could avoid having a back buffer entirely by copying the final colour "buffer" (I can't think of a better word) from edram to the front buffer, and if you timed it right you'd keep vsync. I think they said that this way it was also possible to effectively achieve triple buffering using just a front and back buffer...
If they did, you'd require a very particular backbuffer that fits in eDRAM. But yes, all RAM in use counts as RAM and XB360 has 522 MBs for devs to choose what to do with. And that's exluding what the OS reserves.
Sure they can. That's what technology does, double.
I agree, which is why you shouldn't just add all the memory a system has on the motherboard hodgepodge together. GC was not really a 43 MB system compared to others when 16 MB was brutally crippled and limited in use. EDRAM in any system is not additive to main RAM either.
Yeah it's no accident that devs always mention the memory advantage of the X360 over the PS3. And the divided pools on the PS3 are yet another issue to deal with and it also makes full utilization even harder. You need 6 more megs, you have 2 here and 5 there but can't simply move anything around, so will you re-architect everything just for that?
Those devs call out the divided RAM and OS overhead issues (Carmack recently), as you point out. I've never heard a dev mention EDRAM about any added memory on 360.
But there was a detailed debate before about this on B3D if anybody can find it...if I recall the conclusion was unclear at best.
PS maybe probably OT but I this should get your next gen juices slathering, it does mine (all new BF3 trailer)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5eLbPQt_Pk&hd=1
Quite a lot of headroom left in graphics I'd say, although BF3 is that example we've been missing this gen of a incremental PC game that somewhat lessens the wow factor of next gen consoles when they arrive. But hopefully not too much cause I want to be blown away, and trust that I will even beyond BF3.
Yeah, it'd need to fit in one tile. That got me wondering if you could use a single (front) framebuffer, a horizontally split pair of tiles for rendering, and time the copy from edram to framebuffer so as to maintain vsync. If that makes any sense. At all.
Another contentious issue! An issue this generation and a potential wildcard in the next.
I wouldn't complain about having 16 highest capacity memory chips in the next consoles, but I wouldn't bet on it!
The original Xbox used 4, with 8 being saved for the devkits. The jump to 512 MB of ram for the 360 robbed MS of the chance to have more memory in the devkits, but obviously made the system much more capable.
archangelmorph
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There's no requirement for putting your render targets or depth/stencil buffers in VRAM over XDR on PS3...
Your final render targets maybe a different matter however...
Devs usually don't get into that much detail but the fact is that the extra 10MB does count as an extra 10MB.
Agreed BF3 is looking really nice. I hope it ends up demonstrating that people still want more out of graphics vs. the currently increasing belief that we're at a "good enough" point.
I honestly don't expect next gen consoles to leapfrog PCs though. As things are becoming increasingly heat and power constrained the console form factor becomes the limiting variable (as it will be with all devices).
I fully expect next generation consoles (at least one of them) to jump to midrange discrete DX11-level performance, but I doubt they will even reach the high end of PC performance, let alone surpass it. It's just not reasonable to expect in that size and power profile. Of course there will still be some performance advantage of less abstraction/portability like always on consoles, but I'm not sure if it will make up the gap which is currently the widest that it has ever been and getting wider.
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I don't think the execs here are thinking about XBox having to "pay back" it's investment. This isn't venture capital, and MS was not hurting for profit in those years. I think they're more focused on future profit. The E&D business is now the 4th most profitable at MS and the fastest growing. A few years of absorbed investments is a small price to pay for an entirely new revenue stream with the potential to rival the Windows and Office juggernauts.
I know that, and I absolutely don't want to make it sound like I have some issue with the Xbox business, and noone ever expected the entry of a new player into the console market to be a cheap one.
I've merely talked about how Nintendo is the only one really profitable in this generation if you look at the bottom line.
I've merely talked about how Nintendo is the only one really profitable in this generation if you look at the bottom line.
I don't think we should look at double and triple graphics card systems as a reasonable metric of PC performance. Sure, they're more available to the public compared to stuff like the GSCube or the first multi-chip 3dfx cards; but I'd put those systems into a different leage and not with the "PC".
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