Are you disappointed with next-gen consoles for 2020? [XBSX, PS5]

[Shifty Geezer]

Round numbers are silly psychology. 10tf is no 'nicer' than 9.9 or 10.1 as it's only a quirk of our base 10 numbering system that assigns that quantity a less cluttered visual representation. Same goes for things like big birthdays - 30, 40, 50, 60. Completely arbitrary. If we used base 8, we'd have big, landmark, "OMG I'm getting older" birthdays at twenty-four, thirty-two, forty and forty-eight, while if we used base 12, we'd have those big psychology trips at thirty-six, forty-eight, and sixty, and have less of them.

Next time you set your alarm, don't pick a round a number. Don't be a slave to visual representations! Set it to 7:03 instead of 7:00. Go large on your every eleventh birthday instead of tenth, because of the repeating pattern of digits (22, 33, 44).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

9.2 TF spells incoming PR disaster. Beaten by the one year old Stadia, beaten by your arch rival Xbox Series X, beaten by the launch year mid end or even low end PC hardware, beaten by Nvida's laptop, if Sony ever wants to shit the bed in style this is one way to spectacularly do it.

Look how Nintendo Switch got utterly crushed with its shit specs...

 

[snc]

9.2 TF spells incoming PR disaster. Beaten by the one year old Stadia, beaten by your arch rival Xbox Series X, beaten by the launch year mid end or even low end PC hardware, beaten by Nvida's laptop, if Sony ever wants to shit the bed in style this is one way to spectacularly do it.
At the end of the day, I hope the 2.5% of casuals who craved the BC should feel proud and honor Sony by engaging obscenely amount of hours on PS4 games on their PS5. The immense sacrifice Sony made for them by butchering the console's design potential shall never leave the back of their heads.

nah, first ps5 exlusive will look on level impossible to achievie on stadia weak vega

 

[KirkSi]

I just don’t have the time to own multiple consoles any more. Last gen I had them all was with the Wii, 360 and PS3. I went Xbox One ‘cause it’s where most of my friends play, I tend to play online shooters (at the time Xbox Live was way better than PS network, it’s much better now they’ve started charging for it) and I much prefer the Xbox controller (the PS stick layout hurts my hands after a bit).

As an Xbox fan I’m very excited about the prospect of the Series X. I’m very happy to see the slow down in hardware advancement didn’t hold them back and they changed the form factor to accommodate the power they wanted rather than sacrifice power for form factor. I think due to diminishing returns the differences we see between PS5 and Series X will be minimal, but I’d still rather have the more powerful hardware. Ray tracing in a console is an unknown entity so I’m interested to see whether PS and Xbox do have different solutions as it seems and how effective each solution is. I think it has the potential to be game changer, I’m just not sure whether the hardware is mature enough for consoles or whether it’ll be half arsed.

As an Xbox fan I don’t actually want MS to ‘win’ the generation. Having them be behind has actually been good for Xbox gamers. It’s made them be more consumer friendly and we’ve gotten more features and services because of it (backwards compatibility from now on, subscription services such as EA access years before Sony allowed it, Game Pass with Xbox first party games included day 1 etc.). I want a hungry MS going forwards not an arrogant one. It’s in nobodies interest to have one manufacturer trounce the other in sales. Effective competition between them is good for gamers overall. I’d like MS to catch up to Sony a bit in terms of sales, so if having the more powerful console at the start of the gen does that then great, but I still expect Sony to sell more systems due to retention (they published some great exclusives in the last few years that will retain them a lot of customers). As an Xbox owner I just need for there to be enough Xbox’s sold so it’s worthwhile third party developers putting in equal effort to the development and support of the Xbox version of their game and for there to be enough players to populate the servers of the multi-player games I like to play (Battlefield mainly). As long a that happens I’ll be happy.

 

[ultragpu]

Look how Nintendo Switch got utterly crushed with its shit specs...

Isn't that bit unfair? It's a handheld, whole different demographic here.

 

[ultragpu]

nah, first ps5 exlusive will look on level impossible to achievie on stadia weak vega

This may be true but still the number thing is a PR nightmare. People's mindset always favor higher number.

 

[snc]

This may be true but still the number thing is a PR nightmare. People's mindset always favor higher number.

only on threads like this, I remember that when x one and ps4 debuts most people didn't know ps4 is quite faster (the reasons for easy win for sony where in other places)

 

[Deleted member 11852]

That seems highly hyperbolic. I don't think anything beats the generational jump from 2D to 3D.

Visually, but for many 3D ushered in janky controls for years until devs worked how to regain that precise, near pixel-perfect, control we had in many 2D games. Just try going back to the original Tomb Raider.

 

[PSman1700]

What I meant by arrogant Sony is not about setting a sky high price, it's more to do with how they're feeling too comfortable with their immense install base thus not pushing the boundaries in tech

Sony would be arrogant if they ignored +90% of their market which are casuals that want the ps5 as cheap as possible. Would Sony be thinking of you me and tech interested people then the casuals would say the same.

I'm going to have a PS5 whatever TF numbers it has, it will be the only place where some of the great sony exclusives will shine. This whole TF war has no use when next GoW or HZD2 only are on PS5.

 

[KirkSi]

9.2 TF spells incoming PR disaster. Beaten by the one year old Stadia, beaten by your arch rival Xbox Series X, beaten by the launch year mid end or even low end PC hardware, beaten by Nvida's laptop, if Sony ever wants to shit the bed in style this is one way to spectacularly do it.
At the end of the day, I hope the 2.5% of casuals who craved the BC should feel proud and honor Sony by engaging obscenely amount of hours on PS4 games on their PS5. The immense sacrifice Sony made for them by butchering the console's design potential shall never leave the back of their heads.

You guys know the hardware way better than I ever will but is there a consensus here that Sony’s next gen design has been constrained due to having to maintain a GPU configuration (same number of CUs) for BC as their API is closer to the metal than Xbox?

With the PS4 Pro it did seem like they had to double up on the GPU so they could deactivate half to allow compatibility with base PS4 games. With the BC modes of Oberon it looks like they have to mimic the exact hardware configurations and clocks of the previous consoles. Could they not have had a 56 CU GPU and selectively deactivated 20 CUs to give them the 36 for the Pro (at the lower clock) and then 18 more for the base PS4? Will the CUs be split into two banks of 18 in the PS5 so they can have all running at 2GHz for next gen games, then drop the clocks to 911MHz for PS4 Pro and then deactivate one bank of 18 and drop the clocks further to 800MHz for base PS4?

These chips seem to have 4 more CUs than required to allow for better yields if there’re defects in up to 4 CU. Not all of the chips will have 4 defective CUs though, some might only have 3, some 2 etc. Are those extra CUs not selectively deactivated in software? Have Sony made the choice of 36CUs as the best of multiple options then? It allows for easier BC, it results in a smaller cost-effective chip that will just have to clocked higher but allows them to charge £399 for their console rather than £499? Will they save more money with a smaller, higher clocked chip but have to beef up the cooling, rather than a wider, slower chip which will require less cooling? (although MS seem to be going to town on cooling in that tower form factor, can’t wait to see what the cooling solution is inside the case).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Isn't that bit unfair? It's a handheld, whole different demographic here.

No. It proves power isn't everything, as we know having had this discussion many, many times before. People use the term 'PR nightmare' far too lightly. It's at worse, a mild PR hurdle having a less powerful machine. In those cases, you just message in a way that ignores power as Nintendo does. Talk about games and services and price. Power is but one of multiple selling points. If PS5 looks very similar on screen to the layman, has the games, and is a lot cheaper and gains critical momentum, Sony's PR will write itself again, and it'll be down to MS to try and turn an expensive product into something desirable and/or argue the merits of the cheap, underpowered box - see, PR can be spun any way you want.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Uhm, dumb question. How can anyone be disappointed in consoles that aren't out yet and who's specs haven't been confirmed?

Is this like the new place for old video card fanboys to go and shake their fist at the sky and yell? If so I guess I get it a bit...

 

[Globalisateur]

Look how Nintendo Switch got utterly crushed with its shit specs...

Wii U weak specs were very detrimental to its success. It's in part what contributed to its failure.

 

[Rangers]

Nope. The Series X is likely going to be very expensive ($499). PS5 looks like a good balance of price and performance perhaps (?) targeted at $399.

You have to remember 1TB high performance SSDs arent cheap and are a new cost center here.

And then throw on 8 core, 16 thread, high IPC Zen CPU's? Massive 16GB's of high performance GDDR6 ? when the top Nvidia card is what, 11GB GDDR6? Perhaps change my answer from "no" (not disappointed) to HELL no! They are packing in a LOT, I'm more worried about how they're going to come in at reasonable prices.

 

[BRiT]

Wii U weak specs were very detrimental to its success. It's in part what contributed to its failure.

WAY OT, but I think Wii-U failure was more about naming associated with product fatigue (Wii), but we'll never know how it might have done with a differentiated name. Specs played a part, but Nintendo has always done well despite their specs.

 

[turkey]

I am a little upset we won't have any VR competition in the console space, that would only drive quality up and price down. the new GPUs a d console api and closed systems seem a very good fit for VR.

Just as Valve and Half Life enter VR Xbox seemingly steps back

 

[Esrever]

Nope. The Series X is likely going to be very expensive ($499). PS5 looks like a good balance of price and performance perhaps (?) targeted at $399.

You have to remember 1TB high performance SSDs arent cheap and are a new cost center here.

And then throw on 8 core, 16 thread, high IPC Zen CPU's? Massive 16GB's of high performance GDDR6 ? when the top Nvidia card is what, 11GB GDDR6? Perhaps change my answer from "no" (not disappointed) to HELL no! They are packing in a LOT, I'm more worried about how they're going to come in at reasonable prices.

Considering the only real difference between the 2 consoles is the SOC, the prices are probably going to be way less than $100 difference. Everything else is shared in both.

It's probably more likely both launch at $500 or both launch at $400 than either launching with a $100 difference.


Also just something to think about, when the PS4, with it's 8GB of GDDR5, came out, the top Nvidia GPU, the Titan was a $1000 GPU with only 6GB of GDDR6. By the time the PS4 is out, GPUs will probably come with 16GB of GDDR6.

 

[AzBat]

Uhm, dumb question. How can anyone be disappointed in consoles that aren't out yet and who's specs haven't been confirmed?

Is this like the new place for old video card fanboys to go and shake their fist at the sky and yell? If so I guess I get it a bit...

I was about to ask the same. I'm still confused more than ever on what both camps are doing. I do like the new Xbox name & I'm really getting excited about their new form factor. I don't think I could have taken another monolithic VCR looking design again.

Can't be disappointed if we have no final details on what they're doing.

Tommy McClain

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Visually, but for many 3D ushered in janky controls for years until devs worked how to regain that precise, near pixel-perfect, control we had in many 2D games. Just try going back to the original Tomb Raider.

Absolutely. Anytime new types of gameplay come about there's going to be a bit of faffing about until someone figures out the best way to control things in this new gaming paradigm. I mean compare how System Shock controlled versus System Shock 2. Granted System Shock was able to do things that System Shock 2 couldn't, but my god it was difficult to control.

The point wasn't that the move from 2D to 3D ushered in perfectly better games, but that they allowed for the introduction of new gameplay. A 3D platformer is significantly different from a 2D platformer. And yes, it took most developers a long time to figure out how best to control a 3D platformer.

OTOH - the next generation is unlikely to bring any new types of gameplay. It'll be almost purely better graphics, better accessibility and better convenience.

Spiderman would still be Spiderman even with instant loading of assets, a denser city, more NPCs, more physics, etc. The gameplay doesn't change.

Visually, it may be on par with going from flat/gourard shaded polygons to textured polygons, but I don't view it as being more revolutionary than something like that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not pooh poohing the next gen consoles. I think there's a good possibility for equal or potentially greater visual leap than what we got from going from PS3/X360 to PS4/XBO. But the greatest generational jump ever? Heck, I'm not sure it'll even beat the jump from 8-bit consoles to 16-bit consoles.

Then again, if the developers saying these things have only developed games on the PS3/X360 and PS4/XBO, this may seem absolutely incredible to them.

Regards,
SB

 

[Deleted member 11852]

OTOH - the next generation is unlikely to bring any new types of gameplay. It'll be almost purely better graphics, better accessibility and better convenience.

A considerable increase in computing power could enable significant enhancements to games that aren't possible on today's consoles. Imagine GTA VI will a procedurally generated building interiors for all buildings and fully-destructible environments and where it's possible to even level buildings that don't just fade back in when you drive away and and return. Where new buildings get built and old derelict ones get pulled down.

Except in a few cases, we're expecting our game worlds to be static and unchangeable (except where scripted) because to do anything different requires changes to AI (adaptive pathing on a massive scale) and a very different way to store data about game worlds. Vastly better CPUs and the solid state drive solves both of these barriers.