Baseless Next Generation Rumors with no Technical Merits [post E3 2019, pre GDC 2020] [XBSX, PS5]

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I don't see how Sony is in trouble or "losing" the hype war. I can only see this being a problem if they lose control of the narrative and said narrative upsets some of the fans. i.e.- Assume the "worst" has some truth to it. It is on the weaker side of the predictions - 9.3 TF, $500, supply and BOM issues, etc. If that comes out in a fashion where the "leak" has weight, as in all the major outlets get these specs (digital foundry, ign, actual reporters, etc.. , then you may have a short term problem. No company wants to lose control of the narrative for their flagship product. The XBO e3 reveal and subsequent reactions are a decent example of losing control.

I remain optimistic. A cheap Lockhart I can put in another room? Still has the ssd and all the major benefits but only renders 1080 to 1440? Hell, I can get a TCL 3 series to stick in the bedroom. A $500 PS5 with better lighting, larger worlds and no loading times? H:ZD 2 made even prettier and no loading times? You have my attention. 12 TF monster with Rt and an offering like Ultimate Game Pass where I can play on both PC and the consols? My decisions may just be a matter of in what order do I buy all 3! And I have never owned more than 1 console per gen.
 
Simple. Have preorders with same day delivery from online stores. Exactly like they had in 2013. No problems.
 
Read my second paragraph, it’s in there.
here it is copied from my last post.
That's not a valid argument (if it was, I wouldn't have asked for one ;)). That hype brought customers to the fight - bums on seats. Explain to me how a lack of PS5 info now means a lack of 'bums on seats' when it launches. If PS5 wasn't advertised at all, then yes, you'd have a point. "PS5? I didn't even know it was out. That's why I bought an Xbox." Clearly though, PS5 will be fully covered when it's time to. So it's not an issue of no coverage, but coverage timing. You're saying that XBSX is gaining an advantage. In this business, that means unit sales. So, how are PS5's unit sales going to be affected by a lack of information 8 months in advance as opposed to, say, only 4 months in advance? How many people are going to have their mind made up now for XBSX who can't then be influenced to consider PS5 in some months' time because the info is too late? Or is your argument something else? Please explain what Sony loses with this silence.
 
That's not a valid argument (if it was, I wouldn't have asked for one ;)). That hype brought customers to the fight - bums on seats. Explain to me how a lack of PS5 info now means a lack of 'bums on seats' when it launches. If PS5 wasn't advertised at all, then yes, you'd have a point. "PS5? I didn't even know it was out. That's why I bought an Xbox." Clearly though, PS5 will be fully covered when it's time to. So it's not an issue of no coverage, but coverage timing. You're saying that XBSX is gaining an advantage. In this business, that means unit sales. So, how are PS5's unit sales going to be affected by a lack of information 8 months in advance as opposed to, say, only 4 months in advance? How many people are going to have their mind made up now for XBSX who can't then be influenced to consider PS5 in some months' time because the info is too late? Or is your argument something else? Please explain what Sony loses with this silence.

Essentially a few console warriors on forums are having hissy fits and might not buy PS5 is the answer you are after. Nobody in the real world cares right now.
 
That's not a valid argument (if it was, I wouldn't have asked for one ;)). That hype brought customers to the fight - bums on seats. Explain to me how a lack of PS5 info now means a lack of 'bums on seats' when it launches. If PS5 wasn't advertised at all, then yes, you'd have a point. "PS5? I didn't even know it was out. That's why I bought an Xbox." Clearly though, PS5 will be fully covered when it's time to. So it's not an issue of no coverage, but coverage timing. You're saying that XBSX is gaining an advantage. In this business, that means unit sales. So, how are PS5's unit sales going to be affected by a lack of information 8 months in advance as opposed to, say, only 4 months in advance? How many people are going to have their mind made up now for XBSX who can't then be influenced to consider PS5 in some months' time because the info is too late? Or is your argument something else? Please explain what Sony loses with this silence.

And this is if the consoles release in 2020 maybe we will have a delay...
 
I don't see how Sony is in trouble or "losing" the hype war. I can only see this being a problem if they lose control of the narrative and said narrative upsets some of the fans. i.e.- Assume the "worst" has some truth to it. It is on the weaker side of the predictions - 9.3 TF, $500, supply and BOM issues, etc. If that comes out in a fashion where the "leak" has weight, as in all the major outlets get these specs (digital foundry, ign, actual reporters, etc.. , then you may have a short term problem. No company wants to lose control of the narrative for their flagship product. The XBO e3 reveal and subsequent reactions are a decent example of losing control.

I remain optimistic. A cheap Lockhart I can put in another room? Still has the ssd and all the major benefits but only renders 1080 to 1440? Hell, I can get a TCL 3 series to stick in the bedroom. A $500 PS5 with better lighting, larger worlds and no loading times? H:ZD 2 made even prettier and no loading times? You have my attention. 12 TF monster with Rt and an offering like Ultimate Game Pass where I can play on both PC and the consols? My decisions may just be a matter of in what order do I buy all 3! And I have never owned more than 1 console per gen.
You forgot a Switch lite for those quiet moments on the toilet....
 
No company wants to lose control of the narrative for their flagship product. The XBO e3 reveal and subsequent reactions are a decent example of losing control.

The XBONE narrative was already set before E3, by the leaks first and then the confirmation bias of the TVTVTV reveal event. The fact that people keep saying all that happened at E3 instead is the proof. By the time the games and firmed up game details were revealed at E3, which is what happened at E3 but is not what keeps getting repeated, the narrative was already set and spun in the worst possible way, making any discussion as productive as talking to a brick wall.

That is what PlayStation supporters are legitimately worried about, because they have already seen the results firsthand.
 
Let's see.
We are in March, right?
Consoles will be released in november (if they don´t get delayed).
There's a 8 month interval, in which Sony can reveal.
Currently what do we know? Some specs (not even all of them) on one console.
But we also knew some details on PS5 features before we knew anything about Xbox.
So I ask:

So, why do you consider Sony to be lossing the hype war?

Because companies are not talking in the same day?
Which period do you consider to be critical for loosing the hype war? Is it 8 months before? Is 7 or 6 not good enough?
They also have 3 first party titles coming out in the next 2-3 months that will potentially sell ~10mil copies each. Software is where the money is, right?
First I thought that putting next gen hype on the back burner to hype up games for a "dying" system was questionable but I guess it's pretty good marketing to entice you into the ecosystem. Just like HZD coming to PC.
 
Hype is a fickle beast.

It can help you, but it can also hurt you.

Too early and hype may die before the thing you are hyping is available. Too late and you won't drum up as much business when your thing is available.

And the most important thing to remember. Hype isn't a beast you can control. You can put out crumbs that attempt to move the hype beast here or there, but hype can go in a completely different direction than what you intend. PS3 and XBO are great examples of hype not going the direction intended.

Coming back to specificities with the current topic. You can't even pre-order any of the next gen. consoles yet. Whether the hype is good or bad right now doesn't affect how well the next gen. consoles will sell.

In a few months time, the hype landscape could be completely different.

Right now hype can't directly help your next generation console. It may or may not help when the console finally releases, but many things can change between now and then. The only thing hype can do is potentially convince people to not buy current generation consoles.

In that respect Sony has far more to lose than Microsoft. Albeit both have mitigated that somewhat with announcements of BC support.

Basically this late in the generation hardware sales aren't that important. What is far more important is to try to keep people buying software. Traditionally software sales will soften in the lead up to a new console as people stop buying hardware and games. But, if they know their games will run on the next console as well, then there's no reason not to buy games. If those games will also get next generation enhancements, even less reason to stop buying games. There will, of course, still be people that wait because they want to play the games at the highest graphics possible, but there are many who won't wait.

Some people are far too caught up in hype or non-hype.

Unless you are an investor in one of the companies, then what information they release or don't release, isn't going to materially impact you.

Regards,
SB
 

I believe this was known and already posted by AbsoluteBegginer. The github leak had a lot of pre-silicon numbers if I recall.

Because they're pre-silicon numbers doesn't mean that they are incorrect. Pre-silicon numbers can be collected by running the RTL verilog in simulation and that's extremely slow (potentially hours of simulation time to get 10's of thousands of cycles) . Or in emulation where the design is run on a FPGA that would be much faster than an RTL sim, but still slow (maybe a couple of megahertz). This is the typical work that would be done to verify a design before tapeout. You are running the actual design. These tests should catch major issues, but won't catch all issues. Chances are you will find weird corner cases only when you run a tests on final silicon as that's the only place where you can run billions of cycles.
 
Aren't pre production kits just PC's designed to mimic the console?

IIRC PS4* has an ARM based security chip on the board that prevents the loading of other OSes.
* the original allowed linux installs, they fixed it in the PRO and Slim

If the unit they're using isn't locked down yet they can run whatever OS they want.

A generic Windows install verse Sony's tuned custom BSD-Unix OS probably isn't the the best indicator of actual performance.
I thought the PS4 on Windows being referenced were leaked benchmark database entries of early hardware, which meant they were inadvertent or purposeful leaks from those involved with production.
It may not be the best indicator of final performance, but it could be useful in confirming that the base feature set is implemented properly. In AMD's case, its marketing that its discrete products benefited from the optimization and mindshare of the consoles might be helped by avoiding any severe incompatibility between a tweaked GCN and the main family.

I believe this was known and already posted by AbsoluteBegginer. The github leak had a lot of pre-silicon numbers if I recall.

Because they're pre-silicon numbers doesn't mean that they are incorrect. Pre-silicon numbers can be collected by running the RTL verilog in simulation and that's extremely slow (potentially hours of simulation time to get 10's of thousands of cycles) . Or in emulation where the design is run on a FPGA that would be much faster than an RTL sim, but still slow (maybe a couple of megahertz). This is the typical work that would be done to verify a design before tapeout. You are running the actual design. These tests should catch major issues, but won't catch all issues. Chances are you will find weird corner cases only when you run a tests on final silicon as that's the only place where you can run billions of cycles.
The idea that there would be pre-silicon simulation of a stepping is what I would have assumed was a given. The discussion of "virtual steppings" is could be misunderstanding that, or it may be asserting that AMD has started assigning traditionally physical stepping numbers to revisions of the IP.
I'm not sure if I have seen evidence that there is a compelling argument for doing the latter. There should already be a means to identify the versions of the implementation prior to tapeout, and I would think being held to the limited number of values available in the 2-digit identifier scheme would be limiting flexibility of the virtual side and potentially adding confusion to any work that may be specific to steppings like tracking errata and bug fixes.
As noted, at some point there should generally be a physical end-product to a given stepping, if only to verify that the simulations are to be believed. I'd expect declining confidence in pre-silicon results in a "virtual" stepping in terms of applicability to a different physical one.

edit: Also, what is the timing of these "virtual A0" results? If it's in the March to June range of 2019, that seems to put a rather recent tapeout of the A0 or later silicon, and what does that mean for the rumors claiming an E0 if it's possible the physical silicon was nonexistent that recently?
 
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