it's not like sony knew what MS was going to do. anytime you over do your competitor is always a good thing.
and like you said it's probably important to get out first and try to control the narrative
but they didn't announce much really.
Baseless Next Generation Rumors with no Technical Merits [pre E3 2019] *spawn*
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and like you said it's probably important to get out first and try to control the narrative
but they didn't announce much really.
yea but those things are planned way in advance is all i'm saying. there's only so much reactionary stuff you can do as a company.
Just thinking...
The Cernys' timing looked a little strange, as if to anticipate something from a competitor, in particular as if they know that the competition has something better in hands, and wanted to talk now instead than after a bigger ms' reveal.
In the wired article it states they recently accelerated putting out dev kits. So I'd guess this was more to get ahead of potential leaks and trying to set the story.
That being said not many actual numbers around core specs came from this....which could still leak...
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In June 216 Sony had an idea of what Microsoft would be launching seventeen months later (November 2017)with Xbox One X because Microsoft threw out some ballpark performance numbers at the end of the E3. I think doing things like that (and the recent Wired interview) is a short-lived marketing boost at the expense of tipping your hand to competitors and taking some of the WHOOSH out of the actual inevitable reveal.
Now that both companies on are the same technology pathway, noting Microsoft likely have far greater flexibility given Xbox's hardware-abstracted hypervisor architecture, once you have your target launch window the technology options will, baring custom extensions and accessories, are going to be very similar for each company. What will separate the hardware aspects of the consoles, and what could be quite dramatic in real performance terms, is choices of RAM (type, configuration, quantity, speed), CPU, GPU power and storage solutions - all of which are largely dictated to slow-moving designs and fab windows outside of each manufacturer's control so there differentiator will be the cost as this can dramatically impact the performance.
In terms of sales I assume? In terms of performance, Xbox One X is where it's at but it's not the best selling console SKU, nor was PS4 Pro when it held the performance crown. On a site like this we're always interested in the most impressive technology but it's not that common for the console with the most impressive tech been the leading console.
The one clear message MS could act upon is the storage. PS5 could look very 'next gen' if loading speeds are non-existent while XBN is taking a while to load stuff from slow storage. With the cat out the bag, MS can now consider super fast storage options where perhaps they were considering mundane, economical solutions.
I suspect BC, RT and SSD needed to be 'mentioned' ahead of the MS reveal as Sony suspect (or know) those are in the next Xbox and didn't want to make it sound like a reactionary 'yeah we have those too'.
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We don't know what size or type of cat is in what bag. The widely-adopted assumption is that PS5 will include a big (for many games) and fast SSD because the quote strongly implied it was very fast. Sony could just be slotting in 64Gb of fast solid state cache in front of the HDD which virtually eliminates loading once the data has been read once, but continues to use a HDD for mass storage. There is a lot of neat trickery in the way PS4 games are packaged to let you play before the whole game had installed or downloaded; maybe PS5 has an evolution of this.
A silly competitor could easily prioritise a big 1Tb SSD and blow a chunk of budget on that but Microsoft really can't because they will already be pretty committed to what they have been designing for past few years. So the options are to increase the cost (or reduce profit margins) by throwing in a conventional SSD or try to retrofit a similarly smart solution.
Or maybe Xbox 4 already has something similar! Those engineers in Redmond are pretty smart and probably hate slow-loading games as much as the engineers at Sony
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I think there's more weight to the inclusion of RT for the implication of a powerful Navi gpu in a PS5. The Wired interview showed us how enthusiastic Cerny was on pimping Raytracing and we all know it takes at least a 2070 to run it at a decent resolution just for current gen titles, logic indicates more power is required with next gen assets. Does this not further extrapolate the massive power that's required for this console? I'm pretty sure Sony doesn't wanna market RT with a peasant res (900p to even 1080p) on a brand new next gen hardware in late 2020. Is it safe to assume at this point the gpu would be at least on par if not substantially more powerful than an Nvidia 2070, perhaps in spitting distance of a 2080?
We don't know what size or type of cat is in what bag. The widely-adopted assumption is that PS5 will include a big (for many games) and fast SSD because the quote strong implied it was very fast. Sony could just be slotting in 64Gb of fast solid state cache in front of the HDD which virtually eliminates loading once the data has been read once, but continued to use a HDD for mass storage. There is a lot of neat trickery in the way PS4 games are packaged to let you play before the whole game had installed or downloaded and maybe PS5 has an extension of this.
A silly competitor could easily prioritise a big 1Tb SSD and blow a chunk of budget on that but Microsoft really can't because they will already be pretty committed to what they have been designing for past few years. So the options are to increase the cost (or reduce the profit margins) by throwing in a conventional SSD or try to retrofit a similarly smart solution.
Or maybe Xbox 4 already has something similar! Those engineers are Redmond are pretty smart and probably hate slow-loading games as much as the engineers at Sony
I do believe Sony have the solution bolded. Maybe MS will think it's a full fat SSD and take the bait
Once third parties are playing with an extremely fast ssd (as cache or full) with guidelines for avoiding loading and specs for streaming assets at GB/s, MS probably gets it leaked soon after. They can keep the clocks on a need to know basis, even the final amount of ram, but any game dev and even testers will know it has crazy fast storage. It's a core feature impacting the game design and what is experienced by testers.
The rest of the specs he talked about were all obvious. Zen, navi, physical media, "supports RT".
The rest of the specs he talked about were all obvious. Zen, navi, physical media, "supports RT".
I don't think MS can respond to it. I'm fairly confident that most of these things are locked in hard early on. Though Sony has provided loading time comparisons and that should give MS a ballpark to work with internally to figure out where they stand relatively speaking. 16x the loading time ps4 -> ps5, then they should comparing a similar 16x loading time benchmark XBO -> XBN and see where they line up.
If they don't already have a spec for it, it's hard to believe they can just uppity switch things up to new hard drives. If Sony made something awesome with storage and MS didn't, it's too late for anything to be done by MS.
MS just needs to focus on what they do, and Sony is going to focus on what they do. There's no baiting of anything, MS will have their own strategies for their own consoles and as much as they'd like to compete with Sony on say storage it could come at compromise to other things they are working on and I don't think they're going to do that. If Sony spent that money on their storage that's money not spent elsewhere. It's just the way things are. You have limitations on how far you can push on different fronts on the hardware configuration at given price points and how far a company may be willing to subsidize hardware costs.
We saw from Scorpio reveal how little the motherboard changed to release. And even when they didn't announce the memory our members were able to pinpoint the 12GB of memory and that didn't change 18 months later so it wasn't just some marketing mockup - it was the actual hardware design laid out for marketing.
If they don't already have a spec for it, it's hard to believe they can just uppity switch things up to new hard drives. If Sony made something awesome with storage and MS didn't, it's too late for anything to be done by MS.
MS just needs to focus on what they do, and Sony is going to focus on what they do. There's no baiting of anything, MS will have their own strategies for their own consoles and as much as they'd like to compete with Sony on say storage it could come at compromise to other things they are working on and I don't think they're going to do that. If Sony spent that money on their storage that's money not spent elsewhere. It's just the way things are. You have limitations on how far you can push on different fronts on the hardware configuration at given price points and how far a company may be willing to subsidize hardware costs.
We saw from Scorpio reveal how little the motherboard changed to release. And even when they didn't announce the memory our members were able to pinpoint the 12GB of memory and that didn't change 18 months later so it wasn't just some marketing mockup - it was the actual hardware design laid out for marketing.
Yeah. That's my thinking. Plus they have been talking to their developers just as much & I'm sure they don't like slow-loading games either.
What I will be interested in more is if MS is working more on the time it takes to play a game once it's started to download. Hopefully you can start playing sooner. I'm sure they can leverage their experience in their virtual machine/hypervisor technology & their Azure cloud to do something similar to Numecent's Cloudpaging. With that they may not need a more robust storage system.
Tommy McClain
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This has got to be obvious, hasn't it? A lot of games, particularly openworld games like GTA V, RDR2 and Witcher 3, take a long time to do that initial load and for next gen consoles you probably doubling/tripling the RAM available and we're seeing asset fidelity is ballooning on Pro/One X, so have to have a solution to bring load times down, not allow the to get longer.
They need to beg, borrow or steal PS4's installation system. It's freaky how you can insert a disc for the first time and 10-15 seconds later you can usually start the game while the rest of installing in the background. It's truly impressive.
During the 1X price guessing thread I was pushing a teared storage solution. SSD was to expensive and HDD was just slow.
I never got it.
I'm fully expecting something from both, we now know Sony has something in place.
MS is aware of the issue, they made a big deal about how they improved it in 1X. No way just a HDD would be fast enough next gen. Its just about what solution they went with.
They also hired a some kind of storage expert from what I seem to remember? Or at least advertised for it.
I never got it.
I'm fully expecting something from both, we now know Sony has something in place.
MS is aware of the issue, they made a big deal about how they improved it in 1X. No way just a HDD would be fast enough next gen. Its just about what solution they went with.
They also hired a some kind of storage expert from what I seem to remember? Or at least advertised for it.
PC user:
GPU check
Memory check
CPU check
Pcie3 SSD huh what.....?
Everything pc can meet or scale currently easily apart from storage.
This is where the biggest difference will be for Sony 1P. They don't need to worry about pc.
MS will, even if you say min req is ssd, thats just not close enough to not impact possible game design. Unless ms storage solution is primative SSD set up.
updating game to take advantage of supper fast storage would be pretty easy.
How long will it be before pcie3 ssd is common enough to be able to be considered essential in a pc game?
Suppose they could make console and cloud exclusive game, but I wouldn't be surprised if pressure would be to not to do that.
Multi plats will limit themselves to pc ssd.
GPU check
Memory check
CPU check
Pcie3 SSD huh what.....?
Everything pc can meet or scale currently easily apart from storage.
This is where the biggest difference will be for Sony 1P. They don't need to worry about pc.
MS will, even if you say min req is ssd, thats just not close enough to not impact possible game design. Unless ms storage solution is primative SSD set up.
updating game to take advantage of supper fast storage would be pretty easy.
How long will it be before pcie3 ssd is common enough to be able to be considered essential in a pc game?
Suppose they could make console and cloud exclusive game, but I wouldn't be surprised if pressure would be to not to do that.
Multi plats will limit themselves to pc ssd.
D
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This is a weird way to look at it, but yeah.. interesting. I'm so looking forward to MCC coming to PC this year, reinforcing Microsoft's commitment to Xbox everywhere but that's the immediate drawback to everything/everywhere - you have to accept the lowest common denominator.
The workaround is Microsoft let you stream things your hardware just isn't capable of keeping pace with when run locally.
The funny thing is people probably simply assume Lockhart would be that.
Where as I think everything will be close enough in spec to allow for scaling at a decreased resolution to not impact game design, and facilitate easy support. I fully expect Lockhart to have fast storage. Maybe anaconda 256GB, Lockhart 120GB, teared storage, discless (possibly sku) , etc.
Much bigger impact is pc storage speed in my eyes.
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