Current anti-MS in gaming *spawn

[mrcorbo]

Waiting a year to release a system ~40% more powerful than Pro is indeed risky. Remember that's roughly the difference in GPU between XB1 and PS4.

That there is a comparable percentage difference between Scorpio and PS4 Pro as there is between PS4 and Xbox One is actually meaningless (and I say this having made the comparison before myself). The absolute performance difference between the two is in a whole other category. A 1.8TF difference is more significant than a 0.5TF one.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Why compare absolute metrics? That's far more meaningless than relative metrics.

 

[mrcorbo]

Why compare absolute metrics? That's far more meaningless than relative metrics.

How so? The amount of additional compute/graphics work you can do with an extra 1.8TF of compute power is 3.6x greater than the amount of additional compute/graphics work you can do with an extra 0.5TF of compute power. And while I can see an argument that some or maybe even many of the workloads that the refresh consoles are being asked to process have also scaled by some factor, that is not universally true.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

What publications are these that seem so biased against Microsoft? The ones I read seem pretty neutral to me.

Me too. I frequent IGN, Eurogamer, GiantBomb, VideoGamer and GameInsider. All seem to call things as they see them. They've been critical of Sony's initial handling of PS3, including cost and launch lineup and praiseworthy when Sony brought the costs down and started releasing decent games. They were praiseworthy of PS4 because of its relative performance/pricepoint to Xbox One but have been critical about the lack of exclusives at Christmases (in contrast to Microsoft). They've been critical of no UHD drive in PS4 Pro. They've been praiseworthy of 360 and it's early launch, good price, decent standard features like voicechat and online functionality and impressive games. They were critical of RRoD and Microsoft's initial denial but happy with the eventual handling and extended warranty. They were critical of Xbox One's unveiling, and the cost and inclusion of Kinect. They were happy when Microsoft made Kinect option and very happy with Xbox One S. They've been generally interested in Scorpio but reserved because nobody knows exactly what it will offer and cost.

I'm seeing no prevalent bias anywhere I read.

 

[Clukos]

Maybe I'm the only that notices it but I find on a lot of gaming websites there tends to be a general anti-Microsoft bias. Both in PC and console gaming.

It's popular to be anti Windows 10, anti Windows store...and be pro Steam and generally pro PS4.

Steam is a better service, and it is generally accepted that Ps4 is the better console between the two. Of course "better" is subjective, just as X360 was the defacto "better" console last gen. It's just sad that MS shit the bed so bad with X1 early that it is affecting its image to this day, they've improved a lot since 2014, Windows Store needs to be improved further if they want to compete against Steam though.

 

[MrFox]

How so? The amount of additional compute/graphics work you can do with an extra 1.8TF of compute power is 3.6x greater than the amount of additional compute/graphics work you can do with an extra 0.5TF of compute power. And while I can see an argument that some or maybe even many of the workloads that the refresh consoles are being asked to process have also scaled by some factor, that is not universally true.

Is the PS4 advantage over the XB1 a thousand times more than the difference between PS2 and xbox?
Or is it a million time more noticeable than the difference between SNES and Genesis?

 

[mpg1]

When I said "I find a lot on gaming websites" I meant comments/forum posts...not gaming websites themselves.

 

[ProspectorPete]

There will never be another Xbox360. Friends who at the time worked for the biggest tech site in my country explained to me how MS operated; everyone in the website got free XBL, they also got free XBL vouchers, they got every game multiple times, with special editions consoles to go with it for every major release, also special edition controllers. Multiple press trips a year, Barcelona 5 star hotel review events, all inclusive, business class flights payed for.
Contrast this with Sony; who refused to send review copies in advance for 1st party titles... you can guess who the website was biased towards. Compared to metacritic; they always scored MS titles 10 points higher. Sony titles 15 points lower.
I was banned for asking them to be transparent about review copies and press kits/trips.
Nowadays, MS doesn't care about websites anymore, they don't give out free games, consoles or 5 star hotels anymore, at least not in my country.

For the Xbox One launch, MS probably still tried it in the USA as a last resort:
Staff on IGN panels literally saying "the human eye cannot differentiate between 720p and 1080p, unless you have a 60inch screen". Major publications also tried to spin the anti-consumer no-resale of physical games as an example.

These days consumers rule the general consensus. No amount of bribing reviewers and websites is ever going to make that go away. MS learned the hard way.

 

[iroboto]

When I said "I find a lot on gaming websites" I meant comments/forum posts...not gaming websites themselves.

an unfortunate mistake mpg1. Now go to the corner and stand there and think about the chaos you caused.

 

[mrcorbo]

Is the PS4 advantage over the XB1 a thousand times more than the difference between PS2 and xbox?
Or is it a million time more noticeable than the difference between SNES and Genesis?

The PS4, XBOne, PS4 Pro and (I'm expecting) Scorpio are all architecturally similar and generationally similar in the types of workloads they are going to be asked to process in ways that none of those other comparisons are.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

How so? The amount of additional compute/graphics work you can do with an extra 1.8TF of compute power is 3.6x greater than the amount of additional compute/graphics work you can do with an extra 0.5TF of compute power.

This is basic maths and ratio. Comparing absolute amounts is very rarely the method of choice because it paints a very unclear picture as all values exist in relation to each other which the difference loses (which is why you ended up comparing the ratios of the difference as 3.6x greater! ).

Consider country A has 100,000 population and 30,000 immigrants, and country B has 50,000,000 populations and 90,000 immigrants. In terms of the difference, Country B has 3x as many people to worry about entering the country, or 60,000 more people. But in relative terms of percentage growth, country B has only 0.2% growth whereas country A has 30% growth. Clearly that's a far bigger impact on country A when described in relative terms to the existing population and it's implied capacity to support that existing population.

As a more extreme example, consider lengths of string. String A is 2 cms long. String B is 4 cms long. String B is much longer than string A. String C is 1,000,000 cms long. String D is 1,000,010 cms long. That 10 cms difference is way more than the 2 cms difference between A and B, yet in real terms C and D are effectively the same size.

Differences lose the context of relativity, which is why we very rarely use them and almost always use ratios and percentages. In the context of what can be done on screen, Scorpio is set to be proportionally the same difference between 4Pro as PS4 is from XB1. That is, whatever graphics XB1 can produce, PS4 can produce an amount better, and Scorpio will be able to produce the same sort of difference with 4Pro (likely just a bit of image quality and a few FPS).

 

[Deleted member 11852]

There will never be another Xbox360. Friends who at the time worked for the biggest tech site in my country explained to me how MS operated; everyone in the website got free XBL, they also got free XBL vouchers, they got every game multiple times, with special editions consoles to go with it for every major release, also special edition controllers. Multiple press trips a year, Barcelona 5 star hotel review events, all inclusive, business class flights payed for.


Contrast this with Sony; who refused to send review copies in advance for 1st party titles... you can guess who the website was biased towards. Compared to metacritic; they always scored MS titles 10 points higher. Sony titles 15 points lower.

So your "friends" compromised their journalistic integrity for free stuff?

What a cute story, thanks.

 

[mpg1]

an unfortunate mistake mpg1. Now go to the corner and stand there and think about the chaos you caused.

someone could write that they prefer the color purple over blue on here and it would cause a new thread to be spawned off...

 

[ProspectorPete]

So your "friends" compromised their journalistic integrity for free stuff?

What a cute story, thanks.

They worked as forum moderators. Also "journalistic integrity" does not apply to bloggers circa 2005-2010. They were mostly angry about not allowed to go to review events (one moderated the gaming sub-forums) while persons who reviewed hard disks or motherboards were allowed to go Permanent staff always went on the trips, forum moderators were more like volunteers. The free Xbox Live needed to be activated at the office in fear of people selling the cards and actually getting paid..
If I were them I would have contacted an actual journalist, because taking bribes, IMO, is sickening and anti-consumer

 

[mrcorbo]

This is basic maths and ratio. Comparing absolute amounts is very rarely the method of choice because it paints a very unclear picture as all values exist in relation to each other which the difference loses (which is why you ended up comparing the ratios of the difference as 3.6x greater! ).

Consider country A has 100,000 population and 30,000 immigrants, and country B has 50,000,000 populations and 90,000 immigrants. In terms of the difference, Country B has 3x as many people to worry about entering the country, or 60,000 more people. But in relative terms of percentage growth, country B has only 0.2% growth whereas country A has 30% growth. Clearly that's a far bigger impact on country A when described in relative terms to the existing population and it's implied capacity to support that existing population.

As a more extreme example, consider lengths of string. String A is 2 cms long. String B is 4 cms long. String B is much longer than string A. String C is 1,000,000 cms long. String D is 1,000,010 cms long. That 10 cms difference is way more than the 2 cms difference between A and B, yet in real terms C and D are effectively the same size.

Differences lose the context of relativity, which is why we very rarely use them and almost always use ratios and percentages. In the context of what can be done on screen, Scorpio is set to be proportionally the same difference between 4Pro as PS4 is from XB1. That is, whatever graphics XB1 can produce, PS4 can produce an amount better, and Scorpio will be able to produce the same sort of difference with 4Pro (likely just a bit of image quality and a few FPS).

In context you're right, because these consoles are tied to their previous incarnations, which I forgot to consider. My thinking was that Scorpio could both match the best of what the PS4 Pro could offer graphically and then still have a whole PS4's worth of compute capability to do "other stuff". In general, this was going to be a rarity anyway but, in the context of Scorpio just being Xbox One+, it's probably not going to be a thing at all.

Out of context, I still don't agree that relative comparisons are better than absolute comparisons in all cases, but that's OT and I'm going to leave it at that.

 

[ProspectorPete]

(likely just a bit of image quality and a few FPS).

I'm hoping for just a bit of TRUE 4K and a few FPS, locking it down at 60
(I hope optimism is allowed)

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Also "journalistic integrity" does not apply to bloggers circa 2005-2010.

If you consider yourself a journalist, it's applied for a couple of hundred years. Moderators are not, by default, journalists, but ideally should be free-thinking and independent. If you're a moderator for what you can get out of corporations then you probably volunteered for the wrong reasons!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I'm hoping for just a bit of TRUE 4K

How much difference does that actually make? Are people with 4Pros finding issues with the reconstruction techniques?

 

[function]

In the context of what can be done on screen, Scorpio is set to be proportionally the same difference between 4Pro as PS4 is from XB1. That is, whatever graphics XB1 can produce, PS4 can produce an amount better, and Scorpio will be able to produce the same sort of difference with 4Pro (likely just a bit of image quality and a few FPS).

Well ... for the most part. X1, X1S, PS4 all have 5 GB of memory for games. So same memory, and pretty much the same CPU.

PS4 Pro has 5.5 GB, to accommodate larger frame + intermediate buffers, but it uses PS4Bone assets across the board.

Scorpio is likely around 9 GB for games. While not enough of an increase to allow x4 increase across all assets, you can still do a lot with effectively double the asset storage. PC games certainly have options that allow 2x ram to show distinct improvements. As always, spend your memory where you get the best returns.

Too much focus on flops with Scorpio IMO. It's going to have memory, and possibly architectural enhancements, that PS4 simply didn't have over X1. And please, God, not Jaguar again ....

Spoiler

I know, I know ... it's going to be Jaguar again.

 

[ProspectorPete]

How much difference does that actually make? Are people with 4Pros finding issues with the reconstruction techniques?

It should be worth the wait, if it's just a PS4Pro with unoptimised ports (=not that different visually compared to the Pro) then it would have been a shame to release a year later.