Do you think it would be a mistake for MS and/or Sony to launch in 2012?

[Mobius1aic]

Why 2012 would be a mistake: both the PS3 and 360 are completely workable platforms with pretty much complete HD media capabilities. It's the videogaming capabilities of theirs that are now underwhelming. However, there is plenty of software to be made, and new experiences to be had on both systems. To replace them, even in 2012 would seem premature. Keep making software and people will continue to play games, play online, and buy DLC as well as media services, with no need to build a new box. Things like Kinect and Move have helped too, but I think it's the overall combination of "good enough hardware", great online experiences, games, and pivotal media implementation have helped push consoles into the living room, making them the centerpiece of entertainment, only behind the HDTV in importance.

Yes, competition could one up the competitor, but a well to do system like either the PS3 or 360 can still go for a while even with a new generation system from the competitor around. Leaving computational power for the sake of games out it, I just don't see the next generation really offering anything that couldn't be done on today's systems. The only thing I see making the next generation necessary is the arguably archaic hardware in regards to gaming in the current systems. For everything else, they are fine at what they do. Devotees of either the PS3 or 360 probably wouldn't be as jealous as we would think of a new system from their less preferred brand, especially if games continue to stick to being multiplatform. Might as well make 2013 the earliest date of release. Until then, revise the systems to be cheaper to produce, create new system life extending accessories that are actually desirable, make the games and software better.

 

[TheChefO]

Why 2012 would be a mistake: both the PS3 and 360 are completely workable platforms with pretty much complete HD media capabilities. It's the videogaming capabilities of theirs that are now underwhelming. However, there is plenty of software to be made, and new experiences to be had on both systems. To replace them, even in 2012 would seem premature. Keep making software and people will continue to play games, play online, and buy DLC as well as media services, with no need to build a new box. Things like Kinect and Move have helped too, but I think it's the overall combination of "good enough hardware", great online experiences, games, and pivotal media implementation have helped push consoles into the living room, making them the centerpiece of entertainment, only behind the HDTV in importance.

Yes, competition could one up the competitor, but a well to do system like either the PS3 or 360 can still go for a while even with a new generation system from the competitor around. Leaving computational power for the sake of games out it, I just don't see the next generation really offering anything that couldn't be done on today's systems. The only thing I see making the next generation necessary is the arguably archaic hardware in regards to gaming in the current systems. For everything else, they are fine at what they do. Devotees of either the PS3 or 360 probably wouldn't be as jealous as we would think of a new system from their less preferred brand, especially if games continue to stick to being multiplatform. Might as well make 2013 the earliest date of release. Until then, revise the systems to be cheaper to produce, create new system life extending accessories that are actually desirable, make the games and software better.

I agree with the general premise that nextgen console will likely be doing much the same of what we've already seen on ps3/xb360, but better.

I don't expect revolutionary gameplay on ps4/xb720 which would be impossible on xb360/ps3 for at least the first year after launch, maybe two.

It will be roughly the same, but prettier IMO.

But this could be said of last gen too.

What gaming experiences do we have now that could not be replicated to a lesser extent on xb1 and ps2?


As far as the competition is concerned: Sony doesn't know MS plans and MS doesn't know Sony's plans. This makes it difficult to sit on hands and throw a dart at a year without regard for what the competition may do.

This also says nothing of the plans an outsider may have to enter the market ....

 

[Phil]

I personally think that the scope of moving first to a new generation is being underestimated here.

Picture the scenerio of a game-studio, that's making money on current generation titles. They have a solid library base, lots of assets and workable environment and tools to create new games. Lets say the first of the console makers decide to launch within 12 months.

This game-studio can now decide to fully (or partly with half the team) focus on being ready and being one of the first devs to meet the next gen launch with a new game. For this, they need to focus on new hardware, mostly incomplete docs, new costly assets, small development time window etc. Resources they move off current "money making" generation, means investing into at that point unknown territory. Given the fixed timeframe of 12 months until the launch, they know what budget they have to expect. Employees cost money after all.

What if, that console that was supposed to launch in 12 months doesn't and gets delayed by 6 or 12 months? Finished games can not be sold and there's no money coming in at that stage - so effectively, by launching late, the console manufacturer is putting these faithful devs in an uncomfortable situation. What are those devs with a finished product supposed to do? Work another 6 months on their product? Sure, but that costs money and as long as no product can be sold, there's no income. Start development on the next game? Sure, but that costs money too. One way or the other, it's costly for all involved, hence the risk in investing into a new generation.

The bigger the developer or the bigger the backing by a publisher, the less of a problem it is, as a large developer could theoretically still support two generation and lessen the risk. Not all developers have that luxury though and with the current economy, this may not be feasable for many.

Given the risk involved for all, it's absolutely important that a console maker targeting a date for a launch tries to achieve that. It can't expect to set a launch date and "see what happens" only to decide it can afford to delay for 12 months because the opposition has an ace up its sleeve. It's unrealistic and absurd.

 

[function]

Bioshock didn't seem to have a sales issue when it was ported months later to ps3 ... same for Oblivion.

Bioshock and Oblivion were never intended to be simultaneous launches, the business case for those ports was made with them never intending to rely on advertising budget from the PC and 360 versions. (They were also ports of extremely well received games with multiple GoTY awards and budget / GoTY re-releases so awareness and positive word of mouth remained high. Most games aren't so lucky.)

This is a different situation to developing a product with coordinated marketing being part of the business case and then the product falls out of that window. That mucks things up for everyone.

Launch titles age really fast. If your launch title sits on a shelf for 6 ~ 9 months it'll look bad compared to far more polished products. If you continue developing (especially now that all other versions have shipped) you could spend millions extra on development. And if you miss your marketing and launch against well marketed products you're going to get squeezed.

 

[TheChefO]

I personally think that the scope of moving first to a new generation is being underestimated here.

Picture the scenerio of a game-studio, that's making money on current generation titles. They have a solid library base, lots of assets and workable environment and tools to create new games. Lets say the first of the console makers decide to launch within 12 months.

OK

This game-studio can now decide to fully (or partly with half the team) focus on being ready and being one of the first devs to meet the next gen launch with a new game. For this, they need to focus on new hardware, mostly incomplete docs, new costly assets, small development time window etc. Resources they move off current "money making" generation, means investing into at that point unknown territory. Given the fixed timeframe of 12 months until the launch, they know what budget they have to expect. Employees cost money after all.

As I've said (and supported by xb360 launch), I'm not expecting launch software to take full advantage of the hardware. I'm expecting the vast majority (outside of 1st/2nd party) will be ports of existing content/games from existing console & PC projects.

No crazy content creation. At least at launch. PC assets will be plenty to provide a visual jump.

As for how long this would take to get these projects ready for Nextgen ... a few weeks.

What if, that console that was supposed to launch in 12 months doesn't and gets delayed by 6 or 12 months? Finished games can not be sold and there's no money coming in at that stage - so effectively, by launching late, the console manufacturer is putting these faithful devs in an uncomfortable situation. What are those devs with a finished product supposed to do? Work another 6 months on their product? Sure, but that costs money and as long as no product can be sold, there's no income. Start development on the next game? Sure, but that costs money too. One way or the other, it's costly for all involved, hence the risk in investing into a new generation.

12 months delay would be a horrible failure. Lucky for anyone launching in 2012, I'm not anticipating MS/Sony using a prototype cutting edge technology that has never been at retail before which would cause such a delay.

28nm GPUs will ship Q1/2012

Let's take a look at the last yield ramp on 40nm:

q2/2009 20-30% Launched gpus on new 40nm
q3/2009 60% yield doubled
q4/2009 40% another snafu, but not catastrophic, just shortages
q1/2010 60% back to reasonable levels

q3/q4 should bring suitable yields for a console using 28nm.

The longest the delay would be is a few months.

Granted, I'm not saying they may not have shortages at launch, but this isn't new. In fact, shortages can be a powerful ally in mindshare. Creating desire.

The bigger the developer or the bigger the backing by a publisher, the less of a problem it is, as a large developer could theoretically still support two generation and lessen the risk. Not all developers have that luxury though and with the current economy, this may not be feasable for many.

I'm not anticipating a radical departure in hardware for either MS or Sony, thus the port process to provide launch software will be rather simple. Even with that, smaller devs don't have to participate in the launch, and most don't.

Given the risk involved for all, it's absolutely important that a console maker targeting a date for a launch tries to achieve that. It can't expect to set a launch date and "see what happens" only to decide it can afford to delay for 12 months because the opposition has an ace up its sleeve. It's unrealistic and absurd.

I hope I didn't give the impression that MS/Sony wouldn't try to hit the q4/2012 date window. Past yield ramps indicate they will not have an issue launching q4/2012 on 28nm. If they miss it, q1/2013 would be doable. No worries about a 12 month delay.

 

[hoho]

Let's take a look at the last yield ramp on 40nm:

q2/2009 20-30% Launched gpus on new 40nm
q3/2009 60% yield doubled
q4/2009 40% another snafu, but not catastrophic, just shortages
q1/2010 60% back to reasonable levels

Mind putting sources to those numbers and add what kind of binning and die sizes were used to come up with them? Without that kind of information they are utterly useless when discussing non-binnable console parts.

 

[AlNom]

Mind putting sources to those numbers and add what kind of binning and die sizes were used to come up with them? Without that kind of information they are utterly useless when discussing non-binnable console parts.

Just off the top of my head:

Q2 2009 would mean rv740, ~137mm^2.

The Evergreen series didn't launch until Q4 of 2009, ~334mm^2 (Cypress) and 166mm^2 (Juniper). Both Cypress and Juniper launched with two market SKUs each, with the slower iteration having a disabled shader/TMU block along with reduced core clocks.

 

[TheChefO]

Mind putting sources to those numbers and add what kind of binning and die sizes were used to come up with them? Without that kind of information they are utterly useless when discussing non-binnable console parts.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1604394&postcount=225

Let's also keep in mind that the 40nm process was not running along very smoothly. Doubling yields in 1 quarter, down 50% the next, and then back to normal levels the quarter afterward.

TSMC has stated 28nm is ramping quicker than 40nm.

 

[hoho]

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1604394&postcount=225

That's just one number out of four.

TSMC has stated 28nm is ramping quicker than 40nm.

What kind of time period are they comparing there? Again, without context this is absolutely useless bit of information and could mean pretty much anything

 

[TheChefO]

That's just one number out of four.
What kind of time period are they comparing there? Again, without context this is absolutely useless bit of information and could mean pretty much anything

Read on:

...run into new issues with their 40nm process technology that have sent yield rates down to 40%.

The company had previously improved yield rates for its 40nm processes to around 60% from as low as 20-30% in the second quarter of 2009

Putting two and two together here with the published date of the article breaks it down to the time schedule I provided.


You keep banging on about binned parts and yields to shed doubt on 28nm q4/2012 and how there is no evidence/information which can provide any projection for this timeframe.

While that may be true that we can't predict the future with absolute certainty, we do have some information from the past which when combined with information from the present is all one can go one to predict the near-term future.

Nothing of what we know from the past nor the present leads me to DOUBT a q4/2012 28nm is possible.

Do you have any information which would lead you to doubt this launch window? If so, what is it?

As I said ... way back when, MS decided to target 90nm for launch of xb360. They did this before any 90nm GPUs were being produced.

They had no idea what the yields would be (can't base anything on the past, right?).

Yet, they took a blind shot in the dark and targeted 90nm q4/2005.

Mind you, no GPU was on the market at e3 when they announced the launch date. None.

Binning or not.

Low yield or not.

And yet, they launched, successfully, in q4/2005. Right along side new GPU's which also used the 90nm process.

Granted, this was not a smooth launch, and the engineering and design of the innards of xb360 caused RRoD. But this is not a mirror of that situation. MS has the benefit of seeing how products using the 28nm process are coming along before making a public announcement on a timeframe for launch.

 

[AlNom]

Microsoft was pretty desperate to move on from Xbox 1, that's motivation enough to take a lot of risks.

 

[TheChefO]

Microsoft was pretty desperate to move on from Xbox 1, that's motivation enough to take a lot of risks.

Indeed.

But this situation isn't a mirror of that one from a manufacturing standpoint.

MS can see how 28nm manufacturing is going prior to a public target window for launch. (see edit)

 

[TheChefO]

Bioshock and Oblivion were never intended to be simultaneous launches, the business case for those ports was made with them never intending to rely on advertising budget from the PC and 360 versions. (They were also ports of extremely well received games with multiple GoTY awards and budget / GoTY re-releases so awareness and positive word of mouth remained high. Most games aren't so lucky.)

This is a different situation to developing a product with coordinated marketing being part of the business case and then the product falls out of that window. That mucks things up for everyone.

Launch titles age really fast. If your launch title sits on a shelf for 6 ~ 9 months it'll look bad compared to far more polished products. If you continue developing (especially now that all other versions have shipped) you could spend millions extra on development. And if you miss your marketing and launch against well marketed products you're going to get squeezed.

These (PC + xb360) ports to xb720/ps4 will take a few weeks. (assuming derivative hardware)

Not a huge investment.

 

[AlphaWolf]

That's a bit optimistic, but so is your entire argument for 2012. So nm i guess.

 

[TheChefO]

That's a bit optimistic, but so is your entire argument for 2012. So nm i guess.

IME I can move a title from one platform to another in < 3 weeks if I have to. Biggest issue is whether the assets will work on the new target.
It usually takes about a week to get the game "compiling and running" usually without graphics or sound, and another couple of weeks to fix toolchains and graphics runtimes.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=764106&postcount=35

 

[function]

Well you missed out this really important bit (it was the next line):

This doesn't really take into account platform specific optimizations, but they are generally done later in development.

And you seem to be assuming that all developers will have the same experience, and that nothing in an unfinished, unreleased platform would make this more difficult. But that's not actually what I consider to be the big issue.

How would a launch lineup of games looking and playing exactly the same as the version on the system you currently own convince you to invest $400 in the new system? Even the 360 launched with a massively stronger lineup than this. And they'll absolutely look and run worse than the PC version on a moderately high end PC, and this ("higher res console game ") is so far not killing off current consoles.

 

[TheChefO]

Well you missed out this really important bit (it was the next line):

And you seem to be assuming that all developers will have the same experience, and that nothing in an unfinished, unreleased platform would make this more difficult. But that's not actually what I consider to be the big issue.

Granted,
My assumption is mostly based on the concept that the nextgen systems will be an extension of the existing architectures.

If they aren't, then this theory (easy ports) is a lot more difficult to support.

Why would I assume that these systems would be extension of existing architecture?

• 1) BC
• 2) Cost of HW development
• 3) Dev Tools
• 4) Cost of SW development
• 5) Lack of Desirable Hi-Power Alternatives

1) I won't go into the details here as it's been discussed ad nauseam, I think it's important and will be a part of nextgen
2) Experimental HW cost an arm and a leg last time Sony went down that road with Cell with mixed results. I suspect the hardware will be much more "off the shelf" on the GPU end (GCN), with derivative CPU's of the existing consoles (~xcpu x4 or ~Cell x4) which may or may not be OoOE. Going down this road will be cheaper to R&D and provide suitable results.
3) Dev Tools can be leveraged which have already been designed if the architecture is close enough to last gen. Modification to reflect the specific differences, but certainly cheaper/quicker than the process that Sony/MS had to go through this gen.
4) Developers can leverage the knowledge they've gained in developing for the past 6 years without having to switch out much of their code base to meet any new alien architecture as was the case in 2005/2006.
5) There are no serious alternatives to the existing architectures which offer significantly better bang for the buck which would counter the above and make such an exotic alternative to the above idea of derivative hardware.

OoOE and GCN are about as radical a departure as I expect. Both of which can be leveraged to provide better performance, but should not break BC and will not break the code bases of developers.

I could be completely wrong, but this is what I'm basing my projections on and why I came to the conclusion that this is the path nextgen will take.

How would a launch lineup of games looking and playing exactly the same as the version on the system you currently own convince you to invest $400 in the new system? Even the 360 launched with a massively stronger lineup than this. And they'll absolutely look and run worse than the PC version on a moderately high end PC, and this ("higher res console game ") is so far not killing off current consoles.

Maybe you missed it, but:

Out of the 20 launch games, 5 were 3rd party exclusive:

Amped 3
Condemned: Criminal Origins
Every Party
Ridge Racer 6
Tetris: The Grandmaster ACE


3 were 1st party exclusive:

Kameo: Elements of Power
Perfect Dark Zero
Project Gotham Racing 3


and 12 were ports:

Call of Duty 2
FIFA 06: Road to FIFA World Cup
Gun
Madden NFL 06
NBA 2K6
NBA Live 06
Need for Speed: Most Wanted
NHL 2K6
Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie
Quake 4
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06
Tony Hawk's American Wasteland

So the majority were xbox/pc ports which simply had higher res textures, maybe an improved model here or there, and higher res and/or framerate.

I suspect this will continue.

As for whether this will be enough to lure buyers, I doubt it. At least not in significant numbers (subjective). MS (or Sony) would have to show something in the works which DOES push the envelope into realms not possible on ps3/xb360.

Preferably having at least one title available at or around launch which is pushing the envelope.

 

[BRiT]

You also fail to take into account that was back in 2006 when games and platforms were much simpler. Since then game creation and sophistication has expanded significantly.

 

[kagemaru]

So the majority were xbox/pc ports which simply had higher res textures, maybe an improved model here or there, and higher res and/or framerate.

I know for a fact that porting xbox/ps2 games to the 360 was anything but easy and required a good amount of work. Ignorance of this level belongs on Gamefaqs or GAF.

 

[TheChefO]

I know for a fact that porting xbox/ps2 games to the 360 was anything but easy and required a good amount of work. Ignorance of this level belongs on Gamefaqs or GAF.

Instead of spouting off, why not introduce actual numbers to the discussion?

"I know for a fact it took a team of x a total of x months to port xb360 launch game x."

That would help the discussion and I'd be happy to know such details. I'm sure others would too.



Don't be mad because you were proven wrong on the launch port figures!