Given the industry, and more importantly, Xbox's recent history of graphic differences between reveal trailers and final product, I wouldn't make a judgement yet on how well Hellblade 2 really looks.
Do you think there will be a mid gen refresh console from Sony and Microsoft?
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cheapchips
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Current mid+ PC hardware RT with ML upscaling/framegen should do that job, good image quality and 60fps+ out of current gen titles. That's why some of the PS5 Pro rumours are what they are (no idea what's actually true on that front).
Gamers wont move to Series S, they'll do what they've always done and thats to move to the lower priced PS5 and Series X($299 and below sometime 2024 or 2025 for the PS5). Like they did when they moved from the PS3 and Xbox 360 to the $299 PS4 and Xbox one once the prices dropped. Same thing happened when the PS3 and Xbox 360 prices dropped and people moved on from Xbox and PS2. The marketing guys at Xbox sold the lie that this gen there wont be cost savings moving to new nodes as well as no need for a midgen refresh and the non technical parts of the media ate it up. So the Series S was likely a marketing driven decision to drive up Gamepass subscriptions but this hasn't panned out well because its not selling well and has lower demand than even the Series X.
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That's just your assertion though, we don't know how things will pan out. 2025 - especially late 2025 - is a long time to be without a current console even assuming the PS5 is below $300. PS4 was still $300 on PS store until recently.
The big problem with Xbox is it's current lack of desirability due to MS's consistent mishandling of their consoles.
Cost is obviously a factor but so is support for older consoles ending. And Series S is always going to be cheaper than Series X or PS5.
This is just plain wrong. MS didn't say there would be no cost reduction, they said that historic drops in the cost of transistors as you move to new nodes are no longer there. This isn't just their opinion, this is an industry wide truth.
I'm 100% certain theres going to be majore price reductions for the PS5 at least in 2024 or whenever they release the PS5 pro(either 2024 or 2025). As well, glow income gamers have been gradually moving away from the PS4 and Xbox One and its a tough argument to say they have been passing on the PS5 and Series X for the S since this hasn't been their behaviour in previous generations and the X and PS5 have been the better selling consoles as well as more in demand(Series S has been more available yet had few if any stock outs).
Agreed! But imho which you dont have to agree on, they made it harder for themselves by launching two consoles at once.
Again gamers in lower income parts of the world are buying more PS5s than the Series S. Series X has had more demand than the S despite the S being cheaper and more available. There is increased diminishing marginal utility when bringing down the price of a console. If at $299 for the Series S Gamers would rather save up for a PS5 or Series X, once the PS5 hits $299 it wont matter at all if the Series S is at $199. The cost of missing out on 4K gaming(on PS5 and Series X), cheaper expandable storage(on PS5), AAA exclusives(on PS5), is too high even for low income consumers, they'd rather save up. MSFT's aims of driving up hw sales(and in turn subscription sales) with a low cost hw option arent working because consumers prefer the new best thing not the new low cost almost as good as the best thing and its why they havent released Gamepass subscriber numbers since Jan 2022 when it became obvious the console wasnt selling as expected.
Okay let me put it more clearly. They said there wouldnt be meaningful cost reductions moving to newer nodes which wasnt true and Sony has proved it by getting a 10% cost reduction moving from 7nm to 6nm on the PS5. Xbox as well will be moving to a new node next year(N4P I think) in order to get meaningful cost reductions on the price of silicon(which they said wouldnt happen). You need to understand these talking points were imposed on the MSFT engineers by the marketing department in order to push the Series S. they expected the lower cost model to drive up sales and thus subscriptions. If you listen to pro Xbox reporters they were sure there would be no midgen refresh, they were regurgitating the talking points about no meaningful price reductions in moving to new nodes and now you can hear the skepticism that there wont be major price reductions of the PS5 and Series X. Its just marketing for the low cost S having to face reality.
Johnny Awesome
Veteran
Well. 10% isn't that meaningful, so MS weren't really wrong.
Its meaningful and that was just moving from 7nm to 6nm!!!
TSMC N6 was designed to be easy and cheap replacement for N7 and belongs to same family. Prices per transistor jump when you go down to N5 family (N5x, N4x) and again at N3 family
As Kaotik points out above, N6 is designed as a replacement for N7, and TSMC have been pushing customers to move over to it.
A node will still get tend to get cheaper over time but new nodes are now costing more per transistor instead of offering the historic immediate reduction in cost. This is why AMD kept some of even their newer RDNA3 products back on the old N6 process despite inferior characteristics.
Memory also faces similar issues - it is no longer getting cheaper at anything like the rate it used to.
If you mean SRAM they already hit the wall at N3 (there's one N3 variant so far which has slightly smaller size than N5, but basic N3 has exact same size for SRAM as N5)
Johnny Awesome
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It's not. You're just desperate to prove your point. In years past, consoles became $200 cheaper to produce in about a 3 year period and you're telling me the PS5 is essentially $50 cheaper to produce in the same time frame, 10 years later when $50 in 2013 is worth about $38 now, meaning it's not even 10%. It's more like 7.5%. It's meaningless. It's also only 10% because Sony has sold 50 million units and gets preferential volume pricing from TSMC that MS would never get even if all of their 25 million units were Xs.
It's silly to think that MS "lied" to everyone because previous 50% reductions for Sony console costs are now 7.5% when produced enmasse for Sony. Xbox savings would be lower and possibly non-existent. Not to mention the fact that if MS had produced a ridiculous looking console like the PS5 did to save costs, they would have been raked over the coals by the media. MS were right that costs are not going down nearly like they used to. If they weren't right, then the PS5 Pro wouldn't only have 16 GB of RAM.
I get it, lots of hate for the S, especially amongst tech enthusiasts, but there's really no evidence that it hurt Xbox *yet*. Just a few devs complaining they have to work harder to get some things running on the S, which has 99% feature parity across the game line with the X. The loss of split screen on BG3 is one of the only S downgrades that has affected gameplay in any way and most S users probably don't even care, Internet trolls notwithstanding. The verdict is still out on the S. It'll be interesting to see what happens when MS price the consoles at $199/$399 soon, as I believe they will, taking greater losses to get more GP users, which I believe is the right call.
I still think they should bring their consoles out 1 year after Sony to "ruin their party" so to speak. That and 6 AAA games every year should slowly bring them from 2:1 to 1.5:1 over the next 10 years with GP subs heading to 75+ million. I'm not suggesting that if PS5 Pro is in 2024 that MS start a new generation in 2025. Just bring out another machine. Then if Sony brings one out in 2027 or 2028 to start a new generation that MS just brings their "next gen" console out in 2028 or 2029. Lets face it, Sony's not going to be able to show off anything super impressive in the 1st year of a new console when everything has to be cross generation for sales reasons and MS can always play the game of "a year from now we will blow you away" and show some trailers etc... It's enough to keep Xbox power users happy with the right marketing spin - "we sold you the X with the expectation that you would get at least 5 years out of it before wanting to upgrade..."
Remember this: MS isn't in the business of "beating" Sony in worldwide console sales. That's a fools errand, especially with Japan. They're in the business of growing the Xbox division and that includes consoles, PC, xCloud, mobile, GP subs, more engagement with MTX and DLC etc.... They can do quite well if Sony sells 120 million units and they sell 60 million units and could probably have even larger profits than Sony if they can sell 80 million units. They just spent $100 billion over the last 6 years getting 40 studios. Dev cycles are 5 years for a AAA game + Covid delays. They're just getting started really.
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The argument wasnt about increasing price of silicon or of moving to newer nodes. It was whether there would be meaningful price reductions for console makers in moving to new nodes despite the higher silicon cost relative to previous years. And the resounding answer is yes. 10% cost reduction is meaningful. And we'll see both Sony and Xbox move to N4P and eventually to 3nm during the next 5 years. Xbox's brooklin upgrade of the Series X is also rumored to be on N4P. They wouldnt be doing this if there werent any meaningful price reductions in moving to a new process. Your telling me that the cost of moving to new processes has gone up and I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm saying there are still meaningful price reductions in moving to new processes contrary to some talking points.
You wrote this whole thing and I read it, but instead of writing another long one, I have one simple question for you? Does MSFT plan on getting meaningful price reduction when they move to N4P or 3nm next year with their Brooklin(smaller cheaper to produce Series X) console? Or they're just doing it for fun? Or you think they're going to keep it at 7nm contrary to their internal docs?
In the spirit of not being argumentative I'll just leave the 6nm argument alone. But my question to you is, do you think MSFT and Sony expect to get a meaningful price reduction in the cost of silicon when they move to N4P next year in their PS5 pro and Brooklin consoles?
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Deleted member 11852
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Sony probably get good rates from TSMC because they manufacture most of Sony's semiconductors, way beyond PlayStation because that's ICs for consumer, prosumer and professional A/V equipment. The only manufacturing that Sony does itself is for CMOS sensors, which are mostly made by Sony Semiconductor Solutions Group.
And the missing piece of information for Xbox for many years, is not how much they are spending on acquisitions, nor how much revenue they take in, but exactly how profitable this business is once you remove all the costs. You're right in that Microsoft want to sell a service (GamePass), because services are Microsoft's model, but thus far GamePass has seen most adoption on Xbox consoles and they are selling fewer and fewer each generation since the 360. How Xbox Series is selling less than Xbox One utterly baffles me but here we are.
The literal $100 billion question is how Microsoft will pivot all these acquisitions into a tangible profit. They user base (whether Xbox hardware and/or GamePass subscribers) taken as a total is shrinking. Microsoft say they want to double revenue by 2030, and most revenue comes from GamePass subscriptions, with a fair chunk from advertising according to Microsoft's last financial report. The repeated theme in that report is Microsoft want to crank up revenue by creating more opportunities for advertising. Specifically for gaming, they say "Xbox revenue is mainly affected by subscriptions and sales of first- and third-party content, as well as advertising."
I personally don't want more advertising on my Xbox, the UI is already a mess, and I do not want ads in games either but you know this is definitely coming (and not just to Xbox).
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The theory sounds good that we win back gamers with more exclusive titles every year. However, I don't think it's realistic to expect real success from a couple of games with months between them. A lot more games are needed for this and MS shouldn't have to deal with the fact that since these are big games, they have to spread out the release dates. It's an antiquated strategy to go months between releases of major games... because that way gamers aren't as interested in that platform.
I believe better that gamers today need a bombastic, attention-grabbing and focused offer! Publish several AAA titles in one season, or even publish 5 big titles at the same time as a new launch! All of this could well be connected with the appearance of the redesigned Series consoles next year. Since several first-party games will be ready for release by 2024, I think all of this is feasible.
I was meaning dram, but I didn't know that about sram so thanks for that.
"Meaningful" is pretty subjective, so I'd rather think in terms of absolute cost reductions or historic comparisons.
You can still save in areas other than simple transistor cost with for example reduced power and cooling demands, and smaller cases and lower shipping costs etc, but historically you'd save a lot on the silicon after a shrink plus a lot on power and cooling and have a smaller console to boot.
Cost reductions on consoles where you'd see a device drop to 50% (or less) of its launch price within a few years are a thing of the past. Oh, and that was often with the console maker taking a loss on selling early units too. If you want a sub $250 or $200 console these days you can't just wait a few years (we're already three years into the generation!), you have to make one. Whether it's important to have that is another matter of course.
Edit: just wanted to add that a PS5 Pro would require a more advanced process, but an Xbox refresh might only need N6 - cutting the disk drive, reduced power and cooling etc would all add to a reduced BOM, as might simplifying the memory bus.
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For Sony, no. They're doing a bigger chip on more expensive process. For MS, yes, they're doing same chip on slightly cheaper process (Brooklin is just N6 shrink, same thing Sony already did)
The die area on the PS5 pro will be smaller than on the PS5 (same thing happened with the PS4 pro because of a new node despite more CUs on the GPU). So you think Sony is going to stick to 6nm on the PS5 when they release the PS5 pro? I doubt this, I think Sony is going to go N4P across the board, it would be wasteful not to considering the base PS5 sells millions and they can get a better deal on N4P in this way. But lets agree to disagree on this one.
And for the Series X you agree there is a meaningful price reduction moving to 6nm for MS otherwise they would have stuck to 7nm. Thank you that was my whole point this whole time. Also I dont think its set in stone Brooklin is going to be on 6nm because Phil Spencer said some things in that leak are already outdated, I think this is one of them.
His 10% number might just be a lesser expensive cooling solution+case size+weight+shipping costs for the PS5
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