General Next Generation Rumors and Discussions [Post GDC 2020]

[eastmen]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...I7hTTbFTXz_Ni4Kf57dhp08P1cL73D-ud0uBv01Exf9Js

I dont think it's serious. Eurogamer article.

''Sony patents pet-like "feeling deduction" robot companion for gamers''

sounds really creepy

 

[Nesh]

sounds really creepy

Sounds like Aibo

edit: I take it back! Thats indeed very creepy! It is taking personal information and because it is under a cute cover it is easier to consent. It also potentially creates alienation with real people and more emotional attachment with a thing, a product.....that doesnt have feelings or consciousness.
Aibo isnt taking such information for a company's consumption at least

It sounds super interesting and complex though.

edit 2: https://us.aibo.com/feature/feature3.html
I take that back too. Aibo is also collecting data.
Seems like it is based on a similar concept and ideas. It is probably using the same tech modified for different needs.

 

[chris1515]

No one said that. Thermal issues are solved, it's not like they are building a quantum computer here. If they have heating issues, just put in more cooling that results in more BOM. There's no rocket science here about it. The game is being able to cool everything successfully, while ensuring the hardware is stable and reliable for 7 years and keeping the costs and sound low.


It's my comprehension of what Cerny was trying to do. When someone says their targeting at least something, their aiming at their potential maxima number. In this case this is ideal number that they can achieve disregarding thermal throttling. I"m just looking to see if they ever intend to address a bandwidth number that is guaranteed, it could very well be 5.5 GB/s for PS5 which is fine, but they'll need additional BOM or one hell of a design to ensure the 3P external NVME drives will either (a) never throttle, or (b) throttle down to 5.5 GB/s as a minimum performance number.




We honestly just went through it with asymmetric memory discussion discussing whether MS is lying about it's 560 GB/s or if it's actually 408 GB/s due to some math. Somehow people are convinced that adding more capacity will result in less bandwidth and that was addressed. But ignoring that, this isn't a Sony can't achieve it discussion. We look at how much MS spent on cooling their internal and external SSD solution and they are running 1/2 bandwidth of PS5. We know that heat is generated significantly more with higher bandwidth. So what will Sony's solution look like? What will their BOM look like?

Next gen, I'm fairly positive the console I will purchase will likely be PS5 and I will go PC for all my other needs. I've never owned one before, aside programming for it, but this will be my first ownership of the console. I'm not invested into their ecosystem, I don't have fond memories of their games. But I mean, if I'm being real here: if Sony announced PS6 as being a quantum computer, there would be a subset of fans that wouldn't question it at all and of course ask why we aren't trusting Cerny on building a quantum computer. The rest of the world would be asking questions how they managed to get that happening in such a small form factor when cooling to near 0 Kelvin is usually the size of a room.

I'm just on the inquisitive side of things. Sony's SSD solution sounds significantly too good to have 0 drawbacks. Sony's clocking solution also sounds too good to be true too, they got all of the super high clocking power with none of the down sides. All of it was presented with no drawbacks. And we know there are draw backs that are often related to heat, yields, form factors, TDP etc. And i"m looking for it, and it won't dissuade me from buying the console, but perhaps I may wait for a second revision/slim model just in case I'm not fully sold on version 1.

XSX was presented with full transparency of their drawbacks, the fixed clocks, the slower SSD, the asymmetric memory, the removal of the optical out, the mega cooling. They had people come in and work with it hands on and assemble it. They demo'd games with it. They demo'd its features. We've seen enough that I don't need to question everything single thing about it when I can see where they made concessions and price is going to be one of them as well.

And for the sake of this discussion, I'm curious to see how Sony did it. It's not particularly hard to solve heating. It just costs more money if you can't find an elegant solution to do it for less. A lot of the discussion about PS5 has been around the 399 price point, and I actually think it's going to be very close to the XSX given these challenges. That's all I'm thinking here. They could very well be the same price.

Sony could have lie and never talk about the variable frequency. There is a drawback like they said when the worst-case games will arrive it will lower the frequency. Sony will talk when they decide they are ready to do it probably May or June.

For the SSD, this is probably the main component of the machine and the first element they work on during PS5 R&D all patents are from 2015/2016 and Mark Cerny talked about 2015/2016 in Road to PS5 for SSD R&D. And he said the PS5 R&D began in 2015. They sacrificed some GPU power to have the I/O complex and the Tempest Engine on the die. They decided to go with a tinier APU for cost and maybe they will be able to launch the PS5 at a cheaper price than the XSX. We have every detail about the SSD* and optimized games and if they lied it will be visible: Less than one second loading time, no loading screen, no long patch install and 8 to 9 GB/s of compressed data for optimized games. And out of the variable frequency, the true compromise and drawback of the PS5 is the memory bandwidth.

The center of the XSX is the GPU and CPU, the power the 12 Tflops.

But MS never lied they told there is faster memory and slower memory. They did not give more explanation than this. There is one example of a PC card with the same system the Nvidia 970 and it is a very clever way to keep the cost down when you said the truth like MS did. In theory, XSX has 25% more bandwidth than the PS5 if you take into account this clever cost-saving, there is 20% more memory bandwidth for the XSX compared to the PS5 after factoring CPU bandwidth. They only lost only 5% of bandwidth advantage and gain 20 to 30 dollars on the bill of material. This is great. For example, if Sony decides to go with 16Gbps modules(512 GB/s), it would cost them more than this probably 40 dollars and they would have a little bit less bandwidth than MS for the GPU(3%).

This is a great compromise much better than the memory bandwidth situation of the PS5. If something needs to improve on PS5 this is the memory bandwidth. It looks like the PS4 Pro weakness. I was shocked by how low is the memory bandwidth when I see Digitalfoundry spec sheet.

Consoles have some strong points and weaknesses. PS5 strong point is the SSD and the 3D audio, weaknesses variable frequency and low memory bandwidth. On XSX side strong points are the CPU, the GPU the memory bandwidth, weaknesses a slower SSD and less emphasis on Audio.

This is the fastest console against the most powerful console.

*Out of cooling solution

 

[PSman1700]

On XSX side strong points are the CPU and the GPU, weaknesses a slower SSD and less emphasis on Audio.

Slower SSD remains to be seen, how much slower it actually is in practice. If WC isn't straight out lying, they actually mitigate the gap with the PS5 using bcpack. MS was empathizing sustained/guaranteed rates very specifically, more so then Sony did (same for clocks). It seems that MS aimed for a slower drive itself, but wanted to put the stress on other hardware, this could be due to temperatures, those tiny mem cards need to run at the same speed.

As for audio, also the XSX is using a DSP for it. It could very well be the exact same thing in hardware (a CU reserved for audio / trueaudio next). Untill we have definite specs/numbers from MS on the audio solution we cant just conclude already they have less emphasis on audio. The software solution might be different though.

In the same vein, we can't yet conclude that PS5 might not have any hardware VRS just because they didn't mention it. They also seem to name their hardware differently (geometry engine).

 

[chris1515]

Slower SSD remains to be seen, how much slower it actually is in practice. If WC isn't straight out lying, they actually mitigate the gap with the PS5 using bcpack. MS was empathizing sustained/guaranteed rates very specifically, more so then Sony did (same for clocks). It seems that MS aimed for a slower drive itself, but wanted to put the stress on other hardware, this could be due to temperatures, those tiny mem cards need to run at the same speed.

As for audio, also the XSX is using a DSP for it. It could very well be the exact same thing in hardware (a CU reserved for audio / trueaudio next). Untill we have definite specs/numbers from MS on the audio solution we cant just conclude already they have less emphasis on audio. The software solution might be different though.

In the same vein, we can't yet conclude that PS5 might not have any hardware VRS just because they didn't mention it. They also seem to name their hardware differently (geometry engine).

Sony gave a very precise value for typical Games scenario 8/9 GB/s. No throttling will depend on the thermal solution we will have more details when they will do a teardown by Gamernexus and maybe Digitalfoundry.

The solution of MS is very different. They prebaked the 3d audio sound and use an audio equivalent to light probes see Projects Acoustics and they don't have the same emphasis on HRTF. There is one advantage, the solution works too on Xbox One.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-triton/

https://www.windowscentral.com/xbox-series-x-project-acoustics-audio-ray-tracing-revealed

Project Acoustics is a wave acoustics engine for 3D interactive experiences. It models wave effects like occlusion, obstruction, portaling and reverberation effects in complex scenes without requiring manual zone markup or CPU intensive ray tracing. It also includes game engine and audio middleware integration. Project Acoustics' philosophy is similar to static lighting: bake detailed physics offline to provide a physical baseline, and use a lightweight runtime with expressive design controls to meet your artistic goals for the acoustics of your virtual world. Ray-based acoustics methods can check for occlusion using a single source-to-listener ray cast, or drive reverb by estimating local scene volume with a few rays. But these techniques can be unreliable because a pebble occludes as much as a boulder. Rays don't account for the way sound bends around objects, a phenomenon known as diffraction. Project Acoustics' simulation captures these effects using a wave-based simulation. The acoustics are more predictable, accurate and seamless. Project Acoustics' key innovation is to couple real sound wave-based acoustic simulation with traditional sound design concepts. It translates simulation results into traditional audio DSP parameters for occlusion, portaling, and reverb. The designer uses controls over this translation process.

 

[PSman1700]

Sony gave a very precise value for typical Games scenario 8/9 GB/s.

Yep, typical indeed. That's not what was being talked about either MS didn't claim typical.

a teardown by Gamernexus and maybe Digitalfoundry.

Let's hope DigitalFoundry in that case. Most likely they will, they have been in direct contact with cerny, so have some faith.

The solution of MS is very different. They prebaked the 3d audio sound and use an audio equivalent to light probes see Projects Acoustics and don't have the same emphasis on HRTF.

We don't know that yet, we need to learn more to conclude that. Like said, it's not impossible both are using the same actual hardware but the API's might differ. If MS is using a different hardware solution like last time, it might be superior also then what AMD could offer (like in 2013).

 

[chris1515]

Yep, typical indeed. That's not what was being talked about either MS didn't claim typical.



Let's hope DigitalFoundry in that case. Most likely they will, they have been in direct contact with cerny, so have some faith.



We don't know that yet, we need to learn more to conclude that. Like said, it's not impossible both are using the same actual hardware but the API's might differ. If MS is using a different hardware solution like last time, it might be superior also then what AMD could offer (like in 2013).

If they had the same emphasis on it, they would have talked about it. They are far more transparent than Sony on the technical side. If they utilize the same hardware they don't need to prebake the 3D audio. This is right inside the XSX spec deep dive with Digitalfoundry. You said MS lied about its own machine.

Tempest Engine and Steam Audio solution create 3d sound in realtime. They aren't some prebaked solution.

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2020/03/16/xbox-series-x-tech/

This was so important for them they did not talk about it on the official site. They don't do VR, this was not a very important point for them.

Yep, typical indeed. That's not what was being talked about either MS didn't claim typical.



Let's hope DigitalFoundry in that case. Most likely they will, they have been in direct contact with cerny, so have some faith.



We don't know that yet, we need to learn more to conclude that. Like said, it's not impossible both are using the same actual hardware but the API's might differ. If MS is using a different hardware solution like last time, it might be superior also then what AMD could offer (like in 2013).

They can't guarantee this level of performance. First, if the dev doesn't use Kraken they will not reach this level of bandwidth. And dev needs to optimize the game too. This is the reason I talk about optimized game engine this is not magic and one of the reasons the SSD was done before the other part of the machine. They needed a prototype as fast as possible. There is a reason no PS4 games were announced after 2017. All teams with unannounced exclusive games for Sony work on PS5 games if the project began in 2017 and after.

EDIT: It is the same on MS side, teams need to modify heavily the game engine to exploit the SSD.

 

[PSman1700]

If they had the same emphasis on it, they would have talked about it.

MS showed emphasis for VRS (patented and all), Sony didnt. So sony doesn't have any VRS? As said, we need more details to have a final conclusion.

This was so important for them they did not talk about it on the official site.

They can't cover everything, were just one month past the official reveal. Hold your horses. MS ain't done and so isn't Sony. MS showed and boasted what they think was important to them, likewise for Sony.

Edit: You seem to have no idea if all teams past 2017 have only been working on PS5 games exclusively, with no PS4 version in mind. Besides that, it would be a hard blow to those over 100 million current PS4 users.

 

[chris1515]

MS showed emphasis for VRS (patented and all), Sony didnt. So sony doesn't have any VRS? As said, we need more details to have a final conclusion.



They can't cover everything, were just one month past the official reveal. Hold your horses. MS ain't done and so isn't Sony. MS showed and boasted what they think was important to them, likewise for Sony.

But MS talked about the audio solution. Read or maybe you don't know how to read. The XSX uses project Acoustics and a DSP to replay the prebaked 3d sound. All details are on MS site and this is a prebaked solution. This is the solution used in Gears 5 for 3d audio. Sony did not talk about VRS at all, they just talked about Geometry Engine and raytracing and the GPU is a custom RDNA 2 GPU. This is very different.

https://www.windowscentral.com/xbox-series-x-project-acoustics-audio-ray-tracing-revealed

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2020-inside-xbox-series-x-full-specs

 

[chris1515]

MS showed emphasis for VRS (patented and all), Sony didnt. So sony doesn't have any VRS? As said, we need more details to have a final conclusion.



They can't cover everything, were just one month past the official reveal. Hold your horses. MS ain't done and so isn't Sony. MS showed and boasted what they think was important to them, likewise for Sony.

Edit: You seem to have no idea if all teams past 2017 have only been working on PS5 games exclusively, with no PS4 version in mind. Besides that, it would be a hard blow to those over 100 million current PS4 users.

You want to take the bet like I have known the SSD speed will be above 7GB/s before PS5 reveal, this is something I heard about. Sony never talked about cross-gen games. Each playstation generation, it is the same thing the third-party publishers continues to do cross-gen game. There is only one exception on Sony side MLB The Show.

https://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/irday/pdf/2019/GNS_E.pdf

They said it to investors and shareholders last year, they believe in generations.

SIE Believes in Generations

We will harness the power of new technology to offer completely transformative and immersive gaming experiences

We will leverage Backwards Compatibility to transition our community to Next Gen faster and more seamlessly than ever before
We provide stability of environment for content creators

If you want to harness the full power of a new console, you need to do exclusive games.

Other things Sony do a postmortem of generations and two executives told they were unhappy with the first part of the generation(Andrew House and Shuhei Yoshida to Famitsu) from the point of view of first-party exclusives. I am ready to do a bet the first part of the generation will be much better from an exclusive point of view on the Sony side.

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/info/irday2015electronics_presenE.pdf

Same Andrew House said it to investor and shareholder

https://gamingbolt.com/sonys-andrew...es-are-sparse-says-exclusives-are-hard-to-get

 

[chris1515]

No. Project Acoustics isn't a spatial audio solution (at least, not on its own).

They have a separate part of their software stack for spatial audio (see their 2019 GDC talk), which already supports much of what Sony are promising (albeit with a lower object count) on an Xbox One from 2013.

Project Acoustics just provides a highly detailed data set that can be used to drive reverb/etc in a way that's much more detailed and accurate than artist-placed reverb volumes, or anything that could be approximated in realtime (even using raytracing hardware). I highly recommend watching the first Project Triton presentation from GDC 2017, which covers the research that lead to it (Project Triton was the initial research project, Project Acoustics is the final product version) and its initial implementation into Gears of War 4.

Also, Project Acoustics is actually multi-platform, available through MS's Gamestack middleware on Windows, Mac OS, Xbox One, and Android currently, with the presentation from last year promising support for Sony and Nintendo platforms in the future, via plugins for Unity, Unreal, and Wwise (with custom engines possible with additional work).

When MS talk about dedicated hardware to support it, I'd assume that just means some dedicated processing cores (whether that's off-the-shelf DSP cores from someone like Tensilica, customised AMD CUs, or something completely different) that can handle a ton of DSP work for doing reverb, etc, although given that this is MS, I'd expect that to be exposed via an API, rather than the direct programmability that Sony are providing (the same chunk of hardware will likely also be handling HRTFs and other psychoacouatic effects).

I'd expect that Sony will have a definite advantage in flexibility (which they may pay for in future generations when they want to provide backwards compatibility...), but there's not enough data to say who has the more powerful audio processing hardware, since MS haven't talked about that at all (for previous consoles, they've done presentations at HotChips that would include some of that information, but this year who knows how or if they'll present that info).

If they were more powerful, they would shout out from the top of the roof. They did not talk so much of the audio like Sony did not talk so much of the CPU and GPU because they are behind the Xbox Series X.

And probably the reason many third party audio engineers react positively to the 3d audio solution of Sony and not the MS one(not bad but not the best).

 

[AlphaWolf]

If they were more powerful, they would shout out from the top of the roof. They did not talk so much of the audio like Sony did not talk so much of the CPU and GPU because they are behind the Xbox Series X.

And probably the reason many third party audio engineers react positively to the 3d audio solution of Sony and not the MS one(not bad but not the best).

And if they have 98% of the power? What would they do then? Shout it from the 3rd floor?

At worst I would think MS will have at least a rough equivalence with XB1 for BC. I suspect it will take a refined ear to notice a difference in the audio solutions.

 

[chris1515]

And if they have 98% of the power? What would they do then? Shout it from the 3rd floor?

I suspect it will take a refined ear to notice a difference in the audio solutions.

If it was comparable they would have spoken more about it. The focus was on creating the most powerful console and it worked. This is the best part of the XSX, it is CPU 3.8 GHz without SMT, 3.6 GHz with SMT and 12.15 Tflops GPU, all of this with constant frequency and a good memory bandwidth 560 GB/s fast memory and 336 GB/s slow memory.

Each company had a different focus.

Sony tried to create a cheaper console and maybe they failed. If they are the same price, it is a failure. If it is only 50 dollars a semi failure.

 

[Nisaaru]

If they were more powerful, they would shout out from the top of the roof. They did not talk so much of the audio like Sony did not talk so much of the CPU and GPU because they are behind the Xbox Series X.

And probably the reason many third party audio engineers react positively to the 3d audio solution of Sony and not the MS one(not bad but not the best).

Why would MS's marketing focus on audio which has such a small impact for most gamers and also game producers themselves?

 

[AlphaWolf]

If it was comparable they would have spoken more about it. The focus was on creating the most powerful console and it worked. This is the best part of the XSX, it is CPU 3.8 GHz without SMT, 3.6 GHz with SMT and 12.15 Tflops GPU, all of this with constant frequency and a good memory bandwidth 560 GB/s fast memory and 336 GB/s slow memory.

Not really. Mentioning audio more would just mean mentioning 12.2 Teraflops less.

Audio rarely makes headlines in the gaming news.

 

[chris1515]

Why would MS's marketing focus on audio which has such a small impact for most gamers and also game producers themselves?

Because it is not the priority and they don't do VR.

Sony is in VR and they need it and it is a priority for exclusives out of VR and it is possible to market it now because everyone has a headphone and can access youtube. And audio engineers need to fight a lot to make the sound a priority on Sony side. They talked more of audio than CPU and GPU...

Use an headphone you will understand better.

They can use 3d audio in trailers or conference.

 

[PSman1700]

Why would MS's marketing focus on audio which has such a small impact for most gamers and also game producers themselves?

They prioritized what is important to 99% in their PR. XSX most logically has a CU/dsp reserved for audio, done by amd. Its by far the cheapest and easiest solution to integrate coming from amd, i suspect trueaudio is the same thing. Their api might differ seeing what they have to work with.
They indeed wont shout it from the roof since no one cares, VR is still a niche market. When it becomes something more, ms can just release VR headset and the dsp hardware will do what the ps5’s does and more.
MS was also being conservative during their reveal regarding ssd, they could have showed max rates but went with minimal rates. If they want they can show max rates at a later stage, PR and all. Different strategies.

 

[TS_JBG]

ms can just release VR headset and the dsp hardware will do what the ps5’s does and more.
MS was also being conservative during their reveal regarding ssd, they could have showed max rates but went with minimal rates. If they want they can show max rates at a later stage, PR and all. Different strategies.

Nope to both affirmation i would tend to say. If their audio solutions was able to do more than Sony's one they would have added a one line like "fixed frequence", as they had leak from sony presentation.
And both talked about maximum throughput of their ssd solution: 5Gb/s for MS, 22Gb/s for Sony.
The different marketing strategies (except obviosuly the focus on power which is the main one) comes from trying to minimise bandwith advantage with the "mysterious" BCpack compression format, while sony actually talked about realistic throughput of 8/9Gb/s.

 

[chris1515]

I think that's very unsafe thinking. These companies are releasing more info over time and not dropping it all at our feet in one instance. MS haven't really talked about their audio yes because they've had a lot of other things to talk about. That doesn't mean their audio isn't also awesome.

Or rather, you're right, they'll tell us about it, but the deadline for telling us about their system hasn't passed. Maybe in July, MS will release a video from the top floor shouting about their audio?

For this Techinical Discussion, can we keep to the known facts and sensible assumptions and not try and fathom the mysteries of marketing to guess at the box designs. We have enough info to draw up some sort of BOM guesses and can put in margins of error to account for the unknowns.

May or June...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Or September, or November. MS have until the machine releases to communicate all its selling points to consumers to get them interested.