JP Morgan report on Xbox 2
- Thread starter Megadrive1988
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Your forgeting that ms is the same size if not bigger than sony. This isn't huge intel verses tiny amd .
Also early adopters of these machines will care about the specs as that is the first wave of hype. That and videos of thigns that will never happen on the consoles .
If ms can get the higher numbers it will only help. If sony has a 3 ghz cpu and ms says they have 6 3 ghz cpus then to many people who don't know better ms has the advantage .
Anyone can easily take away the leaders position in the console wars .
Sega had 2% of the market with the master system. It then took 40% of the market from the super nintendo. Sony had 0% of the market and in one swoop took the whole market mostl ikely 70% .
So it can happen again and it will. If this is the generation or not who knows
I made a typo which changed the whole context of my post.
Should say,
"Unless sony *says* they *have* 32 of these CPU's on a single IC?"
And I wasn't? If MS says they have a 3 core CPU, Sony will say they have a 32 core or more.
I'm not defending anything, just pointing out the obvious. Sony isn't going to say that BE is made up of a single CPU, they are definately going to shout the fact that BE is made up of over a dozen cores.
Should say,
"Unless sony *says* they *have* 32 of these CPU's on a single IC?"
And I wasn't? If MS says they have a 3 core CPU, Sony will say they have a 32 core or more.
I'm not defending anything, just pointing out the obvious. Sony isn't going to say that BE is made up of a single CPU, they are definately going to shout the fact that BE is made up of over a dozen cores.
Paul said:
Yes but there is no need to bring it up unless you are trying to defend something .
I gave an example off the top of my head to show how companys market the specs. But for you , you saw ms being portrayed as greater than sony and so you had to step in and give an example of sony being greater than ms .
Which is what i've come to expect.
Tahir said:
don't forget about that 1% that then tells others how uber another system is .
I used to work at a video game store. i know how it works . One hardcore sony fan working there tells a bunch of people buying dreamcasts the leaked sony specs. They put down the dc and preorder the ps2 .
I've seen it many times before .
Paul said:
Yup but we are not talking about sega right now. And i don't own a sony video game system nor a ms game system.
You on the other hand have a bias in this situation.
Your comment added nothing to this thread except that a negative comment against sony wouldn't stand by its self and now the last word is a negative comment towards ms .
I've seen you do it many times before and that is why I called you on it right now .
My bias has nothing to do with this thread. Your bias has something to do with this thread and is what caused that post .
jvd said:
Nes was like 80 million to master system 10 million, but there were other systems on the market too that had similar success to the master system.
Genesis to snes was like 40 million to 45 million.
N64 to psx to saturn was like 40 million to 110 million to 10 million.
Dreamcast to ps2 to gamecube to xbox was like 10 million to 40 million to 10 million to 10 million.
BTW, whichever system wins at the start should go a long way to deciding the outcome....though that is rarely true. It was true for nes and ps2, but not for genesis, n64, dreamcast, or saturn(though dreamcast and saturn only had the advantage from the start since they were released first, they lost it quickly enough, genesis was eventually edged out by snes and psx picked up a ton of speed after 1998 and never slowed down).
An ideal solution 20 months earlier = worse tech. Exactly WHAT it would resemble--who knows? But undenyably worse. (Keeping losses the same, of course.)Lazy8s said:
Awards are inconsequential and don't tell the end-user anything about the product, but you're still talking about twenty months less development, and the costs associated with that time swing. I am indeed assuming that it's probable an Xbox launched in March of 2000 would have had less RAM, but I consider it a safe assumption due to the costs at the time, which one has to keep equal or one is throwing yet another factor in to be considered, and making the comparison even worse.
jvd said:
This isn't company-vs-company, but product-vs-product. nVidia and ATi are almost equal sized companies as companies, but in each sector they have their own dominances and/or lacks. If used AMD and Intel because Intel's dominance is huge across the board, and their products are similar. It is NOT useful to compare Microsoft and Sony that way, as the first's software dominance does not immediately translate to an advantage over the latter's hardware dominance in a completely different sector. You take chips as chips, and consoles as consoles. It's an over-simplification in some ways, but not for the "general marketplace" which seems to excel and prefer over-simplifications.
AMD has gained notable ground and support and eroded away at Intel's sheer bulk, but no one expects them to overtake Intel even through their current Prescott woes, slower responses, and caving in on the 64/32-bit computing direction. Similar troubles for Sony will shrink their lead, but I don't think many people would expect them to be overtaken short of complete mishandlings, especially since the market has been just fine with the mishandlings and inadequacies we've seen so far. Mindshare IS a pain in the ass to overcome.
It takes time.Obviously people aren't that swayed by marketing numbers, as they could quote them but have no idea what they mean anyway, and others will quote DIFFERENT marketing numbers and have no idea what it equates to. As always, it will come down to games. The quality of launch titles, the skill and devotion of developers, and the adoption of features and speed OF adoption by developers in new games coming down the pipe will drive the platform, not GHZ nor GFLOPS. When the Xbox launched, as much as people said it was "more powerful," they weren't really making any number comparisons--they were just talking about the visuals they say, and on the hardware side, features like the hard drive and integrated networking support. THOSE features carry more weight as well.
It's the freaks like us who'll make the most deal out of chip speeds and all that stuff, and while we'll have our own buzzes, lord knows WE don't drive the market.
I think you assume too much shifting at this point in time, which I no longer see as likely to happen. Earlier in console life, the market is more volatile, and you get a lot of people looking for "bigger and better" or at least "different." Atari had it utterly and blew it through mismanagement. Nintendo took it equally, and gave ground basically because there was nothing else OUT there (people like at least two options), and Sega offered the "newer attitude." Sony was big enough to cause lots of excitement and speculation as to their machine, and we saw the lengths PSX went to. Microsoft brought its own excitement and speculation, and we saw what they could accomplish as well--while PS2 reinforced Sony's dominance and extended the trend to longer than anyone else has had it. Who else could enter and cause as much excitement and splash as Microsoft?
Even bigger-company speculations like Intel seem to be more likely to bring "PC/console" hybrids (a la DISCover, and Phantom, and others likely to come and go with few ripples) and not challenge the arena where Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft will likely be the only serious contenders for a long time to come. They're now refining their machines and polishing their images and pushing their own envelopes, but the market isn't as volatile anymore, and the public's expectations have been able to settle into their usual troughs and/or complete potholes--where mindshare is most evident.
No, I don't "easily" see anyone suddenly leaping to the fore and causing epic swings. I rather see Microsoft doing a bit worse this round, as they are playing smarter, but not the "edgier" their fanbase likes and the new folk they'd want to attract expects. They also will have nothing else to ride on, while Nintendo and Sony will have new portables and linking-functionality and "more" in that respect to attract folks to their new platforms, and if the Xbox 2 doesn't have as noticable a technical dominance as it did this round, and doesn't have the feature-functionality...?
As always, "we'll see." There is too much to say ANYTHING right now, as a failure on either the DS or PSP's part will mar their next launch (though offhand I see both being decent successes in their own right and at their own levels), and we don't know all that much about even just the bare tech specs of next generation, let along what developers can end up doing with it.
But I don't forsee any huge blowouts or monolithic failures, and with a mass market that is more settled and has more grounded expectations, I see certain shifting depending on platform strengths, but no violent sways.
cthellis42:
Did you consider what PowerVR delivered back then, with even Series 2 parts like ELAN, as suggested?
That's exactly what I said. I pointed out that PowerVR's console/arcade technologies met the real requirements of the marketplace and were a popular choice for licensees at the time, so Microsoft's search for the best solution could've very well found them at PowerVR's door for this hypothetical Xbox.
Did you consider that those Series 2 parts needed only standard SDRAM, and how much more SDRAM than DDR could've been bought for the same cost?
Lazy8s said:
I thought Elan was quite expensive.
Lazy8s said:
They probably were considered at one point but obviously got passed over early on (assuming they were considered). After all, this is MS and therefore I'm sure they would consider every possibility in the beginning. Who knows, perhaps the Sega Dreamcast win hurt IT's chances for the XBox?
Changed, certainly, but this is the perfect example: Has ATi overcome nVidia's desktop dominance? Did it cause them unprecedented gains? Were they behind in marketshare by a factor of between 4:1 and 5:1? Did areas they were already ahead in shift up dramatically as well?jvd said:
Good products and good strategies cause gains, but the videocard market is even less "mature" (least as far as years go--it's much more active by comparison, however) and R300 didn't cause a TKO or a complete leapfrogging, whether one things it should have. nVidia retained its mindshare, leveraged what it could how it could, and as far as I'm concerned the fight is just getting more interesting.
3dfx enjoyed huge dominance and lost it through, and lost it through idiocy. nVidia enjoyed dominance, but has never had it on the scale of Intel's or Playstation's (or likely even 3dfx's, though I'm not up on all the figures), and R300 on strength-of-platform narrowed the gap--as it should. AMD has narrowed the gap--as it should. None have flown past--though they certainly could be setting up for further coups in the future. (And in the meanwhile, one has to look at the graphics card market differently, since there many facets--and no company is completely dominant in all of them.)How does that matter? If one is trying to make a simplistic and straight comparison--as was being presented--you keep it as simple as possible, or you don't do it at all. So you flip the timetables, but Microsoft's expenditures would remain the same, their R&D timetable would remain the same, and their design philosophy would remain the same... what else would it point to? Not that the arguement had merit as it was used, and so arguing ABOUT the arguement is just a bit wonky, eh?
To keep things straight and simple, the design philosophy--and in the Xbox's case their partners--would have to remain the same as well. If you want to flip the example and thrust the PS2 forward to launching in November of 2001, who knows what additional developmet would have occurred? Certainly more than just "more RAM," ne? One can throw about "what if's" all day, and acheive the lovely result of going nowhere fast.
If, however, one wants to try mention a simple point, you also have to keep the examples as simple as possible. Totally reconfiguring a hypothetical Xbox launch in March of 2000 becomes as mythical as totally reconfiguring the PS2's design for November of 2001.
Ty:
No reason to go the Naomi 2 route specifically since we're talking about a hypothetical custom solution, as Imagination Technologies was capable of creating something original with Series 3+ performance around that time (or even could've used higher-clocked Series 2 parts).
Anyway, the Xbox silicon budget and selling price gives quite a bit of headroom over PowerVR's previous Dreamcast project, and the Naomi 2's cost was suggested as coming in line with Naomi 1's (for reference).
The arcade market isn't so cost sensitive, so working towards a more cost-efficient layout isn't always worth it (even though it's been suggested that it was quite possible in this case). ELAN was just a Series 2 T&L processor implemented in arcade form on a system maintaining backward compatibility with Naomi 1 - neither inefficiencies applicable to a hypothetical custom Xbox solution.
No reason to go the Naomi 2 route specifically since we're talking about a hypothetical custom solution, as Imagination Technologies was capable of creating something original with Series 3+ performance around that time (or even could've used higher-clocked Series 2 parts).
Anyway, the Xbox silicon budget and selling price gives quite a bit of headroom over PowerVR's previous Dreamcast project, and the Naomi 2's cost was suggested as coming in line with Naomi 1's (for reference).
There was indeed an exclusivity contract in the console space for the technology covered by DC and potential partnerships, but MS could've just commissioned sufficiently custom parts or worked a deal out with SEGA (with whom they were in heavy negotiations at the time regarding an alliance in the market). Ultimately, the issue was moot because MS's planned entrance into the console market solidified using an entirely different schedule.
According to Simon F, the ELAN chip was not expensive even thought it didn't benefit from huge economies of scale since it was used only in NAOMI 2.
Lazy8's argument makes a whole lot more sense though ie VideoLogic's PowerVR technology back then would've allowed Xbox to ship when PS2 shipped and still would've been able to compete in performance and cost. However MS chose newer technology that wasn't ready until a year after PS2 was released and caused them to lose a lot of marketshare and mindshare.
Lazy8's argument makes a whole lot more sense though ie VideoLogic's PowerVR technology back then would've allowed Xbox to ship when PS2 shipped and still would've been able to compete in performance and cost. However MS chose newer technology that wasn't ready until a year after PS2 was released and caused them to lose a lot of marketshare and mindshare.
