Microsoft leaks details on Xbox Next

[StefanS]

An interesting article on the backwards compatibility situation.

Jen-Hsun Huang weighing in: Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of Nvidia, says his guess is that the next Xbox won't be compatible with the old one. "It's virtually impossible on many levels," he adds. "On an intellectual-property level. On practical levels, too."

When asked to explain (might this be sour grapes talking?), Huang says for cost reasons, Microsoft isn't likely to be willing to put additional chips in the box to ensure hardware compatibility. Moreover, he suggests that current Xbox games make use of Nvidia's proprietary graphics shaders and that Microsoft might have to license them to use them again.

Dave Orton disagrees: By contrast, Dave Orton, president of ATI, says, "It's not outside the realm of possibility to make a compatible Xbox." He didn't discuss specific products his company is making for Microsoft, but he says that if you just consider the timing (about five years) between the consoles, then Moore's Law dictates that the new machine will be eight times as fast as the old one. With such an increase in raw processing speed, Xbox Next should have plenty of horsepower to emulate the old games via software. That is, the new hardware will be fast enough to execute the old games even if they have to run through software translation.

And of course there's the Connectix angle we've talked about before: On the processor side, Microsoft might have to employ its Connectix software to get the Intel code to run on the IBM PowerPC. That problem raises the prospect of additional costs and engineering efforts. "It's not a trivial amount of work," says Dean McCarron, an analyst at PC chip market researcher Mercury Research in Scottsdale, AZ. "It will be a massive task of integrating different technologies."

More to the article than that, so link over. ^_^

Interesting... Last year they seemed to think it was entirely possible...

Well, he probably was thinking Nvidia had the deal in its bag...

 

[cthellis42]

Interesting... Last year they seemed to think it was entirely possible...

That was the main reason it attracted my attention; Jen-Hsun seems to be contradicting other comments--though he is leaning more on the IP/licensing end, it would seem.

 

[London Geezer]

Interesting... Last year they seemed to think it was entirely possible...

That was the main reason it attracted my attention; Jen-Hsun seems to be contradicting other comments--though he is leaning more on the IP/licensing end, it would seem.

I guess he's trying to make money any way he can...He's climbing on mirrors...

 

[kaching]

No one claimed that streaming on a more limited scale wasn't possible on PS2 or other HDD-less systems.

Well, the genesis of this particular tangent seems to be thanks to DeathKnight's comment:

"Look at Halo, without the HD you'd see loading screens instead of the 1 (or less) second pauses when it reads level data into memory from the HD. Seamless worlds simply would not be possible."

That's not really leaving a lot of interpretation for HDD-less systems...As you say, no one is arguing the merit of an HDD paired with as much memory as possible here. It's the people that are trying to overextend their argument to what's supposedly impossible on other system configurations that are getting themselves in trouble here

 

[Lazy8s]

Comments are in the context of their paragraphs, where DeathKnight was referring to the level of Halo's seamlessness.

While the syntax of the statement was misleading, I don't imagine anyone thought he was somehow discrediting the accomplishments of games on other systems.

 

[gurgi]

Even in context I find it misleading. I don't see why Halo couldn't be streamed from a DVD. Halo was in development before the Xbox. Bungie weren't console developers. When development moved to Xbox, a hdd was still available.. why not use it? In fact.. being a first party, they were probably expected to use it.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

I think that Fable will be the next big HD-streaming showcase game, as long as it ships before Halo 2.

 

[kaching]

Lazy, if no one thought he was discrediting the accomplishments of games on other systems than why is there now a Halo vs Jak2 comparison in this thread?

DK's statement may be in the context of Halo initially, but when he says "Seamless worlds would simply not be possible" he stepped outside of the Halo context.

 

[Lazy8s]

If Halo were streamed from a DVD, you certainly wouldn't be able to go back to a section of the level as fast as you can now (under one second), nor would the DVD drive be as free to access more data or play back music. I'm sure the HDD is not inconsequential to the allowance of the texture and data set size used by Halo's maps.

 

[Squeak]

but the detail texturing schemes I've seen don't rely on alpha channel information.

Oh okay, I didn't know that. But if alphablending is done without explicit alpha values on single texels, it must be a blendmethod that just blends all texels equally, so it's impossible to specify which texels should be blended more than others, right (you wouldn't for example be able to do completely opaque texels)? So that would still leave CLUT4 with an (albeit small) advantage in that regard.

 

[Colourless]

You're alpha values for detail texturing will be done per vertex based on distance from viewer and probably surface orientation too.

 

[Dio]

"It depends." One simple method I've seen is to apply a texture with modulate2x. This works quite well because you can easily set it so the lowest mip level is 0.5 grey and so has no effect - so the detail texture naturally fades out with distance.

Many of the detail textures I've seen are greyscale - they are used to add things like the graininess on the surface of a brick. For greyscale textures there are loads of high quality compact formats to use.

Of course, there are better methods arriving with pixel shaders, the alpha channel might become useful.

 

[Lazy8s]

kaching:

Lazy, if no one thought he was discrediting the accomplishments of games on other systems than why is there now a Halo vs Jak2 comparison in this thread?

Because people here irrationally identify with brand names and feel compelled to be defensive over benign statements.

DK's statement may be in the context of Halo initially, but when he says "Seamless worlds would simply not be possible" he stepped outside of the Halo context.

As ambiguous as it was (misleading for being grammatically independent, yet still not a separate paragraph), I didn't see the call for debate. Being defensive would've been justifiable had DeathKnight implied that examples of streaming on other systems weren't impressive by their own standards.

 

[gurgi]

I think there is merit to a hdd discussion. It is relevant to whether hdd's in general should be in consoles aswell as backwards compatibility in Xbox2. I don't see what the big deal is really, unless you "irrationally identify with brand names and feel compelled to be defensive over benign statements."

 

[marconelly!]

Because people here irrationally identify with brand names and feel compelled to be defensive over benign statements.

With all due respect Lazy8, you should under no circumstances frown upon the behaviour that you are soaked into with your whole being (and if you think you are not, you my friend are lying to yourself)

Could you take any screen shots tha thad less going on in them for halo? You could have bothered to find something more comparable, such as the night fighting level where you encounter many more aliens and things going on. You aslo forget that halo could be played with two players through the single player game, rendering everything twice. Not just rendering everythign in lower detail with two players, but actually rendering everything twice.

Well, I did my best. I know there are scenes with lots more of enemies in Halo, but I couldn't find any. It goes both ways though, as I couldn't find any of the really complex scenes in Jak 2 which feature tons more vehicles and people walking around. As for playing the game in two player mode, and rendering everything twice, you've surely noticed that it comes to a pretty big expense of the framerate way too often in that mode, and there's always a factor that you have to render twice only half of the screen, with smaller viewpoint.

Like I said before, comparing a platformer to a a first person shooter, just shouldn't happen to begin with. As the 3D engines needed to create those worlds are completly different beasts. What's even worse is that you're comparing a game released last fall to one released moe than 2 years ago? Why don't you compare the graphics to halo 2 and see which one stands up better?

True, maybe I should have compared with Jak 1, but it's engine is simillar, only doesn't push AS many polygons and doesn't run in progressive scan. However, it still streams *everything* seamlessly. Halo btw, is in part a third person game, as you go into that view as soon as you drive any vehicle, so the comparision is not that off as you make it out to be. Both games feature elaborate, non destructible worlds, Halo does have better textures, better AI, but it doesn't excel in framerate and polygon thorughput, *and* it's streaming engine could be better IMO, having HDD at it's disposal. You shouldn't be waiting for what seems one whole minute for a new level to load, if a less capable console without HDD can have a comparable engine with no visible loading pauses. That's my point.

You're also acting like halo's framerate is always fluctuating, however it's actually not, it only does that when there's a hell of a lot going on. There's a lot of things that affects framerate other than the geometry, such as the physics and AI. two things done completely different between these games.

Well, it's 30FPS most of the time, but dips below 20 at times, especially if you use flashlight. Last level is too much of an offender as there are places if you go the certain route, where the game literally becomes a slideshow for couple of seconds, rendering no more than 1FPS. Regardless, my comment on framerate came only after you brought the point of halo having advantage in polygons, which I still think is simply false, which one look at both games in motion can confirm. Even if it was rock solid 30FPS, that's still practically 2x less than Jak 2 (which I admit probably fluctuates between 60-50 in it's busiest scenes, thus the screen tearing.)

Jak2 could get away with a much more simple physics engine, while halo's engine was capable of rag doll characters and stackable objects (like Havok). Halo combined different methods for drawing the world (indoor and outdoor) seamlessly. Even the AI in the games is dramatically different and can't be compared.

AI and Physics engine are certainly more complex in Halo but that kind of stuff is loaded once and handled by the CPU, not exactly something that would affect streaming engine much, as far as I can see. It's a faster console, it's expected to run such things in a more complex matter.

Both games have poly budgets that are spent differently. Halo spends it's polys on characters as you can always get close to everything in the game. Jak2 doesn't do this until you have cutscenes (where they swap the models with high res versions). It also uses smaller polys through out the terrain, in order to keep it smooth for driving vehicles, and the simple fact the camera is so close. Jak 2 can get away with less gemetry in the terrain and spend those polys on small details.

Let's not even go into cutscene models because those in Jak 2 put Halo's to an absolute shame. However, in-game models are quite comparable, both are on the low-poly side, but there can be lots of them so it's fine. You would agree that it's hard to verify the size of the polygons for the terrain. Again, just by looking at those screens I posted, (and I reiterate - neither are fully representative of each of games busiest scenes) I think that's pretty difficult to argue in Halo's favor when it comes to polygon budget.

What's interesting is that a game from two years ago still has better texturing thenn a PS2 game released a few months back.

I don't see anything really interesting in a console with two times more memory and hardware texture compression being capable of better textures. Do you think that it's 'interesting' that Max Payne 1 on the PC has higher resolution textures than Max Payne 2 on Xbox, while running at 32bit color in higer resolution? I don't. What I do find interesting is when the weaker platforms outdo stronger ones in some aspects due to smart programming and designer's creativity.

I think there is merit to a hdd discussion. It is relevant to whether hdd's in general should be in consoles aswell as backwards compatibility in Xbox2.

Exactly - this thread should give pro and con opinions on if it's possible to make a seamlessly streaming game on next gen consoles, without the use of the HDD (which is supposed to be the biggest advantage of that piece of hardware from what I understand) I am *well* aware that everything you can do with the DVD disc, you can do faster with the HDD, but if the DVD streaming is good enough, the question is - is that extra speed HDD gives worth the extra price that would go into the console hardware.

 

[kaching]

Lazy,

I don't imagine anyone thought he was somehow discrediting the accomplishments of games on other systems.

Because people here irrationally identify with brand names and feel compelled to be defensive over benign statements.

You're going to need to work a little harder to keep your story straight. These posts are on the same page!

As ambiguous as it was (misleading for being grammatically independent, yet still not a separate paragraph)

Ah, so you give more weight to paragraph independence than to grammatical independence? So, if DK's last sentence of that same paragraph had been "DC Sucks!" instead, you would have still considered the statement ambiguous?

 

[Lazy8s]

gurgi:

I think there is merit to a hdd discussion.

That was never in question. What was baseless was the claim that the HDD didn't enable Halo to perform streaming beyond that of the example brought up, Jak2. Most obviously, the HDD allows you to jump back to a separate section of the level within one second, not possible with Jak2. If you've ever re-entered the level you were last in while playing Halo, especially after having turned the machine off, you realize this. Also, it's quite obvious that HDD streaming frees up the DVD drive for streaming additional data, like music.

 

[marconelly!]

In all fairness, to get to where you stopped in Jak 2 it takes about 4-5 seconds, so again, one has to ask is the extra speed worth it. Again, noone is saying that it's not better to have or anything, just is it reasonably possible not to have it, and keep most of the gaming related funcitonality.