News & Rumors: Xbox One (codename Durango)

[Rangers]

I see no reason for Microsoft to go in depth about the specs, especially that the conference is a 1 hour event. Except for a fringe of enthusiasts, numbers and specialized jargon is of no interest.

Now there's news Keighley is doing a one hour interview special with MS execs after the show. Some more hardware info could come out there I guess. I dont think Keighley typically feeds canned PR questions, and he actually has a decent feel for what gamers want to know.

I see no reason for Microsoft to go in depth about the specs, especially that the conference is a 1 hour event. Except for a fringe of enthusiasts, numbers and specialized jargon is of no interest.

Yeah the 1 hour thing concerns me too, especially since that's like 42 minutes after commercials.

 

[kots]

It would be quite sad if Durango ended up putting a cap in quality on every multiplat and even affecting PC versions. Because with the rumored specs it certainly could depending on the way most devs go about it. That's certainly not something I'd hope for, even for the lulz. Let us gamers hope devs do the right thing and feed Durango with ports in lower res and asset quality.

Maybe it's better to divide the development with WiiU and Durango on one side and PS4 with PC on the other .

 

[kots]

I see no reason for Microsoft to go in depth about the specs, especially that the conference is a 1 hour event. Except for a fringe of enthusiasts, numbers and specialized jargon is of no interest.

Yeah propably they'll be vague about the specs in the conference , but later they can't avoid giving answers to the press about specifics of their hardware .

 

[bbot]

It's getting pretty embarrassing.

Xbox is going to be the weaker console. MS expected this and is completely fine with it.

#dealwithit

Oh, don't worry. Consumers will deal with it. By voting with their wallets and buying PS4.

 

[scently]

Now there's news Keighley is doing a one hour interview special with MS execs after the show. Some more hardware info could come out there I guess. I dont think Keighley typically feeds canned PR questions, and he actually has a decent feel for what gamers want to know.



Yeah the 1 hour thing concerns me too, especially since that's like 42 minutes after commercials.

It is not a tv show, there won't be commercials.

 

[dragonelite]

It is not a tv show, there won't be commercials.

Its only livestreamed?

 

[Grall]

It is not a tv show, there won't be commercials.

Hey, never underestimate microsoft...
The xbox dashboard isn't a TV show either, but last time I checked it was chock full of commercials (ads.)

 

[GrimThorne]

It is not a tv show, there won't be commercials.

What Rangers meant was the post show interview on Spike TV, that's likely to have commercials.

But if Microsoft execs actually want to talk after the show (something Sony DID NOT DO), I think they probably will have something to say.

Or why do an interview at all?

 

[Grall]

Microsoft: never announced that the Xbox 720 will use AMD chips

...Which doesn't mean it will use something other than AMD chips, of course. Their announcement is still a week and a half-ish away, but is there anyone (with a minimum of half a brain to their person) who expects something other than an AMD chip in there...?

 

[Le Photographeur]

Shifty Geezer> Thanks, great answer. I have some comments on this, but I will answer it on my answer to Bkilian.


Bkilian>

There are definitely things I can't say. And if you read my posts closely, you'll see I have not confirmed or denied any leaks. The only thing I said about the vgleaks rumors is that they were not drawn or written by vgleaks itself, that leaves a whole host of folks they could have been created by.
And yes, definitely, there were things I never knew. I do not know the rumored console's name. I do not know its form factor, or the power draw, or it's cost. I do not know (entirely) what the UI will look like. I do know pretty much everything a third party developer would know, as well as a lot of things that third party developers would not need to know.
If I were still at MS, I would be even more careful, but I'm still pretty careful in what I say.

And, as always, caveat emptor. My opinions are usually just that, read things into them at your peril.

Just a brief comment on the bolded sentence..
Those elements directly affect the hardware specs and what has come out of VGLeaks, can be just a part of it or even missing a huge chunk of information.

And if I recall correctly, we have not had any kind of confirmation, here or at neogaf, about VGLeaks and that those specs would be correct. Like, if you would say: "Yeah, those specs are correct".. then BOOM, a confirmation from someone with the know at least. But obviously you have not done so, which is understandable.

Btw, have any information/confirmation come out on betakits? Have any one said that "it is like the VGleaks"?

My point here is, that it seems that there are too many uncertainties still, because people who know things, have neither/cannot either deny nor confirm and the small information they did reveal, was a small piece of the whole puzzle.

In the end of the day, I don´t mind the VGLeaks specs, but if those were true, then perhaps I would questions MS abilities. I mean, MS houses some extremely creative minds and designers and within MS research groups, exists people who could do some crazy interesting things to improve or to really excel console-technology. It just feels that MS could deliver something more than what is shown in the VGLeaks. (of course, politics, costs, agenda and things like TDP, console form etc etc influence console development as well)

Anyways, thanks for the previous reply.

Cyan>Thanks!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Microsoft: never announced that the Xbox 720 will use AMD chips

Looks like: "We doesn't comment on rumors"

MS haven't announced anything. So the standard response when pressed is, "we haven't announced anything," and if people present you with a rumoured design, say, "we didn't announce that." Can still be true though.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I can safely affirm that at present it is unknown what the specs are, after all the rumours that haven't been confirmed or those that have been debunked, I don't know what to believe or who to believe, except bkillian and his NDA and a few other people.

That's untrue. I have it on very good authority that the content posted on VGLeaks comes straight from MS white papers. Thus the rumours are "MS technical documentation" vs. "PR speak by gaming CEOs and developers." Which is going to be the more accurate reference for determining the hardware in Durango? The only problem here is the public information source supplying the white-paper information is being discredited on account of its lack of journalistic integrity. However, other independent sites like DigitalFoundry and Edge corroborate the information through their own sources and should not be ignored for no good reason. This article was the state of Durango as of January. That's what developers were being told to design for. Whatever appears on the 21st will be this design, or this design tweaked with more RAM or different clocks, or the greatest (and most bizarre) corporate information control in history. But certainly there isn't a single 3rd party developer in a position to tell us that the current design isn't the final design because they are being supplied the same design documents. The likes of Yannis Mallat, if they have any technical knowledge at all, are reading from the same technology papers. And as such, their PR comments are clearly just pro-next-gen comments.

 

[Rangers]

Yeah propably they'll be vague about the specs in the conference , but later they can't avoid giving answers to the press about specifics of their hardware .

the hell they cant lol. all they need to say is custom amd gpu. and we aren't getting into specifics or something in the unlikely event they're really pressed. hell, 90% of execs and journos alike probably have no idea what a teraflop is.

how long did reggie and nintendo duck wii u tech specs? they finally only gave some out in a nintendo direct, and even then not many. we still aren't sure how many shaders the gpu has (though imo it's likely 160)

It is not a tv show, there won't be commercials.

are you sure? i believe e3 conferences and all those things on spike have commercials?

i'm not really sure on this though. you may well be correct now i think about it.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Just a brief comment on the bolded sentence..
Those elements directly affect the hardware specs and what has come out of VGLeaks, can be just a part of it or even missing a huge chunk of information.

And if I recall correctly, we have not had any kind of confirmation, here or at neogaf, about VGLeaks and that those specs would be correct.

Btw, have any information/confirmation come out on betakits? Have any one said that "it is like the VGleaks"?

My point here is, that it seems that there are too many uncertainties still, because people who know things, have neither/cannot either deny nor confirm and the small information they did reveal, was a small piece of the whole puzzle.

See my above post. In short, this link is what developers understood Durango to be and were developing for 4 months ago. It's unlikely IMO that DF would have blown Durango wide open like VGLeaks did, as I guess DF's contacts wouldn't violate NDA so catastrophically, but with VGLeaks exposing the info other sites were free to ask people in the know, "are these for real?" with all blame pointing back to VGLeaks.

So please, everyone, stop thinking the rumours are just VGLeaks. They have been independently corroborated and are the state of the machine as of January.

 

[Nisaaru]

This article was the state of Durango as of January. That's what developers were being told to design for. Whatever appears on the 21st will be this design, or this design tweaked with more RAM or different clocks, or the greatest (and most bizarre) corporate information control in history. But certainly there isn't a single 3rd party developer in a position to tell us that the current design isn't the final design because they are being supplied the same design documents. The likes of Yannis Mallat, if they have any technical knowledge at all, are reading from the same technology papers. And as such, their PR comments are clearly just pro-next-gen comments.

That may all be true but you put too much emphasis on target specs and dev systems to match exactly the release HW. With the consoles being slightly tweaked PC HW with Win8 APIs in the case of MS and first generation games never optimized for the target HW makes such target specification mean nothing more than some baseline numbers in some pdf for curiosity sake until the final product is there.

They produced usable release games for the 360 under a far more complex situation for a CPU architecture most game developers had probably never touched before at a cut throat release time table while early dev systems were based on G5 PowerMacs and ATI 9800 which both hardly relate to the 360 CPU and GPU performance.

 

[Rangers]

Maybe it's better to divide the development with WiiU and Durango on one side and PS4 with PC on the other

standard overreaction lol.

it's like i tried to point out on gaf when some where trying to say something along these lines..."the flops gap between the PS4 and 720 may be nearly as great as between the Wii U/360/ps3 and 720"

The difference is 720 is something ~500% of the 360's flops, and 66% of the PS4's flops...

It's like saying, a 2.2 million man army has a better chance against a 2.1 million man army, than a 100,000 man army has versus a 1 man army. After all, the absolute difference is greater in the former case! The key here is the relation to each other not absolute numbers.

so, no. wii u will get lumped in with ps360 for porting, next gen will be 720/ps4/pc.

it's true you dont want 720 to fall too far behind though, which is why i believe there are rational reasons and pressures to do a late spec bump. but hopefully we will find out in just 12 days now.

 

[DJ12]

It will only be left behind in games that target 720p on ps4. It will go blow for blow with a 1080p ps4 game although it will probably be at 720p or somewhere in between the two.

 

[Squilliam]

I would say whether or not there is a business case to bump the specs depends on how many consoles they intend to make and ship before the 20nm shrink and how much extra revenue they anticipate from future sales after that point. I would suggest that once they hit the 20nm node the cost of bumping the clock rate up by 10-20% would fall pretty close to zero. The quantity and type of RAM on the other hand is much harder to change. Unless they had some kind of contingency plan I don't see them making a last minute contract for some pretty special RAM spec. I doubt for instance that Sony at the last minute snatched up millions of not yet produced GDDR5 chips when they haven't even been produced in volume yet and the same goes for high capacity fast DDR3.

 

[Xenio]

So please, everyone, stop thinking the rumours are just VGLeaks. They have been independently corroborated and are the state of the machine as of January.

In January Orbis has 4 GB.

developers don't know anything about the real final specs, even carmak was surprised, but you talk about those docs as bible. ok, then. And can be wrong another time as well.

 

[Strange]

In January Orbis has 4 GB.

developers don't know anything about the real final specs, even carmak was surprised, but you talk about those docs as bible. ok, (fact: bible was wrong), then. And can be wrong another time as well.

And they did say Sony was pushing for 8GB.

Yes they do know something about the real final specs. They know the ballpark they should be in.