News & Rumors: Xbox One (codename Durango)

I think Kinect at this point is expected. That's not really much of a surprise.

 

Lead platform can be determined by many things, mainly it is the lowest common denominator. If Durango, as leaked, is priced lower and outsells PS4, you can bet 5GB usable will be the target allocation.

If durango is more complicated to develop for because of memory pools, and has lower specs, and outsells PS4, we could see a similar dev scenario like ps2->xbox1, only replace that with 720->ps4.

Where as had the ps2 had more memory (64MB) and a better gpu, that generation of games would have been better for it.

 

Healthy = green?

Down... clock? Holy shit

 

It's not as simple as that. Tags are chosen by committee between the mods, with at least three days between suggestion and inclusion to mull them over. Each one is vetted and added only if we (vote with 70% majority required, some mods votes are worth 2 due to their experience in the industry) feel it contributes something to the discussion as a legitimate reference point. There has to be a modicum of truth to them, or at least their origins, for them to be approved, and thankfully we've some superb industry connections.

 

Looks like being a mod is tougher then i thought!

Of course, i didn't know so much effort went into the tags as i'm new here.

Let me apologise for my earlier remarks concerning tags.

 

Wha?

Shifty's pulling our leg methinks.

I can just add tags myself.

 

You know Reiko, posting teasing statements but no actual info - isn't particularly helpful...

 

Yep. Anyone can add them. They don't mean anything. Mostly they end up being jokes.

 

Yes, I don't see the point of including 12GB of RAM for those specs. Consoles exceeded expectations featuring 8GB after all -people expected 2GB at first, then 4GB at most-.

I have a feeling that the console is going to be definitely called Xbox Infinity.

Listen to Larry Hryb -Major Nelson- and how he modulates his voice when he says the word at the 15 minutes 25 seconds mark.

https://soundcloud.com/xbox/show-476-video-gaming-industry

-thanks Maxterchief for sharing the link-

I am 99,9% sure that's the actual name after listening to him. (Infinityyyyyyyy)

 

Not that it means anything or that anyone should believe that pastebin stuff...but the architecture is identical to what we had heard dating back to the Feb 2012 docs, isn't it? It seems they just took the architecture we knew about and turned up the dial on all the parts, not reconfigured how they would work together or anything.

 

It is, but I'm questioning why they're calling it alpha specifications and not just original specifications. Alpha specifications seem to imply they think those were just the specs for the alpha kits (ie they don't really know what they're talking about and are making stuff up from known info)

 

BTW it will be nice if they shared more info related to the business side of the industry, i would like to get a hand on all the research and studies they did to define their strategy with durango/infinity.

 

Bumping to 384-bit would be anything but cost-effective. There's a reason that only $500+ graphics cards feature that wide memory buses, it ends up requiring an AWFUL lot of pins on the ASIC, those pins take up area on the chip which means the die needs to be a minimum size to fit them all; when you want to shrink the chip with a new process it's no good if you run out of space to fit all of your memory interfaces...!

Also, widening the memory bus would require re-plumbing the ENTIRE chip. Throwing away all work done so far, starting over from scratch. It would tack on another year, year-and-a-half on development for a chip of that complexity according to a poster with industry experience who was crossposted to one of these threads, due to need for another round of simulation, test fabrication, verification and so on. Cost overruns would be appropriately major as well might be noted...

Safe to say, that is an absolute impossibility if MS wants to launch this year. Suppose they through a miraculous, supreme effort manage to re-jig and debug their chip in just a year, then production chips take ~4 months or something to come out the other end of the fab. ...Shit, we just missed christmas, goes MS executives, by...ohhh, half a year plus once chips are packaged, soldered to a mainboard, assembled, packaged in boxes and shipped from china to markets around the world!

...If testing requires any silicon re-spins, this could end up taking a lot longer, and if MS were to skimp on the testing and end up with a product with hardware bugs, perhaps riddled with them, serious ones... Disaster! ...So no they wouldn't do that.

I know the knee-jerk reflex of gamers is to desire bigger numbers than the competitor's offering, but reworking the silicon in a late stage just ISN'T feasible. Heck, even reworking the mainboard may be out of the question at this late stage.

Occam's razor works fine here too. If MS was fine with the specs of their product before the sony reveal, chances are they will be just fine with their specs after it as well, especially considering the complications, cost increases and RISKS involved in changing their plans.

Nice one, Shifty. I think you need to tempban yourself there for that superb troll!

 

They said they are going to share their vision of the future for their entertainment business in the next Xbox reveal, how the team worked on the console, etc.

2 days to go, and there is a very interesting article (it's split in two parts) on the story of the Xbox:

http://www.vg247.com/2011/08/03/the-xbox-story-part-2-gunning-for-greenlight/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seamus_Blackley

 

I'd gladly take the reduced pop in from the 12GB. 1st parties can still use it.

 

That'd be a nice bonus of course but would it really be worth the significant increase in bom to microsoft that a 50% increase in memory and a redesign entails?

 

If the devkits already have 12GB, then it probably wouldn't involve a redesign.
MS has traditionally used identical components in the devkits including the actual PCB, though sometimes the devkits have additional components.

 

Probably more to do with aggressive culling then with memory space?
So its more performance based then memory spaced but i could be wrong..

 

If I were MS the goal for me would be to make the console weaker than the PS4. The weaker it is, as long as it is well designed, the more pricing flexibility I should have. The key is balance. If it is obvious to average consumers that it is weaker, then it can negatively affect sales. If it is weaker but it is difficult for consumers to tell, you now have the advantage because of pricing flexibility.

Now take a look at the recent stats released by MS about the growth of the gaming industry next-gen: http://news.xbox.com/2013/05/x360-aaron-greenberg-industry-growth

Then take into account Greenberg's comments about new markets:

Pricing could very likely be an even bigger differentiator and have a bigger impact next-gen than it did this gen. Due to the importance of emerging markets like Latin America/China.

Also in the Yukon leak we see that they are planning Fortaleza glasses and a Cloud Rendering platform. This seems likely as well since Dave Cutler has been known to join the Xbox team. He was a lead developer of Windows Azure (MS cloud platform) and Windows NT.

If they are still planning on doing cloud rendering then it would make even more sense to have a cheaper console. Why waste money on hardware that will not be needed once the Cloud rendering platform is ready?

Obviously the case can be made that not everyone will have the internet connection needed to take advantage of this. They did something similar though with the launch of Xbox Live. They limited it to broadband only and many were very critical of the idea. Especially since broadband adoption was very low: http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/at_glance/top15_broad.html

 

I agree. But the thing is, such an analysis contradicts the latest rumors about the box pricing : 500 US$. I personnally find this figure to be quite high to achieve market penetration.