News & Rumors: Xbox One (codename Durango)

[AzBat]

No problem. I'm not sure what to think anymore, but figured both sides needed represented. I think Microsoft need to take control of their own messaging & quit letting leaks & rumors from over-shadowing and/or damaging their message & vision. Seems like if this rumor about Kinect-less SKU in the Spring gets any traction it could affect launch pre-orders. Anyway, I don't think MS are taking any of this seriously. They should have somebody in full-time damage control. The 3 they have right now are not doing any good.

Tommy McClain

 

[eastmen]

From what my source tells me gamescom is going to be really good for ms. So I dunno. Guess we will see in a week right

 

[Xenus]

makes no sense at all. magically ms reduced performance 20% with a driver? wtf? pretty sure drivers get better over time, not worse. it also makes zero sense that ms would not livestream because of this, but yet the presentation is going to be offered for download directly after. so ms doesn't want you to see it....but yet they're going to make it available for everybody to see because tape delay will solve everything. right. not to mention ms just talked about their mono/to the metal driver recently. not even to mention are we really suppose to believe they're going to show games with crap awful framerates in the teens and the like? i mean if nothing else they'd just show old footage instead or use the old drivers in the meanwhile. it boggles the mind how dumb this is.

It's called a regression and it happens all the time. It's not a big deal but if their presentation relied on something in the new firmware but it fubarred other stuff I could see it being cut. I figure they would have a back up plan to show something in case but maybe not. But that is probably the most plausible of the rumors besides the obvious MS reserves the right to jetison Kinect if thewy are getting killed in sales and think that will help type thing.

 

[XBNJim]

To the performance drop thing, my own theory is MS architecture never planned for always recording. And now they squeezed the feature in, and it ate resources and performance drop if the feature turned on.

The part about "streaming" was referring to Microsoft not livestreaming at Gamescom. But as has been stated this is because Phil S and Phil H are giving a short presser and then the rest of it is basically all being done on the show floor. Microsoft has the largest layout of anyone at this years event. So no it has nothing to do with any performance issues. This whole idea is silly.

And the delaying of 8 European markets is due to multiple reasons so the rumor mentioned is not entirely false. But localization is the primary reason. Some of these countries such as Sweden need multiple languages localized and finalized for Kinect and not all of the are finished. There is also a strategic business aspect to this that really isn't that difficult to figure out. Don't risk leaving consoles on shelves in some of these other markets when you can't keep them on the shelves in others.

And lastly, the epic level of failure that would be required for a Kinectless SKU to be pushed out is unrealistic. The amount of R&D that would be thrown out the Window would have Julie cutting off heads. Anyone who thinks a Wii U situation is even possible doesn't truly.understand the Wii Us market problems.

 

[bkilian]

To the performance drop thing, my own theory is MS architecture never planned for always recording. And now they squeezed the feature in, and it ate resources and performance drop if the feature turned on.

No. Game DVR was planned from the start.

 

[baten]

What CBOAT is "revealing" might be the reason Mattrick left so suddenly. IF (stress on IF) XBOne launch is a failure, he's out of it early enough. Maybe he had some hints this was going to happen, so he jumped at the right time...

Of course, now he can even say - "I had a vision, after I left they did an 180 on most of my ideeas, no wonder the Xbone failed"

 

[Rangers]

It's called a regression and it happens all the time. It's not a big deal but if their presentation relied on something in the new firmware but it fubarred other stuff I could see it being cut. I figure they would have a back up plan to show something in case but maybe not. But that is probably the most plausible of the rumors besides the obvious MS reserves the right to jetison Kinect if thewy are getting killed in sales and think that will help type thing.

When was the last time AMD or Nvidia released a driver that decreased performance in general?

You could have some sort of weird bug I guess, essentially a defective driver that is quickly recalled, that's about it. i really dont think a driver reducing performance "15-20%" is possible in any meaningful sense. My guess is CBOAT heard some dev talking about some certain aspect of a certain game that lost performance in the latest driver, and sensationally extrapolated it into "huge problems".

What's our standard of proof for CBOAT? Presumably they wouldn't show anything too bad on video, so the Xbone demonstration stations will be playing games with terrible framerates? I'm going to doubt that one ahead of time. The rumor is just so typically nebulous as to be meaningless.

BTW Ryan Mcaffery Xbox IGN editor is saying a new hands on of Ryse will be going up in about 24 hours when the NDA is up (about 1AM central) so I guess Gamescom begins...

Ryan McCaffrey ‏@DMC_Ryan 1h

Off to play Ryse in 2 hours. First XB1 game of my #Gamescom week. Supposedly combat is "final" now. Full report on @IGN in about 24 hours.

 

[Strange]

No. Game DVR was planned from the start.

Was live streaming planned from the start? DVR and streaming may have slightly different requirements, especially as video streaming needs to be highly customizable (fps, bandwidth, profile, buffer lengths, CBR/VBR, etc.) to suit the streamer's abilities and needs (you can't just encode your stream at a constant 10Mbps and expect the streamer's network to handle it with no problem).

I think the loss of performance by 15~20% refers to when streaming is turned on, which indeed makes good sense. Streaming is, in fact, CPU intensive and would require you to offload it to some chip if you don't want the performance hit. I can't think of another proper reason for performance to drop so significantly as described, or we are in fact looking at extremely incompetent engineers which I don't think they are.

 

[temesgen]

When was the last time AMD or Nvidia released a driver that decreased performance in general?

You could have some sort of weird bug I guess, essentially a defective driver that is quickly recalled, that's about it. i really dont think a driver reducing performance "15-20%" is possible in any meaningful sense. My guess is CBOAT heard some dev talking about some certain aspect of a certain game that lost performance in the latest driver, and sensationally extrapolated it into "huge problems".

FWIW the translation early in the thread for the reduction in performance was:

"Latest SDK version (from couple of weeks ago) dropped performance by 15-20% across the board, dont get mad, happens all the time in console dev cycle and eventually will be fixed. No chance of early October release for the Xbone"

CBOAT seems to be saying its not a big deal.....

 

[dumbo11]

You could have some sort of weird bug I guess, essentially a defective driver that is quickly recalled, that's about it. i really dont think a driver reducing performance "15-20%" is possible in any meaningful sense. My guess is CBOAT heard some dev talking about some certain aspect of a certain game that lost performance in the latest driver, and sensationally extrapolated it into "huge problems".

AFAIR they recently landed a brand new driver model... and we're expecting that the NUI is approaching final status.

So, it's entirely possible that they're in a catch-22 - the NUI needs the new driver, but the new driver is not yet fully optimized for gaming. (or the games are not optimized for the new driver - don't forget that demos for gamescom were probably forked quite a while ago).

Anyway, ironically, CBOATs underlying message on that point is "DON'T worry about the lack of live-stream".

 

[GrimThorne]

FWIW the translation early in the thread for the reduction in performance was:

"Latest SDK version (from couple of weeks ago) dropped performance by 15-20% across the board, dont get mad, happens all the time in console dev cycle and eventually will be fixed. No chance of early October release for the Xbone"

CBOAT seems to be saying its not a big deal.....

But it doesn't make sense in the light of the recent 53Mhz upclock which Microsoft stated was done through software, and as an upgrade through it's new mono driver.

How do you manage an upclock and then drop 15-20% in performance at the SAME TIME?

 

[Rangers]

FWIW the translation early in the thread for the reduction in performance was:

"Latest SDK version (from couple of weeks ago) dropped performance by 15-20% across the board, dont get mad, happens all the time in console dev cycle and eventually will be fixed. No chance of early October release for the Xbone"

CBOAT seems to be saying its not a big deal.....

oh, i completely forgot to comment on the bolded. what a bold prediction

in other news, sun likely to rise in the east tmrw morning...

 

[Xenus]

When was the last time AMD or Nvidia released a driver that decreased performance in general?

You could have some sort of weird bug I guess, essentially a defective driver that is quickly recalled, that's about it. i really dont think a driver reducing performance "15-20%" is possible in any meaningful sense. My guess is CBOAT heard some dev talking about some certain aspect of a certain game that lost performance in the latest driver, and sensationally extrapolated it into "huge problems".

What's our standard of proof for CBOAT? Presumably they wouldn't show anything too bad on video, so the Xbone demonstration stations will be playing games with terrible framerates? I'm going to doubt that one ahead of time. The rumor is just so typically nebulous as to be meaningless.

BTW Ryan Mcaffery Xbox IGN editor is saying a new hands on of Ryse will be going up in about 24 hours when the NDA is up (about 1AM central) so I guess Gamescom begins...

While it's usually not across the board we've had drivers that fried cards before which I'd call a much worse regression if you'd even call it that.

 

[dumbo11]

i dont even know what this means. "cross reference the languages". umm, ok, what the hell does that even mean? well first one that comes to mind is russia. yep, that's definitely a different language than the one spoken in the other territories. alrighty then. localization issues confirmed.

the yield issues thing is going to be hilarious if xbox one outsell ps4 that first npd which i have this real funny feeling may just happen (once we have the release dates i feel a poll coming on about this).

It's obvious, but if MS has cancelled sales to a large part of the world, and there isn't a production problem, then we should be expecting to see a sizeable increase in day 1 consoles to the 13 remaining regions.

AFAIK that hasn't happened yet.

 

[Rangers]

It's obvious, but if MS has cancelled sales to a large part of the world, and there isn't a production problem, then we should be expecting to see a sizeable increase in day 1 consoles to the 13 remaining regions.

AFAIK that hasn't happened yet.

how would we know?

you can still get xbox one preorders from microsoft (at a time when preorders for next gen are starting to get pretty tight). we have seen a retail hardware unboxing from mn. we've seen ms execs with xbo in their homes, we have 100 xbo stations at gamescom.

i already ran the numbers in multiple posts, the markets ms moved where maybe 15-20% in population and probably less than 10% if not less than 5% in unit volume.

i generally dont argue they're not having problems, because we just dont know. but i dont see any real evidence for it. imo the majority of evidence runs against it.

there's also a likely middle ground, since i dont think any console launch runs problem free.

 

[Bagel seed]

It's obvious, but if MS has cancelled sales to a large part of the world, and there isn't a production problem, then we should be expecting to see a sizeable increase in day 1 consoles to the 13 remaining regions.

AFAIK that hasn't happened yet.

Or they're sitting on a large amount of unconfigured consoles, stored in a warehouse somewhere. But not destined for the 13 markets.

Or, they chose to slow down their production capacity after they found out translating would take longer than expected.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Or, they chose to slow down their production capacity after they found out translating would take longer than expected.

I don't think that one makes much sense. They can just sell more to the other markets - no need to reduce output for the reduced number of countries beign sold to at launch. There'll easily be enough demand for all MS can make. I think Wii U demonstrates a good few million can be considered a new, big three console entry typical sales figure.

 

[McHuj]

We really won't know for sure if they have had production problems until after Q4 2013. Launch date, number of countries, etc are just circumstantial evidence and certainly not definitive.

If they are having production problems and can't meet demand, I think they'll say that in their quarterly statement early next year. Or at least make a vague reference to improving supply to meet demand.

 

[dumbo11]

Or they're sitting on a large amount of unconfigured consoles, stored in a warehouse somewhere. But not destined for the 13 markets.

If it was 500k consoles? 500k x $500 = $250M.

I would imagine that shareholders wouldn't be overly impressed with the plan of 'storing a quarter of a billion dollars worth of stock in a warehouse somewhere, for "something"'.

Edit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhu0MMS7RjY#at=24
Footnote at end: "xbox one coming this November"
So an official release month.

 

[zupallinere]

When was the last time AMD or Nvidia released a driver that decreased performance in general?

Well SDK was mentioned not drivers so whether or not drivers are a problem would be even more speculative. Didn't the guys doing the port of The Crew say that Sony had performance issues with their SDK ? That problem wasn't "across the board" per se but it was a problem that affected gaming performance. Why would it be a shock if the XB1 had performance issues with the SDK if say, functionality was added or something like that and it hasn't been optimized.