NGGP: NextGen Garbage Pile (aka: No one reads the topics or stays on topic) *spawn*

[Scott_Arm]

I do think its quite surprising... As this is a MS that sank (read: p!ssed away) billions on the OG Xbox to fight tooth and nail to get into the console space. They then produce a fantastic console the xbox 360 that even beats Sony in the global gaming market. And now when all the stars have aligned, Nintendo have crapped out a severely underperformant POS with the WiiU, Sony went with a rather moderate design for their PS4, and MS will the big coffers could have pushed out a beastlord that destroyed all the other consoles and positioned them into total dominance of the console gaming space (and by extention the PC space - since its now just a port platform), they go Wii-like and give us this.

Baffles me... it beggers belief

I wouldn't say this is Wii-like. This should be a significant upgrade over PS360, even if it is a good deal behind Orbis. They must have big plans for features beyond pure processing performance. I'll be curious to see what that is. I could go either way, depending. If PS4 has Battlefield 4 with more players, bigger maps and better physics, then it's pretty much a done deal for me, as long as they are competitive in online features (that I use).

And price will be a difference maker. I would imagine their BOM is cheaper, but we'll see how much Kinect adds in if it's bundled. If they've switched to 3DV's Zcam, which Microsoft now owns, then Kinect could be a good deal cheaper this time around. It was $50 BOM or something the last time.

Durango should also be smaller, quieter, cooler and use less power. All secondary considerations, but may be desirable to some people.

 

[dagamer]

Or maybe MS is betting everything on the price of 249/299$.Honestly, according to rumor I do not see other possible selling point.

Don't forget they need to budget in Kinect hardware (more specifically, they need to budget in the retail price of the Kinect in the high-end SKU, because if people found out that they were charging them $100 for $10 worth of parts, they would be very suspicious).

 

[shinobi]

I do think its quite surprising... As this is a MS that sank (read: p!ssed away) billions on the OG Xbox to fight tooth and nail to get into the console space. They then produce a fantastic console the xbox 360 that even beats Sony in the global gaming market. And now when all the stars have aligned, Nintendo have crapped out a severely underperformant POS with the WiiU, Sony went with a rather moderate design for their PS4, and MS will the big coffers could have pushed out a beastlord that destroyed all the other consoles and positioned them into total dominance of the console gaming space (and by extention the PC space - since its now just a port platform), they go Wii-like and give us this.

Baffles me... it beggers belief

as an xbox fan this how i feel, i will be skipping out on the next xbox for taking this route, i just want a powerful console, with online play, its not exactly wiiu like, as that is a pos but its not impressive by any means.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I thought sub-1080p was pretty much guaranteed for many titles next-gen, but this pretty much confirms it for Durango. If they have built in hardware to ease implementing dynamic resolution, as those Display Plane rumours suggest, then I'm guessing there will be quite a few titles that dip down to 720p, and maybe some games close to that at most times. If there's really nothing behind that patent in terms of Durango, then I'm guessing the upper-end resolution will come down a bit to guarantee stable framerates. 1080p is looking like a rarity for gaming on Durango. The question now is how much people will notice the difference, and I'm sure MS is hoping they won't. It'll definitely be an interesting generation of consoles.

 

[liolio]

as an xbox fan this how i feel, i will be skipping out on the next xbox for taking this route, i just want a powerful console, with online play, its not exactly wiiu like, as that is a pos but its not impressive by any means.

Well that is pushing way too far, the system lacks 33% the raw shading power of the ps4 (if rumors, etc. disclaimer), has less ROPs but enough bandwidth to feed them (they should perform closer to their peak perfs than the one in the PS4, AMD own word is that pitcairn ROPS are under fed hence why they increased bandwidth in Tahiti while keeping 32 ROPs).

The very issue for real "enthusiasts" is that the ps4 doesn't look like a monster either.
I've shifted back to PC gaming with a conservative set-up (laptop) and I plan to upgrade sometime in 2014 (worse case scenario would be early 2015 / after Christmas hunting for refurbished parts ).

By that time, the PS4 won't look like anything special either, we should have 22nm GPU parts, I hope excavators with decent performance on one side, set to be awesome (compared to jaguar cores it is not really disputable) Haswell/Broadwell CPU on the other.
Lot of Fast RAM for cheap is a given (my laptop already have 6GB). etc.
It should definitely be doable to find even a laptop (without breaking the banks) that is competitive with those next gen. As far as desktop are concerned (even in tiny form factors) it should be more than doable, close to cheap actually.

Thing is I'm OK (not that I may buy the product, I'm completely undecided on the matter, not sure to buy a console at all and I want to see prices for both systems) with MSFT strategy, as imo betting the farm (/financial risk that match a power house console) on a console in that sucky economy, when more actors could try to enter the show (Valve, Nvidia could have follow up to Shield who knows, Apple, etc.) possibly with a different positioning than "traditional consoles.

Soon, interposers will be mass produced, so could be things as memory cube, mobile devices are getting really powerful, etc. Imo releasing a console now is ballsy.
Both Sony and MSft could not release consoles before for various reasons (mostly recovering losses and the situation is not that competitive) but it was a bit safer 1 or 2 years ago if you go with 5 years cycle. I mean 5 year cycle in the way it should be understand from a business pov, ie before it could get replaced. Could is the important part, depending of the conditions you can extend the life of your product, you might continue to sell it along your new products, etc.
But you don't want to get stuck imo in a longer cycle (be in a situation where you can't react to market changes for more than 5 years).

 

[scently]

I do think its quite surprising... As this is a MS that sank (read: p!ssed away) billions on the OG Xbox to fight tooth and nail to get into the console space. They then produce a fantastic console the xbox 360 that even beats Sony in the global gaming market. And now when all the stars have aligned, Nintendo have crapped out a severely underperformant POS with the WiiU, Sony went with a rather moderate design for their PS4, and MS will the big coffers could have pushed out a beastlord that destroyed all the other consoles and positioned them into total dominance of the console gaming space (and by extention the PC space - since its now just a port platform), they go Wii-like and give us this.

Baffles me... it beggers belief

I think you are overreacting and really exaggerating . That statement is really incorrect.

BTW, what is the function of ROPs in relation to rendering and framerate? Also how many texturing units does durango have?

 

[shinobi]

Well that is pushing way too far, the system lacks 33% the raw shading power of the ps4 (if rumors, etc. disclaimer), has less ROPs but enough bandwidth to feed them (they should perform closer to their peak perfs than the one in the PS4, AMD own word is that pitcairn ROPS are under fed hence why they increased bandwidth in Tahiti while keeping 32 ROPs).

The very issue for real "enthusiasts" is that the ps4 doesn't look like a monster either.
I've shifted back to PC gaming with a conservative set-up (laptop) and I plan to upgrade sometime in 2014 (worse case scenario would be early 2015 / after Christmas hunting for refurbished parts ).

By that time, the PS4 won't look like anything special either, we should have 22nm GPU parts, I hope excavators with decent performance on one side, set to be awesome (compared to jaguar cores it is not really disputable) Haswell/Broadwell CPU on the other.
Lot of Fast RAM for cheap is a given (my laptop already have 6GB). etc.
It should definitely be doable to find even a laptop (without breaking the banks) that is competitive with those next gen. As far as desktop are concerned (even in tiny form factors) it should be more than doable, close to cheap actually.

Thing is I'm OK (not that I may buy the product, I'm completely undecided on the matter, not sure to buy a console at all and I want to see prices for both systems) with MSFT strategy, as imo betting the farm (/financial risk that match a power house console) on a console in that sucky economy, when more actors could try to enter the show (Valve, Nvidia could have follow up to Shield who knows, Apple, etc.) possibly with a different positioning than "traditional consoles.

Soon, interposers will be mass produced, so could be things as memory cube, mobile devices are getting really powerful, etc. Imo releasing a console now is ballsy.
Both Sony and MSft could not release consoles before for various reasons (mostly recovering losses and the situation is not that competitive) but it was a bit safer 1 or 2 years ago if you go with 5 years cycle. I mean 5 year cycle in the way it should be understand from a business pov, ie before it could get replaced. Could is the important part, depending of the conditions you can extend the life of your product, you might continue to sell it along your new products, etc.
But you don't want to get stuck imo in a longer cycle (be in a situation where you can't react to market changes for more than 5 years).

Well i'm just a console gamer, i don't even have a pc, i bought a 360 because it had better multi platform games, now with ps4 has a good advantage, MP games that are pushing the hardware should look and run much better on ps4.

 

[DieH@rd]

Don't forget they need to budget in Kinect hardware (more specifically, they need to budget in the retail price of the Kinect in the high-end SKU, because if people found out that they were charging them $100 for $10 worth of parts, they would be very suspicious).

You mean like when MS sold WiFi adapters for Xbox 360 for $80-100 until the appearance of Xbox 360 Slim? I wont even mention external HDD prices...

edit - scratch that, they are still selling them for $85
http://www.amazon.com/Xbox-360-Wire...0006307&sr=8-1&keywords=Xbox+360+wifi+adapter

 

[dagamer]

You mean like when MS sold WiFi adapters for Xbox 360 for $80-100 until the appearance of Xbox 360 Slim? I wont even mention external HDD prices...

Point taken. *retreats*

 

[ramr]

You mean like when MS sold WiFi adapters for Xbox 360 for $80-100 until the appearance of Xbox 360 Slim? I wont even mention external HDD prices...

edit - scratch that, they are still selling them for $85
http://www.amazon.com/Xbox-360-Wire...0006307&sr=8-1&keywords=Xbox+360+wifi+adapter

MS actually had a great reason for that, well in addition to making more money that is. Not only was wifi not that common at the time, they explicitly were waiting for N band to be widespread before including it.

 

[anexanhume]

MS actually had a great reason for that, well in addition to making more money that is. Not only was wifi not that common at the time, they explicitly were waiting for N band to be widespread before including it.

They could have started with G and upgraded to N later just like PS3. They didn't include Wifi in the launch 360 because of cost and no one else had done it. Once the PS3 and Wii launched, however, they didn't really have a great excuse.

 

[Alexct]

A question for bkilian if you read me and you want to respond. How do you think MS is taking the negative wave that is hitting the next xbox after this rumor/leak due to the low power and the apparent superiority of ps4??
With most of the criticisms that come from happy users of the xbox 1 and the 360.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Please stop it with the "secret sauce." I don't know who started that term, but they should be put to death.

Sorry to say, as the alternative is something verbose like "advanced custom solution" or "clever proprietary hardware additions", the metaphore is likely to stick.

 

[liolio]

Well i'm just a console gamer, i don't even have a pc, i bought a 360 because it had better multi platform games, now with ps4 has a good advantage, MP games that are pushing the hardware should look and run much better on ps4.

Well you might be right that the PS4 should have an edge (actually I fail to see how it could not be the case), though I would remove quiet some parts in your statement, it should be:
MP games should look better on the PS4. They will run most likely the same (in frame per second).
It won't look "much" better either, I think that most people won't be able to tell.
The ps360 are closer in power but in some extreme cases people were not able to tell, pixel counters and their friend "magnifier x50" could though.

Then there is price, which system your friends own (if you play online), etc. but on a technical pov indeed Sony system looks ahead by a significant margin.

 

[Inuhanyou]

I'd say its basically a PS3 360 scenario all over again, in that devs will simply code to the lowest common denominator ala Durango, so third parties will look essentially the same(although i expect Orbis to play them slightly better).

First party games are where Orbis will look a lot better taking advantage of its GPU and much higher bandwidth.

Isn't that a good situation? Compared to current gen, when coding for both of these machines, it will still look worlds apart from anything we're seeing today. So really, the fact that Microsoft is obviously designing a "good enough" console really seems to have been a logical decision, especially if they can come in with a lower price point out of the gate.

I'd buy one if it was relatively cheap even in the beginning..

 

[liolio]

I'd say its basically a PS3 360 scenario all over again, in that devs will simply code to the lowest common denominator ala Durango, so third parties will look essentially the same(although i expect Orbis to play them slightly better).

First party games are where Orbis will look a lot better taking advantage of its GPU and much higher bandwidth.

Isn't that a good situation? Compared to current gen, when coding for both of these machines, it will still look worlds apart from anything we're seeing today. So really, the fact that Microsoft is obviously designing a "good enough" console really seems to have been a logical decision, especially if they can come in with a lower price point out of the gate.

I'd buy one if it was relatively cheap even in the beginning..

I would not say that, definitively the PS4 should have an significant edge, I expect higher resolution rendering to happen quiet often.
If the resolution is the same definitely the ps4 should be able to do "more", higher precision lightning, higher quality effects overall, higher FPS (though with V-sync... it should not happen and the gap is not enough to go from 30fps to 60 fps without making trade off).

 

[shinobi]

I'd say its basically a PS3 360 scenario all over again, in that devs will simply code to the lowest common denominator ala Durango, so third parties will look essentially the same(although i expect Orbis to play them slightly better).

First party games are where Orbis will look a lot better taking advantage of its GPU and much higher bandwidth.

Isn't that a good situation? Compared to current gen, when coding for both of these machines, it will still look worlds apart from anything we're seeing today. So really, the fact that Microsoft is obviously designing a "good enough" console really seems to have been a logical decision, especially if they can come in with a lower price point out of the gate.

I'd buy one if it was relatively cheap even in the beginning..

well that depends, games like crysis, witcher 2, BF3, far cry 3 and AC3 etc run like crap on current gen, you will see those type of games performing and looking much better on ps4, look at the tech demos for next gen though, games already look like they will be taxing the hardware on both next gen systems, if they push the hardware, guess which port will be running sub 30 fps with less detail.

 

[french toast]

I'd say its basically a PS3 360 scenario all over again, in that devs will simply code to the lowest common denominator ala Durango, so third parties will look essentially the same(although i expect Orbis to play them slightly better).

First party games are where Orbis will look a lot better taking advantage of its GPU and much higher bandwidth.

Isn't that a good situation? Compared to current gen, when coding for both of these machines, it will still look worlds apart from anything we're seeing today. So really, the fact that Microsoft is obviously designing a "good enough" console really seems to have been a logical decision, especially if they can come in with a lower price point out of the gate.

I'd buy one if it was relatively cheap even in the beginning..

Agree with this ↑↑ I think if the specs are true we can thank our lucky stars to be honest.

People are moaning and dissapointed. .however of you think back to last years rumours we were talking of hd6670 with 2gb ram!!! If durango os really the denominator here...it looks like a pretty good scenario to me!

Im still amazed at what xbox 360 can chuck out in comparison to pcs..with prehistoric hardware!...can you seriously imagine 1.2 tf gcn uarch properly optimised and coded for??...I dont think many around here have thought it through...the efficiency gains alone from xenos to gcn should massive....bandwidth has jumped up from 25gb/s to 172gb/s....thats nearly 7x!!... scratchpad memory has more than trippled (should be more) and has more functionality.
Ram has been upped by a whopping 16x!!... cpu performance is what?...double single thread integer at least and alot more multithread....
No more crappy dvds!!...almost no one has mentioned this!!...50gb game storage..as standard on next gen systems...ps3 had this but was underutilised especially in cross platform...because of the 360...no longer!
Hard disk drives shipped with every console from the get go!..this used to be a major annoyance with 360 was it not?..did the lack of this feature on 360 also hold back cross platform?

720 is very likely going to be priced reasonably....be low power and heat. ..(same size or smaller? No rrod!..quiter?)
Will have much much more functionality and connectivity...likely have a better game pad...and come ewuiped with the next gen kinect..likely fixing many of the issues which held bsck the original...ie...higher resolution...hd capture. ..lower acceptable latency so will be able to be used better in hard core games...ability to be able to use more players? In smaller rooms? Probably a couple of other new features that would help.

Illumiroom looks to be ground breaking. ...its not quite. .of course. ..but seems a valid step forward towards immersing the player into the game world...much much better than just gawping at the square screen...if implemented properly it would be a game changer. ..

All these things are feasible...only the illumiroom may not make launch..bit you can bet Microsoft has already factored in these new controller/ visual products into its hardware design and BOM...

I think we will have to look at things with every feature combined...but if we only look st the rumoured specs on graphics power....we could do alot worse than durango being the common denominator for cross platform we really could.

 

[bkilian]

A question for bkilian if you read me and you want to respond. How do you think MS is taking the negative wave that is hitting the next xbox after this rumor/leak due to the low power and the apparent superiority of ps4??
With most of the criticisms that come from happy users of the xbox 1 and the 360.

I have no idea. I guess they would have to be prepared for something like this if they knew beforehand that their spec would be lower than PS4. (Actually, I know exactly what the management response was when questioned about relative console power - and other non-leaked things that may have significant impact on the sales of consoles, but it's not my place to say. Let's just say that I got flashbacks to my days in a different, less successful, org in some meetings.)

 

[DJ12]

I'd say its basically a PS3 360 scenario all over again, in that devs will simply code to the lowest common denominator ala Durango, so third parties will look essentially the same(although i expect Orbis to play them slightly better).

Will they though?

This lowest common denominator business stems from the PS2 and xbox, PS2 sold over 150 million and the xbox 25, why would you invest your money when the difference in userbase was so vast? You develop games for the one that will make you the most money in this instance and seeing as multiplatform games this time round ran considerably better on 360 in the most part, doesn't that actually disprove your theory?

And no third party dev is seriously going to release a game that looks considerably worse than Uncharted 4 and other first party games, they will have to much pride for that in my opinion.

I predict we will see what happened this time, which in reality is games being made for the better system and being made to run as best as possible on the weaker one.