Charlietus
Regular
AMD wanting to sabotage ray tracing hardware vs Nvidia, Sony, Microsoft, Intel and Nintendo all at once. Like can you imagine 
Predict: Next gen console tech (10th generation edition) [2028+]
- Thread starter RDGoodla
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WorkGraph is a huge step forward for graphics programmers, it let us do things we couldn't before, like spawning new threads on the GPU. Having the GPU run asynchronously with the CPU instead of being a slave processor. (Ok not there yet, but still much better.)
Ray tracing workloads lead to Work Graph, it's simply taking the requirements/ideas and making them more general and available to programmers, instead of hiding them being a graphics API.
[I only read the specification and haven't used it, but it has huge potential.]
Ray tracing workloads lead to Work Graph, it's simply taking the requirements/ideas and making them more general and available to programmers, instead of hiding them being a graphics API.
[I only read the specification and haven't used it, but it has huge potential.]
Why do some people think that the next Xbox will be based on AMD? It's not at all certain that it will be. MS is talking about the biggest technological leap ever for their next console. Such a statement is usually made by someone when there is something new technology in the background.
In the leaked roadmap from the Activision merger legal case, the two options were "GPU: Co-design w/ AMD or license AMD IP (Navi 5)".
Things may have changed of course, but back then MS were looking at tech that was AMD aligned or derived.
Precisely what each of these options means seems to be a bit vague: co-designing could be radical or it could mean asking for a just a few tweaks and customisations. And licensing Navi 5 "IP" could mean just Navi 5 with a few tweaks and customisations, or it could mean getting the rights to the IP then using it as the basis for a radical new design.
Radical would be exciting, but something based on the existing AMD roadmap might be faster to bring to market and cheaper too.
Also: Back compat. Will need to either go with AMD or license a lot of AMD IP anyway.
Any such claim is very vague and does not inherently mean any truly radical advancement. Going from 12TF to just 30TF would be an 18TF increase, which could be argued to be the 'biggest ever leap'.
Truth is, there's no magic tech on the near horizon that's going to revolutionize anything, and with the increasing costs of competitive process technology and lack of improvements in cost of memory per GB and all that stuff - there's simply no chance that some next gen console within the next five years could actually deliver on any such promise in reality.
Most people assume they'll stay with AMD because they've already talked about doing so, it would involve the least amount of hassle keeping native backwards compatibility back to XB1, AMD offers good prices and respectable enough technology and have a lot of experience making and designing these kinds of products now, and because there's not really any case that AMD's tech/capabilities are at all holding back the market for consoles, and especially not themselves.
ARM is the only other option they've talked about, and while it's certainly possible and I wouldn't be shocked to see it, I also dont think it really offers them any kind of terribly useful advantages, either. The CPU side of consoles isn't all that interesting nowadays, especially since developers aren't really pushing them in the first place.
It's very unlikely to be anything else, from both a technology and business perspective - and between the two, business almost always wins out. Thus why you see the cost cuts on Series consoles, ie - asymmetrical ram pools, the need to save costs or keep the price down is the driving factor for any console release. If they can't release something good enough at a specific price point, then they just have to wait another year until it can come down. This is why the consoles will always likely launch together from here on out, if you are both targeting the best hardware at a specific price, they are likely to land at the same time. Nvidia will never be cheaper than AMD, and less chips is cheaper than more chips. This makes AMD the default solution.
But also because I believe in the ABK leaks they indicated that their next console is AMD based.
This time, they probably won't launch their next console at the same time as the competition, that's almost certain. On the other hand, I see too conservative approaches here. I also find this strange because it's obvious that MS needs a completely different concept for their own console to be successful in the next generation. They need a lot of Gamepass subscribers, and for that they need hardware to generate this number. This didn't work with the Series generation consoles, so it will soon be phased out. The next console will be completely different, either it will be merged with the PC, or it will build on a completely new feature, which is expected to make it popular.
I disagree with this.
For game pass to be successful, it does not require hardware to be successful, it requires games on game pass to be successful. If gamepass is a successful service then people will sign up for the service however it is accessible to them. So a successful game pass should drive more membership on PC and console and mobile.
While having a larger console base will lead to more game pass subscribers, as gamepass penetration is just a % of a population base, if you want to improve the penetration rate, you need to improve game pass. To improve game pass, you need to improve the offering, or, the games in this case. MS is working on this point and this should prove to be fruitful in about 1-2 years, as it still takes time to push titles out.
To get people to buy the next generation of hardware, they have to sell people on what the next generation of games brings. And this is a tough value proposition as the aging group of players who play Roblox, are absolutely OK with playing with block graphics.
I assume, players who are comfortable and grew up with the F2P microtransaction model, will continue to be comfortable growing up with it through their lives. Meaning they'll just grow into more F2P titles.
What next generation needs to offer, plainly, is the next generation of social, user generated content, experience. And I know everyone here is going to groan about it, but this is the bulk of players who will be the ones ultimately funding the platform and single player games that people are excited to play.
There's nothing certain about that whatsoever. There's only like one unreliable rumor that they were gonna release a new generation console in 2026, but I dont think it'll happen. It'll be their end, for all the reasons I've explained several times here. It would genuinely be the dumbest thing they could do right now.
And no, there is no 'different concept' they can take that's going to make them successful. This is exactly the same ridiculous thinking that has resulted in their current situation - this idea that they can avoid simply executing well on the core console strategy, and find some alternative direction that will magically lead them to success. There's a REASON that the core console strategy is what it is, and has been relentlessly successful for so long.
Also no, Nintendo is not some exception here, either. They've ultimately executed well on the core console strategy on every successful platform they've ever had. But they've also done so with massively more love and popularity as a platform owner than Xbox could ever dream of.
Charlietus
Regular
They are selling around 800k consoles a quarter, and the numbers are still falling. Can they really wait until 2028 to launch with Sony?
But launching in 2026 would mean not launching a traditional console. From the leaked timeline in the Microsoft leak, there are so many steps to launch a console that shaving off 2 years is probably impossible.
The leaks mentioned "Navi 5" as a possibility. If RDNA 4 is launching at the start of 20025, MS won't be waiting till late 2028 for a "Navi 5" console to be a possibility.
MS need something new and attractive to make Xbox stand out. An NPU to significantly increase upscaling speed and quality, frame interpolation quality, RT de-noising, and add an AI assistant to the machine might do it. Launching a successful handheld would also help the Xbox brand.
A Series S equivalent handheld with more memory and BC would launch with a very strong library, and future games could leverage an integrated NPU to bring effective quality and performance up significantly. Hell, MS's SR on an NPU could even make Series S games look sharper especially when output to a 4K TV.
And we're about ready for nostalgia for waggle as people look to play games with their kids.
And hell, a cost reduced, quality improved Kinect with AI assisted processing (AI's ability to understand what it's seeing is now freakily good) would allow for a completely innovative way to interact with a player. It can see you, it knows what you are doing, it can speak to you. And games can have characters that tie into all those capabilities.
So fuck yeah, there are lots of opportunities for MS. Will they try and leverage any of these things that they almost uniquely already have the library and software background in? Probably not, because they're Microsoft.
Charlietus
Regular
I don't know why they mentioned Navi 5 specifically, but in the timeline A0 tapeout Is in 2026, and the chip in that moment would probably be Navi 5. They would add more features in future tapeouts, maybe.
DavidGraham
Veteran
We shall see, it wouldn't be the first time devs praise some API before it's out, only for that API to have huge problems or features that are not even used at all, it happened with DX12, DX12U and it's features (mesh shaders, sampler feedback, Variable Rate Shading, ... etc. Even DXR had problems despite being used the most out of all of the DX12 features and despite delivering the most visual enhancements.
Agreed. It sounds great on paper but the “elite” graphics developer community has to regain credibility after a string of undelivered promises in recent years.
We don't agree, but there's no problem with that, we have a different point of view.
Gamepass is only as successful as MS's console Xbox allows, because it is known that the vast majority of GP subscriptions are on Xbox. The GP numbers just need to be increased and a ready-made theory is nonsense in itself, it's not that simple, otherwise everyone would subscribe on PC and TV stick, but that's not the case. Popular console hardware is necessary for GP popularity, because it is easy to see.
Since the sales of the current Xbox consoles have stagnated or are showing a downward trend, it follows that GP subscription numbers cannot increase significantly.
It follows from all this that MS does need a new, more popular hardware, a new console that more people will buy and thus increase the number of GP subscriptions.
Nintendo is no exception, Nintendo was only successful when it launched hardware with a successful concept, see Wii and Switch. And the GC and WiiU were not successful, and if they hadn't always had successful handhelds, they would have been discontinued a long time ago. But there was money from the successful handhelds, and with a new, successful concept, they were able to turn it into a popular desktop console again. Because let's face it, almost nobody believed in a Switch-level success story when the WiiU fell. And that's a fact.
MS can do the same with the Xbox, it just needs a good business model with a modern feature that is popular. This could be the AI they are likely to build on.
Furthermore, exactly an earlier date can put the next Xbox in a better position. In 2026 or even 2025, they can bring out an AI-centered console that can offer much more than a Ps5pro, which is just a rip-off of the current console. And the answer to the power question is that MS does not necessarily have to bring out much more powerful hardware than the competitor's midgen console, rather SMARTER hardware with a SMARTER concept.
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This is my whole complaint with Xbox's current strategy. Phil seems to have completely given up on this console generation, when the only real route to gaining success is fight back hard and win people back. Sony did this with PS3 and that 'fight back' mentality not only worked, but also carried them into an ultra successful PS4 generation on the back of that momentum.
Of course it was never gonna be easy, but the absolute worst thing they could do was give up. It's not like the market is just acting independently of Xbox's actions. It's all a direct result. Nobody is confident in Xbox anymore, and that's almost all Xbox's fault. Their continually vague, confusing rhetoric about their future and this new push to put their exclusives on competing platforms further makes gamers wonder why on earth they should ever buy an Xbox.
It's possible, it would just be weak, half baked, and not offer anything anybody would care about. Devs would also largely give it token support at best. Absolutely nobody, not even Xbox studios, would be making games exclusively for it. And then it would get obliterated by a PS6 a couple years later, which would be quite a bit more powerful and would have the backing of developers and exclusive titles.
I cant reiterate enough that their only chance was to try and actually fight back and do better. And honestly, they had every opportunity to do so from the start of the generation. People were actually quite optimistic about Xbox going into the XSX gen. But then they completely and totally wasted that optimism and let it fester til it was straight up necrotic tissue that they seem unwilling to remove.
Overall, this Xbox leadership team, helmed by Phil Spencer, have doomed Xbox as a console platform. Maybe they can make it as a games publisher, but Phil didn't have the first clue how to make Xbox work as a Playstation competitor. It wasn't even complicated, he's just bad at his job.
The Series X (and Series S concept) was great console hardware, and they did it well. The development of the games was delayed for several years for known reasons, which is not necessarily the fault of the MS management in the first place, this is how it turned out... However, now that their games are ready, they can launch these games, and among them are very popular game series. They can easily do this by releasing a new hardware with a new concept sooner, and prioritizing the games for this new hardware. In fact, they will definitely do this, because they will apparently abandon the Series consoles, which seems like a good decision in the current situation.
A new console is always more exciting and attention-grabbing. This requires a lot of good games and a popular feature. No one will care about the PS6 in 2025 as the PS5pro will only be out now. On the other hand, after the PS midgen console, masses may be interested in a well-positioned Xbox advertised as a completely new generation, with a more serious game selection and gaming options.
One of the key elements of the X360's success was its release a year before the competition and the many games. If they do the same with the next Xbox, there's a good chance they can increase GP subscriptions. Because this is the most important thing from a business point of view.
A new console is always more exciting and attention-grabbing. This requires a lot of good games and a popular feature. No one will care about the PS6 in 2025 as the PS5pro will only be out now. On the other hand, after the PS midgen console, masses may be interested in a well-positioned Xbox advertised as a completely new generation, with a more serious game selection and gaming options.
One of the key elements of the X360's success was its release a year before the competition and the many games. If they do the same with the next Xbox, there's a good chance they can increase GP subscriptions. Because this is the most important thing from a business point of view.
I have no issues with the XSX hardware. I agree it's great. XSS - idea is great, execution less so. But none of this is really relevant to any of Xbox's real issues.
The idea that games were all delayed 'several years' cuz of Covid or something is nonsense. Covid was such an overused excuse for game delays, all while like 80% of big games were getting regularly delayed even before Covid hit. And it doesn't excuse poor management of the studios and projects anyways. It's not even really that games were delayed, it's that Xbox took a deliberate choice to not have any next gen exclusive titles showing off their new 'most powerful console' hardware whatsoever for over two years. This wasn't even some surprise, they literally told us that's what they were gonna do beforehand.
And there were numerous opportunities for hit games, but they just whiffed basically every time. Even with delays and ditching last gen consoles, their games just weren't hitting.
You also seem to completely ignore the difference in situations with the X360 releasing a year early - the X360 was well supported by both 1st and 3rd party studios who were willing to make games exclusively for it. The first two years of the X360 were absolutely jam packed with incredible console exclusives. And yea, that absolutely put Playstation on the back foot. It's almost like the reverse situation of what exists today, eh? But this motivated Playstation to do better and resulted in their massive resurgence. That's the lesson - try harder.
Xbox is doing the opposite. They dont want to have to try hard, they want to find some alternative strategy. And it's never going to work. They are trying to duck the fight and will lose as a result.
Do you care what I believe ? The circumstances (slow transistor tech advances/rising inflation) make it hard for them to be symmetrically competitive in any near future scenario ...
It's NOT in any pre-release stage. You just refuse to see that it's already in a release state ... (ever since March this year)
Consoles are always there for them. Working strategy for PC =/= Working strategy for console
I'm referring AMD's RT research papers which don't see any real results ...
Can you imagine the industry dumping Unreal Engine and it's virtualized geometry technology ?AMD wanting to sabotage ray tracing hardware vs Nvidia, Sony, Microsoft, Intel and Nintendo all at once. Like can you imagine
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