Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[Crossbar]

I think the most concrete evidence that Sony will keep some form of Cell CPU is this statement by an IBM representative.

"I think you'll see [Cell] integrated into our future Power road map.
That's the way to think about it as opposed to a separate line --
it'll just get integrated into the next line of things that we do,"
Menon said. "But certainly, we're working with all of the game folks
to provide our capabilities into those next-generation machines."

If it will have some GPU specific functionality added is not known, but the following could be interpreted as they are adding graphic capability to some of their upcoming chips.

The PlayStation 3 combines Power processor cores with specialized
hardware to deliver advanced gaming capabilities. IBM is trying to
increase its focus on developing multiple processing components in
systems to intense graphics requirements and specific application
needs.

"There are many things we are doing that will impact the consumer,"
Menon said.

 

[bkilian]

@bkilian: The rumors of multiple Cells were just that, rumors. And they were born more out of confusion of the facts rather than anything concrete. Said original rumors though stemmed from Sony's patent, where even there, there was dedicated graphics silicon; 'Cell' as envisioned had a GPU component as part of its heterogeneous architecture.

Anyway beyond that, even prior to NVidia there was the direction that same design team was moving towards with the Cell and the Toshiba GPU.

Yeah, I know. But one can hope. I've always wanted a GPU where the shader pipeline ran at >3Ghz

 

[bkilian]

As my intelligence and knowledge about next generation consoles is unmatched, please feel free to ask me anything and I'll do my best to answer if I can.

Oh, thanks!

Do you know if the ports and other general console attachments such as USB, optical out, component and HDMI are expensive enough to worry about if we're trying to speculate on cost and next generation consoles? I remember Shifty was a bit miffed the NGP didn't have TV out.

Are the warranty repair costs on mechanical components such as DVD rom drives and HDD's expensive on a per console basis? I was thinking in the context of optical vs flash based media.

Ouch. Talk about putting words in my mouth . I'd say about the only conclusion anyone realistically could draw from my statements is that I know _nothing_ about any future console tech

I _can_ give you insights based off 5 years in teams dealing with consumer electronic devices though.

Everything that goes into a device is expensive enough to worry about. We talk about redesigns to remove components that cost negligible amounts. (I've seen a design rev to remove a single LED). If we had shaved 1c off each Kinect sensor we sold during the holiday, it would pay an engineer's salary for a year.

Above and beyond the component prices are the licensing costs. There are license fees you pay for providing things like HDMI or Optical out. (Since you have to support DD and such). Those costs are also generally per device (sometimes with caps) and effectively add to your BOM.

When Sony launched the PS3, they removed 2 ethernet ports and 3 USB ports for "Cost Control Reasons". When we launched the 360S, we removed the memory card ports, and I don't think it's because we weren't making money from those ridiculously overpriced memory cards.

Every port you add adds more than just it's BOM cost. It increases the size of your board, it adds complexity to your track layout and soldering, it sometimes requires more silicon to support it, it sometimes requires software development and testing.

I don't know about warranty costs or considerations. I do know that byte for byte, flash cannot compete with optical storage as of yet. A 9GB dvd costs on the order of tens of cents to produce, and can be produced at 1 every 5 seconds. A flash chip with the same amount of storage is on the order of dollars, and you'd still have to produce the board, the interface, and the enclosure. Move to the 50GB of blu-ray, and while the optical costs are only a little higher, the cost of flash chips of that size are an order of magnitude more expensive.

 

[Squilliam]

Ouch. Talk about putting words in my mouth . I'd say about the only conclusion anyone realistically could draw from my statements is that I know _nothing_ about any future console tech

I was just kidding!

I _can_ give you insights based off 5 years in teams dealing with consumer electronic devices though.

Everything that goes into a device is expensive enough to worry about. We talk about redesigns to remove components that cost negligible amounts. (I've seen a design rev to remove a single LED). If we had shaved 1c off each Kinect sensor we sold during the holiday, it would pay an engineer's salary for a year.

Above and beyond the component prices are the licensing costs. There are license fees you pay for providing things like HDMI or Optical out. (Since you have to support DD and such). Those costs are also generally per device (sometimes with caps) and effectively add to your BOM.

If thats the case how come you guys persist with the DVD playback? Surely people don't make much use of it and thats another $5 or thereabouts per box. You could even turn it into a profit maker by charging people money to activate that feature. Theres probably data somewhere which says how commonly used that feature is.

I don't know about warranty costs or considerations. I do know that byte for byte, flash cannot compete with optical storage as of yet. A 9GB dvd costs on the order of tens of cents to produce, and can be produced at 1 every 5 seconds. A flash chip with the same amount of storage is on the order of dollars, and you'd still have to produce the board, the interface, and the enclosure. Move to the 50GB of blu-ray, and while the optical costs are only a little higher, the cost of flash chips of that size are an order of magnitude more expensive.

With flash don't you get the option of lowering the base costs and especially the fixed costs of the console? Surely that could help to go a long way in compensating for the increased price of the media itself. I don't think they'll really want to increase the size of the games significantly, regardless of everything else as they (publishers) are all looking to target direct download as a possible primary means of distribution. They could even go ridiculous and offer a console which has no HDD or ODD, imagine how crazy cheap that could be as a streaming/media and flash game box?

 

[3dcgi]

If thats the case how come you guys persist with the DVD playback? Surely people don't make much use of it and thats another $5 or thereabouts per box. You could even turn it into a profit maker by charging people money to activate that feature. Theres probably data somewhere which says how commonly used that feature is.

It's a small sample, but myself and a decent percentage of my friends use the 360 to play DVDs.

 

[Megadrive1988]

back in 2003 there was a patent from Sony about a 4-cell CPU called Broadband Engine and a 4-cell GPU called Visualizer. That would've been a monster.

 

[Carl B]

That's what we be talking about above.

 

[bkilian]

If thats the case how come you guys persist with the DVD playback? Surely people don't make much use of it and thats another $5 or thereabouts per box. You could even turn it into a profit maker by charging people money to activate that feature. Theres probably data somewhere which says how commonly used that feature is.

There is, and you'll note the DVD playback software has not been modified in 5 years . It was included in the original XBox to compete with Sony, and I believe it was carried over to the 360 for a similar reason. It's not an exceptionally well regarded implementation (unlike, for instance our HD DVD implementation, or Sony's Bluray implementation), and we have had very little pressure to spend any significant dev time on it. Same for Back Compat, which was originally considered practically impossible until one of the genius folks here had the idea of repurposing (and heavily modifying) Virtual PC for Mac. It's now relegated to being an enabler for the downloadable xbox titles, which directly result in revenue.

With flash don't you get the option of lowering the base costs and especially the fixed costs of the console? Surely that could help to go a long way in compensating for the increased price of the media itself. I don't think they'll really want to increase the size of the games significantly, regardless of everything else as they (publishers) are all looking to target direct download as a possible primary means of distribution. They could even go ridiculous and offer a console which has no HDD or ODD, imagine how crazy cheap that could be as a streaming/media and flash game box?

Sure, you could ship a slightly lower cost console, in return for media that costs 10x the current amount, that you ship on the order of 10x the volume of consoles. The optional HDD in the 360 was a conscious choice to enable us to ship a lower cost console. The fixed costs for hard drives are quite high, and mostly inelastic. It costs about the same to produce a 40GB single platter hard drive as a 120GB single platter hard drive. (one of the reasons both companies use increasing hard drive sizes to "add value" to the newer consoles. The increase in BOM is negligible. The 250GB we have now is probably about the same cost as the 20GB we launched with)

 

[bomlat]

bkilian

If you work for the MS then I suggest to use the "they" or "I" instead of "we".
You know,just to avoid any inconvenience with the legal department
The "we" sound like an official company stuff - and I don't think that you have any authorisation for that.

 

[aaronspink]

Sure, you could ship a slightly lower cost console, in return for media that costs 10x the current amount, that you ship on the order of 10x the volume of consoles. The optional HDD in the 360 was a conscious choice to enable us to ship a lower cost console. The fixed costs for hard drives are quite high, and mostly inelastic. It costs about the same to produce a 40GB single platter hard drive as a 120GB single platter hard drive. (one of the reasons both companies use increasing hard drive sizes to "add value" to the newer consoles. The increase in BOM is negligible. The 250GB we have now is probably about the same cost as the 20GB we launched with)

But one factor you have to consider is margin distribution into the costs. Considering the margin for physical distribution (on the order of 1/2 retail cost and sometimes higher) vs physical distribution, there is certainly a cross over point where enabling a robust DD strategy even with upfront costs. If we assume as average attach of ~10 games, then if 40% are purchased via DD then the storage is paid for (assuming 30% split as via steam and the rumored $10 current royalty rate). This doesn't factor in tail capture etc like steam which would significantly increase average attach rate though at some hit to average sale price but ends up being a large net win (esp for catalog titles).

Personally, I think that all the console manufacturers *want* to move to a DD system, the issue for them is currently how to do it while also providing a distribution method for the physical hardware. For both the system developers and the publishers, cutting out a large percentage of lost margin is very attractive. For a game like COD:BO, it is worth on the order of 250-500 million dollars which isn't anything to sneeze at. On a yearly basis, it is a pretty insane amount of profit that is being left on the table.

 

[aaronspink]

What's your source for this ?

pre order numbers, first week numbers, etc. For instance, AOC had 500k first week and warhammer was in the region of 1 Mil.

 

[bkilian]

bkilian

If you work for the MS then I suggest to use the "they" or "I" instead of "we".
You know,just to avoid any inconvenience with the legal department
The "we" sound like an official company stuff - and I don't think that you have any authorisation for that.

Indeed. Everyone here knows that I am not talking officially for MS, and that any opinions are my own. I try to only use "we" when referring to actions taken by the team. It seems a bit strange to use "they" in those cases, but I can do that if necessary. I might go back to using "MS" instead of "we".

 

[NRP]

Nah, just keep speaking freely, bkilian.

Don't mind the sphincter police around here, they're out of their jurisdiction.

 

[Squilliam]

There is, and you'll note the DVD playback software has not been modified in 5 years . It was included in the original XBox to compete with Sony, and I believe it was carried over to the 360 for a similar reason. It's not an exceptionally well regarded implementation (unlike, for instance our HD DVD implementation, or Sony's Bluray implementation), and we have had very little pressure to spend any significant dev time on it. Same for Back Compat, which was originally considered practically impossible until one of the genius folks here had the idea of repurposing (and heavily modifying) Virtual PC for Mac. It's now relegated to being an enabler for the downloadable xbox titles, which directly result in revenue.

Ahh that makes sense, very insightful for the 99% of us who aren't privy to insider knowledge.

Sure, you could ship a slightly lower cost console, in return for media that costs 10x the current amount, that you ship on the order of 10x the volume of consoles. The optional HDD in the 360 was a conscious choice to enable us to ship a lower cost console. The fixed costs for hard drives are quite high, and mostly inelastic. It costs about the same to produce a 40GB single platter hard drive as a 120GB single platter hard drive. (one of the reasons both companies use increasing hard drive sizes to "add value" to the newer consoles. The increase in BOM is negligible. The 250GB we have now is probably about the same cost as the 20GB we launched with)

Surely after the HDD, the optical drive would have to be the next worst offender for having inelastic costs, especially as they become more sophisticated and require faster drives in order to feed the data appetites of next generation consoles?

If you consider how the use of the console has changed over the last 5 years it seems that no longer could you call the Xbox 360 strictly a games machine and as that trend continues the number of uses outside of gaming and the number of consoles used for things other than gaming would have to rise. The Xbox 360 has various video and music services, online arcade games and applications which all don't really require an optical drive or HDD to deliver. Wouldn't it be a competitive advantage being able to offer a smaller, thinner, quieter and most importantly cheaper console to these people?

I remember you said that at Microsoft you value big bets which may pay off in 5-10 years time. Whilst it would be extremely expensive in the order of multibillions of dollars to implement, if Microsoft could compliment their cloud based online Live services with a physical point of sale in 10s or 100s of thousands of locations world wide it would be a competitive advantage no other cloud based media distribution company could match. So if the PS3 was a trojan horse for Blu Ray, why not have the Xbox next as a trojan horse for kiosk distribution and hence gain a monopoly on that form of distribution which would be hard for competitors to shift. Going away from the optical drive isn't just a means to reducing console cost in my eyes, it is also a means to a new opportunity, perhaps the kind which could make the EDD 3rd only to Office and Windows divisions.

P.S. Tell the peripheral people they suck because my Comfort Keyboard 2000 broke!

P.P.S. Tell the peripheral people they rock because my new Sidewinder X4 has the best keys I have ever had on a keyboard and the backlight is fantastic. I tried 20+ keyboards until I found that one and it only took 3 key presses to know that it was the one!

P.P.P.S. Thanks for participating, since you've started participating more regularly my knowledge of the inside of the console industry and the various realities has improved immensely and im sure others feel the same way.

 

[Tahir2]

Intel HD3000 with 12 SP's is also a pretty good GPU, on par with the lower end stuff from NV/AMD. A version with 48-60 SP's would be pretty competitive on performance per watt, and Intel might have the motivation to sell it cheap to establish themselves in that market, because still the common opinion is Intel IGP = crap.

If you break down the Intel HD3000 a little, the reason why it seems so quick is its clockspeed. Sure there are improvements to the architecture compared to its own predecessors but compare it to the competition and it is not that impressive.

The main advantage Intel has is its process technology which allows the GPU to clock to 1.35GHz when needed!

Increasing the EU units four to five fold, keeping the clockspeed similar would still only make the Intel HD series on par to a Radeon HD 57xx or equivalent NVIDIA version in my estimation.

Naturally this will require an increase in memory bandwidth to match the increase in ALU/Tex power otherwise the improvement in speed may be just twice or thrice.

 

[Tahir2]

Well, do they have a candidate GPU that will be competitive for PS4 ?

I think it was a rhetorical question that you asked - the answer is YES since your replies after indicate you do believe ImgTec could have a competitive GPU later. This is more of a response to the other posts below yours.

ImgTec/PowerVR have many years and man-hours of experience with high end graphics, working with console manufacturers, software development, integration to a variety of systems and scaling from 1 core to 64.

ImgTec are an IP company, they don't have their own stand alone retail products so may be a bit of an unknown to some however lets look a little at the pedigree:

Freescale, NEC, TI, ARM, Apple, Samsung and Intel all have at some point successfully integrated PowerVR into their SoCs.
They have a variety of options depending on performance/cost/power
Have been in a console already, with SEGA on the Dreamcast
Have been in the PC 3D graphics market since virtually from the start (3DFX, not 3dfx days, ending sadly with the Kyro

No one has designed a 64 core version of the PowerVR Series 5 but it is a possibility. Probably a few examples exist somewhere in the HQ of ImgTec.
Series 6 is a viable option given the expected timeframe the next gen consoles are to be released, it is entirely possible a company like Nintendo, MicroSoft and Sony may have already commissioned a custom design for their next gen consoles.

Why would MS, Nintendo or Sony go with PowerVR and not AMD or NVIDIA? Performance (HW and SW), cost, experience, risk.

If all can be met to the satisfaction of the three lead console manufacturers why some people think no other company can compete with AMD/NVIDIA when it comes to high end graphics, I do not know.

Using Larrabee as an example of FAIL - that was purely Intel's fault for trying to evangelise the idea that x86 will conquer all, just wait for process technology to catch up to the all powerful x86.

 

[corduroygt]

Increasing the EU units four to five fold, keeping the clockspeed similar would still only make the Intel HD series on par to a Radeon HD 57xx or equivalent NVIDIA version in my estimation.

But wouldn't it be smaller than those GPUs, and hopefully more power efficient too?

 

[AmFreak]

pre order numbers, first week numbers, etc. For instance, AOC had 500k first week and warhammer was in the region of 1 Mil.

That's not a source - that's you saying the numbers . I mean where do you get that numbers from ?

 

[Tahir2]

But wouldn't it be smaller than those GPUs, and hopefully more power efficient too?

Edit: Probably smaller, but then add the 128bit GDDR5 memory controller and its own pool of memory. In the end - maybe it will actually be similar if you factor out the process advantage. IMHO.

 

[bkilian]

Surely after the HDD, the optical drive would have to be the next worst offender for having inelastic costs, especially as they become more sophisticated and require faster drives in order to feed the data appetites of next generation consoles?

If you consider how the use of the console has changed over the last 5 years it seems that no longer could you call the Xbox 360 strictly a games machine and as that trend continues the number of uses outside of gaming and the number of consoles used for things other than gaming would have to rise. The Xbox 360 has various video and music services, online arcade games and applications which all don't really require an optical drive or HDD to deliver. Wouldn't it be a competitive advantage being able to offer a smaller, thinner, quieter and most importantly cheaper console to these people?

I remember you said that at Microsoft you value big bets which may pay off in 5-10 years time. Whilst it would be extremely expensive in the order of multibillions of dollars to implement, if Microsoft could compliment their cloud based online Live services with a physical point of sale in 10s or 100s of thousands of locations world wide it would be a competitive advantage no other cloud based media distribution company could match. So if the PS3 was a trojan horse for Blu Ray, why not have the Xbox next as a trojan horse for kiosk distribution and hence gain a monopoly on that form of distribution which would be hard for competitors to shift. Going away from the optical drive isn't just a means to reducing console cost in my eyes, it is also a means to a new opportunity, perhaps the kind which could make the EDD 3rd only to Office and Windows divisions.

P.S. Tell the peripheral people they suck because my Comfort Keyboard 2000 broke!

P.P.S. Tell the peripheral people they rock because my new Sidewinder X4 has the best keys I have ever had on a keyboard and the backlight is fantastic. I tried 20+ keyboards until I found that one and it only took 3 key presses to know that it was the one!

P.P.P.S. Thanks for participating, since you've started participating more regularly my knowledge of the inside of the console industry and the various realities has improved immensely and im sure others feel the same way.

Hmm, I'm in the market for a new keyboard. I'll go check if the company store has the sidewinders. (I was leaning towards the Razer Black Widow).

On the topic of dropping an ODD, sure, it's tempting. It requires huge investment, on the one hand, to build out a kiosk system for the folks who don't have broadband, or if you don't have that, relying on the broadband companies to have your best interests at heart, which I find a little iffy.

Without the physical distribution structure, you're limiting your customer base to only those with broadband, and assuming they'll prefer to spend their (increasingly limited) data allocation downloading your games. With the physical distribution stuff, you run into all sorts of other issues, like what if a user brings in a card that doesn't have enough space, etc etc.

This stuff can be solved, but it would be a pretty big bet to give up a highly efficient and developed game distribution model in favor of something that may or may not work, just so you can shave a few dollars off your BOM (and other incidentals like warranty).