Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[RepublicanWolf]

What do you guys think about Crystalwell?

The Intel chip will be expensive. However, these days Intel integrates most of the motherboard onto their chip which lowers component costs. Intel chips have low TDP which lowers cooling costs. Intel can bin these chips and they won't go to waste, again lowering costs.

Finally, I see the consoles as expensive but subsidized by either cable providers or Xbox Live. $99 for 2 year contracts at $15/month. Every 2 years, the consoles are updated on Intels tick tock schedule and users can upgrade to get more features.

This is just one possibility of many, that makes business sense to me.

 

[Cyan]

Finally, I see the consoles as expensive but subsidized by either cable providers or Xbox Live. $99 for 2 year contracts at $15/month. Every 2 years, the consoles are updated on Intels tick tock schedule and users can upgrade to get more features.

This is just one possibility of many, that makes business sense to me.

That would be a possibility, I also wouldn't rule out the possibility of a similar approach than the one used this generation when it comes to peripherals.

I hope it doesn't happen again, but to give you an example... the Xbox 360 cost 400€, and yet you basically MUST buy the peripherals, some were well overpriced, to enjoy other possibilities of the console, like the external Wireless networking adapter -quite expensive, 80€-, the play and charge kit priced at 40€ iirc, a second controller -40€, although expected-... and you could end up paying about 600€ to enjoy the full experience.

Then you had some official MS peripherals like the HDMI cable that cost 50€, what a con!

Obviously I can understand that from a business point of view, except for the blatant rip-offs, but there are ways and ways to subsidize the hardware.

 

[AlphaWolf]

You absolutely do not need any of the peripherals. No reason to expect peripherals to be cheaper next gen.

 

[bgassassin]

What do you guys think about Crystalwell?

The Intel chip will be expensive. However, these days Intel integrates most of the motherboard onto their chip which lowers component costs. Intel chips have low TDP which lowers cooling costs. Intel can bin these chips and they won't go to waste, again lowering costs.

Finally, I see the consoles as expensive but subsidized by either cable providers or Xbox Live. $99 for 2 year contracts at $15/month. Every 2 years, the consoles are updated on Intels tick tock schedule and users can upgrade to get more features.

This is just one possibility of many, that makes business sense to me.

Haswell sounds like it would need a discrete GPU for proper gaming. It doesn't sounds like a good fit on its own IMO.

 

[RudeCurve]

What do you guys think about Crystalwell?

The Intel chip will be expensive. However, these days Intel integrates most of the motherboard onto their chip which lowers component costs. Intel chips have low TDP which lowers cooling costs. Intel can bin these chips and they won't go to waste, again lowering costs.

Finally, I see the consoles as expensive but subsidized by either cable providers or Xbox Live. $99 for 2 year contracts at $15/month. Every 2 years, the consoles are updated on Intels tick tock schedule and users can upgrade to get more features.

This is just one possibility of many, that makes business sense to me.

AMD already has a APU that performs equal/better than current gen...it's called A8-3870K.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desk...s/Pages/a-series-model-number-comparison.aspx

 

[RepublicanWolf]

The AMD A8 3870 has more than 2X the transistors as the Xbox360 and is an updated architecture. I would think it is significantly more powerful than the 360.

Can ARM access more than 4GB of memory?

 

[tunafish]

The AMD A8 3870 has more than 2X the transistors as the Xbox360 and is an updated architecture. I would think it is significantly more powerful than the 360.

It is.

Can ARM access more than 4GB of memory?

4GB per process, of which some high proportion would likely be mapped to the kernel (like 2/2GB or 3/1GB split). If you are ok with running more than one process, the physical addresses are 40-bit. (1TB of address space).

The ISA definition for 64-bit ARM was just released, but imho the chips are not close enough to be contenders for the console race, unless the timetable is pushed way back.

Which is a shame, really. Like x86_64, ARMv8 chips have two optional operating modes, for 32-bit and 64-bit. Unlike x86, the 64-bit mode is not just a minor addon to the 32-bit. They basically redesigned the ISA from the ground up, and unlike the most recent "hey let's do a new isa", they didn't base it all on some untried ideas. The result is that when you only implement the 64-bit parts (which the spec allows), ARMv8 is the cleanest and best ISA with (upcoming) mass adoption, ever.

 

[RudeCurve]

The AMD A8 3870 has more than 2X the transistors as the Xbox360 and is an updated architecture. I would think it is significantly more powerful than the 360.

You brought up some future expensive 100W Intel CPU/GPU SoC to use in a console. I was pointing out that AMD has been selling said chip for months. I don't see the point of waiting to put Intel's future chip into a console when AMD already has them today.

 

[sebbbi]

What do you guys think about Crystalwell?

Very good for laptops and Ultrabooks, but not enough GPU performance for next gen consoles. If Haswell rumors are true, the top model (GT3) graphics will have 40 EUs. Ivy Bridge has 16 EUs, and is slightly more powerful (around 1.5-2x frame rate in many console ports at 720p) than current generation consoles. Assuming perfect (linear) scaling Haswell will have 2.5x GPU performance compared to Ivy Bridge. Ivy Bridge GPU is not bandwidth constrained (memory overclock benchmarks do not bring much improvements), so superlinear scaling (because of the interposer) is not possible. Basically you could expect to have at most 4x-5x performance compared to current generation console GPUs. I don't think that's enough for next gen console products.

 

[XpiderMX]

After rumours of Microsoft losing moey for each Surface, ¿can we wait the same with Xbox 720?

 

[TheWretched]

After rumours of Microsoft losing moey for each Surface, ¿can we wait the same with Xbox 720?

Probably... but I guess the tablet market is just as big a stake for them now, since Windows is virtually non-existant there, and the Windows brand is "slipping" in the consumer market. Windows Phone sells badly, there are no tablets, and the traditional desktop gets pushed aside for the tablets, too (though I still find that sort of hard to believe, that people actually prefer a tablet for doing "computer stuff", market research tells us otherwise, though).

 

[SKYSONY]

Probably... but I guess the tablet market is just as big a stake for them now, since Windows is virtually non-existant there, and the Windows brand is "slipping" in the consumer market. Windows Phone sells badly, there are no tablets, and the traditional desktop gets pushed aside for the tablets, too (though I still find that sort of hard to believe, that people actually prefer a tablet for doing "computer stuff", market research tells us otherwise, though).

If they want their strategy to be a total success they need a Windows box in the living room. I see it as important as the tablet market for them. Honestly, this is probably the last generation they will have to spend money in, thus a powerful system that makes their strategy feaseable makes sense to me.

 

[XpiderMX]

Probably... but I guess the tablet market is just as big a stake for them now, since Windows is virtually non-existant there, and the Windows brand is "slipping" in the consumer market. Windows Phone sells badly, there are no tablets, and the traditional desktop gets pushed aside for the tablets, too (though I still find that sort of hard to believe, that people actually prefer a tablet for doing "computer stuff", market research tells us otherwise, though).

But the entertainment division is one of the most important business for Microsoft, I guess it is the most profitable and I they need to have "the winning" platform this time. They need to attract the core and casual gamers, not only casuals.

 

[Cyan]

But the entertainment division is one of the most important business for Microsoft, I guess it is the most profitable and I they need to have "the winning" platform this time. They need to attract the core and casual gamers, not only casuals.

Sony and MS could easily build a console that catered to people of both audiences, casual and traditional.

I've been in love with gaming for as long as I can remember, but I wasn't allowed to play games featuring the most modern technology for a few years because I got stuck with an old PC when the games were evolving so much, which only increased my lust for games featuring top notch technology.

I picked up my first console in 2004 -I had played the Atari 2600, and had the SNES, but they were family consoles, not actually mine- after some years with the aforementioned old PC because im a massive idiot and was REALLY in the mood for some great, awesome graphics. So I truly hope that consoles live up to the hype this time around too and that they push the envelope once more.

The current generation consoles were amazing when they were launched back in the time.... and Remedy say the new consoles are going to push the envelope once more while at the same time developers want the likes of Move and Kinect to also evolve. It should be a fascinating new generation, if the new consoles live up to the premises.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

it's not about being able to or not but all about what is making financial sense. You can't have a console with tons of power and kinect 2/move 2 while keeping costs reasonable.

 

[XpiderMX]

it's not about being able to or not but all about what is making financial sense. You can't have a console with tons of power and kinect 2/move 2 while keeping costs reasonable.

But a Kinect (on the box) with just an infrared sensor and 2 mics, just for simple body tracking and voice recognition, can do the work for simple games and dashboard, and they can sell a "Kinect Pro" with HD RGB camera and more mics for advanced titles. I guess it can keep costs low.

 

[TheWretched]

But a Kinect (on the box) with just an infrared sensor and 2 mics, just for simple body tracking and voice recognition, can do the work for simple games and dashboard, and they can sell a "Kinect Pro" with HD RGB camera and more mics for advanced titles. I guess it can keep costs low.

Which would render the "Pro" variant useless for most people, as developers/publishers will focus on the low end model, as everyone has that.

 

[xexuxjy]

Plus having the sensors (or at least the IR sensor) in the box itself just seems an odd think to do as you're then forcing the console itself to be located in a particular position in relation to the user. As it stands at the moment I'd actually be really surprised if a kinect of any description came bundled with the 720... theres been very little really from a games point of view to push it. I'd expect that existing kinects were compatible with the new box, and _possibly_ a newer version with more capabilities but I think the Kinect wave has peaked... (famous last words)

 

[Shifty Geezer]

If MS are serious about Kinect, they need to bundle it. Then every game will have it as an option making support and experimentation and progress uniform across games. A shooter that comes up with a good system of body tracking while playing on the couch to add natural player nuance, or a racer that tracks the player position and tracks camera accordingly, or a platformer that reads the platers facial expressions and intelligently applies subtle assists to eliminate frustration, would then enrich other games in those genres that would copy.

I suppose the threat of multiplatform would mitigate that considerably, as there's little incentive to develop interfaces for one system that the other two (or three) can't use. But still, if you want to do something different, it has come to the standard you want in all machines. Any peripheral is going to severely diminish the value of its technology by being an uncertain extra. Sony's biggest mistake this gen IMO was not bundling the camera with every box and failing to progress EyeToy. MS would be stupid to leave Kinect out of XBox 3 unless they don't believe it has any value beyond party games and would just diminish the worth of the system to their core gamers. If it can't contribute to core gaming, then it'd just be an expense that sits idle.

 

[DieH@rd]

Charlie has a new article about Xbox 720, its production problems, change of ahitecure into full AMD machine and rls date.
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/09/04/microsoft-xbox-next-delay-rumors-abound/

The chip, which is still referred to as ‘Oban’, is being run through multiple fabs in very high quantities, too high by more than an order of magnitude to simply be for dev kits. Yields on the chip are said to be something between painfully low, Nvidia Fermi painfully low, and worse than that. Given the sheer number of wafers Microsoft contracted for, this seems to be both an anticipated problem, and one they have plans to work through. That said, SemiAccurate’s sources are still reporting that there is much work to be done, yields are not even up to “horrid” yet.

Microsoft insiders tell us that the planned launch date is September 2013, and that is not changing without heads rolling internally.

It looks like the long shot came through, moles are now openly talking about AMD x86 CPU cores and more surprisingly, a newer than expected GPU. How new? HD7000 series, or at least a variant of the GCN cores, heavily tweaked by Microsoft for their specific needs.

This means both the XBox Next and the PS4 are going to effectively be HSA/FSA devices.