Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[Dominik D]

Man, I love these discussions.

A: Most rumors say X.
B: On the contrary dear sir, most rumors say Y.

Link to rumors supporting your claim or die, seriously. All of you. What's the point of ping-ponging like this? It's clear that everyone will be entrenched in their vision of reality and spew "no, I'm right" over and over again. Link or give it a break.

 

[JasonLD]

Only a year left until either Sony or MS releases next console and this lack of information is startling. Are they just got better at keeping secrets or still does not have final specifications ready?

Or did Wii U changed whatever plans they had and forced them to change?

 

[McHuj]

Not sure if this is the right thread but anyway, according to Gamereactor and they seem to be 100% sure. There is ONE new console being launced next year. They have based this on what the boss of Activision Bobby Koticks has said. The only thing that they are not sure of is if it is the next PS or Xbox. So Wii U now in november, next year another console and the year after the last one will be released.

/ Ken

I think that's reading in too much in Kotick's comments. The question and answer that cause the speculation (from seekingalpha) are here:

Daniel Ernst - Hudson Square Research, Inc.
Two questions, if I might. First, for Eric, I wonder if you could comment on your thoughts around the Wii U, specifically for Call of Duty, maybe not -- that's not something that someone who has an Xbox or a PS3 is going to transition to the Wii U to play that, but maybe a Wii family that now has a kid who's old enough who wasn't when they got the Wii to jump into Call of Duty, is that a platform you think is going to be viable for that franchise? And then second, on -- I'll try the -- for Bobby, the question on next gen a little bit different way. Dovetailing some comments you made in the opening remarks about not placing resources on things you didn't think we’re going to create shareholder value and where your franchise were going to do well, specifically things like Facebook or overbuying in the mobile space, and then a couple of years ago, there was a lot of fear there wouldn't ever be another console cycle because things like OnLive were going to divert energy from that space. And so now as we're approaching what appears to be another console cycle, you who have lived and grown through a number of them, are we going to have another console cycle? Is this going to be another successful period for the gaming industry where new hardware comes along and developers take advantage of that capability and come up with new experiences and grow the business?

Robert A. Kotick - Chief Executive Officer, President and Director
I wish I could give you a more complex answer, but the truth is we can't really talk too much about next generation console plans, but I think it's safe to say you have a Wii U coming out, and there will be another new console coming, and we expect that there'll be very successful as they have been for 135 years at Nintendo. And we always evaluate all platforms with an eye towards being able to create the most compelling differentiated content. And whether it's Facebook as a platform or tablets or mobile devices as platforms, once we think that we can put our best creative foot forward and we can deliver something that's compelling and engaging and meaningfully different and really capitalize on the capabilities of a new platform, we'll support it.

It's not like he really gives a date or anything specific. I think he's trying to be vague. I don't think anyone should read anything into it.

What I found more interesting is this:

We look forward to sharing the results of our 2012 holiday, as well as the specifics of our annual operating plan for 2013 with you on our next call in early February

Might we have an announcement of a next gen platform by then? Maybe it's a meaningless statement, but any specific discussion of 2013 would include next gen plans and launches.

 

[Acert93]

Hardly, most of the rumours agree with each other and we have a reasonable idea of what the 720 looks like and to a lesser degree the PS4.

We have a whole thread of 360 rumors with rampant contradictions.

That said I dare you to (a) put what the "rumors" say about the 720 into your sig and (b) quote yourself with a mm/dd/yyyy stamp and we will revisit your sig when the hardware is announced.

Deal?

Or are you too chicken to back up the talk with some real "walk"

 

[COPS N RAPPERS]

Sony is heavily rumored to be further along in designing and binning their chips.

All rumors point to the fact essentially all the rumors being vague at best and outright fabrications at worse.

Hardly, most of the rumours agree with each other and we have a reasonable idea of what the 720 looks like and to a lesser degree the PS4.

If it's APU based it can be out as soon as next year. if it's a new integration of sorts it could span out. I wish we had pictures already by now of the dev kits or the chips used.

I think that's reading in too much in Kotick's comments. The question and answer that cause the speculation (from seekingalpha) are here:



It's not like he really gives a date or anything specific. I think he's trying to be vague. I don't think anyone should read anything into it.

the only way they could know who is if they're working on projects, and IF they received a dev kit from a specific console manufacturer. besides the parts involved being finished comes the launch titles....if there aren't being worked on by next year there wouldn't be a reason for it to be sold. My 8 ball says ms will probably have problems on sufficient projects for the console to launch next year compared to sony.

 

[(((interference)))]

Man, I love these discussions.

A: Most rumors say X.
B: On the contrary dear sir, most rumors say Y.

Link to rumors supporting your claim or die, seriously. All of you. What's the point of ping-ponging like this? It's clear that everyone will be entrenched in their vision of reality and spew "no, I'm right" over and over again. Link or give it a break.

Pfft...you know there's being skeptical and then there's just being ignorant.
Do you seriously think we have no idea of what will be in the 2013 machines?

Even highly secretive companies like Apple can't keep the lid closed on their future products, you think a fractious behemoth like Microsoft has better chance? Nearly a year before the iPhone 5 launched, we knew about the 4 inch display, aluminium case, 8mm taller length and LTE support.
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/ba...-on-2012s-redesigned-ipad-iphone-macbook-pro/

Take the 720, it's pretty much certain that this is what is in the devkits:
http://www.vgleaks.com/whats-inside-durangos-alpha-kit/

From the pic of the devkits rear:
http://www.vgleaks.com/rear-durango-a-new-view-for-the-alpha-kit/
We know it has a HD6870 or a HD6950 GPU, so the final GPU can't be weaker than that.

And we know that's a genuine devkit because Digital Foundry confirmed it was legit through it's multiple industry sources:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-the-curious-case-of-the-durango-devkit-leak

 

[(((interference)))]

We have a whole thread of 360 rumors with rampant contradictions.

That said I dare you to (a) put what the "rumors" say about the 720 into your sig and (b) quote yourself with a mm/dd/yyyy stamp and we will revisit your sig when the hardware is announced.

Deal?

Or are you too chicken to back up the talk with some real "walk"

Actually, most of the credible rumours about the current specs (and not the ones mentioning Power PC/Intel cores that MS might have been considering at some point or other,) indicate an AMD CPU with a large amount of cores (8), lots of RAM (8 GB) and a modestly powerful, modern AMD GPU (around 2TF) with embedded eDRAM.

 

[Acert93]

I see: "most of the rumors" now changes to "most of the credible rumors".

Please, pray tell, how you have made this determination of what is a "credible" rumor. The IGN rumor is different from the one you are hanging your hat on and in regards to the GPU there is nothing stopping MS or Sony from gimping a card with a special bios.

The fact you are being so forceful, yet won't take my little challenge, is... interesting

 

[AlphaWolf]

My 8 ball says ms will probably have problems on sufficient projects for the console to launch next year compared to sony.

The company that historically has had the best development tools is going to have the hardest time getting the dozen or so launch titles?

 

[(((interference)))]

I see: "most of the rumors" now changes to "most of the credible rumors".

Please, pray tell, how you have made this determination of what is a "credible" rumor. The IGN rumor is different from the one you are hanging your hat on and in regards to the GPU there is nothing stopping MS or Sony from gimping a card with a special bios.

The fact you are being so forceful, yet won't take my little challenge, is... interesting

Well I have no idea how many of 720 rumours there are floating around on the internet and what they say so I can't honestly say 'most rumours' I have to clarify that with 'credible' meaning that they can be cross referenced with other information (like other independent rumours, iherre/bgassassin's statements or Digital Foundry's sources etc).

As for the IGN rumour, it came out in January, and seems that at one point MS were considering Power PC cores (since fudzilla and semiaccurate were so sure that it did).

and in regards to the GPU there is nothing stopping MS or Sony from gimping a card with a special bios.

Please don't be ridiculous, there is such a thing as being overtly skeptical.
Sure they certainly could gimp the card through software, but then again, we certainly could all just be living in the Matrix or the world certainly could have been created 5 minutes with the appearance of age.

It is far more probable that the card in the devkit is indicative of (minimum) performance in the final machine rather than the converse being true

And I'll take you up on your wager, the 720 will have an 8 core AMD CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a new architecture AMD GPU that is at least as powerful as a HD6870.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Actually, most of the credible rumours about the...

Most of the rumours are actually one rumour repeated across the internet. We probably only have three or four rumours, and I don't think there's much agreement between them although I'm not following closely.

 

[(((interference)))]

Most of the rumours are actually one rumour repeated across the internet. We probably only have three or four rumours, and I don't think there's much agreement between them although I'm not following closely.

Perhaps, but the main rumour on the recent 720 specs (ie. basically what vgleaks says -AMD 8 core CPU, 8GB RAM, AMD GPU w eDRAM) correlates with Digital Foundry's investigations, what Charlie from semiaccurate is saying and lherre and bgassassin's comments.

There is also the fact that vgleaks seems to be accurate with predicting the Wii U specs (see the 3 enhanced Broadway cores they had vs all the Power7 rumours) and lherre confirmed the accuracy of their Orbis alpha kit specs.

And since we know (from Digital Foundry's investigation of DaE) that they definitely have access to a legit devkit, it seems reasonable that they would also know the specs of that devkit.

So, while sure, things could change in the final hardware and it is possible that the HD6870/6950 in the leaked devkit is underclocked, or the 8 cores are just to deal with current low yields etc, I think it's reasonable to believe that the next gen consoles will be similar to what the most credible rumours suggest.

I mean look at paranoid Apple and their product pipeline, we know pretty much everything they're doing, Retina MacBook, iPad mini etc. I mean we knew the iPhone 5 was going to be aluminium bodied and 8 mm taller than the 4S nearly a year in advance.

How can we know nothing about MS and Sony's next gen machines?
That's an incredible proposition, at least some of the rumours floating around must be legit (otherwise you'd have to believe that of the hundreds of people in the know no one is talking).
No, the real difficulty is in going through all the rumours, ascertaining which ones are the most credible and synthesising a reasonable looking picture out of them.

I'm pretty sure if someone looked back over this whole thread from the start of 2012, they'd be able to do just that; I only pop into this thread from time to time and have already forgotten most of what was posted.

For example I just did a quick search and found two statements (from back in June) by lherre and bgassassin that perfectly agree with the RAM specs in the vgleaks page.

Lherre has said that Next Xbox CPU is not PowerPC and 8gb RAM.

bgassassin I said probably when I should have said definitely. As for my info it wasn't quite like that. For the memory it was said that the 12GB was for the dev kit with 8GB being the final. I was only told a "multi-core" CPU. And when it came to the GPU all I got was "1+ TFLOPs". That's why I'm still hoping/waiting to get clearer info.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?p=1648986&highlight=lherre#post1648986
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=31379&page=520

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So, while sure, things could change in the final hardware and it is possible that the HD6870/6950 in the leaked devkit is underclocked, or the 8 cores are just to deal with current low yields etc, I think it's reasonable to believe that the next gen consoles will be similar to what the most credible rumours suggest.

'Similar' is a wide reference point. If the final box gets a last minute RAM cut, or 4 cores instead of 8 but at the same potency, or similar to 6870 GPU performance in an APU or very different to 6870 performance in a GPU, does that count as similar? I think the lack of accuracy is what many here consider as 'not knowing'. Wii U we knew the specs of when we learnt it was tricore PPC. We've no real idea of the CPUs/APUs in the next-gen consoles. We're told it's an APU but no idea of which flavour, or CPU+GPU, maybe an APU+GPU in one in stark contrast to the XB3 devkit, so that machine's not telling us a lot.

We know the old devkit specs. That's like knowing the old XB360 devkits. We're a long way from knowing the final console specs even if they happen to coincide closely with early devkits.

 

[Proelite]

'Similar' is a wide reference point. If the final box gets a last minute RAM cut, or 4 cores instead of 8 but at the same potency, or similar to 6870 GPU performance in an APU or very different to 6870 performance in a GPU, does that count as similar? I think the lack of accuracy is what many here consider as 'not knowing'. Wii U we knew the specs of when we learnt it was tricore PPC. We've no real idea of the CPUs/APUs in the next-gen consoles. We're told it's an APU but no idea of which flavour, or CPU+GPU, maybe an APU+GPU in one in stark contrast to the XB3 devkit, so that machine's not telling us a lot.

We know the old devkit specs. That's like knowing the old XB360 devkits. We're a long way from knowing the final console specs even if they happen to coincide closely with early devkits.

Hey Shifty, do you hold a position in the industry?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Nope

 

[(((interference)))]

'Similar' is a wide reference point. If the final box gets a last minute RAM cut, or 4 cores instead of 8 but at the same potency, or similar to 6870 GPU performance in an APU or very different to 6870 performance in a GPU, does that count as similar? I think the lack of accuracy is what many here consider as 'not knowing'. Wii U we knew the specs of when we learnt it was tricore PPC. We've no real idea of the CPUs/APUs in the next-gen consoles. We're told it's an APU but no idea of which flavour, or CPU+GPU, maybe an APU+GPU in one in stark contrast to the XB3 devkit, so that machine's not telling us a lot.

We know the old devkit specs. That's like knowing the old XB360 devkits. We're a long way from knowing the final console specs even if they happen to coincide closely with early devkits.

Well I'm arguing against the notion that we know nothing about the next gen machines, not that what's in the devkits may be different from the final hardware.

My point is actually not so much that the exact architecture of the final systems will match the rumours, but that the power of the final systems is what will be similar (if not better).

That's really what matters anyway, so as to put to bed all the nonsense about the next gen machines only being slightly better than the Wii U and being pathetically underpowered.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That's really what matters anyway, so as to put to bed all the nonsense about the next gen machines only being slightly better than the Wii U and being pathetically underpowered.

I agree with that. MS and Sony aren't going to spend 9 years to get a marginal improvement in performance, unless they were going to go with portable devices or a Wii like 'something extra'. The difference between Wii U and XB3/PS4 won't be as pronounced as Wii and PS360, obviously, but it'll very obvious.

 

[Osamar]

The difference between Wii U and XB3/PS4 won't be as pronounced as Wii and PS360, obviously, but it'll very obvious.

I think there will be not first look as pronounced, but with two, three or even four times more RAM and good compute (modern GPU), games can advance a lot in the no graphic areas.

 

[XpiderMX]

I think there will be not first look as pronounced, but with two, three or even four times more RAM and good compute (modern GPU), games can advance a lot in the no graphic areas.

I want a big jump in physics (hair physics, please), and animations.

 

[COPS N RAPPERS]

The company that historically has had the best development tools is going to have the hardest time getting the dozen or so launch titles?

I wouldn't say the best.....and even if they were it took them too long to catch up with sony. halo 3 took almost 3 years into xbox 360's life to make and looks no ware near like halo 4, which was almost 7 years later in the console's life span.

under the best circumstances for them the fastest projects that could be finished would be sports titles.....assuming that the dev kits will arrive sooner.

In sony's case, they do a have a stronger first party line up. they even got uncharted to be a launch title for the vita. this is why i say they can do it more so than Microsoft.