Series X Refresh and Next Generation Xbox Hardware

[RDGoodla]

Xbox needs < $399 consoles. Business model already becomes subscription, and what is the main feature of subscription? Cheap, cheap. Cheap game, and cheap consoles.

So xbox needs $399 series s2 and a $399 handheld console. High performance console does't fit xbox business model.

 

[cheapchips]

Xbox needs < $399 consoles. Business model already becomes subscription, and what is the main feature of subscription? Cheap, cheap. Cheap game, and cheap consoles.

So xbox needs $399 series s2 and a $399 handheld console. High performance console does't fit xbox business model.

They can never be cheap enough there. They ran into that issue with their streaming console and run into the same issue with controllers on TV/Mobile apps, to a lesser degree.

 

[Nesh]

A basic GP subscription for 5 years is revenue equivalent to an attach rate of 11 games. Lol

MS dreams of every S owner getting a basic GP sub.

The S is great value and there's no evidence that gamers are negative about it when it is a majority of Xbox Series sales. There's the proof. Who cares what B3D enthusiasts think of the S? Not the target demographic.

Likely all this Gen's games are going to work on the upcoming handheld because of the S. That has huge potential.

MS has the talent now to do whatever they want. They should stick to their plan:

2024: S $199, X slim $399
2026: M $399, X2 $599

30+ studios cranking out 6 AAA games per year.

Grow GP to 50+ million subs.

This assumes that GP is in absolute demand and that all GP subscribers will continue their subscriptions non stop.

Surely Series S helped sales but it is also a testament of how bad XBOX is doing. It's sales aren't increasing. They are falling. Core gamers abandoned the X, series S isn't strong enough to substitute it. It is only slowing down the inevitable.

As XBOX sales are falling so is the potential of GP subscription growth on console

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Not true. MS is at 27 million units. Only 10% shy of their 30 million goal by year 3. Xbox failing is a false narrative.

AAA games and price drops will drive sales.

Sony dreams of having as strong a 2024 games lineup as MS.

Sorry to all the naysayers, but Xbox is mostly fine.

Stick to the plan Phil.

 

[Charlietus]

Not true. MS is at 27 million units. Only 10% shy of their 30 million goal by year 3. Xbox failing is a false narrative.

AAA games and price drops will drive sales.

Sony dreams of having as strong a 2024 games lineup as MS.

Sorry to all the naysayers, but Xbox is mostly fine.

Stick to the plan Phil.

In Europe, for the month of February, IB estimates 35k Xbox consoles sold, compared with 135k Switches and 300k Ps5's. Europe is pretty much lost, and this is with sony trying it's hardest to f**k it up.

I don't think that Phil thinks that it's fine.

 

[Seanspeed]

Sony dreams of having as strong a 2024 games lineup as MS.

That's probably the only point I'd concede here. Sony's 2024 lineup looks almost as bad as Microsoft's 2022, which was one of the worst years for a 1st party in the past couple decades.

We still need to see how these games hit, though. Senua is gonna be marketed like a major blockbuster, but will still likely be a somewhat smaller-scale game just with top tier production values. Avowed really needs to be a fair bit better than Outer Worlds. And Indiana Jones is hard to predict, but some optimism is warranted with the studio's reputation. I dont think any of these are gonna be absolute 'must haves' though, unfortunately. So I wouldn't go bragging about their lineup that strongly.

Though to be fair, if we were to include more niche/PC titles like Ara and Flight Sim 2024, I'd say it's pretty strong, just not as relevant for their console presence.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

One day, an Xbox hardware tech thread won't end up about Gamepass, game library and XB consoles not selling...

 

[iroboto]

One day, an Xbox hardware tech thread won't end up about Gamepass, game library and XB consoles not selling...

Impossible. Someone is going to always add in some sort of zing around tools, features being useless, wider and slower, poor design choices when about 90% of the issue is going to come from just lack of time spent optimizing the platform for performance.

 

[Tkumpathenurpahl]

If, theoretically MS were to refresh the Series X would it be of any use to do away with the split speed memory?

The first benefit is more memory. But how useful would that be? How much would it translate to visible benefits and would it make life any easier for devs?

I suppose though that paired with a GPU clockspeed upgrade, it would be quite a good way to ensure that it's minimal effort to get games which use PS5/Pro as the lead platform running on the Series XX.

 

[iroboto]

If, theoretically MS were to refresh the Series X would it be of any use to do away with the split speed memory?

The first benefit is more memory. But how useful would that be? How much would it translate to visible benefits and would it make life any easier for devs?

I suppose though that paired with a GPU clockspeed upgrade, it would be quite a good way to ensure that it's minimal effort to get games which use PS5/Pro as the lead platform running on the Series XX.

The memory pools are not technically split; they just aren’t uniform in size.

If you want to resolve that issue, XSX refresh needs 20GB of memory.
Or I suppose you can go 8 chips that run much faster like 5pro is doing. But then you need to redesign the bus and cache.

Which is too costly

 

[Tkumpathenurpahl]

The memory pools are not technically split; they just aren’t uniform in size.

If you want to resolve that issue, XSX refresh needs 20GB of memory.
Or I suppose you can go 8 chips that run much faster like 5pro is doing. But then you need to redesign the bus and cache.

Which is too costly

What I meant to convey was their memory design to give 10GB the full 560GB/s and 330GB/s to the remaining 6GB. I'm fine using whatever term other than split speed memory though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm not sure fewer, faster chips would be totally immune to BC issues. If anyone would be immune to it, it's MS though. It seems that moving to 20GB of memory would be the easiest move: 560GB/s across the board, or 720GB/s if they went with 18gbps GDDR6.

That amount of bandwidth on a 5nm shrink, with ~2.5GHz variable clockspeed would have it do just fine when compared to the Pro. And if it's relatively cheap to draw in features from newer generations of RDNA, then all the better.

 

[Boss]

One day, an Xbox hardware tech thread won't end up about Gamepass, game library and XB consoles not selling...

That day will come only after Xbox has fixed all their other issues. So perhaps not in our lifetime.

 

[RDGoodla]

That amount of bandwidth on a 5nm shrink, with ~2.5GHz variable clockspeed would have it do just fine when compared to the Pro. And if it's relatively cheap to draw in features from newer generations of RDNA, then all the better.

It's still far behind Pro because 1.5x Seriesx only has 1.5x RT, without any hardware upscaling. But it costs still a lot.

What ms needs is a completely new series s2, backward compatible with seriesx, with Zen 5 CPU, RDNA 4 GPU and good upscaling, and then completely replaces seriesx.

 

[RDGoodla]

One day, an Xbox hardware tech thread won't end up about Gamepass, game library and XB consoles not selling...

The choice of design depends on business model and sales number.

 

[cheapchips]

The Verge had a writeup on Qualcomm's Snapdragon GDC talk. The short version - They expect most x86 game to work just fine, with little performance penalty on CPU over native Arm and none on GPU.

I thought that was interesting context from a next gen, handheld or even refreshed Xbox perspective.

Qualcomm says most Windows games should “just work” on its unannounced Arm laptops

How well will they run, though?

www.theverge.com

 

[Johnny Awesome]

It's hard not to talk about software lineups, because more AAA 90% metacritic games are what they need more than hardware at this point. There's nothing wrong with MS hardware.

They can wait until 2026 because dev cycles are so long now. As long as new 3rd party games still have to run on 55+ million PS5s they don't have to release anything more powerful than the Series X.

Their own 1st parties can showcase the X2 in 2026. Gears 6 preview will be enough to satiate hardcore Xbox gamers until 2026. Also, X2 will run PS5 Pro games better than PS5 Pro will.

All this talk is relevant because what I'm saying to MS is: Don't bother until 2026. Concentrate on your real problems instead.

PS: 2TB X v2 is fine of course.

 

[eastmen]

It's hard not to talk about software lineups, because more AAA 90% metacritic games are what they need more than hardware at this point. There's nothing wrong with MS hardware.

They can wait until 2026 because dev cycles are so long now. As long as new 3rd party games still have to run on 55+ million PS5s they don't have to release anything more powerful than the Series X.

Their own 1st parties can showcase the X2 in 2026. Gears 6 preview will be enough to satiate hardcore Xbox gamers until 2026. Also, X2 will run PS5 Pro games better than PS5 Pro will.

All this talk is relevant because what I'm saying to MS is: Don't bother until 2026. Concentrate on your real problems instead.

PS: 2TB X v2 is fine of course.

I disagree. 2025 coming in at a $500 price point and making use of zen 5 and possibly rdna 5 could be a good re-entry point for MS. If done properly they could have a decent leap over the ps5 pro (if the current rumors of its performance are true. ) They can enter with a two prong system approach. Use zen 5/rdna 5 to make a system similar to the series x but in the foot print of a series s and similarly priced. Then release the higher end sku . If it can play through games like GTA 6 and other big releases at 4k 60fps and with higher levels of ray tracing it could be a good disruption for MS. They could have another 360 moment. Sony would be forced to either abandon the ps5 pro and move on to a ps6 quickly in like 2026 or to ride out the ps5 pro until 2027 or beyond. depending on the hardware advantages of a xbox next vs a ps5 pro it could be a sizable enough performance advantage that is noticable to gamers and will make them want to move platforms.

MS has enough exclusives releasing now and momentum should be in their favor with all the studios they have.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Well, for the record I don't mind a 2025 scenario, but I don't think MS will throw Sony off course with hardware, only AAA software could do that.

 

[Boss]

Well, for the record I don't mind a 2025 scenario, but I don't think MS will throw Sony off course with hardware, only AAA software could do that.

If a 2011 tablet cpu/GPU combo can have the highest profit margin per console and the most units sold, it should tell us all that the specs of the hardware mean absolutely nothing. It’s the one lesson Microsoft has still not learned. They mismanaged their own studios, then bought more which they are also now mismanaging.

 

[eastmen]

Well, for the record I don't mind a 2025 scenario, but I don't think MS will throw Sony off course with hardware, only AAA software could do that.

LIke I said , I think ms has the software. But they need big splashes to gain market share. At this point what even is a generation of hardware? MS has games running on their platforms from the original xbox in 2001. So there shouldn't be an issue with them taking advantage of new hardware right out of the gate.