Why would the publisher want DRM if piracy isn't an issue?
*Spin off* Bill of Materials and Cost/Price Reductions of Current Consoles
- Thread starter Vic
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Why would the publisher want DRM if piracy isn't an issue?
used market.
I think he was mainly thinking about the user interface. We already have consoles with a plethora of different harddrive, video output and wifi configurations, it doesn´t seem to bother people that much. People seem to handle Arcade, Premium and Elite models, the fixed models of the past are no more, the war has changed as some wise man said.
cuz that's all the same as performance upgrades?
I could argue that some 360 games take advantage of the harddrive when it is available and some may see that as a performance upgrade.
If there were more memory available and some games took advantage of that for caching or whatever worthwhile that might enhance the experience, what´s the big deal as long as you have a min. spec in common?
More memory would definitely make the consoles more versatile devices suitable for browsers etc. I hope it happens before the next generation consoles.
I think that if microsoft went crazy and allowed it, the 360 could have been a really cool linux box.
1 GB of unified memory would really nice and the increase of BOM would likely be less than $10.
You could but it would be laughable at best. Very few games make use of it and it doesn't exactly amount to much.
We already have pc's. We don't really need another version of them. The big deal is that people don't want to have to upgrade. And don't give me the bs 'but they don't have to upgrade' line. Everyone has to pay the same amount for the games they deserve the same experience, they don't want to feel they got burned by buying the earlier version of the console or that they need to spend an extra whatever amount of money to make their console run the game the way the developer intended.
Hope all you want, there's no money in it, so its very unlikely to happen. You want a pc, buy a pc.
You would find that the demographic you describe to be insignificantly small. Generally, people don't care that their software can be better utilize by more expensive hardware. All they truly care about is that the games run relatively smoothly. PS3 and 360 software already provide different experiences based on hardware a gamer owns. You don't see a major backlash from SDTV users disgusted by the fact that HDTV owners get better visuals at the same price when it comes to the PS3 or 360.
2/3 of the current gen titles available in the console market won't work for any given console. PS3 software and Wii software won't work on a 360 and vice versa. In general people understand and accept that reality. They do so because when buying a game they know that as long as they see software badged with the console of their choice that 99% of the time that game will play on their console at home. If that remains true even with a console that can represent hundreds of different configurations, they will remain accepting.
If you recall, GDDR3 700MHz chips were already in very short supply circa 2005. Plus you're advocating that MS should double an already doubled amount of RAM that they originally intended. "Only" $10 is still $10 for 20+ million units just to cater to some niche linux market? Nuh uh.
upnorthsox
Veteran
MS spending $200 mil or MS catering to linux, I think the money is the lesser of the no go's on this one.
I don´t know what kind of ideal world you live in, what the consumers "deserve" and what they get are two very different things IMO. The companies sell what they can sell, they don´t have any morale obligations to maintain certain functions unless there is business concept for it. Just look at the BC functionality of the PS3, Sony kills it and resurrects it when they think it makes business sense not because the consumers "deserve" it.
I don´t want another PC to maintain in my house, I actually want to reduce the current number. I think there are more benefits of the consoles than the "fixed" hardware which no longer is that fixed.
You keep bringing up features that aren't part of the core gaming experience like its the same. It's not.
No, you want to turn consoles into another PC. Once you start telling people that games play much better with new improved console version Y, version X becomes a millstone for the company. And many version X owners won't appreciate it. Look at the multiplatform comparison threads already, if you start doing that on a single platform I think it could get ugly.
????
Actually it was lioli who brought up Linux and properly tagged the idea as crazy. I also know bloody well hell would freezy over an infinite number of times before MS would support Linux. I am just observing that memory is coming down in price very fast.
If Sony or Microsoft brought a high end model of their consoles with twice the memory I would be all for it. If they chose to do it I expect it to happen when the cost reduction has reached levels where no subsidaries are required for the hardware.
Edit: I think MS is the less likely to do this as I expect them to bring their next generation to market before Sony.
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So you are sticking to your consumers "deserve" fixed hardware argument. That is OK. We have different opinions on this.
We obviously have very different opinions of the characteristics of the PC as well.
I don´t think that comparison threads of these boards should be used as benchmarks for how the public would react. I bet there were quite a few no-techie buyers of the 360 Elite model that expected it to produce better graphics at the time of introduction.
Sorry One I paste here one of your comments from another thread, because I feel like this thread is more appropriate.one said:
This have been discuss to death, but I'm not sure MS had the choice.
On the perf side, I'm not sure the gain of edram are worse it in the average consumer eyes.
It's clear that they could not afford a 256b bits bus but at the same time they could not go with a 128 bit bus. Ms would have had to use Rambus Xdram to reach ~50GB/s worse of bandwidth.
what would have cost more?
Time for another revive?
The new 60gb Xbox 360s in store come with four 1024mbit GDDR 3 modules rather than 8 512mbit GDDR 3 modules.
1. How much is this small change likely to be saving them?
2. I don't understand how 4 chips can give the same bandwidth etc that 8 can.
The new 60gb Xbox 360s in store come with four 1024mbit GDDR 3 modules rather than 8 512mbit GDDR 3 modules.
1. How much is this small change likely to be saving them?
2. I don't understand how 4 chips can give the same bandwidth etc that 8 can.
Well, probably decent savings in terms of memory costs and board wire tracing/complexity, but these days those memory costs probably weren't all that high to begin with. Not sure on the bandwidth, but the simplest answer would probably be a RAM speed increase...
Would the GDDR3 be sharing the same pins on both sides of the PCB or is it a completely different routing path to the rear side memory modules?
Would you know if its likely a $5 saving or closer to $10-15 on the overall cost of the machine?
In any case it seems like a reasonable saving considering the Xbox 360 has just undertaken an extensive price reduction between the different SKUs.
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1200830&postcount=163
http://www.qimonda.com/graphics-ram/gddr3/index.html
It is still 700MHz GDDR3. (crappy photos are crappy, but you should be able to see the "-14" on the chip
)I wouldn't be surprised if they routed the extra lanes through a different layer.
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