I do not think it is mindboggling or for that matter even surprise that PS4 specs are better. Sony is a hardware company and more focused on games than OS, apps, which is Microsoft strength I think.
Technical Comparison Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox
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I do not think it is mindboggling or for that matter even surprise that PS4 specs are better. Sony is a hardware company and more focused on games than OS, apps, which is Microsoft strength I think.
Both Xbox One and PS4 are fully capable of running any entertainment services. They are like a locked down PC after all. The difference is how they pitch their systems at this point in time. MS is selling to the mainstream, while Sony targets the existing gamers.
The home consoles since PS3 ("It Does Everything") and 360 have been used for general entertainment. Blu-ray, NetFlix and the usage numbers proved it, but the gamers probably continue to buy more games.
I suspect the key differences will be business model nextgen (pricing, reconfiguring gaming value chain, alliances, ...), followed by services.
In Xbox One, since MS relies on a VM-centric approach. They may take Xbox One games elsewhere (to a PC or other future devices for example).
It may also mean they intend to let other vendors manufacture/private-label the h/w boxes. The library of VM games will be the draw. They may earn from the service subscription and h/w + s/w licenses (later). If so, their design will be focused on aggressively shrinking and lowering the production cost.
In Sony's case, they focus more on the their own h/w. They filed assorted patents for emulating and switching GPU. Perhaps that's their way to evolve the platform. As such, for anywhere gaming, they seem to bet on a heterogeneous future. Playstation Plus will buy you games for multiple platforms. In the longer term, they may bet on Gaikai as opposed to the PS Mobile VM for mainstream gaming.
However I do expect them to release services for general entertainment.
IMHO, for both to succeed, they both need to show a compelling nextgen gaming experience. If it's just for general entertainment, people may continue to buy whatever they are used to. And rely on their existing vendors to improve the platform. There is very little reason to switch, even with Kinect. This is because a large part of our life is already mobile, not living room centric.
The other thing is alliances. We may see them announce all sorts of partnerships throughout the year.
ZeroEx
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I agree here that pricing will be a very important factor in the upcoming next generation.
If MS can justify their hardware decisions with super competitive pricing across HW and Services, then I think they'd have made the right choice with Xbox One.
I however don't agree with the HDMI-in/TV integration, when most people just stream off the internet nowadays, and other than the US market with all it's cable companies etc, to the rest of the market outside of USA, it's completely irrelevant.
I see a lot of people talking about forward compatibility and VMs and as a result quicker HW refreshes. Is this really the generation for that to happen or is that wishful thinking?
Jonathan Blow suggesting major performance difference https://twitter.com/jonathan_blow
The ecosystem should function the same way with Netflix and other streaming services. I see no reason why you couldn't have skype and Netflix running side-by-side, for example.
Presumption is that they allocated a chunk of the budget to Kinect 2 so they had less BOM for GPU and RAM.
Or that they wanted to keep costs down to change the subsidization model.
But they did it to keep it quiet? Well if people do keep it running all the time like they want, maybe that makes sense.
I'm just repeating what they said. It could be total BS. They wanted a box that fit nicely in the living room, and managing power consumption carefully, heat and noise were all factored into that. I believe they specifically mentioned not jumping for the best graphics they could get, because they wouldn't be able to achieve those goals. The SoC is supposed to max out at a 100W, so the system as a whole probably has pretty low power consumption and should be very quiet.
How good is the game VM in Xbox One ? Now besides the hardware differences, the OS layer also barges into the performance party.
Perhaps we will really see third party Xboxes. It would help explain the featured always-connected/always-on DRM. MS need it to make sure the games are authorized on someone else's hardware.
I suspect there's also a difference in the designers' expectations for the future in terms of foundry process improvements and the respective strengths of each company.
You can bet on more silicon if you are confident in the likely timing and cost-effectiveness of node transitions. Complex solutions can be acceptable if you are confident in your software.
A more pessimistic reading of the foundry tea leaves and a disadvantage in software might lead to choosing faster external RAM. Sony does have a history of some good package and system integration, so it could also have more confidence in compensating for some of the additional expense.
Microsoft wants synergies with its software ecosystem and cloud services, while Sony can benefit from improving its device manufacturing across its CE portfolio, and improving media delivery.
eDRAM can't go on the same die, at least not for any process worth using for a high-end console.
Even if it could happen in a future node, it would be 2-3 nodes out since it's not being paraded around for upcoming foundry offerings. That means an extra physical component and extra packaging cost for the vast majority of the console's manufacturing life.
The game VM would be analogous to the OS that runs while you're playing a game on PS360. On PS360, when you launch a game your console basically reboots into a light-weight OS. On Xbox One, the System will not reboot. The game gets launched in a VM at the same time. That VM will include highly-optimized virtual device drivers that communicate with the hypervisor. Because the CPU and GPU both support virtualization in hardware, the penalties for this setup should be negligible.
I don't think there will be 3rd party Xboxes.
SRAM cell size drops with new nodes too. TSMC has claimed a 40% reduction for their upcoming 20nm process node compared to 28nm. A 256Kb SRAM macro has a density of a little over 8Mbit/mm^2 in 20nm, which would put the current 28nm node at 4.8Mbit/mm^2, the Durango ESRAM is thus on the order 50-60 mm^2.
For comparison, the raw SRAM cell size in a AMD 7970 is 0.16um^2 in TSMC's 28nm process.
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If it's just an OS, then they would call it an OS. If they call it a VM, then the developers will likely need to go through some software layer to access gaming resources. We have heard that MS is providing APIs to access their GPU (as low level as they can, but different from Sony's closer to metal approach).
If the VM doesn't have any virtualization benefits, then there's zero reason for it.
Maybe I didn't communicate clearly enough. They Hypervisor runs a stripped down version of Microsoft's Hyper-V Server. It has real device drivers that access the hardware. On top of that you run the System VM (Windows kernel based OS) and the Game VM (light-weight OS that runs only the game it's "bundled" with). The System and Game VMs both include virtual device drivers that access the virtual hardware that is exposed to them by the Hypervisor. The device driver in the hypervisor OS actually accesses the hardware. The penalties for this setup are supposed to be negligible, because the CPUs and GPU support virtualization in hardware. On top of that, this VM solution is custom, controlled and does not require the flexibility that a normal VM environment might. You can listen to their architecture talk and they explain the logic around partitioning the hardware to guarantee quality of service to each VM.
Edit: To further expand on this. On current consoles you boot the system into a full-featured OS, but when you launch a game the console effectively reboots into a light-weight minimal OS that only runs the game you are playing. Microsoft decided they wanted the full-featured OS running at all times, but they wanted access to partitioned hardware for games with quality of service guarantees. They decided a VM model was the way to go. You have to VMs, each running a different OS. One is the "System" that provides apps and media features. The other is the game VM which runs an OS that is analogous to the OS your console would boot into on the current gen platforms.
Embeded SRAM/DDR3 is not the big deal, because there's plenty of bandwidth in the end, more for a weaker GPU. It's that it probably comes in at the expense of what might have been a stronger GPU.
Although GDDR5 must be much more straight forward as well.
There's no way the difference would be twice the framefate, unless the leaked Xbox One spec is wrong.
The PS3 already pretty much does that, but it's somewhat reversed for the US and UK. The 360 has passed 8 million units in the UK I was surprised to see, and will overtake Wii soon if it hasn't yet.
If MS can expand a little in the rest of europe pushing the other features of their system (they didn't do that with the 360, most content is US/UK only), and deliver some good exclusive games, they might do much better than last time out. As long as the system isn't more expensive than Xbox 360 was at launch.
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deathindustrial
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With respects to the OS, I wonder how Sony will handle the web browser with the PS4? I don't think they can get away with a crippled legacy mobile browser this time around. Tricky situation as far as security is concerned . . . will they go with Chrome, try to roll their own Webkit solution or what?
On the Xbox One side I expect that every single web developer alive died a little inside yesterday when they learned that there will be millions of new Internet Explorer installs out in the wild soon further extending their standards non-compliance and troubleshooting miseries.
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On the Xbox One side I expect that every single web developer alive died a little inside yesterday when they learned that there will be millions of new Internet Explorer installs out in the wild soon further extending their standards non-compliance and troubleshooting miseries.
Cheers
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