Well I would have to say it is 'possible' to put 680 level equivalent performance from a console if you assume that heavy optimisation is possible and 28nm silicon in a years time is noticeably better than the current silicon.
The Next-gen Situation discussion *spawn
- Thread starter gongo
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Well I would have to say it is 'possible' to put 680 level equivalent performance from a console if you assume that heavy optimisation is possible and 28nm silicon in a years time is noticeably better than the current silicon.
So what you are saying a car is a car
Other than being willing to not make a profit you mean?
Don't think Nintendo's surprising successful "sell less effective hardware at a lower price point but no subsidy" went unnoticed. I would not bank on the crazy supposed 50% over sale price hardware BOM happening again soon. Both MS and Sony were bitten by it.
On the Tri SLI GTX580s it ran at 2560x1600 with 4x AA, pretty sure that on the GTX680 it ran at 1920x1080 (not 720).
NVidia's official screens tell me otherwise
If they did they'd have to allocate a massively greater power budget than was available to the current generation of consoles.
G70 had a TDP of 81w at 110nm and RSX had an (estimated) TDP of around 70w on 90nm. It did run about 16% faster than G70 but it also cut back in other areas. So being generous we could say at G70 clock speeds RSX would have drawn 60w but that's with a die shrink.
The next gen consoles likely won't have that advantage but to continue being generous we could assume it will still be able to achieve a 25% TDP reduction over the 680 with the same performance. That's >140w or more than double the power budget of RSX.
A graphics API is a completely different concept on a console than on a PC. On a PC, a graphics API is a generic interface to a driver, where the driver does all of the heavy lifting. On a console there is no driver, and the API's are hardware-specific functions that can directly build command buffers. Consequently there are less abstractions between the game and GPU resources and feature sets, which lets you target them more directly.
RancidLunchmeat
Veteran
I don't see how MS was 'bitten' by it at all. MS has done fantastic this generation, achieving almost every goal they set for themselves, with the only stumbling block being the failed cooling solution that led to the RRoD. And even that total failure might have been worth it to be able to launch first and secure next gen exclusives.
Sony was all over screwed, but it wasn't the fault of the PS3. Sony made the decision to leverage the PS and PS2's success by cramming Blu-Ray and Cell into the PS3. The PS3 suffered for it, but that's not a gaming division decision. BR and Cell were supposed to be ubiquitous products for Sony, carrying the entire company forward.
Nintendo, on the other hand, hasn't accomplished anything this generation other than make money selling a product that plays games. Meaning they weren't able to monetize their huge install base, either through increased 3rd party developer support or any other means. Sony, meanwhile, put a BR player in the household of every PS3 owner and MS established two huge revenue streams through Live subscriptions as well as video and music downloads making Zune the second largest marketplace behind iTunes.
Anybody following Nintendo's business model would do so with the understanding they are going into the toy business. Not the consumer electronics and entertainment business.
Well I always assumed the xbl subscription netted MS a tidy sum (35m x $50/yr = 1.75B ... annually)
I also I guess foolishly assumed MS was actually making money on each xb360 now... as well as Kinect.
Oh and pardon the ignorance, but I also assumed the 35million live members would be generating additional potential revenue through ads which are now pretty well embedded in the new metro interface. Not to mention future voice search ad revenue.
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Yeah, the business model of the console biz is just like the razor-blade model. The initial sales are for a loss to spur a HIGHLY lucrative tail.
It's also nobody's fault but MS' that they had to foot the 1B for RRoD faulty engineering, but even with that, I'm quite sure MS made a tidy sum this gen.
So while I respect your contributions here on this forum and via MS, please don't insult our intelligence by suggesting MS hasn't made a dime this gen because they bent over backwards in producing a chipset which forced the dept to never turn a profit.
I'm sure it didn't.
However, I'm also sure that those trying to chase that magic bullet will be bitten by something far worse than the (currently) highly profitable Xbox business unit that Microsoft currently enjoys.
There are certainly valuable lessons to be learned from Wii, but short-changing the spec wasn't one of them...
Word to the wise.
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Agreed overall with this post, well said. However, I disagree with the last statement.
Just because they are selling for a profit doesn't mean they are going into the toy business. However, trying to replicate the Wii too closely will result in disaster.
1280x720 is around 1/4 of 2560x1600 (4x AA would use a lot of power also vs FXAA), 3 GTX580s are less than 3x the power of one GTX680 and they don't even get close to linear scailing.
Epic also said that Samaritan needs 2.5 TFLOPS of power to run at 1920x1080 at 30FPS, less than the rated power of the GTX680.
The last figures released released by MS show they get less than half that from Live Gold memberships, and 3rd parties are increasingly wanting a larger cut of that. Revenues from Live marketplace sales are actually higher than Gold memberships. Neither Gold nor marketplace sales actually require bleeding edge hardware.
You've recently been able to get Gold for £10 when you buy a 360 from Amazon in the UK, which isn't bad.
Banking on a similar length console cycle next generation would be a risky move, and they may not have a Kinect like ace in the hole to play at year five next time. Without Kinect the ASP would be much, much lower and margins would be thin. Not everywhere likes Xbox as much as America: the 360 is constantly on offer in the UK on places like Amazon, with the Kinect less models sometimes on offer for what must be break even prices. A heavy loss leader that never makes it far into positive territory in 2/3 of the market may well stay in the red.
Without the rapid and affordable advancements in process technology and subsequent cost savings (size down, weight down, power supply down, cooling down, reliability up) the 360 would have been dead in the water. Such rapid and affordable advances probably won't be available next gen.
Ads, Live, Metro, Search and Voice don't need powerful hardware though. All of them have actually come online for the 360 at a time when the 360 really isn't a powerful system any more. Even Llano can kick its ass now, and Bobcat isn't so far from nipping at its heels.
$1B was just the hardware repair set aside, the total cost to MS is probably massively higher. They will still be losing customers to RRoD even today.
Bloody RRoD.
So, MS is pretty much confirming the existence of a nextgen xbox via a job post on their own website.
Sounds like they're in some kind of hurry to get to the launch date yes?
http://www.gamefocus.ca/news/16793.html
Sounds like they're in some kind of hurry to get to the launch date yes?
Why not a short changed PS3 with a much weaker GPU then? I wonder how that would have went over (hint, like a lead balloon).
Similarly, a weaker 360 wouldn't have been able to keep pace with PS3 as well as it has.
Wii sold well for a while, though it's longevity was horrible, which is why it sold 92,000 last month in NPD. But it sold on a gimmick that made it's power fairly irrelevant, at least for 2-3 years. We're rehashing things everybody should know by now.
If Nintendo can come up with another gimmick that captivates people again with Wii U, they can do it again. My bet is they cant and wont, because I just dont see a tablet controller captivating Moms again.
You do have to be smart about it. a slightly higher specced Wii, you are correct, probably would not have gained Nintendo anything. Lets say a 50% more powerful Wii, still would have been ignored by all the hardcore in favor of PS360. You likely would have had to start getting close to PS360 in power to pull anybody away from those two, anything less would likely have fallen in the realm of added cost for no return.
I think a strategy of serving the core gamers with a powerful system and then branching out to the casuals if possible is the one that doesn't lead to a foundation on quicksand.
Do you have a link for those latest figures?
As far as third parties wanting a cut, AFAIK there's been some shady rumors of Activision getting a little bit (which mainly was before COD Elite launched and Activision were getting zip from online play, it may not even be the case anymore) and that's about it. Believe me if MS is in the habit of paying third parties Live money, then Sony will have to follow suit in some fashion, so that doesn't really make sense.
Yeah, fall 2013.
Good to hear though, there was still some worry in my mind of 2014.
I guess we'll get one last rush of people hoping it's announced at E3 now, to no avail, lol. At least this time we'll know sooner rather than later.
Can't find it sorry. It was discussed on this forum but it's hot and my internet is crawling slow and I'm giving up. The full year Xbox Live revenue was something like $1.5B iirc, with less than half of it coming from sources other than subscriptions for the first time.
Either directly (through a cut of Live subs) or indirectly (through marketplace ads or a reduced distribution cut) I'm sure MS are already paying for favourable treatment with release schedules. There was reference in the financials to reduced profits from greater cuts to going to other parties (or something like that), but as I can't find the report I can't quote it exactly. I recall it being none specific who they were talking to.
Given the pressure Activision have talked about from shareholders demanding they "monetise" all the CoD online play man-hours they're got to have pushed for something from MS ...
But nothing from Sony (or even Nintendo?) I'm dubious.
Anyways without the exact wording I'm skeptical.
Monetizing the play hours was the point of COD Elite...
His point was pretty good and it's backed up by others as well so there is really no reason to go for the low blow insults.
Nintendo would most likely have made money without WII going mainstream, because that is how they do business, with Intelligence and bold moves. I doubt they expected their machine to take off like it did, but thanks to the conservative approach on the hardware they made a truckload of money.
Microsoft did good, partly on their own, and partly because Sony messed up, on especially PR.