What if lower end hardware was targeted last generation? *spawn*

That'd be quite a Switch-aroo.

 

Alright, Jellico.

To be fair, this product is targetting 1080p resolution with base consoles targetting 4K, while the start of last gen the base consoles were only targeting 1080p (if that).

 

But it's okay because it only targets 600p.

 

The current rumor is that everything, including CPU clock, is the same apart from GPU and memory. Seems pretty straightforward to segment your product lineup with 1080p and 4K versions of otherwise identical games (with a relative reduction in texture detail).

A more accurate analogy would be a 0.5TF last-gen machine targeting 480p. It would likely have not held anything back though in 2013 it would probably not have been an attractive product. Not exactly the same circumstance today given the acceptability of 1080p for the average person in 2020.

 

Would it have composite out still? For the market it was targeting this would have been important. Not all of them would want to pay for gold scart cables.

 

The Xbox One sat where Lockhart is going into next gen.

A PS4 equivalent in 2020 would be 6TF.

 

Xbox one went head to head with PS4 and was priced $100 higher.

Lockhart will be priced under PS5. PS5 and XSX will go against each other in pricing.


Look at it this way , if this was last gen. PS4 would be XSX the most powerful console at release, PS5 would have the position of XO but perhaps without the price increase. LH would be a lower end PS4 if it existed that cost a lot less and allowed sony to sell millions of more units directly into the lower price points

 

Nice. Perfect point to why I hate Lockhart.

PS5 is struggling to do 30 FPS 1440P games from the PS5 reveal, Lockhart is DOA...if it releases.

 

The next gen consoles only nominally target 4k. I dont fully remember the DF video but at least one PS5 exclusive was sub 4k and 30 FPS, and maybe more/most. Therefore lockhart will only nominally target 1080P. Yikes. 900P/720P games dont look good on 4k TV's (nothing larger than 32" is even sold at 1080P for some years now)...

If everything is the same that just means cost will also be the same, very high. Which it will. Most of the cost of a console is in the memory not the SOC. A 1TV PCIE NVME SSD is extremely expensive, as is 10GB+ of GDDR.

This is why they had to cut features and fake that it costs less than it does by artificially making it a digital only edition, but yet not doing the same for XSX (because that would have brought the prices closer together again). They may even have to not release a DE XSX and artificially keep XSX price higher to prop up and subsidize Lockhart.

Ironically the very low end buyer they target with Lockhart will be the one to most likely buy disc media still.

Oh well, I got worked up about how terrible Lockhart is but at the end of the day it has little to no appeal on it's face and no chance in the market, so it's not really a big deal, if they release it.

 

I guess that tells more about PS5 capabilities than that what MS is doing.

X1X can already have pretty amazing native 4K graphics (RDR2, 30FPS). It's difficult to understand why Lockhart could not offer a great graphic experience at 1080p with similar level of GPU power (+ VRS, Mesh Shaders, etc.).

And I'm not even speculating with DLSS 2.0 type up sampling here.

 

My guess is that Lockhart will have 500GB of SSD storage. It’s been repeated several times, but a much smaller SoC, less storage, less and likely slower memory, savings on cooling, power supply, case, disk drive. You could easily cobble together $150 or more in savings from those elements. Then, as you say, the digital-only element means higher margins on software sales.

I think in a world with GamePass and Fortnite, this will be a very appealing product if it is $249 or less. The games will look just like the 1080p trailers/streams of the Series X versions. A budget limited 13 year old would likely pick a Series S over a PS4 to play CoD and Fortnite.

 

Of course taking a console that was developed as *single sku "all-in-one" media/gaming box with a weak cpu/gpu to begin with and a forced bundling of a $100+ peripheral* and deriving specs to say what the lower end console would have looked like ...is going to look bad....but it isn't exactly an apples to apples comparison to XSX and Lockhart.

Worse case you get games that are basically the same but at 900p and no RT. For a lot casuals who are gaming on a couch away from a TV that won't be a big issue.

The main downside I could see with buying Lockhart is if we get pro models of XSX and PS5...then does support for it drop? Think it would have to.

 

Or they end up designing XO with more performance knowing they had lower end model coming out also.
Maybe it would've launched at $550 have equal/more TF of the PS4, then dropped to around same price as PS4 when kinnect gets dropped?

Point is, Lockhart/xsx wasn't designed in a vacuum.

 

I think it will have RT - it scales pretty well.

 

Support wont drop , support will just change. If in 2021 LH gets 1080p editions of 4k XSX titles but in 2024 when XSY comes out the XSX moves down to 1440p then LH will get lower res titles. Its already 4 years into its life cycle , MS could stop selling it at that point. Then in 2 years drop support or make support Xcloud only. If they do a rolling gen right people who bought LH because they had 1080p tvs may have progressed to 4k tvs and will want a better experiance. They can stay at the same price bracket and buy an XSX for that original LH price or they can spluge and the new high end model.


Right now we have the most popular selling console as the Switch and games like DOOM is getting released onto it. So you had to scale games from Switch up to PS4 to XOX to PC. I don't see the switch going anywhere for another 2-3 years as its just continuing to sell better for nintendo. So we are just going to introduce another generation of graphics cards and another generation of consoles and still have switch as the base line. So making LH editions of games that have the same feature set as the XSX but just less power will be a walk in the park for developers compared to making PS4/XO or switch version of the game.

 

In reality we all got PS4’s and XB1’s version of Lockhart as mainstream consoles last gen.

LOL.

Those consoles were built to become profitable almost immediately. Nothing about jag arch, DDR3 as VRAM screams premium. AMD released a 2 Tflop 6870 for $239 back in 2010.

If both Sony and MS had the same mind set from this gen during last gen, I doubt we would have had just 1.3-1.8 TFlop consoles.

 

The problem that unannounced planned obsolescence creates is that there is always going to be people who buy your product just before you announce it's ceasing to be supported. The flip dilemma is once you announce a product is going to drop out of support in future, sales will take a hit. It's a tricky nut to crack.

 

How is this different than any other product ? If you buy the lowest end iphone its going to be supported for a shorter amount of time. Like I said , lockheart 2021 sold through 2024/25 support for it ends in 2026/7 but you can still use the old software and games on it.

 

Xbox One was last gens Lockhart, we never got a version of Xsx or PS5.