Where is next-gen headed? *spawn

[function]

Mod: This thread is spawned from the technical hardware prediction thread. When started, that thread anticipated a simple round of closed boxes with fixed hardware to last another number of years. Things have changed a fair bit since then, and there's a question of what exactly the nature of the next boxes will be, which is a fundamental question that underpins the hardware choices. As this is parallel to but different from the hardware choices, here's a thread to discuss this matter exactly.

Thing is, quite a bit may change next gen. For example, Microsoft has finally woken up and realized that they need to unify all their platforms together and make them interoperable. So on the Xbox 720, will they perhaps want the user to be able to pop up a fully functional Windows App Store while playing any game? That's going to take some ram. They bought Skype, will they want fully functional video calling Skype aviailable while people play games? Gonna need some ram for that. Maybe there will be some new killer use for Kinect that they want running all the time in the background in some way, might need some ram for that. Would be cool to have a music service running all the time in the background streaming your tunes, hmm might need some ram for that as well. Who knows at this point what they will come up with...but point being that the next boxes may be about more than just playing games. I'd agree that 4gb would be enough for just playing games, but as do-it-all boxes it may not be enough.

I really hope MS don't make the next Xbox a system able to do everything, all at the same time! That would require a static allocation of a large chunk of fast memory to do stuff that, in many cases, you could do just as well on a phone or, in all cases, do with ease on any PC from the last half decade (or more).

When in "game mode" I only want to see a mini, game-related shop (text and small icons), there's no need for hi-res video conferencing (where are you going to view it?) and music streaming really shouldn't take much space. If you want to jump back into the dash temporarily mid game (for MyFaceTube, video Skype or whatever) just swap a portion of game memory to flash (let developers choose which bit so realtime game services can continue run if desired) and then copy it back when the user wants to game again. [Edit]Actually if you're running a game from on board flash cache/scratchpad you won't even need to bother with a swap, just jump 512MB, 1 GB, whatever of memory marked as dumpable and load the full dash (a couple of seconds) and then reload whatever you need to when you want to resume gaming (a few seconds).[/edit]

Even Windows Phone 7is able to deal with switching focus and juggling resources, so forcing Xbox 720 to at all times be running cut-down media-entertainment-eshop-PC would be a horrible disappointment to those of use that want to see maximum gaming potency for minimum cost!

 

[Laa-Yosh]

At the end I worry about next gen console,because smartphones and tablets are growing rapidly and may in the future very soon subtract considerable game market share much more if next gen console are not substantially flexible, powerful and differentiated.

Hardware alone is nothing, the tablets and phones do not have the necessary interface for the vast majority of console games. You need to get a controller in your hand for serious FPS and TPS and racing and other action stuff, touch screens aren't fit for that. This also means you need a static screen instead of holding it in your hands, which is your TV.

Sure, you can build a docking station for your tablet near the TV and use bluetooth controllers or so, but that still means playing a traditional console game and not a tablet/smartphone game. And at that point a console will still be a more efficient machine for the task.

If anyone has to worry it's the Wii U...

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Agree,but ps3(cell processor with improvements over original patent august/2002) and xbox360(Xenos/R500/C1) are flexible and powerfull enough to allow developers to work with Deferred Render paradigm.

The point is, when they were designing the hardware, they weren't thinking about what might happen. They did the best they could on their budget, and trusted the devs to figure out how to make the best use of it.

So the idea that the hw engineers should try to guess what devs want to do 10 years from now and accommodate that is completely backwards...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The point is, when they were designing the hardware, they weren't thinking about what might happen. They did the best they could on their budget, and trusted the devs to figure out how to make the best use of it.

So the idea that the hw engineers should try to guess what devs want to do 10 years from now and accommodate that is completely backwards...

I nod in serious agreement. This idea of second guessing what might happen with software is no way to design a closed box. Going back to Joker's suggestion, well, what if a load of services move to online and cloud-computing? Then we don't need RAM to support those. Or what if they want to support multiple mobile device connectivity as multiple render targets, like Wuu? Are they going to add memory for that? You'd be shooting yourself in the foot as an engineer if you add 1GB specifically to support tasks that end up not being used or served elsewhere. When PS2 was designed, I'm pretty certain the engineers weren't thinking 'what if someone thinks to stick a webcam on this thing and do video-feed stuff?', and I doubt the engineers that spec'd XB360 thought to themselves 'let's added this much extra processing power and memory in case someone implements a 3D camera system in a few years'.

The systems have to be designed according to the principles of meeting a known target, with flexibility to then be used however technology progresses. In the case of PS3, originally the uncertainty of what they'd be doing resulted in a load of RAM being taken away from the games which goes to show the negative impact of planning for uncertainty. Irrespective of what might come, it's an absolute certainty that these boxes have to be manufactured for a number of years, across a number of pricepoints with considerable influence on how well these boxes will sell. It's that design requirement that has driven all computer progress one way or another. It's on top of what hardware is out there that systems and services are built, and technology is never future-proof. How many top-end PCs can still operate effectively in the present?! Doesn't matter how much money you threw into making a PC in 2001, it'd be hopeless with contemporary tasks in 2008. Sufficent firmware is all that's really needed to survive five years on the cutting edge of entertainment. PS3 and XB360 have done very well thanks to their updateable OS's, taking on new features, and there's always the option of a new SKU to support some new function, like the doubled RAM PSP or the HDMI-enabled 360s.

 

[liolio]

Gubbi don't you think that Kinect will be standard on Ms next system? I can see a system without for people who are already equiped but that it, for me it will be mandatory.

 

[joker454]

All through this thread we've been considering choices based on logical progressions of the console space. Now all of a sudden we're having to entertain what-if scenarios?? What if Sony decide PS4 is also going to operate as a 3D editing workstation? Better give it 16GBs.

Well I don't t think the logical progression is the way to look at it. You know me by now, if it was to design purely a video game console then I'd throw all the dollars/watts at the gpu. But I think if Sony/MS design their next machines primarily as video game consoles then they missed the boat. Personally the concept of a video game machine is fast racing it's way towards obsolecence, it doesn't make sense to me to continue on that route and hence it's why I'm not sure traditional thinking when it comes to specs applies anymore. There's far more revenue streams and/or ways to hook people to your platform and that requires venturing outside of just games.

In that regard I'm expecing Microsofts next console to be much more than just a video game playing device. Likewise I'm expecting a far more seamless software experience. Currently the 360 effectively relies on running apps. So stop what your doing, run an app (zune, facebook, etc), do something there, exit. That's old school to me and is legacy design in many ways to due memory and cpu constraints. We should finally be at the point hardware wise on the NextBox to let a user keep their favorite tools/apps/etc resident in memory at all times and available with a quick popup. If I'm playing a game and want to pop up a music player, take a screen shot and tweet it, quickly go set a tv show to record and then come back to my game, etc, then I should be able to do all that. Current consoles already reserve some cpu for "system stuff", and next gen they will have more cpu to reserve to handle all such things. The wildcard then becomes ram.

Crazy example: Say you go with 8gb of memory, and allow 6gb useable by games and 2gb is reserved by the machine for "other". It's all unified unified memory such that all tasks running on the machine can comminute with each other easily, but the game sdk does not allow a game itself to use more than 6gb total (fail trc if they do). That opens up a world of new opportunities for the dashboard developers to add to the experience, and doesn't burden game developers with any of it since they party in their 6gb like always without caring about what's going on in the top 2gb. Overkill? Perhaps...but when you look at it as a hook-to-the-tv device that will have a 2013-2021 effective lifespan, and when you look at how fast phones and tablets are advancing hardware wise I'm not so sure that it's overkill.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

In that regard I'm expecing Microsofts next console to be much more than just a video game playing device.

The thing is that not every user is like you, I for example don't want to have all kinds of apps messing around when I'm playing. That should be relaxation to me when I don't get bugged, don't have stop every X minutes, but let myself immersed and concentrate on what I'm doing.

Just as smart phones are the hot thing and the market is growing, but I don't think it'll ever reach even 50% of the cell phone market. AFAIK it's 25% now, we'll see how far it gets.

So there should be a serious market research as well before MS commits to anything. A lot of people may prefer a focused system instead of an all-round device that becomes tedious to use and manage.

 

[liolio]

I hope that the xbox next is able to somehow multi task but only when into the dash board, like doing web browsing with the face book apps open, streming music, etc. May be MS should introduce the option for games with real low requirement (so a new class of xbla games) like social games but that's it, for proper XBLA or retail games no! They bought skipe so actually they could reserve few ram and resources for that in place of nowadays voice chat and make the thing a bit more universal but that's it. Plain multi tasking will kill perfs or raise cost too high, an option could be to be able to set the apps you want to launch anytime you reach the dash board. you take a five minute break you go back to the dashboard your favorite apps open in the same time, actually they could introduce a "super pause" so you don't have to quit the game, but make this real multi tasking and fast is asking too much for now imho.

 

[Persistantthug]

The thing is that not every user is like you, I for example don't want to have all kinds of apps messing around when I'm playing. That should be relaxation to me when I don't get bugged, don't have stop every X minutes, but let myself immersed and concentrate on what I'm doing.

Just as smart phones are the hot thing and the market is growing, but I don't think it'll ever reach even 50% of the cell phone market. AFAIK it's 25% now, we'll see how far it gets.

So there should be a serious market research as well before MS commits to anything. A lot of people may prefer a focused system instead of an all-round device that becomes tedious to use and manage.

Um....

It isn't a question of might or if the next boxes are going to be "doing it all" next gen.

Regardless of how you personally feel about the multimedia feature demands....they are not going away nor are they going to digress.

These consoles will never be game only machines ever again.....never.

 

[manux]

In that regard I'm expecing Microsofts next console to be much more than just a video game playing device. Likewise I'm expecting a far more seamless software experience. Currently the 360 effectively relies on running apps. So stop what your doing, run an app (zune, facebook, etc), do something there, exit. That's old school to me and is legacy design in many ways to due memory and cpu constraints.

I doubt you need 8GB memory to fulfill what average user wants from computer. Ipad2 does pretty much everything average users wants with measly 512MB.

I would much rather see console OS mandates splitting of apps to server and UI part. Server parts should run always(i.e. voip, messaging,...). UI parts should be optional. If the platform has fast mass memory swapping apps in and out seamlessly is not a hassle. If you are gaming and open facebook it should be trivial to swap in the UI part(think about 400-500MB/s read speed for the SSD used to do swapping).

It shouldn't be more than 256-512MB reserved for OS during gaming and required apps can be pulled into that mem if user decides to do some light chatting/voip/check facebook/webpage whatever while gaming. OS can swap inside OS reserved memory if it should not be enough. Again swapping is super fast on SSD and console optimized os+apps.

Video editing/rendering and other hardcore tasks are better either left for pc's or having them not run while game is on. Anyway why would you try to edit video while playing COD? Similarly rendering the edits with all cores should be much faster than use os reserved core to do rendering while gaming.

 

[Heinrich4]

Hardware alone is nothing, the tablets and phones do not have the necessary interface for the vast majority of console games. You need to get a controller in your hand for serious FPS and TPS and racing and other action stuff, touch screens aren't fit for that. This also means you need a static screen instead of holding it in your hands, which is your TV.

Sure, you can build a docking station for your tablet near the TV and use bluetooth controllers or so, but that still means playing a traditional console game and not a tablet/smartphone game. And at that point a console will still be a more efficient machine for the task.

If anyone has to worry it's the Wii U...

I wish I had the same certainty that you have, because in less than two years tablets and smartphones probably have at least 4GB RAM and with intel entering in this market with Ivy Bridge and beyond, Nvidia, ARM etc. offer more processing power SoC and acceptance increasing along with consumers ,I don''t ensure that developers "tablets/smartphones oriented" can not geared towards these interfaces to rival the next gen consoles..

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So, a recap. Are we looking at just another box next-gen like PS360? Or will we see some divergent designs? The obvious choices are:

1) conventional console
2) streaming console like OnLive
3) tablet based design
4) more of a computer

For Sony I anticipate more of the same, despite the fact they should be creating a tablet design according to my Grand Vision of the Future. It'll be an all round entertainment box. For a while I wondered if they'd cahoot with Google and maybe support Android, but I'm not sure. They should hopefully have their act together, as shown with Vita, and support multitasked key services so users can switch out of a game into a web browser or chat without having to exit the game. I guess a fast save and restore would serve that rather than full multitasking.

MS will probably carry on as they are. The XBox was always a platform for DX, and their was talk of maybe dropping the console nature and just providing a PC standard that simplified gaming. I don't think that'll happen given the growth of the XB brand this gen, but they may want to PC-ify the Xbox, and effectively whack Windows N on it. A full fledged OS will generate issues thugh regards people buying a cheap PC, so perhaps it'll be a subset? Their competition won't be just Sony and Nintendo, but Apple and smart TVs. Google's online services are also threatening MS's dominance, so MS will want to hit back from every direction. I can't see a future where XB3 will need to serve the PC space though. High-end productivity (photo editing, document authoring, etc.) will remain Windows exclusive on PC or mobile forms.

Nintendo have shown their colours - another box. It's worth noting that they've embraced the broadness of the new era CE devices despite repeatedly saying they were only interested in games. Wii has seen a growth of apps. As these are just simple software apps, Nintendo will continue to support extra-gaming functions, but not worry about being as broad as Sony, who want to sell content, or cross-platform like MS who want to secure a ubiquitous platform to rival Android.

 

[joker454]

I doubt you need 8GB memory to fulfill what average user wants from computer. Ipad2 does pretty much everything average users wants with measly 512MB.

8gb may be overkill, but 512mb iPad2 content looks like 512mb iPad2 content IPad 2 is still fairly primitive overall, it can't keep very much resident in memory. It doesn't really multi task either, I can't do skype while playing a game at the same time for example. It multi tasks the services, but you still can only do one thing at a time due to memory and cpu limits, and battery limits in iPad's case.

I would much rather see console OS mandates splitting of apps to server and UI part. Server parts should run always(i.e. voip, messaging,...). UI parts should be optional. If the platform has fast mass memory swapping apps in and out seamlessly is not a hassle. If you are gaming and open facebook it should be trivial to swap in the UI part(think about 400-500MB/s read speed for the SSD used to do swapping).

That's an idea, but then you are again to keeping the UI looking primitive to make sure it loads quick and fits into what I presume would be a really small ssd.

Video editing/rendering and other hardcore tasks are better either left for pc's or having them not run while game is on. Anyway why would you try to edit video while playing COD? Similarly rendering the edits with all cores should be much faster than use os reserved core to do rendering while gaming.

Definitely not video editing! I was thinking of say I wanted to video chat with my wife while we play a game on XBLive together for example. Pop up skype which I presume will be standard on the Xbox 720, and off we go playing and doing video chat at the same time.

The thing is that not every user is like you, I for example don't want to have all kinds of apps messing around when I'm playing. That should be relaxation to me when I don't get bugged, don't have stop every X minutes, but let myself immersed and concentrate on what I'm doing.

They'd all be optional of course, nothing on screen. I was thinking that you can enable "widgets" as it were and they just get preloaded into ram so they are only a button press away if you need them, and they load quick and look modern. Either way there would be nothing on screen when you play. Best way to explain it I guess would be having apps minimized in Windows. I have Skype for example loaded and ready right now, but I don't see it at all. But with one mouse click it instantly appears because it's all loaded and resident in memory.

 

[wco81]

I don't think MS would want to encroach too much into the PC market with a console that performs a lot of the functions of a PC.

Unless they see tablets as a threat and their own tablet efforts go nowhere. But it sounds like W8 and W8 tablets would be out about the same time as mext Xbox so they really won't know.

 

[ERP]

I don't think MS would want to encroach too much into the PC market with a console that performs a lot of the functions of a PC.

Why not what do they care as long as the user is buying their software?

FWIW I don't think console sales cannibalize PC sales anyway.

I wouldn't expect to see Office on a console, I would expect the XBox group to push the social aspects further, to build the Xbox Live user base.

 

[wco81]

Well when previous Xboxes were launched the PC OEMs were doing much better. Compaq might have been around still.

Now, HP wants to get out, so maybe OEMs won't push back as much.

But the more functions consoles can't perform, the less reason people have to buy the second or third PC for the household.

 

[egoless]

Delete

 

[manux]

Definitely not video editing! I was thinking of say I wanted to video chat with my wife while we play a game on XBLive together for example. Pop up skype which I presume will be standard on the Xbox 720, and off we go playing and doing video chat at the same time.

How complex UI can one use while playing a game? I see on my win7 box skype using astounding 63MB memory at this point of time. Assuming even console version is as bloated that is still almost nothing to swap in It's not like console should be designed to run game, skype, web browser and some flash games at the same time. People will be perfectly happy if the use case is limited to primary and secondary use case at same time where secondary can be pulled in when necessary from pool of secondary services. At some point the user needs to pause the game and say that ok. too much to handle, I'll take a break to take care of these other things(like skype chatting+checking prices from amazon for that friend on skype). It's not like you can get many kills on cod if you are typing url's talking to a friend and part of the screen is obstructed by image of friend and browser.

Ofcourse there also is "almost free" operations like mp3 playback which should just work always and not eat loads of resources which I would assume are universal and always usable.

Ofcourse If the point is to actually have single console serving multiple displays at home I can definately agree more mem and more of everything would be perfect.

 

[manux]

I wouldn't expect to see Office on a console, I would expect the XBox group to push the social aspects further, to build the Xbox Live user base.

Me too. I would go as far as to say microsoft+nokia(other licencees maybe not so much) wants to make live legitimate competitor to facebook and g+ from phones to pc's and everything in between.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

8gb may be overkill, but 512mb iPad2 content looks like 512mb iPad2 content IPad 2 is still fairly primitive overall, it can't keep very much resident in memory. It doesn't really multi task either, I can't do skype while playing a game at the same time for example. It multi tasks the services, but you still can only do one thing at a time due to memory and cpu limits, and battery limits in iPad's case.

I'd say that's largely to do with the current state of the iOS, rather than iPad 2's hardware capabilities. iPad 1 with much lesser hardware can do pretty much the same, also back in the day when PC's had 512MB of ram, you could do plenty.