Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation

[Rangers]

For a machine that is supposedly having ESRAM yield problems, who's hardware situation is "behind schedule and a mess", who's tools situation recently went from 'shitty' to 'partly shitty' (thx bkilllian for that one), and has a 900 GFLOP GPU, I thought the XBO showed very well yesterday, particularly in-game with BF4 and with RYSE, at least as good as what was shown elsewhere.

oh i agree with that.

still the specter of ps4 being more powerful is very real even if it wasn't on display yesterday.

the xbones 499 would be viewed very differently if it was the 1.8 tf box and ps4 1.2

 

[DrJay24]

For a machine that is supposedly having ESRAM yield problems, who's hardware situation is "behind schedule and a mess", who's tools situation recently went from 'shitty' to 'partly shitty' (thx bkilllian for that one), and has a 900 GFLOP GPU, I thought the XBO showed very well yesterday, particularly in-game with BF4 and with RYSE, at least as good as what was shown elsewhere.

How many of the games were played live with a controller on stage? Are these games playable on the floor?

 

[Boxercide]

For a machine that is supposedly having ESRAM yield problems, who's hardware situation is "behind schedule and a mess", who's tools situation recently went from 'shitty' to 'partly shitty' (thx bkilllian for that one), and has a 900 GFLOP GPU, I thought the XBO showed very well yesterday, particularly in-game with BF4 and with RYSE, at least as good as what was shown elsewhere.

One quibble: it was glaringly obvious that BF4 was being run on PCs. ALL the prompts showed keyboard keys. Off the top of my head, I believe I saw F, SPACE and BACKSPACE during the presentations.

 

[HollovVpo1nt]

For a machine that is supposedly having ESRAM yield problems, who's hardware situation is "behind schedule and a mess", who's tools situation recently went from 'shitty' to 'partly shitty' (thx bkilllian for that one), and has a 900 GFLOP GPU, I thought the XBO showed very well yesterday, particularly in-game with BF4 and with RYSE, at least as good as what was shown elsewhere.

I think the behind schedule part might be true. Some of their games looked like they were planned for Xbox 360 originally and then moved over to Xbox One because they were behind and needed games. Particular examples: Killer Instinct, Crimson Dragon. These two games had the worst graphics of the whole conference. For KI, that's quite an achievement seeing as it's probably one of the less demanding games..
Black Tusk is also supposedly behind in schedule.

 

[babybumb]

I dont think it was technically running on XboxOne. It was on PC version with "next-gen" level specs and there was even the PC Battlelog hud indicator

 

[Arwin]

Peter Moore said it was running on a PC specced to Xbox One

 

[Inquisitive_Idiot]

I think the behind schedule part might be true. Some of their games looked like they were planned for Xbox 360 originally and then moved over to Xbox One because they were behind and needed games. Particular examples: Killer Instinct, Crimson Dragon. These two games had the worst graphics of the whole conference. For KI, that's quite an achievement seeing as it's probably one of the less demanding games..
Black Tusk is also supposedly behind in schedule.

I agree, just look at the Ryse and Dead Rising direct feed screens! Nothing remotely next generation about those, in fact, most current gen games running on PC at 1080p look better than that I think people still holding out for next gen visuals on a console with roughly a Radeon 7770 equivalent are in for a rude awakening, especially if they end up targeting 1080p. I think at this point if I were an Xbox One developer I would focus on 720p, and get as many effects on screen rather than wasting power on 1080p.

 

[HollovVpo1nt]

I agree, just look at the Ryse and Dead Rising direct feed screens! Nothing remotely next generation about those, in fact, most current gen games running on PC at 1080p look better than that I think people still holding out for next gen visuals on a console with roughly a Radeon 7770 equivalent are in for a rude awakening, especially if they end up targeting 1080p. I think at this point if I were an Xbox One developer I would focus on 720p, and get as many effects on screen rather than wasting power on 1080p.

I was quite excited for Ryse during the opening minute where they were on the boat. Facial animations were great, nice detail on the character etc. But when they landed, it was really apparant that it was the transformed remnant of once a kinect game. That might explain why there are so many QTE's. I guess the animators had all those animations done for Kinect and when they decided to ditch it, they couldn't let those animations go to waste and made QTE's out of them.

I really do wonder what Microsofts reasoning is to delivering a relatively 'underpowered' console in 2013. The tech in the One from what I gathered so far isn't all that much. To me, as an Xbox fan, is striking because I became an Xbox fan due to Microsofts efforts in the power department: Xbox was a beast and it was quite clear that Microsoft wanted a graphically capable console with the 360, with it's custom (at the time) sophisticated GPU.

I guess we'll have to wait for E3 '14 to see some nice games. I do hope that Microsoft doesn't rush their first party into releasing games too soon. That short teaser for Black Tusks game also looked like something that was made quickly to show something for the sake of showing something.

 

[Deleted member 7537]

Peter Moore said it was running on a PC specced to Xbox One

 

[eastmen]

Peter Moore said it was running on a PC specced to Xbox One

everything shown at the ea conference was cgi or running on pc dev kits. Even the ps4 racing game.

 

[Mianca]

How many of the games were played live with a controller on stage?

Yeah, right.

When AC4 and Destiny started suttering during the PS4 demonstration, we could at least tell it was actual, live, real-time gameplay ...

 

[Rangers]

Yeah, right.

When AC4 and Destiny started suttering during the PS4 demonstration, we could at least tell it was actual, live, real-time gameplay ...

Hey, our system was overheating and broken, but it was real (as real as behind a curtain can be)

i doubt any of these games were running on real hardware cause it doesn't exist too much. pc to spec is the way to go.

 

[warb]

I agree, just look at the Ryse and Dead Rising direct feed screens! Nothing remotely next generation about those, in fact, most current gen games running on PC at 1080p look better than that I think people still holding out for next gen visuals on a console with roughly a Radeon 7770 equivalent are in for a rude awakening, especially if they end up targeting 1080p. I think at this point if I were an Xbox One developer I would focus on 720p, and get as many effects on screen rather than wasting power on 1080p.

Seriously? You should go back and actually look at those current gen games at high res. Or just watch that opening landing sequence in the Ryse demo. The complexity and detail in those demo scenes screamed next-gen. You've thousands of shuffling zombies in view, in an open world game and no loading on hopping into buildings. Plus geometry is orders of magnitude more complex, even if much of that is tesselation.

 

[_Enigma_]

In my opinion, Ryse was cgi

 

[warb]

In my opinion, Ryse was cgi

Much of it was gameplay, and I think it was playable.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

There was aliasing even in the intro, and also it's been more than a year since Crytek moved the project from the Budapest studio and - probably - restarted.

 

[Arwin]

In my opinion, Ryse was cgi

I've seen some really ugly screenshots on GAF.

 

[warb]

These screens aren't ugly: http://www.gamersyde.com/news_e3_ryse_for_the_romans_-14142_en.html

 

[LightHeaven]

I would wonder more why AMD or NV wouldn't jump to ESRAM/EDRAM and cash in the profits which would go to the GDDR5 producers over DDR3.

- Terrible performance on existing games
- Unless they have magic drivers the devs would have to code specifically for their gpus
- Larger chips without the marketing PR numbers to gloat about
- Bad yields

Pick your devil

 

[kots]

I still wonder if this is the case, why not tout it?
I guess perhaps because in order to tout it, you have to admit 1.2 teraflops in the first place?
Maybe it's all too technical. Even saying "ESRAM" would be so far over most people's heads...

What to say .. "we have lower latency because of the Esram etc"... that is not marketable .
You either have brute force or you haven't .