Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation

That 1.2tf GPU looks expensive ... can they afford it ?

 

That diagram makes no sense. It very much has a "dumbed down for fucktards" feel to it.

 

MS seen to have massively dropped the ball with regards to high fidelity gaming..

I can now see why 3Gb and 2 CPU Cores are allegedly reserved.. assuming EDRAM offsets any other RAM bandwidth issues, what is left is substantially below the competition.. and from the DF article,

I can't see how they won't have different render targets to their competition, something that I think is so very risky.. you are essentially changing your market, ditch the hardcore gamer and aim at the market that seems to have got over the casual NUI fad, and hope you can push through all their other media devices such as Ipads/Smart TV's..

 

the diagram doesnt necessarily confirm either one of those thing imo. though it wouldn't shock me if hdd is indeed standard.

 

Sounds like they moved the console budget to the Sony takeover pool. They are at 12.70B at the moment

 

i will admit ignorance and ask what part(s) of the diagram don't make sense?

 

Can you emulate 360 with this setup? Seems doubtful

 

Agreed, but I don't think they claim the diagram is from Microsoft. Probably they made it up based on the specifications. I don't think MS has to tell developers that the orange blocks are memory, the green blocks are storage, etc.

 

Yeah, the diagram doesn't have that on. The link makes the claim separately in a list of features (inc. flops and that).

 

so it's going to have the power of a late 2014 android tablet ?

 

If the 50GB bluray is real, it would mean they are artificially crippling the console, it's practically free to support 128GB BD-ROM now. Maybe they want to force devs not to go beyond 50GB so that they can offer all games in dld form, but it's still weird.

 

Late 2014 tablet will probably have same or more GigerFloppies than PS4/X360, but various bottlenecks in their architecture will still prevent them from having games with same amount of "scope".

 

Durango is supposed to be all about scalability, though (i.e. "we will push out a new, updated, more powerful device every 2 years - and people will gladly keep throwing their money at us.")

They could start selling a console based around the specs posted above for ~$300 and still make some profit on the hardware. Once 20nm production is ramped up and ready, they can presumably just shrink the launch SoC, put two of them in a box, call it "Durango 2" and sell that for around the same price as the launch system.

I guess someone at Microsoft just took a look at Apple's revenue chart - and decided that their way of selling hardware while (and by) frequently refreshing it didn't exactly ruin them during the last ten years ... all they need is platform that's ready to be scaled. No need to start with the most powerful machine ever. You'd probably even deliberately start with the less impressive machine - because you know your loyal consumers will just buy the launch machine now ... and the newer, better, shiny update machine a few months later. Instant-double-cash-in à la Ipad3/4. It's a marketing strategist's wet dream.

 

Don't really see too much of that in these specs, what I see are lower frame rates where applicable and fewer assets on screen.

 

Also, tablets will not have a protected architecture like the big consoles. There goes any hope of AAA single-player games. There's over a million Android smartphone sold every DAY, still not a single game that can be considered AAA. It's an ecosystem of casual games somewhere between free and $5.

Even Apple with their closed source and closed ecosystem, despite their 100 billions in the bank... cannot prevent their tablets from being rooted within 48 hours.

 

considering current phones/tablets havent caught up to 8 year old xbox, and not just for tech reasons (also because nobody puts a high budget into a mobile game sans a rare outlyer, infinity blade cough), i wouldnt be too worried.

 

sony is going to have to reserve at least one core for os, right? or are they magic?

we know durango has a dedicated audio chip? does orbis? if not, maybe there goes another 1-3 cores...

 

somehow i doubt more than 50gb will be widely necessary, if it's even really true.

 

This looks like a system designed to be in the black from day 1, something microsoft has never done before. I also see no secret sauce to speak of. I'm calling BS on Vgleaks based on the second one. There's nothing here to suggest the general consensus of equality is the case.

 

I'd like to see it day 1 at 299. Seems reasonable given the uunderwhelming specs, but I'm guessing we'll actually get 399. They wont leave $ on the table and it will probably sell either way.

Secret sauce is audio chip, and DMA engine presumably for 2 out of 3. Other might be "fixed function stuff". Who knows. I think it could be buttered up Jaguar cores too. It might be nothing too special or even recognizable.