Xbox Series... M?

[eastmen]

Jez Corden from Windows Central talked to Xbox HW folks and they said Series S is impossible in the forseeable future to put into a portable form. An Xbox handheld would need better battery life than all the PC handhelds including Steam Deck, so they might not be able to use the same node for the same perf envelope.

Dunno who Jez talked to but a portable series s is extremely doable with 5nm. Also again the switch only had 2.5 hours of battery life and went on to sell over a 100m units. Plenty of windows handhelds including the deck can get battery life in that range.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

But what is the future ? 100 years from now? 3g is what 15 or so years old now and we had data caps on it and now we have 5g and we have data caps on it. Why would we assume in the future we dont have data caps on mobile tech ?

You're probably looking at least 10 years but not longer than 20. 5G already delivers technically on both high bandwidth and low latency but there are still plenty of places with no cell reception at all, let alone 2G, 3G or 4G. 3G is over twenty years old - at last in Europe. The US is often late to communications parties because the US industry players like to argue amongst themselves rather than co-operate and push technology forward.

The big leap will be when we stop relying on literally tens of millions of cell towers on Earth and switch to a satellite-based solution. The technology already exists but it's a long-way from being economical to deploy to consumers in the volumes required. But at the speed at which new satellite are deployed, viable solutions could be available sometime during the life of PlayStation 6.

Again bringing music and movies into this is not a good comparison. Streaming music is already recorded and heavily compressed. Movies again are already recorded and heavily compressed.

I don't know what services you use but Apple provide movies streaming bitrates comparable to Blu-ray and for audio it goes up to 24 bit at 48 kHz, which is some way above CD quality. If you're experiencing poor-quality content then it's a combination of the service, the network and your ISP.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

3G is over twenty years old - at last in Europe. The US is often late to communications parties because the US industry players like to argue amongst themselves rather than co-operate and push technology forward.

That's a bit of a misconception about US telecom. The big holdup with the adoption of 3G was bidding for the 3G frequency spectrum which is dependent on relevant government agencies within each country.

First commercial rollout of 3G

• Japan - commercial launch in Oct. 2001, but pre-commercial was in 1998.
• First European launch was on the Isle of Man in Dec, 2001.
• First US launch was by Monet Mobile Networks, but I couldn't find a date. The second US launch was on Verizon in July, 2002.
• First UK launch was in 2003.

So, the US was only behind the Isle of Man by a few months while it was ahead of many European countries.

Regardless, yes, eastmen was incorrect about 3G being only about 15 or so years old.

Regards,
SB

 

[cheapchips]

I remember when the first Three shops popped up in the UK and thinking "who the hell would want to watch video on their phone".

To be fair to my past self, this was when the average phone screen was under 2 inches!

 

[Deleted member 11852]

That's a bit of a misconception about US telecom. The big holdup with the adoption of 3G was bidding for the 3G frequency spectrum which is dependent on relevant government agencies within each country.

That would be the FCC, who have spent decades in policy paralysis due to unrestricted industry lobbying. Whilst it's sensible for any government to consult industry experts on the adoption of new technologies, when your industry players consists of people who absolutely will not co-operate and heavily lobby for opposing policies, you end up moving very slowly and sometimes you even move backwards.

So, the US was only behind the Isle of Man by a few months while it was ahead of many European countries.

I'm not sure that the beating the powerhouse of technology that the Isle of Man represents should be the benchmark. Shouldn't the US be leading? The fact that almost thirty EU countries agrees on a standard faster than one country?

 

[Silent_Buddha]

That would be the FCC, who have spent decades in policy paralysis due to unrestricted industry lobbying. Whilst it's sensible for any government to consult industry experts on the adoption of new technologies, when your industry players consists of people who absolutely will not co-operate and heavily lobby for opposing policies, you end up moving very slowly and sometimes you even move backwards.







I'm not sure that the beating the powerhouse of technology that the Isle of Man represents should be the benchmark. Shouldn't the US be leading? The fact that almost thirty EU countries agrees on a standard faster than one country?

Uh, the Isle of Man beat all other EU countries as well. And the US beat most EU countries. The UK and Italy were the first EU country to adopt 3G and they did it in Mar, 2003. Granted, this is information from Wikipedia, so there's always a chance they aren't correct.

[edit] Looks like it might not be entirely correct.

THE EVOLUTION TO 3G MOBILE — STATUS REPORT

www.itu.int

Manx Telecom, on the Isle of Man launched Europe’s first 3G network in December 2001, and services became commercially available in July 2002. Although Finland was the first country in the world to license 3G, and incumbent operator Sonera met licensing conditions by having its network available on 1 January 2002, commercial service was not available until September due to lack of handsets. Austria’s Mobilkom launched its 3G network on 25 September 2002. In March 2003, Hutchison commercially launched 3G services in the United Kingdom and Italy, as well as in Australia in April and in Sweden in May.

So, looking at that based on commercial availability. The Isle of Man and the US are tied with rollouts to customers in July 2002. Finland and Austria were next in Sept. 2002, although it's unclear if Austria was rolling it to consumers at that time or if it was just the "launch" of the network itself.

If we go just by the rather nebulous non-commercial launch date for the Isle of Man of Dec. 2001, I'm not sure what the similar non-commercial "launch" would have been for the US. It could have been earlier or it could have been later than the Isle of Man.

Regards,
SB

 

[Deleted member 11852]

So, looking at that based on commercial availability. The Isle of Man and the US are tied with rollouts to customers in July 2002. Finland and Austria were next in Sept. 2002, although it's unclear if Austria was rolling it to consumers at that time or if it was just the "launch" of the network itself.

If you cast your mind back to back to when 3G was first deployed in the US, you may recall that whilst technically the networks were compliant with the minimum specification (IMT-2000), that in practise coverage was incredibly poor and the available speeds was often below that what good 2G (EDGE) connections would offer. It was more of a theoretical, marketing launch than a launch of a new network that was actually better than what you had. You may recall some US networks also branded fast 3G connections as 4G when 4G launched. Over-selling and promising network capabilities is kind what the US telecoms industry is known for globally.

For folks who used to travel and visit the US, US '3G', when available, was slower than your years-old 2G network from where you live and fraction of the speed of 3G you were use to everywhere else.

 

[orangpelupa]

Btw if xsm does become a reality, is it viable to be also act as a "dongle" for Xbox VR?

So with just 1 usb c cable and a belt, the vr become truly wireless with much better performance and battery life than in-headset soc

 

[eastmen]

You're probably looking at least 10 years but not longer than 20. 5G already delivers technically on both high bandwidth and low latency but there are still plenty of places with no cell reception at all, let alone 2G, 3G or 4G. 3G is over twenty years old - at last in Europe. The US is often late to communications parties because the US industry players like to argue amongst themselves rather than co-operate and push technology forward.

The big leap will be when we stop relying on literally tens of millions of cell towers on Earth and switch to a satellite-based solution. The technology already exists but it's a long-way from being economical to deploy to consumers in the volumes required. But at the speed at which new satellite are deployed, viable solutions could be available sometime during the life of PlayStation 6.



I don't know what services you use but Apple provide movies streaming bitrates comparable to Blu-ray and for audio it goes up to 24 bit at 48 kHz, which is some way above CD quality. If you're experiencing poor-quality content then it's a combination of the service, the network and your ISP.

I was wrong with the 15 years thing. However my point still stands. We have 4g LTE / 5g now and still have data caps on our services. Now you are talking about satellite solutions. That will take years or decades to roll out. The closest thing we have is star link and that isn't exactly mobile unless you count mounting it on an rv. Having a satellite solution as viable in the playstation 6 life span seems really pie in the sky dreaming. PS5 launched in 2020. Ps4 launched in 2013. So that was 7 years. Which means PS6 would come out in 2027. Another 7 year life span would put its replacement at 2034. That is 12 years to design , get funding , launch and have a viable network of satellites. I don't see that happening and even then we don't know how long it would take for them to have a viable enough amount of bandwidth to allow tens of if not hundreds of millions of gamers to access these satilites to stream content while people are using it to access their normal content. Also in those 12 years people aren't going to be content with streaming ps4/ps5 quallity content. In that 12 years the 8k roll out will have happened fairly successful since its already started. So we will be streaming much higher bandwidth content too. Not to mention we may be moving past 8k at that point too. Most likely they will increase the color bit , add faster refresh maybe even go up to 16k for high end tv sets of 120inch or bigger. That isn't even taking into account vr and the need for higher and higher pixel counts there.

As for your last comment. Yes apple uses compressed audio for its content. They use a 256kbp/s with their own AAC codec . I believe amazon music hd /ultra hd had 850/3730kbp/s tracks respectively

Amazon.com: Amazon Music Unlimited FAQs: Digital Music

Online shopping for Amazon Music Unlimited FAQs from a great selection at Digital Music Store.

www.amazon.com

To be honest the majority of my music is ripped from my old cds in storage. I am kinda stuck in 1980s- early 2000s rock and heavy metal and of course 1980s/90s video game music cause I am that friggen cool

But you miss my point. Music is already a solved issue. Mp3 has been around since 1991. AAC which is what apple uses has been around since 1997 and FLAC has been around since 2001. These are all various forms of compressing audio while keeping sound quality as high as possible vs something like redbook audio. So if you want CD quality audio you can take say a 600MB cd and stream it or you can use FLAC which is lossless and would give you a file of around 300MB and stream that. Same quality but you need half the bandwidth. But you can go further. You can take that 600MB cd and bring it down to 50 or 60MB depending on the audio quality that you or your subscribers feel good about.

Now lets say that is a 60 minute cd. So now you stream it. You can stream the 600MB over the 60 minutes , you can stream the lossless compression at 300MB over the 60 minutes and need half the bandwidth to stream that or you can take that 60MB compressed file and stream it over 60 minutes. Obviously bandwidth required goes down drastically.

You have the same situation with video. They have made mpeg 2 , mpeg 4 and now I believe HEVC is the best one out which is h.265 or Mpeg-h part 2. The issue here is that while Hevc results in about 20% - 50% better file sizes it also uses a lot more compute power. You are also going to be looking at what 60MB per 1 minute of 1080p footage with HEVC ?


Now these are files that you have and can throw as much compute power as you want and keep them compressed in the cloud for when someone wants to view them . But with something like xcloud or the playstation version of xcloud well you don't have that option. It all has to be compressed on the fly in reaction to what the user has to do. It's going to take a lot more resources than something like video streaming or audio streaming.

It takes MS having the xbox series x hardware to do 1 4k xbox series x stream or 4 xbox one streams. Imagine optimized silicon for streaming movies or even audio and how many streams of each they could do in the same foot print as a single series x blade.

Now just imagine when xbox next releases in 2027 or something . Now you need to roll out brand new hardware at huge costs to the company to support people streaming games. With music streaming I am sure they run the current servers until they break and get a free upgrade on the amount of streams and audio quality they can dish out simply by it being x amount of years newer hardware. Most likely the same thing goes on with video streaming . Think about it , 4k was introduced in 2012. It's already been a decade and most companies only have limited content in 4k or limited content in 4k plus charge more like netflix. It's taking a huge amount of time to roll out 4k and that isn't a reactive technology.

With xcloud there is a lot more to it than just streaming already compressed content that is just waiting to be served to a customer

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I was wrong with the 15 years thing. However my point still stands. We have 4g LTE / 5g now and still have data caps on our services. Now you are talking about satellite solutions. That will take years or decades to roll out. The closest thing we have is star link and that isn't exactly mobile unless you count mounting it on an rv.

It may in the US, where the telecoms industry has manipulated most geographic markets so that there is no competition. Competition in Europe is why consumers have genuine choice, which means service providers have to try hard - actually compete - to attract users.

But with something like xcloud or the playstation version of xcloud well you don't have that option. It all has to be compressed on the fly in reaction to what the user has to do. It's going to take a lot more resources than something like video streaming or audio streaming

If you eliminate the latency, and satellite does that by removing the number of server to server and point/router to point/router relays you are already there. Modern satellite comms are already close to zero latency, it's used by many armed forces to controlled UAVs on the other side of the planet in literally mission-critical low latency scenarios, or for surveillance.

There are already chipsets that will encode H.265 at hundreds of frames per second. Apple's M2 chip, and M1Pro and M1Max chips include a hardware H.265 encoding block which crunch H.265 at 4K at 60fps or more. And this is just an IP block on the APU, dedicated video encoding chips are much, much faster.

 

[LiveGamer]

A Switch 2 won't be more powerful than the Steam Deck.

So MS could still release a portable inline with Switch 2's specs and still receive significant future support that way. It would also have the benefit of Xbox, 360 and Xbox One backwards compatibility increasing it's library. It could then also use xCloud for any future games that don't fit otherwise.

 

[cheapchips]

A Switch 2 won't be more powerful than the Steam Deck.

So MS could still release a portable inline with Switch 2's specs and still receive significant future support that way. It would also have the benefit of Xbox, 360 and Xbox One backwards compatibility increasing it's library. It could then also use xCloud for any future games that don't fit otherwise.

If an MS portable doesn't natively play Series games, it's a waste of time. Might as well stream xCloud to one of the many other devices that costs MS nothing to produce.

 

[LiveGamer]

If an MS portable doesn't natively play Series games, it's a waste of time. Might as well stream xCloud to one of the many other devices that costs MS nothing to produce.

Playing console games on the phone just isn't the same.

Strap on controls don't feel good. Touchscreen controls don't feel good. Clipping a full controller to a phone is ackward to say the least. Plus you having to keep up with and reattach all these extra accessories which is a pain. Plus it drains the battery of your phone. I think most people that would want console games on the go would prefer a seperate device. If phone gaming was sufficient the Switch wouldn't be selling gang busters.

 

[eastmen]

It may in the US, where the telecoms industry has manipulated most geographic markets so that there is no competition. Competition in Europe is why consumers have genuine choice, which means service providers have to try hard - actually compete - to attract users.



If you eliminate the latency, and satellite does that by removing the number of server to server and point/router to point/router relays you are already there. Modern satellite comms are already close to zero latency, it's used by many armed forces to controlled UAVs on the other side of the planet in literally mission-critical low latency scenarios, or for surveillance.

There are already chipsets that will encode H.265 at hundreds of frames per second. Apple's M2 chip, and M1Pro and M1Max chips include a hardware H.265 encoding block which crunch H.265 at 4K at 60fps or more. And this is just an IP block on the APU, dedicated video encoding chips are much, much faster.

Okay so what satellite cell service is currently available in Europe and what speeds does it operate at ?

Okay so you removed the different server jumps. You still have the internal latency of the machine and still need it to get sent up to the satellite and then down to the receiver and into the device that is being used to play to wait for a command from the user that then has to get sent back through all that again. Also with the curve of the earth you may still have to hop through some other satellites if there isn't a facility near you. Then what about storms ? Last time I had direct tv storms would screw with the system. Is that fixed with internet satellite ? If it isn't then its really a useless tech.

Yes there are chipsets that encode h.265 but an M2 and m1 chip are not cheap. They cost money. More money than simply selling a person a console. Not to mention that you are still left with large file sizes that need to be transmitted over the internet and it all has to be done fast enough so people don't notice the latency. Which no one has done successfully yet. Meanwhile we continue to move forward to another console generation that will require huge investments in hardware again and none of the issues are really solved.

You are going to continue to get new Xboxes and PlayStation because it will always be the more efficient way to sell people a gaming experience. At the end of the day if you can sell a person a $500 xbox series x and have them buy or subscribe to gaming services it is better for the company than to role out enough series x's in a data center and sit and wait to recoup the $500 per blade deployed on just the subscription alone.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Okay so what satellite cell service is currently available in Europe and what speeds does it operate at ?

I have no idea, I'm talking about the commercialisation of technologies that have been in common use by many armed forces around the world. I think you need to re-read this post of mine because it feels like you have mis-read it.

Yes there are chipsets that encode h.265 but an M2 and m1 chip are not cheap. They cost money. More money than simply selling a person a console.

The H.265 encode blocks are tiny, tiny parts of Apple's chips. H.265 is not complicated or expensive and certainly not in the grand scheme of running a server operation.

You are going to continue to get new Xboxes and PlayStation because it will always be the more efficient way to sell people a gaming experience. At the end of the day if you can sell a person a $500 xbox series x and have them buy or subscribe to gaming services it is better for the company than to role out enough series x's in a data center and sit and wait to recoup the $500 per blade deployed on just the subscription alone.

This is completely backwards. With the physical console model, Sony and Microsoft have to manufacture enough consoles for as many people who might want to use them. I use my consoles far less than I did ten or twenty years ago. The server-based approach means you only needs as many virtual consoles as the maximum number of people who will be gaming at any particular time. I bet of the 100+ million PS4s sold, no more than 40m are in use at any particular time. That's no efficient on any level, not is manufacturing then, and shipping them around the world.

 

[cheapchips]

Playing console games on the phone just isn't the same.

Strap on controls don't feel good. Touchscreen controls don't feel good. Clipping a full controller to a phone is ackward to say the least. Plus you having to keep up with and reattach all these extra accessories which is a pain. Plus it drains the battery of your phone. I think most people that would want console games on the go would prefer a seperate device. If phone gaming was sufficient the Switch wouldn't be selling gang busters.

MS should make a strap on controller that doesn't suck, which is also a battery pack.

Don't get me wrong, a portable XSS would be fun. A portable Xbone? Not so much.

 

[orangpelupa]

Playing console games on the phone just isn't the same.

Strap on controls don't feel good. Touchscreen controls don't feel good. Clipping a full controller to a phone is ackward to say the least. Plus you having to keep up with and reattach all these extra accessories which is a pain. Plus it drains the battery of your phone. I think most people that would want console games on the go would prefer a seperate device. If phone gaming was sufficient the Switch wouldn't be selling gang busters.

Ridiculous amounts of people are happily playing with cramps-inducing touch screen controls tho.

They are also fine with bringing power bank to power their magic slab.

Nintendo Switch joycons are uncomfortable for shooters but splatoon 1-2 was quite popular.

 

[Jay]

Ridiculous amounts of people are happily playing with cramps-inducing touch screen controls tho.

They are also fine with bringing power bank to power their magic slab.

Nintendo Switch joycons are uncomfortable for shooters but splatoon 1-2 was quite popular.

I don't think anyone is saying that can't remain an option for those people.

They can continue using phone and that would be the cheapest entry point.
There's also a lot of people who doesn't like that experience.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Ridiculous amounts of people are happily playing with cramps-inducing touch screen controls tho.

I honestly don't know how people this. When I see people playing Minecraft or Fortnite I am always astonished how accomplished they seem to be, so kudos to them.

 

[milk]

a strap on controller

I hate my mind sometimes.