Xbox Series S [XBSS] (Lockhart) General Rumors and Speculation *spawn*

You are a hot-take machine!

 

Jason Schreier of Kotaku reported last year he was hearing this from senior devs so this does not come as surprise.

 

XSX 4k - 3840x2160 = 8,294,400 pixels
XSS 1080p 1920x1080 = 2,073,600 pixels

That's 4 times the resolution . 12TF/4TF = 3. So 3 times the power. I think lockheart will be just fine playing 4k xsx games at 1080p . If ps5/ xsx is $500 then this would be fine at $250 and $300 it will be okay but pushing it a little in terms of price. But what if its $200 ? Close to 40m Americans are expected to file for unemployment through the end of may due to corona.

 

And yet devs are voicing their concerns about this. So it's clearly not that simple.

 

Per the 1440p target rumor (from the Jason Schreier article DSoup linked), it would be 2560x1440 = 3,686,400 pixels

 

I don't think it was ever made clear what exactly they were concerned about, though. The available power of the lower SKU or just the extra SKU existing at all, divorced from whatever power it had. Any extra SKU is going to mean extra work and I don't think any developer is going to welcome that if it can be avoided. Muliplats could have as many as 9 hardware targets now and that's counting PC as only one.

 

Sounds like laptop/tablet resolutions to me ...

 

Jason Schreier elaboratedin the Kotaku Splitscreen podcast of that week. Devs were concerned that having to design for Lockhart would hold back game design for Series X - and PS5 for multi-platform games.

It's not as simple as the processing power relative to scaleability of graphics, i.e. 1080p vs 4K.

 

The concept of a PC (laptop/tablet) developer being given a resolution target seems weird to me.

 

Jason also reported that MS was way behind schedule. He has only negative leaks for MS because they seek each other out.

 

Hopefully, should it materialize in the rumored form, the hardware and development platform will show those concerns to be unfounded. I'm maintaining my stance that I'll assume neither MS or Sony are doing anything dumb until they definitively do. Then I'll roast them for it.

 

Yup. This is a terrible idea. However I remain wholly unconvinced Lockhart is actually coming out. There doesn't seem to be any decent source here.

Anyone who thinks X1X wasn't held back is crazy. Unless you think a 5X more powerful machine should show no major graphical improvements. X1X would have effectively been a new generation if it was unshackled.

Now we're also supposedly hearing Series S will feature little to no ray tracing (again, it literally has to have no RT to fit the model, they cannot afford anything on the GPU, again showing what a worthless idea it is). Paradoxically I think this is good news, as I think that will make it more shunned than it already would be. It should die a pretty swift death by the looks of things.

I ask the most basic questions that have no good answers regarding Lockhart such as:

-MS pretty clearly already holds the winning hand this gen (more powerful box likely to be the same price). Why is anything more needed?
-If the target is 1080P vs 4k, what happens when the 100% chance devs dont actually typically target 4k, but start shifting to 1440 +reconstruction etc, on Series X happens? Does 900P become the lockhart shifting target? 720P? Imagine selling 900P in 2021+. On 4K TV's!
-The price of Lockhart is NOT going to be substantially lower. It must have the expensive SSD setup (imagine if it didnt, imagine the "Its not holding things back" people shrieking in terror then, but I mean hey, lets put a HDD in, ItS NoT hOldiNG anYthiG bacK). It must have probably at least 12GB of GDDR. It must have Zen 2. Are you reading this? They will be lucky to get $100 BOM delta TBH.
-Lets say for argument sake Lockhart launches at 299 (nope) and Series X at 499. What happens oh, a whopping ONE YEAR in when Series X is prepping for that inevitable drop to 399? Is Lockhart going to 199? (Lol, 7 year old PS4 isn't 199)
-When Mid Gen Series XXL comes along, what is Lockhart going to do then? 540P 20 FPS ports?
-Anyone looking for a 299 console and doesn't care about graphics is buying a switch. Period. 100% of the people. Not 99.99, 100.

It's a terrible idea. However two things: 1. I dont believe it's coming out. 2. If it does, it likely will die a swift death in the market.

 

My issues with Lockhart aren't the GPU. The rendering should scale well to 1080p. Lots of people, especially discount gamers still have old tvs. I'd be more concerned about memory and cpu and how well games would scale to those. There should be some cost savings, but it would have to be a pretty noticeable price difference for this thing to be worth it. If it's a $500 Series X and a $300 Series S, I think it could work. If this thing gets released, I think a mid-gen refresh is off the table. We saw tons of games this gen go from Xbox One and PS4 to Switch, which no one thought would be possible. I can see why devs would be annoyed if support is mandatory.

 

He said MS was behind giving devkit to devs. They were less open not that they were behind schedule.

 

What devs ? I haven't really seen anything and of course the 4tflop rumor has been around for awhile , that doesn't mean its just 4tflop it could be closer to 5tflop. We have to wait and see, if they announce it next month we may not have long to wait at all for specs

Maybe but didn't Schreier keep pushing the 13tflop rumor for the ps5 up to a few days before the announcement and then he down played it ?
So its still 2.25 more pixels with only 3 times the power at that point. That's if its just a 4tflop system. But hey 10tflop vs 4 tflops changes the caculations as its a 2.25 times increase in pixels with a 2.5 increase in performance. Or 2.5 times the increase in performance vs 4 times the pixels

Also like I said if the device is $200 or $250 and the others are $500 it allows a lot of people entry into the system

 

If it's still coming it's got to be a unique form factor. Not a classic box & not even like the XBSX tower. I don't see them just releasing another slab that sits under the TV. There has to be some kind of special use(mobile, tablet, modular, etc). I wouldn't be surprised if it's being confused with a new Surface device.

Tommy McClain

 

Hart Shaped Box

 

Nope.

 

I dunno but this all works with my prediction of portable and modular.

More than that though just looking at the reaction this Windows Central article has gotten i really wonder how they are going to market it it if it's NOT a portable device.

A cheaper box is just not sexy or cool and it's got the perception of "holding back" games or whatever.