you have to get the exact wording they used. Are they taking a loss on the series x and series as combined where the X is loosing money but the S is breaking even or maybe making a little but with the X cost they still end up loosing ? Also what are the projections of costs over the next x amount of months
Your guess is as good as mine here, we simply aren't privy to those types of details, from either company. I guess someone involved in that process could do some sleuthing and get the info and leak it out, but then they'd be out of a job (and probably blacklisted :S)
Same way they took to the ps4 and ps4 pro or xbox one and xbox one x. Obviously the people who only have an xbox series s will be fine with it either playing in 1080p /1440p or will stream xcloud. I believe that MS will always have a $300 and $500 box (it might fluctuated a bit with price cuts maybe sometimes 200/400 before being replaced) but the hardware in them will be refreshed every few years to the newest architecture as that is the easiest way to improve performance and power profiles now.
Some of the things MS are implementing with All-Access (that you will be able to, in addition to other things, get access to "new hardware"), might be suggesting this. So there's a chance hardware refreshes could be more frequent from them compared to Sony for example. If so, that's a good sign Gamecore is doing its job, because that type of approach would not be possible if there wasn't an all-encompassing SDK and API toolset available to allow for relatively easy scaling while still giving enough access to tinker with hardware performance and push the design for devs with the time, money and manpower to do so.
That may mean in 2024 a Navi 4 and Zen 6 at that point on 5nm could produce a system on par or better (esp with ray tracing and ML) than the Xbox series X currently is but at a $300 price point and at a $500 price point maybe we are looking at a 20tflop+ machine . What would be the point of selling the current systems ?
If their plans for mid-gen refreshes are more in the vain you suggest they might be, then something at the high-end pushing around those figures might actually be possible. I'm still curious what purpose it would serve in the ecosystem though. More importantly, what games would be there to take advantage of that additional power? Because at that range, for something that could theoretically drop in 2024, that's something 2x the power of PS5, on paper, so you'd expect 2x the visual fidelity and/or performance, resolution etc.
I think simply having that power there, just to be there, won't work as well with the console gaming market if the performance of the previous mid-gen refreshes are any indication. There has to be other benefits to come along with it, preferably in the scope of gaming immersion or experiences. That's probably the one thing that helped the PS4 Pro as much as it did (even though it was still only a fraction of total PS4 sales); since they timed the PSVR alongside the Pro, and the Pro benefited PSVR performance, that gave the Pro something of another purpose beyond simply boosting the graphics of PS4 games.
Since MS seem more open to the idea of VR support now (and ironically, Sony scaling back on it, at least from Jim Ryan's tone in interviews), a much more powerful Series X refresh a few years from now paired with pushing VR/AR gaming could bring some benefits and big appeal.
At the same time as I've been saying you take that same navi 4 and zen 6 apu and you cut it down so it plays games at least as well as the current XSS. What would such an APU and console look like ? Well navi 4 would be the third try for amd at ray tracing. Performance there should be much better, if they are able to scale 50% or so performance improvements like they did from navi - navi 2 then perhaps you don't need to be as agressive with the clocks and memory speeds. That is the basis of what I believe they will do going forward , its what i've been saying for at least half a year and to me hot chips cemented it in my mind as what MS will do
True, and if they can be less aggressive on clock speeds, memory speeds etc. that means even further power consumption savings, opening up a better chance for something with Series S specs in a portable or portable-esque form factor.
I think they will be very careful in what it can do because they will want to have it part of but apart from the other surface devices. They will wnat you to get a surface pro and a surface xbox.
One thing i've talked about before is a usb c xbox attachment for future surfaces. As a customer you go out and you buy a surface go or pro or book or laptop and you already have the screen and battery and other functionality. So just put the xbox series s in a small portable enclosure and your good to go.
That's an interesting idea, I just wonder how that would benefit with regards to power supply and cooling. I mean, it could still work as USB-C (maybe as a Thunderbolt connection) for the connectivity, but the form factor I don't think would fit that of a thumb drive. It'd still be somewhat sizable, if smaller than Series S is currently.
The reason I find it interesting though, is because it kind of reminds me of the older Sega add-ons like the Sega CD/32X, or some of those mid-90's PC graphics cards which were basically consoles in and of themselves. The Nvidia NV-1 (a Saturn-based PC GPU card) and PCFX-GA (a NEC PC-FX based 98/PC GPU card) immediately come to mind. Those were intriguing experiments but didn't get too far, partly because the consoles those were based on already had differentiation/shortcomings not in sync with more popular devices in the wider market of the time, which means the PC card equivalents were proportionally reduced in terms of software and dev support.
But the idea itself was always intriguing and it's very clear AMD are leveraging their console dev partnerships with both MS and Sony to push forward their RDNA architecture for, among other things, PC GPU cards, so we're maybe kind of coming back full-circle on this note :3. Therefore it's not unreasonable MS could design some kind of Series S-based dGPU product for the Surface products that basically gives them Series S-levels of performance and maybe even Series-style OS features and whatnot. I'd be interested in seeing that come to fruition. They could also theoretically try similar with the Series X I guess, but maybe less of a need to there since anyone who already wants Series X (or PS5) level of performance outside of those consoles will have a PC, and there are (and will continue to be) cards available providing that type of performance if not better, and that type of gamer isn't really price-conscious when it comes to specs.
But someone on a Surface tablet who wants something closer to a console experience without the technical tinkering PC requires? Yeah, something like a Series S dGPU add-on would be great, just as long as they could get the price right. I'd say $199 max, there has to be some price advantage between going Surface & Series S dGPU versus going Surface & Series S console, otherwise it doesn't work.
Maybe but thats a decade away or so i'd say. AMD will most likely get large jumps through 5nm at the very least. Remember RDNA is the first major architecture on the graphics side from them in a decade who knows what else they can improve in it
Dunno; I'm just going to be cautiously optimistic but I think there's a wall to be hit sooner rather than later WRT these ever-increasing GPU clocks. If CPUs went through it little over 15 years ago, I don't think GPUs will be that far off. Hence why we've been seeing pushes for wider designs, even from AMD. It's a way for them to "cover their bases", so to speak.
That said I'm very interested to see where their GPUs go!
I think like a pc it wont really care. A pc doesn't care if you put a geforce 1080 or a 3080 in it, it will just run the code as well as it can. MS has the direct x layer which should make it easy for games to run fine. IC @ xbox series s clock speeds should provide enough bandwidth at 1440p i'd imagine. I'd also wonder if a 5nm navi 4 would be able to run at higher clocks while removing Rops and CUs and still perform as well as the rdna inside of the xbox series s.
For a while I was thinking this wouldn't be possible, but for some reason I sometimes forget that MS's BC approach isn't predicated on exact hardware matching 1:1 in terms of CUs/ROPs etc. the way Sony's seems to be. That frees them up to do things as you suggest here, I also think that's their experience from the PC and server markets coming through pretty clearly.
Like i said i think the xbox series s is the base for Microsoft and what comes next will be faster than it while using newer tech. They go into detail of why simply dropping the micron process on a design wont work for price drops like it used too.
Just nomenclature thing for me, but I'd rather call it the "floor" rather than the "base". Base implies it'll be the root of software development, and I hope that actually isn't the case! I'd rather the newer, more powerful systems be the base and then devs just scale stuff down (be it graphics, some gameplay features, or both) to accommodate the lower-power platforms in the ecosystem like Series S.
Which to my knowledge, is what MS have said before, so I'm going to hold that to them when we see more of these 1P games come forward from them
Not unless they're going to run a mass disc-mail-in programme where they credit you the equivalent digital licence.