Xbox : What should MS do next? *spawn

[iroboto]

Nope. Sony is going after this years holiday season with PSVR and NEO for sure. Makes no sense on not doing so...

Sure MS could have better hardware within late 2017, but Sony will more than likely have an uncontested user-base of 60-65 million when that happens. That's more impressive to a developers/publishers, than new hardware.

Will Sonys base really increase due to Neo? Or will the same people that bought PS4 at launch just going to upgrade?

Something to consider. In the eyes of consumers, Sony is actually coming in as quite premium. They no longer seem to be servicing the same market.

XBO is quickly becoming the budget gamers console, especially with BC, EA Access and 4 games per month through XBLG. One could easily buy XBO And gold and be done with it.

If Scorpio does release you are looking at growing the high buyers market for XBO which doesn't much exist since they all left to buy PS4 which has better hardware.

If MS plays right, it should be about capturing the low end until Scorpio is released. And then going back after the high end.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Shortbread]

Will Sonys base really increase due to Neo? Or will the same people that bought PS4 at launch just going to upgrade?

It's simple math really.... using Sony's current (average) monthly world wide sales. That's not even including the potential for PSVR moving more PS4 units, and NEO being factored in. Sony install base is over 40 million (now), by years end, another 10-12 million, and by late 2017, more than likely another 14 million units.

Something to consider. In the eyes of consumers, Sony is actually coming in as quite premium. They no longer seem to be servicing the same market.

And? It hasn't stopped or impeded sales....

XBO is quickly becoming the budget gamers console, especially with BC, EA Access and 4 games per month through XBLG. One could easily buy XBO And gold and be done with it.

Does being cheap = better value? If so, XB1 sales with all its great pricing deals and super-duper bundling, sure hasn't budge the market in its direction.

Plain and simple, this generation is cooked. The only thing MS can do, is maximize it's profits as much as possible on XB1/XBL and later next year, ring in Scorpio as the next challenger.

If Scorpio does release you are looking at growing the high buyers market for XBO which doesn't much exist since they all left to buy PS4 which has better hardware.

If MS plays right, it should be about capturing the low end until Scorpio is released. And then going back after the high end.

Assuming Sony doesn't have a clue about both markets (value / high-end) and misreading potential consumers in both. I really don't see that happening.

 

[ramr]

IMHO, it's a combination of MS terrible XB1 E3 reveal, poor communication, specs more moderate than PS4, and of course, stiff pricing. But that's history...



Assuming Sony doesn't drop PS4 pricing. Assuming Sony doesn't have a slim model (PS4) as well.



If this was the case, you wouldn't be hearing about Scorpio. This senerio you're not going to see.

Not sure why you would hear of the slim details yet as there is nothing exciting there that benefits MS from early talk and there is no need to let devs know about it ahead of time.

NEO is the slim. Given the way PS4 is selling there is no need to lower margins for the slim.

 

[ramr]

Will Sonys base really increase due to Neo? Or will the same people that bought PS4 at launch just going to upgrade?

Something to consider. In the eyes of consumers, Sony is actually coming in as quite premium. They no longer seem to be servicing the same market.

XBO is quickly becoming the budget gamers console, especially with BC, EA Access and 4 games per month through XBLG. One could easily buy XBO And gold and be done with it.

If Scorpio does release you are looking at growing the high buyers market for XBO which doesn't much exist since they all left to buy PS4 which has better hardware.

If MS plays right, it should be about capturing the low end until Scorpio is released. And then going back after the high end.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This is absolute the best strategy for MS. Crush the low end to grow ecosystem. A $199 digital/flash only ($249 with BR and HDD) SKU could move 10-15 million units in the next year and 8-10 next year with Scorpio moving 5-8 depending on $399 or $499 price.

 

[iroboto]

It's simple math really.... using Sony's current (average) monthly world wide sales. That's not even including the potential for PSVR moving more PS4 units, and NEO being factored in. Sony install base is over 40 million (now), by years end, another 10-12 million, and by late 2017, more than likely another 14 million units.

As far as I recall, neither companies decided to release numbers on their HW unit sales last month. Sony's not exactly knocking it out of the park anymore, and MS didn't die on arrival like many insisted it would -- all things considered, it should have.

And? It hasn't stopped or impeded sales....

see above.

Does being cheap = better value? If so, XB1 sales with all its great pricing deals and super-duper bundling, sure hasn't budge the market in its direction.

it's not cheap enough yet, but to say they aren't setup is something else. They are setup, but the HW should it drop to $199 would have a positive effect on their sales

Plain and simple, this generation is cooked. The only thing MS can do, is maximize it's profits as much as possible on XB1/XBL and later next year, ring in Scorpio as the next challenger.

Didn't say it wasn't, I'm not even sure when this generation is going to end either with both mid-gen consoles arriving. A significantly cheaper XBO from PS4 would make a bigger difference than you think. Sony's success this generation is a combination of recapturing most of their PS3 buyers and Xbox 360 buyers. But the market is not fixed, anyone can own more than a single console. If MS gains market share it's not because Sony is losing it, its just that everyone that owns a PS can also own an XB.

Assuming Sony doesn't have a clue about both markets (value / high-end) and misreading potential consumers in both. I really don't see that happening.

Once again see above. It's not about losing out to MS, but if Sony has tapped out their market, they've tapped out their market. There's no real competitor to iPad -- but they aren't selling much more, they've saturated the market with their own product and no one feels compelled to buy another one.

 

[Shortbread]

As far as I recall, neither companies decided to release numbers on their HW unit sales last month. Sony's not exactly knocking it out of the park anymore, and MS didn't die on arrival like many insisted it would -- all things considered, it should have.

The months from Jan-August are always the slowest months for most retail product. With Sep-October picking back up, with November-December being the bread and butter months. Plus, April (NPD), PS4 sales didn't decrease when compared to last years April NPD. A little flat maybe, decrease no.

Once again see above. It's not about losing out to MS, but if Sony has tapped out their market, they've tapped out their market. There's no real competitor to iPad -- but they aren't selling much more, they've saturated the market with their own product and no one feels compelled to buy another one.

Of course any assumption can be true or false, come to pass or not. So far, PS4 is mimicking what most successful / hot products do - grow. Until there is another more hotter, more valued product, that consumers would find more appealing and well suited for their needs.

 

[ramr]

Can we please not turn this thread into threads that already exist, such as Console Sales or the What should Sony or MS Do Next?

Kthxbi!

Sure -

My thoughts on the XB 1-2 leak. Given the polaris 10 pricing, the 6TF model from the leaks seems like a 2016 polaris SKU. If it is 2017 a 10TF+ Vega SKU seems more appropriate as a premium SKU - well unless they are doing both of course.

 

[BRiT]

Hrm, that would be interesting to see how the market works out assuming all 3 models are software compatible. Curious how the market would act with the following lineup:

Xbox One at $200-250 for 1.xTF.
Xbox One Two at $400 for 5-6TF.
Xbox One Two Three at $700-$750 for 10-11TF.

 

[ramr]

Hrm, that would be interesting to see how the market works out assuming all 3 models are software compatible. Curious how the market would act with the following lineup:

Xbox One at $200-250 for 1.xTF.
Xbox One Two at $400 for 5-6TF.
Xbox One Two Three at $700-$750 for 10-11TF.

That was pretty much my thoughts, except maybe $599 for 123 with little Vega. I am super interested what they do with the slim as there as so many possibilities with the shrink. It seems like a no brainer to replace the GPU with Boffin.

 

[milk]

And then the Xbox Two Three download-only spin off without the optical media drive:
Xbox One Two Three Go!

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Sure -

My thoughts on the XB 1-2 leak. Given the polaris 10 pricing, the 6TF model from the leaks seems like a 2016 polaris SKU. If it is 2017 a 10TF+ Vega SKU seems more appropriate as a premium SKU - well unless they are doing both of course.

AMD graphics architectures going forwards are meant to be scalable. Meaning it doesn't have to be based around any desktop or mobile specific part (IE - Polaris 10) but instead are based on the overall architecture (IE - Polaris). The customer is able to specify how much of each functional block it wants (more or less CUs, for example). So, for example, PS4 Neo is likely using Polaris but in a configuration that is unlikely, albeit still possible, to match up with either Polaris 10 or 11.

Considering this is meant for the living room, I'd hazard a guess that the Vega architecture is more aligned with that than the Polaris architecture as AMD are saying that it has significantly better perf/watt than Polaris which would be important in a living room console using an SOC. And when considering 6 to 10 TFLOPs that just makes Vega even more likely to be the one used due to power consumed during gaming. Again using PS4 as an example, they could have gone with significantly greater than 4 TFLOPs, if power consumption wasn't an important consideration in console design. But it is, and I'm sure they'd like to keep the machine under 150 watts when gaming and probably closer to 100 watts than 150 watts.

If it was launching this year, then Polaris is the no brainer (along with something closer in performance to PS4 Neo). If it's fall of next year, Vega seems more likely.

Regards,
SB

 

[eastmen]

I think you are vastly underestimating the power of price. The $100 price difference at launch is likely responsible for most of the market share difference in the current consoles.

A $199 XB1 slim would easily outsell a $299 PS4 in relevant territories.

If MS replaces the GPU in the Slim with Boffin, then they could have a $199 box that is substantially more powerful than the PS4 @$299 and with no meaningful difference from the $399 NEO at 1080P, i.e. sufficient umph for steady 1080P60. From a strategy standpoint, that is absolutely the route that I would go.

MS doesn't have to replace anything on the xbox one.

THe sdram killed them at launch but it should prove quite a nice advantage going forward. The 32MB of it should scale quite nicely and the APU should be pretty tinny on 14nm for them. Even the DDR 3 ram should be cheaper. They may even be able to put in low wattage DDR 3 at this point.


I wonder if they are able to get 360 bc on their streaming stick. If they can do that or even put a full xbox on in a small enclosure like I speculated in another thread they could take the low end and with scorpio the high end and leave sony stuck in the middle.

$100 apple tv / intel nuc sized enclosure digital only with a 512/1tb sized Hardrive . This would play xbox 360 / xbox one titles. Built in streaming from Scorpio

$200/$250 Xbox one slim 4k. This would be the xbox one with a 4k bluray player , 1tb hardrive and new wireless . Scorpio streaming

$400-$500 Xbox scorpio 5-10Tflop machine with an ssd and bluray 4k .



A set up like that would be nice. On my main living room tv which is 4k , I can hook up the scorpio but if my gf or visting family wants to watch tv on it , I can play in my office with my xbox one at 1080p streaming or even if the basement with the $100 option.

 

[function]

THe sdram killed them at launch but it should prove quite a nice advantage going forward. The 32MB of it should scale quite nicely and the APU should be pretty tinny on 14nm for them. Even the DDR 3 ram should be cheaper. They may even be able to put in low wattage DDR 3 at this point.

The esram gets a lot of stick, but what would X1 have been like without it?

- A 256-bit GDDR5 interface would have been larger than the DDR3 one so you'd have lost a good chunk of the die area freed up by ditching the esram. The chip would still have been almost as big as the PS4 SoC (check out the die shots if you don't believe me!).

- With the extra power needed for the GDDR5 and its bus MS would have had to lower clocks to get down to their power targets and have their silent machine. So it would probably have performed even worse than it does now.

- The huge interface may have made the SoC practically unshrinkable.

So it would likely have performed worse, cost just as much and been un-slimmable (so actually more expensive) going forwards. That's not a win.

Folks should stop blaming esram for MS's terrible decisions about where to target X1.

 

[ramr]

MS doesn't have to replace anything on the xbox one.

THe sdram killed them at launch but it should prove quite a nice advantage going forward. The 32MB of it should scale quite nicely and the APU should be pretty tinny on 14nm for them. Even the DDR 3 ram should be cheaper. They may even be able to put in low wattage DDR 3 at this point.


I wonder if they are able to get 360 bc on their streaming stick. If they can do that or even put a full xbox on in a small enclosure like I speculated in another thread they could take the low end and with scorpio the high end and leave sony stuck in the middle.

$100 apple tv / intel nuc sized enclosure digital only with a 512/1tb sized Hardrive . This would play xbox 360 / xbox one titles. Built in streaming from Scorpio

$200/$250 Xbox one slim 4k. This would be the xbox one with a 4k bluray player , 1tb hardrive and new wireless . Scorpio streaming

$400-$500 Xbox scorpio 5-10Tflop machine with an ssd and bluray 4k .



A set up like that would be nice. On my main living room tv which is 4k , I can hook up the scorpio but if my gf or visting family wants to watch tv on it , I can play in my office with my xbox one at 1080p streaming or even if the basement with the $100 option.

Question for more knowledgeable folks, as part of the ole 1-2 punch is there any reason why MS would NOT go with Boffin in the slim? That would add very minimal space to the die, and that plus FinFet upclocks and architecture changes to improve bandwidth through compression should be enough power (16 CU x 1200/800 MHz = 2.4 TF with higher IPC or ~ 50% increase over PS4) to get consistent 1080P60. At 1200 MHz, esRAM would have theoretical peak > 300 GB/s. Faster DDR4, main memory up to 80 GB/s or more. All of that selling for $249 or less.

 

[eastmen]

Question for more knowledgeable folks, as part of the ole 1-2 punch is there any reason why MS would NOT go with Boffin in the slim? That would add very minimal space to the die, and that plus FinFet upclocks and architecture changes to improve bandwidth through compression should be enough power (16 CU x 1200/800 MHz = 2.4 TF with higher IPC or ~ 50% increase over PS4) to get consistent 1080P60. At 1200 MHz, esRAM would have theoretical peak > 300 GB/s. Faster DDR4, main memory up to 80 GB/s or more. All of that selling for $249 or less.

Because it will cost more than the current xbox one soc.

The Xbox one SOC will be tiny on 14nm and it already plays xbox one games just fine. They should be able to stay cheaper than sony through the generation while a change of SOC and ram will just increase price.

What you describe above would not sell for $249 or less unless ms eats some cost , everything would be more expensive than the xbox one.

Also why would they need a more powerful low end console when they have scorpio coming out. The goal is to have a good price difference between the two. I would suspect scorpio will come in at $400-$500 depending on its power and you'd want the xbox one at $200 .

If they can't do it at 14nm then I would suspect they'd want the xbox one at 10nm to be their media stick / box

 

[Shifty Geezer]

What's 'boffin'? Internet's coming up with nothing.

 

[function]

Baffin?

A new GPU architecture is basically a new console rather than a cost revised model.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Baffin?

Ah, 'Boffin' is a typo.

 

[Megadrive1988]

What's 'boffin'? Internet's coming up with nothing.

Baffin?

A new GPU architecture is basically a new console rather than a cost revised model.

'Baffin' is the small, lower end Polaris 11 GPU for laptops.

'Ellesmere' is the upper midrange Polaris 10 GPU (Radeon RX480).

'Greenland' is the large, very highend Vega 10 flagship GPU. This will have HBM2.

http://www.kitguru.net/components/g...gpus-for-2016-greenland-baffin-and-ellesmere/

That article is from August 2015, when less was known. AMD's new family of GPUs was still known as Arctic Islands back then.

Assuming there is a Vega 11 GPU that's somewhat smaller than Vega 10, I don't think its codename has been outed yet.

Edit: saw this:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/03/amd-gpu-vega-navi-revealed/

AMD also confirmed that there will be at least two GPUs released under Vega: Vega 10 and Vega 11. This is similar to Polaris, which consists of the Polaris 10 and Polaris 11 GPUs, the latter of which is presumed to be a smaller GPU intended for laptops and mid-range graphics cards.

 

[wco81]

What is that? Some Brit slang?