Next Gen Consoles

Stitch1

Weaksauce
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Has anyone else started down the rabbit hole of what the next gen consoles might bring in the way of performance gains and what that might mean for gaming as a whole?

Things we know so far.
AMD Zen 2 CPU: This alone is a huge leap in performance as the Jags currently used has been the biggest thing holding current hardware back in terms of performance.

8 core 16 thread CPU: With devs now working with this as the baseline PC gaming should see a huge jump in performance.

Custom Navi GPU: While a chip upgrade brings in more muscle to push performance, I am more excited about...
RDNA Architecture: Because they will be using Navi we will get all the gains from the advancement of graphics architectures over the last 7 years. Current gen hardware is really based on early GCN architecture. Digital Foundry recently did a comparison video of how much architecture changes from Tahiti GCN 1.0 to Polaris GCN 4.0 to Polaris GCN 4.0 (4 more compute units) to Navi (same 36 compute units) at worse we are looking at a 30% gains in from the architecture alone.

14Gbps GDDR6 system memory: We still don't know how much ram will be provided. It would be surprising to see the the kind of jumps we've had in the past. However, anything is possible.

Custom Low level integrated Storage SSD: A lot has been said about how they are going to be able to pull of the claims from both Microsoft and Sony. The idea is to get to next to no loading times. Something even the PC isn't currently capable of using NVME.

Ray Tracing: Sony has said they will have ray tracing but not saying how they plan to handle it. Microsoft on the other hand has stated they will have hardware enhanced ray tracing. The thing to remember about ray tracing is that up until the Nvidia RTX lineup, that type of integer processing was completed at the CPU level. I will be interested to see if they use a dedicated chip, part of the GPU or CPU, or even possibly software based (in the case of Sony). Also, I wonder about what the means for the future of PC ray tracing.

Variable Refresh Rate: Xbox has already added this feature and soon more and more TVs will support VRR with the advancement of the HDMI 2.1 spec. As spoiled as we have become with FreeSync and G-Sync, having this available on consoles is a huge deal. No longer will we see tearing like what was common place in the 360 era and being locked in at 30, 60, or even 120 won't matter quite as much as it does today. Combined with the dynamic resolution tricks currently seen in gaming I think this will help the new hardware meet or exceed expectations for a buttery smooth experience.

Now the fun part. Speculation. The goal post seems pretty much set that 4k 60 needs to become the norm. Microsoft seems to be setting their bar even higher with 120fps. Being that these are 400 to 500 dollar boxes and current PC prices for that kind of performance seems far fetched at that price point. However, looking back at how good current games were able to look and run with such outdated and weak hardware, looking at you Jaguar CPUs, and how far technology has come. DX11 to Mantle to Vulcan and to DX12, giving devs more access API commands and lessen the burden on driver and software support. Think about the more efficiency in processing with additions of asynchronous compute with less idling compute units. Also, the addition of more, complex, and powerful compute units. This might be a much bigger leap than we have seen in a very long time.
 
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Has anyone else started down the rabbit hole of what the next gen consoles might bring in the way of performance gains and what that might mean for gaming as a whole?

Things we know so far.
AMD Zen 2 CPU: This alone is a huge leap in performance as the Jags currently used has been the biggest thing holding current hardware back in terms of performance.

8 core 16 thread CPU: With devs now working with this as the baseline PC gaming should see a huge jump in performance.

Custom Navi GPU: While a chip upgrade brings in more muscle to push performance, I am more excited about...
RDNA Architecture: Because they will be using Navi we will get all the gains from the advancement of graphics architectures over the last 7 years. Current gen hardware is really based on early GCN architecture. Digital Foundry recently did a comparison video of how much architecture changes from Tahiti GCN 1.0 to Polaris GCN 4.0 to Polaris GCN 4.0 (4 more compute units) to Navi (same 36 compute units) at worse we are looking at a 30% gains in from the architecture alone.

14Gbps GDDR6 system memory: We still don't know how much ram will be provided. It would be surprising to see the the kind of jumps we've had in the past. However, anything is possible.

Custom Low level integrated Storage SSD: A lot has been said about how they are going to be able to pull of the claims from both Microsoft and Sony. The idea is to get to next to no loading times. Something even the PC isn't currently capable of using NVME.

Ray Tracing: Sony has said they will have ray tracing but not saying how they plan to handle it. Microsoft on the other hand has stated they will have hardware enhanced ray tracing. The thing to remember about ray tracing is that up until the Nvidia RTX lineup, that type of integer processing was completed at the CPU level. I will be interested to see if they use a dedicated chip, part of the GPU or CPU, or even possibly software based (in the case of Sony). Also, I wonder about what the means for the future of PC ray tracing.

Variable Refresh Rate: Xbox has already added this feature and soon more and more TVs will support VRR with the advancement of the HDMI 2.1 spec. As spoiled as we have become with FreeSync and G-Sync, having this available on consoles is a huge deal. No longer will we see tearing like what was common place in the 360 era and being locked in at 30, 60, or even 120 won't matter quite as much as it does today. Combined with the dynamic resolution tricks currently seen in gaming I think this will help the new hardware meet or exceed expectations for a buttery smooth experience.

Now the fun part. Speculation. The goal post seems pretty much set that 4k 60 needs to become the norm. Microsoft seems to be setting their bar even higher with 120fps. Being that these are 400 to 500 dollar boxes and current PC prices for that kind of performance seems far fetched at that price point. However, looking back at how good current games were able to look and run with such outdated and weak hardware, looking at you Jaguar CPUs, and how far technology has come. DX11 to Mantle to Vulcan and to DX12, giving devs more access API commands and lessen the burden on driver and software support. Think about the more efficiency in processing with additions of asynchronous compute with less idling compute units. Also, the addition of more, complex, and powerful compute units. This might be a much bigger leap than we have seen in a very long time.
They going to be $500+. Don't expect 120fps at 4k from anything outside simple indie games. It is going to be a huge leap sure. It will push PC games more like every generation of consoles has. Sony is probably going with their own custom low level API like always. MS still won't have any games.
 
Two things i don’t buy.

“No loading”. If PC can’t do it in any iteration now, in 2019 even regardless of cost — then console can’t do it in 2020 at console prices. No way no how.

120FPS at 4K. Ain’t happening. Not in they way we consider it on PC at Max Settings anyway.

Next gen consoles are basically equivalent to a Ryzen 2700 performance with a 1080TI right? That’s a HUGE step up from current gen — and a really solid gaming platform on PC! But it’s not even a 4K 60hz arrangement on max settings with current gen PC games — never mind next gen.

I’m excited about everything else. And I think it’s a big deal for PC gamers to have that much horsepower available as the base platform for game development. It’ll move the ball forward on game engines and graphic detail significantly. VRR integration is huge and makes specific FPS numbers largely irrelevant. I don’t care about capped 120hz when VRR is on the table. VRR makes continuous capping of FPS moot.
 
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I am still thinking $400 is the target price but with the tariffs in place I could easily see $500 as their base price.

I'm not so sure on the 120 4K. While it may not be completely the norm I could see it as the target for some AAA games. IE: how 60 is the target on the Pro/X games currently. However, I don't think it will be a solid 120 or a solid 4k as we know them today on PC. Look at the new Call of Duty engine and what its doing with temporal supersampling. Any one frame may not be a solid 4k but they do dynamic tricks throughout the frame to give both the look and feel of a solid experience. This looks to have replaced checker boarding and it probably the same tricks that will be used going forward to get 4k 120 with the horsepower of the next gen systems.

Sony and Microsoft both put their own secret sauce into their consoles. I think M$ might have the better blend with the lessons learned from their backcompat emulation team. The same tech they used to upscale their older games could be leveraged with even current gen games on current gen hardware. Reading in between the lines on some of their interviews it seems they are planning to use it for current gen games running on their next gen hardware to give them that impressive "enhanced edition" look on the new system. If you've played any 360 game on an X you'll know what I am talking about.

I find it comical that you say Microsoft will still have no games. I remember the trends on the PS3/360 era where it was Sony was the one with no games. Even the launch of this gen people claimed Sony had no games. Then the PS4 took off and the story reversed. Microsoft made a HUGE blunder this generation. There's no doubt about that. Almost everything they wanted to do at launch had to be scraped and then they canceled game after game and didn't have the install base to support second party exclusives. Titanfall and Sunset Overdrive ring a bell. Heck, even Tomb Raider didn't help the bleeding at the time. Then the attempt to right the ship with the Halo collection blew up in their face when the game launched in horrible shape. Things are just now turning around for them but this gen is for sure an overall loss. However, they are in really good shape to start the next one. Backwards compatibility and Game Pass both are excellent features and make owning their system a good value again. To say they will have no games is comical because of all the studios they recently purchased. Plus they are launching with a revamped from the ground up Halo. Gears 5 just launched to rave reviews. Give them time. They are making good for the next gen.

Now don't discount Sony and what they have done with their studios lately. When Sony was going through a similar hell at the start of the PS3 era they were able to launch some much loved franchises. Uncharted came out at the right time for them. They had some success with Resistance but had some real stinkers as well. LAIR anyone? Naughty Dog flexed their muscles and kicked off both Unchared and Last of Us at a time when Sony needed them most. However, Sony is now saying they want to make less of these single player experiences so that they can take longer fine tune and craft these types of games. I will say as of right now Sony has some of the best devs for single player story driven experiences. My worry is a lot of their eggs are set to hatch soon rather than with the next gen. So much so that I've decided to wait for the next gen to even play their latest crop of games. They have already confirmed PS5 will be backwards compatable with PS4. Death Stranding, Last of Us 2 can wait for new hardware for me.



No loading does seem far fetched but with both of them talking about it this early on as their main selling point makes me put credibility to it. They will have the bandwidth with PCI4 and having very fast (even with current SSDs) transfer speeds. As well as whatever custom transfer algorithm they come up with due to being a closed ecosystem.... They may just do it. Or, if nothing else shorten them enough that they become nominal. If they are able to make a game like Witcher 3 go from what feels like a life time to load on current hardware to a few seconds on the new console... Call me impressed.

Yes, you are correct. They are targeting 2700 performance at half the power consumption. The GPU side things are a little more cloudy and seems harder to compare to current GPUs. But yes ball park seems to be anywhere as low as a 1070 to as high as a 1080ti in raw horsepower. But I think the difference is how they put the rubber to the road. (poor analogy) But I still don't expect the same 4k 60 max settings we are used to on PC. Again the consoles can't play by the same rules as the raw power of the PC market. Consoles will never have the same PC "max settings". However, I think both the console and PC games will be better in the long run for it. Think about it this way. If the next gen hardware is able to be optimized to run in a veritable refresh rate between 60 to 120 on hardware that cost less than $500 in the PC market..... What would the high end PC cards be capable of?

Also remember, both next gen consoles are using an APU configuration. So both CPU and GPU are on a single chip. This is probably the most interesting aspect of this. If they are able to optimize performance, keep power draw down, and of course thermals in check. What does that mean for something for a PC version of this kind of hardware where power and heat aren't a limiting factor. The PC future is looking very bright for someone like AMD at the moment. We're just too early to see how this will play out. Should be interesting to see what Intel has up its sleeves as well.

On the flip side, I am very interested to see what 7nm will do for Nvidia's hardware. They should see some real performance gains but will it be as great as Pascal was for them or will their gains slow down again? Turning saw improvement but not to the same level as Pascal. I would like to know more about their road map but they are much more secretive. I would never count them out though. They such a unique company. Just pure speculation but I could see them double down on the ray tracing aspect of their cards. Currently, they are only able to really compute a very small level of rays. Basically, black and white shadow detail and not even all "that" much data. But as their die shrinks they could make a lot more room on the chip for much more powerful integer processing units. This could become their next big advantage in the gaming space. Again time will only tell.
 
The PS3 issue wasn't the no games. It was the price it came out of the game with. It was too damn expensive. What hurt the Xbox one was all the bs drm crap and the price for inferior hardware to the PS4. No games worth owning a Xbox one for were exclusively release that couldn't be found on PC. Tarrifts shouldn't effect Sony much since they generally produce their console in Japan for a year before moving it all to China.
 
Oh, I'm sorry, I must have been mistaken. Sony has no games was never a meme or anything.


Yes, we all agree Xbox pooped the bed with the XBO. Lots of heads were replaced after that and it's taken all generation to get them back on track. You can pretty much trace every Xbox issue back to when Peter Moore left and Don Mattrick took over. Moore was the one that stepped up to the plate when red ring was an issue and talked M$ to shell out to fix the issue with a no questions asked warranty. Did that save the brand? You bet your ass it did. Moore was great and fought to get exclusives or exclusive content on the system. Mattrick on the other hand never seemed to understand why people liked consoles in the first place. He put all his eggs in the Kinnect basket. We all know how that worked out. The interesting thing about the DRM Microsoft was pushing is pretty similar to how Steam and the rest of the PC market works. Their biggest issues was communication. They didn't deliver a clear message and didn't ever explain their vision or why or how it would benefit the consumer. Then you tack on the Windows 8 style experience as your console dashboard (an app for achievements) and you got yourself one mess of a system on your hands.

Sony originally produced the PS3 in Japan but the PS4 has always been built in China as far as I am aware.

I'm not really here to debate the past. Although, it is good to look at when predicting the future. I'm just far more interested in hearing what others know about the next generation and how devs will be able to make better use of new technology.
 
I'm just happy that they keep bringing up FPS. That's a first on the console side of things.
There's no way in hell we're going to see 4K/120 any time soon (and it won't work on 99% of TVs) but 4K (or upscaled 1440p) and 60fps IS within reach.
That combined with quicker load times makes me happy.
I'm also hopeful that some of the rumors related to Sony's next VR project are true. I'm still a believer in VR, but feel that it's just too much of a pain right now. Smaller hardware with wireless (or "less wired") functionality could go a long way toward making it a mainstream option.
 
The PS3 issue wasn't the no games. It was the price it came out of the game with. It was too damn expensive. What hurt the Xbox one was all the bs drm crap and the price for inferior hardware to the PS4. No games worth owning a Xbox one for were exclusively release that couldn't be found on PC. Tarrifts shouldn't effect Sony much since they generally produce their console in Japan for a year before moving it all to China.
No games worth playing is more apt. I felt that a lot of early releases were very gimmicky in that they were focusing too much on graphics and forgot about the gameplay. It really wasn't until about halfway through the console's lifespan did the PS3 get any games I felt were worth playing. We praise the PS4 for its quality lineup of exclusives, but it took awhile for Sony to hit the mark with that lineup on the PS3. Despite the relatively shorter list of games on the PS3 I think Sony understood where the market was going with multiplatform titles and decided to reevaluate the kinds of games they were releasing to make them really stand out among the competition. Microsoft did the opposite and are embracing the multiplatform ecosystem and that strategy has hurt their hardware division in a big way. It will be interesting to see what is going to happen now with both Sony and Microsoft teaming up to try and dominate what they see as the future of game streaming.
 
No loading does seem far fetched but with both of them talking about it this early on as their main selling point makes me put credibility to it. They will have the bandwidth with PCI4 and having very fast (even with current SSDs) transfer speeds. As well as whatever custom transfer algorithm they come up with due to being a closed ecosystem.... They may just do it. Or, if nothing else shorten them enough that they become nominal. If they are able to make a game like Witcher 3 go from what feels like a life time to load on current hardware to a few seconds on the new console... Call me impressed.

I think they said something more to the likes of no more or little loading screens once the game is loaded or something to that effect.

They demoed spiderman loading in 0.83 sec on the new hardware vs 8.10 sec on the PS4 pro (ofc you have to keep in mind this is a current gen game, not next gen) but iirc the dev also said they could have upped spidermans travel speed in the game with these faster loading speeds.

I'm all for some speedier loading speeds as imo that is what currently keeps the consoles almost back as much as the dated CPU and GPU.
 
I think they said something more to the likes of no more or little loading screens once the game is loaded or something to that effect.

They demoed spiderman loading in 0.83 sec on the new hardware vs 8.10 sec on the PS4 pro (ofc you have to keep in mind this is a current gen game, not next gen) but iirc the dev also said they could have upped spidermans travel speed in the game with these faster loading speeds.

I'm all for some speedier loading speeds as imo that is what currently keeps the consoles almost back as much as the dated CPU and GPU.

To be fair, the faster loading is a function of the HDD more then anything; a SSD pretty much covers that performance difference.
 
Lots of next gen info keeps leaking out. Sony has been very friendly giving detailed info to Wired and Digital Foundry has been doing some pretty cool performance tests to give us some idea of how the next gen will compare to current tech. If you haven't seen the "Navi RDNA vs GCN 1.0: Last-Gen vs Next-Gen GPU Tech Head-To-Head" and the “In Theory: Zen 2/Navi PC vs Xbox One X/PS4 Pro - How Much More Performance Could We Get” Digital Foundry videos I would recommend checking them out.


I was having an interesting conversation about content and services with a friend earlier. I would like to open it up to this group as well. We were talking about launch games. We know Halo Infinite is coming with the next Xbox but that’s really all we know currently. However, Xbox has purchased a lot of new studios and even their current studios have been rumored to be working on a lot of new IPs. Something like 6 new IPs. Plus, we have a rumored Fable RPG in the works from Playground Games Studio. While I am sure not all of these will be a home run hit, I am impressed with number of new ideas that are in the works.

On the Sony side there is a lot more unknowns. Rumors of a Demon’s Souls remake as well as a Killzone online multiplayer game. Possibly some sequels for Horizon and Spider-Man are in the works. However, a lot of the Sony teams have just launched or are about to launch big titles, so we won’t get to see anything new from them for a while. While I am sure Sony will have some games at launch it looks like we might see another Sony drought as we wait for more titles post launch.

We were also talking about how most of Sony’s biggest hits this gen were kind of samey. Not that they were bad games or anything but Uncharted, Last of Us, Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, and Days Gone were all third person action games with similar combat. Also, 3 out of the 5 listed were sequels. Again, each were different but not as wildly different as Sony has been in the past. As a side note, at least Sony had games this gen. Looking at you Microsoft. However, having backwards compatibility should minimize any droughts and keeping with the same architecture should allow devs to pump out games at a quicker rate than in generations past.

This is really the first generation were the top contenders are keeping their same architecture. This should prove to be interesting as the hardware becomes less of the focal point giving way to the games and services. Sony seems to have regained focus on PS Now and Xbox has their Game Pass service and have been unlocking their games from their consoles. I am interested to see how some of these ideas’ playout next gen as well as what other new concepts they have in store for us.


Anyone else have any rumors for next gen games? How about new console info? What are you thoughts on Sony’s new rumble triggers in their next controller?
 
The rumble triggers are a good idea, but I suspect most studio's wont bother much with them.

Aside from that, now that crossplay is a thing, I don't expect a lot of exclusives really worth bothering on. Nowadays, I'd actually go exclusively Nintendo/PC, as owning a dedicated gaming console is fast becoming an oxymoron; they're just PCs now.
 
The rumble triggers are a good idea, but I suspect most studio's wont bother much with them.

Aside from that, now that crossplay is a thing, I don't expect a lot of exclusives really worth bothering on. Nowadays, I'd actually go exclusively Nintendo/PC, as owning a dedicated gaming console is fast becoming an oxymoron; they're just PCs now.
Sony makes very good single player exclusives that alone are worth it.
 
Sony does have some great exclusives still and consoles are still great for living room play. Less complicated and easy to navigate from a couch. Also, assuming these next console are around $500 what PC are you getting that can do 4K/60 with some ray tracing and pretty fast loading for that price?

Xbox One already has some feedback in their triggers and its kinda cool. I think it will be used more if both systems support it or at least support something similar.
 
So we know PS5 is going to be on 7nm but I'm starting to here rumblings that Xbox Scarlett might be on 5nm. That's interesting because it could make it more power efficient and or have higher clock speeds.
 
Kind of, yes and no. TSMC and Samsung have both been working on 5nm nodes with mass production scheduled for 2020.

Microsoft choosing to use 5nm could be very interesting because AMD hasn't really talked about 5nm chips yet. Although it's a bit risky because there could always be delays. However, Microsoft has been pretty public about how close their partnership has been over the last year or so.

I will say 5nm sounds far fetched but could really spice things up for this gen.
 
Gaming as a whole? Nothing. They will be more similar to contemporary PCs until they fall behind again. But from a gameplay perspective not much will change. If anything, games are regressing in terms of small details and instead falling to invisible things to make the game longer or to add "complexity" to it, such as many unlocks and upgrades. Back in the early 2000s newer hardware meant bigger maps or skipping those awkward loading points like in Half Life 2. These days, the limitation is creativity and finding out how to fill out these massive worlds.
 
Gaming as a whole? Nothing. They will be more similar to contemporary PCs until they fall behind again. But from a gameplay perspective not much will change. If anything, games are regressing in terms of small details and instead falling to invisible things to make the game longer or to add "complexity" to it, such as many unlocks and upgrades. Back in the early 2000s newer hardware meant bigger maps or skipping those awkward loading points like in Half Life 2. These days, the limitation is creativity and finding out how to fill out these massive worlds.

Personally? Am I alone in frankly getting tied of these open world games? Case in point: I quit God of War because I simply don't have time to invest anymore.

It also doesn't help that we're down to essentially three AAA studios (Activision, EA, Ubi) and a few AA players (Bethdesia, 2k), who are all congregating around the same types of games. Games these days all feel largely the same to me.
 
Personally? Am I alone in frankly getting tied of these open world games? Case in point: I quit God of War because I simply don't have time to invest anymore.

It also doesn't help that we're down to essentially three AAA studios (Activision, EA, Ubi) and a few AA players (Bethdesia, 2k), who are all congregating around the same types of games. Games these days all feel largely the same to me.

I'm sure you're not alone since people's tastes differ and change all the time, but there's certainly a large market for them still, for which I'm am a part of as well. God of War was a relatively linear game still compared to many other popular open world games, and it only takes 20-30 hours to play through completely (I platinum'd it in around 30 hours I think). If you don't have time to invest in that short of a game, then I'm not sure you have time to invest in games in general.

I can certainly get the bore of grinding through a truly open world game, as I've experienced it a bit on other highly-rated games like Breath of the Wild, but I find that if they're executed right to keep you somewhat focused like God of War did with more clear objectives and less distractions (there's side quests, but not an excessive amount like in Zelda), then it can make the game much more enjoyable and engaging.

I just started getting back into PC gaming this year after all the PS4 exclusives I've been playing the past few years, half of which are open world story-driven games; Horizon ZD, God of War, Spiderman, Shadow of the Colossus, RDR2 (console exclusive until next week), then there were the more linear story-driven games like the Naughty Dog games (Uncharted 4 & Lost Legacy), Detroit, Until Dawn, Ratchet and Clank, Bloodborne, and the Yakuza series.

I plan on picking up Death Stranding next month, which is an open world game for sure. I don't think any of these games really felt the same at all and am fairly sure Death Stranding will be a pretty unique game for better or worse with Kojima behind it. Not sure if you're talking about developers or publishers (since you listed both), but there's definitely more AAA studios than the multi-platform ones you mentioned: Naughty Dog, Insomniac, Guerrilla Games, Nintendo, Capcom (they've really stepped up the past couple years), Square Enix, Epic Games, CD Projekt Red, Suckerpunch Games, etc.

If you really enjoy games and don't care about stupid high resolutions and frame rates or kb&m controls for everything (which I only like for FPS, RTS, and maybe some 3rd person games), then you're missing out on some of the best ones by only staying on one or two platforms. But I'd say if you couldn't even get into a game like God of War, then you just don't like that whole genre of games at all anymore or games in general, because those games are as much or more about the story than they are about game-play anyways, but God of Ware specifically struck an awesome balance between both IMO.
 
Ps5 and nextbox will be pretty close to the same, 7nm machines.

Ppl need to understand how does the semi custom business works, and that's exactly what consoles are semi customs. Semi customs are never rolled out in untested process nodes, this is exactly why we don't have 7nm desktop APUs yet even though we have Zen2 cpus, the laptops and APUs are expected to hit at some point next year, some 6 months post initial desktop offers, that's because you need the process to be mature in order to handle the higher complexity of the added graphical cores on the same package.

Any rumor about the nextbox being much better, scrap it as fanboy drivel.


And about samey games, I'll only say "gears, forza, halo" nigga please :rolleyes:
 
Ps5 and nextbox will be pretty close to the same, 7nm machines.

Ppl need to understand how does the semi custom business works, and that's exactly what consoles are semi customs. Semi customs are never rolled out in untested process nodes, this is exactly why we don't have 7nm desktop APUs yet even though we have Zen2 cpus, the laptops and APUs are expected to hit at some point next year, some 6 months post initial desktop offers, that's because you need the process to be mature in order to handle the higher complexity of the added graphical cores on the same package.

Any rumor about the nextbox being much better, scrap it as fanboy drivel.


And about samey games, I'll only say "gears, forza, halo" nigga please :rolleyes:


While I also think they will both use 7nm but I think for different reasons. If you remember, consoles have used pretty wild custom chips in the past. I mean we are only one generation past the PS3's Cell Processor and the 360's Tri-Core Xenon. Both of these were pretty wild for the time. Dual Cores were just becoming a thing in desktops when the 360 was announced and originally the PS3 was going to use two Cell processors but the second one was scraped for the RSX GPU from Nvidia.

At this point anything could happen for the next gen. Fanboy or not Microsoft doesn't wasn't want to be the weakest box again.

Yes the only games M$ has is Gears, Forza, Halo argument. While I can't argue with you that they keep releasing same three games at least all three are pretty different from each other. Third person, racing, first person. But I am pretty sure the winds of change are coming for Xbox. They bought up a lot of studios and I am sure they are going to bring more to the table next gen.

At the same time I still hope Sony keeps doing great as well. I'm not a "fanboy" of either company but rather of a fanboy of the industry as a whole. Everything is better when their is a strong competition going on. Look at how much better Sony made the PS4 over the PS3. The network got so much better then gen. Although we have to pay for it now. Everything is improved. We got more games quicker and they took bigger chances on games this gen. I think they are making some smart moves by making PlayStation a more global company with fewer fragments by region.

M$ wants to grow their Xbox brand is a much different way. They don't want to keep it locked down to a single platform anymore. While the Scarlet will be a great place to play they want to open their games and platform up to the PC side as well. So sure if you are a PC gamer you have less of a reason to by a Scarlet. But you might want to try out their Game Pass subscription.

More people playing games is good for everyone.
 
They weren't that wild if you knew that they had to do with the PowerPC architecture and that cell was a bet that IBM was taking that didn't pan out (most of the cell line is currently dead with a few server options being left), cell was a weak PowerPC central processor with 2 threads + 7 active SPE units.
They seemed extra wild to us standard pc players that mostly grew up in a x86/arm world.

That said, this generation was a massive boom for developers, we got great games right out of the gate, and both console makers took note of how it helped their adoption.

Even if Microsoft wants a leg up they need to be a little more honest with their standing worldwide, even getting a year earlier with the easier architecture they only got parity in marketshare during the xb360 era, this is because they lack brand appeal and it won't be obtained from low yield high cost hardware (which would actually be detrimental to their adoption rate), instead they need to not kill their fringe gaming projects.

Sure they could instead try and get a bit extra hz or more graphic cores, that's viable instead of going 5nm which won't happen.

It's more likely indeed that they will look to expand their ecosystem slowly into the pc market, like they have already started doing, this is a direction in which they do have a leg up VS Sony although Sony could expand ps now streaming to pc relatively easy too so we shall see. Yes I agree that the expansion of their services to pc may be their next battleground.
 
On Revdarian ’s note of MS needing to not kill their fringe gaming projects (I agree), but this is something they can look at how Sony is handling it. Ignoring whatever anyone thinks of Death Stranding as a game/art piece/walking sim/checklist of famous people Kojima knows/whatever. Sony helped fund it. Sony took a big chance betting on Kojima. That’s just the most recent one, they also published games like Bloodborne, Days Gone, God of War, Detroit, The Order 1886, Nioh.

Not all of those games are winners or even particularly good. But they helped developers they don’t own put out the product they wanted to put out. That’s something Microsoft could start doing better. They’ve made strides towards doing that (recore, Sea of Theives, Super Luckys Tale) but not nearly to the same degree in my opinion, and it usually feels like they pull the plug too quickly.

Actually a similar great example is how SquareEnix has funded games from Yoko Taro constantly. Despite most of them being uhhhh less than good in a manner of speaking.
 
They weren't that wild if you knew that they had to do with the PowerPC architecture and that cell was a bet that IBM was taking that didn't pan out (most of the cell line is currently dead with a few server options being left), cell was a weak PowerPC central processor with 2 threads + 7 active SPE units.

Actually, the Cell was a processing monster, but difficult as f to use properly. It's maximum throughput was on the order of 240 GFLOPs, though it's typical throughput was lower (~160 GFLOPs from the people I've talked to). The chip in the 360 would get around 105 GFLOPs by comparison (which makes sense, as it's essentially a stripped down Cell).

The x86 chip in the PS4? It's lucky to get 110 GFLOPs. Or about half the Cells maximum throughput, and about the same as the 360's CPU.
 
Yes the total was a monster thanks to the spe but the main powerpc central unit is single core two threaded weak, you can look up the technical design they went with it, sounded great at the time but it was too complex to program, and it needed all those gflops due to a weak gpu of choice (gpu that was weak because the very first design included none, you were supposed to use the cell for everything, so you have to add the ps4 gpu to the cpu number, even thought we know that it doesn't really work that way)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSX_Reality_Synthesizer
Only 192gflops on the gpu side of things, so yeah you were meant to use the SPE's as much as possible as part of your graphics pipeline.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenos_(graphics_chip)
Here's the Xenos for comparison's sake, with 240 GFlops it doesn't look absurdly more powerful on paper (just 25%), the thing with both architectures being relatively close but so different in the minutiae of how they were balanced affected the ps3 greatly, a fast port from pc to the 360 was relatively simple since cpu to cpu and gpu to gpu seems initially simple and from the 360 to the ps3 seemed simple too, but if you didn't do a heavy amount of extra work distributing some usual graphic jobs to the SPE's your port would be subpar and this happened constantly through most of the 7th generation.

There were other pluses that the Xbox360 had under its sleeves tho with the unified memory and the very fast cache that allowed almost free antialiasiang easily but in any case my point was that the underlying cpus seemed to be pretty standard, and you could get initial code running relatively easily on them (again powerpc wasn't that uncommon except for us pc users).

If you look further back you will see that the contrived ps3 design had been more or less the norm for console hardware and maybe that's also why I don't find them as wild designs . The ps2 was actually more contrived even.

In any case I strongly doubt that after tasting the benefits of the simplified development platforms any console vendor would want to go back to the multi mixed chip madness.
 
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Taking risks and helping devs make the game they want to make seems to be Phil Spencer's new MO. Look at the announcements from XO19 yesterday. Nothing too crazy but you can tell he's working hard to rebuild the Xbox portfolio. Granted, most of these games look more focused on younger players. However, the variety of games was nice chance of pace. Also, listening to him talk in a few interviews afterwords he stated he still has a few game announcements left to make before the end of the year. My bet would be during the Video Game Awards. I also, fully expect Sony to have something to show a the Awards show.

I know this generation was rough on Xbox. They shot themselves in the foot before it even started. Then they canceled a ton of projects. Then followed that up with a bunch of misses and buggy launches. Thus turning their platform into Gear/Forza/Halo. However, they do seem to shifted gears and righted the ship that they should be more competitive next generation. Also, their commitment to Game Pass needs to be applauded. It's currently the most consumer friendly thing to happen to the game industry.

As much as I am kind of frustrated with Sony for skipping E3 this year, they really did lay down a very smooth road map to next gen. Death Stranding just came out, Final Fantasy VII R, Last of Us 2, and then Ghost of Tsushima. I am sure we should start hearing about PS5 titles either at the Game Awards or early next year. Sony kind of knocked this gen out of the park without even trying too hard. I was just watching some videos about how they almost canceled God of War. Yet, it turned out to be one of their best selling games. With that many home runs on their exclusives, there's no real reason to look elsewhere for multi-plat games.

As for the hardware powering these systems, If nothing else, these new CPUs should make a huge difference over the weak sauce Jags we had this generation. While, it's impressive to see what we are getting with the base hardware being a custom Radeon HD7850. However, jumping up into a "real" CPU and modern GPU should make for a bigger leap than we saw last time around. Without even knowing what final specs will be I am already sold on the performance gains. I just want to see the software that that these will be powering. I also hope Sony does what Microsoft has and adds full backwards compatibility with game enhancements. I have wanted to go back and play the Resistance games from the PS3 era for a while. I would also like to revisit Metal Gear Solid 4.
 
Speaking of Xbox I just watched this video on it. Pretty interesting looking at how big of blunder they made and how far they've come.

 
https://wccftech.com/amd-rdna2-support-for-raytracing-variable-rate-shading/

Pretty much all info that has been rumored for awhile. But interesting to see it coming up again now that the series X has been announced.

I never made a post about Sony's State of Play from the other day. While nothing ground breaking it was at least something. RE3 coming next spring was a nice announcement. Even if it's been rumored for a bit. I also liked seeing the tease for Ghost of Tsushina. While the indie games don't get me too excited it was nice to see that Sony had something to show before year end. I do wish they would have done this a wee bit sooner.

The Game Awards were a surprise. Not only did we get our first look at a PS5 title, Godfall, but also a look at the new Xbox Series X. I didn't see that one coming. The Trailer for Hell Blade 2 was very cool. I haven't played the first but means it's on Gamepass I am going to check it out.

I can't wait until they both start showing off the details of the systems. The little things that make each of them different from one another and most importantly the games. Both companies seem to have their act together for once. I hope for everyone's sake neither of them shoots themselves in the foot again. Having too many good games to play and too many good consoles to choose from is the kind of problem I would like to have.
 
How much are these things gonna cost?

Let's see mass produced pricing ballparks: (guesstimating) Probably a little high - but still cheaper than retail sales at current.

  • upgraded 5700 or 5700XT' ish = $300
  • Gen 5 AMD Ryzen barebones Motherboard = $50
  • upgraded Ryzen 2700/3700' ish with heatsink = $150
  • 12GB DDR5? = $150
  • 4K UHD BR ROM= $50
  • Custom Case = $50
  • New Gamepad = $40
  • Samsung 1TB PCI-E4x NVME = $80
  • 300 watt PSU and case fan = $25
  • Box and packaging = $10
  • Assembly, packaging, and shipping to retail partner cost = $50

~ $1000 ish -- and that's with no profit margin, nor headroom for RMA's returns, etc.


Something's not quite right with these figures -- PS3 at $600 was a flop. I don't think MS wants to lose money per console - they've said as much, and has this thing got any chance of succeeding at $800 ish or greater, where PS3 had previously flopped?

Is MS thinking it can get $1k for the new consoles? $800? $600? What are they cutting out at $600?
 
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I don't think Microsoft ever said they weren't willing to lose money on every system sold. They did say they won't sacrifice power for price. As well as they won't be out of position on power or price when it's launched.
 
How much are these things gonna cost?

Let's see mass produced pricing ballparks: (guesstimating) Probably a little high - but still cheaper than retail sales at current.

  • upgraded 5700 or 5700XT' ish = $300
  • Gen 5 AMD Ryzen barebones Motherboard = $50
  • upgraded Ryzen 2700/3700' ish with heatsink = $150
  • 12GB DDR5? = $150
  • 4K UHD BR ROM= $50
  • Custom Case = $50
  • New Gamepad = $40
  • Samsung 1TB PCI-E4x NVME = $80
  • 300 watt PSU and case fan = $25
  • Box and packaging = $10
  • Assembly, packaging, and shipping to retail partner cost = $50

~ $1000 ish -- and that's with no profit margin, nor headroom for RMA's returns, etc.


Something's not quite right with these figures -- PS3 at $800 was a flop. I don't think MS wants to lose money per console - they've said as much, and has this thing got any chance of succeeding at $800 ish or greater, where PS3 had previously flopped?

Is MS thinking it can get $1k for the new consoles? $800? $600? What are they cutting out at $600?
You're making the mistake of using consumer prices on what you assume to be equivalent hardware to estimate the cost to the manufacturer. You're also using current market prices, not prospective prices for when these things will be released at the end of next year. Besides that, consoles are always sold at a loss or close to cost while software licensing makes up for it.

PS3 was $600 at launch for the 60 GB model, $500 for the 20 GB model. Xbox 360 was $500 for the Premium model with a 20 GB hard drive included while the Core model without hard drive was $400.

That said, I am in the $600 territory for price of these consoles. Maybe $600 for the Xbox Series X and $400-500 for the weaker model.
 
How much are these things gonna cost?

Let's see mass produced pricing ballparks: (guesstimating) Probably a little high - but still cheaper than retail sales at current.

  • upgraded 5700 or 5700XT' ish = $300
  • Gen 5 AMD Ryzen barebones Motherboard = $50
  • upgraded Ryzen 2700/3700' ish with heatsink = $150
  • 12GB DDR5? = $150
  • 4K UHD BR ROM= $50
  • Custom Case = $50
  • New Gamepad = $40
  • Samsung 1TB PCI-E4x NVME = $80
  • 300 watt PSU and case fan = $25
  • Box and packaging = $10
  • Assembly, packaging, and shipping to retail partner cost = $50

~ $1000 ish -- and that's with no profit margin, nor headroom for RMA's returns, etc.


Something's not quite right with these figures -- PS3 at $600 was a flop. I don't think MS wants to lose money per console - they've said as much, and has this thing got any chance of succeeding at $800 ish or greater, where PS3 had previously flopped?

Is MS thinking it can get $1k for the new consoles? $800? $600? What are they cutting out at $600?

Your prices are way too high, Remember MS is going to order millions of these over the next several years. Not only do they get insane volume discounts but they seek out suppliers willing to offer the lowest price for what they're after.

The APU isn't going to be more than a couple hundred (AMD probably won't make much profit per-unit), maybe $300 at absolute most.
The motherboard will be $5-10
Why would they use DDR5? If anything they'll use GDDR6 for everything. They're not likely to use top end 14Gbps GDDR6 either. Possibly the 8 or 12Gbps versions. Last year the price for 12GB at those speeds would range from $80 to $128, but given over-time cost decreases and sheer volume I doubt MS will be paying over $60-70 for it.
MS pays an estimated $33.50 per unit for the 4K BD drive in the S and X, they're not going to be paying $50 a pop for the one in the XSX.
Tooling for the case likely costs 100s of thousands up front, but total per unit cost is probably under $20.
No way the Gamepad costs them $40 to produce, especially since its just a slight modification of the XB1 pad.
What makes you think they're using PCI-E Gen 4 or Samsung for the NvME drive? They're not going to jump for the highest end drive possible, that would be stupid. Even the XBX still uses a 5400 RPM hard drive.
$25 seems high for the PSU and fan.
Lol. No. Boxes and packaging doesn't cost $10. Packing it in the US wouldn't even cost that much.
Where did this number come from? These companies get big discounts on shipping since they do such high volume. Assembly is likely going to be as automated as possible and given how little Chinese workers get paid. You've also included packaging twice.
 
You're making the mistake of using consumer prices on what you assume to be equivalent hardware to estimate the cost to the manufacturer. You're also using current market prices, not prospective prices for when these things will be released at the end of next year. Besides that, consoles are always sold at a loss or close to cost while software licensing makes up for it.

PS3 was $600 at launch for the 60 GB model, $500 for the 20 GB model. Xbox 360 was $500 for the Premium model with a 20 GB hard drive included while the Core model without hard drive was $400.

That said, I am in the $600 territory for price of these consoles. Maybe $600 for the Xbox Series X and $400-500 for the weaker model.

$500 seems more reasonable (and it's where all rumors seem to be pointing at these days). $600 wouldn't do well in the market and Sony would definitely massively undercut them, again, if they tried.
 
You're making the mistake of using consumer prices on what you assume to be equivalent hardware to estimate the cost to the manufacturer. You're also using current market prices, not prospective prices for when these things will be released at the end of next year. Besides that, consoles are always sold at a loss or close to cost while software licensing makes up for it.

PS3 was $600 at launch for the 60 GB model, $500 for the 20 GB model. Xbox 360 was $500 for the Premium model with a 20 GB hard drive included while the Core model without hard drive was $400.

That said, I am in the $600 territory for price of these consoles. Maybe $600 for the Xbox Series X and $400-500 for the weaker model.

Xbox 360 launched at $400/$300 actually. It was hugely cheaper than the PS3
 
Xbox 360 launched at $400/$300 actually. It was hugely cheaper than the PS3

Yeah that's true, but that $300 core version pretty much forced you to buy another $100 in accessories like storage since it came with no HDD installed or internal storage to save game files on, AV cables since it only came with composite instead of component cables, and it came with a wired controller instead of wireless. So it was incredibly stripped down just to get it down to that price point. PS3 came with everything you'd need and want at least and even had HDMI from the start at least. 360 didn't even have HDMI on the console until a year or so after launch when they revised them to fix the common RROD issues.
 
Yeah that's true, but that $300 core version pretty much forced you to buy another $100 in accessories like storage since it came with no HDD installed or internal storage to save game files on, AV cables since it only came with composite instead of component cables, and it came with a wired controller instead of wireless. So it was incredibly stripped down just to get it down to that price point. PS3 came with everything you'd need and want at least and even had HDMI from the start at least. 360 didn't even have HDMI on the console until a year or so after launch when they revised them to fix the common RROD issues.


Yeah, main thing I was trying to point out is that they listed the price as being +100 over what it was.
 
Yeah that's true, but that $300 core version pretty much forced you to buy another $100 in accessories like storage since it came with no HDD installed or internal storage to save game files on, AV cables since it only came with composite instead of component cables, and it came with a wired controller instead of wireless. So it was incredibly stripped down just to get it down to that price point. PS3 came with everything you'd need and want at least and even had HDMI from the start at least. 360 didn't even have HDMI on the console until a year or so after launch when they revised them to fix the common RROD issues.
True. Every store at launch only had 1 or 2 Premiums in stock first come, first served. I only was able to get a Core and ended up spending over $400 anyway to get the 20GB HDD ($100) and component video cable ($40).

The PS3 did not come with an HDMI cable. All launch models of the PS3 only came with a composite cable. It was completely baffling to me at the time given that these were being advertised as "HD" consoles with Blu-ray video playback and they didn't even give you that capability out of the box.
 
Microsoft could spec the next Xbox and twice the performance as the PS5 - I'll still be buying a PS5 as Sony has all the good exclusives and Xbox games for the most part come out on PC anyway.
 
Microsoft could spec the next Xbox and twice the performance as the PS5

I'm not following.. did you mean "spec the next Xbox to be twice the performance as the PS5"? Because that's not possible if they want to come in at anywhere near the price of the PS5 or anywhere near the reasonable $500 price point that most people expect both consoles to come in at at launch. Just like the current generation, I don't expect there to be much of a performance difference between both console's base versions initially. The PS4 was only slightly more powerful than the Xbone when they launched; they both used essentially the same CPU and GPU with the PS4 using a bit better memory configuration AFAIK, which is what allowed it to stay closer to 1080p in most games compared to the Xbone's 900p. I don't suspect any more of a difference between the next gen consoles either way unless MS decides to delay their console launch to be considerably longer after the launch of the PS5 in order to have newer hardware in it, which I don't expect will happen.
 
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