Duderino

1 hour ago, Paperclyp said:

It appears you agree with half of what Phil said lol. He said the XB1 was underpowered and...another thing. 

I agree that the Kinect added to their costs and that the Xbox one was underpowered.  

I do believe with a more focused approach from the get go they could have delivered a more competitive Xbox One at $399 or a much more compelling system at $499.

22 hours ago, Paperclyp said:

I don't think packing in Kinect was really all that risky. They made a lot of poor decisions with the launch of it. 

 

But I agree I don't think $499 is outlandish or unbelievable. As I said before, I don't have a lot of confidence in forecasting what they're gonna do. But I do think they care what Sony is doing and that the PS5's pricing will dictate on some level what they're gonna do. 

I agree with Phil Spencer’s take:

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We launched a box that was underpowered compared to the PlayStation, and more expensive because of the inclusion of [motion-sensing camera] Kinect in every box. Underpowered and overpriced was ... not the right model for us.

The gamble on Kinect hampered their ability to deliver a competitive console in terms of power and price.

Going by the X and the numbers being tossed around, my guess is power will continue to be Microsoft’s priority with the Series X.  Like with 4K and the X, I can’t see MS comprising on their vision with the Series X to match whatever the PS5 will cost.

1 hour ago, Paperclyp said:

No it’s not. It’s much less risky.

Neither come close to the risk Microsoft took with packing the Kinect in with the Xbox One.  

$500 for a powerful new console in 2020 is not all that far fetched. (Assuming 500)

12 minutes ago, SimpleG said:

Is there an actual link that gives sale figures for the x1x cause I cant find any?

The closest you’ll find is an NPD rep’s comments back in 2018:

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Xbox One sales show the highest growth of the three major hardware platforms in the U.S. this year, and the Xbox One X in particular has been performing phenomenally... year-over-year growth like this at this point in the cycle has never been seen before, driven by launch of the Xbox One X and new content delivery efforts. It's a mid-generation turnaround the market's never seen before. This qualifies as phenomenal, even if not market leading.

In other words Microsoft saw a big turnaround with the introduction of the X.

5 hours ago, Paperclyp said:

The 1X is a different thing. It was marketed as a high end thing mid-generation for a demographic they knew was going to be there. 
 

Head to head to start a new generation, I believe MS is still going to care about getting an established base going with their new hardware that isn’t just the people willing to shell out $500. Price and narrative were huge swings in each of the last two console generations. 
 

It’s not going to blow me away if I’m wrong - I don’t have strong convictions about it. 

Agreed that this is a different situation. An expensive high-end mid-gen refresh is a tougher sell than an expensive premium next-gen console.  If the X could sell well at $500, the Series X certainly can too, especially to early adopters so long as the added value is there.  (where the PS3 and Xbox One launches failed)
 

Lockheart will in all likelihood be their broader market solution.

6 minutes ago, legend said:

 

Dying, to the point that businesses are considering different long-term plans based on not being able to rely on it, but not yet dead.

 

That said, you probably shouldn't go by Moore's law if the thing you actually want to measure is video game performance; especially not if you're measuring perceived performance.

Depends on who you ask.

1 minute ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

And interesting point to consider is this, the X1X is 6TF and the new system will be 12TF. While I realize that this seems like a huge jump in power, it kinda isn't. With enough tricks (dynamic resolution, slightly toned down processing effects, etc) and a dip in frame rate, I'm guessing that many if not all of the first year Xbox Series X games can and will run on the X1X. So the low budget version of Series X might already be here. 

The CPU and SSD are a big enough bump to limit what games moving forward can be back ported.  I agree though about that first year, we’ll see many cross gen tittles.

34 minutes ago, JPDunks4 said:

 

I'd say that's pretty debatable.  The One X did little to nothing for overall Xbox sales in comparison to Sony's.  They earned the narrative of most powerful box, but by that time the narrative had pivoted to exclusives and first party support.  Power no longer really mattered much, especially when once again, the differences in performance between the One X and PS4 Pro in many cases were literally debating, one checkerboards 4k slightly more or less than the other.  

 

I honestly think game performance is what people are looking for these days far more than "resolution" arguments.  Essentially none of the PC gamers I know care much about 4k gaming. They focus entirely on frame rates.  So many are completely content with a 1080p monitor just maximizing their FPS.  When the One X did so little for framerates, I think a lot were left disappointed.  

 

I remember when PUBG released around the same time as the One X, and couldn't play the game at even a stable 30fps.  So many were arguing eventually they'd patch it to be 60fps, not realizing the limitation was in the CPU.  

 

But yeah I'm off on a tangent.  I don't really know if Microsoft would consider the One X a huge success.

I’ll simply put it this way; with the 1X, I very much doubt Xbox execs were kicking themselves in the foot for launching another $500 console.

5 hours ago, Paperclyp said:

And the results of each of those was that the machine that came out more expensive initially got crushed. 

I very much doubt MS considers the $500 price point of the One X a failure.

10 minutes ago, Nokt said:

Might take a redesign of the shipping box they have been using for the One X/S, but I can't see it being much bigger in terms of overall size.

The estimated height and width of the Series X alone is larger than than the width and depth of the One X retail box.

Xbox Series X will be in the $499-$599 range, depending on how much of a loss MS is willing to take.

A few reasons for the high estimate:

1. The Xbox One X release really wasn’t all that long ago.  Moore’s Law is dead, yet their target is a 2x leap.

2. Lockheart, if it exists, means MS will be less concerned with a mass market price point for the Series X.

3. Bigger box = increased shipping costs and/or less units per shipping container.

4. A desire to continue marketing Xbox as the power leader in the console space.

5. Tariffs, or the threat there of.

Most of all, I don’t think their pricing strategy will be in line with the next PlayStation.  Neither the Xbox One or X were.  There's little presidence for it by this point.

8 minutes ago, Rodimus said:

I thought the spider-man demo was impressive.

Funny how, even after the Series X reveal, an off screen capture from a cell phone can still be one of the more Next Gen things we've seen.

2 hours ago, Rodimus said:

Well less loading or fast enough to hide the loading and preventing stuttering will improve visuals.

It'll certainly smooth out the experience and reduce a bottleneck.  Neither of which necessarily come across in a trailer like Godfall's (or Hellblade 2 for that matter).
 

Think it's going to take the right developer, right project, and probably something in the form of live demo.

3 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

I guess that makes sense, although we didn't see much evidence of that in the kind of okayish looking footage they showed.

A faster SSD isn’t going to make better visuals in itself.

42 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

 

 Does he mean literal LoD, or streaming data? I can't figure out what this line means.

Likely asset quality.  Can’t have as detailed or varied of environments and characters if streaming can’t keep up.

Some little tidbits from the Godfall developer:
 

https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2019/12/12/godfall-ps5-tech-controller-world-gameplay-keith-lee-interview/
 

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PSLS: WHAT UNIQUE BENEFITS ARE YOU GETTING BY DEVELOPING GODFALL ON NEXT-GENERATION HARDWARE? WHY MAKE IT A PS5 EXCLUSIVE RATHER THAN A CROSS-GEN RELEASE WITH PS4?

 

KEITH LEE: The exceptionally powerful SSD on the PlayStation 5 offers a new level of detail for each individual object as well as seamless loading of our expansiveness world. Our combat is kinesthetic in nature, so the new controller’s “adaptive triggers” and haptic feedback will make moment-to-moment combat feel exhilarating and visceral.

For those that think a 2080 or better raytracing performance is plausible for Scarlett and/or PS5, what do you think AMD's new line of competing PC cards will cost next year?  Will price point be in the high-end enthusiast range or low enough for the more mid range consumer?

4 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Then, they will be very disappointing.

Only if you are expecting full blown raytraced GI, AO, shadows, and refections in the first place.

I don't think it's a coincidence that this rumor is talking in terms of 4k60fps as opposed to raytracing.

12 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Yes.  I am expecting Ampere to launch in 1H 2020, consistent with current rumours.  No.  As I mentioned, I am expecting PS5/Anaconda to be comparable (in GPU) to a 2080 (not leapfrogging NVidia).  Which would be ~50% faster than X1X in rasterization, plus having ray tracing.

 

I am expecting PS5/Anaconda to have GPU performance comparable to a $400-$500 PC 2020 NVIDA GPU.

 Both PS5 and Scarlett will have some raytracing capabilities from the new architecture, but between console cost cutting measures + downclocking to improve life expectancy, power usage, and thermal output, I still find this to be a very unrealistic expectation for a console in 2020.

Love to be wrong of course.

Jason Schreier on the kotaku podcast.
 

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I've heard some skepticism from third-party developers, who are, like, "Hey, it's a pain in the ass to ship on multiple hardware SKUs. Second of all, this is going to hamper us, because Microsoft is requiring us to ship on this lower-powered version, that has the equivalent graphical power of a PS4 Pro." It's worth noting, that is has a higher-end CPU and a solid-state drive, and other next-gen features, so it's not safe to compare it directly to the PS4 Pro.

The way it’s been described to me…I think [Lockhart] is going to have significantly less RAM, but the CPU makes a big difference, especially when it comes to framerate. The SSD makes a huge difference when it comes to loading times. So, I think what [devs] can do a lot of the time is knock down the texture quality, take a hit on the resolution, but you don't have to sacrifice framerate as much.

First time hearing about the RAM too.

3 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

I'm not, I'm comparing a console launching in 2020, with a two-year old graphics card.

 

There are a lot of non-ray tracing compatible video cards (just look at the stats on Steam) -- they will target better computers, but still offer the option to play on lower end computers.

Devs will not be locked into supporting Lockhart for 6-8 years.

Soo much would have to change in a year. For example, Nvidia's own low end RTX cards ($325-$400) are not suitable for the 4k60 gaming MS is suggesting as a general target for Scarlet games in this rumor.  AMD would have to leap frog Nvidia's current efforts in both cost and performance, raytracing or otherwise.  Not saying it's impossible, just unlikely.

Despite being skeptical of RTX level of raytracing on consoles, I do think we will eventually see more approximated solutions running on Scarlett, PS5, and in time, a higher percentage of gaming PCs.  If Lockheart can’t keep up, that could certainly impact the generation as time goes on.
 

Raytracing might not even be the bottleneck, btw.  This generation for example would have been very different had Sony or MS launched a SKU with a Switch level GPU.  Not saying Lockheart will be this generations equivalent to that, but I wouldn’t rule it out.

@AbsolutSurgen, what makes you so confident that AMD will be able to provide next gen consoles with cost effective GPUs that are competitive with Nvidia's high end RTX line?
 

Today’s lower end PCs fall into the same category as cross-gen releases.  Eventually devs will stop supporting them in an effort to raise the visual bar and move past old limitations.  In the case of Lockheart however, devs will be locked into supporting its lower than Scarlet specs for the next 6-8 years.  (If these rumors are true).

1 hour ago, TomCat said:

people always make this stuff sound harder then it is. I said a long time ago MS would come out with two skus this generation.  I said they could easily take the GPU in the 1x add a ryzen2 core cpu and make that the lower sku xbox. major blunder in last gen was the Jaguar cpu's  they held the whole system back. get rid of them and you have a competent gaming machine.

 

Should I pat my self on the back now or later. I said that with the Ryzen2 cpu games would target 60fps as the standard. I was laughed at. Guess what MS appears to be using a gpu that is not even as powerful at the 1x gpu and doing exactly what I said. Execept going for 1080p-1440p instead of 4k since most people havent upgraded to 4k yet.

 

consoles are basically pc's now. especially the MS console.  Pc's have millions of combinations of hardware that dev. have to program for.  Why would making games for 4skus be so difficult? It wont and the lower skus wont hold the top games back.  I can play the same games on my 970 that people are playing on their 2080ti's   just at a lower resolution and some effects lowered or canceled.  the dev kit will do most of the scaling work for dev.  It has a button for each sku so dev can test performance

 

MS will come out swinging for the fences next gen so get ready gaming is about to be hella fun

 

and as far as raytracing goes its a fluid technique  the hardware is capable they are just refiniing the techniques on how to use the hardware more efficiently the effects on framerate will get alot better once they perfect the software tricks.  Look at the gains and improvements theyve already done with the few games that are released. it will only get better.

If a developer can only reliably leverage the expanded raycasting capabilities on the Scarlet and PS5 next gen boxes (for whatever purpose that may be), Locheart could potentially hinder ambitions and/or require custom paired back solutions that will eat up dev resources and time.  This is a hypothetical senario of course, but it does illustate one of the potential issues with introducing a partial step console at the begining of a console generation.

You don't have to take my word on it though.  If you trust Jason Schreiers reporting on Lockheart, you should also accept that, yes some developers have concerns: 

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Game developers will be expected to support both Anaconda and Lockhart, which some are worried might hamper their ambitions for next-gen games in the coming years.

2 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

For Anaconda, I am expecting  rasterization performance compared with a RTX-2080, but with somewhat better Ray Tracing capabilities (or about equivalent of my expectation of how an RTX-2170 will perform).  If AMD achieves this, it should be able to have pretty decent Ray Tracing (but, not at 4k, nor 60 fps).  This console wouldn't be "a beast", but would be a worthy upgrade over a PS4 Pro, and a generational upgrade over a base PS4.

 

Based on these rumours, I am expecting Lockhart to play the same games by lowering resolution, lowering texture quality, dropping ray tracing and other graphical effects.  In a similar way that you can drop the graphical settings on a PC game.  Latter in the gen, I expect that not all games will be playable on this device, but will need to be streamed via X-Cloud.

 

Then they should save the money and not put the ray tracing cores on their SOCs.

Now those are some high expectations.

I have to agree with @Reputator.  
 

I do think a few tittles will have some form of ray tracing, but not to the degree we are seeing with Control + RTX.  At least not without some new technical advancement that can compensate for even lower ray counts on console hardware.
 

I expect more tittles will target 60fps as opposed to pushing rayracing next gen.  But for devs with plans to utilize raytracing, this half step console probably isn’t the best news.