FunkyPajamas
Member
uh-oh.
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Xbox boss says hardware analysis between consoles is meaningless
- Thread starter Elginer
- Start date
What the fuck are you even saying?
That would change a lot.
It would still be met with distrust because they tried to fuck the consumer, but that would be an amazing move for everyone.
Come on klaus, you're being so disingenuous. You admitted in the other thread after moving the goal post several times that basically nothing will be good enough for you before the games aren't out there that take full advantage of the hardware and you agreed that would be 2014 or 2015.
So fuck that post of yours.
Kung Fu Grip
Banned
I was so mad when he broke down why Heavy Rain was shit. I love the game but i couldn't refute his arguments.
Let's stay classy, shall we? I asked for confirmation besides numbers, you gave me numbers int the form of a graph. So no, sorry I'm quite open for arguments besides the good old numbers game. Btw perhaps you can find some quote that shows where I moved goalposts or agreed on anything regarding 2014 / 2015? Thanks a lot.
CouldBeWorse
Member
How much did the change in DRM and used games change the general mood about the Xbone around here? Not very much.
It would be extremely hard (bordering on impossible without missing holiday 2014) to change the specs, but they could still make the other changes like lowering the price and de-bundling Kinect. Even if they did that, it again wouldn't change much.
They're only chance now is with the games and the services. That's how Sony won everyone back on the PS3. Great exclusive content and a great service in PS+.
I just wish MS would stop trying to beat around the bush and own the decisions they made with the Xbox One. Yeah, it's weaker than the PS4, so what? If you're the type of gamer that wants the best possible graphics, you're doing most of your gaming on a PC anyway, not a console. MS decided that in order to reach a broader audience with the One, they had to target more than just high end specs. While the One is compromised as a gaming machine, it's a far more capable all in one media device for your living room, especially with Kinect as an input device.
I think their internal calculus went something like this: yeah, we might lose hardcore gamers to the PS4 due to inferior specs, but the majority of those will also be gaming on a Windows 8 PC so who cares. The customers we gain via the integrated living room experience we're selling are much more valuable.
Now, what they probably didn't bet on is the whole DRM fiasco muddling their PR and casting a negative light on the entire launch of the product. They will likely be further behind out of the gates vs the PS4 then they anticipated being due to that blunder. I think being $100 more expensive hurt them as well, as it's much harder to sell the One's value proposition when you're already more expensive than your main competitor.
I think their internal calculus went something like this: yeah, we might lose hardcore gamers to the PS4 due to inferior specs, but the majority of those will also be gaming on a Windows 8 PC so who cares. The customers we gain via the integrated living room experience we're selling are much more valuable.
Now, what they probably didn't bet on is the whole DRM fiasco muddling their PR and casting a negative light on the entire launch of the product. They will likely be further behind out of the gates vs the PS4 then they anticipated being due to that blunder. I think being $100 more expensive hurt them as well, as it's much harder to sell the One's value proposition when you're already more expensive than your main competitor.
Seriously, it's amazing to me that people still have yet to understand that gamers are just incredibly hostile to anyone who shits in their sandwich, it's not about being skewed one way or the other.
Xbox 360 was my primary console of choice last gen, as it was for many others jumping ship to PS4. We simply have to protect our best interests, and I could not care less which company helms the ship provided they are currently aligned with my consumer interests. To me, it is great that they changed course, but because of the level and severity of their betrayal of consumers, I have to wait until the generation is deep into its run before I know whether Microsoft will attempt to change things back. I am simply looking out for my best interest.
I don't know who you asked, but such comparisons have already been done before countless times on websites and on NeoGAF (there have even been pretty graphs!). Of course everyone will define "far weaker" as something different than the next person, but there seems little doubt that the gap is considerable - much larger, relatively speaking, than the theoretical gap between PS3 and 360, and perhaps more similar in nature to the gap between Xbox and PS2. If you want someone to do a spec-by-spec analysis, I can try to dig up some of the great ones that have been done on NeoGAF for you (because, I am not an engineer and have only a basic grasp of the nitty-gritty of technology, and therefore go to trusted NeoGAF sources for my information on what matters and what does not and how it will impact the games. Part of being an informed consumer!).
To which I replied with a graph to show the relative specification of the two system as they are 1:1 due to being on the same architecture.klaus said:
klaus said:
benny_a said:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=67267266&postcount=2666klaus said:
At first numbers weren't good enough. Then a visual explanation to the less technical inclined with a relative graph wasn't enough. Then it was changed to results that are only available at the end of 2015 and that was enough, because they can't be delivered.
This was all in addition while AandATech and DigitalFoundry stuff was posted that has authority figured that are not on GAF repeat the same thing that were said in that thread.
You're being disingenuous and everyone who read that thread actively knows it. So I repeat once more: Fuck your post.
REMEMBER CITADEL
Banned
It's amusing that you make this post just after another post that calls out the persecution complex of many Xbox fans
"Persecution complex" is a nice term to hide behind, but these last couple of pages are quite evidently filled with genuine frenzied persecution; even outside observers have already commented on the community's recent bloodlust so trying to present it as a figment of someone's imagination comes off as rather cynical.
@Albert Penello (if this is his real identity),
I think Microsoft Marketing should seriously consider their core gaming customers as more technically competent group than what the marketing normally would consider.
Microsoft should have a tech lead talk about the design decisions made on Xbox One, advantages and disadvantages, and justifications.
These tech talks may not do much for most common XO users, but it will give more credence, confidence and respect in the XO team from tech savvy user groups.
Sure, ultimately, the quality of the games should be the judge, but at this initial point of a new platform introduction, it may not tell us accurate picture for the whole duration of the new platform.
I don't understand about the XO marketing teams hand-waiving about "3 OSes", "xxx GBps bandwidth". You can talk about stripped Hyper-V, and concurrent eSRAM read/write. A hand-waving is creating more confusion.
I think Microsoft Marketing should seriously consider their core gaming customers as more technically competent group than what the marketing normally would consider.
Microsoft should have a tech lead talk about the design decisions made on Xbox One, advantages and disadvantages, and justifications.
These tech talks may not do much for most common XO users, but it will give more credence, confidence and respect in the XO team from tech savvy user groups.
Sure, ultimately, the quality of the games should be the judge, but at this initial point of a new platform introduction, it may not tell us accurate picture for the whole duration of the new platform.
I don't understand about the XO marketing teams hand-waiving about "3 OSes", "xxx GBps bandwidth". You can talk about stripped Hyper-V, and concurrent eSRAM read/write. A hand-waving is creating more confusion.
You're better served specifically trying to highlight a post you disagree with and then breaking down why it's wrong then trying to lob stink bombs at places and then running away. When you do one, it seems like an intellectual disagreement; when you do the other, it just is a persecution complex.
There are plenty of insightful posts in the 'last couple of pages', just as there are plenty of bad ones (your original post, by the way, is an example of a bad one: if you meant to IMPROVE the quality of the discussion, you didn't, and therefore became a self-fulling prophecy. How can you criticize the quality of other posts and their 'attacks' when you almost self-evidently are contributing to the perceived poorer quality of the conversation in the past few pages with your own post?).
CouldBeWorse
Member
That's the direction I'm heading in, too. While I do irrationally love my Gamerscore, two things have changed for me in recent years:
1. I almost never play on XBL anymore (I'm just getting old, along with my friends), so the better online gaming service and cross-game chat don't really matter that much to me anymore.
2. For some reason, I've gotten a little more attached to trophies. I think it was being able to earn them on multiple devices after the Vita came out that did it for me,
On top of that, the Dual Shock 4 seems to address my complaints with the PS3 controller, which is another reason I always chose the 360 version of multiplats.
My interests were used games because I consume+trade, rent, and sometimes buy old stuff used. I never cared about the always online stuff, but no used games was NOT aligned with my interests.
Once you allow used games and offline play, I don't know how you reverse that midstream. However, I do completely understand the skepticism and caution considering how poor their messaging has been, how ready they were to move in a consumer-unfriendly direction, and how poorly the Xbox leadership has performed in public, which is the opposite of trustworthy Mark Cerny and lovable guys next door Jack Tretton and Adam Boyes.
I'm sorry if I come across as being disingenuous. And yes, I made it clear from the first post on that numbers are not what I was / am looking for. And I don't think we need to argue that numbers and graphs are the same thing in a different form. And yes I agreed that by 2014/2015 it will be clear that there will probably be a bigger difference - we see a similar thing happening with 360 / PS3, still people wouldn't go out and say the PS3 is much stronger than the 360 (yes I will get taken apart for that sentence, now the architecture is the same yada yada). Perhaps my wording was bad, but some people claim the PS4 to be much stronger than the One, and I simply don't see any reason yet why that should be clear.
Common sense (and playing video games since over 30 years) tells me a much stronger system should have anything to show its prowess besides numbers (or how bout some multiplat devs that openly confirm the supposed big difference), even when it's still a few months til launch - but yeah fuck my post. Or even better: ignore me if you have a problem with my questions.
Edit: Congrats also on the selective quoting ^^
Thanks for the answer. Well sorry to be the asshole who is always nitpicking, I am not that interested in specs (= numbers = grahps), for a) I'm also not an engineer and b) I have experienced way too many of those spec battles (all the way back to the bit wars), and tbh my conclusion is I'm more interested in results / cool demos than silly numbers. And yes there already should be results (perhaps the Demo by QD, that was quite impressive) confirming the "big" difference - we're not far away from launch and especially the PS4 is way further along with the devkits / tools from what I hear. Well but you are right, the definition of "far weaker" is ofc no objective measure..
hydrophilic attack
Member
I don't mind being called a cynic. Cynics tend to have an accurate view of the world in my experience.
Oh, and could you link to some of these comments on our bloodlust by observers? I don't doubt that you are correct; I just enjoy reading about outsiders' perception of NeoGAF
The other thing to note about the bullshit of letting the "games speak for themselves" -- it is kind of hard to do that when a majority of your games are running on FUCKING desktop PC's with modern, high-end graphics cards. (I am referring to Microsoft at E3)
Who cares if you personally don't see a reason for it. You've admitted that you're not knowledgeable about the subject and dismiss other posters that are. So why would your uninformed opinion be the barometer?
If I don't know something I defer to an authority that does. And the PS4 vs. Xbox One specs threads are full of those with well reasoning explanation why they say one is significantly stronger than the other.
Yes, sounds like a smart career move. Attach your name and company to such a statement.
Also nice covering you did there, so anonymous developers that could give this information to EDGE, Eurogamer or posting here/B3D can't be cited as a source.
This will be my last response to you, but I don't think ignoring is necessary. I doubt you'll make it past 300 posts on this forum before graying out.
hydrophilic attack
Member
Multiplatform developers won't state that one console is obviously superior to the other for fear of pissing off fanboys. Case in point: the attitude of many PS3 fanboys towards GabeN last generation. He could afford it though, because he didn't develop games on PS3 back then, and thus didn't risk losing sales by pissing off the most vocal portion of its fanbase.
Regarding the bolded, did you see this video? This is all running in real time on PS4 hardware, using the developer's PS3 tools no less. I haven't seen anything close to this running on Xbox One hardware.
Dismiss? Asking people if they can back up their claim is now dismissing them? Well let's leave it at that, we are derailing the thread, sorry for making you angry.
Yes, that's a really impressive demo. I hope we will get a game that gets close to that quality on the PS4 - would blow my mind tbh
CouldBeWorse
Member
It's E3 and everyone is scrambling to make launch. Out of the things to get up in arms about, this is a pretty low priority since we'll be able to judge them in the wild in 5 months.
Didn't think of that. But yeah, absolutely true. And true of some PS4 games too, IIRC.
I'm a little confused by what you want. You seem to just want a big showcase game that demonstrates how the PS4 is more powerful. And yet, even platforms that are demonstrably weaker in power for years often receive a title that surprises people for what they're doing with the hardware (example: ShenMue 1/2).
So, one of the worst ways to compare the power of a system would be to simply pick a showcase game and compare: this by nature forces so many variables into the mix that it automatically kills any possible objective comparison.
For an example of how, I'll list some of the variables that must then come into play once you use this as the only metric:
● The difference in time between when a developer/publisher got a dev kit (In other words: If Company A gets a dev kit a full year before Company B, then company A is far more likely to be further ahead in its engine prep/R&D and will be producing superior results.)
● The difference in relationship between the dev/pub and the console manufacturer (this matters because it starts to mean things like the difference between communication when you're having issues; the level of help you're likely to receive; the tools you have access to)
● The difference in core competency among teams (for example, if a team at CryTek got a handle of an X86 architecture platform, they're likely to be far ahead in their ability to produce superior visual displays than, say, Atlus)
● The actual technical variance among the platforms (already being discussed)
Whereas, if we can compare the specs, we know what each system should theoretically be capable of, and the only thing we're waiting for is someone to deliver on that promise.
Another issue with just expecting a visual indicator at this point is, again, how much was being finalized this year with teams. As I indicated early, most devs - including Sony's first party devs - thought it'd have 4GB of GDDR5 right up until the Feb 21 reveal. Suddenly being opened up to 8GB at that final moment is almost like being struck with a lightning bolt - it immediately opens up a world of possibilities, almost all of which are going to be impossible to implement in a meaningful fashion before an E3 reveal. Same goes true of any changes MS is making.
Eventually, we'll get those big games that demonstrate the difference in power, but I am unsure why you'd completely reject the illustrative potency of a straight spec-to-spec comparison. It does matter, as far as I can tell, it has always mattered...
Lucent
Member
Sounds like he didn't listen to Cerny's talk.
Then they shouldn't tell the consumer to "let the games speak for themselves". How the fuck can that happen if they don't run on the actual hardware? I know Battlefield 4 will look great on PC thanks to E3, but I have no idea how it will look on the Xbone.
My point is that if your games are running on desktop PC's, don't even bring up the "our games are amazing" argument until your system has launched.
PS. Someone remind me, was TITANFALL!!!!! running on actual Xbone hardware?
ThoughtsOfSpeaking
Banned
In fairness, Marketing and PR are interchangeable terms to most here.
For those who don't know the difference
Marketing is the business of introducing consumers with your products and convincing them why they should buy them.
PR is the business is building a dialogue with your customers to foster brand loyalty.
While the original comments cannot really be classed as either Marketing nor PR, Alberts presence here is, even if it is on his own time.
I think the thing to take away from the comment is Microsoft will only release information about specs that they can message as being the same or better than PS4.
The two pieces of information released on hardware specifications:
8GB of RAM- Can be messages as on par
5 Billion Transistors- Seems to be important
Also, as someone that works as a product manager, how long does it take for specifications as they sit in a system to be finalized? I always thought that the entire set is picked out long before launch and that manufacturing is already happening. If there has been no change by now, it's not going to come close to making up the gap that exists now without delaying the system out of the November.
The two pieces of information released on hardware specifications:
8GB of RAM- Can be messages as on par
5 Billion Transistors- Seems to be important
Also, as someone that works as a product manager, how long does it take for specifications as they sit in a system to be finalized? I always thought that the entire set is picked out long before launch and that manufacturing is already happening. If there has been no change by now, it's not going to come close to making up the gap that exists now without delaying the system out of the November.
Whether MS fu**ed up elsewhere is irrelevant: the guy is largely correct imo. The difference on paper between these two machines will not be directly proportional to the difference visually in the vast majority of games.
The difference in price, however, is key. It's hugely disproportionate when looked at in conjunction with the consoles respective hardware specs. PS4 looks to much better "bang for buck" wise.
The difference in price, however, is key. It's hugely disproportionate when looked at in conjunction with the consoles respective hardware specs. PS4 looks to much better "bang for buck" wise.
dragonelite
Member
Jep microsoft drop the price and do the same as sony unbundle kinect and drop to around $359 that seems like a good pricepoint.
PR is a part of Marketing.
What you call Marketing is selling and advertising, a branch of Marketing
The difference between these two consoles is greater than that between the PS3 and 360, an we certainly saw (and felt) the difference between the two. Now we have a situation where the gap between two consoles is even wider (in aspects that are reflected in visuals and performance)... and you're telling us the difference will neither be large nor perceptible.
RustyNails
Member
Don't you agree that "bloodlust" was partly responsible for MS reversing it's XB1 policies?
Pristine_Condition
Member
Predictable post from Citadel is predictable.
Alebrije
Member
Agree.
Althought technically PS4 has more power than Xbone launch and first year games could look similar but pretty sure after second year that will change, Just want to know what ND can do with the PS4 (Last of Us is a wonder in the PS3).
No one can deny the + power that the PS4 has , Also this time (compared to PS3) Sony made a developer oriented machine so we wont have to wait to the end of the generation to see the graphicall difference.
I'm pretty sure Titanfall, Forza, Ryse and Dead Rising 3 were all running on Xbox one hardware. The crash to desktop story we heard was lococycle I believe.
Heh, it's also interesting to note that sometimes a dev who is known to make visual showpiece games occasionally stumbles out of the gate with new tech. Some may disagree with me, but MGS4 I feel is a good example of this - MGS2 and 3 set some standards on the PS2 visually, as did MGS1 for PSOne. MGS4 had trouble keeping up with the top tier games on the platform. MGS5, on the other hand, seems far more technically competent, suggesting they've finally become familiar enough to grasp how to be competitive from this perspective.
All of this is not to say Naughty Dog won't meet expectations (if anyone can, it's them, in terms of visuals anyway), but just that I'm very interested to see who will meet the expectations of gamers and who won't.
For example, I never would have expected Sucker Punch to have the visual standout game for the PS4 launch window period. But, here we are
That post is really helpful, thanks for taking the time to bring my point into a well written and concise statement (sometimes a thing I'm not very good at, plus english not being my first language doesn't really help..).
Indeed this (i.e. the results we can experience) is the metric I almost exclusively rely on - even though I put a lot of my work time into getting the best out of a given hardware / system and appreciate technical advancements, at the end of the day all that (imho) matters is what the consumer has on his screen. And ofc this makes comparisons way harder (for exactly the points you made, plus there are also things like quality of developer tools / documentation, and the respective consumers' personal tastes regarding art style, novelty, effects like bloom / lensflares etc.), and that's why I personally agree (up to a certain point) with the statement that pure hardware analysis is meaningless. Yes you can (and most probably will) get better results with stronger hardware, but I firmly believe there are tons of other important factors that we do not know of (or perhaps are not assessing properly), that simply stating "machine x is much more powerful than machine y because it has more FLOPS, GBITS & whatnot" just doesn't do it for me. When a machine consistently shows better results, then I am willing to agree to that statement.
And yes, PS4 undisputably has clear advantages in the core specs, and yes the Dark Sorcerer demo is really impressive, but the Forza (gameplay) demo (to me at least) is also quite a sight to behold and ran iirc on a devkit (yeah it's hard to compare those two). So I try to sum it up: I won't give too much to spec comparisons until I have solid evidence what the machines are capable (or not capable) of - we had so many letdowns / positive surprises in the past generations that I'm willing to wait a few months before passing final judgement on the power of the systems.
Perfectly reasonable explanation on your part. Indeed, I'm a "show me the money" type of guy, being as cynical as I am, but I do understand especially in the early years of any platform's life the difficulties in truly representing what a platform is capable of (which is why tech demos make the rounds of every systems early showcases: it generally features a grouping of visual effects that show what will come over the life of a system).
Like you, I thought Forza 5 looked impressive... but especially so when I know they're targeting 1080p and 60fps for launch. Being a launch window title I know that it's not going to be feature complete, just like many PS4 launch titles (rushing to meet an impossible deadline in both cases), but it really does boost my confidence to see a game target that at the launch, and still look as good as it does generally speaking. And it's only going to get better for both XB1 and PS4!
Now that PS4 has 8GB of RAM (which devs found out only after Feb 21, for the most part), I expect it to be even easier for devs on that platform to target 1080p@60fps, just as the devs of Forza did with their 8GB of slower RAM/32MB of eSRam.
I hope this is a standard most devs can aspire to... I prefer less detail if it means locking in 60fps and 1080p.
That's the one thing I'm hoping for since the good old times when games were locked at 60/50 fps and the word upscaling didn't even exist have passed by
hydrophilic attack
Member
Sorry, I don't think more RAM would really have any affect on that.
Type of RAM may, but as far as I know, doubling the RAM amount would not make it easier to reach a certain resolution and/or framerate.
Great explanation on your preferences, and I respect it. But just because you don't believe in all the paper specs doesn't mean that others can't, and you keep asking for proof that will satisfy your needs (not paper specs) when there is none available and you know it...
Another thing is that numbers are raw data. What you want is a very subjective thing. As they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Each person will always have different opinions that differ from others, but raw data is raw data is raw data. But I do agree that it's too early to make comparisons because MS has not given us much data to work with.
That's not happening, Amirox. Console developers will continue to prefer more graphical power over higher framerate. It's simply easier to sell consumer on while 60 fps requires numerous venues to do the game justice by displaying it at 60 fps (and many won't).
Still, I share your enthusiasm about next gen. When launch titles look as good as Forza 5 and Infamous, we've got fun time ahead. This is much preferred to Wall Guy crap we started off Gen 7 with.
Manmademan
Member
"directly proportional?" no. But to pretend that there won't be a difference at ALL is disingenuous. There will be a difference, both in first and third party software- the only question is how large. There wasn't really a large performance gap between the 360 and PS3, so gamers have gotten used to software looking "more or less" the same- some better textures here, uncompressed audio there.
That's no longer the case. One platform has 30% more RAM with nearly 3x the bandwidth, and a GPU that's 50% more powerful. Any difference in ease of programming is gone. There was arguably less of a difference between PS2 and DC, and the distinction between those platforms was obvious.
Unless I am greatly misunderstanding the importance of RAM, it should certainly allow developers greater flexibility in how they handle their engines, thus facilitating better framerates and the like if they were heading in that direction.
I could be completely wrong, it's not like flipping a switch obviously, but I don't see why it wouldn't help. Maybe someone could better inform me, as I said I'm not an engineer.
Well some devs will, others devs won't... I'll just have to support more devs that do
Haha, and seriously for real with that Wall Guy/Box Guy shit at the start of last-gen. This is a much more satisfying start to be sure lol
Edit:
Holy shit, remember the PS3 BoxGuy Photoshop Topic? So many memories haha
Edit 2: Holy shit, I'm the one who made that topic to troll the PS3 for how shitty that game looked didn't even remember that lol
Point taken. I hope that, on the other hand, some people that value specs very highly also can see where I am coming from, and why it can be a bit tiring to read lots of posts (in almost every single thread it seems) that claim that the Xbox One is clearly an inferior system based on some numbers.. (perhaps a bit exaggerated, but I hope it's clear what I mean)
Pristine_Condition
Member
That's a red herring to hide what is obviously teh bias on the NeoGAFs... You only made that thread seven years ago so you could have an excuse to unfairly persecute the XBox One now. While I admire your long-term planning, I'm on to your scheme...
I am cunning and devious, after all
haha seriously though, I've been called a Nintendo fanboy, a Sony fanboy and a Microsoft fanboy all at some point through my tenure here, so I suspect that means I'm doing something terribly wrong or terrible right lol
omg LOL:
hydrophilic attack
Member
I'm an engineer, but not in computer science
I know almost nothing about how this stuff works, but the impression I have from several posters who are a lot more knowledgeable than me is that PS4 doubling its RAM pool should not really have any effect on resolution or framerate. Memory architecture may affect this, but RAM amount should not be important (unless, possibly, if we are talking about orders-of-magnitude differences).
More RAM should allow for stuff like larger levels/worlds and more detailed textures though. Possibly it could also theoretically allow for stuff like more advanced AI routines and more complex computations, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to say whether practically RAM amount would make a difference here.
Edit: I found a post from someone who actually knows what he is talking about:
From this thread