phosphor112
Banned
I keep seeing this thread bumped. I know nothing significant is posted...but I check anyway. =/.
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PS4 Rumors , APU code named 'Liverpool' Radeon HD 7970 GPU Steamroller CPU 16GB Flash
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More in hope sir, more in hope.
specialguy
Banned
360, the specs schematic leaked in Jan/Feb 2004. So we're already behind that timeline (Jan/Feb 12 for Nov 13 launch).
But we did get the major document leak just recently, it seems to be XB3's analogue to that.
We have gotten major spec outlines for Orbis/Durango though, that's what we've been discussing.
bgassassin
Member
I wouldn't pay much attention to what's being posted by that cteam person.
Just wait till a year has passed like with the Wii U speculation threads. Though Sony and MS will most likely be much leakier than Nintendo along the way.
THE:MILKMAN
Member
nope!
& I guess the nomad counts as a Genesis too so that's 3 redesigns
Edit: & the redesigns are to save money in the 1st place so what does Sony money issues have to do with it? if they make the console smaller & lighter it will save them money on parts & shipping.
I think that's cheating a bit! Looking at Wikipedia there are only 2 Sega revisions of Genesis.
All other Genesis models seem to be licensed products.
The CDX was a very limited model and the Nomad just used recycled Genesis parts to make a handheld.
Re: PS3 super slim.......I just can't see Sony doing it. We are 5.5 years in to this generation and sales are going down. The investment needed to make it cheaper and smaller would be greater than that of PS3 slim IMO.
I genuinely can't see how it could work for them. But like I say, I don't have a business brain and am probably completely wrong on this...........
JohnnySasaki86
Member
Will PS4/720 be capable of real time ray tracing?
Also I wonder if the PS3 OS footprint is still at 50mb? That was late 2009, early 2010 when they reduced it to 50mb. Could it be more around 35-40mb now?
Bg, given you are well versed the realm of computer science I wanted to ask you this:
Websites that test graphics cards do so on their best machine, in particular the CPU that they can find at the time. So, how relevant is CPU to graphical performance (framerate for example) on a console when current parallelism in programming make it more beneficial to move tasks onto the GPU?
For example: How much of a difference would there be (all else being equal) in performance (framerate) if you tested a R7770 with Q6600 as opposed to say Core i5 2500 or between a Core i5 and i7 (or their AMD equivalent)?
shinra-bansho
Member
Asked in the WUST thread, but for the more techie here, if you were to construct a console around the spec of the rumors for Durango or Orbis, what would be your best very rough guestimate for a per unit BoM? Say to the nearest hundred dollars.
Well they brought out the PS2 Slim 6 months before they showed off the PS3, now the PS3 didn't come out for like 2 years afterwards for multiple reasons that delayed it, but they knew beforehand that they were going to keep selling it and with a new console on the horizon wanted to make it cheap to produce.
While we have already received a PS3 slim, that was really down to necessity due to how expensive the thing was to manufacture and actually sell to consumers. I really wouldn't be surprised if they decided to slim it down again to a smaller form factor, not only for cheaper parts but so they can sell as many as possible going into this last run before next-gen.
THE:MILKMAN
Member
While all this is true and I agree, it is a very different situation this time round.
PS2 had no competition.
PS2 was selling very well.
Sony weren't in massive debt.
Another point is where are the leaks for this super slim PS3? The last one leaked months before going on sale.......
PS3 GT5 does but not during the race
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/813/813424p2.html
That's 32bit HDR also.
GoofsterStud
Member
I need 1080p. Make it happen Sony. 
JohnnySasaki86
Member
specialguy
Banned
I hope so, Nintendo leaks have been near nonexistent. It boggles my mind we still dont know specifics of Wii U hardware (exactly what GPU, what CPU, etc) and it's literally 4 months from store shelves.
I wish! but they will get some benefits from ray tracing.
I need 1080p. Make it happen Sony.
The current consoles can do 1080p.
Not enough hardware power to do so.
GoofsterStud
Member
Just like the Sega Saturn had widescreen support.
Just because next gen consoles have more power doesn't mean native 1080p is going to be more consistent. PC is the platform where you can choose to render all modern games at 1080p.
On the plus side, 1.8tf of gpu juice means that sub720p will probably be less common.
i do the sames *place fist here bro*
JohnnySasaki86
Member
How much hardware power do you need to do real time ray tracing? 5tflop gpu?
bgassassin
Member
ROFL. I wouldn't use "bgassassin" and "well versed" together in that sentence. By the time I settled on a major (Computer Engineering Technology), I couldn't go to school anymore and that was about 10 years ago. Only thing I've been doing this past year is trying to get caught back up on what's going on in the computer tech world.
As for your actual question I don't think I could give a good answer based on my currently level of knowledge and without looking at benchmarks of those parts. I at least know you chose some pretty capable parts. And in a console all we're looking for right now is a max of 60FPS with a es of 1080p. My personal take based on what I do know is that the CPU isn't "as relevant" as it used to be and that the main thing you would want is for the CPU to not be a bottleneck to the GPU. So to me the ideal situation is the CPU being able to handle the code well enough to accomplish what you want to do with the GPU.
And yet we essentially know more about PS4 and Xbox 3 already and they're over a year away.
phosphor112
Banned
To get quake 3 running in real time it took 20 AMD XP1800 cpu's.
...I have no idea how many flops that is... but I'd say you'd need at least 3 TFLOPs for something with a decent poly count.
Mind you, this was done in 2006... in 2010, they did Return to Castle Wolfenstein ray traced with higher poly models.
That required a cloud of 4 "servers". Each consisting of:
Motherboard: Intel® DX58SO (code name Smackover)
CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-980X processor (6 cores, 2 threads per core, 3.33 GHz) - (79.9g flops...?)
Intel code name Knights Ferry PCIe card (32 cores, 4 threads per core) - ...I think that was at 2TFLOPs?
Multiply that by 4... you get easily over 8 tflops. I may be completely wrong, someone correct me if I am.
iamshadowlark
Banned
It depends on the degree you are talking to. There have been real time demos on PS3.
The Abominable Snowman
Member
According to This reporter, the demonstration ran on a 16-core (4 socket, 4 core) Tigerton system running at 2.93 GHz.
Intel first showed off the Knights Ferry card in 2011. And the demonstration is in relation to ray-traced cloud-based gaming
JohnnySasaki86
Member
It seems like it will be virtually impossible no matter how powerful your hardware is, unless you want to do it on software thats a generation or two old on the most current hardware. What i mean is, as your try to push the graphics in other areas(polygons, effects, numbers of objects, geometry, lighting, ect) you'll never be able to employ ray tracing.
So another wards xbox 720 might be able to do ray tracing on Halo 1, but not on Halo 5/6. Then Xbox 1440 or whatever could do it on Halo 3, but not on Halo 10. How would it be possible to stop this never ending cycle? How do you make it viable?
medicalmidget
Banned
I don't see Sony aiming high like they did for the PS3. It will be a nice jump in performance that is certain, but a PS2 to PS3 jump I doubt is going to happen. Especially since they can't be pricing it at that infamous "599 US DOLLARS!"
GoofsterStud
Member
I am a PC gamer when given the choice, but how does that help when wanting to play console exclusives.
bgassassin
Member
Wah?
A slow start not only would not be needed, it would be outright bad. Even with your explanation that doesn't make sense. And a fast start means games, accessories, PSN+ subscriptions, and other things they may have in the works are all generating revenue. Your posts seem to ignore or not give enough weight to the revenue streams. A $100 loss on the retail box would be fine. $300 (on just the hardware) along with a high retail price like we saw this gen is clearly bad and should show why slow early sales is bad.
And what do you define as short-term? Because I think we view that differently. For me short term is as much as 2-3 years.
What is the retail target for the approx. $450 target? I'm saying that estimated BoM based on what I know of the target specs.
Gemüsepizza
Member
The price of the PS3 was above all a result of the included features and exotic hardware choice and not a result of pure hardware power. The Xbox 360 was priced much cheaper, yet it is capable of similar graphics.
JohnnySasaki86
Member
I disagree. I think they'll release a $399 model, and a higher end $499 model(maybe it will have a SSD?). They'll loose around $100-$125 per console at launch. So this gives them a ~$500-600 manufacturing cost. You'll be able to make a beast of a console out of that. Theres nothing like bluray this time to drive the production cost up towards the $800 range. Plus they'll release some sort of $99 add on that allows you to be backwards compatible with PS3 titles(which will cost ~$35-$40 to manufacture). It will offer slight graphical improvements over PS3, just like PS3 did at first vs PS2. It will plug in the back or something, and will basically just be a Cell+RSX SoC at 28nm. The cell might be slightly modified, cause it doesnt need as many SPU's, as in it doesnt need to run an OS, and plus theres the PS4 tech(1PPU4SPU's?). Wasn't jeff_rigby talking about something like this before? This will help them recover a substantial amount of there losses on the early adopters(which this accessory will have a high attach ratio with), combined that with software they'll be breaking even/close to a small profit within the first year. It will release Spring 2014 stateside.
Oh and one more prediction. The meltdowns that will occur when everyone find outs there charging them $100 for backwards compatibility. Tough luck, keep your PS3 around. It be stupid for Sony not to do this!
medicalmidget
Banned
Gemüsepizza;39432066 said:
That is true, but that doesn't mean Sony couldn't put the equivalent amount of dollars into the PS4, but without proprietary hardware.
medicalmidget
Banned
What? I think not having backward PS3 compatibility out of the gate is a horrid idea. Most people won't take kindly to having to buy an add-on, which would drive the already $400 model up to $500 and the $500 model to the $600 range (unless that has built-in backwards compatibility). Sure it's optional, but every PS3 owner has got to have about a dozen or so PS3 games (unless you bought yours two years ago, or don't game that much in the first place) and when some people trade in their PS3s for a PS4s (trust me there will be people like that) only to find out they can't play their PS3 games, Sony will be swamped in tech support calls. As for the multiple models, I doubt that as well, only because it adds extra costs to market.
shinra-bansho
Member
Oh, I know what your basing it on; I'm just opining that I think such a loss isn't really a good losslead and a loss of more like $80 on a unit cost of$450 (wholesaling for 370) would be more sound for profitability
DemonCleaner
Member
well that's just a problem as long as you try to convert a rasterization-based game into ray tracing. if you were to design a game with the necessary constraints in polycount and texture size from the ground up, im sure you'd be able to accomplish a remarkable result.
as ray tracing is basically whats used in cgi graphics, it'd be much more interessting to see, if it was somehow possible to render early cgi stuff in realtime nowadays. early stuff = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P28FQns0OoM&feature=fvst
medicalmidget
Banned
Agreed, having a target of $450 (assuming Assassin you mean hardware cost, not retail cost) then is pushing the retail cost to like $550.
JohnnySasaki86
Member
Sure a lot of people wont like it, but its a really smart business decision, and it allows Sony to put more powerful hardware into the PS4, for PS4 games. I'm all for that. I much rather them devote resources to that, then BC. No one will care about BC after 3+ years. Do people care about PS2 BC in PS3 now? Not really. Its there as an option for the people that want it. Kinda like MS selling the Wi-fi addon for $100 for like 4+ years. And yes its a way for them to "secretly" drive the cost up. People can save up for the add on. You dont have to buy it with the PS4, wait a couple months. Its a smart business decision, but even as the consumer I would be all for it as it would lead to a more powerful PS4.
Oh and people being uniformed and trading there PS3's in not knowing PS4 wont be BC is their own fault. IMO the idea is ridiculous. Sure the sales clerk would inform them if they didnt. They wont be getting swamped with tech support calls... ridiculous.
edit: oh and I thought about them including the BC in the high end priced model. I dont think they would do that though. I'm pretty sure there would be a lot more cost involved in designing and manufacturing two completely different motherboards(maybe someone else who knows more about hardware manufacturing can confirm this?). The whole PS3 may look different. Hence why I think the add on idea would be much better for profitability. I'm pretty sure there would be little to no profitability in the former option at $500. They would probably have to charge $550, not to be making profit as a whole on the unit(they still be loosing $50-75 per unit), but to making profit on the inclusion of BC in that model, and to make it less of a loss per unit then the $400 model.
Not to mention the fact you pretty much halve you consumer base by doing this. With the add on, you potentially have future buyers from both the $400 and $500 consumers.
systemfehler
Member
Could be a hint at a "weaker" console as an online hub which streams games in better quality. If that would be true I skip the PS4. I want physical media to play games on a powerfull console without the need of a 30Mbit connection to have decent image quality.
medicalmidget
Banned
Well your point makes some sense now considering the whole Sony Gaikai deal that went down. Backwards compatibility won't be a huge issue now, but the question that remains is how will Sony be able to tell what games are owned for a person's system? No one wants to be forced to rebuy all their previous games. Though I'm assuming that won't be a huge issue, maybe just check which games were connected online and do it that way I assume.
or it could hint at what I was talking about in the Xbox 720 documents thread. Sony & MS now have to worry about the TV it self making consoles unneeded.
this move will give Sony even more routs to send their services to you. this means Sony don't have to sell you a console to sell you games. they can send you games right to your TV, Blu-ray player & Google TV boxes.
if you are Sony you would rather have this tech in your hands than for someone like the cable company.
I would be assuming that too, and if it winds up being their BC solution, then watch Gaikai be positioned as their "virtual console" perhaps. All your PS1/2/3 games for a monthly subscription fee like PSN+.
It would also make PS4 a little bit cheaper to manufacture since they wouldnt need to build in PS3/2 architecture support necessarily (big saving initially) and they would be making ongoing money for having the support still in the package.
Of course all this assumes that the streaming can replicate the experience of playing a game at home, or be near enough and good enough not to be a problem.
Will be very interesting to see in any case.
Ha ha, yeah - I wouldn't have thought to look here for your response.
But this is probably the more appropriate thread for this discussion.3 years is probably stretching into mid-term - but yeah, 2 years would be short-term.
Yeah, strong sales out of the gate would be great for the long-term health of the platform, but absolutely brutal for the short-term financials if they are taking a $100+ hit on each unit of hardware.
I don't think you've fully grasped just how much of a loss $100+ per unit really is (and that's not including advertising costs associated with launching the system). That won't come anywhere close to being offset by games/PSN/accessories, etc. in the first couple years. Systems sell 8-10 games per system over the life of a system, but that tie ratio will be lower within the first year or two. Even best case scenario with software/accessories/etc. still leaves you with a BIG loss in year one - and it just gets bigger and bigger the more hardware you sell.
In any case, this is the projection that I'm referring to in terms of Sony's stated goals. They plan to double their profit margin by FY14 (which will be the early stages of PS4) from where it is today with a PS3 supposedly already selling for a profit (although the recent filing showing SCE $1B in the hole last year casts doubt on the FY11 numbers in this graph), plus moving far more PS3 software than the PS4 will ever come close to moving in FY14, PSP/PS2 nothing but pure profit at this point, and Vita sales so low that they really don't contribute significantly to any bottom line for FY11.
There is absolutely zero chance of reaching those profit margins (8%) in FY14 with a PS4 that launches at a $100-$130 loss per unit.
(Then again, they also plan to sell 10M Vitas and 6M PSPs this year!)
JohnnySasaki86
Member
There is absolutely zero chance of reaching those profit margins (8%) in FY14 with a PS4 that launches at a $100-$130 loss per unit.
(Then again, they also plan to sell 10M Vitas and 6M PSPs this year!)
I wouldn't pay to much attention to that. Just like you said, them selling 10M Vita's this year is pretty much impossible short of a surprise MH release in Japan, even then I doubt they would even get close to 10M.
I fully expect them to loose around $100-$125 per unit on PS4. Theres many other ways for them offset this loss though. Biggest one is still probably software, but theres still a lot of unknowns. Maybe there planning on increased revenues through PS+, maybe this Gaikai deal has something to do with it. Maybe there going to do something like I proposed with a $100 BC add on. Who knows, but I'd be really surprised if they loose less then $100 per unit at first. Remember PS3 lost somewhere between $225-$250 per unit on PS3, cutting that in half is probably a huge win as far as Sony is concerned.
This is all hypothetical of course, but Im really curious on what Sony could produce on a $500-$525 production budget in late 2013/early 2014(assuming its for the model which would sell at $399). Would it be stronger or about the same at the rumored specs in the OP?
No, there really aren't other ways to offset $100+ per unit losses. Let's just say they sell 10M PS4s in FY14 at $100 loss per unit. That's $1B in losses. Sony never earned $1B in any fiscal year during the height of their PS2 years (they came close once in 2003) with software flying off the shelves by the truckload, memory cards and hard drives and controllers all contributing profits, and hardware selling at a profit.
Those kinds of losses aren't just easily fixed by selling software and accessories. They can still be overcome via a long-term strategy (a la the X360), but those early couple years will be ugly if those are the losses being taken at launch.
But that's the point. Cutting the PS3's launch losses in half will still leave a big loss, and there won't be a chance in hell of having an 8% profit margin in FY14.
So either the PS4 taking a big loss at launch is bullshit - or Sony's FY14 targets are bullshit. And for the record - I would tend to say that Sony's FY14 targets are bullshit.
JohnnySasaki86
Member
If there is a major revision planned for PS+ with GaiKai, that could be another huge way to off set the loss outside of software and accessories. Im going to have to say theres targets are BS as well though. Just like them selling 10M Vitas this year is BS, I doubt they'll do more then 6M(there just over 2M now. edit 700k, even more of a ridiculous thought then...).
edit: nvm I see. I thought that would be a good thing, but it seems to actually be bad. Well they will probably have at least one console revision sometime by the end of 2014, which would help a bit. pretty much disregard everything below then...sigh dont know how to make that line go through the text yet.
Anyways if this document is to believed, theres another possibility. What if Sony doesnt release PS4 in late 2013 at all? or what if they only plan to sell 3million consoles in the short 3-4 months it has on the market in FY14. Thats a 300M loss that COULD be offset by other factors, including a much more profitable PS3 with huge titles like the TLoU and Beyond releasing? Add in the Vita which I'm sure they hope will be catching ground by then, then its possible.
Just for the record, the 10M Vita forecast is for this FY, which started in April. Vita is nowhere near 2M sold since April. Probably under 700k sold-through to consumers for FY-Q1 based on the numbers we have available (and that's being generous with sales in Europe).
It is Apr/14 - Mar/15. If PS4 launches late 2013, then FY14 would be the first full year for PS4 at retail. FY13 would be largely offset by PS3 profits, but FY14 would take the full hit from PS4.
CadetMahoney
Member
Whilst corporate espionage might help get an idea on where the competition is heading and change your specs, it wouldn't help if MS decides to simply decides to outspend them based on their estimations on what they (Sony) can feasibly afford to make (PS4). You probably don't need to spy to estimate that. All depends if Sony's financial trouble actually have any affect on the PS4 specs some ppl say it does, some don't.
3x at the most, and that's in the best case scenario. I expect much better textures, animations etc. but overall it will be the same 30fps games at 1080p.
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