Support NeoGAF

[Seraphinianus]

were xbox games pushed to 360 with 720p @ 60 fps?

720p and maybe an unstable 30fps

 

[KevinRo]

77xx and 78xx are supposed to be GCN based as well.

Yeah but they're not even out yet. How can they be 99.99 sure what model it will be if it's never been released.

 

[charlequin]

How many times do I have to explain that im not talking about the overall life of the PS3?

You can explain something foolish as many times as you want and it won't make it into something smart. You can't isolate the last year of the PS3 from the context of its entire lifespan. The PS3 as a product is an immense, almost unprecedentedly huge failure, full stop. Any minimal, fledgling success late in the generation is entirely irrelevant in the shadow of that massive, irrevocable failure.

Game consoles are always most profitable in the last few years. So I think there's an argument to be made for the long tail.

Yeah, I mean, the optimal situation would be to release a moderately cheap system and then stretch its life out as long as humanly possible. If you can get a 7-year generation off a $300 system, that's great; it's only a bad tradeoff if you only get up to 7 years by launching a moribund system at $500 or whatever.

So what are the odds of there being a kinect free sku of the next xbox?

I've been going back and forth on this, but I'm really leaning towards "very low."

I think it will come out this year because I don't think MS will give Nintendo the market uncontested (especially their largest market) for any length of time.

Microsoft, I think, do not now and probably never will consider Nintendo a real competitor.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

Microsoft, I think, do not now and probably never will consider Nintendo a real competitor.

At the start of the generation I generally would agree. The Wii factor I'd think though would alter it to a degree. I mean, they launched a year before them, and they are still even during the 360 resurgence behind them in America by millions of units. I really can't see MS just taking it for granted that won't happen again. I doubt either of them want Nintendo to have both the first mover advantage and another Wii.

edit: A Wii with modern hardware no less.

 

[KageMaru]

I would call out-selling your competitors success. Don't get it twisted though, the overall project from 2006 forward will be considered a failure, all things considered.

Its about how you finish though, and how you set yourself up for the next cycle.

I thought you retracted your comment on the PS3 outselling it's competitors, no?

Also considering how the PS3 isn't close to recovering it's cost and how Sony has never been in this bad of a position leading up to the next console cycle, I'm still lost how it can be considered a success at this point in time.

Its not as black and white as that, sony did something unprecedented in developing the PS3 the way they did. Nintendo's Wii was unconventional in that it went a completely different direction than the rest of the industry. This whole console cycle was idiosyncratic.

Wat? o_0

Well I guess you can say it's unprecedented how quickly they lost both market and mindshare, but Nintendo has already made that claim back with the NES -> SNES transition =p

 

[I H8 Memes]

Its not as black and white as that, sony did something unprecedented in developing the PS3 the way they did. Nintendo's Wii was unconventional in that it went a completely different direction than the rest of the industry. This whole console cycle was idiosyncratic.

Nintendo's success with the Wii was somewhat surprising, but Sony didn't do anything unconventional at all. The most powerful console has come in last place 3 console cycles in a row.

 

[Slayer-33]

Nintendo's success with the Wii was somewhat surprising, but Sony didn't do anything unconventional at all. The most powerful console has come in last place 3 console cycles in a row.

It's the fact that they make them developer unfriendly.

All that power doesn't show til mid + cycle. Easier to use development tools should be the priority if you want to put a powerful system in the market.

 

[I H8 Memes]

It's the fact that they make them developer unfriendly.

All that power doesn't show til mid + cycle. Easier to use development tools should be the priority if you want to put a powerful system in the market.

PS2 was a bitch too and it still took 1st place last gen.

 

[clashfan]

PS2 was a bitch too and it still took 1st place last gen.

So you are advocating unfriendly development tools? The hardware is platform. The developers make the platform a success.

 

[Vanillalite]

No Kinect free sku + this hardware makes me think there is now way the system launches for less than $400 at launch. It might even have a higher sku with a larger hdd. Now I wonder what the Wii-U price is going to be.

 

[I H8 Memes]

So you are advocating unfriendly development tools? The hardware is platform. The developers make the platform a success.

I'm not advocating that at all. I pointed out that making your console the most powerful has netted a company last place in the console cycle 3 cycles in a row. Slayer-33 replied that they make their consoles developer unfriendly, which I took to mean that he felt that to be the reason they were in last place this gen. I replied to him that the PS2 was developer unfriendly too and it was the most successful console of all time.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

No Kinect free sku + this hardware makes me think there is now way the system launches for less than $400 at launch. It might even have a higher sku with a larger hdd. Now I wonder what the Wii-U price is going to be.

I'd say $399 on the dot with both Kinect 2.0 and a fairly traditional controller included. They'll take a minor loss at the start, the hardware will be a lot more capable than the WiiU. Probably by about the same range as the WiiU is over the 360. Less or more, but in that general vicinity.

Techies will grumble, but when games start using the hardware well the bitching will lessen. And then a couple of years later it will be completely and utterly eclipsed by PC's running better than at a much higher resolution.

 

[CoffeeJanitor]

What do these specs mean?

 

[a Master Ninja]

No Kinect free sku + this hardware makes me think there is now way the system launches for less than $400 at launch.

No doubt. $499 isn't even far-fetched. The 20GB 360 launched at $399 (at a loss). Years later the model with Kinect and a 250GB HDD sells for $399 (with decent margin), which is kind of nuts when you consider the Wii sells for $149.

I'd personally like the next Xbox to be around $500 and still sold at a loss.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

What do these specs mean?

Games be very pretty.

Especially with the additions MS would likely want added. Maybe even earlier attempts at stuff being made for DX12.

 

[KageMaru]

PS2 was a bitch too and it still took 1st place last gen.

It had the market all to itself for 19 months, by the time the competition arrived, the development community was already fully invested into PS2 development. No way were they going to turn down that healthy marketshare.

I'd personally like the next Xbox to be around $500 and still sold at a loss.

 

[Im_So_Pringles]

I would seriously not care if there were any "graphical" improvements for the Next Generation. I really just want three standards: 1080p with some kind of (good) AA, 60 fps, and screen-space ambient occlusion in every game (I know, a weird think to ask for, but I truly think just about every game can benefit from it. It adds depth and readability to basically any scene, if implemented properly).

I know the only place that I'm going to get those wishes is on the PC, though. Hence why I'm going to build a new rig later this year with some extra money that I have.

 

[i-Lo]

Can we do something about the damn clipping situation next gen?

I am just wondering what kind of interface the nextbox is going to have. Also... RAM.. how much of it will be there for it.

 

[demigod]

This sounds more believable than the bs dual gpu rumor.

 

[Shin Johnpv]

Can we do something about the damn clipping situation next gen?

I am just wondering what kind of interface the nextbox is going to have. Also... RAM.. how much of it will be there for it.

Unless they get memory density up soon, then the next gen consoles will be topping out at 2 gigs of ram.

 

[Psychotext]

BluRay royalties can't conceivably make up for PS3 losses over a ten-year timeframe, even if you're just looking at the raw losses and not the delta from hypothetical successful PS3 to real-life failure PS3.

Aye. Last time I saw the calculations blu-ray licensing revenue looked more like 10s of millions of dollars, 100s of millions in a rather extreme success scenario (bigger than DVD ever was).

It's a drop in the ocean vs the billions they lost on the PS3.

 

[iamshadowlark]

You can explain something foolish as many times as you want and it won't make it into something smart. You can't isolate the last year of the PS3 from the context of its entire lifespan. The PS3 as a product is an immense, almost unprecedentedly huge failure, full stop. Any minimal, fledgling success late in the generation is entirely irrelevant in the shadow of that massive, irrevocable failure.

No, it isn't. Im tired of explaining this and you will continue to live in your vacuum world, so its pointless to keep discussing.

I thought you retracted your comment on the PS3 outselling it's competitors, no?

Also considering how the PS3 isn't close to recovering it's cost and how Sony has never been in this bad of a position leading up to the next console cycle, I'm still lost how it can be considered a success at this point in time.

I did but obviously people still want to challenge the point I was making.

You all fail to discern between a product being successful in the marketplace and a product being a success. Business, especially this one is not black and white at all. Its the opposite in fact, very nuanced.

Wat? o_0

Well I guess you can say it's unprecedented how quickly they lost both market and mindshare, but Nintendo has already made that claim back with the NES -> SNES transition =p

Nintendo's success with the Wii was somewhat surprising, but Sony didn't do anything unconventional at all. The most powerful console has come in last place 3 console cycles in a row.

...........

Ummmm Sony started a joint venture(STI) to develop the processor for this system with a huge ass budget. They originally planned to shoehorn rasterization and texture units somewhere and use two of these things, one acting like a full fledged GPU. They scrapped that idea very late in the design process and contracted Nvidia to make a chip in the fastest time they possibly could. Lets not forget splitting the ram and virtually halfing the ram the GPU could use in any practical manner.


They stuffed in a medium, whose core components were prohibitively expensive and nowhere near commercial production levels or let alone had a standard manufacturing process . Not to mention one that had serious competition abroad when it launched.

They launched with a BOE that was almost twice the competitors and was still losing a considerable amount on each system.

In what world do you think any of these things are conventional this industry?

 

[CLEEK]

Ummmm Sony started a joint venture(STI) to develop the processor for this system with a huge ass budget. They originally planned to shoehorn rasterization and texture units somewhere and use two of these things, one acting like a full fledged GPU. They scrapped that idea very late in the design process and contracted Nvidia to make a chip in the fastest time they possibly could. Lets not forget splitting the ram and virtually halfing the ram the GPU could use in any practical manner.

The oft-quoted rumour that the PS3 was originally designed to have two CELLs, one acting as CPU and one as a GPU is not true.

At least, not according to the lead IBM engineer in his book. Sony were planning on creating their own scaled down GPU, as the CELL was planned to be able to perform a lot of the typical GPU tasks.

This GPU design kept slipping, so they made the decision to scrap it and go out to market. Which is how they ended up with the RSX.

 

[dream]

I just read an article about Dave Cutler of VMS and Windows NT fame joining the Xbox team. Which is baffling to me because Cutler's a brilliant product manager and software engineer but his expertise is distributed computing and workstations and I have no idea what he'll be contributing to the Xbox project.

 

[antonz]

I just read an article about Dave Cutler of VMS and Windows NT fame joining the Xbox team. Which is baffling to me because Cutler's a brilliant product manager and software engineer but his expertise is distributed computing and workstations and I have no idea what he'll be contributing to the Xbox project.

Microsoft wants to develop the Xbox beyond gaming. Its been the goal since the earliest daydreams of a console. Its finally happening though

 

[dream]

Yeah, that's what confuses me. When they say "beyond gaming," I'm thinking some sort of post-PC device for general purpose computing and multimedia. Cutler can make them one hell of a workstation, but I'm not sure how he'd do with something that sits in the living room.

 

[iamshadowlark]

The oft-quoted rumour that the PS3 was originally designed to have two CELLs, one acting as CPU and one as a GPU is not true.

At least, not according to the lead IBM engineer in his book. Sony were planning on creating their own scaled down GPU, as the CELL was planned to be able to perform a lot of the typical GPU tasks.

This GPU design kept slipping, so they made the decision to scrap it and go out to market. Which is how they ended up with the RSX.

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/624/624605p1.html

Heres the words from Krazy Ken himself. As I said they were "creating" their own gpu by adding texture and rasterization units, among other things, to a cell processor.

 

[bigtroyjon]

I just read an article about Dave Cutler of VMS and Windows NT fame joining the Xbox team. Which is baffling to me because Cutler's a brilliant product manager and software engineer but his expertise is distributed computing and workstations and I have no idea what he'll be contributing to the Xbox project.

I posted an article about it earlier in the thread that said the xbox os is loosely based off of NT.

Also said he gets to choose whatever he wants to work on and he's chosen to work on Xbox.

 

[Vanillalite]

No doubt. $499 isn't even far-fetched. The 20GB 360 launched at $399 (at a loss). Years later the model with Kinect and a 250GB HDD sells for $399 (with decent margin), which is kind of nuts when you consider the Wii sells for $149.

I'd personally like the next Xbox to be around $500 and still sold at a loss.

I wonder what the general public would think about going back to $400 consoles again. Then again people are buying the Kinect 360 bundles at $300 still.

 

[duk]

No doubt. $499 isn't even far-fetched. The 20GB 360 launched at $399 (at a loss). Years later the model with Kinect and a 250GB HDD sells for $399 (with decent margin), which is kind of nuts when you consider the Wii sells for $149.

I'd personally like the next Xbox to be around $500 and still sold at a loss.

there's no way 720 is coming at at anything over $400. they will not pull a sony next gen.

 

[Log4Girlz]

there's no way 720 is coming at at anything over $400. they will not pull a sony next gen.

I'm calling $499. Prove me wrong MS!!

 

[charlequin]

No, it isn't.

It is, very much so, on the topic we are discussing.

While it's true that companies measure their results on a quarterly and annual basis, and losses from past years are generally sunk costs in terms of determining the correct course of action to take going forward, you can't judge individual products with a planned finite lifespan by the same standards. All game consoles since the mid-nineties have been built on a business model that explicitly amortizes costs over an entire generation because of the nature of this model: immense R&D, manufacturing, and unit-sales losses upfront to establish a hold in the marketplace, offset by immense profits late in the generation when costs are down, hardware is profitable, and software sales are up.

When this strategy works (see: PS1, PS2) the costs are kept low and the long tail of profitable sales is significant, so the project as a whole is profitable (and therefore successful.) When it's unsuccessful, costs spiral out of control and dig an inescapable hole, such that any later quarterly profits are just money to shovel into that hole in the hopes of filling it up a little. That's exactly what's happened with the PS3 -- its late-gen success is now shoveling money into that immense, unfillable hole.

Any discussion of the PS3 project as a whole (and the place of the PlayStation brand within Sony) has to start and end with this understanding. It was not a success in any way; it was a disaster. A couple more projects as unprofitable and destructive as the PS3 would sink the company. Any PS4 project that isn't being questioned every step of the way with "how can we keep this from being like the PS3" is not being done with due diligence.

 

[SapientWolf]

I just read an article about Dave Cutler of VMS and Windows NT fame joining the Xbox team. Which is baffling to me because Cutler's a brilliant product manager and software engineer but his expertise is distributed computing and workstations and I have no idea what he'll be contributing to the Xbox project.

I'm thinking that MS is going to find a way to unify content on their XBox platform with their PC and mobile devices through the cloud.

 

[Vanillalite]

there's no way 720 is coming at at anything over $400. they will not pull a sony next gen.

Problem is how are they going to be able to sell it @400 with these kinds of specs for the GPU and a CPU to match if they also plan on including a kinect in the box as well for every sku?

 

[Thunder Monkey]

Unless they get memory density up soon, then the next gen consoles will be topping out at 2 gigs of ram.

Unless MS designs the 360 differently. A split mem pool could up the amount if they go for an older RAM as a giant cache or something.

But I'd personally rather see it have a unified pool of something blazing fast. And that would limit them to 2 gigs currently. Since I think it's coming out this year, people will either have to deal with 2 gigs of fast RAM or many gigs of slow. I can't see them going with older RAM than the 360 though.

If they actually push it out to fall 2013 though the tech might be there. But that would be pushing it close on a level the 360 didn't see, and that was one rushed launch.

 

[eso76]

499 or even 599 is fine with me.

Give us an expensive, powerful beast; you only buy a console (well, 2 or 3 maybe) once every 6/7 years, probably even longer this time.

 

[duk]

Problem is how are they going to be able to sell it @400 with these kinds of specs for the GPU and a CPU to match if they also plan on including a kinect in the box as well for every sku?

and u know their product lineup how?

with kinect still selling like crazy why would they bundle it? why keep on selling it as an add-on and make more money? u gotta remember they are making over $100 per pop on kinect standalones at this point.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

and u know their product lineup how?

with kinect still selling like crazy why would they bundle it? why keep on selling it as an add-on and make more money? u gotta remember they are making over $100 per pop on kinect standalones at this point.

Honestly I could see it going either way.

I'd hope MS could come up with something else to work in tandem with Kinect and a standard controller. To be their next Kinect. I'm thinking about that in the terms of a gaming company though. You'd want your "innovations" to become permanent mainstays of the Xbox experience. The best way to do that is to standardize them. They did the same with XBL.

I'd still wager that Kinect comes with the system, along with a legacy controller for $399.

 

[AzaK]

What do these specs mean?

- Games will look sexy as hell
- A shit dev will still make a shit game
- A great dev will still make a great game
- Gamers will moan regardless

 

[CoffeeJanitor]

- Games will look sexy as hell
- A shit dev will still make a shit game
- A great dev will still make a great game
- Gamers will moan regardless

I'm guessing these dominate whatever the best the Wii U may offer?

 

[mr_toa]

....

Any discussion of the PS3 project as a whole (and the place of the PlayStation brand within Sony) has to start and end with this understanding. It was not a success in any way; it was a disaster. A couple more projects as unprofitable and destructive as the PS3 would sink the company. Any PS4 project that isn't being questioned every step of the way with "how can we keep this from being like the PS3" is not being done with due diligence.

Exactly, simply put and to the point!

There's only one place a product is measured; the markedplace.
There's only one way a project is successfull for a company; if it performs accordingly to the investment- and recuperation plan.
If a company's investment ability is large enough, it can survice across multiple product miscalculations or endure very long recuperation cycles - if not, the debt drags them down.

 

[Auto_aim1]

Microsoft, I think, do not now and probably never will consider Nintendo a real competitor.

Well, they targeted the market Nintendo had a solid grip on, with Kinect, so clearly Nintendo's success must have affected their business model? And considering the fact that Wii U is aimed at the market where Microsoft has had great success this gen, should be somewhat considered as a threat to them, right? Of course, there is a chance that the Wii U may play second fiddle to the PS3 and 360 when it comes to third-party games, especially for a few years, and this could be the main reason why you may see MS/Sony launching their consoles in 2013/14.

 

[Log4Girlz]

What do these specs mean?

Well, for one amazing looking console games that have no excuse not to feature some fine IQ and 1080 p. Also, this raises the bar for PC games as they are not being held back by console technology (due to creating multi-platform friendly code).

 

[Vanillalite]

and u know their product lineup how?

with kinect still selling like crazy why would they bundle it? why keep on selling it as an add-on and make more money? u gotta remember they are making over $100 per pop on kinect standalones at this point.

They want to have it in every package so they can fundamentally design the system around it with certain features knowing that everyone has one.

I was just thinking purely in terms of the fact that adding something else in the box would raise MS cost more to produce everything. That being said who knows by time 2013 gets here how much the kinect is actually going to cost MS. It also depends on if it's the kinect 1 or we if we some sort of kinect 2.0.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

I hope the next XBOX costs 750 US dollars, sold at a 150 dollar loss. I can afford it, and I'm the only person I care about. It will come with a 512GB SSD, Crossfire 7990s and a 16 core CPU. But it will still only have a DVD drive.

 

[Log4Girlz]

I hope the next XBOX costs 750 US dollars, sold at a 150 dollar loss. I can afford it, and I'm the only person I care about. It will come with a 512GB SSD, Crossfire 7990s and a 16 core CPU. But it will still only have a DVD drive.

And you know what? It would be a massive bargain IMO, but the price is too high for the casual market. It would be so amazing. Imagine the goddamn games you would get on that rig. And in 4 years, it'll be a reasonable $250 and everyone can enjoy it. But that initial price would kill its prospects of surviving into the 4th year.

Edit: Oh...dvd drive. Nevermind.

 

[left_senseless]

It is, very much so, on the topic we are discussing.

While it's true that companies measure their results on a quarterly and annual basis, and losses from past years are generally sunk costs in terms of determining the correct course of action to take going forward, you can't judge individual products with a planned finite lifespan by the same standards. All game consoles since the mid-nineties have been built on a business model that explicitly amortizes costs over an entire generation because of the nature of this model: immense R&D, manufacturing, and unit-sales losses upfront to establish a hold in the marketplace, offset by immense profits late in the generation when costs are down, hardware is profitable, and software sales are up.

When this strategy works (see: PS1, PS2) the costs are kept low and the long tail of profitable sales is significant, so the project as a whole is profitable (and therefore successful.) When it's unsuccessful, costs spiral out of control and dig an inescapable hole, such that any later quarterly profits are just money to shovel into that hole in the hopes of filling it up a little. That's exactly what's happened with the PS3 -- its late-gen success is now shoveling money into that immense, unfillable hole.

Any discussion of the PS3 project as a whole (and the place of the PlayStation brand within Sony) has to start and end with this understanding. It was not a success in any way; it was a disaster. A couple more projects as unprofitable and destructive as the PS3 would sink the company. Any PS4 project that isn't being questioned every step of the way with "how can we keep this from being like the PS3" is not being done with due diligence.

I'd rather not get into this too much, but this sort of black and white reasoning is nonsense. Sony has out sold their competitors at certain points with changing strategies. if Sony is keen on the small successes while facing their overall failures it can help keep them away from these issues in the future. having those points of changing tides can be crucial in the success of future playstations. you can count the small successes in spite of an overall failure for a console generation. consider business war, you can lose many battles and still overcome defeat. so many wars in history were won when little hope was left.

Sony has fucked up a ton this generation, but they have also given gamers a shit ton of great exclusive content. I would count many successes for Sony this hardware generation even with the overall losses they've incurred.

 

[Log4Girlz]

I'd rather not get into this too much, but this sort of black and white reasoning is nonsense. Sony has out sold their competitors at certain points with changing strategies. if Sony is keen on the small successes while facing their overall failures it can help keep them away from these issues in the future. having those points of changing tides can be crucial in the success of future playstations. you can count the small successes in spite of an overall failure for a console generation. consider business war, you can lose many battles and still overcome defeat. so many wars in history were won when little hope was left.

Sony has fucked up a ton this generation, but they have also given gamers a shit ton of great exclusive content. I would count many successes for Sony this hardware generation even with the overall losses they've incurred.

I can't help but picture the black knight from monty phython and the holy grail.

 

[herzogzwei1989]

I predict a custom GPU with some DX12 features.

 

[Monty Mole]

I'd personally like the next Xbox to be around $500 and still sold at a loss.

Enjoy having no games to play on that failure of a console then.