Support NeoGAF

[brain_stew]

With this kind of gulf in power, can the XB1 still be considered a Next Gen console?

It's not a true generational leap, no. The PS4 barely qualifies as one, the Xbox One is a huge disapointment. Waiting 8 years for a ~6x leap is terrible when compared to historical precedent. The gap between the original Xbox and 360 was around twice that, yet it happened in half the time.

 

[thuway]

But theoretically, DDR is better (or at least easier) for things like AI right? I know that stuff is peanuts compared to what you need to render a frame, but still. Theoretically there could be a few games that benefit from the One's setup?

(just trying to throw an xbone to the MS fanboys here)

DDR has lower latency, GDDR has much higher bandwith. If I had to choose one, I'd always go with the higher bandwith.

edit: beaten :/

 

[Ran rp]

This is going to be a very interesting gen.

 

[mattp]

You're really underestimating the penny-pinching capability of Comcast. If you subscribe for HD service, but don't want to pay the DVR fee, they still give you that component box. This happened to me when I got them six months ago. When I asked for something with HDMI, he said I had to upgrade to the DVR.

exactly my point
also, on top of that, "people can just upgrade for free" sounds nice, but come on. how many average people go out of their way to upgrade their cable boxes?
there's a reason comcast can get away with using such old boxes. no one knows or cares

 

[Vanillalite]

It's like the PS2 and Xbox days swapped.

Honestly this isn't just a small gap. It's a rather significant one. In theory it shouldn't even take much work to get better looking or better running PS4 titles. All prices being in the same ballpark for both consoles I don't see how the Xbox One isn't a much worse value for the money in terms of hardware in the box.

 

[famfrit]

Fun with math:

Assuming that the Wii-U is exactly 33% as powerful as a PS4 then:

XBone + Wii-U = PS4

Subtract Wii-U from both sides and you get:

XBone = PS4 - Wii-U

Now add a 'U' to each side:

Xbone + U = PS4 - Wii


Let's assume that PS4 - Wii is pretty much a PS4 without a move controller and XBone + U is a way to indicate multiplayer on the XBone, i.e. XBox live. You're left with

Xbox Live = PS4 (without Move)

I think we've just uncovered that unless you're using a Move, PS4 multiplayer will have a subscription fee.

Lol.

 

[TheExodu5]

Although I'm not really well versed in game development, I'm going to guess that latency is mostly going to be a non issue. Memory latency is in nano seconds, and given that most game logic runs 60 times per second, I'm going to guess that differences in latencies measured in nano seconds are going to be irrelevant.

 

[CosmicGroinPull]

Wow, with that power gap, MS is sure to release this console at $299!!!

And Sony will release theirs no higher than $399!!!


It's everyone's wish come true!


Too bad the real pricing for XBOX One will be $399.99 and PS4 will be $449.99.

Sounds great. Hope this comes true.

 

[Evolution_1ne]

It seems they are betting the farm that TV integration and apps will make up for any lack of power on the gaming side. A almost nintendo like gamble on novelty over performance.

I can see this working well in parts of the USA, but I can't imagine this working too much in the rest of the world. For those who don't watch Live TV, or don't have cable boxes, this also seems pretty much worthless.

no no, haven't you heard, they were banking on "cloud computing" actually having the cloud help with the development of their games, that's why they went with the absurd amount of servers 300k if I'm correct, that's why the 360 was going to be always online

 

[H_Prestige]

The silicon budget for the Xbox One wasn't necessarily smaller than the PS4, they just didn't make as good a use of it. Probably because they were aiming for an earlier launch.

Also buying exclusives is much cheaper. To double the RAM on the 360 they had to spend what - 1 billion? Exclusive content on GTA IV was rumored to cost them 50 million dollars, which they got back in royalties. Much cheaper.

There's no fantasy at all here that Microsoft can spend money to make exclusives, even Jack Tretton has said as much.

Yes, there is a fantasy. That MS can moneyhat their way of anything. If that were true the Xbox 1 would have dominated after MS literally bought every single game. There would be no playstation or nintendo anymore. WP8 would be ruling the smartphone market.

The company is not that powerful. The type of moneyhats MS is throwing around at publishers is no different than the ones Sony is throwing around.

 

[SneakyStephan]

Looks like extremely poor design to me, they have this huge transistor count and pissed it all away on the esram and ended up with a system that is much less powerful , harder to program for and with much less bandwidth at the same cost.

 

[ironcreed]

Well, it's rather obvious why they did not go all out on the gaming side of things. They have reduced it to just being another feature in this 'all-in-one' gamble. In other words, it plays games as well, instead playing games first. Gaming is just not the top priority for them anymore, they want to take over cable boxes and TV.

 

[StuBurns]

Out of interest, if Sony's play hadn't worked out, and they'd have had to stick with 4GB of RAM, how comparable would the systems have been?

 

[Cidd]

Wow, with that power gap, MS is sure to release this console at $299!!!

And Sony will release theirs no higher than $399!!!


It's everyone's wish come true!


Too bad the real pricing for XBOX One will be $399.99 and PS4 will be $449.99.

You're forgetting Kinect 2 and Xbox live charges...

 

[BruiserBear]

If you think MS will allow a better port on the PS4, you are brain dead. They actually had an agreement this generation that no games would look better than the 360 version. They will hamstring the developers, and the developers will take it.

You are completely wrong about that. No such agreement exists.


There were numerous games that looked/ran better on the PS3.

Out of interest, if Sony's play hadn't worked out, and they'd have had to stick with 4GB of RAM, how comparable would the systems have been?

The PS4 would still be more powerful. It would just have a little less RAM available compared to the Xbox.

 

[The_Lump]

Misinformation aside... Sony took a gamble they could just slot in DDR5, MS played it safe but ultimately had to create more exotic work arounds and thus add cost onto their silicon, so infact the cost of both looks equal. Before you factor in Kinect however...

Pretty hilarious that now the XBONE is the exotic slightly more roundabout hardware to work with after this long generation of the opposite.

Yeah I really didn't see that coming. I suppose Kinect will blance out the price somewhat...although PS4 comes with a camera thingy too right?

First of all, I greatly disagree with your word choice. Neither system is even close to offering "excessive" power.

As for price difference, there shouldn't be much.

I didn't mean excessive, sorry wrong word. Extra, is what I meant. I'm saying given the choice, what would you prefer?

 

[A.R.K]

Will the 3rd party devs who are making PC version too, take advantage of PS4's extra power and make it step above X1? This time there should be no excuse doing this, as the PS4 architecture is so close to a PC.

This is how it should be:

PC -> Ultra high settings
PS4 -> Very high settings
X1 -> high settings

No excuse about too hard to program for PS4 !!!!!

 

[SlickShoesRUCrazy]

so, is the xbox one basically the console they were going to release in 2010 if this had been a standard generation cycle? XD

 

[commedieu]

all games will be made with that 33% target for multiplatforms. Why bother utilizing the PS3s extra processing when you can sell cod for 60 dollars without doing so?

Same with the ram. Games will be optimized at 5gigs.

 

[RM8]

So. Not twins anymore?

 

[Cidd]

all games will be made with that 33% target for multiplatforms. Why bother utilizing the PS3s extra processing when you can sell cod for 60 dollars without doing so?

Same with the ram. Games will be optimized at 5gigs.

Keep thinking that, This time things are different there's nothing stopping devs from using the extra power in the PS4. They're both the same architecture it will be like changing the settings from high to very high on a PC.

 

[SolsticeZero]

Keep thinking that, This time things are different there's nothing stopping devs from using the extra power in the PS4. They're both the same architecture it will be like changing the settings from high to very high on a PC.

Exactly. It'll be essentially as easy as using a "quality" slider on a PC game.

 

[MichaelCorleone]

Talkin about who you gon squabble with and who you shoot,
You're only 60 pounds when you're wet and wearin boots.

Damn S they tried to fade you on X day
But X Day only meant Sony's pay day.

 

[Lagspike_exe]

So, basically, Xbone and PS4 have smilar sillicon budgets, but Sony managed to extract up to 50% more performance from their's. MS made an epic mistake.

 

[2real4tv]

Kinect will probably be $200 by itself...

 

[2San]

all games will be made with that 33% target for multiplatforms. Why bother utilizing the PS3s extra processing when you can sell cod for 60 dollars without doing so?

Same with the ram. Games will be optimized at 5gigs.

Yeah, but with similar components and the PS4 simply having the better ones. It's going to be piss easy to make the PS4 run at higher frame rate and with better IQ.

 

[Rourkey]

Out of interest, if Sony's play hadn't worked out, and they'd have had to stick with 4GB of RAM, how comparable would the systems have been?

Good question, I reckon it would be like this gen, multi platform games on a par with exclusive games looking better

Multi games would have been made with the respective memory & GPU restrictions in mind

 

[WoolyNinja]

So, basically, Xbone and PS4 have smilar sillicon budgets, but Sony managed to extract up to 50% more performance from their's. MS made an epic mistake.

Mark Cerney and his team are looking pretty great right about now. He is one of the most refreshing stories to come out of this entire thing. I'm hoping he has another chance in the spotlight at E3 as his part of the Feb show was easily the best part of a show like that in years.

 

[commedieu]

Keep thinking that, This time things are different there's nothing stopping devs from using the extra power in the PS4. They're both the same architecture it will be like changing the settings from high to very high on a PC.

Exactly. It'll be essentially as easy as using a "quality" slider on a PC game.

It doesn't make any financial sense to waste the time it will take to invest in high quality assets(models/shader networks/texture resolution) -- TO SCALE DOWN FROM-- in the first place.. The same thing literally happened last generation. The Cell had a leg up on the 360, but the only place it was seen was from the first party developers. This has always been the situation. If both are equally difficult to develop, EA isn't having dice write extra PS4 code. Nor does EA wan't their product looking different on two different hardware competing devices.

So yes, I'll know that this is the case. Well, since it sort of is.

Suuurreeee, Microsoft is going to really allow a slider of fx that goes further on the PS4, than on their system. Keep thinking that

;-)

 

[v1oz]

Is 33% less GPU power the reason for the lack of fur shading in Xbone version of COD Ghost.

Anyone else think the dog needs a fur shader?

 

[SolsticeZero]

It doesn't make any financial sense to waste the time it will take to invest in high quality assets(models/shader networks/texture resolution). The same thing literally happened last generation. The Cell had a leg up on the 360, but the only place it was seen was from the first party developers. This has always been the situation. If both are equally difficult to develop, EA isn't having dice write extra PS4 code. Nor does EA wan't their product looking different on two different hardware competing devices.

So yes, I'll know that this is the case. Well, since it sort of is.

That's the thing. It's x86 architecture. So if it's something that will be going to PC, they could easily use the PC assets if they wanted to. It's going to be so much easier this generation to make little things like that happen.

 

[Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew]

The 33% way of looking at it seems like a glass half full approach. The 50% figure makes more sense to me.

Yep. Hit that with full force!

 

[TheGreyHulk]

No, that is irrelevant considering Kinect has no impact on the main die's silicon budget.

I think the eSRAM is the likely culprit.

Yup, it's the eSRAM for sure. that crap takes up a lot of space. they didn't want to spend the $ for gddr5 and stacked ddr3/ddr4 obviously wouldn't be ready on time, so they rolled the dice and went with 8gb ddr3 and hoped that the 8gb > 4gb would cancel out the higher bandwidth advantage of the ps4... they rolled a snake eyes and lost the bet. they were stuck with eSRAM and had to sacrifice die space for it, unfortunately.

 

[commedieu]

That's the thing. It's x86 architecture. So if it's something that will be going to PC, they could easily use the PC assets if they wanted to. It's going to be so much easier this generation to make little things like that happen.

I get what you mean.

You are understanding where I'm coming from though? Microsoft, nor sony, would really ride alongside that, imo. I'd be ecstatic, but just knowing gaming and the rivalry, I can't see it realistically happening.

I don't think the effort is going to be made for the PC game, to scale down from, in the first place since the bar will be the Ones's specifications. Why would it be? Next-Gen's hardware is always great, but the business model of gaming sort of makes it counter productive to go all out on your gaming assets, sound, framerate, etc, rather than just getting it good enough. A few developers were stand outs last gen, with Rocksteady at the head)when it came to multiplatforms( They made the unreal engine look like it never has. Same with the Dead Space crew... On the whole, it comes down to the studio. But the stand outs of last gen, were what all developers should have been doing, considering the fee for the games. 60+.

 

[SolsticeZero]

I get what you mean.

You are understanding where I'm coming from though? Microsoft, nor sony, would really ride alongside that, imo. I'd be ecstatic, but just knowing gaming and the rivalry, I can't see it realistically happening.

I don't think the effort is going to be made for the PC game, to scale down from, in the first place since the bar will be the Ones's specifications.

I do see where you're coming from, but I respectfully disagree. I tip my hat to you, sir.

 

[SolidSnakex]

Out of interest, if Sony's play hadn't worked out, and they'd have had to stick with 4GB of RAM, how comparable would the systems have been?

Here's DF's article where they compared the original specs (when the PS4 was at 4GB)

On paper, Orbis looks like the tighter, more powerful, more games-focused design. With Durango, the astonishing lengths to which Microsoft has gone to accommodate 8GB of RAM adds further weight to the hypothesis that its plans for the Xbox hardware extend beyond gaming, that it wants the hardware to form a next-gen media centre. The question is to what extent its non-gaming plans impact on the processing resources available to developers...

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df-hardware-spec-analysis-durango-vs-orbis

 

[Cidd]

That's the thing. It's x86 architecture. So if it's something that will be going to PC, they could easily use the PC assets if they wanted to. It's going to be so much easier this generation to make little things like that happen.

Exactly, using PC assets would cut cost and from what I've heard most games lead platform will be PC anyways since porting them to these console will be much easier. See Watch Dogs and Battlefield 4 for example.

 

[bakedpony]

So. Not twins anymore?

One got lean and hot... the one that attracts all the girls.

The other simply hear people say, "What happened to him?".

 

[commedieu]

I do see where you're coming from, but I respectfully disagree. I tip my hat to you, sir.

I edited.. FUCKING SEE IT ALREADY! :c I hope to the gods of this generation that you're right, that we will get multiplayer games that are scaled from PC games, to where we have a slider that devs will apply for PS4 games, separately, from Xb1 titles.

Not holding my breath though, I think it will be seen as a negative from MS if their titles aren't able to produce the fidelity that the ps4 has, BUT, MS did say they didn't focus on graphics, blah blah.

We will see. Hat Tip indeed.

Edit;

THis is me posting when I misread a post. - - Nevermind Thought you said you didn't see...

 

[SolsticeZero]

I edited.. FUCKING SEE IT ALREADY! :c I hope to the gods of this generation that you're right, that we will get multiplayer games that are scaled from PC games, to where we have a slider that devs will apply for PS4 games, separately, from Xb1 titles.

Not holding my breath though, I think it will be seen as a negative from MS if their titles aren't able to produce the fidelity that the ps4 has, BUT, MS did say they didn't focus on graphics, blah blah.

We will see. Hat Tip indeed.

I fucking see it and I fucking tip my hat to you, again! Good day sir!

 

[JohnnySasaki86]

Out of interest, if Sony's play hadn't worked out, and they'd have had to stick with 4GB of RAM, how comparable would the systems have been?

Sony would of still had the more powerful console when it comes to games and graphics, but feature wise would of been much less rich compared to MS's console(now its possible for them to be comparable with MS console still probably having the edge). You would of only been talking about a difference of 3.5gb of much faster RAM vs 5Gb of much slower RAM for games.

 

[ymmv]

It doesn't make any financial sense to waste the time it will take to invest in high quality assets(models/shader networks/texture resolution) -- TO SCALE DOWN FROM-- in the first place.. The same thing literally happened last generation. The Cell had a leg up on the 360, but the only place it was seen was from the first party developers. This has always been the situation. If both are equally difficult to develop, EA isn't having dice write extra PS4 code. Nor does EA wan't their product looking different on two different hardware competing devices.

PC devs are quite used to making a game run on different hardware with various quality settings. Since the PS4 and Xbox One are PCs in console form, it shouldn't be any problem at all to make different versions for the PS4 and 720, with the latter running with lowered visual fidelity compared to PS4 and a high end PC.

 

[TheGreyHulk]

So, basically, Xbone and PS4 have smilar sillicon budgets, but Sony managed to extract up to 50% more performance from their's. MS made an epic mistake.

it all stems back to kinect 2 stealing the h/w budget.

i know kinect 2 doesn't mess with their SoC die size budget, but it messed with the overall cost budget and that meant saying no to more expensive gddr5 in large qtys because kinect 2 is brand new, in house developed tech. that meant ddr3 was the only option since stacked ram wasn't going to be ready, nor would it be cheap, and that meant it was absolutely necessary to use eSRAM to counter the low bandwidth of the ddr3, and then that meant putting the eSRAM on the die and doing so meant there's less space for the GPU or CPU and they couldn't reduce the CPU, so they had to use less compute units and that means less gpu power.

thank you kinect 2.0!

PS4 is definitely going to be the more powerful system. there's no question about that. 50% more compute units + sony's customization to the compute units to allow for better/efficient simultaneous compute + graphics calculations

 

[B.O.O.M]

Stop tipping hats dammit....that's Sessler's gig now

 

[Kosma]

Suuurreeee, Microsoft is going to really allow a slider of fx that goes further on the PS4, than on their system. Keep thinking that

;-)

???

Microsoft is not the one calling shots on things.

But sure keep thinking they are.

This is exactly what will happen this gen.

Expect ONE games to drop to low 20's high 10's FPS by the end of this gen in instances. While same games run 5/10 fps higher on PS4. Or PS4 games just having 2x AA while ONE games go without etc.

There is nothing MS can really do about this since the system just isn't as powerful.

 

[commedieu]

I fucking see it and I fucking tip my hat to you, again! Good day sir!

lol... ok Gene.

???

Microsoft is not the one calling shots on things.

But sure keep thinking they are.

I will change the hair color of my fucking avatar to Houston Vanilla if this actually happens.

I just think if this results in the PS4's versions of games being visually/technically superior, it will be seen as a negative from Microsoft. And I think Microsoft has options, if they care, to stifle this technological superiority.

Hope you're right, as I hate Houston Vanilla.

 

[Bomb-Threat]

The heck with my schlong is bigger than yours talk, just show me the games!!

 

[Mario007]

Out of interest, if Sony's play hadn't worked out, and they'd have had to stick with 4GB of RAM, how comparable would the systems have been?

At the time when Sony was going with 4GB of RAM they were rumored to leave 500MB to OS, so the devs had 3.5 GB of RAM to work. So it was a 3.5 vs 5 GB situation. From the discussions back then lots of people were still preferring Sony's way, going as far as to say that given the differences between GDDR5 and DDR3, Sony's solution was better for gaming.

Also even if Sony was stuck with 4GB it still has a much better GPU so that's a major advantage for it.

 

[EmSeta]

Everyone will be stuck with crappy mechanical hard drives? I sincerely hope PS4 will allow for upgrading to SSDs.

 

[JohnnySasaki86]

So, from what we've heard here, the silicon budget for both the XBone and PS4 are roughly the same. What would explain the discrepency in terms of GPU performance? Does the XBone's eSRAM reside on the main die? In that case, maybe it took up space that could have been otherwise dedicated to those 6 extra CUs.

Yes. Exactly. This is what Ive been saying, and DF said the same thing as well. Sony gambled and came up ahead BIG TIME in pretty much every area. Memory, bandwidth, and GPU power(50% more raw shader power AND twice as many ROPs).