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Digital Foundry: the complete Xbox One architects interview

bish shows up and people start droppin'

DeFiBkIlLeR
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PartyTimeFunTime
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simplythebest said:
dXJfrvl.gif
Click to expand...

Don't worry, don't worry. I'd stick to Reddit or something, :p

But seriously, these people are nuts and I hope they're getting paid. Because if they're doing it for free, then there's something mentally wrong. No offense to them. Mental defiencies are no joke.
 
artist said:
bish shows up and people start droppin'

DeFiBkIlLeR
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PartyTimeFunTime
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GumDumpster
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WrongSider
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Click to expand...

Dat 1 Billion $ Microsoft invested in Xbox One are lowering pretty fast with NeoGAF...
 
coolasj19 said:
I'm mostly serious right now. I haven't finished reading all the former GAF threads yet but, I'm starting to develop a small fear of Sony getting wrapped up in corporate espionage or something court cases in a few years. A man that worked with Playstation since it's inception, leaving after handling the last hand-off for the PS4, going to Atari mostly to pick up a buddy, then going to Gaiki, serving on the board (Sony buys Gaiki relatively shortly afterwards), and then leaves for Microsoft. In the games division.

TL;DR : Starting to think Agent Harrison is seriously real.

All the other stuff I don't understand is interesting too.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's real at all and is some kind of fun but not to be taken seriously tinfoil hat stuff.

But I was definitely blown away when I saw that Phil was the one who tapped Mark Cerny to design the PS4.

Oops.
 
SniperHunter said:
when a premiere first party fighting game is running at 720p something is wrong.....
Click to expand...

I'm going to assume it has more to do with rushing to make launch than hardware capabilities. It seems to me that 2013 wasn't the original plan. Would rather wait till the second wave of games before making any conclusions.
 
viveks86 said:
I'm going to assume it has more to do with rushing to make launch than hardware capabilities. It seems to me that 2013 wasn't the original plan. Would rather wait till the second wave of games before making any conclusions.
Click to expand...

I expect the onslaught of 1080p games to come in the next wave of games as well. Both machines appear capable. Nowhere to go but up after launch.

I hope
 
On the bright side, at least Microsoft is being honest and upfront about their hardware now. The XB1 does sound balanced, it's just balanced at a different level of performance than the PS4.
 
artist said:
bish shows up and people start droppin'

DeFiBkIlLeR
Banned
(Today, 05:58 AM)

PartyTimeFunTime
Banned
(Today, 06:40 AM)

GumDumpster
Banned
(Today, 08:35 AM)

WrongSider
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Click to expand...

If PartyTimeFunTime added an r to the end of his name... mindblown.gif. Close though.
 
FranXico said:
Found this comment to the article over at EG. I think it is an interesting reaction, so I will quote it here:
Click to expand...

I think Microsoft's design decisions are pretty straightforward. I wouldn't say it's "backwards" per se, but more holistic in terms of competing goals for the hardware.

1) Power was not the only goal of the console - OS features, Kinect, and gaming all had priorities when designing the console, so 8GB of RAM was a must in order to ensure enough memory resources.

2) The console was going to pack-in Kinect as standard. This required more robust audio hardware, it would also increase the cost of the console. As a result, other components needed to be cheaper in order to keep costs down.

3) In order to meet the goals of 1) and 2), a single APU design was necessary in order to decrease costs and allow die shrinks to continue decreasing costs significantly over time. 8GB of RAM was also a requirement, but it needed to be a cheap solution that could be targeted for 2013 release -- thus 8GB of DDR3 was chosen.

4) In order for 8GB of DDR3 RAM to be able to hold up in 2013, a secondary pool of high speed memory was necessary - thus, the decision could have been eDRAM or eSRAM. The latter was ultimately chosen because it could be integrated with the APU.

Microsoft went into the design of Xbox One with the mindset that all of these factors needed to be met. GDDR5 may have increased the BOM more than they would have liked, and it also may have not been guaranteed for 2013 release (remember Xbox One was designed two years ago).

Sony went into the design with a different philosophy; instead of competing interests for OS functionality or Move, they decided to focus designing the hardware around games and developers first, and then whatever resources they had left over would be allocated to either of these functions but they were considered of secondary importance.

It's why Sony was originally willing to go with 4GB of GDDR5 -- sufficient for gaming purposes, and in many ways still superior to the 8GB of DDR3 purely for rendering. It would have required a smaller OS footprint for the PS4, so Sony was conceding at that point in time that they may have not had the ability or memory resources for all the advanced multi-tasking that the Xbox One is capable of. Bottom line is that 8GB of RAM was never a requirement from the outset of the project design. This allowed Sony to focus the APU purely around providing the best GPU bang for their buck -- they picked a highly customized Pitcairn GPU with advanced GPGPU functionality coupled with a relatively modest CPU.

So Sony was giving developers what they wanted the most out of a next-gen consoles -- RAM bandwidth and a powerful GPU. It just so happened that they lucked out and 8GB of GDDR5 became available in 2013, further removing developer limitations with the console.

Sony and Microsoft had two very different philosophies for next-gen, and I think they were entirely based upon their experiences this gen. In the case of Sony, many people felt PS3's design was overly complex and the cost was too high due to Blu-Ray and CELL, while the memory architecture was causing developer headaches. It left Sony fighting to win back the core audience they had been losing to Microsoft. So their PS4 design was based upon winning them back.

Microsoft in comparison, felt pretty confident that they had the hardcore gaming audience in the bag, so to speak. And they had been riding high off some relative success of an expanding userbase thanks to Kinect. So they doubled down on this strategy, and focused more on expanding services.

Hence why we have the two systems that we have today.
 
From all these articles, it becomes more and more apparent that X1 is weak compared to PS4 no matter how they spin it. All they are trying is twist the logic to make the PS4 advantages seem insignificant which is totally opposite of the reality.

Of course being the creators of X1 they can never accept this publicly.
 
James Sawyer Ford said:
I think Microsoft's design decisions are pretty straightforward. I wouldn't say it's "backwards" per se, but more holistic in terms of competing goals for the hardware.

1) Power was not the only goal of the console - OS features, Kinect, and gaming all had priorities when designing the console, so 8GB of RAM was a must in order to ensure enough memory resources.

2) The console was going to pack-in Kinect as standard. This required more robust audio hardware, it would also increase the cost of the console. As a result, other components needed to be cheaper in order to keep costs down.

3) In order to meet the goals of 1) and 2), a single APU design was necessary in order to decrease costs and allow die shrinks to continue decreasing costs significantly over time. 8GB of RAM was also a requirement, but it needed to be a cheap solution that could be targeted for 2013 release -- thus 8GB of DDR3 was chosen.

4) In order for 8GB of DDR3 RAM to be able to hold up in 2013, a secondary pool of high speed memory was necessary - thus, the decision could have been eDRAM or eSRAM. The latter was ultimately chosen because it could be integrated with the APU.

Microsoft went into the design of Xbox One with the mindset that all of these factors needed to be met. GDDR5 may have increased the BOM more than they would have liked, and it also may have not been guaranteed for 2013 release (remember Xbox One was designed two years ago).

Sony went into the design with a different philosophy; instead of competing interests for OS functionality or Move, they decided to focus designing the hardware around games and developers first, and then whatever resources they had left over would be allocated to either of these functions but they were considered of secondary importance.

It's why Sony was originally willing to go with 4GB of GDDR5 -- sufficient for gaming purposes, and in many ways still superior to the 8GB of DDR3 purely for rendering. It would have required a smaller OS footprint for the PS4, so Sony was conceding at that point in time that they may have not had the ability or memory resources for all the advanced multi-tasking that the Xbox One is capable of. Bottom line is that 8GB of RAM was never a requirement from the outset of the project design. This allowed Sony to focus the APU purely around providing the best GPU bang for their buck -- they picked a highly customized Pitcairn GPU with advanced GPGPU functionality coupled with a relatively modest CPU.

So Sony was giving developers what they wanted the most out of a next-gen consoles -- RAM bandwidth and a powerful GPU. It just so happened that they lucked out and 8GB of GDDR5 became available in 2013, further removing developer limitations with the console.

Sony and Microsoft had two very different philosophies for next-gen, and I think they were entirely based upon their experiences this gen. In the case of Sony, many people felt PS3's design was overly complex and the cost was too high due to Blu-Ray and CELL, while the memory architecture was causing developer headaches. It left Sony fighting to win back the core audience they had been losing to Microsoft. So their PS4 design was based upon winning them back.

Microsoft in comparison, felt pretty confident that they had the hardcore gaming audience in the bag, so to speak. And they had been riding high off some relative success of an expanding userbase thanks to Kinect. So they doubled down on this strategy, and focused more on expanding services.

Hence why we have the two systems that we have today.
Click to expand...

This post is balanced. I think I teared up a bit there at the end.

Well done.
 
artist said:
bish shows up and people start droppin'

DeFiBkIlLeR
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PartyTimeFunTime
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GumDumpster
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WrongSider
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Click to expand...

LOL MS is so incompetent.
There should be a sticky thread with all the banned usernames along with their email addresses revealed.
 
satam55 said:
We don't know enough info about the ARM chip/SoC in the PS4 (other than what Cerny told us at the PS4 event in February) to make a new thread about it. It would just be us speculating.
Click to expand...
Speculating? Perfect!
That's what boards etc. are doing sometimes.
So go for it ;)
 
With all the PR and hyperbole spreading like wild fire before the big launches I hope CBOAT makes one final pre launch appearance. Maybe he is laying low for a while though.

gaming_noob said:
LOL MS is so incompetent.
There should be a sticky thread with all the banned usernames along with their email addresses revealed.
Click to expand...

With those kinds of posters constantly crapping up threads it wouldn't hurt if the mods took that kind of stance in hopes of chancing them off or at least exposing some of the crap these companies are trying to pull.
 
gaming_noob said:
LOL MS is so incompetent.
There should be a sticky thread with all the banned usernames along with their email addresses revealed.
Click to expand...

I don't know if revealing the email addresses is a good idea, but explicitly pointing out which users were doing astroturfing would certainly be instructive.
 
skdoo said:
I swear Leadbetter has a hard-on for MS... it's almost embarrassing to read the spin. Sounds like a sports team that sucks, knows they suck, but have to spin "not sucking"
Click to expand...

Yes, like Jerry Jones spins the Cowboys, when they are a .500 ballclub. Balance?
 
skdoo said:
I swear Leadbetter has a hard-on for MS... it's almost embarrassing to read the spin. Sounds like a sports team that sucks, knows they suck, but have to spin "not sucking"
Click to expand...

To be fair, in this version of the interview, he isn't really cheerleading quite as hard as the other versions.

But yes, he is quite an obvious fanboy.
 
skdoo said:
I swear Leadbetter has a hard-on for MS... it's almost embarrassing to read the spin. Sounds like a sports team that sucks, knows they suck, but have to spin "not sucking"
Click to expand...

Yes, like Jerry Jones spins the Cowboys, when they are a .500 ballclub. Balance?

After this MS should focus on the entertainment abilities of X1.

WTF? this was an edit?
 
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