Support NeoGAF

[AdventureRacing]

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.

So what exactly are the successes for sony (giving exclusive shit to gamers is not a success for sony).

Heres some of the bad points of this gen:
-They lost a shit ton of money (and if it the PS4 lost as much i think they would pull out of the home console business).

-They lost a ton of marketshare. They went from outselling their competitors combined almost 4:1 to coming in last place this gen. The playstation brand is nowhere near as strong as it used to be because of what happened this gen (especially in the US and Japan).

-They lost their spot as the defacto home to 3rd parties and this is a pretty big deal. In the home console space if anything MS is now the go to for 3rd parties.

The only thing i can see possibly being touted as being good for their future success is their expanded 1st party but even that isn't much of a victory. Their Japanese 1st party library has become even more irrelevant than ever and has had pretty much no impact this gen and that will almost certainly be the same next gen.

Their biggest 1st party title and their only real big HW moving franchise was developed in the PS1 era and even it suffered this gen as well. God of war was also started last gen. The only real big franchise they started this gen was uncharted and it isn't much of a system seller.

Sony has a pretty stellar line up of 1st party developers but they need to turn this into producing some real system selling software.

I think there are very few positives to take out of this gen at all. A small resurgence at the end which probably won't even get them out of last place or anywhere near being profitable overall isn't much to shout about really.

 

[dragonelite]

I predict a custom GPU with some DX12 features.

I dont really think we know what devs want into dx12 and i think it is really far away if you ask considering big case of developers are still working on dx9.

 

[Oblivion]

What series of GPU was Xenos? And by what factor would this new GPU be more powerful?

 

[Brimstone]

MS is not waiting till 2014 to release their system. It is not going to have an HD8000, or HD9000 based chip in it.

There is comedy and there is comedy gold aka Shin Johnpv.


Microsoft says lets play catch to Sony and they are throwing a javelin.



Both Sony and Nintendo have no answer to Halo or Shadowrun it is game over.

 

[Stripper13]

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 have yet to see these successes.

The exclusive line up they possess is relatively insignificant when it comes to moving consoles.

Lost some serious 3rd party content/exclusives to Microsoft.

They lost a shit load of money, marketshare and brand awareness/loyalty.

They're attempt at motion gaming was/is a flop relative to the alternatives.

Nintendo were, and Microsoft currently are - steaming ahead, while the PS3 kind of flip flops on the line between mediocre and merely 'good' sales performance.

The only good move they made this generation has been turning a potentially division/business killing product, into one that they'll try to not repeat ever again.

 

[bigtroyjon]

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

Amazing post.

 

[dragonelite]

What series of GPU was Xenos? And by what factor would this new GPU be more powerful?

From wikipedia

Developed under the codename "C1," it is in many ways related to the R520 architecture and therefore very similar to an ATI Radeon X1900/X1950 series of PC graphics cards as far as features and performance are concerned.

I do hope next gen card will atleast be 5~8 times faster/better.
Because going from 720p to 1080p is a 2.25 increase in performance.
Then i would like a fps increase so that is 2.25 * 2 = 4.5 times better performance.
Then we have the same amount of resources/pixel as this gen only running 1080@60fps.
So a bit more performance per pixel i come out at a gpu being 5~8 times faster.

Timothy lottens has made a nice break down what he expects is the next gen gpu for one of the consoles.

http://timothylottes.blogspot.com/2012/01/to-extremes-and-back-to-reality.html

 

[Brimstone]

From wikipedia


I do hope next gen card will atleast be 5~8 times faster/better.
Because going from 720p to 1080p is a 2.25 increase in performance.
Then i would like a fps increase so that is 2.25 * 2 = 4.5 times better performance.
Then we have the same amount of resources/pixel as this gen only running 1080@60fps.
So a bit more performance per pixel i come out at a gpu being 5~8 times faster.

Timothy lottens has made a nice break down what he expects is the next gen gpu for one of the consoles.

http://timothylottes.blogspot.com/2012/01/to-extremes-and-back-to-reality.html

Recall the scene from the movie 300 when Gerard Butler kicks the dude into a pit.


Bill Gates to Timothy Lottes "this is Sparta"!

 

[McHuj]

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.

They're talking about the architecture not a specific card. GCN next specifically. Who knows how many shaders and what card it would be closest too. The article is speculating that whatever the shaders are they won't be VLIW5 (5xxx, 6xxx) or VLIW4(69xx) series, but GCN. Nothing about GCN limits it to 79xx class devices?

I predict a custom GPU with some DX12 features.

What I'd like to know if there really are major things that need to be improved for a DX12 to be necessary? I'm wondering if a very compute capable (through OpenCl, DirectCompute, AMP C++) GPU can pretty much accomplish what something like DX12 would bring to the table with actually needing DX12?

Any dev/DX programmer wanna chime in?

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'm actually thinking the opposite on the price point. If this design is an SOC, I think people need to look at something like Llano/Trinity for transistor counts, die size, and TPD numbers.

Something like an A8-3850 is 228 mm and packs 1.45 transistors with a TPD of 100W. Retail price of around $130 (I bet the retailer and AMD make a nice profit). Trinity, allegedly, 25% more CPU power and 50% more GPU in the same TPD and roughly the same size.

I'm predicting that if this design will be an SOC, it will be very similar in size to these guys (under 300mm) and under 2B transistors so the actual cost won't be that as high as two discrete components and TPD will be under 125W as well (for the SOC not the whole system).

 

[Vanillalite]

They're talking about the architecture not a specific card. GCN next specifically. Who knows how many shaders and what card it would be closest too. The article is speculating that whatever the shaders are they won't be VLIW5 (5xxx, 6xxx) or VLIW4(69xx) series, but GCN. Nothing about GCN limits it to 79xx class devices?




What I'd like to know if there really are major things that need to be improved for a DX12 to be necessary? I'm wondering if a very compute capable (through OpenCl, DirectCompute, AMP C++) GPU can pretty much accomplish what something like DX12 would bring to the table with actually needing DX12?

Any dev/DX programmer wanna chime in?




I'm actually thinking the opposite on the price point. If this design is an SOC, I think people need to look at something like Llano/Trinity for transistor counts, die size, and TPD numbers.

Something like an A8-3850 is 228 mm and packs 1.45 transistors with a TPD of 100W. Retail price of around $130 (I bet the retailer and AMD make a nice profit). Trinity, allegedly, 25% more CPU power and 50% more GPU in the same TPD and roughly the same size.

I'm predicting that if this design will be an SOC, it will be very similar in size to these guys (under 300mm) and under 2B transistors so the actual cost won't be that as high as two discrete components and TPD will be under 125W as well (for the SOC not the whole system).

Even with a SoC if we are getting the GPU the topic thread shows the SoC is going to cost a lot more at least going by current pricing structures.

$400 IMO is the spot we are looking at if we are getting a 7000 GPU no matter SoC or not along with a kinect and however much space MS wants to give each console. (I wonder if MS would try and go solid state?)

 

[Aasir Osu]

So, without any knowledge of chip architectures, etc. let me throw this question out to you experts:

My limited understanding of GCN architecture is that part of what it's supposed to do is bring graphics chips closer to general computing performance or CPU-like functionality. I know AMD/Nvidia are not quite there yet. But, would it be possible to design a console with this idea in mind?

In other words, a SoC system that takes the same philosophy as Xenos - a unified shader type approach, where a CPU/GPU combo would both take advantage of a chips (heavily re-modified) GCN units on an as-needed basis or load basis.

The above is an extreme, very extreme, oversimplification. But I bring it up because I'm wondering why a closed system like a console would need a GCN based graphics chip? Wouldn't it be better to spend the transistors on dedicated, faster units - a variation, I know, of the same arguments that came up during the RSX/Xenos debates. Especially if memory is going to be the issue everyone is assuming it is?

If a true SoC could be designed, one that blurred the lines even further between a CPU/GPU, then maybe MS or Sony could get away with a chip that had the next gen performance we're all hoping for, but wouldn't be as transistor heavy as two separate chips, since the CPU or GPU would only take advantage of what they needed to at any given time. If a GCN unit could do the same thing as it's CPU counterpart, why include it in both?

Tell me how wrong I am, but be gentle.

 

[jeff_rigby]

I know it would cause a lot of Toy Story jokes but Beyond would be a good name for the 4th generation of Xbox console.

Infinity has a lot of marketing potential on its name alone and so does Beyond since you can just say Xbox Beyond, Beyond Infinity.

Much better than Loop or that 720 shit.

You are really sharp <grin>. To infinity and beyond. I remember your other thread discussion of XBOX 720 names....very good there too.

 

[KageMaru]

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.

You, of all people, really shouldn't really be talking about other people living in a vacuum with the way you've been talking in this thread.

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.

Losing the vast majority of your market and mindshare in one single transition is not considered success in the marketplace. Piling up an enormous debt that is unlikely to be recuperated over the course of the products life-cycle is not considered success in business.

I think the PS3 is a great system, as good as any other this gen, but you are way off base here IMO.

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?

Yes they formed a joint venture hoping Cell would be integrated from desktops, TVs, and other electronics other than the PS3. That didn't pan out.

IF the second Cell as a GPU plan was real, it never worked out.

They included blu-ray to win a format war (or please the suits) when blu-ray would have probably won anyways.

They launched with a BOE that was almost twice as much as the competitor with no real results to show for that added investment.

You're right, none of that was conventional, it was reckless. They thought they had an iron grip on the industry and they could do what they want and still come out on top.

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.

Couldn't have said it better myself, though with people who obviously prefer a platform, apparently the parent company can do no wrong.

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.

They could have done all of that without digging themselves into such a deep hole.

 

[Pagusas]

You, of all people, really shouldn't really be talking about other people living in a vacuum with the way you've been talking in this thread.



Losing the vast majority of your market and mindshare in one single transition is not considered success in the marketplace. Piling up an enormous debt that is unlikely to be recuperated over the course of the products life-cycle is not considered success in business.

I think the PS3 is a great system, as good as any other this gen, but you are way off base here IMO.



Yes they formed a joint venture hoping Cell would be integrated from desktops, TVs, and other electronics other than the PS3. That didn't pan out.

IF the second Cell as a GPU plan was real, it never worked out.

They included blu-ray to win a format war (or please the suits) when blu-ray would have probably won anyways.

They launched with a BOE that was almost twice as much as the competitor with no real results to show for that added investment.

You're right, none of that was conventional, it was reckless. They thought they had an iron grip on the industry and they could do what they want and still come out on top.



Couldn't have said it better myself, though with people that obviously prefer a platform, apparently the parent company can do no wrong.



They could have done all of that without digging themselves into such a deep hole.

Had they not included Bluray the HDDVD/BR war would have lasted much much much longer. That was a GOOD decision on sony's part

 

[KageMaru]

Had they not included Bluray the HDDVD/BR war would have lasted much much much longer. That was a GOOD decision on sony's part

I agree that would have been likely. However I fail to see what that has to do with Sony's decisions with their game division this gen.

The format war lasting longer would have mostly effected early adopters or people waiting to jump on either format, all the while the PS3 would have likely been in a better position today if it didn't include blu-ray.

 

[iamshadowlark]

So, without any knowledge of chip architectures, etc. let me throw this question out to you experts:

My limited understanding of GCN architecture is that part of what it's supposed to do is bring graphics chips closer to general computing performance or CPU-like functionality. I know AMD/Nvidia are not quite there yet. But, would it be possible to design a console with this idea in mind?

In other words, a SoC system that takes the same philosophy as Xenos - a unified shader type approach, where a CPU/GPU combo would both take advantage of a chips (heavily re-modified) GCN units on an as-needed basis or load basis.

The above is an extreme, very extreme, oversimplification. But I bring it up because I'm wondering why a closed system like a console would need a GCN based graphics chip? Wouldn't it be better to spend the transistors on dedicated, faster units - a variation, I know, of the same arguments that came up during the RSX/Xenos debates. Especially if memory is going to be the issue everyone is assuming it is?

If a true SoC could be designed, one that blurred the lines even further between a CPU/GPU, then maybe MS or Sony could get away with a chip that had the next gen performance we're all hoping for, but wouldn't be as transistor heavy as two separate chips, since the CPU or GPU would only take advantage of what they needed to at any given time. If a GCN unit could do the same thing as it's CPU counterpart, why include it in both?

Tell me how wrong I am, but be gentle.

Think SPEs in Cell, only alot worse at their job as of right now.

Also

The above is an extreme, very extreme, oversimplification. But I bring it up because I'm wondering why a closed system like a console would need a GCN based graphics chip? Wouldn't it be better to spend the transistors on dedicated, faster units - a variation, I know, of the same arguments that came up during the RSX/Xenos debates. Especially if memory is going to be the issue everyone is assuming it is?

Its good to know I'm not the only one.

 

[StevieP]

I dont really think we know what devs want into dx12 and i think it is really far away if you ask considering big case of developers are still working on dx9.

Any discussion of DX12 should be changed to "DX11.1" because for the foreseeable future, that's what you're getting. AMD GCN chips, like the ones going in the next Xbox, will have DX11.1 support.

Whichever customized chip you're getting, look at a 75-100w power envelope @ 32nm. Tops.

 

[iamshadowlark]

You, of all people, really shouldn't really be talking about other people living in a vacuum with the way you've been talking in this thread.

Oh really?

Losing the vast majority of your market and mindshare in one single transition is not considered success in the marketplace. Piling up an enormous debt that is unlikely to be recuperated over the course of the products life-cycle is not considered success in business.

You all fail to discern between a product being successful in the marketplace and a product being a success.

I absolutely love how you transition from "oh no you didn't" to proving my point in the span of one paragraph. Brilliant lol.

Yes they formed a joint venture hoping Cell would be integrated from desktops, TVs, and other electronics other than the PS3. That didn't pan out.

IF the second Cell as a GPU plan was real, it never worked out.

They included blu-ray to win a format war (or please the suits) when blu-ray would have probably won anyways.

They launched with a BOE that was almost twice as much as the competitor with no real results to show for that added investment.

You're right, none of that was conventional, it was reckless. They thought they had an iron grip on the industry and they could do what they want and still come out on top.

Its not like I said the exact same thing and you challenged it. Nope didn't happen.

Couldn't have said it better myself, though with people that obviously prefer a platform, apparently the parent company can do no wrong.

Yep im just a corporate nut hugging shill. You got me.

 

[KageMaru]

I absolutely love how you transition from "oh no you didn't" to proving my point in the span of one paragraph. Brilliant lol.

I guess I misunderstood your previous post, my bad.

Its not like I said the exact same thing and you challenged it. Nope didn't happen.

It looked like you tried to spin it as a positive. If you agree with what I posted, then why debate with people questioning Sony's success in this thread?

Yep im just a corporate nut hugging shill. You got me.

Well acceptance is the first step to recovery. =p

 

[charlequin]

Had they not included Bluray the HDDVD/BR war would have lasted much much much longer. That was a GOOD decision on sony's part

Not monetarily. Sony's royalties on BluRay will never come close to recouping the direct cash losses they took on the PlayStation 3 as a result of the BluRay drive's inclusion, much less the intangible brand value. If they'd been able to include it in PS3 at a reasonable cost and thereby maintain both brands (as was the plan) it'd be one thing, but in practice they traded success in the console market for success in a market an order of magnitude smaller.

 

[McHuj]

Even with a SoC if we are getting the GPU the topic thread shows the SoC is going to cost a lot more at least going by current pricing structures.

What GPU? No actual GPU is mentioned, only speculation on the architecture. Like with any other architecture GPU AMD has recently put out, it's scalable across various chip sizes and price points.

I'd bet that the 2013 successor to Trinity will have a GCN architecture for it's embedded GPU and will still hit the market at similar pricepoints.

 

[Mindlog]

Had they not included Bluray the HDDVD/BR war would have lasted much much much longer. That was a GOOD decision on sony's part

Crazy Hypothetical Land:

Blu-Ray was just too damned expensive to include it when PS3 launched. I wonder what would have happened if Sony took the money they lost in the first year of PS3 and threw it directly at movie studios. I believe Blu-Ray would have won just as fast and the PS3 would have been cheaper. Stand alone players wouldn't have had to compete with PS3 for diodes.

Hindsight 20/20 and all. Microsoft has Live Gold subscriptions to help offset early hardware losses this time around. I'm pretty sure that will be put towards an in-box Kinect.

 

[herzogzwei1989]

If Xbox 3 isn't coming until late 2013, why can't the GPU have some elements of R1100 / Sea Islands aka Canary Islands, like super tessellation or whatever?

 

[H_Prestige]

Not monetarily. Sony's royalties on BluRay will never come close to recouping the direct cash losses they took on the PlayStation 3 as a result of the BluRay drive's inclusion, much less the intangible brand value. If they'd been able to include it in PS3 at a reasonable cost and thereby maintain both brands (as was the plan) it'd be one thing, but in practice they traded success in the console market for success in a market an order of magnitude smaller.

So the only money Sony can make from BD is from royalties? And that's all public knowledge that we can use to calculate revenue? How much money did they lose from the BD drive?

 

[herzogzwei1989]

any thoughts on my post above?

 

[Opus Angelorum]

any thoughts on my post above?

Time.

The final GPU design will have already been signed off.

 

[herzogzwei1989]

Time.

The final GPU design will have already been signed off.

True. I agree.

 

[Psychotext]

So the only money Sony can make from BD is from royalties?

Directly? Yeah, pretty much.

I mean sure you might have an intangible like "people associate Sony with blu-ray so buy more of their blu-ray devices / tvs / whatever"... but in reality Samsung and LG have been assfucking them so I don't think it's really worked out that way.

 

[charsace]

IMO the GPU in the next xbox will have some DX12 features. The 360 has infantile version of things that they were looking to put into future versions of DX and so did the original xbox. I don't see why they wouldn't be doing the same thing now.

 

[Loofy]

Not monetarily. Sony's royalties on BluRay will never come close to recouping the direct cash losses they took on the PlayStation 3 as a result of the BluRay drive's inclusion, much less the intangible brand value. If they'd been able to include it in PS3 at a reasonable cost and thereby maintain both brands (as was the plan) it'd be one thing, but in practice they traded success in the console market for success in a market an order of magnitude smaller.

Youre assuming had Sony went with DVD then everything would be completely different.
For me if the PS3 didnt have blu ray, then there would be no reason to pick it up over the 360. Heck that HDDVD add on might even look tempting.

 

[Basileus777]

Youre assuming had Sony went with DVD then everything would be completely different.
For me if the PS3 didnt have blu ray, then there would be no reason to pick it up over the 360. Heck that HDDVD add on might even look tempting.

Anecdotal evidence doesn't mean much here. The PS3's history demonstrates pretty convincingly that the high price and manufacturing cost hurt Sony than whatever the value of BluRay gave them. A cheaper PS3 sold at less of a loss would have led to more sales and helped Sony more than BluRay did.

 

[[Nintex]]

IMO the GPU in the next xbox will have some DX12 features. The 360 has infantile version of things that they were looking to put into future versions of DX and so did the original xbox. I don't see why they wouldn't be doing the same thing now.

Windows 8 is DirectX 11.1 so don't expect DirectX 12 anytime soon. DirectX 11.1 is pretty much what everyone expected DirectX 12 to be anyway and it seems like we'll be stuck on it for a while.

 

[wwm0nkey]

Windows 8 is DirectX 11.1 so don't expect DirectX 12 anytime soon. DirectX 11.1 is pretty much what everyone expected DirectX 12 to be anyway and it seems like we'll be stuck on it for a while.

Yeah I dont see DX12 happening for quite some time

 

[les papillons sexuels]

Anecdotal evidence doesn't mean much here. The PS3's history demonstrates pretty convincingly that the high price and manufacturing cost hurt Sony than whatever the value of BluRay gave them. A cheaper PS3 sold at less of a loss would have led to more sales and helped Sony more than BluRay did.

I'd actually argue that blu-ray hurt them in that people were buying the system with no intent to use it for gaming, meaning that sony wasn't recouping losses that they normally would, had people been buying games, and more importantly, exclusives. Same goes with their advertising causing issues.

 

[iamblades]

IMO the GPU in the next xbox will have some DX12 features. The 360 has infantile version of things that they were looking to put into future versions of DX and so did the original xbox. I don't see why they wouldn't be doing the same thing now.

We are beyond the point where DX revisions will actually add substantially more features. The only real graphics feature that has been added since DX 9 is tessellation, everything else has just been improvements to programmability.

The whole point of programmable GPUs is that you don't have to worry about the feature set of the API. If you need something, you just program a shader to do it.

I doubt any substantial features will be added in DX12 that doesn't work on DX11 hardware.

 

[TheOddOne]

Windows 8 is DirectX 11.1 so don't expect DirectX 12 anytime soon. DirectX 11.1 is pretty much what everyone expected DirectX 12 to be anyway and it seems like we'll be stuck on it for a while.

Speaking of DirectX 11, it's been mentioned in a lot of job listing from MS lately.

 

[Loofy]

Anecdotal evidence doesn't mean much here. The PS3's history demonstrates pretty convincingly that the high price and manufacturing cost hurt Sony than whatever the value of BluRay gave them. A cheaper PS3 sold at less of a loss would have led to more sales and helped Sony more than BluRay did.

And thats all on the tiny little blu laser diode? You could also say Sony could have made the difference if they didnt go with the Cell BE. Today the manufacturing costs between a blu ray drive and DVD would be $20 at most. Yet the 360 still has a $100 price advantage.

History has also shown that the PS3 has never been at the same pricepoint as the 360, yet there has been months where it was close in hardware sales. No difference in the price gap this year either, yet the gap in hardware sales has been larger than ever.
Perhaps hardware costs isnt the reason for the PS3's position now.

 

[OG_Original Gamer]

One thing I can think of that D12 would bring is improved tesselation, currently its just not where it needs to be to give devs the ability to create an entire level using the feature as well as objects like cars with decals, with issues like the stretching of decals.

 

[les papillons sexuels]

We are beyond the point where DX revisions will actually add substantially more features. The only real graphics feature that has been added since DX 9 is tessellation, everything else has just been improvements to programmability.

The whole point of programmable GPUs is that you don't have to worry about the feature set of the API. If you need something, you just program a shader to do it.

I doubt any substantial features will be added in DX12 that doesn't work on DX11 hardware.

what compute shaders?

 

[herzogzwei1989]

I predict the Xbox 3 GPU will be somewhere between DX11 and DX12.

Just like Xbox 360's C1/Xenos GPU was beyond DX9c.


Correct me if you guys feel I'm wrong.

 

[Zeal]

I predict the Xbox 3 GPU will be somewhere between DX11 and DX12.

Just like Xbox 360's C1/Xenos GPU was beyond DX9c.


Correct me if you guys feel I'm wrong.

No I would say this is totally accurate. DX11 with some early DX12 effects and whatnot thrown in, just like what they did with 360.

And honestly, it's gonna need it.

 

[DCDW]

I think the largest contributing factor to this generations console outcome (at least as far as PS3 vs 360 goes), was ease of development. Games are hitting well over 50 million to make and having to fight with the console architecture in turn extending development time wasn't a very good selling point to developers. Xbox360 managed to keep it's graphics in line with PS3 and allow ease of development. Now eyeing the next generation, how much do you figure game development will cost for next gen graphics and engines? I see the console that allows the easiest method of developing games while keeping in line with the next gen standards is gonna be the favourite for 3rd parties.

Nextbox seems to be going for traditional PC architecture with probable modifications here and there. I can't see Sony designing their own hardware components from the ground up and have learned their lesson from the development nightmares of the Cell processor. So really I think all 3 companies are gonna play it safe from a hardware standpoint. If there's going to be any interesting deviation it might be in the form of the controllers (see the WiiU).

Edit: I mean look at the MMO market, I think the WiiU controller could allow developers to better adapt consoles for that gametype and getting into a 11+ Million player base with monthly subscriptions isn't a bad market to compete in.

 

[Quicksilver4648]

Yeah, anyone who thinks the next Xbox will ship with just DX11 is out of their mind. DX11 was included in Windows 7, back in 2009. If their next console doesn't release till fall 2013 then of course it will have newer tech. It will have whatever Windows 8 has and then a little extra to keep it relevant in the years post paunch.

 

[les papillons sexuels]

I think the largest contributing factor to this generations console outcome (at least as far as PS3 vs 360 goes), was ease of development. Games are hitting well over 50 million to make and having to fight with the console architecture in turn extending development time wasn't a very good selling point to developers. Xbox360 managed to keep it's graphics in line with PS3 and allow ease of development. Now eyeing the next generation, how much do you figure game development will cost for next gen graphics and engines? I see the console that allows the easiest method of developing games while keeping in line with the next gen standards is gonna be the favourite for 3rd parties.

Nextbox seems to be going for traditional PC architecture with probable modifications here and there. I can't see Sony designing their own hardware components from the ground up and have learned their lesson from the development nightmares of the Cell processor. So really I think all 3 companies are gonna play it safe from a hardware standpoint. If there's going to be any interesting deviation it might be in the form of the controllers (see the WiiU).

Edit: I mean look at the MMO market, I think the WiiU controller could allow developers to better adapt consoles for that gametype and getting into a 11+ Million player base with monthly subscriptions isn't a bad market to compete in.

not sure what the argument for this is. The 360 has quite a unique architecture, whilst the original xbox first attempted using a traditional PC archiecture and that failed horrendously. If anything it'll be a system very similar to 360.

 

[Log4Girlz]

I really do expect some custom features in the GPU, it will not be completely off the shelf and be some weird hybrid of modern cards and more advanced cards. It will sacrifice some absolute raw performance for a more varied repertoire of features. It will be a little kick ass GPU which will be outclasses very shortly by PC's sure, but at least it raises the bar on development for every high-end platform

 

[herzogzwei1989]

No I would say this is totally accurate. DX11 with some early DX12 effects and whatnot thrown in, just like what they did with 360.

And honestly, it's gonna need it.

Cool. I'm glad someone agrees with me.

 

[charlequin]

So the only money Sony can make from BD is from royalties?

The only money they can make directly from BD specifically, yes. They might make money selling BD players, but if the format war had gone the other way they'd make the same money selling HD-DVD players instead.

And that's all public knowledge that we can use to calculate revenue?

Total DVD royalties capped out in the hundreds of millions per year even at the format's peak. BluRay is, even looking optimistically, going to be a significantly smaller format overall than DVD (especially given the slower uptake as a PC format) and Sony's splitting the pie several ways. If they took home $200m every year for the next decade, it still wouldn't come close to making up for the PS3.

How much money did they lose from the BD drive?

Well, given the conventional wisdom that the BRD was directly responsible for the PS3's price and therefore its market failure, somewhere between $6 billion (direct cash losses on the PS3) and $8-10 billion (delta from expected performance of a reasonably-priced PS3 to what they actually saw instead.)

And thats all on the tiny little blu laser diode?

Pretty much, yes. The BRD was an outrageously expensive component at launch, far moreso than even other boutique parts like the Cell, and it was directly responsible for taking the system into the laughable, failure-inducing territory it ultimately wound up in.

 

[duk]

can't freaking wait for E3!

im hoping next gen will really surprise us in new console/home ent device direction but not Wii u route.

 

[Ryoku]

I feel like it must be said because it is bound to get mixed up if it hasn't already. Sony is not the only company to gain royalties for Blu-Ray. There is an entire list of companies which Microsoft and Nintendo can pay the royalties to. The list is on Wikipedia; do yourself a quick search if you really want to know.

 

[herzogzwei1989]

can't freaking wait for E3!

I'm excited for Wii U and any hints about Xbox 3!