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Kotaku: Microsoft Is Still Planning A Cheaper, Disc-Less Next-Gen Xbox
- Thread starter Spectromixer
- Start date
But this still sounds like disruption for disruptions sake. You'd agree that people continue purchasing the old system after release of a new one, and MS have said they'll continue to support XB1, so why go to the trouble of manufacturing an "in-between" of the two generations? We're talking R+D, design, manufacturing plants, and production for a console that is made to appeal to the people purchasing an XB1. Considering MS have already redesigned the XB1 to an XB1S and developed an XB1X, I just don't get why you'd setup more facilities to make another console ... consoles aren't iPhones.
I wonder what this means for a potential Switch 2. If next-gen multiplats will be designed for something around the power of a ps4pro as their baseline, that may leave enough wiggle room for Nintendo to come in around 2022 with a hybrid console in that range and receive a decent amount of next-gen ports.
This is a misconception. 4TF Navi in the Lockhart is at least 50% better due to improved efficiency + bandwidth. Add in VRS and conservative rasterization, HW RT, it's probably double...
Let's see if the Switch 2 can match base PS4 performance first... Even XB1s perf is not reached in mobile GPU yet.
It depends on the Switch 2. Zen2 means a lot CPU power. And no, games are not designed around the power of the pro, there is more than just a gpu in a console that is relevant to performance.
4TF Navi doing RT is another issue seeing how the RTX GPU's handle it.
I would not be surprised to see only very limited support for rt in Lockhart.
It's not though; it's expanding on what both Sony and Microsoft have established in this current generation. Having two consoles at different price points and performance tiers hasn't destroyed their business or the console market. And how doesn't it make sense? First, let's ignore the logistics of creating the system and simply tell me which do you think Microsoft prefers. Do you think when the next generation hardware comes out but someone doesn't buy the high end system, would they rather sell you a system that can only play previous gen games or a system that can play previous gen and current gen games? The answer should be obvious. It helps to grow the user base faster, which means that's a bigger audience that game developers can develop their games for rather than waiting for the install base to grow at a slower rate that a normal transition would be. There's good reason here for Microsoft to want to try to explore this.
Now let's look at the logistics part. You're assuming that the design of the two are drastically different but let's look at the PC. They're built to be modular and almost like LEGOs. Why can't we assume that if they planned this ahead of time that they didn't design both platforms with this in mind so that they could share a lot of things? You wouldn't be doing R&D at the cost of two systems. You would be doing R&D on a platform that can be used as two different systems by being modular.
Finally, as you already said they already do this with the Xbox One S and the Xbox One S, so it's not like it's some new concept to them to manufacture two different systems. Where you might be missing something is the assumption that there's going to be four systems on the market. There's no reason for the Xbox One S or One X to be on the market with Lockhart out there since it'll play those games and more. This is very likely going to replace them and not live along side them and just like there are two platforms now, there will only be two when the next gen launches. And again, it'll be backwards compatible so that doesn't stop them from supporting existing Xbox One users and Xbox One games for people who buy Lockhart.
Didn't the 360 launch with BC? I remember reading something about how they prioritized having Halo 2 BC.
It did. One of the first games I played on my 360 was the original Xbox version of Tony Hawk's American Wasteland. Users needed the hard drive though.
We will see, I guess :) I guess it also depends on how much of a performance drop there will be with RT for next-gen systems in general and how that is achieved.
Right, I forgot BC was tied to the hard drive.
It's crazy how much better the Xbox One's implementation of BC is compared to the 360's. Really excited to learn more about Scarlett's BC.
Its going to happen. It makes business sense at least. They know theres a large number of people that dont care about the best graphics or whatever. They aren't blind to how many units the Switch is selling right now....
They will probably make a killing with this approach next gen.
Multiple outlets called Halo 2 one of the stealth best launch titles for the 360.
Does that mean you're expecting the sales split to be 80/20 in favour of Lockhart? That would align with the two tiered approach in the current generation.
I think the manufacturing thing would be more of a bottleneck out of the gate, as there normally a bit of a ramp up time to produce enough consoles. I guess they could use pre-orders to adjust which split they aim for but the more casual end of the market don't always pre-order.
I haven't given it any thought on what the split might be. I would think we'd start with data from previous console transitions and see how many previous gen systems sold during the launch of a new generation during the holiday season.
I think this is a very good question though on how Microsoft determines how to allocate manufacturing of each system. It also begs the question of how the supply chain works with shared versus non shared parts too. But I agree, at launch, given the history of how consoles have been constrained by limited supply from manufacturing, it poses a potential problem. Pre-orders are certain a way to gauge it, but it'll really depend on the lead time needed to know and how easily they can shift manufacturing resources. Again, supply chain typically has to be planned in advance, so who knows how easy this is to change.
If anything, this aspect is a much more compelling and interesting discussion on the challenge of going this route for Microsoft. Maybe it all goes back to what I started with with them basing how to do this based on the data of how previous generations split the sales between previous gen and next gen and they do something similar along those lines. After all, they do predict from data and interest from retailers on how much to increase their manufacturing for their current systems to compensate for the increase in sales that happens at this time of the year every year.
All future Xbox ecosystem exclusives will be playable on PC, so therefore users on Scarlett should still get impressive games regardless of the sales split (e.g.: Lockhart getting far more sales out of the gate due to cheaper price). Multiplats available outside of Xbox's ecosystem may be a bit more varied, but most of those games will be available on PC too anyway.
I honestly think things will be fine for both groups (Lockhart users & Scarlett users).
I never really thought about how they'll determine how many consoles of each type to make. It seems like Xbox One X consoles are as easy to buy/find as Xbox One S consoles though.
It may just be that they risk going all out to start with, going for 80/20 in favour of Scarlett, knowing that their hardcore will be there at the start, though it may risk annoying the lower price market if there are huge shortages and it's the sought after toy for Christmas next year. Definitely an interesting dilemma.
Gamepass is the difference. It makes this doable. Gamepass + regular sales
Amazing what cheap software can do. All of the sudden it's not that big of a deal if you're locked into owning stuff for ever with no way of reselling or lending lending games to your friends/family.
Amazing what cheap software can do. All of the sudden it's not that big of a deal if you're locked into owning stuff for ever with no way of reselling or lending lending games to your friends/family.
As someone who has little interest in Xbox and will almost certainly be PS5 only next gen I really couldn't care less about this and I'm not at all concerned about the quality of next gen games.
Games this gen have been fantastic and they are only going to get better next gen.
If this happens it seems to me it's a console to get people in on Gamepass and I think if Xbox wants one thing next gen it's a sub to that above everything else.
I'm not qualified to say how much of a hassle it would be for devs so have nothing to say about that aspect.
Games this gen have been fantastic and they are only going to get better next gen.
If this happens it seems to me it's a console to get people in on Gamepass and I think if Xbox wants one thing next gen it's a sub to that above everything else.
I'm not qualified to say how much of a hassle it would be for devs so have nothing to say about that aspect.
I am fine with gaming at FHD.
Thought-provoking
Yeah, you're right. I remembered that incorrectly. The 360 did launch with BC, but the caveats were pretty severe:
- it was done through a software emulation layer
- it was a limited list of games, 212 in North America at launch
- you had to have a hard drive
- you had to download a patch for each BC game
- The games had a tendency to be glitchy, performance could be poor and you would get crashes
If developers make their games with the PS5/Scarlett as the baseline spec and then port down to Lockhart months later, that's one thing. If developers make games with Lockhart as the baseline spec and all the PS5/Scarlett do is run higher resolution Lockhart games, that's a huge problem.
If Lockhart is treated as a separate platform like the Switch then it won't be an issue. If MS mandates that all Scarlett games have to run on Lockhart, developers obviously won't be able to take advantage of the PS5/Scarlett fully. That's the problem. This won't be a issue for first-party Sony games but for third-party games and literally everything on MS' side, it could seriously hold things back.
The patch wasnt per game, it was actually just the main emulation package that they updated periodically as it got better/more games got added.
But yeah, it was pretty patchy even at the time, I kind of felt it was only for Halo 2, which actually got really good solid support and ran better than on OG.
Most of the OG games looked so rough by the time we had moved to HD AND 16:9 on all games on 360
They'll cut off the previous consoles as usual. Nintendo did it and it's selling like hot cakes, meaning consumers still accept being screwed over.
Developers in the long run won't develop game for the ps4/Xbox one, that's just how things are.
My point was that when I buy the new hardware I bring my games (and controllers on xbox, hopefully ps5) with me. I know that eventually things get phased out because of power limitations.
The GPU could be arround 4TF but the CPU will be better, it will have a SDD (and hopefully the games will take advantege of that). The console will be obvious much powerfull than PRO and X.
I Doubt that switch 2 match the the PS4/xbox (base models) so even the Pro will be away beyond
At that time Sony crippled their lead in the market by building a bespoke architecture for the PS3 that completely stopped any opportunity for backwards compatibility.
If you think they'll make that mistake again that's cool, I don't though.
Just because the Switch exists doesn't mean they make the games for the switch first and then upres it for Xbox One and Playstation 4 so why would they do that with Lockhart? Do we anticipate Lockhart being the market leader above PlayStation 5 or something? At least Lockhart should have the same CPU. I don't see the problem. I guess PlayStation 2 was holding back the Xbox original? The power Gap was probably bigger then.
Difference is what was said is that MS would mandate Devs to develop for both from the start. And the CPU/ram will be lesser too.
PS2 held back multiplatform games on the original Xbox, yes.
If we're going to talk about the parallels between Switch and Lockhart. The undocked + docked mode is a perfect analogy.
Switch GPU undocked perf is 42% of it's docked perf. The ram bandwidth can be lowered proportionally.
Lowering the CPU and ram allocation for games might have introduced some transition lag / extra developer head aches. Is it even possible to turn off portions of the LPDDR4 ram dynamically?
Switch developers have to account for this scaling in real time.
Lockhart GPU and ram bandwidth is around 40% of the Anacondas. Ram is 75%. CPU is likely at least 60%. It's not an outlandish comparison to compare to Lockhart / Anaconda to Switch's undocked / docked transitions. Expect one is a transition you handle at compile time, the other one you have to handle in real time.
Switch GPU undocked perf is 42% of it's docked perf. The ram bandwidth can be lowered proportionally.
Lowering the CPU and ram allocation for games might have introduced some transition lag / extra developer head aches. Is it even possible to turn off portions of the LPDDR4 ram dynamically?
Switch developers have to account for this scaling in real time.
Lockhart GPU and ram bandwidth is around 40% of the Anacondas. Ram is 75%. CPU is likely at least 60%. It's not an outlandish comparison to compare to Lockhart / Anaconda to Switch's undocked / docked transitions. Expect one is a transition you handle at compile time, the other one you have to handle in real time.
Supposedly not. According to Schreier on the latest episode of his podcast, MS is mandating that if a dev wants to launch on one SKU of the next Xbox, they have to launch on both.
I hope this isn't true. That's bullshit of the highest level and reminds me of when MS didn't want to do indie deals/ports unless the game came to then with content exclusively for Xbox.
It undermines the whole point if it isn't mandatory. It's not really that different than not being able create a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X only game.
Last time I checked, games built with Pro or 1X in mind were possibly compromised by having PS4/Xbone versions. We don't know thetrue specs or how this will affect the base games. Remember, it's easier to port up, then to port down.
I'm talking about the principle of making it mandatory to be compatible. Not making it mandatory would be worse for what they're going for.
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Being Xcloud is built on S's (not X's), I'm going to assume Lockhart was primarily conceived as a cost cutting measure for "next-gen Xcloud". Presumably they're also planning a "Pro" tier subscription for Scarlett level Xcloud hardware, relegating Lockhart to the free tier (or perhaps mobile device streams).
...as usual?
Sony has made 6 systems, including the PS1.
of those 5 systems that could theoretically support BC, 4 of them do. (The PS2, the PS3, the PSP, the Vita).
Only the PS4 doesn't, and that's largely because the jaguar CPU is too weak to emulate the cell processor.
There's no reason to assume the PS5 wouldn't have BC- especially since Sony has already been clear on it. Microsoft, same thing.
I'm talking about new games not running on older systems.