-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Next gen PS5 and next Xbox launch speculation - Secret sauces spicing 2019
- Thread starter Phoenix Splash
- Start date
- Status
Yeah of course QOL changes like faster loading, installing or even downloading and a very snappy UI are great but imagine games not having sequences when Lara slowly climbs over a narrow ceilings so that the next area can load into memory. No more of Kratos squeezing himself through a tight spot, or Joel holding up a garage door so that Ellie can go behind.
All of these scenes are masked loading screens and they slow the pacing of the game down. I don't think people realize how much freedoms devs would receive if they could make draw calls to SSD instead of a lowly 5200rpm HDD.
Thanks for the answers.
MS would still be the only one with zero VR capability on consoles then, as even Nintendo is tipping their toes in it with Labo. Yeah they could always launch it later, but Sony will be quite far ahead by then with their VR expertise and goodwill.
Microsoft has Windows Mixed Reality devices. It's not like MS isn't working on VR, it's just not in the console space yet.
Tbh i'm ok with a 1TB HDD when the console is 14tf. I can buy a SSD later
Blame it on the lack of leaks...... if we had leaks a lot of this wouldn't be happening.
You should revisit my comment. I added some more context ...
I know, have they actually worked on or released any VR games yet?
If you want to protect people, then why are you posting anything they've told at all? Also, have you posted with their permission?
Pre-announce hype is fun, and I do a lot of speculation myself, but I hope you're not thinking you're playing Robin Hood, but with none of the risk. Even accidental leaks can derail peoples' careers.
I always wondered if it went from the disc to ram or first to the HDD. Thank you for the clarification.
As the CPU won't be a bottleneck next gen, I really hope that the entire system is not bogged down by an HDD. The more ubiquitous SSDs the more optimised engines will become. So I hope both Sony and MS will build their systems around SSDs.
Are we making this thread about me or are we talking about next-gen leaks? Pick one.
1. Digital is going to grow over time. It is expected. That has always been my standpoint, even on this thread, I have pointed out that it is simply following what has happened in other forms of media. None of what is posted in those articles states any different.
2. The people buying digital are the minority. If I wanted to play Hellblade prior to Ninja Theory's purchase, it was a digital download, and there are a lot of games that are simply digital only.
3. I have a lot of friends that are on one platform and will stay on one platform because it allows them to buy separate games and share. They will stay on the Playstation platform as they have done since the PS one.
4. I know of guys that buy digital. They do that not because of discounts, but because they can play it the moment the timer stops. No going to the store and waiting for a game to install some chunk before they play. It has nothing to do with pre orders either. They will simply one Friday morning pay and load a title and know that by the time they are up on a Saturday the game is ready to play.
5. Player engagement is about how much a player is on a single game if you are a publisher, and for Microsoft it is how many are using that through game pass. That in itself would be a win,but they are also tracking how much these people are buying games or spending on in game items like DLC or MTX. People are not going to be engaged if you do not have quality content, and engagement is also not solely tied to digital bought titles. This is why Anthem and Fallout were heavily discounted so soon i.e. we are not selling well, let us dump the price and maybe as the game matures we will make money off more gamers off the microtransaction store.
6. BC does not count for much. That Microsoft is doing it when everyone else is not, and that it has not brought back sales should show just how little gamers think of it. It is fan service, and sometimes you need to do that. What they are doing that is likely to have a huge disruption in the industry is Game Pass, and how they will integrate that with XCloud to target multiple devices. Sony is already doing the same by spreading PS Now to PC as they target additional revenues.
The industry will not turn on digital downloads and their support from platform holders. Not when we have a culture of consumption where there is a need to have something new and something fresh. Games like Fortnite are an exception and not a norm, and even within the game itself, the PS4 was the exception in tying the Epic account to one device.
Games like CoD, Battlefield, FIFA, NBA2k, Madden, Assassins Creed i.e. the huge franchises that dominate sales are yearly iterations where people have to start all over. They have infinitesimal value when it comes to BC. You adventure titles with minimal replay value similarly the same. I had a huge collection of games last gen, none of the discs is with me. I have games going all the way back to the original playstation that are collecting dust. PC games from over a decade ago still on disc that I would never put on a disc drive today, and that is something that applies to every gamer I know.
I did edit the previous post just as you put this one out. A console will do well because multiple good decisions were made, and there is always some luck with someone making bets that eventually look abysmal. This generation, that was Microsoft pushing Kinect and moreso their DRM policies that they backtracked from, that was followed by Sony sticking to the basics and getting lucky with RAM densities improving. This is something that happens every generation.
Who knows, maybe next generation is defined by subscriptions to other devices or the bet Microsoft is taking on a two SKU approach appeals to those who want to save money. In any case, a new generation will be a refresh unless you have a solution for streaming similar to what Google has with Stadia that could tie some of the older consoles to subs. What I am sure of is that BC will not be a game changer.
With the stuff they're doing with Hololens and MR headsets on PC, they could bring some of that knowledge/experience to consoles later down the road.
Just this Halo Recruit thing:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/h...ft_web_collection&activetab=pivot:overviewtab
Interesting description there:
"Take the first, small step into a virtual Halo world with Halo Recruit. This free training experience will introduce you to the characters, weapons, and universe of Halo through the power of Windows Mixed Reality. As a freshly minted UNSC recruit, you will learn to identify and fight terrifying alien combatants in this compelling exploration of what Halo's virtual future might hold."
;)
Last time I checked, this thread contained many topics related to informartion on the next gen, and so the morality of leaking 2nd hand information is a fair point to raise. But since you were so nice I will raise that in a new topic, which gets to explore the topic from multiple perspectives.
I'm still thinking they will have something crazy for either Hololens 2 or WMR at the Halo Outpost Discovery events.
No. Never.
1TB SSD is twice expensive than 2TB HDD right now on the market.
But will SSD make loading times much faster for every game or is it up to the engines of games and the way they load data and unpack shaders and other stuff? Did games load faster if you replaced the basic HDD in consoles by SSD?
I said game data is loaded in and out of RAM. Textures are game data. But so is lighting data, animation data, AI, meshes etc etc.
RAM is used as the working memory space for all of the that by the processors.
Nah, shouldn't make a difference. Game data still needs to be loaded into RAM in both cases, and with a physical flash cache + HDD setup managed by the HBCC the data will be pre-fetched from HDD to the cache well ahead of time in parallel to any flash cache to RAM transfers.
I must disagree. Hardware design can't mitigate the issue I addressed in my previous post with a 2-SKU approach.
That's not an issue of a "traditional approach" versus some nebulous new paradigm. The fixed target hardware spec. is the only approach that makes sense for consoles.
Even if MS wanted to steer consoles towards a more PC-like model of devs build a game and dictate a minimum hardware spec. they can't do that for console multi-platform development across non-MS platforms that still retain thin console software/graphics APIs.
You're missing my main point. By designing all the "other stuff" that isn't dependent on rendering resolution on the weaker lower spec. machine you are by definition limiting the scope of the game to the lower spec. machine.
If the lower spec. SKU didn't exist, every game would be designed with the top end SKU as a performance baseline and thus the higher baseline would open up more possibilities to employ technologies that would be impossible on the lower spec. machine, e.g. how SVOGI was beyond the capability of current-gen machines regardless of rendering resolution.
No, my friend, we're not.
MS might want to. But MS will have to dance to the tune of the wider industry, not the other way around; especially when their current console comprises quite a bit less than a third of the installed base of consoles for the core AAA audience.
This makes very little sense. Games are as varied and diverse as their hardward useage requirements are. Some game tax the hardware royally, while other barely touch certain aspects of the console hardware. The only constant IS the console hardware. So it makes no sense to treat that constant as anything but that.
What you describe is simply what the PC platform is. Nobody wants consoles to become PC. All that means is more abstraction and thus you're leaving performance on the table on a platform where every processor cycle and byte of memory counts.
It's a huge question, and one with no answer. How can devs give feedback on a hardware spec. for games they haven't even developed yet?
I don't think you properly thought this through.
I would only recommend it if they had a Pro model. OG/slim are severely limited by SATA speeds.
Someone in this very forum said one thing that I never forget to this day. He said something along the lines of 'if it cannot run on the lower end Xbox SKU (Lockhart), it will not be able to run minimum spec PC's' or something along those lines.
Consoles will rarely ever be the low end spectrum when it comes to gaming and I guess that is the main reason as to why first party developers are almost always at the forefront of pushing tech. A lot of what third party developers are doing is also geared towards PC gamers, an unlike this generation there is actually going to be a CPU worth mentioning, more RAM on consoles than you get on most PC's (better type too) and if you are looking at anything in the 8-10TF range, a GPU far better than what most people are running on PC today.
Economics will dictate what the minimum specs for games to run on the PC as publishers look to canvas as much of the PC market as they see fit. At the start of this generation Steam did a survey and it turned out that most of the people who volunteered had worse tech than consoles when the GPU was taken into consideration. I can only postulate that that number would be even higher even if we were to get a console more powerful than Xbox One X as being the baseline.
If is like this next gen will be insane ahhah
I hope PS5 is a 399 at least if is just one sku
Hi folks! Haven't tuned in for awhile. Any new-ish scoops or rumors? I'm most interested in Anaconda.
Hololens is a business focused device now. It's meant for and targeted to businesses, not consumers.
https://gph.is/1maQZMJ
Last edited:
In regards to Anaconda, apparently it was named after a type of snake.
This is total conjecture on my part but I've given it some thought and I believe both MS and Sony will offer consoles at $399. With that said, I do believe both consoles will be similar and would easily still be sold at a loss if they were priced at $499.
My line of thought is that it's imperative for both Sony and MS to quickly gain a user base but momentum is more important and a price of $499 won't do that. I don't doubt that Microsoft and Sony are reasonably pleased with the sales from the One X and PS4 Pro, but I'm confident that they have seen their internal numbers and know that $499 is not viable in establishing a userbase that will buy enough nextgen software (digital or otherwise). I don't doubt we'll see 3rd parties hedging themselves with cross generation software, but at some point they will need to have a next gen platform that will have a large enough base to leave behind the previous generation.
In addition to establishing a userbase, Microsoft will be focused on MAU/Xcloud and Sony and their revenue generated from PSN/PSnow. They will want to price and position their consoles to gain and maintain the most users they can. In light of Google's foray into gaming and other emerging competitors, the market will become similar to what we are seeing with the Movie and TV space where Netflix has more more competition these days from CBS, Hulu, Disney, DC/WarnerBrother, etc. Because each platform needs to distinguish itself, I feel this is the top reason MS has bought so many developers recently. Whether it's PC or Console, Microsoft is pursuing original content for itself to keep its game catalog fresh and appealing.
We've also seen that during this current generation, Sony and Microsoft have not matched the depth of price cuts from previous generations. I think this will also help in justifying a lower $399 price point as the BOM drops.
Just my 0.02 cents.
My line of thought is that it's imperative for both Sony and MS to quickly gain a user base but momentum is more important and a price of $499 won't do that. I don't doubt that Microsoft and Sony are reasonably pleased with the sales from the One X and PS4 Pro, but I'm confident that they have seen their internal numbers and know that $499 is not viable in establishing a userbase that will buy enough nextgen software (digital or otherwise). I don't doubt we'll see 3rd parties hedging themselves with cross generation software, but at some point they will need to have a next gen platform that will have a large enough base to leave behind the previous generation.
In addition to establishing a userbase, Microsoft will be focused on MAU/Xcloud and Sony and their revenue generated from PSN/PSnow. They will want to price and position their consoles to gain and maintain the most users they can. In light of Google's foray into gaming and other emerging competitors, the market will become similar to what we are seeing with the Movie and TV space where Netflix has more more competition these days from CBS, Hulu, Disney, DC/WarnerBrother, etc. Because each platform needs to distinguish itself, I feel this is the top reason MS has bought so many developers recently. Whether it's PC or Console, Microsoft is pursuing original content for itself to keep its game catalog fresh and appealing.
We've also seen that during this current generation, Sony and Microsoft have not matched the depth of price cuts from previous generations. I think this will also help in justifying a lower $399 price point as the BOM drops.
Just my 0.02 cents.
But you have a problem right there as people on PS3 and PS4 had the option to change the hard drive and if they don't change that, people might change the internal ssd to an hdd again. They cannot rely on the access times of ssds then. Also they have limited the bandwidth games can have from the sata bus, same as Xbox One, probably for the stuff the operating system does in the background for the HDD. I guess we'll see something similar for next gen consoles, too.
And Outpost Discovery is a special event, just like the Hololens thing they did for Halo 5 a few years ago at E3. Hololens at that point was still very much focused at developers and enterprise.
It's not like it would be available for everyone, just those who attend that event as a unique use case for a MS owned IP getting a special treatment with the tech.
This is easily remedied by either making the internal drive permanent(not my favorite solution) or force a check that see if the drive meets a minimal criteria (ie minimum SSD Size and speed). If it doesn't meet the minimums then the OS gives a rejection message. I'm sure MS and Sony will be partnering up with manufactures again to offer officially licensed SSD solutions.
Yeah, I agree. My point is that Hololens isn't going to be a product that is pushed to play games or used to market the Xbox brand.
Who in their right mind would exchange an SSD for a HDD. Also, who says that it won't be a chip on the PCB instead of a full SSD drive.
Also when I tried to expand the internal storage of my phone, it gave me a warning that my SD card was too slow to be used as internal storage. It would be very easy for Sony to reject a newly added drive if it was below the minimum specs.
Of course, that's obvious. I'm just saying that has to be kept in mind and that they also still might have a toll on the bandwidth.
Sony is already checking HDD speed with external drives - if they are not usb3, you can't use them and IIRC Microsoft also did that with flash drives on 360.
Again and again people go where the value is no matter how much people repeat this thing
If a product (in this case console) they stay give the reason to stay showing value (price, power, games, services) if not they will move...spreading the words ....this is how mainly work.
Again, this was just a reminder.
People could want to have more storage than an SSD provides, for example. And nobody said anything, don't be so sensitive about it.
Regarding drive speed, as I already explained, they are already doing it with external storage.
Hey, didn't mean to offend or anything, just having fun with speculations. You are right, I just hope that whatever power will be inside those boxes. It won't be bottlenecked by slow read speeds.
It's not the same thing of course, but I recently upgraded my laptop with an SSD. It is about 5 years old and with the old HDD inside, it felt like the thing was dying, it froze all the time, didn't respond, got really really hot and had insane delays on everything. Just opening the file explorer could take up to 10 seconds. Just putting a 250 gig SSD inside solved all problems and the thing runs better than the first time I turned it on.
SSD are clearly superior and I want to see what a game can do when asset streaming works with SSD speeds.
There's nothing nebulous about what I described. This process has resulted in a real console that exists today - the Xbox One X. Console hardware will remain fixed, I'm not saying otherwise. Both Sony and Microsoft currently have two (fixed) hardware specs, and it seems to make sense just fine for them, and recent rumors suggest Nintendo may join them.
I'm not going to argue that a lower spec'd machine will have lower capability, that's obvious. And I don't really know if launching with two SKUs right off the bat is better or worse than just one - I do think it's the necessary move for MS. My argument is that if both skus are designed in tandem with specific goals in mind for capability with the one variable being their target being resolution, it's possible for them to spec the machines to have a high probability of hitting those targets.
I'm arguing that MS will use data generated from game profiling to simulate next gen games and next gen hardware. Then they'll build their Scarlett platforms based on that data. They've already done this, I fully expect them to do it again.
No, it's nothing like the PC Platform. I am talking about the process Xbox engineers will use to select and customize the hardware for their next generation consoles. The console hardware is only constant once a spec is locked down, during the design phase all aspects of components are likely to be adjusted to create the optimum machine.
From Digital Foundry:
I'm saying is this same approach can and will be used for their next gen platforms. The target is more nebulous, but they can still get meaningful data and insight from developers to create that target. Games are different as you said, and each one may have unique bottlenecks in hardware, this approach actually looks at the bottlenecks then hardware can be optimized to mitigate them. It's a more efficient way to design because it's based on data gathered and analyzed before hardware is fabricated. The final spec would be determined by the configuration most capable of meeting the design targets for a given BOM. There's always going to be compromise, that's an inherent part of consoles in general, the goal would be to minimize their impact. I suggest looking up how engineers in various disciplines utilize DOEs (design of experiments) in their design process.
Again, this process works. The Xbox One X exists. I'd be interested to hear you explain what you think is the best process for a console maker in choosing the specs and customizations they want for their new console.
In the past Sony and Microsoft have sought feedback from devs on future console hardware, and they will continue to do so. Nothing is different in this regard. During the development of the PS4, Mark Cerny flew to devs around the world to get feedback on next gen before the hardware was finalized.
I did.
Oh, they definitely are, it's ridiculous how io limited computers always were and only a few knew about it. The advantage in access times is immediately felt and things will only get better with Optane memory.
If they use a replaceable M.2 drive there will be no way for a user to replace it with a mechanical hard drive.
Precisely. Plus why would you if they have out of the box external drive support?
That's not how OEM pricing works. Cheapest market prices you can get now for 2B HDD and 1TB SSD is ~$60 and $100 respectively. OEM bulk pricing brings that doesn to about a third when possible, emphasis here is on when possible because there is only so much the price of a HDD can go down (that's why there i only like a $4 difference between 500GB HDDs and 1TB HDD). In 2020, assuming the OEM price for a $2TB HDD is around $30, it will probably be costing them around that or less t put n a 1TB SSD.
And then that gap will likely get even smaller over the generation, correct?
Yes. SSD will asymptotically approach HDD, but lack of future node shrinks will hamper their ability to surpass in terms of price/GB. At that point it would be improvements in manufacturing efficiency.
Are they also likely to become less prone to failure? Due to the whole moving parts vs no moving parts thing?
- Status