Since you're back, does the concept of binning APUs for high performance SKUs make sense in the context of consoles?
No. But that exact strategy that was used for the Project Scorpio Dev Kits which is why they have 6.6tflops. They were binned with the better parts. For a large-scale console release, no way that would make sense as it's far too unreliable at scale.
Welcome back Mr Penello.I think we were interested in that discussion how long in advance are E3 plans made by MS/Sony especially regarding next gen tech.
Hm. There isn't a one-size-fits-all answer to this because there haven't been that many E3's where next-gen consoles have been presented, and the debate on what was shown, and when, differed greatly each time.
I guess I can say this. First, there are probably less than 25 people within Xbox that know the exact plan. Phil and his directs as well as a small handful of others. People are brought in for their individual sections, but exactly what is being shown in what order is very, very tightly controlled and many things are code-named so if someone sees a list they don't know what the titles are. I always question when anyone says they "know" or "have heard" what someone is doing at E3 because the people that know aren't talking.
But it's not super hard to reverse-engineer what might be shown if you're following the industry, looking at all the different developers and triangulating what they are working on. It's why E3 bingo is so much fun.
As for consoles and what might be shown? It has a lot to do with balancing what action you want people to take, what you think you get strategically vs. waiting, and what you think the competition is doing. Since I'm not there, I don't know what the current team is thinking in this regards.
So your guess is as good as mine on this one. Scorpio reveal was pretty far out so they could do that level of unveil easily.
I'm
personally not holding out for much in the way of a console news. There simply isn't enough reason to do it, and there are only downsides. If you're Sony, numbers are great, you're not at E3 anyway, and your next event is later in the year so why risk stalling any holiday sales.
For Xbox, because Sony isn't at E3 there is literally 0 risk of them taking any news cycles away, and like Sony, Xbox sales are good, people already know they are doing something since Phil said it last year, so I think they focus on games and xCloud.
If there is anything I'm guessing it will be something teaser-y like Scorpio
if at all. And they can make the call to do something like that pretty late in the game.
Like I said - I have ZERO knowledge of the plan. They may have other reasons to do more so I'm not taking a hard stance they won't do more, but it would surprise me.
