Digital Foundry: next-gen PlayStation and Xbox to use AMD's 8-core CPU and Radeon HD

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cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
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That won't happen with these. Consoles benefit from locked hardware because someone buying one at launch never has to worry about any games not working. They just bank on the games people buy. The market is as un-pc like as can be that way. When you buy PC hardware, Intel, amd, nvidia, Asus etc all make money off your purchase. When you buy a console they take a bit of a loss most of the time and make it up with huge margins on software. PC hardware manufacturers are not selling you software.

The console business is doing very well. GTA5 making $800,000,000 in a single day is proof.
 
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Gideon

Golden Member
Nov 27, 2007
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That won't happen with these. Consoles benefit from locked hardware because someone buying one at launch never has to worry about any games not working.

Nothing tops vendors from forcing support of the "vanilla" Xbox One too, simply at lower resolution, effects levels. If it is done correctly it will be much less of a headache than it was before (points listed in my above post).

I'm not saying that this is definitely the right way to go. Simply that, if one's business model is not working[/b] so well as it used to, one should actively try to fix it rather than making up excuses, why this can't be done.

Having faster hardware available doesn't mean, that you can't make games work on both versions. Especially when it has otherwise very similar software and hardware architecture. This point is driven home even better by the fact that the majority of new games coming out in 2013/14 will still support the ancient last generation. All of which have tablet-like performance and feature set and vastly different software stack
 

futurefields

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2012
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Lol if MS released a more powerful XBone S in 2-3 years it would be terrible for everybody that bought a launch XBone wouldn't it? What a stupid idea!
 
Dec 30, 2004
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All this talk about console hardware not changing at all, during its 5-10 year lifetime as it has been all this time ...

I'm not so certain that it's set to stone to a similar degree this time around. It's just a guess, but:

  • They will soon have competitors, like SteamBox, that will have iterative updates
  • Consoles are much more similar to PCs in hardware now. They even share the low-end graphics API with AMD cards. Which in turn is used to optimize run on vastly different hardware, APUs to SLI rigs.
  • More and more auto-optimizing software, like Geforce Experience and the AMD equivalent, are cropping up. These will make optimizing for multiple performance targets substantially easier.
  • They are even now doing the unheard of: Releasing the majority of new games on both current and next generation. And according to Michael Pachter for quite some time to come.

I can't stress the last point enough. Xbox 360 and PS3 are tablet-level performance targets with ridiculously different software stacks compared to current gen (let alone each-other). Therefore if they are supporting these for years to come, an incremental update would be easy-peasy in comparison. Basically, the cost of designing and maintaining multiple performance versions of your Console in its traditional life-cycle might not be as difficult now, as it was in the past.

Now let's consider a hypothetical scenario:

Right alongside the EOL-ing of Xbox 360 in 2-3 years, Microsoft releases "Xbox One S" which bests PS4 in performance by a considerable degree, catching the traditionally thinking Sony completely off-guard. They would of course still continue to support the old one (no biggie compared to Xbox 360) but would also regain the "hardware crown" and make some fans rebuy their console in a most "appleish" way

I'm not saying doing that is actually the best thing to do. It's just that the Console market is not doing too well, the vendors should actively be considering such ideas rather than dismissing them outright. After all, history books are full of companies failing to redesign their failing business models and being outmaneuvered by their more agile compeditors ... Along with a considerable amount of sour grapes and heartbroken fanboys :)
that's impossible, you either alienate the early adopters with low framerates and better graphics or you handicap the One S purchasers with great framerates but original-One quality graphics.
 

Enigmoid

Platinum Member
Sep 27, 2012
2,907
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That won't happen with these. Consoles benefit from locked hardware because someone buying one at launch never has to worry about any games not working. They just bank on the games people buy. The market is as un-pc like as can be that way. When you buy PC hardware, Intel, amd, nvidia, Asus etc all make money off your purchase. When you buy a console they take a bit of a loss most of the time and make it up with huge margins on software. PC hardware manufacturers are not selling you software.

The console business is doing very well. GTA5 making $800,000,000 in a single day is proof.

I could see two versions. One plays the game at 900p upscaled @ 30 fps. The other at 1080p 60 fps. Visuals are basically the same but different resolution and framerate.
 

Gideon

Golden Member
Nov 27, 2007
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I could see two versions. One plays the game at 900p upscaled @ 30 fps. The other at 1080p 60 fps. Visuals are basically the same but different resolution and framerate.

Yeah, that was along the lines of I was thinking. To do this you would require approximately 2,5-3x more GPU power, but the game would essentially still be the same. Only run better and look marginally better.

For instance I personally HATE it passionately that ANY non-sports PS4/Xbone games are done to last generation as well. That automatically cripples you to tablet-level hardware and you have to keep that in mind constantly (level sizes and whatnot, let alone graphics). I was pretty sure that this would NOT happen, as majority of Xbox 360/PS3 era AAA titles were NOT ported to the elder generation ... however, they did it regardless and will be supporting those for years. The difference between a slightly upgraded version would be way way less ... If it weren't for this fact I would consider this ides 100% implausible, but if they decided to cripple the industry to those levels, why not do it further ?

Also, before the Iphone i would have never thought that people would shell out 500€ every year (or 200€ with a killer contract), for a new smart-phone, just to have the latest and greatest, yet a surprisingly big contingent does that. I'm sure in 2005 a lot of people would have considered that as lunacy too.
 
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Dec 30, 2004
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I could see two versions. One plays the game at 900p upscaled @ 30 fps. The other at 1080p 60 fps. Visuals are basically the same but different resolution and framerate.

oh hm...interesting...suppose that actually possible...hm...bet most would go for 30fps. Bad for company. Better to enforce on all.
 

Gideon

Golden Member
Nov 27, 2007
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Lol if MS released a more powerful XBone S in 2-3 years it would be terrible for everybody that bought a launch XBone wouldn't it? What a stupid idea!

Depends on the perspective, doesn't it ? :)
A lot of GPU enthusiasts who are used to yearly updates are moaning like crazy, that they now only get bigger updates once every 2 years. Also somehow a lot less people consider an Iphone 5 S a year after Iphone 5 as utter stupidity.

If you still have the same games with higher resolution @60 fps and perhaps some additional eye-candy, it wouldn't be half as bad.

EDIT:
Personally I think that MS would NEVER go for that. Given their track record, they're far more likely to try to milk the current hardware for 10+ year if they can. They usually tend to innovate only if competitors are actively forcing them out of the market. Otherwise they stay stagnant and milk. Be it OSes, browsers or phones (Windows Mobile <= 6 version). Recently things are getting even worse than usual IMO. Extremetech has a very good article about that:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...ilure-to-grasp-its-own-increasing-irrelevance
 
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StrangerGuy

Diamond Member
May 9, 2004
8,443
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Lol if MS released a more powerful XBone S in 2-3 years it would be terrible for everybody that bought a launch XBone wouldn't it? What a stupid idea!

Exactly. The iPhone comparison is ludicrous is simply because they aren't consoles. Most popular games on iOS/Android are lowest common denominators that barely stresses 2012 class mobile hardware.
 

NTMBK

Lifer
Nov 14, 2011
10,208
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It's actually vaguely feasible that they could ship an upgraded XBox- pretty much every single modern console game gets patches, meaning that devs could retroactively patch in support for higher resolutions etc on the "One S". I doubt that many would, but certainly Microsoft's first part titles like Halo would get the treatment, to help them sell more consoles.
 

notposting

Diamond Member
Jul 22, 2005
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EDIT:
Personally I think that MS would NEVER go for that. Given their track record, they're far more likely to try to milk the current hardware for 10+ year if they can. They usually tend to innovate only if competitors are actively forcing them out of the market. Otherwise they stay stagnant and milk. Be it OSes, browsers or phones (Windows Mobile <= 6 version). Recently things are getting even worse than usual IMO. Extremetech has a very good article about that:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...ilure-to-grasp-its-own-increasing-irrelevance

Read that article, somehow found link to a MS dev writing about his experiences (link here), and man...they are just so broken. Here's hoping they don't just get another "corporate" CEO. They need some vision at the top.
 

CakeMonster

Golden Member
Nov 22, 2012
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I could see two versions. One plays the game at 900p upscaled @ 30 fps. The other at 1080p 60 fps. Visuals are basically the same but different resolution and framerate.

Better visuals are what people would want. I don't see anyone releasing an upgraded console just to scale resolution or frame rate a bit higher. That will not sell. What will sell is better effects, which is more work for each game, which... is not going to happen.
 

Dresdenboy

Golden Member
Jul 28, 2003
1,730
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citavia.blog.de
Its Shanghai zone only tho. Other parts was also allowed in the zone. But its 25 million or so people, not 1.3 billion.
This seems to be a test of a free market, to be rolled out to the mainland if succesful. Further the article stated:
After going through the necessary official approvals, these companies can then sell their video game consoles to the mainland domestic market.
 

rgallant

Golden Member
Apr 14, 2007
1,361
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It's actually vaguely feasible that they could ship an upgraded XBox- pretty much every single modern console game gets patches, meaning that devs could retroactively patch in support for higher resolutions etc on the "One S". I doubt that many would, but certainly Microsoft's first part titles like Halo would get the treatment, to help them sell more consoles.
I was thinking more of amds mantle if it is what they say , xbox1 vs xbox 2 should be invisible to the game that has it for amd's hardware.
Could be why amd invested in this direction. more consoles more chips ,more consoles more games sony and ms sells.-every one wins ,dev's ms,sony ,pc'ers