The Official Xbox One Thread

[American Gunner]

I also listen to Joystiq, but haven't found any others I like... Got any suggestions?

I listen to the game informer one, the patch, and beyond. The beyond guys are hilarious to me. I also listen to the official playstation one and major nelson, but both of those have stretches that are really boring, plus you can tell that they have to be overly positive about stuff since they work for the companies. Also if you want one that's just funny, give the comedy button a listen. They have a bunch of video game guys, but rarely talk about games while talking about everything else under the sun.

 

[Arkaign]

This really does blow my mind. If it were one or two games, I would think it was the devs. I am not a developer and have no idea how that stuff works, but I just don't get why they are having such a hard time getting more out of this machine. On paper at least, it is way more powerful then the 360, so I would expect a rather large bump in game performance.

This has some hope for things. I don't own an XB1 now, but I know that eventually there would be enough games for me to pick one up a few years down the road.

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/1...one-gpu-performance-by-making-kinect-optional

Forget the parts about MS dropping Kinect (they will deny that right down to the day when they actually do bring a kinect-less SKU, which is still quite possible depending on how 2014 turns out for them). But this part :

"To make matters worse, game developers working on the Xbox One are coding with one hand tied behind their backs. Microsoft requires that all games reserve 10% of the GPU’s capacity for the Kinect, even if the game doesn’t use it. That’s split up into 8% for the Kinect video features and 2% for Kinect voice. In an effort to give a boost to its console, Microsoft is expected to issue a system patch that removes the requirement that games save that 8% for Kinect video."

Imho that 8% could be even more than 8% when you consider the PITA that it is to work fractionally with component resources. So in theory it might only use 8%, but in practical terms be more limiting than that would suggest.

Will it be enough? I think in combination with more dev experience, I hope so, and expect to see big improvements this year for it.

 

[Wingznut]

I listen to the game informer one, the patch, and beyond. The beyond guys are hilarious to me. I also listen to the official playstation one and major nelson, but both of those have stretches that are really boring, plus you can tell that they have to be overly positive about stuff since they work for the companies. Also if you want one that's just funny, give the comedy button a listen. They have a bunch of video game guys, but rarely talk about games while talking about everything else under the sun.

Yeah, I like the Major Nelson one too. But when they talk about how great some game or Xbox feature is, you're right... Gotta take it with a huge grain of salt. I'll check out the others you mentioned. Thanks!

 

[American Gunner]

Yeah, I like the Major Nelson one too. But when they talk about how great some game or Xbox feature is, you're right... Gotta take it with a huge grain of salt. I'll check out the others you mentioned. Thanks!

You're welcome.

 

[purbeast0]

just got an email with this link that has info on the update.

http://news.xbox.com/2014/02/xbox-one-multiplayer-update

i am glad the recent players list is now back. that way i can leave negative feedback and not have to bother getting matched up with ragequitters anymore. i can actually grab the update tonight too from the early update program. i got a new smartglass message last night that it's ready to grab. doubt i will do it before the weekend though.

party chat being on by default is just a herp derp option that never should have been not included.

 

[Lil Frier]

just got an email with this link that has info on the update.

http://news.xbox.com/2014/02/xbox-one-multiplayer-update

i am glad the recent players list is now back. that way i can leave negative feedback and not have to bother getting matched up with ragequitters anymore. i can actually grab the update tonight too from the early update program. i got a new smartglass message last night that it's ready to grab. doubt i will do it before the weekend though.

party chat being on by default is just a herp derp option that never should have been not included.

I didn't know that they had gotten rid of that until recently. Given their touting of a matchmaking system where your player feedback mattered more, it is rather dumb that they then made it really difficult to submit that feedback.

 

[smackababy]

This one has never bothered me. In fact, it is actually a lot quicker to get to your setting on the XB1 compared to the 360, since all you have to do is hit the menu button when you're on the homescreen and it is right there. I listen to IGN's xbox podcast and they went on and on about not being able to find the settings, and I just wanted to go crazy while listening to it because of how easy it is to find now.

I had to google where it was. I couldn't find it. It makes no sense coming from the 360. I am not saying it isn't more efficient (now that I know where it is), just that it is moronic to hide it and not tell people about it. When I first start up my console, give me a tutorial that shows where it is... It isn't that hard. The same thing happened with their office suite. They changed up a design for a more efficient system, but nobody knew how to use it. I'm sure DVORAK is a much better keyboard layout, but if you don't label your keys and let me know, I am going to have a very hard time switching.

 

[Lil Frier]

This has some hope for things. I don't own an XB1 now, but I know that eventually there would be enough games for me to pick one up a few years down the road.

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/1...one-gpu-performance-by-making-kinect-optional

Forget the parts about MS dropping Kinect (they will deny that right down to the day when they actually do bring a kinect-less SKU, which is still quite possible depending on how 2014 turns out for them). But this part :

"To make matters worse, game developers working on the Xbox One are coding with one hand tied behind their backs. Microsoft requires that all games reserve 10% of the GPU’s capacity for the Kinect, even if the game doesn’t use it. That’s split up into 8% for the Kinect video features and 2% for Kinect voice. In an effort to give a boost to its console, Microsoft is expected to issue a system patch that removes the requirement that games save that 8% for Kinect video."

Imho that 8% could be even more than 8% when you consider the PITA that it is to work fractionally with component resources. So in theory it might only use 8%, but in practical terms be more limiting than that would suggest.

Will it be enough? I think in combination with more dev experience, I hope so, and expect to see big improvements this year for it.

I keep telling myself that will help, but then I get to asking "for how long?" I mean, we're talking about a console where it's struggling with Plants vs. Zombies and Call of Duty at launch. Imagine where The Division will be. If the full GPU was available, would CoD have been 1080p/60FPS? It's alleged it would have been. However, would Battlefield 4 get there, or would it only tie the PS4 at 900p?

The reason I ask those questions is because these are long-term investments. If the GPU can't handle 2014's games at 1080p, what's the future like? Maybe the full GPU can handle those games at 1080p, but how long until games eat that extra 8% and hit the ceiling again? I don't think getting the 8% GPU power increase is going to be enough for games in 2020.

Hopefully the primary source of help isn't that GPU availability. We have to trust that the developers are ignorant about how to best utilize the hardware right now, and to a pretty big degree. This actually applies to both consoles, given that the PS4 isn't a 100% 1080p machine itself. We have to hope that there is a LOOOOOOOT of optimization to be done.

When you see these things struggling to hit 1080p (especially the One), it's hard to see how either (again, especially the One) will manage 4K/60 FPS gaming in 5 years.

 

[dguy6789]

I forget if it was Cliff Bleszinski or John Carmack but before the next gen consoles launched one of them said he was really disappointed in the next gen console hardware and that if you take virtually any modern console game(at the time most ran at 600P or even less) and raise it to 1080p you use up pretty much all of the additional power the new systems have and don't have room for any other bells and whistles.

 

[Arkaign]

That's the worry with the XB1 optimizations. Beyond scaling back the Kinect leeching, we're still talking about a GPU and GPU memory bandwidth that's pretty significantly lacking.

Another thing that worries me a little (on both consoles) is that we're not talking alien technology here. This isn't Cell, this isn't a tri-core processor in an age of single cores, this is relatively old hat by now on the PC side of things. Mantle has shown some decent improvements when combined with terrible CPUs (inarguably the PS4 and XB1 suffer from 8 weak/slow cores, so that's a hopeful sign really), so the best case I can think of is a rough doubling of performance for both of them over the next few years.

I don't think 4K will be possible with reasonable detail/framerate for any AAA title on either console this gen. 4K is four times the pixels to push of 1080, and 1080 isn't working out so well now.

 

[purbeast0]

I didn't know that they had gotten rid of that until recently. Given their touting of a matchmaking system where your player feedback mattered more, it is rather dumb that they then made it really difficult to submit that feedback.

i didn't even know it was possible to submit feedback as of now.

 

[EightySix Four]

That's the worry with the XB1 optimizations. Beyond scaling back the Kinect leeching, we're still talking about a GPU and GPU memory bandwidth that's pretty significantly lacking.

Another thing that worries me a little (on both consoles) is that we're not talking alien technology here. This isn't Cell, this isn't a tri-core processor in an age of single cores, this is relatively old hat by now on the PC side of things. Mantle has shown some decent improvements when combined with terrible CPUs (inarguably the PS4 and XB1 suffer from 8 weak/slow cores, so that's a hopeful sign really), so the best case I can think of is a rough doubling of performance for both of them over the next few years.

I don't think 4K will be possible with reasonable detail/framerate for any AAA title on either console this gen. 4K is four times the pixels to push of 1080, and 1080 isn't working out so well now.

Neither console has enough ROPs for true 4k anyways.

 

[Lil Frier]

That's the worry with the XB1 optimizations. Beyond scaling back the Kinect leeching, we're still talking about a GPU and GPU memory bandwidth that's pretty significantly lacking.

Another thing that worries me a little (on both consoles) is that we're not talking alien technology here. This isn't Cell, this isn't a tri-core processor in an age of single cores, this is relatively old hat by now on the PC side of things. Mantle has shown some decent improvements when combined with terrible CPUs (inarguably the PS4 and XB1 suffer from 8 weak/slow cores, so that's a hopeful sign really), so the best case I can think of is a rough doubling of performance for both of them over the next few years.

I don't think 4K will be possible with reasonable detail/framerate for any AAA title on either console this gen. 4K is four times the pixels to push of 1080, and 1080 isn't working out so well now.

Very true, though you have to wonder just a little how hard developers were trying with PC games this past generation. Everything was Cell and PowerPC and whatever for the 360 and PS3, and folks were often complaining that PC versions were often bad ports. So maybe the developers are little rusty on the x86 development (at least, that's the lie I am going to tell myself to feel better, haha).

I don't really see where the optimizations and familiarity comes with the PS4, but I think it's obvious that the Xbox One has a bit of breathing room because developers haven't really played with the eSRAM much (not sure how helpful that really is).

 

[purbeast0]

gonna post this link yet again because people quickly forget how bad the ps3/360 games looked at launch compared to games like the last of us.

http://kotaku.com/the-ps3-had-12-games-at-launch-heres-what-they-looked-513396910

this thread divulges into the same old conversation over and over and over. i keep seeing a bunch of new posts in this thread and then come to see it's basically people still talking about the same exact things they were months ago. thought there would be more new info

 

[EightySix Four]

gonna post this link yet again because people quickly forget how bad the ps3/360 games looked at launch compared to games like the last of us.

http://kotaku.com/the-ps3-had-12-games-at-launch-heres-what-they-looked-513396910

this thread divulges into the same old conversation over and over and over. i keep seeing a bunch of new posts in this thread and then come to see it's basically people still talking about the same exact things they were months ago. thought there would be more new info

While this is true, those improvements were possible because the developers were getting used to the unusual hardware inside the PS3/Xbox360. The Xbox One and PS4 hardware is comparatively commodity hardware and it is hard to believe that they will have a similar ability to scale up as developers use them in comparison to previous generations of hardware.

 

[Wingznut]

While this is true, those improvements were possible because the developers were getting used to the unusual hardware inside the PS3/Xbox360. The Xbox One and PS4 hardware is comparatively commodity hardware and it is hard to believe that they will have a similar ability to scale up as developers use them in comparison to previous generations of hardware.

Nah, it's the same with every generation.

 

[EightySix Four]

Nah, it's the same with every generation.

When is the last generation where the hardware in the console was nearly OTS components for all the major players? The only console I can think of which was OTS hardware was the original Xbox and the PS2 at the time had the emotion engine, which wasn't easy to develop for. This is the first time that multiple major players have essentially the same hardware as normal computers at the time.

 

[Wingznut]

When is the last generation where the hardware in the console was nearly OTS components for all the major players? The only console I can think of which was OTS hardware was the original Xbox and the PS2 at the time had the emotion engine, which wasn't easy to develop for. This is the first time that multiple major players have essentially the same hardware as normal computers at the time.

I'm saying the pattern of games improving graphically through the consoles' lifespan is consistent with every generation. This one will be no different.

 

[blackdogdeek]

LOL @Tiger Woods' facial expressions

 

[purbeast0]

When is the last generation where the hardware in the console was nearly OTS components for all the major players? The only console I can think of which was OTS hardware was the original Xbox and the PS2 at the time had the emotion engine, which wasn't easy to develop for. This is the first time that multiple major players have essentially the same hardware as normal computers at the time.

ok well look at launch xbox titles and look at games like ninja gaiden. it was a huge graphical improvement.

as wingznut said, this generation will be no different. people just like to get all up in arms about everything.

 

[Pheran]

When you see these things struggling to hit 1080p (especially the One), it's hard to see how either (again, especially the One) will manage 4K/60 FPS gaming in 5 years.

As other have said, you can forget about this right now. 4K gaming is never going to happen on either the XBO or PS4, they don't have the horsepower.

As for the Xbox One's GPU, your concerns are valid and I don't think the future optimization are going to fix the problem. The Xbox One GPU is a Radeon 7790 at best, and it's actually worse than that because of the gimped memory bandwidth. Trying putting one of those into a gaming PC and see how well it runs at 1080p - you can do it, but it won't make 60 FPS. In contrast, the PS4 is roughly equivalent to the AMD 7870 that I'm still using in my 1080p gaming rig. I expect that the vast majority of AAA games on the XBO will be scaled from a lower resolution throughout its lifetime.

 

[EightySix Four]

ok well look at launch xbox titles and look at games like ninja gaiden. it was a huge graphical improvement.

as wingznut said, this generation will be no different. people just like to get all up in arms about everything.

I'm not saying there won't be improvement, I'm saying the chances of it being as dramatic as it has been in previous generations are pretty low. I'm not up in arms about it or anything else, it's just highly unlikely.

On a different note, the rumor is that TitanFall is going to have a Day 1 patch for true 1080p play due to Microsoft releasing the extra few percent of the GPU that was dedicated to Kinect in the March patch.

 

[cmdrdredd]

This really does blow my mind. If it were one or two games, I would think it was the devs. I am not a developer and have no idea how that stuff works, but I just don't get why they are having such a hard time getting more out of this machine. On paper at least, it is way more powerful then the 360, so I would expect a rather large bump in game performance.

Small eSRAM. I read about some developer talking about the low amount of eSRAM which is suitable for loading up certain game assets. They can only fit so much in there and have to constantly swap out to DDR3 and back to eSRAM. This hinders the performance and to keep performance up they drop resolution first. They did say that they have new dev tools available now that do help a bit with the eSRAM swap and allow them to do it more rapidly for less performance loss. Two quotes and links below and I must say the second one makes it sound pretty dire. The simply fact is that it's a big difference when you only have 32MB of very fast memory to use and the rest is pretty slow and not very suitable for GPU tasks. The XB1 will never match the PS4 and that's what. However, that doesn't mean it will suck forever. It'll have its own share of games that are enticing. If the games are good I imagine most people will forget about resolution.

http://www.gamepur.com/news/13520-x...er-gddr5-can-never-have-sustained-speed-.html

In a recent Twitter conversation, Pete Dodd was asked to comment on Xbox One's ESRAM, "whether recent leak stating that its Super Fast and Expensive" is TRUE?, to which he replied, "ESRAM in Xbox One is faster than DDR3 but not as faster as GDDR5, its Bottleneck, Plain and Simple."

"Its faster than DDR3, but not much faster than GDDR5 (used in PS4: 8GB DDR5 RAM), there's only 32 MB, its Bottleneck, plain and simple", tweeted Dodd.

Dodd further explained, things will get better as time progresses but it won't be available to sustain the speed which GDDR5 offers.

"But like most bottlenecks they will get better at getting around it. But it will never have the sustained speed of gddr5."

When Twitter user "josh hanlon" asked if developers will get used to Xbox One's ESRAM yet or not?, Todd replied, there's not much difference between ESRAM and EDRAM (which is used in Xbox 360) so developers will get used to it as time passes but it's not exactly foreign.

"ESRAM isn't all that different than edram which is what the 360 used. Devs will get better with it but it's not exactly foreign"

So there you have it folks, use whatever term you can "Resolution-Gate, ESRAM Gate", Xbox One seems to lack PS4's qualities in every important department.

http://www.gamepur.com/news/13770-a...e-esram-bottleneck-cumbersom-and-pain-as.html

"I don’t get this obsession with MS fanboys wanting the more powerful machine. Its not happening. Who cares. There are xbox fans who think esram is this mystical thing when all it is is cumbersome, bottlenecking memory."

"But its in there so it HAS to be special. When I hear people say devs need to just utilize esram better, its like saying they need to learn how to do the most basic thing again. Esram isn’t rocket science, it isn’t even complex. Its just a pain in the a**. That’s it" Pete Todd wrote on NeoGaf.

 

[smackababy]

Here is my problem with the debate about which console is more powerful: it doesn't matter. The best game of all time runs at less than standard definition, on an ancient system, and is called Chrono Trigger.

Graphics mean squat in terms of games. You know what game looked great and had awesome physics? Crysis. You know what game sucked? Crysis. I don't care what the native resolution it runs in. If the gameplay is fun, the story engaging, and it doesn't crash every few minutes (Bethesda, I'm looking at you), it will be a good game.

Also, just got invited to preview the Xbox One update. Probably going to download it when I get home from work.

 

[zerocool84]

Here is my problem with the debate about which console is more powerful: it doesn't matter. The best game of all time runs at less than standard definition, on an ancient system, and is called Chrono Trigger.

Graphics mean squat in terms of games. You know what game looked great and had awesome physics? Crysis. You know what game sucked? Crysis. I don't care what the native resolution it runs in. If the gameplay is fun, the story engaging, and it doesn't crash every few minutes (Bethesda, I'm looking at you), it will be a good game.

Also, just got invited to preview the Xbox One update. Probably going to download it when I get home from work.

Your example doesn't make sense though, Chrono Trigger was a good looking game for its time and it's not like it didn't push graphics at all. Graphics do matter to a certain degree, spotting out distant enemies is easier on higher resolution, more power means higher/more stable framerate, but also you can have game where that doesn't matter. Dead Rising would have benefited from more power with all those zombies on screen, less slow down. More power isn't just about graphics, you can more physics, enemies, etc on screen at one time. I for one don't think it will matter much more than the resolution/frame rate difference in most games which is mostly for bragging rights anyways.