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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - "April's next Xbox announcement "pushed back a month"

DirtyP2002 on 30 March 2013
theprof00 said:
Adinnieken said:

Both companies have made up where they were deficient at the beginning of this generation.  Sure, it looks like Microsoft may be behind Sony in terms of games and game content but that's because they started out way ahead of Sony at the beginning of this generation.  Hell, Microsoft ended the previous generation leagues ahead of Sony.  So kudos to Sony for catching up with the Original Xbox capabilities.  Microsoft has made up and surpassed Sony's media capabilities through the media services available on Xbox LIVE.

Sony is a media company, as well as a software company, as well as a hardware company, yet Sony has done nothing on the scale of what Microsoft did with Halo 4.  Microsoft created a live-action Halo series prior to the release of Halo 4, released the game Halo 4, created a massive amount of content for Halo 4, as well as an animated episode for each of the DLC packages.  Huh.  Go figure.

What kind of excuse is that? So it only looks like sony is putting out more games every single year because ms had a headstart? Sony is caught up and more, which says that in 6 years, sony put out more games than ms in 7. That's not an illusion.

MS ended last gen leagues ahead??? Sony first party titles dwarfed the xbox first party, both in quality and quantity.

PS: Halo is a massively popular series. If you're saying that Sony, being a huge multimedia conglomerate has yet to show even an ounce of strength compared to MS, I have no argument, as MS' marketing and merchandising ability wasn't something I was arguing in the first place. I'm not sure how that counters "ms is less focused on game software" though, as it really has nothing to do with it, since comic books and tv shows are not games.

This is not an illusion. It is wrong.

  PS3 XBOX360
Year Number of Games Average Metacritic Score Number of Games Average Metacritic Score Advantage
2013 21 71.00 25 70.44 PS3
2012 207 70.61 255 69.56 PS3
2011 270 69.00 269 68.50 PS3
2010 236 69.65 262 67.56 PS3
2009 191 70.14 254 67.96 PS3
2008 153 69.78 223 66.04 PS3
2007 100 71.80 187 67.26 PS3
2006 21 70.81 103 69.12 PS3
2005     34 74.47 XBOX360
Total 1199 69.99 1612 68.14 PS3


Imagine not having GamePass on your console...

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Adinnieken on 30 March 2013
ethomaz said:

Adinnieken said:

Actualy, it doesn't.  Because it came to light at GDC that the PS4's memory architecture isn't as great as it sounds.

While the GPU gets the top speed, of 120 or 170 GBps, the CPU only gets 20GBps.  So CPU wise the two consoles are just about even steven, and GPU wise the next Xbox is only slightly slower.

The margin of difference in performance now is less than 1%.

The opposite happened in the GDC... the PS4 architecture seems even more impressive and strong.

Except that it didn't.

I'm not suggesting that the PS4 isn't an impressive machine, I'm saying the hyperbole over the GDDR5 memory was a bit premature.  The entire PS4 doesn't get the advantage of 176GBps throughput.  It's 20GBps on the CPU.  The same, in fact, as on the next Xbox.  The difference thus is that the next Xbox has 170GBps throughput as opposed to the PS4's 176GBps to the GPU.

And my apologies.  I was overzealous in my estimate.  The performance difference is a 3% gain for the PS4.  I doubt you'ld notice the difference between 7 and 10 ms. 



ethomaz on 30 March 2013
Adinnieken said:
ethomaz said:

Adinnieken said:

Actualy, it doesn't.  Because it came to light at GDC that the PS4's memory architecture isn't as great as it sounds.

While the GPU gets the top speed, of 120 or 170 GBps, the CPU only gets 20GBps.  So CPU wise the two consoles are just about even steven, and GPU wise the next Xbox is only slightly slower.

The margin of difference in performance now is less than 1%.

The opposite happened in the GDC... the PS4 architecture seems even more impressive and strong.

Except that it didn't.

I'm not suggesting that the PS4 isn't an impressive machine, I'm saying the hyperbole over the GDDR5 memory was a bit premature.  The entire PS4 doesn't get the advantage of 176GBps throughput.  It's 20GBps on the CPU.  The same, in fact, as on the next Xbox.  The difference thus is that the next Xbox has 170GBps throughput as opposed to the PS4's 176GBps to the GPU.

And my apologies.  I was overzealous in my estimate.  The performance difference is a 3% gain for the PS4.  I doubt you'ld notice the difference between 7 and 10 ms. 

Eveything showed new in GDC.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-inside-playstation-4

The PS3 CPU, GPU, HSA, etc is even more impressive than PC parts alone... the 20GB/s bandwidth for CPU is crazy high (the DDR3 used in high-end PC have ~12GB/s in dual-channel)... no PC have this bandwidth... "one source tells us that the CPU is more constrained at around 20GB/s - still pretty good at around two-thirds the level of bandwidth available to Intel's Ivy Bridge"

And Next didn't have 170GB/s bandwidth... it is a sum of parallel brandwidth of the eSRAM and DDR3 but everybody forget the data can't travel for the two tunels at the same time... the bootleneck will be always the lowest bandwidth.. only perfect cases will use all the paralel 170GB/s... the PS3 is 176GB/s for all cases because it is one tunnel alone with HSA the GPU and CPU can access the same memory space without need to travel between memories (eSRAM do DDR3, DRR3 to MoveData, DRR3 to eSRAM, PC RAM to GPU RAM, etc).

The GPU itself has designed to run Graphics and Compute in parallel without lost performance... the GPU is new and custom... not close to anything in PC market "The cool thing about Compute on PlayStation 4 is that it runs completely simultaneous with graphics. So traditionally with OpenCL or other languages you have to suspend graphics to get good Compute performance. On PS4 you don't, it runs simultaneous with graphics. We've architected the system to take full advantage of Compute at the same time as graphics because we know that everyone wants maximum graphics performance".

The GPU is like a evolution of the GCN found in HD 7000 series in PC... there is features to come in the GCN 2.0 to be releases late this year (or mabye it can be a pre-GCN 2.0). AMD and Sony did really a great job.

PS4 is not like a custom PC monted with parts... there are a lot of stuffs not found in PC and the performance is way ahead similat graphics.

GDC just showed more impressive stuffs about PS4.



MaxwellAllen on 31 March 2013

I just wonder if people are anticipating some sort of ground breaking, sea parting presentation.

They can't show it soon enough. The speculation is killing people.



walsufnir on 31 March 2013
Machiavellian said:
ethomaz said:

Adinnieken said:

Actualy, it doesn't.  Because it came to light at GDC that the PS4's memory architecture isn't as great as it sounds.

While the GPU gets the top speed, of 120 or 170 GBps, the CPU only gets 20GBps.  So CPU wise the two consoles are just about even steven, and GPU wise the next Xbox is only slightly slower.

The margin of difference in performance now is less than 1%.

The opposite happened in the GDC... the PS4 architecture seems even more impressive and strong.

I do not know about the hardware for the PS4 being more impressive but I will say that Sony is making a lot of smart moves that will help developers to get the most out of the hardware.  Being able to get almost to the metal is one strong point.  Allow develpers to create their own extensions or changes to Sony low level API is another.  For developers like Naughty Dog, we should really see them excel at getting the most out of Sony hardware which is a big bonus.  It seems Sony whole attitude has changed this gen from last and its a mark improvement.

I highly doubt that MS will let developers modify their API though they will have extensions to directX that will allow developers to get closer to the metal.

Another thing I like about Sony direction is how they are handling indie developers and making it easier for them to get content on their system.  Opening the system up more and lowering those old barriers is the right direction and move and Sony should reap benifits from this approach.

The whole talk about APIs and "close to metal" is ridiculous. Both systems will offer ways to work as close to hardware as possible. Just like they did with their previous systems.



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theprof00 on 31 March 2013
DirtyP2002 said:
theprof00 said:
Adinnieken said:

Both companies have made up where they were deficient at the beginning of this generation.  Sure, it looks like Microsoft may be behind Sony in terms of games and game content but that's because they started out way ahead of Sony at the beginning of this generation.  Hell, Microsoft ended the previous generation leagues ahead of Sony.  So kudos to Sony for catching up with the Original Xbox capabilities.  Microsoft has made up and surpassed Sony's media capabilities through the media services available on Xbox LIVE.

Sony is a media company, as well as a software company, as well as a hardware company, yet Sony has done nothing on the scale of what Microsoft did with Halo 4.  Microsoft created a live-action Halo series prior to the release of Halo 4, released the game Halo 4, created a massive amount of content for Halo 4, as well as an animated episode for each of the DLC packages.  Huh.  Go figure.

What kind of excuse is that? So it only looks like sony is putting out more games every single year because ms had a headstart? Sony is caught up and more, which says that in 6 years, sony put out more games than ms in 7. That's not an illusion.

MS ended last gen leagues ahead??? Sony first party titles dwarfed the xbox first party, both in quality and quantity.

PS: Halo is a massively popular series. If you're saying that Sony, being a huge multimedia conglomerate has yet to show even an ounce of strength compared to MS, I have no argument, as MS' marketing and merchandising ability wasn't something I was arguing in the first place. I'm not sure how that counters "ms is less focused on game software" though, as it really has nothing to do with it, since comic books and tv shows are not games.

This is not an illusion. It is wrong.

  PS3 XBOX360
Year Number of Games Average Metacritic Score Number of Games Average Metacritic Score Advantage
2013 21 71.00 25 70.44 PS3
2012 207 70.61 255 69.56 PS3
2011 270 69.00 269 68.50 PS3
2010 236 69.65 262 67.56 PS3
2009 191 70.14 254 67.96 PS3
2008 153 69.78 223 66.04 PS3
2007 100 71.80 187 67.26 PS3
2006 21 70.81 103 69.12 PS3
2005     34 74.47 XBOX360
Total 1199 69.99 1612 68.14 PS3

Try reading what I wrote again.



Machiavellian on 31 March 2013
walsufnir said:
Machiavellian said:

I do not know about the hardware for the PS4 being more impressive but I will say that Sony is making a lot of smart moves that will help developers to get the most out of the hardware.  Being able to get almost to the metal is one strong point.  Allow develpers to create their own extensions or changes to Sony low level API is another.  For developers like Naughty Dog, we should really see them excel at getting the most out of Sony hardware which is a big bonus.  It seems Sony whole attitude has changed this gen from last and its a mark improvement.

I highly doubt that MS will let developers modify their API though they will have extensions to directX that will allow developers to get closer to the metal.

Another thing I like about Sony direction is how they are handling indie developers and making it easier for them to get content on their system.  Opening the system up more and lowering those old barriers is the right direction and move and Sony should reap benifits from this approach.

The whole talk about APIs and "close to metal" is ridiculous. Both systems will offer ways to work as close to hardware as possible. Just like they did with their previous systems.

This is true that both companies will have access to the hardware because both companies will have extensions in their API to do this.  What is interesting on Sony point is that developers can improve their API as they give them access to create or modify their own extensions.  Middleware developers like Epic could do this and then supply those modifed calls within their engine thus getting better performance.

I will say that letting developers modify your API in this way probably will kill any backward compatibility when it comes to the next generation so that will be interesting.



Jumpin on 01 April 2013

I heard a rumors that the next Xbox is using HGDDR7 Ram, that's 2 GDDRs better than PS4, and 4 DDRs better than most higher end PCs!



I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.

hasonap on 01 April 2013

Is everyone forgetting that AMD was on the verge of going bankrupt 5months ago and that they still are in the dangerzone, if I were going to bet my future product on a platform I wouldn't choose the company that is near to go bankrupt. Intel already owns the desktop/laptop business and there is no way that we can outrule them from sneaking their way into making a CPU for MS - it's a longshot but who knows.

Then we have IBM who made both the CPU in the 360 and PS3 and maybe Microsoft had one of their platforms on their kitchen table.
The platforms are endless and there is nothing that says that MS didn't have like 5 different dev kits (one AMD/AMD, one nVidia/IBM, one Intel/AMD and another one with IBM/AMD.

You may say that all this crazy talk but matter of fact is that I am just speculating just as these so called rumors are doing and the only difference is that I'm no journalist.

P.S. My uncle works at MS so there you have my source for speculation, see how easy that is!