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thismeintiel on 17 December 2018
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shikamaru317 said:
thismeintiel said:

4 SKUs?  I'm going to go with alienate it.  This is a similar problem Steam Box faced.  Instead of a nice simple launch, they had multiple SKUs by different manufacturers.  I mean, retailers are going to have to take a stinking course just to know the differences.  Good luck passing that info on to your average consumer.  And then there will be a simple $399 PS5 SKU sitting next to all that confusion.  I think most would just say screw it and grab the PS5.

Also, the OP mentions Navi for the XB2.  I'm thinking they may have to go with Vega.  If AMD is truly working as closely with Sony in creating at least the first round of Navi GPUs as insiders have stated, I just don't see Sony being fine with them handing that tech right over to their competitors.  I would think Sony would have a console exclusivity agreement on that for at least a year or two.

Considering 2 of them are streaming boxes it shouldn't be too hard to explain the differences to people. Just name them smartly and clearly label on the boxes which ones are for streaming and which are normal consoles, and make sure to put 1080p on the Lockhart box and 4K on the Anaconda box. The goal seems to be making Xbox more like the Surface family, where they have the Surface, Surface Prop, Surface Book, Surface Laptop, Surface Studio, and Surface Hub product lines.

Both PS5 and Anaconda seem to be using Navi, as Brad Sams said that Anaconda is using a Ryzen 2 CPU and a "next-gen" AMD GPU. The next graphics generation for AMD after the current Vega is Navi. https://wccftech.com/xbox-scarlett-4k-60fps/ The report that said that Sony was designing Navi with AMD was never confirmed and I'm not even sure which insider leaked it. Brad Sams on the other hand has very good sources at MS, leaking multiple MS products over the years. Anaconda is either using Navi, or MS is working with AMD to design a fully custom AMD GPU rather than a semi-custom AMD GPU based on the PC Navi line. 

You're going to have 4 different SKUs, mostly likely with 4 different prices, with a bunch of writing (a mixture of 2 or more of these, "No Disc Drive" "Disc Games Do Not Work" "Streaming/Download Only" "Disc Drive Included" "Disk Games Work" "1080p Only" "4K Gaming") on the front of the box so as not to mislead consumers.  Then next to it you have the nice and simple all in one solution that is the PS5, just a picture of the console with minimal writing.  Which do you honestly think the average consumer is most likely to choose?

We'll have to wait and see exactly what "next-gen" actually means.  As for the leak, apparently it was multiple sources in AMD.  They say that was the reason that Raja Koduri, the person in charge of Vega development, left.  AMD was focusing more on making Navi with/for Sony, than the Vega line.  Which, if true, makes sense for AMD to do, frankly.  The PS4 is going to sell 100M+, which means 100M+ APUs sold for AMD.  PS5 is likely to repeat that success.