Leaked Lockhart specs

[EricHiggin]

eva01beserk said:

EricHiggin said:

A question that should really be asked, is does MS believe the XB1 branding is tainted, and would they be better served to drop it altogether next gen? While that would leave the sub $299 price range solely to PS4, it would allow MS to take a step towards getting rid of the XB1 negativity. It couldn't be forgotten completely as they will still be supporting XB1 consoles, but being able to say they are no longer selling that hardware, would be a way to make it look like they are making a worthy push into next gen without being held back as much. It would mostly be marketing PR, but MS needs all the positivity they can get now and going forward.

The fact that they called it "Series X", says to me, if there is going to be another lesser console, that's spec'd similar to XB1X, then there is next to no reason to keep the XB1X. Call it 'Series Whatever' and move forward, dropping XB1X. Maybe that means no more XB1S as well, maybe not. We'll see. 

If Lockhart is real and does exist with specs close to what has been leaked, who's to say there isn't a lower tier below that to compete with PS4? Perhaps just an xCloud streaming box. Maybe they end up with Series S, Series E, Series X. $199, $349, $499. Now that would be really interesting.

Would that be mic drop worthy in terms of hardware?

I never thought of that. your right, the xbox one name might be poisonous. that really could be a good reason to change the name even if the performance is the same.

There are rumors that the lockhart apu is meant for surface laptops. But that would cost more than an xsx most likely. I would not be surprised if part of the family is a set of laptops ranging from the rumor 4tf and going up to maybe matching the xsx at maybe a heafty premium. I would definetly consider that a mic drop moment. I have zero interest in an xsx, but if they make that laptop lockhart =< $1000 I would buy it instanly.  

They could attempt an XB1X Slim as you described, with new tech for cheaper, but I think moving forward will look better for MS overall, while also being less confusing considering the specs of both XB1X's would be different.

While 4TF Lockhart can't exactly be directly compared to XB1X 6TF, it shouldn't be all that far off in terms of graphical performance. 4TF of RDNA 2 shouldn't be all that much weaker than 6TF of GCN architecture. MS might even be thinking about better competing with Pro if they think SNY is going to keep it around though. Consumers will see 4TF vs 4.2TF and would see that as a wash along with 8 CPU cores. Lockhart likely having more RAM, and an SSD, while being next gen capable, would be the main selling points going for it. If Pro went down to $299, and Lockhart was $299 or $349, if would make people think twice about which console to get between the two.

I have a hard time believing MS is ready to start clearly mixing PC and console hardware just yet, and an XB laptop would do just that. If MS were looking to try and go mobile, that could be a first step in that direction however. It definitely would be surprising.