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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - IGN: Xbox 720 Will Be Six Times as Powerful as Current Gen

greenmedic88 on 25 January 2012
M.U.G.E.N said:

for sony I think, the PSV approach shows they know what to do with hw this time around from the get go...they seem to have a solid plan for the psv (with sw ready for year 2014 even iirc) and the hw is not TOO over the top. I think we will see a much more dev friendly piece of tech with the next PS and I'm VERY excited

Handhelds are a bit different given the rate at which progress takes place in that market. 

While a home PC can be grandfathered for maybe 4 years without resorting to running only old software, put in perspective, an iPhone from 4 years ago won't even run the last few iterations of iOS for lack of processing power. If you're grandfathering a smartphone for well over 2 years, you are greatly reducing its usability in terms of new software you can reliably run on it. We can pretty much expect to see a new iPad every year with significant increases in specs if not design. 

What SCE has done right with the Vita is use the latest in available technology without doing the R&D on it themselves. While components were naturally customized for the purpose of optimization, those same components can be found in current or will be in future smartphones and tablets. At any rate, it should be interesting to see how well it holds up over the next 5 years. 

The focus for the entire next gen of consoles will probably be developer friendliness. Any company that doesn't focus on this would only be isolating themselves, making development for other platforms more appealing. 



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greenmedic88 on 25 January 2012
Slimebeast said:
greenmedic88 said:
Slimebeast said:

Now I dont believe the X720 will be only 6 times faster than a X360 but what a fiasco that would be. Only a 6 times increase in 8 years between two consoles is unprecedented.

Sadly this news still suggests that MS aren't going for the most powerful hardware possible but instead cheap hardware directed at the casual.

Hopefully Sony waits one year with their nexxt gen console and invests in really powerful hardware and stomps the Nextbox.

That would put the upgrade on par with the GC > Wii at any rate. 

If so, that HD6670 powered Xbox 3 report would actually be believable. 

Based on their success with Kinect, maybe that is the direction they want to head in. It's also possible that the Xbox 3 is being designed with a shorter life cycle in mind as well. I'm still of the opinion that the Wii was never really intended to be supported past 5 years as Nintendo's lead console and that it was deliberately underpowered with little regard to keeping it "future proof" by instead focusing upon low production cost and initial profitability.  

As for Sony, I would be pretty shocked if they made the same mistakes they made with the PS3 by overinvesting in cutting edge hardware and selling it at a major loss while still having to charge significantly more than the competition. 

What do u mean "if so, the HD6670 powered Xbox 3 report would be believeable"? The HD6670 speculation is derived from this very news of a 6 times increase.

I'm pretty sure the HD6670 GPU is not 6x more powerful than the Xenos GPU.



M.U.G.E.N on 25 January 2012
Millenium said:
M.U.G.E.N said:
Slimebeast said:

Now I dont believe the X720 will be only 6 times faster than a X360 but what a fiasco that would be. Only a 6 times increase in 8 years between two consoles is unprecedented.

Sadly this news still suggests that MS aren't going for the most powerful hardware possible but instead cheap hardware directed at the casual.

Hopefully Sony waits one year with their nexxt gen console and invests in really powerful hardware and stomps the Nextbox.


finally ready to embrace the dark side my friend? :D

rumor this and that..one thing is for sure...next gen is upon us (at least the reveal is lol) and these are exciting times..

my hope? Both xbox and PS will be different to each other in some major way so they will have their own strengths and will be appealing in their own way. Both in SW and HW

I'm excited ya'all! :D bring it MS


Your excitement just burned a hole through the page.

That'll be $4.99 please. (Should go nicely towards my funds to buy a next-gen console XD)

hahah I mean really..good or bad new hw rumors etc gets me excited! I mean I see console wars for NEXT gen have started already..but why or why should that be! (I'm referring to all sides here) Let's just hope all consoles will do good (yes even WiiU despite me not really being excited by what I have seen..I'm sure many are)

Next gen, since I love first party stuff of Sony..PS will be my first console of choice most probably but like this gen I will either buy/borrow all consoles and play on all of them! so these are very very exciting times..usually when the rumor mill goes overboard that means an announcement is close (tho most rumors will be utter nonsense)

I mean come on guys I wanna see stuff like damn I wonder what the next kinect can do...wonder what kinda of quality one can expect from these hw etc etc more around here



In-Kat-We-Trust Brigade!

"This world is Merciless, and it's also very beautiful"

For All News/Info related to the PlayStation Vita, Come and join us in the Official PSV Thread!

M.U.G.E.N on 25 January 2012
Slimebeast said:
M.U.G.E.N said:
Slimebeast said:

Now I dont believe the X720 will be only 6 times faster than a X360 but what a fiasco that would be. Only a 6 times increase in 8 years between two consoles is unprecedented.

Sadly this news still suggests that MS aren't going for the most powerful hardware possible but instead cheap hardware directed at the casual.

Hopefully Sony waits one year with their nexxt gen console and invests in really powerful hardware and stomps the Nextbox.


finally ready to embrace the dark side my friend? :D

rumor this and that..one thing is for sure...next gen is upon us (at least the reveal is lol) and these are exciting times..

my hope? Both xbox and PS will be different to each other in some major way so they will have their own strengths and will be appealing in their own way. Both in SW and HW

I'm excited ya'all! :D bring it MS

I think I have embraced the dark side. I just haven't left Xbox yet.

Truly exciting times are ahead of us yes, but if nex gen hardware isn't more powerful than rumoured so far I am to be very disappointed. I wanna feel the magic of a next gen, stuff like in the Samaritan demo or the grafix of a modded PC Crysis but on consoles.

oh for sure don't leave MS ..not even next gen...heck even I won't..

I wouldn't put too much money on rumors man...just take them with two truck loads of salt..but be excited for the possibilities for your favorite games and such! new hw new sw new tech! :D sweeet times ahead..damn I sure hope sony lied and they would show something for ps4 as well



In-Kat-We-Trust Brigade!

"This world is Merciless, and it's also very beautiful"

For All News/Info related to the PlayStation Vita, Come and join us in the Official PSV Thread!

M.U.G.E.N on 25 January 2012
greenmedic88 said:
M.U.G.E.N said:

for sony I think, the PSV approach shows they know what to do with hw this time around from the get go...they seem to have a solid plan for the psv (with sw ready for year 2014 even iirc) and the hw is not TOO over the top. I think we will see a much more dev friendly piece of tech with the next PS and I'm VERY excited

Handhelds are a bit different given the rate at which progress takes place in that market. 

While a home PC can be grandfathered for maybe 4 years without resorting to running only old software, put in perspective, an iPhone from 4 years ago won't even run the last few iterations of iOS for lack of processing power. If you're grandfathering a smartphone for well over 2 years, you are greatly reducing its usability in terms of new software you can reliably run on it. We can pretty much expect to see a new iPad every year with significant increases in specs if not design. 

What SCE has done right with the Vita is use the latest in available technology without doing the R&D on it themselves. While components were naturally customized for the purpose of optimization, those same components can be found in current or will be in future smartphones and tablets. At any rate, it should be interesting to see how well it holds up over the next 5 years. 

The focus for the entire next gen of consoles will probably be developer friendliness. Any company that doesn't focus on this would only be isolating themselves, making development for other platforms more appealing. 


yeah what I meant was their approach to the hw was good..they got together with their studios and took their feedback from day 1..made very dev friendly hw..and took out features that would have made the hw too expensive..a grounded and smart approach. So I'm hopeful they will do the same with the home console



In-Kat-We-Trust Brigade!

"This world is Merciless, and it's also very beautiful"

For All News/Info related to the PlayStation Vita, Come and join us in the Official PSV Thread!

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SvennoJ on 25 January 2012
kitler53 said:
crissindahouse said:
kitler53 said:
SvennoJ said:
6 times is not a lot. 720p30 to 1080p60 requires 4.5 times as many pixels to render. Add 3D and you need 9 times the current power. Most games don't even make 720p30 atm. If true, I guess 1080p60 tv's will still be under utilized next gen, never mind 3D at 1080p60.
If you apply Moore's law while looking at a 2013 release date we should get 16 times the power of current gen.

Let's hope they at least stick a decent amount of ram in there this time and an ssd drive for caching.


well supposedly the wiiU can do 1080p but who knows what the fuck fine print comes with that statement.  i agree, 6x is underwhelming.  i honestly don't think i care if the graphics are more than 6x 'cause lets face it -- the gaming industry cant' support that economically anyways so power or not it won't really be supported.   i was however really hoping for a console that was much much more effective at multitasking and that requires a fair amount of processing power too.

it's not true to say the industry can't support that economically. the specs we know about know if true or not would maybe not even enough to play actual pc games with ultra settings, 4x msaa, hbao, 1080p and whatever. it's not like they can't develop this games they do it NOW and i don't believe they couldn't few years in the future when technologies are better and it will be less expansive to make graphics we have NOW on the pc. i mean if it wouldn't be possible we wouldn't have those games for pc and pc games sales aren't very high...and even if this console could do everything an actual gaming pc can the console will release end 2013 then we will have much better pc games than nowadays so with a better console we could play them with these rumored specs we won't be able to play the games with the same setting but the settings are there, they aren't too expensive.

it's expensive to build those maps but if you put in 2x msaa or 4x msaa isn't such a big thing for development i think but it costs a lot of power.


i dunno -- i'm not much of a technical guy but by my definitions i've seen the ultra, super, high settings of PC games and other than resolution they don't really look like better graphics.   the images are sharper but the assets are still low quality -- kind of like when ps2 games are made HD for the ps3.  yes the resolution is better and things do look better but the enviornments are still using the same assets and the game still looks dated and not at all up to par with a current gen game.

Resolution isn't expesive for development but the artists needed to make things look truely more detailed and better are.

That's why 6x is so underwhelming. The assets are already there on pc, higher res textures, longer draw distance, better lighting and shadows. Stuff that won't all be able to run on the 720 with only a 6x power increase. Thus no room for improvements.

A lot of things can improve gameplay and actually cost the same or less effort for artists. Real time dynamic lighting instead of pre-baked different time of day sets, improved physics instead of scripted events, more enemies on screen, longer draw distance less need of low lod models.



HappySqurriel on 25 January 2012
SvennoJ said:

hat's why 6x is so underwhelming. The assets are already there on pc, higher res textures, longer draw distance, better lighting and shadows. Stuff that won't all be able to run on the 720 with only a 6x power increase. Thus no room for improvements.

A lot of things can improve gameplay and actually cost the same or less effort for artists. Real time dynamic lighting instead of pre-baked different time of day sets, improved physics instead of scripted events, more enemies on screen, longer draw distance less need of low lod models.

Being that my modest GPU (Radeon HD 5770) runs the vast majority of PC games at (or near) their highest level of detail, at a high resolution with a stable framerate, I think you're ovestating how much game developers are pushing PC hardware ... After all, the reason why so many reviewers are using resolutions like 2560x1600 in their benchmarks are because modern games do not push new GPUs hard enough to act as a reasonable benchmark.

When game engines become highly optimized to the GPUs in the next generation consoles, games will be able to do everything you're thinking of and more with a "6x" performance increase.



glimmer_of_hope on 25 January 2012
Dr.Grass said:
glimmer_of_hope said:

People are still not getting it. There will not be an enormous leap in consoles this upcoming generation. The only big jump/improvement will be the WiiU, going from DVD based to HD. There is absolutely no surprise that the Nextbox could only be 20% more powerful than WiiU.

We have hit the roadblock this upcoming generation, games will only be able to put out 1080P graphics, because that's the best televisions we have now. The successor to 1080P televisions could be years away.

You can add as much CPU, GPU RAM, Processor all you want, the end result will be 1080p games. Sure the games will be sharper, bigger and 60fps....but the difference will not be as much as some people expect/hope.

Errr, waaahh..?

Avatar on BluRay is 1080p and (if this news is true) it looks WAY better than anything people would ever expect from Nextbox. Where do you get the idea that 1080p is a limitation at all at the moment or in the near future?

As I said, It will not be as much as people EXPECT. People are saying such stupid things as 100x more powerful. It won't be a jump like PS2 to PS3



                                  Gaming Away Life Since 1985


happydolphin on 25 January 2012
glimmer_of_hope said:
Dr.Grass said:
glimmer_of_hope said:

People are still not getting it. There will not be an enormous leap in consoles this upcoming generation. The only big jump/improvement will be the WiiU, going from DVD based to HD. There is absolutely no surprise that the Nextbox could only be 20% more powerful than WiiU.

We have hit the roadblock this upcoming generation, games will only be able to put out 1080P graphics, because that's the best televisions we have now. The successor to 1080P televisions could be years away.

You can add as much CPU, GPU RAM, Processor all you want, the end result will be 1080p games. Sure the games will be sharper, bigger and 60fps....but the difference will not be as much as some people expect/hope.

Errr, waaahh..?

Avatar on BluRay is 1080p and (if this news is true) it looks WAY better than anything people would ever expect from Nextbox. Where do you get the idea that 1080p is a limitation at all at the moment or in the near future?

As I said, It will not be as much as people EXPECT. People are saying such stupid things as 100x more powerful. It won't be a jump like PS2 to PS3





Zim on 25 January 2012

Man I think all these rumours about next gen systems have reached the point of being utterly pointless.

So many different rumours flying around about how this system is doing that while the other is doing this. All based on 'confidential sources'.

I mean we have gone through this so many times with so many systems. The vast majority of the time most of the rumours are completely out.



Turkish says and I'm allowed to quote that: Uncharted 3 and God Of War 3 look better than Unreal Engine 4 games will or the tech demo does. Also the Naughty Dog PS3 ENGINE PLAYS better than the UE4 ENGINE.