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Forums - Microsoft - Kotaku: We know all about the next Xbox

Sensei on 15 February 2013
Nsanity said:

Durango game installations will also be mandatory, as games can't directly access data from the disc.

 


What? This makes no sense at all, I don't understand why it wouldn't.



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yo_john117 on 15 February 2013

I don't like the mandatory game install thing especially since you'd probably end up needing a much larger HD than 500GB. This reeks of no used games. That would be pretty horrible (especially since you couldn't even borrow games from your friends). And what if you had 2-3 Xbox's and could only use your game on one? GAH!!!

Everything else sounds fine or amazing.



nnodley on 15 February 2013
Adinnieken said:
nnodley said:

I don't want in this dumb and pointless argument you and VGking are in, but what you wrote in the bold just irks me like no other.   Why would someone want to buy a ps4?  Oh, I don't know maybe because they want to and like the exclusives that are out for it.  Me personally am not gonna look at a peripheral that comes with the console and be like well the nexbox comes with a gimmicky kinect 2.0 that is it's main selling point and ps4 doesn't, so I'll buy that.  I'm buying a VIDEO GAME CONSOLE not an effing PC and I'm gonna look at the exclusives that come with each one and choose based on that.  That's all I want is GAMES.  And, also your asking the same question that can apply to all the consoles for each generation.  The ps360 are close in performance and the majority of the games look and play the same.  I'm gonna probably get both the ps4 and nexbox, so no I'm not a fanboy of sony.  It just makes no sense why you would ask that about just the ps4 and not the nexbox too.  

But, whatever.  That's just my rant over a pretty dumb question.

*edit* You have the right to ask what you want and I'm not attacking you.  This is just something that irks me a lot.  I could have put this in your thread, but it was more convenient to put it here.

Because, I'm a hardware guy and I like hardware. 

Despite why you bought the PS3, there are several key features that Sony has sold the PS3 on.  Unique exclusives are but one of those, other features were the motion controls of the  SixAxis controller, included Wi-Fi, included Blu-Ray ODD, Bluetooth, the Cell processor, Linux capabilities, etc, etc.  A few others were added later on as selling features, such as Move and 3D.

There had been, and still is, a lot of information about what Microsoft has planned for the future Xbox.  There isn't a heck of a lot for the PlayStation.  So the interest, especially in the face of so many people saying that they were interested in purchasing the PS4 simply based on the preliminary specs, is what was there that people would buy the PS4 for?

The only, and I repeat only, answer I can still appreciate is the very one you mentioned, exclusive games.  However, I would challenge you those exclusive games are generally only of significant interest to those who have already played the series.  That is, enough to inspire an early  purchase (i.e. not one after a price drop).

As for I didn't do one for the Wii/Wii U, well it's already out.  As for the next Xbox, it isn't a question for me to answer.  I already have formed an opinion as to whether I believe the next Xbox offers something of value for my purchase consideration. 

Trust me, I'm looking forward to the 20th to find out what Sony has planned.

So, I'm more interested in hardware and what companies have planned with it than with games.  Games I like and want to play will come along, that's a given, but hardware is the what I find cool.

I completely understand where your coming from,  but you did ask that question on a gaming forum and everyone is gonna say games is the number one reason.  Second would be price and if they have a lower pricer than the nexbox then a lot of people will choose the ps4.  To me what needs to be focused on most in a game console is games.  Being an entertainment hub should not be the priority, which from all the rumors is what MS is focusing on.  Sony is too, but they seem to be catering more towards the gaming side than anyone else by not shoving gimmick motion controls down people's throats.  I have PS move and I like it and it is great when done right, but motion controls are not my main choice when playing through a game for the first time.  

I guess that's why everything is opinions right now.  You want awesome hardware that gives you more ways to play and fills all of your entertainment needs.  On the flipside, I want awesome powerful hardware with just awesome games and a standard controller and that's it.  Almost every device in my house has netflix on it so that's covered no matter what and that's the only app I would use on my console.  



VGKing on 15 February 2013
Adinnieken said:
VGKing said:

You're ignoring the fact that 3 of those 8 gigs of DDR3 are reserved for the OS. So no, the ESRAM doesn't make up for the lower bandwidth. Even if MS managed to make to bring the bandwidth up to par with the 4gig GDDR5, the PS4 would still have the advantage as this is a unified RAM pool. PS$ is easier to develop for and pretty straightforward at least in terms of RAM. Xbox 720 is the opposite. Microsoft has a huge bandwitdth disadvantage and they have resorted to using super expensive ESRAM to try and compensate.

So whatever money MS saved using the cheaper DDR3 RAM, its negated by the more expensive ESRAM they were forced to include. Again, this is all for the sake of Kinect and some RAM-eating features they have.(Which could be some kind of DVR feature or maybe Windows-based OS) They chose quantity over qualitly(in this case, speed). this is where Microsoft has made mistakes with the Xbox 720 design IMO. I doubt we'll see any big differences in multiplats, at least not for a few years. Where I expect things to really show is with exclusives.

I'm not ignoring anything.  You however are ignoring the very article you cited.  In it, they say that the ESRAM does essentially make up for the lower bandwidth of the GDDR3 memory.  It doesn't equate to a 1:1 relationship, but we're talking a difference of about 14 GBps.  A negligible performance difference.

The ESRAM however doesn't do anything for Kinect.  The purpose of ESRAM is to provide faster memory for portions of code where performance is necessary.  Again, in the article you cited, a programmer from an actually game studio, goes on to explain that the majority of game code doesn't require the high speed memory.  The game doesn't benefit from having access to it.  Only in some specific instances does high speed memory benefit the code.  And it's actually more difficult to put a 4GB bank of GDDR5 memory together than it is to put an 8GB GDDR3 memory bank together.  As explained in the article you cited, GDDR5 memory only comes in 512MB banks, so getting anything more than 4GBs in a single memory configuration is painfully difficult.  Again, read the article you cited.

Sony loads up the PS4 with extremely high-speed memory, but the majority of code that'll access it won't be able to take advantage of it.  The next Xbox includes 8GB of slower memory, but includes 32MB of EDRAM.    What you don't quite fathom is it becomes 6 of 1 and a half-dozen of another.  If the PS4 has a performance gain it's negligible.  It won't amount to a hill of beans. 

The only way exclusives could be better is if they offer 4K resolution, which I doubt they will.  Sony and it's 1st party developers may decide to present 4K games to the public, but I doubt they'll actually release any. 

This was the whole reason why I made the thread about what was valid reason to buy a PS4.  The two consoles will be about even in terms of performance, the majority of games, the same.  The only difference will be the "hook" each brings to the market to get consumers/gamers hyped on buying the console.  A new Dual Shock gamepad doesn't quite do it. 



We agree on something. PS4 won't blow the next Xbox out of the water, they'll be fairly even in terms of power and performance. But any small advantage it has will be fully uitilized by the likes of Naughty Dog and Sony Santa Monica.