We know man, you already mentioned the 20% gpu difference 5 times now. So you think 20% more gpu power will make a huge difference but let me guess, a 4Tflops Lockhart or the 1,3Tflops Xbox One won't hold back Series X at all because uncle Phil says so...

But I'm still curious if you ever played a game at 120fps and why you think that's so important? I'm also curious if you can tell the difference between native 4k and something like 1440p or checkerboard rendering.

Last gen already relied on HDD, installing bits and pieces or using the HDD as cache. Plus last gen actually had tricks to use both HDD and optical drive together. The digital version of Halo Reach actually performed worse with only the HDD to run from instead of using both pathways.
https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.232501-Should-You-Install-Halo-Reach-to-Your-Xbox-360

So actually we went a bit backwards this gen in general I/O since everything is installed on HDD now, no more benefits from a secondary source.

Sorry, but you are wrong. (Or I'm dreaming I had to wait 10 minutes between MGS4 chapters to install the next part to HDD)

By interactive I mean more evolving changing worlds instead of static worlds. The more you can move around, destroy, build in worlds, the more you need to remember, either in RAM of by committing it to disk. The SSD augments RAM, less needs to be kept in memory since it's much faster to retrieve it.

More interactive worlds were also held back by baked lighting. The advance of ray tracing and dynamic lighting removes that obstacle (that any changes won't effect the lighting correctly) while the SSD allows all changes to be stored and retrieved from disc, up to 1000x faster than from HDD when it comes to random read write access.


People get excited about 10x the tflops compared to last gen. But somehow fail to see what implications up to 1000x the I/O speed can have.
This is the difference between SSD and HDD on my laptop


Next gen console SSDs will be even faster, up to 5 GB/s (with hw compression) for Series X and 9 GB/s for ps5.
HDDs are even slower this gen (games designed for standard 5400 rpm drives)

So for example now we have a car that can go 900 mph, but you have to design your game around pedestrians that can't run faster than 8 mph.


Scaling only goes so far. Yep Minecraft was actually possible on the 3DS, well only the new 3DS that is and with severe limits
Although the height limit is only 128 blocks, worlds can be larger than the Small world type from Legacy Console Edition. There is a mob cap that is much stricter than Legacy Console Edition, where a maximum of 24 enemies, 24 animals, 16 squid, and 16 villagers can exist at one time.
Can you still call that the same game as the PC version where you can build stuff like this

Building games have long been limited by ram and storage speed.

Interactivity depends on hardware capabilities. CPU/GPU for physics, RAM and storage for amount of changes that can be made/stored, input methods for how to manipulate the environment (especially in VR). All will be better next gen, yet storage I/O will be magnitudes better next gen. Supporting HDDs will hold new ideas back.

Most Xbox 360 games of the first years worked without any HDD. A few later games needed a small HDD for some caching and for patches, but most of the data still was loaded directly from the DVD.

Most PS3 games only needed a small part of the HDD for some caching (usually as mandatory installs of tiny fractions of the game) and some patches, but most of the data still was loaded directly from the Blu-ray.

Xbox 360 Core and Xbox 360 Arcade existed, the PS3 Superslim with 12 GB existed.

I'm also curious which games you played with 120 fps.

On what system? With which monitor/TV connected?

Well not many because I have a GTX1060, which I admit isn't a great card for gaming at 120fps. However, I was curious what the fuzz was about so I did play some simple games like PugB, Doom, Fortnite on Forza Horizon 4 on my Msi Mag272cqr and I honestly couldn't really tell the difference between 60 and 120fps. It does give you a slight edge in competitive gaming as mouse movement seems a bit snappier, but overall it's complete overkill, especially on consoles.

4K is the same thing. On a pc monitor it does look a lot better but sitting away from a tv, it becomes a lot less noticeable, especially compared to 1440p

Dirt 5 wouldn't of attracted more people if it was built from the ground up either. Infact the most talking point of the game is its 120fps mode.. otherwise it would be just another racer like everything else.

Minecraft and Fortnight are playable on Mobile phones, they don't require the need of state of the art machines to play. Minecraft is an 11 year old game and was in development a lot longer before than. It doesn't need tech to be fun. Its the gameplay that keeps people into it, not the visuals.

SSDs are awesome, however its not what makes games great, its just hardware at the end of the day, its definitely an improvement. AoE4 even if it was being made from the ground up on XSX wouldn't change how AoE4 plays because the developers are making the game to their vision, keeping it traditional for the fans that actually love those type of games. Age of Empires is not a 200 player Battle Royal game and i am sure many RTS fans don't want them to change there vision just because they have hardware to do so. 

Either way, weather you like it or not, its not going to change anything, majority of games due out this year and next year are most likely designed with current gen in mind so we wont see anything soon from Xbox and even Playstation that take full advantage of these systems hardware until at least 1 to 2 years into the console generation.

I am interested in seeing more game announcements, not how they are made, but that's just me.

You can’t lecture me on repeating the 20-30% gap when you peddle the holding back concern trolling stance since the year started. Fact is Xbox is in a better position to hit benchmarks while also looking next gen. 

If you make a game on the lower hardware and port up then 100% you are right it holds new hardware back. But since they announced Halo Infinite is built natively on Series X we now know they just have to cut corners to scale down. You know this but still for some reason hope (???) that MS is building games natively on old hardware and porting up.

It’s simple, my TV is 4K and more frames the better. If you wanna settle for less before the generation even begins then I’m glad I’m not on your side. Series X has a better shot to do both because they actually designed it to be next gen. I never played a game at 120 FPS but I imagine it’s a step up and can’t wait to see the difference. 

Here I know it doesn’t suit your concern but here’s the confirmation again.

https://twitter.com/xcloudtimdog/status/1276173499028078592?s=21

You’re talking to goopy, who reads an interview with the director of Halo and ignores where he talks about building the game around the most powerful hardware and how it will shine on XSX but instead focuses on the part where he says the game will look and run well on Xbone and twists that to mean they are designing the game around base Xbox One and then just making stuff look better.

Don't forget Papa Phil said PS4Pro competed against X1S not X1X because apparently 1,3 vs 4,2 Tflops (3x) are a smaller difference than 4,2 vs 6? (40%) difference.

So it is obvious that X1 doesn't holds XSX down but it will be a world difference agains PS5. It will be like X1 1080p30fps, PS5 1440p30fps and XSX 8k120fps you'll see.