VGLeaks Durango specs: x64 8-core CPU @1.6GHz, 8GB DDR3 + 32MB ESRAM, 50GB 6x BD...

XtremeXpider said:
I have a question. This:
Mean Kinect on all boxes? I haven't noticed before.
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As far as the design is concerned (and how I understand it), it means it can be active all the time (whatever game or software you're running). It may still be optional, but Microsoft obviously wanted to make it a standard feature, so it is possible that they will provide a sensor with each console. Or maybe there will be a premium pack.

Technically, "NUI sensor" could mean other things than kinect (a simple microphone array could be considered as one). The wording is interesting since they specifically mentioned a kinect input, not a "NUI sensor" input. Maybe there will be default sensors in the box, plus kinect (2) as an optional peripheral ?
 
Black Tusk is hiring for somebody (Posted Jan. 23) to work on various AI systems such as path finding, decision making, crowd systems, squad logic etc. Experience with multiplayer and/or co-op gameplay development, Unreal engine experience and strong debugging and optimization skills in a multi-threaded environment is a also a plus.

Epic games engine programmer job listing (Posted Jan. 22) mentions multithreaded systems, console experience, especially next-generation systems, experience with mobile engine development and Xbox LIVE experience. Epic games mentions in another job listing for a level designer (Posted Jan. 22) as qualification publicly released levels for a FPS, RPG, or Action Adventure game. Microsoft had a position open to work as a producer for Epic on dec. 12 2012. Microsoft also for their partner program is searching for a design director to work with external developers on Microsoft’s core titles (including shooters, RPGs, action/adventure, etc.).
 
Alx said:
As far as the design is concerned (and how I understand it), it means it can be active all the time (whatever game or software you're running). It may still be optional, but Microsoft obviously wanted to make it a standard feature, so it is possible that they will provide a sensor with each console. Or maybe there will be a premium pack.

Technically, "NUI sensor" could mean other things than kinect (a simple microphone array could be considered as one). The wording is interesting since they specifically mentioned a kinect input, not a "NUI sensor" input. Maybe there will be default sensors in the box, plus kinect (2) as an optional peripheral ?
Click to expand...

They don't call the Kinect port the "NUI Port" for the same reason they don't call the HDMI port the "Metro Interface Port". Kinect is the hardware that makes the Natural User Interface possible. Kinect IS the simple microphone (array). It is a simple webcam. It is a depth sensor. They're not going to include simple room mics for the same reason they dropped support for the Xbox Vision camera, and never supported voice commands using a 360 headset. Their vision of a natural interface requires Kinect. It's that simple. Anyone who thinks Kinect won't come standard is simply kidding themselves.
 
Brad Grenz said:
They don't call the Kinect port the "NUI Port" for the same reason they don't call the HDMI port the "Metro Interface Port". Kinect is the hardware that makes the Natural User Interface possible. Kinect IS the simple microphone (array). It is a simple webcam. It is a depth sensor. They're not going to include simple room mics for the same reason they dropped support for the Xbox Vision camera, and never supported voice commands using a 360 headset. Their vision of a natural interface requires Kinect. It's that simple. Anyone who thinks Kinect won't come standard is simply kidding themselves.
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I second this.

Kinect + Metro is here to stay.
And no more cheap mic included in the box.
a strong Skype integration
and most assuredly some software burned on the console that makes Kinect relevant for casuals. Think Avatarverse with freemium games or stuff like that.
 
The Family love Kinect, in fact I can't get on the bloody 360 most nights until they all bugger off to bed. The news that the new xbox will have one as standard is not the best news for me thats for sure.
 
Pug said:
The Family love Kinect, in fact I can't get on the bloody 360 most nights until they all bugger off to bed. The news that the new xbox will have one as standard is not the best news for me thats for sure.
Click to expand...

Break it and claim it was an accident, then make your kids do chores to earn money for a replacement. You get to play and your kids learn a valuable lesson about the value of hard work and saving.
 
TheOddOne said:
Epic games engine programmer job listing (Posted Jan. 22) mentions multithreaded systems, console experience, especially next-generation systems, experience with mobile engine development and Xbox LIVE experience. Epic games mentions in another job listing for a level designer (Posted Jan. 22) as qualification publicly released levels for a FPS, RPG, or Action Adventure game. Microsoft had a position open to work as a producer for Epic on dec. 12 2012. Microsoft also for their partner program is searching for a design director to work with external developers on Microsoft’s core titles (including shooters, RPGs, action/adventure, etc.).
Click to expand...

Samaritan!?
 
Brad Grenz said:
They don't call the Kinect port the "NUI Port" for the same reason they don't call the HDMI port the "Metro Interface Port". Kinect is the hardware that makes the Natural User Interface possible. Kinect IS the simple microphone (array). It is a simple webcam. It is a depth sensor. They're not going to include simple room mics for the same reason they dropped support for the Xbox Vision camera, and never supported voice commands using a 360 headset. Their vision of a natural interface requires Kinect. It's that simple. Anyone who thinks Kinect won't come standard is simply kidding themselves.
Click to expand...

Actually bkilian said Kinect CANNOT be integrated into the Xbox chassis. Audio spacing, positioning, etc. Think about the current Kinect sensor and where you place it.

So it's literally impossible for it to be non removable.

I do think Kinect will be standard out of the box, but I dont think it's even possible for MS to not have the option to ship a non-kinect SKU down the line (although I'm not even sure this would be a good idea).

As I've stated, the audio chips have voice recognition for kinect built in, so thats at least some built in expense to the main box for kinect.

And I know thats really what this is all about, a lot of people want Kinect built in so it will in theory weaken the main hardware so PS4 can be more powerful.

But I think it's a case of be careful what you wish for, there's a non insignificant chance Kinect will sell a lot of boxes, or that even with Kinect packed in Durango will match Orbis pretty well, leaving Kinect only as an additional selling point, not an anchor. The same goes for all the OS stuff supposedly planned.

If you end up with Durango being comparable to Orbis or within ~10%, but it has Kinect and whatever OS stuff MS has planned for the same price, I suspect that overall package will sell a lot better than a possibly slightly more powerful Orbis, at least in MS friendly territories.
 
specialguy said:
there's a non insignificant chance Kinect will sell a lot of boxes, or that even with Kinect packed in Durango will match Orbis pretty well, leaving Kinect only as an additional selling point, not an anchor. The same goes for all the OS stuff supposedly planned.
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I agree 100%. If both consoles performances are similar and release in the same time window (which is what is currently expected), both constructors will have to find things to differentiate themselves from their competitor, other than "the Halo box" Vs "the Uncharted box".
NUI and services/OS features are obvious ways to give some "flavour" to the console, in the eyes of the consumer.
 
derFeef said:
It makes no sense making a lewss poweful machine because of those two. You can have both.
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Can you? Is it possible to make a box that is relatively small and quiet, with strong media capabilities and ample gaming horsepower, while at the same time striving to not take a big loss on each unit sold AND keep the price down so that consumers buy it? If Microsoft can pull that off, kudos.

Proelite said:
Not day 1. The console WILL be sold at loss.

They want profitability in the same fiscal year.
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Ah, that makes more sense. Still a hard goal, but much more reasonable.

monome said:
Kinect + Metro is here to stay.
Click to expand...

But why, it's terrible :(
 
Brad Grenz said:
ERP has always been careful to qualify his statements that the major benefits he is seeing from the DME only apply if the 32MBs is actually SRAM. Unfortunately 32MBs of SRAM would take up a massive amount of space on the chip, which is why most of us have assumed we are actually looking at a form of embedded DRAM (which includes the MOSYS 1T-SRAM). Considering our bandwidth numbers for the 32MBs of on die memory can be calculated by simply multiplying the 360's eDRAM 32GBps for 10MB by 3.2 to get 102.4GBps for 32MBs, it is tempting to conclude they have simply scaled the 360's eDRAM up linearly. In that case the DMEs may be both convenient & necessary, but may not provide the more interesting benefits he is speculating about.

Conversely, we have also heard rumors that Durango's APU is very large and suffered some major yield issues. That could mean we are looking at a huge block of actual SRAM.
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Why would they go to all the trouble to design such a peculiar memory architecture, which apparently needs a low latency memory to be worth the while, and not go for the memory type that makes the whole magic happen?

Supposedly that's the whole reason they went if a less than impressive gpu (on paper) in the first place.
 
alexandros said:
Ah, that makes more sense. Still a hard goal, but much more reasonable.
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I think both Microsoft and Sony will be aiming for reasonable ($300-450) price points and early (within a year or so) profitability.

And I don't see why either of the leaked set-ups would break the bank - although someone more in the know is free to elaborate if they think these set-ups would/wouldn't. They look like nice upgrades but nothing ridiculous, and there's no brand new optical format etc. to drive up prices ridiculously this time.
 
alexandros said:
Can you? Is it possible to make a box that is relatively small and quiet, with strong media capabilities and ample gaming horsepower, while at the same time striving to not take a big loss on each unit sold AND keep the price down so that consumers buy it? If Microsoft can pull that off, kudos.
Click to expand...

I don't see how it's not possible with the current rumored specs.
 
James Sawyer Ford said:
If the latter scenario is true and they are using a huge block of SRAM, I wonder why they would actually go that route instead of just getting a beefier GPU.

I can't imagine the performance gains from SRAM overcoming the additional complexity, chip size, and yield issues to make it a more worthwhile investment over just having a larger GPU.
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Because they felt like that was the way to get the most performance they could get that would fit within their budgets (cost, consumption, size), why else? :)
 
LukasTaves said:
Why would they go to all the trouble to design such a peculiar memory architecture, which apparently needs a low latency memory to be worth the while, and not go for the memory type that makes the whole magic happen?
Click to expand...

A different memory choice would give them all the bandwidth they'd need (although wouldn't have the low latency of the SRAM) - but it would cost a lot more to use 8GB of that. And capacity is a top priority for them.
 
If the ESRAM is not low latency and the magic as Aegis says doesn´t come from the DMEs then we must be talking of a heavy customized GPU to increase efficiency. My bet is there is a block left in the GPU part, maybe one that becomes GCN in an out-of-order architecture.
 
specialguy said:
Actually bkilian said Kinect CANNOT be integrated into the Xbox chassis. Audio spacing, positioning, etc. Think about the current Kinect sensor and where you place it.

So it's literally impossible for it to be non removable.
Click to expand...

This isn't true. Everything inside Kinect with the exception of the cameras could be included within the console hardware. There's no reason for all the hardware to be included inside the camera casing. It would actually be smart to do that so you can reduce the cost of the camera and or sell new ones cheaper.
 
Real time asset compression? I do recall intel years ago proposed some hardware that would compress/uncompress all data traffic to and from memory in realtime. I don't know if something like that is applicable.
 
oldergamer said:
This isn't true. Everything inside Kinect with the exception of the cameras could be included within the console hardware. There's no reason for all the hardware to be included inside the camera casing. It would actually be smart to do that so you can reduce the cost of the camera and or sell new ones cheaper.
Click to expand...

I still think it's seperate somehow, you can't expect everyone to setup up their xbox in a perfect way. Plus there would need to be huge improvements to the camera / sensors because of that.
 
oldergamer said:
This isn't true. Everything inside Kinect with the exception of the cameras could be included within the console hardware. There's no reason for all the hardware to be included inside the camera casing. It would actually be smart to do that so you can reduce the cost of the camera and or sell new ones cheaper.
Click to expand...
"Everything inside the Kinect with the exception of the cameras" are a couple of cheap microphones, and even with a perfect room setup, no, you don't want those near the fans of your system either.

If you mean processing units, it doesn't really matter where they're located, does it? (shrug)
 
aegies said:
Think real-time asset compression and decompression
Click to expand...
You posted earlier hinting at the same thing, I believe:
aegies said:
I *think* that there's a solution in place to compress data to move it across the bus then almost instantly decompress that data into memory. But it can be hampered by overly tesselated geometry, for example.

Again, I think, here. I wasn't told this, per se.
Click to expand...
Have your prior thoughts been confirmed or is this something different? (Or is this just reiteration of the same thoughts?)

-----
amstradcpc said:
If the ESRAM is not low latency and the magic as Aegis says doesn´t come from the DMEs then we must be talking of a heavy customized GPU to increase efficiency. My bet is there is a block left in the GPU part, maybe one that becomes GCN in an out-of-order architecture.
Click to expand...
Did he say that?

That seems to conflict with earlier information in the thread. At least from Proelite.
Proelite said:
The Data Move engine is pretty important since there are 4 of them. Each one doing different things to help the GPU.

I expect we will get more details the closer we get to launch.
Click to expand...
Proelite said:
He is massively wrong.

4xMove engines have nothing to do with Kinect. They're straight up graphical performance enhancers.
Click to expand...

So confusing.
 
oldergamer said:
This isn't true. Everything inside Kinect with the exception of the cameras could be included within the console hardware. There's no reason for all the hardware to be included inside the camera casing. It would actually be smart to do that so you can reduce the cost of the camera and or sell new ones cheaper.
Click to expand...

I can't see any problem building four directional mics into a console with a constantly spinning blu-ray drive and constantly spinning harddrive, wedged into someone's entertainment center...
 
gofreak said:
A different memory choice would give them all the bandwidth they'd need (although wouldn't have the low latency of the SRAM) - but it would cost a lot more to use 8GB of that. And capacity is a top priority for them.
Click to expand...
But if their concern was only a large pool of memory vs bandwidth they cold have gone with very different and less esoteric setups... People keep saying that the whole design was focused on improving efficiency, and using a weaker than expected hardware to achieve a target performance. Which would justify this approach.
 
Cheap and small Kinect 1.5 bundled that equals 5-10% of the price of launch bundle > Powerfull Kinect 2.0 with a lot of advertising that equals 15-25% of the price of the launch bundle.

I'll buy it anyway...if no choice.
 
derFeef said:
I don't see how it's not possible with the current rumored specs.
Click to expand...

Well I guess it depends on whether you consider Sony as Microsoft's only rival or not. The hardware may be competitive to Sony's effort, but what happens if mainstream PC performance surpasses console tech significantly from, say, the first year? What if a slew of Steamboxes come out and they're more powerful than both consoles at a similar price? What if Apple comes up with something that puts iOS games in the living room?

I know it sounds a bit far-fetched, maybe it is. But when you don't push tech far enough, you leave the door open for competitors to close the distance and claim a piece of your market share.
 
LukasTaves said:
But if their concern was only a large pool of memory vs bandwidth they cold have gone with very different and less esoteric setups... People keep saying that the whole design was focused on improving efficiency, and using a weaker than expected hardware to achieve a target performance. Which would justify this approach.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I misunderstood your question anyway...about why they wouldn't use SRAM.

On the point about capacity vs bandwidth, capacity was the first priority I think, but to have it relatively cheaply, they needed 'something else' to improve the bandwidth situation, which leads to more esoteric setups (i.e. eDRAM or eSRAM).

Although I recognise this isn't answering your question about why they'd set all this up and then not go with eSRAM. Some people are saying cost/complexity but I don't know enough about the differences...I assume they would go with eSRAM if possible.
 
Feep said:
"Everything inside the Kinect with the exception of the cameras" are a couple of cheap microphones, and even with a perfect room setup, no, you don't want those near the fans of your system either.

If you mean processing units, it doesn't really matter where they're located, does it? (shrug)
Click to expand...

There are two processors on kinect that i think it would have sense to have it inside the camera.

Kinect depth camera captures IR images at 1280x1024. The prime sensor processor converts that into a 640x480 image. With that processor on the console you would need to send a 4 times larger image over the bus.

The other processor does the same thing for audio (kinect has 4 microphones) and also handles video. (On 360 for example, the depth image gets a futher reduction to 320x240)
 
alexandros said:
Well I guess it depends on whether you consider Sony as Microsoft's only rival or not. The hardware may be competitive to Sony's effort, but what happens if mainstream PC performance surpasses console tech significantly from, say, the first year? What if a slew of Steamboxes come out and they're more powerful than both consoles at a similar price? What if Apple comes up with something that puts iOS games in the living room?

I know it sounds a bit far-fetched, maybe it is. But when you don't push tech far enough, you leave the door open for competitors to close the distance and claim a piece of your market share.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I think that's an important point to consider if everyone starts to aim for day 1 profitability. One thing that made the console market almost impossible to enter for new competitors is the huge up front cost. When e.g. Valve can sell a Steambox in 2 years for $400 without losses that is slightly more powerful than the consoles this changes.
 
monome said:
Cheap and small Kinect 1.5 bundled that equals 5-10% of the price of launch bundle > Powerfull Kinect 2.0 with a lot of advertising that equals 15-25% of the price of the launch bundle.

I'll buy it anyway...if no choice.
Click to expand...

They don't need to bundle kinect 2.0 right away. Even with current kinect on a faster bus they can improve the resolution and the framerate of the camera (not so sure on the framerate, but the resolution definitely yes), and in a few years launch a new stand alone HD kinect with improved video quality, and a wider fov which requires less space, like they did with kinect on 360.

The difference being that by launching with kinect 1 first you already created a large userbase for the software by the time kinect 2 launches.
 
gofreak said:
Sorry, I misunderstood your question anyway...about why they wouldn't use SRAM.

On the point about capacity vs bandwidth, capacity was the first priority I think, but to have it relatively cheaply, they needed 'something else' to improve the bandwidth situation, which leads to more esoteric setups (i.e. eDRAM or eSRAM).

Although I recognise this isn't answering your question about why they'd set all this up and then not go with eSRAM. Some people are saying cost/complexity but I don't know enough about the differences...I assume they would go with eSRAM if possible.
Click to expand...

I agree with you. Capacity does seem to be the major goal. For what is what's troubling me (It can't be just apps because i don't think it would justify all that memory usage).
 
LukasTaves said:
I agree with you. Capacity does seem to be the major goal. For what is what's troubling me (It can't be just apps because i don't think it would justify all that memory usage).
Click to expand...

I think capacity was there main priority as others have said but they needed a way to get said capacity and also mitigate the bandwidth problem. There is also the issue of the tech spec target they want to achieve. I think all these and more probably steered them to the decisions they have made about the system. Obviously until we get better detail about the overall system makeup, we can only but speculate why certain hardware features are in the system. One thing is obvious though, from the limited knowledge we have about some of these components, it seems they are well on their way to achieving their target ie large capacity memory, efficiency, and mitigating bandwidth constraints. We can only be certain how much of this they achieve when developers are able to talk more about the systems indepth.
 
LukasTaves said:
They don't need to bundle kinect 2.0 right away. Even with current kinect on a faster bus they can improve the resolution and the framerate of the camera (not so sure on the framerate, but the resolution definitely yes), and in a few years launch a new stand alone HD kinect with improved video quality, and a wider fov which requires less space, like they did with kinect on 360.

The difference being that by launching with kinect 1 first you already created a large userbase for the software by the time kinect 2 launches.
Click to expand...

my point exactly. only with a smaller form factor for Kinect 1.0 with newish but cheap components.
Kinect 2.0 with Fortalezza bundle and Halo 5/ New IP FPS VR edition but with controllers!!! never a FPS hands-free. never.
 
LukasTaves said:
There are two processors on kinect that i think it would have sense to have it inside the camera.

Kinect depth camera captures IR images at 1280x1024. The prime sensor processor converts that into a 640x480 image. With that processor on the console you would need to send a 4 times larger image over the bus.

The other processor does the same thing for audio (kinect has 4 microphones) and also handles video. (On 360 for example, the depth image gets a futher reduction to 320x240)
Click to expand...

There is little benefit to that, it just means you have less data to send through usb. If it's a standard feature of the console you should just provide a high bandwidth connection to the new camera, which I'm sure they will do.
 
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