Ninja Moomin
Banned
yes.... because when you are in the pre launch era of console game production the state of the hardware revisions has absolutely no impact on what developers can achieve.
Jeez.
Kotaku Rumor: Microsoft 6 months behind in game production for X720 [Pastebin = Ban]
- Thread starter shinobi602
- Start date
yes.... because when you are in the pre launch era of console game production the state of the hardware revisions has absolutely no impact on what developers can achieve.
Jeez.
Ninja Moomin
Banned
Napalm_Frank
Member
AFAIK pretty much all of Asia is PS3 land.
MS is wasting their time if they try to push Durango anywhere outside US-EU in the first few years at least. Besides Durango seems to be extremely US minded console in design (mainly entertainment push).
jeff_rigby
Banned
I have no idea <sigh>. I was predicting a new Xbox 360 (XTV and EPA Energy star) just before I found the 4/2010 Leaked Xbox 720 powerpoint and it stated a Xbox 361 would be out Holiday 2012 to support XTV. This matches exactly to Oban hitting forges Dec 2011 for a Holiday 2012 release.
Something happened and likely it's related to Energy star power regs. I assumed a more modern AMD GPU and scaleable (Freq and Voltage) hardware would allow the refreshed Xbox 360 SoC to meet the regs. I might have underestimated the difficulty in emulating the Xbox 360 using more modern hardware. Best guess now with the rumors of a Xbox 360 with ARM Win RT/Windows 8 is that OS Dashboard is running on ARM IP and Games side is the Xbox 360 SoC. Very similar to how the PS4 and Xbox 720 will work.
Adding a h.264 encoder to ARM and ARM Trustzone married with Xbox 360 SoC can support Gaikai like BC on Durango and the microsoft-sony.com domain registration might have Sony AND Microsoft supporting Gakai like streaming from 22nm PS3 and 32nm Xbox 360 between each others hardware platforms over the home network. AOAC is also needed here for the Xbox 360 to comply with EU power Regs (500mw standby) and still respond to LAN discovery requests as well as requests by other platforms like Durango to support remote Xbox 360 play.
I can only use the guesses in my above two posts.NinjaFusion said:
1) PS4 has a second ARM chip and Xbox 720 Kryptos (Means Hidden in Greek) includes ARM IP hidden inside Kryptos. 64 bit ARM v8 CPUs were just released Jan 2012 so a design incorporating 64 bit CPUs would have to be stalled till ARM was ready. PS4 Thebe could be forged earlier and the second separate ARM chip later. Sweetvar26 said PS4 Thebe was delayed but still on track and Xbox Kryptos was scheduled for after Thebe and it was on track also. PS4 before Xbox 720 might be related to my guess but both on schedule means it's something else or rumors are wrong.
2) Rumors of Kryptos running hot? Poor code can do that. This could just be bogus or it's exceeding EPA power regs for some of the regulated modes. Writing the Xbox 720 operating system is going to be harder for Microsoft as the AMD HSA HSAIL virtual engine and open standards like OpenCL provided by AMD will be replaced with the WinRT virtual engine and DirectX.
3) PS4 second custom chip is likely 28nm HPM silicon and will perform better than ARM IP in Kryptos that's using LP Silicon. (Assuming they aren't using TSVs and 2.5D or 3D assembly).
specialguy
Banned
I dont think there's much consoles sold in "asia".
Third parties break down their financials like North America/Eu/Japan/Other? I think. Other is usually quite small.
Consoles are illegal in China.
That may come to an end soon, as there are rumours that ban is going to be lifted.
Regardless, with the rampant copycatting and piracy going on there, consoles won't have a big market there anyway for the forseeable future, even after a banlifting.
jeff_rigby
Banned
If you fully read both articles the second denies the PS3 being allowed. But Sony wouldn't have applied for approval and started a Company in China to develop Games for the China market if this were true.
So, ways around the ban are to provide more than Games. PCs and Media platforms are allowed and they both play games. Sony can reinstate Other OS Linux and/or with the 22nm PS3 with ARM support Media.
There is a rumor that the PS4 with Trustzone will support a open Linux OS and at the same time a Other OS Linux will be provided for the PS3. Current PS3 design DRM keys are known so it's a dead duck. 22nm PS3 with ARM trustzone will be secure and likely cheap. Best guess is Linux will be provided on only newer PS3s and this time fully supported on the GPU.
Coulomb_Barrier
Member
This is all very interesting.
So what I can extrapolate from that is whilst Sony can forge ahead (quite literally) with thebe (their main chip) whilst waiting for ARM's 64-bit chip (their 'secondary chip'), MS are stalled completely as they have a 64-bit ARM chipset inside Kryptos itself (their main chip) and can't progress any further until ARM are ready.
LOL specialguy. Doesn't know what the word 'speculation' means. haha.
If/when the Chinese dictators/kleptocrats decide to allow console sales in China, it will be a chinese brand console that will allow some 3rd party software that will dominate. Anyone expecting a thriving wiiu/xbox/ps sales environment in China is going to be very very disappointed. & I can hardly wait until we see the Chinese version of ESRB. That should be almost as funny as the first games developed by that government. Anyone see IP Man? The movie that explained how China won WWII?
jeff_rigby
Banned
Don't forget to put everything past tense. Designs for 64 bit ARMv8 were reported released Jan 2012. Microsoft and Sony probably got them earlier.
Another pet theory of mine is that either a ARM Mali 600 series or Power VR series 6 (based on ARM and can do 4K UI) GPU is in the PS4 second chip and might be in Kryptos. According to letters by one of them to the EPA, neither could meet the EPA Energy star power regs for non-game active screen of 40 watts or meet the IPTV streaming 50 watts without a "Apple TV like ARM SoC". This is another late to release IP.
There are lots of disagreements on this but the Yukon slide and Sony 2 GPU patent both support a smaller GPU and larger GPU in PS4 and Xbox 720.
64 bit ARMv8 may not be needed but both consoles are supposed to support 4K UIs and only the series 6 ARM based GPUs can do that. Also AOAC support is only in later ARM designs so it's going to be something relatively new.
Ignore the 20nm in the slides above, that's for handhelds;
http://www.arm.com/about/newsroom/arm-announces-pop-ip-for-cortex-a50-series-processors-on-tsmc-28nm-hpm-and-16nm-finfet-processes.php said:
specialguy
Banned
charlie lol
and i still dont know how tons of oban's being produced according to charlie in late 2011 fits anything. if you contort really hard maybe you can make some sense of it (umm yeah, maybe it was for a whole bunch of dev kits, even though as far as i know no rumors have put final durango hardware in dev kits until recently), but why bother.
charlie is only right when talking about how bad nvidia yields are. rule of thumb.
he hates ms and he hates nvidia, you have to understand him.
jeff_rigby
Banned
Anyone who has been in this industry since the 80's has gone through multiple cycles of X86 crap CPUs and MSDOS when Macintosh, Amiga, Atari ST and Sinclair were producing 32 bit computers with GUI OSs in advance of anything Intel and Microsoft. Programmers working with me refused to even touch Intel based computers because there was so much work around in going from a Motorola 68K 32 bit CPU to 8088 16 bit.
With AMD X86-64 many of the issues in Intel X86 microcode were fixed. Win7 and now Win8 are attempting to break the legacy tie to X86-16. BUT the HSA foundation, Linux and HTML5 are creating OSs that might be just as good as Win8 and free. Time will tell.
Charlie is about 10 years younger than me and I think was involved in Atari ST or Amiga development in the 80's. He is claiming 85% accuracy and is up on new technology. I was out of the industry for 25 years so I've been catching up since 2010. I still have holes in my knowledge base like what the self refresh power requirements are for GDDR5. GPUs and GDDR5 didn't exist in the 80-90's. I guessed about 3 watts but it's built using DDR3 and with no clock with Self refresh it should be DDR3 leakage which is about 9-50mw depending on the memory size.
AOAC and Fast startup
This might mean Sony is using GDDR5 and Flash SSD and Microsoft DR3LM. Both have some ARM CPU and memory (separate from GDDR5 and DDR3Lm) managing AOAC. Microsoft gets an instant boot from self refreshed DDR3Lm and Sony a fast snapshot boot from SSD Flash? If Sony's GDDR5 Self refresh power + AOAC function power are less than 500mw then expect instant on by way of GDDR5 self refreshed memory rather than snapshot booting.http://www.electronicspecifier.com/Memory/Thanks-for-the-memories.asp said:
DDR3L-RS Self refresh power is about 10X less than DDR3. The EU and Energy star regulation for Standby is 500mw. AOAC ARM and Windows8 is a new network connected standby mode not mentioned in the 2009 EU paper defining Standby but it can meet the 500mw EU reg.
.
they could release a very cheap ps3 but i thinks it is more likely that PS4 will be the first to be allowed to release there.
SniperHunter
Banned
I think Microsoft will be fine. I think Sony is making a mistake by launching Shadow Fall, Second Son along with Battlefield 4, Call of Duty Ghost, Watch_Dogs and Ass Creed IV. Those games alone can push PS4 and Durango
When someone says "So time for a little speculation..." what does that mean to you?
ThisWreckage
Banned
Microsoft will launch exclusive titles with those third party titles being released as well. A company cannot become completely dependent on third parties because how are they supposed to differentiate themselves from the competition?
darkside31337
Tomodachi wa Mahou
Not to mention all those 3rd party games he listed are still coming to the PS3 and 360 as well, those titles alone aren't exactly going to inspire people to go rush out and pick up a new system for the holidays.
jeff_rigby
Banned
Could be, China will have 8K broadcast and 4K TVs before we have them in the US. PS3 can do 4K output and it will be cheap. For sure the PS3 should sell better in China than here as this market is saturated for a PS3 at $249. $149 is another price point that will create demand.
I very much doubt this, the fact that their fanbase is way bigger than at the X360 launch is going to be a huge factor.
Different gen and different consumer behaviour.
Those 1st party titles look visually more impressive than BF4(in my opinion) and perhaps COD(since its a multiplat next gen game too)
Sales will be determined on which console has more hype . In USA, i expect X720 to outsell PS4. despite ps4's lineup .In Europe and Asia, PS4 will be the victor by long shot
I think if Sony can strong arm a relatively good price point, broadcast it's exclusives, and make sure to create an online ethos- I think sales in the US will stabilize to the point of dead even. I think the PlayStation brand is just as strong as Xbox, despite the shortcomings of the PS3.
darkside31337
Tomodachi wa Mahou
Totilo expanded on this bit today - http://kotaku.com/about-microsoft-being-six-months-behind-with-the-next-486212937
Just a bit here:
Microsoft seems less certain about how to proceed, sources tell us. They don't seem as ready for a launch as you'd expect them to be. It sort of makes sense, if you think of Microsoft riding high on the Kinect-fueled success of the Xbox 360 in recent years. Still, they did launch their last console, the 360, in 2005, a year before Sony and Nintendo's PS3 and Wii.
One reliable source compares Microsoft's current Durango moment to the situation with the Wii U, which launched without a key promised launch service and with a scant number of exclusive games. Remember the Wii U? Expect something kind of like that for the next Xbox, they say. At least in terms of how it's looking now. So much can change. And it's never easy to make a console. I'd expect all console launches to be like the Wii U's. Because they always are.
All that said, the "six month" thing I reported has stuck out. What's it mean? It means, as best I understand it, that we'll see Durango launch like the Wii U did. It means developers—internally and third-party—haven't had a ton of time with development hardware. It means that, as I've been told, the games aren't where they need to be and even the machine's operating system isn't up to snuff yet. Nintendo may have some problems unique to Nintendo, but if you thought Wii U's ungraceful launch was just a Nintendo thing, think again. (Christmas 2013 with a maturing Wii U and newborn PS4 and next-gen Xbox just might look a little different than Nintendo naysayers expected.)
edit: Totilo added this
(Update: To expand on this a bit since I noticed it grabbed some attention: in early April, a top source told me Durango devkits were running Windows RT and used the same APIs for opening files and creating threads as the OSes for Microsoft Surface and Windows Phone 8 do. Microsoft is an OS company, so assume they'll get that right. While this is only single-sourced to one top source who I trust, I'm mentioning it in this addendum to add a little more color. It's not that Microsoft doesn't have an OS in the works for Durango; it's that, as with most other things related to the system, they're still sorting out how to get it to do everything they'd like the system to do. This seems normal for at least some point in a console's development cycle; whether it's where they should be now is another story.)
Just a bit here:
Microsoft seems less certain about how to proceed, sources tell us. They don't seem as ready for a launch as you'd expect them to be. It sort of makes sense, if you think of Microsoft riding high on the Kinect-fueled success of the Xbox 360 in recent years. Still, they did launch their last console, the 360, in 2005, a year before Sony and Nintendo's PS3 and Wii.
One reliable source compares Microsoft's current Durango moment to the situation with the Wii U, which launched without a key promised launch service and with a scant number of exclusive games. Remember the Wii U? Expect something kind of like that for the next Xbox, they say. At least in terms of how it's looking now. So much can change. And it's never easy to make a console. I'd expect all console launches to be like the Wii U's. Because they always are.
All that said, the "six month" thing I reported has stuck out. What's it mean? It means, as best I understand it, that we'll see Durango launch like the Wii U did. It means developers—internally and third-party—haven't had a ton of time with development hardware. It means that, as I've been told, the games aren't where they need to be and even the machine's operating system isn't up to snuff yet. Nintendo may have some problems unique to Nintendo, but if you thought Wii U's ungraceful launch was just a Nintendo thing, think again. (Christmas 2013 with a maturing Wii U and newborn PS4 and next-gen Xbox just might look a little different than Nintendo naysayers expected.)
edit: Totilo added this
(Update: To expand on this a bit since I noticed it grabbed some attention: in early April, a top source told me Durango devkits were running Windows RT and used the same APIs for opening files and creating threads as the OSes for Microsoft Surface and Windows Phone 8 do. Microsoft is an OS company, so assume they'll get that right. While this is only single-sourced to one top source who I trust, I'm mentioning it in this addendum to add a little more color. It's not that Microsoft doesn't have an OS in the works for Durango; it's that, as with most other things related to the system, they're still sorting out how to get it to do everything they'd like the system to do. This seems normal for at least some point in a console's development cycle; whether it's where they should be now is another story.)
An OS company not confident in their own OS. Surely I'm being trolled.
They need something to sell the PS4 specifically over Durango and something built from the ground up for it, not cross gen. Launch exclusives aren't put out for profits, they're there to be added incentive for early adopters.
Alx
Member
Well, there's being confident in the OS, and being confident in its availability, which are two different things.
What I understand from the above comments is that MS are late for their planned release date. Some features probably won't make it in time. I can't wait for the May reveal so we can know about the planned features, and speculate on which ones will make it in 2013.
So uh yeah, not a lot of the technical stuff in this thread makes any sense to me.
All I know is, I wasn't planning on getting a 720 at launch. And this will especially be the case if they are a lacking games for a year (not doing another Wii U). Deep down, I still hope MS surprises me, and has some really great games at launch that tempt/hook me into getting one
All I know is, I wasn't planning on getting a 720 at launch. And this will especially be the case if they are a lacking games for a year (not doing another Wii U). Deep down, I still hope MS surprises me, and has some really great games at launch that tempt/hook me into getting one
gaming_noob
Member
Could it be that they can't decide on what their target market is? WiiU's dismal launch and current state probably have them concerned about the casual market.
Alx
Member
I doubt it. The global strategy has been decided a long time ago, and you don't change it in the last months before launch.
Besides, their target market is obviously different from that of the WiiU. Everything suggests that MS is not focusing on a narrow group like "the casuals", but is trying to build a versatile console, that will handle all kinds of games and services. If anything, the fact that Nintendo is struggling with a very gaming-specialized console should comfort them in their strategy.
You will have more questions than answers I predict. The nature of unveils is to tease you enough for you to tune in for the next major unveil. There will be a funneling through process of showing off feature set, games, OS enhancements, online evolution, etc. There is enough diversity, Microsoft like Sony, will not blow their load in one shot.
We are still more than 5 months away from launch.
Lady Deathstrike
Banned
The thing is I have this feeling the new Xbox will not even launch this year. If they do, it'll probably be as half-assed as they did with the 360 (Problems with the hardware right off the bat), or Sony with the PS3 (They face a hiccup and can't get as many consoles out early as they would have liked).
SniperHunter
Banned
ahh I see
So close.
I hope it rains that day. If it doesn't I'll be stuck out in the field watching contractors work.
stephentotilo
Behind The Games
Since you folks jumped on it, I added a little more about the OS to flesh that out. It's in the piece now as an update. I'd been told in April by one source that Durango was running Windows RT. I've not heard more on that either way. How that squares with a sense that even at the OS level they're not where they want to be yet is for us all to wonder about! The bottom line is that this thing is still in the oven and may be taken out and served a wee bit earlier than is ideal.
SniperHunter
Banned
not a big deal, OS can be fixed by patches
I have to applaud you for providing a voice of reason even while reporting potentially alarming news. Thanks for being one of the good guys.
BTW, did your source distinguish between WinRT and Windows RT? Similar names but very different things.
Windows RT is for ARM wouldn't it make more sense to port Windows 8...
The OS stuff would tally with those other low-key rumours about background-app running... guess there is a better-than-decent chance they'll be melting all their App initiatives into one store now.
Feature-wise, RT makes more sense, regardless of processor type.
OK OK OK - last thing from me.
Microsoft's marketing strategy is not the problem. In fact, the marketing is the least of any one's concerns. They have plans to drown out any racket Sony can muster. Whether that means partnering with soft drink manufacturers, fast food chains, or product placement in television shows; it isn't even a question.
The problem is half baked development. The Xbox team has some very specific goals, ambitions, and constraints. They have some brilliant minds working under the roof. The team who works on Direct X, ex-AMD folk, and hardware engineers with laundry lists of accolades. With all that said, if you have a thermal constraint and a maximum size in mind; no amount of talent can give you 2 TF.
The other side of the coin is first party. Studios, from what I am hearing, are having a hard time establishing a proper development culture. This is mostly in reference to Black Tusk, and a heavy reliance on third party titles from unproven studios (Respawn's Titan, Lucid's PGR6, etc).
The last little bit: they started late. Sony actually started developing before MS. Microsoft wanted to launch last year, believe it or not, but things didn't pan out than, and they are hurrying their teams now. There is actually a game released now that was supposed to be a Durango launch title.
It's the constellation of difficulties that is causing Microsoft to work harder and faster. It's frenetic, but it will eventually iron itself out. The most concerning thing is the games, and I am told to not get my hopes too high for their first party effort at launch.