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[alabtrosMyster]

So are these guys haters? Or do they speak the truth

"Xbox got more controllers than it got games Xbox... "

 

[itsjustJEFF]

Leaked Microsoft document hints at second next-gen Xbox
Maybe MS is aiming for 199$?

If it is $199 than it will likely be the best selling Xbox this coming generation. If the $199 price and those specs are real, then Xbox's main goal is to just get as much XBox's out there as possible. Its not likely that the Series X will out sell this budget version. If the budget version is real, their main push in the future will be XCloud. If they can get the consoles into homes and signed up with their services, they can in 5 years sell a new version that may even be weaker but at that point it might just be an XCloud machine.

 

[iJudged]

I think we'll see a $299-$349 Lockhart. A $349-$399 PS5 DE. $399-$449 PS5. $449-$499 Series X. In that scenario, I can't see PS5 not coming out on top.

To me it seems the execs are meddling in the Xbox business, again, just like they did with XBO. Last time it was DRM. This time they want a cheaper Xbox that will be used to push xCloud/GamePass, the thing they really bought those new studios for. I think it's going to backfire myself. And I think a lot of smaller studios will just develop for PS5, since Lockhart will be mandatory to develop on if you go Xbox. Doubt those studios will want to deal with that headache with limited time and resources on their hands.

you think xsx is gonna be more expensive then then ps5? lol

 

[01011001]

I just looked and it totally did! Thats amazing!

I watched a video around when X1 BC came out and it said it was just a straight port, maybe did a patch later? Either that or I was just thinking of the 360 backcompat probably.

every OG Xbox game running on back compat runs at 4x the original resolution on base Xbox One/S and at 16x the original resolution on One X.

meaning a 480p OG Xbox game will run at 960p on Xbox One and at 1920p on Xbox One X

that's a universal thing for every single og Xbox game that's made compatible. they don't need any extra patches

 

[Deleted member 775630]

I find the step down in CPU bizarre.

As you lower the resolution things become more CPU bound as you lean on the GPU less.

The only way this makes sense is if they are also not concerned about framerates for this box.

This thing really doesn't need to and shouldn't exist.

Why not? If there's a market for it?

 

[Coulomb_Barrier]

Even though I think this thing will sell well at $200 and gain nice marketshare for Xbox, it needs to die for the sake of all of us. MS fans, Sony fans, even PC fans.

We'll have this slow thing shackled to all third party and exclusive MS games for the entirety of the gen. Should have been a clean break as soon as XB1 is cut off in 2021/2022.

 

[NullZ3r0]

Leaps and bounds better.

One X targeted 4K. Thus its 6TF GCN pushed pixels to that. 4TF Navi is more powerful than a 6TF GCN and this will be targeting 1/4 of the pixels. Ignoring the arch benefits from Navi, think of what would happen on your computer if you targeted 1080p or 720p, you notice how you can significantly increase all the other settings?

For time eternity, graphics are made for the high end and scaled down. Games ship with 4k textures and scale downward. This will not change. Series X won't be using 1080p textures scaled up. It will go the other way.

The major drivers of gameplay design, CPU, SSD and fast ram will be the same. There will be no compromise on gameplay. You will just get worse graphics at lower res. The same thing PCs have done forever.

Agreed. This is why Lockhart is important. Textures and effects can easily scale down. What cant be scaled down is physics and level design. That's why games like The Medium can't run on One X but can run on Lockhart.

 

[RaySoft]

If it is $199 than it will likely be the best selling Xbox this coming generation. If the $199 price and those specs are real, then Xbox's main goal is to just get as much XBox's out there as possible. Its not likely that the Series X will out sell this budget version. If the budget version is real, their main push in the future will be XCloud. If they can get the consoles into homes and signed up with their services, they can in 5 years sell a new version that may even be weaker but at that point it might just be an XCloud machine.

And to be honest, kinda MS' only chance to shift people already invested into PS' platform, to their own.
I'm sure MS will invest $$ this gen to bring gamers over, 'cuse this (XSX/PS5) gen will be the deciding factor before cloud gaming is the norm.

 

[Kuranghi]

every OG Xbox game running on back compat runs at 4x the original resolution on base Xbox One/S and at 16x the original resolution on One X.

that's a universal thing for every single og Xbox game that's made compatible

Cool, I hope on XSX they can expand that "auto remaster" tech to increase framerates without problems, but I think thats a lot trickier and will have to be looked at on a case by case basis. I just hope they don't go down the route of... *devil voice* MOTION COMPENSATED FRAME INTERPOLATION...

I'm hopeful for the "auto-HDR" thing to be good but from what I've seen its not even as good as the better dynamic tonemappers on top-end HDR TVs. Although people seem to love those settings on their TV, almost unversally think it looks better than the SDR without tonemapping, they don't see any of the problems at all so it'll probably be the future, which as a big massive IQ-hoe, makes me sad lol

 

[Nikana]

I just looked and it totally did! Thats amazing!

I watched a video around when X1 BC came out and it said it was just a straight port, maybe did a patch later? Either that or I was just thinking of the 360 backcompat probably.

Not sure, but I believe that all OG Xbox games get One X enhancements where 360 games its not the case. EA access is $1 i think right now too if you have a one X and want to see it for yourself.

 

[Arkam]

I am just ready for this thing to be unveiled so we can all see MS’ angle on it. Show us some games running on it so we can set expectations. Might surprise a few folks.

 

[LeVictorien]

Reading this thread I think grandmas will be less confused than some people here. They'll see the new games on a low cost next gen console and will grab it for lil Timmy. Meanwhile people on GAF can't understand how scalability works, are confused with the names, still think 6 TF from OneX is more powerful than RDNA 2 4 TF, don't understand why a lower entry price will be appealing to casuals that don't care about 4K... jeez!

 

[01011001]

Cool, I hope on XSX they can expand that "auto remaster" tech to increase framerates without problems, but I think thats a lot trickier and will have to be looked at on a case by case basis. I just hope they don't go down the route of... *devil voice* MOTION COMPENSATED FRAME INTERPOLATION...

I'm hopeful for the "auto-HDR" thing to be good but from what I've seen its not even as good as the better dynamic tonemappers on top-end HDR TVs. Although people seem to love those settings on their TV, almost unversally think it looks better than the SDR without tonemapping, they don't see any of the problems at all so it'll probably be the future, which as a big massive IQ-hoe, makes me sad lol

I hope that they can do that auto resolution increase thing for every 360 game

 

[HarryKS]

Where is the 199 Dollars coming from?

Not in the article. Who's making stuff up?

 

[Kuranghi]

Reading this thread I think grandmas will be less confused than some people here. They'll see the new games on a low cost next gen console and will grab it for lil Timmy. Meanwhile people on GAF can't understand how scalability works, are confused with the names, still think 6 TF from OneX is more powerful than RDNA 2 4 TF, don't understand why a lower entry price will be appealing to casuals that don't care about 4K... jeez!

Confirmed Xbox is for grannies.

 

[Psykodad]

Reading this thread I think grandmas will be less confused than some people here. They'll see the new games on a low cost next gen console and will grab it for lil Timmy. Meanwhile people on GAF can't understand how scalability works, are confused with the names, still think 6 TF from OneX is more powerful than RDNA 2 4 TF, don't understand why a lower entry price will be appealing to casuals that don't care about 4K... jeez!

Then Timmy gets bullied at school because he got the poor-edition console.

 

[GHG]

Why not? If there's a market for it?

Historically consoles have been responsible for ushering in an industry-wide baseline shift every 5-7 years or so.

With this console it means that for the first time the baseline will not be shifting up, it goes sideways in all aspects with the exception of I/O throughput.

Are you more concerned about sales (if there actually is a market for this thing) or are you more concerned about having gaming experiences that haven't been possible throughout the current generation of consoles?

 

[itsjustJEFF]

And to be honest, kinda MS' only chance to shift people already invested into PS' platform, to their own.
I'm sure MS will invest $$ this gen to bring gamers over, 'cuse this (XSX/PS5) gen will be the deciding factor before cloud gaming is the norm.

Yea, I agree. Xbox/PS want to lock you into their ecosystem. Xbox's BC strategy is to keep who they currently have, and bring back who they lost. Budget console is to attract the casuals, the Nintendo Wii buyers. At $199 that can be an impulse buy. I'd imagine IF PS were to introduce a BC strategy, beyond PS4, they likely have the same goals as Xbox. I just wonder what PS' streaming strategy would be, cause trust me they have one or are working MAD crazy on one LOL

The only thing that has me worried about Cloud gaming is the current state of our internet infrastructure and the general consumers willingness to buy into it. Lets not forget that Stadia is a thing. They had a HUGE media push, they spend a ton of money on marketing. They basically removed the barrier of price; there's a paid version, there's a monthly paid version, there's even a free version. Yet it still hasn't caught on, at least to this point. Which makes me wonder if the general public is really all that interested in video games.

 

[NullZ3r0]

I see no point in buying something so gimped.

Then its not for you. Its for the people that can't afford a SX that were content with sticking with One S or One X that are content with 1080p for the next couple of years. MS needs to get these people off those old platforms.

 

[Kuranghi]

I hope that they can do that auto resolution increase thing for every 360 game

Oh right, so on an X1X I'd get 4K@30 on BLACK but for Burnout Revenge it would be 720p@30 (upscaled to whatever your output is set to)? I meant the 360 version of Burnout Revenge, not the original on OG Xbox.

 

[kiphalfton]

Is this not just a lateral upgrade from the X1X? Seems pointless if so.

 

[-Arcadia-]

All I can say is that it looks like we’re doing this, one way or the other. If those materials are from this month, Lockhart is surely on course for launch, and may be revealed at the July event.

It will be fascinating to see how it turns out. The massively lower resolution is a start. Can Microsoft engineer a set of consoles while maintaining the balance of a truly impressive top-end option, and a low-end option that performs well? I think the potential is there, but it’s going to take a lot of smart design.

If they pull it off, the upside is enormous. High-end A/V geekery, 4K, 60/120 FPS, and ‘high settings’ for people who want that, and an affordable, but still awesome solution for people that just want to play next-gen games, have them still look great, and don’t need all the bells and whistles.

That would be paradigm shifting. If they pull it off.

 

[Psykodad]

Then its not for you. Its for the people that can't afford a SX that were content with sticking with One S or One X that are content with 1080p for the next couple of years. MS needs to get these people off those old platforms.

Didn't they have a payment plan for those people?
Even with GamePass included.

 

[mckmas8808]

if it uses the same RDNA2 architecture it most likely will have RT hardware in every CU.
we know that AMD will release RNDA2 GPUs on the low end PC and Mobile sector that will lack the RT hardware completely, but let's assume that's not the case here.

if it still has RT acceleration that will absolutely be no issue.

if we look at how most games now handle RT effects like reflections, we see that they usually render these at 50% horizontal and vertical resolution (25% overall resolution)
a Lockhart game running at 1080p would basically run RT reflections at 540p, and on Series X where the game would run at 4K, the RT reflections instead would run at 1080p.
we also saw this in the early gameplay and trailer for GranTourismo during the PS5 reveal. there the game also ran at 4k with the reflections running at 50% on each axis.
and that's also how they work in Battlefield 5

so the RT performance needed if you lower the resolution from 4k+1080pRTR to 1080p+540pRTR also goes down by 75%

a 4TF RDNA2 gpu should therefore have no issue having RT effects that are scaled down to fit it's performance level.

But would the RT even look good at this point? If it has to be reflected at 540p I mean.

 

[RaySoft]

Is this not just a lateral upgrade from the X1X? Seems pointless if so.

No, it's another ballpark entirely. Those 4TF are stronger than than the Series X 6TF's on the merit it has support for a whole new set of hw features the Series X don't. This just shows you can't measure async compute for power. The CPU's are uncomparable.

 

[Kerotan Frog]

Undisputedly better. This thing will have a custom silicon SSD, RDNA2 GPU, and a CPU upgrade that's actually kinda insane.

Also, all this "concern" in the thread about holding nextgen back is going to fizzle away when these fanboys realize Microsoft already said their games are designed with the Series X in mind. Lockhart is going to be the same concept that exists for PC today: when you play RDR2 on a Xbox One X and are awed on how amazing it looks and how much of a technical masterpiece it is, you don't care that it can also run on the base Xbox One. Nobody does. The people that would bring that up are concern trolls and they scatter like the wind when their FUD doesn't come to fruition.

If its better than the X and only $200, then I'll go with that until Xbox games are next gen exclusive. Only time will tell though. Any chance this gets announced at the Xbox show in July?

 

[Deleted member 775630]

Historically consoles have been responsible for ushering in an industry-wide baseline shift every 5-7 years or so.

With this console it means that for the first time the baseline will not be shifting up, it goes sideways in all aspects with the exception of I/O throughput.

Are you more concerned about sales (if there actually is a market for this thing) or are you more concerned about having gaming experiences that haven't been possible throughout the current generation of consoles?

Do you think this console will exist for 5-7 years? I believe they'll fase it out when the XSX pro comes out. And the XSX will be Lockhart.

 

[Entroyp]

I can see this being $199 and the XsX $399. Not a bad move by MS.

 

[eastwood333]

Really think this is a smart play by MS and will pay dividends in this economy.

 

[Stilton Disco]

I really hope this sells poorly enough that third parties just ignore it for development purposes and, if they absolutely have to release on it, just farm the port out to the lowest bidder to knock out a cheap and cheerful downgraded port to it.

It does make me wonder if the reason MS went with the XSX being so beastly is because they've fully commited to the PC gaming philosophy, and are just going to brute force graphics rather than treat games with the usual console approach of maximising the possible output of fixed specs.

This could well mean we end up with an even bigger gulf in quality between PS5 exclusives than you'd expect, and possibly even more third party games being much closer in graphics and performance between the two proper next gen console.

Seriously, this is such a fucking stupid idea that will potentially harm the whole generation.

 

[mckmas8808]

Really think this is a smart play by MS and will pay dividends in this economy.

It'll be MS' Kinect of this generation. 5 years from now GAF will all say that Lockhart was the decision that hurt the XSX generation the most.

 

[Arkam]

I dont see any reference to storage, did I miss that bit? Is there an SSD?

 

[01011001]

Oh right, so on an X1X I'd get 4K@30 on BLACK but for Burnout Revenge it would be 720p@30 (upscaled to whatever your output is set to)? I meant the 360 version of Burnout Revenge, not the original on OG Xbox.

black is not 4k btw. Black ran at a very low resolution on og Xbox.

I think it's about 1500p

because, again, it does a 16x up-res not a 4k update

 

[Fake]

All PS5 games are already running at native 4k though. Lol

Thats not true at all.

 

[JLB]

Is this not just a lateral upgrade from the X1X? Seems pointless if so.

It is not. X1X CPU is a custom 2013's Jaguar. Which already was bad at the time.

 

[GHG]

Do you think this console will exist for 5-7 years? I believe they'll fase it out when the XSX pro comes out. And the XSX will be Lockhart.

I think it will exist for the whole generation, yes.

What you're suggesting would mean in 3-4 years they are going to have to turn round to the people who bought Lockhart and say "thanks but now we are ending support for this console and we are forcing you to upgrade". That's not going to happen.

 

[RaySoft]

If its better than the X and only $200, then I'll go with that until Xbox games are next gen exclusive. Only time will tell though. Any chance this gets announced at the Xbox show in July?

It's a two edged sword though... The Series X was underutilized. it could do much more than the tasks it was handed.
The Lockhart though, will have to run all the next-gen games. So when you hear that the Lockhart is better hardware wise than the Series X, it's true, but where the Series X was breezing through what was thrown at it, it's another ball-game this gen, since the Lockhart will be the weakest of the new consoles and the workload will be significantly higher than last-gen.
Only time will tell if MS have struck the right balance...

 

[GHG]

I dont see any reference to storage, did I miss that bit? Is there an SSD?

Yes.

It's looking like that's the only thing staying consistent across the two SKU's.

 

[Psykodad]

Thats not true at all.

You're late, but I don't feel like editing that post.

 

[vkbest]

Probably the SSD will be slower than X too. $200 having a SSD and Ryzen CPU? I really doubt. Don't expect less of $299

 

[newtonfb]

I don't see the point, more work for devs. Just do what PS did and release a disc less version for $50 cheaper.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

you think xsx is gonna be more expensive then then ps5? lol

Logic would suggest it since it has higher specs and more expensive silicon.

 

[Stuart360]

If it really is just a 1080p version of XSX, i have no problem with it. You would be surprised how many clueless people are out there that will be like 'There is no point me buying PS5 or XSX as i dont even have a 4k tv'.

 

[GHG]

Probably the SSD will be slower than X too.

That would then mean they would need to have multiple variations of proprietary SSD's.

No chance.

 

[Andodalf]

Not sure, but I believe that all OG Xbox games get One X enhancements where 360 games its not the case. EA access is $1 i think right now too if you have a one X and want to see it for yourself.

Not all OG games get an X patch, but a higher percent do, iirc. All non patched games do get 16x af on X regardless of what console they are for, automatically

 

[UltimaKilo]

Thanks for holding back the gen, Microsoft.

 

[godhandiscen]

It's throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. A luxury only trillion dollar monopolist corporations have.

Exactly. The worst is that if the majority of people actually go for the true next gen systems and development sets the PS5 as the baseline, those that bought the gimped system will be forced to upgrade very early in the generation.

I still don’t believe this console exists. It is such an absurd strategy. I am willing to eat crow if the console is real and a success.

 

[vkbest]

That would then mean they would need to have multiple variations of proprietary SSD's.

No chance.

Why?

 

[eastwood333]

I don't see the point, more work for devs. Just do what PS did and release a disc less version for $50 cheaper.

A 200 dollar price difference would have a far more bigger impact than a 50 dollar difference. I'm of course assuming XSX is 500 and Lockhart is 300

 

[RaySoft]

Why?

Edit: Misunderstood.

"Never say never", but that would be a strange move. I could see it on the merits of smaller filesizes to stream etc but why change something they could easily fit in a smaller box and make devs life easier?
The more you have to scale down, the more chance you make a bad choice. If the leaks are correct and the CPU is slower than the XSX, that's another aspect where MS have already "weighed and balanced" their hardware. In my mind, a hardware designer should stick to their formula, the "weighing and balancing" is more of a developer job.