The dev kits!? Seriously!?

[BenRK]

[blog]
I can't help but shake my head when seeing the current dev kit specs for the next Xbox and whatever they're calling the PS4. I sincerely hope these are just over blown specs or just some fanboy rumors, because there is no way Sony and Microsoft can price those specs within the ball park of affordable. I'm expecting another couple "five hundred and ninety nine US dollars" announcements in the not so distant future if these are finalized specs... Only somewhere in the $800 range...

Yeah, that will be affordable to those of us who have jobs. Sarcasm. I could barely comfortably get a Wii U, I doubt I could ever get one of those as well!

Ugh... not to mention dev costs will go up, making games all the more expensive or filled with crap like required DLC (stuff they take out from the base game and charge you for if you want it back) and what not. I'm really not looking forward to that kind of gaming future...

Not to mention no matter what kind of video chip they put in their consoles, the graphical jump wont be anywhere near as impressive as the jump from the PS2 to PS3 was. From SNES to N64. And so on. The most we'll get is things getting sharper while the edges get less jaggy. The characters wont be any more life-like (hell, I could argue even "realistic" games look like cartoons), when you plug it in your face wont melt from awesome. We'll still have glitches. People humping walls or ragdolls flying through the air. Graphics are not what's important anymore...

What is important is memory, processing, and how indie friendly it is. Not even joking...
[/blog]

 

[Rydian]

Dev kits tend to be more powerful than retail units because software in-development is often inefficient. Double the RAM is not uncommon, for example, but CPU specs and such tend to be more in-line with the retail units.

But yeah we do see a lot of bullshit before official announcements.

 

[Snailface]

The Xbox360 specs seemed unreal in 2005, beating the average high-end pc handily. I expect the same could be possible now at a non-insane price.

Beware the miracle of volume pricing.

 

[BenRK]

I don't recall the 360 specs back in 2005 being all that impressive. I was in high school at the time and I think that was the year I was in my A+ class. We were making high-end PCs for the school with considerably better specs, but that was a long while ago.

I just want to see something affordable come out. I would rather lesser specs if it means I can afford it, you know? All of this is why I'm cautiously optimistic about the future of games on the Wii U.

 

[Rydian]

In 2005 we were dealing with the Pentium M, not even the Core Duo.
GPU is the same sort of deal, The Radeon X1000 series had just come out in 2005-2006 (the 360 uses a modified X1800 from what I read).

 

[marcus134]

Somehow, I fell like being a smartass

the next Xbox and whatever they're calling the PS4.

they're called durango and orbis.

Not to mention no matter what kind of video chip they put in their consoles, the graphical jump wont be anywhere near as impressive as the jump from the PS2 to PS3 was. From SNES to N64. And so on.

This is called diminishing return, it's a phenomenon that is quite common in electronics and economics where the next leap never gives the same advantages as the previous one.

Though from a pc gamer perspective, some update is needed, when I play on my ps3, I sometimes can't brush off some weird claustrophobic feeling in some games that kinda breaks my suspension of disbelief towards the environment, which is probably caused by the weird variation of texture and detail quality (pretty hard sensation to describe, like playing an old game with hi-res texture update, but lowly detailed polygon), there's also the short view range in open world games that can be very annoying.

I'm expecting another couple "five hundred and ninety nine US dollars" announcements in the not so distant future if these are finalized specs... Only somewhere in the $800 range...

consoles are usually sold at cost or at lost, and the company makes it off with the software sale. I'm expecting them around 500$ or so. at 800 + a pc with steam would end up cheaper, in fact even at 500$ I find it hard to swallow. If it wasn't for the exclusive I wouldn't get one for myself (when I get one, I actually wait to be late is the console life time to get it cheap with games at lower prices)

not to mention dev costs will go up, making games all the more expensive

quite the opposite, in the current generation we have x86, ppc and cell broadband cpu to develop for, the next gen should be x86 only.

 

[Foxi4]

1. Devkits are more beefy than the final machine since they run extra software in the background for debug purposes etc.
2. The programming stations of the Devkit may very well be powered by a completely different CPU for the purpose of running a specific OS - the programs may be tested on an entirely separate testing station.
3. x86 and x86_64 are probably the worst architectures to choose from when designing a low-cost gaming-oriented machine - they're packed with extra components that are completely useless in gaming, albeit useful in everyday computing. They're practically reserved for PC's, using them would be unwise and costly.
4. "Older" or "Weaker" components are used in consoles because consoles are entirely capable of squeezing more out of the hardware - they don't have to deal with heavy-weigh OS'es etc.
5. I find it unlikely that anyone will risk releasing a $500 or even $450 console next generation - such launch prices proved to be hindering the consoles this generation and manufacturers are not stupid - they will do their best to cut costs, especially in times of recession.

 

[Rydian]

Yeah I wish the consoles would go x86 as well, that'd at least make porting between things easier.

Yes, I know there's better architectures, but come on now, you will not get PCs to go ARM or some shit in one generation, even wishes should be kept within reality.

 

[Foxi4]

Yeah I wish the consoles would go x86 as well, that'd at least make porting between things easier.

Yes, I know there's better architectures, but come on now, you will not get PCs to go ARM or some shit in one generation, even wishes should be kept within reality.

Oh, of course it would be beneficial! x86/x86_64 is well-equipped for everyday computing as I mentioned before, this opens a lot of doors for non-gaming-related homebrew. It'd be great, really... but after the XBawkz, I don't think they'd go that route again... I suppose we'll see. That, and as we all know, x86/x86_64 carries over a lot of "legacy junk" hardware designers may not want to deal with, really.

To me, what matters the most is affordability - this should be the most important factor.

 

[Jamstruth]

Yeah I wish the consoles would go x86 as well, that'd at least make porting between things easier.

Yes, I know there's better architectures, but come on now, you will not get PCs to go ARM or some shit in one generation, even wishes should be kept within reality.

We'll never see PCs go to ARM etc. in one jump but that doesn't mean that we should have our consoles running on x86_64 when there are way more efficient architectures out there. The amount of crap left over in that from early assembly programming is ridiculous.
I'd rather have an efficient CPU than one that's easier to port to. Choosing an efficient enough processor will mean it keeps up with PCs for a good bit longer before falling behind.

 

[Deleted_171835]

Actually the PS4/720 leaked specs aren't actually that impressive. It has a shitty Jaguar CPU and a mid-high end GPU. Compared to the specs of high-end PCs, it's not that good.

The consoles probably won't be too expensive looking at the specs, $399 I would guess.

 

[Gahars]

All rumored specs are bullshit until proven otherwise.

Anyone could say anything at this point, and as long as it sounds just believable enough, news sites will publish it. Some of this stuff may be true, sure, but a lot of it may not be. Considering how many conflicting rumors and reports are out there, I think we're just better off waiting for the official announcement.

 

[marcus134]

x86 and x86_64 are probably the worst architectures to choose from when designing a low-cost gaming-oriented machine - they're packed with extra components that are completely useless in gaming, albeit useful in everyday computing. They're practically reserved for PC's, using them would be unwise and costly.

The original xbox used an intel pentium 3 chip and frankly I don't remember people complaining about the high price of the xbox, and I also don't remember it story of the console being so hot that it made the solder point melt either.

x86/x86_64 carries over a lot of "legacy junk" hardware designers may not want to deal with, really.

the legacy stuff is there to support legacy software and compiler and allow great cross generation compatibility. the programmer don't have to bother for those if they don't want to.
Also nothing can stop amd from trimming some fat on the cpu to reduce cost, if microsoft allow them.

btw the dev-kit would use a two module with 4 cores on each, bulldozer architecture uses 2 core per module, so this is a custom made chip. I frankly doubt they're gonna back away from such investment. Also considering the absence of mention to Vram (unlike in orbis specs leak) could point out to a gpu on the cpu die and that could be the trick up Microsoft sleeve to keep the price down.

 

[Rydian]

We'll never see PCs go to ARM etc. in one jump but that doesn't mean that we should have our consoles running on x86_64 when there are way more efficient architectures out there.

The question is, what kind of efficiency? Electrical power to processing power, electrical power to price, cost to overall processing power, etc. When it comes to overall processing power, x86 is still king of the easily-available chips (when disregarding power draw and stuff).

In addition, porting is an issue. The closer consoles are to PCs (and to each other), the easier development becomes. This translates to cheaper development, quicker development, less buggy development, etc. (which can translate to additional content if desired on the behalf of the creator).

Currently porting is a mess, with some companies licensing games out to other companies since they lack the experience, resources, and time to do it themselves... and even when companies do it themselves, things are often cut back or slow for the ports.

The amount of crap left over in that from early assembly programming is ridiculous.

Backwards compatibility is often a requirement for big organizations. I worked in the tech department of my college for a few semesters, and the amount of ass-old shit we had to install and use on machines was ridiculous. Things like Microsoft Office we'd get updates and such, but then there were some programs we were contracted to use that hadn't been updated in years and we'd need to do custom fixes for (like setting the display resolution to 800x600 and going into the .ini file to tell it to skip the RAM check since it fucked up on machines with more than 4GB of RAM) just to get them to run on modern machines.

Hell, some places still haven't gone to 64-bit Windows since it won't run 16-bit programs.

The problem with a potential switch on PCs is that old stuff won't work. Take Windows R/T for an example. It's Windows on ARM, but you can't load up Firefox or ZSNES because they're compiled for x86. And it's not just "recompile and you're done". There's situations like ZSNES, which uses a lot of x86 assembly, and so can't be recompiled for ARM... and of course in order for a program to be rebuilt to work on a new system, somebody with the source and the rights has to do it. For many programs out there the original source is lost (or unavailable to users), the holding company/persons has dropped off the face of the planet or doesn't care enough to port it, etc.

Consoles, on the other hand, will change architectures from generation to generation, and while backwards compatibility may immediately suffer, people get the fuck over it eventually.

 

[The Riolu]

No way would this upcoming console reach the $800 price range.
Although its specs are pretty sweet, they aren't going to price it that high.
The cheaper the product is, the more sales they obtain; simple.
However, that would keep a lot of squeakers off of Live :3

 

[Rydian]

However, that would keep a lot of squeakers off of Live :3

Their parents buy it for them anyways.

 

[The Riolu]

Their parents buy it for them anyways.

Yeah :L Sadly enough

Hate playing with little kids on Mature games, they don't understand the concept.