The Next Gen consoles

[Smitty]

One thing to remember is the specs of the box aren't necessarily the whole story, on paper the PS3 is more powerful that the 360 but the PS3 architecture and MS's toolset for the 360 made it far easier to get performance out of the 360, especially in the early days.

Quite.

[b00dles]

From what I've heard on the grapevine the PS4 specs on eurogamer are the most accurate out there. I can't comment on the next Xbox as I'm NDA-ed and the guy over at neogaf would be as well remembering NDAs last years beyond the end of your employment and having dealt with MS's LCA department, they're a humourless bunch.

One thing to remember is the specs of the box aren't necessarily the whole story, on paper the PS3 is more powerful that the 360 but the PS3 architecture and MS's toolset for the 360 made it far easier to get performance out of the 360, especially in the early days. From Sony's statements in the early days of the PS3 they wanted improvements in software to come from developers learning how to use the architecture rather than the standard fixed platform method of utilising everything to your advantage and learning new tricks to get the most out of it (there is a subtle difference). Sony's big advantage is the ICE team, these guys exist just to invent ways to get the most out the hardware and show off the machine, e.g. they work closely with Naughty Dog on their games (they're in the same building). MS have never created a group like that.

Aren't Epic sort of that? Or at least were, Gears 1 was the first big push and a showcase of what you could do iirc?

[The Bag]

The ICE team aren't producing engines or the like, they're more coming up with algorithms/techniques to do something impressive like snow or water from the Uncharted games. Or help optimise the fuck out of your game.

The other big difference between the two is Sony uses its first party (and second party) to showcase the console, to put out the games you need to get a Playstation for. Microsoft have moved away from that and onto using their first party to push what their vision for the platform is, you must have Kinect support, you must use Live, etc.

[b00dles]

Yeah good point, they've done a terrible job with Rare tbh, perception wise at least anyway, in general terms though Microsoft Studios have released some very good games over the time, they just lost a lot of the individual identities from the places they bought up.

I still think having proper second party teams like Naughty Dog or Nintendo's Tokyo EAD or IS does reap some rewards in regards to a consumer fanbase but then again, shit loads of people aren't even remotely aware that different developers have been doing the CoD games so maybe it just seems better if you pay attention to who actually makes the games.

[labarte]

I really don't believe that MS are going to start releasing incremental hardware upgrades, that would seem too complicated for developers and consumers. I can definitely see them doing mobile phone style contracts with Live subs, but hardware refreshes seem like the dreams of xbox fanboys disappointed with the leaked specs.

I am concerned that Durango is not going to be very hardcore. The way 360 really pushed the envelope (hence the appalling failure rate) had me pretty confident that MS would put out something mega. However, unless there really is some 'secret sauce' -- or the leaks are wrong -- Durango looks weak compared to Orbis. Kinect 2 is going to have to do some pretty amazing stuff to save it.

Much more interested in Orbis now, it sounds far more likely to provide the kind of technical jump that will have me paying over the odds at launch.

Still, it could all be bollocks..

[MansizeRooster]

I think Sony learned their lesson this gen. Microsoft gave them a good proper scare and gave their hubris a thorough knocking. They've had to really up their game in a big way just to break even with MS.

I think now that they're leaner and meaner and ready for a challenging fight, it only makes sense for them to have designed PS4, and the associated dev technologies, to be as easy to dev for as possible.

They know that they have to be able to at least compete with whatever MS could possibly throw at them, and can't afford to take dev relationships for granted.

[NecroMorrius]

It isn't really though is it? iPhones hardware doesn't get upgraded particularly quickly (at least not compared to the six or four month upgrade cycles of some of the Android OEMs).

And when you have an iPhone that's a year or two (or three if it's a 3GS) out of date, you'll find that most stuff runs perfectly fine, because guess what? Developers want to sell their stuff to a wide audience and so aim at the middleground where a lot of people are rather than making something solely for the device that launched a month ago and not many people (relatively) have bought yet. A few might make something that aims hard to push the top-end hardware (usually Epic trying to sell their engine), but not much. You can be a mental and buy the new one as soon as it comes out, just as you can buy the latest graphics card, but it's for little benefit.

Android is even more like this - most people are still on an OS that's three coming up four years old, although there it's due to open source, OEMs making bargain basement devices for the developing world and so on. Steambox might end up going this way depending how the model plays out.

I think he's saying that the platform holder plays on our desire for the latest and greatest, the state of the art, to keep most of us upgrading at least every other cycle. He's not saying your iPhone is actually out of date as soon as the new one comes out, but that it could be quite annoying for enthusiasts like us to feel that we're missing out if we don't keep up with regular console refreshes. And if we did, we'd be playing right into the hands of the platform holder, so it's lose-lose. (First world problems etc). Graphics cards don't quite hold up as a comparison, because they're so tiered and diverse to begin with. If the 'Xbox 720 MkI' was replaced a year later with the 'Xbox 720 MkII (retina edition)', that's a single upgrade path and you're left feeling like you've fallen behind. I don't really think it's a problem, but then I'm exactly the kind of mug who will upgrade every year.

[hub2]

I think Sony learned their lesson this gen. Microsoft gave them a good proper scare and gave their hubris a thorough knocking. They've had to really up their game in a big way just to break even with MS.

I think now that they're leaner and meaner and ready for a challenging fight, it only makes sense for them to have designed PS4, and the associated dev technologies, to be as easy to dev for as possible.

They know that they have to be able to at least compete with whatever MS could possibly throw at them, and can't afford to take dev relationships for granted.

Other than a few key franchises (Hello Halo!), I think Sony have the better 1st party developers as well. They really tried hard to screw up the PS3 from the outset but they came good in the end. Hopefully they will have learned their lesson.

[SMD]

Other than a few key franchises (Hello Halo!), I think Sony have the better 1st party developers as well. They really tried hard to screw up the PS3 from the outset but they came good in the end. Hopefully they will have learned their lesson.

*looks at Sega*

*shakes head sadly*

[mushashi]

One thing to remember is the specs of the box aren't necessarily the whole story, on paper the PS3 is more powerful that the 360 but the PS3 architecture and MS's toolset for the 360 made it far easier to get performance out of the 360, especially in the early days. From Sony's statements in the early days of the PS3 they wanted improvements in software to come from developers learning how to use the architecture rather than the standard fixed platform method of utilising everything to your advantage and learning new tricks to get the most out of it (there is a subtle difference). Sony's big advantage is the ICE team, these guys exist just to invent ways to get the most out the hardware and show off the machine, e.g. they work closely with Naughty Dog on their games (they're in the same building). MS have never created a group like that.

According to the mod over at B3D, who has done tours of duty at EA,Microsoft and currently SCEA, it would seem Sony is finally competitive on the dev tools front with Microsoft (which is odd, considering they should have been ages ago anyway with the acquisition of one of the few independent tool devs ages ago, some British company, SN Systems I think)

Not really when people talk about poor development tools, it's mostly about slow (or in some cases buggy) compilers and linkers and difficult to use or inadequate debuggers.

At the start of the PS3's life MS were also shipping robust profiling tools and Sony really wasn't.

Now though that gap has all but closed, the Sony tools for Vita are embedded in VS, and generally the gold linker used on Sony's existing offerings is faster than the MS equivalent. That speed difference has led a number of people to switch their development platform of choice.

[Spacehost]

According to the mod over at B3D, who has done tours of duty at EA,Microsoft and currently SCEA, it would seem Sony is finally competitive on the dev tools front with Microsoft (which is odd, considering they should have been ages ago anyway with the acquisition of one of the few independent tool devs ages ago, some British company, SN Systems I think)

SN pretty much exclusively made profiling tools I think. Microsoft on the other hand was providing a very mature top-to-bottom development pipeline. Sony have definitely caught up since the PS3, though.

[Shook]

The mobile phone style contract arrangement would pretty much be the end for me. I game so occasionally now that I couldn't justify it. Unless its very cheap, like Xbox live cheap. Which is a bit shit as I like a good session every now and again. Forcing me into buying a contract so I can play a couple of games every now and then isn't fair.

There must be a good few people like me that just wouldn't do it.

[mushashi]

Mobile contracts are more a way of getting people to part with a lot of money without realising it, fork out £529 upfront for a iPhone and pay £10 a month for calls on a cheap package or get it for free and pay £46 a month for 2 years, great if you have no spare cash and use it a load I suppose.

[Harsin]

Irrespective of specs, on the the very remote offchance someone from Sony or MS ever read this - PLEASE NO PIANO BLACK GLOSS FINISH.

[SMD]

Irrespective of specs, on the the very remote offchance someone from Sony or MS ever read this - PLEASE NO PIANO BLACK GLOSS FINISH.

I hope they're both purple.

[b00dles]

I hope there's a handle.

And a flap, obv.

[Harsin]

Prince account spotted.

[SMD]

I hope there's a handle.

And a flap, obv.

The handle is the flap.

[DocG]

The mobile phone style contract arrangement would pretty much be the end for me. I game so occasionally now that I couldn't justify it. Unless its very cheap, like Xbox live cheap. Which is a bit shit as I like a good session every now and again. Forcing me into buying a contract so I can play a couple of games every now and then isn't fair.

There must be a good few people like me that just wouldn't do it.

I don't think anyone's saying that'll be the only way to get one. Just a possible way MS might alleviate sticker shock if the launch price is high.

[Philly]

The Xbox brand lost its soul for me the moment Inside Xbox was canned and replaced with "official" IGN & Pals. Utter shite.

[RubberJohnny]

People watched Inside XBox?

[jonamok]

It was watched by the whole of Philly, at the very least.

[Salsa Party Animal]

I know I will be getting next gen XBOX but PS4 I don't know yet if there will be enough games like unchartened to make it worthwhile purchase.

[Revival]

The PS4 can be as powerful as the Deathstar but whats the point considering how poor Sony's approach to game development has been this generation. It was what 3 years before we started seeing anything half decent on the system?

Other than a few key franchises (Hello Halo!), I think Sony have the better 1st party developers as well. They really tried hard to screw up the PS3 from the outset but they came good in the end. Hopefully they will have learned their lesson.

Is that before or after they fired most of them? Going by the Vita situation they haven't learned a jot.

[SMD]

The PS4 can be as powerful as the Deathstar but whats the point considering how poor Sony's approach to game development has been this generation. It was what 3 years before we started seeing anything half decent on the system?

Is that before or after they fired most of them? Going by the Vita situation they haven't learned a jot.

3 years? It came out in 2007, you seriously suggesting that there was nothing worth getting until 2010?

[squirtle]

It launched with Motorstorm so he's talking a whole load of poo.

[TheSlugFormerlyKnownAsNap]

I know I will be getting next gen XBOX but PS4 I don't know yet if there will be enough games like unchartened to make it worthwhile purchase.

I bet Naughty Dog is working on Unchartened 4 as we speak.

[ulala]

It launched with Motorstorm so he's talking a whole load of poo.

No he got Motorstorm, he was just waiting for it to load.

[NecroMorrius]

People watched Inside XBox?

Only Gold subscribers.

[Vemsie]

The guy who created the FXAA anti-aliasing algorithm under Nvidia chimes in, based on the rumoured specs that Digital Foundry posted:

Working assuming the Eurogamer Article is mostly correct with the exception of maybe exact clocks, amount of memory, and number of enabled cores (all of which could easily change to adapt to yields)....

PS4

The real reason to get excited about a PS4 is what Sony as a company does with the OS and system libraries as a platform, and what this enables 1st party studios to do, when they make PS4-only games. If PS4 has a real-time OS, with a libGCM style low level access to the GPU, then the PS4 1st party games will be years ahead of the PC simply because it opens up what is possible on the GPU. Note this won't happen right away on launch, but once developers tool up for the platform, this will be the case. As a PC guy who knows hardware to the metal, I spend most of my days in frustration knowing damn well what I could do with the hardware, but what I cannot do because Microsoft and IHVs wont provide low-level GPU access in PC APIs. One simple example, drawcalls on PC have easily 10x to 100x the overhead of a console with a libGCM style API....

I could continue here, but I'm not, by now you get the picture, launch titles will likely be DX11 ports, so perhaps not much better than what could be done on PC. However if Sony provides the real-time OS with libGCM v2 for GCN, one or two years out, 1st party devs and Sony's internal teams like the ICE team, will have had long enough to build up tech to really leverage the platform.

I'm excited for what this platform will provide for PS4-only 1st party titles and developers who still have the balls to do a non-portable game this next round....

Xbox720

Working here assuming the Eurogamer Article is close to correct. On this platform I'd be concerned with memory bandwidth. Only DDR3 for system/GPU memory pared with 32MB of "ESRAM" sounds troubling....If this GPU is pre-GCN with a serious performance gap to PS4, then this next Xbox will act like a boat anchor, dragging down the min-spec target for cross-platform next-generation games.

My guess is that the real reason for 8GB of memory is because this box is a DVR which actually runs "Windows" (which requires a GB or two or three of "overhead"), but like Windows RT (Windows on ARM) only exposes a non-desktop UI to the user. There are a bunch of reasons they might ditch the real-time console OS, one being that if they don't provide low level access to developers, that it might enable a faster refresh on backwards compatible hardware. In theory the developer just targets the box like it was a special DX11 "PC" with a few extra changes like hints for surfaces which should go in ESRAM, then on the next refresh hardware, all prior games just get better FPS or resolution or AA. Of course if they do that, then it is just another PC, just lower performance, with all the latency baggage, and lack of low level magic which makes 1st party games stand out and sell the platform.