3 ms·

RT is a joke but what's wrong with XBox One?

dragontamer 13y ago
Compared to the PS4, the XBox One hardware has 30% less shaders on the GPU, is using DDR3 RAM instead of faster GDDR5 RAM, and is using the same CPU as the PS4. All the while, it costs $100 more than the PS4. So for the first time in XBox's history, the XBox is launching with strictly weaker hardware than its closest competitor. (XBox 360 at least had a GPU that was 2x stronger than the PS3 GPU, and the XBox 360 also had faster RAM. PS3 won on CPU power... but lost out on everything else.) There is terrible, terrible press across the whole internet about the XBox One-Eighty. Video Gamers overall have a negative impression on it. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/06/12 http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/06/12 http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/06/21 http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/06/21
- yulaow 13y ago
  and not only this. The worst part is the total failure of the presentation of the console. I know they now have deleted the big part of the main restrictions, but still they undermined the trust of the buyers.It is not a little problem
- freehunter 13y ago
  >XBox 360 at least had a GPU that was 2x stronger than the PS3 GPU [et al] And did it matter at all? From what I remember of this current generation's history, if games looked any different on the PS3 than the 360, the developers blamed it on the tools and how difficult the PS3 was to program for, not on the weaker hardware. Developers made cross-platform titles for the Xbox first and ported to the PS3 because Xbox was easier. When I was 16 years old I argued console hardware specs. These days I don't hear many experience gamers mention it at all, because when it comes down to it, minor differences in specs doesn't really matter.
  - dragontamer 13y ago
    Why was the PS3 harder to program for? Because its GPU was out of date, its RAM was split, and its architecture sucked. Programming the PS3 "incorrectly" leads to extremely poor performance. Certain memory transfers on the PS3 are just straight up broken: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1007286/ps3-hardware-slow-broken http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1007286/ps3-hardwar... The XBox was "easier" to program for because it was a more balanced system. Overall, the XBox360 was both simpler and more powerful. By making XBox360 more powerful, previous soft-exclusives like Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid made their way to the XBox360. Sony lost a lot of publishers because of the boneheaded hardware they shoved into developer's faces. It is Microsoft that has made this mistake in this generation. Not only from a policy stand point against indie gamers (ie: Oddworld moving to PS4 exclusive title. As well as SuperGiant Games making Transistor PS4 exclusive), but also by launching with weaker (yet paradoxically more expensive) hardware. The PS4 will be easier to program for, it has a simpler more unified architecture, and Sony's policies are more friendly towards developers. While it barely matters for the end consumer, it is easy to see which systems producers will prefer in the coming generation.
    - angersock 13y ago
      "The PS4 will be easier to program for, it has a simpler more unified architecture, and Sony's policies are more friendly towards developers." The architectures seem near identical--the only big difference would seem to be that the XBO will have dedicated framebuffer memory, probably hidden behind a system call anyways. As for being more friendly to developers, Microsoft has always had the best tools and documentation for developers (long live SGI, poor bastards). I don't really see where you're getting this from.
      - dragontamer 13y ago
        Count the number of indie-developers on XBox One. Now count the 140 currently announced titles on the PS4 (most of them indie games). The current joke: PS4 has more exclusives than XBox One has launch titles. (slight hyperbole, but the number of PS4 exclusives almost gets there. 30 titles from Sony themselves, ~10 exclusive indie titles announced at E3, and all of a sudden the game environment for PS4 looks mighty tasty) It is dead obvious which console has won the support of indie developers. Microsoft may have superior documentation... but when you _require_ indie gamers to find a publisher before they're allowed to make an XBox one game, the number of titles on your system will suffer significantly. A number of PS4 indie developers want to program for the XBox One, but they can't due to Microsoft's boneheaded policy. It doesn't matter how good the XBox One development kit is, if Microsoft fails to hand it off to innovative developers. Again, XBox One _POLICY_ is bad for indie developers.
- commandar 13y ago
  >XBox 360 at least had a GPU that was 2x stronger than the PS3 GPU Eh? Where are you getting that? The Xbox 360 Xenos GPU was based on ATI's R520 and the PS3's RSX was based on Nvidia's G70 architecture. They were roughly equivalent to each company's flagship Radeon X1800 and GeForce 7800 lines at the time. The real design win for the 360 was a shared memory pool instead of a split CPU/GPU memory architecture, but I've never seen anything to suggest that the 360 had a GPU anywhere near "2x stronger."
  - dragontamer 13y ago
    XBox360 crushes PS3 in virtually every microbenchmark: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071217224458AAC2wb9 http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071217224458AA... 2x faster Triangle Setup rate, 4x faster Vertex Shader processing, 50% faster pixel shaders, 2x faster Anti-Aliasing... The PS3 makes up for it as they use all of those Cell processors basically as a GPU. But in terms of pure GPU Girth, the XBox360 was just straight up easier to use and more powerful. -------------- Basically... despite all the major press about the PS3 "supercomputer", XBox360 was a simpler, better designed gaming machine. In in this upcomming generation, PS4 out-xboxed the XBoxOne. The PS4 is a dead-simple straightforward architecture that simply throws more hardware at the problem. (while somehow being cheaper...)
    - commandar 13y ago
      A lot of that is a demonstration in why microbenchmarks are usually worthless for determining real world performance. Xenos has a unified shader architecture while RSX does not. That means that during microbenchmarks, it can dedicate all of its shaders to that task, and put up relatively impressive numbers. In reality, that means that those shaders can't be used for anything else, meaning your real world performance will look nothing like the microbenchmark. AA performance is almost entirely due to the on-package EDRAM. While that was a smart design decision, it's not indicative of some huge overall power advantage. Look, Microsoft made a number of very smart design choices with the 360 that have allowed developers to squeeze a lot out of the hardware, there's no doubting that. I think it's also fair to say that Xenos is a bit faster than the RSX -- as was the case with that generation of discrete GPUs from ATI and Nvidia -- but throwing around things like twice as powerful and "crushes" is getting into hyperbole territory if you're looking at actual performance from the hardware.
samsnelling 13y ago
OP might not think there is something wrong with the XBox One... however I there is no denying that it was a PR catastrophe with the it's always online stuff. Flip flopping after a product introduction does not bode well IMO. Edit: OP does not like the XBox One ... my bad. :)
y0ghur7_xxx 13y ago
http://venturebeat.com/2013/07/13/microsofts-xbox-one-chief-product-officer-admits-big-mistakes-in-messaging/ http://venturebeat.com/2013/07/13/microsofts-xbox-one-chief-... http://www.neoseeker.com/news/23234-microsofts-one-mistake-pressing-reset-on-the-xbox-ones-aspirations-of-a-digital-future/ http://www.neoseeker.com/news/23234-microsofts-one-mistake-p...
- dragontamer 13y ago
  And of course... http://www.idigitaltimes.com/articles/18620/20130701/xbox-180-don-mattrick-fired-steve-ballmer.htm http://www.idigitaltimes.com/articles/18620/20130701/xbox-18... Don Mattrick is now fired.
guizzy 13y ago
Nothing per se at this point, but their previous stance on DRM allowed their main competitor to gain a large PR advantage. However saying that the Xbox One will fail like the WinRT did is very premature; the PS3 had a slow start and still made a respectable showing this generation, and the 3DS was considered a debacle until a price cut and the right games came along and it suddenly exploded in popularity.
- jdjb 13y ago
  I feel we'll see the same thing with the Wii U. Everyone is dismissing it right now and for good reason (lack of games). But Nintendo did announce at least 1 game for every major line they have running at the last E3 so I expect the Wii U sales will start to jump up right around we see the PS4 and XB1 releases.
  - guizzy 13y ago
    I hope so; I bought one a couple of weeks ago. Nintendo seems to be getting ready for a major push, but I think it will need to make a price cut; not because the console is a bad deal, but because they need to generate positive headlines in the gaming press for the gaming community to stop seeing it as having no future.
    - dragontamer 13y ago
      WiiU is the only backwards compatible system, showing strong support for consumer rights. I frankly am most excited about WiiU this generation, but I'm holding off on buying one till more games come out. But Earthbound on Virtual Console, and Pikmin 3 coming out make it a compelling buy already IMO.
schabernakk 13y ago
I think he is referring to the PR disaster the Xbox One had a couple weeks back with the only online requirement, Kinect always listening and other lockdown mechanisms implemented on the machines making sharing games or similar things more or less impossible. I don't know it this will have much impact on the actual sale numbers, the release date is still quite some time in the future and the PS4 despite all the love it currently gets from the gaming scene also requires a Sony account you have to pay monthly to be usable. I am pretty sure it will play out like it always does: lots of complaining and in the end it will get bought nevertheless. [1] [1] http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/6062/1258035395841.jpg http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/6062/1258035395841.jpg

Compared to the PS4, the XBox One hardware has 30% less shaders on the GPU, is using DDR3 RAM instead of faster GDDR5 RAM, and is using the same CPU as the PS4. All the while, it costs $100 more than the PS4. So for the first time in XBox's history, the XBox is launching with strictly weaker hardware than its closest competitor. (XBox 360 at least had a GPU that was 2x stronger than the PS3 GPU, and the XBox 360 also had faster RAM. PS3 won on CPU power... but lost out on everything else.) There is terrible, terrible press across the whole internet about the XBox One-Eighty. Video Gamers overall have a negative impression on it. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/06/12 http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/06/12 http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/06/21 http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/06/21

yulaow 13y ago
and not only this. The worst part is the total failure of the presentation of the console. I know they now have deleted the big part of the main restrictions, but still they undermined the trust of the buyers.It is not a little problem
freehunter 13y ago
>XBox 360 at least had a GPU that was 2x stronger than the PS3 GPU [et al] And did it matter at all? From what I remember of this current generation's history, if games looked any different on the PS3 than the 360, the developers blamed it on the tools and how difficult the PS3 was to program for, not on the weaker hardware. Developers made cross-platform titles for the Xbox first and ported to the PS3 because Xbox was easier. When I was 16 years old I argued console hardware specs. These days I don't hear many experience gamers mention it at all, because when it comes down to it, minor differences in specs doesn't really matter.
- dragontamer 13y ago
  Why was the PS3 harder to program for? Because its GPU was out of date, its RAM was split, and its architecture sucked. Programming the PS3 "incorrectly" leads to extremely poor performance. Certain memory transfers on the PS3 are just straight up broken: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1007286/ps3-hardware-slow-broken http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1007286/ps3-hardwar... The XBox was "easier" to program for because it was a more balanced system. Overall, the XBox360 was both simpler and more powerful. By making XBox360 more powerful, previous soft-exclusives like Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid made their way to the XBox360. Sony lost a lot of publishers because of the boneheaded hardware they shoved into developer's faces. It is Microsoft that has made this mistake in this generation. Not only from a policy stand point against indie gamers (ie: Oddworld moving to PS4 exclusive title. As well as SuperGiant Games making Transistor PS4 exclusive), but also by launching with weaker (yet paradoxically more expensive) hardware. The PS4 will be easier to program for, it has a simpler more unified architecture, and Sony's policies are more friendly towards developers. While it barely matters for the end consumer, it is easy to see which systems producers will prefer in the coming generation.
  - angersock 13y ago
    "The PS4 will be easier to program for, it has a simpler more unified architecture, and Sony's policies are more friendly towards developers." The architectures seem near identical--the only big difference would seem to be that the XBO will have dedicated framebuffer memory, probably hidden behind a system call anyways. As for being more friendly to developers, Microsoft has always had the best tools and documentation for developers (long live SGI, poor bastards). I don't really see where you're getting this from.
    - dragontamer 13y ago
      Count the number of indie-developers on XBox One. Now count the 140 currently announced titles on the PS4 (most of them indie games). The current joke: PS4 has more exclusives than XBox One has launch titles. (slight hyperbole, but the number of PS4 exclusives almost gets there. 30 titles from Sony themselves, ~10 exclusive indie titles announced at E3, and all of a sudden the game environment for PS4 looks mighty tasty) It is dead obvious which console has won the support of indie developers. Microsoft may have superior documentation... but when you _require_ indie gamers to find a publisher before they're allowed to make an XBox one game, the number of titles on your system will suffer significantly. A number of PS4 indie developers want to program for the XBox One, but they can't due to Microsoft's boneheaded policy. It doesn't matter how good the XBox One development kit is, if Microsoft fails to hand it off to innovative developers. Again, XBox One _POLICY_ is bad for indie developers.
commandar 13y ago
>XBox 360 at least had a GPU that was 2x stronger than the PS3 GPU Eh? Where are you getting that? The Xbox 360 Xenos GPU was based on ATI's R520 and the PS3's RSX was based on Nvidia's G70 architecture. They were roughly equivalent to each company's flagship Radeon X1800 and GeForce 7800 lines at the time. The real design win for the 360 was a shared memory pool instead of a split CPU/GPU memory architecture, but I've never seen anything to suggest that the 360 had a GPU anywhere near "2x stronger."
- dragontamer 13y ago
  XBox360 crushes PS3 in virtually every microbenchmark: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071217224458AAC2wb9 http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071217224458AA... 2x faster Triangle Setup rate, 4x faster Vertex Shader processing, 50% faster pixel shaders, 2x faster Anti-Aliasing... The PS3 makes up for it as they use all of those Cell processors basically as a GPU. But in terms of pure GPU Girth, the XBox360 was just straight up easier to use and more powerful. -------------- Basically... despite all the major press about the PS3 "supercomputer", XBox360 was a simpler, better designed gaming machine. In in this upcomming generation, PS4 out-xboxed the XBoxOne. The PS4 is a dead-simple straightforward architecture that simply throws more hardware at the problem. (while somehow being cheaper...)
  - commandar 13y ago
    A lot of that is a demonstration in why microbenchmarks are usually worthless for determining real world performance. Xenos has a unified shader architecture while RSX does not. That means that during microbenchmarks, it can dedicate all of its shaders to that task, and put up relatively impressive numbers. In reality, that means that those shaders can't be used for anything else, meaning your real world performance will look nothing like the microbenchmark. AA performance is almost entirely due to the on-package EDRAM. While that was a smart design decision, it's not indicative of some huge overall power advantage. Look, Microsoft made a number of very smart design choices with the 360 that have allowed developers to squeeze a lot out of the hardware, there's no doubting that. I think it's also fair to say that Xenos is a bit faster than the RSX -- as was the case with that generation of discrete GPUs from ATI and Nvidia -- but throwing around things like twice as powerful and "crushes" is getting into hyperbole territory if you're looking at actual performance from the hardware.

samsnelling 13y ago

OP might not think there is something wrong with the XBox One... however I there is no denying that it was a PR catastrophe with the it's always online stuff. Flip flopping after a product introduction does not bode well IMO. Edit: OP does not like the XBox One ... my bad. :)

y0ghur7_xxx 13y ago

http://venturebeat.com/2013/07/13/microsofts-xbox-one-chief-product-officer-admits-big-mistakes-in-messaging/ http://venturebeat.com/2013/07/13/microsofts-xbox-one-chief-... http://www.neoseeker.com/news/23234-microsofts-one-mistake-pressing-reset-on-the-xbox-ones-aspirations-of-a-digital-future/ http://www.neoseeker.com/news/23234-microsofts-one-mistake-p...

dragontamer 13y ago
And of course... http://www.idigitaltimes.com/articles/18620/20130701/xbox-180-don-mattrick-fired-steve-ballmer.htm http://www.idigitaltimes.com/articles/18620/20130701/xbox-18... Don Mattrick is now fired.

guizzy 13y ago

Nothing per se at this point, but their previous stance on DRM allowed their main competitor to gain a large PR advantage. However saying that the Xbox One will fail like the WinRT did is very premature; the PS3 had a slow start and still made a respectable showing this generation, and the 3DS was considered a debacle until a price cut and the right games came along and it suddenly exploded in popularity.

jdjb 13y ago
I feel we'll see the same thing with the Wii U. Everyone is dismissing it right now and for good reason (lack of games). But Nintendo did announce at least 1 game for every major line they have running at the last E3 so I expect the Wii U sales will start to jump up right around we see the PS4 and XB1 releases.
- guizzy 13y ago
  I hope so; I bought one a couple of weeks ago. Nintendo seems to be getting ready for a major push, but I think it will need to make a price cut; not because the console is a bad deal, but because they need to generate positive headlines in the gaming press for the gaming community to stop seeing it as having no future.
  - dragontamer 13y ago
    WiiU is the only backwards compatible system, showing strong support for consumer rights. I frankly am most excited about WiiU this generation, but I'm holding off on buying one till more games come out. But Earthbound on Virtual Console, and Pikmin 3 coming out make it a compelling buy already IMO.

schabernakk 13y ago

I think he is referring to the PR disaster the Xbox One had a couple weeks back with the only online requirement, Kinect always listening and other lockdown mechanisms implemented on the machines making sharing games or similar things more or less impossible. I don't know it this will have much impact on the actual sale numbers, the release date is still quite some time in the future and the PS4 despite all the love it currently gets from the gaming scene also requires a Sony account you have to pay monthly to be usable. I am pretty sure it will play out like it always does: lots of complaining and in the end it will get bought nevertheless. [1] [1] http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/6062/1258035395841.jpg http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/6062/1258035395841.jpg