4 ms·

2014 Oculus Rift expected to ship widely demoed and lauded next generation experience. Nov 2013 Sony and MS start shipping new consoles. Oct 2013 Apple likely

by Steko 13y ago

2014 Oculus Rift expected to ship widely demoed and lauded next generation experience. Nov 2013 Sony and MS start shipping new consoles. Oct 2013 Apple likely to announce and immediately ship $129=$199 A7X based console killer. Sep 2013 Valve announces beta opt in for SteamMachine with zero details on product.

cheald 13y ago
> Oct 2013 Apple likely to announce $149 A7X based console killer. Maybe I'm just missing something here, but I'm pretty sure an ARM-based system has exactly zero chance of displacing current gaming platforms. They could whip up a sexy Ouya competitor, sure, but Ouya isn't exactly setting the gaming world on fire. An ARM console would be a competitor to phone/tablet gaming, not to console gaming.
- commandar 13y ago
  Sony might have a chance of it with the Vita TV, but that has as much to do with PS4 streaming as its native games.
- Steko 13y ago
  The Ouya GPU pushes 12 GFLOPs (gamecube, original xbox quality). The GPUs in the 5S give 76 GFLOPs and are underclocked at 300 Mhz for battery reasons. A hypothetical A7X which, following the A6X, has twice as many GPUs as the A7, would put us at 150 GFLOPs. Keep in mind the A6X is still on a mobile device. Up the clock speed to 500 Mhz and we've arrived at 250 GFLOPs. This is comparable to the PS3 (230) and 360 (260) and the assumptions seem pretty reasonable. GFLOPs aren't the whole story but it's important to understand what class of machine Apple could ship now. It's certainly console quality. Specwise it won't hold a candle to the PS4 (1.8 TFLOPs), at least in 2013/14. But as we learned last generation the new stud consoles often trail not only underpowered upstarts (Wii) but sometimes their own previous generation consoles due to supply or price issues. https://www.google.com/search?q=ps2+outsells+ps3&safe=active https://www.google.com/search?q=ps2+outsells+ps3&safe=active And in terms of price Apple could ship the system we're talking about with a decent amount of RAM and a controller for $149. Of course they won't even market it primarily as a gaming device so it would probably ship without a (gaming) controller for $129+.
  - cheald 13y ago
    If we're going to talk about GPUs, my ancient Radeon 5770 does 520 GFLOPS all by its lonesome. The PS3 does ~400GFLOPS; the XBox 360 somewhere around 300. Getting all the way up to 250 puts you at somewhere between the Wii and the XBox 360, right when the XBox One and PS4 are due to start shipping. Modern discrete gaming GPUs do 2-3 TFLOPS. ARM is notable for its power usage, not its performance profile, and in wall-connected gaming, performance is king. Any "console killer" is going to have to compete with...well, current consoles (and now, Steamboxen). Apple could certainly ship an underpowered "do your mobile gaming on your TV" device (and to be clear, I think there's room in the market to siphon off some casual gamers), but actually going head-to-head with the console market just isn't going to happen without putting some more raw power into the box and shipping an architecture that won't make ports a pain in the ass. The Xbox One, PS4, and Steambox are all going to be X86-64 architectures. Throwing an ARM platform into the mix and expecting it to kill existing consoles is silly.
    - Steko 13y ago
      " The PS3 does ~400GFLOPS; the XBox 360 somewhere around 300." I'm showing the PS3 at 230 (various Google) and the X360 at 240 (wikipedia Xenos). Regardless the Ouya at 12 is not in the same ballpark. To say the hypothetical Apple system is Ouya quality and not PS3/360 console quality is simply wrong. "console killer" is going to have to compete with...well, current consoles (and now, Steamboxen) ... actually going head-to-head with the console market just isn't going to happen without putting some more raw power" It doesn't have to compete directly though, it just has to be good enough at gaming at the price it's selling for in addition to whatever else they're selling to undermine the console business model. Mobiles won the point and shoot and handheld gaming markets without competing directly on specs in those markets.
      - cheald 13y ago
        My point with the Ouya remark is that the Ouya is an ARM machine, which runs ARM software. Nobody makes ARM games except mobile developers. The Wii, PS3 and 360 were PPC architectures; the PS4 and Xbone are x86-64 architectures (the Wii U, interestingly, is still PPC, but there seems to be far less of an emphasis for the Wii on capturing third-party AAA titles than there are for other platforms.). The raw power is a secondary concern to the fact that the utter lack of developers making non-mobile ARM games. An A7 system would probably easily capitalize on iOS games, and could have some PS3/360 games ported to it, but the library runs a little thin past that. Apple would have to get developers to port their titles to an underpowered system using a different instruction set that doesn't have a proven sales model for their class of product and which would involve entering into contracts with a company that is famously hostile to developers. Regarding undermining the console business model, consoles live and die on their triple-A titles. Your GTAs, Halos, Marios, and Call of Duties are what sell consoles, not cheap hardware. Footnote: Regarding the gigaflops numbers, I got them from here - I admittedly didn't do the math. I kind of suspect it's a combined CPU + GPU number in light of your numbers: http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/156273-xbox-720-vs-ps4-vs-pc-how-the-hardware-specs-compare/2 http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/156273-xbox-720-vs-ps4-vs-...

by Steko 13y ago

cheald 13y ago

> Oct 2013 Apple likely to announce $149 A7X based console killer. Maybe I'm just missing something here, but I'm pretty sure an ARM-based system has exactly zero chance of displacing current gaming platforms. They could whip up a sexy Ouya competitor, sure, but Ouya isn't exactly setting the gaming world on fire. An ARM console would be a competitor to phone/tablet gaming, not to console gaming.

commandar 13y ago
Sony might have a chance of it with the Vita TV, but that has as much to do with PS4 streaming as its native games.
Steko 13y ago
The Ouya GPU pushes 12 GFLOPs (gamecube, original xbox quality). The GPUs in the 5S give 76 GFLOPs and are underclocked at 300 Mhz for battery reasons. A hypothetical A7X which, following the A6X, has twice as many GPUs as the A7, would put us at 150 GFLOPs. Keep in mind the A6X is still on a mobile device. Up the clock speed to 500 Mhz and we've arrived at 250 GFLOPs. This is comparable to the PS3 (230) and 360 (260) and the assumptions seem pretty reasonable. GFLOPs aren't the whole story but it's important to understand what class of machine Apple could ship now. It's certainly console quality. Specwise it won't hold a candle to the PS4 (1.8 TFLOPs), at least in 2013/14. But as we learned last generation the new stud consoles often trail not only underpowered upstarts (Wii) but sometimes their own previous generation consoles due to supply or price issues. https://www.google.com/search?q=ps2+outsells+ps3&safe=active https://www.google.com/search?q=ps2+outsells+ps3&safe=active And in terms of price Apple could ship the system we're talking about with a decent amount of RAM and a controller for $149. Of course they won't even market it primarily as a gaming device so it would probably ship without a (gaming) controller for $129+.
- cheald 13y ago
  If we're going to talk about GPUs, my ancient Radeon 5770 does 520 GFLOPS all by its lonesome. The PS3 does ~400GFLOPS; the XBox 360 somewhere around 300. Getting all the way up to 250 puts you at somewhere between the Wii and the XBox 360, right when the XBox One and PS4 are due to start shipping. Modern discrete gaming GPUs do 2-3 TFLOPS. ARM is notable for its power usage, not its performance profile, and in wall-connected gaming, performance is king. Any "console killer" is going to have to compete with...well, current consoles (and now, Steamboxen). Apple could certainly ship an underpowered "do your mobile gaming on your TV" device (and to be clear, I think there's room in the market to siphon off some casual gamers), but actually going head-to-head with the console market just isn't going to happen without putting some more raw power into the box and shipping an architecture that won't make ports a pain in the ass. The Xbox One, PS4, and Steambox are all going to be X86-64 architectures. Throwing an ARM platform into the mix and expecting it to kill existing consoles is silly.
  - Steko 13y ago
    " The PS3 does ~400GFLOPS; the XBox 360 somewhere around 300." I'm showing the PS3 at 230 (various Google) and the X360 at 240 (wikipedia Xenos). Regardless the Ouya at 12 is not in the same ballpark. To say the hypothetical Apple system is Ouya quality and not PS3/360 console quality is simply wrong. "console killer" is going to have to compete with...well, current consoles (and now, Steamboxen) ... actually going head-to-head with the console market just isn't going to happen without putting some more raw power" It doesn't have to compete directly though, it just has to be good enough at gaming at the price it's selling for in addition to whatever else they're selling to undermine the console business model. Mobiles won the point and shoot and handheld gaming markets without competing directly on specs in those markets.
    - cheald 13y ago
      My point with the Ouya remark is that the Ouya is an ARM machine, which runs ARM software. Nobody makes ARM games except mobile developers. The Wii, PS3 and 360 were PPC architectures; the PS4 and Xbone are x86-64 architectures (the Wii U, interestingly, is still PPC, but there seems to be far less of an emphasis for the Wii on capturing third-party AAA titles than there are for other platforms.). The raw power is a secondary concern to the fact that the utter lack of developers making non-mobile ARM games. An A7 system would probably easily capitalize on iOS games, and could have some PS3/360 games ported to it, but the library runs a little thin past that. Apple would have to get developers to port their titles to an underpowered system using a different instruction set that doesn't have a proven sales model for their class of product and which would involve entering into contracts with a company that is famously hostile to developers. Regarding undermining the console business model, consoles live and die on their triple-A titles. Your GTAs, Halos, Marios, and Call of Duties are what sell consoles, not cheap hardware. Footnote: Regarding the gigaflops numbers, I got them from here - I admittedly didn't do the math. I kind of suspect it's a combined CPU + GPU number in light of your numbers: http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/156273-xbox-720-vs-ps4-vs-pc-how-the-hardware-specs-compare/2 http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/156273-xbox-720-vs-ps4-vs-...