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TheVision wrote:

Doctor Glyndwr wrote:

zaphod79 wrote:

"The Exclusive Gap Between PS4 And Xbox One Has Become A Canyon"

Yes, I read this a few days ago and thought it made a strong case. I loved the 360 but I have very close to zero interest in an Xbox One, even though Scorpio looks like a great piece of hardware. Surely the X1 is the biggest inter-generation fall-from-grace for a console platform? It was Microsoft's game to lose. It might be worse than when Sony bungled every single aspect of the launch of the PS3, because at least the PS3 eventually came good.

How long did it take for the PS3 to come good though?

I would say from 3 years onwards it stopped being a figure of fun. It was arguably the better console for the last 2-3 years of the generation.

It was permanently hindered by the overall shitness of the PS3 controllers. Despite my utter hatred of all the (now walked back) shite aspects of Xbone when it was first announced, if Sony hadn't massively improved the controllers I would still have seriously considered an Xbone for that one reason.

Bamba wrote:

I concur with this. PS3 was just barely my preferred platform for the last year or two of the last generation (I bought GTA for PS3 rather than 360, for example), but that was very much despite the pads. I really like the PS4 ones though.

So maybe there's still hope for the Xbox One yet? You never know, people might like to watch games not load for no reason at all or to have their controllers disconnect for a few seconds... for no reason at all... and what about the controllers sometimes "forgetting" they're synced to the console when you turn it on? Yep. A killer feature that people might like!

Seriously, all these things have happened to me. Annoying.

On the talk of Exclusives, since Microsoft started the "Xbox Play Anywhere" thing, my Xbox just spends most of its time gathering dust - I don't care much for the game 'looking better' or anything, but I'm used to playing games mostly on the PC now, (As most of my friends have either stopped playing or moved to PS4) so if they're on the PC that's where I'm going to buy them. I like the idea of it of course, but it doesn't seem like a great way to sell hardware.

I suspect next-gen for MS will be small form-factor PCs that are Xbox branded, much like the Steam Machines. I don't think they'll do another console.

Lonewolves wrote:

I suspect next-gen for MS will be small form-factor PCs that are Xbox branded, much like the Steam Machines. I don't think they'll do another console.

Well, maybe. I thought this. But then if that's true, why does Scorpio exist? Unless it's just MS shipping the org chart, I suppose.

Bamba wrote:

Quality of hardware is almost entirely irrelevant though once you've lost the "so what do your mates have" game.

Zardoz wrote:

WTF is Scorpio?

Next year's Xbox One mk 2. It's much more powerful, whereas PS4 Pro is a bit more powerful.

Isn't true 4k gaming a bit of a pipe dream at the moment even in the PC space? Which would put it well beyond even the Scorpio.

Bamba wrote:

Isn't true 4k gaming a bit of a pipe dream at the moment even in the PC space? Which would put it well beyond even the Scorpio.

4k gaming can be done on plenty of PC GPUs released in the last year or two - if you're willing to play at 30fps, which a fair amount of PC Gamers aren't. On console, which targets 30, it should be possible for a fair amount of games with how powerful the Scorpio will be.

Let's be fair, we don't know how powerful Scorpio will or won't be: there isn't much detail in the specs released.

BOOOOOORRRRRRRING.

Is it powerful enough to play Scalebound?

12GB of GDDR5 too. Wonder if they've gone the Sony route of having that the only RAM in the system?
Octocore processor is kinda.. meh. For the price point of consoles I'd assume that means still an older AMD CPU.. which is pretty weird to pair with such a powerful GPU.

Didn't they say the original Bone would take advantage of the cloud? I basically don't believe a word they say.

Lonewolves wrote:

Didn't they say the original Bone would take advantage of the cloud? I basically don't believe a word they say.

It kind of does in the fact that all your saves and video clips are on there... but yeah... I know.

Apparently Crackdown 3 will make full use of it to feature a massive, fully destructible world. The likes of which we've never seen before. :insincere:

If they'd just say 'everything is 1080p@60FPS on Scorpio' I'd be all over it like a cheap suit.

Hearthly wrote:

If they'd just say 'everything is 1080p@60FPS on Scorpio' I'd be all over it like a cheap suit.

It'd look great on your 720p telly

Putting an SSD in it would drive the price up like crazy, and they can just sell a separate SSD to anyone who is happy to pay through the nose for an SSD. They are getting cheaper, but you couldn't really get away with a 128gb drive, and 256gb+ drives are still too expensive to include by default.

I don't understand clockspeeds and overclocking. Can someone ELI5?

But what's the advantage of forcing people to buy an SSD rather than supporting it as an option?

Are you suggesting it should have two hard drive bays?

Surely it's because games are so big that we still need traditional HDDs? I'm not sure 1-2TB SSDs are the cheapest, and it's what you need for a modern console.

With Scorpio, Maybe Xbox Can Find Its Way Back

It Looks Like Refunds Are Coming to Xbox One

Author:	TheVision [ Thu Feb 23, 2017 17:20 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
Lonewolves wrote: TheVision wrote: Doctor Glyndwr wrote: zaphod79 wrote: "The Exclusive Gap Between PS4 And Xbox One Has Become A Canyon" Yes, I read this a few days ago and thought it made a strong case. I loved the 360 but I have very close to zero interest in an Xbox One, even though Scorpio looks like a great piece of hardware. Surely the X1 is the biggest inter-generation fall-from-grace for a console platform? It was Microsoft's game to lose. It might be worse than when Sony bungled every single aspect of the launch of the PS3, because at least the PS3 eventually came good. How long did it take for the PS3 to come good though? I would say from 3 years onwards it stopped being a figure of fun. It was arguably the better console for the last 2-3 years of the generation. So maybe there's still hope for the Xbox One yet? You never know, people might like to watch games not load for no reason at all or to have their controllers disconnect for a few seconds... for no reason at all... and what about the controllers sometimes "forgetting" they're synced to the console when you turn it on? Yep. A killer feature that people might like! Seriously, all these things have happened to me. Annoying.

Author:	Doctor Glyndwr [ Thu Feb 23, 2017 17:22 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
Bamba wrote: It was permanently hindered by the overall shitness of the PS3 controllers. Despite my utter hatred of all the (now walked back) shite aspects of Xbone when it was first announced, if Sony hadn't massively improved the controllers I would still have seriously considered an Xbone for that one reason. I concur with this. PS3 was just barely my preferred platform for the last year or two of the last generation (I bought GTA for PS3 rather than 360, for example), but that was very much despite the pads. I really like the PS4 ones though.

Author:	myp [ Thu Feb 23, 2017 17:26 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
Doctor Glyndwr wrote: Bamba wrote: It was permanently hindered by the overall shitness of the PS3 controllers. Despite my utter hatred of all the (now walked back) shite aspects of Xbone when it was first announced, if Sony hadn't massively improved the controllers I would still have seriously considered an Xbone for that one reason. I concur with this. PS3 was just barely my preferred platform for the last year or two of the last generation (I bought GTA for PS3 rather than 360, for example), but that was very much despite the pads. I really like the PS4 ones though. Same same same. What killed the 360 for me was the last dashboard revision and the shoving of HUGE VIDEO ADS in my face all the time and paying a sub for the pleasure. Microsoft got very lazy last gen because they were so far ahead for so long. Sony got the momentum back in the last few years of last gen and ran with it. Saying that, there's a danger Sony do the same thing next gen as they're now head and shoulders above MS.

Author:	TheCookie197 [ Thu Feb 23, 2017 17:30 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
TheVision wrote: So maybe there's still hope for the Xbox One yet? You never know, people might like to watch games not load for no reason at all or to have their controllers disconnect for a few seconds... for no reason at all... and what about the controllers sometimes "forgetting" they're synced to the console when you turn it on? Yep. A killer feature that people might like! Seriously, all these things have happened to me. Annoying. Really? Worst I've had happen was once when the A button stopped working on the menu screen - disconnecting and reconnecting the power fixed that though. On the talk of Exclusives, since Microsoft started the "Xbox Play Anywhere" thing, my Xbox just spends most of its time gathering dust - I don't care much for the game 'looking better' or anything, but I'm used to playing games mostly on the PC now, (As most of my friends have either stopped playing or moved to PS4) so if they're on the PC that's where I'm going to buy them. I like the idea of it of course, but it doesn't seem like a great way to sell hardware.

Author:	myp [ Thu Feb 23, 2017 17:34 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
Cookie197 wrote: On the talk of Exclusives, since Microsoft started the "Xbox Play Anywhere" thing, my Xbox just spends most of its time gathering dust - I don't care much for the game 'looking better' or anything, but I'm used to playing games mostly on the PC now, (As most of my friends have either stopped playing or moved to PS4) so if they're on the PC that's where I'm going to buy them. I like the idea of it of course, but it doesn't seem like a great way to sell hardware. I suspect next-gen for MS will be small form-factor PCs that are Xbox branded, much like the Steam Machines. I don't think they'll do another console.

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The Xbox one thread https://www.beexcellenttoeachother.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9494	Page 35 of 52

Author:	myp [ Thu Feb 23, 2017 17:42 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
Doctor Glyndwr wrote: Lonewolves wrote: I suspect next-gen for MS will be small form-factor PCs that are Xbox branded, much like the Steam Machines. I don't think they'll do another console. Well, maybe. I thought this. But then if that's true, why does Scorpio exist? Unless it's just MS shipping the org chart, I suppose. I have given up trying to second guess Microsoft these days.

Author:	Zardoz [ Thu Feb 23, 2017 17:49 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
The 360 was superb. Especially the online Bezzie element. I was only drawn to a (cheap 2nd hand) PS3 to mop up some exclusives, just as it became a brilliant console itself. This generation though, like the Doc said, the Xbone just hasn't interested me at all. Initially I was put off by the OMFG YOU CANT PLAY 2ND HAND GAMES!!! but my interest never recovered when that turned out to be bullshit.

Author:	devilman [ Thu Feb 23, 2017 17:53 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
Doctor Glyndwr wrote: Bamba wrote: It was permanently hindered by the overall shitness of the PS3 controllers. Despite my utter hatred of all the (now walked back) shite aspects of Xbone when it was first announced, if Sony hadn't massively improved the controllers I would still have seriously considered an Xbone for that one reason. I concur with this. PS3 was just barely my preferred platform for the last year or two of the last generation (I bought GTA for PS3 rather than 360, for example), but that was very much despite the pads. I really like the PS4 ones though. I hammered the 360 as I got it before the PS3. However, since buying the PS3, I've pretty much only used it to play blu-rays, as there were no particular games I wanted to play on the PS3 and I was so used to the 360 controller, that the PS3 pad felt like a step backwards. That said, when it came to a console making way under the TV to house the Saturn I recently bought, it was the 360 that went - it's just far too noisy to use now, so I just never turn it on. Even after I cleaned out the console, it only seemed to get louder. With the PS4/Xbox One though, it had initially seemed fairly even, but now with VR and the better releases, I see no reason to get an Xbox One at all now, so it'll be a PS4 at some point in hte future for me.

Author:	Cras [ Thu Feb 23, 2017 17:56 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
Quality of hardware is almost entirely irrelevant though once you've lost the "so what do your mates have" game.

Author:	TheVision [ Thu Feb 23, 2017 17:58 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
Cras wrote: Quality of hardware is almost entirely irrelevant though once you've lost the "so what do your mates have" game. The friends I play online with all have an Xbox One... and spend as much time as I do moaning about them.

Author:	Zardoz [ Thu Feb 23, 2017 18:01 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
Yeah 'killer app' counts for a lot in the console game.

Author:	Satsuma [ Thu Feb 23, 2017 18:23 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
Doctor Glyndwr wrote: Zardoz wrote: WTF is Scorpio? Next year's Xbox One mk 2. It's much more powerful, whereas PS4 Pro is a bit more powerful. You'll probably know more than me, but isn't it correct that, whereas MS initially said it was going to be a true 4K machine, the most recent information from MS has shown that they are going to be utilising a chequerboard technique (MS call it something else, I forget what that is) similar to PS4 Pro to achieve a 4K resolution which may indicate it won't be as powerful as initially thought?

Author:	Bamba [ Thu Feb 23, 2017 21:56 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
Isn't true 4k gaming a bit of a pipe dream at the moment even in the PC space? Which would put it well beyond even the Scorpio.

Author:	TheCookie197 [ Thu Feb 23, 2017 22:06 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
Bamba wrote: Isn't true 4k gaming a bit of a pipe dream at the moment even in the PC space? Which would put it well beyond even the Scorpio. 4k gaming can be done on plenty of PC GPUs released in the last year or two - if you're willing to play at 30fps, which a fair amount of PC Gamers aren't. On console, which targets 30, it should be possible for a fair amount of games with how powerful the Scorpio will be.

Author:	Bamba [ Thu Feb 23, 2017 22:09 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
Cookie197 wrote: Bamba wrote: Isn't true 4k gaming a bit of a pipe dream at the moment even in the PC space? Which would put it well beyond even the Scorpio. 4k gaming can be done on plenty of PC GPUs released in the last year or two - if you're willing to play at 30fps, which a fair amount of PC Gamers aren't. On console, which targets 30, it should be possible for a fair amount of games with how powerful the Scorpio will be. Fair enough, I hadn't really paid much attention recently because it's not something I have a need for (what with only having 1080p displays around the place).

Author:	Satsuma [ Thu Feb 23, 2017 22:20 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
Let's be fair, we don't know how powerful Scorpio will or won't be: there isn't much detail in the specs released.

Author:	asfish [ Fri Feb 24, 2017 10:27 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
Satsuma wrote: Let's be fair, we don't know how powerful Scorpio will or won't be: there isn't much detail in the specs released. I read that it will have an 8 Core CPU from a yet to be announced manufacturer. Also will contain a graphics card with 6 Teraflops of processing power , a 1080 has around 8.9 Teraflops. By comparison the current Xbox One has 1.32 and the PS4 1.84 So a lot better on the graphics side than current consoles but 50% less that current best PC gaming cards. I got Xbox One on the release day, its used mostly for Skype, Plex, Amazon Video and right now Youtube for my son to watch Mr Men shows I like it and I have 59 games on the storage from Gold, but never play console games, in the day my son will just go nuts and demand Youtube and at night we are watching TV. Whilst I'm not as current on gaming as a lot of people here, my gut and limited info tells me that if I wanted a good gaming console then the PS4 would be the way to go. Will problay get one of those as some point as I like to collect, but first its Wii-U

Author:	TheVision [ Thu Apr 06, 2017 15:08 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
The specs for the Scorpio have been revealed and now I know what it's like to own a PC that I thought was cutting edge. Apparently it offers true 4K gaming, 6 teraflops of power, 326 GB/'s of memory bandwidth and 8 CPU cores. All this and more (no, not really more as there's no games you'd want to play on it) will be available "Holiday 2017". I'm taking my holiday on the 24th May so get your pre-orders in for then!

Author:	LewieP [ Thu Apr 06, 2017 15:09 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
BOOOOOORRRRRRRING. Is it powerful enough to play Scalebound?

Author:	TheCookie197 [ Thu Apr 06, 2017 15:11 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
12GB of GDDR5 too. Wonder if they've gone the Sony route of having that the only RAM in the system? Octocore processor is kinda.. meh. For the price point of consoles I'd assume that means still an older AMD CPU.. which is pretty weird to pair with such a powerful GPU.

Author:	TheVision [ Thu Apr 06, 2017 15:12 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
LewieP wrote: BOOOOOORRRRRRRING. Is it powerful enough to play Scalebound? Probably but the chances of it being released on the Xbox One are very slim. Never mind. Console yourself in a plethora of indie type games that you've never heard of or have no intention of playing because there seems to be loads of them released every week.

Author:	Satsuma [ Thu Apr 06, 2017 15:16 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
IM ASSUMING (edit) this is the Digital Foundry video? I'm going to wait for Hearty to tell me if this is any good or not.

Author:	LewieP [ Thu Apr 06, 2017 15:19 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
Cookie197 wrote: 12GB of GDDR5 too. Wonder if they've gone the Sony route of having that the only RAM in the system? Octocore processor is kinda.. meh. For the price point of consoles I'd assume that means still an older AMD CPU.. which is pretty weird to pair with such a powerful GPU. Yeah the esram is gone. 4gb is reserved for the system, so 8gb for games. Presumably in part because they're now supporting (mandating) 4k game recording/streaming.

Author:	Grim... [ Thu Apr 06, 2017 19:11 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
I think it looks pretty good.

Author:	Hearthly [ Thu Apr 06, 2017 20:44 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
The specs are definitely tasty but the CPU hasn't scaled up anywhere near as much as the GPU has, although there is much talk of super-fancy custom hardware shenanigans going on to offset that. (They're talking about 'custom x86' architecture for the CPU but as best I can tell they're still basically the weak Jaguar cores albeit 'evolved' or something.) My fear is it'll be hamstrung by all games having to run on the base XBox One hardware as well (same as happened with PS4/PS4 Pro I believe?), so what we're actually going to end up with is games that are 900/1080p@30FPS on XBox One are going to be rendered at 4K on Scorpio but also at 30FPS. (Except where the game is rendered at 60FPS on XBox One as well, so Forza and suchlike.) If they'd just say 'everything is 1080p@60FPS on Scorpio' I'd be all over it like a cheap suit. Also disappointing to see a traditional hard drive in there, SSDs are effectively mainstream now, so a spinning disk in there will slow loading down. It's very much a 'wait and see' as far as I'm concerned, nothing thusfar in the XB1/PS4 era has had me jump in and buy either console. (This being the first console generation ever that I've not owned a current console out of, unless you count the Wii-U.) Plus of course it all comes down to the games, if it's just stuff I can get on PC (which is already my primary gaming platform) then there's no reason to get a console to play those same games. (Which is why I got the Wii-U, because Nintendo games.)

Author:	Satsuma [ Thu Apr 06, 2017 21:10 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
I don't understand clockspeeds and overclocking. Can someone ELI5?

Author:	myp [ Thu Apr 06, 2017 22:50 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
Didn't they say the original Bone would take advantage of the cloud? I basically don't believe a word they say.

Author:	TheVision [ Thu Apr 06, 2017 22:59 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
Lonewolves wrote: Didn't they say the original Bone would take advantage of the cloud? I basically don't believe a word they say. It kind of does in the fact that all your saves and video clips are on there... but yeah... I know. Apparently Crackdown 3 will make full use of it to feature a massive, fully destructible world. The likes of which we've never seen before.

Author:	LewieP [ Fri Apr 07, 2017 3:11 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
Putting an SSD in it would drive the price up like crazy, and they can just sell a separate SSD to anyone who is happy to pay through the nose for an SSD. They are getting cheaper, but you couldn't really get away with a 128gb drive, and 256gb+ drives are still too expensive to include by default. TheVision wrote: Lonewolves wrote: Didn't they say the original Bone would take advantage of the cloud? I basically don't believe a word they say. It kind of does in the fact that all your saves and video clips are on there... but yeah... I know. Apparently Crackdown 3 will make full use of it to feature a massive, fully destructible world. The likes of which we've never seen before. Crackdown 3 is more likely to be cancelled than to convince anyone of the practical implementations of the cloud for offsetting realtime processing.

Author:	Sir Taxalot [ Fri Apr 07, 2017 6:05 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
Hearthly wrote: If they'd just say 'everything is 1080p@60FPS on Scorpio' I'd be all over it like a cheap suit. It'd look great on your 720p telly

Author:	Hearthly [ Fri Apr 07, 2017 8:43 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
Sir Taxalot wrote: Hearthly wrote: If they'd just say 'everything is 1080p@60FPS on Scorpio' I'd be all over it like a cheap suit. It'd look great on your 720p telly Well it'd be a splendid driver for me to get a 4K telly I originally bought the 40 inch 720p telly specifically for my XBox 360 (prior to that I'd been perfectly happy with a very nice widescreen Sony Trinitron). Obviously I'll replace my trusty old 720p telly when I've got a motivation to do so, but it's fine for films/Netflix/iPlayer/etc and the only gaming I do on there is XBox 360/Wii-U/XBox, none of which need more than 720p. LewieP wrote: Putting an SSD in it would drive the price up like crazy, and they can just sell a separate SSD to anyone who is happy to pay through the nose for an SSD. They are getting cheaper, but you couldn't really get away with a 128gb drive, and 256gb+ drives are still too expensive to include by default. Admittedly prices have gone up recently thanks to the Brexit pound effect, but 256GB SSDs can be had for about £70 to the end consumer, so obviously MS can get them a lot cheaper than that. A 256GB SSD alongside a 1TB hard drive would be a good combo I think, and the system could intelligently cache the most used games to the SSD, and archive off less/unplayed games to the hard drive. I find hard drive loading times excruciatingly painful these days, and it's not just games either, but system loading times, patching/update duration etc - all of which are massively, massively faster on SSD based systems.

Author:	LewieP [ Fri Apr 07, 2017 8:51 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
But what's the advantage of forcing people to buy an SSD rather than supporting it as an option? Are you suggesting it should have two hard drive bays?

Author:	TheVision [ Fri Apr 07, 2017 9:06 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
My Xbox one has a hybrid drive. I can't tell you if it makes a difference as I have nothing to compare it to.

Author:	Bamba [ Fri Apr 07, 2017 9:28 ]
Post subject:	Re: The Xbox one thread
Satsuma wrote: I don't understand clockspeeds and overclocking. Can someone ELI5? Clockspeed: number of 'cycles' a second; basically the speed of something. So when someone talks about a processor running at 3.5Ghz that's the clockspeed and is basically the number of instructions it can process in a second (3.5 billion in that example). Way back in the day, raw clockspeed was the only measure of performance of a CPU. But then they started developing multi-core chips so there's more to it all now, though a higher clockspeed is obviously better. Overclocking: inducing a bit of hardware (so CPU or GPU or apparently even RAM and monitors) to run faster than it's default clockspeed. In real terms these things are limited to a given clockspeed because that's the speed the manufacturer is happy it can run without overheating and frying. If you can keep the temperature down with improved cooling solutions though, and you're willing to take the risk, you can push stuff over the default to get better performance.