Microsoft delayed production of the Xbox Series X and S consoles to get the full RDNA 2 feature set Comments
- Kangal
- Hq4
I think this was the perfect opportunity for MS to one-up and beat the console race, OR vice-versa for Sony to do it, by pulling a "pro move".
And what I mean about that is that MS should have trolled Sony, by developing a next-gen console that is launching later (December), priced much higher (USD $600), have worse specs (512gb SSD, 12GB RAM, 3.0GHz 8core/8thread, 32cu RDNA-1 GPU), be much hotter (crappy fans), be much louder (crappy fans), look uglier (eg Weird fins), have a confusing name (eg Xbox Series X), and have gimmicky launch titles (eg Minecraft 4K edition). So it's basically a 4K-checkerboard console with NO RayTracing. We know eventually the specs and the design would leak to their competitor (eg October 2019). This would've meant Sony, for example, plays things safe/easy by developing a PS5 that's even worse, in terms of features (No RayTracing), and specs (20%-60% slower), and at a higher $600 price, all to stay in status-quo to help the company profit-margin.
2) And very early on MS has a full announcement of their next-gen console. Yep, even going as far as sending lots of units to game publishers to work on, some individual units to online reviewers, and even limited supply to retailers. Everyone is questioning their tactic, saying the executives are out of touch. Whilst MS justifies it by saying the somewhat recent Xbox One X is still powerful. Then BAM!!! at the last minute (eg October 2020), MS apologises and cancels the product just before launch. Then cite the covid restrictions, supply issues, etc etc as the culprit. But promises to release the system very soon when they are ready. If people can forgive delaying the Olympics, they can forgive a delayed console. A slimy business move indeed. It will lead to the half-baked PS5 competing with itself, which doesn't matter, as PS4 had won the current-gen console race, and the early victory is pointless as they have stock shortages and consumers have less expendable income.
3) Then MS "re-develops" the next-gen console to actually release a year later, in Aug 2021. By this period, they would have stopped the old-gen Xbox One/S/X production and ended stock. And released the "Xbox Two" as a better named, beautiful console, that runs cold, runs silent, ships with the Elite2 controller, and has a couple awesome exclusive games. It would run all enhanced "XB1X" games, and it supports next-gen games, at 120fps but 1080p but upscaled to output at 4K-HDR-RayTracing. The games the studious optimised in early 2020, now in late 2021, run perfectly. Due to the extra incubation time, they were able to upgrade some key components; such as 3.0GHz 8c/8t Zen2 to a 4.0GHz 8c/16t Zen3 CPU, the 12GB RAM to 16GB RAM, and the 32cu GPU from RDNA-1 to RDNA-2+. This still puts its specs only at a slight upgrade to the Xbox One X... but pricing has been adjusted to equal the discounted Xbox One X at a very competitive $300 price. Immediately it makes all other PS4/XB1 units redundant. Most controversial aspect is it has soldered 512GB nVme SSD and lacks a Disc tray, so it is Digital Only, which gives a monopoly to MS for game sales and streaming. With this delayed release no reviewers were able to get their hands-on, but all physical retsilers were sent with having full stock on Day 1. Thus, it is ready for sale right away, shocks the industry and defeats the 1 year old $600 PS5 on a strict value proposition.
4) But wait, there's more!
Upon release of the Xbox Two, two weeks later MS holds a press release/announcement. This is their true fifth-gen console aptly named "The Xbox V". It's even better named, more beautiful design, runs silent, runs cool, and is better and cheaper than expected. The next day and following, there are ads for it everywhere on TV, Radio, Billboards, and everywhere online. Whilst pre-orders start the next week, for a sweet $500 price, with heaps of stock but only in Microsoft's own warehouses boxed and ready. They would also have a new 5th-gen controller dubbed "XP5" for Xbox Pad 5 with an updated design. This shares the upgraded parts of the Xbox Two, but beefs things up such as, the User Replaceable 1TB nVme SSD, the more ample 32GB GDDR6 memory, and a much more powerful 64cu GPU. Not to mention a much more polished API, Software, and launch titles/exclusives (not gimmicky). Overall there's a huge and noticeable (30%-90%) performance difference between the next-gen consoles when comparing the "half-baked PS5" versus the "enhanced Xbox V". This means PS5 suffers immensely with all third-party releases for the entire generation (not enough RAM, worse APIs, and slower CPU and GPU), and this new console package with such an instant reveal and launch puts Sony at a difficult position. Sony and their half-baked PS5 is a less capable 1440p console compared to the 4K console Xbox V, and its too expensive compared to the adequate1080p Xbox Two. Hence, having an early victory in 2020 for Sony proves useless in terms of profit and market share, but turns out to be a disadvantage, and the console race really heats up.
- Anonymous
- 7tP
"Sony confirmed that the PlayStation 5 will lack Variable Rate Shading." This statement is not correct. Sony has not said anything about VRS - nether confirmed or denied.
- r31ya
- sEG
Anonymous, 26 Nov 2020And where did Microsoft say that they were forcing developers to use all the features since th... moreyup, the late final dev tools is speculated as the reason it fell behind against PS5 in multiplats performance.
PS5 whose dev tool is pretty close to be carry over to ps4 giving a lot of advantages in early titles. That being said, PS5 also have several features that haven't being used fully as well so yeah. In the future the performance will get better for both of them.
my early expectation on PS5 vs Xbox is
Xbox will able to churn more effect (ray tracing and such)
PS5 will able to churn more assets (3d models and such)
And it seems early digital foundry shows pretty close to that expectation.
More ray tracing in Xbox but more detail asset in PS5.
- Boggy-Stefy
- p%B
[deleted post]And a true gamer will know that some random guy from YouTube playing a game that you want, doesn't mean that you would like it too.
Also, some bad reviews of a game (made again by some random guys), doesn't mean you will not like the game. I played games that had bad reviews, but I liked.
Also, those random guys are sometimes paid to give certain type of reviews.
Maybe to get an idea, yes, but to base your purchased just on what some random guy on internet said, well, I am sorry for your money then. Especially when you buy a game. When opinions can be fully subjective.
- Anonymous
- JEH
Good to read, Sony did a similar thing last gen with the memory and that paid off for them this time MS have got the upper hand by waiting.
I see the early Multiformat game comparisons were favouring the PS5 in areas it shouldn't of, this is now being rectified with the devs now issuing patches for Dirt 5, AC Valhalla for Series X, the Valhalla patch also knocks up the Framerates from 30 to 60fps s on the Series S it just shows what the devs will be able to do once they get fully to grips with the Series X architecture and the games are not based on current gen.
- Lilian
- Iks
Would of been nice if they switched to Zen 3 with that delay. Good job Microsoft, anyway. Users can wait a little bit for a better experience.
- Sebastian
- NiL
Anonymous, 25 Nov 2020Where does 'Sony confirmed that PS5 doesn't have VRS'? Aren't you opening ... moreMicrosoft themselves have stated their consoles are the only consoles that feature full RDNA 2.
- Rareart1
- YHV
Boggy-Stefy, 26 Nov 2020For me, PS exclusives are not that appealing. Also, I lose more money like that. Because I buy... more i was happy with kingdom hearts 3, until after I cleared mount Olympus and was forced to play a spaceship mode with stupid missions. I have not been able to pass the motorcycle escape scene in final fantasy 7, despite countless attempts. Oh well, at least I have a couple of madden games to play.
- Anonymous
- gJt
Yhey should have spent more time making it more reliable. Their consoles have an appaling track record .
- Anonymous
- kuR
Anonymous, 25 Nov 2020so in other words, RDNA 2 will help Xbox to compensate for its less capable hardware. noted.Not really. The Xbox is more capable, but needs better dev tools to unlock the full potential. Which are hopefully released soon.
- Boggy-Stefy
- p%B
For me, PS exclusives are not that appealing. Also, I lose more money like that. Because I buy the game, try it for some time, get bored or do not like it, than I sell it with 50% of the money. Imagine buying 2-3 games for 60EUR/each and do not like them (for various reasons). And then resell them to special gaming shops with 50% less. Not very good deals.
With Game Pass, true I pay 10EUR/month. But I can try 5-10 games per month. If I do not like them I just uninstall them and try the next game. That's it. I lose 10EUR/month.
Is also true, that in this rhythm, I will have no new games to try out from Game Pass library in 4-5 months time. But, in this case, I will just cancel my subscription, wait 2-3 months for new games to be added and then reopen my subscription again. Still better than to wait 2-3 month for some Sony exclusive, pay 60EUR for it and not liking it. I lose 30EUR for nothing.
If Sony will invest more time and money into PS Now to make it more appealing, that will be another thing. But, even Sony CEO admitted that for them that kind of service is not the most important thing. So.. Game Pass and Xbox it is for me.
PS: I do admit, I am very picky with my games. I got bored after 30 minutes playing Bloodborne (because it was too hard and I kept dying). And after 1-2hours of playing Horizon Zero Dawn. Also, other non exclusives games (like Prey, Deus Ex). But I did like (and also finished), The Last of Us, The Order 1886 or Shadow of the Colossus.
- David
- k0w
uk7866, 25 Nov 2020Xbox series X is definitely less capable. There's countless vids already providing this.Bruh you literally just showed how the ps5 has less compute units. The ps5 from a hardware perspective is less powerful
- Anonymous
- H{T
dude111, 25 Nov 2020It doesn't look like it for the S The comparisons from Digital Foundry of the same game ... moreAnd where did Microsoft say that they were forcing developers to use all the features since they didn't it is up to the developer to optimize the game as they see fit at least until the GDK's and the SDK's are further optimized
- PetalPax
- 7tV
sixtymes, 25 Nov 2020smart on Microsoft's part. caring about the customer experience. Shame Sony did not do th... moreDid you even read what it does? Seems worthless to wait for such a feature and jeopardize sales.
- Winbrick
- YiR
ReapThiS, 26 Nov 2020Yeah shame on Sony all you have is amazing exclusives. The Xbox has been readily available and... more>"The Xbox has been readily available and people don’t want it..."
Odd take when you can watch both the Series S and Series X sell for twice their retail price on eBay.
You don't have to fabricate arguments against a console you don't prefer to make a valid point. It's not a prerequisite.
- Anonymous
- IJq
Anonymous, 25 Nov 2020Where does 'Sony confirmed that PS5 doesn't have VRS'? Aren't you opening ... moreUse of this feature is not, or not openly available in the dev tools for the ps5. Sony has either hidden this feature or does not support it. Don't see why they would block it's use so they must not support it.
- Anonymous
- 6Pp
Ugh. For the umpteenth time, Sony opted for a custom Geometry Engine (the part that contains vrs function) and decided to go with a proprietary approach to VRS. There are patents for VRS tech under Mark Cerny's name that detail a different approach that would produce the same or arguably (in some circumstances) better results than RDNA 2 VRS.
For those interested read the top patent from here, it was given Grant Status way back in 2019 btw, whilst the same patent got a Application status in 2020.
https://patents.justia.com/inventor/mark-evan-cerny
This makes more sense considering that VRS-like and culling tech in general is used extensively for VR applications (often with foveated rendering to begin with which packs details in the center and keeps the scene less gpu dense on the edges),something PS needed but not MS so they probably went with more standard parts (different, not superior or inferior) that would allow future inter operability between PC and xbox (especially for xcloud)
- Anonymous
- 2Wx
Not that it truly matters TBH.
By the time the extra feature sets become more important, I can bet the Pro versions of the consoles that will make the PS5 (vanilla) and Series X seem obsolete.
- Anonymous
- 7X2
keep waiting guys!!!! yes!!! just keep waiting!!!!
- r31ya
- sEG
NotAnOpinion, 26 Nov 2020I'm just loving the idea that everyone are overlooking that fact that the PS5 memory modu... moreThe heat test is done by tech jesus who then points out, it may have been designed to reach and survive that temperature.
While he points one concern on that memory module, he points out the cooling is way better than ps4, way quiet, tough compared to high end pc, its still sub-optimal due to one memory concern that may be by design.
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