Microsoft Disputes PS4 Power Advantage

[Aesthetical Quietus]

Spoiler: Spoiled to save room

Now, it's my understanding that Microsoft has inferior architecture. That the Xbox One has one chip doing the same things that PS4 has divided among three chips. And that seems to be an issue that could cause a system failure in extended play. Not helped by the less than stellar reputation that the 360 had when it came to failing.

Of course, the reason it's so big is to help with the cooling process. Still not convinced it won't fail in time. Nor am I convinced that the system can handle the same processing as the PS4. The PS4 was designed to download games in the background while you play. It seems (according to a chart I saw) that Xbox One can, too. But I'm thinking they added that after they realized it was a good idea and I'm not certain it's something that the system will do well.

Honestly, it seems that Microsoft is playing catch up already. They pulled all those 180's on the DRM and such. They added the ability to record and upload video. I think they even stated that the system doesn't need the Kinect to work (though I think others have since said otherwise).

In comparison, PS4 has not made any changes.

And with all those recent changes, I'm not certain that the system should be coming out as soon as it is. Can you completely change a system six months before it launches and have it work?

And, of course, the final question. Which system will have better processing and framerate? I doubt graphics will vary much, especially in multiplatform titles, but which is better as the putting it all together?

I'd like to know what has influenced your opinion to give you the indication that they have inferior architecture? I may be misunderstanding what you mean by architecture, as I have no idea what you mean by the PS4 having three chips to the Xbox One's one. As far as I know (I am of course liable to be wrong, I haven't been exactly been following the news on it too closely), there's no real significant difference between the two. They're both running a custom AMD SoC with 8 cores, the main difference being the PS4 getting GDDR5 RAM, and 6 more Compute Units.

I can't remember where I read it, as it was a while back, but I remember it was implied that since the Xbox One only had one chip to use for processing, it would likely run much hotter. Which is why it is a bigger system to allow it to cool off the system. But, assuming the system really does run hotter, it would probably reduce it's lifespan. Hence why I said that to my understanding the architecture is inferior.

They both have roughly the same architecture as far as I can tell, and considering the power advantages the PS4 has it will run hotter (at least on paper, we have no idea what they're actually using to cool these systems).

I'm pretty sure Microsoft is well aware of it's reputation with the 360 on hardware failures, they know they can't have two consoles in a row with the same sort of problems, it will be a far bigger PR problem than less powerful hardware.

Everything will fail in time, it's the nature of electronics. A bigger, cooler box merely reduces the chances of it happening. It can't handle the processing the PS4 can, they don't have the power; however downloading/storing/installing in the background is something that is not hard to do. (The network/hard-drive is far too slow to even begin to have an influence on performance).

I'd say that everything that happened with the 360 says otherwise. They pretty much never fixed the RROD issue. Even much later consoles were still dying due to the same issue. And, Microsoft has never released any statistics on the failure rate. But I know I have heard estimates as high as 50% [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_problems]. Even the low end is around 20% which is still very high. And when they did fix it, the E74 issue sprang up.

As for how capable either system is at downloading, I can't say. But I do know that while PS3 would let me download in the background, that would stop if I booted up a game. So, it couldn't have been that trivial.

That's precisely why I think they know they can't let it happen again. The 360's tech was brand new for it's time, GPUs had never been done that way (Unified shaders didn't come to the PC for a long time after the 360 shipped). Of course I know nothing of their internal policies and they could be about to shoot themselves in the foot even more.

That download pausing is not because of the power requirements, as I said it's relatively low-cost to implement something like that (especially if the servers are further away). The problem was that it opens up an attack vector, that is you could hack online multiplayer, or the marketplace, or the console; it wouldn't be easy, but someone would eventually do it. Plus it removes all the fringe cases for testing, and means you won't require a reboot when a download finishes (asset checks are done on launch, at least for the 360/XNA developed games, I'm assuming the PS3 is the same). It's something you can add in later, but it does require extra effort to make sure the console works as expected.

Most of their 180's have been mostly PR moves, nothing that could really affect the console too much. The recording of video could actually be performance intensive if they were doing it in a silly way, if they simply stored the result of the draw calls into a circular buffer that's big enough to store the length of the video, then it would only be memory/hard-drive intensive, a single CPU core could handle that pretty easily. It doesn't need the Kinect, you can have it unplugged. It only ships with the Kinect, and that's because Microsoft realised that the kinect was a chicken-egg problem, people don't develop for it because not everyone has it; and people aren't picking it up because people aren't developing for it. They tried to use the new generation to change that.

Are you implying that backtracking on the Online Requirement and DRM was a PR move? I actually hope you're wrong. As that would imply they would be willing to put those back in at a later date. Something that would piss off a lot of people. The mere threat of that is enough to turn several people I know off of the system. And we don't know the details of the DRM (and yes, it was DRM). But considering the original intent was to completely copy the game to the systems hard drive and render the disc effectively useless, I would say they had to make some pretty big changes since it now reads the disc to play it (or does it? I've just read otherwise). Big enough to require a Day One patch.

And honestly, I don't even think Microsoft knows what's the deal with Kinect. I've heard it was required and the system absolutely wouldn't work without Kinect. Then, I heard it could be turned off, but not completely. Then, that it could be completely turned off. Then, that it wasn't required. Then, I heard it actually is required. Now, there's rumor of a Kinect-less Xbox One next year.

They seriously don't even know what they are selling or what it needs to work.

Yes I am, it was a PR move in that they realized that people weren't willing to accept those requirements for the benefits it would've allowed the console to have. It would've been foolish to stick to their guns for a feature that people weren't desperate to have (the disc-free play). I don't think they'd be silly enough to force the matter, I think if it came back it would be either optional, or only on games that you don't already have the disc in for. In any case, I was implying that it's a PR issue because handling it software side is essentially an abstracted step (if(DRMCheck()){loadGame();})No, we don't know the details of the DRM, which is Microsoft's problem, they let people speculate and their imaginations took off running (not that that's a bad thing).
Yes, it is DRM, Microsoft and Sony are not only trying to sell the consoles to us but also to the publishers, and they know that the publishers are the more important part of that equation. Eventually gamers will come around if there are enough good games, Publishers aren't going to rush to develop for a console if it's just going to be pirated.
It of course depends on how they implement it, but I think they will install the game and use the disc for DRM checking, which won't be that massive of a change (merely requiring them to make sure their DRM check step can't be worked around).
The disc drive is going to be too slow to be able to provide next-gen graphics at any kind of decent load-speed in my opinion.

Microsoft has certainly back-stepped on the Kinect, and I'm not even going to pretend to know what they thought they were doing. Last I heard it ships with it, but isn't required. I think the Kinect-less Xbox one would happen if the Xbox-one doesn't reach the sales quota they want, they desperately want to push the Kinect as it's a unique feature, and if everyone has one developers can count on it being there, but they don't want to do that at the cost of sales. Hence the PR cluster-fuck.

Sony have played it pretty safe this generation, stronger hardware that's not radically different (i.e., not using the cell processor), no risky moves (such as DRM/Kinect), and their competitor has been making stumbles. They haven't need to make any changes, and any that they did make would make them look weaker.

As I mentioned earlier, most of their changes have been PR moves. It's mostly been minor OS edits and minor tech changes, a minor CPU clock upgrade and stripping the new DRM system out is going to mean next to nothing in terms of the bigger console picture.

They played it safe? No. Microsoft played it stupid. They tried to force Online requirements and DRM on console gamers. They made their console inconvenient to the general player. They forgot that people had other options. Sony actually gave a Gaming System. Most of the things that Microsoft touted as "Game Changing" Sony also has. And without a Pay Wall.

Coupled with PR disaster after PR disaster, Microsoft hurt their image in the gaming community. And if you don't believe me, check out PS4 and Xbox One vids on Youtube. PS4 generally garners 90% or better likes while Xbox has a two-thirds dislikes.

Making sure your console is easy to develop for is not playing it safe. I'm not saying Sony is a master of Chess in this regard. Merely that they didn't screw up and have been wise to capitalize on the competitions fumbles.

I'd argue that both happened, Sony played it safe by sticking to regular things, Microsoft tried to push features without properly interpreting the way the public would see it. As I mentioned earlier, the DRM/Online requirements was an attempt to bring disc-free gaming into play, while keeping the publishers happy. It backfired badly in terms of PR. What do you mean without a Pay Wall, last I heard they're going to require PS Plus for online play.

They did, and they're now playing catch-up. My point was that they haven't needed to make any changes with the PS4, Microsoft has handed that to them with all the PR disasters. Although, that being said, it is important to remember that the Gaming community has a very vocal subset that don't really follow through (remember L4D2?).

Actually it pretty much is playing it safe, there's no way for that to backfire. You won't hear developers (indie or otherwise) complaining about making their jobs easier, it means they get to spend more time implementing features rather than working on getting the game engine running at an optimal performance. Actually, fun note, you didn't hear much about it but Microsoft made the same sort of moves for the 360. They developed the XNA library which is a .NET library that abstracts a lot of the nasty DirectX handling, and as an added bonus it also means you get automatic garbage collection. Of course, they didn't make it easy to get into their marketplace, which was their main problem.

I'm also not saying playing it safe is a bad thing, Microsoft has a lot more money to play around with, letting them do their business and playing to your strengths is a bloody smart move. Use your opponent's strength against them and all that.

The PS4 will, almost without a doubt, but it won't be by much. Developers will find a way to squeeze that extra power out, but it won't happen for a while. You won't notice it until a lot closer to the end of the consoles life-time, and the multi-platform titles will show it to an even lesser extent. Much like the current consoles the extra power will be used blindly at first while developers get used to it, then as the generation goes on they will settle in and find all the little tricks to stretching out the power (such as doing certain operations before others, building this shader operation this way because the GPU can do it .01% faster, etc, etc). It won't be as bad as this generation was because the consoles are pretty similar to PCs, unlike last time. The 360 introduced unified shaders (and a few other things) and the PS3 had the cell processor, which required a fair bit of work to get used to.

This is true of all consoles. Compare early Genesis games to later ones. Compare early PS One games to later ones. As developers get used to the hardware, they learn how to push it and take advantage of it. It even shows up in things like loading.

Yes, I am aware of that, that's why I made the point. My point was that in the end the consoles and their hardware will only do so much, it's what the developers do with it that makes it special. Which has always been my problem with the console wars, people argue over the hardware when the only people that should be worrying about that are the people developing for it. Only have the money for one console? Stand back and see which is the best after a couple of months, you'll get it cheaper then anyway. Buy any hardware on day one and you pay for it, it's called the bleeding edge for a reason.