Who's ready for the "Xbox 2"?

Who's ready for XBox 2?

The XBox One definately is.

We already discovered earlier this year that it's more powerful than the PS 4.

What I don't understand is what's to stop Sony from copying Microsoft, like they did with achievements and Kinect, and pool the resources of all the online Playstations to increase their own processing power?

 

We paid $500 for an Xbox One with Kinect. 24 hrs = 1M consoles sold @ launch. I think we're quite capable of throwing money at things we want. The trick is proving the technical prowess in a way that decimates your opposition. You're also still responding
in a way that suggest a new Xbox replaces the current one, which is incorrect. Like the Surface 3 is an affordable tablet with great capabilities, the Surface Pro is the flagship. Both sell, and both serve a purpose.

The trick is showcasing something that is noticeably stronger. Creating two price-points for two devices that work with one another effortlessly (something that Microsoft is all about now with Win10 on all their devices) can work. Your entry-level will
sell better, no arguments there. You'd be surprised how successful a higher end device would sell.

For reference, see every Apple product ever made. People are dumb enough to spend more for a logo, at least with an Xbox that surpasses the XB1 you could literally see and experience the difference.

 

@Azrael008uj: "We already discovered earlier this year that it's more powerful than the PS 4."

You do know that the Xbox One is technically less-powerful than the PS4 graphically, right? Microsoft spent more money on computing power while Sony spent more time on graphical power, though Microsoft can find more benefits all-around (like better HD audio
processing), we've seen how the Xbox One just isn't quite up to the task graphically as Sony's PS4 is (games frequently come out @ 720p on XB1 vs. 900p on PS4). That doesn't make it a better console, but we see it selling a helluva lot better than the XB1
is overall.

And Sony definitely borrowed from Microsoft with a lot of its online approach, but Xbox Live still remains the more connected online community and Azure (Microsoft's cloud platform) is significantly more powerful than all Sony has to offer in this department.

 

You cannot compare PC's like the Surface to a games console they perform different functions and the consumer base is completely different. There is a genuine market for PC's that have different levels of functionality. There is not that market for consoles,
if you have a more powerful Xbox One then all console users want it, no gamer is going to settle for a lesser model of the same console or be content that a version with more horses under the hood is released in tandem. Chalk and cheese, and like I keep
repeating the gaming PC sector does exactly what you are requesting already and does it better.

 

Everyone knew that the XBox ONE was technically less powerful than the PS 4 at launch.

However it has since been revealed they are able to increase it's processing power exponentially.

It's been a year and not a single game has come close to tapping the full power of the XBox ONE.

They're only beginning to make a start with with "Crackdown".

People completely misunderstood the point in the XBox ONE always being online in the first place.

People are quick to forget how long their consoles are supposed to last them as well.

 

Not me, I am enjoying my Xbox One. On the 22nd of this month Xbox One will be 2 years old. And they have not squeezed the power of the Xbox One yet. Halo 5 is the beginning of what they can do. EA also thinks so, and has said that they are not tapped
out. If you need further evidence of this, look at Xbox 360 games in 2007, and then look at Rise of the Tomb Raider on Xbox 360 in 2015.

Developers find new ways to be creative, learn the architecture better and find ways to squeeze power out of an console. This is just silly

 

@SchroederRock, thank you for actually bringing an interesting discussion to the table, while a don't agree with your view, you've clearly put in the effort of making a thread worth reading instead of the usual derp some people post.

on topic, i don't think it's time to talk about a new or refreshed console yet for a number of reasons, making a Xbox One Point Five that is a little more powerful would alienate the millions of gamers that already have a console, and will either pay out
the nose for a new console, be jaded and ditch Xbox altogether, or be left in the dust as they make new games for the One Point Five console that maxes out it's power, that will run very poorly on the One. also cannot forget that MS also stated from the start
that this console will be a 10 year console, how many gamers will revolt against MS if they 180 yet again.

i still think the best days are still ahead for the Xbox One, just looking at the change from the launch games on the 360, to Halo 4 and Tomb Raider, i think we still have a few years before this consoles really start to shine(IMO).

 

...on topic, i don't think it's time to talk about a new or refreshed console yet for a number of reasons, making a Xbox One Point Five that is a little more powerful would alienate the millions of gamers that already
have a console, and will either pay out the nose for a new console, be jaded and ditch Xbox altogether, or be left in the dust as they make new games for the One Point Five console that maxes out it's power, that will run very poorly on the One.

Exactly. So many people get a 'great idea' rolling and the more they think about it, the more they like it... so they start "building their case" to support it. Thing is, most
people tend to build their case around the pros and either ignore the cons altogether, or easily dismiss them, when they often can not or should not be dismissed at all... let alone so easily. You can't dissect a pie and change the pieces you want changed
without affecting how they all fit together.

Just to mention a few pieces... How many threads have turned into ***** sessions over how ridiculous it is that game devs can't release a full game that actually works and doesn't
require a multiple GB day one update?

Who would like to be told that Halo 6 "could have been more"... but... well, the devs had to make the game for 2 versions of the Xbox. The One and the Two. So compromises had to
be made for publisher deadlines and budget and such. Go to the Guardians forum and look at the number of threads whining over split screen being dropped and you can see how well people take to having their gaming experience compromised to allow for progress.

also cannot forget that MS also stated from the start that this console will be a 10 year console, how many gamers will revolt against MS if they 180 yet again.

Can't say I'd be all sunshine and bunnies over it.

i still think the best days are still ahead for the Xbox One, just looking at the change from the launch games on the 360, to Halo 4 and Tomb Raider, i think we still have a few years before this consoles really start
to shine(IMO).

I agree. Take a look at any game series that lasted over the lifespan of the 360. Mass Effect and Gears come to mind off the top of my head. The difference between the first and
last is substantial... and it wasn't due to a hardware change... it was due to devs getting more efficient with the hardware that was there... which didn't happen overnight and in some cases not even in the first half of the console's life cycle.

 

@Genchy - I disagree with you. When you have a unified system setup where you can pick enthusiast for affordability, people will go where they want to go. Believe me, plenty of people have said to me "I want the best" and others tell me "I have to wait
for it to be $X before I can afford it". This is, of course, relating to game consoles. Plenty of my friends still are stuck on Xbox 360 because they don't have $500 to spend on a console. Other friends of mine who have more financial freedom and are into
the best thing available would spend the extra money.

The big opportunity for a refreshed console is the XB1 can continue to serve for 10+ years if you have that "enthusiast" console capable of accepting expandable hardware. With how the consumer market works there's an absolute opportunity for two consoles
to exist simultaneously. Just look at the Xbox 360 hardware sales in the first year of the Xbox One when it was still moving 250,000+ units because it was marked at or under $199. That's more than evidence enough that bigger and better can work with cheaper
and accessible.

The Surface market also fits PERFECTLY into this situation because they're products that do the same thing but are capable of different things. One is aimed at getting you into the Surface tablet market while the other is aimed at being the end-all-be-all
tablet that replaces your laptop.

 

@A Blue Illusion - The Xbox One wouldn't be retired. That's my point from the very beginning. The Xbox 360 was supported beyond the release of the XB1 and people still purchased it. Don't believe me? Go look at the sales reporting on the console which
was selling about 35-40% of the volume that the XB1 was selling in its first few months in 2013-2014. It's not a "180" when you introduce two consoles that work 100% together with one being technically advanced and the other being an accessible product. You
start with one. After a while, if you want to save the pennies, you can jump to the next.

 

@Zero Divided - Thanks, it's a thought I've been mulling over for a year. I'm not suggesting Microsoft reveal the next Xbox today, or even for 2016. There's no way it would happen. However, I could see 2017-2018 being a window where Microsoft says "okay,
we're gonna start talking about our 2-console strategy and satisfy two markets". It's not all about "speeds & feeds", specs don't tell the whole tale - there's no arguing that ever.

There seems to be a point though where developers will stop trying to stretch the hardware because it doesn't translate well to dollars spent versus dollars earned. Not that technical performance isn't appreciated, but devs know that spending an extra month
throwing engineers at improving the game in the slightest will cost them $100,000, when they can just settle for things as-is. I believe the Xbox One is approaching that point. Even Microsoft's own 343 Industries couldn't force Halo 5: Guardians to run at
1080p/60FPS consistently (they downgrade the 1080p image when there's more things on screen to maintain 60FPS) - go play multiplayer and tell me that it looks like a lush and crisp environment (I was playing last night and noticed how much stuff gets tossed
away to save on graphical processing - like blades of grass or smooth inclines/declines).

Anyone thinking there's another level to this machine is very optimistic and I think doesn't understand that x86 hardware is easier to code for than the IBM chipset 3-core chipset of the Xbox 360. The 32MB eSRAM cache isn't large enough to realistically
push the dense, complicated graphics rendering that happens in real-time (had Microsoft opted for a 128MB cache, we'd probably be having a much different conversation). DirectX 12 will make it easier for devs to maximize their games, but rest-assured that
the XB1 will be tapped shortly after games start coming out under that API (and DirectX 12 is here, 2016 will see games released using it). In the next few years, Microsoft will continue to optimize the software, but you can't shed much more weight. The
best they can do is shave off another 1/2 a core needed for running apps, but that would require the utmost optimization for apps to run with little CPU power - something I don't think will be realistically possible for apps like YouTube, NFL, Netflix, etc.
IF they did, there would be 7 full cores dedicated to gaming, offering another slight improvement in HP.

I state all of these options for improving the Xbox One to show you the best-case scenario of what can happen. It took 6-7 years for devs to tap the previous generation consoles because they were different. When you throw those same devs onto PC hardware,
they're going to figure it out MUCH faster, because we've been coding for PCs for decades and it's the easiest place to build games.

 

"Is anyone else with me on this? I was hoping for at least a shot at 4K gaming in a couple years once these consoles saw enough dev time that companies could really stretch them, but that seems to be more of a pipe dream as 1080p gaming still escapes us
more often than not."

I am not with you on this at all.

Also, 4k gaming was NOT going to happen in any way this console cycle. I have a very powerful PC and it can not do 4k gaming that great. It can run if mostly fine but it takes a lot of power to do it and is expensive. No way consoles designed for a beginning
sales date of 2013 were going to have that. Even a console designed to begin selling next year is not going to have that. It will be at least 2 more years before 4k is cheap enough for even most on PC to run it they way they would like. And then you will
have a few more before the cost to produce is low enough to be console viable.

 

"However it has since been revealed they are able to increase it's processing power exponentially."

Wow, cool. Could really use a link to that. Was thinking that this was what we would get and that would be it until the next console. Did not realize they made the console scale like that. Guess they are just slowly unlocking that power. To be honest,
I buy most games on the Xbox and could not really care less about resolution or I would play on PC all the time. But you would think they would unlock enough they could guarantee that their versions of games would always work as good as the other versions.

 

@Guerrero Ultimo - power is not the most important factor, but it changes the "WOW" factor people get. The destructible environments we get in certain games take a lot of power. Ever play Battlefield 4? There's a map with a skyscraper that is collapsible
and turns into rubble if you weaken its foundations. It was incredible to behold, but it KILLED the Xbox One when it went down, because the CPU power required to render the physics and graphical changes were too intense to occur while the game was running
without dropping the framerate from 30 FPS to as low as ~10-12 FPS. We're in an age where we should be beyond a lot of this. Frame drops aren't horrible when they're a short-lived 5-10% slide, but when they're 50-60% for 5-10 seconds at a time... it's not
all that great. Granted, BF4 was earlier in the console's lifecycle so maybe that's not AS big of a deal if they rework it for 2015/2016.

The XB1 has gotten more powerful, sort of. They've optimized the software, reduced the power that the Kinect pulls to push more toward the Xbox's processing power, but it's only a small bit of power (5-10% by some estimates) - that was done back when Titanfall
came out. Microsoft also started with only 6 cores of the console being accessible, then opened up 1/2 of the 7th core for a little more breathing room.

Cloud computing will help offload a little power, but Microsoft made a BIG deal about this @ launch and we haven't seen the fruits of cloud computing push this console anywhere better, yet. Crackdown 3 is supposed to be the big coming out party for XB1's
cloud capabilities, but you're not talking drastic graphical upgrades but small internet-enabled processing tricks that put players in an online world where a computer processes a building coming down instead of your Xbox and it just streams the event occurring
to you. If everyone had iron-clad high speed internet (50Mbps DL/15Mbps UL) I'd say this would be a realistic way to go forward, but there's a lot of people still on internet that doesn't exceed that 10-12Mbps DL mark. More localized power would have been
beneficial for this console.

 

Whoever posted that bit about how EA says there's still room for these consoles to grow: I found two articles on it and neither mentions their processing capabilities. They are talking about sales volume and how each console can continue to drive sales.
The backwards compatibility for XB1 is mentioned as an example.

And @Guerrero Ultimo - 4K gaming may be out of reach no matter what we do, but at least 2K resolutions upscaled to 4K are possible. Resolution isn't everything -I'd be just as happy with densely-filled 1080p environments and potential for high player counts
in my game worlds. Battlefield with 32v32 @ 1080p, 60FPS and great foliage to use for cover and explore would be great. Skyrim with the visual mods that were found on PC available on console would be incredible, but completely impossible for what we currently
have.