You can apply much more pressure in a public setting. You can ask a question multiple times, from different people.
From what I’ve read, most reporters dislike the table format and would prefer the one-on-one interviews. For one, the roundtable format allows your competitors access to your questions and answers. There are no exclusive scoops. The roundtable also allows PR to handle the messaging more easily. Interviewees are less likely to answer candidly because they tend to be less relaxed when faced with a room of reporters versus one guy in a hotel room.
Make what you will out of the cancellation, but the tweets I’m seeing from E3 reporters is that they’re fine with it.
shang
1647
Yeah, I’m in the same boat. My cable modem died four days ago and I’m still waiting for a replacement from my ISP. It’d be really annoying if my consoles required an internet connection.
Latest rumor from GAF confirmed insiders is that the Xbox One APU production is going horribly thanks to the 32MB of SRAM built into the chip. It is being suggested that the GPU will have it’s clock speed reduced by as much as 25% putting it down in the 8-900 GFlop range. Which is to say, it’s looking like the Xbox One GPU will literally be half as powerful as the PS4’s.
This came up in a thread where an insider confirmed the Xbox One OS and TV UI stage demo was completely faked and that the real thing is choppy as hell and looks like crap right now. You can see it in this GIF from Wired’s video feature on the system:
As always, anyone jumping right in on a system at launch is asking to be a beta tester.
Nothing to do with the launch. They can’t make the system faster a year or two in, because it’s supposed to be a static target. There was an article about the xbox360 a couple weeks ago, when they moved to the 360slim integrated SoC they had to purposefully slow down the graphics so all the 360 titles would play properly.
900GFLOPS is like a radeon 7770, much slower than the 7850 equivalence all next-gen consoles were originally targeting, at 1800GFLOPS. Of course reducing GPU performance to GLOPS is a huge oversimplification, but still.
Nothing to do with the launch? It has everything to do with it as far as I’m concerned. They’re rushing to hit a target date while trying to fulfill promises made to the media and partners.
It’s the 360 issue all over again.
Teiman
1652
Dear Microsoft.
Stop putting Internet Explorer on more things, or fix it. Pick one.
Anonymous Webmaster.
happened to me many times
Mostly because unpredictable bugs that make well written code break, and force to rewrite large parts of the code on ofuscated and horrible hacks just because is the only way to make the code works-around the IE bugs. IE on all versions.
Well of course, but you said that anyone buying a system at launch is a beta tester. That may be true in many ways, but later xbones won’t be any faster. Performance is determined at launch and does not improve over the same console generation.
Wait a year, and they can do a “slim” or whatever incorporating improvements to the design. I’m not banking on it, obviously, and they won’t make the newer version greatly faster than the original, but they can improve it so the stutter seen in the video gets reduced.
I don’t buy any console at launch. That policy has served me well.
Quaro
1655
Wow, the deluge of bad news continues.
If the Xbox tanked for whatever reason, I wonder if MS would throw some more resources behind PC gaming.
Later versions of the console cannot be any faster, because games target a static performance profile.
I suppose they could slow it down in software for games, then use that performance to make the video and dashboard UI smoother or something. I wouldn’t bet on it. That’s a software issue, anyway, the xbone is more than fast enough to play video in a frickin’ window.
The xbone won’t tank due to this performance gap, just like the PS3 didn’t tank in the current generation. It will just run games upscaled from lower resolution (800p rather than 1080p), or target 30fps rather than 60fps, or use less detailed shaders, lower definition shadows, and so on.
The shame of it is that cross-platform titles target the lowest common denominator, so while PS4 games will look better than xbone titles (much like xbox360 titles tend to look better than PS3 titles) they won’t look as good as they otherwise would have. Lost opportunities there.
Right. Game performance won’t get much better, but I’d be very surprised if the performance on the U/I media crap doesn’t get a lot better either through software or hardware improvements.
Either way, I’m not jumping in on a console at launch. I wait and see how things shake out. In every gen, one console becomes the primary target of devs, while the others get the ports.
It’s pretty clear that the PS4 will be the primary development target for this generation. Not because it’s faster, because its straightforward architecture is easy to develop for. If the xbone substantially outsells the PS4, that could always switch, I suppose.
Bah! Reasonable debate sucks!
Here’s some meat to chew on.
Asked for his position on the used game market, Spencer said: “I think the whole idea of a secondary market is important and it’ll be important in the next generation, and we’ve designed with that in mind from the beginning.”
He added that DRM can be very beneficial: "We think there are a lot of advantages of having your content assigned to you digitally – we did that on 360 with cloud-saved games – and we want to do that with content.
“We understand there are implications… just know that we recognise the importance of that market and we’ve designed with it in mind from the beginning.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Another non-answer from the mickey-mouse incompetents at MS.
ARogan
1661
I’ve read this in a few places and I’m like whut whut? MS is very familiar with x86, and they created directx and visual studio. So how do they manage to screw that up? I thought I read somewhere that ps4 development is smoother and better integrated with visual studio than xbox one??!!???
I’ve heard that too, but I was talking more about the architecture than the tools.
Quaro
1663
If their tools are behind I would expect its because the entire console isn’t as far along as the PS4, rather than a deficit in capability. The architecture should be easier than the 360, its just that the PS4 is on the opposite extreme this time.
stusser, Telefrog! You’re arguing past each other about separate points! Telefrog is right the UI situation should improve, but stusser is right the GPU can’t be upgraded later!
Well, you can pretty easily create a narrative about MS having lots of set-backs with their design and the final hardware coming in really hot, putting back development everywhere, from the dev kits, to the OS to the games. By Microsoft’s own admission they started working on this system in 2010, which was 3 years after Mark Cerny started working on the PS4 design. MS also prioritized their media features and developed this wacky multi-OS VM system to facilitate it, while Sony is using BSD as a base for a more conventional multitasking OS. Plus it’s been apparent Sony has made facilitating easy development a big priority internally. The PS3 tools may have been horrendous at launch, but their current state is supposed to be very good. The Vita SDK is apparently brilliant and it appears that has continued to the PS4.
