Xbox 720

[toblix]

Apparently this thing "leaked" today: http://www.scribd.co...h6rubjxuj1kp24x. Highlights include:

• Some sort of glasses
  
• The usual new focus on the XBox as being A LOT OF STUFF LIKE NFL FOOTBALL AND YOUR FAVORITE SHOW plus some video games
  
• They envision 6–8 CPU cores, a single GPU, 3 PPC cores for backwards compatibility and, get this, 4 GB RAM.
  
• Enough focus on silence to make me hopeful
  
• "watch footballscores with an NFL ticker as you play Gears of War 5"
  
• Focus on doing the same thing on multiple devices/screens
  
• A picture of happy people showered in dollar signs
  
• A picture of a kid playing with a baseball controller too damn close to the television
  
• Business jargon
  

Nothing's confirmed, but it seems reasonable enough to be real, and not so crazy as to clearly be a fake.

[Roderick]

It doesn't seem an outrageous thing. No surprises either. They aim for 4-6 times the (graphic/processing) power as the 360. Yeah, I'd buy it.

[Murdoc]

These days I just expect a modern consol to do what a top of the line PC did 2 years before it's release but with a fancy(or dumb) interface... which isn't a bad thing and a pretty good deal.

[TheLastBaron]

On the page for the competition it lists "Wii2: rumored". I wonder how old this is

Edit: nvm the agenda page says "The road ahead: 2011-2015"

[toblix]

Yeah, it seems to be a few years old. I just heard there are rumours of the Wii U having more than 1GB RAM, which astounded me. I guess I'm overestimating how much memory you need to run a modern console game.

It will be interesting if it turns out they'll ship the Kinect v2 with the next Xbox and consider it part of the base system specs. I wonder if it'll increase the amount of dumb shit game creators will have to tack onto their games to have them released, or if it'll enable them to do stuff they couldn't before because almost nobody had Kinect. Probably both. Next year seems like the year to watch for official announcements.

[Sno]

One of my favorite rumors that I've heard for the next X-box is that it's going to use proprietary game cartridges.

Which would have horrible implications for backwards compatibility, but would still be awesome.

If that one comes to pass, it'll probably be tiny game cards or something, but i want to see big fat NES carts.

[toblix]

Obviously none of the new consoles will come without an optical drive, simply because Bluray, but it would be sweet if they somehow managed to force publishers into a first-class digital distribution system. They could ship around their little plastic boxes if they must, but all games should be globally available at the same time. It won't happen this generation, of course, but some day.

[elmuerte]

Seriously? only 4GB of ram? My wristwatch has 4GB of RAM.

[Murdoc]

It will be interesting if it turns out they'll ship the Kinect v2 with the next Xbox and consider it part of the base system specs. I wonder if it'll increase the amount of dumb shit game creators will have to tack onto their games to have them released, or if it'll enable them to do stuff they couldn't before because almost nobody had Kinect. Probably both. Next year seems like the year to watch for official announcements.

I know things. Dark things. Get ready for a lot of dumb shit that makes the previous dumb shit smart.

The great thing bout ram in the last 6 years is it's now dirt cheap, so crank that sucker up and we'll see acceptable texture resolution which will be nice for a change.

[TheLastBaron]

Seriously? only 4GB of ram? My wristwatch has 4GB of RAM.

Well keep in mind the 360 has 512 MB of RAM so this is still 8x more.

[elmuerte]

No, I'm not keeping that in mind, because it's dumb. It's irrelevant what the previous generation had. They want this thing to last for 5+ years. 4GB isn't going to cut it.

[ItsMeYourFriend]

Well keep in mind the 360 has 512 MB of RAM so this is still 8x more.

and the that's also shared RAM as well, it functions as both the main system RAM as well as the video RAM. The 360 is still able to output fairly decent graphics as well

[Murdoc]

I bet it'll be more than 4gb, because that just sounds low in this day and age.

[elmuerte]

Shared RAM is great, because it saves a lot of effort. On PCs textures, vertices, etc are often loaded twice in memory (once in "system" RAM and once in the dedicated GPU ram), that's because the PCI bus is so damn slow. So on PCs you're wasting RAM. Specially the vertices are loaded twice due to rendering and collision, textures are less of an issue.

Either way, if you plan to release a system with a planed lifetime of 5 to 10 years and which includes a persistent background system right from the start you shouldn't skimp on RAM right from the beginning. Specially not given the fact that 1GiB of RAM is dirt cheap.

[Henroid]

RAM in a console is way different than RAM in your PC. 4GB is colossal for consoles.

[elmuerte]

You're right Henroid, it's very different. But 4GB is not colossal in 5 years, specially not when you you increase texture size. Consoles have been suck on rending game in VGA like resolutions and upscaling it to 720p.

[Henroid]

And 8GB is considered good for PCs; 4GB considered okay. So really, it's not a spec worth getting worked up over like this.

[brkl]

• A picture of happy people showered in dollar signs
  

That's everything I've ever hoped for.

[Twig]

4GB is absolutely enormous for a console, no matter how long its been since the last new console.

That said, I wish it would happen. RAM is kind of a bottleneck in a lot of ways. Not usually the main bottleneck, but still.

[TheLastBaron]

My point was that if 512 MB has last the 360 until now why would 4GB be a big issue for a next gen console? If 4GB of RAM last the next xbox as long as 512 megabytes has lasted the 360 I don't see an issue.

[ThunderPeel2001]

And 8GB is considered good for PCs; 4GB considered okay. So really, it's not a spec worth getting worked up over like this.

When does the average user make use of >4GB? Most applications are still 32-bit and so can only address the first 3.5GB anyway.

[Henroid]

When does the average user make use of >4GB? Most applications are still 32-bit and so can only address the first 3.5GB anyway.

And that only goes to serve my argument presented here.

I understand the need to deck out a PC as much as possible (I'm a nervous asshole like that; my new PC I've been slowly building has 16 GB of RAM), and people make the false arguments about spending over a thousand dollars if you want a good PC, but really... you don't have to go top-drawer at the moment. And I know I don't NEED all that RAM;I originally had 8 in it thinking "This is great!" but figured since my capacity is higher on the motherboard and RAM is relatively cheap, sure, why not. But it was not, by far, needed by a long shot.

4GB in a console is, as I said, colossal. I will stand by that statement.

[toblix]

When does the average user make use of >4GB? Most applications are still 32-bit and so can only address the first 3.5GB anyway.

Most users run more than one application, though.

If the Xbox 360 is getting away with 512MB shared memory, and they envision a GPU with 1GB dedicated, maybe 4GB sounds about right. It's easy to say "lol my rig haz 64gbitz" but obviously a business won't do anything more than they'll get away with, and if they can get away with buying 256 petabyte of ram instead of 512 petabyte, they will. No doubt developers will quickly start lamenting all the limitations of the new architecture whilst releasing beautiful, great games for it.

[Gormongous]

My point was that if 512 MB has last the 360 until now why would 4GB be a big issue for a next gen console? If 4GB of RAM last the next xbox as long as 512 megabytes has lasted the 360 I don't see an issue.

Well, you'd hope they'd err towards caution, because I know that several devs have struggled to accommodate such a low memory ceiling on the 360, mostly by resorting to tricks and compromises that undermine the overall technical operation of the game.

[toblix]

They may err towards caution, but the metrics they'll be using won't megs of RAM, or whether developers will have to struggle to get the next Gears of War out, as long as they do. The specs will probably be somewhere between what the tech people say are the lowest possible specs and what the financial people say is the highest possible cost. Whatever amount of RAM they end up putting in there will be a calculation based on months of financial and technical predictions, rounded up to the nearest possible MB. Or so I imagine. Full disclosure: I know nothing about console design.