Topic: XboxOne ~News/Rumor/Speculation~ Biggest Console Released This Gen!!

[BlackNMild2k1]

A version with no HDD and BRD drive but is expected to sell full size retail games digitally to who?

1 or 2 games and your memory is full? that wouldn't make sense, unless MS is assuming that you will only stick XBLA games and not use the other many set-top box like features that they have been moving towards all these years.

the whole purpose of a version with no HDD would be to sell you everything digitally, including full size retail games. If you have to go out and buy expensive memory in order to enjoy that one launch game you really wanted to play.... well then look at how the PSVita is doing right now. Those Xbox consoles will sit on that shelf until turn into the very dust that they will be collecting.

Now if you are referring to the rumors of a driveless Xbox 360 settop box with 64GB built in for a more casual crowd where you can still enjoy 5+ full size retail games and some smaller digital content without having to worry about space while also being able to have enough space left over for some non gaming things, like recording a few HD tvshows, then that is not what we were discussing.


and as far as Kinect is concerned, like it or not, it is a large part of the reason that the X360 is seeing continued surge in sales that it is seeing right now. Kinect may not get the support it deserves, but neither did the Wii. Kinect didn't work as well as it should have and was advertised to, but (without M+) neither did the Wii. So strong support for the device right out of the gate, especially for it's non-(hardcore)-gaming features, where is will shine, i say good move on MS's part.

[oohhboy]

It doesn't matter if it is a really expensive system.  They will just mark it up and recover a bit of the loss in Australia.  Everywhere else will get it for a reasonable price.

You can't run an entire slave mining operation on one Australian.

[Chozo Ghost]

1 or 2 games and your memory is full?

Depends on how much onboard flash it would have. Personally, I think Nintendo is making a mistake giving the Wii U only 8gb of storage. Don't you agree with that assessment? 8gb on the X420 would also be too little, but Microsoft could opt for double or quadruple or even more that amount, which in 1-2 years should be much cheaper to pull off since flash memory seems to double every year.

8-16gb of storage would only be enough for a few games and that's it, but what if we are talking 32gb or 64gb of storage? Then it becomes a little more reasonable. I know that's expensive right now, but in 2014 it shouldn't be.

[NWR_insanolord]

It doesn't matter if it is a really expensive system.  They will just mark it up and recover a bit of the loss in Australia.  Everywhere else will get it for a reasonable price.

You can't run an entire slave mining operation on one Australian.

I think you underestimate the bureaucrats working at Microsoft.

1 or 2 games and your memory is full?

Depends on how much onboard flash it would have. Personally, I think Nintendo is making a mistake giving the Wii U only 8gb of storage. Don't you agree with that assessment? 8gb on the X420 would also be too little, but Microsoft could opt for double or quadruple or even more that amount, which in 1-2 years should be much cheaper to pull off since flash memory seems to double every year.

8-16gb of storage would only be enough for a few games and that's it, but what if we are talking 32gb or 64gb of storage? Then it becomes a little more reasonable. I know that's expensive right now, but in 2014 it shouldn't be.

It depends on what the space is going to be used for. 64 GB is in no way reasonable for a download-only machine, especially with Sony and Nintendo using discs that can hold up to 50 GB.

In Nintendo's case, it remains to be seen whether or not 8 GB will be enough for the average user. If they intend to sell GameCube games as downloads, that could get eaten up pretty quick. Though, if the current state of the Wii and 3DS Virtual Consoles is any indicator, it'd be a while before there were enough of them released for that to be a problem.

[TJ Spyke]

Wii U discs will be up to 25GB, not 50.

[BlackNMild2k1]

no one ever said Wii U disc could't be dual layered or that the drive couldn't read dual layered disc, so no need to keep repeating that so matter of factly.

all that was ever said on the issue was "Katsuya Eguchi, confirmed that the system's proprietary disc format will hold 25 Gigabytes of data."

not that "it can only hold up to 25GB and dual layer is not possible".

[BlackNMild2k1]

1 or 2 games and your memory is full?

Depends on how much onboard flash it would have. Personally, I think Nintendo is making a mistake giving the Wii U only 8gb of storage. Don't you agree with that assessment? 8gb on the X420 would also be too little, but Microsoft could opt for double or quadruple or even more that amount, which in 1-2 years should be much cheaper to pull off since flash memory seems to double every year.

8-16gb of storage would only be enough for a few games and that's it, but what if we are talking 32gb or 64gb of storage? Then it becomes a little more reasonable. I know that's expensive right now, but in 2014 it shouldn't be.

It depends on what the space is going to be used for. 64 GB is in no way reasonable for a download-only machine, especially with Sony and Nintendo using discs that can hold up to 50 GB.

In Nintendo's case, it remains to be seen whether or not 8 GB will be enough for the average user. If they intend to sell GameCube games as downloads, that could get eaten up pretty quick. Though, if the current state of the Wii and 3DS Virtual Consoles is any indicator, it'd be a while before there were enough of them released for that to be a problem.

I still don't think there will only be 8GB of storage especially with the big eShop changes and online push. and the fact that DQX required 16GB for the Wii version and it should be a launch game on Wii U too.

[Chozo Ghost]

It doesn't matter if the Wii U can handle dual layer discs or not, because 25gb discs should be far more than adequate. As it is, its extremely rare to ever see a Wii or 360 game require more than one DVD, so the 9.7gb capacity of a DVD seems to be sufficient for about 90% of games. And a game being so large it can't fit on a single layer BRD is unheard of. Maybe if someone were trying to pull off a compilation of multiple games on a single disc then a dual layer BRD might be required, but other than that I don't see it ever happening.

But my point is that a download only xbox with 64gb on board flash wouldn't be as bad as it might seem. Dual layer BRDs might be able to hold 50gb, but just because they can hold that much doesn't mean they do. If anyone can point out any single game which requires 50gb of space then please point out. Even if such a game does exist I'm sure its an extremely rare exception with the majority of modern games being in the range of probably about 2-10gb. If most modern retail games are in the 2-10gb range then a 64gb on board flash should be able to hold a good number of them at any time. When the drive gets to be full and you need room you can just uninstall the ones you aren't playing.

I'm not saying that's an ideal setup, but again this is the low end SKU and if you don't like dealing with that then you have to bust out your wallet and pay for the HDD add on.

[TJ Spyke]

If anyone can point out any single game which requires 50gb of space then please point out. Even if such a game does exist I'm sure its an extremely rare exception with the majority of modern games being in the range of probably about 2-10gb.

Kojima claimed MGS4 used up the full 50GB of space. Even if that is true, I have no doubt it's because they chose to do so much uncompressed video/audio and having data written multiple times on the disc to decrease loading times.

[SixthAngel]

If most modern retail games are in the 2-10gb range then a 64gb on board flash should be able to hold a good number of them at any time. When the drive gets to be full and you need room you can just uninstall the ones you aren't playing.

This seems like the Wii situation but far worse because it isn't just the vc that is in the refrigerator.  Also, with  multiplat games on 25gb discs developers won't want to compress at all and there is no reason they can't make the dd games bigger as well unless ms forces size limits.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Chozo, you're talking about current gen games, we are talking about next gen systems and next gen games. PS3 games are using 10-20GB due to no compression. PS4 games @ full 1080p 7.1 surround and whatever other space hogging effects of next gen will likely use more than that on the regular.

and on a realistic note, a download only system for next gen games with the current problem of data caps would be kinda stupid. A download system only for current gen HD games would be kinda stupid too because of the same problems. Although I could see the rumored Xbox360mini XBLA settop box rumor coming true at some point.

Oh, and it does matter if Wii U can handle dual layer or not.
Bill Gates once said 640kb is all we should ever need....
Last thing we need is something so trivial as dual layer being the reason that some AAAA Blockbuster games skip the Wii U. The hardware is there and it can easily read a double layer, so they might as well not go through the trouble of purposely kneecapping it to not do it.

and I would love some of those compilations that us Nintendo only gamers missed out on this gen, such as maybe a ME Trilogy all on one (dual layered if necessary) disc, or Assassins Creed or Metal Gear HDmakes, and many other series that we've missed out on.

[Chozo Ghost]

I'm sure the Wii U will support dual layer discs, and even if it doesn't at first all it would take would be a firmware upgrade to make it happen somewhere down the road. But then again, this is Nintendo we're talking about here. It also would have been a trivial thing to allow DVD playback on the Wii, and that never happened... so who knows?

As for the xbox having only onboard flash, I keep saying that would be the low end "arcade" SKU. Its not the default model. Its just some cheap gimped version which any serious gamer would have to buy a HDD add on for. The point of it is just to sucker people into thinking they are saving money, but then after they get it they realize they need to spend another $100+ on the proprietary HDD add on, so in the end Microsoft gets the same amount of money out of people, but just in installments instead of all at once.

Why is there any reason to doubt it? Microsoft is already doing this right now with the 4gb Arcade 360. Its not like I'm speculating on something which is completely unprecedented. They've already done it and are doing it as we speak, so why wouldn't they do it again?

Microsoft seems to love having a premium and low end version of their products. They've been doing this for years not just with their Xbox line, but also their other products like Windows. They sell a higher cost "professional" version of Windows, and also a cheaper low end "Home edition" version. So this is something they seem to love doing and there's no reason to doubt they will do it again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions

Actually, its worse than I thought. The lowest end one is "Starter" and there's a bunch more until you get up to the "Ultimate" edition.

But anyway, my point is this is their modus operandi, so not only should we not doubt they will do this with the next Xbox, we should expect it.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Well, (i think) normal DVD players use CLV to my understanding and Wii uses CAV.
To constantly switch from CAV to CLV, just for standard movie playback, would strain the motor and burn out the disc drive quicker.

I think this may be (a part of) the same reason why we won't see standard Bluray playback on Wii U and why why it probably won't ever be officially offered through the eShop. I'm sure Nintendo does not want to cover warranty on burnt drives due to movie playback.

Although if they do have that issue worked out, then I would love for them to give us the option to buy the Bluray license in the eShop, even though I wouldn't personally ever buy it.

[Ymeegod]

Most players nowadays (for the last 8 or so years) are Cav.  The only thing nintendo does differently is how it's read.  Standard DVD players read from the inside/out (meaing it starts with the inner rings) and since the GC launch, nintendo's been going outside/in.  Since the dvd's are spinning at the same speed nintendo's able to get more information since the outter rings hold more. 

Just looked it up and both MS systems were CAV drives and sony's are all still CLV's (including the PS3), which would explain why the PS3 loads are utter crap 80% of the time.

 

[BlackNMild2k1]

Out of curiosity, what is the Xbox360 disc drive failure rate?

and what you're saying is that for Nintendo switch to DVD playback they would need to use a drive that would start the laser on the inner ring instead of the outer (& be able to switch back for games)... doesn't seem too bad. Not that I would watch movies on my Wii anyway, but I imagine it would be really convenient for about 90% of people to just have the Wii U a DVD player too.

[tendoboy1984]

It depends on what the space is going to be used for. 64 GB is in no way reasonable for a download-only machine, especially with Sony and Nintendo using discs that can hold up to 50 GB.

It all depends on how big the file sizes are. Most smartphones, tablets, and the iPod Touch have small amounts of flash storage (up to 64 GB in most cases). For those devices, it's fine since the file sizes are extremely small.


I haven't heard of any developers complaining about the storage capacity of an iPhone or iPad. And those devices don't have a file size limit.


If Wii U's eShop games have small file sizes, then 64 GB is more than enough. I have an 8 GB card in my Wii and 3DS, and I still have plenty of "blocks" left (over 54,000 blocks to be precise).

[nickmitch]

Actually, the iOS file size limit is 2GB. 50MB for over the air files though.

[tendoboy1984]

Actually, the iOS file size limit is 2GB. 50MB for over the air files though.

Even so, I haven't heard any developers complaining to Apple about their size limits for iOS devices. And Apple doesn't even allow for expandable memory via SD cards!

[nickmitch]

But Wii Ware's was like 40MB, or some ****. A lot of devs had trouble operating with that restriction, like Team Meat for example. And 2GB is kind of a lot for iOS apps.

[BlackNMild2k1]

MS will follow Sony's lead (just as Nintendo has already announced they are set up to do) and offer full size retail games for digital consumption.

Those games are gonna span from 6-8GB all the way up to 25GB+ at some point. If we are talking a download only Next Gen 1080p HD console (which was rumored to be very set-top box/DVR like), 64GB is not gonna be enough, but it's far better than 32GB standard..
I think there are current HD Demo's that take up 2-4GB in space already being offered.

[Kytim89]

MS will follow Sony's lead (just as Nintendo has already announced they are set up to do) and offer full size retail games for digital consumption.

Those games are gonna span from 6-8GB all the way up to 25GB+ at some point. If we are talking a download only Next Gen 1080p HD console (which was rumored to be very set-top box/DVR like), 64GB is not gonna be enough, but it's far better than 32GB standard..
I think there are current HD Demo's that take up 2-4GB in space already being offered.

Wouldn't it take days, or even weeks, to download games of that size?

[BlackNMild2k1]

maybe, but that's why a download only console for a next gen system doesn't really make sense, especially with data caps and shitty internet in too many places around the world.

[Oblivion]

*raises hand* I'm one of them. I always hate downloading any sort of video game from the PSN store. 75kb/s isn't exactly the fastest in the world.

[nickmitch]

I don't think the next gen is the right time for a download only console. Maybe in the handheld space, but certainly not home consoles. In fact, I don't think it will happen any time soon at all. By the time the gen after this next one comes, we'll be back to a cartridge based system with 50GB capacities and relatively low loading times. I think the new medium will be the driver there as opposed to graphics and horsepower, except for Nintendo who will always focus on game play.

[Stogi]

Not to quote Obama but I think the future will allow for an "All of the Above Approach". Everyone has their own preferences, whether that's the convenience of online or the physical nature of owning a disc or card.

What fascinates me the most (and I don't want to bring back the DLC argument because that is not what I'm talking about) is the future where developers may find it easier to sell their games if they broke them up into small pieces. Maybe in the foreseeable future I won't have to buy the campaign mode of the latest FPS and strictly download the multiplayer only, if that's all I wanted. I'm pretty sure they have something similar already in place for the PC, but this could become standard on consoles if downloading really takes off (which it probably will simply due to how convenient it is).