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

[Fatty The Hutt]

Download Shmownload. The Nextbox Durango can have a smaller amount of onbioard memory or whatnot because Microsoft will push everything to the cloud and have you stream-play your games. You won't need 20gb of onboard.
Thast is my wild prediction, unsupported by any facts or rumours. 

[Stogi]

Honestly that makes a lot more sense. That would also give them a lot more control over the media as well which in their eyes is always good.

[Chozo Ghost]

Maybe streamplay is the reason for that rumor about the console requiring a constant internet connection? We all just assumed it was to verify the games and to combat piracy, but maybe the real version is its literally required to stream the game for you to play it?

But I think to pull that off you would still need to have some basic framework of the game downloaded and pre-installed, but this would still take up a lot less space than having the entire game on the hard drive. Basically, you would download and install the skeleton of the game which might be like 1/10th of the total size, and then you would stream play the guts.

If it was done like that then a very limited amount of on board flash storage should be more than adequate. A fraction of the game would be installed locally of course, but the majority of the game would reside in cloud land.

[TJ Spyke]

Streaming only is a terrible idea and I think any system that uses it will bomb, it's even worse than having to enter a Online Pass for a game.

I think giving players the option to do it is fine, but not the only option.

[nickmitch]

Lol, OnLive.

[TJ Spyke]

OnLive is a terrible idea (especially the idea that when you pay full price to "buy" a game, you lose access to it when OnLive shuts down.

[nickmitch]

But you're assuming that OnLive will eventually shut down, which it might (I dunno how successful they are), but business entities are assumed to live on forever.

[Chozo Ghost]

I think when you take a lot of these Xbox420 rumors swirling about and add them together it sorta makes sense that it might be a streaming only console.

First, we have the rumor of there not being any disc drive at all, and then there is the rumor of it requiring a constant internet connection, and then another rumor about it making it impossible to play used games. So take all those together and it meshes really well with the console being streaming only. It all makes perfect sense when you add it up.

[TJ Spyke]

The thing is, cloud services are not that good as the only source of something. If you download a Xbox Live Arcade game, you will still have that game even if Xbox Live gets shut down. You pay $50 to "buy" a game on OnLive, you lose it forever if OnLive shuts down (not to mention not being able to play any games if your Internet goes down). If there was a way to download those games, it might be different.

I have not seen any rumors that Xbox 3 won't have a disc drive, the only rumor I have heard close is that a redesigned Xbox 360 won't have a disc drive (as it will be focused on XBLA).

[Adrock]

I have not seen any rumors that Xbox 3 won't have a disc drive, the only rumor I have heard close is that a redesigned Xbox 360 won't have a disc drive (as it will be focused on XBLA).

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/122/1220412p1.html

[Chozo Ghost]

The thing is, cloud services are not that good as the only source of something. If you download a Xbox Live Arcade game, you will still have that game even if Xbox Live gets shut down. You pay $50 to "buy" a game on OnLive, you lose it forever if OnLive shuts down (not to mention not being able to play any games if your Internet goes down). If there was a way to download those games, it might be different.

That is only a problem for consumers. It doesn't matter at all to the company behind it if consumers one day find themselves unable to access the stuff they purchased. So just because its a problem for consumers doesn't mean it wouldn't be done. If OnLive ever goes under it will suck for the people who use it, but since OnLive will no longer exist its not going to be their problem.

I'm not arguing that its a good idea (for consumers); I'm just arguing that it might happen. If Microsoft can make money doing this and have more control then why wouldn't they do it?


ETA: Also, if you think about it, a streaming only console isn't much different than digital downloads. Either way, if the service gets shut down eventually your stuff becomes inaccessible. Digital Downloads already exist and they have pretty much the same problems for consumers that streaming only games have.

[TJ Spyke]

At least with digital downloads, you still have the games if the service shuts down. You might be screwed if your console breaks and you can't fix it, but still better than streaming.

[nickmitch]

The thing is, cloud services are not that good as the only source of something. If you download a Xbox Live Arcade game, you will still have that game even if Xbox Live gets shut down. You pay $50 to "buy" a game on OnLive, you lose it forever if OnLive shuts down (not to mention not being able to play any games if your Internet goes down). If there was a way to download those games, it might be different.

That is only a problem for consumers. It doesn't matter at all to the company behind it if consumers one day find themselves unable to access the stuff they purchased. So just because its a problem for consumers doesn't mean it wouldn't be done. If OnLive ever goes under it will suck for the people who use it, but since OnLive will no longer exist its not going to be their problem.

It becomes a problem for manufacturers when the consumers decide that it's too big of a problem and elect to avoid it by not buying the system in question.

[GoldenPhoenix]

Another rumor. The Xbox 720 to have 16 core CPU?

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/04/12/report-next-xbox-to-sport-a-16-core-cpu


Sounds a bit too extreme for a console (not to mention expensive!). I can't help but think that this may be a bit overkill if it is true, but we'll see.

[Luigi Dude]

Another rumor. The Xbox 720 to have 16 core CPU?

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/04/12/report-next-xbox-to-sport-a-16-core-cpu


Sounds a bit too extreme for a console (not to mention expensive!). I can't help but think that this may be a bit overkill if it is true, but we'll see.

$599.99 US Dollars

[Adrock]

Ars Technica has a nice article regarding this rumor. They point out that it depends on how powerful those cores are. It's interesting to note that "most PC games struggle to max out even three cores on high-end Intel Sandy Bridge processor." They go on to say that 16 cores could end up being meaningless, more of a marketing term like Atari bragging that Jaguar was "64 Bit."

Even if MS managed to include 16 cores (which seems excessive and largely unnecessary), I highly doubt we'd be looking as something that could run Skynet.

[Louieturkey]

Plus let's not forget that Diablo III is not out yet.  We don't know if this will affect its sales or not or if the whole concept will go over like a lead balloon.  We're just assuming that because it's Blizzard it will be fine but we don't know yet.

It doesn't seem to have held back Starcraft II sales and that also requires an always-on internet connection.

The difference is that Diablo is single-player only, there is not multiplayer in it. So the constant Internet connection is ridiculous.

What are you talking about? Of course Diablo III has multiplayer; they cut the competitive multiplayer, but it still does co-op, which is a pretty big emphasis of it. It's still stupid to require always-on Internet even when playing single player, but Diablo III is no worse than any other game doing it.

And Starcraft II has a full single player campaign that you can't play unless connected to the internet.  So I'm not even sure what the argument was there.

[Louieturkey]

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.

FFXIII required a dual layer BD.  Yes, it had uncompressed video, but if you look at comparisons of the PS3 version and the 360 version (which required either 3 or 4 discs, can't remember which), the PS3 version looks better in all aspects of the game, not just the CGI sequences.

[Fatty The Hutt]

... 16 cores could end up being meaningless, more of a marketing term like Atari bragging that Jaguar was "64 Bit."

Blast Processing for the New Millenium!

[Fatty The Hutt]

Re playing games streaming: I could see MS (or Nintendo with VC) doing a Netflix-like service where a large catalogue is available all the time for a flat fee and you stream-play what you want.
 
Maybe with console games (not VC or XBLA type games), MS could charge a monthly fee that would let you play up to 3 or 5 selected games at once or something like that.

[Louieturkey]

I know it's been said before, but it looks like it'll be a 16 thread, 4 core processor, not 16 cores.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Another rumor. The Xbox 720 to have 16 core CPU?

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/04/12/report-next-xbox-to-sport-a-16-core-cpu

Sounds a bit too extreme for a console (not to mention expensive!). I can't help but think that this may be a bit overkill if it is true, but we'll see.

 http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/forums/index.php?topic=32855.msg726540#msg726540
 You've just been Caterkiller'd XD

[Chozo Ghost]

16 core CPUs exist right now in the present, although they are very expensive. 2 years from now the price will have dropped, so maybe it could be doable.

That said, maybe it just being 16 thread and misinterpreted as 16 core is more likely.

[BlackNMild2k1]

I know it's been said before, but it looks like it'll be a 16 thread, 4 core processor, not 16 cores.

That is the first time I've seen the actual specs of Project Durango.
80MB eDRAM shared between the CPU & GPU!!?

I guess thats the downside of having to share technology partners... Sometimes you competition will have the better version of the same tech.
At best Wii U was only rumored to have maybe 64MB eDRAM, but it wasn't said how it would be shared

[tendoboy1984]

Streaming only is a terrible idea and I think any system that uses it will bomb, it's even worse than having to enter a Online Pass for a game.

I think giving players the option to do it is fine, but not the only option.

How is streaming-only bad? OnLive does it, and that's been pretty successful. Look at how popular Netflix is for movies, and Pandora Radio & LastFM are for music.