Hi everyone, so today we're going to be discussing where it all went wrong for
Microsoft with the
Xbox One. Now this is not a fan boy
bashing video or anything like that. I have both consoles, I've put both through
their paces
and I've been following the industry for a long time now. And it's very easy to
see
that there is a gap here between the
Xbox One and the PlayStation 4. Now what we're starting to hear, coming out from
developers as well
is that they're finding that they simply cannot hit the same
quality of frame rate on the Xbox One as they are on the PS4.
For instance, the next Tomb Raider enhanced edition which is the next gen version of
the new Tomb Raider
will run at 30 frames a second
on Xbox and 60 frames a second on PS4.
Now interestingly, the developers have said that the Xbox One
version will at times pitch up to around 40-45 frames a second
but in more intensive scenes 30 frames a second is the lock.
Now what's really interesting here is we are dealing with
very similar hardware on both consoles. However, it's where they diverge
from each other.
They both have the same Jaguar CPU GP combination cores
but the choice of memory that
both manufacturers went for is really the decider here.
Ultimately Microsoft went with DDR3,
that is standard memory that we would find in PCs, laptops, etcetera.
Sony went for graphics DDR memory.
DDR, GDDR5 effectively. Now that is the same graphics memory that we would put
on to things like NVIDIA graphics cards ATI graphics cards.
It has an incredible amount of bandwidth and it's very, very, very, very fast.
Now where Microsoft made a trade-off is
they went for DDR3 but they also went for
a 32meg ESX
stick of memory in there as well which is actually faster
then GDDR5 in theory. But it all depends how it's being used and what it is being
used for.
What we're really seeing when we hear about frame rates being lower
is the console struggling
to push those textures around the scene as well as
obviously those textures filling the screen when you have information. So for instance if we have
a, you know, a dark scene with fire in the middle
and lots of characters on screen at the same time and they're all moving around
what we're kind of having to do with the system is we're having to render all of those
individuals as they're moving. This is
causing fill rate issues and we also have, you know, the effects coming from the
fire. Now what we can sometimes see in these scenarios
is that one console would effectively
be struggling a little bit to keep all of that information moving on screen and
updating textures and everything else it has to do.
Now really where the memory comes in more importantly
is the faster the memory you h ave, the quicker you can get
the textures from the drive up into memory
moving everything around as well as holding all the other information the game has to do
at the same time.
Speed and bandwidth of the memory is absolutely
key here and it's very much always been a bottleneck in gaming.
If you take a DDR3 stick of memory and there's lots of different kind of speeds and types
within that
kind of classification, you can see a big difference between
using a slow stick of DDR3 versus the fastest performance stick of DDR3.
Likewise with graphics cards we see something similar. Old graphics card
slower. New graphics card faster. Fairly simple.
And so we should see exactly the same thing DDR3
versus GDDR5. Ultimately GDDR5
is faster memory, it is newer memory, it is going to perform
much much better. But here's the thing: where did it all go wrong
for Microsoft because coming out of the Xbox 360
it was almost unbeatable really. They could have launched
well, as they did, an absolute piece of junk and people would have bought it
but now what we're seeing really is a console which is a bit of a lame duck in the
market.
Where it really went wrong for Microsoft is they designed by committee.
They didn't design by gamers and actually in many respects this is where
Sony should get a big round of applause because
they listened to the communities, they made a console that games developers
and gamers could really invest in and that came from a
technical understanding of what would be required over the next six years
for next-gen consoles. They've got to be able to compete
and beat PCs in most cases. Certainly as we start to see a decline in the PC
industry
it becomes even more important that consoles pick up the power mantle effectively
otherwise we're going to be left with Arm based CPUs in
mobile devices with not the best GPU
packages to really be our next-gen gaming systems
so it becomes even more strange that Microsoft would pick DDR3
at a time when industry-wise GDDR5
would be the future-proofing technology to go for.
But really where I think it all comes down to for Microsoft is
they built an entertainment device and an entertainment device
first and foremost is about streaming pictures, TV shows
movies and music. That is what an entertainment device is.
Its secondary function in Microsoft's eyes appears to have been
building actually something to play games on and so what they've done is
they kind of messed up the spec right from the word go by
thinking about the industry in the wrong way. They wanted to take control of the
living room,
they didn't want to take control of gamers and essentially
they built a console which was cost effective to put into living rooms
except they didn't because somewhere along the line someone decided you had
to force the Kinect in there
as well because somehow that makes interacting with entertainment, you know,
watching a film,
so much more enjoyable. No it doesn't because Kinect doesn't work.
The Kinect One didn't work, the Kinect 2 doesn't work.
It is a flawed concept, it is a flawed piece of
hardware and it's a flawed integration with the
console itself, the Xbox One. The whole thing is just a bit of
a mess. So really from Microsoft's point of view, there's very little they can actually do now
to change this around for themselves. If they were following my advice
I would say by 2016 you need to have a revision console out.
You need to move the graphics spec on as far as moving to GDDR5 is concerned.
The Kinect needs to be removed and become an optional extra again,
and well, let's face it, the console physically needs a redesign.
It's far too big for the work it's actually
doing. Everything that we've seen coming out of Microsoft with some of the
executives that have been leaving and some of the executives that were
well, forced out before the Xbox One was actually launched or potentially even
went into development,
says that Microsoft unfortunately has no skills left when it comes to delivering
on the Xbox One promise. To me it does feel like Microsoft
just, well, committed themselves to death on this one
and it's meant that they've delivered a substandard product
which ultimately is overpriced in the market and doesn't deliver
what gamers actually are looking for, which no matter who you ask really
it's about performance guys you know? If one console is running at 60 frames a
second
and the other one is running at 30 frames a second for the same game offering the same content
which one will gamers feel is the right console for them?
I'm afraid they're going to go with the one that provides a smoothest frame rate. Sixty
frames a second should be the bare minimum
games are hitting and that should be at 1080p or as close as possible.
What Microsoft is offering is unfortunately 720 p
960p gaming at 30 frames a second. That
isn't good enough and it's certainly isn't going to hold them over this next
period of
six to seven years, especially when, if the rumours are true,
Nintendo's Fusion project is going to deliver some pretty stonking hardware
in 2016
that could very well blow Microsoft out of the water into third place.
Do keep your eyes on this channel. Do please subscribe as well.
We will be taking a look at what went wrong with the PlayStation 4 and also
the Wii U as well.
So, like I say, this video is not about bashing
Microsoft as such. It's about discussing where it went wrong for them
and ultimately things go wrong for all of the manufacturers.
Thanks watching we hope you enjoyed this video. Do please remember to LIKE
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