I had always wondered if they would have a couple of contingency designs based on various factors and timelines. It would only make sense to have plans just in case things outside your control occurred.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Next gen PS5 and next Xbox launch speculation - Secret sauces spicing 2019
- Thread starter Phoenix Splash
- Start date
- Status
I had always wondered if they would have a couple of contingency designs based on various factors and timelines. It would only make sense to have plans just in case things outside your control occurred.
Maybe this is what Phil REALLY meant by plural Xbox consoles. :D
Based on your past post regarding specs, price being set early on, Cerny almost made it seem at the February 2013 announcement, the case design was not finalized at that point, and knew at E3 that year he was going to see it at the unveil with the rest of us. Could the box design be changed late in the game to accommodate upclocks of APU?
"new GPU architecture"
That's kinda the problem with next gen, it's a GCN refresh, so the leap will be smaller than ever before, they really should wait until 2021 for AMD's true next gen GPU's, but people don't wanna wait that long despite the PS4 Pro & X.
I just want to say big thanks to Albert Penello for insight posts.
Must be difficult to write without revealing too much..
Im interested in (and obviously it will not be possible to answer this) but how would a company go about to "secure" top spot with having the most powerful console when not knowing where the competitor will be at.
Is it a viable strategy to have several possible configurations, with testing and everything and depending on what is leaked/revealed from the competitor, that you would choose accordingly in order to maintain tech lead or is it already decided long before like, pardon the expression but.. "fuck it, lets max this to the max"?
Also, when designing specs and hardware.. (because many involved are also gamers (Phil Spencer for sure), do you as a unit create a hardware that you feel would be design for you (as gamers yourself). Because you guys also love to play games, you have the possibility to design something that you also would like to have as a gamer... or is it strictly "business" always?
Must be difficult to write without revealing too much..
Im interested in (and obviously it will not be possible to answer this) but how would a company go about to "secure" top spot with having the most powerful console when not knowing where the competitor will be at.
Is it a viable strategy to have several possible configurations, with testing and everything and depending on what is leaked/revealed from the competitor, that you would choose accordingly in order to maintain tech lead or is it already decided long before like, pardon the expression but.. "fuck it, lets max this to the max"?
Also, when designing specs and hardware.. (because many involved are also gamers (Phil Spencer for sure), do you as a unit create a hardware that you feel would be design for you (as gamers yourself). Because you guys also love to play games, you have the possibility to design something that you also would like to have as a gamer... or is it strictly "business" always?
console lover said:
you need to keep your expectations on ps5 specs in check. sony hasn't turned the ps5 into ps5 turbo. 2019 was never a thing. team 2019 needs to let it go.
Firstly thank you Albert Penello for weighing in and providing some much needed context.
For like a page or two and then it's back to the wild speculation and leaks based on a culmination of what's discussed here. Penello's input is super important but this thread has taken on a life of it's own and I fear it'll be forgotten quickly in favor of continuing the, often not based on reality, speculation.
For like a page or two and then it's back to the wild speculation and leaks based on a culmination of what's discussed here. Penello's input is super important but this thread has taken on a life of it's own and I fear it'll be forgotten quickly in favor of continuing the, often not based on reality, speculation.
It also seems to be accepted wisdom that console manufacturers get access to new gen components from AMD far in advance of them becoming available to the consumer. How far is this actually true?
Interesting words by Albert.
I've always thought (and said) that the first step was fixing the price ($399 for PS5) and from there you calculate what can you implement for that price.
So they knew the specs very early on....that doesn't bode well for SSD for example, which prices are only going down lately.
Nor for the PS5 and not for Lockhart either.
So that would be 2 things that put Brad Sams in doubt, the Hard Drive and the talk about specs not being 100% final. So he's either:
- Making things up, or
- He's getting fed false information...
Could MS do that on purpose, and why?
I've always thought (and said) that the first step was fixing the price ($399 for PS5) and from there you calculate what can you implement for that price.
So they knew the specs very early on....that doesn't bode well for SSD for example, which prices are only going down lately.
Nor for the PS5 and not for Lockhart either.
So that would be 2 things that put Brad Sams in doubt, the Hard Drive and the talk about specs not being 100% final. So he's either:
- Making things up, or
- He's getting fed false information...
Could MS do that on purpose, and why?
I mean Brad said, the dev kit uses an SSD, so it might just be something for developers. Or the final versions use a smaller SSD.
Dev Kits always have better specs, mostly because of debugging tools and other crap that is needed for monitoring and fine tuning.
I hope for SSD, but I would rather an HDD running at 7200rpms with 2TB of storage.
RE SSD: It'd be great, but the most important thing isn't what it ships with the console, but rather what is supported. That was what was so disappointing about the OG PS4 which shipped with a SATA 2 port instead of SATA 3.
If it's not economically feasible for Sony/MS to ship with a high speed, high capacity NVMe SSD, it's enough for me if they provide support and easy access for the user to make such an upgrade.
If it's not economically feasible for Sony/MS to ship with a high speed, high capacity NVMe SSD, it's enough for me if they provide support and easy access for the user to make such an upgrade.
The PS4 doesn't have enough physical space for 2.5" HDD that is 12mm in thickness, a 4TB HDD. I dare to bet that Sony will not expose the pcie, which they probably won't use considering the price.
If the next gen consoles have a removable hard drive that can be swapped about between an SSD and a HDD similar to the Xbox 360 then i'd be good with that.
About the whole SSD thing...
If the next-gen Xbox consoles were to use traditional hard drives with cache of flash memory, would we see that on the dev kit? I wasn't sure if it's easier/cheaper to just throw an SSD in the dev kit for that scenario. Xbox One X has an SSD in the dev kit does it not?
If the next-gen Xbox consoles were to use traditional hard drives with cache of flash memory, would we see that on the dev kit? I wasn't sure if it's easier/cheaper to just throw an SSD in the dev kit for that scenario. Xbox One X has an SSD in the dev kit does it not?
I've been hoping for a hybrid drive that can be swapped out for an SSD. Would still provide a nice experience for those that don't want to spend extra money on upgrades. Having a couple 3.1 slots would allow for plug-and-play upgrades as well. My Sammy T5 external SSD gets nearly the same performance (like, within margin of error) as my M.2 860 Evo.
Didn't he say Dev Kits weren't supposed to be out until after GDC?
I don't think he was referring to devkits when he talks SSD, but the final SKUs
Edit: In any case you all missing the point of my post, the point was that the specs + price is the first thing that are decided, as per Albert Penello, so it doesn't make sense to plan for an SSD and then expect that it drops as much as it did.
So for the PS5 at $399 wouldn't make sense, and for the Lockhart either.
On the other hand if they planned it for Anaconda, which would make sense, now they can make it cheaper than they thought, which in turn liberates some money.
Although it's probably hard to invest that money on the sku now, this late in the game, I'm sure they can tweak some things etc
Last edited:
Who knows what they'll do... But say they want to include some flash storage for cache, wouldn't it be cheap to just plop an m.2 slot and have it accessible for service?
It's possible.
We know how MS beat Sony to the punch with the Scorpio announcement even though Sony was much farther ahead (a full year ahead) and stole Sony's so called thunder with a 6 tflops console that made Sony's pro obselete before it was even announced, let alone released. Phill has been playing 3d chess this whole time. He knows Sony's gameplan. Simple no-frills and powerful console for a mass market price, and he has gone out of his way to announce that MS will reveal not one but two consoles. Now if I was Sony, i would be like what the hell do i do now? He will beat me with a cheaper console and a more powerful console at the same time. I am in a lose-lose situation.
I began to have self doubts and delay my console to have a more powerful console to avoid the bad PR i got from the Pro. But maybe thats exactly what Phill wanted. he knew he was going to get beaten to the market by a full year and threw Sony in for a loop by talking about the most powerful console ever made.
I think the truth is somewhere in between. Horizon 2 was probably not ready for a 2019 launch and there werent any third party cross gen games releasing in 2019 for Sony to advertise at E3 2019. They were probably a bit insecure about releasing an 8 tflops console and figured it couldnt hurt to delay it by a full year. At some point, you say screw it to the comeptition and focus on what you do best which is first party output and they probably wanted to give their first party studios enough time to get demos ready for the reveal.
Note: all of this is just assumptions on my part with some gossip to keep things interesting. its fun to discuss what might be happening behind the scenes in the most salicious way possible.
Nor most likely for a 2020 release date... Why did you think a such project could have been released in 2019?
Why wouldn't it bode well for an SSD if that's what they were planning from the beginning? If talking to their suppliers they could estimate out what the costs would be over ~10 years it's very possible they've been thinking about it from the beginning.
I would assume Sony is looking at the same storage solution as well for the PS5.
Adding a port if it is not included in the motherboard design is a pita. Doubtful that Sony cared enough. Probably we will just get plain old USB 3, not USB 3.1.
they done it before with KZ Shadowfall.
KZ3 launched feb 2011.
KZ Shadowfall november 2011.
and that was with the main team and best developers working on Horizon at the same time.
If anything Sony was sticking to there own plan .
We knew about Pro specs etc etc going into E3 but Sony did not want to talk about it there and did there own event .
This is when Andrew House was in charge and said he did not want to announce hardware to long before you can buy it , don't know if that is still the same way now that he left .
Also it make sense that Sony don't want to announce hardware early there sales are still really good at the current price point .
This month NPD is the perfect eg of this , Sony and MS going to have different plans and do things different cause there standing is not the same.
Jesus, that is incredibly disrespectful to anyone on the KZ team.
No everyone was working on KZ and small set working on HZD.
GG does not have two teams plus your dates wrong lol
Where MS stole so called "Sony's thunder"? What happened in the end when MS beat Sony to the punch after Scorpio announcement? Powerful console for a mass market? And yet X1 is selling worse every year. WTF i'm reading here.
Btw, you're missed KZ Shadowfall launch for 2 years.
Last edited:
sorry, only remember the speed and assumed it is the same.
3.0 5Gb/s
3.1 Gen 1 5 Gb/s
He specifically refers to the dev kit (Danta) having an NVME SSD, not the consumer version:
(12:08 if the timestamp doesn't work)
There is no reason to doubt Sams (or "making things up"), given his track record and Thurrott as a whole.
Last edited:
lol i didnt mean to be disrespectful. we have always referred to B teams over at Sony's studios. GoW Ascension and KZ Shadowfall were disappointments for a reason.
lol yes i meant 2013 when PS4 launche.d
"We"?
There is no "B" team at any of Sony's studios.
GOW Ascension was a great game and KZ Shadowfall was a launch game made in a remarkably short space of time. Middling quality launch games are simply a fact of the industry (unless you're Nintendo and operating on your own timeline)
People on forums have referred to those teams as B teams for the longest time.
Sony studios no longer have two teams making seperate projects anymore but this was true back in those days when ND was developing TLOU and Uncharted 4 at the same time, SSM was developing a new IP and GOW Ascension at the same time and GG was making Horizon and KZ shadowfall at the same time.
2 years and 8 months is not a short space of time. The Horizon 2 team is even bigger than the first and the entire studio is working on it at the same time. Obviously it's possible they still werent able to deliver a sequel in that time, but if rumors of Sony's initial plans to launch in 2019 are true, they wouldve thought they could deliver a sequel in 2 years and 8 months since they had done that already. especially now that the studio is bigger than ever and focused on one game.
Look, I didn't bring Sam up, Albet Penello did, putting in doubt the affirmation than the specs are not final, according to his prior experience
So thats why I asked that either he's making stuff up (which I myself don't think) or so someone is feeding false information to him.
Alternatively, you can also put in question Albert's doubts and believe that indeed Sam is 100% correct.
But for the sake of arguent and speculation, let's heed Albert's advice, and question ourlseves, if Sam is not making stuff up, who and why would leak to him false information?
But I see the thread is not receptive about these inquisitive line of thought lol
Let's go back to the TFs, storage size and clock speed talk, which certainly seems much more endearing
You are wrong about GG there were never 2 teams or anything like that .
There was small team working on pro type stuff while everyone was working KZSF .
Then after wards everyone move over to HZD .
You really can't call 15 to 25 people doing pro type stuff a team .
"Who" it's not one singular person, he talks about three separate sources he verified it with. I was just correcting you about what he said in relation to the SSD, no need to explain your reasoning.
Anyone else hoping that the Dualshock 5 has a 24 hour battery life and supports wireless charging.
No man, you weren't "just correcting me about what he said in relation to the SSD" (in which I think you're mistaken btw, because he's talk about them in other videos, in which he mentioned the possibility of an SSD on actual SKU's, but I don't have time to rewatch all of them at this point, so let's leave it at that)...
You were also rebuking me for, and I quote, "There is no reason to doubt Sams (or "making things up"), given his track record".
Of course I wanted to clarify that further, so that's i explained my reasoning, and if you go back to my initial post, in which I said "make things up", which you mention but don't quote, I say very clearly "He either made things up, or someone was misleading him"
So indeed I needed to explain my reasoning, because you misrepresented what I said, which was not to cast doubt about him , but on the contrary, ask ourlseves "who and why?" would mislead him, if it was the case that indeed his info is not 100% accurate
Last edited:
Forum fanfiction =/= reality. No single Sony studio has ever had two full discrete teams outside of Guerilla Cambridge who were renamed from existing Sony Cambridge and Japan Studio.
Both GG and ND have always had all staff working on all their games but with a small skeleton crew that break off and work on concepting and pre-production on new titles while the existing ones are in the final stages of their full production cycle. You're misinformed here.
Also, when the average current gen game takes 4yrs to make (Anthem took 6 and look what a shitshow that turned out to be), GG making KZ Shadowfall being made in just over 2 and a half, while being so polished despite its flaws is remarkable.
Not true.
https://www.ign.com/articles/2011/12/12/naughty-dog-officially-split-into-two-teams
Sony famously canned SSM's new IP just a few weeks after firing Amy Henning. That IP was led by Stig who had directed GoW3. After they cancelled, they had a big round of layoffs.
You can watch any horizon documentary and you will find that they had a separate team of 30-40 people working on Horizon while they shipped KZ Shadowfall.
The point is, having two separate teams working on titles that overlap doesn't mean that those are two distinct teams of physical people who always work together do not move around between projects.
Colin's article is editorialising here based on that tweet.
There is no "A" Team and "B" Team, as you seem to want to suggest, where one has all the most talented staff and the other team is the leftover dregs that work on the shit projects.
That's forum fanfiction and disrespectful to the devs.
Frankly I think posters peddling that kinda sentiment are being abhorrent
I was also clearly talking about the SSD ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But I wasn't, so that's how and why you misrepresented me.
If you don't wanna address the points I made, why quote me in the first place?
But let me show you how you are wrong about the SSD as well:
https://youtu.be/Zggh5sysbsY
14m45s
Question: "Brad, do you think next generation Xbox should have an SSD?"
Answer: "Yes, I do, and I'm almost positive that it does"
And then again at 15m32s
"So yeah, the next gen stuff will have a Solid State Drive, it might be up to 1TB is what I'm hearing"
So welp, there you have it
To finalize I wanna add that I'm pretty sure he talks about SSDs in yet another video, but the experience of going through this once again was quite grueling, so I'm not gonna search for them :P
Edit: I have no idea what "Simmah down nah" means btw
Edit 2: Adding Lausebub's post
Last edited:
I think you are being disingenious here. Stop trying to get outraged over something so commonly used on forums. When Dark Souls 2 came out and it ended up being a disappointment, and people found out Myzaki wasnt involved, people openly blamed it on the "B" Team. When Andromeda came out and people realized it was an entirely different studio that made it, and that the A team was working on Anthem, people blamed the B team.
If the games ended up being great and not massive disappointments then you wouldnt hear people call them B teams. GG Cambridge made Mercenary and everyone here was begging Sony to let them work on Killzone full time. They used to be the B team and people loved them. Treyarch was once the B team and they are now by far the most popular CoD devs.
You need to stop getting so worked up over this. Calling posters abhorrent for using terms being used going back all the way to DMC2 is ridiculous. Leads in video games matter. If most, if not all the major leads are working on Horizon or Santa Monica's new IP or The Last Of Us or Bloodborne then other games suffer. U3, GoW Ascension, Dark Souls 2, Killzone Shadowfall all didnt live up to expectations because they didnt have the best talent working on them. Thats the cold hard fact. No one is calling devs lazy. They did the best they could.
But if we are literally getting to the point where we cant say a game as flawed as Killzone Shadowfall wasnt made by their best devs then we reached a new level of insanity.
"Stop being outraged by my inflammatory language used in my ignorance to disrespect developers when I feel disappointed about something I like less than others."
I'm not the one being disingenuous here, my friend.
Regardless, i'm not going to respond on this any further because you clearly think its ok to continue peddling the above sentiment.
Regarding "contingency plans" or multiple development paths: No. At least not in the way I assume you mean (which is to actively parallel-path different options). That's simply not economically feasible because in essence you're developing multiple different consoles and incurring all the costs and risks associated with both. The chip itself is only one part of the program, and the entire system is usually built around the chip. So doing more than one is really not possible. You do have multiple options for achieving your goals which is discussed with the vendors (e.g. AMD), but assuming I'm interpreting the question correctly - you chart one course and go. As I've said, adjustments can be made during development but I would not consider that "contingency plans" in the way I think you mean it. There is a lot of risk involved. It's scary - but remember AMD is a partner long-term for both Sony and Microsoft, so by the time work is being done, and contracts are in place, there is a high degree of confidence from all involved that the plan can happen.
On Cerny's comment on the final form. Obviously I can't speak to Sony's timing and I don't know how much he is involved in system design vs. just chip design. The simplest answer (based on what I know) is that the entire system design is done in Japan so it's simply possible that he was not involved in the console ID. He's not a Sony employee AFAIK, he's a consultant I thought, so that could be more of an organizational decision then a timing one. I do know that "seeing the final" and "seeing work in progress" are also not the same thing. So it's very likely he had some idea of the overall form, but simply wasn't privy to the final ID until after the system integration was done. Again, I don't know but I don't think it is counter to any of the timelines I've talked about.
Finally - I'm not intending to suggest that Brad is lying, or being fed bad information (on purpose). I think people who are leaking may be credible sources and just don't know the whole plan. He is likely likely getting small snippets of information then extrapolating that into a spec, or the people giving him the information only have part of the story and are doing the same thing. The only thing I was reacting to was the impression that these console specs are fluid, they haven't been decided, and so everything is still up-in-the-air. That's likely not the case. Someone knows exactly what the plan is.
I have yet to see anything that is accurate to what I was aware of before I left. The infinite monkey theorem suggests that maybe someone, somewhere has figured it out exactly. But so far nothing I have seen is 100% right. Of course, things could have changed as it's been 9 months since I left so it's possible the plan has changed slightly. And if someone did have it right, I would never say.
On Cerny's comment on the final form. Obviously I can't speak to Sony's timing and I don't know how much he is involved in system design vs. just chip design. The simplest answer (based on what I know) is that the entire system design is done in Japan so it's simply possible that he was not involved in the console ID. He's not a Sony employee AFAIK, he's a consultant I thought, so that could be more of an organizational decision then a timing one. I do know that "seeing the final" and "seeing work in progress" are also not the same thing. So it's very likely he had some idea of the overall form, but simply wasn't privy to the final ID until after the system integration was done. Again, I don't know but I don't think it is counter to any of the timelines I've talked about.
Finally - I'm not intending to suggest that Brad is lying, or being fed bad information (on purpose). I think people who are leaking may be credible sources and just don't know the whole plan. He is likely likely getting small snippets of information then extrapolating that into a spec, or the people giving him the information only have part of the story and are doing the same thing. The only thing I was reacting to was the impression that these console specs are fluid, they haven't been decided, and so everything is still up-in-the-air. That's likely not the case. Someone knows exactly what the plan is.
I have yet to see anything that is accurate to what I was aware of before I left. The infinite monkey theorem suggests that maybe someone, somewhere has figured it out exactly. But so far nothing I have seen is 100% right. Of course, things could have changed as it's been 9 months since I left so it's possible the plan has changed slightly. And if someone did have it right, I would never say.
"Simmah down nah" means calm down, thanks for the link and the info. I'm still utterly confused about how I "misrepresented" you, or your responses in general tbh. All I did was respond to you with the Sams video about the "leak" were he talks about it as you were unsure about what he said, but I was clearly mistaken as I did not remember the response in that other video. I also see nothing wrong with me saying "There is no reason to doubt Sams (or "making things up"), given his track record and Thurrott as a whole", I don't think he has made anything up given his track record and thurrott as whole. I also don't think there is any reason to doubt Sams, he (or Thurrott) wouldn't have their track record if they were being fed false info. They wouldn't be doing their job properly if that was the case, I pointed out in my second response that he had checked with three sources clearly to avoid such a thing from being reported. So I don't think anything was made up, I also don't think he is being fed false info as he is doing his job as a journalist well which is a given due to his track record. I'm really finding it hard to understand what your taking issue with.
It's nice to have you posting in here with some behind the scenes info, I think the thread would go mad without the occasional informative post.
Last edited:
- Status