The Xbone

[Warsaw]

Well, it really all depends on how that extra 32MB is used. The 10MB on the 360 allowed it to do a lot, including free AA.


Considering they're both x86-64 I think this will be less of a thing. Consoles for today's games are the LCD, but that entails using a lower level on the LOD tree and a mip one tick down. The current generation of console doesn't rely on compute, whereas this one will. Developers won't underperform on the PS4 when it's a 50% difference in terms of cores.


Power states.

But...Windows 8 can do power states all by itself...

I just figured they'd develop for the LCD just for cost reasons. Don't have to make the models and textures as high resolution, spend less time on the assets and therefore less money. They may just use those extra resources for better AA and AF. I hope I'm wrong, it'll be awesome if so, but you know how certain industry parties are...

[Zeph]

But...Windows 8 can do power states all by itself...

But windows is a pretty shit way to interface your software with the hardware. It's there for the stuff that doesn't need much power. Running it as one VM with the game os on another VM is just simple when it comes to a unified memory space and rendering to the frame buffer.

I just figured they'd develop for the LCD just for cost reasons. Don't have to make the models and textures as high resolution, spend less time on the assets and therefore less money. They may just use those extra resources for better AA and AF. I hope I'm wrong, it'll be awesome if so, but you know how certain industry parties are...

The LCD in this case is the game's logic design. Visually, things scale dependent on the hardware because artists take the effort to make the most out of what's available to them. You can easily cut render overhead by lowering vertext/polycount and texture space, but if your code is using up too much time nothing can be done. If anything was shown from this brief is that people don't like to fucking read and they don't care about anything if there's not something to look at. This console hardware can be a netbook, but if you show a cinematic that looks fucking amazing the brief would be a success.

[Kornman00]

.

Except there's a difference between Windows 9x and everything else. Everything else is NT based (the 9x series wasn't). And XP was Windows-5 'for the consumer' (Win2000 being the actual Win5). Windows Server are just variants of the NT builds (2003 is a variant of NT 5).

NT 3.x -> NT 4.x -> 2000/XP -> Vista (NT 6.x) -> 7 (NT 6.x) -> 8 (NT 6.x)

B.) No backwards compatibility? Why? The original Xbox was x86, so don't tell me incompatible architecture is the reason. You also emulated backwards compatibility on the 360, so that's even more of a nail in your coffin. Face it, all you want to do is sell me your streaming service. Well, I'm not buying; go fuck yourself.

The original Xbox was 32-bit. XBone is 64-bit. While x86-64 makes it possible to run 32-bit stuff without actual emulation, it doesn't mean it's a freebee to implement into the OS. DX8 to DX9 wasn't that big of a transition. However, the transition from DX8 to DX11 is. Besides the software emulation needed, they would also have to emulate the hardware, and in the case of game discs, would have to support some of that hardware.

So yeah, there is an incompatible architecture. Plus there's the issue of marketing "Xbox One is backwards compatible with Xbox 1 games!". Face it, it just gives MS a chance to make HA10 2.0. Not H2A10, but HA10 2.0. H2A10 comes next year. Then Halo 5 in 2015. Then Halo Wars 2 shortly before they announce the Xbox Infinity in 2023.

[Warsaw]

But they've shown in the past that they were willing to write a software emulation layer so all of that goes out of the window anyway. I'm willing to foot the bill for a console that can play my old games and I suspect I'm not alone. It is called the Xbox One, right, as in one device does everything?

One box to rule them all
One box to find them
One box to bring them all
And in the Darkness, bind them!

I'm all for H2A10! Though this time, they are free to actually change the game play and rework the levels. Please do so, 343i, because H2 was balls. Can I get a Brute Force 2? It'll be just like the Xbox 1 days on my Xbox One!

BTW:


Progress!

[InnerGoat]

that looks a whole lot better too lmao.

[Btcc22]

While x86-64 makes it possible to run 32-bit stuff without actual emulation, it doesn't mean it's a freebee to implement into the OS.

Even though every 64-bit Windows can run 32-bit code just fine. What's not free about it if the support is already there?

I can't see getting games that target Direct3D 8 running to be much of a problem either. Last I checked, I can still run them just fine.

Besides the software emulation needed, they would also have to emulate the hardware, and in the case of game discs, would have to support some of that hardware.

What extra hardware would they need to handle Xbox discs? I can't think of anything.

I'm going to take a guess and say that it's not technical barriers preventing them from providing compatibility but more because they assume nobody cares about decade old games.

[Tnnaas]

Good thing I didn't sell my original Xbox then. I can still play Pariah and Republic Commando.

[Warsaw]

Ha, same here! But it's old, and won't last forever. It's nice to know there is still a currently supported means of playing old games.

[Btcc22]

But it's old, and won't last forever.

Bet you can get a couple of decades out of it even if you have to replace the hard and DVD drives along the way.

[Tnnaas]

Although, now that I think about it, the two that I mentioned are up for grabs on PC. I'm sure I can buy them used for $5 a piece.

Heh, I don't think I'd ever get away for saying that if I bought the Xbox One.