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Feb 13 / Ozymandias

ExtremeTech Speculates on “the” Next Xbox

Just wanted to point you to this ExtremeTech article where they speculate on the hardware capabilities of a (presumed) next Xbox. Fun read, and better thought out than most posts you see on NeoGAF or elsewhere. Just to be clear, I’m not making any sort of statement about ideas in the article… just saying it’s nice to read something coming from a more technical bent.

And since I have it on the hard drive, thought I’d share one of my favorite pictures back from the days of Xbox 2 speculation. Enjoy!

There is no Xbox 2

Related posts:

  1. Unreleased Penny Arcade Xbox 2 Rumors Strip
  2. Xbox 360: 28M Sold WW | Xbox LIVE: 17M Subscribers, Majority Gold
  3. [Edit] Xbox LIVE being discontinued for original Xbox
  4. Great Xbox 360 French Video
  5. Creating the Xbox 360 Brand Identity

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  • Roland

    The parts I understood were right on. I can only hope Microsoft doesn’t just "do its own thing" but also listens to input from users as well as those kinds of articles.

    If expanding the hardware (CPU & GPU) is as ‘easy’ as that article made it sound like, the next Xbox would be better right from the start than any system has been so far, considering the advantages for the developers (not too much change from programming for 360 to Xbox Next) and users (near 100% backward compat. possible).

    I don’t care for the whole motion control movement, but I do hope the next controller will be better suited for slightly larger hands, as my fingers don’t have nearly enough room around the handles.

  • MrNastyTime UK

    Very good read.

    Hopefully will using the same CPU/GPU model and refine upon. I imagine it will make the developers life alot easier rather than have to learn yet another new method to maximise the console potential aka cell.

    Sadly no mention of AI, or hardware which could be installed to help development.

    The other factor would I hope MS considers is noise levels of the next-gen systems, both the 360 and PS3 are loud, so mention of a SSD instead of HDD is welcome reading.

    Finally I still say brand loyalty towards MS is swallow so if Sony get their game in order and launch a superior nextgen console I could see Sony winning. I know I will be very cautious with MS next next-gen system due to the RROD plus I dont believe it takes 12 months to realise you’ve made a 1 BILLION DOLLAR error. Simply they rushed it out and Im 100% certain they knew there were issues. Well MS does this with every OS so.. who dares to say Im wrong?? haha

  • http://csdprojects.co.uk/ Alex Atkin UK

    @MrNastyTime UK

    Unfortunately the use of SSD is not relevant to the noise level of the console. Both the 360 and PS3 have near-silent 2.5" drives. Many 3.5" drives are also near silent and most outrun SSDs easily for general use and as certainly a lot cheaper.

    Considering the sizes (SSDs vs HDD for the same price), I would prefer they stick with hard drives. SSDs are quickly getting to decent sizes but only the extremely expensive ones actually match the speed of a much cheaper (and larger) HDD.

    While they will be readily available in 320GB sizes in a year or two, laptop hard drives (like the 360/PS3 use) likewise will be at least 1.5TB by then, likely double that.

    I would rather have more space for installing/downloading games on the HDD rather than potentially improved load times. Lets not forget Arcade games are getting bigger and bigger. The next Xbox needs a HUGE HDD especially as some of us might want to install our 360 games onto its HDD (which I already filled my 120GB) as well as the new games and redownloading all our Xbox Live Arcade games.

    We will need a LOT of space.

    As for noise, the problem is all down to money. The 360 uses cheaper fans which make more noise. There are readily available fans which shift more air and are quieter, but they cost more money.

    Also, the 360 needed to be a bit taller like the PS3 for better airflow and bigger/slower/quieter fans. It would have probably prevented the RROD. Although I am sure Microsoft have learnt from that mistake.

  • MrNastyTime UK

    @Alex Atkin UK

    Even when the DVD player is not spinning the 360 is loud. Is it just the cheap 360 fan making the noise?

    Do higher quality product have some kind of sound damping then?

  • upset gamer :(

    Hopefully the next xbox will be more reliable…I waiting for my xbox to come back from repair for the 4th time now…

    I own most of the game system released since the 80′s. Most of them still work!!!

    How in hell I need to send my xbox to repair every year?!

  • WiNG

    The article is mostly a good read of possible "maybes", nothing more than that so far. I quite agree with Alex Atkin on the HDD issue on the need of more space against more read speed at this point. Let me insist on SSDs being superior at READING data but being awfully slow (so far) on WRITTING data, making them a not so smart choice for caching (which developers are still going to need). Also, given the cost-effective approach, which I believe to be a good bet by the article writter, SSDs are simply prohibitive. Yes, their price will drop… predictions said it would be that way last year, but it wasn’t. Either they drop drastically on 2009 or I think we can discard them for the next Xbox.

    Regarding the CPU, the only certain thing is that it will need to have more cores than now. All processor manufacturers nowadays have resorted to pack more cores on a single die due to the (current) impossibility of making a single core faster, therefore it is safe to assume that if the CPU will get faster it will be through more cores.

    Regarding GFX… oh man, that is a real hard choice now. Larrabee is comming, CUDA is here already and ATi… oh wait, what the heck is ATi doing these days? One of the reasons X360 finally appealed far far more developers than on the original Xbox was the (relative) easier programming due both its structure and the framework provided by MS. In the past, this framework seems to have been based heavily on MS experience in the PC field, including DirectX on the GFX part. Well, Larrabee is designed to be a powerful multi-core multi-purpose processor that will render graphics in software mode… to summarize, no DirectX or OpenGL anymore (Larrabee will rasterize DirectX or OpenGL when needed). To understand this concept a bit better let me link you to an interview with the brains behind the Unreal Engine speaking on this topic: arstechnica.com/…/gpu-sweeney-int

    CUDA on the other side has been with us for a long while without most of us really knowing it. Basically, it is a set of instructions that allows coders to use a Nvidia card almost at will. Their new Physx built in support for phisical acceleration is done through CUDA for instance. According to Nvidia, CUDA is no different to Larrabee concept but with greater details here and there (of course they are not going to say they are worse than the new competence, are they?)

    Logic tells me Nvidia has a higher chance than Larrabee, specially with Sony asking for Larrabee for PS4 (I pity the fool who has to code something working on a Cell+Larrabee combination…). However, my hunch tells me it will be ATi again. ATi still has the fastest and more badass graphic cards available despite all the troubles AMD has gone though so far and the supossed lack of innovation on the near future (anyone heard of their plans after the 4870? I think not). Surely it is not more than a hunch but, when a company that has made a so wide array of brute force products seems to have gone dry unexpectedly for long… well… either they actually got dry or we do not know yet what they are working for. As I said, logic tells me it will be Nvidia again, but if I had to bet it would be a new ATi, probably with dual processors (4x would go probably out of price), probably with also a separe physics engine (not necessarily Ageia Physx but it could be). A combination theoretically not as versatile as Larrabee but neither as bitchy, probably over it in raw power, with all the current support and full DirectX 11 support (as well as possibly other nice instructions pre-scheduled for DX12 depending on the launch date as happened on the X360)

    And since we are speculating… for the name I expect something on the lines of x480 instead of the so expected x720… or at least something that includes the number 4.

    Of course, I could be horribly wr

  • MrVitaminP

    @WiNG

    ATI has a competing technology to CUDA with their Streaming API. They might be a bit late to the game, but they are not just sitting around. You can read a blip about it here: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/395/1049395/ati-puts-stream-everywhere.

  • http://ozymandias.com/ Ozymandias

    I wouldn’t bet against SSD in the longrun. They’re nothing more than masses of RAM on a interface device, and RAM is one of those things that just keeps dropping in price like a rock. Go take a look at how much it costs to get 2 GB DDR3 SIMMs these days – have dropped by half in the last six months. In general, I suspect traditional hard drives may start getting displaced by SSDs in the next few years. Five years from now, I could actually see a world where >50% of mass storage device sales go to SSDs.

  • WiNG

    @MrVitaminP

    Thanks for the link, it was a good read even with INQ’s particular way of saying things. I still stand by my point though, whatever ATi is doing they are not just gloating about it so far and I can’t help but wonder what is next on the line. At any case, as I said, my ATi speculation is no more than a hunch with no real logic involved.

    @Ozymandias:

    SSDs have been called to substitute plate-based HDDs and not without a reason… however, the biggest mystery still remains: when? Theoretically 2008 was the year that would witness the final launch of this kind of disks… but it wasnt. I am about to seriously upgrade my desktop computer and ready it for some more years of performance and one of the things I was looking for, among a WD Velociraptor, was a SSD main drive (using the WD for caching to compensate for the reduced speed in writting data), but I am afraid I will have to drop the idea. There is not much to choose from (at least from my part of the world), prices are high to insanely high depending of the model and, above all, small storage space. It is not really a matter of betting against SSD, its a matter of betting if they will pack out the requirements desired to be cost-effective and, in the case of Next Xbox speculation, if that will happen in time.

    After all, its not the first time plain memory (although SSDs are not exactly like your RAM sticks) have been attempted to be used for this task without much success for the very same reasons: http://www.techpowerup.com

  • Rafoca

    One thing I know for sure about the next xbox: it will be reliable.

    MS will never make this same 3rls mistake again.

  • WiNG

    I just noticed… all comments on the site show to have been made on 23rd Jan

  • http://ozymandias.com/ Ozymandias

    Heh – good catch, I didn’t even notice! I just asked Telligent for any ideas they might have… I’m sure it’s just some dumb setting somewhere that needs to get kicked. Thanks for telling me!

  • Roland

    Andre, do you think there’s any possibility Microsoft will send out a questionnaire of some sort to get input from current users on what they expect and/or want (and definitely don’t want) in the next Xbox?

    I don’t mean on the technical hardware side but storage, game delivery, dashboard functionality, etc. based on how these things are used now.

  • http://ozymandias.com/ Ozymandias

    I’m sure Microsoft will do all sorts of user surveys on anything we do in the future. If I see anything that I can point you to, I definitely will!