VGLeaks: First look as Durango XDK (always connected, kinect required)

[MorganX]

That was my point, the Move Engines are nothing more than SPUs were on PS3, people are talking like they are some super special silicon that is going to boost GPU performance, at best they will offer "free" antialiasing. They are mainly there to get around the slow bandwidth of the DDR3 RAM.

The PS4 has beefed up ALUs on all the CUs of the GPU, so physics is moot.

Don't be ridiculous it's not moot. You've 1) just eliminated any memory bandwidth advantage, based on your words, which would be situational anyway, 2) Anytime you free up the GPU to do more GPU this increases overall performance, the SPUs were just too hard for many to utilized, and 3) beefed up ALUs or not, if you can offload the physics, that would leave them to do even more!

Only real world performance will tell, just as was the case with this generation.

[Klownicle]

The have to install is because of bluray and the slow read speed. And it doesn't say you have to do a full install like the 360 "installs", just that you have to do an install, which is likely a mini install.

And it'd be surprised if it wasn't 1TB. And since it's most likely a mini install, of course you need the disk, if you didn't you could just install and give it away. Unless every disk was signed and it could ony be played on your account.

Bluray's top WRITE speed is 54MB's a second, that's the speed of a standard cheap hard drive. Read speed will never be an issue with games directly from a disk at these speeds. Requiring all games to be installed on the drive presents a "max" type problem, so I'm not sure how they could work with this. Suddenly you have too many games and required to buy a new drive for your other games? Companies just trying to get money, that's all I see. Never about the consumer is it...

At 1TB, for 50gb a disc, your looking at 20-25 games.

[TheLegendOfMart]

Don't be ridiculous it's not moot. You've 1) just eliminated any memory bandwidth advantage, based on your words, which would be situational anyway, 2) Anytime you free up the GPU to do more GPU this increases overall performance, the SPUs were just too hard for many to utilized, and 3) beefed up ALUs or not, if you can offload the physics, that would leave them to do even more!

Only real world performance will tell, just as was the case with this generation.

It is moot, the beefed up ALU in the PS4 can take care of physics like the Move Engines. The MEs aren't going to make up the difference between 12CU on Durango and 18CU on Orbis.

[HawkMan]

The Move Engines are for Kinect, hardware compression/decompression, they are mainly used to maximise the throughput limited RAM and to ease CPU burden not to supplement GPU power. They are basically just the SPUs like on the CELL CPU.

All the shaders on the PS4 are beefed up anyway, it was originally only going to be 4 of the 18 CUs but all 18 will have extra ALU.

No the move engines are not for Kinect. they may be able to help kinect. but you obviusly have not read up on what the move engines do, and what shaders are often used for. Beefed up shaders... heh...

read the post above about what the move engines do, ALL those operations listed there, are regular stff that has NOTHING to do with Kinect and are jobs the GPU And the shaders have to do today, and they are intensive tasks that have to be done a lot. the Move engines basically do all these ops for free, freeing up the shaders and gpu processing that would normally be tied up in this mundane tasks.

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Bluray's top WRITE speed is 54MB's a second, that's the speed of a standard cheap hard drive. Read speed will never be an issue with games directly from a disk at these speeds. Requiring all games to be installed on the drive presents a "max" type problem, so I'm not sure how they could work with this. Suddenly you have too many games and required to buy a new drive for your other games? Companies just trying to get money, that's all I see. Never about the consumer is it...

At 1TB, for 50gb a disc, your looking at 20-25 games.

So this is the technical explanation. My non technical gaming explanation was I am playing Tomb Raider on the PS3 currently, no disk install at all, and the load times are pretty much the best I have ever seen on a console game this generation. So that is why I personally do not believe Blu Ray drives are to slow to read from, I have experienced first hand the fact they are just fine, and as such I believe a lot comes down to developers and how they are choosing to get the assets, etc., off the disks.

[HawkMan]

I agree, but in this case both platforms are using the same GPUs, so this time around the specs are easier to compare.

All of the functions the move engines handle are normally handled by the CPU, if anything they would take load off the CPU, not the GPU. Most games nowadays are bottlenecked by GPU performance, not CPU performance.

Actually , most of those ops are today handled by the shaders. not the CPU:

[MorganX]

It is moot, the beefed up ALU in the PS4 can take care of physics like the Move Engines. The MEs aren't going to make up the difference between 12CU on Durango and 18CU on Orbis.

Just as nothing was going to make up for the almighty power of the SPUs in the cell processor which was going to dominate the world. We'll have to wait an see. MS did pretty good this generation with lower technical "specs." So, we'll have to see won't we?

[HawkMan]

That was my point, the Move Engines are nothing more than SPUs were on PS3, people are talking like they are some super special silicon that is going to boost GPU performance, at best they will offer "free" antialiasing. They are mainly there to get around the slow bandwidth of the DDR3 RAM.

The PS4 has beefed up ALUs on all the CUs of the GPU, so physics is moot.

Except that the Move engines don't need special coding to be utilized, they are automatically used. and unlike the PSU's they offer free performance while the SPU's on the PS3 essentially was the CPU. though that idea in retrospect sucked.

[MorganX]

So this is the technical explanation. My non technical gaming explanation was I am playing Tomb Raider on the PS3 currently, no disk install at all, and the load times are pretty much the best I have ever seen on a console game this generation. So that is why I personally do not believe Blu Ray drives are to slow to read from, I have experienced first hand the fact they are just fine, and as such I believe a lot comes down to developers and how they are choosing to get the assets, etc., off the disks.

They are not "that" slow to read from. I don't know if a "full" game install will be required or not. On the face of it, I doubt it but we'll have to see. With the Xbox having 50GB Blu-ray, more devs will surely start taking advantage of it since it will be on both platforms. Hard to imagine mandatory 20GB plus installs no matter how big the internal drive. But it's not that far fetched.

[HawkMan]

So this is the technical explanation. My non technical gaming explanation was I am playing Tomb Raider on the PS3 currently, no disk install at all, and the load times are pretty much the best I have ever seen on a console game this generation. So that is why I personally do not believe Blu Ray drives are to slow to read from, I have experienced first hand the fact they are just fine, and as such I believe a lot comes down to developers and how they are choosing to get the assets, etc., off the disks.

it's called LOD/texture streaming. they load everything up as crap low res assets and then load them up in higher res as you go, causing texture and LOD popping. on newer games they "fade" the LOD change to hide it instead of the Mass Effect 1 style shock pop.

And the game does do a "sort of" install in the background, though temporary, basically they load stuff up in the background to a temp area on the HDD so it can be read from there when you get to the area.

[Alladaskill17]

I truly hope this is not true, I have NO use for Kinect, do not care for it at all. I have been an Xbox fan since the release of the first console, but I really do not like the direction they seem to be rumored on taking. Is this official?

[vcfan]

Everything we hear about the next Xbox just makes it sound awful. I don't want Kinect. I don't want an "entertainment hub" I don't want MS to tell me they are not abandoning the core while they roll out another Halo/Cod/Gears.

At this point I'm not even sure if I'm going to bother with next gen at all, the microtransaction, dude-bro, every multiplayer game must feature unlocks that give people who play the most ridiculous advantages, has ruined gaming for me.

Gaming was better when it wasnt popular.

I don't think Microsoft is trying to cater to you when you are a minority.The stuff that you want or don't want is probably something most people disagree with .Microsoft is in the business of making money,not customizing their product for a select few to get good comments on internet message forums.

According to independent research, no other consumer electronics device sold faster within a 60-day time span, which is an incredible achievement considering the strength of the sector."

Sales of Kinect have topped 24 million worldwide - more than Nintendo's GameCube (21.7 million) and equal to the original Xbox

nuff said

[dead.cell]

I don't think Microsoft is trying to cater to you when you are a minority.The stuff that you want or don't want is probably something most people disagree with .Microsoft is in the business of making money,not customizing their product for a select few to get good comments on internet message forums.

nuff said

Depends on whether they're including sales of the Kinect that came with the Xbox 360's newer models I guess, wouldn't it? My friend for example got Kinect just because he got a new Xbox as a gift (his last one burned up on him heh).

[MorganX]

I don't think Microsoft is trying to cater to you when you are a minority.The stuff that you want or don't want is probably something most people disagree with .Microsoft is in the business of making money,not customizing their product for a select few to get good comments on internet message forums.

You are right. But, like in desktop computing there are hardcore gamers and enthusiasts that drive mindshare in the industry, same for gaming. With a pretty stout PS4, MS can't ignore on-Kinectimals. If it's unobtrusive and doesn't drive the cost up, it's not going to be an issue. But if MS goes into the next generation thinking they can ignore the hardcore gamer and enthusiasts I think it will be a mistake.

However, in the US, MS is so dominant, they can probably pull it off. And for those like me with big hands, even if I want to go, the PS controller is just not doable. Haven't heard anything about Bluetooth. But if you can use a wireless Xbox Gamepad with PS4, I'm probably in.

[mattmatik]

Must be including Kinect/360 bundles, I doubt they sold that many stand-alone. Requiring Kinect is just a way for them to force the sale - so later on we will hear about how many Kinects were sold.

Still not sure which direction I'll go. Want to see what the online offerings are. If Microsoft charges for LIVE again, they made my decision for me.

[vcfan]

Depends on whether they're including sales of the Kinect that came with the Xbox 360's newer models I guess, wouldn't it? My friend for example got Kinect just because he got a new Xbox as a gift (his last one burned up on him heh).

that would only be true if the Kinect was added for free,or if only the Kinect bundle is available and not the console itself. if someone is buying an xbox and doesn't care for Kinect,why would they pay $100-$150 more for the bundle?.

[MorganX]

Must be including Kinect/360 bundles, I doubt they sold that many stand-alone. Requiring Kinect is just a way for them to force the sale - so later on we will hear about how many Kinects were sold.

Still not sure which direction I'll go. Want to see what the online offerings are. If Microsoft charges for LIVE again, they made my decision for me.

They're charging for Live. That's one of their money makers. Me, free is good, but some things are worth paying for. The free PS community is one of the things I didn't like about the platform. Even a small subscription like $40 annually is some level of riff raff filter. It was bad, real bad. And at that time, blocking/ignoring/reporting was medieval on PSN.

[vcfan]

Must be including Kinect/360 bundles, I doubt they sold that many stand-alone. Requiring Kinect is just a way for them to force the sale - so later on we will hear about how many Kinects were sold.

Still not sure which direction I'll go. Want to see what the online offerings are. If Microsoft charges for LIVE again, they made my decision for me.

dude,that doesn't make sense. the bundle is at least $100 more. How are they forcing the Kinect? People are buying the bundle for Kinect. Its $100 cheaper today to buy the console without Kinect bundled.

[Blackhearted]

At 1TB, for 50gb a disc, your looking at 20-25 games.

You're assuming that every game will use up the entirety of the disc. They wont. Not all games will need the full 50GB of a dual layer blu-ray disc.

[TheLegendOfMart]

No but a lot of PS3 exclusive games run 20-50Gb, the only reason multiplatform games were small this gen was 360 8Gb Dual Layer limit. Pointless having Bluray if they aren't going to make use of it.

[HawkMan]

No but a lot of PS3 exclusive games run 20-50Gb, the only reason multiplatform games were small this gen was 360 8Gb Dual Layer limit. Pointless having Bluray if they aren't going to make use of it.

Err no they don't. even the largest highest quality PC MMO games(the games with the most and highest quality(largest) assets) don't reach 50 yet. not even Secret World which is ginormous.

[TheLegendOfMart]

Do you have to be such an insufferable arrogant know it all, all the time, its getting boring.

Uncharted - 22GB

Uncharted 2 - 23GB

Uncharted 3 - 51GB

Gran Turismo 5 - 20GB

Killzone 3 - 46GB

God of War 3 - 45GB

God of War Ascension - 38GB

Heavy Rain - 21GB

Metal Gear Solid 4 - 28GB

I never said it was all game assets, but clearly dual layer discs were holding games back.

[HawkMan]

A lot is apparently 2 games now then, and all of those games include heavy padding and repeated content, especially the 40+ games.

[TheLegendOfMart]

So you went from "errrr no" to "now and then", people like you are the exact reason I post on other forums now, you go out of your way to point out that someone is wrong even when you yourself are wrong and then refuse to admit it, jog on.

[Blackhearted]

How much of the space on some of those larger ones is simply from not bothering to compress various assets(audio/cinematics/etc) because they had a load of excess space to use?