Live data from Hacker News

The Xbox One: Hardware Analysis & Comparison to PlayStation 4

anandtech.com

21–30 of 82 posts

Re: The Xbox One: Hardware Analysis & Comparison to PlayStation 4

#21

I understand that native Xbox 360 games will not run on Xbox One, but games developed using XNA should be able to run if Microsoft ports the CLR to Xbox One no?

XNA has been discontinued. I wouldn't expect Microsoft to port the CLR.

Re: The Xbox One: Hardware Analysis & Comparison to PlayStation 4

#22
post #7
post #3

It looks like the Sony machine will be more expensive (or its profit margins will be a lot lower). The PS4 seems to have a lot more hardware under the hood than the One. Having said that, as I pointed out elsewhere, it's now how many things your device does, but how well it does the thing that'll define its function. If it's an entertainment system, it's how well it entertains people. If it's a videogame, it's how fu…

Exactly, the developer experience is very important, and hardware is only an issue if you're really pushing the limits. Differences in SDK made a huge difference in popularity between the PS3 and the 360. Since the 360 handled background music, matchmaking, and voice chat natively, devs had a huge head start over competitors on the PS3. Helping out the devs had a direct effect on the players' experience, which led to…

Yeah.. but it does look like MS is backpedaling in support of indie devs for the XBox One.

Re: The Xbox One: Hardware Analysis & Comparison to PlayStation 4

#23

Took me a while to discover the meat of the article was hidden inside a drop-down navigation system. I honestly nearly bailed thinking, "This is all there is?" What an awful idea. Thank goodness I saw it at the last minute.

That's the experienced offered by most hardware review sites - AnandTech, DP Review, Toms Hardware, Extreme Overclocking, etc. Certainly to pump up pageviews, and thus generate more revenue.

Having said that, it is still bad design/usability. They could easily fix by keeping the model of separate pages for each topic, but moving the content from the drop down to an index at the bottom of each page, and also use prev/next buttons.

Re: The Xbox One: Hardware Analysis & Comparison to PlayStation 4

#24
post #5
post #3

It looks like the Sony machine will be more expensive (or its profit margins will be a lot lower). The PS4 seems to have a lot more hardware under the hood than the One. Having said that, as I pointed out elsewhere, it's now how many things your device does, but how well it does the thing that'll define its function. If it's an entertainment system, it's how well it entertains people. If it's a videogame, it's how fu…

I believe they used to make the previous console at a loss, because they generate most of their profits through the sales of games and accessories. I believe.

Yes, the PS3 initially launched at a loss(mainly because of the Blu Ray player from what I remember). Towards the end of its lifetime it wasn't losing them money.

Re: The Xbox One: Hardware Analysis & Comparison to PlayStation 4

#25
> "The hard partitioning of resources would be nice to know more about. The easiest thing would be to dedicate a Jaguar compute module to each OS, but that might end up being overkill for the Windows kernel and insufficient for some gaming workloads. I suspect ~1GB of system memory ends up being carved off for Windows."

Microsoft actually confirmed that 3GB will be reserved for the OS while only 5GB is available for games. Check out the video at 9:44

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2013/05/21/in...

Re: The Xbox One: Hardware Analysis & Comparison to PlayStation 4

#26

Took me a while to discover the meat of the article was hidden inside a drop-down navigation system. I honestly nearly bailed thinking, "This is all there is?" What an awful idea. Thank goodness I saw it at the last minute.

Just view it in Print mode instead:

http://www.anandtech.com/print/6972/xbox-one-hardware-compar...

Re: The Xbox One: Hardware Analysis & Comparison to PlayStation 4

#27
My take away:

- PS4 and XBox One are going to be similar hardware wise, with the PS4 having an edge in raw power and the XBox One having an edge in "cleverness" (e.g. memory caching) and power consumption (lower).

- Microsoft is re-using Hyper-V in a very awesome way(!).

- HDMI passthrough is Microsoft's "ace in the hole."

- Developers are going to have a great time this generation thanks to how similar the hardware is (identical in many cases).

I really want to know how Microsoft is able to run two hypervisors and offer GPU acceleration to both concurrently. Is this part of AMD's new CPU+GPU on one die magic, or is this something we'll see on the PC?

Re: The Xbox One: Hardware Analysis & Comparison to PlayStation 4

#28
So, I have a Linux Desktop PC, with 8GB of RAM, and an AMD A10 processor. I'm running XBMC (or LXDE or Front Row), and running 5 VM's on it under KVM. Cost about $450 when I bought it. price is about $570 now.

I've had this setup (with a slightly slower AMD proc) for over 2 years, and I've been running BSNES, Dolphin, PCSX2, Nestopia, and MAME fairly regularly. Today's announcement informed me that I've been enjoying much of the next-generation gaming experience already, without any of the DRM Sony and Microsoft promise to include with their systems.

Re: The Xbox One: Hardware Analysis & Comparison to PlayStation 4

#29
post #7
post #3

It looks like the Sony machine will be more expensive (or its profit margins will be a lot lower). The PS4 seems to have a lot more hardware under the hood than the One. Having said that, as I pointed out elsewhere, it's now how many things your device does, but how well it does the thing that'll define its function. If it's an entertainment system, it's how well it entertains people. If it's a videogame, it's how fu…

Exactly, the developer experience is very important, and hardware is only an issue if you're really pushing the limits. Differences in SDK made a huge difference in popularity between the PS3 and the 360. Since the 360 handled background music, matchmaking, and voice chat natively, devs had a huge head start over competitors on the PS3. Helping out the devs had a direct effect on the players' experience, which led to…

Tangent: In addition to that, I think this generation might be defined by how well each console opens up to smaller/indie developers.

Modern day indie developers are making products which we would have called AAA games in 1998 and many of them are selling extremely well (just see Kickstarter). I think they have a HUGE role to play this generation, and holding them hostage in the "app" sandbox will be a massive mistake.

If either Microsoft or Sony opened up their SDK to indie developers, and created some kind of arrangement where these developers could sell digitally for a fee, I think they will effectively "win" this round. And I do not mean "apps." I mean full power of the console level stuff.

Re: The Xbox One: Hardware Analysis & Comparison to PlayStation 4

#30

Took me a while to discover the meat of the article was hidden inside a drop-down navigation system. I honestly nearly bailed thinking, "This is all there is?" What an awful idea. Thank goodness I saw it at the last minute.

I actually prefer it greatly to either the never ending scroll or the digit-based pagination (1, 2, 3, Next, etc) wherein I cannot tell what's on page 3 or page 4. Often I just want to go to the summary, or to just view GPU info. I like it.
Post reply on HN