Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Xbox One: Hardware Analysis & Comparison to PlayStation 4

anandtech.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 82 posts

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

#61

Post by pandaman »

slacka wrote: post #52
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #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…

> "Developers are going to have a great time this generation thanks to how similar the hardware is (identical in many cases)." Sure the hardware will be similar, but what use is that if the APIs to access the hardware are totally different? I think the odds of Sony using DirectX in their SDK are pretty slim.

Developers had been writing multi-platform code for 10 years already. When you have API calls isolated from the rest of the code it takes a couple man/months tops to target another API.

The hard part of the previous generations multi-platform had been in getting to the same level of performance. E.g. 360 had a pretty weak CPU and a superior GPU compared to PS3 so the distribution of things done on CPU and GPU was completely different between these two targets.

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

#62

Post by pandaman »

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #51
AdrianRossouw wrote: post #45

> Combine the fact that TV is important, with the fact that the Xbox 360 has evolved into a Netflix box for many, i thought the ps3 was more widely used for streaming? it's pretty fscking ridiculous that you need to have gold membership AND netflix membership to stream with the xbox.

>i thought the ps3 was more widely used for streaming? Not by a LONG shot. And you don't need gold membership to use the Netflix app on xbox. Also, the Netflix app for xbox is much better than the PS3 app.

According to Netflix PS3 is the most popular streaming device (not just out of PS3 and 360 but all TV-connected devices).

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2412856,00.asp

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

#63

Post by manojlds »

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #51
AdrianRossouw wrote: post #45

> Combine the fact that TV is important, with the fact that the Xbox 360 has evolved into a Netflix box for many, i thought the ps3 was more widely used for streaming? it's pretty fscking ridiculous that you need to have gold membership AND netflix membership to stream with the xbox.

>i thought the ps3 was more widely used for streaming? Not by a LONG shot. And you don't need gold membership to use the Netflix app on xbox. Also, the Netflix app for xbox is much better than the PS3 app.

As a Xbox 360 user, I can confirm that Xbox Live Gold membership is required for Netflix.

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

#64

Post by InclinedPlane »

teamonkey wrote: post #21
michielvoo wrote: post #15

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.

The Xbox One runs on x86 hardware though, porting the CLR would be rather trivial. Indeed, the CLR probably runs as part of the apps VM.

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

#65

Post by pandaman »

aclevernickname wrote: post #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…

Even if you had the same GPU and CPU (which you don't, there had not been 8 core/12CU GCN APUs two years ago, I doubt you can buy them even now) you still would be far away from the console experience because the PC games cannot access the GPU directly and rely on slow and inefficient APIs.

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

#66

Post by teamonkey »

joenathan wrote: post #36
aclevernickname wrote: post #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…

>I've been enjoying much of the next-generation gaming experience already. You can't be serious. Although you can very soon be enjoying the next-generation gaming experience, what's exciting to me about this as a PC gamer is that all next gen games will be designed with x86 in mind, which should make porting trivial compared to this generation.

Porting from console to PC is trivial. Getting it working well on an infinite number of configurations is not and supporting it is expensive.

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

#67

Post by Yuioup »

NamTaf wrote: post #57
Breakthrough wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I would consider HDMI passthrough as an ace in the hole... I mean I get how it would be cool to be able to overlay your cable box output on the screen, but this also implies that you would have to have your Xbox on every time you wanted to watch television. Unless, of course, the pass through works when the device is turned off... However, I haven't heard any mention yet that it does (does anyone know…

That's the idea. Low power is to help justify leaving it on constantly. You don't ever turn this thing off - it just sleeps at such low power that you write it off like you do with a modern TV or the like. Microsoft's betting the farm on the idea that a consumer will leave the xbox on 24/7 in a low-power state and have it as THE hub for all things digital entertainment. Your TV goes through it for advanced features s…

But I don't want Kinect. I don't want to pick up the controller when I want to watch TV. Can I get a good remote for the Xbox One?

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

#68

Post by joenathan »

teamonkey wrote: post #66
joenathan wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I've been enjoying much of the next-generation gaming experience already. You can't be serious. Although you can very soon be enjoying the next-generation gaming experience, what's exciting to me about this as a PC gamer is that all next gen games will be designed with x86 in mind, which should make porting trivial compared to this generation.

Porting from console to PC is trivial. Getting it working well on an infinite number of configurations is not and supporting it is expensive.

That's what abstraction layers are for, think Direct X and OpenGL.

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

#69

Post by YokoZar »

Yuioup wrote: post #67
NamTaf wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the idea. Low power is to help justify leaving it on constantly. You don't ever turn this thing off - it just sleeps at such low power that you write it off like you do with a modern TV or the like. Microsoft's betting the farm on the idea that a consumer will leave the xbox on 24/7 in a low-power state and have it as THE hub for all things digital entertainment. Your TV goes through it for advanced features s…

But I don't want Kinect. I don't want to pick up the controller when I want to watch TV. Can I get a good remote for the Xbox One?

Almost surely. There were official remotes for previous generation consoles. It is, after all, a blu-ray player.

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

#70

Post by jasey »

hayksaakian wrote: post #59
wmf wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is "necessary" in the sense that AnandTech would be out of business otherwise.

this feels like a real problem that some startup should solve. clearly, websites that do this are shooting themselves in the foot in terms of UX, for the sake of pageviews and ad impressions. Is there now better way?

The other model is a paywall.

When I worked for a publisher there was a long debate over UX vs page views and ad impressions.

I think Google has rules around how you can load ad's also so it might not be posible to do anything dynamic. Google has all the ad inventory so is the dominant player.

Post reply on HN