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About LinkBacksRead more.You’ll have to install the games to HDD and “play from the optical drive will not be supported.”
Read more.You’ll have to install the games to HDD and “play from the optical drive will not be supported.”
And sod your leccy bills!
Because we're all so energy efficient...Originally Posted by Smudger
I assume in can drop back to a low-power, "GPU-off, 1 CPU core" type mode as with most other modern systems, even when doing things like updates and having the disk active the idle draw could easily be <10W with a good efficient PSU, just look at a NUC or other SFF device. Unless you've got posh LED bulbs then just leaving one light on is many times worse.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm interested in what the power consumption of various states will be like for the next consoles, as it's pretty horrendous for the current Xbox/PS3, although better than it was at release.
This always-on has to be done right, 10W 24-7, doing nothing, is unacceptable nowadays. It might not be that much vs some other stuff depending what you leave on, but however much it is, it's another needless, wasteful drain. They will have had to put a serious focus on efficiency if they don't want to be ridiculed, e.g. aggressive component gating, spin down the HDD when it's not needed, etc. It's possible, you only have to look at mobile devices, but we're still yet to see a decent amount of effort put into AC-powered hardware.
My sockets still have power switches fortunately.
Wonder if it has a graceful total-shutdown option? Switching off during an update or something could be bad...
Absolutely agree 10w is not acceptable - any thing over 1w is nowadays. You can run a full laptop at idle in 10w - including a semi-dimmed screen.
Having said that, last time I looked, the Sky+ acted as brilliant room heaters, even when notionally turned off.
Always on console? Depending on how this works they will lose this gen. At least there wasn't anything retarded like that, that I noticed, from the ps4 announcement.
I mean, you can't even tell people to install all games when your HDD space is limited. Sounds like a console to avoid already.
"Always on, Always connected." Except for when your Internet service drops... Also should people expect to be unable to play if their connections goes out somewhere down the line. This leaves them spitting distance from always online DRM which isn't what people want.
"installation system is being designed so that games can be played even as they are being installed, so you can get to the fun quicker." Sure, yeah that's why.... It's more because if players had to wait they'd definitely flip their ****.
"“Play from the optical disc will not be supported”" I don't see why they would even go this route, seeing as you CAN play the game from the disc *see above*, unless there is something in the works for DRM and used games.
"“Every Durango console will be sold with a new high-fidelity Kinect Sensor, which will be required for the system to operate”" So does that mean that if it breaks the system stops working? That would be hilariously stupid.
"“All games will be installed on the hard drive. Play from the optical disc will not be supported”" So if your hard drive goes so does your ability to play your games huh?
This all just smells a little funny to me, every way features have a way of improving play experience also has ways that they could lead to horrible experiences.
Haha, yeah. I've got switched extension leads for my TV and consoles. Unless they're building in a UPS then good luck!
Not that the next Xbox was on my shopping list anyway...
Well, it's got an AMD-based GPU so zero-core is an option, possibly an even more heavily gated version. Then there's AMD's fabric which would allow ARM cores as helper cores - wonder if it's got a multi-core APU with low power ARM core for idle processing - you could power-gate pretty much the whole silicon and leave it sitting in an incredibly low power idle state most of the time. Interesting concept.
Not sure how well the "install everything" mantra is going to work though: it'll need a huge hard drive or easy upgrades to satisfy every customer, particularly if they're going to supply games on blu-ray - that could be > 50GB of content per game: 20 games and you've filled a 1TB drive
current xbox 360 ships with a 250gb hdd , with a 320 as the adddon option
so sticking a 500 in there would be easy.
and allways on? its been on teh cards for ages - and i would stunned in the PS4 didnt require an allawys on connection as well (they just kept it quiet)
500 ? need more like 5000.
At least they're still selling the games on media and not relying on everyone having a fttc broadband.
I do hope they take into account people turn off plugs when they're not in use...
We live in days where phones remind you to unplug chargers when they're not in use to save all of 10w/year.
I was tempted to say that i'd send ms my leccy bill for all the resources they've squandered, but on further reflection i'm just not going to bother I don't play my x360 enough as it is.
Aside from that, it's bound to add a fair chunk to the sale price even for people who want nothing to do with the arm-wave-detection-system e.g. myself and almost everyone I know on XBL. Kinect not selling well enough? Make it mandatory for the next system to force it onto everyone so we can add silly features to more games without having to program an alternative input.
I agree, a lot of the 'features' are just shortcomings that marketing have put a positive spin on.
@scaryjim: I hadn't really thought of that but yeah that could be a problem. Whereas now you can have your most frequently games installed, and run other stuff from disc, would you have to persevere with stupid-long install times if you like to hop between a lot of games, or just feel like re-visiting an older title?
I mean I get that the access time and transfer speed of optical media isn't great, and is even an obvious problem with some current gen games (texture popping when not installed, for example) but storage space isn't unlimited. Still, just because they have 25-50GB available, I don't expect many titles will come close to filling that, at least initially.
@HalloweenJack: Sony have already said the PS4 will not be using draconian DRM, I see little reason to remain online in light of that? Auto-updates and quick boot are just excuses, they're not worth constantly staying online for - updates should take all of a few minutes* and if it needs to stay powered on for boot time to be reasonable then that's down to incompetence of the software team.
*Also, they could be downloaded and scheduled when the console is powered on, to install on next shutdown, or to nag the user after a timeout period if they stay online for ages.
Last edited by watercooled; 20-03-2013 at 06:00 PM.
Yes surely upgrading during a power cut will result in the whole OS breaking...
I don't like this at all, and my friends wonder why I play games on PC these days
In an attempt to STOP the bandwagon:
This does not say "Will REQUIRE".. The console will be ready instantly when users want to play, and will always maintain a network connection
Simply this appears to be a convenience mechanism. The console will keep your connection active even in sleep / hibernate mode to allow quick start-ups and background updating. Sounds good to me, I hate going to play games and waiting 10 minutes for console or game updates.
As for the rest of the details, I hope this is accurate because it looks fantastic. I will finally be able to use Kinect and no more disc swapping... What's not to like!
Sincerely hope they offer ample storage though.. 4GB simply won't be enough this time around Microsoft.
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