Microsoft's disc-less Xbox One S reportedly launches next month

[OortCloud]

Um you do realize that a PC can hook up to a TV right? There's even an entire case market dedicated to HTPCs. I pointed that out in my original comment which you seemed to have glazed over. Stream big picture mode has been around for awhile and KODI accepts a huge range of remotes, something the consoles cannot do.

I don't want to argue with you. Like I said I love my PC and have been a PC nerd for 40 years. I've used steam big picture - I even have a steam link (and tried the horror show that was the Steam Controller), and kodi/plex etc but a PC will never be quite the same as a console for that ease and convenience and nowadays I find the graphical power of consoles is generally 'good enough' - although obviously not up to my GTX1080.

 

[Soothsayer]

They probably figure the drive will fail quickly anyway so why not ship it without a working drive to begin with...

Xbox ONE S without a UHD blu-ray drive is almost pointless. It doesn't matter so much with games because they will download the whole game from LIVE instead of using the image from the disc.

I was able to install COD Black Ops 4 from disc by disabling wifi, but if you want to play online you will have to download 74GB game image anyways. MS never heard of streaming video and data caps apparently

 

[Soothsayer]

One of the most disappointing aspects of Xbox One X for me was the lack of a user replaceable HDD.

They should have learned their lesson by now:

Put the OS main drive as a M.2 or a sata SSD or HDD and then allow us to put in our own drive.

...I hate externals.

The problem is MS cheaped out on XBOX ONE. The southbridge chip has SATA 2 interface, and eMMC 4.5 spec.

SATA3 was already a thing for a couple years when Xbox ONE launched. MS didn't update the Southbridge in 2016 for the ONE S, nor did they upgrade for the 'high performance' ONE X in 2017.

So XBOX ONE is living circa 2009...

Now SATA2 can do up to 375MB/s but even replacing the internal drive only shaves a few seconds off boot and load times versus the spinning drive's impressive 40MB/s.

So there is something drastically screwed up with the X1 subsystems. Because 375MB/s would actually be pretty damn good in comparison.

Part of the problem may be the eMMC 4.5 standard for the built in NAND cache. Only 52MHz (not sure if X1 supports DDR mode for a massive 90MB/s transfer speed). The OS is the only thing that can use the eMMC, and that is where the OS is cached. Which explains why even an internal SSD does almost nothing for boot times.

eMMC 5.0 was just around the corner with 200MHz when X1 came out. But Microsoft didn't update the southbridge for X1S or X1X.

A console should be near instant on, not take almost a minute just to boot to the dashboard. 300MB/s read speeds would be appropriate. Probably would be about 15 second or less boot time.

MS and Xbox are trash.

 

[Evernessince]

The problem is MS cheaped out on XBOX ONE. The southbridge chip has SATA 2 interface, and eMMC 4.5 spec.

SATA3 was already a thing for a couple years when Xbox ONE launched. MS didn't update the Southbridge in 2016 for the ONE S, nor did they upgrade for the 'high performance' ONE X in 2017.

So XBOX ONE is living circa 2009...

Now SATA2 can do up to 375MB/s but even replacing the internal drive only shaves a few seconds off boot and load times versus the spinning drive's impressive 40MB/s.

So there is something drastically screwed up with the X1 subsystems. Because 375MB/s would actually be pretty damn good in comparison.

Part of the problem may be the eMMC 4.5 standard for the built in NAND cache. Only 52MHz (not sure if X1 supports DDR mode for a massive 90MB/s transfer speed). The OS is the only thing that can use the eMMC, and that is where the OS is cached. Which explains why even an internal SSD does almost nothing for boot times.

eMMC 5.0 was just around the corner with 200MHz when X1 came out. But Microsoft didn't update the southbridge for X1S or X1X.

A console should be near instant on, not take almost a minute just to boot to the dashboard. 300MB/s read speeds would be appropriate. Probably would be about 15 second or less boot time.

MS and Xbox are trash.

Heck I have SATA III on the Z68 motherboards I have. Those are way old.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

MS and Xbox are trash.

#1 I was on the shelf about buying Xbox One X when it was $500, so I went and built my desktop PC - spending way, way more. I personally love Xbox Live and I love Xbox's controller as well as interface.

While I am annoyed with design decisions, it's still only $500 ($400 now) while my desktop cost closer to $5000.