Xbox Project Scarlet: Microsoft focusing on improving frame rates and launch times

[amghwk]

SSDs are still quite expensive. Games nowadays easily gobble up 50+GBs. The max SSD GB they might cram in the cosoles could be 240GB for a popular selling price for the majority of buyers.

Of course, those who can cough out more doughs wouldn't mind paying for a premium for the very high capacity SSDs.

 

[dirtyferret]

that may have been the case 5 years ago but we've come a long way since then. hardware is far more efficient now. keep in mind that the consoles were made within the limitations of the time and it didn't help that AMD weren't exactly doing very good with their cpus at the time. so it's a little premature to say it won't happen.

Long way? Have you seen the thermals on coffee lake and Ryzen?

 

[Digitalzone]

They could make space for 3.5" HDD at 7200rpm. Furthermore, 3.5" are cheaper than smaller 2.5".
It's not as fast as SSD, but since the 1TB SSD costs what the complete Xbox One S costs I wouldn't expect SSDs soon. I personally think SSDs are overrated, considering their prices. (I have 500GB SSD just to mention).

 

[asmcint95]

I don't think getting 60fps more often is actually that likely on consoles. The current pervasion of 30fps is not due to hardware limitations, but because the industry at large views graphics as a key selling point, and will as such push them further at the expense of framerate, and by extension gameplay.

 

[jaryn211]

that may have been the case 5 years ago but we've come a long way since then. hardware is far more efficient now. keep in mind that the consoles were made within the limitations of the time and it didn't help that AMD weren't exactly doing very good with their cpus at the time. so it's a little premature to say it won't happen.

Long way? Have you seen the thermals on coffee lake and Ryzen?

coffee lake is not relevant since it won't be in consoles. also you do realise that the cpus will almost definitely be underclocked, which means lower voltages and by extension, lower temperatures. and yes we have come a long way, 8 core cpus in the past were priced at a 1000 dollars or more and required some serious cooling. now, I can get a 8 core, 16 thread cpu that cost me 200 dollars and I can run it using the included cooler.

 

[dirtyferret]

coffee lake is not relevant since it won't be in consoles. also you do realise that the cpus will almost definitely be underclocked, which means lower voltages and by extension, lower temperatures. and yes we have come a long way, 8 core cpus in the past were priced at a 1000 dollars or more and required some serious cooling. now, I can get a 8 core, 16 thread cpu that cost me 200 dollars and I can run it using the included cooler.

Was there a point to your reply other then saying the obvious that CPUs with more threads cost less now then they did years ago? Did you honestly think people thought otherwise? Will your next reply to this comment be as irrelevant as your last and state how the price of gas has gone up and won't be a nickel per gallon anymore???

 

[ghostf1re]

The chances of them adding an SSD are very slim, especially one to store games on it. You are looking at $80 added on to the console cost and that's a no go.

A better option would be some sort of high speed and cheap cache that's roughly as fast as an SSD. The cache would simply store the required files for games you played recently.

A hybrid drive could probably bridge that price gap, but with this console coming out in around 2 years, SSD's could look really nice as prices continue to drop.

 

[Evernessince]

A hybrid drive could probably bridge that price gap, but with this console coming out in around 2 years, SSD's could look really nice as prices continue to drop.

Prices on SSDs won't drop that much in 2 years. SSDs are mature now, it's not going to be like the early days where price per GB halves in a year anymore.

You would need at least a 1TB SSD in next gen consoles, especially with games approaching 100GBs. That's currently $180. The price would have to be cut in more than half to make it feasible for a console. It doesn't make any sense to store an entire game on an SSD when the only advantage is loading times.

A hybrid drive is cheaper than an SSD but more expensive than a HDD. You also can't control what's stored on the drive's SSD portion. It makes more sense for console makers to incorporate their own form of game cache as they can control what's stored, the price, and the speed. For all we know they could simply use the cheapest bare SSD on the market and create custom drivers and software for it to use it as an intelligent cache. Really the most important factors for games are read speeds and latency. Everything else isn't that important.