skywake

@dalekphalm You also have to consider the likely capacity of the optical media they'd go with. There doesn't seem like much of a push at all for a mainstream and cheap optical media format after BDXL currently or any desire from consumers for movies on discs larger than UHD BluRay. The PS4/XBOne currently use 50GB discs it's likely that a theoretical PS5 if it was to use optical media would go with 100GB BDXL discs. By then and with the rate that ROM chips have been getting cheaper like clockwork since the 80s 64GB cartridges will be the standard. Mid console cycle the standard size cartridge will be larger than the BDXL discs they'll have locked themselves into at the start. So there won't be much of a capacity advantage

I tend to agree but this shouldn't really be a discussion about cartridges vs digital distribution or even cartridges vs HDDs. It's more about cartridges vs optical media. Cartridges are and have always been better than discs in these aspects: - Faster especially in random reads by an order of magnitude - Lower cost mechanism in the console itself - Less prone to mechanical failure - Lower noise and power consumption - Takes up less physical space - Can contain other electronics including writable memory, co-processors and extra I/O (not much of an advantage anymore) But they lost ground in the mid 90s because: 1. The cost of ODDs came down enough that they could largely absorb the costs on the console hardware itself 2. The capacity of discs was a couple of orders of magnitude higher than what was possible on cartridges at a reasonable cost 3. People were buying consoles to playback DVDs and then later BluRays 1 still holds, 3 is less true in the age of Netflix and 2 is increasingly less true. So the question is of cartridges vs discs is going to change. It's no longer about whether or not we're happy paying more for games on a media that's physically limited in terms of capacity. It's now starting to be more a question of whether or not we're still happy paying a bit extra for the console itself with a mechanism for reading physical media that's slower and less reliable just so we can playback BluRays. If you're going 100% digital distribution you are, if anything, in the group of people who should be pushing for the death of optical media the hardest.

If you had been reading what I was saying this is basically what I've been arguing for from the start. Just some fast flash on the system to store at least some fraction of the most commonly used applications. Maybe a bit more than the ~8GB you typically see in an SSHD though Except it wouldn't be that much more expensive as I've already shown. This isn't 1997. And there are benefits other than speed some of which will actually cost you less money. The main ones being that it doesn't make any noise and a cartridge slot costs less. On the second point it costs less not just for the drive itself but also in the R&D and shipping costs in physically making space for it. And with some people going digital only surely if you're never buying discs you'd rather not have to pay extra for a component you'd never use. I say kill the optical drive, jump on cartridges and use the money saved removing the ODD to put a small SSD in the system I was comparing the physical media itself, you were comparing graphical horsepower. We expect that a GPU that you can squeeze into a portable system will be at least a generation behind in terms of spec. The Switch is the first portable console that's less than a full console generation behind in that regard. So I don't think it's reasonable to be complaining that the Switch is less capable graphically than the PS4. However it is entirely fair for me to be comparing prices of modern day discs and cartridges because if a home console was to use cartridges it would literally be the same tech as what the Switch is using. If anything it's the opposite. ROM chips have been getting cheaper faster than they historically have and improvements in capacity of optical media have stagnated. At the average rate ROM chips have been getting cheaper and with 16GB being available now ~50GB (i.e. 64GB) will be the standard by 2020 with 128GB being a higher capacity option. In theory optical discs could keep chugging along but there doesn't seem to be any desire to come up with a new optical disc format. Put simply by the time a theoretical PS5 would be at its peak cartridges available will be bigger than the discs it would likely use. And this isn't just me pulling figures out of thing air, here's a graph showing where things have been going for the last 30+ years. Note how the lines are converging in this graph, this is what I'm talking about. And this was with the costs of cartridges being passed onto consumers in the 90s vs now (hence the Switch now appearing above trend). As I said we're only a handful of years away from capacity not being a factor, they are now less than an order of magnitude away compared to the 90s where they were a couple of orders of magnitude away. And with other benefits to cartridges? I think it's a leap that consoles need to take.

I assume you're talking about the video that comes up as the first result when you do a search for "Switch boot" on youtube. Yeah, that's when you first boot the system when you first take it out of the box. It doesn't do that afterwards. I literally have my Switch on my desk right now. If I put it into sleep mode and press the home button it's on within a fraction of a second, basically instantly. Performing a full shutdown of the system and doing a cold boot right now I got 11s from pressing the power button to the lock screen. A full system restart was 16s. And it's not just the boot times but the system in general is very snappy. Except it's a portable device so it's not really competing in the same space and the PS4/XBOne are its contemporaries not it's predecessors. Graphically it's a massive step above the 3DS and Vita, conceptually it's a decent upgrade from the Wii U and technically it's doing things that the PS3 and 360 couldn't. And in any case, I don't have to worship every aspect of a device to buy it and like it. All I'm saying is that if a theoretical PS5 launched in 2020/2022 for $500-550AU it should be as snappy as the Switch was in 2017 especially given that I assume it's not going to be limited by a portable form factor. Are you even listening to yourself? Did you read anything I said? You cited 1997 pricing of N64 cartridges vs CDs as the reason why cartridges were a bad option. I made a counter point by showing prices of Switch games vs the same games on PS4/XBOne at one of my local retailers as of today. To put it simply: - The capacity of cartridges at prices publishers are able to absorb are much closer to discs than they were 20 years ago (~1/3rd vs < 1/20th) - The capacity of cartridges are growing faster than discs historically have (2x every ~5 years for discs, 2x every ~2.5 years for cartridges) - Unlike 20 years ago extra data for a game can be downloaded and saved on mass storage (eg "100GB games" on 50GB PS4 discs) So your point was heard but it's a moot point. In less than a handful of years cartridges will be the superior to discs in every aspect at prices that publishers will be able to absorb. That's just the cold hard facts of the matter. If you were starting from scratch and choosing a physical media for a console that would launch in 2020/2022 you would use cartridges. Plain and simple. With that said here are three factors that will potentially stop this from happening or at least delay it. Firstly the fact that movies are still sold on discs and a large portion of the market expects their game console to be able to play them. Secondly the fact that current gen games are on discs and if you remove the optical drive you kill any chance of backwards compatibility. Lastly there's a fair chance that physical media for games as we know it may just be dropped at some point.

You're so stuck on this, you still don't get it. I'll spell it out for you. When I say most "frequently used applications" on a console I am obviously not talking about photoshop, that shouldn't need to be explained but there you go. What I'm talking about here is something similar to those SSHDs or Intel's Optane. On a file or even lower level the OS can go "hey, these files are loaded into memory a lot. Lets keep a copy on the faster storage". Now that might be built in apps, it's definitely going to be the OS and system menu but it might also be the assets that are always loaded on that one game you play week after week. Well if we're going to be that pedantic let me get out a timer. Just now timing it from a cold boot the Switch gets to the lock screen in ~10sec, pressing the home button when in standby gets you there instantly. If you think that's a non benefit? Cool. All I was saying was that a "next-gen" console should improve on its predecessors in every aspect not just FPS. Especially if they are selling the hardware on the idea of it being high spec. Yes, this is true as of today. And it's also true that for the Switch they had no other option because it's a portable console. That wasn't my point. My point was to say that we have a console on the market that uses cartridges, digging up catalogues from 1997 to prove a point is misleading. Things have changed since then. A 2017 era cartridge is more compelling when put against even a BDXL disk than a 1997 era cartridge was against the CD. The 3DS and Vita launched in 2010 with 2GB cartridges being the standard and 4GB being an available option. The Switch is on the shelves now with 16GB being the standard and 32GB being an available option. I don't think it's a stretch to say that by the time a PS5 launches sometime after 2020, likely closer to 2022 that we will be talking 64GB+ at a reasonable price and capacity will not be of cartridges anymore. Games are not getting bigger faster than cartridges are. This is not 1997 when a large game on the N64 was 10-20x smaller than a CD and FF7 was on 3 discs. This is probably the best reason why they should stick to optical media. Though it is kinda amusing that you're bring up this point when at the same time the idea of some amount of flash being included is being dismissed outright as an unnecessary expense. You know I hear that Microsoft got screwed over releasing a console that did more media stuff at the expense of a better gaming experience. So surely it would be wise to omit the ODD in exchange for a cheaper cartridge slot and faster storage options even if it means no UHD BluRays. Obviously you don't care about graphics or price

18 seconds? Dude, try 3-4 seconds. You press the home button and then the same button three times to turn it on and it's on the home screen. The speed of a home console should be more than just FPS. If that means having a super marginally weaker CPU/GPU so they can put a ~128GB SSD in there for the OS and most frequently used applications? Then yes. That's exactly what I'm saying they should do. I'm not sure what point you're trying to prove by citing prices from 20 years ago. We all know that during the N64/PS era the N64 suffered because of the significantly smaller capacity of cartridges. We're talking games that were 10x smaller or less than a single disk sometimes costing twice as much. That's far removed from where we find ourselves now. Why cite 1997 prices when we literally have a console on the market right now that's using cartridges? A few examples of multi-platform games using Australian pricing from one retailer: Syrim Special Edition: $69 on PS4/XBOne, $79AU on Switch LA Noire: $79AU on Switch/PS4/XBOne NBA 2K 18: $69AU on Switch/PS4/XBOne FIFA 18: $89AU on PS4/XBOne, $79AU on Switch Lego City Undercover: $79AU on Switch, $89AU on PS4/XBOne In general you don't pay more for games on the Switch despite it using cartridges. If anything bringing up the state of cartridges vs discs highlights just how far we've come. They're pretty close to being on-par now in terms of the ability for publishers to at least absorb the costs so consumers aren't paying more. Though to be fair none of the above games come on >16GB cartridges. L.A. Noire for example is a 30GB game on Switch but it you buy the cartridge they hit you with a 14GB day one download. Though they do the same with "100GB games" on PS4/XBOne anyways so what's the difference?

I'm not the one talking about expensive technologies six years from now. I made three fairly basic points: 1. With 16GB cartridges being the standard on Switch (vs 2-4GB being standard on Vita/3DS) we're not far away from cartridges >50GB 2. With diminishing returns in horsepower and 4K being a bit of a ceiling we'll likely see a trend towards smaller, cheaper, more power efficient consoles 3. With flash getting cheaper faster than HDDs we're not far away from consoles with SSDs. Either entirely (eventually) or as a boot/fast storage drive If you want to disagree then fine. But disagree without talking about how current consoles handle these things or what we expect from current consoles. You said that the boot times of the PS4/XBOne are fine. What's so great about fine? The Switch, as underpowered as it is, starts up instantly. Yes it only has 32GB of internal storage but it's super fast to load things and super quiet because aside from a fan it has no mechanical storage. Now I may be a bit of a Nintendo fanboy but IMO I think the PS5 should beat the Switch in every technical aspect, not just horsepower.

What's the point of a "PS5" speculation thread if everyone is stuck on limitations of current systems and current pricing. Is this the PS5 thread or the PS4 Super Pro thread?

They might not care about Chrome but they do care about how long it takes to boot the console and how long it takes to install system updates. Also I see no reason why they couldn't have a 128-256GB SSD and intelligently store data on the SSD which is more sensitive to slow read/write performance. I mean they already get people who buy the disk to install a large chunk of the game onto the HDD for the same reason. Why not add another tier of even faster storage to the mix?

Again, we're talking at least 2020 and probably closer to 2022 so I wouldn't make guesses based on today's prices. And even if being entirely SSD based doesn't make sense at that point it, and it might not, it will make sense to put the OS and commonly used apps on one. So one way or another I think they'll have an SSD of some kind in their next console. Every year it makes less sense that they haven't gone down that road yet. Lastly I don't think they're using 1TB HDDs now because of the size of games. They're using 1TB HDDs because 500GB HDDs aren't much cheaper because there's a price floor for HDDs where there isn't for SSDs. At retail pricing a similar spec SSD that's twice as big costs about 1.5x as much regardless of capacity. For HDDs at the lowest capacities a HDD that's twice as big pretty much costs the same. Currently for 2.5" drives 500GB is that price floor, soon 1TB drives will be there.

I didn't say 1TB and I'm not talking about 2018 prices....

Well optical media is inferior to cartridges in every way except the $/GB. I'd note that during the N64 days when cartridges had their last stand (outside of portables) you paid tens of dollars more for N64 games that were an order of magnitude smaller than a CD. It's not at parity and it never will be but we're now at the point where a Switch cartridge is cheap enough that they are about the same price as equivalent PS4/XBOne releases and they're ~16GB cartridges, ~1/3rd of the size of a 50GB BluRay. If size, performance and noise matter at all and digital distribution doesn't take over entirely I think the days of optical media for games are numbered. Same deal with HDDs vs SSDs in consoles. Looking at the internet archive when the PS4 launched a 1TB 2.5" HDD was about 20% more expensive than it is now. If that. But SSDs have effectively halved in price. They're still about 4x more expensive per GB but they're certainly catching up, especially in that form factor. Given the drop in prices and how much of an impact an SSD has on general performance I'd be really surprised if the next generation of consoles don't have SSDs. If not entirely at least as a boot drive and smart cache for the most commonly loaded games/assets.

I get the sentiment but but I still think a modern TV should be more than a panel with a built in TV tuner. Currently I have a TV that's about 7 years old and I've been looking at getting a new 4K panel with HDR support. My current TV when I got it was covered in marketing material about all of the services it supported. But this was before Netflix launched in Australia so it didn't have Netflix and that was never added in later. It also lost all of the other services it did support with firmware updates that removed those features. And frankly I didn't really care when they were removed because I can just use a Chromecast which does just as good a job. However I still think a TV should do more than just be a panel. It should support streaming of local media over DLNA and playback of media via an external drive. It should have the ability to record TV shows onto an external HDD and have a dual-tuner so you can watch a second channel while recording. Lastly it should probably have a chromecast built in. Lastly it should have wireless AC built in and a Gigabit Ethernet jack on the back for connectivity. Anything beyond that I don't care but it should have all of that at a minimum. Otherwise that's three HDMI ports I'm using on my TV almost automatically

Well all of these technologies cost about the same to deploy in the first instance. So if there's no existing infrastructure fibre is the only sensible option because it's the technologically superior option. And because of the ability to charge some consumers more by offering speeds other technologies couldn't deliver. If you can offer some of the higher end users better services that reduces the price you need to sell the service to consumers who are happy with a slower speed. So for that reason and the lower running costs fibre will always be the option that allows you to offer the cheapest price service. The problem comes with the fact that most places already have some service already running past their house. Whether it was originally deployed as a phone service or cable tv service. So in the short term it's cheaper to just keep using what's already there. The problem with that approach though is that ultimately fibre is still cheaper because of the lower maintenance costs and ability to offer higher tier plans. If there is any demand for plans better than can be offered on HFC/DSL in a given area? In the long term fibre would have been cheaper.

I honestly don't think it'll be as simple as the PS5 being to the PS4 what the PS4 was to the PS3. IMO trends in tech and gaming mean that they can't just make a PS5 that's the same thing but higher spec especially if they're going to call it "PS5". If that's all they're doing they should just adopt the Apple model, as they kinda already have, and release hardware revisions with improved spec that have full compatibility. Which might be the route they go. At the same time there are a few things which have been happening over the last ten years that are changing what makes sense. For optical media, if they're still going physical media, games aren't getting bigger faster than the rate that cartridges are. There are BDXL disks that are ~100GB which a PS5 could use as a step up from the 50GB disks currently used for games. But a console like the Switch has 32GB cartridges and that sort of ROM chip is only going to get cheaper. If they went back to cartridges they'd be able to make a quieter and smaller console that loads games quicker. By the time a PS5 would likely launch, and we're at least a couple of years away, the price advantage of optical media will shrink so it might not make much sense anymore. Then there's the fact that higher spec hardware doesn't have as much of an impact as it used to. We're currently in the transition to 4K and there are GPUs on the market that can already handle the hardest to run games at 4K with decent framerates. It also seems unlikely that video resolutions above 4K will become the standard given the limitations of human vision. At the same time we're increasingly seeing component manufacturers push for lower power consumption more than they're pushing for more horsepower. Does this mean I think the PS5 will be more like the Switch than the PS4? Well maybe, maybe not. But whatever it is I don't think it'll blow away whatever PC hardware is out at the time. I don't think it'll be using optical disks anymore for games, it'll either be download only or cartridges. And I think if it's not a hybrid like the Switch it'll at least be something more along the lines of the form factor of a large Intel NUC than a small HTPC case.

I agree entirely that a dual-core CPU is not a good option for gaming in 2018 given how games are optimised now. But I wasn't making that point and I don't know why you have a problem admitting you misunderstood where I was coming from. I was making a point about how far behind the curve the PS4/XBOne were at launch vs previous "high end" console launches. The only reason I brought up the Pentium was as an extreme example of what even fairly entry level 2013 gaming PCs could do. You do realise that both the PS4 and XBOne CPUs are Jaguar based mobile chips with fairly low clock speeds right? I mean technically they all two quad cores that are kinda similar to a pair of A6-5200s (PS4/XBOne slightly underclocked, Pro/X slightly overclocked). Not the highest end of CPUs even for 2013. For the sake of comparison here are the PassMark numbers for one of those quad cores vs a stock Pentium I was talking about before. I actually looked this up while I was making my first post just to be sure I what I was making made sense, I didn't think I needed to post it because I thought what I was saying was obvious... And the fact that you can get away with an almost 5 year old quad core in 2018 does say something.

Why? I wasn't trying to argue that people should go out and buy dual-core CPUs for gaming. The fact that some games fail to run at all with dual-core CPUs doesn't take anything away from the point I was trying to make. I was making a point about how far behind the curve the PS4/XBOne were even in 2013. Specifically I was trying to counter an argument from someone who was saying that all GPUs from that era are now garbage and CPUs were even further behind. Total BS. The point I made about an overclocked Pentium was pushing the limits for a reason, I was proving a point. I said that even a machine like that, something that is pretty average compared to today's hardware, would be ok running most games at 1080p. And given that's the case someone who spent a bit more in 2013 and got an i5 and a 660Ti or better is still doing pretty well at 1080p. So saying 2013 hardware is garbage now isn't at all true. The XBOne/PS4 were much further behind the curve than previous consoles were and, to be frank, it didn't really matter because we're not pushing the hardware as hard as we used to.

I quoted what I said. I said that for most games would still be fine running on a fairly entry level gaming PC from 2013 at 1080p. My example being an overclocked dual-core Pentium with 8GB RAM and a 650Ti. I then specifically mentioned that it wouldn't be at Ultra details and that with some games you'd run into issues with games that need more than two cores. So I don't know why you are saying that I didn't mention these things. All of which is beside the point anyway because it was a relatively extreme example I constructed myself to prove a point. The person I was quoting was saying that all PCs build around 2013 were complete garbage for gaming in 2018. "Especially the CPU". Which is complete BS.

No special hardware on the server, just enough network ports for the number you want to add. And yes you will need a managed switch but this will be cheaper than a switch with 10Gbps ports. For example in Australia the switch I linked to above with 8x Gigabit ports and 2x 10Gbps ports costs ~$350AU but a random 16 port managed gigabit switch from the same seller is ~$150AU. This is before you factor in the cost of a 10Gbps NIC (~$170AU).

Absolutely unnecessary. As others have said link aggregation is the cheaper option and, in this scenario, will do jus as good a job. The only time 10Gbps will perform better is when you're either moving more than the number of aggregated ports can push or if you need more than 1Gbps from a single client. With 8x 1Gbps you're unlikely to hit the first and won't ever need the second With that said this is pretty close to what you're after https://www.asus.com/au/Networking/XG-U2008/

I know, which is why I said: As I also said, I built my PC in late 2014 and it wasn't exactly bleeding edge at the time. Core i5, R9 285, 16GB DDR3. Given I still have a 1080p/60Hz display I haven't really had much reason to upgrade any of these components. I wouldn't have been able to say the same about my similarly expensive PC I built in 2005 by the time 2009 rolled around. Consoles are nowhere near as bleeding edge as they used to be and tech is becoming "outdated" far slower than it used to.

Except that it is increasingly less and less true. If you go back to the 90s what could be done on a console was generally quite a bit above what you could do on a PC. The PS4/XBOne are the first "high end" consoles that have launched well behind the curve of what can be done on PC. Not that they were bad value, they were actually pretty good value and still are. But they weren't pushing the limits of hardware by any stretch. What are you talking about? The CPU is by far the least impressive part of these consoles and 600 series cards are far from "pure garbage". Also there was no way you were building a PC with DDR2 in 2013. Even an entry level gaming PC in 2013 which would have been an overclocked Pentium paired with 4-8GB of DDR3 and something like a 650Ti would still be ok running most games at 1080p today. Maybe not ultra-details at 60fps and maybe not with some games that actually take advantage of more than two cores these days. But at 1080p such a machine is far from "pure garbage". And that would've been a super entry level gaming machine at the time. If you had got an i7 or even an i5 you'd still be well above the spec of the CPU that's in the XBOne X let alone the original XBOne/PS4. And for GPU sure you may be a bit behind the curve now especially compared to the X. But at 1080p if you have a 660Ti or 670 you're still reasonably happy with most modern games as long as you're not pushing everything up to Ultra.

1. Other consoles aren't portable 2. Other tablets don't have physical buttons and have their power focused on multi-tasking rather than graphics Forget the other comments about Nintendo fanboys, Nintendo being for kids and "there are no games". People making those comments are missing the point either via ignorance or because they think it's cool to not like Nintendo. The Switch is indisputably the best way to play everything from Super Meat Boy to Rocket League to Doom away from your TV/Monitor. Period. If that sounds cool to you? Get a Switch.

Nintendo has previously given qr codes with links to pdfs before. I wouldn't be surprised if they do the same here with these. Though the cardboard will be utterly useless without the software which, in the end, is what you're actually paying for

The cardboard is cardboard. Cut out some new templates, use some tape. If it brakes it's not the end of the world