Xbox One hardware Updates

[hph6203]

On March 10, 2016 at 0:17 PM, dalekphalm said:

The only thing I don't agree with is that you think it will lack an Optical Drive. Microsoft has always positioned their consoles as "Media Centre" friendly. The next XBOX will undoubtedly have a 4K Blu-Ray drive installed (Or as an optional add-on - but we saw how (un)popular that was with the HD-DVD add-on).

 

There might come a time where they stop shipping games on physical disc, but even that won't be for a while.

 

Many people use the PS4 and XBO as their only blu-ray player for their home theatre.

4K Bluray is almost certainly going to be less popular than regular Bluray, which was less popular than DVDs. Streaming is the future and optical media is going to die off. The average internet connection in 2020, which is the timeframe of the next gen console is almost certainly going to be in excess of 100mbps (thanks to improved wireless networks). Microsoft was on a path towards selling the majority of their content digitally with the Xbox One, but backtracked significantly (that's part of what killing the secondhand market was about).

 

Optical media fell 11% from 2013 to 2014, 12% from 2014 to 2015, if that trend continues the sales in 2020 in comparison to 2013 will be cut in half. I personally think you'll see the decline accelerate given that internet speeds will significantly increase over the next 4 years.

 

There are already rumors of Microsoft releasing an Xbox One Slim sans-optical drive this fall.

[Sharkyx1]

1 hour ago, hph6203 said:

 The average internet connection in 2020, which is the timeframe of the next gen console is almost certainly going to be in excess of 100mbps

I'm going to need a single fact to back this up

 

i currently pay 36$ a month for 25mbps and if you think in 5 years the average consumer will be able to get quadruple that for a competitive price your living in lala land. Especially since my parents have been on 20mbps since i was in grade school and the price hasn't dropped and speed hasn't gone up, 2020 is a lot closer to now than to my grade school days and i don't see the markets changing significantly in the next 5 years

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8tBLOJ8Gozc/VP_Z5ISwWLI/AAAAAAAAB-M/DMcKqEScOR4/s1600/US%2BInternet%2BSpeed%2Bby%2BYear.jpg

 

The current trend in the united states is about 1mbps increase per year.

[Dabombinable]

10 minutes ago, Sharkyx1 said:

I'm going to need a single fact to back this up

 

i currently pay 36$ a month for 25mbps and if you think in 5 years the average consumer will be able to get quadruple that for a competitive price your living in lala land. Especially since my parents have been on 20mbps since i was in grade school and the price hasn't dropped and speed hasn't gone up, 2020 is a lot closer to now than to my grade school days and i don't see the markets changing significantly in the next 5 years

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8tBLOJ8Gozc/VP_Z5ISwWLI/AAAAAAAAB-M/DMcKqEScOR4/s1600/US%2BInternet%2BSpeed%2Bby%2BYear.jpg

 

The current trend in the united states is about 1mbps increase per year.

$55 a month for 500GB "ADSL2+ 20Mb/sec" (aka, its only around 13Mb/sec on a good day with almost no one in the neighborhood using the internet. Yep, I don't think internet will be at around 100Mb/sec for over a decade. As it is Australia's NBN was advertised as being 100Mb/sec, and of course the greedy bastards decided to cap everyone that uses it a lot lower so they can charge more for higher speeds.

 

[dalekphalm]

9 hours ago, hph6203 said:

4K Bluray is almost certainly going to be less popular than regular Bluray, which was less popular than DVDs. Streaming is the future and optical media is going to die off. The average internet connection in 2020, which is the timeframe of the next gen console is almost certainly going to be in excess of 100mbps (thanks to improved wireless networks). Microsoft was on a path towards selling the majority of their content digitally with the Xbox One, but backtracked significantly (that's part of what killing the secondhand market was about).

 

Optical media fell 11% from 2013 to 2014, 12% from 2014 to 2015, if that trend continues the sales in 2020 in comparison to 2013 will be cut in half. I personally think you'll see the decline accelerate given that internet speeds will significantly increase over the next 4 years.

 

There are already rumors of Microsoft releasing an Xbox One Slim sans-optical drive this fall.

You're seriously overestimating the advancement of Internet on a global scale. Sure if you live in New York or Toronto or Seoul, then getting 100+ Mbps (Even Gigabit) isn't out of the question. But most bigger cities in North America are only just getting FTTN high speed (25 Mbps+). My apartment building STILL caps out at 16 Mbps DSL (Bell Canada). Fortunately, Rogers has been expanding like crazy in my city, so they're faster, but it's still not widespread.

 

Then you've got every single person who lives in Rural North America, where the closest junction box for high speed is 50+ km away. These people, if they want high speed, rely on Fixed Wireless (Slow, high latency), Satellite (Slower, even worse latency, high caps), or Cellular wireless (can be fast, not reliable in many areas, high caps, latency can sometimes be an issue). Plus the huge expense. In Canada, you simply cannot get unlimited Mobile Data on most carriers. Only a few, like Wind Mobile offer unlimited, and Wind ONLY operates in the biggest cities.

 

Lastly, Streaming has a VERY LONG WAY TO GO before the bitrate will come anywhere near to physical. A videophile will always choose physical disc over streaming because of the vastly superior visual quality that Blu-Ray (And 4K Blu-Ray, when that hits) offers.

 

I agree, that optical media is not as popular. But it's still popular enough that people will continue to buy it on the mass market for at least another decade. Perhaps 4K Blu-Ray will be the last popular physical media, but even in that scenario, it'll be around for a while.

 

I personally have 150/10 internet, and I still buy Blu-Ray, because no streaming service comes even remotely close to the quality I get from a Blu-Ray.

 

I'll quit buying Blu-Ray's when I can get DRM free, Blu-Ray quality/bitrate digital downloads that I can buy online from the likes of Amazon or something.

[hph6203]

I live in Texas, you don't have to educate me on rural areas. However, you're restricting your viewpoint to landlines or satellite, my parents have no access to DSL, satellite is a piss poor replacement for broadband, they currently use AT&T's mobile network as their only source of internet connectivity, because it is the most cost effective and fastest service they can receive. This year Verizon is planning field trials for their 5G network, with limited commercial rollout in 2017. That network is 30 to 50 times the speed of current 4G technologies, with sub 1ms latency (theoretically, real world speeds will not achieve these numbers, but they don't need to for the vast majority of people to have connections in excess of 100mbps).

 

Verizon for example, launched their 4G LTE network Dec. 5, 2010 to the 38 most populated cities in the US, by June 2011 they had reached the top 74 markets in the US, by the end of 2011 they were in the top 147 markets, by the end of 2012 they had coverage for 470 markets and availability to everyone outside the most rural of areas (250 million people). If they and others have a similar rollout you might not see the average actual connection at 100mbps, but they will likely have access to those speeds.

 

I'm not arguing that physical media won't be a thing in 2020, what I'm arguing is that Microsoft won't be there with a 4K media player, because physical media sales have steadily declined over the past several years, while at the same time digital sales and subscription based streaming have increased. Make no mistake, physical is on the way out. Videophiles will certainly still be buying UHD discs, but they probably won't be playing them on a Microsoft console.

 

That may be a naive viewpoint, but I don't think it's outlandish to think that in 4 years cellular technology will have advanced to where the drawbacks outpace the difficulties of deploying ground based/wired infrastructure. 

[Notional]

On ‎02‎-‎03‎-‎2016 at 9:21 AM, SaladFingers said:

" Consoles lock the hardware and the software platforms together at the beginning of the generation. Then you ride the generation out for seven or so years, while other ecosystems are getting better, faster, stronger. "

 

Well, Phil. Does the word "PC" ring any bells? So you are trying to make the X-box be like a PC? Better idea: Just focus on PCs then.

#Majority of Gamers still uses Win7, which is 7 years old and obsolete in every way, including graphics API's.

 

This does seem like an interesting thing. I always wondered why there aren't just new iterations of the same console with better hardware. Then you can have different graphics presets based on the iteration used by the consumer.

[SaladFingers]

On 3/14/2016 at 8:10 PM, Notional said:

#Majority of Gamers still uses Win7, which is 7 years old and obsolete in every way, including graphics API's.

 

This does seem like an interesting thing. I always wondered why there aren't just new iterations of the same console with better hardware. Then you can have different graphics presets based on the iteration used by the consumer.

Yeah but that doesn't contradict my statement in any way. And I wish M$ wouldn't do half-arsed approaches with every upgrade so more people would feel the need to jump to newer versions.

[Notional]

7 minutes ago, SaladFingers said:

Yeah but that doesn't contradict my statement in any way. And I wish M$ wouldn't do half-arsed approaches with every upgrade so more people would feel the need to jump to newer versions.

Indeed. Given that consoles are PC based (x86-64), I would think consoles will get newer iterations faster. Games being released for several iterations might be a thing in the future and very welcome. They could just have pre determined settings for each iteration, like most PC games has.

 

As for Windows, 10 might have it's set of issues, but so does every other version. Windows 7 is so obsolete these days, I'm not sure people who use it even knows.

[SaladFingers]

2 hours ago, Notional said:

Indeed. Given that consoles are PC based (x86-64), I would think consoles will get newer iterations faster. Games being released for several iterations might be a thing in the future and very welcome. They could just have pre determined settings for each iteration, like most PC games has.

 

As for Windows, 10 might have it's set of issues, but so does every other version. Windows 7 is so obsolete these days, I'm not sure people who use it even knows.

Well, I've moved to Windows 10 myself and yes once configured properly they are perfectly fine. But there's always a catch when upgrading and that's what has been keeping people from moving on

[TroubleKlef]

I sure hope this isn't true. 

 

Consoles offer superb value because they can play any major title without worrying about minimum requirements. If Microsoft does this, then game developers will start making games too strenuous to run on older Xbox Ones leaving out the fan base. Microsoft's mistake was that they put too much effort into the Kinect system and not enough on hardware like Sony did. Now they are feeling the hurt this generation.