In a revealing hour-long podcast interview with IGN last night, Head of Xbox Phil Spencer weighed in on an array of topics relating to Xbox Series X. At the 15-minute mark of the interview, host Ryan McCaffrey questioned how Spencer reacted to the infamous PS5 deep dive last month.
"I felt really good about how Series X lines up. I think Mark [Cerny] and the team did some really good work on the audio processing that they've talked about, their SSD technology is impressive - we like that - we saw the work that they did. But, you know, we took a holistic view on our platform, from CPU to GPU to RAM to throughput velocity architecture, latency, back compat - it took us years to get to this point..."
In relation to the planning for Xbox Series X, Spencer highlighted the ability to buy an Xbox One game that will work in its "full fidelity" on the platform, and spoke in detail about the confidence he has in the team building the console and their ability to create "a great end-to-end program."
"The planning takes a long time, and so, I will definitely have respect for any platform team that's launching - it just takes a lot of work - but I will say when we finally saw the public disclosure, I felt even better about the choices that we made on our platform, and I kinda expected that I would."
We'll be sharing more of what Spencer had to say in the interview throughout the day here at Pure Xbox. Let us know what you think of Spencer's comments down below.
[source uk.ign.com]
Comments 7
Phil is even more confident in the Series X. Great news for us!
Xbox One was a Don Mattrick system that Spencer inherited, the Series X is his baby so I'm not surprised how on point MS has been so far. Spencer definitely doesn't want the first system under his watch to go over as poorly as X1 did. This is the Xbox division of the 360 days, love to see it.
I'll bet there was a lot of virtual high fiving going on around the Xbox team that day!
While I am still getting both systems, I do think Sony's SSD speed will be underutilized except for platform exclusive games. It feels like a waste, in my opinion.
Okay, so Series X might load in 1 second as opposed to Sony's "instant" load. In the grand scheme of things, that really won't matter once the pixels hit the screen and the Series X can maintain a better frame-rate.
The sound processing sounds like a great concept - and I do like the fact that Sony is moving the majority of the audio processing off of the CPU. It will be interesting to hear what a game sounds like when every raindrop or member of the crowd has it's own sound.
The problem I have with it is that Sony is focusing on virtualized 3D sound - which might be a huge turn-off to those with high-end sound systems. I realize "the kids" are all using headphones these days, but there is a big difference between playing Gears 5 using Atmos for Headphones and playing it in Atmos on a 9.1.4 sound system.
Sony is taking a very "Nintendo"-esque approach to hardware this time: focusing on proprietary technology that only the platform holder will use in it's entirety (with great success).
@Gamer83 yeah, Mattrick was a complete pr disaster. Everything from always online to telling people to stick with 360. Would expect no less from a man who used to work for EA.
As for the console, Phil did say they wouldn't be beaten on power again. So I imagine he felt quite pleased when he realised they have the power advantage.
I watched this interview yesterday & absolutely loved it & the confidence Phil has in XSX. He doesn’t take any weak jabs at Sony, but also gets the point across that they won’t be beaten on power again. And his interviews are always great, bc he comes off as a guy you could have beer with & just talk games. I am friends with him on Xbox Live & see him actually playing games on there all the time. Sony doesn’t have anyone like that.
In the end, it will come down to games though. And he sounded confident on that front, as well. Ideally, both companies will push each other to do better this generation.
Obviously they don't know what secrets each other has and probably no idea on the exact price point each was targetting either but on 'raw' specs, you would have to say that MS should feel most confident with their devices.
The GDC talk from Sony also seemed to be a little defensive and I do wonder if Sony have pushed their CPU/GPU's up later in development to get and appear closer to MS. The talk about 'faster' GPU's being better than 'wider' and slower doesn't always translate to the 'best' option. The Series X isn't just a little bit wider but nearly 50% bigger with nearly 50% more shaders and lets be honest, 1.825Ghz isn't 'slow' - that's double the frequency of the PS4 Pro. Its like an office of 3000 workers compared to an office of 2000 workers. Those 2000 may be working a bit faster but you can only allocate so many tasks to complete at once - and we don't know what frequencies the CPU/GPU will run at on average when they are not 'boosted' to max. We don't know if the CPU will be able to run at 3.5Ghz IF the GPU is running flat out or vice versa. To me, Mark Cernys talk about being smaller but faster seemed more defensive after MS announced their 52 CU GPU...
As far as Audio, we don't yet know how much more advanced it is, if it is at all. MS have separated Audio from the CPU on the XB1 and recently showed a similar demonstration of their audio processing with an actual demonstration of that in practice. The way sound bounces, interacts with the world etc is all traced too but whether its as complex as tracing 'individual' drops of rain (does it really need to?) or not and whether the audio quality really does sound different when its still coming from just 2 small speakers strapped to your head, we will have to see - both seem to have their own 3D audio plans - although again MS had that with the XB1 S/X too - Windows Sonic and Dolby Atmos.
That's similar to the 'Haptic' feedback on the triggers - MS put rumbles in the triggers for the XB1 controller whilst Sony opted for the very under utilised touchpad, the lightbar and built in speaker. Not saying that Sony's may be a bit more 'refined' but it could be very similar to the rumble triggers on XB1....
The one area that Sony does appear to have a 'sizeable' advantage is their SSD speeds - although that could also be a LOT more expensive per TB of storage than MS's solution and you may not be able to just swap them instantly. It could be much more like swapping the HDD on a PS4/Pro now and, as the technology isn't commercially available yet, end up being less consumer friendly.
It does seem that the most likely to utilise it in some 'groundbreaking' way will be the first party exclusive developers too. Devs working on multi-platform games will want to release to the widest possible target audience and a lot of PC gamers don't have SSD's and a lot that do, use SATA so don't get the throughput of data that even the XB1 will offer. Maybe in 4-5yrs, that landscape could be different but certainly in the early years, especially during the years of cross gen development, the only advantage maybe slightly better load times...
Anyway, its all speculation at this point and Sony's PS5 is still really just a concept and we are yet to really see anything running on it. You can argue that what MS has shown has been 'old' games but that also helps give some context to what you are seeing. Gears 5, native 4k, PC Ultra Settings and a flawless 60fps - essentially matching a GTX2080ti without actually optimising for the Series X. That gives people some reference point and how it measures up to current hardware available.
I will of course get both systems too so the differences don't really matter to me. It may help me choose which platform to buy most of my games on but other factors also come into play for that too...
Show Comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...