Google to create own console [WSJ] - Spec Speculation begin!

[Idontcare]

Simple solution. Make google app that turns ones smartphone into the controller. Keeps cost of alleged console down. Gives customers the choice of controller size. Seems like it's doable as most smartphones have Bluetooth anyways.

Genius!

 

[galego]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...571992848684764.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEFTTopNews

Release perhaps in time for christmas sales.

What i'm interested in - what will power it?

Will it be casual and just some ARM licensed simple core - or could the Intel going to nuclear war on android\mobile optimization perhaps lead to a ULV haswell CPU inside?

Haswell? My bet is on ARM.

 

[blackened23]

Haswell? My bet is on ARM.

An ARM SOC console, excellent. We know it's worthless before it's even released.:whiste:

Oh wait, they can put the most powerful ARM SOC to date in it (SD 800) and it will still have worse GFlops than the 10 year old xbox 360. I can't wait to play angry birds on the big screen.

 

[galego]

An ARM SOC console, excellent. We know it's worthless before it's even released.:whiste:

Oh wait, they can put the most powerful ARM SOC to date in it (SD 800) and it will still have worse GFlops than the 10 year old xbox 360. I can't wait to play angry birds on the big screen.

Where did I read similar arguments? Oh wait from the guys who said us No AMD APU in PS4 and Xbox One :whiste:

 

[Exophase]

An ARM SOC console, excellent. We know it's worthless before it's even released.:whiste:

Oh wait, they can put the most powerful ARM SOC to date in it (SD 800) and it will still have worse GFlops than the 10 year old xbox 360. I can't wait to play angry birds on the big screen.

What do you think, that Google is going to get console and PC developers to port to a brand new console? If Google does a console it'll most likely be an Android device with a controller and maybe a little extra software polish. Just like Ouya.

They could put the highest end PC hardware they can in the thing and it'll all go to waste if it only runs Android games. It'd also cost more than the $500 MS is charging for XBox One since there's no way Google would be able to make money from app revenue by selling at a loss, because $60 games will never fly on Android. That, and anything with Haswell and a discrete GPU (or even Iris 5200) would inflate the manufacturing cost beyond XBone or PS4.

 

[Chiropteran]

\
Oh wait, they can put the most powerful ARM SOC to date in it (SD 800) and it will still have worse GFlops than the 10 year old xbox 360.\

I'm not even sure what your point is, that 10 year old xbox 360 still gets new games, how many games do you play on your 10 year old desktop PC? If you are saying that it's a slow CPU and won't be able to run any decent games, just about the entire current console gaming market disagrees with you.

If you are saying it won't benchmark as fast as haswell, everyone knows this and nobody cares. Top end CPU being used for a gaming console will never happen, it's pointless and consoles are not CPU limited in any meaningful way. Intel has become the king of irrelevance, it's CPU are faster in zero meaningful applications because the GPU or memory or network or hard drive storage are the bottleneck in nearly ever possible situation. When you cut corners to make a console the CPU is the first thing to get cut down, because a dirt cheap quad core is plenty fast enough.

Consoles don't live or die on CPU speed, there are other far more important factors.

 

[frozentundra123456]

What do you think, that Google is going to get console and PC developers to port to a brand new console? If Google does a console it'll most likely be an Android device with a controller and maybe a little extra software polish. Just like Ouya.

They could put the highest end PC hardware they can in the thing and it'll all go to waste if it only runs Android games. It'd also cost more than the $500 MS is charging for XBox One since there's no way Google would be able to make money from app revenue by selling at a loss, because $60 games will never fly on Android. That, and anything with Haswell and a discrete GPU (or even Iris 5200) would inflate the manufacturing cost beyond XBone or PS4.

Anand's preview article specifically said it would be android. Personally, I dont see the point. If you want serious gaming get a PS4 or PC. If you want to play social, facebook games, get a tablet or smartphone.

 

[Exophase]

Anand's preview article specifically said it would be android. Personally, I dont see the point. If you want serious gaming get a PS4 or PC. If you want to play social, facebook games, get a tablet or smartphone.

I have an XBox 360 but most of what I bothered to play on it is XBLA stuff costing $15-20 or so. None of it needs more power than what a decent Android machine could give but I also wouldn't play any of it w/o proper physical controls, and I'd generally prefer to play it on the TV. I don't know how common this is but I do know at least some people that feel similarly.

You could rig up a normal Android device to display on a TV and use an external controller, but aside from being less convenient (particularly if you also frequently want to use it as a mobile device) without standardization or promotion it's not something developers will have in mind much. I suspect that, like with all of its other devices, Google is more interested in promoting Android and its software landscape than their particular hardware. Having more of these console-specific devices gain traction would convince more devs to make their games physical controller friendly.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Samsung SmartTVs already work like a gaming platform with either gesture or a smartphone/tablet as controller.

 

[sontin]

On an absolute basis ARM performance isn't great.

I think people underestimate the performance of ARM cpus. Tegra 4 with a 1,9 Quadcore A15 has the same integer performance and more than twice the floating point performance of AMD's 1,5GHz Quadcore Jaguar.

And look what the next gen consoles using as a cpu...

 

[galego]

I think people underestimate the performance of ARM cpus. Tegra 4 with a 1,9 Quadcore A15 has the same integer performance and more than twice the floating point performance of AMD's 1,5GHz Quadcore Jaguar.

No the first time you make similar claims, as others have noted:

If you think ARM A15 is as fast as Jaguar you are thoroughly mistaken.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=35061174

And look what the next gen consoles using as a cpu...

MS and Sony? Something that neither Nvidia nor Intel could provide

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2327902

 

[sontin]

Ha? A15 is on par with Jaguar - 3DMark, Sunspider (even Android vs. Windows!), Geekbench.

 

[blackened23]

I'm not even sure what your point is, that 10 year old xbox 360 still gets new games, how many games do you play on your 10 year old desktop PC? If you are saying that it's a slow CPU and won't be able to run any decent games, just about the entire current console gaming market disagrees with you.

If you are saying it won't benchmark as fast as haswell, everyone knows this and nobody cares. Top end CPU being used for a gaming console will never happen, it's pointless and consoles are not CPU limited in any meaningful way. Intel has become the king of irrelevance, it's CPU are faster in zero meaningful applications because the GPU or memory or network or hard drive storage are the bottleneck in nearly ever possible situation. When you cut corners to make a console the CPU is the first thing to get cut down, because a dirt cheap quad core is plenty fast enough.

Consoles don't live or die on CPU speed, there are other far more important factors.

Oh, okay, so CPU performance isn't that important. It's great then that every ARM SOC on the planet has horrible graphics performance to complement the horrible CPU performance. The Xbox 360 is 240Gflops IIRC, and there isn't an ARM SOC on the planet that can even match that. Pretty LOL-worthy if you ask me. The tegra 4 struggles to get what? 96 GFlops? Let's rewind to 2003 and that's where ARM SOC chips are in terms of graphics performance. Even the xbox 360 has 3-4 times the graphical performance of a Tegra 4 chip that isn't even released yet, and this is supposed to be the latest and greatest ARM SOC. The Snapdragon 800 is better still than the T4 yet still slower than the xbox 360. Hilarious, don't you think?

ARM SOCs are cheap because they're junk for any performance oriented computing. All of them. :whiste: So again, I look forward to the google console and playing angry birds on the big screen. Can't wait. I wonder if the Tegra 4 can manage 60 fps in Angry birds, maybe it's not so obvious.

 

[galego]

Ha? A15 is on par with Jaguar - 3DMark, Sunspider (even Android vs. Windows!), Geekbench.

Please give the Geekbench scores

 

[jpiniero]

Well, PowerVR claims that they support Rogue models that can do a TFlop. Whether that is realistic for use in a console is another question.

 

[StrangerGuy]

I'm not even sure what your point is, that 10 year old xbox 360 still gets new games, how many games do you play on your 10 year old desktop PC? If you are saying that it's a slow CPU and won't be able to run any decent games, just about the entire current console gaming market disagrees with you.

If you are saying it won't benchmark as fast as haswell, everyone knows this and nobody cares. Top end CPU being used for a gaming console will never happen, it's pointless and consoles are not CPU limited in any meaningful way. Intel has become the king of irrelevance, it's CPU are faster in zero meaningful applications because the GPU or memory or network or hard drive storage are the bottleneck in nearly ever possible situation. When you cut corners to make a console the CPU is the first thing to get cut down, because a dirt cheap quad core is plenty fast enough.

Consoles don't live or die on CPU speed, there are other far more important factors.

We must have $300 Intel CPUs in a $400 box, otherwise how would the PS4 user crunch superpi 1M in <10 secs?

 

[blackened23]

Well, personally when it comes to consoles I do expect the bar to be higher than a 10 year old piece of hardware such as the xbox 360. I'm afraid that using any ARM SOC would relegate any such console to being far outdated and lower in performance than even the xbox 360 and PS3, which to me is not desirable whatsoever. As mentioned the best ARM SOCs are already tripled in performance by the xbox 360.

I think google is making nothing more than a set top box such as the Apple TV with the ability to play smart phone games on the side. If they are, good for them , but It's not something I would consider a quality console by any means. The hardware has to be better than something 10 years old for that to be the case, and already ARM SOCs are tripled in graphical output by a 10 year old console. To me that is a joke, unless google simply wants to make a multi-purpose set top box for services such as netflix and hulu with simple games on the side.

For any type of meaningful console performance, ARM SOCs are out of consideration, period. So that leaves nvidia graphics, intel, MIPs, and AMD? I just can't see google using any of those for an android console. Hence I think this is nothing more than a set top box. Another "Ouya", if you will.

 

[galego]

Well, personally when it comes to consoles I do expect the bar to be higher than a 10 year old piece of hardware such as the xbox 360. I'm afraid that using any ARM SOC would relegate any such console to being far outdated and lower in performance than even the xbox 360 and PS3, which to me is not desirable whatsoever. As mentioned the best ARM SOCs are already tripled in performance by the xbox 360.

I think google is making nothing more than a set top box such as the Apple TV with the ability to play smart phone games on the side. If they are, good for them , but It's not something I would consider a quality console by any means. The hardware has to be better than something 10 years old for that to be the case, and already ARM SOCs are tripled in graphical output by a 10 year old console. To me that is a joke, unless google simply wants to make a multi-purpose set top box for services such as netflix and hulu with simple games on the side.

For any type of meaningful console performance, ARM SOCs are out of consideration, period. So that leaves nvidia graphics, intel, MIPs, and AMD? I just can't see google using any of those for an android console. Hence I think this is nothing more than a set top box. Another "Ouya", if you will.

Google's goal is precisely to compete with Ouya and Nvidia shield.

The best AMD SOCs available are not comparable to the custom AMD SOCs found finally in PS4/Xbox1. Nobody knows what CPU/APU Google will use neither its performance.