Xbox Series X | S

[Hitcher]

Series X optimised games aren't patches for the One X versions anyway so they'll need a new download.

[cassidy]

13 minutes ago, Hitcher said:

Series X optimised games aren't patches for the One X versions anyway so they'll need a new download.

Cheers for info. I thought it may be the case,  glad I asked.

 

Just nabbed Yakuza Like a dragon for £30 on eBay. 

 

Think I'll make that my first series X game as been away from the series for a bit. 

[MattyP]

1 minute ago, Hitcher said:

Series X optimised games aren't patches for the One X versions anyway so they'll need a new download.

Indeed and they (Series S/X games) only run from the internal SSD anyway. Probably down to the way the Velocity Architecture API works and to give a consistent experience.

 

[scoobysi]

9 hours ago, Yiggy said:

I would hate to be enjoying games on gamepass to discover that it’s a Spotify situation and they’re getting shafted. Pretty sure it’s a good deal all round though? (For the moment at least)

That has to be a concern though doesn’t it, gamepass becomes so dominant (on XBOX at least) that MS start to squeeze the developers on payments and customers on cost. While PlayStation is strong I think it’s probably good for everyone but if PlayStation was to decline or worse then I’m not so sure.

[Dudley]

4 hours ago, Timmo said:

I know this probably makes me sound like a console war frontline apologist, but the small hard drive doesn't really bother me at all. I never bothered upgrading the base PS4's, and I'm not bothered about it here, either. There's rarely a situation where I'd want to have more than four games on the go, in fact I'm rarely playing more than two. Plus with pretty quick, unlimited broadband, it's no issue swapping games overnight, or during the day, when I decide to.

 

If I lived in the sticks and had shit broadband then admittedly I'd probably feel different.

 

Yeah and that's the key really.  Admittedly it's an edge case but COD is now 190gb.

 

That's over a day of saturating my connection, if it holds full speed and while ruining my chance of doing much else with it.

 

So in reality it's probably 5 days of overnight downloads. It certainly took me a full day in reality to download Cyberpunk's day 1 patch.

 

If I had the 900mbps a friend of mine can get I wouldn't worry for a second, that's 29 minutes.

[Siri]

It gets a little more complicated with GaaS, too - means you're stuck with a bunch of 80gb games that you might play every week, but not actually have a definite end to them (shoutouts to Destiny 2 and PSO2).

Again, though, Just backing them up to a HDD and rotating them out will be fine to an extent. At that point, the only thing you're risking is chewing though SSD write cycles if you're repeatedly moving Series S/X Only games just to play them (and by the time you've killed the SSD, you would hope at that point there's a bunch of SSD suppliers already on board with providing either internal M2 replacements or external expansion cards).

Speaking of Destiny 2 - Can Series S/X patched games be played from external media like standard X-Box One games, or do they get locked out of playing from the Hard Drive as soon as the patch is out?

[Garwoofoo]

3 minutes ago, Siri said:

Speaking of Destiny 2 - Can Series S/X patched games be played from external media like standard X-Box One games, or do they get locked out of playing from the Hard Drive as soon as the patch is out?

 

It seems completely random. Halo Master Chief Collection got a significant update and can be played fine from an external drive still. CrossCode, which didn't really need a 120fps patch but got one anyway, now only works from the internal drive. In general I find it's an exception if X|S patched games still work from an external drive, typically they don't.

[Transient Curse]

56 minutes ago, Siri said:

At that point, the only thing you're risking is chewing though SSD write cycles

Is that something that is of any concern? How many cycles does a modern drive get? 

[MattyP]

6 minutes ago, Wahwah* said:

Is that something that is of any concern? How many cycles does a modern drive get? 

I wouldn't worry about it had drives in dev machines for 4+ years doing build cycles and left on 24/7. Drives were all still good. Probably more reliable than old school spinning disks.

 

https://www.compuram.de/blog/en/the-life-span-of-a-ssd-how-long-does-it-last-and-what-can-be-done-to-take-care/#:~:text=For the storage types and,last about 3%2C000 write cycles.

 

Interestingly using the formula in that piece they calculate the lifespan at 343 years!

 

[Dudley]

Copying it off the backup will obviously use one cycle but also so presumably will "playing it" so... I doubt it'll be a big proportion.

[Siri]

2 minutes ago, Dudley said:

Copying it off the backup will obviously use one cycle but also so presumably will "playing it" so... I doubt it'll be a big proportion.

No, playing it counts as a read. Reading from SSDs doesn't really do much of anything to an SSD's health, from my understanding.

The internal SSD for the Series S is a Western Digital SN530, which is documented as 3D NAND . Endurance is listed at 200TBW, so you've have to completely write over all 500gb of space 400 times, essentially.

It's not the largest of concerns as the console is very easy to pull apart and the SSD isn't soldered to the board, but it is a complete disassembly to access it. and that's if the security system doesn't come with some hardware recognition nonsense like the 360 hard drives did, but that's still an unknown until larger M2 2230 cards become commonplace.

[Timmo]

I got my PS4 launch week, used it every week, constantly installed and deleted games, and never had any issue.

[Transient Curse]

On reflection, even if these drives did start to wear out after... 10 years? It wouldn't matter in terms of access to software now games seem likely to be backwards compatible forever. It does seem weird/potentially annoying that Microsoft have buried the drive so deeply in the systems, I guess that's a trade off with with making things as compact as possible. 

[Siri]

1 hour ago, Timmo said:

I got my PS4 launch week, used it every week, constantly installed and deleted games, and never had any issue.

Well, yes. A mechanical hard drive like in a launch PS4 is more likely to be prone to fairly limited mechanical failures, instead of failures generated from writing over data a set amount of times which is what most disk drives are destined to do. Hence why you'll likely hear a traditional hard drive dying before it actually dies.

Even if you lumped an SSD into the PS4 at launch, SSD technology has changed greatly - back then, you probably only had access to Single-Layer NAND memory, which could take up to 10,000 writes. TLC and QLC technologies like what we're seeing now is capable of reaching those 1-2TB hard drive sizes at a price people can afford, but the hit is on write cycles - about 1,500-3,000 on 3D NAND.

Of course, the impact is lessened because you can just store all your shit on a 1TB Hard Drive and just read from it all day after a single install. But that does become a harder proposition when it's a 512gb disk that is further segregated down to 364GB for games, and modern games are consistently weighing in at 60-80GB. I think I've got 10 games on my Series S (No, none of them is COD, thank you), and about 50gb left in case something comes up that I desperately want to play on it. That's fine by me, although I'll probably repurpose an old Hard Drive to plug into the USB3 port so I can start fucking around with Retroarch.

But, hey, there's always the PC to fall back on for the heavy lifting. I'm just loving the Series S as it boots up in 2 seconds and I can throw on a nice gamepass indie that didn't sign for a PC deal as well, a GaaS game that I'm currently into or Netflix.

[Garwoofoo]

Presumably Quick Resume is going to play a part in this too. In theory at least the Series consoles are writing 16GB of data to the internal SSD every time you switch games. I hope this isn't a time bomb for a few years down the line when everyone's SSDs fail within a few months of each other.

[Siri]

26 minutes ago, Wahwah* said:

It does seem weird/potentially annoying that Microsoft have buried the drive so deeply in the systems, I guess that's a trade off with with making things as compact as possible. 

If you haven't seen a teardown, it's quite fascinating for the Series S - pretty much everything is plugged into the main board with mating connectors, with screws (T8 and T10) holding the main board and shielding together - and the only wire in the assembly is to power the fan.
 

(Fuck removing that X-Clamp, though. I wouldn't bother with that personally)

[MattyP]

1 minute ago, Siri said:

If you haven't seen a teardown, it's quite fascinating for the Series S - pretty much everything is plugged into the main board with mating connectors, with screws (T8 and T10) holding the main board and shielding together - and the only wire in the assembly is to power the fan.
 

(Fuck removing that X-Clamp, though. I wouldn't bother with that personally)

Indeed the S and X are quite elegant designs. Like that everything is modular and easy to replace including the SSD. 

[Transient Curse]

1 hour ago, Siri said:

If you haven't seen a teardown, it's quite fascinating for the Series S - pretty much everything is plugged into the main board with mating connectors, with screws (T8 and T10) holding the main board and shielding together - and the only wire in the assembly is to power the fan.
 

(Fuck removing that X-Clamp, though. I wouldn't bother with that personally)

Thanks, I hadn't seen it, but it is quite reminiscent of the One X, I took that apart to change the thermal paste on mine- the X Clamp looks similar and is not so tough to get on and off, but I was acutely aware that if it had gone wrong, I'd have regretted being annoyed by the fan sound. I wonder how many revisions they go through to get these things so compact. 

[Hanzo the Razor]

Microsoft have Series X in stock. Just bagged one! Yeeessssss!!!

 

EDIT: Bloody hell. They're gone already.

[skondo]

Unbelievable. I’ve been checking Microsoft store at least every hour all day, my last check being at 17:00 as I then needed to sort dinner and I’ve just put my little boy to bed. My timing is clearly impeccable.

[Shimmyhill]

7 hours ago, Wahwah* said:

On reflection, even if these drives did start to wear out after... 10 years? It wouldn't matter in terms of access to software now games seem likely to be backwards compatible forever. It does seem weird/potentially annoying that Microsoft have buried the drive so deeply in the systems, I guess that's a trade off with with making things as compact as possible. 

Even trickier on a Ps5 unless you can microsolder and get the parts...

[routeburn]

16 hours ago, Siri said:

But, hey, there's always the PC to fall back on for the heavy lifting. I'm just loving the Series S as it boots up in 2 seconds and I can throw on a nice gamepass indie that didn't sign for a PC deal as well, a GaaS game that I'm currently into or Netflix.

 

That's what I originally thought about the Series S and my PC. However, I spent an hour or so with Doom Eternal on Series S and by golly... it is silky smooth, looks fantastic, and is a much nicer experience on a big TV and speakers. My PC is only a GTX 1080, but still looks very nice and has a high frame rate. But comparing some Series S games, I struggle to say that my own PC is more suited to "heavy lifting" over my Series S. I wonder what the balance point is for this - i.e. when does a PC become noticeably better.

[Tim]

For those looking for an X and also awake already... I've just bagged one from Argos for click and collect from my local store, apparently available for pick up on Saturday, so it maybe worth checking availability!

 

 

[skondo]

I may have got one from Argos, but I’m not 100% sure. Was trying random sites earlier and noticed ‘add to trolley’ was available. Money has gone from my PayPal account and I do have an order confirmation email, but at checkout it stated payment couldn’t be taken and my basket was emptied. Probably a glitch due to volume of traffic, but I’ll try and give them a ring later. If all okay, then I should be able to collect on Monday.

[Bennette98]

Argos took payment from me this morning but didn't provide me with an order confirmation (it did say there was an error after checking out) have contacted them and they said the order hasn't gone through and I need to wait 3-5 days for the money to return to my account :/

[Timmo]

55 minutes ago, Bennette98 said:

Argos took payment from me this morning but didn't provide me with an order confirmation (it did say there was an error after checking out) have contacted them and they said the order hasn't gone through and I need to wait 3-5 days for the money to return to my account :/

That's fucking awful. Payment always takes seconds at most but refunds are days.

 

I recently called Go Outdoors about a refund I was supposed to be getting following another phone call to them, they originally told me 10 working days and it was past that. The lady apologised to me and said it hadn't been processed at all by her co-worker and she would do it then. Clicks a button and the money is straight in my account.

[Bennette98]

45 minutes ago, Timmo said:

That's fucking awful. Payment always takes seconds at most but refunds are days.

 

I recently called Go Outdoors about a refund I was supposed to be getting following another phone call to them, they originally told me 10 working days and it was past that. The lady apologised to me and said it hadn't been processed at all by her co-worker and she would do it then. Clicks a button and the money is straight in my account.

 

Oh yeah its terrible, from how they've described it the order was never raised just the bank was successfully contacted. So my funds are in a situation of pending and will  eventually fail to return to me but Argos can't do anything as there isn't an order and they haven't received my money (and won't).

 

Whether they've said that just to fob me off is a different question

[teddymeow]

18 minutes ago, Bennette98 said:

 

Oh yeah its terrible, from how they've described it the order was never raised just the bank was successfully contacted. So my funds are in a situation of pending and will  eventually fail to return to me but Argos can't do anything as there isn't an order and they haven't received my money (and won't).

 

Whether they've said that just to fob me off is a different question

 

I had this with a hard drive I bought from them. Order failed but money was ring-fenced. Should have released back to me after five days but it took almost a fortnight and two live chat sessions to resolve.

 

Bit of a shambles.

[Strafe]

For some reason (likely I didn’t read the article properly) I thought the patch for Jedi fallen order would give me 60fps 4K on series X but the 60fps mode is limited to 1080p. Shouldn’t it be able to do it?

[klargon]

Think the resolution varies between 1080 to 1440 at 60fps in performance mode.