• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Speshal Nick [XboxEra]: Jason Ronald not Leading Next-Gen Xbox design (Replaced by Surface team).

spons

Gold Member
Damn, he's been working with Xbox for almost 18 years now. Nasty, but if you don't deliver you basically have to go.

He does seem to have a different take on the term "successful" than most people though:

vgXS1zh.png
 
Last edited:

SirTerry-T

Member
Wasn't some of the Surface design team brought in during the XBoneS design phase, back when Panos Panay was still at MS?

There is a big difference between hardware engineers and industrial designers, wonder if this Nicholas lad has got his wires crossed a bit...
 

phant0m

Member
Bring Nvidia back you cowards
Pound for pound you’re going to deliver a lot better framerates and IQ with DLSS than any AMD-based setup. FSR3 is barely as good as DLSS 2 let alone DLAA and frame-gen capabilities of DLSS3.

If they want to swing hardware back in their favor and make Sony sweat going back to nVidia is their only choice.

but they won’t
 
Last edited:

DR3AM

Member
Maybe surface team is working on the handheld and Jason’s team is working on the next gen Xbox
 

MarkMe2525

Member
Mixed feelings about this. I think the Series consoles are well designed, but I also have really liked some of the surface hardware. Mind you, not all of the surface hardware has been great, but they have knocked it out of the park on a few occasions.
 

Audiophile

Member
Still maintain THIS is as the most balanced play for both consoles.

The XSS wasn't a bad idea but it was poorly executed (mem bandwidth/size difference & excessive gpu gulf) and the XSX was over-engineered (wide/slow GPU and odd memory interface with a large, expensive die); to what extent that is his doing or the pressure of higher-ups we'll probably never know.
 

mrqs

Member
Every experience I've had with a Surface has been awful. They are shitty pieces of hardware that have nonstop issues.

That's what I thought. Grim future for the Xbox and for sure executives are making big decisions here without considering long-term.
 

ShaiKhulud1989

Gold Member
Series X, while pretty and compact, is the most overengineered boutique device that was never deisigned to be a massive success. Reminded me first revision of phat PS3. Daughterboard, vapour chamber, custom external SSD... It's too expensive to produce and too difficult to ramp-up when needed. The die size alone is a pain.

We can laugh at PS5's size all we want, but Sony made all the right concessions for a speedy and sustainable production, along with minimal architecture bottlenecks while undercutting both S and X in retail just by removing the BD drive.
Series S was just downright bad idea.

So yeah, good luck, if true. Nice beard tho.
 
Last edited:

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
I would buy a device like that in an instant if it has Xbox console games/digital library compatibility.
I doubt it would have the same upgrades as the XSX did even while docked, but there are some titles that never got to PC…not many but maybe enough.
 

LordCBH

Member
the surface team should’ve been axed ages ago. The surface is a terrible product line overall. Had nothing but bad experiences with them at my last job getting them setup for corporate use. 50% of the ones we unboxed (SP3/4) were DOA. Absolutely refused to use a surface since then.
 

Matsuchezz

Member
The hardware is one part. Ms hasn’t delivered on the games front. And most probably Ronald had a more balanced machine in the original design. But uncle Phil must have asked him to make it cheaper to try to have an edge on the price vs Ps5. If the games were there nobody would have care. Look at the switch.
 

Daneel Elijah

Gold Member
Seems like he did lead design for both systems.

If so, he did not only fuck up on specs, he also kinda messed up not making them cost-savy enough, the X is very overbuilt and has a split board layout (which is expensive).
Honestly this is one of the takes on Xbox that I understand the least. The team that did the Series S/X had extreme limitations on it made by Xbox management. Because of the 360 red ring of death, they could not push termals as much as they would want. Because of the Xbox One failure, they had to find a way to make sure that their console would be superior to the PS5, while being not too costly and with limited time and ressources, as they had to do the One X before it, and did not have the same clear vision, mandate and freedom and experience that Sony got. They had to make the platform that will become the Series S and X also work as a base for Xcloud. On top of all that, they had to do 2 consoles AND find a way to have it work with the next Direct X(direct storage and maybe RT) implementation while another team was writing the specifications of it at Microsoft. Joker: give it some abilities beyong AMD standard specs with VRR/HDMI 2.1 implementation(before the standard is set again) and whatever they mean by machine learning and Sampler Feedback Streaming. We can be happy that Sony got smart with the PS5, and specifically the digital edition, a real masterclass IMHO as it will be the base model in the future. But I really think that the Xbox team that designed the Series S/X got fucked over by Xbox management.
 

Hudo

Member
Bring Nvidia back you cowards
I believe the reason why both Microsoft and Sony chose to not go with Nvidia was (and is?) that they're notoriously hard to make a deal with. I am still amazed that Nintendo have successfully made a deal with Nvidia for the Switch that they deemed OK.
 

LordCBH

Member
It’s really bizarre. I wouldn’t ever say HW has been much of a problem other than the launch 360. The One was overpriced, but they also insisted it be bundled with a stupid ass expensive camera no one wanted. The One X was great, the One S was a baller mid gen refresh, and the Series consoles are really fucking nice.
 
Top Bottom