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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The Xbox Series X will be missing the optical S/PDIF audio output that was present on the Xbox One and Xbox 360 hardware lines.
[...] The removal will mainly impact players who use a small subset of high-end gaming headsets and audio systems that rely on the optical audio connection instead of audio sent over HDMI or Microsoft's wireless standard. Some users will be able to use S/PDIF passthrough output from their TV-set as a replacement, though. And Windows Central reports that wireless headset makers like Astro are already working on solutions to make existing Xbox One-compatible S/PDIF products work on the Series X.
Microsoft has also confirmed that the Series X will be missing the IR extension port that was present on the back of the Xbox One and the IR blaster that was present on the Xbox One S. Those features were only really useful in extremely limited circumstances, such as for Xbox users who wanted to use the system's TV remote control functions without plugging in a Kinect sensor.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Friday March 20 2020, @02:08PM (2 children)
Xbox Series X Will Feature Audio Ray Tracing, Director of Program Management Reveals [wccftech.com]
Sony’s Next-gen PS5 3D Audio is Taking Steps a Big as Graphics and is a Dream Come True, Composer and Dev Say [wccftech.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_5#Hardware [wikipedia.org]
Microsoft: Xbox Series X Performance Is 25+ TFLOPs when Ray Tracing; I/O Rate Equal to 13 Zen 2 Cores [wccftech.com]
Both the XSX and PS5 will have some kind of dedicated audio chip. That is potentially more interesting than the raytraced graphics.
It could take at least a 12-core CPU to effectively match the consoles' capabilities, when dedicated chips or background cores (ARM in PS5?) are taken into account.
Total RAM (shared with GPU) is at 16 GB, which is at the lower end of the 16-32 GB that was expected.
Both consoles will ship with relatively fast SSDs instead of HDDs. That could have an impact on games beyond just reducing loading times, since before this console generation, game developers had to cater to a large number of console and PC HDD users.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday March 20 2020, @05:50PM
Consoles with standard SSDs would have seen a significant User experience improvement. The nice and fast SSDs they are shipping with, will have an even greater positive impact on the user experience. Let alone, just game load times. OS booting, listing/accessing videos, audio, etc. The next gen consoles seem like they're on the right track for significantly improving the user experience with their systems.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday March 20 2020, @05:55PM
The 16GB shared RAM is kind of sad to see as a typical gaming desktop would have a dedicated GPU with 8GB of RAM with 16GB+ of System RAM, for a total GPU+System RAM of 24GB+. Still, It's a significant upgrade from last gen.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"