Microsoft unifying PC/XB1 platforms, Phil implies Xbox moving to incremental upgrades
- Thread starter dancrane212
- Start date
Graphics Horse
Member
To be fair it might just be the article writers inferring xbox one, I'll have to read again. I think though with the moves they are making to unite windows & xbox development, it seems like something that could come sooner rather than later.
Trogdor1123
Member
You don't think that this will limit development as they will want to hit the mass base? They already restrict development for parity on different consoles. You think it will be different on in house stuff?
TheDarkKnight774
Member
Up to a point. Until they drop a system. Or will new old games be patched later on to support new systems.
It could be a mess of game compatibility if they keep changing around the OS like Apple does.
Papacheeks
Banned
Thing is that can only be said for a couple of titles. Go look at how many games ran great on PC this past year that were on consoles?
Go look at what's happening right now with gears of war ultimante on PC with amd cards.
Go look at the ridiculous specs xbox games on pc will need to run?
There are a lot of games that were optimized for console. Blacks Ops 3 being one of them, same with Mortal Kombat, batman. And yes there are games like AC:unity, Witcher 3, and the likes. But they were mostly patched down the line to run somewhat properly.
And that's because of the install base. So i wouldn't say they are worse versions. It's just some games performance wise are not all created equal. But a majority of them run fine, and do not require driver updates, custom gaming profiles, or third party software like nvidia inspector to get them running.
You sometimes just have to wait for them to get patched. PC games themselves are cheaper, but that's because of how long digital has been on PC. We now are getting PSN and the like flash sales that actually rival steam.
Consoles are what they are, and actually in the beginning are great investments as it takes hardware manufacturer to update their drivers, to support some of the engines/physics specialized lighting that these games have. It's apples to orange, but depends on the customer to make the decision, and right now if Microsoft goes through with having incremental revisions that choice will be forced as to them wanting the better experience.
If you think "nominal" will mean small in that situation, you'll be very disappointed.
There are consumers that are willing to pay for a better product. Why lock down everyone to shitty hardware simply because some people are only willing to upgrade every 7 years?
Those that do not want to upgrade will stay on the same hardware for 7 years.
Those that do will benefit from the hardware boost.
You just think of the insane fragmentation that any PC game has to deal with to realise that the concept of having 3 or 4 Xbox variants is small fry.
Besides, the likely changes that exist are going to be fairly simple to handle differences such as clock speed. It's not going to be a huge architectural overhaul every 12 months.
Interfectum
Member
This isn't just an Apple thing. Everything is heading in this direction. The days of putting out a piece of hardware and hoping for some magical 10 year cycle are done. I wouldn't be surprised if Sony starts incremental upgrades soon.
Why do you think a game would need to be $10? You don't get a sliding scale for price on the PC
How it could work:
- W10 upgrade with Xbox mode (dual OS)
- licence 'Xbox' to hardware manufacturers
- using Xboxlive as a service on W10, making it a 1:1 PS3 era copy of PSN
(sales, free monthly games, server support)
What I don't see happening:
- Xbox 2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3
Xbox lost share this gen. Why should they fracture their userbase even more?
Please keep in mind that this industry is all front-loaded. Xbox 2 can't afford having customers being undecided, waiting for a year or two because they will then buy Xbox 2.1 so that their favourite game runs better. What's the purpose of owning a console then? Are people really expecting that 50$ upgrades will make their console run every game @ 1080p/60FPS?
I really would regret my PS4 purchase if Sony released a PS4.5 in a year from now.
If I add the 400$ PS4 to the 400$ for a PS4.5, I can buy a PC for that money. Do people believe that you will get a GTX980TI level graphics upgrade in 2 years that fits in your XboxTwo chasis? To be fair, I definetely would pay 100$ for a PS4 upgrade that runs a game like Bloodborne @60fps. I'm not sure how this could work though, when 90% of games after release run like shit on what we have now.
- W10 upgrade with Xbox mode (dual OS)
- licence 'Xbox' to hardware manufacturers
- using Xboxlive as a service on W10, making it a 1:1 PS3 era copy of PSN
(sales, free monthly games, server support)
What I don't see happening:
- Xbox 2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3
Xbox lost share this gen. Why should they fracture their userbase even more?
Please keep in mind that this industry is all front-loaded. Xbox 2 can't afford having customers being undecided, waiting for a year or two because they will then buy Xbox 2.1 so that their favourite game runs better. What's the purpose of owning a console then? Are people really expecting that 50$ upgrades will make their console run every game @ 1080p/60FPS?
I really would regret my PS4 purchase if Sony released a PS4.5 in a year from now.
If I add the 400$ PS4 to the 400$ for a PS4.5, I can buy a PC for that money. Do people believe that you will get a GTX980TI level graphics upgrade in 2 years that fits in your XboxTwo chasis? To be fair, I definetely would pay 100$ for a PS4 upgrade that runs a game like Bloodborne @60fps. I'm not sure how this could work though, when 90% of games after release run like shit on what we have now.
Malcolm9
Member
Inferior versions to who? They aren't to me when I play them; being a console only gamer.
Also realise that console games sales are a big factor in games being made ie The Witcher 3.
If they actually go through with this, i see it as the death blow to the XBOX brand.
Every year would be a bit much, every couple of years, sure.
Upgrading a PC is substantially more than a console (at least when I do it). In addition, if they are smart, they just make it seamless. You just go and buy an Xbox, you don't care what "version" it is, it's just the latest.
Most game companies doesn't write their own engines. The use UNREAL, Unity or similar stuff. The engines takes care of this. When I write a game using Unity I don't scale up and down, the engine does that based upon settings.
In addition, this is already something any game company targets multi platform anyways (unless it's a hard core exclusive). If the architecture remains the same, it should be easy(ier) for the game companies than having to do this massive shift every 6+ years.
It takes a couple of years into a console life cycle for companies to even begin utilizing the specialized hardware, with this model you could see the changes instantly as they would all target x86 / DirectX.
You could even publish a game for a console which doesn't exist yet, and when new hardware comes out it would look better.
I hope the hell not, that would be a disaster.
Trogdor1123
Member
Except it's not every 7 years, it's way more often.
I just don't see devs investing more time and into a product for Ms benefit and not their own, in fact it likely works against them.
Papacheeks
Banned
But that's for a long generation. This is suppose to be short like 5 years,6 at the most.
Think about how people will feel come christmas where they buy the current version of xbox, then 4 months pass, they announce the newer refresh that does more?
How fucking pissed would you be? This another sega move. It's just that all the games will play in some way or form on all of the versions of the console.
But not the people who bought the console originally? So how will that make consumers and the community feel? Especially in let's say competitive games? What if a refresh yields a better Ethernet port for higher bandwidth speeds, or higher frame rates in online shooters?
How is that going look for the community? People will fucking burn Microsoft to the ground.
Couldn't agree more. Better specs means they have to re-optimize the game, or if let's say the gpu is higher clocked and has advantage for new api(or something like that) that MS wants developers to include, that add's more work that may not be beneficial in any way to the game.
This is a slippery slope, that they don't need to really be one. i don't fucking understand MS right now like at all. If Sony is doing great, then why the fuck not look at what they have done right look at their history, go back look at what you fucked up on, start making the changes and prepare to try again? What the fuck is so fucking hard?
And Sony to my knowledge does make a profit on their console. So If they can do, Nintendo has done it, why the fuck not MS?
It's not fucking rocket science. But I guess when you got a lot of cooks in the kitchen extreme idea's get thrown around.
I think you can very easily say that most Xbox One versions are inferior to the Ps4 versions right now.
MS are possibly throwing out an option that means that if you really like Xbox and the Xbox brand, you can have an Xbox that is superior to both your current Xbox one and Ps4....
That's how it's always been on PC. Never been a problem 'til this thread
tearsintherain
Member
Honestly all this news just makes me want to game on the xbox one less, not more. You want to win me over Microsoft? I'd love cross play, but in this way:
1) games ran on steam on PC
2) it was all cross buy, so me buying PC would give me xbox one version and vice versa
3) PC discount strategy applied to xbox one games
4) games have feature parity and release date parity
None of this is happening, its instead a bunch of weird solutions that just leave me confused and slightly exasperated.
"I wanna listen to some music at the gym Microsoft, what have you got?
Well, you can leave a surface pro 4 in your locker and then have it stream over wifi to your xbox one at home which will remote control your zune emulator on the windows 10 phone in your pocket to provide you with the ultimate music experience!
uh, I think i'll just stick to an ipod."
1) games ran on steam on PC
2) it was all cross buy, so me buying PC would give me xbox one version and vice versa
3) PC discount strategy applied to xbox one games
4) games have feature parity and release date parity
None of this is happening, its instead a bunch of weird solutions that just leave me confused and slightly exasperated.
"I wanna listen to some music at the gym Microsoft, what have you got?
Well, you can leave a surface pro 4 in your locker and then have it stream over wifi to your xbox one at home which will remote control your zune emulator on the windows 10 phone in your pocket to provide you with the ultimate music experience!
uh, I think i'll just stick to an ipod."
TheDarkKnight774
Member
Can you imagine the market confusion when a game doesn't look like the videos and images on the back of the box because they're running the "minimum" system specs for a console retail game. Especially when you're at the "end of the gen"
That's something the PC scene knows but man that could really disrupt the average console gamers scene.
That's something the PC scene knows but man that could really disrupt the average console gamers scene.
Lys Skygge
Member
Are any PC gamers worried that this could introduce other services like Steam to charge for online gaming in the future? I mean, paying for online gaming was unheard of until XBL, then PSN followed with PS+ and making it mandatory when the PS4 was introduced.
With MS wanting to unify Windows 10 and Xbox I have no doubt they'll eventually charge for XBL on Windows. Microsoft introducing a paid subscription to the PC could give other services some bad ideas.
I don't know. I guess we'll find out in 5-10 years!
With MS wanting to unify Windows 10 and Xbox I have no doubt they'll eventually charge for XBL on Windows. Microsoft introducing a paid subscription to the PC could give other services some bad ideas.
I don't know. I guess we'll find out in 5-10 years!
I wish more people would look at it this way. Am I going to upgrade every year? No. But I'd sure as hell be up for a mid-cycle upgrade if it got me higher res textures or better frame rates.
As long as titles stayed backward and forward compatible for the length of the generation there are no downsides to this. People who want to go the entire generation on launch hardware can do that. People who want incremental upgrades can do that as well.
I think you just described E3 demos.
Trogdor1123
Member
Ok, if this right I'm much more hopefulIf they actually go through with this, i see it as the death blow to the XBOX brand.
Every year would be a bit much, every couple of years, sure.
Upgrading a PC is substantially more than a console (at least when I do it
Most game companies doesn't write their own engines. The use UNREAL, Unity or similar stuff. The engines takes care of this. When I write a game using Unity I don't scale up and down, the engine does that based upon settings.
In addition, this is already something any game company targets multi platform anyways (unless it's a hard core exclusive). If the architecture remains the same, it should be easy(ier) for the game companies than having to do this massive shift every 6+ years.
It takes a couple of years into a console life cycle for companies to even begin utilizing the specialized hardware, with this model you could see the changes instantly as they would all target x86 / DirectX.
You could even publish a game for a console which doesn't exist yet, and when new hardware comes out it would look better.
I hope the hell not, that would be a disaster.
Could you imagine a world where a game is advertised using the best looking version of the game, with all screenshots being taken on a dev kit and supersampled!
Oh wait. That's the world we live in
RowdyReverb
Member
Not many, but because of forward/backward compatibility, it won't really matter. People would only have to upgrade when their hardware is considered "obsolete", which could be a 4-5 year cycle like the iOS devices.
I think the goal here is to make PC gaming more approachable by the average consumer. Basically it would eliminate the barrier between PC and Xbox and unite them as Windows 10 platforms. People pursuing the cutting edge would still build a PC and play games on Windows 10, and these were never going to be console gamers anyway.
I imagine it would be like a simplified form of PC development in which there are much more finite hardware configurations to optimize for. If anyone was able to make tools that streamline this process for devs, it would be MS.
Peripherals would be the wrong approach. The goal here is to unite players under the Windows 10 umbrella, not dividing the user base into haves and have-nots, and they accomplish this with the backward/forward compatibility. In this way, it is different from a Sega 32x scenario in which players without the peripheral were SOL.
NullPointer
Member
And its the very last thing I want them to be.
Agreed not inferior to me either, just using the OP's definition of it.
Because when everyone is stuck with said "shitty hardware" devs adapt to it and we get better and better looking games.
Look at where the XB1 was at launch...720p games that could barely hold 30fps in a lot of cases. Now we have near-1080p games running at 60fps. This is due to the maturity of tools that both MS puts out and developers create as they get to know the platform. Where would the motivation be as a dev in making my game run better on XB1 when I know there's a platform coming in the next year that will enhance my framerate without me having to do any additional work?
You do get benefits from having the same hardware. Fracturing that will cause lower tier models to be "outdated" much, much more quickly.
TheDarkKnight774
Member
E3 demos is not the back of the box material. It's a separate beast that only appeals to a small segment of the gaming community
I'm talking the mass market. It'd be the equivalent of advertising the ps4 game without notifying it in the ad for the PS3 game.
I suppose this would be avoided by having the games work much like PC games with variable graphics settings that auto-scale to the machine, but really at that point why even buy an Xbox? They'd be no different from PC. Unlike PCs, console generations have historically lasted longer than the normal cycle for new processors or graphics cards. By entering into this incremental system the value of an Xbox unit is also decreased, as it no longer has a sense of longevity.
It's one thing to have a backwards compatible new console, quite another to turn it into an annual line of hardware a la smartphones. If it was cheap enough it could work, sure. $50 to upgrade to a new console? Why not? But it won't be that cheap. That would be a massive cost to MS with very little benefit for them. Unless of course, these consoles came with data plans like phones do.
Doug Heffernan
Member
Absolutely, there is nothing wrong with options.
Dyson Industries
Banned
Say hello to the future of Xbox One.
Indeed.
Trogdor1123
Member
Can some of xplain to me how this would impact the console "advantage" please? The fact that using set hardware allows for optimization and such would no longer exist right? Or would it just become another PC graphics card arms race type situation?
TheDarkKnight774
Member
Oh and I'm sure this will make games even more broken and increase game development.
They can't even release games well on one version of the equipment.
They can't even release games well on one version of the equipment.
Having multiple consoles at different levels of performance and prices every couple years doesn't sound the same to me.
You're removing the focus of one box from developers and consumers.
So unless you upgrade your console every year and fork out $500 you're going to be at a disadvantage in games because those with upgraded boxes will be running them at a higher FPS?
Yeah fuck that.
Mihos
Gold Member
People say this a lot...and it simply isn't true. If 1 door leads to Disney World and I add an optional door that leads to a fiery pit of despair... A % of people will always end up in the pit and attendance at Disney World goes down by that same %
RowdyReverb
Member
The Backward Compatible aspect is the fundamental difference here. 32X games were not backward compatible with the standard Genesis/Megadrive, which is why it failed. It divided the user base instead of broadening it.
Say hello to the future of Xbox One.
I can certainly see companies miss leading customers with this. "I guess you should have read the fine print" bullshit. It would be in MS interest to set these standards for how to represent this information, much like how it's done on back of PC games.
With a move towards 100% digital this becomes even more important to get right with some sort of disclaimer before buying games (like the windows store does now, but perhaps more outlined).
Where are you getting these prices and time frames? $500 a year isn't realistic.
Interfectum
Member
You act like competitive PC gaming doesn't exist.
SneakersSO
Member
Again - we are talking about consoles & handhelds that have no higher-end model on market at this time. We also need to discuss which 3DS model we're talking about in that example, since the price range could be far higher.
The moment a higher end product, like the NX, is introduce into the market consciousness, the value of the 3DS immediately will drop. Not only that, but it still doesn't offset the devaluation of that product in the consumer's eyes. Gamestop would only buy the machine back from the consumer if they know they can sell it at a certain price, if not sell it at all.
You think a userbase, after a year or two, would view Xbox One A at a $200 price point, when Xbox One B just launched, and Xbox One A has a guaranteed far shorter software shelf life ahead of it? How much longer do you think Xbox One A will be supported software wise? On top of that, do you think devs are just going to support it if MS can't prove each individual install base can't reach a threshold of profitability?
Heck, all we have to do is look at how quickly software sales & hardware adoption for last-gen drops off compared to new-gen to gain a similar idea of how this is all going to pan out.
Games running better has been almost the entire basis for the PS4 being superior.
Every single Xbox One owner is at a current disadvantage that they cannot get away from unless they fork out another $500
Trogdor1123
Member
A bit extreme lol but I agree. Options are good up to a point. There was a Ted talk on exactly this, it was interesting.
The console you buy in 2015 doesn't start performing worse because someone else buys a more powerful one in 2017.
Both. Xbox would be competing with PCs if it were to go this route.