What? This literally happens at the beginning of every single generation.
MS consoles being overhyped and Sony consoles being undermined even without knowing anything about them.
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[Business Insider] "With the next Xbox, Microsoft has a 4-part strategy to end the console wars once and for all"
- Thread starter Neat
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What? This literally happens at the beginning of every single generation.
MS consoles being overhyped and Sony consoles being undermined even without knowing anything about them.
I mean that's exactly my point.
Requiring gamer's to purchase console X or Y to play a specific game should be done away. Microsoft has somewhat shifted considering you can play most of their big first party titles on PC now (and on other devices ocne XCloud roles out) without ever having to own an Xbox. With news that Sony is releasing HZD on PC by the end of this year, that also gives me hope that Sony will follow suit.
Comapring what systems you play on should be eradicated in the future.
I dont mean those games being on pc, I mean for example if sony puts their games on xbox and vice versa.
No, it doesn't happen 'every' generation. It didn't happen at the start of this generation, quite the opposite in fact. It also didn't happen in the first Xbox generation. There was positivity around the 360 and it was completely warranted. Stop generalizing the press and spreading nonsensical narratives.
Agreeing to disagree doesn't mean you aren't wrong. The PS3 was hyped to hell and back.
That depends on how they're structuring their deals with studios and publishers. For their own games on Games Pass sure they get a cut, but for other studios's?
...it still hasn't proven to be hugely profitable. What about that do you not understand?
For now, sure. They're clearly enticing their users to move in a different direction.
exactly what isn't profitable? maybe that's the part of your argument I don't understand
Yeah it does happen constantly now heck at least the last three gen sony keeps being portrayed as they are failing again and they continue to prove the press wrong.
I just used that as an example because up until recently, that was something Sony never did.
I could see a console-less gaming future
Annual output is definitely a key factor in sustaining a Gamepass type service. Asking people to pay a reoccurring fee to access a collection consisting primarily of games 2 generations old or older, is a tough sell. Like you said, Netflix is creating a lot of their own new content. MS is creating a lot of there own new content. EA and Ubi create a lot of new content. It's the new content that convinces people to retain their subs, so Unless a competing service creates a lot of new content, it won't survive.
I think where we disagree is the idea that MS is putting first party on Gamepass is to counter the inevitable scenario where 3rd parties raise their prices or defect to their own services. I just don't think there are enough publishers in a position to offer their own to for MS to be too concerned with that. And those who cant offer their own, obviously stand to earn more by staying in Gamepass since it lengthens the shelf life of their games and keeps people from buying used.
Ms throws their own games on it to boost the service's value to customers. And the resulting surge in subscribers makes it more attractive to publishers as a potential source of additional revenue.
The value proposition MS offers participating publishers is a quite a bit different from what Netflix offers the studios.
What do you mean? Have you heard that MS is surrendering their cut of gamepass DLC? Hard to believe considering they are paying a fee for the games to appear in the first place, and giving gamepass users a discount on related DLC and purchases.
By that logic, MS is taking an additional loss everytime a customer purchases an extra. Highly unlikely.
Also, if someone decides to get or renew xbl because of the MP games in Gamepass, that's a win.
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Tell that to licensed games or other games in which companies can easily take away at any given time. Or games in which you'll lose forever if you either get banned or if a specific service is no longer on a specific platform & if your console happens to break, get bricked or something terrible happens to your HDD/SDD.
Word. This shit is just sad.
That's exactly what some other posters here have explained. But for some reason, they're still going at it with the console war crap.
And are they counting those with free trials and 1 dollar trials in the "wildly successful" numbers?
I'd like to see some stats on these types of things happening.
I bet, statistically, people's licenses are safer sitting on the platform holders servers than they are sitting on a DVD. I never had a digital license get lost, damaged or stolen.
If something happens to my harddrive, I can generally redownload the game. Can't do the same with a physical disc.
Both options have pros and cons. But having lots of good options is good for the industry .
One day, those servers will go away eventually, like with the Original Xbox & the Wii. And then what? You'll have to pray that your HDD doesn't ever get worn out or anything of the sort, because if it does, then everything that you bought & downloaded (DLC, games, music, movies, etc.) goes kaput & you won't be able to re-download them. Especially not with licensed games like "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World".
That's true.
the console war already ended when xbox said they don't care about console sales, their metric is monthly active users. Sony fans laughed about this and then 6 months later Sony told their shareholders that monthly active users was becoming their metric for success too.
I get that. When I say that it will hurt games, I mean in the technical sense.
I think the consumers are winning with the direction MS is going. The value they are bring to their platform while simultaneously being more platform agnostic. I don't care if MS wins they are pushing the industry in a good way and every platform will be better because of it. Fun to watch.
And one day all my OG Xbox games or 360 games will get thrown right back to GameStop for low value trade in towards the next major plastic box to impress me. So what? At least with Xbox I still get access to those games when I otherwise wouldn't. And there is no reason to think MS couldn't allow you to download games that are being wiped from their servers in this hypothetical future.
I'm not going to replay to everyone, but there is a huge difference between having the ability to still play modern games, albeit horribly, on slightly older hardware the dev doesn't really care about, and the dev actively limiting the scope of their game to support cheap laptop-grade hardware from 2013.
Some PC games do that, sure. But most AAA-titles don't, and shouldn't, IMO.
Says who? ~Sir Michael Cohen
Seriously though. You are making assumptions about game design that do not imho seem backed up by much of anything. Yes, the versions will need to be notably different, but devs already have loads of experience using tricks to chop up game worlds and don't likely mind cutting frame rates in half or running physics sims way slower or culling AI nuances or various objects from a given scene. You can have cross gen games look mindblowing with full utilization of the SSD for super high density world detail sprawling across massive open areas sans loading screens at 4k 60fps with RT and VRS/VRR as needed...while at the same time having a 720p-900p-1080p at 30fps, chopped up levels/worlds with loading screens and vastly few/lower fidelity assets present for the X1 version.
Again though, this is only for first party games and there are known exceptions like Halo already cited by Booty. More importantly, I don't see it at all likely that we can even be talking about many games here in the first place! What studios would feasibly be able to release games in that time frame (from launch thru year end 2021) that could have been next gen purity showcases? Compulsion Games next title? Everwild? We know it won't be Halo or likely Forza either, so what else? You are reacting as if this is a platform wide thing when it probably affects only a few games!
And what expertise in game design do you bring to bear on the discussion, exactly? I'm guessing there is a good reason you are avoiding addressing the points I've raised. :/
I'm not talking about physically. I'm talking about digitally.
And what you're saying isn't exactly a 100% guarantee.
Something to the effect of it being designed specifically to show off next gen capabilities. Don't have direct quote handy. He said 1-2 games would do that and I would guess Forza is another one since it was rumored to be a really good RT showcase.
Right, I'm saying that even physical games *typically* don't get kept in some vast gaming library forever. Hoarding games as a collector is such a niche scenario for MS or anyone else to fret over preserving that I can't get on board with that personally. Folks upset about 'their rights' don't seem bothered by the EULA limiting the hell out of those rights, so it comes off to many of us on the other side as an almost cooky-Libertarian style mindset. I think the other poster had some really good points about the comparison between holding the data on a disc you personally hold onto vs storing it securely on a well maintained server. Sure, maybe someday they erase those games from the server, but not sure why they'd bother doing that. Like, you are probably ten times more likely to lose access to the physical disc via numerous circumstances than they are to just erase it off their servers.
All of those things take time and ressources, I doubt many devs will want to put that much work into maxing out vastly different hardware specs. An easy to scale solution somewhere in the middle is the obvious choice.
Eh, we are talking about MS here, and their studios mostly already consist of multiple teams as is. Also, VERY IMPORTANTLY, don't forget my point about how many games this would even make sense to apply to! There is good reason to think this is only gonna apply to a literal handful of titles. I also would not agree that those design scale backs would take a whole lot of effort for devs already targeting a range of PC's as is. Scalability is being thought of as if it only applies reliably and easily to stuff like resolution or framerate, but that is very far from reality. Consider that devs routinely scale back all of these kinda things I noted across consoles/PC already and nobody bats an eye. PS4 versions of some early gen games has more grass or whatever, Xbox version might have more AI, PC could have various framerates and fast load times where consoles had long load times, etc.
What do ya mean by somewhere in the middle, precisely?
It's just for the first year and many games the first year are usually standing with one foot in the previous gen as it is. And third party devs will be there fighting for the attention as well. I don't think you'll notice much tbh.
In the end it's Microsoft's strategy to keep the userbase intact during the transition. It has it's downsides but also it's upsides.
Sony's strategy has been to have all their teams working on PS5 exclusives for a long time, so initially we'll probably see a bigger jump there, but they'll start the userbase from scratch so that has some downsides as well.
No but i was mainly talking about the ps3. Ps4 and now ps5, it was especially bad last gen with the ps4 against the Xbox one, it's why we see similar article now and it's nonsense.
if Microsoft was selling anywhere near sony or beating sony, we would be hearing about hardware sales and getting numbers. It's because they are not is why that information is not released.
So Sony can sell far and away the most consoles of anyone with PS4, yet there's all these imaginary articles about how Sony is going to fail? Where? The article this thread is based off doesn't even say a single thing about PS, let alone anything bad. The people in this thread somehow seeing it as some slight against PS is really weird and frankly, paranoid.
And your second point has nothing to do with what Niaboc said. If Sony also changed to monthly active users being their metric for success then they clearly agree on that with MS, so it's clearly not based on consoles sold.
As stated many, many times now MS do not care about consoles sold and for some reason that triggers people to no end.
The Xbox is becoming an iPad basically. And no one will know which one they have until they can't play a game they want to play.
Doesn't matter how big a company is or how much money that have, it still has to make sense business wise.
Anything that goes into concept and development from day 1 has the requirement 'it must run on that hardware'. You dont think that effects the game? The goal will always be to find a solution that fits the min and max hardware specs well.
What if for example AI, Physics, or environment destruction - things that really haven't improved significantly this gen - are a core mechanic of the game? Those are very hard to scale.
Exactly the weakest denominator has to be taken into consideration.
It's not just the visuals but the scope of the game that can be hindered.
IF XSX ends up more powerful than PS5...I don't expect exclusives to look better until cross gen support is cut.
I've still got digital OG xbox games. Even de-listed games can be redownloaded as long as you own the license.
Yeah, if MS goes out of business AND my harddrive goes Kaput AND I have no backups, I'd be out of luck. But how likely is that scenario compared to being unable to use a physical disk I've purchased (lost, stolen, scratched, etc)?
This. I imagine we'll have a Netflix vs Amazon situation and Gamepass and PSNow will have independent apps that you can install on your mobile, tablet, tv etc.
Sure, but it obviously does make business sense and isn't likely all that huge of an investment anyhow. And those things probably aren't necessarily hard to scale depending on how they are authored. Again though, try to keep in mind that this is only gonna apply to a few games that are coming from studios who were probably not gonna push boundaries with their tech design elements in the first place.
Please stick to the arguments I am actually typing up for you instead of putting words in my mouth as a strawman. What I *am* saying is that....
1. The number of games this would apply to is likely 2-4 titles max I bet (due to how the timelines on projects line up for MS's first party games).
2. It does not seem to be applicable to The Coalition, The Initiative, 343, inExile, Obsidian, or PlayGround Games given the timelines in question (launch to year end 2021), leaving only a couple studios where it might even be an issue (Rare, Compulsion Games...???).
3. The investment needed to scale stuff back is not a big deal for MS, who is already investing VERY heavily in blurring the lines b/t generations as a core selling point of their brand.
4. The types of scaling we are talking about aren't likely all that problematic from a game design pov. Sure, you can dream up games designed around high end physics and bespoke advanced AI systems as a central and core mechanic, but there has to be an actual desire from the devs in question to wanna make that kinda game. If devs did wanna make that kinda game, they can launch said game in 2022. If they wanna make a different type of game, one much more inline with existing design paradigms from this gen, it shouldn't be too problematic.
5. We *know* they are making the required investments on at least 1-2 titles like Halo and probably Forza to make sure they aren't being held back design-wise.
6. There will be no shortage of games built for XSX exclusively as the target getting shown off in 2020 and 2021 to keep our imaginations and excitement in overdrive. Alongside tons of next gen exclusive third party games.
7. Lastly, we know Flight Sim will be there day 1 and we all know how crazy and impressive that looks in terms of computational complexity and visuals. /shrugs
In the end, are you really that bothered by a literal handful of potential games ya haven't even seen yet being held back in some areas if only they are designed in very specific ways? And if they aren't designed in those ways, the game systems can likely be scaled with a bit of reworking across the board.
Every Xbox fans I know are totally uninterested in buying the XSX since there will be no more exclusive.
And that comes with a lot of problems, if the XSX games have to be able to work on the Xbox One, then we'll never get true "next-gen" Xbox games.
I don't understand how could anyone want that.
And that comes with a lot of problems, if the XSX games have to be able to work on the Xbox One, then we'll never get true "next-gen" Xbox games.
I don't understand how could anyone want that.
I'll buy XSX and PS5 games on PC, awesooooome!
But I still need a good UHD player, so it depends on several factors for me if I buy any console or a standalone UHD player.
Streaming services will get less and less affordable as they dominate the competition. Netflix, Prime, HBO, etc. will only get more expensive.
Not beyond the realm of possibility that Gamepass, PS Now, etc. will all become more expensive with time. If streaming will replace how we consume games, then no thanks. However, if it will only act as an alternative method, then why not.
Not beyond the realm of possibility that Gamepass, PS Now, etc. will all become more expensive with time. If streaming will replace how we consume games, then no thanks. However, if it will only act as an alternative method, then why not.
There will be exclusives though...
It's truly amazing how misquotes propagate through social media then solidify the opinions of the uniformed.
Like, its incredibly easy to get accurate info these days, but people still regurgitate whatever they saw in a post or heard from a friend.
For the record, for the next year or so (actually 10-22 months based on when the comment was made) all games from Microsoft Studios will play up and down the family of devices. That's all that was said.
Your suggestion that all XSX games have to work on Xbox One is straight up false.
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Why do people upgrade their PCs? They want to play games at higher resolution, better framerate, higher graphical settings (plus now raytracing), etc.
Everyone is jumping to conclusions about this whole thing. How about we wait until we see what games are going to look like on the XSX.
Thats like saying PC games are worse looking than their console versions because they also work on weak machines.
Didn't Microsoft stop disclosing monthly active users on Xbox a few months ago?
Microsoft hasn't disclosed Xbox-only MAU for a long time IIRC