Indeed... this was always the plan of MS. No luck involved, just a much broader vision of what console gaming is.
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Microsoft's free 4K 360 enhancements put a lot of paid remasters to shame
- Thread starter leng jai
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Indeed... this was always the plan of MS. No luck involved, just a much broader vision of what console gaming is.
While it's mostly software, it was revealed recently that the XBO does have some hardware built in to aid in BC.
I'm not saying this is technically wrong, but games like Ori and Cuphead sold tons of copies on Xbox One despite the fact they give you titles like Red Dead Redemption, Black Ops 2, Oblivion and Mass Effect "for free" (free for prior owners, anyway). Given Nintendo's pricing it's not that you'd suddenly get Mario Kart or Donkey Kong for 3 dollars used and bring it over to the Switch, you'd still spend a reasonable amount of money on it which goes into Nintendo's pockets, so it still remains a win, and more Wii U owners would be encouraged to upgrade, so another win there. If indies died because of backwards compatibility, that would mean that the Switch's line-up is so weak that people need to buy indies en masse to justify owning the console - and I'm sure neither of us thinks that (I'm a Switch owner, btw).
This has to be the best excuse for charging full price on ports I've ever seen. They're doing it for the benefit of others lol
What Microsoft's been doing with bc is outstanding. It's one of the greatest things about PC gaming. Nintendo and Sony are doing to well in the marketplace to care about consumer friendly features.
That is a very short term view, and short term views in business usually come back to haunt you big time.
Thats how I would word it. The hardware in questions wasn't implemented just for BC but it supported the later SW solution by some (unknown) degree.
Yeah I was surprised by that at the time. My guess is that they'd have loved to have had it ready for launch but it just wasn't ready/proven in time so they sat on it till they knew it would work. I mean, announcing BC and then have it fail spectacularly isn't a risk I think they'd take, the potential for being accused of misselling is huge.
This. Today's GAAS industry means that you don't drop your title a few weeks or months after launch, but you stick around for years and years. Games like League Of Legends, CS:GO, Overwatch, Rainbow Six: Siege are years old, and yet they keep engaging hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of players every single day. Gone are the days of leaving your games behind and moving it. In that sense, I really appreciated Activision giving free upgrades to next-gen versions to people who bought Destiny and Advanced Warfare for X360/PS3, with even save compatibility. It made buying those games a lot easier, knowing fully well I'd buy the new console a couple months later. Too bad that trend didn't catch on. When PS5 and Xbox Whatever launches in 1-2-3 years, they can't just not have Rocket League, Rainbow Six: Siege or Overwatch available to play immediately.
Playing the bullshotCrackdown - Xbox One X Enhanced
1080p Super-Sampled Mode
Found my Japan version!
The hardware in question isn't hardware for just BC but was designed with typical BC challenges in mind. That's how I personally put it. If they really had designed it for BC only they wouldn't have had released BC so much later after the console.
This. It's extremely short-sighted to downplay BC.
Compare it to your movie streaming sites. Would you rather sign up to a service that has thousands of movies to stream, all the new flicks AND all your old favorites and all of that watchable in glorious HD or sign up to a service that has the newest stuff and charges you extra for movies you already BOUGHT a couple of years ago?
I pretty often sit down on my couch and browse through my library just finding something I wanna play. Or recently, I watched the DFRetro about Panzer Dragoon and would've enjoyed playing Panzer Dragoon Orta again, but that's not on BC yet - so the more, the merrier, as far as I'm concerned :)
BC can also make for a nice marketing beat. Rockstar absolutely should make a patch for Red Dead Redemption that ups the resolution and stabilizes the framerate for RDR before the launch of RDR2. Tons of people would either buy the game or download and play it again to prepare for RDR2.
I guess the late launch was due to the fact that Xbox had leader changes and quite some chaos before and after launch and of course there is also still software involved which means time and from a management perspective someone who will be responsible for that, a "driver". Unless we know more details, I'll keep it at that - there is silicon for bc in Xbox One which is hardware.
You may need to watch an E3 interview by Jeff Gerstmann from Giantbomb with Phil Spencer where Phil Spencer said (paraphrasing): They thought it was not possible but some software engineers figured it out on their own and they made it an official project. Does this sound to you that it was planned all along? Not to me at least!
The work is done by Ms, without changing the game code.
Basically they work at a OS level: Game requests a buffer, it returns a buffer 9 times of what the game wanted. Game requests lod, it returns the highest quality one, and so on. They still have to test for performance, and of course not all games will benefit in the same way (for example it could use a non standard api to get the right lod).
The more interesting thing to me is that they were planning BC from 2011 and were waiting to do it right as opposed to it just being merely a reaction to Sony being #1 as some have suggested.
This is amazing and a huge feather in the Xbox cap. It shows commitment beyond greed, and that's basically the complete opposite to how the One was originally introduced.
I hope this becomes an industry staple as it adds enormous value to each game bought. It also allows games to be sold much longer similar to Steam.
I hope this becomes an industry staple as it adds enormous value to each game bought. It also allows games to be sold much longer similar to Steam.
Cool I'll check that. Maybe I'm mis-remembering the interview where it sounded like they baked in the BC hardware.
but then how will they remaster shadow of the colossus for the 3rd time?
That was how people interpreted the introduction of the One... it was just a hate fueled lynch-mob reaction IMHO and Sony managed to come out the good guys with some clever marketing/PR moves.
BC needs to be there day 1 for it to be a selling point during a new gen transition. At this late point MS is playing a PR game to butter people up for the next transition. I fully expect Sony to join the BC party day 1 with PS5 to take the wind out of MS's sails.
Still, can't look a gift horse in the mouth, and competition is good for the customers.
For people comparing these BC titles to actual PC gaming...
Yes, I am aware of less input lag, how you can go higher than 60 (something I really care about myself) etc.
But the point is that the way BC is being handled is far closer to PC BC than ever before. It's convenient, you don't have to buy the games again for updates and they "just work".
Going forward I hope MS keeps this trend.
Yes, I am aware of less input lag, how you can go higher than 60 (something I really care about myself) etc.
But the point is that the way BC is being handled is far closer to PC BC than ever before. It's convenient, you don't have to buy the games again for updates and they "just work".
Going forward I hope MS keeps this trend.
Sony will come out as hypocrites if they do BC on the ps5 and same fans here who get excited will be too... But you can bet that if they don't have BC in PS5 you'll hear a lot of defence for it. Sony wins the PR game regardless.
I really hope they do, BC needs to become the norm again, but not the way that costs money for consumers to play the same games.
Skate looks very good also.
Is skate even an X enhanced game? I thought microsoft was able to pull some engineering wizardry off and every single game got a resolution bump, including performance fixes due to the better hardware. Then those that got the patch got some major upgrades.
I don't what they are doing.....but its amazing to watch, especially since this is also the first piece of hardware and only line of hardware to have original xbox backwards compatibility. Something which still doesn't exist on PC in good form.
I think the issue here is all the info about how to managed to make it happen came much later than the interview I am talking about. To make it easy for you to find it I provide you some youtube links. One of those is the correct one. Unfortunately I can't remember which.
E3 2015: https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=kg53_mFUP9M
E3 2016: https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=d7gWGDPFXqs
Edit:
Its the E3 2015 interview but the info about the engineers must be from somewhere else.
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I think you are right about the next xbox and PS5 - the only difference to your outcome is that Sony will probably continue to have the lions share of better exclusives i think that this outweighs BC for many people
I've had it installed, but never launched it..........Mirrors Edge though is "oh my god" insane to look at. It's amazing how good the original mirrors edge holds up with the bumps to 4k on the X. That artstyle and world was perfect for scalability.
Every 360 (and unpatched XB1) game gets the following benefits: V-sync, improved performance (both loading and framerate), forced 16xAF, support for variable refresh rate when it launches, increased resolution when the game uses a dynamic resolution.
Nice edit. Why would you add something like that?
On topic: I buy new consoles to play new games, the fact that Switch brings so many remasters is really disappointing. Not everyone wants BC, for me its not necessary at all. My point was that as long gamers support(full) remasters companies will keep making them and earn a lot of more money that way than offering an BC solution.
But that is not what they are after. They no longer want to win a generation, they want to create an ongoing service that everyone is aboard and the userbase is always increasing.
In this scenario, starting first is fundamental, and by the time any new consoles came out they will definitely have quite a sizable amount of subscribers, specially if they keep doing great stuff like what they are doing.
For instance, imagine they find a way to put all xbone games, including BC on PC, and that from now on 100% of the released games will be Play Anywhere. Just like that they shrunk the cost of entering their ecosystem from $500 to $10 a month if you have a Pc already, and with gamepass that cost means hundreds of games at your disposal. A scenario like that, while having immense goodwill built over the years out of the current users would be much more impactful than withholding those features until the next console and cutting xbone and X users short.
No wonder Crackdown 3 has gone to ground. Last time it looked like this, a 10yo game. It must be undergoing a major rework.
I haven't owned an Xbox since the OG but this enhanced BC effort really makes me consider them for the future. If Sony want to keep me on thier side next gen they really need to join in. It looks likely I could buy the next gen Xbox and have access to four generations of games right away and that's hugely appealing to me. Meanwhile if Sony goes for another clean slate with PS5 why should I bother staying with them, there's nothing holding me to remain loyal if my purchases don't get carried forward.
That's not really on topic since this is a BC thread compared to remasters; if you don't care about "old games" you're not in the right place.
And your point is caring about big corporations finances. Which i, as a player and not said corporation employee, don't.
No but they do care about growth, and if underneath the line it isn't growing, they aren't growing in fortune. That is sadly how this sick world works :(. Green numbers is one thing, but "ooh we went got 40% of growth!" that is even more interesting for them. Profit sadly isn't all, I'd agree with you, but in the hyper-capitalist world, sustainability and healthy businesses are not important. Growth is, as that is the short term gain for finances. Any growth and making numbers "bigger". And believe me, no company in the hyper-capitalist world is in it for "second place". Right now the mindset is "SONY SONY SONY!", look to youtube and what the lets players play? That's what kids want, they don't ask for Xbox, and that is something shareholders take notice off, and that's the questions Phill will need to answer and in a justifying way of :"Why should sustain you any longer? How do you represent growth to my stock? You seem more detrimental to it. Now if I vote to sell you, I get a short term financial injection and thus growth to my stock.".
Is it fucked up? Yes, as Xbox is healthy and running a profit, but in a world of "MORE MORE MOREEE!" that hyper-capitalism represents, you simply can't run on "healthy and we are making a profit". There the mind set is:"stable is standing still, growing is running forward.".
Now Xbox is far from doomed, but don't underestimate it either. Phil Spencer can easily be canned, there is a reason why the Xbox One started out as this "TV TV TV" media box, and it wasn't just Don Matrick. It was an orchestrated event to throw the Xbox to fold the Xbox into the Mobile division of Microsoft and make it into an "Apple TV". It never should have been there, and should have stayed it's own. Let's just hope current shareholders understand that, but I doubt they look to long term and sustainability. For goodness sake, Value act (the destroyers of Motorola ) are on the board these days.
FYI x360 audio and texture decoding hardware block is included in the X1 SOC.
Nah that's not true. Graphically Crackdown 3 looks fine. There were some things that need work - mainly animations and some shaders - but it definitely looks like a modern Crackdown.
There has to be a video somewhere of Phil Spencer being shown the first 360 games getting scaled to 4K. I'd love to see that video, I bet his reaction was awesome.
The Xbox One SoC does have Xbox 360 related customization baked in, mainly to support the various asset formats.
https://youtu.be/Hd8nYLO43zs?t=86
There exclusives, which sell more than Sony's on average.
But troll aside the X is becoming worthy of that $500 price tag and I think the price will drop at e3. Although it is a great value I think designing the X and releasing it when they did was done intentionally so the prices on it's parts would fall in a short time.
Here's Crackdown for those wondering:
Wtf?
Is that with all games or only those with devs who thought ahead?
Probably they are talking about proprietary codecs and maybe texture formats. XMA and such.
PS4 supports Atrac 9 in hardware for example.
Playing Gears of War 3 on the X blew my mind. I really like what MS is doing there. Great job.
If they do that for Mass Effect I'm going to go nuts.
If they do that for Mass Effect I'm going to go nuts.