But isn't Macs have horrible specs, especially the gpu? And to make worse it's can't be upgraded?
So xbox is easier choice
But isn't Macs have horrible specs, especially the gpu? And to make worse it's can't be upgraded?
So xbox is easier choice
D
Deleted member 86764
Guest
Depends on the Mac.
Anyway, the point I was making is that anyone with a half decent PC that was considering buying an Xbox One won't ever need to now, since it's possible that all "exclusive" games go to PC too. It's a bonus for anyone with a PC obviously and also for Microsoft, but anyone with an Xbox One will probably feel a little marginalised since there's less reasons for people to buy their box of choice now.
Honestly, none of this affects me at all - I'm just trying to understand why people may see this negatively.
Edit: I'd quite like to see another Xbox, so I really hope these aren't steps away from dedicated console hardware.
Anyway, the point I was making is that anyone with a half decent PC that was considering buying an Xbox One won't ever need to now, since it's possible that all "exclusive" games go to PC too. It's a bonus for anyone with a PC obviously and also for Microsoft, but anyone with an Xbox One will probably feel a little marginalised since there's less reasons for people to buy their box of choice now.
Honestly, none of this affects me at all - I'm just trying to understand why people may see this negatively.
Edit: I'd quite like to see another Xbox, so I really hope these aren't steps away from dedicated console hardware.
I actually think this move probably makes it more likely that there will be another Xbox. I think it will be even more PC-like (such as simpler architecture with no embedded RAM) so that simultaneous PC/Xbox development is even easier.
Basically, the Xbox will be the min or mid spec and the PC will be able to scale beyond that. I think MS would be leaving money and users on the table by not having a dedicated gamin box that they can sell for around $399 in places like Bestbuy, Walmart, etc.
Basically, the Xbox will be the min or mid spec and the PC will be able to scale beyond that. I think MS would be leaving money and users on the table by not having a dedicated gamin box that they can sell for around $399 in places like Bestbuy, Walmart, etc.
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
I am in the market for a smaller Xbox One. The current unit + PSU will not comfortably fit in my expensive entertainment centre - not with everything else in there and I'm not looking to buy a larger/taller entertainment centre to accomodate the Xbox One so I definitely welcome games like Quantum Break coming to Windows.
Given the choice I'd rather play it on console. 30fps doesn't bother me and I prefer the convenience and lack of fuss of a console. But if this is the way things are going with Microsoft published console exclusives then I'll be looking for the next best thing - a console formfactor compact gaming PC connected to my TV.
Exactly ... Windows 10. That's the point. Even people with Mac's game on Windows 10, because OSX sucks for gaming. PC gaming really means Windows gaming. The operating system is the platform. Almost everyone with a PC games on Windows, and Microsoft hasn't really made any money from it. Steam has.
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
I think you have misread my posts. You don't need Windows to run Windows games under OSX (or Linux). You can run Windows natively or even virtualised but you haven't needed too to own Windows for years. DirectX and Metal will further blur the distinction of OS/API.
And when Microsoft finally allows xbox one to run universal apps...
Office, etc.
PC will cry their exclusive apps now also available on Xbox?
Or students in dorm and with tight money will be considering:
PC or xbox one.
Instead of only pc (which cheap pc I can buy but I also want to play games).
Office, etc.
PC will cry their exclusive apps now also available on Xbox?
Or students in dorm and with tight money will be considering:
PC or xbox one.
Instead of only pc (which cheap pc I can buy but I also want to play games).
Mac gaming performance is awful compared to windows. That's why people dual boot windows. I have a mac. It's my only computer.
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
Are you talking about Mac versions of games or running the Windows version of games under OSX?
I doesn't necessarily disagree with the former and Cider is a significant culprit at large. Some studios do decent ports, anything from Valve or Blizzard will get as good a game port as OSX's ancient OpenGL enginecan muster and Metal (and Unreal engine supporting Metal) will hopefully mean native ports of other games are better in future. Unity is another engine that has serious issues on Mac (and consoles) which is a shame.
My experience with Parallels is good and my experience with WINE wrappers is better, because you're ditching the Windows OS and translating only the essential graphics and audio stack. I find myself switching the Windows (under Bootcamp) less and less on my 2012 MBP (2.6Ghz i7, 1Gb Geforce 650M, 16Gb RAM) and 2014 iMac (3.5Ghz i7, 4Gb Geforce 780M, 32Gb RAM). I have no expectations of high/ultra settings except on older games because with the exception of the Mac Pro, all Mac's use laptop-class GPUs but both of these Macs turn in good performance in many games under WINE. Obviously gaming wasn't a priority for either purchase and expectations have to be realistic - YMMV.
If Microsoft could find a way to port their core gaming platform (DirectX++) to other x86 operating systems with a view to monetise by selling games to those who chose non-Windows platforms, that could be a nice slice.
Either. The native osx versions of games massively under-perform compared to native windows versions on the same hardware. Cider is terrible. Wine is also not the kind of performance most pc gamers would want.
Regardless. This is a huge derail. At least 90% of pc gaming is done on the Windows operating system. Microsoft basically gets nothing from that. They're trying to put good products in the windows store and tie them into Xbox Live, so people will adopt Windows 10 and use Xbox Live services. If they get enough people using those services, they can attract more titles. Every gamer that has a pc running windows 10 has access to the store, and to Xbox Live. They just need a reason to use it.
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
PC gamers aren't going to be buying Macs in the first place.
Some people do have legitimate copies of Windows. You pay for that!
And they could be more ambitious by taking Xbox Live on Windows and extracting the crucial DirectX components and virtualising them for OSX and Linux. Put that Store natively on Mac and Steam with the ability to run Windows games without needing Windows, without needing to switch to Wndows and without the less-than-optimal translation technologies (Wine, Parallels, VM Fusion etc).
This will give them a leg up on Steam on non-Windows OSs. Because you can bet your arse Valve are working on ways to get Windows software running on other platforms - particularly OSX because those people have money and spend it. With APIs cutting closer to the hardware, there will be less complex translation of fat APIs in the future. Running Windows software on non-Windows operating systems will only get easier and faster.
Of course PC gamers aren't going to be buying mac ...
Yes, you pay for Windows ... once. Getting a % of every single software sale, like Steam, is huge money. On consoles the platform holders collect license fees for every single piece of software that's sold, even on disc. On the PC, Microsoft gets nothing unless they sell it themselves. They get $0 from Steam games. The only money they make is on the development side, selling companies visual studio.
How would they make money porting DX12 to OSX? You gonna charge each user for it? This is way more complicated than just selling the games they pay millions of dollars to develop in their own digital store, which already exists in every single copy of Windows. What's the aversion to have Microsoft sell their games in Windows and make money off them? It costs the users of Windows nothing. Xbox One users lose nothing.
Yes, you pay for Windows ... once. Getting a % of every single software sale, like Steam, is huge money. On consoles the platform holders collect license fees for every single piece of software that's sold, even on disc. On the PC, Microsoft gets nothing unless they sell it themselves. They get $0 from Steam games. The only money they make is on the development side, selling companies visual studio.
How would they make money porting DX12 to OSX? You gonna charge each user for it? This is way more complicated than just selling the games they pay millions of dollars to develop in their own digital store, which already exists in every single copy of Windows. What's the aversion to have Microsoft sell their games in Windows and make money off them? It costs the users of Windows nothing. Xbox One users lose nothing.
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
Xbox Live is the environment and the store. Microsoft now compete directly with Steam on OSX and Linux only now in addition to Mac and Linux versions of software they can now do something Steam can't, sell Windows games that run in their store's virtualised environment which is all part of their Xbox Live package. Now Microsoft are taking a cut of software sales to Mac/Linux owners through their store, publishers are selling software on platforms they don't support, shit Mac/Linux ports disappear which is a bonus for publishers and developers. Everybody wins and Steam gets some much needed competition.
Xbox/Xbox Live becomes an encapsulated set of technologies that is deployable to other hardware. That seems to be where they were going with Xbox One's virtualised environment under the hypervisor anyway.
At that point I don't see any distinction between the 2. Xbox will just be a cheap SFF PC.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
For that to happen Apple would need to have a huge shift in focus and either cede or share control of key parts of OSX with Microsoft, IMO.
OSX is a decent OS. However, it really sucks compared to Windows for gaming. On comparable hardware a game will run significantly worse in OSX than it will in Windows. Blizzard has been committed to releasing on both Windows and Macs for almost 20 years now and their games have never run as well in OSX as they have in Windows. Valve is in a similar place, even when they used to use OpenGL as the basis for their graphics rendering thus rendering DirectX mostly irrelevant to the discussion. There hasn't been a single port to OSX that has offered similar performance on similar hardware that I'm aware of.
Much of that was just Apple's indifference to gaming on the platform. While that has improved slightly, it's still not at a place where gaming on OSX is going to flourish.
Now assuming Apple would open things up to Microsoft to help improve the platform WRT performant gaming or more importantly being able to run the same executables and/or easily compile (basically make OSX a target for UWP, which would require massive involvement from Apple, IMO) to OSX... What would be Microsoft's incentive be for this rather massive undertaking?
Also take into account that Apple can and does at times decide to just change how things are done. Developer's can then either adapt or risk their applications no longer working. If Microsoft spent all this effort to make Windows applications (games) easily run in OSX and Apple decides to change things, then MS has to go through all that massive effort to attempt to make their back catalog work with whatever new system has caught Apple's eye. One of the things people like about OSX is how it can stay relatively fresh and new, but with that sometimes comes abandonment of backwards compatibility. One of the things people like with Windows is how it can support programs that are decades old written in the 80's and 90's, but with that come difficulty in modernizing many parts of the OS.
If Apple were serious about gaming becoming a thing on OSX, we'll see it in the results. Games and their performance. That hasn't happened yet, despite big time players like Blizzard and Valve wanting to make OSX a gaming destination on par with Windows. Microsoft won't be able to change that.
Regards,
SB
Many of us prefer the convenience of consoles over PC, despite owing both.
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
It's not OS X, it's OpenGL.
If Apple didn't care about higher performance graphics it wouldn't have bothered bringing Metal to OS X. That's a serious undertaking and means continued ongoing collaboration with both AMD and Nvidia.
You don't need Apple to do anything to add a graphics API to BSD. Kernel extensions can play nice sharing hardware resources which is how OpenGL and Metal co-exist and DirectX and OpenGL co-exist on Windows. Games are already used to having to share GPU resources with the host OS. But having native DirectX APIs available isn't magically going to make a Windows .exe binary compatible with OSX and Linux because they're different operating systems.
That's why I said in addition to an Xbox Live environment and store, a virtualised Windows environment that's running DirectX natively inside the virtualised environment in which games run but which uses the host OS for higher level functions This is what tuned Wine wrappers do now but Microsoft could do this without the inefficient DirectX API translation/emulation. Modern virtualisation technologies mean you can pick and chose what to do natively and what you virtualise. Parallels and VM Fusion both use selective virtualisation and environment abstraction so you can run Windows apps in OSX and they look and act like OSX apps, and vise-versa OSX apps in Windows.
Microsoft are unique in that they alone can deploy a solution where performance critical code - Direct3D - does not need to be translated to the host's graphics API (or emulated) but can be run natively in a virtualised Windows environment. Microsoft have be working on a range of virtualisation technologies for years and they are very, very good at it. They own the codebase for the key code that games need to be as fast as possible and that it's the least desirable element to have to emulate or translate.
shredenvain
Regular
No there will still be differences. Not all programs are in convenient little app packages on the windows store.
There is software that will never run in a full version on a Xbox like pro tools or Photoshop. As far as gaming you will still get better bang for your buck (performance wise) on a Xbox One for at least another year or 2.
Fixed spec, fixed drivers, high perf/$, long platform life, and physical friendly [platform] will continue to have advantages for some consumers for a while to come.
Retail presence, brand marketability and subscription / licensing fees will continue to have value for platform vendors for a while to come.
A gaming focused console that can sell in the tens of millions will continue to benefit both MS and their customers for the foreseeable future, so long as they don't shit the bed again.
Retail presence, brand marketability and subscription / licensing fees will continue to have value for platform vendors for a while to come.
A gaming focused console that can sell in the tens of millions will continue to benefit both MS and their customers for the foreseeable future, so long as they don't shit the bed again.
Last edited:
Similar threads
