Future of MS Exclusives? (Win10 & Xbox One...things)

[Rangers]

A few of us here at B3D have suggested consoles might move towards more continuous hardware evolution with full backwards compatibility and a degree of forwards compatibility.

And a few of us have suggested that's a bad idea/wont happen. So far we've always been right.

Phil's comments confound me a bit. Just on a practical rubber meets road level, when are they going to announce a new upgraded Xbox, for example? E3 2016 maybe? This is a "show me the money" or "I'll believe it when I see it" type situation for me. Not meaning I dont think it could happen (though I still find it exceedingly unlikely) in light of Phil's comments, but just ok, now where's our actual product?

Anyways as I've always said about this, I'm not sure exactly what will happen, but make no mistake it would be a sea change, for better or worse. A very fundamental change in the way consoles work.

For starters I imagine a slightly upgraded Xbox in which the hardware is no longer taken advantage of, well basically just like those race PC's out today. Some sharper textures, higher AA, but nothing fundamental, as the game will be designed for the oldest lowest common denominator (probably 20 million Xbox One's already out there cant be abandoned). So it will be wasted power. Meanwhile all those Xbox One owners will be felling inferior as they play janky sub 30 FPS "forwards compatible" titles on the equivalent of low settings?

It seems like Phil is perturbed XBO wasn't as powerful as it should have been, and perhaps he's overreacting. Honestly though, I dont see this happening, and I dont know if it would be a good thing or what effect it would have on Xbox good or bad. It's definitely playing with fire. I'm sure a lot of people who want Xbox to go away will love the idea as they will hope Xbox fades into some sort of meaningless I dunno...PC thing...

But anyways yeah, show me the money. Until there's concrete news or products related to this, I'm inclined to dismiss Phil's comments entirely.

 

[Rangers]

I hope they go for it and pull it off. As long as anyone that buys a console, get to play current games now and for a decent length of time after, this type of approach could be very disruptive to the industry.

Yes, very disruptive. How will PS4 owners feel when their much hyped power advantage no longer exists? But on the flip side, would it in the long run be very destructive towards whatever brand it's applied to, as consumers wont buy a Xbox/Playstation they know will be quickly obsoleted, and instead opt for the other guy's fixed hardware (funny I used to hear this argument occasionally from Apple users, back when phone tech was moving faster, they would say they were happy to be on iphone so their phone wasn't obsoleted every couple of months by the newest latest and greatest android model in that ecosystem, although I always found that a very odd mindset to say the least).

It would be a huge fundamental change and a lot of people on B3D dont seem to get the big picture. That's why I'm reticent to believe it.

 

[AlNom]

How will PS4 owners feel when their much hyped power advantage no longer exists?

This matters because...

 

[McHuj]

as consumers wont buy a Xbox/Playstation they know will be quickly obsoleted,

I think that's a big assumption as to what constitutes quickly obsolete. If any single console is a viable game platform for ~5 years, that's not quickly. If they obsolete a system every year, sure that's a problem.

 

[eastmen]

And a few of us have suggested that's a bad idea/wont happen. So far we've always been right.

Phil's comments confound me a bit. Just on a practical rubber meets road level, when are they going to announce a new upgraded Xbox, for example? E3 2016 maybe? This is a "show me the money" or "I'll believe it when I see it" type situation for me. Not meaning I dont think it could happen (though I still find it exceedingly unlikely) in light of Phil's comments, but just ok, now where's our actual product?

I would suspect not before they can take advantage of new tech like hbm2 and 14/16nm 2016 is the wrong year.

Anyways as I've always said about this, I'm not sure exactly what will happen, but make no mistake it would be a sea change, for better or worse. A very fundamental change in the way consoles work.

For starters I imagine a slightly upgraded Xbox in which the hardware is no longer taken advantage of, well basically just like those race PC's out today. Some sharper textures, higher AA, but nothing fundamental, as the game will be designed for the oldest lowest common denominator (probably 20 million Xbox One's already out there cant be abandoned). So it will be wasted power. Meanwhile all those Xbox One owners will be felling inferior as they play janky sub 30 FPS "forwards compatible" titles on the equivalent of low settings?

I don't think we are talking about a slightly upgraded xbox. The xbox one is at $300 its not hard to imagine with a micron drop for them to get the system down to $200 . That leaves room for a $400-$500 higher end console.

The xbox one would take its place as a lower end gaming machine , they would most likely stop trying to hit 1080p and just focus on 900p 30fps while the new console will be 1080p+ (they may support 1440p or even 4k if the hardware is powerful enough)

A buyer can purchase what they want. Perhaps for their kids playing a game in 900p for $200 is worth it , esp if its cross buy and you can put a more powerful box in the living room for $400-$500 . The living room is most likely where the higher end tv would be

It seems like Phil is perturbed XBO wasn't as powerful as it should have been, and perhaps he's overreacting. Honestly though, I dont see this happening, and I dont know if it would be a good thing or what effect it would have on Xbox good or bad. It's definitely playing with fire. I'm sure a lot of people who want Xbox to go away will love the idea as they will hope Xbox fades into some sort of meaningless I dunno...PC thing...

Phil just sees the tech that MS has made and understands that a console can be like a tablet or cell phone. Where people enjoy games on multiple generations of devices and get locked into the ecosystem the longer they stay in it and the easier it is to bring software and apps forward.

Developers already target the PC which is higher spec than any of the consoles , later this year with pascal and the r400 pc will pull further away. A zen + gcn 3.0 with hbm2 console would just get a tweaked version of the pc exe. The headlines would change from the xbox being lower res and worse frame rates to being higher res and better frame rates and if they stay in the $400-$500 price range it wouldn't be for too much more of a premium.

They also get work around the limitations the current gen systems have for VR. Kinect 2 has a latency of 60fps but newer cmos and a faster chip on board would allow them to get the latency down further. So we could see a rebirth of Kinect focused on the vr experience. They would have had 4 years or so to improve upon the Kinect 2s hardware.

But anyways yeah, show me the money. Until there's concrete news or products related to this, I'm inclined to dismiss Phil's comments entirely.

I wouldn't expect a new console until 2017. IT seems to me that 2016 would be laying the ground work for whats to come.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

MS would seem to be a good place with regards to that - their emulation and BC abilities are second to none, and they have a virtualised sub elements. They would also seem to be most in need of a near term shot in the arm with regards to hardware. It would also allow them to drive "cutting edge" development on PC and their Win 10 app store.

But they can't keep the original Xbone compatible with new software for ever.. some day there will be a necessary change in instruction set and/or CPU power for stuff other than graphics (meaning it can't be scaled down).

I wonder where they'll draw the line.

 

[eastmen]

But they can't keep the original Xbone compatible with new software for ever.. some day there will be a necessary change in instruction set and/or CPU power for stuff other than graphics (meaning it can't be scaled down).

I wonder where they'll draw the line.

I mean we can still play dos games today. Why wouldn't u be able to play original xbox games in 10 or 15 or even 30 years.

 

[function]

And a few of us have suggested that's a bad idea/wont happen. So far we've always been right.

It's never been tried, so you're incorrect in saying you've always been right about it being a bad idea. It's never succeeded and it's never failed.

Times change, and MS's preferred platform is Windows rather than a particular piece of hardware. 360 software BC and Universal apps show that quite well. People are used to upgraded systems offering better experience, just like with phones. Happy with your old phone? Keep it. Want the new one? Buy it.

As long as there's continuity with software and services - something MS are well placed to guarantee - pick the hardware upgrades that seem worth it to you.

For starters I imagine a slightly upgraded Xbox in which the hardware is no longer taken advantage of, well basically just like those race PC's out today. Some sharper textures, higher AA, but nothing fundamental, as the game will be designed for the oldest lowest common denominator (probably 20 million Xbox One's already out there cant be abandoned). So it will be wasted power. Meanwhile all those Xbox One owners will be felling inferior as they play janky sub 30 FPS "forwards compatible" titles on the equivalent of low settings?

PCs find plenty to do with their power, and software will always take advantage of the underlying hardware to a greater or smaller degree. There's no reason the 'X2' should be any less able to take advantage of the hardware than then X1.

If 'X2' doesn't get released then games are still going to be stuck at X1/PS4 level, so that's kind of a none argument.

If OG X1 owners were to feel their games are inferior it's because they are. If it bothers them that someone who spends money on new hardware gets ... new hardware, then they can buy new hardware. If they're comfortable with their current device - and we keep hearing how happy X1 owners are despite PS4 games generally running better - then they're free to keep plodding on with their current system.

The absolute worst thing is to consider that Xbox owners are children and crybabies whos tears should be avoided. If people are legit shook that a newer system runs stuff better and want to boycott your product because, like, technology advances, then fuck 'em. These people have had to cope with phones and tablets and TVs and computers advancing in a manner that's not based around not upsetting them, so they'll probably adapt. Or not, and get an 'inferior' experience anyway, elsewhere.

But anyways yeah, show me the money. Until there's concrete news or products related to this, I'm inclined to dismiss Phil's comments entirely.

I wouldn't be so quick to entirely dismiss the position of the head of Xbox on the future of Xbox.

 

[function]

But they can't keep the original Xbone compatible with new software for ever.. some day there will be a necessary change in instruction set and/or CPU power for stuff other than graphics (meaning it can't be scaled down).

I wonder where they'll draw the line.

Yeah, it'd be interesting to see where that line gets drawn. So long as the PS4 is in the game and a target for multiplatforms then I'd guess it'd make sense to continue with OG XBone games ...

Perhaps there'll be a compromise where you're free to make games for older systems for as long as a dev/pub wants, but they'll only try and push you into it for 'x' years. Or maybe they'd just go the full-on "market forces" route?

 

[liolio]

That was a quiet finely crafted, turnaround type of answer Phil Spencer made, I feel lots of people are reading too much into it. The statement made by I don't remember which Sony exec was a lot more clear wrt what the company was thinking reasonable or not.
The only reason I can see for a shortening of this generation by MSFT is either the XB1 start to really bomb and I would not expect them to release a point way ahead of competition more trying to pull a 360 vs PS3 type of head start.

 

[iroboto]

That was a quiet finely crafted, turnaround type of answer Phil Spencer made, I feel lots of people are reading too much into it. The statement made by I don't remember which Sony exec was a lot more clear wrt what the company was thinking reasonable or not.
The only reason I can see for a shortening of this generation by MSFT is either the XB1 start to really bomb and I would not expect them to release a point way ahead of competition more trying to pull a 360 vs PS3 type of head start.

Disagree. Technology is moving way too fast to have these long console generations. Performance is moving at a monumentally quick rate and its not reasonable by any means to expect that a mid level performance console will continue to be able to keep up with other devices that iterate annually.

 

[pjbliverpool]

So it's official.... Forza is coming to the PC:

http://www.techspot.com/news/63961-forza-motorsport-6-apex-free-play-version-turn.html

It's a cut down f2p version of the full game this time (so perhaps nothing to get too excited over). But it seems this is just the first step in the full franchise becoming truly cross platform:

Back on the topic of Forza, Beaudoin said the move to PC is just the first step and acknowledged that the best way to learn how to make a game on a platform is to ship a game on it. That said, he noted that future Forza games will "absolutely" be developed concurrently for the Xbox and PC – confirmation that Apex isn't just a one-off experiment designed to try and lure PC games to its console.

That said, if it's f2p, you can;t really go wrong. I'll certainly be downloading and giving it a try.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Curious how they'd do an upgradeable console. Socketed APU? I imagine they'd still want to limit the number of hardware permutations, otherwise it's just a PC.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

But they can't keep the original Xbone compatible with new software for ever.. some day there will be a necessary change in instruction set and/or CPU power for stuff other than graphics (meaning it can't be scaled down).

I wonder where they'll draw the line.

I fail to see why not? They are talking about making the Xbox part of a universal windows platform. At worst, it may be that the newer Xbox when running an "OG" XBO game would instead use a slightly modified PC version (assuming it wasn't a platform exclusive) or an emulated version like X360 games on XBO.

Going the other direction of original XBO running future games, again, why not? It's an X86 platform with GCN based graphics. I'd assume that once Microsoft has gotten the drivers sorted for using Windows X + Windows version of DX on XBO that it would use a slightly modified PC version of the game just like future Xbox consoles. At which point, just like PC games, the developer or Microsoft chooses one console IQ preset for that particular Xbox hardware configuration. If console gamer's are lucky, they'll get more graphics options (or just more presets) to choose from. Giving the user the option to choose 60 fps or 30 fps, or anything in between (feasible if adaptive sync comes to the platform at some point).

Either way, I'd imagine that allowing OG XBO to run future games or to allow future Xbox consoles to run OG games would be relatively trivial compared to making the XBO part of the universal windows platform, which is their intent.

Regards,
SB

 

[mrcorbo]

I expect the original spec XBOne could remain a viable platform for playing most universal platform games for as long as the PS4 remains a viable platform as multiplats are going to target the PS4 spec and scale up or down for the other platforms.

Not sure MS is going to be able to pull this off, but It'll be interesting to see them try!

 

[eastmen]

I expect the original spec XBOne could remain a viable platform for playing most universal platform games for as long as the PS4 remains a viable platform as multiplats are going to target the PS4 spec and scale up or down for the other platforms.

Not sure MS is going to be able to pull this off, but It'll be interesting to see them try!

as long as the xbox one keeps selling I don't see why not. Its not like the devs can't turn down the res a bit and lower some settings from a ps4 port. The xbox one has sold over 15m hardware units and is continuing to sell. That's a sizable market

 

[orangpelupa]

Curious how they'd do an upgradeable console. Socketed APU? I imagine they'd still want to limit the number of hardware permutations, otherwise it's just a PC.

Probably just faster console cycle?

Instead of every 10 year. New console every 3 yearss

Kr every 1 year and also brings the contract subscription option back.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

http://hothardware.com/news/microsofts-modular-surface-pc-concept-detailed-in-patent

Has this modular components patent application by MS been discussed here?

 

[eastmen]

Probably just faster console cycle?

Instead of every 10 year. New console every 3 yearss

Kr every 1 year and also brings the contract subscription option back.

What console was on the market 10 years before it was replaced ?

Consoles seem to be replaced every 4-6 years depending on how sucesful they are. I believe the xbox 360 might be the longest console before being replaced with a holiday 2005 to holiday 2013 . PS2 launched in march of 2000 and the ps3 came out in holiday 2006. Ps1 was launched Holiday 94 and replaced in march of 2000.

I dunno maybe the nes , that hit in july 83 in japan the super nes holiday 90 .

 

[Egmon83]

This is going to be a big disaster, this is how it went last time with the suits:
MS-analyst:"As you see here in this chart, the average american watches 3 hours of Tv every day, in the early 2000's this was 2 hours. In 2015 Americans will watch an average of 4 hours tv every day, so that is why we need to sacrifice fast 4GB ram for slow 8GB of ram, and silicon budget for the APU needs to go into HDMI in, Kinect and TV will be the future!"

I can already see it now:
MS-analyst:"The apple iPhone is the most successful phone on the market, raking in +90% of all telecom hardware profits with only 10% market share. How do they do it? They release a new, more powerful model every year, it's compatible with the previous software, and people buy it again because they want the more powerful hardware. We can do the same thing: release more powerful versions of xbox so people will buy it again and again and again. New Xbox model, people will buy it again just like the iPhone"
Bill Gates: "-hey weren't you the one who proposed to focus on TV a few years ago? I thought I fired you!!"