Impact of XBox One X on the industry and competition *spawn

[function]

The Fable reboot by Playground games (yiss!!!) is supposedly targeting X1X as the lead platform.

Seeing a AAA game by a AAA dev optimised around X1X will be interesting. No doubt the game can scale down to X1, but highest level asset quality, res/rendering quality tradeoffs, and minimum simulation workloads will likely ~finally~ be skewed higher.

Interestingly, the cross gen down port of Tomb Raider put in a surprisingly respectable appearance on 360 despite targeting X1 from the off and being ported after the fact by a different developer.

 

[Recop]

It's a cross-gen engine... so they obviously had the 360 in mind.

If you really want to see what happens when developers truely target more powerful hardwares, then you have the Switch version of Doom. And the Switch is more powerful and more recent than the 360...

 

[Rangers]

Did anybody see the poll on reset era? Xbox owners, What Xbox model do you own? https://www.resetera.com/threads/xbox-one-owners-what-xbox-model-do-you-own.40012/

Results currently

Xbox One 140
Xbox One S 90
Xbox One X 256

So overall over 50% of Xbox owners on Era who responded own the One X. That's kinda crazy, goes to show how hardcore forums are I guess.

Wonder how a similar poll would look for PS4/Pro on Era.

 

[Nesh]

Did anybody see the poll on reset era? Xbox owners, What Xbox model do you own? https://www.resetera.com/threads/xbox-one-owners-what-xbox-model-do-you-own.40012/

Results currently

Xbox One 140
Xbox One S 90
Xbox One X 256

So overall over 50% of Xbox owners on Era who responded own the One X. That's kinda crazy, goes to show how hardcore forums are I guess.

Wonder how a similar poll would look for PS4/Pro on Era.

Average joes dont spend time in forums

They just play games, regardless if they have the max res or max framerate or max settings

Sony made the proper impact at the proper time. There isnt much for MS to do. The S hits the right price and the X the right performance. But Sony hit the right price and performance when it mattered and they add value with AAA exclusives.

 

[mrcorbo]

So overall over 50% of Xbox owners on Era who responded own the One X. That's kinda crazy, goes to show how hardcore forums are I guess.

Polls on gaming forums give insights that are only applicable to the members of the forum the poll appears on. No forum has a user base that can be viewed as a representative sample of the overall gaming market.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Rangers didn't say it did - even alluded to precisely that they arne't representative, stating "how hardcore forums are".

 

[mrcorbo]

Rolling generations would operate in the market same as the current system has done. You can't really get away from what the market will support.

We know the market supports hard cutoffs because it has been doing so since it's inception. IMO, the key advances here are:

• Not having to throw away your existing investment in software due to BC while getting a performance/quality benefit when running that existing software on the new hardware.
• The ability to continue to offer prior gen titles indefinitely in digital form
• Not having to have as hard of a cut-off in that you don't have to drop support for the prior gen so quickly after the launch of the new gen hardware. Titles developed for the prior gen, since they can run on the new hardware, are still value-adds to the new platform though not as valuable as exclusives, of course.

I think this is enough. I don't think any benefit that might accrue from mandating continuing support for older hardware is worth the cost of limiting what is possible on the new hardware as a continuing policy. I do like allowing for mid-gen refreshes, since you can get better hardware out faster, but I also think there is value in, at some point, allowing developers to create games that fully realize the potential of the latest and greatest hardware.

 

[mrcorbo]

Rangers didn't say it did - even alluded to precisely that they arne't representative, stating "how hardcore forums are".

I know. I was agreeing with and expanding on his take.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Okay. I suggest you precede such agreements with a little acknowledging remark like 'Yep' or 'Indeed' - the natural read seems, to me at least, to be a counter-argument unless someone voices agreement.

 

[mrcorbo]

Okay. I suggest you precede such agreements with a little acknowledging remark like 'Yep' or 'Indeed' - the natural read seems, to me at least, to be a counter-argument unless someone voices agreement.

OK, I can see that. Especially since I quoted the whole thing and didn't bold or otherwise emphasize the part of Ranger's post that my comment was directed at.

Edit: In fact I edited my post to do just that.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

So overall over 50% of Xbox owners on Era who responded own the One X. That's kinda crazy, goes to show how hardcore forums are I guess.

This is why it's really easy to get a disproportionate view of the a market from spending time in forums, or other places where gaming enthusiasts gather. All those people, buying lots of games, are not representative of the larger market. And as many games as those communities buy, they are largely insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

 

[iroboto]

The rolling generation plays well with Trade In Value Programs.

TIV programs drive console users to move forward as long as the cost to upgrade is marginal. I recall seeing X360 being on sale for $1 at a Black Friday GameStop flyer.

Connecting the dots: traditional model for GameStop is to sell the console as a method of selling the previously owned games. But the developers and MS don’t profit from this exchange.

Game Pass changes the model. You TIV everyone onto the new console and trailing population can still get access to the lower end models at a way cheaper price, subscription services provides a huge catalog of games. The rolling generation makes the older console relevant still, the longer the rolling, the more games on the subscription service that is available.

So really, the key was as simple imo, as just having as many subscribers as possible.

TLDR; Trade In Value Programs don’t work if there isn’t a new console. And the value of the older console is diminished if it can’t play newer titles. Thus rolling generations enables TIV benefits to expand the population, exploiting low entry barrier price points coupled with low barrier subscription services, and Backwards Compatibility to supplement an ever increasing library while still allowing them to play the latest games until they fall 2 generations behind. Scratch that: BC encourages users to TIV to the next model. You have no fear that your library is moving forward. So you TIV up. A $499 console isn’t that bad if you’re not actually paying $299 as a TIV.

Customers get a choice to stay cheap and manage themselves on the lower end of the rolling generation. Or skip a generation. Or always be on the upper hand of the rolling.

Damn. I feel like that’s it. I’m satisfied.
All of this at a cost of the hard cut. The question becomes, how important is the hard cut to move games forward.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Except if a game runs on XB1X, it can be made to run well enough on XB1 (and PS4 and PS4Pro). The launch games for a next-gen, at least in the first year (past the really early up-ports etc), are impossible on the old gen without crazy amounts of work and a compromised experience.

Gah, I knew I shouldn't have opened this thread when I don't have time. So many posts I want to respond to, but I just want to touch on this.

Yes, this is absolutely the case if the older console is 7-8 years old (traditional generation). But if the older console is only 3-4 years old (rolling generations)?

As I've noted there were exclusives released for the XBO that do not target any other hardware than XBO that run perfectly fine on hardware 3-4 years older featuring hardware architectures that are significantly different. Go back 7-8 years and that becomes significantly more difficult. Of course, with the pace of technology slowing (GPUs used to iterate every 6-9 months, now they iterate every 1-1.5 years and sometimes longer) that becomes less and less difficult as we go.

This is even more true now as everyone is using GPUs based on desktop PC GPUs. GPUs which have to at some level (driver or hardware) maintain compatibility with older hardware. Sure graphics features may not be feasible on older hardware, but it's easy enough to enable those on newer games that target all the capabilities of the new hardware while not implementing them on the older hardware.

For example, hardware tessellation that is used in some current gen game is just disabled on hardware that does not support hardware tessellation or can be disabled for hardware that suffers too much of a performance hit from it.

Unless the rendering paradigm changes, all this holds true for the forseeable future. Modern consoles aren't like traditional consoles that ditched all hardware compatibility. Hell, even PS4 shares some graphics compatibility with the PS3 due to the PC roots of their GPUs. Granted, much of PS3's rendering had to be done on the PS3's SPUs as the GPU used was anemic compared to the competition, so in that sense it straddles the line between modern console and traditional console.

Going forward, it isn't like any future console can completely ditch compatibility with a prior console (like when going from PS1 to PS2). Even going with a mobile smartphone GPU sees a lot of common functionality.

Also, SORRY DSOUP! Your post I also really wanted to reply to, but I just don't have the time.

I did want to mention that yes, scaling down can be more difficult or even impossible if there isn't already a framework in place to facilitate scaling down. However, PC GPUs and PC infrastructure are designed to help facilitate scaling down at hardware, driver, and software (API and game) layer. Yes, only one of the current gen consoles is close to PC infracture, but all of them use PC GPUs as well as PC based CPUs.

That's why games that targeted this generation of hardware had virtually no problems running on hardware of a completely different generation when those games were allowed to run on PC.

Regards,
SB

 

[Xbat]

The current gen CPUs could be a problem. The next game console CPUs are going to be on another level according to that digital foundry article.

 

[JPT]

We know the market supports hard cutoffs because it has been doing so since it's inception. IMO, the key advances here are:

• Not having to throw away your existing investment in software due to BC while getting a performance/quality benefit when running that existing software on the new hardware.
• The ability to continue to offer prior gen titles indefinitely in digital form
• Not having to have as hard of a cut-off in that you don't have to drop support for the prior gen so quickly after the launch of the new gen hardware. Titles developed for the prior gen, since they can run on the new hardware, are still value-adds to the new platform though not as valuable as exclusives, of course.

I think this is enough. I don't think any benefit that might accrue from mandating continuing support for older hardware is worth the cost of limiting what is possible on the new hardware as a continuing policy. I do like allowing for mid-gen refreshes, since you can get better hardware out faster, but I also think there is value in, at some point, allowing developers to create games that fully realize the potential of the latest and greatest hardware.

But then again, to me none of those points are important vs getting a new generation shiny device.
I have no problem with trashing my current software library, because its stuff I have played or at least stuff I gotten for "free" from PS+ that I have not gotten around to play yet, if ever.
Prior gen titles, again, I have most likely played them. If not I do hope there is new stuff on the market that is fun, which means I do not have to go back to older stuff to find something to entertain me.

I so definitely want new and shiny more than the ability to play "old" games, only exception for me when going from PS3 to PS4, I missed Critter Crunch.
I would have liked to see that on the PS4, but I did not miss it enough to boot up the PS3 and play it. I stuck with Resogun instead

And I doubt I am the only, so question, where is the lion share of the market?

My company sells solutions to ISP's, we had this idea for a companion app for the solution. We prototyped it and showed it around. ISP's went banans, we need that app, get that app released, we can not use your solution without the app. The end-users must have the app.
We pushed the priority and got it released, NOBODY* uses it. It became just another feature on the datasheet for our solution.

*A minuscule amount of people do, but like twice a year. Now the investment if measured by DAU is a disaster, but as an investment of feature and we can say we have an app, is gold. And in a pitch or pre-sales meeting, we can save 10 minutes of discussion by just say, we have an app.

And back to games, BC/FC could almost be just another feature on the datasheet, that people "buy"/need, but rarely uses. Like the breaks on my car

 

[Shifty Geezer]

There's a whole other thread discussing the importance of BC

 

[Cyan]

The rolling generation plays well with Trade In Value Programs.

TIV programs drive console users to move forward as long as the cost to upgrade is marginal. I recall seeing X360 being on sale for $1 at a Black Friday GameStop flyer.

Connecting the dots: traditional model for GameStop is to sell the console as a method of selling the previously owned games. But the developers and MS don’t profit from this exchange.

Game Pass changes the model. You TIV everyone onto the new console and trailing population can still get access to the lower end models at a way cheaper price, subscription services provides a huge catalog of games. The rolling generation makes the older console relevant still, the longer the rolling, the more games on the subscription service that is available.

So really, the key was as simple imo, as just having as many subscribers as possible.

TLDR; Trade In Value Programs don’t work if there isn’t a new console. And the value of the older console is diminished if it can’t play newer titles. Thus rolling generations enables TIV benefits to expand the population, exploiting low entry barrier price points coupled with low barrier subscription services, and Backwards Compatibility to supplement an ever increasing library while still allowing them to play the latest games until they fall 2 generations behind. Scratch that: BC encourages users to TIV to the next model. You have no fear that your library is moving forward. So you TIV up. A $499 console isn’t that bad if you’re not actually paying $299 as a TIV.

Customers get a choice to stay cheap and manage themselves on the lower end of the rolling generation. Or skip a generation. Or always be on the upper hand of the rolling.

Damn. I feel like that’s it. I’m satisfied.
All of this at a cost of the hard cut. The question becomes, how important is the hard cut to move games forward.

reading your post makes me wonder for the future of some stores like Gamestop.

They need to move to digital at some point. At first I thought they could try a deal with Microsoft (or Nintendo or Sony for that matter) so they sell the games in a hypothetical Gamestop's online store where they provide all the infrastructure, but now I don't see it clear it will ever happen.

Gamestop had a digital store before, called Impulse. I purchased quite a few titles there, more than 10 games. Some of them were good, like Rome Total War or Age of Empires 3.

Then one fine day it was closed. I wanted to play Age of Empires 3 a few months ago and I couldn't find the Impulse store anywhere. It turned out they had discontinued it back in 2014! They didn't even sent me an email -except it went to the trash bin-.

With teh Xbox going "infinite compatibility" like the PC, the incentive to sell used games and consoles isn't the same.

I see a business opportunity for Gamestop there. Hardware wise. We can look at it this way, Xbox 360/Xbox/Xbox One titles that were only playable on the older consoles can now be played on the future Xbox consoles. People also don’t need to keep holding on to their previous consoles and can now chuck them off to GameStop, where they can rent them or sell them at a slight profit.

 

[mrcorbo]

TLDR; Trade In Value Programs don’t work if there isn’t a new console. And the value of the older console is diminished if it can’t play newer titles. Thus rolling generations enables TIV benefits to expand the population, exploiting low entry barrier price points coupled with low barrier subscription services, and Backwards Compatibility to supplement an ever increasing library while still allowing them to play the latest games until they fall 2 generations behind. Scratch that: BC encourages users to TIV to the next model. You have no fear that your library is moving forward. So you TIV up. A $499 console isn’t that bad if you’re not actually paying $299 as a TIV.

I don't think a rolling generation is necessary at all to facilitate this, though. Development of new games for the old hardware doesn't stop at the launch of the new generation or for some time after. I don't think consumers that are buying into a prior generation multiple years after the next generation releases represent a particularly lucrative demographic and I wouldn't choose a development paradigm based on its ability to attract them.

I would like to see a generational transition that partially follows a similar model to the mid-gen refreshes where you would have un-patched titles designed for the old hardware which would get some amount of enhancement when running on the new hardware and cross-gen titles that were designed to run on the old hardware but where the developer has coded specific enhancements to take advantage of the new hardware. There would also, though, be new-gen exclusives that were designed from the ground up for the new hardware. The branding would be dead-simple, too. Using Playstation as an example, you'd have PS4 titles, PS4 titles with "Enhanced for PS5" markings and PS5 titles.

 

[iroboto]

I don't think a rolling generation is necessary at all to facilitate this, though. Development of new games for the old hardware doesn't stop at the launch of the new generation or for some time after. I don't think consumers that are buying into a prior generation multiple years after the next generation releases represent a particularly lucrative demographic and I wouldn't choose a development paradigm based on its ability to attract them.

I guess I was trying to answer why keep a rolling generation, if there was going to be a reason, the idea that TIV pushes people to adopt the next model, and the next group of people to buy into the lower price point, they can still play together, and everyone got what they wanted at the price points they were willing to pay in at.

I would like to see a generational transition that partially follows a similar model to the mid-gen refreshes where you would have un-patched titles designed for the old hardware which would get some amount of enhancement when running on the new hardware and cross-gen titles that were designed to run on the old hardware but where the developer has coded specific enhancements to take advantage of the new hardware. There would also, though, be new-gen exclusives that were designed from the ground up for the new hardware. The branding would be dead-simple, too. Using Playstation as an example, you'd have PS4 titles, PS4 titles with "Enhanced for PS5" markings and PS5 titles.

That's pretty much the rolling generation model, the only difference here is that you called it PS5, instead of PS4 Pro.

When Phil suggested Xbox One X could have exclusive content. It was for the reason you stated.
Let's look at an interesting scenario. Assume that MS plans to have their console ready by 2021 earliest, Sony is ready to go in 2019.

It's an interesting scenario, because it's likely that X1X can likely play the very same games as PS5, though I doubt the same with the artistic integrity for XBO.

So when I said that they'd have to enable exclusive content for X1X, it was so that 3rd parties could release games designed for next gen, PS5, and still have it available on the Xbox ecosystem, the X1X. I'm not talking about strictly 1P exclusive content. I don't believe in this high likelihood that the CPU is going to take gaming to this next level. Framerates sure, but opening up new game paradigm I'm not so sure. Some the readers here love Cell so much, you'd probably be able to start an OT about how PS3 cell is likely more powerful than the PS4 Jaguar.

Anyway, If MS opened pandora's box by enabling X1X to become the next base model so that developers could move forward, then by default XB2 is the mid gen refresh to X1X. At this point in time you're rolling the generations.

 

[function]

Yep. A shrunk X1X (XS?) in 2019/20 would make a great base for a "next xbox" that could immediately target the mass market. Roll the "next Xbox" dash out to the X1X as an"update".

X1 lifespan won't have been cut short by X1X. Which is all "no one gets left behind" was ever going to mean.

If X1/S started to lose some titles in 2020 I don't think anyone reasonable would complain. 7 years as lead platform is a good run.