Middle Generation Console Upgrade Discussion [Scorpio, 4Pro]

well try not to loose sleep.

There isn't much point for the majority of people to pay $25 bucks for a movie they will watch once or twice when they can stream it on Netflix for $10 a month

 

There will always be a market for high quality media. Just look at Laser Disc. Unfortunately, it's also possible that it'd become as niche as Laser Disc as well, though.

Regards,
SB

 

Wow, Blu-ray is expensive in the US. Don't Amazon sell them cheap? Amazon UK often have Blu-ray (and DVDs) at low discounted prices, more so when buying a boxset or a few movies at a time. I rarely pay more than the equivalent of £5 on average for a disc.

Game of Thrones season 4: £18, Hobbit Trilogy: £20, Walking Dead Seasons 1-5: £50, Fast & Furious 1-7: £18.

 

I haven't bought a non new release bluray in years. The last bluray I bought was Deadpool on UHD Bluray , Bluray and digital download for $25. There was also the option of Bluray , DVD and DD for $25.

My point is simple. Netflix and hulu is less than the price of a new release bluray. It offers many more movies than that single bluray you bought , thousands of times more.

That is what people are going to get , just like people will stream music now instead of buying cds or bluray audio . The quality doesn't really matter , its the ease of use.


I bet even less people will adopt 4k bluray than did bluray

 

Yes, hiring something for a time is invariably cheaper than buying something. Plus streaming services will lose the rights to things over time.

 

You could also purchase things digitally if you wanted. I have an entirely library of movies on DVD that I haven't even touched in over 10 years. Not a single rewatch. Why? They are inconvenient. I've pretty much gone full digital for everything. Yes, I may lose a bit of quality depending on quality of stream or whether it's a actual digital download. But for me, and everyone I know, the potential loss of detail at typical living room distances is typically unnoticeable unless the stream is really bad. On my computer where I sit ~3 feet from my display, I would probably notice, but I don't watch movies at my computer desk. Heck, in Japan where you typically sit much closer to the TV than you do in the US, digital streaming/distribution is still taking off rapidly.

I keep meaning to take my entire DVD collection (hundreds of movies) down to the local charitable thrift shop to donate, but laziness (that's a LOT of DVDs to move ) has meant they continue to take up space here for no reason. If I invested in BluRay to replace my DVD collection, the same thing would end up happening. Except in rare cases, ownership is over-rated. Out of that collection during the time when I did a lot of movie watching on DVD from ~1997-2006 it was very rare to watch a DVD more than once. And the ones I watched more than 3-4 times likely comprised just 2-3% of my entire collection.

I know a lot of people that still use physical media (BluRay) for movie viewing. But I also know quite a few people that have ditched physical media entirely and that group grows yearly, while the group that continues to buy physical doesn't. Yes, personal anecdotes and all that. Countries with significantly worse internet than the US probably wouldn't be too practical to go all digital, I'll admit.

Regards,
SB

 

IGN E3 page views, most clicked stories on E3

http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/06/19/the-11-biggest-stories-from-e3-2016

Scorpio was #1...#2 was Sony press conference.

 

What's the general reaction to scorpius on the forums?
- Microsoft is abandoning the one
- Cool, I will buy one if in two years I still care
- I don't care
- I don't like it, is a scarran hybrid with overheating problems

 

Not sure about the 4K content from Netflix/Amazon etc, but seeing as it's compressed, I wouldn't be surprised if a full quality 1080p bluray looked better than a compressed 4K stream?

Yeah you can pick up cheap rubbish 4K TVs right now for a few hundred $ more, but they are garbage and you will be lucky to get a decent life out of it. For proper 4K you will need to go down the HDR route which is starting at $1000 right now, but even those models are entry level and dont have decent refresh rates. Most analysts suggest consumers wait until at least 2017 before investing in a 4K, but it's still a big investment. Also you really want to be getting at very the least a 50" to make the difference, although most will want higher than that. To go into that market is going to cost consumers a hell of a lot of money.

Also one other point. It was reported recently that the vast majority of Steam users only have 1080p monitors, so do PC gamers really want 4K games? Eventually yes, but not right now.

 

It depends on the gamer. PC has always offered a choice between cost conscious or balls to the walls. I was on a 1920x1200 monitor when most people were still on 1024x786 and 1280x1024 monitors. I was gaming on a 1600p monitor when the majority of users on Steam were rocking sub-1080p/1200p monitors. Most people on PC tend to be conservative with monitor choices.

And 1080p doesn't tell why people are still mostly on 1080p on PC. One of the reasons is that the majority of affordable monitors that can do 120-144 Hz are 1080p monitors. 4K doesn't even support higher than 60 Hz due to HDMI and DP standards not having the bandwidth required to do it at 4:4:4 chroma. That's changing with the new standards for HDMI and DP, but doesn't affect current displays.

The Scorpio is just another choice. People are also generally more willing to spend a lot more on a TV than they do on a computer monitor. Prices on 4K TVs are dropping faster than prices on 4K monitors. If you don't need 1080p and you don't care about VR then you may not need a Scorpio. If you want 1080p/60 minimum on any game and 4K 30/60 depending on game and VR then Scorpio will be a compelling choice. Assuming a developer does a 4K 30 FPS game (unlikely, but possible, IMO) I do hope they offer a lower resolution option or a reduced graphics settings option for people that wish to run it at 60 FPS instead.

I'd choose lower resolution and/or lower graphics settings for 60 FPS over a 30 FPS version of a game any day of the week. Other than the method of control, most games not being 60 FPS is the main reason I no longer game on console. I don't think it'll happen, but it'd be really nice if Scorpio also ushered in an age where console users had more choice in how their games perform.

Regards,
SB

 

LIke most MS things on forums , its evil and has to be stopped. How it does in the market is another story entirely.

 

I thought I have zero interest in mid-gen console refreshes. But 4x performance improvement over Xbox One is quite substantial. I am certainly interested about it. Developers seem to be preferring 1080p @ 60 fps over 4K @ 30 fps. Scorpio is a no brainer for me if wide adoption of (locked) 60 fps actually occurs.

 

The problem I see with those new specific brand desktop PC is that they don't offer the flexibility, neither the possibilities of a PC, for a simpler user experience though.
To me they sound like a worst deal than in the past.

(You can't use productivity software with them, can't decide on the resolution/framerate trade of...)

 

It is interesting, the pretty good news for PC gamers went under reported. So pretty MSFT missed the mark twice,with the and the PC.

 

Microsoft missed the mark because Xbox play Anywhere wasn't in a top 10 list??

that was about all they were advertising on stage. Xbox play anywhere was the loudest and most concise message they had at that press conference. They spent less time on XBOS and less time on Scorpio.

The fact that gamers and reporters don't care about that a paradigm shift happened here is not MS fault.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I acknowledge it's a paradigm shift but seriously why should most gamers really care about the feature so strongly, now? A virtualized game library is nice to have for the future but most people live in the now and there it does nothing really relevant to the player. In the now it's imho more a service the game studios would profit from by minimizing costs.

 

When you announce a 6TFLOPS monster in the face of such pretty good moves, how don't you expect the announcements (1s and Play everywhere) to be overshadow completely?

 

fall 2017