Mixed Information on Consoles or How I learned to loathe PR *spin off*

[mrcorbo]

6 Teraflops is a lot of extra power.I dont its going to be used just for resolution and framerate. Also I think MS did say that its up to the developer how the extra power will be exploited.
To me there lies a problem.

In the past we knew that the developers would squeeze the most they could out of the hardware through great art, optimization and in house developed techniques to by pass limitations.

This is all very expensive and getting more so each time the quality benchmarks go up. Yet, game prices are still $60. Something has to give or AAA game development will only be viable for the biggest of the big publishers. Last gen killed so many studios, I'd hate to see that trend continue or even accelerate.

To me, despite what MS says, I get the impression that MS is slowly phasing out XBOne since it is pretty obvious that MS is disappointed with the future prospects and its sales performance

Seems like a lot of wasted engineering creating the XBOX One S and enabling the HDR mode if you don't intend for it to be a viable product.

 

[eastmen]

When Sony announced PSVR you didn't have any issue saying how confusing it would be and how Sony screwed everything up, now you are suggesting calm over MS's messaging... Just be consistent. If consumers are confused by a Move bundle surely some could be confused about which XB1 they need to buy. In both cases the fear IMO is overblown.

sony announced PSVR years ago and delayed it multiple times. That is what I complained about. Now they announced neo in an article so no one would know to trick more people into buying ps4s this holiday.

That it is worse than ms not having a full vision for scorpio. At least consumers can buy an one s or wait with some information

 

[Nesh]

This is all very expensive and getting more so each time the quality benchmarks go up. Yet, game prices are still $60. Something has to give or AAA game development will only be viable for the biggest of the big publishers. Last gen killed so many studios, I'd hate to see that trend continue or even accelerate.

It is not the traditional model of consoles that killed them. A more expensive underutilized hardware isnt going to make games less complicated to produce nor sell games at a higher price to the consumer.

Unless what you are saying is the complete elimination of consoles.

And besides I am a console gamer/consumer and I ll speak from that perspective.

Seems like a lot of wasted engineering creating the XBOX One S and enabling the HDR mode if you don't intend for it to be a viable product.

Wasted engineering? You mean a product with a cheaper manufacturing process?

 

[MrFox]

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/14/sony-expect-playstation-vr-shortages.html
Andrew House gave a short interview. It's the first interview which is speaking to consumers about it. This is only 3 small paragraphs so it's not like there's pages and hours of interviews with 99% of empty fluff to filter and interpret.

""We will absolutely have a single community of players. All of the games releasing within this life cycle [of consoles] will absolutely be playable on the standard PS4"

Direct promise to existing consumers. It's all games. Not games from us, not all except VR, no context necessary, no room for interpretation.

More importantly, he qualified with "within this life cycle", because gamers are worried about PS4 continuing for "a decent period of time". It's time that is important and it's time that needs reassurance. Caveat, it's not a known time.

If you are looking for the highest graphics performance, if you recent bought a 4K TV and you're looking for content, then Neo is going to be great option for you. But it is that – an option – rather than saying the cycle has moved on.

The two reasons to get it over a PS4. There's nothing more to add or elaborate.

House declined to discuss whether Neo would be coming out this year or next. However, he said, it's important that the large (and still growing) PS4 user base feel neither rushed, nor that the pace of improvement was too slow. People invest in a console and they want to have that investment validated over a decent period of time"

Reassure again that they understand precisely WHY gamers are worried. (investment validated over a decent period of time)

"That being said, with iterations like Neo we are, to some degree as an industry, acknowledging the pace of iteration has shifted. … People have become attuned to a slightly different cadence of innovation. The critical thing is to give the consumer options, rather than dictate the future for them."

Caveats, it's not perfect, you can't have your cake and eat it too. It's the entire console gaming industry that is moving to mid-gen iterations. Some gamers will pay for faster iterations, others don't (or can't afford it). It's a competitive market, and that's why there are two options.

 

[eastmen]

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/14/sony-expect-playstation-vr-shortages.html
Andrew House gave a short interview. It's the first interview which is speaking to consumers about it. This is only 3 small paragraphs so it's not like there's pages and hours of interviews with 99% of empty fluff to filter and interpret.

Direct promise to existing consumers. It's all games. Not games from us, not all except VR, no context necessary, no room for interpretation.

More importantly, he qualified with "within this life cycle", because gamers are worried about PS4 continuing for "a decent period of time". It's time that is important and it's time that needs reassurance.

The two reasons to get it over a PS4. There's nothing more to add or elaborate.

Reassure again that they understand precisely WHY gamers are worried. (investment validated over a decent period of time)

Caveats, it's not perfect, you can't have your cake and eat it too. It's the entire console gaming industry that is moving to mid-gen iterations. Some gamers will pay for faster iterations, others don't (or can't afford it). It's a competitive market, and that's why there are two options.

What are you going on about ? He says all games in this life cycle. They can end that life cycle at any point and they will , most likely not in year one of neo but they can in year two or year three and still claim they didn't lie.

Sony is extremely vague .

Xbox one will continue to get games because guess what , games take time to make. So there are games still targeting xbox one through 2017 and most likely 2018. Also guess what , the xbox one is very similar to the ps4 so supporting it is not very hard if your making a ps4 game. Just drop the res. So it will continue to get games.

I would expect xbox one support to shrink in 2018 and dry up in 2019. PS4 might last a little longer

 

[Michellstar]

Whoa, this interview it´s almost a copycat of what has been saying the other camp..

 

[Scott_Arm]

More to confuse all of you

http://www.polygon.com/e3/2016/6/16/11928776/phil-spencer-future-of-the-xbox

 

[mrcorbo]

Wasted engineering? You mean a product with a cheaper manufacturing process?

They changed more than was strictly necessary for cost cutting.

 

[AlNom]

More to confuse all of you

http://www.polygon.com/e3/2016/6/16/11928776/phil-spencer-future-of-the-xbox

The dank side clouds everything. Impossible to see the messaging is.

 

[AlNom]

They changed more than was strictly necessary for cost cutting.

Please do give us a breakdown of the costs involved.

 

[Nesh]

They changed more than was strictly necessary for cost cutting.

Be more precise

 

[Michellstar]

More food for thought

Thanks @MrFox for it

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/14/sony-expect-playstation-vr-shortages.html

The relevant parts

Sony: Expect PS VR shortages

Andrew House

"Given Monday's announcement from Microsoft about a significantly more powerful, seemingly next generation system code named Project Scorpio, questions have arisen about what Sony has in mind with this update.

House, though, says Neo is not the beginning of the next generation.

"It's a higher end version of the PlayStation 4," he says. "We will absolutely have a single community of players. All of the games releasing within this life cycle [of consoles] will absolutely be playable on the standard PS4 … This just offers the consumer another option. If you are looking for the highest graphics performance, if you recent bought a 4K TV and you're looking for content, then Neo is going to be great option for you. But it is that – an option – rather than saying the cycle has moved on."

House declined to discuss whether Neo would be coming out this year or next. However, he said, it's important that the large (and still growing) PS4 user base feel neither rushed, nor that the pace of improvement was too slow.

"People invest in a console and they want to have that investment validated over a decent period of time," he said. "That being said, with iterations like Neo we are, to some degree as an industry, acknowledging the pace of iteration has shifted. … People have become attuned to a slightly different cadence of innovation. The critical thing is to give the consumer options, rather than dictate the future for them."

 

[function]

I assume he's talking about UHD BR / HDR and all that stuff innit? And putting the IR blaster on the base unit? And going the the "envelope pushing" fancy pants injection moulding design?

X1 was never going to live forever, and it's already nearly three years old. It'll be four when Scorpio is released, and will be "the cheap option" for a year or two or three.

If UHD BR and 4K streaming with HDR are big enough draws it might live on a little longer, if not it might not last much past Scorpio. How long X1S lasts will depend on how the market takes to both it and its software.

 

[temesgen]

sony announced PSVR years ago and delayed it multiple times. That is what I complained about. Now they announced neo in an article so no one would know to trick more people into buying ps4s this holiday.

That it is worse than ms not having a full vision for scorpio. At least consumers can buy an one s or wait with some information

Again too much revisionism, you complained about Move being used in PSVR and how it was going to confuse parents, now MS has similarly confusing messaging and it's no big deal.... Just be consistent with how you analyze things.

 

[BRiT]

Sony's official Mixed Message about the PS4 Neo is now moved into this thread. Go crazy people!

 

[mpg1]

So Phil Spencer said they tried to ship a 4K gaming box this year but couldn't do it....they needed to wait until next year and go 6 Teraflops.

Andrew House is saying the PS4 neo will be great for gamers with a 4K TV. But neo is more of half step than Scorpio.

Sooo..what native resolution is neo targeting?

 

[temesgen]

more proof the media hates MS:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...ssages-at-e3-arent-pretty-for-xbox-one-owners

 

[mrcorbo]

Please do give us a breakdown of the costs involved.

Be more precise

I assume he's talking about UHD BR / HDR and all that stuff innit? And putting the IR blaster on the base unit? And going the the "envelope pushing" fancy pants injection moulding design?

X1 was never going to live forever, and it's already nearly three years old. It'll be four when Scorpio is released, and will be "the cheap option" for a year or two or three.

If UHD BR and 4K streaming with HDR are big enough draws it might live on a little longer, if not it might not last much past Scorpio. How long X1S lasts will depend on how the market takes to both it and its software.

Pretty much, yeah. I don't see why they would have added an UHD BluRay drive and HDR rendering capability for games (even going so far as to free up additional system resources for devs so they could enable it) to a console design that they were intending to transition away from quickly. I expect that the XBOne will hang around for some time as MS's option for price-sensitive consumers.

 

[Scott_Arm]

more proof the media hates MS:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...ssages-at-e3-arent-pretty-for-xbox-one-owners

I get that people are upset that their console they have expectations of is now being turned upside down. It's up to microsoft to prove that the xbox one isn't going to be left behind. Like he says, the real proof will be when scorpio comes out and whether xbox one games turn to shit, or disappear in short order. I put a 2 year shelf-life on xbox one after scorpio is released.

The complaint about the games coming to pc ... well, he says he has a pc to play them. If anything it makes his life easier. He can play on his pc or his xbox and move back and forth with his saves. He also has this idea that there are certain types of experiences for consoles and certain types of experiences for pc, and that merging these two into one ecosystem will make those types of games disappear. The barriers that created this artificial difference between pc games and console games was the input device. Most people did not have good gamepads for their pcs, so people didn't make games for them, so people didn't buy them and it ended up being this circular self-fulfilling prophecy. Now you can easily use your PS4 or X1 gamepad on your PC, and Oculus comes with an X1 gamepad. More PC gamers than ever have decent gamepads for playing platformers and the few types of games that rarely showed up on pc. Point and click style pc games, like RTS, moba and some rpgs will find their way to console soon enough. There are no real reasons why any type of game should not be available on any platform, and that's good for games. I guess that's all talk for another thread.

 

[liolio]

The game is not made by Epic, so nope.

My bad

more proof the media hates MS:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...ssages-at-e3-arent-pretty-for-xbox-one-owners

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidth...more-powerful-than-the-original/#4510978473e9
The conference was support busy, plenty of games and good news for PC gamers, 2 news systems, etc.
But as the excitement went don some slight issues that should have been tacked head on by MSFT, as usual left to themselves, they grew out of proportion.