I wrongly ass-u-me'd that because all the rumours get posted in the other thread that was dedicated. I think it would make sense to have a dedicated thread because things are going to start getting noisy!
Rumor: XBox dual SKU next-gen launch
- Thread starter anexanhume
- Start date
I wrongly ass-u-me'd that because all the rumours get posted in the other thread that was dedicated. I think it would make sense to have a dedicated thread because things are going to start getting noisy!
I was never a buyer of that interpretation of that phrase, anyway. Every time it was uttered, it was in the context of new consoles being able to play the games of the older generation and that this would allow for a smoother transition between generations. No one from MS ever said that The Xbox One family of consoles would be able to play games developed for what came next. Not having your "base" platform hamstrung by a Jaguar-derived CPU is a good thing.
I am taking these rumors with a grain of salt.
Remember how many people got sucked into this:
10TF Xb1x
Tiny xb1 slim for $99
A dongle sized xbox streaming
I see these leaks are never giving any specs, but use a lot of adjectives. It might be a leak of press talking points. Not something from actual devs or other third parties who respect the strong NDA, in the sense that the information here isn't the type which needs to be well secured.
We see journalists taking almost nothing and build it up into a full article mixed with their own speculation.
Consider MS have said half a dozen false things in interviews and even right on stage at E3, and imagine what gets leaked and misinterpreted or exaggerated by journalists.
Remember how many people got sucked into this:
10TF Xb1x
Tiny xb1 slim for $99
A dongle sized xbox streaming
I see these leaks are never giving any specs, but use a lot of adjectives. It might be a leak of press talking points. Not something from actual devs or other third parties who respect the strong NDA, in the sense that the information here isn't the type which needs to be well secured.
We see journalists taking almost nothing and build it up into a full article mixed with their own speculation.
Consider MS have said half a dozen false things in interviews and even right on stage at E3, and imagine what gets leaked and misinterpreted or exaggerated by journalists.
When you start to assemble all this into a product stack along with Game Pass and a move away from hard generational shifts, the disc-less Xbox One SKU begins to make a bit more sense. I can see this SKU getting carried forward past the release of the next-gen SKUs as an ultra-low end SKU for the purpose of playing titles from this gen, continued digital-only Xbox One releases, and Game Pass titles long after physical game releases for the One family are discontinued. Then, above that, you have the Lockhart SKU as your entry-level SKU to play next-gen releases and the top-end Anaconda SKU offering a premium experience at a premium price.
Huh, I just looked out of curiosity and they are still releasing 360 games digitally. Just Dance 2019 was released for Xbox 360 on 10/28.
Just because something doesn't get released or pushed back/changed doesn't mean leaks are wrong.
Examples are things like the windows phones, mini tablet, etc that was all designed, prototyped and even further along than that but not released.
I think the no one left behind refers to no one's games library is left behind. As soon as the 1X came out with a jaguar I never expected it to become the base.
MS was very wooly around no one left behind, and you don't really hear that from them any more apart from BC.
A Scarlett S wouldn't need to be marketed as 1080p machine, just a cheaper not as nice graphically console.
Nothing stops the 1S being played on 4k TV, just not as good as the 1X.
Well MS did kind of talk a lot about losing the whole 'generations' thing.
Conversely Sony said they still believed in 'generations'.
I can't remember which MS exec said it now, but they did say that there not ruling out generations, just not ready to talk about it yet.
And that was more recent than the no more generations, which they made a point not to really clarify when asked at the time.
They threw out BC and FC prior to the 1X release, never mentioned FC after it's release.
And that was more recent than the no more generations, which they made a point not to really clarify when asked at the time.
They threw out BC and FC prior to the 1X release, never mentioned FC after it's release.
Guess if you could use xo as the streaming client device, the one that does some local processing then you could say that......
Good point. It just wouldn't be able to play next gen offline.
uhh.. it might be more like, they won't explicitly tell developers where to develop which platforms for so the platform has a chance to keep going on for much longer if they want it to.
Beyond that, they specifically talk about enabling developers to patch old games to take advantage of new hardware (which we saw with Xbox One to One X) to give them a second life on that hardware. The thing that I believe people consistently got wrong is that MS's comments about generations had implications for older devices' ability to play newer games. Outside of the case of members of the same product family, this was never stated. It was just people assuming or reading into the generational comments and completely ignoring all of the text around them that specified what was meant by them. It was always about ensuring new hardware could not only play old games but that, where possible, those old games would give an improved experience on the new hardware. It was about ensuring that console owners could carry their entire library forward into the next generation and that developers could continue to support and earn revenue from titles across hardware generations.
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It's absolutely insane to release a weak console but still better than the previous one.
I can see why somebody would buy a very cheap (<200$) Xbox One S2 capable of running Windows Store games or at most XB1 games and using Xbox Streaming for next gen games.
But anything beefier than that is stupid.
People upgrade because they want next gen and games have to be made targeting next gen specs.
It's going to be nasty for developers, scaling up (i.e. S -> X) is relatively easy, scaling down is not.
I can see why somebody would buy a very cheap (<200$) Xbox One S2 capable of running Windows Store games or at most XB1 games and using Xbox Streaming for next gen games.
But anything beefier than that is stupid.
People upgrade because they want next gen and games have to be made targeting next gen specs.
It's going to be nasty for developers, scaling up (i.e. S -> X) is relatively easy, scaling down is not.
I don't understand what your saying.
Why would it be any different than the current 1S and 1X in regards to development?
As long as the cpu is in the same ball park everything else can scale pretty easily, easiest way being resolution.
If people upgrade consoles for next gen games that's exactly what they would be getting, would also be targeting those specs.
12tf we assume is targeting 4k, so for 6tf simply half the render resolution and 6tf falls into line quite easily (all other components being equal).
It would almost be a compile option in the sdk. Xbox one X boost mode is "free" with the recent sdk builds so this is not too outlandish an idea I feel.
Same GPU features and CPU features , the rest is playing with graphical presets, probably easier than a One X patch which has different CPU (speed and features), different memory (size and type), different HDD speed, different GPU features etc...
It would almost be a compile option in the sdk. Xbox one X boost mode is "free" with the recent sdk builds so this is not too outlandish an idea I feel.
Same GPU features and CPU features , the rest is playing with graphical presets, probably easier than a One X patch which has different CPU (speed and features), different memory (size and type), different HDD speed, different GPU features etc...
Mid-gen, as a whole, caused a nasty dilemma.
If they make the next gen BC but not forced FC with mid-gen (seems to be the plan after all), it's not nice for those who just bought an xb1x after the allusions to a rolling generation. It will be only three years from launch until some flagship games start coming out requiring next gen.
The alternative is worse, if they don't allow games to be made exclusive to next gen hardware, they would cripple the first three or four years with only cross-gen titles.
The idea of rolling generations looked good on the surface, because it solved the longevity problem of xb1x, but that would have been to the detriment of the real next gen. Can't have your cake and eat it too.
The upside is that there will be much more cross gen titles than in the past, because it's all x86 and easier to port. First year or two should have only a handful of flagship titles exclusive to next gen. Only the ones that absolutely require it. While in the past, cross gen was a massive development burden regardless of how much the game could scale down.
If they make the next gen BC but not forced FC with mid-gen (seems to be the plan after all), it's not nice for those who just bought an xb1x after the allusions to a rolling generation. It will be only three years from launch until some flagship games start coming out requiring next gen.
The alternative is worse, if they don't allow games to be made exclusive to next gen hardware, they would cripple the first three or four years with only cross-gen titles.
The idea of rolling generations looked good on the surface, because it solved the longevity problem of xb1x, but that would have been to the detriment of the real next gen. Can't have your cake and eat it too.
The upside is that there will be much more cross gen titles than in the past, because it's all x86 and easier to port. First year or two should have only a handful of flagship titles exclusive to next gen. Only the ones that absolutely require it. While in the past, cross gen was a massive development burden regardless of how much the game could scale down.
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