That Cross-Generation Games Thread [2020] *spawn*

[Deleted member 11852]

Microsoft have confirmed over on Xbox news that there will be no Series X exclusives for the "next couple of years", which is further out that the "couple of years" commitment they made back in 2019.

• You won’t be forced into the next generation. We want every Xbox player to play all the new games from Xbox Game Studios. That’s why Xbox Game Studios titles we release in the next couple of years—like Halo Infinite—will be available and play great on Xbox Series X and Xbox One. We won’t force you to upgrade to Xbox Series X at launch to play Xbox exclusives.

It's an interesting take.

 

[iroboto]

Microsoft have confirmed over on Xbox news that there will be no Series X exclusives for the "next couple of years", which is further out that the "couple of years" commitment they made back in 2019.

• You won’t be forced into the next generation. We want every Xbox player to play all the new games from Xbox Game Studios. That’s why Xbox Game Studios titles we release in the next couple of years—like Halo Infinite—will be available and play great on Xbox Series X and Xbox One. We won’t force you to upgrade to Xbox Series X at launch to play Xbox exclusives.

It's an interesting take.

its certainly been controversial lol

 

[Mskx]

Microsoft have confirmed over on Xbox news that there will be no Series X exclusives for the "next couple of years", which is further out that the "couple of years" commitment they made back in 2019.

They really need to be specific about the time frame they are talking about, "next couple of years" is so fucking vague.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

its certainly been controversial lol

It's an interesting decision. On one hand there is the pro-consumer argument that Microsoft are continuing to support current gen console owners for two more years. On the other hand, if you don't care about technical performance then there is arguably no reason to buy a Series X if there are no new game experiences.

Of course, it may not be much of an actual decision, it could be Microsoft's true Series X exclusives are just far out so presenting the situation as a pro-consumer policy is smart.

 

[BRiT]

They really need to be specific about the time frame they are talking about, "next couple of years" is so fucking vague.

To be pedantic, they said "next couple", not "next few". Couple means two. Few means a small number. At least they didn't say "most of the time".

But I do agree with you on a definitive timetable statement.

 

[BRiT]

It's an interesting decision. On one hand there is the pro-consumer argument that Microsoft are continuing to support current gen console owners for two more years. On the other hand, if you don't care about technical performance then there is arguably no reason to buy a Series X if there are no new game experiences.

Of course, it may not be much of an actual decision, it could be Microsoft's true Series X exclusives are just far out so presenting the situation as a pro-consumer policy is smart.

Or were they maybe taking into account the ability of xCloud to play your games on any device?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

But I do agree with you on a definitive timetable statement.

I imagine this is roughly when they expect the first MGS Series X exclusive game to launch so without knowing exactly when they will be, they'll be a little imprecise.

Or were they maybe taking into account the ability of xCloud to play your games on any device?

Could be, but this is speculation at this point. The statement says "That’s why Xbox Game Studios titles we release in the next couple of years—like Halo Infinite—will be available and play great on Xbox Series X and Xbox One. We won’t force you to upgrade to Xbox Series X at launch to play Xbox exclusives." It would be disingenuous to say we won't force you buy a new console but perhaps force buy a subscription service?

 

[BRiT]

I imagine this is roughly when they expect the first MGS Series X exclusive game to launch so without knowing exactly when they will be, they'll be a little imprecise.

Oh yeah, entirely, and I get it, but people like to have definitive statements.

Also, despite knowing what MGS refers to in this context, my mind always says "Metal Gear Solid" first.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Oh yeah, entirely, and I get it, but people like to have definitive statements.

Also, despite knowing what MGS refers to in this context, my mind always says "Metal Gear Solid" first.

Yup, and as far as I know, this is Microsoft imposing this restriction only upon Microsoft Game Studios. When at Kotaku on a Splitscreen podcast, Jason Schreier's mentioned that developers were unhappy with a mandated Microsoft policy that all nextgen Xbox games had to run on Series S, but it was only Series S and not Xbox One, One S or One X.

Which I can only interpret as third parties developers can drop current gen, but they just support Series S - which less of an ask given it's rumour to have comparable CPU and SSD to Series X.

 

[BRiT]

To be pedantic, does 17 months counts as "couple of years" for the purpose of this announcement, could they be weaselly by rounding the next 1.5 years up to a couple? Does couple of years mean until end of 2021? Or 2022? Or is it all the way out to the very end of 2023?

People want definitive statements!

 

[Mskx]

Our backward compatibility engineers have spent years devising innovative ways for modern, next-gen technology to make the games library you’re building today even better, at no additional cost and with no work from developers.

I wonder if they have more up their sleeves other than just the HDR stuff...

Specifically "next-gen technology"? What is next-gen specific? RT and ML?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

People want definitive statements!

From Phil Spencer?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

They really need to be specific about the time frame they are talking about, "next couple of years" is so fucking vague.

Because it's a work in progress. They'll evaluate when to drop the old consoles - there's no hard and fast plan and it'll depend how actively those old console owners buy the new games. It might be 'next couple of years' for the next ten years.

 

[Mskx]

Because it's a work in progress. They'll evaluate when to drop the old consoles - there's no hard and fast plan and it'll depend how actively those old console buy the new games. it might be 'next couple of years' for the next ten years.

Well... Hopeful that it at least means high framerates on the new consoles since they shouldn't be CPU bound.

 

[ultragpu]

To be pedantic, does 17 months counts as "couple of years" for the purpose of this announcement, could they be weaselly by rounding the next 1.5 years up to a couple? Does couple of years mean until end of 2021? Or 2022? Or is it all the way out to the very end of 2023?

People want definitive statements!

Emphasizing on Next. 2020 is current year, not next couple of years, therefore it should be interpreted as 2021&2022. Which means XGS will output only crossgen games until end of 2022 and that's a real bummer to the early adopters who wish to experience true next gen XGS games right off the bat.

 

[BRiT]

Won't be much of a bummer to me. We'll still have the better looking, higher resolution, higher framerate, and faster loading versions of those XGS games. We'll also have the option of getting them on PC for even higher fidelity.

To be pedantic, the next year would be from 2020-07 until 2021-07 and the next year after that is 2021-07 until 2022-07.

 

[MrFox]

Previous gens had a problem with sales on old-gen quickly becoming too low to support the massive porting effort on very different architectures and 16x less memory. So it got ditched quickly. But this time around it's so much easier to make cross-gen games, we might get a longer transition.

Both companies, and a number of third party devs, said the SSD pipeline is the game changer next gen. Games never before possible. Levels finally designed without the limitations of HDD streaming.

I see three possible explanations for the seemingly inconsistent PR-speak: First, this is all false and there's no game design improvement possible next gen (this falls into crazy conspiracy theory, like everyone is lying). Second, they actively prevented their devs from designing around the new hardware capabilities for games launching in that time frame. Or third, the games designed from the start to exploit the next gen hardware are simply not ready, which makes the most sense since big AAA new IPs would take at least 5 years to make. I don't remember any launch year games exploiting new game design paradigms outside of graphics quality.

 

[ultragpu]

Won't be much of a bummer to me. We'll still have the better looking, higher resolution, higher framerate, and faster loading versions of those XGS games. We'll also have the option of getting them on PC for even higher fidelity.

To be pedantic, the next year would be from 2020-07 until 2021-07 and the next year after that is 2021-07 until 2022-07.

He didn't say next couple of financial years.

 

[BRiT]

He didn't say next couple of financial years.

He didn't say Calendar Years.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Which means XGS will output only crossgen games until end of 2022 and that's a real bummer to the early adopters who wish to experience true next gen XGS games right off the bat.

It depends how long it takes to create 'true' next gen games. And even in a worst-case scenario, I doubt MGS titles on XBSX will look at all worse than Sony exclusives on PS5.