The Annual E3 Microsoft press conference thread, 2016 edition

It's true. So many people move from country to country. Just because you live in England doesn't mean you wouldn't want to game in Swedish etc etc.

 

Yeah, I have friends who work for the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office who buy games abroad that have no English language options so this will please them as well. I think it's not a huge problem all things considered and it's not exactly a difficult technical problem so it's nice that Microsoft just waved their dev wand to make this issue go away on Xbox.

 

Is there anything solid that Vega is something else than just basically bigger Polaris with HBM, the render MS released seems to confirm GDDR 5 memory. Console parts don't need to be fixed on PC GPU names, but are semi custom.

 

I thought it was pretty big news also, but didn't think others would think it was a big deal so I didn't comment on it. I have a bunch of Ukranian friends here that would love to have the option to play in either their native Ukranian or in Russian in addition to English.

Regards,
SB

 

It seems that it is an useful vessel to promote UWP and Windows 10. On the other hand announcing the Scorpio now is weird, it may indeed affect the XB1 sales as some already said and it put pressure on the pc manufacturers.

 

I am going to agree with some, this is HUGE for PC gaming and also a win for MS and the Xbox branding. They are going to grow the base, have excellent games on PC with a tidy ecosystem (look I love Steam, but as the Xbox store improves it is starting to make Steam feel dated and clunky), drive GPU upgrades (mine is long overdue and I want FH3 on PC). What would have made the conference better for me, was a way to easily stream my PC games to Xbox One so I could enjoy higher IQ/FPS on the larger displays. --Maybe that Xbox stick is meant to stream games from PC to the HDMI input on a TV or Xbox One?

Instead now with the news from today, I sort of want to redo my HDMI wiring to take advantage of the power in my PC. For years people have been asking for MS to make a true stab at PC gaming, they just did that in a big way but it seems for now it is getting passed over.

Scorpio to me is just a cheaper upgrade path for those that don't want a higher end PC or have upgradeable gaming rigs (they might have laptops or convertibles). The phone my wife has is a PC, through that MS dongle box she can dock here at home or work, so in a way I can see how in a few years you will want a console for high-end games as your home PC starts to migrate to smaller devices that target what you need them to do (Word, spreadsheets, email, etc).

Not all of us have rigs that can run three monitors for gaming bliss, or let alone VR. So MS has made a sensible move that helps fit two markets. PC gamers win, and then gamers win that don't have or want a gaming PC rig. Smart move, well played, bit of a sleeper hit I think.

 

According to AMD slides, Vega is a significant step up in perf/watt. AFAIK, their slides only refer to the GPU and not total board power. Even if it was total board power it's still more than HBM would theoretically bring to the table. Polaris is 2.5x the base 28 nm GPU used for comparison while Vega appears to be ~4.5x the base GPU.

Regards,
SB

 

Well it's going to be interesting to see where the increase is coming from as it's supposed to be releasing quite soon in 6 months or so. You'd think this increase would be very welcome in low to mid end as well, which they are releasing now. It's great if they can bring way more efficient architecture so soon, but I'm still maybe cynically sort of believing that the increase comes from being wider + HBM...

 

The risk of having people wait for Skorpio instead of buying an XBO is real. Then 2017 comes and so does Neo, a comparable console with comparable specs but with a bigger library and better exclusives. It will be PS4 vs XBO all over again.

I'm also perplexed about the whole 4K/60fps thing. In order to maintain that framerate and that resolution compromises will be mabe, again, so I don't expect better gfx out of Scorpio games.... 4k will be only for bragging rights.

 

So wait and sell your Xbox One until after you get the adapter?

Edit: Do you think 4K will be native or up-scaled? I think the specs are still a bit low for great 4k at a decent FPS, but scaling it up might be a nicer means to get great IQ on those displays.

 

Yes, just like PS4/XBO games don't look better than PS3/X360 games, right? Since those can't do 1080p at 30 or 60 FPS at the same graphics quality as 1080 games on PC. Right?

Same flawed logic.

Regards,
SB

 

They need feedback that this is terribly inconvenient for what is probably a very cheap product to manufacture.

 

This got me thinking about something. If you wanted to stay in the relative same power envelope as the current console.

• Polaris - ~2.5x perf/watt of base GCN GPU. 2.5 x 1.8 TF is 4.5 TFLOPs, or pretty close to the 4.4 TFLOPs rumored for PS4 Neo
• Vega - ~4.5x perf/watt of base GCN GPU. 4.5x x 1.3 TF is 5.85 TFLOPs, or pretty close to the 6 TFLOPs for the Xbox Scorpio

XBO (not Slim) consumes significantly less power than PS4 while gaming, so Microsoft probably don't feel bad about potentially raising it's power consumption while gaming a little while Sony might be stay within the same power envelope.

Regards,
SB

 

YEEEESSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My prayers have been answered. There is in fact an all powerful deity, deities or alien overlord looking over us!

Regards,
SB

 

Yes, pretty much my thoughts as soon as the rumors of Scorpio were first leaked. I also don't believe there was a single game that wasn't announced for both W10 and Xbox, although only the Microsoft Published games are currently "Xbox Anywhere" games. So while it doesn't look like you'll be able to pause third party games on one platform and pick them up where you left off on another platform, all games will be available for both the PC or the XB. There really is no reason to buy Scorpio if you'd rather just have a W10 gaming PC.

Which is fantastic.

 

That's horrible. Why do you need to wait until you have an S in hand? If you provide the SN of the Kinect and XB1, isn't that enough to prove ownership? Why should I have to be delayed, I'd want to use my Kinect the same day I set up my S.

 

Phil Spencer on Scorpio http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/13/11890842/microsoft-xbox-project-scorpio-virtual-reality-e3-2016