The Annual E3 Microsoft press conference thread, 2016 edition

Xbox One S 2TB retail unboxing with Major Nelson, Carl Ledbetter & Geoff Keighley.



Tommy McClain

 

I think I'm caught up. So far I'm kinda of disappointed. No Crackdown 3, No Red Dead sequel, no details on more backward compatible titles. Was kinda expecting a Xbox TV/Stick & maybe game streaming to phones or PC streaming to XB1 or something about Xbox interface on Win10.

Also disappointed about the 2TB $399 in August. They should have made it $299 @ 1TB shipping today. Glad that they didn't get rid of HDMI In. Was surprised at the missing Kinect port, but liked seeing the IR blaster on the front. BTW can it receive too when using the Media Remote? Like the size of the new system & it looks better than the original. Wasn't too happy when I first seen it back in 2013 but it's grown on me. Just glad they offer a vertical option. Too bad I picked a TV stand that would only allow it to be placed horizontal.

Surprised at the new controller size, really expected a built-in microphone & press to talk button. Missed opportunity there. BTW will the current headset adapter & chatpad still work? The Controller Design Lab is great. Might get me an OSU orange & black controller, but it might be awhile. Hard to justify $80 for a controller to the Mrs.

What about the games they did show? State of Decay 2 will probably be the biggest one. I only look for cooperative games anymore & that looks like it will be great. Sea of Thieves surprised me. Might actually try that out. Gears of War 4 might be on my radar, but still haven't played GoW3 or GoW: Judgement & my co-op buddy hasn't played any of them. ReCore looked interesting, but wasn't blown away. Same goes for Scalebound. Didn't really care the first Halo Wars even though I finished it, not sure I will try the 2nd one. As for Forza Horizon 3, neat, but not a racer either. Though the open-world is appealing.

Not surprised at the Play Anywhere initiative, but sucks there's no longer any true exclusive anymore. But since I don't have a PC I guess it doesn't matter anyway right? At least with the promise that no XB1 gamer is left behind with Project Scorpio I should be OK. Probably buy that in 2018. Save my money between now & then & not waste it on the Slim(don't have 4K TV) - unless my XB1 kicks the bucket before I buy the Scorpio.

Kinda excited about the future. Just get me Red Dead 3 dammit! LOL

Tommy McClain

 

crackdown is 2017 now . I bet it will be a launch title for scorpio , really flex those zen cores.

The interesting thing about scorpio is all your controllers should work on it. So saving up for it isn't a bad idea.

 

I'm still holding out for an independent announcement from Rockstar.

 

I don't really get that statement. There are MS exclusives and there are Sony exclusives. I for one am sooooo happy that I'll be able to get Forza Horizon 3 and freely play, with progress and achievements tracked, whether it be in the entertainment room with the XBOX, upstairs on my desktop, or on the road with a notebook.

 

This generation saw about a sixfold leap in computing power, and around eight times the bandwidth, for a modest bump in resolution (1280x720>1920x1080 = 2.25x).

Going from FullHD to UltraHD is four times the resolution; Scorpio has around 3 times the computing power of a PS4 (~4 times the XBO), and around twice the bandwidth (give or take...). How many games will be able to run at a steady 4K/60Hz? Going by the current trend, most games will be in 2560x1440 or 3200x1800 upscaled to 4K.

Aside from the 4K buzz (totally futile as people typical distance from TVs doesn't give them the ability to notice the increased level of detail) there's nothing really convincing about the Scorpio. Add to this that Microsoft is also trying to push Windows 10 gaming (another failure of its own right) so there is even less incentive to buy an Xbox if you can build and upgrade a decent gaming PC at a faster pace than waiting for the next 'upgraded' console.

 

the 290x is 5tflop performance





I would suspect amd's newest to be much better optimized for 4k than a 3 year old chip. Esp since we don't know how many rops or tmus it has which will be more important in hitting 4k .

 

Expect to see more funky rendering algorithms that reconstruct image from multiple lower resolution frames (like Quantum Break) and/or different visibility sampling / shading rate (like Rainbow Six Siege). Stuff like this: http://www.pmavridis.com/research/coarse_shading/. With clever algorithms we can reach 4K rendering with much less than 4x cost.

This thread describes a few methods that can be adapted to scale to high resolutions efficiently: https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/modern-textureless-deferred-rendering-techniques.57611/

 

Pardon me for jumping in with a question like this, but I have almost 300 unread posts in this thread so I'll just ask... Apologies if it has been answered already:

Is there a link to an offline version of the full press conference somewhere? I looked at MS's site, xbox site - nothing. ...That I could find, anyway. If it's there, they hid it pretty well. I don't understand why they don't put stuff up like this themselves, easily found! It would be in their own interest.

Thank you!

 

https://www.twitch.tv/xbox/profile

I'm assuming you wanted to watch it and not just read about it.

Regards,
SB

 

Was anything shown of Crackdown 3?

 

ARE MY EYES DECEIVING ME? NO POWER BRICK?

I would buy it just for that. Finally!

 

I'm intrigued that it has more CPU/GPU power than the current system. I don't know if it's enough for me to upgrade with the Scorpio coming out next year.

 

There's only this teaser site: http://pages.engage.xbox.com/page.a...9371ab3805dfcc1201e185ad038b50b1cf119906bc902

 

Ehh.... I'm pretty sure that I've been told repeatedly around these parts lately that there's no reason at all that anybody, regardless of their particular circumstances, would buy the XB1S.

 

Doubt it'd be worth the trouble unless there's some special edition custom skin bundle with games that amortizes that somewhat. *cough*

 

I won't get the slim, but if I had a nice 4k tv I might think about it.