Rumor: XBox dual SKU next-gen launch

RDR2 shows exclusivety isnt needed for great games/graphics. Even if this has always existed, this exclusivety seems there to get people locked to one platform.



Not bad considering.
Yea its a pretty good value for its price on sale. I figure looking at the next year of releases I would have spent over $70 easily , most likely 3 times that on games that will be on the pass.
 
Yes, but the problem with subscriptions is that everything is not included. So what inevitably ends up happening is a false economy where you subscribe but still buy most of the games you would have anyway. Hopefully gamepass is changing to a better model, it's certainly made strides. But even so, you're still going to have to buy the biggest games.

Isn't the same true for things like Netflix ? Some of the biggest stuff doesn't come to Netflix but that doesn't mean whats on it isn't worth $12 or whatever the cost is per month to people. It still has 10s of millions of subscribers. Its been established by MS that going forward all their games will release on gamepass I believe. So at least the biggest First party xbox games will all be included in the subscription model. Halo , Forza , Crackdown , State of decay, Gears and others will all be on the pass so its not a bad value imo. I would subscribe to a Nintendo subscription if it was $6 bucks a month and I got all first party Nintendo titles
 
I don't disagree but MS have a habit of getting themselves into these situations and then not clarifying the situation, allowing the interwebs to run-a-mock.

I mean, saying things like 'no-one get's left behind' and then going on to say things like 'generations as we know them won't exist', and even mentioning PCs as a comparison - and all this after Sony had made it clear that generations as we know them will continue, does indeed imply that new games might work on old hardware. The question is, were MS wording this to mislead people considering the X and if it would be worth it for $500 with X2 out in a few years meaning X would be obsolete?

I just don't understand the criticism. I really don't. If people want to pull one or two sentences out of a paragraph/interview/presentation and ignore everything else, that's MS's fault?

Also, generations "as we know them" as of these last two generations, would actually imply no or limited BC (with the exception of the very first PS3 model), so if that is all Sony is saying would it be reasonable for me to infer that PS5 won't have BC? Is it Sony's fault if I do? Of course not.
 
Isn't the same true for things like Netflix ? Some of the biggest stuff doesn't come to Netflix but that doesn't mean whats on it isn't worth $12 or whatever the cost is per month to people. It still has 10s of millions of subscribers. Its been established by MS that going forward all their games will release on gamepass I believe. So at least the biggest First party xbox games will all be included in the subscription model. Halo , Forza , Crackdown , State of decay, Gears and others will all be on the pass so its not a bad value imo. I would subscribe to a Nintendo subscription if it was $6 bucks a month and I got all first party Nintendo titles

Oh yeah...I hate all those types of subs. The worst thing is you can never really find stuff you want, then you'll be watching TV and a film will be on that I want to watch - with adverts (or missed the start) and those are never on the subscription service. lol

I just don't understand the criticism. I really don't. If people want to pull one or two sentences out of a paragraph/interview/presentation and ignore everything else, that's MS's fault?

Also, generations "as we know them" as of these last two generations, would actually imply no or limited BC (with the exception of the very first PS3 model), so if that is all Sony is saying would it be reasonable for me to infer that PS5 won't have BC? Is it Sony's fault if I do? Of course not.

What? The whole interview goes on and on about it. The word generation is used 28 times and throughout nothing is concrete.
 
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While sony has a bigger console market, i do like MS's strategy more. Platform excluvity and the locking down to that platforms eco system seems an unhealthy thing to the general gaming market.
Couldnt a company behind spiderman make more if the game was ported to xbox too?
I know this has always existed but, sonys console would sell as many units anyway?

You realize we are talking consoles, right? If you want this, there is the PC Market!
Consoles were always about exclusivity (and they exist for 40 years). That's part of the definition of consoles. What you are talking about is a concept like the Steam box, not a console!
And consoles were never unhealthy to the general gaming market. They dominate the general gaming market, and they managed to get to where they are with exclusivity.
It is my oppinion that bit by bit the console concept is beeing changed to a PC concept. And the way I see it, that is not good! The PC concept already exist and people prefer consoles. That many console players were PC players, and miss some of the PC concepts, I accept. But consoles are consoles, not PCs, and when you buy it, you must accept this. They have companys that produce them, that sell them, and that support them. They want to sell their product, and games are just a way to get there.
Yes you could produce games and sell them to all platforms. That is what EA, Ubisoft, Rockstar, Activision, etc do! But that's not the business console makers are in. They do not create games! They create support for their consoles, so that they can sell more!
As for the MS strategy, i must confess I'm still not shure what she is! Since 2013 it changed from a multimedia center with TV at it´s center, and a Kinect to a full fledged console, then to a platform that shares it´s games with the PC. And in the future it pretends to expand to all platforms. All changes and plans inside a five years generation!
Personally I own all consoles and a top of the line PC. Beeing doing this for years! I do not mind what Microsoft is doing, but that´s just because I have other products that don´t do the same! I like fixed hardware consoles! I like the optimizations this allows. I like the safety of consoles. I like the way they are protected from PC hackers and cheaters.
Not defending this gaming medium above others, but stating that what makes it diferent, and made it grow is what some people want to change.
 
Why is this getting dragged into the exclusives debate?

That matter's still not been settled in its own, dedicated thread. This one will die a quick death if it gets similarly muddied.
 
What? The whole interview goes on and on about it. The word generation is used 28 times and throughout nothing is concrete.

"Generational" comment:

Phil Spencer said:
So from a development platform, we needed to think about our hardware as multi-generational.

The very next sentence.

Because we said 'Okay, there's gonna be games that are going to live multiple generations. And our software platform really has to service a developer's need to service an ongoing set of users.'

Another one.

But also these games are going to probably start to span generations.

Another one.

So, starting with this idea that there are games that I just think are seminal games that people should be able to play, and not getting those locked to a specific generation of the hardware, is a goal of ours.

The PC comparison.

So then when we started thinking about our hardware generations, and I talked about this a little bit at one of our showcase events last year, where I talked about hardware -- and I'm thinking as much as I'm saying -- I was thinking about console generations being able to take on some of the advantages that PCs have.

In one of the following paragraphs.

And then start talking to developers about like, what is scalable resolution, and why are you putting that into your game. Why might that be interesting in the future, if new CPU or GPU capability came online and you were able to use that.

And in another followup paragraph

These are the kinds of thoughts, when we think about dev platform hardware evolution, that were coming together, and this idea that I should be able to continue to play the games that were great.

One more

I think of gaming in a similar fashion. And console generations make that difficult to do. There are advantages to the console generations, but I wanted to try to evolve our capability to kind of have the best of both. Old games that work well, new games that are innovative, and hardware platforms that could scale.

To me the strategy that best enables the "best of both" is new hardware having BC, having your game library tied to an account an not to a physical device or specific type of media (which a future iteration of hardware may not be able to access) and new games that aren't restricted by having to run on old hardware.

I'm not doing some weird parsing of phrases to draw my conclusions, I'm just reading the text. I'm guessing the difference is I'm choosing to read and consider all of it instead of just focusing on selected phrases.
 
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I'm not doing some weird parsing of phrases to draw my conclusions, I'm just reading the text. I'm guessing the difference is I'm choosing to read and consider all of it instead of just focusing on selected phrases.
nailed it.

I think to the defence of other readers here, there's something called audience bias? interpretation? I forget what it's called. But like everyone who reads/sees art has a different experience than the next person based on how they interpret it. That's why we have polarizing opinions on some movies ie. The Last Jedi etc. I believe the words they used are "You are writing the text while you read it"
Effectively generating the story of what's happening while you are reading the text itself. This may well explain why academic papers are so boring to read, while non-academic papers are more fun to read. The former leaves no room for your mind to wander and imagine, the latter can push your mind in areas that make you feel emotion.

This was a really effective way of showing how to interpret this interview.
 
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"To me the strategy that best enables the "best of both" is new hardware having BC, having your game library tied to an account an not to a physical device or specific type of media (which a future iteration of hardware may not be able to access) and new games that aren't restricted by having to run on old hardware.

I'm not doing some weird parsing of phrases to draw my conclusions, I'm just reading the text. I'm guessing the difference is I'm choosing to read and consider all of it instead of just focusing on selected phrases.

Ok, I'll step out and shut up
 
I think to the defence of other readers here, there's something called audience bias? interpretation? I forget what it's called.

Confirmation bias. The tendency to prioritize information based on how well it aligns with a previously held belief. I don't blame people for it, it's a
subconscious mechanism, but you can always make an effort to try to see where it might be influencing your thinking. This is why exposing yourself to, and being receptive to, different points of view is important.
 
I can also see why people thought FC was something that was being promised/touted by MS.
Prior to 1X release there was a lot of talk, and a lot of reporting, where after the fact its pretty easy to see they was just talking about the XO family of devices.

Once 1X was jaguar based, to me it was pretty clear there wouldn't be a rolling generation.
What there will be is longer cross gen support. Simply because development tools, engines and code will work across generation unlike every previous one.
I also expect xb live will be same unlike x360 and xo.
 
I also expect xb live will be same unlike x360 and xo.

I hope they don't spend any time re-inventing the wheel like the transition from X360 to XO. Yes, a few things could use some improvements, but it's in a usable state now so tackle that after the new and amazing feature sets required for next-gen launch are complete.
 
I can also see why people thought FC was something that was being promised/touted by MS.
Prior to 1X release there was a lot of talk, and a lot of reporting, where after the fact its pretty easy to see they was just talking about the XO family of devices.

Once 1X was jaguar based, to me it was pretty clear there wouldn't be a rolling generation.
What there will be is longer cross gen support. Simply because development tools, engines and code will work across generation unlike every previous one.
I also expect xb live will be same unlike x360 and xo.

In my mind, it was caused by the idea that MS wouldn't release the One X, as expensive as it was, into the market 3 years prior to releasing a more powerful successor for fear of alienating people who bought the X. People seized on the idea of "no generations" meaning perpetual FC for the most recent prior generation as a way to reconcile the prospect that MS was, in fact releasing a new, more powerful, console in 3 years. With a rolling generation those One X owners would still get a full 7 year console cycle and would therefore not be any worse served than any of the original owners of consoles this gen were when the mid-gen refreshes were released.

Instead, I think we'll see developers continue to release games for Xbox One and Xbox One X well past the release of the next Xbox consoles (especially in digital format) long enough for them to have a nice, long service life. There will be a lot of cross-gen titles at first and those titles which are exclusive to the next-gen Xboxes will not have been possible (most likely due to scale or complexity of game systems) on the One X, meaning that One X owners wouldn't be getting them anyway. The difference is that if developers were to be forced to support the One X these games wouldn't be able to come to the next Xbox either.
 
In my mind, it was caused by the idea that MS wouldn't release the One X, as expensive as it was, into the market 3 years prior to releasing a more powerful successor for fear of alienating people who bought the X. People seized on the idea of "no generations" meaning perpetual FC for the most recent prior generation as a way to reconcile the prospect that MS was, in fact releasing a new, more powerful, console in 3 years
That was definitely part of it, I think it was a couple things, and people still holding onto it.

I also agree with everything you've said about game releases. That's why I don't think it's necessary or positive for MS to mandate XO support, it will naturally have longer support than in the past whilst not strangling games that couldn't be realised on XO.
So the 1X's life span in reality isn't that bad, 3-4 years all games support, then lacking scarlet exclusive local games.
 
In my mind, it was caused by the idea that MS wouldn't release the One X, as expensive as it was, into the market 3 years prior to releasing a more powerful successor for fear of alienating people who bought the X. People seized on the idea of "no generations" meaning perpetual FC for the most recent prior generation as a way to reconcile the prospect that MS was, in fact releasing a new, more powerful, console in 3 years. With a rolling generation those One X owners would still get a full 7 year console cycle and would therefore not be any worse served than any of the original owners of consoles this gen were when the mid-gen refreshes were released.

Instead, I think we'll see developers continue to release games for Xbox One and Xbox One X well past the release of the next Xbox consoles (especially in digital format) long enough for them to have a nice, long service life. There will be a lot of cross-gen titles at first and those titles which are exclusive to the next-gen Xboxes will not have been possible (most likely due to scale or complexity of game systems) on the One X, meaning that One X owners wouldn't be getting them anyway. The difference is that if developers were to be forced to support the One X these games wouldn't be able to come to the next Xbox either.

This. I totally agree, all I was trying to say was that MS seemed to be ambiguous. Sorry if I upset anyone, I realise I am more negative towards MS but that's based on my personal experiences...I do listen to other sides of the story but I get frustrated when you have the other end of the stick, like the 'utopian' digital software situation that many believe would have happened, but when you read the statements it's clear it was not at all like that.

The odd thing to me is I'm confused why MS just didn't make the X with a better CPU, that would have surely given them that 'low end' to next gen - 2 birds with one stone as it were. I'm probably over-simplifying it (like I normally do lol).
 
The odd thing to me is I'm confused why MS just didn't make the X with a better CPU, that would have surely given them that 'low end' to next gen - 2 birds with one stone as it were. I'm probably over-simplifying it (like I normally do lol).

Were you confused by why Sony didn't put a better CPU in the Pro? Because the CPUs were not significantly upgraded in either system for the same reasons.
 
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