@OldGamer999 Nah, he's talking "AI, Cloud, Console, PC", those are internal pillars and platforms. They're definitely doing a next console. I just think they're clueless and directionless but doing it anyway.
", we can bring the best of AI innovation, cloud innovation, console innovation [and] PC innovation to build the best games that can be enjoyed by gamers everywhere"
There it is. All the buzzwords are accounted for.
All the share holders who have no idea what any of this even is must be weeping tears of gilded joy on hearing it.
FF is a given. Stellar Blade is likely (devs expected higher sales on PC than PS, I'm sure they'd like to hit every platform while they're at it.) Rise of Ronin is a weird one because there's no PC port mentioned either, but it's a Tecmo game, of course there's going to be ports.
Realistically, there's not a lot of "True" exclusives on either side of the divide these days. A lot of PS's have been purchased exclusive that aren't forever exclusive. Their internal studios haven't had a whole lot of output (and Concord was a dud, and Helldiver's largest market is PC anyway), and Xbox is obviously giving most of their big games to PS. Very different era.
I really don't care if they're redefining Xbox, I just want them to be honest with a roadmap and a strategy to get excited about even in a new direction even if it's a console-less direction. Tell people what to expect and why they should be excited rather than vague, couched "we're redefining everything but it'll all stay the same, don't worry."
Dr Evil here keeps playing games with the customers, and not the kind of games they want to subscribe to Game Pass to play.
I've been obsessed with msfs24, it's basically all I've played the past few weeks, and so much about the design is amazing. But it feels like a public beta. Bugs galore. A DISASTER of a button binding interface (I have a yoke, stick, throttle with panel, rudder. I have to bind every single button individually on each device. And the binding is a giant list of every surface on every aircraft, helicopter, jet, prp, combat all mixed together, and half the controls on the list are duplicative with other controls. Throttle and collective for helo bind to the same thing. As do other controls. Things aren't labeled in the config the same as they are in game. The "melting buildings" really is a mess. And probably not fixable. Manhattan looks like post apocalyptic Manhattan. Landing gear is embedded in the ground. The dialogue is in broken English half the time and the AI voices are a great example of why AI is a bad bet for Microsoft. Can't they use the AI those YouTube videos that "review"products by reading the marketing copy do? Weird pop in. And huge bugs in mission/training.
The early helicopter training, 2 are impassable. The instructor let's off assisting with torque, or cyclic and suddenly the craft shoots backwards and lifts altitude and becomes impossible to control. Next mission where you start with full control that doesn't happen. Then in missions I have no left torque to compensate and no translation drift at all. Did a ferry helo mission where it just stopped recognizing ATC signals, penalized me for ignoring it, and the landing marker had me land in a parking strip next to an abandoned industrial river dock with my vip, then penalized for an unauthorized landing zone, but gave me an A and called it perfect.
Super crazy buggy and that binding menu is unforgivable. And yet I'm addicted to a flight sim with an actual structure and progression to follow, something that sims other than racing always miss.
@Raffles The Omega Apex is rock solid. I ended up buying 2, one for flight, one for racing (flight required those desk clamps with the red lever to lock it on to get it all on). I actually could do it all with the one, but the pedals don't both fit. And my Winwing rudders are wider than the Omega and the foot pedal part sticks into the fold, it's too wide, so I needed to rig them to just sit onto fixed bolts and lift them off when folding. The racing stuff fits fine.
The only thing that' I'd caution with the omega Apex is folding it is ridiculously heavy. The frame is like 28-30lb, then the 11nm DD wheel is another 10-15, then my hydraulic pedals are like 23, and a few pounds for the shifter, cables, so the whole thing is probably 50-70lb to pick up and move around! Not an easy lift to put away even if it does fold pretty compact (though the the pedals protrude straight forward even folded!) Still better than a PlaySeat for storage, but you need the forearms of a real racecar driver to move it around lol.
How much of an upgrade can get wooly. TBH the T300 is really really good for what it is. I don't think the amount of force is a huge issue, it has enough (for small diameter wheels), and honestly feels very good. DD is much better of course but I think it's possible to be happy with the T300. Where the DD comes into play is the reaction time. There's a lag and latency to the T300 because of the nature of belts and pulleys. When you're into a turn and feeling the force steadily it feels fine. It's those smaller prods, bumps, spinouts, etc where it always feels like the force is lagging slightly to the effect, and the "softness" in feel that quickly changes direction (tires losing traction then going into a spin, etc) where it feels disconnected. That's where direct drive shines, because it's instant and full force in those rapid direction changes. For me, playing in VR, it's more highlighted because the immersion is absolute, and that stuff breaks the illusion. It's also why I got the Logitech over, say, Moza, because the much maligned TrueForce, does add to immersion and in VR, immersion is king.
If you're just looking to race around with something that has some good feel and can make turns feel good etc, I think the T300 is more than great for the money and really does the job. If you're looking for either maximally competitive racing online (not me), then gear tuning just like real racing is everything on the track, and/or if you're looking for maximal immersion (me) or large diameter wheels (MPI makes a 15" full size stock car wheel for the Logitech, I have one on order!) then high force matters and DD nuisance matters.
The Logitech (or any DD) is a huge upgrade to the T300, but where the difference shines is in the nuanced quick feedback moments more than the high tension big turns, and it might not be that big a difference if you just want to feel the G's when turning.
Is this really a 100% cloud-streaming-only game that doesn't even use local rendering hardware, or does it still use the local hardware? For a game that includes VR support, cloud-streaming-only is a REALLY questionable decision. Even weirder that they partnered with Pimax for the official VR which is a very high res platform, which would make cloud streaming only with compression even more dubious.
@Sol76 You were flying Boeings weren't you? That's all part of the accurate detailed simulation, nothing is wrong with your game.
@GamingFan4Lyf It's weird, you'd think MS could offer a good fee to beat competitors (20% instead of 30% or something.) And I doubt there's a GP requirement, I think it's the other way around, GP games have to be on Windows Store because it's necessary to function, therefore the only games that end up there are the ones with GP because they have to be there for GP. You'd think if they're on Epic they'd want to be on Windows too....it's not like anybody buys anything on either, lol. I think it's just that Windows store has so few users and poor sales metrics (who BUYS games on Windows store by choice unless they have a GP save or an Xbox?) there's just no point.
I love GoG, but there's basically nothing on it. Ironically Horizon Zero Dawn, some of the Yakuza games but not all, BG3, and of course CDPR games, but the rest is all for old stuff. And I think that's the thing it was meant exclusively for retro games. A lot of people got annoyed when they tried to make it for mainstream games and it wasn't financially working great for them, meanwhile it's the best place for retro games because unlike steam they test/patch them. Most big publishers won't touch DRM-free with a 1000ft pole. Amazed Sony is one that did!
Seriously though the good era was when the One X launched and Xbox seemed to be coming back swinging. Sadly that lasted, what, 2.5 years? It was a great 2.5 years though.
@Balaam_ Is the Series era like the 3rd world bus terminal in the desert you have to go through after you got out of the valley, then?
MS finally figured out how to win the console wars. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!
I'm not a COD player, only time I've ever played CoD was the 2 WiiU ones, Ghosts, and I guess it was MW2? BLOPS2? Can't remember just because I was desperate for WiiU games. Tried the free one Sony gave out at Layden's last E3 and could barely be bothered with it, it bored me to tears. Trying this one just because it's "free" on GP-PC, and I'm really enjoying the campaign. I wouldn't pay $70 for this. I wouldn't pay $40 for this. I'd questionably pay $25 for this. For $13, it's a good old time. Feels like a Naughty Dog game with better shooting mechanics. You don't have to use your head much, just sit back and watch the colors popcorn fun for idle entertainment kind of fun. Although this might be the campiest thing I've ever seen, and I say that as an 80's and 90's sci-fi fan........
@LogicStrikesAgain To be fair, it's a long term thing. People aren't all going to sell their PS and buy an XB just because one game is on CoD. The strategy has to revolve around building a long term value proposition so that when people are shopping for their NEXT console...PS6, PS7, even, they stop and think of Xbox having more value for them instead.
Only problem with that strategy is MS has the attention span of a goldfish and will get tired of waiting and move onto a different one by the time any payoff could happen.
@PsBoxSwitchOwner @GamingFan4Lyf You would think, you would REALLY think, they would fix their Windows Store. It's not just that the games are locked up (which is insane), but also that it's missing most games so you couldn't chose that platform for most games even if you wanted to and would have to use Steam or Epic anyway, so why not just use it always? And beyond that is the fact that it's just flat out freaking broken most of the time and ends up with all kinds of DRM issues due to some magic server error that doesn't show up on the Xbox server status page as a problem, but always fixes itself over time. It's just such a bad platform.
That's where GPPC kicks in. You start the game free on Windows store and then your save is there and you don't switch later. I think that's its secret purpose
That having been said, IMO BO6 is the perfect game to still get on GP and Windows Store, it's a short and sweet one and done campaign, modding isn't super huge on CoD anyway because the main show is MP which can't be modded much due to anticheat, and it's a game that's good for one year before the MP moves onto the next.
Having Switched to GPPC from GPU I got to play BLOPS6 for $13, seems like a perfect game for the service if you're not a hardcore CoD online player. Not keen on the 200+GB install that forces you to install MW3 and WZ and the icon for the launcher shows up as WW2 though before you can later remove them though. Windows Store is a mess.
@Raffles we have the same keyboards! The Rii is my daily login, mod/vr config driver, and I take out the Logitech if I have to do more heavy setup (Skyrim modding 😂).
I didn't get a hard seat cockpit, no room. But my couch is about the right height anyway and isn't going anywhere so I got a GT Omega Apex stand. The thing is rock solid. I originally just had at Thrustmaster T300 which was honestly great, but upgraded to a Logitech Pro (was looking at Moza R12 but people raved about Trueforce in supported games for immersion, and for VR, immersion rather than force is more important to me. Plus most reviews said that the ffb quality in the Logitech was better despite its huge profile for a direct drive. The thing weighs like a sandbag. The only negatives are it's huge compared to everything else for an 11nm and no fancy first party wheels which isn't important to me.
Ironically I talked about the pimax and they just had a presentation today with a lower cost and 2 year subscription for payment and are taking orders now. Doesn't have the OLED bundle though, looks like that'll be sold totally separate but the same price it was going to be in the bundle. I might bite lol
Yeah wukong vr even on quest strains the GPU hard. Can't get 90fps at all on quest 3. Can't imagine on>8k pimax lol. And then there's Dragons Dogma2 in VR 😂
Yeah injection is rough. Basically double rendering (two rendering cameras) also at insane resolution, and also at insane fps, and also can't use tricks like frame Gen, and the games don't let you turn all the stuff off. It's very imperfect. But being able to play aaa(a) games in VR, it's still so worth it. Doesn't work with everything but either true vr mods or "Giant simulated 3dtv" modes like vorpx still make flat screens seem dated.
@Xbox_Dashboard Yeah, the idea is great but IDK what metrics they had thinking this wasn't going to happen. A queue isn't bad given all mmos use it but it's brutal anyway.
Otoh this could be factored in. Using FFXIV as an example you just can't really get in at all and it's a mess whenever a big expansion releases and then a few weeks later it's back to normal. It's possible they expected this at launch and expect numbers to settle quickly.
Still disappointing either way. Was definitely looking forward to this one. Might as well just start downloading 2000 again.
Edit: could be worse, they have the inverse problem if most service games today, too much demand, not not enough capacity. Crystal Dynamics, Firewallk, and Rocksteady must be watching this, drooling 😂
@Raffles Lol, yeah I find it hilarious how many "tech enthusiasts" seem to have a complete lack of awareness of current computer tech, and are a decade or two out of touch. It's like people arguing over which fancy microwave makes you a top chef 😂
Yeah I have an unorthodox setup, where I'm not a desk gamer, left that behind ages ago. It's fun when you're a school kid, it's not fun when you spend all day every day at a desk. But I'm near sighted, and would rather not wear glasses just to play games, and even on the TV across the room, it's still too far/small to see proper detail and text, so I bring it up close and have a 27" 4k HDR monitor on a diy swivel mount on a microphone boom pole that just swing around in front of the couch lol. And I have one of those little controller sized wireless keyboard/track pad units that just sits with my controller. Works perfectly!
Though these days I'm using my VR more than the normal monitor. And if doing sims I have to drag the "folding" race or fight stand out (lol, folding is still bulky and weights like 65lb with all the gear on it!). Regular VR gaming I just grab my hmd and controllers and away I go. No TV/monitor needed.
Playnite is a drug. That and RGB software if you have rgb. I've spent whole nights just playing playnite 😂 I use it on my ally/legion on full screen. I intended to on the big rig, but my frequent use of vr injectors and messing with racing/flight peripheral tools, I found it was too often in the way when I needed to get to the desktop, so I'm just using desktop mode now, but full screen is so nice. Before I started using it I was going crazy with gog, steam, Xbox, ubicon ect, ea, epic, and double-buying too often!
Lol, weeeeeelll, I went just a teeeensy bit overboard and bought a 7800x3d and 4090 😂. I wasn't going to. Swore up and down I'd never buy those absurd cards, and for straight pancake games there's not a chance I ever would, the thing is ridiculous overkill for everything. But because I'm big into VR injection which is EXTREMELY punishing on a GPU, I kind of had to, and, even 4090 is insufficient there. It's all brute force.
I decimated finances and probably can't afford the next upgrade though. Technically I'd need a 5090 to go with my original intention of getting a Pimax Crystal Super (>4k x2... Something like 9k native) but having also invested in the racing and flight rig I should probably be done with spending on anything for the next half decade though! Maaay still get the Pimax because I do have the reservation already. But will have to make it sing on the 4090 for years , even though the say the super isn't really much better than light on current cards due to the display port bandwidth limit.
I probably won't upgrade the pc for quite some years!
@Raffles Absolutely loving it. So much more polished than it was in 2008 that's for sure!
Where it gets cumbersome is simply the sheer number of stores I'm using plus the mandatory ubi and ea launcher etc, but that's just the price of bargain hunting! Plus the sheer number of peripherals now (Sim wheel, pedals, shifter, flight stick, rudder pedals, throttle, yoke, and then switched brands of each, plus vr headset and multiple "vr injector" packages to run non vr games in VR, etc) plus mod managers. So a lot of software involved but that's all for optional extras you don't get on console to begin with. Remove all that is it's smooth sailing. Only crash I've had not related to forcing vr into non vr games, is blops6 lol, curse you Xbox! Plus drm being down and unable to launch things with nonsense errors..... Which is only an Xbox store thing lol. (You can now assign primary pc just like on console, though, they just added that )
I'm not using a TV specifically but I didn't use a TV for console either, I play everything on a monitor, close up, but I have it running through the home theater HDMI hookups anyway. A monitor is just a TV without all the fancy features, it's not like the old VESA days where monitors and TVs are completely different.
@Xbox_Dashboard You'd think MS could figure it out better with all their server capacity. I remember this happened to EA with Sim City ages and ages ago and they straightened it out, but it was a mess of a launch. IDK how MS managed that again.
I own MSFS2020 on Steam, and was going to play 2024 on GP, been waiting for it and for my cockpit to come together as I have my rudder pedals sitting on the couch right now, but maybe I'll end up just having to do 2020 after all with it instead of the new game.
If only they'd had a $50 Early Access release and we could have not played for more money!
@Banjo- I was waiting for it for it for years....so many years I've now switched to PC and changed from GPU to GPPC and can't use it anymore!
It's cool that they're finally adding it though. Someday I may have a use for it, though I think - might actually recommend it to people. In my case since I've now amassed a large PC library, if I wanted to stream it, even though I still have a big Xbox library forever, I think I'd probably do better with Geforce Now for steraming if it's supported. But, there could be titles supported on one and not the other, so it could still come in handy at some point.
@S1ayeR74 They've all but confirmed it's a real handheld, not a streaming device, and have talked about it in context with Ally/Legion etc, so I think that's a firm bet there. They're not going for the Portal/phone/G-Cloud market on this one, they're going for the Ally market. Which is smart, and there's a market for it for sure (the PC portables are doing particularly well in Asia.)
But late to the party is the big problem. Steam Deck into Ally was really the big push into the new handheld world, and launching today would put Xbox in a competitive place still, but launching "in a few years" after all the above have had one or more refreshes plus Switch 2, just seems like such incredibly late timing. I bet it will be an excellent product that just struggles to make it into the the market because it's too late. A classic MS problem.
@HonestHick I don't think it's easy to see MS' plan because I think they don't actually have one. They just go whatever way the winds are blowing at the moment.
Sony's long term is precarious. They're in great shape so long as they stay a monopoly platform because they can skim 30% off most of the industry by doing nothing, just like Apple. That's a good model. The problem isd they've set themselves up to be knocked out of being the default platform by a challenger who intends to try hard to do so. Right now there isn't one, so they're fine. But by the time one pops up it's too late. If they tip away from being the default place for the masses to play games their model irreparably crumbles, so they need to ensure status quo forever.
MS....I still don't think they have an actual plan. They just keep their fingers in the air always to see what seems like a good plan for this quarter.
@themightyant Tech may have slowed down but I don't buy this line that a lot of tech companies have been putting out there (Nvidia...) that we're basically at the end of tech so every advancement in tech just gets more and more and more expensive forever, where instead of a $1500 computer just getting faster and faster every few years, a $1500 PC is always the exact same spec for the next 10,000 years, and each faster one will add another $500 to the price for each increment forever. Nvidia's tried to push that narrative. I don't buy it. If we're really at the end of tech, and price to dollar baseline is now fixed forever and the only direction is to add ever more for ever higher prices until we start reaching government contractor pricing for the masses, I think that's a different way of saying the tech economy is now permanently over, the tech industry will collapse, and it's now all a big old datacenter mainframe circle jerk forever. And I'm not buying that.
That said we're also at a weird point where we have these akward products where for every practical measure shouldn't exist but they keep ending up in this "there's a market for it" place, which is awkward. That includes the absurdly priced video cards (I'm excluding xx90 because that's a different situation where, while there's a gaming market for it, a big chunk of its sales is actually commercial/video editing/streamer sales where it's a far cheaper alternative than the actual commercial parts, so some of its success lies, unfortunately, in it being a budget part for a commercial market.)
I do think the greatest threat to the console market is the console market. This idea of escalating prices - paying more and more isn't how the console market has operated or what has really built its market. Being an affordable packaged box for all is what drove the console market, and the direction prices are implied to go for successive generations, I can see console pushing out much of its own market chasing some holy grail (or at least pushing it to Nintendo), If tech really has stalled without just paying more and more, I can see all but the core market losing interest in consoles, especially each younger generation for the long term, and then I can see other avenues appealing to the core.
PS5 Pro is an...interesting experiment because one of the biggest things they've marketed it for is for how great it plays your OLD games. And so much of the coverage is about what it does for old games. And where the console business relies on razor and blades sales, where software sales is the goal, that seems like a really poor way to introduce hardware.
I also do think (and I think this is what MS wanted to avoid) the whole mid-gen cycle may seem good, at initial sales, but what they're mainly doing is re-selling to the same early adopters and then filling the used market with inventory cannibalizing new normal sales and ironically reducing price expectations over time. I suspect that will have an effect on launch sales for the next generation model too where, again it'll primarily sell only to the early adopters.
OTOH, I also think I no longer understand Sony's new market, because it seems to be an Apple-esque fomo cult of uninformed buyers with zero impulse control, who will spend anything on hardware and nothing on software.
@S1ayeR74 In theory they'd get the hardware right, and the price right so that it's still theoretically viable, but, yeah, I agree, it's a long enough wait that I think it will by then seem irrelevant in the market of existing handhelds. Unless Asus keeps driving prices up into LOLland so that they look uncompetitive. They already have an $800 handheld, if they stay there and Deck and XHeld are half the price, it will still be viable.
@PsBoxSwitchOwner Yeah but overall the first party, even with major releases totals around 10% at best. That's not to say it's insignificant sales for SOFTWARE (though it is to say it's insufficient sales of software which is why they're seeking the PC market to bolster it), however, keeping in mind a lot of the people that buy one of their first party games is likely the same market that buys multiple of their first party games, even 10% of software sales is likely at best really representing 5% of the actual install base, I.E. the games have a lot of overlap so not all of the sales represent unique customers.) Which is to say 90-95% of the actual console ecosystem customers aren't really interested in the first party offerings at all on either platform.
No doubt both companies software plans and both companies being "out of touch with fans" is based on the fact that the number crunchers realized the exclusives aren't really a factor in their overall business strategies on platform anymore.
@themightyant IDK that were in a very different spot with 5 pro. Ps6 rumors are occasional meaning they'll ramp up more and more, Xbox will certainly be putting the next Gen narrative up sooner than later, real or imagined, I don't think it's in that different a place than the 1x. I feel like Ms consciously avoided that trap specifically to be able to look at next Gen sooner and reboot. Obviously they're in a different place but for core that's looking at things enough to know about "next Gen rumors" they'll know, both companies will be making overtures about the next Gen etc.
Not sure that Sony got that much more out of 4 pro. They had the extra year but most of the sales were in the launch and really stalled out after that and then they discontinued it in 2019/early 2020.
I have both the 4 pro and the 1x, and I feel like the 1x almost felt like it should have been the new generation on its own. The pricing and the capability felt like more of a generational leap than the 1x to seriesx imo. The 4 pro mostly has the advantage that it was an upgrade that didn't actually cost much more. And I kind of feel like if you're doing mid Gen, that's the way to do it. Not a 1x/5 pro situation where is like a half step new generation for a whole step in price.
He really had a lot of great ideas and intentions, just without thinking through how to actually do them or if it was even possible, haha. Nobody didn't like all the things he dreamed up, it's just that nobody, especially him, ever figured out how to actually make them 😂
Mincing through the politician speak it sounds like "We really have no idea what we're doing or where we're going but we're confident it'll all just kind of work out if we keep trying everything"
While I agree with so much of the doom and gloom of "why buy an Xbox if you can get it all and more somewhere else", I'll just point out that based on PS's own numbers of 77 million software units in Q2, a whopping 7% of that was "first party software." Bottom line is exclusives are as irrelevant as irrelevant can be to console sales in 2024. Most of the people buying consoles, even PS, just aren't buying exclusives.
Nintendo is it's own thing. It does work for them and they run largely on exclusives, but that works because they have Disney grade iconic, child-sought, legendary IP that no other company but Disney itself has. Nobody can play the same game they do. Much as enthusiasts talk about "exclusives" the numbers show it's just not really a very relevant factor in the purchasing decisions of the modern console market.
@Titntin But when Peter would say he's buying a drink I'm sure he described a golden nectar of the gods with a taste where you can taste each and every bee that ever pollinated the source harvest in a self refilling mug via an overhead delivery system, but when you got there, it was just Miller's from a normal tap.
Ugh, see this is the problem Microsoft always has in hardware. They have great ideas, they actually build some great products. Their problem is they're either so far ahead of the curve there's no market yet for the product they're making and it fails, or they're so behind the curve, they take years to do anything and by the time they deliver their well designed product, the market already came and went and attached elsewhere and they look like an also-ran.
The handheld was a great plan. It was a next step for Xbox hardware, it was a competitive differentiator. Now they're going to stall it for years and wait for a new Switch, wait for maybe a PS handheld, or just wait for more and more iterations of PC handhelds to flood the market before them and make theirs irrelevant, and meanwhile let their own hardware ecosystem stagnate more.
I had high hopes for their console plans with the handheld as a sort of reboot, but....now....meah....glad I bought my Legion. I'm sure I'll have upgraded again by the time MS gets theirs out at least once, wasn't worth the wait.
IMO the 1X/4 Pro should have had at least a 5 year shelf life or more before the Series/5 came out. They were more than capable for a long time and got cut short, meanwhile the Series/5 came out with barely any real leap above those and feel like a half measure.
@themightyant "One X was always a beast bit of hardware, ahead of it's time. But it fell into an odd space where the enthusiast market would be upgrading from it in 3 years or less, and it arrived when people were talking next-gen, which limited it's market. There also weren't that many games to highlight it's power. "
That's the exact trap PS5 Pro set for itself, which is exactly why MS didn't want to do that again.
Performance leaps are a thing of the past unless quantum computing happens. My PC is basically the best money can buy in 2024, and it's not a "great technological leap" over the XSX. It just has better performance with more visual settings on, and the only real reason I bought it was for doing actual "great leap" stuff in taking normal games and making them run VR by brute force. That's a big leap, but that's not what the consoles will be doing.
I'm pretty sure it's some mixture of marketing BS, PC hybridization and/or AI. And given MS's AI obsession I'm sure it's about shoehorning AI awkwardly into games to try to make it a feature. There are some legitimatley cool features like being able to talk to any NPC in skyrim directly.
Yeah, that era was exciting. Xbox had a good platform and message with real momentum, it looked like we'd get away from the PS4 monopoly era, things were looking up.. so sad that momentum got squandered, and now ps is doing all the same bad things or worse that Xbox did under matrick and Xbox chases its own tail leaving console with no real competition again.
Says a lot about this generations direction when we're getting articles about being nostalgic for the generation we're still in.
It's a good platform though. Just unloved. If anything else though it's still a great gateway drug to PC.
@CallMeDuraSouka It's not really a game, it's a "study simulator". Not really about game objectives but about simulating actually flying real planes because your probably don't have a cup cool million laying in the couch cushions to actually own a plane if you're interested in flying one 😊
If it's not for you it just means you've never looked at an aircraft and thought "wish I could fly that, just once..."
I'm revamping my whole HOTAS setup in preparation for this! Don't have a yoke unfortunately because I have to share the mount with the racing rig so the steering wheel gets the center and the hotas clamps to either side, so not the best for civilian flight but still serviceable, good for combat flight, and decent if I pull the cams and dead stick it for a makeshift helo collective. Hoping VR works well day 1.
@OldGamer999 Nintendo has fallen into a different kind of rut where they seem to be doing a lot of copy and paste type design, with almost mobile like minimalism. People keep raving about how the switch iteration of franchises is their best ever and I don't get it. It's the most formulaic they've been, kind of sterile and corporate, and seeming to always chase the "Japanese kids love crafting things" trend ever since Minecraft blew up there.
I haven't been happy with post-Iwata Nintendo. The clock is the most interesting and Nintendo thing they've done in years....... And that was Iwatas "QoL" project, so it's actually one last bow from him.
@OldGamer999 right, they keep throwing "more" at everything. But what more can they really throw at it? And if the goal is to make visually perfect 1:1 recreations indistinguishable from reality, is anyone willing to pay the extreme prices to do that? Enough people to justify an industry? Video games becomes a weird bespoke elite luxury next to Rolex dealers? $4000 consoles to play $350 games on? That's a dead end. At some point the need to stop adding "more"and recognize live action is cheaper to make on location than trying to recreate locations in real time.
@OldGamer999 I think everyone easily gets stuck on that, which is how it's such a successful business. But I also think it's a dead end distraction that after a point delivers less and less satisfaction for ever more and more cost to consume, and ever more and more cost to produce, while also detracting from the actual purpose of the experience. Technophilia is easy to sell, but impossible to ever be satisfied with. VR is, for now the one exception where there's still leaps and bounds for improvement. I think "4k gaming" is more or less as good as it's ever going to be, visually, in terms of the ability to have costs in delivering it be worthwhile. VR has massive room for powerful hardware to improve upon it, but the problem is we've hit a brick wall for what we can do on hardware, too, without extreme costs, short of quantum computing happening. It's kind of like building airplaines faster. For decades they could make planes go faster and faster and faster. But now, once you get to the point of going faster than sound, you're not going to get many gains of any conventional fuel or craft design, and trying to go faster than light may be an impossible barrier anyway.
@DesertRanger They were using X chipsets before but splitting them into running two instances of the Series S version of the game at S performance levels.
@OldGamer999 You get that dopamine rush when you first boot up a game that looks pretty, and then an hour later you realize you're still playing the same boring committee-designed game you've been playing for years, and it still doesn't look perfect. And trying to make use of all that hardware isn't financially sustainable for developers. It's the exact dead end Yokoi warned about in the mid-90s. The whole graphics snob thing definitely drives a FOMO/obsessive personality flaw in a lot of the market, it works to sell things quickly but then never generates satisfaction as everyone waits to experience the dopamine hit again next hardware release. While never being satisfied.
I think the Xbox booze dispenser thing is basically the equivalent product.
I'm surprised that it's still THAT popular on XB, considering PS has been the go-to console for the fanbase for so long. I do wonder how many just got it on GP to try it out due to hype but still don't really gel with it. I'm not into CoD, but, hey, it's on GP, maybe I should try anyway.,
@Elbow I don't do horror, and Prey2 is definitely not for me, but yeah, that was the most bizarre situation that they just slapped the name Prey2 on a game that had absolutely no relation to Prey, thus both disappointing anyone that bought to because they were familiar with the IP, and discarding a potentially valuable IP for absolutely no benefit at all.
Though a real Prey 2 just wouldn't work without Art Bell either 😂 😢
Comments 6,846
Re: Xbox Series X|S Console Sales Down Almost 30% In The US Compared To 2023
@Fenbops @Lrapsody
Re: Xbox Series X|S Console Sales Down Almost 30% In The US Compared To 2023
Clearly Xbox is doing better than ever. Across PC, (other) console, and mobile. All of which are an Xbox.
Re: Microsoft Boss Highlights Why He's Feeling 'Very, Very Good' About Xbox Right Now
@OldGamer999 Nah, he's talking "AI, Cloud, Console, PC", those are internal pillars and platforms. They're definitely doing a next console. I just think they're clueless and directionless but doing it anyway.
Re: Microsoft Boss Highlights Why He's Feeling 'Very, Very Good' About Xbox Right Now
", we can bring the best of AI innovation, cloud innovation, console innovation [and] PC innovation to build the best games that can be enjoyed by gamers everywhere"
There it is. All the buzzwords are accounted for.
All the share holders who have no idea what any of this even is must be weeping tears of gilded joy on hearing it.
Re: Xbox Appears To Be Getting More Ex-PlayStation Exclusives In 2025
FF is a given. Stellar Blade is likely (devs expected higher sales on PC than PS, I'm sure they'd like to hit every platform while they're at it.) Rise of Ronin is a weird one because there's no PC port mentioned either, but it's a Tecmo game, of course there's going to be ports.
Realistically, there's not a lot of "True" exclusives on either side of the divide these days. A lot of PS's have been purchased exclusive that aren't forever exclusive. Their internal studios haven't had a whole lot of output (and Concord was a dud, and Helldiver's largest market is PC anyway), and Xbox is obviously giving most of their big games to PS. Very different era.
Re: Microsoft CEO: 'We Are Redefining What It Means To Be An Xbox Fan'
I really don't care if they're redefining Xbox, I just want them to be honest with a roadmap and a strategy to get excited about even in a new direction even if it's a console-less direction. Tell people what to expect and why they should be excited rather than vague, couched "we're redefining everything but it'll all stay the same, don't worry."
Dr Evil here keeps playing games with the customers, and not the kind of games they want to subscribe to Game Pass to play.
Re: Flight Simulator 2024 Gets Its Biggest Update Yet, But Problems Persist On Xbox
I've been obsessed with msfs24, it's basically all I've played the past few weeks, and so much about the design is amazing. But it feels like a public beta. Bugs galore. A DISASTER of a button binding interface (I have a yoke, stick, throttle with panel, rudder. I have to bind every single button individually on each device. And the binding is a giant list of every surface on every aircraft, helicopter, jet, prp, combat all mixed together, and half the controls on the list are duplicative with other controls. Throttle and collective for helo bind to the same thing. As do other controls. Things aren't labeled in the config the same as they are in game. The "melting buildings" really is a mess. And probably not fixable. Manhattan looks like post apocalyptic Manhattan. Landing gear is embedded in the ground. The dialogue is in broken English half the time and the AI voices are a great example of why AI is a bad bet for Microsoft. Can't they use the AI those YouTube videos that "review"products by reading the marketing copy do? Weird pop in. And huge bugs in mission/training.
The early helicopter training, 2 are impassable. The instructor let's off assisting with torque, or cyclic and suddenly the craft shoots backwards and lifts altitude and becomes impossible to control. Next mission where you start with full control that doesn't happen. Then in missions I have no left torque to compensate and no translation drift at all. Did a ferry helo mission where it just stopped recognizing ATC signals, penalized me for ignoring it, and the landing marker had me land in a parking strip next to an abandoned industrial river dock with my vip, then penalized for an unauthorized landing zone, but gave me an A and called it perfect.
Super crazy buggy and that binding menu is unforgivable. And yet I'm addicted to a flight sim with an actual structure and progression to follow, something that sims other than racing always miss.
Re: Xbox Introduces 'Stream Your Own Game' Feature With 50 Titles Supported At Launch
@Raffles The Omega Apex is rock solid. I ended up buying 2, one for flight, one for racing (flight required those desk clamps with the red lever to lock it on to get it all on). I actually could do it all with the one, but the pedals don't both fit. And my Winwing rudders are wider than the Omega and the foot pedal part sticks into the fold, it's too wide, so I needed to rig them to just sit onto fixed bolts and lift them off when folding. The racing stuff fits fine.
The only thing that' I'd caution with the omega Apex is folding it is ridiculously heavy. The frame is like 28-30lb, then the 11nm DD wheel is another 10-15, then my hydraulic pedals are like 23, and a few pounds for the shifter, cables, so the whole thing is probably 50-70lb to pick up and move around! Not an easy lift to put away even if it does fold pretty compact (though the the pedals protrude straight forward even folded!) Still better than a PlaySeat for storage, but you need the forearms of a real racecar driver to move it around lol.
How much of an upgrade can get wooly. TBH the T300 is really really good for what it is. I don't think the amount of force is a huge issue, it has enough (for small diameter wheels), and honestly feels very good. DD is much better of course but I think it's possible to be happy with the T300. Where the DD comes into play is the reaction time. There's a lag and latency to the T300 because of the nature of belts and pulleys. When you're into a turn and feeling the force steadily it feels fine. It's those smaller prods, bumps, spinouts, etc where it always feels like the force is lagging slightly to the effect, and the "softness" in feel that quickly changes direction (tires losing traction then going into a spin, etc) where it feels disconnected. That's where direct drive shines, because it's instant and full force in those rapid direction changes. For me, playing in VR, it's more highlighted because the immersion is absolute, and that stuff breaks the illusion. It's also why I got the Logitech over, say, Moza, because the much maligned TrueForce, does add to immersion and in VR, immersion is king.
If you're just looking to race around with something that has some good feel and can make turns feel good etc, I think the T300 is more than great for the money and really does the job. If you're looking for either maximally competitive racing online (not me), then gear tuning just like real racing is everything on the track, and/or if you're looking for maximal immersion (me) or large diameter wheels (MPI makes a 15" full size stock car wheel for the Logitech, I have one on order!) then high force matters and DD nuisance matters.
The Logitech (or any DD) is a huge upgrade to the T300, but where the difference shines is in the nuanced quick feedback moments more than the high tension big turns, and it might not be that big a difference if you just want to feel the G's when turning.
Re: Talking Point: How Are You Getting On With Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024?
Is this really a 100% cloud-streaming-only game that doesn't even use local rendering hardware, or does it still use the local hardware? For a game that includes VR support, cloud-streaming-only is a REALLY questionable decision. Even weirder that they partnered with Pimax for the official VR which is a very high res platform, which would make cloud streaming only with compression even more dubious.
@Sol76 You were flying Boeings weren't you? That's all part of the accurate detailed simulation, nothing is wrong with your game.
Re: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Isn't On Xbox Yet, But The Director Clearly Wants To See It Happen
It's about time, and I'm sure it'll be a while, but, hey, nobody bought the game on PS yet either, so everyone's waiting for a trilogy together.
I'm still waiting for that PC port that's more inevitable than the Xbox one and still not anywhere near announcement...
Re: Xbox Is Making Big Changes To Avatars In January 2025
@somnambulance Me too, I thought the 360 ones were the only ones! No wonder it has low engagement, lots of customers don't even know it exists!
Re: Xbox Game Pass Didn't Hurt Overall Black Ops 6 Sales, Says Analyst
@GamingFan4Lyf It's weird, you'd think MS could offer a good fee to beat competitors (20% instead of 30% or something.) And I doubt there's a GP requirement, I think it's the other way around, GP games have to be on Windows Store because it's necessary to function, therefore the only games that end up there are the ones with GP because they have to be there for GP. You'd think if they're on Epic they'd want to be on Windows too....it's not like anybody buys anything on either, lol. I think it's just that Windows store has so few users and poor sales metrics (who BUYS games on Windows store by choice unless they have a GP save or an Xbox?) there's just no point.
I love GoG, but there's basically nothing on it. Ironically Horizon Zero Dawn, some of the Yakuza games but not all, BG3, and of course CDPR games, but the rest is all for old stuff. And I think that's the thing it was meant exclusively for retro games. A lot of people got annoyed when they tried to make it for mainstream games and it wasn't financially working great for them, meanwhile it's the best place for retro games because unlike steam they test/patch them. Most big publishers won't touch DRM-free with a 1000ft pole. Amazed Sony is one that did!
Re: Talking Point: Looking Back, What Are Your Fondest Memories Of The Xbox One Era?
Seriously though the good era was when the One X launched and Xbox seemed to be coming back swinging. Sadly that lasted, what, 2.5 years? It was a great 2.5 years though.
@Balaam_ Is the Series era like the 3rd world bus terminal in the desert you have to go through after you got out of the valley, then?
Re: Talking Point: Looking Back, What Are Your Fondest Memories Of The Xbox One Era?
All I can ever think of is this:
Re: Xbox Game Pass Didn't Hurt Overall Black Ops 6 Sales, Says Analyst
MS finally figured out how to win the console wars. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!
I'm not a COD player, only time I've ever played CoD was the 2 WiiU ones, Ghosts, and I guess it was MW2? BLOPS2? Can't remember just because I was desperate for WiiU games. Tried the free one Sony gave out at Layden's last E3 and could barely be bothered with it, it bored me to tears. Trying this one just because it's "free" on GP-PC, and I'm really enjoying the campaign. I wouldn't pay $70 for this. I wouldn't pay $40 for this. I'd questionably pay $25 for this. For $13, it's a good old time. Feels like a Naughty Dog game with better shooting mechanics. You don't have to use your head much, just sit back and watch the colors popcorn fun for idle entertainment kind of fun. Although this might be the campiest thing I've ever seen, and I say that as an 80's and 90's sci-fi fan........
@LogicStrikesAgain To be fair, it's a long term thing. People aren't all going to sell their PS and buy an XB just because one game is on CoD. The strategy has to revolve around building a long term value proposition so that when people are shopping for their NEXT console...PS6, PS7, even, they stop and think of Xbox having more value for them instead.
Only problem with that strategy is MS has the attention span of a goldfish and will get tired of waiting and move onto a different one by the time any payoff could happen.
@PsBoxSwitchOwner @GamingFan4Lyf You would think, you would REALLY think, they would fix their Windows Store. It's not just that the games are locked up (which is insane), but also that it's missing most games so you couldn't chose that platform for most games even if you wanted to and would have to use Steam or Epic anyway, so why not just use it always? And beyond that is the fact that it's just flat out freaking broken most of the time and ends up with all kinds of DRM issues due to some magic server error that doesn't show up on the Xbox server status page as a problem, but always fixes itself over time. It's just such a bad platform.
That's where GPPC kicks in. You start the game free on Windows store and then your save is there and you don't switch later. I think that's its secret purpose
That having been said, IMO BO6 is the perfect game to still get on GP and Windows Store, it's a short and sweet one and done campaign, modding isn't super huge on CoD anyway because the main show is MP which can't be modded much due to anticheat, and it's a game that's good for one year before the MP moves onto the next.
Having Switched to GPPC from GPU I got to play BLOPS6 for $13, seems like a perfect game for the service if you're not a hardcore CoD online player. Not keen on the 200+GB install that forces you to install MW3 and WZ and the icon for the launcher shows up as WW2 though before you can later remove them though. Windows Store is a mess.
Re: Xbox Introduces 'Stream Your Own Game' Feature With 50 Titles Supported At Launch
@Raffles we have the same keyboards! The Rii is my daily login, mod/vr config driver, and I take out the Logitech if I have to do more heavy setup (Skyrim modding 😂).
I didn't get a hard seat cockpit, no room. But my couch is about the right height anyway and isn't going anywhere so I got a GT Omega Apex stand. The thing is rock solid. I originally just had at Thrustmaster T300 which was honestly great, but upgraded to a Logitech Pro (was looking at Moza R12 but people raved about Trueforce in supported games for immersion, and for VR, immersion rather than force is more important to me. Plus most reviews said that the ffb quality in the Logitech was better despite its huge profile for a direct drive. The thing weighs like a sandbag. The only negatives are it's huge compared to everything else for an 11nm and no fancy first party wheels which isn't important to me.
Ironically I talked about the pimax and they just had a presentation today with a lower cost and 2 year subscription for payment and are taking orders now. Doesn't have the OLED bundle though, looks like that'll be sold totally separate but the same price it was going to be in the bundle. I might bite lol
Yeah wukong vr even on quest strains the GPU hard. Can't get 90fps at all on quest 3. Can't imagine on>8k pimax lol. And then there's Dragons Dogma2 in VR 😂
Yeah injection is rough. Basically double rendering (two rendering cameras) also at insane resolution, and also at insane fps, and also can't use tricks like frame Gen, and the games don't let you turn all the stuff off. It's very imperfect. But being able to play aaa(a) games in VR, it's still so worth it. Doesn't work with everything but either true vr mods or "Giant simulated 3dtv" modes like vorpx still make flat screens seem dated.
Re: Flight Simulator 2024 Developer Issues 'Sincere' Apology Following Turbulent Release
Boeing 2024 Simulator
Re: Flight Simulator 2024 Developer Issues 'Sincere' Apology Following Turbulent Release
@Xbox_Dashboard Yeah, the idea is great but IDK what metrics they had thinking this wasn't going to happen. A queue isn't bad given all mmos use it but it's brutal anyway.
Otoh this could be factored in. Using FFXIV as an example you just can't really get in at all and it's a mess whenever a big expansion releases and then a few weeks later it's back to normal. It's possible they expected this at launch and expect numbers to settle quickly.
Still disappointing either way. Was definitely looking forward to this one. Might as well just start downloading 2000 again.
Edit: could be worse, they have the inverse problem if most service games today, too much demand, not not enough capacity. Crystal Dynamics,
Firewallk, and Rocksteady must be watching this, drooling 😂Re: Xbox Introduces 'Stream Your Own Game' Feature With 50 Titles Supported At Launch
@Raffles Lol, yeah I find it hilarious how many "tech enthusiasts" seem to have a complete lack of awareness of current computer tech, and are a decade or two out of touch. It's like people arguing over which fancy microwave makes you a top chef 😂
Yeah I have an unorthodox setup, where I'm not a desk gamer, left that behind ages ago. It's fun when you're a school kid, it's not fun when you spend all day every day at a desk. But I'm near sighted, and would rather not wear glasses just to play games, and even on the TV across the room, it's still too far/small to see proper detail and text, so I bring it up close and have a 27" 4k HDR monitor on a diy swivel mount on a microphone boom pole that just swing around in front of the couch lol. And I have one of those little controller sized wireless keyboard/track pad units that just sits with my controller. Works perfectly!
Though these days I'm using my VR more than the normal monitor. And if doing sims I have to drag the "folding" race or fight stand out (lol, folding is still bulky and weights like 65lb with all the gear on it!). Regular VR gaming I just grab my hmd and controllers and away I go. No TV/monitor needed.
Playnite is a drug. That and RGB software if you have rgb. I've spent whole nights just playing playnite 😂 I use it on my ally/legion on full screen. I intended to on the big rig, but my frequent use of vr injectors and messing with racing/flight peripheral tools, I found it was too often in the way when I needed to get to the desktop, so I'm just using desktop mode now, but full screen is so nice. Before I started using it I was going crazy with gog, steam, Xbox, ubicon ect, ea, epic, and double-buying too often!
Lol, weeeeeelll, I went just a teeeensy bit overboard and bought a 7800x3d and 4090 😂. I wasn't going to. Swore up and down I'd never buy those absurd cards, and for straight pancake games there's not a chance I ever would, the thing is ridiculous overkill for everything. But because I'm big into VR injection which is EXTREMELY punishing on a GPU, I kind of had to, and, even 4090 is insufficient there. It's all brute force.
I decimated finances and probably can't afford the next upgrade though. Technically I'd need a 5090 to go with my original intention of getting a Pimax Crystal Super (>4k x2... Something like 9k native) but having also invested in the racing and flight rig I should probably be done with spending on anything for the next half decade though! Maaay still get the Pimax because I do have the reservation already. But will have to make it sing on the 4090 for years , even though the say the super isn't really much better than light on current cards due to the display port bandwidth limit.
I probably won't upgrade the pc for quite some years!
Re: Xbox Introduces 'Stream Your Own Game' Feature With 50 Titles Supported At Launch
@Raffles Absolutely loving it. So much more polished than it was in 2008 that's for sure!
Where it gets cumbersome is simply the sheer number of stores I'm using plus the mandatory ubi and ea launcher etc, but that's just the price of bargain hunting! Plus the sheer number of peripherals now (Sim wheel, pedals, shifter, flight stick, rudder pedals, throttle, yoke, and then switched brands of each, plus vr headset and multiple "vr injector" packages to run non vr games in VR, etc) plus mod managers. So a lot of software involved but that's all for optional extras you don't get on console to begin with. Remove all that is it's smooth sailing. Only crash I've had not related to forcing vr into non vr games, is blops6 lol, curse you Xbox! Plus drm being down and unable to launch things with nonsense errors..... Which is only an Xbox store thing lol. (You can now assign primary pc just like on console, though, they just added that )
I'm not using a TV specifically but I didn't use a TV for console either, I play everything on a monitor, close up, but I have it running through the home theater HDMI hookups anyway. A monitor is just a TV without all the fancy features, it's not like the old VESA days where monitors and TVs are completely different.
Re: Flight Simulator 2024 Developer Issues 'Sincere' Apology Following Turbulent Release
@Xbox_Dashboard You'd think MS could figure it out better with all their server capacity. I remember this happened to EA with Sim City ages and ages ago and they straightened it out, but it was a mess of a launch. IDK how MS managed that again.
I own MSFS2020 on Steam, and was going to play 2024 on GP, been waiting for it and for my cockpit to come together as I have my rudder pedals sitting on the couch right now, but maybe I'll end up just having to do 2020 after all with it instead of the new game.
If only they'd had a $50 Early Access release and we could have not played for more money!
Re: Flight Simulator 2024 Developer Issues 'Sincere' Apology Following Turbulent Release
I'm almost glad my cockpit mount got delayed in shipping and my yoke doesn't arrive till the weekend, lol.
@Xbox_Dashboard To be fair, for this game, an offline mode would probably be a 2TB install.
Re: Xbox Introduces 'Stream Your Own Game' Feature With 50 Titles Supported At Launch
@Banjo- I was waiting for it for it for years....so many years I've now switched to PC and changed from GPU to GPPC and can't use it anymore!
It's cool that they're finally adding it though. Someday I may have a use for it, though I think - might actually recommend it to people. In my case since I've now amassed a large PC library, if I wanted to stream it, even though I still have a big Xbox library forever, I think I'd probably do better with Geforce Now for steraming if it's supported. But, there could be titles supported on one and not the other, so it could still come in handy at some point.
Re: Xbox Fails To Make GOTY List, But Still Gets 11 Nominations For The Game Awards 2024
Really should be renamed to TGCSA.
The Geoff Corporate Sponsor Awards.
Re: Xbox's Phil Spencer Confirms Handheld Plans, But Don't Expect One Anytime Soon
@S1ayeR74 They've all but confirmed it's a real handheld, not a streaming device, and have talked about it in context with Ally/Legion etc, so I think that's a firm bet there. They're not going for the Portal/phone/G-Cloud market on this one, they're going for the Ally market. Which is smart, and there's a market for it for sure (the PC portables are doing particularly well in Asia.)
But late to the party is the big problem. Steam Deck into Ally was really the big push into the new handheld world, and launching today would put Xbox in a competitive place still, but launching "in a few years" after all the above have had one or more refreshes plus Switch 2, just seems like such incredibly late timing. I bet it will be an excellent product that just struggles to make it into the the market because it's too late. A classic MS problem.
Re: Xbox Boss Says Everything Is On The Table When It Comes To PS5 Ports
@HonestHick I don't think it's easy to see MS' plan because I think they don't actually have one. They just go whatever way the winds are blowing at the moment.
Sony's long term is precarious. They're in great shape so long as they stay a monopoly platform because they can skim 30% off most of the industry by doing nothing, just like Apple. That's a good model. The problem isd they've set themselves up to be knocked out of being the default platform by a challenger who intends to try hard to do so. Right now there isn't one, so they're fine. But by the time one pops up it's too late. If they tip away from being the default place for the masses to play games their model irreparably crumbles, so they need to ensure status quo forever.
MS....I still don't think they have an actual plan. They just keep their fingers in the air always to see what seems like a good plan for this quarter.
Re: No Man's Sky Developer Explains Why The Xbox One X Is Still 'Very Capable' In 2024
@themightyant Tech may have slowed down but I don't buy this line that a lot of tech companies have been putting out there (Nvidia...) that we're basically at the end of tech so every advancement in tech just gets more and more and more expensive forever, where instead of a $1500 computer just getting faster and faster every few years, a $1500 PC is always the exact same spec for the next 10,000 years, and each faster one will add another $500 to the price for each increment forever. Nvidia's tried to push that narrative. I don't buy it. If we're really at the end of tech, and price to dollar baseline is now fixed forever and the only direction is to add ever more for ever higher prices until we start reaching government contractor pricing for the masses, I think that's a different way of saying the tech economy is now permanently over, the tech industry will collapse, and it's now all a big old datacenter mainframe circle jerk forever. And I'm not buying that.
That said we're also at a weird point where we have these akward products where for every practical measure shouldn't exist but they keep ending up in this "there's a market for it" place, which is awkward. That includes the absurdly priced video cards (I'm excluding xx90 because that's a different situation where, while there's a gaming market for it, a big chunk of its sales is actually commercial/video editing/streamer sales where it's a far cheaper alternative than the actual commercial parts, so some of its success lies, unfortunately, in it being a budget part for a commercial market.)
I do think the greatest threat to the console market is the console market. This idea of escalating prices - paying more and more isn't how the console market has operated or what has really built its market. Being an affordable packaged box for all is what drove the console market, and the direction prices are implied to go for successive generations, I can see console pushing out much of its own market chasing some holy grail (or at least pushing it to Nintendo), If tech really has stalled without just paying more and more, I can see all but the core market losing interest in consoles, especially each younger generation for the long term, and then I can see other avenues appealing to the core.
PS5 Pro is an...interesting experiment because one of the biggest things they've marketed it for is for how great it plays your OLD games. And so much of the coverage is about what it does for old games. And where the console business relies on razor and blades sales, where software sales is the goal, that seems like a really poor way to introduce hardware.
I also do think (and I think this is what MS wanted to avoid) the whole mid-gen cycle may seem good, at initial sales, but what they're mainly doing is re-selling to the same early adopters and then filling the used market with inventory cannibalizing new normal sales and ironically reducing price expectations over time. I suspect that will have an effect on launch sales for the next generation model too where, again it'll primarily sell only to the early adopters.
OTOH, I also think I no longer understand Sony's new market, because it seems to be an Apple-esque fomo cult of uninformed buyers with zero impulse control, who will spend anything on hardware and nothing on software.
Re: Phil Spencer: I Can't Talk About Black Myth: Wukong's Xbox Status
Weird question, we all know, the devs already said it's coming to Xbox.
Re: Xbox's Phil Spencer Confirms Handheld Plans, But Don't Expect One Anytime Soon
@S1ayeR74 In theory they'd get the hardware right, and the price right so that it's still theoretically viable, but, yeah, I agree, it's a long enough wait that I think it will by then seem irrelevant in the market of existing handhelds. Unless Asus keeps driving prices up into LOLland so that they look uncompetitive. They already have an $800 handheld, if they stay there and Deck and XHeld are half the price, it will still be viable.
Re: Xbox Boss Says Everything Is On The Table When It Comes To PS5 Ports
@PsBoxSwitchOwner Yeah but overall the first party, even with major releases totals around 10% at best. That's not to say it's insignificant sales for SOFTWARE (though it is to say it's insufficient sales of software which is why they're seeking the PC market to bolster it), however, keeping in mind a lot of the people that buy one of their first party games is likely the same market that buys multiple of their first party games, even 10% of software sales is likely at best really representing 5% of the actual install base, I.E. the games have a lot of overlap so not all of the sales represent unique customers.) Which is to say 90-95% of the actual console ecosystem customers aren't really interested in the first party offerings at all on either platform.
No doubt both companies software plans and both companies being "out of touch with fans" is based on the fact that the number crunchers realized the exclusives aren't really a factor in their overall business strategies on platform anymore.
Re: No Man's Sky Developer Explains Why The Xbox One X Is Still 'Very Capable' In 2024
@themightyant IDK that were in a very different spot with 5 pro. Ps6 rumors are occasional meaning they'll ramp up more and more, Xbox will certainly be putting the next Gen narrative up sooner than later, real or imagined, I don't think it's in that different a place than the 1x. I feel like Ms consciously avoided that trap specifically to be able to look at next Gen sooner and reboot. Obviously they're in a different place but for core that's looking at things enough to know about "next Gen rumors" they'll know, both companies will be making overtures about the next Gen etc.
Not sure that Sony got that much more out of 4 pro. They had the extra year but most of the sales were in the launch and really stalled out after that and then they discontinued it in 2019/early 2020.
I have both the 4 pro and the 1x, and I feel like the 1x almost felt like it should have been the new generation on its own. The pricing and the capability felt like more of a generational leap than the 1x to seriesx imo. The 4 pro mostly has the advantage that it was an upgrade that didn't actually cost much more. And I kind of feel like if you're doing mid Gen, that's the way to do it. Not a 1x/5 pro situation where is like a half step new generation for a whole step in price.
Re: Xbox's Phil Spencer Confirms Handheld Plans, But Don't Expect One Anytime Soon
@Titntin That's an awesome story!
He really had a lot of great ideas and intentions, just without thinking through how to actually do them or if it was even possible, haha. Nobody didn't like all the things he dreamed up, it's just that nobody, especially him, ever figured out how to actually make them 😂
Re: Is Xbox Successful Right Now? Phil Spencer Shares His Thoughts
Mincing through the politician speak it sounds like "We really have no idea what we're doing or where we're going but we're confident it'll all just kind of work out if we keep trying everything"
Re: Xbox Boss Says Everything Is On The Table When It Comes To PS5 Ports
While I agree with so much of the doom and gloom of "why buy an Xbox if you can get it all and more somewhere else", I'll just point out that based on PS's own numbers of 77 million software units in Q2, a whopping 7% of that was "first party software." Bottom line is exclusives are as irrelevant as irrelevant can be to console sales in 2024. Most of the people buying consoles, even PS, just aren't buying exclusives.
Nintendo is it's own thing. It does work for them and they run largely on exclusives, but that works because they have Disney grade iconic, child-sought, legendary IP that no other company but Disney itself has. Nobody can play the same game they do. Much as enthusiasts talk about "exclusives" the numbers show it's just not really a very relevant factor in the purchasing decisions of the modern console market.
Re: Xbox's Phil Spencer Confirms Handheld Plans, But Don't Expect One Anytime Soon
@Titntin But when Peter would say he's buying a drink I'm sure he described a golden nectar of the gods with a taste where you can taste each and every bee that ever pollinated the source harvest in a self refilling mug via an overhead delivery system, but when you got there, it was just Miller's from a normal tap.
Re: Xbox's Phil Spencer Confirms Handheld Plans, But Don't Expect One Anytime Soon
Ugh, see this is the problem Microsoft always has in hardware. They have great ideas, they actually build some great products. Their problem is they're either so far ahead of the curve there's no market yet for the product they're making and it fails, or they're so behind the curve, they take years to do anything and by the time they deliver their well designed product, the market already came and went and attached elsewhere and they look like an also-ran.
The handheld was a great plan. It was a next step for Xbox hardware, it was a competitive differentiator. Now they're going to stall it for years and wait for a new Switch, wait for maybe a PS handheld, or just wait for more and more iterations of PC handhelds to flood the market before them and make theirs irrelevant, and meanwhile let their own hardware ecosystem stagnate more.
I had high hopes for their console plans with the handheld as a sort of reboot, but....now....meah....glad I bought my Legion. I'm sure I'll have upgraded again by the time MS gets theirs out at least once, wasn't worth the wait.
Re: No Man's Sky Developer Explains Why The Xbox One X Is Still 'Very Capable' In 2024
IMO the 1X/4 Pro should have had at least a 5 year shelf life or more before the Series/5 came out. They were more than capable for a long time and got cut short, meanwhile the Series/5 came out with barely any real leap above those and feel like a half measure.
@themightyant "One X was always a beast bit of hardware, ahead of it's time. But it fell into an odd space where the enthusiast market would be upgrading from it in 3 years or less, and it arrived when people were talking next-gen, which limited it's market. There also weren't that many games to highlight it's power. "
That's the exact trap PS5 Pro set for itself, which is exactly why MS didn't want to do that again.
Re: Xbox Fans Ponder What 'Largest Technical Leap' Means For The Series X Successor
Performance leaps are a thing of the past unless quantum computing happens. My PC is basically the best money can buy in 2024, and it's not a "great technological leap" over the XSX. It just has better performance with more visual settings on, and the only real reason I bought it was for doing actual "great leap" stuff in taking normal games and making them run VR by brute force. That's a big leap, but that's not what the consoles will be doing.
I'm pretty sure it's some mixture of marketing BS, PC hybridization and/or AI. And given MS's AI obsession I'm sure it's about shoehorning AI awkwardly into games to try to make it a feature. There are some legitimatley cool features like being able to talk to any NPC in skyrim directly.
Re: Sega Delisting Multiple Xbox Games This December
Whoa that's a lot of games. I wonder why? Shame. And not Nights into Dreams!
Re: Soapbox: Four Years On, I'm Already Nostalgic For The Early Xbox Series X|S Era
Yeah, that era was exciting. Xbox had a good platform and message with real momentum, it looked like we'd get away from the PS4 monopoly era, things were looking up.. so sad that momentum got squandered, and now ps is doing all the same bad things or worse that Xbox did under matrick and Xbox chases its own tail leaving console with no real competition again.
Says a lot about this generations direction when we're getting articles about being nostalgic for the generation we're still in.
It's a good platform though. Just unloved. If anything else though it's still a great gateway drug to PC.
Re: PSA: Our Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Review Will Be Delayed At Launch
@CallMeDuraSouka It's not really a game, it's a "study simulator". Not really about game objectives but about simulating actually flying real planes because your probably don't have a cup cool million laying in the couch cushions to actually own a plane if you're interested in flying one 😊
If it's not for you it just means you've never looked at an aircraft and thought "wish I could fly that, just once..."
Re: PSA: Our Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Review Will Be Delayed At Launch
I'm revamping my whole HOTAS setup in preparation for this! Don't have a yoke unfortunately because I have to share the mount with the racing rig so the steering wheel gets the center and the hotas clamps to either side, so not the best for civilian flight but still serviceable, good for combat flight, and decent if I pull the cams and dead stick it for a makeshift helo collective. Hoping VR works well day 1.
Re: Rumour: Blizzard Could Be Remastering Another RTS Classic
That brings back serious memories! Would definitely love to revisit this.
Re: Xbox Hardware Revenues Down Again Despite Content & Services Growth
@OldGamer999 Nintendo has fallen into a different kind of rut where they seem to be doing a lot of copy and paste type design, with almost mobile like minimalism. People keep raving about how the switch iteration of franchises is their best ever and I don't get it. It's the most formulaic they've been, kind of sterile and corporate, and seeming to always chase the "Japanese kids love crafting things" trend ever since Minecraft blew up there.
I haven't been happy with post-Iwata Nintendo. The clock is the most interesting and Nintendo thing they've done in years....... And that was Iwatas "QoL" project, so it's actually one last bow from him.
Re: Xbox Hardware Revenues Down Again Despite Content & Services Growth
@OldGamer999 right, they keep throwing "more" at everything. But what more can they really throw at it? And if the goal is to make visually perfect 1:1 recreations indistinguishable from reality, is anyone willing to pay the extreme prices to do that? Enough people to justify an industry? Video games becomes a weird bespoke elite luxury next to Rolex dealers? $4000 consoles to play $350 games on? That's a dead end. At some point the need to stop adding "more"and recognize live action is cheaper to make on location than trying to recreate locations in real time.
Re: Xbox Hardware Revenues Down Again Despite Content & Services Growth
@OldGamer999 I think everyone easily gets stuck on that, which is how it's such a successful business. But I also think it's a dead end distraction that after a point delivers less and less satisfaction for ever more and more cost to consume, and ever more and more cost to produce, while also detracting from the actual purpose of the experience. Technophilia is easy to sell, but impossible to ever be satisfied with. VR is, for now the one exception where there's still leaps and bounds for improvement. I think "4k gaming" is more or less as good as it's ever going to be, visually, in terms of the ability to have costs in delivering it be worthwhile. VR has massive room for powerful hardware to improve upon it, but the problem is we've hit a brick wall for what we can do on hardware, too, without extreme costs, short of quantum computing happening. It's kind of like building airplaines faster. For decades they could make planes go faster and faster and faster. But now, once you get to the point of going faster than sound, you're not going to get many gains of any conventional fuel or craft design, and trying to go faster than light may be an impossible barrier anyway.
Re: Xbox Hardware Revenues Down Again Despite Content & Services Growth
@DesertRanger They were using X chipsets before but splitting them into running two instances of the Series S version of the game at S performance levels.
@OldGamer999 You get that dopamine rush when you first boot up a game that looks pretty, and then an hour later you realize you're still playing the same boring committee-designed game you've been playing for years, and it still doesn't look perfect. And trying to make use of all that hardware isn't financially sustainable for developers. It's the exact dead end Yokoi warned about in the mid-90s. The whole graphics snob thing definitely drives a FOMO/obsessive personality flaw in a lot of the market, it works to sell things quickly but then never generates satisfaction as everyone waits to experience the dopamine hit again next hardware release. While never being satisfied.
I think the Xbox booze dispenser thing is basically the equivalent product.
Re: Apparently, More Than 50% Of Xbox Series X|S Users In The US Played Black Ops 6 Near Launch
I'm surprised that it's still THAT popular on XB, considering PS has been the go-to console for the fanbase for so long. I do wonder how many just got it on GP to try it out due to hype but still don't really gel with it. I'm not into CoD, but, hey, it's on GP, maybe I should try anyway.,
Re: Arkane Founder Says Xbox Shutting Austin Studio Was 'Stupid' And 'Not A Good Decision'
@Elbow I don't do horror, and Prey2 is definitely not for me, but yeah, that was the most bizarre situation that they just slapped the name Prey2 on a game that had absolutely no relation to Prey, thus both disappointing anyone that bought to because they were familiar with the IP, and discarding a potentially valuable IP for absolutely no benefit at all.
Though a real Prey 2 just wouldn't work without Art Bell either 😂 😢
Re: Xbox Hardware Revenues Down Again Despite Content & Services Growth
@OldGamer999 "I preordered the PS5 Pro in the end and it’s has started the despatching process."
You're weak.
That is all.