@GamingFan4Lyf Yeah, even with DLSS and frame gen on! It's definitely the most brutally demanding benchmark for GPUs. Cyberpunk and VR are the only two places where "4090 isn't enough" is true lol.
@DennisReynolds. YES! Crackdown 4 is the solution!
@GamingFan4Lyf Of course it depends on the game, Hogwarts gets 100+ at 4k on 4090s with ultra and rt. But this game feels more cyberpunk. 4090s can't hold 60fps with ultra and full rt at 4k.
@Vaako007 What Xbox really needed was an internal standards committee within Xbox that has set guidelines for internal games as to what performance targets are for their hardware so that their studios can design around that template. They don't need to micromanage, they just need to set the technical requirements for their hardware platforms for the teams to meet. It should not be hard. And MS own games shouldn't be a hodgepodge of downscaled PC ports and "we'll look at it later" for the #1 sold hardware SKU support.
I LOOOVE Obsidian, but how are they operating where they have an RTX hyped PC build, an console port at 30fps that they are "surprised" runs better than PC, and another console SKU they basically haven't looked at yet just before they were set to release? That's a lack of internal rules for hardware benchmarks.
@OldGamer999 Kinda funny that in 2024 the high water mark for video games is a platformer. And here we thought platformers have been dead for 20 years!
@InterceptorAlpha Nah, I doubt it's using RT on console, but they're sure happy pimping the RT on PC. Which I bet performs like hot garbage even on a 4090 when cranked.
LOL I bought D2:LoD purely for the 800x600 upgrade. Also Blizzard gonna blizzard, even back then few companies would make you buy an expansion pack just to be able to change the resolution, let alone that change being a whopping 800x600 max. Even Rockstar would free patch that, and that's saying something!
Ever play Neverwinter 2? The game was everything Bioware's hideous NwN was not, they fixed the game and made a great D&D game finally. But the thing was a slideshow even on an upper-midrage card at the time (forget what I had), Rediculous performance crashes. Same with KotR2. Obsidian is a wonderful game designer but they're one of the worst technical teams in the biz. It's why the partnership with Bioware was great in the day. Bioware had great tech teams and horrible game designs and writing.
@InterceptorAlpha "I'll be playing it at 100+FPS on PC,"
Not with RT enabled, you won't. If their own statements about performance here are anything to go by I'm betting 60-ish fps with RT on on a 4090, Cyberpunk style, is the best you'll get.
OTOH when you've been playing Obsidian games since they were founded, we should expect it by now. Amazing games. Terrible technology. That's how they've rolled since day 1. No 800x600 for you, get back in the 640x480 box. 1024x768 is for SLI/Crossfire players.
@OldGamer999 Much as I love Astrobot and Asobi nee Japan Studio, pulling off technical greatness on a 3D platformer on a modern console shouldn't be a test of technical prowess...
@Decimateh Hall effect uses a magnet to detect position. Traditional sticks use a carbon film layered potentiometer that rubs together to detect position. Hall effect can't develop drift the same ways traditional sticks can because theres no contact, it's just a magnetic field, however, the centering spring can always go bad or warp. But that's a much less common problem than the normal potentiometer film wear.
@Markatron84 If you're looking for PC and Switch only (not XB/PS without adapters) also check out Flydigi. Kind of a "no name" here, but they're the #1 brand in China, they have pretty nice stuff. Vaders and Apex's have Hall effect.
@andrewsqual I disagree with that reasoning. The game looking and running way better on the powerful hardware is exactly the point of marketing the powerful hardware. It's a great strategy to upsell the S buyers into an X. Cheap, you get this, expensive you get that. People would expect that. And is the same message PS5 Pro will use.
Making Series X look bad so that it sells more series S's instead of X's is a bad strategy.
Oh wait you're probably right then. lol
But, really that implies too much strategy. I don't think they're planning that far ahead and managing console optics that finely. I think their devs just carp out a PC build and dial it till it runs on consoles and that's the end of "optimization." Mostly that means 30fps mid settings. And accounts for the surprise it's running well.
@OldGamer999 To be fair, it's not an issue of Series S being a problematic thing. It's the fact that even this FIRST party dev didn't even consider it until after they built their game around other hardware and decided to "figure it out later".
The fact that they cite it's running better on XSX than PC, while they're already a formerly PC centric studio, it doesn't look visually demanding, and they didn't even consider their own company's top selling hardware model until after building it says everything that's wrong with game devs. It's not the hardware. It's the devs. Or the managers more like. In the 90's devs built a game to the hardware. In the 2020's devs build a game concept they like, then try to wait for hardware that can run it to exist.
This should be 30fps on series S, 60fps on Series X, lolfps/45-60fps RT with full path tracing. Anything else is just lack of trying.
@SodaPop6548 "Does anyone else notice how this sort of drama doesn't happen on other platforms" " first part developers for those platforms get what their customers want."
@themightyant No you didn't misread. I have a 60hz IPS panel, LG, not some weird Chinese unknown. Granted it's technically a monitor instead of TV but that shouldn't matter in this context. I just double checked the LG specs now to make SURE I didn't have something way more expensive than I thought with 120Hz But nope, listed as 60hz.
However 30fps has horribly noticeably uneven frame timing that appears jerky in motion. (I.E. "30fps is almost unplayable!" as I always say.) 40-45 runs perfectly fine. And 60 is ideal.
If I had to GUESS, the only explanation must be the actual panel is a 120Hz panel and something else on the display is limited, or just business reasons for selling the same panel for more money in a 120hz version means they restricted it to 60hz max, even though it's really a native 120Hz panel. Or something? 40 is playable, 30 is a juddering mess.
Given the amount of people with "30fps is unplayable" comments these days, and the dominance of LG displays in general, I would not doubt at all this is not uncommon for them. Many "60hz" panels may really be 120hz panels artificially limited to 60 (cheaper to produce one panel and limit it for cheaper skus?), and thus 30fps really is nearly unplayable on many displays.
I've always thought the panel market has a lot to do with the unending fps arguments.
@Mustoe "Now it's just a production line"
Yeah, ain't that the truth....that's so much of the problem, absolutely.
EDIT: It's an IPS panel, I typed TN originally for some reason.
@Ralizah Very true but before they mastered self sabotage squares missing presence, especially back when square actually mattered a lot more, did a lot to hold back Xbox credibility and adoption.
@OldGamer999 That's ok, Phil's wandering with you. You might bump into each other.
Yeah, Asobi hasn't let anyone down yet, so I'm expecting quality from any remnant of Japan Studio. Shame Sony disbanded every other part of their best (but not most profitable) team...
@OldGamer999 One problem is of course that the hardware simply sucks. They designed it at a point that hardware wasn't really different from the old pro models. It's not a new generation. But the dev issues apply to PC too.
It's also too many cooks spoiling the broth. Look at the credits on these games. They run for an hour. Top budget Hollywood films credits last 10 minutes. How many different teams from different companies on different continents are working on the pieces of these games? How COULD it gel?
Trying to do too many advanced visual things on hardware that doesn't have room to spare with teams that don't work well together and often aren't even working for the same company.
This gen is so bad it pushed me back to PC. It had to be REALLY bad to do that. I swore it off for life. THAT is how bad it is...
@OldGamer999 I'm not sure what's going on with game development this gen. "Something" happened at the development level. Maybe Nvidia is just lead platform for almost everything with console as an afterthought? It's every publisher, every engine, EVERYTHING has the same problems. Maybe they just got rid of all the experienced talent and staffed up on interns for "good enough" for cheap? Throwing too many shaders and lighting and particle tricks at it beyond what hardware can really handle? Just assuming RTX is lead platform? IDK.
A lot of it has to be shaders/materials/lighting, particle effects going on. Why are resolutions AND performance tanking everywhere? It's not RT, most of these games don't even use RT by default. RT is a whole other mess.
Then we have all the CPU bound games, but why are they CPU bound suddenly when they don't seem to do much more than old gen games? Starfield was one of the only ones with an excuse with the amount of object tracking going on, but then that DID get a 60fps patch. But it's the res that takes a hit.
IDK, something changed in the dev of everything in the past few years, even if the end result doesn't justify the losses. The games all seem like they're being made for future theoretical hardware, or just built around 4080s and just tuned down till it runs on anything else.
@InterceptorAlpha "Only a couple mediocre launch window games"
I still remember the pony meltdown when FFXIII was announced to be on 360, lol.
XV gets a bad sales rep. It sold 10 million and broke even in 2 weeks. It sold "only" 1.4 million on Xbox, but it also sold "only" 5 mill on PS, making Xbox just shy of 20% of console sales which isn't horrible. PC makes up the other 4+ million. Still crushed that they killed the rest of the story DLC for a 10mil selling game.
@Fiendish-Beaver @Pabpictu There's "rules" for how it's supposed to work, but meanwhile have a 4k60 fast IPS LG display on which 40 looks wonderfully solid and 30 is a juddering migraine inducing mess. The rules say 40 shouldn't work and 30 should be fine. The panel says 40 is fine, and 30 will make you go blind. I don't have VRR (well not true it's a Freesync display which PC and XB support, but I have my Xb going through HDMI switches that claim to support it, but end up showing a blank screen if I try so I'm not using it.)
If it works as well as Hogwarts did, I found the 40fps mode ideal even on a 60fps display where 30fps always has HORRENDOUS judder, and 60 is smooth. 40 felt like what some other people must see for 30. People, and companies really really underestimate just how different modern displays are from each other and how it affects what you see and how some fps are unusable on certain displays. Some people have a display where 30 looks fine. Some like me have a display where 30 looks like a broken rotoscope with a bent axle.
@JustinSane The problem with modern gaming is, in the old days, in PC gaming, if your game ran janky and choppy or low res on your GPU the companies basically just told you "too bad, you should have bought a top of the line GPU instead." Today, when your console game runs janky and choppy or low res on your console, the companies basically just tell you"too bad, you should have bought a top of the line GPU instead."
So bizarre how Square Enix went from ignoring Xbox and partnering with Sony alone for all this content during all the time where Xbox was showing upward momentum, to the detriment of that momentum often, to now making a huge push into trying to build a base on Xbox, while Xbox momentum is in nosedive freefall.
And they're putting their money where their mouth is, too. The paid sponsor ad on my dashboard last night was for FFXIV free trial (if I saw it while launching XIV, does it count as an ad?) They're actually paying to advertise FF on Xbox. Square Enix. Paying. On Xbox...
If they'd done this years ago Xbox might be in another place today.
Of course it could be all talk, but their mention of building support for the franchise on Xbox seems like they legit know where to start and the hole they're starting in which is a good omen that they're not going to do a Square Enix, dump a few games, watch low sales, and then bail again.
@Grumblevolcano Still floors me that Forspoken had such a long exclusivity lock. Between Forspoken, Concord, and Bungie, I'm starting to think the old running joke about Jimbo and the scotch was just true commentating.
That's weirdly polarizing, and reminds me when Kotaku had the critic that openly hated Xenoblade while most praised it, also review XC2. Spoiler: He hated it just as much.
"Of course, being an Xbox first-party release, Avowed is playable day one on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, although we can't guarantee its arrival date on Xbox Game Pass Standard; a new lower-priced subscription tier which is expected to be out in-full by the time Avowed launches."
...The fact that this paragraph must exist. Oof.
If you can't answer in 10 words or less "what is Game Pass" the plan and marketing is total fail.
@OldGamer999 To be fair this is the studios first big game. I can understand it being shoddy from noobs more than the big established studios. Plus Nvidia basically paid for it to be broken on AMD, so there's that.
And yeah, PS5 60fps isn't so much "broken" as much as "Doesn't exist, It's just tarted up 30fps anyway." They just used frame generation to double the fps and called it a day even though the tech is NOT meant to be used on sub-60fps content. It's meant to get 120 from 60, not 60 from 30.
Friendly reminder that this is an Nvidia sponsored game, being used as a marketing showcase for Nvidia. Console shmonsole, good luck getting the thing to run well on anything AMD.
@GamingFan4Lyf He's supposed to be cocky, he's basically Chinese Icarus. Same general parable to teach a life lesson from a different culture.
@Titntin IDK if these upcoming ms games are really built to utilize the current console or not. My point is the games Sony as so far released are games built around last gen regardless if they chose to lock it to PS5 or not. We know both consoles do those types of games at 60 just fine. It's the newer ones that are 60 or bad 30.
yeah, I really, REALLY don't get what happened to the typical PC dev. From HL2's breakthrough physics to....modern..... how did we go backwards from 1999 onward?
@Titntin I said Sony hasn't released a PS5 game only PS4 games with PS5 upgrades - Elden Ring isn't a Sony game. And Returnal's PC requirements are: i5 6400, GTX1060, SSD optional (recommended.) It runs on a Steam Deck. Very much a game built to PS4 standards.
Now, that doesn't mean that Avowed couldn't run on an X1 (or at least 1X, base X1 was worse than PS4 so it's a bad comparison.) But people comparing games never developed against X1 standards vs games built around PS4 with enhanced graphics running in 60fps mode aren't comparing apples to apples.
Of course Starfield shows a lack of effort with "no 60fps mode on console" followed by adding it, so there's more than one problem. But I still think for a fair comparison we need to wait for the REAL developed-for-PS5 games to someday (maybe?) arrive before comparing. If GoT2 is 60fps with PS5 gfx standards, there's something to it. If it's 30fps only, then it's an industry/hardware generation problem not an MS problem.
@Titntin Yep, not just OLED. My fast refresh IPS is nearly unplayable at 30 unless it's a game with no camera panning. Interestingly at 40 it's fine - played hogwarts that way, but at 30 it's unplayable.
@Scirius Let's just take a moment to remember Sony hasn't actually released any PS5 games other than a few games artificially locked to PS5. They're all PS4 games with a graphical enhancement pack for PS5.
@Simplejohn LOL yeah, Wukong's "60" is actually "30" with framegen, which AMD states shouldn't be done. Though TBF, Wukong is an Nvidia sponsored game, so one would expect it would perform trash on anything AMD which includes XB/PS. Probably would run better on an Nvidia powered Switch LOL. (Similarly Starfield runs garbage on Nvidia. It's AMD sponsored.)
@LMN118 Even most PHONE games are 60+fps...
@Tecinthehead Series S isn't the problem. The games are built for PC, and it needs to target a large variety of PCs including those worse than the Series S. Sony will be doing this too, as they target PC too now (not at launch, but the games are best built for it at the start) All publishers will. Also remember Cloud is MS' future goal and right now that's running Series S hardware. Finally competent hardware strategy would be to differentiate Series S from Series X by showcasing Series X running 60fps where Series S only runs 30. It's not Series S fault.
Meanwhile PC players will complain they can't get it over 120fps with Ultra RT.
@Ralizah Yeah, but Nintendo's using Nvidia hardware.......
Seriously though it does amaze me that Nintendo's running full physics simulations on a potato, and the last PC developer that ran full physics was probably Valve in HL2 that ran on a Pentium III. Somehow in the timespan of 20 years PC devs went from full physics models on a P3, to being unable to do so at all with 16GB DDR4, 12 cores, and 100MB cache. WTF happened to PC devs?
(Ok, to be fair, this is Obsidian and their games were always sloths in performance, but still...)
@OldGamer999 TBH I blame Sony for that. Xbox just did the X1X, that was their "upgrade" console, they were set for YEARS with that. It was Sony that prematurely went into "transition" and stopped releasing PS4 games, to "transition" for like 2 years into PS5, and then only after PS5 announced did they suddenly open up the floodgates to all the PS4 games they'd held back "surprise, we didn't transition at all!" MS had to cobble together the Series to keep up, but I don't think MS was in a generational switch position at all. And then we found out, neither was Sony, they just painted the PS4Pro2 white for market reasons.
EVERYTHING about this generation is what pushed me back to PC. I hate GPU prices, I hate Jensen, I hate them locking software features behind $1k hardware, but as much as I hate it, this generation both MS and Sony played inside industry baseball, destroyed an entire generation of gaming, and left the consumer with the invoice. It'll take a decade at least for that sour taste to wash away.
Before piling on the Xbox hate wagon, we need to wait and see what Sony's single player PS5 only games will run like, should they ever actually release any. If they get 60, then Xbox dropped the ball, but I suspect the industry is doing as the industry always does, 30fps if you don't buy a Pro console. It's not just Ex-Box. It's this entire generation releasing too soon and sucking because of it.
@OldGamer999 Remember that Horizon and SM were both built for PS4 and "upgraded" to PS5. Yeah, HFW:BS (lol) is "PS5 only",but how do you end up with a PS5-only DLC for a game built for PS4 as the lead platform? Artificial restriction for money that's how. I don't think Avowed compares to that. We saw the RTX comparison yesterday, something tells me the game is high load. SHould it be? IDK. But it looks like it is.
Also curious if it's CPU or GPU bound. Seems like most open world RPGs are CPU bound on both platforms. Because the CPUs in these consoles are still a POS like last gen, just less so. I think they're focused on small form factors and small power supplies, so the TDP budget goes to the GPU part of the APU and the CPU gets what's left over which doesn't gel with the modern open world designs.
Still, sucky hardware, sucky dev decisions, sucky generation. The beat goes on.
@Rainz I agree with what you said - at least externally. But, it's also a misunderstanding in the public thinking. Nintendo doesn't "cut" jobs often because they don't actually employ most of the people that work on their games. Their internal teams are more or less core management teams, the rest of the staff is all outsourced on contract work. So they create and cancel contracts, which in turn ends up in job cuts from the contractors but Nintendo gets praised for clean hands because the employees weren't technically theirs.
The switch definitely did open up a lot of avenues in the industry and started the protable wave, though it's also a house built on marketing mostly. At the end of the day Switch is a GBA2 with an HDMI port. But they sold the concept expertly and it influenced the industry in a great direction.
Iwata was visionary (and the Switch was Iwata's baby), I want Nintendo to thrive, but there's so much internet soft focus filtering over who the company is and how they operate that it's just amazing to me. Switch 2 will be interesting. First non-Iwata console since the N64. Do they chase the industry or stay unique?
@Fiendish-Beaver Yeah, Phil used to be like an excitable child with gaming, he was just always excited about everything. These days he looks visibly uncomfortable. He used to be very direct in his statements and how he's a wishy-washy word salad working in a circle around what he's saying like a politician.
I do think Nadella is as always ahead of himself. I think they think not only are consoles not for them, but I think they think consoles are over in general. Kind of like when they thought physical media was over in 2013. But as you said, GP itself is their flagship, but it's tied to the console for the forseeable. They're running their own competition against themselves.
I definitely agree, Spencer knows the console business well. He's got to be aware of the effect on consoles at this point. I think Nadella just sees ABK's old revenue and wants to align their MS Gaming revenue to match it. To Nadella that means just replace Xbox with ABK and suddenly the old revenue line looks like the new revenue line. The guy doesn't understand platforms even though he runs a platform company. That's why Google, and Facebook, and Playstation, and OpenAI and everyone runs circles around them. But somehow they have more money because they invest it like a bank.
It's really awkward watching the change in Phil TBH. I think my faith in XB was tied to my trust in Phil's vision. As his vision became stifled so did my faith in XB.
@Fiendish-Beaver Yeah, I said often, back during the good days in the X1X era leading into Series launch that "I want Xbox to fail" because they're best as an underdog fighting for customers, and that "The day Phil retires is the day everything good about Xbox ends and it goes back to the bad old days."
I was a relentless optimist, as I always am , because Xbox stopped being the underdog even while failing, and Phil lost all power which was taken over by the nasty suits and went back to the bad old days even while Phil's still there.
@Fiendish-Beaver "he'll be replaced with a company Yes Man..." Booty. If not one of the Activision flunkies, it'll be Booty. That guy has seemed like the worst kind of snake in the grass from day one. Very much a corporate climber.
@WhiteRabbit I love Astrobot, but Astro, Sackboy, even Spyro and Daxter and Sly. Somehow none of this ever created that Disney-like eternal cult fandom and kid appeal Nintendo brands do. I don't think even Nintendo could create any of that today. True lightning in a bottle. It was the genius of Miyamoto that built it, and I think he's still the only one there with that level of once a century innate creativity, preceded only by Walt Disney himself. Plus the pure luck of associating with Masuda when they did. I wonder, without Pokemon, would Nintendo be Nintendo even with Mario?
Even without making consoles OR video games, Nintendo would still be an empire built on their IP/characters/brands. Movies, clothing, tourist destinations. They'd have a business on their identity. Even PS just never built anything like that. No company has. Other than Disney. Even WB not so much.
@OldGamer999 Would it matter? If they say no PS5 now, they'll just announce PS5 in January. If they say PS5 now, who knows they might rescind it in May. You'll know the strategy as soon as they do!
@GADG3Tx87 Games for Windows Live was post-Xbox not before it. That was part of Vista. Xbox launched (and therefore was developed before) 2001 in the Win98/2k/XP era. Xbox was a response to the rapid rise of Playstation and 3D console graphics starting to steal developer dependence from Windows/Direct3D monopoly towards OpenGL which then steered consumer dependence, while gaming was a huge source of new Windows sales.
TL;DR the timeline is wrong, but the idea is right, Xbox always existed only to secure computer games depending on Windows/DX. It got weird in the 360 era where it became a true "console" in its own right. Maybe by accident.
@OldGamer999 If Xbox were a pirate ship it would sink itself then decide to float then decide to run aground, then teleport to deep sea, then become a pontoon plane with one propeller but proclaim it has the most powerful engine.
At this point, running adrift is guaranteed to sink the ship. They need to pick a direction, run the engines at full speed. Either they hit an iceberg or they find Atlantis. Just get to the crow's nest, plot the best course, and make all haste to it. It's got to be better than filling the hull with water one red Solo cup at a time.
@WhiteRabbit That's true, though that's also what got them in trouble in the 80's (all games on Nintendo must be exclusive! Want FIFA on Nintendo? EXCLUSIVE ONLY!) LOL. Today, it's easy to focus only on your own platform when you have household name child demanded IP that sells itself and people will spend vaults to get. That's what both XB and Sony are missing. They keep buying more military games with guns. They forgot how Nintendo did it. Go for the kids, you get the parents. Astrobot as an exception, I daresay even TLoU, arguably Sony's biggest property now, or GoW would really sell hardware by itself. Certainly not Halo and Forza. Pikachu and Mario? Yep. They have an easier go of selling hardware via software.
@Pabpictu "they are the most valuable company in the world, they did not get there by luck"
No, they got there by being absurdly wealthy by being a monopoly in the 1990s and then having smart banker types invest that money into acquisitions and investments to generate massive amounts of passive income, and were recently boosted to the top by positioning themselves at the center of the AI tulip mania investor windfall (but using someone else's licensed product.) Not by luck. But also not by leading in tech. At least since 1999.
@WhiteRabbit I do get tired of people white knighting Nintendo. Yes, they're the most traditional still. Yes they're not always teetering on bankruptcy. But they have a captive audience that they milk as hard as possible on an industrial scale like Disney. We're talking about a company that was slapped down for antitrust behavior, while not even being a public corporation at the time. An act so rare MS is one of the only companies in the past 25 years to have had it happen as well.
Much as I hate to see an Xbox without Phil, I kinda wish he'd retire rather than drag his own image through the mud until he descends from the second Iwata down to "standard industry snake."
He now talks in circles, speaks made up nonsense, and constantly contradicts himself. It's sad to watch him go from what he was years ago to this hollow corporate puppet.
No matter what consumer face he almost halfway puts on, it recently comes down to "we're running a business", "change is coming", "the health of Xbox" (is it healthy?), "the health of the platform" (srsly?), and finally from this interview "pressure from within to give back to the company." Handfuls of statements about what they won't do (that then they do within months), and no firm statements on anything at all that they will do. If Phil wants to say they intend to not sell traditional consoles, just say it and tell us what he WILL be selling.
@RadioHedgeFund I absolutely think Xbox becomes a PC, internally. However I don't think it will have Steam. And when Phil talked other storefronts he notably mentioned everything except steam. If they intended Steam that's the first thing they'd have said. There's little incentive for Valve to lose a cut for Microsoft as their own market leader by a landslide, and there's no reason for Microsoft to just sell PCs they don't make any sales revenue on unless they price it like a PC, in which case....just buy a PC? An $1099.99 Surface Gaming. Fine, one and done sale.
I imagine they don't REALLY want to support Epic either but because no publishers want to play ball with Windows store they kind of have no choice but to use another store on a PC-Xbox.
@OldGamer999 That's the crux of the problem, "we don't know what direction" they're running. It may be good, it may be bad, but we don't know. And I honestly think they don't know. They're just going to try things and stick their fingers up and see what way the winds blow and keep changing the destination. And that's the entire problem. You'll know the destination when they know it and they'll change the goals every 6-10 months for years to come depending on results of every experiment. Maybe that's a good thing. Keep the industry on its toes. Lousy to be a customer of though.
But this is all Nadella. He's done this to every single MS division. Chase the quarterly, sacrifice the entire platform behind it. How many once #1 brands were destroyed by execs like that? They're a dime a dozen. Shareholder's best friend. As long as you're a short term shareholder. Guaranteed the Series Y's USP will be Copilot. I ----ing guarantee you.
@cburg Satya Nadella does not play "long games." His whole MO is built around maximizing short term gains at the cost of everything else, even main pillars and myopically chasing every trend and fad that shows up in the rear view mirror. It's why the day traders love him, even as he collapses they company's main revenue generators. Phil tries to frame it as a long game which is disingenuous if you recognize the Nadella playbook. Nadella would make Windows into a launcher for Mac if he thought it would give him +5% on the quarter.
@OldGamer999 Yeah, before I decided for sure on the PC jump, I'd considered going all PS as well. But the more I thought about it and thought about how Sony would behave without a real competition (remember raising the PS5 price, an unprecedented move in console history, everywhere except the one country Xbox is viable) I don't actually feel any more secure with money invested into PS than into Xbox. Xbox MAY go belly up and get out of making consoles. Or Xbox MAY transition into Windows based devices of various shapes. Or Xbox MAY do what you said and make everything cloud based. OTOH an unchecked Sony WILL mug you at gunpoint the moment they know all your base is belong to them.
So I'll give over 50 years of income to to the OTHER green team. Who needs food and clothing anyway? Jensen's leather jackets are made of gamer people. At least my Steam library will work on the potato PC I'll be able to afford 20 years from now lol
I can't recommend anyone invest in Xbox with where they are and how things look, but I couldn't recommend anyone invest in Sony either. Flip a coin? Ask Phil? Flip Phil?
Comments 6,665
Re: Obsidian Says Avowed Is Running 'Really, Really Well' On Xbox Series X, Despite 30FPS Target
@Jenkinss "Square knows what forum warriors want"
I think you might be confusing Square with another publisher there...
Re: Obsidian Says Avowed Is Running 'Really, Really Well' On Xbox Series X, Despite 30FPS Target
@GamingFan4Lyf Yeah, even with DLSS and frame gen on! It's definitely the most brutally demanding benchmark for GPUs. Cyberpunk and VR are the only two places where "4090 isn't enough" is true lol.
Re: Obsidian Says Avowed Is Running 'Really, Really Well' On Xbox Series X, Despite 30FPS Target
@jedinite But it seems so much like an Xbox game. Unwanted, filled with controversy, and ultimately no sales. Made by former Xbox devs...
Tough it would have done better on game pass 😂. Maybe more than 60 people would be playing on PC lol
Re: Obsidian Says Avowed Is Running 'Really, Really Well' On Xbox Series X, Despite 30FPS Target
@Jenkinss you can't hold not being aware of Concord against anyone. Everyone already forgot about it in June. It's the worst Xbox game ever
Re: Obsidian Says Avowed Is Running 'Really, Really Well' On Xbox Series X, Despite 30FPS Target
@DennisReynolds. YES! Crackdown 4 is the solution!
@GamingFan4Lyf Of course it depends on the game, Hogwarts gets 100+ at 4k on 4090s with ultra and rt. But this game feels more cyberpunk. 4090s can't hold 60fps with ultra and full rt at 4k.
Re: Obsidian Says Avowed Is Running 'Really, Really Well' On Xbox Series X, Despite 30FPS Target
@Vaako007 What Xbox really needed was an internal standards committee within Xbox that has set guidelines for internal games as to what performance targets are for their hardware so that their studios can design around that template. They don't need to micromanage, they just need to set the technical requirements for their hardware platforms for the teams to meet. It should not be hard. And MS own games shouldn't be a hodgepodge of downscaled PC ports and "we'll look at it later" for the #1 sold hardware SKU support.
I LOOOVE Obsidian, but how are they operating where they have an RTX hyped PC build, an console port at 30fps that they are "surprised" runs better than PC, and another console SKU they basically haven't looked at yet just before they were set to release? That's a lack of internal rules for hardware benchmarks.
@OldGamer999 Kinda funny that in 2024 the high water mark for video games is a platformer. And here we thought platformers have been dead for 20 years!
Re: Obsidian Says Avowed Is Running 'Really, Really Well' On Xbox Series X, Despite 30FPS Target
@InterceptorAlpha Nah, I doubt it's using RT on console, but they're sure happy pimping the RT on PC. Which I bet performs like hot garbage even on a 4090 when cranked.
LOL I bought D2:LoD purely for the 800x600 upgrade. Also Blizzard gonna blizzard, even back then few companies would make you buy an expansion pack just to be able to change the resolution, let alone that change being a whopping 800x600 max. Even Rockstar would free patch that, and that's saying something!
Ever play Neverwinter 2? The game was everything Bioware's hideous NwN was not, they fixed the game and made a great D&D game finally. But the thing was a slideshow even on an upper-midrage card at the time (forget what I had), Rediculous performance crashes. Same with KotR2. Obsidian is a wonderful game designer but they're one of the worst technical teams in the biz. It's why the partnership with Bioware was great in the day. Bioware had great tech teams and horrible game designs and writing.
Re: Obsidian Says Avowed Is Running 'Really, Really Well' On Xbox Series X, Despite 30FPS Target
@InterceptorAlpha "I'll be playing it at 100+FPS on PC,"
Not with RT enabled, you won't. If their own statements about performance here are anything to go by I'm betting 60-ish fps with RT on on a 4090, Cyberpunk style, is the best you'll get.
OTOH when you've been playing Obsidian games since they were founded, we should expect it by now. Amazing games. Terrible technology. That's how they've rolled since day 1. No 800x600 for you, get back in the 640x480 box. 1024x768 is for SLI/Crossfire players.
@OldGamer999 Much as I love Astrobot and Asobi nee Japan Studio, pulling off technical greatness on a 3D platformer on a modern console shouldn't be a test of technical prowess...
Re: 1997 PS1 Classic 'Croc' Is Getting A Remaster For Xbox This Year
@UBERSICKO "I did have a 32X"
Oh! So you were the other one! It's a small world.
Re: Roundup: The Reviews Are In For Razer's 'Wolverine V3 Pro' Wireless Xbox Controller
@Decimateh Hall effect uses a magnet to detect position. Traditional sticks use a carbon film layered potentiometer that rubs together to detect position. Hall effect can't develop drift the same ways traditional sticks can because theres no contact, it's just a magnetic field, however, the centering spring can always go bad or warp. But that's a much less common problem than the normal potentiometer film wear.
@Markatron84 If you're looking for PC and Switch only (not XB/PS without adapters) also check out Flydigi. Kind of a "no name" here, but they're the #1 brand in China, they have pretty nice stuff. Vaders and Apex's have Hall effect.
Re: Obsidian Says Avowed Is Running 'Really, Really Well' On Xbox Series X, Despite 30FPS Target
@andrewsqual I disagree with that reasoning. The game looking and running way better on the powerful hardware is exactly the point of marketing the powerful hardware. It's a great strategy to upsell the S buyers into an X. Cheap, you get this, expensive you get that. People would expect that. And is the same message PS5 Pro will use.
Making Series X look bad so that it sells more series S's instead of X's is a bad strategy.
Oh wait you're probably right then. lol
But, really that implies too much strategy. I don't think they're planning that far ahead and managing console optics that finely. I think their devs just carp out a PC build and dial it till it runs on consoles and that's the end of "optimization." Mostly that means 30fps mid settings. And accounts for the surprise it's running well.
@OldGamer999 To be fair, it's not an issue of Series S being a problematic thing. It's the fact that even this FIRST party dev didn't even consider it until after they built their game around other hardware and decided to "figure it out later".
The fact that they cite it's running better on XSX than PC, while they're already a formerly PC centric studio, it doesn't look visually demanding, and they didn't even consider their own company's top selling hardware model until after building it says everything that's wrong with game devs. It's not the hardware. It's the devs. Or the managers more like. In the 90's devs built a game to the hardware. In the 2020's devs build a game concept they like, then try to wait for hardware that can run it to exist.
This should be 30fps on series S, 60fps on Series X, lolfps/45-60fps RT with full path tracing. Anything else is just lack of trying.
@SodaPop6548 "Does anyone else notice how this sort of drama doesn't happen on other platforms" " first part developers for those platforms get what their customers want."
Well...there's always Naughty Dog....
Re: Obsidian Says Avowed Is Running 'Really, Really Well' On Xbox Series X, Despite 30FPS Target
Running really well on XSX......at 30fps?
Running better on XSX at 30fps than on PC.....?!???
Running better on XSX than on PC right after showing an RTX demonstration video where the game looks completely different on PC.....
First party studio working on Xbox and PC at the same time....."still figuring out XSS."
?????
triplefaceppalm
Re: Digital Foundry Compares 30FPS, 40FPS & 60FPS Modes In Star Wars Outlaws For Xbox
@themightyant No you didn't misread. I have a 60hz IPS panel, LG, not some weird Chinese unknown. Granted it's technically a monitor instead of TV but that shouldn't matter in this context. I just double checked the LG specs now to make SURE I didn't have something way more expensive than I thought with 120Hz But nope, listed as 60hz.
However 30fps has horribly noticeably uneven frame timing that appears jerky in motion. (I.E. "30fps is almost unplayable!" as I always say.) 40-45 runs perfectly fine. And 60 is ideal.
If I had to GUESS, the only explanation must be the actual panel is a 120Hz panel and something else on the display is limited, or just business reasons for selling the same panel for more money in a 120hz version means they restricted it to 60hz max, even though it's really a native 120Hz panel. Or something? 40 is playable, 30 is a juddering mess.
Given the amount of people with "30fps is unplayable" comments these days, and the dominance of LG displays in general, I would not doubt at all this is not uncommon for them. Many "60hz" panels may really be 120hz panels artificially limited to 60 (cheaper to produce one panel and limit it for cheaper skus?), and thus 30fps really is nearly unplayable on many displays.
I've always thought the panel market has a lot to do with the unending fps arguments.
@Mustoe "Now it's just a production line"
Yeah, ain't that the truth....that's so much of the problem, absolutely.
EDIT: It's an IPS panel, I typed TN originally for some reason.
Re: Final Fantasy Dev Insists The Future Is Bright For Square Enix Games On Xbox
@Ralizah Very true but before they mastered self sabotage squares missing presence, especially back when square actually mattered a lot more, did a lot to hold back Xbox credibility and adoption.
Re: Digital Foundry Compares 30FPS, 40FPS & 60FPS Modes In Star Wars Outlaws For Xbox
@OldGamer999 If you need me, I'll be in the leather aisle with Jensen. 😂
Re: 1997 PS1 Classic 'Croc' Is Getting A Remaster For Xbox This Year
@UBERSICKO @Markatron84 I had a 32X and a Virtual Boy. You may bask in my mythical aura for 2 minutes each.
Re: Digital Foundry Compares 30FPS, 40FPS & 60FPS Modes In Star Wars Outlaws For Xbox
@OldGamer999 That's ok, Phil's wandering with you. You might bump into each other.
Yeah, Asobi hasn't let anyone down yet, so I'm expecting quality from any remnant of Japan Studio. Shame Sony disbanded every other part of their best (but not most profitable) team...
Re: Digital Foundry Compares 30FPS, 40FPS & 60FPS Modes In Star Wars Outlaws For Xbox
@OldGamer999 One problem is of course that the hardware simply sucks. They designed it at a point that hardware wasn't really different from the old pro models. It's not a new generation. But the dev issues apply to PC too.
It's also too many cooks spoiling the broth. Look at the credits on these games. They run for an hour. Top budget Hollywood films credits last 10 minutes. How many different teams from different companies on different continents are working on the pieces of these games? How COULD it gel?
Trying to do too many advanced visual things on hardware that doesn't have room to spare with teams that don't work well together and often aren't even working for the same company.
This gen is so bad it pushed me back to PC. It had to be REALLY bad to do that. I swore it off for life. THAT is how bad it is...
Re: Digital Foundry Compares 30FPS, 40FPS & 60FPS Modes In Star Wars Outlaws For Xbox
@OldGamer999 I'm not sure what's going on with game development this gen. "Something" happened at the development level. Maybe Nvidia is just lead platform for almost everything with console as an afterthought? It's every publisher, every engine, EVERYTHING has the same problems. Maybe they just got rid of all the experienced talent and staffed up on interns for "good enough" for cheap? Throwing too many shaders and lighting and particle tricks at it beyond what hardware can really handle? Just assuming RTX is lead platform? IDK.
A lot of it has to be shaders/materials/lighting, particle effects going on. Why are resolutions AND performance tanking everywhere? It's not RT, most of these games don't even use RT by default. RT is a whole other mess.
Then we have all the CPU bound games, but why are they CPU bound suddenly when they don't seem to do much more than old gen games? Starfield was one of the only ones with an excuse with the amount of object tracking going on, but then that DID get a 60fps patch. But it's the res that takes a hit.
IDK, something changed in the dev of everything in the past few years, even if the end result doesn't justify the losses. The games all seem like they're being made for future theoretical hardware, or just built around 4080s and just tuned down till it runs on anything else.
Re: 1997 PS1 Classic 'Croc' Is Getting A Remaster For Xbox This Year
Clearly PlayStation is deciding on what games to bring to Xbox on a case by case basis.
(Not gonna' lie, this is great, though!)
Re: Final Fantasy Dev Insists The Future Is Bright For Square Enix Games On Xbox
@Jenkinss "Short memories in the Xbox community."
We drink to forget.
Re: Final Fantasy Dev Insists The Future Is Bright For Square Enix Games On Xbox
@InterceptorAlpha "Only a couple mediocre launch window games"
I still remember the pony meltdown when FFXIII was announced to be on 360, lol.
XV gets a bad sales rep. It sold 10 million and broke even in 2 weeks. It sold "only" 1.4 million on Xbox, but it also sold "only" 5 mill on PS, making Xbox just shy of 20% of console sales which isn't horrible. PC makes up the other 4+ million. Still crushed that they killed the rest of the story DLC for a 10mil selling game.
Re: Digital Foundry Compares 30FPS, 40FPS & 60FPS Modes In Star Wars Outlaws For Xbox
@Fiendish-Beaver @Pabpictu There's "rules" for how it's supposed to work, but meanwhile have a 4k60 fast IPS LG display on which 40 looks wonderfully solid and 30 is a juddering migraine inducing mess. The rules say 40 shouldn't work and 30 should be fine. The panel says 40 is fine, and 30 will make you go blind. I don't have VRR (well not true it's a Freesync display which PC and XB support, but I have my Xb going through HDMI switches that claim to support it, but end up showing a blank screen if I try so I'm not using it.)
Re: Digital Foundry Compares 30FPS, 40FPS & 60FPS Modes In Star Wars Outlaws For Xbox
If it works as well as Hogwarts did, I found the 40fps mode ideal even on a 60fps display where 30fps always has HORRENDOUS judder, and 60 is smooth. 40 felt like what some other people must see for 30. People, and companies really really underestimate just how different modern displays are from each other and how it affects what you see and how some fps are unusable on certain displays. Some people have a display where 30 looks fine. Some like me have a display where 30 looks like a broken rotoscope with a bent axle.
@JustinSane The problem with modern gaming is, in the old days, in PC gaming, if your game ran janky and choppy or low res on your GPU the companies basically just told you "too bad, you should have bought a top of the line GPU instead." Today, when your console game runs janky and choppy or low res on your console, the companies basically just tell you"too bad, you should have bought a top of the line GPU instead."
Re: Final Fantasy Dev Insists The Future Is Bright For Square Enix Games On Xbox
So bizarre how Square Enix went from ignoring Xbox and partnering with Sony alone for all this content during all the time where Xbox was showing upward momentum, to the detriment of that momentum often, to now making a huge push into trying to build a base on Xbox, while Xbox momentum is in nosedive freefall.
And they're putting their money where their mouth is, too. The paid sponsor ad on my dashboard last night was for FFXIV free trial (if I saw it while launching XIV, does it count as an ad?) They're actually paying to advertise FF on Xbox. Square Enix. Paying. On Xbox...
If they'd done this years ago Xbox might be in another place today.
Of course it could be all talk, but their mention of building support for the franchise on Xbox seems like they legit know where to start and the hole they're starting in which is a good omen that they're not going to do a Square Enix, dump a few games, watch low sales, and then bail again.
@Grumblevolcano Still floors me that Forspoken had such a long exclusivity lock. Between Forspoken, Concord, and Bungie, I'm starting to think the old running joke about Jimbo and the scotch was just true commentating.
Re: Roundup: Here's What The Critics Think About Visions Of Mana From Square Enix
That's weirdly polarizing, and reminds me when Kotaku had the critic that openly hated Xenoblade while most praised it, also review XC2. Spoiler: He hated it just as much.
Re: Here's Over An Hour Of Fresh Gameplay From Xbox RPG Avowed
"Of course, being an Xbox first-party release, Avowed is playable day one on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, although we can't guarantee its arrival date on Xbox Game Pass Standard; a new lower-priced subscription tier which is expected to be out in-full by the time Avowed launches."
...The fact that this paragraph must exist. Oof.
If you can't answer in 10 words or less "what is Game Pass" the plan and marketing is total fail.
Re: Rumour: Black Myth: Wukong 'Memory Leak' Has Caused Xbox Series X|S Delay
@OldGamer999 To be fair this is the studios first big game. I can understand it being shoddy from noobs more than the big established studios. Plus Nvidia basically paid for it to be broken on AMD, so there's that.
And yeah, PS5 60fps isn't so much "broken" as much as "Doesn't exist, It's just tarted up 30fps anyway." They just used frame generation to double the fps and called it a day even though the tech is NOT meant to be used on sub-60fps content. It's meant to get 120 from 60, not 60 from 30.
Re: Rumour: Black Myth: Wukong 'Memory Leak' Has Caused Xbox Series X|S Delay
Friendly reminder that this is an Nvidia sponsored game, being used as a marketing showcase for Nvidia. Console shmonsole, good luck getting the thing to run well on anything AMD.
@GamingFan4Lyf He's supposed to be cocky, he's basically Chinese Icarus. Same general parable to teach a life lesson from a different culture.
Re: Obsidian Confirms That Avowed Runs At 30FPS On Xbox Series X|S
@Titntin IDK if these upcoming ms games are really built to utilize the current console or not. My point is the games Sony as so far released are games built around last gen regardless if they chose to lock it to PS5 or not. We know both consoles do those types of games at 60 just fine. It's the newer ones that are 60 or bad 30.
Re: Talking Point: Does Microsoft Have A '30FPS' Problem With Its Xbox Series X|S Output?
@Ralizah Confirmed!
yeah, I really, REALLY don't get what happened to the typical PC dev. From HL2's breakthrough physics to....modern..... how did we go backwards from 1999 onward?
Re: Talking Point: Does Microsoft Have A '30FPS' Problem With Its Xbox Series X|S Output?
@cburg Those poor people in Ukraine had to go through trying to make Stalker 2 try to run 60fps on Series X. At some point you just give up.
Re: Obsidian Confirms That Avowed Runs At 30FPS On Xbox Series X|S
@Titntin I said Sony hasn't released a PS5 game only PS4 games with PS5 upgrades - Elden Ring isn't a Sony game. And Returnal's PC requirements are: i5 6400, GTX1060, SSD optional (recommended.) It runs on a Steam Deck. Very much a game built to PS4 standards.
Now, that doesn't mean that Avowed couldn't run on an X1 (or at least 1X, base X1 was worse than PS4 so it's a bad comparison.) But people comparing games never developed against X1 standards vs games built around PS4 with enhanced graphics running in 60fps mode aren't comparing apples to apples.
Of course Starfield shows a lack of effort with "no 60fps mode on console" followed by adding it, so there's more than one problem. But I still think for a fair comparison we need to wait for the REAL developed-for-PS5 games to someday (maybe?) arrive before comparing. If GoT2 is 60fps with PS5 gfx standards, there's something to it. If it's 30fps only, then it's an industry/hardware generation problem not an MS problem.
Re: Obsidian Confirms That Avowed Runs At 30FPS On Xbox Series X|S
@Titntin Yep, not just OLED. My fast refresh IPS is nearly unplayable at 30 unless it's a game with no camera panning. Interestingly at 40 it's fine - played hogwarts that way, but at 30 it's unplayable.
@Scirius Let's just take a moment to remember Sony hasn't actually released any PS5 games other than a few games artificially locked to PS5. They're all PS4 games with a graphical enhancement pack for PS5.
Re: Talking Point: Does Microsoft Have A '30FPS' Problem With Its Xbox Series X|S Output?
@Simplejohn LOL yeah, Wukong's "60" is actually "30" with framegen, which AMD states shouldn't be done. Though TBF, Wukong is an Nvidia sponsored game, so one would expect it would perform trash on anything AMD which includes XB/PS. Probably would run better on an Nvidia powered Switch LOL. (Similarly Starfield runs garbage on Nvidia. It's AMD sponsored.)
@LMN118 Even most PHONE games are 60+fps...
@Tecinthehead Series S isn't the problem. The games are built for PC, and it needs to target a large variety of PCs including those worse than the Series S. Sony will be doing this too, as they target PC too now (not at launch, but the games are best built for it at the start) All publishers will. Also remember Cloud is MS' future goal and right now that's running Series S hardware. Finally competent hardware strategy would be to differentiate Series S from Series X by showcasing Series X running 60fps where Series S only runs 30. It's not Series S fault.
Meanwhile PC players will complain they can't get it over 120fps with Ultra RT.
@Ralizah Yeah, but Nintendo's using Nvidia hardware.......
Seriously though it does amaze me that Nintendo's running full physics simulations on a potato, and the last PC developer that ran full physics was probably Valve in HL2 that ran on a Pentium III. Somehow in the timespan of 20 years PC devs went from full physics models on a P3, to being unable to do so at all with 16GB DDR4, 12 cores, and 100MB cache. WTF happened to PC devs?
(Ok, to be fair, this is Obsidian and their games were always sloths in performance, but still...)
@OldGamer999 TBH I blame Sony for that. Xbox just did the X1X, that was their "upgrade" console, they were set for YEARS with that. It was Sony that prematurely went into "transition" and stopped releasing PS4 games, to "transition" for like 2 years into PS5, and then only after PS5 announced did they suddenly open up the floodgates to all the PS4 games they'd held back "surprise, we didn't transition at all!" MS had to cobble together the Series to keep up, but I don't think MS was in a generational switch position at all. And then we found out, neither was Sony, they just painted the PS4Pro2 white for market reasons.
EVERYTHING about this generation is what pushed me back to PC. I hate GPU prices, I hate Jensen, I hate them locking software features behind $1k hardware, but as much as I hate it, this generation both MS and Sony played inside industry baseball, destroyed an entire generation of gaming, and left the consumer with the invoice. It'll take a decade at least for that sour taste to wash away.
TL;DR: I blame Jim Ryan.
Re: Talking Point: Does Microsoft Have A '30FPS' Problem With Its Xbox Series X|S Output?
Before piling on the Xbox hate wagon, we need to wait and see what Sony's single player PS5 only games will run like, should they ever actually release any. If they get 60, then Xbox dropped the ball, but I suspect the industry is doing as the industry always does, 30fps if you don't buy a Pro console. It's not just Ex-Box. It's this entire generation releasing too soon and sucking because of it.
@OldGamer999 Remember that Horizon and SM were both built for PS4 and "upgraded" to PS5. Yeah, HFW:BS (lol) is "PS5 only",but how do you end up with a PS5-only DLC for a game built for PS4 as the lead platform? Artificial restriction for money that's how. I don't think Avowed compares to that. We saw the RTX comparison yesterday, something tells me the game is high load. SHould it be? IDK. But it looks like it is.
Also curious if it's CPU or GPU bound. Seems like most open world RPGs are CPU bound on both platforms. Because the CPUs in these consoles are still a POS like last gen, just less so. I think they're focused on small form factors and small power supplies, so the TDP budget goes to the GPU part of the APU and the CPU gets what's left over which doesn't gel with the modern open world designs.
Still, sucky hardware, sucky dev decisions, sucky generation. The beat goes on.
Re: Phil Spencer On Game Exclusivity: 'We Have To Anticipate There's Going To Be More Change'
@Rainz I agree with what you said - at least externally. But, it's also a misunderstanding in the public thinking. Nintendo doesn't "cut" jobs often because they don't actually employ most of the people that work on their games. Their internal teams are more or less core management teams, the rest of the staff is all outsourced on contract work. So they create and cancel contracts, which in turn ends up in job cuts from the contractors but Nintendo gets praised for clean hands because the employees weren't technically theirs.
The switch definitely did open up a lot of avenues in the industry and started the protable wave, though it's also a house built on marketing mostly. At the end of the day Switch is a GBA2 with an HDMI port. But they sold the concept expertly and it influenced the industry in a great direction.
Iwata was visionary (and the Switch was Iwata's baby), I want Nintendo to thrive, but there's so much internet soft focus filtering over who the company is and how they operate that it's just amazing to me. Switch 2 will be interesting. First non-Iwata console since the N64. Do they chase the industry or stay unique?
Re: Indiana Jones And The Great Circle Preview - MachineGames' Latest Xbox Adventure Is Looking Whip-Smart
@Fiendish-Beaver Yeah, Phil used to be like an excitable child with gaming, he was just always excited about everything. These days he looks visibly uncomfortable. He used to be very direct in his statements and how he's a wishy-washy word salad working in a circle around what he's saying like a politician.
I do think Nadella is as always ahead of himself. I think they think not only are consoles not for them, but I think they think consoles are over in general. Kind of like when they thought physical media was over in 2013. But as you said, GP itself is their flagship, but it's tied to the console for the forseeable. They're running their own competition against themselves.
I definitely agree, Spencer knows the console business well. He's got to be aware of the effect on consoles at this point. I think Nadella just sees ABK's old revenue and wants to align their MS Gaming revenue to match it. To Nadella that means just replace Xbox with ABK and suddenly the old revenue line looks like the new revenue line. The guy doesn't understand platforms even though he runs a platform company. That's why Google, and Facebook, and Playstation, and OpenAI and everyone runs circles around them. But somehow they have more money because they invest it like a bank.
It's really awkward watching the change in Phil TBH. I think my faith in XB was tied to my trust in Phil's vision. As his vision became stifled so did my faith in XB.
Re: Phil Spencer On Game Exclusivity: 'We Have To Anticipate There's Going To Be More Change'
@Sol4ris Concord feels like the kind of game Xbox would have made. And, technically is made by a bunch of former Xbox (Bungie) devs.....
Re: Indiana Jones And The Great Circle Preview - MachineGames' Latest Xbox Adventure Is Looking Whip-Smart
@Fiendish-Beaver Yeah, I said often, back during the good days in the X1X era leading into Series launch that "I want Xbox to fail" because they're best as an underdog fighting for customers, and that "The day Phil retires is the day everything good about Xbox ends and it goes back to the bad old days."
I was a relentless optimist, as I always am , because Xbox stopped being the underdog even while failing, and Phil lost all power which was taken over by the nasty suits and went back to the bad old days even while Phil's still there.
Re: Indiana Jones And The Great Circle Preview - MachineGames' Latest Xbox Adventure Is Looking Whip-Smart
@Fiendish-Beaver "he'll be replaced with a company Yes Man..." Booty. If not one of the Activision flunkies, it'll be Booty. That guy has seemed like the worst kind of snake in the grass from day one. Very much a corporate climber.
Re: Phil Spencer On Game Exclusivity: 'We Have To Anticipate There's Going To Be More Change'
@WhiteRabbit I love Astrobot, but Astro, Sackboy, even Spyro and Daxter and Sly. Somehow none of this ever created that Disney-like eternal cult fandom and kid appeal Nintendo brands do. I don't think even Nintendo could create any of that today. True lightning in a bottle. It was the genius of Miyamoto that built it, and I think he's still the only one there with that level of once a century innate creativity, preceded only by Walt Disney himself. Plus the pure luck of associating with Masuda when they did. I wonder, without Pokemon, would Nintendo be Nintendo even with Mario?
Even without making consoles OR video games, Nintendo would still be an empire built on their IP/characters/brands. Movies, clothing, tourist destinations. They'd have a business on their identity. Even PS just never built anything like that. No company has. Other than Disney. Even WB not so much.
Re: Avowed Early Previews Are Looking Positive Ahead Of Xbox Game Pass Launch Next February
@OldGamer999 Would it matter? If they say no PS5 now, they'll just announce PS5 in January. If they say PS5 now, who knows they might rescind it in May. You'll know the strategy as soon as they do!
Re: Phil Spencer On Game Exclusivity: 'We Have To Anticipate There's Going To Be More Change'
@GADG3Tx87 Games for Windows Live was post-Xbox not before it. That was part of Vista. Xbox launched (and therefore was developed before) 2001 in the Win98/2k/XP era. Xbox was a response to the rapid rise of Playstation and 3D console graphics starting to steal developer dependence from Windows/Direct3D monopoly towards OpenGL which then steered consumer dependence, while gaming was a huge source of new Windows sales.
TL;DR the timeline is wrong, but the idea is right, Xbox always existed only to secure computer games depending on Windows/DX. It got weird in the 360 era where it became a true "console" in its own right. Maybe by accident.
Re: Phil Spencer On Game Exclusivity: 'We Have To Anticipate There's Going To Be More Change'
@Fiendish-Beaver "So, we might get Concord, but not Helldivers."
That's such an unintentional summary of modern Xbox right there.
Re: Phil Spencer On Game Exclusivity: 'We Have To Anticipate There's Going To Be More Change'
@OldGamer999 If Xbox were a pirate ship it would sink itself then decide to float then decide to run aground, then teleport to deep sea, then become a pontoon plane with one propeller but proclaim it has the most powerful engine.
At this point, running adrift is guaranteed to sink the ship. They need to pick a direction, run the engines at full speed. Either they hit an iceberg or they find Atlantis. Just get to the crow's nest, plot the best course, and make all haste to it. It's got to be better than filling the hull with water one red Solo cup at a time.
@WhiteRabbit That's true, though that's also what got them in trouble in the 80's (all games on Nintendo must be exclusive! Want FIFA on Nintendo? EXCLUSIVE ONLY!) LOL. Today, it's easy to focus only on your own platform when you have household name child demanded IP that sells itself and people will spend vaults to get. That's what both XB and Sony are missing. They keep buying more military games with guns. They forgot how Nintendo did it. Go for the kids, you get the parents. Astrobot as an exception, I daresay even TLoU, arguably Sony's biggest property now, or GoW would really sell hardware by itself. Certainly not Halo and Forza. Pikachu and Mario? Yep. They have an easier go of selling hardware via software.
Re: Phil Spencer On Game Exclusivity: 'We Have To Anticipate There's Going To Be More Change'
@Pabpictu "they are the most valuable company in the world, they did not get there by luck"
No, they got there by being absurdly wealthy by being a monopoly in the 1990s and then having smart banker types invest that money into acquisitions and investments to generate massive amounts of passive income, and were recently boosted to the top by positioning themselves at the center of the AI tulip mania investor windfall (but using someone else's licensed product.) Not by luck. But also not by leading in tech. At least since 1999.
@WhiteRabbit I do get tired of people white knighting Nintendo. Yes, they're the most traditional still. Yes they're not always teetering on bankruptcy. But they have a captive audience that they milk as hard as possible on an industrial scale like Disney. We're talking about a company that was slapped down for antitrust behavior, while not even being a public corporation at the time. An act so rare MS is one of the only companies in the past 25 years to have had it happen as well.
Re: Phil Spencer On Game Exclusivity: 'We Have To Anticipate There's Going To Be More Change'
Much as I hate to see an Xbox without Phil, I kinda wish he'd retire rather than drag his own image through the mud until he descends from the second Iwata down to "standard industry snake."
He now talks in circles, speaks made up nonsense, and constantly contradicts himself. It's sad to watch him go from what he was years ago to this hollow corporate puppet.
No matter what consumer face he almost halfway puts on, it recently comes down to "we're running a business", "change is coming", "the health of Xbox" (is it healthy?), "the health of the platform" (srsly?), and finally from this interview "pressure from within to give back to the company." Handfuls of statements about what they won't do (that then they do within months), and no firm statements on anything at all that they will do. If Phil wants to say they intend to not sell traditional consoles, just say it and tell us what he WILL be selling.
@RadioHedgeFund I absolutely think Xbox becomes a PC, internally. However I don't think it will have Steam. And when Phil talked other storefronts he notably mentioned everything except steam. If they intended Steam that's the first thing they'd have said. There's little incentive for Valve to lose a cut for Microsoft as their own market leader by a landslide, and there's no reason for Microsoft to just sell PCs they don't make any sales revenue on unless they price it like a PC, in which case....just buy a PC? An $1099.99 Surface Gaming. Fine, one and done sale.
I imagine they don't REALLY want to support Epic either but because no publishers want to play ball with Windows store they kind of have no choice but to use another store on a PC-Xbox.
@OldGamer999 That's the crux of the problem, "we don't know what direction" they're running. It may be good, it may be bad, but we don't know. And I honestly think they don't know. They're just going to try things and stick their fingers up and see what way the winds blow and keep changing the destination. And that's the entire problem. You'll know the destination when they know it and they'll change the goals every 6-10 months for years to come depending on results of every experiment. Maybe that's a good thing. Keep the industry on its toes. Lousy to be a customer of though.
But this is all Nadella. He's done this to every single MS division. Chase the quarterly, sacrifice the entire platform behind it. How many once #1 brands were destroyed by execs like that? They're a dime a dozen. Shareholder's best friend. As long as you're a short term shareholder. Guaranteed the Series Y's USP will be Copilot. I ----ing guarantee you.
@cburg Satya Nadella does not play "long games." His whole MO is built around maximizing short term gains at the cost of everything else, even main pillars and myopically chasing every trend and fad that shows up in the rear view mirror. It's why the day traders love him, even as he collapses they company's main revenue generators. Phil tries to frame it as a long game which is disingenuous if you recognize the Nadella playbook. Nadella would make Windows into a launcher for Mac if he thought it would give him +5% on the quarter.
Re: Xbox Boss Phil Spencer Comments On Indiana Jones PS5, And Microsoft's Plan Moving Forward
@OldGamer999 Home of the $60 Game Boy remaster.... And 50/50 digital library retention between any 3 generations?
Re: Xbox Boss Phil Spencer Comments On Indiana Jones PS5, And Microsoft's Plan Moving Forward
@OldGamer999 Yeah, before I decided for sure on the PC jump, I'd considered going all PS as well. But the more I thought about it and thought about how Sony would behave without a real competition (remember raising the PS5 price, an unprecedented move in console history, everywhere except the one country Xbox is viable) I don't actually feel any more secure with money invested into PS than into Xbox. Xbox MAY go belly up and get out of making consoles. Or Xbox MAY transition into Windows based devices of various shapes. Or Xbox MAY do what you said and make everything cloud based. OTOH an unchecked Sony WILL mug you at gunpoint the moment they know all your base is belong to them.
So I'll give over 50 years of income to to the OTHER green team. Who needs food and clothing anyway? Jensen's leather jackets are made of gamer people. At least my Steam library will work on the potato PC I'll be able to afford 20 years from now lol
I can't recommend anyone invest in Xbox with where they are and how things look, but I couldn't recommend anyone invest in Sony either. Flip a coin? Ask Phil? Flip Phil?