Halo Infinite Teasers Continue Ahead Of This Thursday's Event

@Medic_Alert I agree. I’d say a solid 10-15 minutes would be good. We know it’s the feature game but that would still leave 45 minutes for announcements teasers, trailers, and gameplay.

@Medic_Alert @Medic_Alert Frankly held-back has become a meme and console marketing term at this point. If you have any idea about computer graphics, you will know that graphics have always been highly scalable across GPU parallel processors and vector graphics algorithms. Huge teams like 343 can make different versions for the same titles whereas games like The Medium with small team can only afford to make Xbox SX version.

Looking forward to it

@Medic_Alert It seems I’ve already addressed your key concern about that in my last sentence. You shouldn’t hear any excuses from huge studios not doing it speaking from technical point of view. According to official xbox blog, Halo Infinite is natively built for Xbox Series X. Anyways hi again !

As the event draws closer, my true hype becoming clear to me and it’s not Halo, it’s Everwild. Hope we see a date for that game.

@Medic_Alert Frankly everyone have seen ONLY 2 “can be heldback” games - The Medium and Ratchet and Clank...the latter of which can only run at 30fps without any loss in graphics confirmed by it’s developer. So at this point I don’t think your fanboy narrative will be valid for most of the upcoming next gen games. Cheers !

For the most part, a game that is engendered from the ground up with new hardware in mind, won’t likely launch until 2022 at the minimum.

Dev kits have been, perhaps, 1 year on the hands of some first party devs, and even then, not finalized hardware. Select insiders might have an idea on floating targets a bit ahead of time, that can help design choices, but not actual development much. It takes more than 3 years to make a truly ambitious game these days, most AAA games that are worth bragging about take 4-5 years to make.

My point being that the couple years for any console tend to always be held back by the fact that no one had finished dev kits.

Heck... Unreal 5 is not coming out until mid next year (if it is not delayed) and that is a core tool that many devs will need to have at the start of the dev cycle.

TLDR: some core design uses of SSD might not be seen in launch XSX (besides faster loading) but we were not likely to see anything like that for a couple years anyways.

You guys should just agree to disagree and call it a day

@Medic_Alert first party is in the most advantageous position, as they might know a few things ahead of time, but historically, rarely means much. Most launch PS4 and Xbox One games looked like they all could have been done on the previous gen with a lower resolution, and right now Sony seems to be just adding some content to the existing Spider Man game and wrapping it up with some low hanging fruit upgrades like raytracing.

Ratchet might impress me, if it’s there at launch, and it’s cartoony style does lend itself towards quicker dev cycles. I still don’t think we will see that until late ‘21, however.

@Medic_Alert don’t claim to be a mind reader but think I can see what the mindset is for both sides, and in their way, both are valid.

Sony wants to incentivize people to buy next gen via exclusive titles they can’t get anywhere else, not even older PS4s. It’s a proven strategy, if you want to encourage platform migration even for your own consumers.

Microsoft, on the other hand, is not selling the Series X because it wants X1 owners to upgrade, it’s selling in big part to lure competitor customers over with more power now, as well as building for a competitive future. Of course, many One owners will upgrade, but MS cares more about the software and services sales than the hardware sales, and you maximize those sales by leveraging the current gen user base that tends to upgrade a few years into the new console lifecycle.

After all, the console margins at launch are terrible, sometimes negative. Every copy of halo sold has a big profit margin, more so when it’s a first party game. Why limit the sales of their titles only to early adopters?

Think about this: how well would TLOU2 have sold had it been a PS5 exclusive? Definitively not as many as they would have on PS4 with its huge install base.

@Medic_Alert For a huge studio like 343, there’s nothing to overcome as you make it sound like it’s something that’s impossible to do by the law of physics when it’s not in reality. They have early access to internal hardware and software teams in Redmond to make Slipspace engine from scratch solely for next gen. As for forward compatibility, if the level design really requires to do and something Slipspace engine can’t manage (unlike last gen titles like TLOU2 which doesn’t look held back on “mechanical drives“ except maybe graphically) they have very well all the developer strength to create a different experience for different hardware (which might not be required ultimately). Does that fit your fanboy narrative making Halo Infinite held back? Not necessarily, it all depends on the development budget(500m$ reportedly) of the project and the extent devs are ready go to optimise for hardware.

@Medic_Alert “Both machines are incredible. BOTH. But while Sony put all their eggs in an SSD basket, MS divided the talent up for everything. The XSX SSD is a damn fine piece of kit with some impressive IO optimisations of its own that gets ignored, but now, coupled with SFS, it essentially levels the playing field somewhat. As I said, there is no denying the PS5 has the faster IO and raw speeds... OF COURSE. But that's not the end of the magic trick for MS.” - https://gamingbolt.com/xbox-series-xs-sampler-feedback-streaming-is-an-absolute-game-changer-says-developer

@Medic_Alert
Totally agree if you build a game just for the next gen consoles you will then and only then really take full advantage of all the next gen console capabilities. Be it SSD, CPU & GPU and all the other clever tricks a dedicated console programming platform brings. The trouble is this is not exactly the same as PC scaling. Scaling is one thing, but using the full power of a dedicated next gen console is different and always has been.

You all know if you take 343 and said build a Halo game ground up for series x it would be a lot different than having to make it for the Xbox one as well. They would create a game to fully utilise all the series x power and it is a beast of a console. I bet the whole programming and game design process would be a lot different and the game would look amazing for it and extremely detailed and more open and expansive without any boundaries at all. Just because you can scale a game from day 900p to 4K and a few next generation tricks does not mean it utilises the real power and game design of that next gen console.
Think about it would Mario 64 be possible on SNES, no it would not, as it was designed solely for the next gen N64 only and not having to work on the SNES.

Most of you over here are living in Microsoft PR land and their push will be Halo at 4K 60fps or maybe even 120fps. But the only reason you will get that is because they have held back on masses of detail and the game having last gen level boundaries as it has to work on the Xbox one.
Of course we get this and expect from 3rd party developers especially the first next gen year. But what sells is first party exclusives fully utilising next gen power. Why do you think PS4 was and is still so successful selling millions of consoles and games.

@Dezzy70 I assure you the PS4 was not a success thanks to Knack nor the Killzone entry that killed the franchise.

Heck, you know how long most of us early PS4 buyers spent playing Resogun, an indie title because there was nothing else worth throwing money at? MS actually had Dead Rising 3, Ryse or Rome and Forza. Despite that, I got a PS4 with AC Black Flag (a PS3 game) for reasons that has nothing to do with games.

Xbox launch lineup was better, with exclusives that were designed for the new hardware. That did nothing to overcome bad anti-consumer PR.

PS4 launch success is heavily carried by MS own stumbling, and cross-gen third party games.

@Tharsman

I agree about Everwild. I am very curious about that game!

Don’t get me wrong.....I am a big Halo fan (except Halo 5 🙄), but games like Everwild & even Obsidian’s Grounded are intriguing to me.

Nothing wrong with a little diversity in our Xbox catalog. 👍🏻

What do I think? Keep them coming! I am getting so hyped for this event!

I think I've managed to squeeze enough in the finances to get both at launch....just.

So I'm a bit more relaxed about it now and just want to see some gameplay as I will have to be selective what games I get especially early on.

Keen to see Halo gameplay as a result - I was in the camp of being hugely dissapointed with Halo 5's campaign. I loved the first 3. I do think it was the focus shifting away from the Chief that put me off too.

Hopefully that focus is now shifting back, certainly looks like it is.