I find the whole thing a bit cynical honestly. the Fornite thing especially. Any parent with a child who plays Fortnite is about to get locked in!
I’m never interested in day one for these services. In fact I avoid day one like the plague whether it’s on subscription or not. A lot of unbalanced or unfinished rubbish most of the time.
I got the original Xbox at release after which it became my main console. The hours I spent in games like Morrowind and championship Manager were endless, but strangely never got into their own IP; I then got the 360, and it was my main console. The likes of Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon convinced me (the former still being one of my favourite games of all time). I used to play a lot of CoD with the wife before we were living together.
Never had an Xbox after that. They moved away from games that appealed to me. My 360 was stolen in a burglary and I decided to get a ps3 due to all the games I had missed and combination of a bigger digital games library on PS and then later VR only being on PS locked me in.
I was never opposed to getting another Xbox too, just never saw a compelling reason game-wise, and with MS’ shift in policy now I doubt I ever will. Many happy memories though.
@Banjo- Indeed. It’s a shame, but they will be restricted to being a mid range PC henceforth. Any thought of unique tech or inputs can be forgotten. Long gone are the days when consoles where much more, but Xbox especially will look to unify with common PC tech.
@Banjo-
That makes sense, completely, but that doesn’t appear to be what is happening with new games. MS may make exceptions for flagpole titles, and stagger the release as you say, we will see.
There is also the question of getting the most out of the marketing budget for their games though, which can run to the 10s of millions in cost. Doing that twice or three times, for different platforms, may be considered a big waste of money.
Regardless, if they are multiplat, they will be made in such a way that they have to run on everything and so won’t make the best of the Xbox hardware (the same as every third party multiplat game on all platforms). Not that I expect MS to care about that. They are clearly not hardware focused.
“Who’s the victim?” That’s a very interesting question.
Another way to phrase the question is “are there any benefits to exclusivity for platform owners?” Because that’s all we are talking about here, the Xbox platform no longer having exclusives. If there are benefits to exclusivity, then the only “victims” there could feasibly be are Xbox platform owners of course.
So, are there any? Possibly.
In my view, first party exclusivity means games can be tailored more to the strengths of the particular hardware. So that’s one plus.
Connected to this - having big games made for the platform that hold consumers to Xbox hardware also means MS could risk more on unique hardware and input devices next gen. Another plus in my opinion.
Also, you can get games out with a much faster cadence if you only have to make a game for one platform rather than 2,3 or even 4. Another plus, especially with how long games take to make these days.
There is also the whole “identity” thing, but I don’t care for that type of fanboy tribalism nonsense, so anyone affected by that I’ll not consider.
So, there could be downsides to losing exclusives for Xbox platform owners. But the majority of players outside of this will benefit.
The technology is not in the pipeline to do that natively, and platform holders depend largely on chip makers for these advances. So, unless they have made secret leaps in their quantum computing field (which they wouldn’t waste on games consoles yet), this just means the “power of the cloud” (again). Which is something she kept banging on about today. I can’t believe, as others have suggesting, it has to do with upscaling tech, that doesn’t count as a giant leap.
Comments 7
Re: 'Price Increases Are Never Fun For Anybody' Says Xbox Exec Defending Game Pass Changes
I find the whole thing a bit cynical honestly. the Fornite thing especially. Any parent with a child who plays Fortnite is about to get locked in!
I’m never interested in day one for these services. In fact I avoid day one like the plague whether it’s on subscription or not. A lot of unbalanced or unfinished rubbish most of the time.
Re: Xbox Will Be 'Honest & Transparent' About Platforms In Future Showcases, Says Phil Spencer
There is of course no obligation, so doing this then strategic not doing it ill be fun. “Honestly, we hadn’t decided at the time!”
Re: Talking Point: When Did You First Get Introduced To The World Of Xbox?
I got the original Xbox at release after which it became my main console. The hours I spent in games like Morrowind and championship Manager were endless, but strangely never got into their own IP; I then got the 360, and it was my main console. The likes of Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon convinced me (the former still being one of my favourite games of all time). I used to play a lot of CoD with the wife before we were living together.
Never had an Xbox after that. They moved away from games that appealed to me. My 360 was stolen in a burglary and I decided to get a ps3 due to all the games I had missed and combination of a bigger digital games library on PS and then later VR only being on PS locked me in.
I was never opposed to getting another Xbox too, just never saw a compelling reason game-wise, and with MS’ shift in policy now I doubt I ever will. Many happy memories though.
Re: Former PlayStation Exec Says 'The Game Is Changing' As Xbox Goes Multiplatform
@Banjo-
Indeed. It’s a shame, but they will be restricted to being a mid range PC henceforth. Any thought of unique tech or inputs can be forgotten. Long gone are the days when consoles where much more, but Xbox especially will look to unify with common PC tech.
Re: Former PlayStation Exec Says 'The Game Is Changing' As Xbox Goes Multiplatform
@Banjo-
That makes sense, completely, but that doesn’t appear to be what is happening with new games. MS may make exceptions for flagpole titles, and stagger the release as you say, we will see.
There is also the question of getting the most out of the marketing budget for their games though, which can run to the 10s of millions in cost. Doing that twice or three times, for different platforms, may be considered a big waste of money.
Regardless, if they are multiplat, they will be made in such a way that they have to run on everything and so won’t make the best of the Xbox hardware (the same as every third party multiplat game on all platforms). Not that I expect MS to care about that. They are clearly not hardware focused.
Re: Former PlayStation Exec Says 'The Game Is Changing' As Xbox Goes Multiplatform
“Who’s the victim?” That’s a very interesting question.
Another way to phrase the question is “are there any benefits to exclusivity for platform owners?” Because that’s all we are talking about here, the Xbox platform no longer having exclusives. If there are benefits to exclusivity, then the only “victims” there could feasibly be are Xbox platform owners of course.
So, are there any? Possibly.
In my view, first party exclusivity means games can be tailored more to the strengths of the particular hardware. So that’s one plus.
Connected to this - having big games made for the platform that hold consumers to Xbox hardware also means MS could risk more on unique hardware and input devices next gen. Another plus in my opinion.
Also, you can get games out with a much faster cadence if you only have to make a game for one platform rather than 2,3 or even 4. Another plus, especially with how long games take to make these days.
There is also the whole “identity” thing, but I don’t care for that type of fanboy tribalism nonsense, so anyone affected by that I’ll not consider.
So, there could be downsides to losing exclusives for Xbox platform owners. But the majority of players outside of this will benefit.
Re: Xbox's Next Console Will Feature The 'Largest Technical Leap Ever' In A Generation
The technology is not in the pipeline to do that natively, and platform holders depend largely on chip makers for these advances. So, unless they have made secret leaps in their quantum computing field (which they wouldn’t waste on games consoles yet), this just means the “power of the cloud” (again). Which is something she kept banging on about today. I can’t believe, as others have suggesting, it has to do with upscaling tech, that doesn’t count as a giant leap.