News General gaming stuff, random news etc

[Dannnnnnnnnn]

I've always been a PlayStationer but Microsoft leaving (or at least deprioritising) the home console business would be bad for everyone. Sony's attitude towards consumers has dived since their PS4 era domination, I'd hate to see where they end up without competition.

 

[bourbons]

The always online stuff and marketing it more of an all-rounder rather than a gaming console followed up by that dickhead Don Mattrick saying gamers should "just get a 360" if they want offline ensured it

Yeah feels like they've never quite recovered from that period. That E3 (I think?) where it was "TV TV TV" and Sony trolling their DRM stuff with the video of Shuhei 'sharing' a game by handing it to another bloke was just brutal.

 

[Cyber_punk]

I've always been a PlayStationer but Microsoft leaving (or at least deprioritising) the home console business would be bad for everyone. Sony's attitude towards consumers has dived since their PS4 era domination, I'd hate to see where they end up without competition.

Yep it's bad for consumers/gamers.

 

[Quivorir]

Don't see how. One less console to buy. All games in one place. Bring it on.

 

[Ambrose Burnside]

People talk about the Xbox One launch but the PS3 launch was right up there too. That was the last time Sony had no competition after the PS2 crushed everything. The PS3 was $1000 at launch here (in 2007, god knows what that would translate to now) and Sony treated developers like absolute chumps with a nightmare of a machine to develop for and a real disdain for indie developers Xbox 360 was the exact opposite and we ended up with a fantastic generation.

A lack of competition is never good.

 

[Dannnnnnnnnn]

Don't see how. One less console to buy. All games in one place. Bring it on.

Sony will be free to price their games and consoles at whatever they want and have no reason to need to innovate. Without Xbox, we would never have gotten an expanded PS+ service

 

[matt_897]

Don't see how. One less console to buy. All games in one place. Bring it on.

No competition is never a good thing

 

[dwwaino]

I think there will still be innovation but price creep would be a given. NVIDIA didn't have considerable competition for years (and still don't in some areas) yet they never stopped innovating. Developers will still be looking to create new experiences and Sony will leverage whatever is available from the technologies they adopt. They don't make a profit from the hardware sale but know that once you're on the platform it will take x-amount of game sales to cover the cost then everything else is profit. So I don't imagine a world where they charge the price of a PC to profit on the hardware. Price creep may happen on the software but with even more users on the platform plus taking platform royalties from Microsoft sales (should Microsoft become a publisher) and increasing margins due to growing digital sales that might still be a ways off. Steam didn't have meaningful competition for years (and still really don't) and that hasn't affected their prices so it's really hard to predict IMO.

I'm still not doom and gloom yet as I don't expect Microsoft to pull out of hardware at the end of this generation despite them obviously pivoting away as demonstrated by moving away from physical sales and allegedly not even having any contracts in place to produce their next gen silicone. Maybe one more generation but it will look different. One thing I am confident about though is I doubt we'll ever see a new player. Nobody entering the market could possibly compete with PlayStation and PC when people are well entrenched on those platforms with catalogues of licenses and stuff.

 

[Ambrose Burnside]

Yep, losing the PS4/Xbox One generation was critical because that's the generation people established their digital libraries and locked themselves into an ecosystem FOREVER.

What we need is some big courtroom wins opening up these walled gardens to competing storefronts.

 

[Ambrose Burnside]

Another excellent Xbox initiative is Play Anywhere. Not just cross saves and stuff between PC and Xbox, but free upgrades between Xbox One and Series X that Sony kinda sorta went along with. Bet your arse if Microsoft do pull out, you'll be expected to buy all your games again if you want the next-gen version just like the good old days.

Or even the exact same version Nintendo-style.

 

[bourbons]

People talk about the Xbox One launch but the PS3 launch was right up there too. That was the last time Sony had no competition after the PS2 crushed everything. The PS3 was $1000 at launch here (in 2007, god knows what that would translate to now) and Sony treated developers like absolute chumps with a nightmare of a machine to develop for and a real disdain for indie developers Xbox 360 was the exact opposite and we ended up with a fantastic generation.

A lack of competition is never good.

Yep, that was the "you'll get a 2nd job to buy this console" launch wasn't it?

 

[Ambrose Burnside]

Yep, that was the "you'll get a 2nd job to buy this console" launch wasn't it?

Yep!

And giant enemy crabs and RIIIIIIIIIIIIDGE RACER!!!

Probably the first memeable console reveal

 

[dwwaino]

We don't really know anything yet so I have tried to not get too carried away until more is revealed next week. One of the main sources for the info was MLID who slings so much poo that some eventually sticks. He obviously has some contacts but I do take anything he says with a grain of salt. Phil Spencer not denying any of the rumours hasn't helped. However based on trends in reporting not just recently but over time I have gathered a few thoughts to speculate.

Firstly, the One X and Series X proves that having the most powerful system doesn't move units. Neither does GamePass. Microsoft haven't found a winning point of difference. There was a time when stuff would appear on console Gamepass before PC or wouldn't at all. Since complete parity was established between console and PC Gamepass I unfortunately haven't touched my Series X at all. Lots of Gamepass games also appear on Steam day one. This doesn't sell consoles. For the games sold on Steam Microsoft would get a publishing royalty but not a platform royalty. So there is a lot of wasted R&D and production.

I can't see Gamepass going to PS as Sony are adverse to subscriptions since it eats into their platform royalties. Microsoft as a multiplat publisher stand to make considerably more profit from just releasing games on every platform and pocketing the publisher royalty.

The same reports stating they haven't locked in a manufacturing contract also state they are shopping around to Intel and NVIDIA. Both operate on high margins so one theory going around is Microsoft are looking at switching to ARM which would point to a low powered but portable system. But this would require them to emulate their back catalogue and then we also return to the PS3/360 days of games being developed for different architectures. IMO we won't shift from x86 until desktop computing does. Though that doesn't stop them from looking at Intel and NVIDIA to design low powered portable designs, like they do for laptops, to design a portable system or dockable like the Switch to compete with handhelds. Then you have a portable Gamepass system. There also might be nothing at all too it and they could just be shopping around for a better price.

 

[Ambrose Burnside]

Things like Microsoft buying Nokia for $7.2 billion, developing Windows Phone, then just walking away doesn't help either.

I've never seen an Android-based Surface Duo phone in the wild. If they're even still a thing

Wish I had that sort of money to burn

 

[Gralin]

I think there will still be innovation but price creep would be a given. NVIDIA didn't have considerable competition for years (and still don't in some areas) yet they never stopped innovating. Developers will still be looking to create new experiences and Sony will leverage whatever is available from the technologies they adopt. They don't make a profit from the hardware sale but know that once you're on the platform it will take x-amount of game sales to cover the cost then everything else is profit. So I don't imagine a world where they charge the price of a PC to profit on the hardware. Price creep may happen on the software but with even more users on the platform plus taking platform royalties from Microsoft sales (should Microsoft become a publisher) and increasing margins due to growing digital sales that might still be a ways off. Steam didn't have meaningful competition for years (and still really don't) and that hasn't affected their prices so it's really hard to predict IMO.

I'm still not doom and gloom yet as I don't expect Microsoft to pull out of hardware at the end of this generation despite them obviously pivoting away as demonstrated by moving away from physical sales and allegedly not even having any contracts in place to produce their next gen silicone. Maybe one more generation but it will look different. One thing I am confident about though is I doubt we'll ever see a new player. Nobody entering the market could possibly compete with PlayStation and PC when people are well entrenched on those platforms with catalogues of licenses and stuff.

NVIDIA had the enterprise market as an incentive to innovate though

No company wants to treat customers well or spend any more money on R&D than they have to, they want to make money not spend money

the only thing that gets them spending on R&D is the need to either fight off a competitor to protect their market share, or to capture new markets that have opened up

tech will move forward because it has to create a new reason to update, but when you look at phones for example, its like EA

new model every year, same as the old model but more expensive because its new

Microsoft are massive and they've become a major cloud player in general, they love an online subscription model, I can see them moving their gaming business to that for sure

 

[Ed_Gein]

The 360 was an all-time great console, and especially in the first half of their lifespans shat on the PS3. Was cheaper too. PS3 caught up once developers got to grips with it but it was mainly first party stuff that shines, third party stuff was almost always better on 360.

And the early exclusives on 360. Man. Mass Effect, Gears of War, Halo 3, PGR, Forza. Even stuff like Lost Odyssey etc. Damn.

Dead Rising and BioShock as well. The latter was only exclusive to Xbox for a year, but at least I got some good bragging rights over a friend out of that for a bit, haha.

But yeah, not sure how Gears of War fares these days, but I must've put a good 4-5k hours into multi-player from 1 up until Judgement. Some great memories. Great console in general

 

[dwwaino]

NVIDIA had the enterprise market as an incentive to innovate though

No company wants to treat customers well or spend any more money on R&D than they have to, they want to make money not spend money

the only thing that gets them spending on R&D is the need to either fight off a competitor to protect their market share, or to capture new markets that have opened up

tech will move forward because it has to create a new reason to update, but when you look at phones for example, its like EA

new model every year, same as the old model but more expensive because its new

Microsoft are massive and they've become a major cloud player in general, they love an online subscription model, I can see them moving their gaming business to that for sure

Good point in that NVIDIA might not be the best like for like comparison, but in personal computing they were the first thing that came to mind. While AMD's Radeon division have been chasing NVIDIA for years, every time they thought they were catching up NVIDIA would drop a new feature into their consumer cards and AMD would be chasing again. We only have things like TAA and FSR because of NVIDIA leading. Sometimes just the threat of having a competitor means you have to keep innovating to stave them off. IMO Sony would still need to stay on the ball to be preferable to PC or handheld gaming. Then should computing ever switch to ARM then they have the entire mobile world to compete with (and presuming that day comes then ARM will be comparable performance wise to x86).

The other thing is that in every other market, phones, desktop computing etc, the entry price covers the manufactures production cost. Consoles don't so Sony would need to keep their hardware priced competitively enough to not only make sure they lock users into the platform to in turn make a lifetime of return from game purchases, but if they price themselves to profit from the hardware then you start to defeat the purpose of the gaming console and gamers may as well just look at PC gaming. That's why I think the price creep would come into game sales, not initially but gradually over time and more than what we've seen which has actually been very minimal.

 

[dwwaino]

Things like Microsoft buying Nokia for $7.2 billion, developing Windows Phone, then just walking away doesn't help either.

I've never seen an Android-based Surface Duo phone in the wild. If they're even still a thing

Wish I had that sort of money to burn

I did my programming cert IV (prestigious I know) a year or two after those Nokia's and Windows phones were phased out. It was poo because it included training for Microsoft vendor certification but due to the depreciation all of the modules and packages for Visual Studio were out of date and most of the projects weren't even possible lol. I ended up switching my mobile assignments to Android.

But this feels like the end of the UWP kernel. They brought it in on the infamous Windows 8 and it was to unify every Windows platform - phones, tablets, PCs and the Xbox One. Over time the UWP platforms have been knocked over one by one and it feels like the Xbox is the last remaining remnant.

 

[dexter_]

quote from the Xbox CFO at an investor meeting late last year resurfaced on Twitter. Seems like their plan has been out in the open for a while...

Nov 28, 2023: Tim Stuart (Xbox CFO): "what you’ll hear from us more and more is a bit of a change of strategy. And again, not announcing anything broadly here, but our mission is to bring our first-party experiences, our subscription services to every screen that can take a – that can play a game. That means smart TVs, that means mobile devices. That means what we would have thought as competitors in the past like PlayStation and Nintendo."

 

[pantskyle]

quote from the Xbox CFO at an investor meeting late last year resurfaced on Twitter. Seems like their plan has been out in the open for a while...

Nov 28, 2023: Tim Stuart (Xbox CFO): "what you’ll hear from us more and more is a bit of a change of strategy. And again, not announcing anything broadly here, but our mission is to bring our first-party experiences, our subscription services to every screen that can take a – that can play a game. That means smart TVs, that means mobile devices. That means what we would have thought as competitors in the past like PlayStation and Nintendo."

Correct, I really don't understand the outrage about this at all when they have been very upfront with wanting Gamespass everywhere. They want it to be the netflix of video games.

 

[UnitedWarrior93]

Correct, I really don't understand the outrage about this at all when they have been very upfront with wanting Gamespass everywhere. They want it to be the netflix of video games.

Remains to be seen if it works out long term for them if that’s the way they go, gamepass subscriptions have been slowing down lately, and people do have ‘subscription’ fatigue.

 

[Ambrose Burnside]

What's more likely?

Microsoft saying we've lost three generations in a row, we're out of the console market Windows Phone style. Game Pass will still be on PC and you can stream it on TVs and shit if you have God's own internet connection

Or

Microsoft saying Sony are letting us put Game Pass on PlayStation but we'll keep making Xboxes which also has Game Pass, but no PlayStation exclusives

 

[dwwaino]

Look at EA Play on PS. It's heavily cut down, no new releases and the games all eventually end up on PS Plus. Could you imagine how much they make from FIFA (or whatever it is now) sales and what they'd stand to lose if they allowed the full EA Play subscription. Also Gamepass and EA Play (on PC) subs go 100% to Microsoft and EA. The kind of Gamepass I'd expect on PS if it were to happen would be slightly more expensive to cover Sony's cut of the subscription, significantly cut down to only include Microsoft Studios published games (so no Football Manager, Cities Skylines etc), older titles and new releases with a trial and 10% discount like EA Play for PS. Xbox would still be a day one Gamepass machine for any new Microsoft release but on PS it would be purchasable and maybe included later on down the line.

 

[UnitedWarrior93]

What's more likely?

Microsoft saying we've lost three generations in a row, we're out of the console market Windows Phone style. Game Pass will still be on PC and you can stream it on TVs and s**t if you have God's own internet connection

Or

Microsoft saying Sony are letting us put Game Pass on PlayStation but we'll keep making Xboxes which also has Game Pass, but no PlayStation exclusives

I’m more thinking it’ll be about the Xbox community and getting it playable on as many devices as possible, potentially announcing it hitting Nintendo (Can’t see it coming to PS just yet). Also I think they’ll announce that there’ll be the all digital series x and that’ll be the last console made by Microsoft as essentially their console will become the ‘gamepass’ subscription.

I think I’ve said it before, but my Samsung has the Xbox gamepass app, now like you said you need extremely good internet for it to run smoothly like it’s an installed game on a console, it runs pretty choppy for me and I have pretty good internet for Australian standard anyway. I wonder if somehow, with future tv’s they can come with a storage port so you can buy a 2tb SSD and plug that into your tv, click on the gamepass app and be able to install games so it isn’t streaming (which basically makes the tv having to be a console)

 

[Ambrose Burnside]