Yeah the “console magic”. It’s “closer to the metal”. “Developers can optimize for the hardware.” We hear that with every console generation. It’s bullshit. It’s always been bullshit. It’s never translated into notable performance gains over comparable PC hardware.
The only way Scorpio is truly 4k capable for modern games (as opposed to using tricks like the PS4 Pro, or compromising on image quality) is if they aren’t Polaris cores-- they’re Vega instead.
Completely false and their are a host of games that prove it.
^ there
I can’t think of any. There are certainly some terrible PC ports, but they don’t prove that point.
I dunno.it usually isn’t apparent at launch, but I think there are clear quality gains (both visual and complexity of systems) from the beginning of most console lifespans to their ends. And when you look at what developers can put out at the end, relative to the machines’ specs, it’s usually pretty amazing.
What they’re describing is just a command processor which all GPUs have. Also, this is basically the third time MS has announced they’ve solved the draw call overhead problem on Xbox One. Remember the “Mono Driver” or when they finally updated the SDK to DX12?
I’ve read it and nothing their implies anything beyond polaris architecture. Specifically, they don’t talk about enhancements the PS4 Pro GPU received like double rate FP16, or the ID buffer to help with reconstruction techniques.
I was mostly responding to the “out of luck,” but it seems that was hyperbole on your part. Market share is definitely in Sony’s favor, but did Knack and Killzone really move the units off the shelf? Or was it the general feeling by the early adopters that the PS4 was both cheaper and more powerful? I know I bought a PS4 first because I was offended by the bundled Kinect 2.0, the ridiculous DRM scheme, and the focus on teevee teevee teevee rather than games and wanted to let MS exactly what I thought about that. And I’m an Xbox fan from the first generation.
The system turned around when Phil Spencer took over and the platform got properly focused. The Scorpio is Phil’s project, so I think it will be aimed in the right direction: awesome gaming first, everything else second. The hardcore will have a hard time resisting that, they’re the ones who will be ill at ease in the back of their minds when they are playing on a system they know isn’t the Ultimate Gaming Machine.
That said, sure, more solid exclusives would be nice. Too bad Halo and Gears are out of gas, but I was never that big a fan of them. And generational lock-in is definitely a thing, if everybody on your multiplayer list is on PSN, why bother?
Initial sales, probably not much. But over the life of the console, I’d be pretty amazed if the likes of Uncharted 4, Bloodborne, Infamous, Destiny’s exclusive content, Horizon Zero Dawn and a bunch of games for the Japanese market didn’t have a material impact.
I’d like to know the answer to that question myself. A quick look at VGChartz retail numbers tells me that Bloodborne, U4, and Killzone SF all sold less than 3 million units worldwide (and apparently Japan is completely uninterested in any of these, frickin’ Knack outsold Bloodborne in Japan). Meanwhile perennials like FIFA 15 move over 6 million on PS4, and CoD:AW sells 7.7 million.
Sony’s first party stuff has never been their bread & butter, as much as I liked Ratchet & Clank, Sly Cooper, and Jak & Daxter back in the PS2/PS3 days. But quality first-party releases likely do drive perception of the platform.
Also, I think it’s a significant advantage for Sony that Japanese developers don’t bother with Xbox releases thanks to its irrelevance in the home market (and Nintedo has wandered off into its own non-standard corner of the gaming world). Xbox is seen as an American brand.
The Xbox one still gets great sales on certain generes like shooters. Even with the PS4s bigger install base games like BF 1 and CoD still sell almost as good on Xbox.
Note that unless they’ve recently changed their entire model, VGChartz should not be used as a source for sales numbers, as their methodology is largely “make stuff up and hope people don’t notice.”
Also, Knack outsold a bunch of other PS4 games in Japan because it was a pack-in title with every PS4 for a while, not because the audience was actively interested in it.
Got a better one? Would not mind a good source.
C’mon man, you know me. I always throw in a little hyperbole. :)
I think there are a number of reasons Microsoft is behind now, but chief among them is their game lineup. This whole thing started with the original introduction of the system and its digital only/no used games unveiling. They lost a LOT of people right away with that. They gave Sony another “$299” mic drop moment right there and Sony drilled them hard. Before that, I would have said the generation was still up for grabs. Throwing in bundled and supposedly unbundleable Kinect was like throwing dirt on their own grave.
Specs didn’t help either given the PS4 was clearly going to be a bit more powerful. Once we all saw that actually did translate into weakness for third party releases, the path was clear for most people that PS4 was the choice to get both the best third party games and a solid if unspectacular bunch of exclusives. Both systems were also clearly very close to PCs running their own OSes under the hood. They still are! So if you were a PC guy at all, you now had to consider that too. Why buy a console that’s getting all the same stuff your PC plays but at lower resolutions and with more expensive multiplayer paid every year? That’s especially true of Xbox where Microsoft has made some effort to make their few exclusives available on PC too.
Which brings us back to why exclusives, today, are so important IMO. They differentiate. You give people something that they can’t get anywhere else. That might be Uncharted 4, or Bloodborne, or Yakuza 0 or Persona 5 or The Last Guardian or even Destiny stuff first. Baseball fans… MLB is exclusive! It all adds up. It might not be that you want all of those, but even if you only want one really badly, you’re going to think about going the PS4 route instead of the Xbox one.
As you note, generational lock-in via PS Plus/Xbox Live/Friends Lists IS a thing too. All my kids’ friends are on PlayStation with a handful of exceptions, and those kids are kinda the odd men out tbh. I gave my kids an Xbox One for Christmas thinking that they would now be set to include those friends too, but it hasn’t worked out that way at all. I ask my youngest (who has the most friends on Xbox…) all the time why he hasn’t connected with those guys he couldn’t connect with before? They’re either a.) Not into Halo or b.) just not into gaming like the PlayStation friends. The hardcore guys are on PlayStation now I think. Xbox is a more casual system I think, or it’s for old guys like the people here at Qt3. It does have a certain appeal to the 40 somethings with racing, shooting and sports being a major focus…
tl;dr Microsoft needs exclusive games that sell systems. They need more than one of them.
I also think Scorpio might be best sold as a true generational shift. Tell everyone Xbox One is not long for this world. Force Sony’s hand with PS4 Pro. To do that you need Scorpio exclusive titles. I think that’s the way you start to win again even if you maintain 100% backwards compatibility with Xbox One.
…and yeah, VGChartz isn’t a good site.
Ouch.
Ha, I was thinking yeah, that’s me. Kind of funny that I think of myself as casual, I imagine to an outside eye I probably seem hardcore. But I still think of gaming as just a thing I do to relax, to get away for a bit.
Also heads up, Spring sale is coming, week of April 11 - 17:
Crackdown 3 in 4K might make me consider getting one of these… gonna be fairly expensive just for one game though…
Looks over at my Steel Battalion box
On the other hand, buying a XBOX will also make Windows 10/Store/UWP titles more likely, so in that regards to avoid a ‘storefront/platform monopoly/WinX only-lock’ on the PC I guess I should stick with PS4.
Something to consider:
Xbox needs exclusive games regardless of new hardware. Scorpio existing is pretty much orthogonal to the software that’s there to support it. Exclusive games are a consideration when deciding to buy an Xbox regardless of whether that Xbox is a Scorpio or an earlier console.
What Scorpio does, regardless of exclusive games, is make Xbox the de-facto platform to purchase for enthusiasts who want the best versions of multi-platform games. This is in addition to providing the same 4k UHD Blu-Ray player that the XBO S already does.
Clearly this reveal, with Digital Foundry, is not and wasn’t intended to talk about games. It’s purely a hardware analysis, to get its prowess out of the way now, instead of muddling the E3 message later. By the time E3 comes around, its tech specs won’t even be a question anymore. No one will be watching E3 game presentations questioning whether Scorpio is really more powerful than the PS4 Pro or any of its other capabilities. By the time Microsoft starts talking about future games - which will run on all 3 consoles - the hardware running those games will be able to naturally fall into the background.
There’s no good source for sales numbers in the west, unfortunately. Most publishers don’t release numbers unless they hit a particularly interesting milestone or they include them in their fiscal-year reports.
I agree with you. I hope by doing this early that they’ve cleared the way to show a lot of great exclusive games at E3. I just don’t know if they have that in them given their lack of in-house development.