XBOX Scarlet - Microsoft's post XBONE console(s)

Games
21

There’s value in that it sells new consoles, but that’s negative value to their customers. The XBdos will be a faster XBone, much like a 2018 gaming desktop is a faster 2012 gaming desktop. There’s no actual reason to break forwards compatibility so quickly. Imagine if you couldn’t play Borderlands 2 on a modern PC.

The best way to handle this is to have minimum and recommended consoles for each game. So Borderlands 4 recommends an XBtres, but will run OK on an XBdos at reduced quality/speed, but won’t run on an XBone.

22

You are right. I think I’d predict that forwards compatibility is still a thing.

23

No other console has ever done that. Do you think that’s a reasonable expectation?

24

Xbox One X is forward compatible, as is PS4 Pro. That was the first time it happened.

25

I do, because modern consoles are just PCs now. No more weird architectures or pipelines. There’s no technical reason not to do it.

If they break forwards compatibility so quickly now, it’s for sales purposes to segment the market, and is blatantly anti-consumer.

26

Only if you consider the X and Pro as different generations than the vanilla consoles. And I was not aware that we did?

27

Well that distinction is somewhat outdated now that the architecture is so generic.

Theoretically Microsoft could shift the architecture again for Scarlet and break backwards compatibility and call it something new.

But they’re more likely to just upgrade the components, so forwards and backwards compatibility is just code, not hardware dependent.

28

Yeah, the X in particular is dramatically more powerful. The concept of console generations implying the lack of compatibility really no longer applies.

29

I think that sets you up for a potential PR nightmare. Imagine Joe Six Pack with his original Xbone, sees Halo 9 on the shelf, and that it says it will run on his machine but gets it home and it plays at 15 FPS. He’d freak!

30

If you’ll scroll up a page, you’ll note I said they should list minimum and recommended console generations for each title.

31

Microsoft would not approve the game if that were the case. I think they could easily set minimum requirements.

So it’s up to the dev. If you want to ship a single SKU that plays on XBONE or Scarlet, that’s fine, but it has to run at least at 1080p/30Hz on XBONE.

32

I understand that’s how things look right now in stusserland, but we don’t know that, yet.

33

True dat, I should have said “The concept of console generations implying the lack of compatibility should no longer apply.”

34

So then you’re potentially handicapping the new Xbox owner’s experience artificially so older console owners can play the game? That doesn’t sound like a good trade.

35

So you’re not a PC gamer at all, I take it? And don’t have a PS4 pro or XboneX?

36

No…this already happens with tons of games, including every one that ships on PC.

It’s not that big a deal, devs know how to handle it.

And it’s already happening with XBONE X. There’s no such thing as a game only for XBONE X. Microsoft won’t approve it, and they won’t approve a game that plays like shit on the XBONE.

I think your head is still in the last gen. Both MS and Sony have signaled that they are moving past the idea that you have to throw out your games when you buy the new console.

37

Let’s look past you and me for a moment and think about all the other potential customers. There are a lot of people out there that don’t upgrade their PCs every time the new hotness gets released, and the concept of two different consoles playing the same game but potentially having very different gameplay experiences would be foreign to them. You (as a console maker) would have to be very careful how this gets explained to them.

38

This is definitely true. But game makers/publishers are already used to this. Think about Switch versions of any game. It doesn’t look as good, there’s probably less ground clutter, etc. But Switch owners know what to expect.

Nobody buying Skyrim on Switch expects it to look like it does on XBONE X. Or at least they shouldn’t. This doesn’t take a lot of explaining by Bethesda.

39

This is not the same thing. You’re just assuming everyone will immediately grok to what you’re selling here, that it will be immediately intuitive that these systems would be able to play the same games but not necessarily the same way. I doubt that it would go that smoothly.

40

Yeah, you’ve put your finger on the issue there, I think. We are outliers in this board. You’ve got to consider all the folks out there that just don’t think this stuff through.