You have a house with 7 Xbox’s in it? All working? Al plugged in?
One in the family room. One in my offsite office. One each for the other members of the family hooked up to 1440p monitors. One in the RV.
Wow! Do you have any other consoles in the house — PlayStations, Nintendos? Or are you a true family of just Microsoft Aficionados?
From other threads I know he now has three Oculus Quests, and space for them all to play in the same room together!
And there is also at least one Nintendo Switch that I know of - though I suspect there may be a few more floating about tbh…;)
I have two PS4s and one PS4 Pro. The Pro is in the family room, one my oldest uses, and the third is in our schoolhouse. Pre-COVID we did a homeschool co-op in there. I began this generation with the PS4. A bunch of considerations led me to switch to the Xbox as our primary platform. A big one was Xbox Game Pass. The rest were bad experiences with Sony.
What really started this is I worked 1,400 miles away from home for more than two years a while back. Gaming was how my kids and I kept in touch. We played together in various combinations all weekend.
The RV was how my family and I were able to be together. They’d drive out and stay locally where I was working for two weeks every couple months. It’s a 4 day journey so a console helped keep the kids entertained.
Fortunately last year I was able to move home. I still traveled two weeks a month until COVID. I carried an Xbox Series X and Switch with me for entertainment.
Now I rent a one room office near home. I aspire to lunchtime gaming but I keep some gaming hardware setup in case I need to check a work problem firsthand.
I do have one second gen Switch with the battery battery life I upgraded to when I was traveling constantly. Plus two original models, one for the kids and one in my office. I could probably sell the one in my office but it is the hack-able model so I hung on to it. I thought the Switch would be a bigger hit with my kids though too.
We just bought Quest 1 number 2 - and ended up with Quest #3 in the bargain. We live in a small house (1,500 sq ft) so finding space enough for three of us was a challenge. It is standing room only! We were shoulder to shoulder into the 7’ x 7’ space I usually clear for one person. Don’t think we’ll be doing triple room scale any time soon.
This insanity has served us well during COVID. The kids have a number of friends online they play with across the various platforms. Keeps them socially engaged and sane.
Waited too long to bite the bullet on the trade in. Now only getting $207 instead of $212. #firstworldproblems.
That’s still good. Figure XSX is going to be about $550 after tax, so this at least subsidizes the price by about 40%.
I thought about keeping it. The XboneX has amazing build quality. But it’s simply too slow. That HDD means everything takes too long, from powering on to loading games. And that will get even more annoying when an XSX will be in the house.
Not just a video about Xbox but a interesting interview from Digital Foundry with the technical director of Dirt 5.
Someone made a link showing all the release titles of each console.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xcnDqaxx8EdpxeZDhurPv2pU0nfWE2XpZOvi_fe64yw/edit?usp=drivesdk
That wasn’t XBox specific in any way (should likely be in the Dirt 5 thread instead), but it was an interesting insight in how they went about targeting 120fps and how they optimise for each platform they support. Also, bring all your cores! They will happily use them. :)
He sounded very positive about the Xbox One S.
Indeed. Sounds like adding it to the list of platforms and targeting next gen framerates wasn’t a problem. It’s another one to optimise for and for Digital Foundry to test though. Both developers and DF have their work cut out right now. :)
They are spending money on games, but getting output from their new first party studios was going to take time. Halo was supposed to be their big crown jewel game for launch, but obviously that got delayed.
Microsoft actually have a laundry list of games I’m extremely interested to play - Avowed, Fable, the next-gen Forza Motorsport (that is apparently a major rework this time), Everwild, Stalker 2, The Initiative’s rumoured Perfect Dark game, inXile’s unannounced “triple-A” RPG, etc.
The question right now is just how far away those games are, because the July showcase made everything seem like it was at least 2022, even though there were no real dates. I agree that their launch lineup is now perilously thin though.
EDIT: And according to market valuation, they can actually afford to buy Sony about 15 times over, haha.
Microsoft definitely done goofed when it comes to launch exclusives, there’s no way to talk around that. I do believe they will compete this generation with their bundles. You can get an XSX and Game Pass for $35/month, and that’s an extremely attractive offer. Or with a XSS for $25/month.
Microsoft’s excellent backwards compatibility will also retain many Xbone customers who don’t want to lose their previous investment in games. Less Xbone players than PS4, but they’re out there.
I suspect Spencer is unhappy with 343 Industries right now, after they were forced to delay a game that has been in development for five years and was basically the linchpin of their launch slate.
Please post in the new thread for this, pretty big news.
https://forum.quartertothree.com/t/microsoft-buys-zenimax-bethesda/
Gamepass makes up for a lot of that though. A kid buying the financed version of an Xbox has access to 100 games; the kid buying a PS5 has access to 0 without further purchases (not counting the built in controller demo game).
Phil read my posts. Good job, Phil.