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IGN: 6 things Microsoft needs to do after PS4

If they can show visuals that are comparable, I don't see what the motivation is for this. Not saying they will or should lie, but why emphasize points of comparison that can be viewed as a deficit when it's likely it will make little difference in the end product to the vast majority of your audience?

MS will have the most success by showing they can go relatively toe-to-toe on visuals and maintain and exceed the services advantage they have held. Calling out teraflops does nothing for them (and I'd argue it does little for Sony as well).

I personally think that you shouldn't announce specs at an unveiling of a console where the general media are invited. 90% of them won't care because they don't understand it. Case in point, when Cerny announced the 8GB of GDDR5 RAM, no one in the audience batted an eyelid.
 
We believe Microsoft will not offer full Xbox 360 compatibility on their new machine, but it is entirely possible that it could support gamers’ “digital libraries” (read: downloaded games).

Well there goes what little credibility they had. If a digital game can be BC so can disc-based. It's only the logistics of where it's stored that differs.
 
Please send all your staff to a rigorous two week training session where they learn the basics of technology like "If it's not emulating the hardware, and the games aren't written to a special library, it's not going to be any easier (or even different) to port."

I mean seriously it's bad enough when users do this, but at least they're not expected to research this before posting an article on the world's largest gaming site.

No kidding. What was the rationale? Downloaded games are smaller, therefore easier to port?

Do they think the majority of the stuff taking up all the room on physical media is raw code?

The hilarious thing is that you see technically inept assertions like this on lightly edited gaming blogs or whatever. But IGN? Don't they have, I don't know, professional editors going over this stuff?
 
Do the boxes they have stop working?. Id understand if we had a xbox live type turn off situation but these boxes will be around for sometime yet as will live and psn on them.

People tend to trade their old consoles in for new ones. This might be a foreign concept to us, but lots of people do it to reduce the cost or so they can also buy some games with their newly bought console.

This was something I witnessed first hand when I bought my Wii U at launch. Two people brought along their Wii to trade in towards the Wii U. I was tempted to follow suit, the trade in offers were quite insane.

I'm a console hoarder though, the mere thought of trading in my consoles or games makes my stomach churn.
 
With the confident late release of halo, gears and forza MS has clearly showed that they have something up their sleeves. I think gaf is going to be surprised

Seems more like they're just following the same pattern from last generation. Both Halo 2 and Forza 1 came out about a year or less from the launch of the 360 and Rare got center stage for launch. Based on that tweet we saw from the Rare guy it looks like things may be playing out the same. Let's just hope they actually deliever this time!
And/or that MS isn't planning to supplement the potential lack of Halo/Gears/Forza with a mountain of Kinect stuff.
 
People tend to trade their old consoles in for new ones. This might be a foreign concept to us, but lots of people do it to reduce the cost or so they can also buy some games with their newly bought console.

This was something I witnessed first hand when I bought my Wii U at launch. Two people brought along their Wii to trade in towards the Wii U. I was tempted to follow suit, the trade in offers were quite insane.

I'm a console hoarder though, the mere thought of trading in my consoles or games makes my stomach churn.

people also tend to jump into a different console maker but i guess its a foreign concept.
 
I personally think that you shouldn't announce specs at an unveiling of a console where the general media are invited. 90% of them won't care because they don't understand it. Case in point, when Cerny announced the 8GB of GDDR5 RAM, no one in the audience batted an eyelid.

Any developers in the audience or watching online sure would have though. This event might only have been attended by the press and investors but that sure as hell wasn't the only people that were paying attention.

For me they got the amount of spec talk just right. Don't go mental with it, they didn't say what frequency the CPU or GPU are running at or anything like that. It was just a nice simple explanation of why they were going down that route, and then a fairly general 8 cores, modified PC GPU, 8GB GDDR5 ram.

They didn't dwell on it or keep banging on about it, they moved on and never mentioned it again. I don;t think anyone other than Cerny mentioned any of the actual specs. The way some people are banging on about others shouting about GDDR5 you woudl think Sony kept talking about it in the conference and got the devs to talk about it and then ended the conference with "One last thing, 8GB GDDR5 bitches".

After the show though I think every developer on GameTrailers was grinning from ear to ear about it.
 
Even though MS can achieve all 6 points IGN raised, 720 will still be in trouble if the rumors of always online and anti used game are true.
 
Well there goes what little credibility they had. If a digital game can be BC so can disc-based. It's only the logistics of where it's stored that differs.

Was going to say the same thing.

IGN sounding like other people on this forum who don't know how this shit works. lol
 
Any developers in the audience or watching online sure would have though. This event might only have been attended by the press and investors but that sure as hell wasn't the only people that were paying attention.

For me they got the amount of spec talk just right. Don't go mental with it, they didn't say what frequency the CPU or GPU are running at or anything like that. It was just a nice simple explanation of why they were going down that route, and then a fairly general 8 cores, modified PC GPU, 8GB GDDR5 ram.

They didn't dwell on it or keep banging on about it, they moved on and never mentioned it again. I don;t think anyone other than Cerny mentioned any of the actual specs.

After the show though I think every developer on GameTrailers was grinning from ear to ear about it.

I too thought Sony balanced the tech side of things, but GDC is right round the corner, and that is the time to get all geeky with the specs.
 
Seems more like they're just following the same pattern from last generation. Both Halo 2 and Forza 1 came out about a year or less from the launch of the 360 and Rare got center stage for launch. Based on that tweet we saw from the Rare guy it looks like things may be playing out the same. Let's just hope they actually deliever this time!
And/or that MS isn't planning to supplement the potential lack of Halo/Gears/Forza with a mountain of Kinect stuff.
Yea i think its eerily similar to last generation but this time instead of just rare i think we may see a couple of other 1st/ 3rd party exclusives sometime around launch might not be at launch but they will be there. ryse might show up in a new form as well.
 
Even though MS can achieve all 6 points IGN raised, 720 will still be in trouble if the rumors of always online and anti used game are true.

Let's be honest.

Microsoft could show a number of fantastic 1st party titles (all new AAA IP) and people would still say the console was doomed because Kinect is mentioned.

And to those saying BC is irrelevant, are you championing Gaikai?
 
Just reading this thread I'm not sure how MS can turn this tide of negative support. Without core gamers as the backbone I don't see how Durango can be a success.
 
I imagine the current line up of software BC Xbox 1 games will remain compatible in Durango, but I highly doubt 360 titles will be.
 
people also tend to jump into a different console maker but i guess its a foreign concept.

It's hard to argue against this, but we're in uncharted waters with the next generation.The time, effort, energy and money people have invested into their accounts will play a very big role in their decision of which console to buy.

If both don't offer BC, I could see it being less of an issue, but there will still undoubtedly be story after story about consumers who are angry their content isn't accessible on their newly bought console.
 
That isn't going to happen, games will be a secondary feature to controlling your media consumption and watching you masturbate.

This. The entire MS strategy is to extend beyond the gaming market. No way they only focus on this being a gaming machine or make that the main focus. I really do imagine we will see something similar to their past E3 presentations. A heavy emphasis on their OS and entertainment features.
 
Just reading this thread I'm not sure how MS can turn this tide of negative support. Without core gamer as the backbone I don't Durango can be a success.

I can think of 3 announcements they could make that would certainly help them out.


1) A big new exclusive IP that looks amazing from EPIC Games.

2) The new shooter from Respawn Games (the former Infinity Ward guys) is exclusive to the new Xbox for a 1-3 months.

3) The next gen version of Modern Warfare 4 will be exclusive to the new Xbox for 1-3 months.


If they don't have one of those things, ehh, yikes.
 
Since Gears is this year and 2011 and Halo was last year,which returning MS IP can be the big one for launch?
 
I can think of 3 announcements they could make that would certainly help them out.


1) A big new exclusive IP that looks amazing from EPIC Games.

2) The new shooter from Respawn Games (the former Infinity Ward guys) is exclusive to the new Xbox for a 1-3 months.

3) The next gen version of Modern Warfare 4 will be exclusive to the new Xbox for 1-3 months.


If they don't have one of those things, ehh, yikes.

Some very unrealistic expectations.
 
So games are insignificant? Having a library of great games many of which will be $20 or less is a great thing and not insignificant at all.

Did you even read what I said? I think it's great that you're really hung-up on current gen games still, but apparently the majority of buyers doesn't care and buys a next-gen console for next-gen titles.

For sure I would like every console to have full BC. It's just not going to happen and that's not a huge deal because my previous consoles are not going to vanish the minute I buy a new one.
 
Focus on the next Xbox as a games machine?

Bring the first party thunder?

Backwards compatibility?

It's like this guy hasn't paid attention to anything Microsoft has done in the last 2 years. I mean, their first party situation is so bad that he has to bring up Alan Wake 2 as the thing that'll sell core gamers.

Sure, the list is nice as hypotheticals for a console that would be focused on gamers, but Microsoft isn't going in that direction. He should've tried to integrate at least a little bit of reality into this lsit.
 
Just reading this thread I'm not sure how MS can turn this tide of negative support. Without core gamer as the backbone I don't Durango can be a success.
You cant possible be using neogaf as a measuring stick for how the xbox will sell?

Have you people seen the NPDs? What casual xbox game sells game busters there? GTFO.
 
Since Gears is this year and 2011 and Halo was last year,which returning MS IP can be the big one for launch?

My guess is that they follow the Sony route (with Killzone) and use one of their B-listers as their main seasoned launch game, and they focus more on new IP's and old franchise returns; like really old ones like PGR. I'm guessing we could see something like maybe Crackdown.
 
But GDC is right round the corner, and that is the time to get all geeky with the specs.

Exactly, they didn't get geeky here at all apart from saying once that the ram was 8GB, GDDR5 and the bandwidth. It was a nice "Yo, hardcores/developers that know what this means listen up a second, we comin' for you" but not enough to leave millions confused for 20 minutes in the conference while they whittled on about it.

I'm sure they will go into much more detail later on but getting the very basics out there early hasn't done any harm to them at all, not win the way that they did it.

Saying nothing at all just gets backs up.
 
So games are insignificant? Having a library of great games many of which will be $20 or less is a great thing and not insignificant at all.

But see, if that is your main concern you can buy a cheap used Xbox360 and have those cheap older games available. Why would you buy a new console to play the old games? It'd be nice, I suppose, here and there, buy I don't think most people would base their decision on buying the new whiz bang tech on whether or not it can run old games. Games they more than likely already have, if the "keep their current library relevant" crowd are right.
 
I don't think I stated those as expecations, but whatever.

What were they then? Announcements you'd like to see? Announcements they need to make in your opinion?

In any case, they are wildly unrealistic and only serve to set the bar so high that you will invariably come away from the presser feeling disappointed.
 
At this point PSN is more or less at parity with XBL as a service. Live is most likely ahead userbase wise but the numbers they release are so skewed its hard to tell.

Do people even know how the services differ?

Do you all just think its as simple as party chat?

Achieve,nets that don't require manual synching, patches that don't take up to over an hour or more, no installing after downloads and of course the stuff that comes to front of mind like party chat and cross are invites.

Yeah, they really are two steps behind. Is PSN far better than it was at the start of the gen? He'll yeah. Sony has improved their service immeasurably, but that doesn't change the fact that its behind from purely a functionality/infrastructure point of view.
 
But see, if that is your main concern you can buy a cheap used Xbox360 and have those cheap older games available. Why would you buy a new console to play the old games? It'd be nice, I suppose, here and there, buy I don't think most people would base their decision on buying the new whiz bang tech on whether or not it can run old games. Games they more than likely already have, if the "keep their current library relevant" crowd are right.

When I get myself a new Iphone I just delete all my old games since they're old news, right? why the hell would I wan't to keep playing good games that are outdated.
 
No I defiantly can if really the only other thing separating them is First Party support. Your not going to convince anyone with a 360 to purchase a ps4 over a 720 if they can't even play the back catalogue of sony games. On the other hand you may be able to convince some Sony fans to switch over since the 720 will have thousands of games available from the start.

You know, maybe I'm a bit crazy, but those people could wait another year and buy Ps3 or Xbox 360 for cheap they have waited 7 years.

If people buys a Ps4/Xbox 3 is for playing its games, otherwise they will go with the cheaper way of buying the old hardware low priced.
 
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