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[GHG]

Microsoft doesn't treat the medium as an art.

They think it's like some piece of software where you can hire a bunch of programmers to build it and then it sustains with much less resources after it's already built.

That's not how gaming works at all. They have never understood this concept. For them to truly thrive they will need processes in place to to take a critical glance at progression milestones, and also employ people on a full time basis with the goal of retaining their institutional knowledge long term, and not throw them away as something disposable. They do not treat their workforce with respect.

This is why I suggested that they should not only have kept Bobby around, but he should have outright replaced Phil.

People can say what they want about him but he understood how to balance the art and business side of making videogames, possibly better than anyone else in the industry. The way Activision were run was the perfect blueprint for how Microsoft wish they could run their videogames business, but it looks like they are going to let it all go to waste.

It actually would have made more sense for Activision to absorb Xbox rather than for Xbox absorb Activision. Xbox should be adopting the practices and processes that Activision had put in place, not the other way round. But the egos at Xbox are too big to let anything like that happen.

 

[Topher]

Have to apologies for this, just being dragged down to the warrior hole by some comments.

"dragged down"

 

[GHG]

"dragged down"

 

[Killer8]

I remembered Papa Phil's previous whining that they lost the most important generation ie. the one where people accumulated their digital libraries. It doesn't actually make much sense in the context of Game Pass though, because I thought a selling point of Game Pass is that you get a digital library of something like 400+ games handed to you? It ought to make the 'muh library' argument kind of irrelevant.

All of that is just deflection though and all roads lead back to the main hurting point for Xbox: the games. More specifically, the hot new exclusive games (because let's face it, no one is going to be subbing to Game Pass just to mirror a games library they already have). I don't know just how often that needs to be said, but gamers (literally) aren't buying what they are selling.

Several of their releases have ranged from the mediocre to the downright rotten, and MS also bizarrely view putting one first party game per quarter on the service as a good metric. You aren't going to get people to consistently subscribe month on month with a drip feed of content like that. The main draw to the service should be quality and quantity experiences you cannot find elsewhere, especially when they own so many studios now.

As for some of their games coming to other platforms, you can understand it from a bean counter perspective. Reach more people = sell more games = get more money, after all. But you get the impression that this is just a short term cash grab that will harm their brand in the long term. Game Pass loses more exclusives, further reducing the incentive to subscribe to it. Why bother when you can just wait a year and get it on PS5, or sub for just one month a year and blast through all 4 of those amazing games they put out (lol)?

Game Pass could've been like a stockpile of exclusives which built up value over time for Xbox, eventually tipping the balance to make people a subscriber. I can picture the consumer now: "You know, there's a lot of games now on GP that look good that I can't get elsewhere... maybe I will get an Xbox this Black Friday and subscribe". Now that idea is being eroded.

 

[Syphon Filter]

I don't have a PC (unless you count a raspberry pi-like thing running Linux for printing). I prefer the commodity of consoles, i never cared for Pc gaming, too much tinkering involved.

pc gaming doesnt involve tinkering anymore, this isnt the 90's. also consoles arent plug and play for a while now, its just a worse pc instead of custom hardware like the past. you have to install and patch games as well and games crash to the dashboard as well.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

pc gaming doesnt involve tinkering anymore

 

[Ar¢tos]

pc gaming doesnt involve tinkering anymore, this isnt the 90's. also consoles arent plug and play for a while now, its just a worse pc instead of custom hardware like the past. you have to install and patch games as well and games crash to the dashboard as well.

So there is no shader compilation, or getting upgraded drivers to get better performance every time a big game releases, or tinkering with graphics settings until you get the desired framerate?
Or the nearly daily window updates and security patches, not to mention windows itself with its large overhead compared with BSD.

I rarely get crashes on ps5, the last time was ff7 part 1 demo.

 

[Topher]

So there is no shader compilation, or getting upgraded drivers to get better performance every time a big game releases, or tinkering with graphics settings until you get the desired framerate?
Or the nearly daily window updates and security patches, not to mention windows itself with its large overhead compared with BSD.

I rarely get crashes on ps5, the last time was ff7 part 1 demo.

I rarely get crashes on my PC as well. The exceptions are typically games that are in early access, but in those cases you know what you are getting into. As far as the rest, shader compilation isn't something you have to "tinker" with. It just happens and usually only once. Graphics settings can be as simple as changing the resolution and a preset. Updates ain't a big deal are hardly daily. Besides, you can just ignore them if you want to.

Agree with you on Windows, but unfortunately BSD and Linux have a ways to go before they are mainstream gaming operating systems outside of Steam Deck.

PC gaming will never be as easy as consoles. The trade off is the freedom one has with PC gaming.

 

[King Dazzar]

I rarely get crashes on my PC as well. The exceptions are typically games that are in early access, but in those cases you know what you are getting into. As far as the rest, shader compilation isn't something you have to "tinker" with. It just happens and usually only once. Graphics settings can be as simple as changing the resolution and a preset. Updates ain't a big deal are hardly daily. Besides, you can just ignore them if you want to.

Agree with you on Windows, but unfortunately BSD and Linux have a ways to go before they are mainstream gaming operating systems outside of Steam Deck.

PC gaming will never be as easy as consoles. The trade off is the freedom one has with PC gaming.

I agree with a lot of that. I don't/didn't have stability issues with PCing.

I installed Vampire Survivors recently. And for some reason it didn't run quite as smoothly as XSX. Some mild/minor frame pacing issue. So I then changed Hz output, but when I went to look for it as an Nvidia driver profile to change vsync settings. It wasnt there. So had to faff around to see where the file was located due to it being a Xbox MS store game. Created driver profile and it still didnt fully fix it. Not the end of the world and some games arent like that. You can just set and forget. But I did think it was another good example of how you can disappear tinkering with PC's. Depending on how far you want to push perfection on a game by game basis.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Dunno where to put this but...

Microsoft and Intel Strike Custom Chip Deal Worth $15 Billion

Would say this is pretty big news but for multiple reasons. In relation to this thread, I think this 100% validates Moore's Law Is Dead's rumors about MS and Intel in talks for a deal. While it's not 100% certain this deal is pertaining to the next Xbox...it very well could include the next Xbox considering the proximity of the deal, MLID's talk, and the original Discord rumor/leak from January that talked about Xbox shifting to PC-style devices with 3P OEMs able to make their own variants.

Which would also confirm that Discord leak was extremely accurate, although certain things could of course still change. Anyway, just wanted to share.

 

[ReBurn]

Dunno where to put this but...

Microsoft and Intel Strike Custom Chip Deal Worth $15 Billion

Would say this is pretty big news but for multiple reasons. In relation to this thread, I think this 100% validates Moore's Law Is Dead's rumors about MS and Intel in talks for a deal. While it's not 100% certain this deal is pertaining to the next Xbox...it very well could include the next Xbox considering the proximity of the deal, MLID's talk, and the original Discord rumor/leak from January that talked about Xbox shifting to PC-style devices with 3P OEMs able to make their own variants.

Which would also confirm that Discord leak was extremely accurate, although certain things could of course still change. Anyway, just wanted to share.

Microsoft trying to be Apple and make their own custom SoC's for their computers and tablet devices probably.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Microsoft trying to be Apple and make their own custom SoC's for their computers and tablet devices probably.

Likely, but if they're going that far they might as well extend that to their gaming hardware too, particularly of the rumor that the Surface team has taken over for future Xbox hardware design.

That would maximize the deal in this case vs. having the gaming hardware be the odd one out (going with someone other than Intel for the silicon). At the very least seems like the MLID rumor had a lot of substance to it, though there's nothing officially confirmed for this with Xbox just yet.

 

[ReBurn]

Likely, but if they're going that far they might as well extend that to their gaming hardware too, particularly of the rumor that the Surface team has taken over for future Xbox hardware design.

That would maximize the deal in this case vs. having the gaming hardware be the odd one out (going with someone other than Intel for the silicon). At the very least seems like the MLID rumor had a lot of substance to it, though there's nothing officially confirmed for this with Xbox just yet.

They may do that, but I think it would be a mistake to saddle gaming to Intel graphics at this point, at least until it gets better. AMD isn't the top of the line but all of their games currently run on it.

Custom hardware on the die that includes cores for local machine learning and copilot functionality is a more practical application and is in line with some of the chatter around the direction of that technology in some of their productivity apps. There's a desire for more copilot functionality but a lot of enterprises don't want their employees using web services for it. So there's talk about deploying more isolated hardware inside the enterprise so companies can use it with less risk of morons leaking secrets and intellectual property while using it.

 

[hlm666]

They may do that, but I think it would be a mistake to saddle gaming to Intel graphics at this point, at least until it gets better. AMD isn't the top of the line but all of their games currently run on it.

Custom hardware on the die that includes cores for local machine learning and copilot functionality is a more practical application and is in line with some of the chatter around the direction of that technology in some of their productivity apps. There's a desire for more copilot functionality but a lot of enterprises don't want their employees using web services for it. So there's talk about deploying more isolated hardware inside the enterprise so companies can use it with less risk of morons leaking secrets and intellectual property while using it.

If these rumors are true

NVIDIA Has Been "Calling on Microsoft and Sony Every Week" about Returning to PlayStation and Xbox Consoles

NVIDIA is interested in expanding its footprint in the console space by supplying chips for Microsoft and Sony's next-generation Xbox and PlayStation consoles, according to new statements that analyst Jon Peddie made on the heels of a report that suggests NVIDIA is developing a new business unit...

www.thefpsreview.com

It could possibly be intel for cpu, and nvidia for gpu (trying 360 again?). Microsoft has a massive deal with nvidia for AI hardware aswell so if this intel deal indicates intel hardware in their consoles the same could be said for the nvidia deal.

 

[ReBurn]

If these rumors are true

NVIDIA Has Been "Calling on Microsoft and Sony Every Week" about Returning to PlayStation and Xbox Consoles

NVIDIA is interested in expanding its footprint in the console space by supplying chips for Microsoft and Sony's next-generation Xbox and PlayStation consoles, according to new statements that analyst Jon Peddie made on the heels of a report that suggests NVIDIA is developing a new business unit...

www.thefpsreview.com

It could possibly be intel for cpu, and nvidia for gpu (trying 360 again?). Microsoft has a massive deal with nvidia for AI hardware aswell so if this intel deal indicates intel hardware in their consoles the same could be said for the nvidia deal.

It's possible. It seems like it would be costlier to source discrete CPU and GPU from different vendors. Those AI chips they're partnering for are almost certainly headed for their data centers and probably wouldn't show up in anything consumer facing. But the deal could include price breaks for GPU components in consumer devices. Still based on Nadella's comments about the Intel deal I don't think consoles are what they're focused on.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

It's possible. It seems like it would be costlier to source discrete CPU and GPU from different vendors. Those AI chips they're partnering for are almost certainly headed for their data centers and probably wouldn't show up in anything consumer facing. But the deal could include price breaks for GPU components in consumer devices. Still based on Nadella's comments about the Intel deal I don't think consoles are what they're focused on.

My gut still tells me they may leverage some of the Intel stuff for the next Xbox platform though. Just too much likely cross-over of benefits and probably cost savings to ignore doing so. But it doesn't rule out using say AMD for other components of the platform design.

I guess we shall see in due time...

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

 

[MisterXDTV]

The gift that keeps on giving!

 

[mayham2199]

But I did think it was another good example of how you can disappear tinkering with PC's.

Couldn't get Arkham City to work once. Spent no joke probably half a day trying to get it to work. The error was well known and had tons of possible fixes. In the end had to reinstall windows to get it working and I think updating drivers eventually caused the issue to come back. I work in IT so I can really get lost in TSing it almost becomes personal.

The worst part is by the time I got it working I played for 10 mins tops decided nah I don't want to play this. Tried to play it again later on and got the same error again. Definitely driver related but I could care less now.

My PS5 recently broke from some unforeseen circumstances and I decided oh well I'll just try to go back to PC gaming. Was quickly reminded why I hate PC gaming. Controller disconnecting. Got a 8bit controller and it seemed to work. No audio jack for my headset though. No easy way to get out of a game and join my friends in a party chat with a controller. Trophy popups were tiny as hell.

It's getting better though. Steams big picture mode is so damn close to giving you that experience.