Xbox - Series S/X: Thread 01

[teddymeow]

How can anybody say the Xbox One is underpowered?!

I mean Microsoft have the powah of teh clowd!!!!

Surely that must count for something....?

[Team Andromeda]

It's said to be near 450.

I've read somewhere it went close to 500. Other than Ubisoft there are not many software studios that can dedicate over 400 staff to a single game/project

Do I think 343i were working on this back in Feb 2015 when they they still had nearly a year of Halo 5 development left

I would imagine the studio started a month or so after Halo V went gold, so that for me would mean come this October the team have been working on the game for 4 years. I just don't see MS tell the studio don't bother making Halo 6 for the One (insert joke of don't bother at all here) make it the next gen XBox . I like to see a the game come on both systems myself and for Halo V to come out this Christmas.

And to me given Nintendo hardly have anything come out of the 3DS and its In House teams have dropped it like a stone. I see the Switch as nothing more than its next handheld, its also selling in numbers would would expect to see a Nintendo handheld and also like a Nintendo handheld it's missing out the AAA 3rd party games

Its not just talk, but if Nintendo bring out a separate handheld system soon, consider me owned.

[Team Andromeda]

To pick up on a point you made...If MS are making some content available on Switch and currently all their games are also available on PC, why buy an XBox at all?

Because if the stories are true, the streaming gaming service is only powered by the One S tech. Good enough for mobile gaming, not very good for current console gaming, never mind next gen. So the Cloud gaming can be ok for the Smart phones or even the Switch (given the One S is vastly more powerful)

And PC gaming is not a threat to MS or the XBox. MS makes money off both not just with sales of games, but royalties for any game or GFX card that uses Direct X or the Windows OS on the PC

[Digfox]

I've read somewhere it went close to 500. Other than Ubisoft there are not many software studios that can dedicate over 400 staff to a single game/project

Actually there are a number of studios with that kind of resources. All the 6/7 western publishers have those resources at their disposal. A large number more if you deal with the larger independents outside of those.

I would imagine the studio started a month or so after Halo V went gold, so that for me would mean come this October the team have been working on the game for 4 years. I just don't see MS tell the studio don't bother making Halo 6 for the One (insert joke of don't bother at all here) make it the next gen XBox . I like to see a the game come on both systems myself and for Halo V to come out this Christmas.

And to me given Nintendo hardly have anything come out of the 3DS and its In House teams have dropped it like a stone. I see the Switch as nothing more than its next handheld, its also selling in numbers would would expect to see a Nintendo handheld and also like a Nintendo handheld it's missing out the AAA 3rd party games

Its not just talk, but if Nintendo bring out a separate handheld system soon, consider me owned.

So that's 3 years not 4 then. Sigh. Also with post-launch support of Halo 5 it's unlikely they (343i) moved everyone off it straight away.

With regards to Nintendo, their new console is selling extremely well irrespective of whatever it is (faster selling machine this gen in the US). And it makes sense for them to support one system rather than two moving forward. I'm not sure what you're point is on this anymore other than you trying to argue that the Switch isn't a console? Either way this is moving out of the realms of this thread.

[Brad]

@ta ms don’t get money because a game uses direct x so they? Pretty sure I could make a game using direct x and not pay ms a penny in royalties or anything else. Possibly gfx card manufacturers pay a royalty but not even sure about that and the windows license money they’ve already had. So, if someone buys a game on windows instead of Xbox then ms definitely lose out I think.

[EvilBoris]

DirectX is license free.

Nobody makes money on the hardware, you make money on software. From a console point of view you create an infrastructure and you charge publishers a licensing fee to release a game on your platform and a fee to manufactuer the discs for them.
And now they get to take a % of any digital sales

On PC they don't get anything, with the exception of a game being purchased through the store.

The future plan is that they create cloud infrastructure, whether that is dedicated games servers, servers for leaderboards, stats etc or if it's just for content delivery.
If you need to use these things in your moden game, then MS have got you covered. Amazon and Google both other these services and all 3 services are currently used by videogames.


As for the cloud streaming, it's a very similar thing. MS are creating a platform or "operating system" for serving games to any device.

If you are a games publisher and you want to have instant accesss to millions of casual gamers and mobile only gamers (hello asia) then the plan is you can develop a game for Xbox and that will immediately be available to anybody with an existing phone or a laptop or a TV.
You don't have to build and support another version of the game for a million different variations of hardware, you build one version of the game and everybody is playing that same version.
It's less about wanting to get rid of physical hardware, but just about opening doors to people who wouldn't have otherwise bought a games console or gaming PC.

It's not about trying to get Halo and Forza on Switch and PS4, the revenue from that is peanuts.
It's about having the % of each and every sale or having subscription cash from the potential billions of people who do not own a dedicated gaming device of any kind.


It's the same reason they continue to invest in MR stuff with Hololens, because at some point, even if it's 15 years from now, the technology will be super viable and they will have this massive infrastructure and content set for hardware to rely on. Cha ching.


They want the windows sitation everywhere, where everything is built on top of it, then it can't be easily exited from.

[fishbowlhead]

Nobody makes money on the hardware, you make money on software.

Sony made profits on each console sold from day 1 of PS4’s launch. Nintendo also make profits on each console as well.

[Team Andromeda]

@ta ms don’t get money because a game uses direct x so they?

Any gfx card that uses Direct X needs to pay for it, or at least that's how it used to work. Given that almost every game needs windows OS that's more dosh for MS in one way or another and any MS funded game that sells on the PC or Xbox is more money again and then of coruse you have the games that use more MS middlware like.

[dataDave]

Sony made profits on each console sold from day 1 of PS4’s launch. Nintendo also make profits on each console as well.

Nintendo don't make consoles though, only handhelds.

[EvilBoris]

Sony made profits on each console sold from day 1 of PS4’s launch. Nintendo also make profits on each console as well.

Wrong.

The PS4 was estimated to cost $381 dollars to make and sold for 399
The Switch had an estimated build cost of $257 and sold for $299
That was before international shipping and retailer margins and the rest of the overheads that supporting consumer electronics comes with.

Sony and Nintendo would have been would have making a loss on those early units or breaking even if they were lucky.
This is the reason is also why MS had no maneurability of price on the Original Xbox One, without taking a huge hit they would never recoup, it's why Sony needed to removed the camera from the PS4, in order to make it feasible to bring the console price further below MS'

If they could, they would give the hardware away, but they can't because the costs are still significant. Especially when you consider how few games the average purchaser makes.

[teddymeow]

How long until consoles are bought on mobile phone style contracts?

[Digfox]

Wrong.

I don't disagree, two things did happen this last gen for Sony & MS. They made profits on each unit far quicker than they did before and reduced R&D significantly.

[nonny]

I don't think MS can compete with Sony or Nintendo in full hardware sales because let's face it they'll never be able to penetrate Japan in any meaningful way. They got lucky with the 360 because Sony fumbled the PS3 and handed them a lead....similar to now, except of course Sony can sell the PS4 in Japan and expect great numbers.

Maybe MS know this too well and the debacle that was the XBO launch was enough for them to realise only being in the hardware game is a direct road to failure. Cloud gaming is still a maybe for most, subscription gaming and putting your franchises in as many places as possible is probably an easier sell... So knows.

All I know it's they currently have a decent amount of first party development houses yet to show their hand, a subscription service which is actually good, a backward compatibility structure wwhich is brilliant, a great piece of hardware in the Xbox One X, and potentially a cloud gaming service that works.... Will they be successful in the next few years?

They're certainly better than they were at the beginning of this generation.

[EvilBoris]

How long until consoles are bought on mobile phone style contracts?

MS tried it right towards the end of last gen when the 360 was like £80 to buy new.

Google are showing their gaming hardware and services next week, so that is where we will perhaps see access to games really becoming contract type services.

[DeathAdder]

One thing that the Bone does that I really hope becomes common-place is that dlc seems to be region-free. Fortune Island bought from the UK store works fine with my Japanese Forza Horizon 4. I understand that this isn't the case with PSN.

The PS3 didn't outsell its rivals, and got off to a very poor start, but its feature of playing games from any region became the standard for all future consoles apart from the Wii U.