Xbox - Series S/X: Thread 01

[Team Andromeda]

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..

Not many have over 400 staff who are just assigned to develop one game, outside of Ubisoft.

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.

Well I guess if you want to nick pick, but I very much doubt in 20015 MS were telling 343 to make Halo 6 for the next gen and while Gears of War 4 still gets new content and suppport, I would have thought since GOW IV went gold, most of the Coalition studio were put to work on Gears V.

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

Not saying its not, but it doesn't look like we're getting a follow up to the 3DS anytine soon, support is all but dead from Nintendo on the 3DS (In-House) So it kind of looks the Switch is the follow up in all but name and didn't Furukawa-san even say Nintendo might not make a console again?

[Team Andromeda]

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

MS have already started somthing very much like that with its Xbox All Access programe. Where MS lease you a Xbox One X console, Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Games Pass for 35 dollors a month, on a two year deal.

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[Brad]

Direct x is an api. I doubt anyone is paying to use it. Microsoft developed games obviously don’t care whether you buy on windows or Xbox because the Xbox license fee clearly doesn’t apply (as with Sony developed games on PlayStation) so that just leaves 3rd party games I guess where gamers in pc aren’t paying any extra money to Microsoft or Sony or Nintendo. So, Microsoft don’t make a penny on any third party pc game (neither do the other 2) but so what? I guess they’d like to, hence the windows store...

[Team Andromeda]

Direct x is an api. I doubt anyone is paying to use it.

I very much doubt MS is making Direct X available to all GFX vendors out of the goodness of its heart and I seem to remember in a Huge interview with uncle Bill in Edge (I think it was) him saying Direct X represented a growing revenue stream with the growth of 3DFX cards.

MS no doubt still makes a killing off the PC and then any MS that is sells on the PC or the XBox is more sales and where I don't think one takes away from the other, both are different markets in terms of users.

[Brad]

I’ve never known an api you had to pay to use. Direct x isn’t the only gfx api out there. Devs would likely just use one of those if ms tried charging

[Cassius_Smoke]

Direct X doesn't have a licence fee to use, its free. You can download it here. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/down...s.aspx?id=6812.
OpenGL is a competitor and is also completely free to use.

It usually gets bundled in with stuff, like Windows, which does cost, but the Direct X software itself is free.

[Digfox]

Not many have over 400 staff who are just assigned to develop one game, outside of Ubisoft.

Well I guess if you want to nick pick, but I very much doubt in 20015 MS were telling 343 to make Halo 6 for the next gen and while Gears of War 4 still gets new content and suppport, I would have thought since GOW IV went gold, most of the Coalition studio were put to work on Gears V.

No I don't think they made this decision until more recently. Maybe there were delays on the project, or they knew that in scope the development of what wanted to do was going to be larger (i.e. open world looter shooters are more demanding). But either way somewhere along the line (if the rumours are true) they decided to make it a launch title for new hardware.

All of the big western publishers will have huge teams that work mostly or exclusively on one project. It's not just Ubisoft.

We know from statements that in Bungie alone, more than 400 people (indeed over 1,000 on both) were working on Destiny 1 and 2. All the COD teams tend to sit at 250+ sometimes ramping up to complete content. Rockstar will have a significant number of it's 2,000 staff working on single AAA titles. Gearbox have all it's 350+ employees working on Borderlands 3 right now. Blizzard have a huuuugggeee number working on Diablo 4. And significant numbers on any WoW Expac. EA has around 2,000 employees working on it's yearly sports franchises. Even Microsoft has 500-600 across it's 2 studios working on yearly Forza games. Even outside of this there are numerous other teams that have more than that on single titles (Creative Assembly, CD Projekt Red etc.). These are just off the top of my head.

But again to go back to my point what I very confident is that a studio of 400-450 people (in the timeframe we are talking about) is very unlikely to have the capacity to develop 2 Triple AAA projects at the same time. Therefore I suspect the starting preliminary work on Halo Infinite in the months after Halo 5 launched. And whilst nitpicking - 343i WOULDN'T have been working on Halo Infinite 4 years ago. That's simply what I was pulling you up on.

Not saying its not, but it doesn't look like we're getting a follow up to the 3DS anytine soon, support is all but dead from Nintendo on the 3DS (In-House) So it kind of looks the Switch is the follow up in all but name and didn't Furukawa-san even say Nintendo might not make a console again?

And we're not getting a successor to the Wii U either. As Nintendo's new machine is a unified replacement for both. It's appealling to both those who want a home console and handheld console. And just to be clear the Switch is most definitely a videogame console - that's isn't up for debate or what anyone would argue. It's either a Handheld Console, a Home Console or Hybrid. But either way it is a CONSOLE.

[Team Andromeda]

I’ve never known an api you had to pay to use. Direct x isn’t the only gfx api out there. Devs would likely just use one of those if ms tried charging

Developers don't pay for it, but gfx card vendors do or did. Well, at least that's what uncle Bill said.

[Team Andromeda]

And we're not getting a successor to the Wii U either. .

Yeah. I think it marks the point of Nintendo all but giving up on the console under the TV idea.

No I don't think they made this decision until more recently.

So a huge chunk of the game would have been developed for the current gen hardware. I think MS made a cock up by not bringing Kameo out for both the OG XBox and 360 myself. I would like to see Halo 6 out this year and then a blow your socks off Halo 6 for the next XBox next year.

All the COD teams tend to sit at 250+ sometimes ramping up to complete content. Rockstar will have a significant number of it's 2,000 staff working on single AAA titles. Gearbox have all it's 350+ employees working on Borderlands 3 right now.

I thought the main reason BUNGiE wanted to leave MS is that they wanted to work on multiple IP's ( I seem to remember they said they had 2 new IP's they wanted to work on) . Rockstar have all its teams chipping in, or at least that was the case for Red Dead II and GearBox have worked on multi IP at the same time, sadly at the cost of games like Aliens Marines and currently are working on the likes of Project 1v1 and Borderlands 3 . Bizzare work on more than one IP and the likes of Tiburon (who were ace in the Saturn days) have worked on the likes of Madden and the Tiger Golf games and EA Canada work on the likes of Fifa and NHL games


343 is just a single IP developer with more staff than the likes of Naugty Dog; who can handle 2 IP's at a time and keep the quality bar ridiculously high

[Neon Ignition]

I imagine Nintendo will veer increasingly towards a console model with future Switch iterations. The Switch being portable may be a key selling point but whilst the WiiU was a massive failure it's the handheld market that's eating itself into oblivion so focusing too much in that area is self-defeating for them in the longer term. I'd be curious as to how popular Switch is as a handheld given how rare it is to see one in the wild.

BTW - What the hell is taking Borderlands 3 so long?

[Digfox]

Yeah. I think it marks the point of Nintendo all but giving up on the console under the TV idea.

Absolutely.

So a huge chunk of the game would have been developed for the current gen hardware. I think MS made a cock up by not bringing Kameo out for both the OG XBox and 360 myself. I would like to see Halo 6 out this year and then a blow your socks off Halo 6 for the next XBox next year.

Who knows. It could have been a next-gen title from the off. Certainly 343i would have been privy to Microsoft's hardware plans. Maybe even asked to focus on a next-gen title after Halo 5. To me it makes perfect sense for Halo Infinite to be a next gen launch title.

I thought the main reason BUNGiE wanted to leave MS is that they wanted to work on multiple IP's ( I seem to remember they said they had 2 new IP's they wanted to work on)

I think they wanted more independence. But up until Destiny 2 were certainly a single IP/Game dev with 700-800 (and all the Activ studios supporting) working exclusively on Destiny. Obviously we don't know the terms of the $100m NetEase investment last year and what that means for what Bungie are working on at the moment.

[Brad]

Developers don't pay for it, but gfx card vendors do or did. Well, at least that's what uncle Bill said.

I don't get how MS could make a GFX card vendor give them any money. I could make a GFX card that responded correctly to all the calls specified in the Direct X API and Microsoft couldn't do a thing about it. Game devs would not need to know whether a gamer's PC had an NVidia card, ATI or a BradFX card in the PC, they just program against DirectX and it'll work. I'm not saying GFX card vendors don't pay MS I'm just saying I don't know why they would. Does anyone know the business/law around it all?

[CMcK]

Developers don't pay for it, but gfx card vendors do or did. Well, at least that's what uncle Bill said.

I can’t imagine MS were charging for DirectX as they tried to establish its place in the market. There were a lot of vendor specific APIs back then such as Glide (3dfx) and PowerSGL (PowerVR) not to mention open source stuff like OpenGL too. No point in charging for something you hope will unify the market.

[EvilBoris]

Half of DirectX was about just making things easier for the users and it was never only about graphics cards.
It totally got rid of having to set up each and every game to work with your soundcard or mouse or Joystick
Screens like this give me palpitations as it takes me back to my 10year old self where it was total pot luck if I could even get audio



The only place MS would have made money from this was if a GPU,Soundcard or joystick manufacturer wanted to put a DirextX or Windows logo on the box of their product , because at the time just being able to install a driver from disc and have said item even function was a huge boon to consumers.

[Cassius_Smoke]

I feel like a fool not knowing until today that the name Xbox came from 'DirectX Box' when it was being created.